Parody Elon Musk Twitter accounts will be suspended immediately, says Elon Musk Elon Musk, the self-affirmed bastion of free speech, says that anyone setting up a parody Twitter account that isn’t marked as such will be permanently banned from the social network. Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended — Elon Musk (@ …
The last date I went on a few years ago (not the current partner) asked me ' how long I took to masturbate.
I replied between 1-2hrs.
She was shocked... and kinda speechless right up the point I finished the sentence.
'Because it can take that long to find the right bit of porn'
She didn't get the joke... and I didn't ask for a 2nd date.
I'll be honest... ease of access to internet porn has kinda ruined my enjoyment of porn.
Social Media is more like malware, harvesting the masses and making money selling them. If Social Media was just a drug then I wouldn't take it, I'd not complain about it, but it would be more like swallowing nicotine, not smoking it. I never liked just smoking nicotine when I was a kid but it was easy to make it enjoyable when you rolled your own and added a little improvement (OK, so the seeds popped sometimes).
I use twitter ... not as a drug, but as a way to contact companies in a direct, and public fashion (with my Karen hat on) when i need a grievance fixed. Musk is destroying the platform for others, but for me, it'll be business as usual. He's still the chief TWAT though
as a way to contact companies in a direct, and public fashion (with my Karen hat on) when i need a grievance fixed
I do too. And this absolutely sucks.
Having to DM somebody on Twitter about my lost UPS package instead of emailing someone at ups.com or going to a support page at ups.com is utterly broken.
But it has proved the only way to get any sort of contact from someone at UPS.
And UPS is just an example. There's at least half a dozen companies like this.
Indeed, could NOT get through to BT (retail), colleague was having fttp installed and openretch didn't bother showing up. BT's 150 (now 0800800150) line were terminating the calls after the 'you are in a queue' routine.. Contacted BT over the tweeter, and after mentioning the customer details... the next call went straight through to a lass in Liverpool... coinkydink?
Icon because I don't think it was
Many of those "brands" are actual individual independent artists, musicians and creators – that is, they're *people*.
Sure, there's a lot wrong with Twitter but a lot of actual people have their entire identity and profession tied up in their Twitter profile and following. Whether that was a wise move on their part is entirely irrelevant, today – it is the fact of the moment and he's trampling all over that and enabled to do so just because he is rich.
Perhaps, n-decades down the line, this will not be the case and these artists and creators will have learned not to put their entire profile and identity in a corporate-controlled silo – we can hope – but the fact of the matter is that they stand to lose their livelihoods. As much as I am anti-big-corporation and anti-silo, I also appreciate that many of these creators would probably be doing mundane jobs just to eat if they never had that opportunity that pre-Musk Twitter afforded them and, since I follow many and enjoy their content, I'm quite angry that their chances are being erroded.
If you're an independent artist or musician and Twitter has your entire identity you've made a very poor business decision.
With Facebook and Snapchat and whatever else available I can't see it being too hard to transfer their entire identity to another voracious corporation.
"artists and creators will have learned not to put their entire profile and identity in a corporate-controlled silo"
I suspect they won't learn that. If not Twitter, they will choose some other corporate-controlled silo... because they need the network effect to get a decent number of followers. It doesn't affect me, though. I don't follow anybody, nor do I want anybody to follow me (not that anybody wants to do that).
It seems that using social media is the only way to contact many companies these days - If you call them out for their shoddy service and lack of contact details publicly, they'll soon be in touch to fix the issue protect their reputation.
Unfortunately you have to descend to their level to do so.
Unless they are Eon or The AA... who I've been calling utterly incompetent for the last 6 weeks over their failure to do simple things... as well as ignoring complaints.
If Eon haven't sorted it by next week... it's getting submitted to the regulator... they're no better than thieving scum who are literally trying to steal from us after they screwed up and have admitted it was their mistake.
God it's so dull, every article about Twitter (of which there are a lot at the moment!) someone instantly feels they have to smugly announce that they don't use it and never have. I mean, congrats and all, but do you want a medal or something?
I find Twitter very useful, I follow all sorts of interesting people that post stuff I'm into. Software developers, artists, cartoonists, musicians, and yes even some political journalists. It's a good way learn about and discover stuff. For a lot of independent artists it's a big way to get their name out there, and Elon Musk destroying Twitter it will be a big deal for them as there is no obvious replacement for everyone to migrate to.
So just because *you* don't use it, doesn't mean that it's all cat photos and trolls.
