Anathema Device 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (607)

• On the post: Rand Paul Loses The Plot: Says Gov’t Is Going To Use AI For Censorship

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 22 May, 2023 @ 07:20pm

  It's Rand Paul. He never had the plot to lose. And he's flooding the endzone with shit. It's all he ever does. The best thing to do is to ignore the ignorant little bastard.

• On the post: Apparently Elon Doesn’t Think He Needs To Pay Rent Because SF Is A ‘Shithole’; So Why Should We Pay For Twitter?

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 22 May, 2023 @ 03:04pm

  Too busy wanking themselves dry about Soros?

• On the post: Apparently Elon Doesn’t Think He Needs To Pay Rent Because SF Is A ‘Shithole’; So Why Should We Pay For Twitter?

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 22 May, 2023 @ 03:04pm

  Some people still believe with full-throated sincerity that Musk is going to carry a successful manned mission to Mars. Of course, they don't talk much about bringing anyone home.

• On the post: Apparently Elon Doesn’t Think He Needs To Pay Rent Because SF Is A ‘Shithole’; So Why Should We Pay For Twitter?

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 22 May, 2023 @ 03:02pm

  At least one worker has already died because of Musk's disregard for safety

  HE DIED HELPING BUILD TESLA’S GIGAFACTORY. TESLA DIDN’T TELL LOCAL OFFICIALS.

  Antelmo Ramirez was a dad, grandpa, and husband. His death by hyperthermia is absent from a Tesla report required as part of a Travis County tax deal.

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 21 May, 2023 @ 08:23pm

  Full control and a return to the 1850s

  Less astonishing when you realize they want full and total control over every aspect of human life. I thoroughly recommend Teri Kanfield's post on this: Rudy Giuliani, Timothy McVeigh, and Sexual Abuse

  McVeigh wanted to make America “great” again, where “great” meant very few rules and regulations limiting the ability of men to grab what they wanted and keep what they grabbed. McVeigh called himself a “white separatist,” he abhorred immigration, both legal and illegal and “he wanted women to return to their traditional role in the home”. . . (Homegrown, P.6, emphasis added.) If you want to take the country back 150 years, it’s a package deal: White supremacy, hatred of the federal government, a fetish for guns, and women under the dominion of men.

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 21 May, 2023 @ 05:25pm

  ❤️👍👏, Stephen!

• On the post: Supreme Court Leaves 230 Alone For Now, But Justice Thomas Gives A Pretty Good Explanation For Why It Exists In The First Place

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 19 May, 2023 @ 03:14am

  Yes, the photo was licensed to Warhol, who transformed it for VF with the agreement of the photographer. But VF republished that transformed image without transforming it again, and gave the Warhol foundation substantial fee to do so, since the photographer had licensed the original transformation, they claimed the right to a cut of that fee pursuant to the original licensing. And SCOTUS agreed. They didn’t say Warhol’s transformation wasn’t fair use, they simply said republishing it wasn’t, any more than if some posted my fanfic unchanged on another website would be fair use, although the nfic itself almost certainly is.

• On the post: The Shrinking Twitter: Most Active Users Posting Less

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 18 May, 2023 @ 08:36pm

  Just posting this link to annoy the house trolls When a Shitposter Runs a Social Media Platform Bad news for democracy: Elon Musk loves to promote fringe figures and to denigrate responsible journalists.

• On the post: Supreme Court Leaves 230 Alone For Now, But Justice Thomas Gives A Pretty Good Explanation For Why It Exists In The First Place

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 18 May, 2023 @ 06:14pm

  Not actually fair use though?

  Vanity Fair simply reproduced an image which was already credited to the photographer who won the case. How is that transformative? If they had done further editing that transformed the image which had already been licensed, that would have been different? But no further changes were done. They just reused an image that already existed (altered by Warhol originally, but not again in the disputed reproduction). I'm basing this on this description in the Australian media:

  Goldsmith's original photo is black and white. Vanity Fair paid her $US400 ($595) to licence it for Warhol's use, and Warhol used it to create 16 works: two pencil drawings and 14 silkscreen prints. The silkscreens are done in the same style he had used to create well-known portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy and Mao Zedong. He cropped Goldsmith's image, resized it and changed the tones and lighting. Then he added bright colours and hand-drawn outlines. Vanity Fair ran just one of the images Warhol created, the purple-faced Prince, with its 1984 story. The article, titled Purple Fame, came shortly after the release of Prince's hit Purple Rain. Goldsmith, a well-known photographer of musicians, got a small credit by Warhol's image. Warhol died in 1987. Following Prince's death, Vanity Fair paid his foundation $US10,250 to use the orange-faced Prince portrait in a tribute issue. Goldsmith saw the cover and contacted the foundation seeking compensation, among other things.

