Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Captainant 27,771]

On 10/28/2022 at 8:16 AM, 52-80 said:

The notion that Twitter has been somehow on the precarious edge of righteousness and will instantly tip over into a nazi free-for-all is the most amusing overreaction.  (But its 2022, so what worth is take if its not flaming hot)

lol it's funny to go back in time in this thread to see what our surly business leaders were so sure of with elon's management, considering twitter's recent de-moderation moves and inviting CSAM back onto the site

[Clintonaldo 2,576]

Elon is going to end up in a conservatorship as he is clearly not well. 

[27-25 2,055]

What does one do when a group points out that you don't crack down on online hate speech?  Well, you sue that group of course!  Free speech absolutism at its finest.

[Brisketexan 105,336]

18 minutes ago, 27-25 said:

What does one do when a group points out that you don't crack down on online hate speech?  Well, you sue that group of course!  Free speech absolutism at its finest.

Oh....Twitter wants to drink a big old slug of that SLAPP lawsuit juice?  Brilliant.

[Upgrayedd 5,818]

18 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

[fattyflattie 4,638]

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

lol it's funny to go back in time in this thread to see what our surly business leaders were so sure of with elon's management, considering twitter's recent de-moderation moves and inviting CSAM back onto the site

You dig even further back and he was responsible for saving our planet. 

[Herpa Derpa 6,131]

18 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

1980s college athletes had better interview skills.

And that motherfucker cashes checks from the New York Times.

"an everything app is kind of been"

The dumbing idiocracy continues apace.

[Captainant 27,771]

1 hour ago, fattyflattie said:

You dig even further back and he was responsible for saving our planet. 

You sure about that? I just clicked through some of the earlier pages and that certainly wasn't the tenor of all the discussion around elmo, in the way that he has so many actions taken that are overtly terrible that we talk about now. Certainly some cheering on of SpaceX's accomplishments but none of it is ever attributed exclusively to elmo - you know unlike his unilateral decision to welcome pedophiles and CSAM posters to his platform?

Maybe you could provide a link to what you mean?

[NoName 16,406]

they couldn't be more cringe if they tried

oh wait. the 52 year old man CAN in fact be more cringe!

[Ted Lange 16,143]

 

 

[texasdago 7,579]

[Fastbreak 3,992]

they couldn't be more cringe if they tried

oh wait. the 52 year old man CAN in fact be more cringe!

He is like a 12 year old who got rich as fuck (without ever doing anything).

[atomheartbevo 89,799]

6 minutes ago, Fastbreak said:

He is like a 12 year old who got rich as fuck (without ever doing anything).

"Blaze Your Glory" is the stupidest fucking slogan I've ever heard, and it sounds like Elon came up with it while high as fuck.

It sounds like a shitty NBA G-league slogan, oh wait the Utah Blaze was an arena football team, but even they didn't bother with a slogan.

 

[atomheartbevo 89,799]

How do you throw away 17 years of solid reputation/branding on "X" and "Blaze Your Glory".

It sounds like some kind of slogan for one of those shitty bargain-bin Christian youth camps that some of us got sent to as kids because our parents couldn't afford a decent summer camp, where the only thing we remember is the camp owner's wife trying to fuck us without getting caught.

[Brisketexan 105,336]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

How do you throw away 17 years of solid reputation/branding on "X" and "Blaze Your Glory".

It sounds like some kind of slogan for one of those shitty bargain-bin Christian youth camps that some of us got sent to as kids because our parents couldn't afford a decent summer camp, where the only thing we remember is the camp owner's wife trying to fuck us without getting caught.

"trying?"

[atomheartbevo 89,799]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

"trying?"

Yeah.

[Foosters 17,888]

47 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

 

 

Or you could just stop using the app that is now a playground for the alt-right, anti-Semites, and pedophiles. Tough call, I know.

[Grade of D as in David 13,253]

1 hour ago, NoName said:

they couldn't be more cringe if they tried

oh wait. the 52 year old man CAN in fact be more cringe!

I wonder if he uses lube or prefers that they go in dry on him instead 

[fattyflattie 4,638]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Maybe you could provide a link to what you mean?

You want me to link you to all the Tesla fuckboi posts?  When Elmo was anti big oil and was better at hiding his politics? Seems like a lot to ask, when many here who don’t have the need to revise history have acknowledged he flipped his views and people that supported him at the exact same time.  Pretty difficult to follow that transition, I know. 

[Ted Lange 16,143]

1 hour ago, Fastbreak said:

He is like a 12 year old who got rich as fuck (without ever doing anything).

 

 

[Neonmoon 38,130]

Blaze your Glory is a great slogan 

Twitter is a perfect example of Musk lighting his own accomplishments on fire 

[Celery Man 20,996]

I can't see up or down any twitter x threads post-holes because Elon dipshit broke the app but I assume Ian Miles Cheong the nazi is commenting on the I ❤️ Canada/Anal picture? I know the answer (they are stupid) but what the fuck context is he even talking about? They'll think this is a dumb I ❤️ Anal shirt when actually it is a I ❤️ Canada shirt that memelord smartly turned into a different thing?

Or is there some context? I don't know because without an account you are not able to see context on X.

