Friday, April 29, 2022

Today's News: Explaining Norway to a duck

I think Elon Musk may finally be meeting his comeuppance. 
He's used to people telling him how brilliant he is: But for all Twitter's faults, it doesn't flatter people.  Adoring tech-bros and greedy investors can get all fluttery when Musk invents subways and buses but Twitter reveals a person's essential personality very quickly - as demonstrated by Bret Stephens and Mark Hamill and Dolly Parton and J. K. Rowling and many more.
For the last couple of days, Twitter's main character has been Elon Musk. 
And the Twitter verdict isn't a flattering one.  "Sadly ill-informed" is one of the kinder takes. All in all, explaining Twitter to Musk is like trying to explain Norway to a duck:
Here's some recent Musk antics: It still not clear whether Musk is actually going ahead with the Twitter purchase deal or not. But as Josh Marshall notes: "My own sense is that the guy will likely rue the day he purchased Twitter." 
Updating the news closer to home, I notice the people of Ottawa are preparing an "Unwelcoming Party" for the Rolling Blunder rally this weekend: This tweet got a lot of reaction: And here's a funny one: Some of the tweets I read from the bikers and their supporters insist they are just a misunderstood respectful group of veterans who are trying to "take back" the National War Memorial - from whom I'm not sure because the Memorial already belongs to all Canadians and the only ones who disrespected it recently were the FluTruxKlan. 
They're scared of being pelted with Ottawa eggs too! And it looks like Skippy is suffering from the leopards eating people's faces problem:
Moving on to much more important issues - the Ukraine Russia War. 
Here are Biden's remarks today, He is doing an outstanding job of leading the world through this and framing the issues so people can understand it: So is Ukraine winning this thing or not? 
Well, that's not precisely clear. Russia is making tiny advances, but at great cost: Other analysis here: Stepping back to look at the larger picture, here is Tom Nichol's latest grim thread about events in Ukraine. He isn't as sanguine as Dr. Martin about the nuclear risk: Josh Marshall also writes a very interesting but frightening article about Nichols' concerns: 
 There are all sorts of logical reasons ... why Russia won’t resort to some wild escalatory path. But as we know, people and countries do crazy things, especially under intense pressure. And the Russian government apparatus is under the most extreme sort of pressure. Russia embarked on this war to upend and rewrite a global and regional security order which it believed denied Russia its rightful place as a global great power. It sought to do that by the means which have increasingly characterized its policies for the last decade — making up for limited economic and military capacity with daring and risk-taking. The invasion revealed a Russian military dramatically less capable than even its skeptics seemed to have imagined and compounded the toxic stew of grievance and national humiliation which drove the effort in the first place. The world is on the line for what emerges from Russia’s chronically degenerate political culture, which is again a very sobering conclusion.

Finally, on a lighter note:
Trump never laughed at himself. Or at anything. Because he has no sense of humor at all.
 But Twitter rocked with laughter when it found out that Trump is afraid of fruit:
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your blog. Lately, I read it almost every day.

5:36 am
Anonymous said...

I have been reading your blog every day for a while (and missed it when you were off for a few weeks). You help me sustain my pride of being a Canadian amidst all the fascist forces at play to take that away from me. Thank you. Marc B.

10:09 am
Cathie from Canada said...

Hey thanks!
I do try to post something every day - - otherwise, like Lily Tomlin, I just can't keep up! - but its also a lot of fun to troll around Twitter and Kos and other places every day to find out what's happening.

11:15 am

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