• On the post: Automakers Are Making Basic Car Functions A Costly Subscription Service… Whether You Like It Or Not

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 18 May, 2023 @ 03:50pm

  "start boycotting BMW and Mercedes now" Start? I never stopped :)

• On the post: Important Things At Twitter Keep Breaking, And Making The Site More Dangerous

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 17 May, 2023 @ 09:42pm

  yes, it's in use constantly :) You note I am not responding to the house troll, merely a comment about him. I am blissfully unaware of the idiotic comments themselves, and wish to remain so :)

• On the post: Important Things At Twitter Keep Breaking, And Making The Site More Dangerous

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 17 May, 2023 @ 05:29pm

  indeed. Once you flush poo, it stayed flushed. Unlike a certain house troll :(

• On the post: Once Again, ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Caves To Authoritarian Censorial Bullies

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 16 May, 2023 @ 03:52pm

  I should also say that adding 'dumb' to 'bitch' makes its virulent offence very clear

• On the post: Once Again, ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Caves To Authoritarian Censorial Bullies

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 16 May, 2023 @ 03:50pm

  "it is traditionally tame to the point of almost being friendly" Uh, no. It really isn't. It's always very offensive, and always intended to be nasty. Even when gay men call each other 'bitch', it's mocking the nastiness. I've never seen them use it to a woman without it carrying intended nastiness.

• On the post: Colorado’s Top Court Seems Reluctant To Give Judicial Blessing To ‘Reverse’ Keyword Search Warrants

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 15 May, 2023 @ 11:37pm

  I used to write crime and sci-fi, so, ditto :)

• On the post: Once Again, ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Caves To Authoritarian Censorial Bullies

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 15 May, 2023 @ 06:36pm

  You're welcome. It's just such a fund of damaging information about Musk and his methods.

• On the post: Once Again, ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Elon Musk Caves To Authoritarian Censorial Bullies

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 15 May, 2023 @ 04:01pm

  Burning Down The House

  Title of an absolutely scorching post by David Roth, which skewers Musk and Musk-fellators alike

  Elon Musk was always the worst possible person to own Twitter. Musk has long been one of the thirstiest, corniest, most tiresome posters on the site, which is saying quite a bit. More worryingly, though, Musk has used the site—relentlessly, exhaustingly, constantly—in a way that suggested he had no idea what it did, or how people actually used it, or even why they might. His posts were joke-shaped and troll-scented without ever containing humor or even identifiable trolling; his mentions were filled with supplicants and hangers-on, all talking over each other to promote their various business gambits and themselves, to the extent that any identifiable distinction existed. Musk's account increasingly alternated between fervid re-phrasings of reactionary cable news bugaboos—they're trying to make the Minions woke or whatever— and concerned-seeming replies to posts about the same dumb shit.

  Every line is quotable, and the whole thing is well worth your time. I will drop these further quotes because it relates very particularly to a certain group of commenters we are very familiar with here:

  The various scammers and hustlers and aspiring drop-shipping magnates and inexplicably self-assured freelance life-coach types are all there, of course. They are drawn to Musk because they aspire to be rich and epic themselves, and post as if their livelihoods depend upon it, holding forth at great length and with little depth on whatever they think might redound to their benefit. As in all the worst online spaces, there is a sense that the hucksters outnumber the marks; a trench of jostling anglerfish, gaping and preening and starving for lack of prey. Which is remarkable, actually, considering that the largest percentage of Twitter Blue subscribers are people whose identity as howlingly obvious marks seems to have supplanted virtually everything else about them. They are drawn to Elon for the same reason that moths crisp themselves on lightbulbs. It is difficult to imagine what kind of person would give money to the richest man in the world on pure servile principle, but observing them only confuses things more.

  And

  It makes sense that these users would be drawn to Musk, even to the point of posting like him, because he resembles them in his sour incuriosity, and is aspirational in his impunity and wealth. As it happens, that type of rich authoritarian—distractible, idly vicious, relatable in his proud pissy cretinousness—already has an avatar in American politics. Musk sought out this population of blowhards and temporarily embarrassed grand inquisitors and armchair genocidaires, and they invariably found him, but this is a tough crowd. Where Musk has struggled to keep that constituency happy, it reflects less on his seemingly sincere receptiveness to their hair-trigger credulity, bigotry, and vengefulness and more on the fact that these people are fundamentally unappeasable, and fundamentally opposed to being appeased.

  It's a bit like Wilde's bon mot about fox hunting: "the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible". Musk is the unintelligent in pursuit of the ineducable.

• On the post: Iron Maiden Opposes Women’s Lingerie Company For Using The Word ‘Maiden’

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 13 May, 2023 @ 11:52pm

  Clearly you've never worn an underwired bra ;)

• On the post: Iron Maiden Opposes Women’s Lingerie Company For Using The Word ‘Maiden’

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 13 May, 2023 @ 11:51pm

  I look forward to the heirs of that dude from the inquisition getting paid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_maiden Despite its reputation as a medieval instrument of torture, there is no evidence of the existence of iron maidens before the 19th century....Wolfgang Schild, a professor of criminal law, criminal law history, and philosophy of law at the Bielefeld University, has argued that putative iron maidens were pieced together from artifacts found in museums to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition.

• On the post: APA Report Says That Media & Politicians Are Simply Wrong About Kids & Social Media; Media Then Lies About Report

  

  Anathema Device ( profile ), 13 May, 2023 @ 11:45pm

  Your entire comment is nothing but a "this caused that" wallow - without an gram of proof. Stop being cute.

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