[Celery Man 20,996]

55 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

How do you throw away 17 years of solid reputation/branding on "X" and "Blaze Your Glory".

 

[NoName 16,406]

sign is gone

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/31/23814476/twitter-x-sign-removed-san-francisco-bright-light-complaints

looks like they used safety gear this time

 

[atomheartbevo 89,799]

3 minutes ago, NoName said:

looks like they used safety gear this time

Wonder if that was because an actual work crew and not Tesla engineers were brought in, or because they got some notices from the city, or because the internet mocked him for how the assembly was amateur hour.

[Pam Cummings 9,662]

1 hour ago, Foosters said:

Or you could just stop using the app that is now a playground for the alt-right, anti-Semites, and pedophiles. Tough call, I know.

Yeah reading this thread is weird. "He's such an idiot, he's ruining twitter. He's going to lose so much money, he is driving people away". *posts link that drives traffic to website that we just finished saying is a disaster*

 

Can we stop posting links to it and let it die alone like Elon is clearly going to?

[Brisketexan 105,336]

25 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

 

 

Wait.....they think that the t-shirt gag is the height of humor?  I mean, look, it makes me chuckle mildly, because I'm a dude with the maturity of an 11 year old.  But it isn't exactly some brilliant comic achievement for which we should lament the failure of society to laud its brilliance.  It's a fucking "anal" pun/joke.  It gets a chuckle, but it also gets some pity because a fucking billionaire thinks he's actually being clever.  No.  He's being a chucklefuck 12 yr old on the school playground.  Which, when it's you or me, generic dipshits, is mildly amusing. When it's the richest man in the world....it's just pathetic.

[C-Man 27,262]

2 hours ago, NoName said:

they couldn't be more cringe if they tried

oh wait. the 52 year old man CAN in fact be more cringe!

He is such a fuckstick

[Pods 7,586]

1 hour ago, Pam Cummings said:

Yeah reading this thread is weird. "He's such an idiot, he's ruining twitter. He's going to lose so much money, he is driving people away". *posts link that drives traffic to website that we just finished saying is a disaster*

 

Can we stop posting links to it and let it die alone like Elon is clearly going to?

Great point. If people really want to share something from there, screen shot it and paste it into Surly instead. 

The only thing giving them traffic at this point is Ukraine and people laughing at Musk crashing Twitter. 

 

[Chopper 17,245]

In the google play store

• a search for twitter pulls no apps with that name, but it does pull up a couple of social app ads, tiktok first and x second
• based on the rating and number of reviews x is clearly living off twitter's former reputation
• the page for x highlights that it includes 'twitter spaces' so either they haven't figured out how to (re)brand it yet or they've forgotten about it... come to x spaces with elmo for anal!

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by Chopper

[Grade of D as in David 13,253]

App store should make them resubmit their application and reset their review and download counts 

[Captain Ron 12,921]

2 Dozen complaints? For this? Shocking.

 

 

[Fudge Nuggets 19,224]

Must be nice to be able to tell inspectors to fuck off when you do something that ain't exactly on the up and up.

[Pods 7,586]

1 hour ago, Captain Ron said:

2 Dozen complaints? For this? Shocking.

 

 

That's even more obnoxious than I'd previously seen. It turns into a giant strobe light. That could easily trigger a seizure in someone with photosensitive epilepsy. 

[atomheartbevo 89,799]

1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Must be nice to be able to tell inspectors to fuck off when you do something that ain't exactly on the up and up.

I don't know - it's still the banner for his twitter account (see below), so he was pretty proud of it, but he sure pulled it down fast. He would have only done that if he was worried they were going to embarrass him.

 

[NoName 16,406]

totally normal things

 

[NoName 16,406]

Elon Musk Really Hates Getting Permits to do Stuff

https://blog.esghound.com/p/elon-musk-really-hates-getting-permits
 

Quote

It's as if Musk wanted to give a real-time demonstration of why permitting exists. I doubt even the staunchest libertarian tech bro in the Bay Area would be pleased if their neighbor just decided one day to start blasting a white-hot, strobing spotlight into their apartment every single night.

Even the least-woke city in America has a municipal code that regulates such things as “putting a massive steel structure on top of a building” and “blinding every person within 3 square blocks.” For example, Midland, Texas’ municipal and building codes prohibit what X Corp did (I checked!).

The horrible beauty of this entire affair is that this is a concrete example of the kind of soft-NIMBYism that 99% of the population can comprehend and get behind. “We live in a society” kinda stuff.

+
 

Quote

Here, the problem is predictable. Musk and SpaceX will absolutely 100% go ahead and discharge rocket fuel-boiled water right into Waters of the United States if given the chance. Unless someone grows a pair, internally or within an agency (looking at you EPA, FAA and TCEQ) and tells SpaceX that no, they won’t illegally discharge. Unless that person likes prison.

Agencies tell this kind of stuff to companies all the time. Why no one will tell Musk “NO” continues to baffle me.

Honestly, though, this is such a cut-and-dry case of “Clean Water Act Violation waiting to happen” that it borders on absurd. I bet it gets stopped. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

We all hate permits when we face the prospect of needing them. They’re extra work and extra time. But most serious people know that permits and standards generally exist for a good reason and accept them as a part of doing business.