I read twitter.com/RAF_Luton because it’s
a) a parody account and says so prominently.
b) it should be obvious it’s a parody account from the content of the tweets
c) some of the comments from people who don’t understand it’s a parody account are very funny. These are usually retweeted.
Go find a white Persian cat and a hollowed-out volcano!
He's long had his eyes on Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the system. Why else would he want to go to Mars?
Cat though? No sane cat would want to be involved.
Olympus Mons is not an island. No point in having a lair if it's not on an island.
I am honestly surprised that none of the SillyConValleytwatselite has bought Red Rock Island yet ... Last I heard, Red Rock was still for sale, probably. If you have to ask, you can't afford it ... but I have it on good authority that $10million cash will take it.
Look for it a couple hundred yards south of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, about 10 kilometers north-east of the rather exclusive Tiberon. I have absolutely no idea why none of the rich buggers from SillyConValley have purchased it as an exclusive retreat, gawd/ess knows they have the loot to work around it's issues ... Primarily lack of fresh water, and the need to manage grey and black water. (It is also the point where Marin, San Francisco and Contra Costa Counties meet, potentially making building rules and regs a nightmare. Paying off a couple politicians should smooth that out, though. What good is money if you can't spend it?)
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.93097,-122.4274993,15z
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Rock_Island
Just 40ish miles SouthEast across the water to what's left of Palo Alto Harbo(u)r, can do that in under half an hour in a fast boat. From there, it's not ten minutes by bike (gas, electric or pedal) from Facebork or Alphagoo.
No, I'm not joking, and no, I don't have a stake in it.
> Red_Rock_Island Just 40ish miles SouthEast across the water to what's left of Palo Alto Harbo(u)r,
And 1550 feet (500m) off a major highway (Richmond Bridge), 330 feet (100m) off the nominal paths of several ferries, probably fog-tooting stinky Diesels. Hemmed in between long-shots of San Quentin and the old Standard Oil refinery (so, a good neighborhood).
6 acres is hardly more than I own (mine is not water-view). And it is all vertical. You'd have to go indoors to play golf.
The waste-water problem is no worse than the ferries, which have more people every day. I'm sure they have holding tanks and empty them at a potty-service facility (or overboard when nobody is looking...).
The average mega-millions fiend could buy-off the ferries and convert to electric, replace fog-horns with radar and super-BlueTooth and self-insurance. But moving 5+ miles of 6-lane (2+1 up, 2+1 down) viaduct could be more cash than even Warren Buffet could find in his sofa. And Warren won't live forever, while CalTran projects can.
OK, I'm calling my agent.....
Muskrat is not a Bond villain... they had a plan and the ability to carry that plan to fruition... they didn't rely on other people to come up with ideas and then steal them and market them as their own.
He's more like one of those B-movie type villains from a kids movie... one that's so inept he gets beaten by a couple of 9yr olds
Not only is this a complete 180 from the Musk of even like 2 weeks ago, it just further shows that Musk has absolutely no idea what he's doing with Twitter. He doesn't understand the business on any level. Not who the customers are, what the product is, how to sell that product to the customer... He's approaching it from the perspective of a Twitter user, which is kind of the cart leading the horse (happy coincidence on the reference to Musk offering a flight attendant a pony for sexual favors). It'll be great for a few people, right up until Twitter flames out, but for the majority of people it's going to be much worse and will likely only accelerate the problems.
Hopefully this destroys the myth of Musk the great businessman. He got very lucky ONE TIME. That's it. People forget he was looking to flip Tesla early on, but none of the major car makers would bite and he got stuck with it, which ultimately seems to have worked out pretty well for him so far. SpaceX is based on someone else's designs, which only came about after the Russians wouldn't sell to him. Boring has been a low-grade dumpster fire making only a couple small tunnels that aren't anything like he promised and he's been pressuring women at his brain-interface company to have kids with him which is basically de facto sexual harassment in the US. He walked away from the hyperloop idea as soon as he came up with it, since no one has been able to make it work since the late 1800s when the first person came up with the concept.
He's moved on from that. His next move will be... no sales just leases and rentals. Everything on subscription and watch the money roll in. I've seen one estimate of $10,000-$15,000 per year per car.
If your car is in an accident, it will just be written off. No surprise there as he's doing his best to make Tesla's unrepairable.
Personally, I hope that Twitter goes belly up just as Truth Social will.
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He has fallen into the classic trap of thinking that being lucky is the same as being talented.
