Showing posts with label Mastodon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mastodon. Show all posts

December 15, 2022

I was writing about Elon Musk being nuts and then Trump posted a Superman video

I was writing about Elon Musk being nuts and then Trump posted a Superman video

Another example of the
Media making megalomania mainstream

by Hal Brown


If I posted this I'd be a candidate for a rubber room at Bellevue:

These are available for free.
.




As an early member of Duty2Warn and a retired psychotherapist I have written a lot about Trump's psychopathology and very little about Elon Musk's because the former was a danger to democracy and the later I viewed as a sideshow even though he got tons of media attention and it become evident how deranged he was.

Update: The idiocy of this is:

"MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT! My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here!" the ex-president posted on his Truth Social account. "These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting. Go to collecttrumpcards.com/ & GET YOUR CARDS NOW! Only $99 each!

Presumably the worthless Trump University issued a diploma on paper to their grifted graduates, some of whom paid $35,000 for the Trump Gold Elite" package, which promised personal mentorship from experienced instructors "handpicked by Trump that would make them rich. Sycophant suckers in the card con don't even get something they can frame or stick on the refrigerator.

People are posting images like this from a tooter on Mastodon

Even Fox New news is treating this like it shows Trump to be a fool: 

Trump roasted after 'major announcement' turns out to be digital trading cards

This is how the Murdoch owned NY Post put it:

The 45th president’s new NFT* collection depicts — who else? — himself in various forms of, well, highly virtual reality.

Trump is featured with a chiseled chest wearing a cape, triumphantly riding an elephant and sporting a dapper James Bond-style tuxedo in the cards, according to his announcement on Truth Social.

“Hello everyone, this is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite president of all time — better than Lincoln, better than Washington, with an important announcement,” Trump said in a tone-deaf video linked to the post. “I’m doing my first official Donald J. Trump NFT collection.”

The former leader of the free world then urged fans to buy the so-called Donald Trump digital trading tokens — which he described as “much like a baseball card” — for “only” $99 each.

*A non-fungible token is a : a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied 

The word I am reading the most frequently to describe this grift is cringeworthy.

HERE'S MY ORIGINAL BLOG STORY

I wasn't planning to write a blog story about Elon Musk today. I just put together an image that I posted on Mastodon for this toot:

Click above to enlarge image


By now if you have been paying attention you know Trump is teasing an announcement with a video on Truth Social showing him opening his shirt to reveal a Superman t-shirt. On "Morning Joe" Joe  reminded viewers that Trump had wanted to open his shirt to show a Superman t-shirt underneath when he left Walter Reed after he had Covid. 

Someone apparently didn't think this was a smart thing to do when so many people were dying of the disease and they managed to dissuade him. This was reported on in the media, The Murdoch NY Post for example.

Yesterday my favorite columnist, Heather "Digby" Parton, wrote 

Elon is the new Trump: But how long can he hold the No. 1 Troll title? on Salon

Thought bubbles added

Today Igor Derysh wrote, also on Salon: 

Free speech warrior Elon Musk bans, vows “legal action” against student for tweeting public info

Musk is so committed to free speech he wants to use the power of the state to suppress public info about him


In Musk and Trump we have two headline hogging people who meet the criteria for being a malignant narcissist. The malignant part is being sociopathic. The narcissism part means that they are so full of themselves that they often behave in ways that are self-defeating. 

Musk and Trump are grandiose narcissists whose lifeblood is getting attention. They have no deeply held political beliefs. They have no empathy for those who they hurt . They will dominate the news for at least the short-term future. 

This will not please people like Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Lauren Boebert (story), and Louie Gohmert (story) who hope to have the media spotlight on them when the new Congress convenes.

In the greater scheme of things Elon Musk is irrelevant though his craving for attention has been correctly compared to a toddler's tantrum the same way Trump's antics have.

Trump is only truly relevant in the longer term if he runs for president either as a Republican or an Independent.

Yesterday I wrote in my blog about DeSantis that Trump would be the easier candidate for Biden (or whichever Democrat runs) to beat than the other Republican's who have been mentioned as likely GOP candidates. I wrote:

There is one outcome we can hope for, though we can't to anything to make it happen. This is that Trump loses the primary, whether to DeSantis or anybody else, and decides to run as an Independent. His psychopathology strongly suggests he would do this. He doesn't have any loyalty to the GOP or anyone in it with the exception of his dwindling number of sycophants. 

Doing this keeps him in the public eye until Tuesday, Nov. 7th 2023 when he splits the vote assuring an easy Biden win. He can have his rallies and spew his hate speech and paranoia to his cheering cult.