Musk hates permits and has the resources to just ignore them. So that’s what he does. And unless we as a society stop deciding that rules are only for little people, that the richest and most belligerent can ignore them safely, then the law is pointless. I’d hate to see it happen to the Clean Water Act. The surface water standards have protected lives and natural resources for decades. And if laws are selectively and arbitrarily enforced based on the size of a tantrum or the number of zeros in a bank account, they may as well not exist.

 

text

 

 

Spoiler

Elon Musk Really Hates Getting Permits to do Stuff

A Big X and a Big Deluge

ESG Hound

Jul 31, 2023

 

 

 

For the past few weeks, I’ve been mulling over the right contextual hook to describe why it matters that Elon Musk, the world’s most visibly divorced man, simply cannot be bothered to comply with the law. And then, as luck would have it, this week the heavens opened up and dropped a giant steel “X” sign on the roof of Twitter/X Corp’s San Francisco headquarters. Search promptly over.

Musk’s ham-fisted rebrand of Twitter into X has been understandably seized upon by the internet commentariat and press as just another example of his rapidly decaying PR prowess. Last Monday, a work crew arrived at Twitter/X HQ and started dismantling the existing Twitter sign.

 

The X Corp did not get any prior authorization for either the work activity or the sign change itself. Because… of course they didn’t. Unsurprisingly, SF Police shut down the activity promptly.

People on the internet who defend Musk like it’s their full-time job quickly jumped on this as red tape overkill and yet another sign of tyranny from a big “woke” city. This is certainly less crazy than other recent Musk decisions, but it’s still wild, looking at the videos, that the work crew seemingly didn’t even bother to properly tape off the area to prevent injury to any passers-by. And while I don’t want to act like this is a world-ending risk, the fact that a Musk company once again decided to do something without a permit is simply too juicy for me to ignore.

A few days later, the company erected, once again without any sort of approval, a massive, ugly “X” on the rooftop, constructed out of structural steel and crudely installed with no consideration for public safety or engineering and architectural standards.

 

Source: Twitter

Obvious and numerous OSHA violations aside, the above image displays an astoundingly farcical construction and engineering undertaking.

You may have heard that San Francisco sits right on top of the San Andreas fault line, is sandwiched between two others (Hayward and San Gergorio), and has something of a reputation as being prone to regular shaking and rumbling from the underlying seismic activity. A forty-foot tall structure, constructed of steel, weighing thousands of pounds, with dimensions that are far taller than wide, being hastily erected on top of a building, with strapped-on sandbags as the primary counterweight does not exactly inspire confidence on the public safety front.

If that wasn't enough, later that evening, the company turned on the lights affixed to the X.

 

From Twitter

It's as if Musk wanted to give a real-time demonstration of why permitting exists. I doubt even the staunchest libertarian tech bro in the Bay Area would be pleased if their neighbor just decided one day to start blasting a white-hot, strobing spotlight into their apartment every single night.

Even the least-woke city in America has a municipal code that regulates such things as “putting a massive steel structure on top of a building” and “blinding every person within 3 square blocks.” For example, Midland, Texas’ municipal and building codes prohibit what X Corp did (I checked!).

The horrible beauty of this entire affair is that this is a concrete example of the kind of soft-NIMBYism that 99% of the population can comprehend and get behind. “We live in a society” kinda stuff.

Consequences Be Damned

 

The really interesting piece here is looking at how this behavior can happen. Provided that the Giant X does not fall and crush pedestrians to death (not a great bet), then all of this sign bruhaha is purely a civil matter. Musk will stonewall, block inspections, ignore court orders, and mock the entire process. He’s already started doing these things. He may finally relent in the coming days or weeks, and the sign will come down. Penalties will never exceed any amount that Musk cannot pay with a triflingly small check given his net worth. He may take a few dings to his already shredded reputation, but ultimately there is no consequence in our legal system to deter this behavior from the immature and unserious billionaire.

Musk would be far from the first obscenely rich American to thumb his nose at the very concept of regulation. But in the past few decades, this kind of stubbornly petty regulatory subversion has petered out, especially among manufacturers and hard industrial companies. It’s not that the executives of hard industry are good. Rather, they generally play by the rules on the surface and subvert the law by lobbying Congress for carveouts and loopholes. They also distance themselves from actions individual managers and employees may take that break the law. The “I didn’t know my unrelenting pressure to make the numbers no matter what would lead individual employees to break the rules!” school of thought, if you will.

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CLICK THE LITTLE 💓AT THE BOTTOM IF YOU ENJOY THIS! AND PLEASE SUBSCRIBE

 

 

 

 

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SpaceX’s Permitting Woes

 

This post was intended to be focused on SpaceX’s current issues, and as desperately as I would like to stop writing about the company’s ongoing comedy of errors in South Texas, it’s impossible to look away. So the extended introduction involving a big silly sign may seem like a non-sequitur, but I think it’s a fascinating parallel with the latest developments at Starbase.

Back in April, I laid out the case that the Boca Chica launch site was woefully designed for purpose, lacking standard measures used for energy suppression (namely a flame trench and water deluge system). Unsurprisingly, the launch was a disaster for the site, with the flat, bare concrete taking the brunt of the force and sending rocks, debris and dust flying for miles away. Concrete blocks littered the sensitive wetlands that are nesting grounds for several endangered species and the nearby city of Port Isabel was showered in a thin layer of dust and launch debris.

