_____and thorns for quills_____
long live the reckless and the brave, i don't wanna be saved _writer, she/they, bi-ish, disabled-ish, ND, Mohawk+ white privilege, over 25, I tag on request_
The really hilariously ill-conceived part of the Twitter rate limiting thing is that comments and retweets are the same kind of entity as tweets in the back-end database, they’re just “parented” to whatever tweet they’re commenting on or retweeting, and the rate limit they’ve placed on the API simply counts how many of those entities you’ve requested without checking a. whether they’re the children of another entity or not, nor b. whether you’ve already seen that particular entity today.
Thus, the limit isn’t really “600 tweets”. A tweet, each comment on that tweet, and each retweet of that tweet all count against the limit as you view them. For example, if a quote-retweet crosses your dashboard, the quote-retweet itself and the little preview of what it’s responding to that appears above it each count separately against the limit. Click into that quote-retweet to read the comments? They both get counted against your limit a second time, as does each individual comment you read – and heaven help you if any of those comments were themselves commented upon!
The upshot is that if your account isn’t verified, using Twitter in the manner that its own monetisation model assumes – and, indeed demands – it will be used can easily exhaust your entire daily allocation of tweet views in as little as a couple dozen engagements.
so that’s why i ran out in like two hours
If anything, two hours reflects a very restrained usage pattern. Owing to the way that tweet views are counted, somebody who’s using the site the way its user experience “wants” it to be used might readily burn through their daily 600 views in five to ten minutes!
Wait, wait, wait, so, Twitter now works like those mobile games that give you free “lives” and once you’re out, sorry! Wait til tomorrow… or pay!
It’s a bit worse than that, because the verified limit is only 6000 views, and there’s presently no way to increase it beyond that. That might feel like a big number, but for the reasons outlined above, even a paying user with an ideal usage pattern will be able to use site for perhaps 60 minutes a day before they get put on hold, too.
it does look like they forgot that tweetdeck exists (again) and that doesn’t seem to be rate-limited at all, which…??
Yes Elon is bad at running Twitter. It should be noted that he is more than likely intentionally tanking the value of Twitter, so he can declare bankruptcy. He must do this while looking like he’s doing his best.
Remember, all this happened because he joked on Twitter about buying Twitter to temporarily spike his Twitter stock. This is blatantly insider trading, and the sort of thing the SEC loves punishing people for.
This put Elon in a tricky place. He could say he was joking, and risk getting investigated by the SEC. Or he could double down, and actually buy Twitter to prove he wasn’t lying to boost his stock price. These were both horrible options for Elon. But being investigated by the SEC is the type of thing that rich people have nightmares about.
So he was forced to buy Twitter. He could not afford Twitter. So he was forced to engage in a leveraged buyout, meaning he had to pay a big chunk of the check in Tesla stock. This was a shit deal for Elon. Twitter was well known for essentially being at the peak of it’s profitability, and the previous owners were looking for a nice exit. They were happy to sell the company to Elon for what was probably the highest price tag Twitter would ever have.
What this meant for Elon, was he had just used several billion dollars of his actually profitable company, and had to tie it’s ankles to a company that would only drop in value. (and a company he had no idea how to run.) If Twitter drowns, Tesla does too.
His only way out is to tank Twitters value so the company can declare bankruptcy, sell off the assets, and stop bleeding money. But he can’t LOOK like he’s doing that ON PURPOSE for the same reason that he had to double down on buying Twitter in the first place: the SEC is very scary.
This week someone claiming to be from a trans-supportive film, “It Takes a Village,” reached out. After investigating, I figured out it was a front for far-right director and Robby Starbuck. If they contact you, DO NOT RESPOND. We don’t need any more deceptively cut anti-trans films!
This is how Matt Walsh tried to con me into What Is a Woman last year. Thankfully, exposing him helped other trans people back out of the project. I hope sharing this information will do the same. These bigots can’t get interviews without lying to us.
To be clear, I knew it was a sham from the start. They’re using Gmail, called drag bans “the drag issue,” and refused to reveal the distributor. I planned on having them book me a hotel so I could ask for the name on their card. I didn’t even have to go that far: they forgot to create a new Calendly account, which still was registered to Robby’s website!
Based on the questions they sent me, it appears Robby planned to use his connections to arrest me in Tennessee. He’s called for my arrest many times before and his tactic probably would have worked had I fallen for his clumsy front. This is full-on fascist behavior.
A strange part of Robby’s fake documentary is that it appears the alleged director Matt Rodgers is a real filmmaker. They sent me his website but claimed he couldn’t speak while filming in Croatia this week (another dead giveaway). Could he be directing the film? Or is he just another front?
