Twitter Moments Revisited

At least now I know what happened to the Twitter "Moments" feature. First, they put it in the "Creator Studio" (along with "Analytics"), then removed it altogether on 7 December 2022.

Not all moments last. As of today we're removing the option to create Moments for most users as we focus on improving other experiences.

Don’t worry, you can still see past Moments and follow Live events on Twitter. 

Most replies to the above notice seem to be complaints from those who liked to organize items for easy reference, things they were working on (particularly artists). That's understandable because the feature helped you put a bunch of tweets (and their links) under one topic heading. But there is a more critical issue. The "Moments" feature wasn't just something to promote your work; it could amplify messages throughout the Twitterverse. You can still see past Moments -- if you have the time and patience to scroll through entire timelines to find them. So those you created are not only not easy for you to see again; they are not realistically available to anyone who looks at your profile. That is another aspect of the general thrust of #NewTwitter since Elon Musk and Co. bought it.

In my case, the relevance of the issue is here.

So You Lost Some Twitter Followers..............

So you lost some Twitter followers, and now mean people are talking shit at you. At least you're not having bombs falling from the sky in your neighborhood. And you're not in prison for criticizing dictators. And you're not little more than a baby, getting shot to death in your elementary school.

Assuming (for the sake of the argument) that 44 billion US dollars is an awful lot of money no matter how rich one might be, how would it be worth buying Twitter if the goal were not to somehow make money off it? That is, in the short term, one could cope with losses in anticipation of long-term financial benefit, but if the thing goes under completely, how can a purchase of $44 BILLION be justified?

As someone pointed out, Twitter has brought lots of people together in many ways on a global scale. And whatever one can say about that in a critique (for instance, Western affluence affords greater access than that experienced by most of the people of Africa), it's simply true that I've been able to follow events in the Philippines and other places by following accounts from there, and even in less open countries by following human rights and journalistic and political opposition accounts. (And it's not all happy discoveries, either. Some of our friends in Hong Kong were very open to right-wing ideas – evidently, due to the PRC carrying the label "Communist" and their taking its ideological verities seriously.)

But while it would be a shame to lose opportunities to draw attention to Russia's War on Ukraine, how much impact have various Twitter campaigns had on the political situations inside certain countries? If one is inclined to say "very little," Turlough's point may strike at the heart of the matter. The ruling powers in Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Turkey, and so on, could be extremely uneasy at the continued prospect of a global network of humans no longer limited to having to "Think Globally, Act Locally." Why would various agencies try to disrupt such platforms (and their inhabitants) if they feared nothing from that direction? And as they've had their intelligence services attack and infiltrate those platforms to disrupt them in many ways, it would obviously benefit them to have a useful idiot to serve the same goal, especially if one says he's going to do things for positive reasons (like "liberating free speech").

But that's only for public consumption, yes? We can now see that the "positive reasons" are limited to a specific ideological stance (called "libertarian" – seemingly, more individualistic, but fringe right-wing in the US) with no objections to white supremacy and other ideas held dear in Far Right circles. And that's also in keeping with what various governments would like to see, whether only in shit-stirring, or in encouraging extensive social conflict, or in installations of friendly regimes like the one in the United States from 2017 to 2021. To some of us, all this doesn't seem so complicated. Turning Twitter into an updated, normalized version of 4chan or The Daily Stormer would serve both to "get the [Far Right] word out" as well as eventually destroy the "threat" that the platform represented all along.

"Thus Spake Steve Bannon"

An ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT comic strip from the House of Some Ideas! It may make you laugh! It may make you cry! It may make you Question the Values of your Peers! It's........

"THUS SPAKE STEVE BANNON"

 

In his rôle as a public intellectual, disguised as a mild-mannered pod-caster, he sets forth his dogma and stratagems in a never-ending battle for wrong, fabrications, and Far Right world dominion......

Kingmaker.    Chaos Bringer.    Übermensch.    Cyborg Bibliomancer.

He is.............STEVE BANNON!!!

Well Regulated Gun Rights

I had left Facebook back in 2015 (when its other "problems" had not yet surfaced). My departure was due to not wanting to see more of the political opinions of some family and friends. Those were primarily about "gun rights" as "an important issue," so I wrote down some of my thoughts at that time.

 

For me, the end was in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. The next logical step, the only one left, would be for some other wannabe Devil to target a hospital maternity ward. But since elementary school kids pretty much still are babies, the next step wasn't necessary -- it had just happened. So I'm way past OVER the fucking "debate" on the "issue." If what happened there didn't make the American people do something, then the American people will never do anything.

Some people latch on to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution as if God Wrote it in His Own Handwriting. You don't see that degree of zeal about any of the other Amendments. And you can't ask them why we should be so worried these days about British troops confiscating Americans' muskets because they won't know what you mean.

I can appreciate the qualities of all kinds of weapons. But I don't understand a gun fetish any more than I do a foot fetish. (And with Bruce Lee dead, there aren't that many people who can die by foot these days.) And of course, people get defensive and repeat empty slogans, talking about "rights" and "liberty" and how their shotguns help keep Our Nation "safe." (As if the US military forces need help with that.)

Speaking of military forces, should everyone be able to have a hand grenade? It's not clear why you should think they shouldn't if you think they can have a combat weapon like an assault rifle. (The definition being right there in the terminology, you see.) Hand grenades are "weapons of war," aren't they? That's why the military keeps a tight lock on their use and who is allowed access to them. They should NOT be in the hands of civilians.

Should you allow a toddler to play with a loaded gun? Should a raving maniac have a loaded gun? If your answer is NO, then you've already conceded the Number One Point in favor of "Gun Control": There are people who shouldn't be ALLOWED to have a fucking gun.

People are free to worship at the altar of the Second Amendment if they want. People are free to love guns. But guns aren't people -- people are people. And the problem isn't just that after every massacre, we spend more time talking about guns than about the people who got shot dead. It's also that the shooters loved guns, too -- but they didn't love people (or society, life, reality).

So, if you want, you can try to do something about people's mental health and antisocial tendencies, and good luck with that. Or you can try to do something about their access to weaponry. Or you can do nothing.