Category: News

Twitter Reprieve; News Holiday

I deleted Twitter a couple weeks ago, and have been playing Fallout 76 in the mornings, when I often would have had the news on, while I caffeinate. I have no idea what’s going on in the world now. The only tidbits I get are through sites like 9gag, and most of that is about Ukraine, which I just skip over like it was religious nonsense. I just thought, wow, I’m so at peace! What’s differ… Oh yeah, right.

So I just checked Drudge and Fox News, and find I haven’t missed it at all. I don’t know why I’m supposed to care who any of those people on the front page are, and there’s no reason to figure it out, except to get back on social media, and scream into the void about it.

I keep thinking that I could use Twitter, but avoid everyone that talks about politics, and only follow, like, comedians and novelty accounts, but I use it to rant and rave at companies all the time, and that’s not changing anything, except making me feel terrible. I don’t know if I will cave and try this, but I think I have a couple more weeks to feel this out.

Top 6 Signs Your Company is Being Raided

Despite however it’s being sold by the top brass.

U.S. truck engine maker Cummins Inc said on Tuesday it will buy auto parts maker Meritor Inc for $2.58 billion in cash, to beef up its electric and hybrid vehicle parts offerings amid a boom in demand for climate-friendly transport.

Source: Engine maker Cummins to buy Meritor for $2.6 bln in electric parts push

On the occasion of Cummins buying Meritor, I find myself reminiscing about the time when Meritor “merged” with Arvin — the other Fortune 250 that used to be headquartered in Columbus, Indiana — and then proceeded to follow the plan from the university-standard textbook on corporate raiding. I’m pretty naive, so I didn’t see it coming, but as I reflected on everything that happened in the 3 years after the “merger” — until Meritor spun the last piece of Arvin out to private equity — there were lots of moves being made that should have made it obvious that the plan sold to the employees and the public wasn’t really what the top brass was doing.

In somewhat particular order, as this was how I saw it unfold…

6. Middle management creates “integration” groups of low-level people who are supposed to decide how departments will be reorganized. The problem here is that, if top brass really cared, they wouldn’t have put low level people on the committees, and left it to people who had been at the company for mere months to decide how things should be done.

5. Senior management — division VP’s — from the “bought” company start pulling the rip cords on their golden parachutes. Fortune-500-sized public companies just can’t resist sending out company-wide emails talking about these moves, regardless of the fact that relatively few people are actually impacted by them. But, in this case, they do this quietly, and spaced out, so it’s harder to detect the pattern.

4. The combined company throws away excellent, industry-recognized, practical, company-wide training for ridiculous, non-sensical, politically-correct “training” that means nothing, and has no effect on productivity. For instance, if the “training” has a session where everyone has to take off their shoes, crawl around on the floor on all fours, and complete some stupid group activity, while a coach is yelling instructions at them, all while annoying music is playing loudly on a boom box, in order to show that “communication is ‘hard’,” that training may be useless.

3. The combined company immediately sells a strategic facility that was just completed, after literally decades of everyone telling them they should build it. Bonus points if they sell the facility to a supplier, so that they are now stuck buying a critical component at a higher price.

2. The company starts selling other non-critical, yet-highly-profitable businesses. Of course, this might make sense to the business anyway, but the timing is suspect. As time passes, you will start seeing the larger, and more important divisions go, and this should really set off your alarms.

1. Both companies are majority-owned by investment banks, but the company makes a big deal about selling the idea to the public. The deal would have already been a foregone conclusion based on the backroom deals. Why bother with the song and dance?

I only learned this last one after everything else had settled, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. Turns out that all blue chip companies are majority-owned by investment banks, and there’s a whole other conversation to be had about why Wall Street banks not only run so much of the economy, but also seem to own a large portion of the “means of production” as well. I guess it’s just our modern world, but it seems like a fragility just waiting for another disaster to fall apart.

‘I hate this sport!’: Rage, teen tears and Olympic collapse

BEIJING (AP) — The gold medalist said she felt empty. The silver medalist pledged never to skate again. The favorite left in tears without saying a word. After one of the most dramatic nights in their sport’s history, Russia’s trio of teenage figure skating stars each enter an uncertain future.

Source: ‘I hate this sport!’: Rage, teen tears and Olympic collapse

Good. Sorry for all the athletes (and “athletes”) involved, but everything that made the Olympics cool when I was a kid is gone. It’s just another big business now, and a machine that uses and abuses vulnerable people, for a music-label-like shot at fame.

Facebook declared Kyle Rittenhouse guilty from the start

The blackout went far and wide: Facebook actively policed its users for pro-Kyle Rittenhouse posts and removed the content. It even targeted posts from legal scholars arguing the merits of his self-defense case.