He was lucky enough to be born with rich parents, and lucky enough to start, and in most cases, buy some businesses that went on to be successful. I seriously doubt he could even correctly name all the parts that go into his high-speed milk-floats, let alone be able to design and assemble one. All the actual work is done by someone else. Like those poor saps down the emerald mines in South Africa. He's just the capital holding the whip.
He now has such an inflated opinion of himself, by making some lucky gambles, that he thinks he can't fail. It's going to be ugly when he does, because he clearly doesn't know how to do so gracefully. That's what happens when you never tell your kids, "no".
I'm always reminded of a scene from Brittas Empire. Gordon's wife is talking to Laura and describes him as what would happen if your parents filled you with an unshakable sense of confidence. So much so that you think you're the administrative lubricant that keeps everything running smoothly when in actuality you're the grit that gums everything up.
Go back and google all the times Elon changed his twitter name to troll someone. Not that stuff like that matters once whatever lives in the Texas water supply gets into your brain.
Or do the pod people get you first and then you hear the call? I have friends in Texas that have been fine for years, but it doesn't seem to be the case for Elon and his acute case of Howard Hughes-itis. Shame, as the farther down this rabbit hole he goes, the less he will be able to do the things people don't hate him for.
Even those that don't just hate him enough personally to quite Twitter out of spite, he's trying to force his personal vision for Twitter on a couple billion people without their consent, or seeking their input. Most of them don't seem enthused about the idea of Twitter as an 8$ a month tax to access a digital public square that is full of toxic human waste. Maybe Mozilla's investment in a social media block-list startup was prescient.
He got very lucky ONE TIME
PayPal I guess
Tesla early on, but none of the major car makers would bite and he got stuck with it, which ultimately seems to have worked out pretty well for him
lucky a second time then
SpaceX is based on someone else's designs, which only came about after the Russians wouldn't sell to him
ah, a third time. that's quite a lot of luck for a looser. Let's see what excuse you'll find for the fourth time (Twitter)
"People forget he was looking to flip Tesla early on, but none of the major car makers would bite and he got stuck with it, which ultimately seems to have worked out pretty well for him so far. "
Given that Tesla's valuation is based far more on incels throwing money at Musk's reputation as a 'genius' than it is on anything to do with its poor business prospects, weak market position and rock-bottom status in the self-driving tech hierarchy, we'll see how well it works out for him once the very public shitshow he's making of running Twitter plays out.
How many times have we seen someone with a blue check-mark tweet "This is my only Twitter account. I do not have any other Twitter accounts. Anyone else claiming to be me is not me" with some adding "If you paid for something sold by a Twitter account claiming to be me, it was not me".
Yes, this is a thing, often the same person has to tweet, then re-tweet, then re-re-tweet this using capitals when they get tweet replies accusing the blue-check of scamming them.
So this is a perfect reason to up the price.
$20 for a blue check mark, $100 for bronze, $1000 for silver and $10,000 for gold
Then if I see a post (which I don't because like all el'reg readers I'm not on twitter) from a famous person or a global brand and it doesn't have gold I know it's a con.
Speaking of which ... Have there been any more gold badges issued in the last decade?[0] Or are they still internal only, plus a handful of hand-picked pets from the first day of issue? If so, what is the point of the badges in the first place?
Do we need steenkin' badges?
[0] November 27th, 2012, see this article and this post.
Thing is, to get bronze & silver, commentards only have to waste their lives commenting as fast and often as they can: quantity counts (and short script can do the counting).
After those two badges, the criteria become far more nebulous: the original 10 "have been very helpful - to us, through news tips and beta testing, for example - and to their fellow readers, through their posts".
At Gold, it becomes about Quality, all very ineffable. Whilst complaining that the Vulture has pets may be considered thoroughly f(off)-able.
jake,
I don’t think they made any more gold badgers. The forums died a natural death, and only the article comments remained. I don’t think there were resources, or anything more than vague plans, for what to do with the commentards. In some ways a useful resource. I keep coming back here because of the articles, but also the often excellent posts in the comments.
The Guardian used to have a great resource in its commentards. Though nothing close to the relaxed and mostly pleasant atmosphere round here. But it was bringing a lot of engagement and thus selling a lot of ads. However their new editor, Viner, has gone way more campaign-y, and click-baity than the Guardian ever used to be. And also the paper clearly espouses some quite extreme views on social issues compared to its readership. Particularly on gender issues. So I think comments were inconveniently against the editorial line, plus moderation is expensive for such a popular site. And now barely any articles allow comments. I wonder if the extra clicks generate much income? For either El Reg or the Grauniad?
