"Later today, an annotated version of last night’s “Twitter Files” thread on the removal of Donald Trump, along with new commentary on what’s been published so far, will appear here on TK. After a crazy week, during which I’ve been in the unnatural position of feeling a need to keep quiet, I can get back to writing as usual on this site."
Told ya! Told ya! (I can't read it because it's paywalled; that was just the first teasesr paragraph.)
The only reaction I've seen here is: "Yes of course they removed Trump! He was going to start WW3! He was a racist and a sexist"
Because that's what our media chuned out for his four years, including clips shown on news-shows about schoolchildren crying in fear and people hoarding toilet paper. Anything bad, it was tied to Trump, no matter anything else.
And when you asked stuff like "Why this outrage? He's not our president? Why are you never this upset about [insert murderous dictatorship of choice]?!" the answer was:
"But Trump is horrible!"
And if you even suggested that maybe this uniorm reporting with no basis in fact (our journalists cited US media as if that made things fact - that's an 'F' in how you check your facts, that is) was orchestrated, you were immediately decried as an agent of Putin.
So the only effect these reveals have had over here yet is to the tune of "Of course they did, we must stop The Bad Guys!" where Bad Guys is whatever the authorities say they are.
Standing joke over here in oppositional circles, left and right and centre and what have you, that we are the 51st state.
I have a sneaking suspicion that our media wasn't part of some global OBM-conspiracy, but instead took the opportunity to shift attention from our own nincompoops-in-office.
Gods' knows there's enough to go around. Presently, it has become public knowledge (i.e. it's been known among "alt-media" for years) that a high-ranking police official who herself isn't a police - the top ranks are all political appointees so you don't need any actual experience of police work, and that's formal even - has slept her way to power.
First she started bedding a high police official, an actual policeman too, and wound up chief of operations for the department co-ordinating intelligence for police. After dumping the police official she then started putting out for our Commander in Chief, who was married at the time.
Yes, really.
Leading to his divorce and public disgrace, but thanks to him going whole hog on the rainbow-agenda, he remains in place. He even told off swedes complaining about our forces parading under rainbow-flags that any soldier who don't agree with that can take a hike. In public, in his official capacity.
Now, she's dumped him too and has weaseled her way into our department of foreign affairs.
The term "can suck the chrome from a trailer-hitch" comes to mind since she has virtually zero actual credentials.
Who's turning into who, eh. It's a contest neither of us wants and no-one wants to win I'd say. We fell in love with the pre-Vietnam War US, and that feeling lingers still, at least in my parts.
The irony, isn't it, that descendants of Vikings helped to wrestle some of our most challenging wilderness areas into what became states well-known for independent thinking and a love for classic liberal values.
And now look at 'em.
And your last paragraph--I'm old enough now to look back at the '50s of my childhood and realize that despite it being an era of old-fashioned Republican lunacy in many ways, and the secret beginning of the destruction of our elite universities, it was, as that film title said, the best years of our lives.
Maybe everywhere throughout history whatever represents the middle class only has one generation of real glory and then everyone goes too soft to build anything good afterwards.
The history of Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt, and many more seem to point to that, though I'd add two contributing factors relevant for us:
The speed of communication, and lack of immediately obvious existential threats.
The higher the speed of communication, the faster cultural change happens meaning earlier generations' become distant despite still being physically alive - evidenced by the very common phrases to the tune of "But XX makes everything different nowadays!" used as rationalisation and justification.
Lack of obvious immediate existential threats breeds complacency and creates an atmosphere where the present state is perceived as natural and immutable.
Still, China faced far worse 200 years ago. Jews and gypsies both have managed to survive and thrive as peoples despite holding the world records for not having a nation.
For Balder and Höder to return from Hel, Ragnarök must come to pass after all.
I really don't know for sure - how would one ever answer that without the answer being anecdotal and biased? For me, the "march or die"mentality worked far better when I was kid than did appeals to my better nature, rationalisation or "because I say so".
Want a set of skiis for down hill skiing when I was 12? Buy them. Oh, no money? Easy. Work for a relative stacking firewood for four weeks during the summer.
But I know one thing for sure: cultures without this navelgazing introspection that's been the height of intellectual fashion since the mid-1800s don't have our problems.
I thought I was cynical before, but I have been utterly horrified to discover what absolute sheep a vast portion of the populace is over the last 7 years or so.