So Robby, just like your congressional campaign, you’ve failed to achieve your goal. I’d love to hear what you have in store for us now that you’re exposed.
Be safe out there people. As an activist in another arena I have been contacted by underhanded documentary people twice and sometimes it takes a lot of detective work to sniff out what they’re really trying to do. Don’t accidentally help them and don’t put yourself in danger. Real activists making media will have checkable connections with established trustworthy organizations. (And the ones who may be just starting out and have no proof, well, on an issue like this, do you really want to risk your safety to do one of these projects with someone who’s given you no reason to trust them?)
original post date: may 26! this is very recent and likely still ongoing!
It absolutely is still ongoing. Thankfully we caught them sooner than What Is a Woman? so we may be able to make production more difficult before it comes out. Unfortunately, not everyone will see this and media hasn’t picked it up yet, so it’s likely they’ll be able to trick someone into joining the film.
Thinking of your post on the problems of veganism as a movement vs veganism as a lifestyle choice/one technique amongst many, that also applys super well to my issues with degrowth (And anticonsumerism as well) as a movement vs degrowth as one technique amongst many for dealing with the hydra-crisis of overproduction/resource overuse/destroying people and places for resources.
Like, in particular as an autistic person the continual recurring insistence that we need to just "change our desires" creeps me out. As someone who's difficulties were dismissed as just "having a bad attitude" and who's interests were so often dismissed as a waste of time instead of preparing for a job in the "real world" IDK if they truly understand the full horrifying implications of that line of thought.
So here’s the thing with the concept of “overconsumption”
I had to do this whole project on overconsumption in my Anthropology class where I compared my consumption habits to those of someone 2 generations older, the prof clearly had in mind that we would discover a particular result that I did not end up finding.
I had to watch this documentary called “Affluenza” which was all about how Americans consume too much and they shop and buy things for fun and it’s killing the planet, and it kept making these statements like “The average american does X…” and “X” would be something insane that I’ve never dreamed of doing.
Now I technically grew up below the poverty line, we were always financially insecure and struggling to pay bills and there was never any extra money lying around.
But my upbringing felt average, even privileged. We had a house instead of a trailer on cinder blocks, we had food and clothes. Compared to the upbringing of my mom and virtually everyone she knew growing up, we lived in fabulous luxury.
And the “overconsumption” lesson was bizarre to me because it brought up things like “going shopping for fun once a week” and “owning 20+ pairs of shoes” as if they were normal. I wear my clothes until they’re unwearable and shop for clothes like once a year, and my mom has half as many clothes as I do. She feels guilty buying anything for herself and HATES shopping.
It feels like the dominant resources on living an eco friendly lifestyle presume that we have far more agency in what we buy and use than we actually do, instead of being stuck with the cheapest or closest available thing, and that our lives are full of extraneous, non-essential “consumption.”
That class brought up the idea of “conspicuous consumption” a lot, or buying things to obtain social status instead of for their concrete utility. The way “conspicuous consumption” was addressed in the class was not very immediately relatable to me—I never had the option of buying clothes just to appear “with it” socially. My parents couldn’t buy an extra car to fit the aesthetic of the American dream—we had enough trouble keeping the one we had running. The “conspicuous consumption” that class addressed was just not available to me.
However, I don’t think conspicuous consumption is endemic to stable members of a certain socioeconomic status, because consumption is partially driven by the trauma of poverty. People who grew up poor will buy you more Christmas gifts than you can store or use, because they want to spare you the shame they experienced. Their brains are molded around the trauma of not having enough, and giving you enough is their way of keeping you safe.
Conspicuous consumption as a habit is pushed on you if your ancestors were shaped by this trauma. It is a misrepresentation to think of it as driven by pride, because your ability to perform the behaviors and mimic the appearances of a higher socioeconomic status has a concrete effect on how people treat you.
I know J.D. Vance is a nutjob now and Hillbilly Elegy was…not great (I’m more appalachian than you bitch, and I’m not even appalachian!) but the one thing that book got incredibly right was the idea of “social capital” and the way access to financial security and wealth gives you social capital. This is the main thing the current understanding of “conspicuous consumption” gets wrong—the need to escape the appearance and behaviors of poverty is seen as vain and self-indulgent, when it’s a survival mechanism and it’s something you’re expected to engage in to gain opportunities and respect.
Poverty is humiliating. People with money never think about the fact that they have money. They think of themselves as average, if they think of themselves in terms of socioeconomic status at all. Being poor ends up embedded in the grooves and folds of your brain.
