deathmtn

Certainly, everyone should get off Twitter.

It should be noted, however, Twitter was a largely unregulated space before Musk which allowed Nazis to find each other and for Trump to and spread information incite hatred.

Despite him breaking Twitter’s TOS several times, he was never removed. Twitter was a big part of Trump’s rise (along with lazy journalists who couldn’t stop feeding him attention). Jack Dorsey both presided over the early 2010’s good times at Twitter and also made the ultimate call to keep racists and other kinds of bigots on, citing his version of free speech, which was much like Musk’s.

He is motivated by power and perceived shareholder value. Once he has fattened up Bluesky with users’ free effort and goodwill, he’s very likely to turn the crank on it to cash in at the cost of a nice conversion space and/or the health of a democracy.

If history has a lesson, it is that we don’t learn from it.”

Stephen Bush, FT, 19/20 October, 2024

Last time I took my car to the mechanic, he said he wasn't going to fix it for me anymore. It was all rusted underneath, and he told me I shouldn't put another dollar into it. So I knew what I needed to do. I needed to string it up across the windshield and play some music on it. People say that a car shouldn’t be able to sound like a guitar. It's not ash, alder or mahogany. But I did that.

Between 2017 and 2023, from coming to power at just 37 years old until her surprising resignation, Jacinda Ardern had transformed the country into a social democratic mecca and a beacon of progressivism around the world, which her successor, the conservative Christopher Luxon, has needed only a year to dismantle.

Twelve months into the current right-wing coalition, New Zealand is politically unrecognisable, having swung back and forth at lightning speed, driven in large part by the same trends that have brought Trump back and European neo-fascism to the fore. The agenda that sets the pace is not environmentalism, equality and improved labour rights, but anti-immigration and anti- woke , law and order, culture war, tribalism and identity politics. Fantasy and symbolism instead of pragmatism and compromise. Less state. Much less.

…

The parties that make up the right-wing New Zealand coalition are closely linked to the cabal of conservative think tanks called the Atlas Network, which has its networks stretched from Argentina to Australia and which includes the Heritage Foundation of Washington, the inspiration behind Donald Trump's Project 2025.

That man, an Albanian quisling, as teacher Nora called him, was responsible for the transfer of sovereignty to Italy after the flight of King Zog. Zog's rule, and all that followed from it, marked the end of Albanian aspirations to become a truly free society.