Heh, nothing really surprising here for me. Damning yes, but as long as the government and its alphabet organizations still control the legacy media, it’ll be difficult for this to get traction. The biggest takeaway for me is just the continued illustration of the banality of evil that corporations and bureaucracy breeds. These people at Twitter don’t even give a second thought to what they’re doing, information is simply true or false. FBI asks you to review things that are problematic to their various stakeholders and Twitter ascertains their legitimacy by doing a Google search. “Hm, looks like that one Trump election fraud allegation is actually reported by a traditional media source, so that’s one true.” A quick appeal to consensus determines what is deemed permitted conversation. But hey, what are they supposed to do? This isn’t the time for a philosophical debate on the nature of facts, we need to make a call so the representatives from one of the government cabals doesn’t cause trouble for my boss.
Basically, this is the working example of the slippery slope that exists once you start policing ANY speech. It’s a matter of principles that we’re fighting against more than any elite influencers… if we don’t hold freedom of expression as a fundamental tenet, with NO exceptions, this will always happen. And thanks to the internet, it’s the whole world that suffers the consequences now.
This is why I've said over and over that as soon as you allow the 'leaders' to decide what is and isn't allowable speech, dissent is quickly banned afterward.
And it sure is funny how it wasn't 'algorithms' at all, isn't it?
Yeah, I never bought into the algorithm business. That and AI are several gallons worth of snake oil in my opinion. They obviously exist, but their applications are still extremely limited and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. You can block some words or change their priority in a search, but unless you’re willing to accidentally censor ones on “your side” all of this still requires a human touch to be precise.
Related, I wouldn’t be surprised if a ton of Google search results for key topics are personally curated. I think it’s becoming more commonly known that most of the internet is inaccessible by search engines. Do a search for literally anything and Google will claim millions of results, but if you go to the last page of results, you’ll end up with a few thousand at most (mere hundreds in some cases). It’s why controlling platforms like Twitter is so important, they effectively ARE the internet now.
Same here (algorithms & AI), having spent most of my life designing, coding, and implementing business systems.
There would have to be filtering at the user level; examining content programatically is too imprecise.
And the cardinal rule: Output is only as good as the input.
The input (speech) would have to be parsed into "categories", then the categories weighted by some criterion provided by humans to effect a desired outcome. So who is the "desirer"?
Is the outcome purported to be the Objective Truth? Of course not; why then bother at all?
It's intriguing that Musk chose Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss for the new round of releases. They aren't as high-profile as Taibbi, and will get a bunch of new subscribers as a result.
I do not know Matt Tiebbe. I thought he was a liberal, but,maybe I am thinking of someone else.
Either case, this is well presented, I do not believe any news orgs will touch this stuff, they are all like robots and easily selectively manipulated
We do live in a clown world. I always knew there was an underground network of these dirtbags, not only twitter, but just like the “journo-list” network from 2000
It is a pity. Again, I am grateful for your blog, and the followers here
Taibbi was long-considered a "liberal", but like Glen Greenwald, his steadfast commitment to actual classical values means he's now described as 'right-wing'. Even his hatred of Donald Trump didn't get in the way of him calling BS on Russiagate.
Timcast IRL on YouTube, should be interesting tonight, I'm sure this will feature prominent in the broadcast. Last night, Scott Pressler was their guest. Scott is organizing ballot harvesting operations.
Sorry, I should clarify. In states where it's "legal" and Dems have already been doing it, and we haven't. Especially like California. But, several other states allow this. Basically the voter signs a release for the "harvester" to deliver their ballots. And in cities, harvesters can cover a lot of territory quickly. These states also mail out ballots automatically. So, harvesters knock on the door, get anyone who hasn't filled out their ballot, to do so, and conveniently will deliver it for the voter.
As the storm approaches, all ships should head to sea, lest they be dashed to flotsam on the rocks of the harbor. We can regroup when the skies clear.
The other perspective is ride out the storm moored to the anchors and live in the resulting miasma of debris.
America has been a safe harbor for many generations, but its protective seawall, the Constitution, has been neglected and battered from within the harbor for so long, that it is unlikely to fair well from the gathering swells.
Apropos of little, just felt like writing the images that flashed in my mind's eye.
That's the deal with all the releases, but it's ironic how it completely showcases one of twitter's shortcomings. Thousands of comments just 'missed' because there's already a new post (or two) up, with people commenting on that, which get missed because there's already a new post.....