I remember when I was about 12, I gave my friend an informal tour of our house the first time she came over, showing her every room. I realized later that this wasn’t exactly a normal behavior—I had done it because my mom did the same thing when she brought her friend over, and my mom had done it because it was a way of saying look, I survived. Look, I have a place to live to call my own, isn’t this nice?
At its worst, anti-consumerism just reinforces the myth that your consumption is purely a matter of personal choice. And unfortunately when the conversation is ruled by the privileged, this idea will appear substantiated—because rich people can choose the aesthetics of poverty without concretely affecting the way the world treats them. A rich person can choose to live in a “tiny house” but they will never be “trailer trash.”
Anti-consumerism revolves around ideas that are almost irreparably tainted by the mythology of an unequal society. Rich people possess and control the aesthetic of restraint and frugality, allowing them to playact living a Simple Life where they live in a tiny minimalist cottage and eat Healthy Vegan Oat Gruel, while McDonalds is the emblem of American excess. It is poor people’s behaviors and habits that exemplify excess and greed.
Anti-consumerism isn’t going to change anything until it openly confronts the fact that poverty is traumatic and consumption patterns often arise from poverty survival mechanisms.
More than 15,000 hotel workers are seeking higher pay, better benefits, and working conditions. This includes an across-the-board $5 an hour raise, as well as affordable healthcare and better pensions. They also are seeking a ban on the use of E-Verify, which is used to deny employment to undocumented workers and workers involved with the criminal justice system. You can follow what is happening at their Twitter.
[image description: a photo of several hotel workers]
(Cis/trans)women aren’t the only ones that can get breast cancer, either.
Please boost this version 👆
I learned recently that our “Frauenarzt” (womens doctor) is responsible for checkups on male breast cancer. But almost no man knows this, and even if, no one would visit “a doctor for women”
So maybe the self checkups are the only means to get more (cis) men to check themselves!
Interesting to call this “confiscating” when it’s just making the rich pay their fair share, especially considering all the stolen wealth from the bottom 99% and historic tax evasion.
Besides the obvious, the hidden benefit of this is that it provides an endpoint to runaway growth.
The biggest problem with capitalism, the reason it’s so destructive to the planet and to the workers and even, ultimately, to the capitalists, is that, after a certain point, the money’s just a way of keeping score. The number at the bottom of the column has no bearing on what you can buy or do; as a result, there’s no such thing as enough. The number can always be bigger.
Under this proposal, once you hit $1 billion, you’ve won capitalism. You beat the game, achieved the maximum score; you’re finished. There’s nothing more you can accumulate. You now have to find a purpose in life other that the relentless pursuit of profit. (And if we’re really lucky, it might be something that actually benefits other people, but even if not, it’s unlikely to be as damaging as whatever it is you were doing to get that $1 billion.)
Instead of companies expanding endlessly, like tumors, there’s a point where, when all the major stakeholders are maxing out on profit, it makes sense to just hold steady. Keep doing/making/selling whatever it is you do/sell/make, but stop trying to do/sell/make more of it every year.
The problem with a tumor–what makes it cancer–is that it keeps growing and growing, until eventually it’s taking up so much space and consuming so many resources that the surrounding tissues can’t function. The tumor doesn’t have to do anything better than the other tissues in order to crowd them out; it just does it faster. Stop the uncontrolled growth, and it’s something you can live with.
Stopping the uncontrolled growth of capital means more opportunities for multiple businesses–big and small–operating in the same sector, since it doesn’t make sense for any one company to gobble up too much of the market share. That, in turn, means more choices for customers–and workers, since they can take their skills to another employer doing similar things. It means less waste, as there’s no longer an economic upside to spewing cheap goods out of a fire-hose before you even know whether anyone wants to buy them. That could mean slower, more thoughtful use of resources in the first place, but at minimum, it’s going to mean not manufacturing products only to immediately throw them away.
wait what? the fuck? this is the first time I’m hearing about this. christians have a Make New Minecraft World event?
man what the fuck?
Like I’ve said before they believe the Antichrist will take over the world specifically by creating world peace and paradise so that everyone will trust him as a global dictator. This is why they called Obama the antichrist, because he said he wanted to end war. They believe the world is meant to fall into ruin and anyone planning to end violence or poverty is working for the devil.
Out of all the wild mystical opportunities americans choose the ugliest most penitential self-loathing-infused narcissistic nightmare, starve and beat it in the garage and turn it loose on the world
American Evangelical Fundamentalist Christianity is literally a death cult.
