I've been saying it all along: Elon is determined to kill Twitter.

https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1592322959477460993

Here's the thing: if something is so obvious to you, as a Twitter user, that you can't believe they didn't know it internally, I promise you, THEY DID. Of course they knew it. They knew it WAY before you did.

This is the death knell for content moderation and reliable uptime on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1591848844899540992

Here's that this means on the community side: out of control spam, a dramatic spike in hate content and abuse; the proliferation of child sexual abuse imagery, which is illegal, and the lawsuits that come with it; flagged content reports that go into black holes.

I feel helpless today, but here'a a thing I can do. DM me a screenshot of your donation to an abortion access fund and I'll send you free CBD products from @milkbarnfarm. If you're in the PNW, I suggest @nwaafund. The more you donate, the more I'll send. nwaafund.org @milkbarnfarm @nwaafund It was this or throw a brick through a window. I'm starting with the nonviolent one but leaving my options open.

Everything you need to know about a community you can learn by watching who is allowed to speak thoughtlessly and who has to second guess their every utterance. In other words, the people who are allowed to be assholes are the people the community is for.

Well shit.

Goats got into the area where we were hardening off the hemp starts. They ate all of them.

In 5 minutes I went from having too many plants to not nearly enough.

I can start again from seed, but it's late.

This is a disaster. When I caught them, I shooed them out and closed the gate and broke down sobbing so loud a neighbor kid came out to check on me.

I reassured him that I was okay, I was just fucked.

The precariousness of farming is so hard. In tech there were fuckups, but there were backups.

https://twitter.com/AP/status/1533806326610116615

Calling it now: Elon Mush will never own Twitter, and he will wind up paying them millions for breaking the contract. They’ll be in litigation for years.

Jon coulda just been retired and beloved. Instead, this? Fuck.
thehill.com/homenews/media… Rich man protects other rich man. It's such a cliché.

Shame on you, @jonstewart.

When I visited Poland in the early 2000s to see where my grandparents had lived, we went to a camp where my family had been killed. The tour guide asked me if I was Jewish or Polish. I said both. He laughed and said no. You can’t be both.

That was only a couple decades ago. That was also the trip where a group of young Poles had a screaming argument with our tour guide until she hurried us back to the car. She was mortified and didn’t want to tell us what they’d said. All she’d say was they wanted us to “go home.” This was in the town we’re from.

The heartbreaking thing about the Whoopi comments, besides being factually wrong, is: what was her point? Was it that if the Holocaust wasn’t racist (it was), she didn’t have to care about it that much? This from a woman who previously had claimed to be Jewish is just so depressing.

Cad Bane looks fucking terrible. Sub-cosplay level costume. A rare miss. More evil Squidward than Star Wars.

So if you've worked in community content moderation, you already know about running hashes against the NCMEC database. It happens every day and for good reason. If you ever had to see the photos in that database, you wouldn't soon forget them.
cnn.com/2021/08/05/tec… Before the tech-libertarians blow a gasket at the idea of Apple scanning images on your phone, remember that 1: they're scanning photos on *their* servers (iCloud) and 2: they're only comparing hashes. Nobody is looking at your photos.

Predictable. Predictably stupid.
They're not sending their best.
politico.com/news/2021/08/0… Look. When a government protects freedom of speech, it means they won’t make laws to censor you. When a company promises promises freedom of speech, it means they will allow the worst scum on earth to be terrible on their platform. This difference is important.

Imagine a social media system where, instead of everybody being able to yell at everybody from the outset, you had to *earn* the ability to interact with others. It wouldn't be hard to do. Create a list of pro-social, community healthy actions that are qualifiers, then gate the community tools that could be used to ruin someone's day. Mandate that users do X positive things before getting access to the adult table.

First part of this I wholeheartedly agree with. But the second line is problematic. A whole lot of Americans refuse to imagine that this is a racist country, and they’ll refuse to imagine that the GOP has become fascist. But both those things are true.

https://twitter.com/RevJacquiLewis/status/1414272335042027534

Sometimes you can refuse to imagine yourself right into a fascist state.

Sometime we become exactly what we, collectively, refuse to imagine.

All the praise I heard for Bo Burnham’s Inside triggered my contrarian instincts something fierce, but I just watched it and, dammit, it really is that good.

I know. I don’t like it, either. This is seriously inspired.

The guys with guns and badges seem a bit too delicate for the job. nbcbayarea.com/news/local/off… And they call us snowflakes.

Can't get over what an amazing accomplishment the vaccine is, the speed of its creation and rollout, and how we should all be celebrating this amazing American moment ... but we're not because the GOP and Fox News made it partisan from the jump just to protect their chief idiot. I got my first vaccine dose in a convention center staffed by volunteers and members of different uniformed branches of the military, all working together, surrounded by my neighbors rolling up their sleeves to protect themselves and each other. It was beautiful.

Easier to pick the three I'd keep: MCU, Star Wars, and Star Trek. And honestly the last two are iffy, based on the most recent offerings. Maybe, I dunno, we should come up with new things.

https://twitter.com/BAvolicino/status/1379490975689568259

DC: I will always love the animated series' from my youth. That's my Justice League. But let's be real, there's only been one decent DC movie (WW) and the rest have ranged from amusingly bad (Aquaman) to unamusingly bad (everything else).

The mistake is ever taking Republicans seriously. Everything Republicans say should be seen as a toddler making up stories and responded to with that same energy.

"Okay, Mitchie. What a great story. You're so creative! Why don't you go play in the yard. The adults are governing."

Wow. So many lives cut short for so long. I never thought I'd see it.

https://twitter.com/yodifiji/status/1378762538708566019

All us Gen Xers looked at the Covid guidelines and went, "yup, okay, happy to help" because we're old enough to remember watching young people die horribly from a virus.

I have to say, Falcon and The Winter Soldier has left me cold so far, but the Loki show looks like so much fucking fun.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is pretty much what you'd expect from a Marvel TV show. Characters you know, dealing with the continuing universe, some action and some (painful) quips. It's all really unsurprising so far.