This is by far the most damning thread. Wow.
Edit edit: Brad's version is way easier to read IMO
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/the-twitter-files-part-iii-unrolled
This threader stops at 31, looks like missing another 20
I'm gonna change the link to Brad's well-laid out page
From Taibbi's TK News:
"Later today, an annotated version of last night’s “Twitter Files” thread on the removal of Donald Trump, along with new commentary on what’s been published so far, will appear here on TK. After a crazy week, during which I’ve been in the unnatural position of feeling a need to keep quiet, I can get back to writing as usual on this site."
Told ya! Told ya! (I can't read it because it's paywalled; that was just the first teasesr paragraph.)
The only reaction I've seen here is: "Yes of course they removed Trump! He was going to start WW3! He was a racist and a sexist"
Because that's what our media chuned out for his four years, including clips shown on news-shows about schoolchildren crying in fear and people hoarding toilet paper. Anything bad, it was tied to Trump, no matter anything else.
And when you asked stuff like "Why this outrage? He's not our president? Why are you never this upset about [insert murderous dictatorship of choice]?!" the answer was:
"But Trump is horrible!"
And if you even suggested that maybe this uniorm reporting with no basis in fact (our journalists cited US media as if that made things fact - that's an 'F' in how you check your facts, that is) was orchestrated, you were immediately decried as an agent of Putin.
So the only effect these reveals have had over here yet is to the tune of "Of course they did, we must stop The Bad Guys!" where Bad Guys is whatever the authorities say they are.
Nobody ever expects Sweden to turn into the US, right? It was supposed to go the other way...
Standing joke over here in oppositional circles, left and right and centre and what have you, that we are the 51st state.
I have a sneaking suspicion that our media wasn't part of some global OBM-conspiracy, but instead took the opportunity to shift attention from our own nincompoops-in-office.
Gods' knows there's enough to go around. Presently, it has become public knowledge (i.e. it's been known among "alt-media" for years) that a high-ranking police official who herself isn't a police - the top ranks are all political appointees so you don't need any actual experience of police work, and that's formal even - has slept her way to power.
First she started bedding a high police official, an actual policeman too, and wound up chief of operations for the department co-ordinating intelligence for police. After dumping the police official she then started putting out for our Commander in Chief, who was married at the time.
Yes, really.
Leading to his divorce and public disgrace, but thanks to him going whole hog on the rainbow-agenda, he remains in place. He even told off swedes complaining about our forces parading under rainbow-flags that any soldier who don't agree with that can take a hike. In public, in his official capacity.
Now, she's dumped him too and has weaseled her way into our department of foreign affairs.
The term "can suck the chrome from a trailer-hitch" comes to mind since she has virtually zero actual credentials.
Who's turning into who, eh. It's a contest neither of us wants and no-one wants to win I'd say. We fell in love with the pre-Vietnam War US, and that feeling lingers still, at least in my parts.
The irony, isn't it, that descendants of Vikings helped to wrestle some of our most challenging wilderness areas into what became states well-known for independent thinking and a love for classic liberal values.
And now look at 'em.
And your last paragraph--I'm old enough now to look back at the '50s of my childhood and realize that despite it being an era of old-fashioned Republican lunacy in many ways, and the secret beginning of the destruction of our elite universities, it was, as that film title said, the best years of our lives.
Maybe everywhere throughout history whatever represents the middle class only has one generation of real glory and then everyone goes too soft to build anything good afterwards.
The history of Greece, Rome, Persia, Egypt, and many more seem to point to that, though I'd add two contributing factors relevant for us:
The speed of communication, and lack of immediately obvious existential threats.
The higher the speed of communication, the faster cultural change happens meaning earlier generations' become distant despite still being physically alive - evidenced by the very common phrases to the tune of "But XX makes everything different nowadays!" used as rationalisation and justification.
Lack of obvious immediate existential threats breeds complacency and creates an atmosphere where the present state is perceived as natural and immutable.
Still, China faced far worse 200 years ago. Jews and gypsies both have managed to survive and thrive as peoples despite holding the world records for not having a nation.
For Balder and Höder to return from Hel, Ragnarök must come to pass after all.
I remember being so cheered when I found out what happens *after* Ragnarok. Nobody ever gives up on that happy ending thingy.
