Emrys
Emrys's JournalGB News branches out into comedy [Twitter video]
https://twitter.com/jemmaforte/status/1594271852934959105@jemmaforte
Beautiful. Martin Daubney physically unable to form the words required to break it to the viewers of GB News that their own poll shows that 55% would now vote against Brexit 👌😂
[Twitter video]
The actual results:
Needless to say, this has been enjoyed all over Twitter. Here's a version with some added music:
Matt Capon
@MattLCapon
I've tweaked the GB News clip from earlier today - when Martin Daubney had mistakenly assumed the Brexit poll would fall in favour of leave rather than 55% supporting remain.
[Twitter video]
Dogecoin co-creator says Elon Musk is a grifter who doesn't know how to run basic code
Note: This article was published on May 30, 2022, before Musk took over Twitter.The Australian co-creator of Dogecoin has described Elon Musk as a “grifter” who sells a vision that he pretends to understand while not even knowing how to run basic code.
Jackson Palmer is an Australian-born software developer who created Dogecoin, a meme-based cryptocurrency that soon became one of the world’s most valuable digital currencies. He stopped working on the cryptocurrency in 2015 and has since denounced the technology.
In a rare, wide-ranging interview with Crikey coinciding with the launch of his new podcasts about grifts, he spoke about Elon Musk, the cryptocurrency “winter” and the mainstreaming of rentier capitalism.
Palmer says he spoke with Musk over Twitter direct messages after he developed a script to automatically report cryptocurrency scams in a user’s replies: “Elon reached out to me to get hold of that script and it became apparent very quickly that he didn’t understand coding as well as he made out. He asked, “How do I run this Python script?”
https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/05/30/dogecoin-jackson-palmer-elon-musk-cryptocurrency-bubble/
I can completely understand your choice.
Other than from time to time re-posting content from Twitter on DU, Musk doesn't really make any money from me at the moment. Given the state of Twitter's advertising, any clicks that generates aren't very well monetized anyway. If he tries to change that, I'll certainly reconsider and weigh the pros and cons.
I'm a somewhat strange user in that I've never tweeted! I started an account solely because I wanted more control over what I saw on Twitter and my experience of it.
I think there's a mindset among some of us older (ex-)activists - those who're old enough to have been around during the days of cyclostyled leaflets tapped out on ancient typewriters by candlelight, desperate small or large demos to try to make an impact, NVDA and the resulting court cases, letters to papers, phone trees, mailed newsletters, all that sort of stuff, but not cowed by new technology - that boggles at the tools available nowadays and wonders what the world might have been like now if they'd been available back in the day when there were more prospects of disarmament, more time to combat climate change etc., etc.
Being resourceful in those days often meant hijacking media and assets of the state that we might have disapproved of. Conceiving of what's going on as a Twitter insurgency might be a bit grandiose, but quite a few people on DU have certainly enjoyed some of the verbal beatings Musk has taken on Twitter in the last few weeks!
And as I've pointed out a few times, when I joined Twitter, Trump was very active there. Nevertheless, I saw much more of Trump and his tweets on DU than I ever did on Twitter because I generally blocked or ignored his output there.
For context, Twitter has something like 73 million active users in the US.
There are around 19 million in the UK alone.
Here are the worldwide figures:
The figures below are based on Twitter’s advertising audience data for July 2022.
Note: our regions follow the United Nations Geoscheme. Click here to learn which countries belong to each region.
Number of active Twitter users in Northern America: 92.1 million
Number of active Twitter users in Central America: 19.1 million
Number of active Twitter users in the Caribbean: 3.3 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southern America: 43.1 million
Number of active Twitter users in Western Europe: 30.6 million
Number of active Twitter users in Northern Europe: 27.2 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southern Europe: 20.4 million
Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Europe: 8.2 million
Number of active Twitter users in Northern Africa: 8.0 million
Number of active Twitter users in Western Africa: 6.3 million
Number of active Twitter users in Middle Africa: 551 thousand
Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Africa: 4.0 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southern Africa: 3.4 million
Number of active Twitter users in Western Asia: 44.7 million
Number of active Twitter users in Central Asia: 377 thousand
Number of active Twitter users in Southern Asia: 30.9 million
Number of active Twitter users in Southeastern Asia: 57.6 million
Number of active Twitter users in Eastern Asia: 81.6 million
Number of active Twitter users in Oceania: 4.9 million
https://datareportal.com/essential-twitter-stats
I joined Twitter a few years ago while Trump was very much in residence.
