Dave The Web Guy
Elon Just Kicked'em Right in Their Balls
11/30/2023
This is going to be a complicated post. It's going to sound like I am defending Elon Musk's concur about the existence of Jewish conspiracies or whatever, while simultaneously defending his remarks in wake of the predictable advertiser boycott that followed. But I'll try to make a clear point.
The media blowback from Elon's "go fuck yourself" remark, in response to questions about the (now likely permanent) boycott, has outraged the mainstream profit media, which found itself offended by such an open rebuke of its corporate advertising model and the control it exerts over freedom of speech. The same model, while also a semblance of a legitimate industry, is also considered the gatekeeping governance that makes sure nothing gets "too out of control."
There has never been and never will be, for example, an NBC-produced documentary on the merit of communism. A thoughtful production that considers maybe we were wrong about all of this. No weekly cartoon for kids that features a scrappy group of teenagers uncovering alternative economic theories of any kind other than the ones that we miraculously know to be the one we happen to live in right out of the box in (and crazily so many other nations don't - weird huh?).
Your (cough) "local" news station's "Action 8 Investigation Report" isn't going to touch the shady practices of your also local new car dealership so long as those dealerships are laundering in payola in the form of local advertisement dollars, despite complaints against them being like a number one actual issue. Not that the "Action 8 Investigation Report" team isn't tough in going after some no-name contractor or some already un-popular local politician it's probably been asked to finish off by community members of the local back channels.
I hope you get the idea.
Big profit media and its control over the discoverability of new perspectives is the only reason the First Amendment has yet to be be repealed in this country. The assumption has always been, if you don't accrue money, or if you pose a threat to those who do, your message and perspective are comfortably handicapped by commercial default.
It's a system that works well enough, because you know, if it didn't, what China does with freedom of speech and online expression wouldn't look so bad.
It's also why the profit MSM is "at war" with social media or the open web, because people being able to talk and argue with each other, is a crack too much in the comfortable system it's taken decades to build. Any chance to point out why people having free access to the thoughts and viewpoints of others, is depressing teens or leading to "dangerous challenges", is taken in a snap.
There is no clearer example of such a blatantly pro-corporate-media-advertising-monopoly propaganda piece than this ridiculous order-up by CNN producers to make sure viewers focus on the triviality of Elon's response than the point he is making. In it a woman described as a CNN contributor and tech journalist -- Kara Swisher -- is invited to take a moment from emptying bathroom hampers or something (as she is breathlessly making her points from home) to pretend that there wasn't a deeper and valid point being made within the orb of all this scuffle-dust flying about.
Calls were evidently made to get this CNN presentation out there. It's absolutely ridiculous to watch, but also, an accidental insight to CNN's panic or "entitlement to narrate away" Elon's point.
Elon has tied one personality, one person, to a service once treading carefully in a sea of unspoken or perhaps more deliberate business rules that once acted as the true captains and the law of order for Twitter. They are gone, and now it is gleefully albeit destructively, him.
And yes he has wrecked quite a bit - I myself am trying to transition away from the service. But like an atom smasher, his actions and controversies have pushed unexpected matter into our view and strung them out for wider examination. Pretty much exactly how he explained his peace in the event that the advertiser boycott does in fact kill X.
I will give him credit for that.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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My Feelings About The State of Israel and Palestine
10/15/2023
So here is what I think of the Israel/Hamas/Palestinian eruption.
Right now, the issue is the attack by Hamas. Cut away the complexity and depth of the longstanding controversy between Israel and Palestine and what is left is a vicious murderous attack on regular everyday people against the backdrop of at least temporal tranquility. If there is a legitimate beef against Israel, the terroristic "tactic" and strategy against civilians voids it for as long as it takes to punish and more importantly neuter the perpetrators.
Just like many warhawks and warmongers we have here in the U.S., I believe certain sociopaths have an appetite for murder and mayhem first with an argument for it second. It was surely as much sport as it was theology that drove the specific individuals who crossed Israel's border to kill. But more broadly speaking, in the framework of the entire controversy, Hamas has had time to breed and mix the delicate formula of ignorance and sociopathy among people to create such monsters explicitly for their purpose. In the U.S., we perfect that formula to create politicians and commercial leaders who become those faces you might see on Sunday morning press programs. But in desperate places such as Gaza without the elegance of prosperity to cover up such carnality, what happened last week is what you get from these same type of people operating at a much lower level than those of a suit and respectable title.
So, in my blogging opinion, Israel is justified in its predictable military response with probably no "clean" way of going about it. We can hope that whatever happens next ends the threat against them once and for all, that as many innocent people are spared as possible in the process, and that for once, violence won't beget more violence (yeah, right.)
Which does lead to the bigger angst I would hold not against Israel but rather the process that set up this entire matter at the outset. Something that nobody should have been satisfied with. From what I've been able to YouTube and Wikipedia research (which reads as trivial academia of course, but believe me, is how millions and millions of others are now suddenly being forced to develop out of blood curiosity), there seems to have been some drive to "home" people of the Jewish faith that I probably would never agree there was an explicit need for, let alone on preoccupied land.
Instead, somehow "these people are so...something...that we need to work out a way to 'house' them in the world" seems just as presumptuous as oppression or extermination, no matter how well intended. And then to finally agree on a way that would surely just piss off a bunch of other people, sparking perpetual war as it is to be clearly seen now, is just beyond comprehension.
Having sympathy for Palestinian people is clearly not the same as having sympathy or supporting Hamas, the force that hijacked their cause, nor is it decrying Israel or its right to exist today, nor is it not having sympathy for Israelis. What we as people need to consider is Israel's mature evolution irregardless of the ill-conceived reasoning that brought it into being (by at least my opinion). After all when no nation today has a pure history of origins it is unfair to hold such a standard against Israel.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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I Don't See How This is Any Solution
09/21/2023
As a "solution" this makes zero sense. Yes, it's great that all these people have been given the right to work. But - it's for them to live and work in New York City. So how is anything solved? Even at the good end of the wage scale for a migrant worker they aren't going to be able to afford a rent, food, and transportation.
This problem isn't solved for average Americans let alone immigrants. Affordable living and rent among hard workers punching a clock every single day is a longstanding crisis in its own right.
I'm afraid that the only winners here are going to be those who trade in black market rentals in potential fire tombs who will be the ones to get their hands on any cash these people earn. I don't understand the open fictionalization of success here and the pressure to celebrate it.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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