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John Bull Profile picture
@garius
Sep 1, 2020 • 3 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
Boomers talking about what makes good TV comedy. Two panel comic with Princi...
Yes, yes, I know. #notAllBoomers etc. etc.
Oh, and for reasons of fairness...

....this is also Gen X talking about 'Friends.' Principle Skinner two panel...

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More from @garius

John Bull Profile picture
Aug 11, 2023
My favourite IRL Dannatt fact:

In 1999 Major-General Dannatt was CRITICAL to stopping Wes Clark from turning the Kosovo peacekeeping into a hot war with Russia/Serbia.

As he knew when and how he was allowed to reject an order. And his commander, Gen Mike Jackson knew it. /1 🧵
It's June 1999 and a NATO peacekeeping force (KFOR) enters Kosovo under a fragile peace, brokered to end the brutal Balkans wars.

When the first recon elements reach Pristina, though, they find that a small Russian force has also crossed the border and seized the airport.
The Russians (not unfairly) believe they have been cut out of the peacekeeping. But this seizure is an attempt by rogue elements within the Russian government to either provoke an engagement, or secure concessions.

They were FM Ivanov, General Ivashov and FSB head...

...Putin. What Yeltsin’s thoughts on the matter were remains unclear. The President’s grip on power had begun to fade alongside his faculties. To various members of his government, however, it seemed that an opportunity might exist for Russia to emerge from the Kosovo war with some pride after all. Importantly, this group included Foreign Minister Ivanov, General Ivashov (the man in command of much of its southern forces ) and the increasingly influential head of the KGB’s successor organisation the FSB, Vladimir Putin.
Read 26 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
Aug 2, 2023
I'll NEVER tire of the fact that Uber were so desperate to avoid giving drivers sick days in the UK that they accidentally convinced a tribunal they were a cab firm.

That made them VAT liable.

Wrote back in 2019 that HMRC would nail them to the wall: https://t.co/8cyywu7ZfSlondonreconnections.com/2019/schroding…
Uber remains the textbook case of a tech unicorn assuming American corporate law, lobbying and culture can just apply everywhere.

And thus getting UTTERLY undone by not making even the tiniest changes to adapt to a local political and legal market.
The MOMENT they submitted themselves to an employment law case where the Duck Test would be applied under English law, they were fucked.

The moment the tribunal wrote this in their ruling, you could practically SEE HMRC rising, meerkat like, from the savannah. Any organisation (a) running an enterprise at the heart of which is the function of carrying people in motor cars from where they are to where they want to be and (b) operating in part through a company discharging the regulated responsibilities of a PHV operator, but (c) requiring drivers and passengers to agree, as a matter of contract that it does not provide transportation services (through UBV or ULL) and (d) resorting in its documentation to fictions, twisted language and even brand new terminology, merits we think a degree of scepticism.
Read 8 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
Jul 29, 2023
Obscure autobiography arrived yesterday. Been trying to hunt down a copy of for years.

Tiny volume. Person who thinks he's unimportant. Arguably helped save thousands of Jews in WW2.

As is always the case, doesn't credit himself. Blames himself for not somehow saving more.
Flicking through it now and it's heartbreaking. As with Smallbones' papers or Mary Burchill's writings, just good people who stood up, but then cannot forever escape the guilt of thinking they could have done more than they did.

Even as they were doing more than anyone else.
We have a tendency to see 'heroes' as larger than life, and I hate it.

Nearly always they are just regular people who decide they will not accept what is happening, and who they're told to hate, and do what they can.

They just decide to be kind.

And they're haunted by it.
Read 6 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
Jul 25, 2023
To understand Musk's renewed obsession with X and focus on financial services, you REALLY need to understand the X/Confinity merger that became PayPal.

And, particularly, the Peter Thiel-led coup that kicked Musk out as CEO/Chief Strategist.

Here's how that happened. 1/🧵
In early 2000, X hits the news for a vulnerability that allows money to be moved between accounts with just account details. This is fixed, but spooks investors.

Elon agrees with investor Mike Moritz from Sequoia to become CTO while Bill Harris (ex-Intuit) becomes CEO.
Meanwhile, over the road (literally), a startup called Confinity is making waves. It's funded by Peter Thiel, who is also its CEO, but is the brainchild of Ukrainian Max Levchin its CTO.

Backed by Nokia, Confinity is making a way to 'beam' money between PalmPilots by infrared.
Read 31 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
Jul 24, 2023
Thread on history of X dot com and Melon Husk will have to wait until tomorrow as need to stream.

But in the meantime here is a quick story called:

That Time Elon Totalled his McLaren F1 While Trying to Show Off in Front of Peter Thiel 🧵/1 a very totalled mclaren F1
Year 2000. X and PayPal are fighting over the pay-by-email market. Both are burning cash so fast that a merger becomes inevitable (I'll cover all this in tomorrow's thread).

Musk (X) is REALLY not happy about this. He wants to WIN. Thiel (PayPal) is happy. He HAS won.
Thiel saw the writing on the wall, as did Bill Harris (formerly of Intuit) - X's CEO after Elon (biggest investor) stepped back to CTO . They have created this merger to save both companies and make lots of money. Harris has bullied Elon into it by threatening to quit otherwise.
Read 17 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
Jul 9, 2023
I'm old enough to remember when the Rail Delivery Group insisted that Oyster Cards were the spawn of Satan.

They've never deliberately made one pro-passenger ticketing decision in their ENTIRE existence.

Best to assume, with ticket office closures, that this is still true.
If you're wondering why the RDG (or ATOC as it was then. They rebrand whenever the brand becomes toxic for being anti-pax) hated Oyster, it was because IT HELPED PEOPLE PAY THE RIGHT FARE.

The operators make a fortune, every year, from people overpaying for tickets.
This is why smartcard rollout is still shite outside London. There's zero financial benefit to the government or the TOCs in easy, transparent ticketing.

The only person who benefits from that is the passenger, and they aren't shareholders.
Read 15 tweets

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