SpaceX fans, the most normal and well-adjusted folks on the internet, assured me before the 4/20 launch that protections such as a flame trench or deluge system were frivolous and that my post was ridiculous fear-mongering. Surely the crack engineering team at SpaceX wisely skipped over these decades-old control requirements for a good reason. They were simply not needed. Duh. We know that to not be true now (take a look at that crater!). Casual observers of the company chalked it up to rote incompetence. But that’s not why SpaceX skipped these civil engineering projects. Rather they didn’t do so because:

1. The tiny launch pad simply doesn’t have room for such infrastructure as currently designed.

2. The company could not dig trenches or water containment ponds in the surrounding land they owned because most of it is protected wetlands and requires a lengthy Army Corps of Engineering Permit to begin excavation and regrading.

3. The company did not have to means to capture industrial wastewater from a deluge system. This water, once used for cooling purposes, requires treatment prior to being discharged into the surrounding wetlands and estuaries.

But the big crater from launch #1 posed a problem. There was no way they could try a launch like that again. Musk immediately started tweeting the idea of using a water-cooled plate for plume suppression. It was a deluge system but instead of flowing from the edges down into a pit, water would shoot out from the bottom.

A few weeks ago the company began installing this equipment, and after an initial low-pressure test, on Friday, the company gave it a go at full pressure:

 

There’s just one little problem here.

 

According to 33 U.S.C. 1319(c)(1) & (2) it is a crime for someone who “Discharges a pollutant from a point source into a water of the United States without a NPDES or 404 Permit or in violation of a permit.” Not a civil penalty, a *crime* crime, with prison sentences of up to 3 years for knowingly committing such a violation.

Without the presence of a heat source, it is perhaps a bit of a grey area if this week’s test water meets the criteria for a pollutant, but it certainly might be, given the potential washout/erosion and the fact that potable water with its chlorine and other dissolved salts may be incompatible with the background quality standards of tidal wetlands

1

. But let’s take a step back and look at the citation itself. A crime has occurred if someone:

 

1. “Discharges”

   This is a release of water

2. “A pollutant”

   Per the clean water act a pollutant is: dredged spoil, solid waste, incinerator residue, sewage, garbage, sewage sludge, munitions, chemical wastes, biological materials, radioactive materials, heat, wrecked or discarded equipment, rock, sand, cellar dirt and industrial, municipal, and agricultural waste discharged into water

3. “From a point source”

   Again, per the act, a point source is: any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance, including but not limited to any pipe, ditch, channel, tunnel, conduit, well, discrete fissure, container, rolling stock, concentrated animal feeding operation, or vessel or other floating craft, from which pollutants are or may be discharged

4. “into a water of the United States”

   “A Water of the United States” has a legal definition and one that has been endlessly litigated by the EPA and courts, but currently know that tidal wetlands are considered WOTUS

   2
   and SpaceX’s own assessments shows that the surrounding flats are definitional regulated wetlands

    

   

    

5. “without a NPDES or 404 Permit”

   Surface water discharges from industrial sites are regulated under the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program. In Texas, where the TCEQ has delegated authority under the Clean Water Act, these permits are called TPDES permits.

Putting that all together, the addition of heat, products of combustion and agitated dusts and debris that will occur when SpaceX applies their deluge system (a point source) to a lit, white hot rocket engine and plume makes the water a pollutant, categorically.

The State of Texas Water Quality Standard considers any discharge into “tidal river reaches, bay, and gulf waters” that is 1.5 Degrees F (in Summer) or 4 degrees F (in Spring, Fall and Winter) above or below baseline temperatures to be a pollutant. Heat is a pollutant, it says so right in the definitions of the Clean Water Act.

So, should SpaceX fire up a some Raptor engines and use the deluge system to dampen the intense heat and energy, any water that isn’t vaporized (much, but not all of it will) that runs over the silt fenceline adjacent to the launch pad will be an illegal discharge. SpaceX needs an individual TPDES permit that mandates collection, treatment, and eventual discharge.

The problem here is that SpaceX doesn’t have such a permit. They have had years to apply for one, but simply… haven't. CNBC reported on this on Friday, the same day as the initial high-pressure water test.

In an email to CNBC, a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the state’s environmental regulator, confirmed that as of July 28, SpaceX had not applied for what is called a Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (TPDES) permit at its Starbase facility. The regulator said the SpaceX site has previously attained three stormwater permit authorizations.

An earlier email from TCEQ in April, prior to the initial orbital test, TCEQ’s Director of Water Quality stated the following in an email:

An individual, industrial wastewater Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (TPDES) permit would be the appropriate means to authorize a discharge of deluge water.

So that begs the question:

Why Hasn’t SpaceX applied for a permit?

 

I suspect there are a few reasons for this. An NPDES permit is a “Pollution Discharge Elimination” authorization for a reason. SpaceX can’t just fill out some forms and get approval to do what they want. That heated water with suspended solids and trace chemicals must be collected and treated. It’s the law. Remember, water 1.5 degrees above ambient is a pollutant in the Texas Gulf. Water heated so hot that much of it vaporizes will be near boiling temperature (~212 F).