Is there software that mines a users' comments to try and target forum ads at them anywhere? Is there any targeted ad system anywhere online that even vaguely works as promised?
Not sure why you equate the badges with user-generated forums ... other than in initial testing a decade ago I don't think badges gave any special privileges other than minimal HTML capability in the comments. Unless you gold-badge users still have the ability to killfile other commentards (the utility of which I question).
The "Forums" were never more than message boards anyway, and they still exist. See https://forums.theregister.com/section/user/ ... I still keep an eye out that way, and comment when it seems like a good idea, but it's a ghost town.
"Is there software that mines a users' comments to try and target forum ads at them anywhere?"
Any halfway decent perl monk could whip something up fairly quickly ... although I question if any would. Most hate advertising with a passion. Especially advertising that targets a field they are interested in; chances are very, very good that (for example) I know a hell of a lot more about where to find beekeeping supplies or steam engine parts than the likes of go ogle ever will. Trying to convince me otherwise has lead me to various forms of adblocking for the useless garbage.
"Is there any targeted ad system anywhere online that even vaguely works as promised?"
No, that software does not exist to the best of my knowledge. As a friend put it "I just bought a new washer and dryer. I won't need to see ads for new ones for at least 35[0] years. So why am I still seeing ads for washers and dryers, two weeks later?"
As you probably already realize, I have nothing against you gold-badgers ... have a beer :-)
[0] Speed Queen. Check 'em out.
I don't think badges gave any special privileges other than minimal HTML capability in the comments. Unless you gold-badge users still have the ability to killfile other commentards (the utility of which I question).
jake,
I think we got the edit button and the ignore list first. But I thought both were rolled out to everybody? There's a little grumpy face icon next to every username, which puts them in your ignore list.
As you say, a singularly pointless idea. My forum mod experience is that they're for idiots to dramatically announce that they're putting their forum-rivals onto ignore! Only to then instantly reply to their next post, and all subsequent posts, with the announcement that they've specially taken them off ignore, just to answer this one heinous post with the appropriate levels of venom. All while toys go flying from various prams, and dummmies are spat.
I have a loyalty card with a supermarket. So they literally know everything I've bought from them in the last decade. And yet, they insists on spamming me (seemingly bi-weekly) with offers for pet insurance. But not travel or home insurance - which I actually do have with someone else. I may have bought dog food once in the last decade, either when shopping for Mum during lockdown or one of the times I've dog-sat for her. But any pet that I might be feeding will long since have starved to death, on which I'm sure the insurance company would refuse to pay out. And yet they know from my address that I live in a flat - and yet can't make me offers for home contents insurance. Literally all the work is done here, and it would just take some intelligent setting up from the marketing department. Stop laughing at the back there!
They've also failed to notice that I now shop with them once every 6 weeks to pick up a few bits that nobody else sells and have abandoned them for cheaper prices elsewhere - although the real reason was they cut a bunch of the stuff I usually bought from their range. Or at least if they did notice, they made no attempt to try and bring me back with special offers when I went from shopping there 5-6 times a month, to twice a month, to even less now. It doesn't fill me with confidence that even if you gave the ad people all the data they could possibly want, they could actually craft a sensible personalised advertising policy out of it.
Finally, a beer seems like a very good idea. Now that the weekend is here. Cheers!
That is quite a lot of cash to burn through without any realistic growth ahead. Musk really has bought a dead donkey there.
Besides which, Twitter is really quite 'old hat' these days and feels like the Windows 98 of social. We stopped using it last year despite being no1 in our field after looking at the stats in relation to search, and found what we had known for many years: The only real benefactors of using Twitter are Twitter in that social accounted for 7% traffic and search for 72%, but both the web and social demanded similar amounts of work time.
But the socials' days in the limelight have waned as more people realise the con trick that has been played upon them by getting them to generate content free of charge for these social companies.
Not sure what comes next, but the future isn't Twitter or any of the other web2.0 socials.
The loss porn has only begun, and that number allows for the use of clever accounting.
That said, Twitter has been using clever accounting for some time now, as for most of their existence their business model involved collecting piles of VC and investor money and slowly burning it a ceremonial matter. That narrative stalled as their growth peaked, and Elon rode in on the turnip truck to buy it just before the bottom fell out of both the company and the market.
Something that he would have found out if he had done the due diligence instead of waving it.