Source: Facebook declared Kyle Rittenhouse guilty from the start

Whatever you think about the case, this is not the internet I signed up for.

Facebook is following the playbook for any and all companies now: monopolize a market, and then extract all of the profits from it. The problem is that Facebook has essentially monopolized online speech. Sure, they can point the FTC at other successful social media companies, in order to mitigate antitrust action, but every other company is a drop is the bucket in comparison. The most influential company besides Facebook is Twitter, and they have, like, one tenth the number of users. So, yes, there are other social media platforms, but if you want to put something “out there” for the world to see, you can’t NOT use Facebook. Is it the de facto social media platform.

Awhile back, someone pointed out the cynical interpretation of the “Facebook whistleblower,” who recently gave testimony to Congress. Rather than this being an embarrassment to Facebook, and begging for intrusive government intervention, it was, in fact, an engineered and coordinated effort to provoke Congress into creating an oversight board.  Why? Because, rather than put shackles on Facebook’s hands, it would be liberating for the officers of the company to be able to point their detractors towards the governmental body regulating social media, which would, nominally, be setting policy. Except that, as we all know full well, they would be doing so at the bidding of Facebook, for the maximization of profit, and campaign contributions.

In my opinion, the so-called “mainstream media” created Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge by their systemic bias. They only really achieved national success after it became clear that the entire American press was going to give Clinton an editorial pass for every one of his scandals, including (and especially) Lewinsky. After that, they remained forces that every other news commentary program had to contend with and respond to. There are conservative social media and independent journalistic platforms ramping up right now in response to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter’s hamfisted efforts at censorship. I predict that they will achieve the same sort of niche-yet-unignorable success that Rush and Drudge had. If so, it will just prove that line in Star Wars true: “the more you tighten your grasp, the more systems will slip through your fingers.” The success of Parler and Substack, et. al., are directly tied to the tactics of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to control any and all important social narratives online. They more content they disallow, the more those other platforms will thrive.

The Desolation of News

“News”

So a “singer” — which Apple plastered on the front page of their music service for many months with a whole boob hanging out — says something controversial about COVID vaccines — which the CDC is already refuting — and Tucker Carlson — arguably the most popular talking head on TV at the moment — makes that tweet news.

I don’t care what she said about COVID. I just want to point out what a crazy world we live in that crazed rants and resulting ratio-ing on Twitter is now news. How is anyone supposed to make head or tails of anything any more?

In the process, though, she proved the old adage true, that even a broken clock is right twice a day. You have to seek clarity from a higher power.

Leo Morris: News ‘philanthropy’ is a bad idea

Now, advertisers seek targeted audiences rather than broad coverage, and savvy consumers read online reviews of everything before making a purchase. People glimpse the news in their Facebook feeds and find amusements through social media forums. They complain bitterly on Twitter, then look around and wonder where the sense of community went.

Source: Leo Morris: News ‘philanthropy’ is a bad idea

The problem has been debated for about 20 years now. But I think history will look back and find one point he made to be the most-compelling problem: “the sense of community.” The internet has eliminated the “gatekeepers” or the “arbiters” or the “curators” of common knowledge. There was a guy who became famous for describing “the long tail,” and that people could find anything they wanted with the modern internet, and people could make money filling those desires, no matter how obscure or arcane. The internet has allowed each person to radicalize along intensely-individualized lines, and be virulently opposed to anyone who differs in any way. This is the problem. It’s just that Twitter found a way to capitalize on this virulence.

We can’t get along any more, because we all presume ourselves the final authority on everything. So there’s very little room in the market for a journalistic publication that’s supposed to offer a wide swath of “important” stories. No one agrees on what those stories are, let alone why they’re important, and what they infer. The entire idea of a publication has been (almost) destroyed by the internet. Only a few bigs will remain. It has much less to do with how to monetize it as it has to do with people’s desire to consume it. I guess what I’m saying is that I think what people really wanted all along was Facebook, but the closest thing we had was the local paper. I mean, look at the orchids and onions in The Republic. It has always been a “compelling” reason to get it. Facebook is just that, times a million.

While linking my local paper, I see that there are twenty-seven trackers and ads on that page, and this is another thing to talk about in the future.

Jeff Bezos’ $500M real estate portfolio: See all his luxury houses

Get a peek inside the good life of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who has a home for each climate.

Source: Jeff Bezos’ $500M real estate portfolio: See all his luxury houses

At some level of wealth, it must become really aggravating to the 1% that they can’t do anything about the fact that they have a physical body, and can only occupy about 2 cubic feet of space, like the rest of us slovenly plebeians.

NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part Two: What Happened January 28? | by Donald G. McNeil Jr. | Mar, 2021 | Medium

On Monday, February 1 — by coincidence, my birthday — Dean and Carolyn Ryan called me at about 10:30 A.M.My notes of the conversation are sparser than I normally take, but I also recounted it right afterward to a friend, so I think this is accurate.

As I remember it, Dean started off by saying “Donald, you had a great year — you really owned the story of the pandemic….”As soon as I realized he was talking in the past tense, I became tense and started taking notes.

“Donald, I know you,” he went on. “I know you’re not a racist. We’re going ahead with your Pulitzer. We’re writing to the board telling them we looked into this two years ago.”

“But Donald, you’ve lost the newsroom. People are hurt. People are saying they won’t work with you because you didn’t apologize.”

“I did write an apology,” I said. “I sent it to you Friday night. I sent another paragraph on Saturday morning. Didn’t you get it?”

Dean didn’t answer.

“I saw it,” Carolyn said.

“But Donald,” Dean said, “you’ve lost the newsroom. A lot of your colleagues are hurt. A lot of them won’t work with you. Thank you for writing the apology. But we’d like you to consider adding to it that you’re leaving.”

“WHAT?” I said loudly. “ARE YOU KIDDING? You want me to leave after 40-plus years? Over this? You know this is bullshit. You know you looked into it and I didn’t do the things they said I did, I wasn’t some crazy racist, I was just answering the kids’ questions.”

“Donald, you’ve lost the newsroom. People won’t work with you.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Since when do we get to choose who we work with?”

“Donald, you’ve had a great year, you’re still up for a Pulitzer.”

“And I’m supposed to what — call in to the ceremony from my retirement home?”

Carolyn stepped in: “Donald, there are other complaints that you made people uncomfortable. X, Y and Z.”

I remember looking at the snow in my garden.

“May I know exactly what X, Y and Z are? And who said I did X, Y and Z? I’m happy to answer anything — but I have to know what I’m being accused of.”

Neither of them responded. To me, it felt like an attempt to intimidate me.

“Let me give you an alternative view of who’s ‘lost the newsroom,’” I said. “I’ve been getting emails and calls from bureaus all over the world saying, “Hang in there, you’re getting screwed.” People are outraged at how I’m being trashed in the press and by the Times. If you fire me over this, you’re going to lose everybody over age 40 at the paper, all the grownups. All your bureau chiefs, all your Washington reporters, all your Pulitzer winners. Especially once they realize how innocuous what I really said was and that you didn’t find it a firing offense in 2019. And they’ll talk to every media columnist in town. The right wing will have a field day.”

“We’re not firing you,” Dean said. “We’re asking you to consider resigning.”

“You’re twisting my arm.”

“We’re not twisting your arm.”

“Just mentioning it, just bringing it up, is twisting my arm. Nobody in 45 years has suggested I resign. Charlotte has threatened to fire me a couple of times, but that’s different. That was always bullshit. But nobody’s ever suggested I resign. I should shut up and get a lawyer. I need a lawyer.”

Dean and Carolyn seemed to pretend to not hear that, either.

“We’re not twisting your arm. We’re asking you to consider it.”

“No. I’m not considering it. I’m not just quitting like this.”

The conversation then trailed to an end, with them saying “consider it” and me saying no.

Source: NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part Two: What Happened January 28? | by Donald G. McNeil Jr. | Mar, 2021 | Medium

I had read about this in bits in pieces. It was good to read about the whole thing from his side.

In the post-modernist society in which we live, no matter how they start, memes have become reality. All this guy did is quote the word back to a person asking a question. But if a viral mob forms over a perceived slight — no matter groundless it may be — you’re done, and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no amount of record-straightening, apologizing, or telling people to go pound sand that will make it go away. You will be canceled. The only thing that the mob will accept, by way of peacemaking, is your job, career, and future prospects. They want to see your entire livelihood destroyed. It’s a good thing this guy was already retirement age.

PewDiePie on YouTube used the word in question in an actual offense. He still has 109M subscribers. Those kinds of numbers suggest he is still making 10’s of millions of dollars a year on the platform. This guy got the boot after a 45-prestigious-year career, for a direct quote.

I think he’s right. I think the Times will lose readers over this. Not me, of course. The Times tipped its hand a few years back that this was the path they were going to take. They were heading to become the Paper of Record, but for Wokeness. If they can find enough people to pay for the service of having their political egos massaged, then, hey, “ain’t that America,” and good for them, but don’t pretend that this is anything other than the mirror image of the situation at Fox News or Breitbart.

When I realized this was their direction, I started paying for the WSJ.