SpaceX doesn’t have the space to adequately collect this water, nor treat it in settling basins. If they wanted to dig out such ponds, they’d need an Army Corps permit that they also do not have and have not applied for. Per TCEQ, a NPDES permit takes roughly 330 days, and that's if the project isn’t complicated and doesn’t generate a lot of public comment

3

.

 

But most importantly, the second someone at SpaceX goes through the TCEQ’s forms and checklists needed to complete a permit application, they *know* that the water will be a pollutant. A mailed-in permit is an admission that you’re making industrial wastewater, and while the permit is under review, any discharges would be knowing

4

violations of the Clean Water Act.

 

SpaceX wants to play stupid and they’re waiting until a regulator points out the obvious: rocket deluge water is an industrial waste. NASA knows this. Every deluge system at Kennedy Space Center has an NPDES industrial permit. Heck even the tiny Relativity Terran 1 launcher’s deluge system for their Methane/LOX admits this in a 2020 Environmental Assessment:

 

This isn’t complicated. Rocket Deluge Wastewater is an industrial waste and requires permitting that mandates collection and treatment prior to discharge. Here’s what one of NASAs wastewater systems looked like in 1998 for the Space Shuttle Launch:

 

Again, every freshman who has taken a wastewater treatment course understands you can’t just spray cooling water into a wetland. TCEQ knows that the heated water would be an illegal pollutant. SpaceX too is aware of this; take a look at the 2022 Environmental Assessment they wrote:

 

The Standoff

 

Circling back to the “Big X” in San Fransisco, we can see how that situation is maddening to resolve. Musk can tell his employees to do whatever he wants. The cost for non-compliance with City Muni Code will be in the (perhaps) thousands of dollars per day. That’s a reasonable cost to satisfy Mr. Musk’s ego and is decent PR for his company (NO SUCH THING AS BAD NEWS!). It’s a civil matter.

Here, we bring in criminal statute. Why hasn’t Musk just ordered his employees to dig up the surrounding wetlands and build a theme park (or a flame diverter)? I suspect it’s because no contractor in the State of Texas is gonna dig somewhere when they all know they’ll get tossed in prison for doing so without an Army Corps permit. Illegal dredging of wetlands is a big no-no. So too is illegal and unpermitted violation of the Clean Water Act. People get thrown in jail for violating this every year; see for yourself.

It’s the same thing Musk’s silly venture “The Boring Company” did in Bastrop, outside of Austin. Last year, they dug a bunch of holes in the ground, pumped out dirty water and mud, and let it run into the Colorado River. The Boring Company did this without a permit, and TCEQ slapped them on the wrist for it. There, the Boring Company used the “aw shucks, we didn’t know better” excuse.

Here, the problem is predictable. Musk and SpaceX will absolutely 100% go ahead and discharge rocket fuel-boiled water right into Waters of the United States if given the chance. Unless someone grows a pair, internally or within an agency (looking at you EPA, FAA and TCEQ) and tells SpaceX that no, they won’t illegally discharge. Unless that person likes prison.

Agencies tell this kind of stuff to companies all the time. Why no one will tell Musk “NO” continues to baffle me.

Honestly, though, this is such a cut-and-dry case of “Clean Water Act Violation waiting to happen” that it borders on absurd. I bet it gets stopped. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

We all hate permits when we face the prospect of needing them. They’re extra work and extra time. But most serious people know that permits and standards generally exist for a good reason and accept them as a part of doing business.

Musk hates permits and has the resources to just ignore them. So that’s what he does. And unless we as a society stop deciding that rules are only for little people, that the richest and most belligerent can ignore them safely, then the law is pointless. I’d hate to see it happen to the Clean Water Act. The surface water standards have protected lives and natural resources for decades. And if laws are selectively and arbitrarily enforced based on the size of a tantrum or the number of zeros in a bank account, they may as well not exist.

 

Until next time…

 

1

A fish or aquatic frog will die within days of living in a tank of most tap water, due to chlorine content.

2

Even after the recent Supreme Court Ruling which limited the extent of wetlands into the definition of WOTUS, low laying wetlands adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico are absolutely still WOTUS.

3

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT

4

33 USC specifically mandates longer penalities for Knowing violations of the CWA (3 years in prison vs one year for “negligent” violations)

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by NoName

[Celery Man 20,996]

1 hour ago, NoName said:

totally normal things

 

I used to take my pencil and pretend like it was rocket ship that could burrow underground like worms from tremors. Would sit there at my desk going “pshewww psheeeewwww” and making it dive up and down. Basically same idea as his Vegas cab service. A bit more visionary.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Celery Man

[Chopper 17,245]

Xelon got a new tat

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Chopper 17,245]

1 hour ago, Chopper said:

Xelon got a new tat ... and he filed a SLAPP suit to try to suppress facts showing he's turned twitter into a racist, incel machine.

SLAPP = Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation

here's a link to the nyt article

here's a blog post by Robert Reich that expands on the nyt article
 

Spoiler

Today, I want to do four things: (1) Summarize research showing that Musk’s Twitter/X has been spreading hate and malicious lies big time — research coming not just from the CCDH but also from the Anti-Defamation League, Media Matters, and Stanford University, among many others. (2) Tell you why this hate surge has been happening on Twitter. (3) Show how Musk’s lawsuit is designed to silence those who are revealing this surge. (4) And explain why Musk is so intent on silencing them.