Doesn't really matter now, his vision for the company doesn't preclude gutting it and burning most of what's left to the ground. The cynical bet is that enough users will stay out of inertia or indifference that it will be enough to bootstrap a new company, on a new business model. He is trying to break the company and it's corporate culture so he can rebuild it in the image of how he runs his other companies. He is probably counting on the new hires over the next few years to tip the scales after the nearly 50% attrition he seems to be planning.
What that doesn't factor in is that with this act he has become the un-spinnable villain in this story. The scale of people he will have personally offended may not actually have a historical precedent. I wonder if in two years time he can even walk down the street without people in small, normally civil, countries throwing things at him.
Except in this case, it's someone else who has collected that VC money, and he's the rube the company been sold off to. Which demonstrates that previously he has been lucky rather than skilful.
Oh, and minor point, when he was involved with Zip2 and Paypal, he was already rich from having parents who owned an emerald mine.
but the future isn't Twitter or any of the other web2.0 socials
It always amazed me that big organisation (like the BBC) are happy to put their reputation and audience participation into the hands of sociopathic organisations like Facebook and Twitter where they don't control what happens around their account..
Yes, it would take effort and talent to build something in-house but at least you would be able to control it to ensure your message doesn't get side-tracked by some mouth breather posting racist stuff..
I think I created an account about 10-11yrs ago... used it for a few weeks. Mainly to communicate with an ex who used it as her preferred platform. But I quickly grew tired of the toxicity and stopped using it around the same time I deleted my facebook account in early 2012.
I picked it up again, briefly about 3yrs later... again to communicate with said ex... and dropped it once more shortly after.
I again picked it up in 2018... guess why?
But it was at a strange time, I was suffering from a medical condition that led to a B12 deficiency... which can have some quite severe side effects if not kept in check... and I wasn't keeping it in check having skipped my blood tests and boosters for about 7-8 months. I was also dealing with the recent high functioning autism diagnosis... and was a little odd and angry.
Basically... made an arse of myself... tried to apologise and explain but ghosted... figured the ex would never speak to me again and deleted my account entirely as she was the singular reason I used it, just to catch up and check in every few yrs.
Kinda never want to go back... but created an account recently just to tweet at a few companies who were dicking us around and ignoring complaints... looks like they ignore twitter too... So off to the regulator it is next week.
Signed up to mastadon the other day... awaiting approval as apparantly there's been a huge influx.
I also used diaspora about 4 or 5 yrs ago... but it never really appealed to me... was a bunch of displaced G+ people who didn't want to use facebook either... But as with all cliques.... power goes to a few peoples heads and you'd end up with people making complaints about posts where you simple stated 'I don't like cats'.. because some precious little fuckwit couldn't bear the thought of anyone having such a hideous opinion... but the crazy part of that story... was that I actually got a talking to from one of the mods/admins about it, she even stated I'd done nothing wrong but she wanted a chat.
I used the old Stephen Fry response to people being offended...
“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."
Not used it again.
And I respect you and your choice not to like dogs or llamas!
I recently had to look after a friend's cats and house for a few days while they had to attend a funeral. I started off just not liking cats very much, but really, really not liking them at the end! (Although to be fair, think it was mutual - I tried to be nice to them, speaking to them, not moving them off the most comfortable pieces of furniture, as I was a guest in their house!) But was doing it to help out my friend.
Oh, cats REALLY do not like change. They probably didn't hate you so much as the fact that certain things happen in certain ways at certain times and... you just weren't it.
One of my cats long ago used to make her disapproval of the change in time (summer time or not) quite clear. She'd turn up at the "correct" time for feeding and sit there bashing her tail on the ground for an hour. When I got home from work and got the Felix.... I had to try not to notice the death glare that was withering the flowers and making birds fall out of trees.
In other words, he thought trolling people was lots of fun, until he got a proper taste of what it's like to be on the receiving end himself.
Didn't take long for him to offer his own personal proof that inside every loudmouthed libertarian free speech zealot there lurks a petty little authoritarian. Before the end of the year, I expect there to be more rules about what he decrees to be allowed on the site than there ever were before he took it over.
Allow me to point you at a briefly former British Prime a Minister called Liz Truss.
Some people have an uncanny ability to fuck up in ways that defy belief, where the only response is to sharply inhale and mutter something along the lines of "no, (s)he couldn't possibly have..." and fail to be able to even finish the sentence.
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Those have physical products or services, and nearly all the challenges are technical.
Technical problems are mostly soluble by gathering some engineers and plying them with cash and time.
With Tesla and SpaceX, the question was whether the engineers would have enough cash and time to resolve the issues. That question has been answered for SpaceX but remains open for Tesla.