Ye got media attention for his ludicrous announcement that he's a candidate. 


There's nothing to keep Elon from doing the same thing. He isn't running for president, at least not yet. After all if Ye and do it and Musk knows he isn't the brightest bulb in the pack. Why shouldn't the richest person in the world who could buy Trump many times over and who has reported 155 IQ do the same thing?
"Elect Elon" isn't a bad alliteration but "Make America Musk" might appeal to him as a slogan for a Twitter blue baseball cap.






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December 4, 2022

Forego social media and bring back press release

 Forgo social media and bring back the press release


By Hal Brown



Archives on Right >

When it came widely disseminating information before social media there was group email and before that there were newsroom wire services and before that I suppose there was the ticker-tape machine which was used for stock market transactions.


Today even The White House uses social media, especially Twitter, to communicate messages to the media. If they are going to use Twitter I think it is only fair they use other similar platforms like Mastodon and Tribel. For example this is how their latest message seems to have gotten out. I don't know how since it wasn't on their official Twitter account but this is what various media websites have a link to:

I tried to find out where original statement came from. It wasn't a direct tweet from Andrew Bates, it was on his Twitter page as the retweet you see above.  Christopher Cadelgo is a reporter for Politico. It wasn't here either: 

These are their tweets from the prior 19 hours (click to enlarge):



If there's an urgent message that President Biden or White House wants to send there is always the press conference, but there's nothing between that and using the Internet.

If you want to see what the official White House website has to say about what Trump said about suspending the Constitution and try to look at their official website and type in a dot com this is where you go:
Someone obviously figured out that many people would land on this website by mistake and registering the URL was a valuable idea.

When you realize your error and type in dot gov you go to the official website:
Then if you want to find the actual statement which was posted on Twitter you're out of luck because it isn't anywhere to be found where you'd expect it to be:

Trump uses his own version of Twitter, Truth Social, as an alternative to issuing a press release. While Truth Social is an overall failure for Trump it is a success since everything he posts there is covered by the media.

For any government official or entity, any public or private organization or institution, and any individual in the public eye there is an alternative to using the social media platform owned and controlled by Elon Musk even though it currently has the most reach. 

For those wanting to reach the media Wirth a message it would require compiling a group email list, although I would guess some of these are languishing unused in numerous computers. 

Once this is done the same people in charge of posting a tweet to get a statement out to the media could simple send it out as a press release via email.

Of course any organization or individual could still use Twitter but considering that this platform is controlled by Elon Musk I personally would hope that nobody did this. It legitimizes Twitter as a news source and subsidizes the platform which means more money in influence for Musk.

As far as alternatives for those who want to leave Twitter I prefer Mastodon. I wrote abut this here:

Here's my profile.
Individuals, including journalists, are divided over whether or not to leave Twitter. As I write this it is been discussed of Ali Velshi's MSNBC show. You can read "Why I'm Not Leaving Twitter" by Karen Attiah (left below) if you have a Washington Post subscription here.



Ali Velshi expressed mixed feeling about it but said he still uses Twitter and also uses these: 

As an aside, I am actually supportive of having Donald Trump use Truth Social, or if he wants to return to the all embracing arms of Elon Musk, to use Twitter. This is because with either platform he expresses himself without a filter and reveals what he really thinks. He doesn't have handlers urging him to stick to reading what has been prepared for him on a teleprompter. On social media he is his own worst enemy and the nightmare of any defense attorney who is trying to keep him out of jail.

I wonder whether Special Counsel Jack Smith will see this as Trump confessing to sedition:

The right-wing speechwriter Robert Strom just wrote in the highly conservative publication Hot Air that Trump has finally committed political suicide and will never recover:

"It’s like a social science experiment with 350 million participants. Researchers are asking: just how batsh!t crazy does a person have to be to lose 95% of their fans? For some reason, Trump has decided to participate as the experimental subject," Strom added, "There are several obvious things about Trump’s statement that are simply politically stupid. Like, really really stupid. Assuming there were no legal or ethical barriers to either calling a new election or suspending the Constitution (stay with me here, I know that is insane!), it is still politically stupid."

Recent blog stories:





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November 25, 2022

My modified migration to Mastodon

My migration to Mastodon

By Hal Brown


Update: Dec. 12, 2022

This is what Twitter is doing to those who tweet a link to Mastodon 

This is what someone posted on Mastodon:

If you’re wondering about Mastodon’s impact, Twitter is now automatically marking links to mastodon as “sensitive” (aka dangerous) and forcing users who get them to “appeal” the claim. In case Elon didn’t seem desperate enough for you already…

Below is a screen grab of what they tweeted with their identity blocked out by me.