There's got to be some decent medium between putting your kids to work at three or keeping them infantile at 30.
I really don't know for sure - how would one ever answer that without the answer being anecdotal and biased? For me, the "march or die"mentality worked far better when I was kid than did appeals to my better nature, rationalisation or "because I say so".
Want a set of skiis for down hill skiing when I was 12? Buy them. Oh, no money? Easy. Work for a relative stacking firewood for four weeks during the summer.
But I know one thing for sure: cultures without this navelgazing introspection that's been the height of intellectual fashion since the mid-1800s don't have our problems.
I thought I was cynical before, but I have been utterly horrified to discover what absolute sheep a vast portion of the populace is over the last 7 years or so.
Heh, nothing really surprising here for me. Damning yes, but as long as the government and its alphabet organizations still control the legacy media, it’ll be difficult for this to get traction. The biggest takeaway for me is just the continued illustration of the banality of evil that corporations and bureaucracy breeds. These people at Twitter don’t even give a second thought to what they’re doing, information is simply true or false. FBI asks you to review things that are problematic to their various stakeholders and Twitter ascertains their legitimacy by doing a Google search. “Hm, looks like that one Trump election fraud allegation is actually reported by a traditional media source, so that’s one true.” A quick appeal to consensus determines what is deemed permitted conversation. But hey, what are they supposed to do? This isn’t the time for a philosophical debate on the nature of facts, we need to make a call so the representatives from one of the government cabals doesn’t cause trouble for my boss.
Basically, this is the working example of the slippery slope that exists once you start policing ANY speech. It’s a matter of principles that we’re fighting against more than any elite influencers… if we don’t hold freedom of expression as a fundamental tenet, with NO exceptions, this will always happen. And thanks to the internet, it’s the whole world that suffers the consequences now.
This is why I've said over and over that as soon as you allow the 'leaders' to decide what is and isn't allowable speech, dissent is quickly banned afterward.
And it sure is funny how it wasn't 'algorithms' at all, isn't it?
My favorite line was ...in the end there was one rule, "because we say so" . When you no longer can or wish to defend your actions.
When the leaders no longer had to lead from the front...
...we got "On on on cried the leaders from the back!"
That's not a leader, that's a drover.
We were galloping down the blackened hills, and into the gaping trap...
It is eminently quotable today as it was yesterday:
"The massacre now is over and the order new enshrined
While a quarter of the nation are abandoned far behind
Their leaders offer the cliché words, so righteous in defeat
But no one needs morality when there isn't enough to eat"
Yeah, I never bought into the algorithm business. That and AI are several gallons worth of snake oil in my opinion. They obviously exist, but their applications are still extremely limited and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. You can block some words or change their priority in a search, but unless you’re willing to accidentally censor ones on “your side” all of this still requires a human touch to be precise.
Related, I wouldn’t be surprised if a ton of Google search results for key topics are personally curated. I think it’s becoming more commonly known that most of the internet is inaccessible by search engines. Do a search for literally anything and Google will claim millions of results, but if you go to the last page of results, you’ll end up with a few thousand at most (mere hundreds in some cases). It’s why controlling platforms like Twitter is so important, they effectively ARE the internet now.
Same here (algorithms & AI), having spent most of my life designing, coding, and implementing business systems.
There would have to be filtering at the user level; examining content programatically is too imprecise.
And the cardinal rule: Output is only as good as the input.
The input (speech) would have to be parsed into "categories", then the categories weighted by some criterion provided by humans to effect a desired outcome. So who is the "desirer"?
Is the outcome purported to be the Objective Truth? Of course not; why then bother at all?
It's intriguing that Musk chose Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss for the new round of releases. They aren't as high-profile as Taibbi, and will get a bunch of new subscribers as a result.
As I wrote the other night, he couldn't give this to the 'mainstream', because they wouldn't be able to talk about it.
This "hole" Elon has uncovered is very, very deep and very, very disturbing.
Every story, likely at every big media company.
Thank you for sharing this.
I do not know Matt Tiebbe. I thought he was a liberal, but,maybe I am thinking of someone else.
Either case, this is well presented, I do not believe any news orgs will touch this stuff, they are all like robots and easily selectively manipulated
We do live in a clown world. I always knew there was an underground network of these dirtbags, not only twitter, but just like the “journo-list” network from 2000
It is a pity. Again, I am grateful for your blog, and the followers here
He *is* a liberal. A **real** one, who actually believes in liberty, even if he has a somewhat lefty slant to his economics.