Twitter doesn't have physical products or services, and none of the challenges are technical. Dealing with the worst of human nature is a different class of problem.
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Being from the USA, Musk has a number of cultural problems.
1. He does not understand what "free speech" is.
2. Or freedom.
3. Or satire
4. Or that having suitable ancestry and good luck does not mean you are brilliant.*
Having that much money, he can have brilliant advisers. Is he paying any attention to them?
I wish him well. Tesla is probably doing more to combat global warming than that media circus in Egypt!
But just in case, I have a Mastodon account
*I have no doubt that he is cleverer than me but that doesn't prove much!
"Being from the USA, Musk has a number of cultural problems."
Starting with the fact that he's from South Africa, being born there in 1971. He became a Canadian citizen in 1988, and then a US citizen in 2002, aged 31ish ... I rather suspect most of his adult attitudes and prejudices were firmly established by then.
But don't let that get in the way of a good rant, Spanners.
He decided against the court case (most likely cause he'd have lost) and took over Tweeter JUST before the mid-term elections. Coincidink?
Then this today:
To be clear, my historical party affiliation has been Independent, with an actual voting history of entirely Democrat until this year</p>— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
The blue tick has previously indicated a verified user - usually more high profile or authoritative accounts - by making it a subscription option with no verification component he has effectively completely devalued that (and potentially created a new problem for himself- the blue tick was introduced as the result of a court case) and many existing verified users have chosen to go out in a blaze of glory by impersonating him.
The one upside of this right now is watching him go through the "Find Out" phase at incredible velocity is tremendously entertaining. Someone characterised it yesterday as Elmer Fudd having purchased a network entirely full of Bugs Bunnies.
Musk has clearly lost the plot.
Despite posting recently that Twitter should not be political, he tweeted this morning that people in the US should vote for the Republicans. His reasoning is that since the president is a Democrat, there should be different parties in control of the different parts of government. This might be reasonable if the Republicans showed any interest in actually governing, but they just seem to want to oppose everything for the sake of it. I get the impression some members would rather see the country in flames if it meant they could block anything Biden wanted to do.
He then followed this up with another tweet with a picture of a WWII Wehrmacht soldier, so an actual Nazi.
Plus, Daniel Radcliffe has been suspended. They have booted Harry Potter!
I can only hope he spends all this time on trying to "fix" Twitter and leaves the grown ups to manage SpaceX.
Good point.
My late father was born near Gdansk and was 16 when Poland was invaded.
A few years later he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht, but more as forced labour - wasn't given a weapon, just a shovel basically.
In Italy he did a runner and was able to join the Free Polish forces, hence my father had the dubious honour of serving in both armies during WW2!
And before anyone points it out, I know I am ignoring my own advice. I am just a slave to the commentardosphere here on El Reg!
First, every time someone posts a critical thing about the Chief Twi(a)t they get at least one downvote. Does the Musk Ox patrol these chats and punish anyone who says nasty things about him? Enquiring minds wish to know.
Secondly, can we have a hold on articles about this until he drives the antisocial into the ground - perhaps the same time the Zuck android kills facefail.
Yeah, I've noticed the lonely downvote syndrome. It would be quite funny to imagine him hitting downvote on every single post that implies he's a bit of a wanker... but I can't help but imagine that he has more important things to do, like sticking a pin into his overinflated ego so that it bursts before his forty four billion dollar acquisition does.
As for articles like these... more please. The real world is going to hell in a rollercoaster, and we're about to get fucked by the government / bankers / mother nature so this makes for an amusing diversion from the naffness that is life.
What I don't understand is that people here at ElReg don't understand that Musk didn't buy Twitter for profit, but for political influence and power. And some lulz probably. He spent 40 billion of his virtual 250 billions ... even is he looses 100% of that ... what the bl*****dy f****ck will it matter to him ? How on Earth could he spend all his amount of money in his lifetime ? Twitter is only an amusement for him with some spare change !!!
Except, as you point out, his billions are purely virtual: to get actual money for the deal he has borrowed from real institutions (as covered by El Reg - follow the links in the article (and the links in those (and the ...))). Backing those loans with his holdings.
If it all goes titsup and he has to pay back those loans for real then he has to start realising other assets. Which then makes all sorts of waves on the markets.
That may not matter to him but it will matter to the markets and thence all the way down to Real People(tm) e.g. those whose pension funds bought into Musky Boy.
And if all the little people stop liking him, there will be no-one to cheer his spandex-covered robot - it is that cheering that matters to him the most.
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