Those who want to view or join Mastodon can do so at web addresses for Mastodon servers including these https://mastodon.social/explore

Anyone who wants to promote Mastodon on Twitter may be able to avoid their algorithm tagging their tweet by 1) not using the word Mastodon 2) trying to outfox them by tweeting something like "I have a new home." 

Original Story

This is what my Mastodon profile looks like:


In case you haven't heard, Twitter is in trouble. Two alternative sites I joined are Tribel and Mastodon. I will focus on Mastodon here because I find it to be the most engaging  and interesting of the two.  People I respect and am familiar with like Robert Reich, George Takei, Kathy Griffin,  and Joy Ann Reid are posting there.

As far as I'm concerned if Kathy Griffin was the only celebrity posting there I would be hooked on the platform. I don't think I ever missed an episode of her "My Life On The D List" TV series.


She recently made the news by being suspended from Twitter by Musk:


He then reinstated her the next week:


Many people post under their real names as I do. A number of them would not be familiar to most people but have profiles on Wikipedia, for example Jennifer Taub, Matt Blaze, Jeff Jarvis, Tanja Bueltmann, and T. Ryan Gregory. 

 Stephen Fry posts there. His name might sound familiar.

He's the English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer known for among other things playing Jeeves in Jeeves and Wooster.

If you are curious about the background of someone who posted (or "toots") there you can click on their name. Most of them are candid about their backgrounds.

I had a seven part dialogue with one poster who actually had business dealing with him about whether Elon Musk was autist or not. 

I don't know how many there are but there's a large group of former Twitter employees who post on Mastodon.

There's a news section which highlights articles being discussed on Mastodon:

If you are curious enough by now, you can try Mastodon out by joining here: 


If not read more about it. Mastodon has been in the news. For example, click images to read articles:




Many users of Mastodon and Tribel have closed their Twitter accounts entirely. I haven't because I like to monitor what is going on there and keep an eye on what Elon Musk is doing. At resenting he's using polls to determine whether or not to reinstate banned accounts. This is from HUFFPOST: 

Oh Look, Elon Musk Is Letting More Banned Accounts Back On Twitter

Chief Twit rules by polling now.


I couldn't resist putting on a reply to the most recent tweet from earlier this morning:


It's highly unlikely he'll see my reply considering there were over 30,000 replies, but perhaps a few people will. I think if you use an illustration more people may look at what you tweet. It took a brief web search to find these two drawings.


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November 7, 2022

Trying out Tribel and Mastodon, alternatives to Twitter

Tribel

Mastodon


Elon Musk has showed that he's hellbent into turning Twitter into his personal playground of a hellscape. 


His latest pronouncement that he recommends everyone vote for Republicans in the election. He doesn't care about what it will mean for democracy. His reason is that he believes that if there's a Democratic president there should be a Republican Congress. His explanation shows that even with his 155 IQ, he's no deep thinker.

His actions since taking over Twitter have led a growing number of users to seek out our similar social media platforms.

I've been on one Twitter alternative, Tribel, for about two weeks. I find it easy to navigate and post there. Today I am just starting another one called Mastadon.

Both are small compared to Twitter but eventually by posting on one or both it seems to me what a non-famous person posts on either is more likely to be seen than on Twitter.

On Mastodon tweets are called toots. This is their logo, better than a blue colored bird in my opinion.



My Mastodon page, click image to enlarge.

This isn't to say well known people aren't using them. I haven't found any on Tribel but Jennifer Rubin is giving Mastodon a try and somewhere Kathy Griffin is as well.


I just have some "favourited" one of my posts a half hour after I put it on.


It was this article about Kathy Griffin and her feud with Elon Musk that clued me in about Mastadon:


Griffin, meanwhile, continued to troll Musk from her dead mother’s Twitter account. It’s uncertain how long she’ll be able to do that. Yet, even if Musk bans @TipItMaggieG, Griffin is still making fun of him over on Mastodon.

“The bros are coming for me! 😆She’s irrelevant! I thought carrot top was dead! You know, the usual,” Griffin wrote on her Mastodon account on Monday. “HE’S SUCH A DRAMA QUEEN 😂”

Here's a story about what she is doing from Salon.


As far as I can tell https://twitter.com/TipItMaggieG is still active.

Here are some articles about Mastadon:


TodayBERLIN (Reuters) -With Twitter in disarray since the world's richest person took control of it last week, Mastodon, a decentralised, open alternative from privacy-obsessed Germany, has seen a...
 Here are some articles about Tribel:

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