1. Research from many sources confirms that hateful speech and malicious lies have soared since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

(1) CCDH’s research — based on social media analysis tool Brandwatch — reveals that during the first three months of Musk’s tenure, the rate of daily tweets containing slurs against Black Americans more than tripled, and from October through March 2023, tweets referring to the LGBTQ+ community alongside slurs such as “groomer” rose 119 percent.

(2) According to research by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), reports of harassment on Twitter have increased, and extremist content has spiked. Harassment reports rose 6 percent this year. QAnon-related hashtags rose 91 percent in May alone compared with a year earlier.

(3) According to research by Media Matters, COVID-19 misinformation has risen. Between October and April 2023, nearly a quarter of the top tweets related to COVID-19 included information about vaccines that is unproven and untested. Hate speech has also spiked. “Musk has repeatedly said that hate speech has decreased on the platform, but based on the data studies that we have done, we have not seen that,” said Kayla Gogarty, deputy research director at Media Matters. “We have seen the opposite.”

(4) According to a survey conducted by the USC Marshall Neely Social Media Index, more than 30 percent of U.S. adults who used Twitter between March and May 2023 reported seeing content they consider “bad for the world.” That percentage was higher than for Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.

(5) Many users have reported seeing tweets that condoned or glorified violence toward marginalized groups or videos that were violent and sexually explicit and easily accessible to underage children. Video from a mass shooting at a Texas mall earlier this year was shared openly on Twitter for hours before the company took action; so was a video of a cat in a blender.

(6) Researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory found that Twitter has failed to take down dozens of images of child sex abuse. The team identified 128 Twitter accounts selling child sex abuse material (CSAM) and 43 instances of known CSAM. “It is very surprising for any known CSAM to publicly appear on major social media platforms,” said lead author and chief technologist David Thiel.

(7) Meanwhile, Musk himself has also engaged with extremist voices and replied to antisemitic conspiracy theories and anti-trans narratives. Musk’s engagement has boosted those posts, because he is followed by 148 million people.

2. Why this has happened.

None of this should be a surprise. Under Musk, Twitter has loosened its content rules and reinstated accounts previously banned for violating Twitter’s content policies.

Musk also fired most of Twitter’s trust and safety team, which was responsible for filtering out hateful and violent posts. “Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, we have seen the platform go from having one of the best trust and safety divisions in the industry, to one of the worst,” said Nadim Nashif, director at the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media.

3. Musk’s lawsuit is bullying, designed to silence those who are revealing his hate-peddling.

Musk’s threat to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate is clearly intended to silence nonprofit researchers who have been reporting on the rise of hate speech on Twitter since Musk took over the platform.

Musk and his X Corporation have the deepest pockets anywhere. They can almost instantly summon an army of lawyers with the power to pulverize nonprofit researchers who lack the resources to respond.

Hence, Musk’s threat is a form of “SLAPP” (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), a legal action launched by large corporations in recent years to silence public-interest groups that report on their doings. Such lawsuits make a mockery of freedom of speech.

Musk’s threatened lawsuit isn’t the only weapon he’s using against researchers analyzing the rise of hate on Twitter. In February, Twitter began charging for access to its application programming interface, or API.

Researchers had been using Twitter’s API to sift through hundreds of millions of tweets. Now that they’re being charged thousands of dollars for access to a small fraction of that number of tweets, much of that research has been put on hold. Researchers at Stanford, Berkeley, the CCDH, and the ADL say they can no longer afford access to Twitter data.

4. Why is Musk doing this?

Follow the money. Musk’s letter to the CCDH alleged that CCDH’s research was intended “to harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform.”

That’s it, folks. It’s all about ad revenue.

Since Musk bought Twitter and opened the door to vileness, Twitter’s advertising sales have plummeted. U.S. ad revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million — down 59 percent from a year earlier.

Advertisers say they’ve left Twitter because of concerns over harmful content — including Musk’s own posts.

Corporations spend enormous sums seeking to build and protect their brands. They don’t want those brands to be besmirched by hate.

Yet Twitter’s epidemic of hate makes it almost impossible to protect those brands.

Consider, for example, the National Socialist Network — an explicitly pro-Hitler neo-Nazi group that engages in violence, has connections to terrorism, and has used Twitter to recruit new members since November 2022 (just weeks after Musk’s takeover).

If you were running the ad budget for, say, Honeywell, Discovery, National Women’s Soccer League, the Pittsburgh Steelers, USA Today, or Manchester City, you might be upset to find your ads appearing alongside the National Socialist Network — and so might your customers. Yet that’s exactly what occurred.

(Only after Media Matters reported this did Twitter suspend the National Socialist Network’s account.)

Media Matters and other outlets have also documented the appearance of brand advertisements on accounts that feature Holocaust denial, white nationalism, and other toxic content.

Competition for ad dollars will soon become even fiercer, as Facebook’s Meta introduces advertising to its Twitter clone, Threads.

