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Amen. I can appreciate films. Reiner made Movies. Great movies.

Spielberg is an apt comparison.


Posts like this make me appreciate my boss.

I've been very lucky to work for some great people, even/especially when the situation above them is borked.


Watch for widespread outages attributed to Vogon poetry and Marty the landlord's cycle (you know ... his quintet)


According to the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Vogon poetry is the third worst in the Universe.

The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria, and the worst is by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex, who perished along with her poetry during the destruction of Earth, ironically caused by the Vogons themselves.

Vogon poetry is seen as mild by comparison.


Fun fact: in the original radio-series version of HHGttG the name was "Paul Neil Milne Johnstone" and allegedly he was an actual person known to Douglas Adams, who was Not Amused at being used in this way, hence the name-change in the books.

(I do not know whether said actual person actually wrote poetry or whether it was anywhere near as bad as implied. Online sources commonly claim that he did and it was, but that seems like the sort of thing that people might write without actually knowing it to be true.)

[EDITED to add:] Actually, some of those online sources do in fact give what looks like good reason to believe that he did write actual poetry and to suspect it wasn't all that bad. I haven't so far found anything that seems credibly an actual poem written by Johnstone. There is something on-screen at the appropriate point in the TV series, but it seems very unlikely that it is a real poem written by Paul Johnstone. There's a Wikipedia talk page for Johnstone (even though no longer an actual article) which quotes what purport to be two lines from one of his poems, on which the on-screen Terrible Poetry may be loosely based. It doesn't seem obviously very bad poetry, but it's hard to tell from so small a sample.


Unparalleled in all of literature.


Indeed, I have all of her works to gift to people I can't stand.


My dad used to write Forth ... for fun.


I find it ironic that post-apocalypse we must rely on a language that is post-apocalypse.

Like monkeys gathering at the monolith…


The comedic/horrific possibilities as presented are compelling, if comedy and horror are the goals.

Maybe better as a second date.


Agreed. Besides, "left" and "right" are particularly meaningless in this context.

Cheney spent his last years being openly embraced by the same people who spent the last few decades playing the part of opposition.


Yeah, but Cheney's an interesting one especially here.

Probably a lot of permanent D.C. types lost track of whether to lionize or demonize the man in public (they always loved him privately)

Oh, what a tangled web ...


I'm fascinated with the number of users of this site who seem disproportionately invested in getting people to stop using Twitter.


Yeah it's so fascinating that people want an open internet rather than a small group of billionaires and big tech companies controlling everything. Truly bizarre.


"open"?

That's an interesting word to describe a platform that was previously the undisputed playground of Feds and NGOs.


What does this mean?


Pre-2022, Twitter was subject to heavy editorial oversight from D.C. and northern VA.

Censorship and propaganda at breathtaking scale.

This is a good place to start: https://twitterfiles.substack.com/


I like how you complain about "propaganda at breathtaking scale" and you fell for the Twitter Files, which was... precisely that.


Please show your work.


Musk's own lawyers did the work for us.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/06/tech/twitter-files-lawyers/in...

> “Nothing in the new materials shows any governmental actor compelling or even discussing any content-moderation action with respect to Trump” and others participating in the suit, Twitter argued.

> The communications unearthed as part of the Twitter Files do not show coercion, Twitter’s lawyers wrote, “because they do not contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”

> “Instead,” the filing continued, the communications “show that the [FBI] issued general updates about their efforts to combat foreign interference in the 2020 election.” The evidence outlined by Twitter’s lawyers is consistent with public statements by former Twitter employees and the FBI, along with prior CNN analysis of the Twitter Files.

> Altogether, the filing by Musk’s own corporate lawyers represents a step-by-step refutation of some of the most explosive claims to come out of the Twitter Files and that in some cases have been promoted by Musk himself.

Don't worry, though. Under Musk's leadership, free speech is well protected. Just ask https://x.com/elonjet, which Musk specifically promised (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589414958508691456) to protect! They would never ban a news story just because it was from a hack! (https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255298/elon-musk-x-bloc...)


"Show you're work"

Does exactly that using Musk's own lawyers

"...Wait no you weren't suppose to actually do that..."


[flagged]


That's the spirit. Lean into that stereotype! Make it yours.


Yes - it wasn't with respect to Trump. It was silencing negative stories about Biden and his son that was the proximate issue, and the general silencing of mostly Republican voices by mostly Democrat voices (though sometimes it went the other way, it was much less frequent[0].

[0] https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-fil...


Again:

> > The communications unearthed as part of the Twitter Files do not show coercion, Twitter’s lawyers wrote, “because they do not contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”

That was the case for the Biden laptop story, too. (And SCOTUS, thus far, seems to agree; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murthy_v._Missouri)

Again: Musk's own lawyers argued in court that the Twitter Files don't actually show what Matt Taibbi claimed they do.

(Taibbi also publicly claims Musk is now censoring him. https://x.com/mtaibbi/status/1758230628355485979)

> though sometimes it went the other way, it was much less frequent

While I tend to doubt that assertion, "Left-wing terrorism outpaces far-right attacks for first time in 30 years" perhaps points to a reason for a difference if it exists. https://www.axios.com/2025/09/28/left-wing-terrorism-far-rig...

The current administration seems just fine with similar jawboning. https://www.theverge.com/policy/799473/facebook-meta-ice-jaw...


If that were the reason we'd see even 10% of the same fervor for cutting out AWS or Cloudflare but we don't


And don't forget the tertiary effects as we displace millions with those bombs, only to take in a large number of "asylum seekers" from the countries we "aided".

IMO this is all by design, and there are a non-zero number of NGO operatives on this very site who are frustrated that anything is impeding that plan.


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