Taibbi was long-considered a "liberal", but like Glen Greenwald, his steadfast commitment to actual classical values means he's now described as 'right-wing'. Even his hatred of Donald Trump didn't get in the way of him calling BS on Russiagate.
Now, I would really appreciate any efforts for others to come out and share the truth about J6 and the entire set up from those criminals in congress.
Thank-you for posting this so I could read some of it. Other than twit, I don't know if it's available, and I don't twit.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1601352083617505281.html
Easier way to read the whole thread
Thank-you very much! I do appreciate being able to read this. I also feel sick from reading it. 😰😢
SimCom………nothing, just thank you so much for creating this venue. Thank you.
I'm afraid Bandit already called dibs! :p
Good one! I cracked up! Thank-you for the laugh and the call back! 🤣
I choked……actually bent over laughing.
Looking through Taibbi's tweets, there it is again: the sense that Twitter was run by hall monitors.
Exactly.
Not to quibble but more like the ungifted children of the nouveau riche at an upscale public middle school cafeteria who think they're the cool table.
(someone please help me turn off predictive text suggestions because I tried 3 times in my Microsoft settings and they ain't holding.)
Timcast IRL on YouTube, should be interesting tonight, I'm sure this will feature prominent in the broadcast. Last night, Scott Pressler was their guest. Scott is organizing ballot harvesting operations.
He admits he's organizing ballot harvesting?
Sorry, I should clarify. In states where it's "legal" and Dems have already been doing it, and we haven't. Especially like California. But, several other states allow this. Basically the voter signs a release for the "harvester" to deliver their ballots. And in cities, harvesters can cover a lot of territory quickly. These states also mail out ballots automatically. So, harvesters knock on the door, get anyone who hasn't filled out their ballot, to do so, and conveniently will deliver it for the voter.
Thank-you for the clarification!
Where is our “safe harbor?”….I mean, think about it.
As the storm approaches, all ships should head to sea, lest they be dashed to flotsam on the rocks of the harbor. We can regroup when the skies clear.
The other perspective is ride out the storm moored to the anchors and live in the resulting miasma of debris.
America has been a safe harbor for many generations, but its protective seawall, the Constitution, has been neglected and battered from within the harbor for so long, that it is unlikely to fair well from the gathering swells.
Apropos of little, just felt like writing the images that flashed in my mind's eye.
Actually, this is our safe harbor.
True. Sanctum of sanity.
Beat me to it!
Did you ever play a pin ball machine……..you know how it “tilts”?
That’s America.
We’re all tilting.
Bigger than Watergate. So much bigger, it’s “HUGE.” Where are Bernstein and Woodward? 😝😝😝
I believe both have been busy kissing Democrat ass for years.
Kissing, eating, same-same...
Cowering in a corner because it’s not about them.
Substack somewhere.
Are they still alive?
LOL I have no idea, but the idea of them is found on Substack, not on TV.
How about they put their big boy journalist pants on and admit this is an unacceptable shit show??? I want to hear “ worse than Watergate.”
The mainstream media can't do that because they'll be fired. Substack writers are all over this thing.
Who would be left? Fire their asses... their bosses too.
That's the goal! ;)
Exhausting
It's sort of funny that this whole thing shows how bad Twitter is for breaking long stories.
Perhaps the deal with Taibbi was to break it on Twitter first in its entirely and at some future time post it in easier-to-read format on his Stack.
That's the deal with all the releases, but it's ironic how it completely showcases one of twitter's shortcomings. Thousands of comments just 'missed' because there's already a new post (or two) up, with people commenting on that, which get missed because there's already a new post.....
All things considered, we gotta be mighty grateful for the gift no matter what form it comes in, right?
No doubt!!
Strangest times we ever lived through, ain't they?
Printing the 200-300 most important pages as a book makes sense. Something not deletable; or at least package it into an e-book.
thats perhaps because the writers arent used to creating threads?
The whole nature of the platform is terrible for longform journalism. We're like an hour into this 'reveal' already. :/
Which is why I choose to wait in each case. Then read straight through. 😁👍
But, yes, it's not the best for long form.
The impotent rage in Mediastan is quite a joy to behold.