Elon musk

Jordan Peterson went from being a psychologist advising troubled kids to an unlikely political figure as he fought against the Canadian government’s compelled speech law for pronouns. Cockburn watched with fascination as Peterson clashed repeatedly with the left-wing narrative, even going as far as to resign from his tenured position at the University of Toronto due to their rampant leftist ideology. On June 28, Twitter suspended him for this tweet (as recalled by his daughter): https://twitter.com/MikhailaFuller/status/1541946666567323649 Clearly referring to someone by their birth name is a sin for Twitter. Little did Cockburn know that Dave Rubin, the host of The Rubin Report, was to be next on the chopping block. Rubin sent this tweet before being suspended: https://twitter.

News that billionaire Elon Musk is buying Twitter has shaken the world to the point that left-wingers are threatening to deprive us of their every thought by quitting the platform. My guess is this blustering will take those celebrities about as far away as they went when they pledged to leave the country if Trump was elected president. And though Twitter is likely far from rid of the Jameela Jamils and Chelsea Handlers of the world, even a brief reprieve from the balderdash could do us wonders. Last weekend, I had the privilege of experiencing a one-of-a-kind event at my local theater. “Rick Benjamin’s Paragon Ragtime Orchestra” came to town and performed the original musical score to Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr., a 1928 silent film.

Of all the hilarious freakouts over Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter, my personal favorite comes from journalism professor and self-styled "NYC insider" Jeff Jarvis (as noticed by The Spectator's Bill Zeiser last week). Jarvis tweeted — and I quote — "Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany." One imagines Mehdi Hasan and Molly Jong-Fast manically jazz-dancing as the Bruenigs belt out a song from a cabaret stage. And surely nothing calls down the specter of fascist totalitarianism quite like Musk's pledge to end Big Tech censorship. Because that's what the Nazis did, right? They kicked down the door to the nightclub, stormed through the horrified crowd, and barked, "ATTENTION PLEASE!

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in the C-suite at Twitter on Thursday afternoon. The social media company’s San Francisco headquarters reportedly played host to an all-hands meeting in which concerned employees were given the chance to ask questions about billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to buy their company. Their panic is not entirely without merit — Musk has floated the idea of turning Twitter’s building into a homeless shelter. Yet it's worth noting that Twitter’s employees have been told they can work from home indefinitely, and their questions were delivered to a largely empty building via the messaging app Slack.

When I think of Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, I think of Darth Vader. It’s not that Agrawal himself reminds me of the Star Wars protagonist, grave concerns over Twitter’s handling of free speech notwithstanding. I just can't help but think of the nervous imperial commander who receives Vader as he arrives to inspect the Death Star II at the opening of Return of the Jedi. “Lord Vader, this is an unexpected pleasure. We are honored by your presence,” the commander says, with a lump in his throat. The Dark Lord of the Sith flatly replies, “You may dispense with the pleasantries, Commander. I’m here to put you back on schedule.

“Just think about it. Our whole world is sitting there on a computer. It’s in the computer, everything: your, your DMV records, your, your social security, your credit cards, your medical records. It’s all right there. Everyone is stored in there. It’s like this little electronic shadow on each and every one of us, just, just begging for someone to screw with, and you know what? They’ve done it to me, and you know what? They’re gonna do it to you.” — Sandra Bullock as Angela Bennett, The Net, 1995 A few weeks ago, I called the local Domino’s. The man who answered asked whether my address is an apartment or a private residence. I live in a fairly remote Michigan community of about 8,000 people.

Jeff Bezos has built himself a space rocket and it looks like a giant...well you can judge for yourself. Which raises the question: how to go about reporting on this? Is it AP style, do you think, to say the vessel will penetrate the upper atmosphere provided there aren’t any onboard system cock-ups? We can only hope for Bezos’s sake that the rocket isn’t like a typical Amazon product in that it’s smaller in real life than it appears in the picture. Bezos himself will be onboard for the scant 11-minute flight (don’t even get me started), which has drawn the expected gallons of contempt and death wishes from Twitter.

Have you any Clubhouse invites going? I have five, if anyone wants one. Or is it six? I have to admit I’m not sure — like many people I know, I haven’t looked at the app for some weeks now. Clubhouse seems painfully aware of the fact that decreasing numbers of people do. The wild party that is — was — Clubhouse is winding down. The iOS app, that opened up a members-only world of virtual real-time audio chatrooms is now struggling against falling audiences, increased fuss over mediocre, unmoderated, unpleasant content and the fact that companies such as Twitter and Facebook have neatly purloined the audio concept at its heart and refashioned it for themselves.