Bottom line: The ad dollars Musk and his X Corp. desperately seek will return only after Twitter/X stops promoting hate.

 

 

 

 

[Brisketexan 105,336]

59 minutes ago, Chopper said:

SLAPP = Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation

here's a link to the nyt article

here's a blog post by Robert Reich that expands on the nyt article
 

  Hide contents

Today, I want to do four things: (1) Summarize research showing that Musk’s Twitter/X has been spreading hate and malicious lies big time — research coming not just from the CCDH but also from the Anti-Defamation League, Media Matters, and Stanford University, among many others. (2) Tell you why this hate surge has been happening on Twitter. (3) Show how Musk’s lawsuit is designed to silence those who are revealing this surge. (4) And explain why Musk is so intent on silencing them.

1. Research from many sources confirms that hateful speech and malicious lies have soared since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

(1) CCDH’s research — based on social media analysis tool Brandwatch — reveals that during the first three months of Musk’s tenure, the rate of daily tweets containing slurs against Black Americans more than tripled, and from October through March 2023, tweets referring to the LGBTQ+ community alongside slurs such as “groomer” rose 119 percent.

(2) According to research by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), reports of harassment on Twitter have increased, and extremist content has spiked. Harassment reports rose 6 percent this year. QAnon-related hashtags rose 91 percent in May alone compared with a year earlier.

(3) According to research by Media Matters, COVID-19 misinformation has risen. Between October and April 2023, nearly a quarter of the top tweets related to COVID-19 included information about vaccines that is unproven and untested. Hate speech has also spiked. “Musk has repeatedly said that hate speech has decreased on the platform, but based on the data studies that we have done, we have not seen that,” said Kayla Gogarty, deputy research director at Media Matters. “We have seen the opposite.”

(4) According to a survey conducted by the USC Marshall Neely Social Media Index, more than 30 percent of U.S. adults who used Twitter between March and May 2023 reported seeing content they consider “bad for the world.” That percentage was higher than for Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.

(5) Many users have reported seeing tweets that condoned or glorified violence toward marginalized groups or videos that were violent and sexually explicit and easily accessible to underage children. Video from a mass shooting at a Texas mall earlier this year was shared openly on Twitter for hours before the company took action; so was a video of a cat in a blender.

(6) Researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory found that Twitter has failed to take down dozens of images of child sex abuse. The team identified 128 Twitter accounts selling child sex abuse material (CSAM) and 43 instances of known CSAM. “It is very surprising for any known CSAM to publicly appear on major social media platforms,” said lead author and chief technologist David Thiel.

(7) Meanwhile, Musk himself has also engaged with extremist voices and replied to antisemitic conspiracy theories and anti-trans narratives. Musk’s engagement has boosted those posts, because he is followed by 148 million people.

2. Why this has happened.

None of this should be a surprise. Under Musk, Twitter has loosened its content rules and reinstated accounts previously banned for violating Twitter’s content policies.

Musk also fired most of Twitter’s trust and safety team, which was responsible for filtering out hateful and violent posts. “Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, we have seen the platform go from having one of the best trust and safety divisions in the industry, to one of the worst,” said Nadim Nashif, director at the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media.

3. Musk’s lawsuit is bullying, designed to silence those who are revealing his hate-peddling.

Musk’s threat to sue the Center for Countering Digital Hate is clearly intended to silence nonprofit researchers who have been reporting on the rise of hate speech on Twitter since Musk took over the platform.

Musk and his X Corporation have the deepest pockets anywhere. They can almost instantly summon an army of lawyers with the power to pulverize nonprofit researchers who lack the resources to respond.

Hence, Musk’s threat is a form of “SLAPP” (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), a legal action launched by large corporations in recent years to silence public-interest groups that report on their doings. Such lawsuits make a mockery of freedom of speech.

Musk’s threatened lawsuit isn’t the only weapon he’s using against researchers analyzing the rise of hate on Twitter. In February, Twitter began charging for access to its application programming interface, or API.

Researchers had been using Twitter’s API to sift through hundreds of millions of tweets. Now that they’re being charged thousands of dollars for access to a small fraction of that number of tweets, much of that research has been put on hold. Researchers at Stanford, Berkeley, the CCDH, and the ADL say they can no longer afford access to Twitter data.

4. Why is Musk doing this?

Follow the money. Musk’s letter to the CCDH alleged that CCDH’s research was intended “to harm Twitter’s business by driving advertisers away from the platform.”

That’s it, folks. It’s all about ad revenue.

Since Musk bought Twitter and opened the door to vileness, Twitter’s advertising sales have plummeted. U.S. ad revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million — down 59 percent from a year earlier.

Advertisers say they’ve left Twitter because of concerns over harmful content — including Musk’s own posts.

Corporations spend enormous sums seeking to build and protect their brands. They don’t want those brands to be besmirched by hate.

Yet Twitter’s epidemic of hate makes it almost impossible to protect those brands.

Consider, for example, the National Socialist Network — an explicitly pro-Hitler neo-Nazi group that engages in violence, has connections to terrorism, and has used Twitter to recruit new members since November 2022 (just weeks after Musk’s takeover).

