Hatfort

Oh man, did he do all that? She totally increased my support for the old man!

Putin probably wanted to break the grain deal before, but now he got the excuse. The counteroffensive is going bad as fuck for Ukraine, they are not regaining any territory at all. I think what Russians are doing is letting Ukrainians erode themselves because they are seeing their losses are being big, and then they may force a treaty or go with a new offensive. I hope it's the first one.

It's not silly, it's business. Mastodon sucks, it has not a good system to interact in, and an awful uncatchy name. Bluesky is kind of okay, but it's hardly taking off, with still invite-only policy, very slow growth, and the train is not waiting. Threads has had a good launch, even if it may be a bit inflated, but it's the most likely to attract influencers, celebrities and companies as followers are automatically imported when they join from Instagram. That's a huge advantage for them, and for the platform, because they will bring users. I'm from Europe, so I can't really investigate much, but I've read of celebrities already having big numbers in Threads for this reason.

But that's what it's supposed to be, like a place to follow what and who is interesting for you, and read, write, and interact with short messages, replies, and reposts. It's not trying to be something new, it's competing with Twitter for the same slot, no secret.

So you haven't been forced. Well, that's a relief.

Maybe he is, is that not fair game? Okay, maybe not. Zuckerberg owns Facebook and Instagram, they are his assets in social media precisely, so it's understandable he uses them to a degree to promote Threads. Elon did ban links to competitors at some point, which I would also understand, the problem is he announced himself as a freedom of speech absolutist, which doesn't fit with that discourse. The question is if enough users stay and engage in Threads in the future. My instinct tells me they will, but, as said, time will tell.

Well, I can't say for sure, but where I read the news it says this number is in fact organic demand, here the link. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/10/twitter-traffic-is-nosediving-as-metas-threads-hits-100-million-users.html Time will tell if it success or not, there may be some time when both sites compete. But one has a huge debt and the other hasn't.

Threads is getting quite an attention, it seems. So many people and companies were disgusted with Elon Musk's Twitter, but with a lack of alternatives, they had to stay. For so many was a matter of promotion and business, and hard to let go. The sentiment that I'm hearing is that Zuckerberg is not great, but preferable to Musk, who has been so abhorrent in running the popular social media platform. It can crush Musk, in fact it should, according to capitalism rules, investors take risks and can win or lose. So now what? Twitter was not financially well before him, and he added 44 billion to the hole. Someone explain to me why Musk should not be bankrupted after this huge failure. It's also funny how he complains about ex-employees of Twitter he fired getting into Zuckerberg's bus, if they really did. What are they supposed to do according to him? Stay unemployed and die of hunger? Are they not allowed to get new jobs? What is wrong with him? They totally should find another job and offer their knowledge and skills for a wage, not to screw him, but because they need to eat and I don't think food is given for free in the supermarkets in this economy. Is it wrong to find a new job now? Threads has already hit 100 million users, and is not available in the EU yet for legal reasons.

What Zuckerberg has in his favor is that influencers, companies, and people in general will be able to import followers from Instagram, so won't be like starting from zero like in other newborn platforms. There's a fight, metaphorically speaking, and I'm not sure if a real one too...

Does one person thinking that not voting doesn't change anything and not doing it matter? Okay, no. Does thousands of people going through the same process matter? Yessss, absolutely!!!! There are two traps. One is to think that you only matter as a part of a group. The other is to think that you only matter as an individual. Both are important, is it that difficult to understand?

I'm not sure. More weapons or more kisses.

I'm rescuing this thread, there are relevant news. Humanity's greatest mind, genius Elon Musk, has had another brilliant idea to promote his social media platform, which he bought for 44 billion dollars. The great idea is to limit everyone the number of Tweets they can read per day, wow! It seems that the huge Google Cloud bill that he doesn't want to pay is behind this decision. He has been making so many awful decisions, the inertia of an already popular platform has been keeping it alive. But he could lose it, alternatives are getting better, Zuckerberg is launching Threads, Dorsey's Bluesky is taking off. Mastodon, Tribel and Post Social suck, they don't have a chance. MAGA people have Truth Social, Elon couldn't even get Trump back, and he tried.

Antivaxers are wrong, vaccines have saved millions of lives. There is a very interesting history of the smallpox vaccine which was discovered in the late XVIII century by the English physician Edward Jenner. The disease had a huge mortality rate and it was killing millions of people all over the world. The Spanish crown, who had also suffered death from the disease firsthand, agreed on spreading the vaccine through the kingdom, with great success. But there was a problem with getting it to the colonies in America. Without any modern technology, it couldn't survive such a long journey. The Balmis Expedition found a solution for that, which would be considered quite unethical by today's standards. They used 22 healthy orphan kids as carriers of a lighter variant called cowpox, infecting all of them one by one during the long trip, so it would survive until the destination. The system worked, the vaccine reached its destiny, and millions of lives were saved overseas, getting immunity for both cowpox and deadly smallpox. I think the kids survived too. It's considered a feat in the history of medicine. People forget.