I saw more of and about Trump and his tweets on DU that I ever did on Twitter because I chose not to seek him out and to spend my time on Twitter more productively.
This very evening, without his even having re-taken up residence on Twitter, I've read more about Trump on DU than I have on Twitter.
While Twitter provides me with the company, wisdom, energy and humour of like-minded people, and some just different enough to be stimulating, I'll be stuffed if anyone is going to drive me off it, not Musk, and certainly not a hasbeen would-be despot who will hopefully soon be a disgraced jailbird.
Why the hell would I give Musk or Trump such power over me?
Yeah yeah, Marge *pat head*, that's going to go really well ... [Twitter]
Loose-lipped self-appointed GOP mouthpiece Marge Traytor Greene just can't hold herself back from spilling the beans about the grand plans the new GOP House caucus has in store in the next session.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1593788290205089792
@RonFilipkowski
Marge says she has a plan to stop the Special Counsel: “They can tell Jack Smith he’s not going to get much of a paycheck. It’s gonna be real simple. We’re not going to do this. That’s it. We’re gonna stop them and we’re gonna do it through the power of the purse.”
[Twitter video]
The replies are - unusually for Twitter - 100% Marge-hostile with a tinge of amusement, ranging from pointing out that Garland says the whole caboodle is already fully funded to the fact that the Senate has a say in such matters to many who are offering to crowdfund Smith's endeavours to those pointing out that Marge herself may find she has some questions to answer in a formal setting and allegedly already asked TFG for a pardon and was turned down.
Oh, and there's a few memes. In the absence of cowbell, more memes is always good.
Twitter's crucial role in real-life emergency response
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1593272807533821954@RVAwonk
I spoke to @TIME about how Twitter became such a vital part of our emergency comms infrastructure — serving as a hub for witness reports, real-time updates, news-gathering, & more — and why losing such a lifeline would be so disastrous and likely deadly.
Time.com
Twitter's Power in a Crisis Won't Be Easy to Replace
If Twitter as we know it is lost, experts say a critical tool for responding to a crisis will be lost
https://time.com/6233609/uva-shooting-twitter-crisis/
(Unfortunately, the TIME article isn't accessible without signing up - no cost, just email registration.)
@RVAwonk
Furthermore, we’re currently dealing with multiple crises at once, thanks to the impulsive and poorly-rolled-out verification system update, which resulted in a bunch of imposter accounts with blue checkmarks. During a crisis, this could be absolutely catastrophic.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1593277101783875592
Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D
@RVAwonk
People have used Twitter to report the 1st witness accounts of major world events, and a significant number of people use Twitter to communicate w/ emergency services when 911 call centers are overwhelmed. It’s not right that people could be cut off from that lifeline on a whim.
The bright side for Musk [Tweet]
Made me laugh anyway.
https://twitter.com/Xytiel/status/1593393834590969856
Zoë Schiffer
@ZoeSchiffer
NEW: Twitter just alerted employees that effective immediately, all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended. No details given as to why.
Elissa
@Xytiel
On the other hand his lawyers in the case about his Tesla comp can now argue that Tesla paying him $50 billion while he spends all his time supposedly running Twitter is in fact a very good deal for Tesla.
Sometimes, Putin's state-sanctioned war cheerleaders don't do him any favours
Or do they?
Маргарита Симоньян
@M_Simonyan
Вот и у Польши появилась своя Белгородская область. А как вы хотели?
Translated from Russian by Google
So Poland got its own Belgorod region. And how did you want?
For those who don't know, Margarita Simonyan is editor-in-chief of RT (Russia Toady, sorry, Today) and state-controlled media group Rossiya Segodnya.
She can regularly be seen ranting on Russian TV, in ways that might one day earn her a slot on Fox News if Tucker Carlson ever tires of his schtick, courtesy of Julia Lewis's vigilance on Lewis's twitter feed: https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews (and if anyone can take a look at Davis's Twitter feed and not come to the conclusion that Russia is the ultimate baddie in this clusterfuck, they're beyond reaching or bothering with).
Meanwhile:
https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1592599422147661824
@TpyxaNews
Russian market collapsed on the news of two missiles landing on the territory of Poland, a NATO member.
and even more meanwhile:
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1592610376507883520
@JuliaDavisNews
Russia's official response about today's events in Poland:
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Member since: Mon Sep 7, 2009, 12:57 AM
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