If you were running the ad budget for, say, Honeywell, Discovery, National Women’s Soccer League, the Pittsburgh Steelers, USA Today, or Manchester City, you might be upset to find your ads appearing alongside the National Socialist Network — and so might your customers. Yet that’s exactly what occurred.

(Only after Media Matters reported this did Twitter suspend the National Socialist Network’s account.)

Media Matters and other outlets have also documented the appearance of brand advertisements on accounts that feature Holocaust denial, white nationalism, and other toxic content.

Competition for ad dollars will soon become even fiercer, as Facebook’s Meta introduces advertising to its Twitter clone, Threads.

Bottom line: The ad dollars Musk and his X Corp. desperately seek will return only after Twitter/X stops promoting hate.

 

 

 

 

 

As I understand, he's just threatened litigation, he hasn't actually filed suit yet.  And as I said above...skin that smokewagon, you arrogant chucklefuck.  Do it.

[Genco 3,041]

Call his bluff. He's too much of a Xussy to subject himself to discovery.

[Chopper 17,245]

23 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

As I understand, he's just threatened litigation, he hasn't actually filed suit yet.  And as I said above...skin that smokewagon, you arrogant chucklefuck.  Do it.

Yeah the NYT article had a shitty editor, it gets just barely specific about 5 paragraphs down

Quote

In a blog post Monday evening, X announced that it had filed a lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate for “actively working to prevent free expression.” The suit was filed in federal court in the Northern District of California.

But Wash Post has this
 

Quote

In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, X alleged that the American and British operations of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) “engaged in a series of unlawful acts designed to improperly gain access to protected X Corp. data.”

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, with interest, for allegations that include breach of contract, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, intentional interference with contractual relations and inducing breach of contract. It also asks that the CCDH and its agents be barred from accessing materials licensed to a tool that X’s attorneys alleged the group used to obtain data.

also
 

Quote

 

X also alleged, without offering evidence for its claims, that the CCDH operations were “activist organizations masquerading as research agencies, funded and supported by unknown organizations, individuals and potentially even foreign governments with ties to legacy media companies.”

The filing also said that X “currently lacks sufficient information to include the identities [of] these entities, organizations, and persons,” but that “when their true names and capacities are confirmed through discovery,” it would amend the lawsuit to name the CCDH’s alleged backers.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by Chopper

[Brisketexan 105,336]

10 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Yeah the NYT article had a shitty editor, it gets just barely specific about 5 paragraphs down

But Wash Post has this
 

also
 

 

Oh.....is the involvement of foreign governments in this matter relevant?  Interesting.  Cool.  I'd be sending my document preservation notice to Elon demanding that he preserve all texts, emails, and other communications with any representatives of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia and/or China.

Filing a suit for defamation when you have a closet full of very nasty skeletons is almost always a terrible idea.  But, Elon seems to be looking to corner the market on terrible ideas these days, so it checks out.

[Chopper 17,245]

20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh.....is the involvement of foreign governments in this matter relevant?  Interesting.  Cool.  I'd be sending my document preservation notice to Elon demanding that he preserve all texts, emails, and other communications with any representatives of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia and/or China.

Filing a suit for defamation when you have a closet full of very nasty skeletons is almost always a terrible idea.  But, Elon seems to be looking to corner the market on terrible ideas these days, so it checks out.

I'm stuck on why X, a NV corporation, would sue CCDH, a UK non-profit org with a Wash. DC office, in federal court in Northern CA. Seems like xelmo is just begging to get bitch-slapped right from the start.

[NoName 16,406]

23 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh.....is the involvement of foreign governments in this matter relevant?  Interesting.  Cool.  I'd be sending my document preservation notice to Elon demanding that he preserve all texts, emails, and other communications with any representatives of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia and/or China.

Filing a suit for defamation when you have a closet full of very nasty skeletons is almost always a terrible idea.  But, Elon seems to be looking to corner the market on terrible ideas these days, so it checks out.

right on time https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Letter-to-A.-Spiro-from-R.-Kaplan-re-CCDH.pdf

 

 

[NoName 16,406]

Casey Newton knows his shit

https://www.platformer.news/p/is-x-bracing-for-exodus

this is the relevant bit:
 

Quote

 

While the sign imbroglio captured everyone’s attention over the weekend, inside the company, a more consequential drama may be about to play out. 

You’ll recall that when Musk bought Twitter, he paid a rich premium: $54.20 a share. Some of the 1,350 or so X employees are still receiving regular stock grants at that price, and the occasional windfalls have been enough to keep them at their jobs over the past year of tumult.

Tomorrow, those employees will receive their final grant of $54.20 stock. And the question is how many of them will stay much longer.

 

 

[Brisketexan 105,336]

14 minutes ago, NoName said:

right on time https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Letter-to-A.-Spiro-from-R.-Kaplan-re-CCDH.pdf

 

 

Perfect response.  Lawyer-ese for "skin that smokewagon."

[Chopper 17,245]

Officer, I'd like to report a violent dragging.

 

 

Trolls Hijack Twitter CEO's Old Username After Twitter Didn't Lock It

CEO Linda Yaccarino changed her handle to reflect Twitter's new name, X. Now someone's impersonating her using her old @.

By

Thomas Germain

PublishedAn hour ago

 

 

 

 

[Celery Man 20,996]

fucking clownshow