Of course it's good for the economy. These young guys will be spending their money in the real economy, real businesses instead of paying a debt. These are the people that put the money they earn back into the circuit, not the most rich ones. Biden was reluctant at first, I remember what he used to say about it. He will make some valuable points with potential voters, that's true, but I think he is being genuine now. His first attempt failed, but if he makes it happen in another way, he'll be dribbling selfish conservatives and proving himself. We'll see.

Cocaine? My level of surprise is... not big.

I don't think he has any chance of succeeding with those conspiratorial ideas, which is for the better. But it's a pity he hasn't developed a more on-Earth and also progressist mindset, because with that, and his surname, he could have rocked it and pushed things for the better.

Light drinks and people drinking them were already gay before this advertising campaign with a trans person. Real men don't drink light. When did that change?

No, he is not. But his son is.

Andrew Tate has been charged with human trafficking, sexual assault, and creating a criminal organization for these activities, among his brother and two Rumanian guys, and some other charges. The trial is on the way, he may be facing life in prison. I hope he is enjoying his house arrest now. It's not going in his favor that he spat in the honor of this host country, Romania, saying out loud that it was a good place for his activities and implying things like bribery. Like Trump, his own mouth is a big part of his downfall.

Bernie Sanders was cool, but too old as well. I don't think Democrats have shown any other outstanding candidate, like Obama was in his time, for now. Buttigieg or Warren are meh. Ocasio-Cortez is too young, maybe in some years. There are some barriers for her yet.

It's funny how easily he could have avoided this case by returning the classified documents the multiple times he was asked to before Mar a Lago was raided. Now it's done, the crime is commited and documented in a timeline, as well as his awereness of what he was holding at home was classified. There are multiple witnesses as well. Ron Disanctimonious must be happy. Or we could call him the 13th apostle of Jesus Christ. In any case, we can sit and enjoy the spectacle.

It's not looking good for Ukraine right now. They have been given heavy artillery and trained for months to perform a counteroffensive. For now it's failing, a big part of the artillery is already lost and trained soldiers are dying without achieving significant wins, some small villages at most and sometimes losing them right away. Zelensky should have taken the initial offer, which was Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and the commitment not to join NATO or EU. Now it seems they can hold Kherson and Zaporizhia too, connecting the two areas and the whole Azov sea coast for Russia. I think they can hold it long-term. I thought Europe would push for the end of the war sooner, as they are also having some economic damage from it, but I was wrong. They are so sold to the US and NATO. The longer it goes, the worse for Ukraine.

I'd say in human societies there's a consensus for what's considered a man and a woman, that's common in all cultures. In other words, a social construct. Does this have a relation with what we know as the biological sex of men and women? Undoubtfully yes, most cis men fall into the men construct and most cis women in the women one. Are there biological men and women that recognize themselves as the opposite sex and prefer to present themselves as that in society? Yes, those are what we know as trans people and in some cultures as the two spirited or things like that. Does this mean that every person that connects in one way or another with what is known from the opposite sex is trans? Not at all, a lot of people do connect with the opposite sex's social constructs but do not necessarily feel and present themselves as the opposite sex. Those are still cis people then, no matter how feminine or masculine. These things don't work like exact mathematics, we are in the psychology and sociology fields here, so the metrics are different and valid in different ways.

Kind of did, yes, the same way as China. Both were massive countries with huge undeveloped areas in extreme poverty, meaning people dying of hunger and no real economy at work. Both got a central government developing all the basic services as we know them, like infrastructures, transport, healthcare, army, police, etc... It has been argued that part of what capitalism does is to take private control of what before was in the hands of the state and charge at least the same, plus the benefits for the corporations and its bosses and shareholders, which is a bad deal for the service takers. There should be a healthy improvement of the orange state, but there are also very problematic ones, I think some hardcore capitalism defenders fail to see that. Not all countries have followed the same line, but it's kind of going from blue to orange. You cannot skip one, look at undeveloped countries in Africa. Maybe what they need is a bit more of state organization and control before getting what oranges call freedom, which in reality leaves more people in poverty and zero freedom about their lives. And it's not exclusive to undeveloped countries, it's happening in developed ones too, there should enter the green.

In case nobody said it, I think Elon Musk is a big narcissist. Sociopath would be too much to say though.