Bobson Dugnutt 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Trump White House Announces That It Will Decide Who Gets To Cover The Administration

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2025 @ 11:31am

    It's not smarts, it's personality. Peter Thiel is by any conventional measure smart. He does have a malignant personality, and one that lends itself to totalitarianism. I single Thiel out because he's done more than anyone else to take tech executives down his dark journey, and we know his thinking and influences. His libertarianism started with Murray Rothbard, continued with Rothbard's disciple Hans-Hermann Hoppe and fully formed by Curtis Yarvin, his "court philosopher".

  • On the post: Musk Leverages His Unelected Non-Existent Authority And Expertise To Steal $2 Billion FAA Contract From Verizon

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2025 @ 09:29am

    Rome wasn't built in a day. But it was sacked in about a half-week.

  • On the post: Jeff Bezos Frees WaPo Opinion Pages Of The Personal Liberty Of Expressing Their Opinion

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2025 @ 11:43pm

    The modern rules of journalism are way older than the '80s. The Objectivity Model (two frames in conflict) became the journalistic paradigm by the 1920s. That's when newspaper audiences began migrating to radio (and later TV), and because broadcast spectrum was scarce and production expensive, broadcast didn't lend itself to the litigating of competing opinions -- especially not when the government meted the licenses. Print journalists, losing audiences to radio and facing a credibility crisis from the yellow journalism era, also went along with the Objectivity Model.

  • On the post: Jeff Bezos Frees WaPo Opinion Pages Of The Personal Liberty Of Expressing Their Opinion

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2025 @ 11:24pm

    Hiding the ball

    In both cases, these newspapers fundamentally misunderstand both their own role and how the internet actually works.
    I think the New York Times and Washington Post are hyper-aware of what their roles are. They have the same self-consciousness that European aristocrats had at the turn of the 20th century, and are making their beds to lie with fascists. It was self-interest in both the economic (preservation of wealth and status) and the psychological senses (fascism is a companion that keeps them warm and feeling wanted). Brad DeLong, the UC Berkeley economist and historian and Clinton White House figure, likes to use the expression "hide the ball" particularly for the New York Times. "Hide the ball" is law slang for one party to conceal evidence that will hurt their case in a suit. In this case, NYT and WaPo know that their interests and survival, like the decadent aristocrats, are conditioned upon manufacturing a narrative that services Trump, Musk and everyone else within their galaxy. The flaw in their plan is that non-magas recognize the cynicism inherent in the media's ploy.

  • On the post: Jeff Bezos Frees WaPo Opinion Pages Of The Personal Liberty Of Expressing Their Opinion

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2025 @ 10:25pm

    I (probably) created the truism that Almost all appeals to free speech are moral hostage-taking. If you speak, and your idea finds a platform for expression and an audience ... congratulations, you've got free speech. No appeal necessary. If you find platforms that silence you or audiences that ignore you or meet you with hostility, yet you persevere and your ideas overcome resistance and get out into the world, you've earned free speech. But, an appeal to free speech is generally done in bad faith. You know how the famous XKCD free speech comic has title text that implies that "free speech" is the ultimate concession, since the only thing defensible about the speech is that the government literally cannot arrest you is weak tea. Appeals to free speech have the same objective as hostage takers: They want to extract concessions, not speak freely.

  • On the post: South Dakota Lawmakers Send Unconstitutional Age-Verification Bill To The Governor’s Desk

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2025 @ 09:57pm

    Oh great, one more way for FanDuel and Draft Kings to get us addicted to frictionless gambling.

  • On the post: South Dakota Lawmakers Send Unconstitutional Age-Verification Bill To The Governor’s Desk

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2025 @ 09:55pm

    I disagree. I think critics of IQ are correct in that distilling the concept of intelligence to a score derived through testing is largely bullshit. Especially because of the implications in how it can be used against groups -- and it has repeatedly. The challenge: How do you come up with a definition of intelligence that is agreed upon by a consensus of experts, testable, evaluable and can be attenuated of bias (gender, cultural, socioeconomic, etc.)? These challenges are much more clear-cut when evaluating the opposite, which is not stupidity but cognitive decline. Also, a lot of elected officials come from the professions like medicine, law, accounting and engineering -- all of which have high-stakes entrance exams and work experience requirements (boards for MDs, the bar for lawyers, licensing for CPAs and engineers) that are far more rigorous than an IQ test. Even these don't filter for personality or political fitness.

  • On the post: Trump White House Announces That It Will Decide Who Gets To Cover The Administration

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2025 @ 09:33pm

    Looks like the ominous trends foretold by British author Peter Pomerantsev, who was born in Russia and worked there, are taking root in the U.S. He wrote "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible" in 2014 about how Russian news has taken on a stagecraft element, and in 2019 "This is Not Propaganda" about how the internet fuels disinformation and propaganda to cause free societies to suffer information overload.

  • On the post: South Dakota Republicans: Let’s Start Jailing Librarians

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2025 @ 09:34am

    You gotta remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the New West. You know ... morons.
    -- Gene Wilder as the Waco Kid, "Blazing Saddles"

  • On the post: Texas Newspaper Traces Racist ExTwitter Account To An ICE Prosecutor

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2025 @ 03:13pm

    Probably not. The guy is bald. Musk;s employment condition is apparently a broccoli haircut.

  • On the post: John Oliver’s Content Moderation Episode Isn’t Just Funny — It’s Absolutely Accurate

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2025 @ 02:36pm

    In all likelihood, the origins of COVID-19 are zoonotic. It's not 100% certain, but not a 50/50 coin flip that it was either the wet market or a lab leak. https://www.vox.com/22961822/covid-19-origin-coronavirus-wuhan-china-market-lab-leak Scientists were able to narrow down the likely evolutions of two COVID variants to a Wuhan market that kept live animals in unsanitary conditions that allowed for the viruses to brood and evolve. The first human infections were also in the vicinity of the Wuhan market, a densely populated inner city area. The lab, meanwhile, was in what we in North America recognize as a suburban office park and less densely packed compared to the market area. They are far apart, and if it were a lab leak the contagion would have been among lab workers and their social circles. The distance between the lab and the market is about 8 miles, per Vox, and the virus would have spread in transit rather than centered around the market and dispersed outwards.

  • On the post: US Attorney Ed Martin Undermines DOJ Defense While Cosplaying As President’s Personal Counsel

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2025 @ 12:15pm

    It's not us we should be worried about. It's the majority of the electorate who are beyond hope.

  • On the post: Musk’s Big Accomplishment This Weekend Was Apparently Throwing The Entire Federal Government Into Chaos

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2025 @ 12:09pm

    More importantly, government workers have civil service protections that are supposed to insulate employees from the crap Musk pulls. One of many functions of the civil service is to ensure the continuity of government, both military and civilian, so that workers don't lose their jobs when political power is transferred.

  • On the post: Buzzfeed CEO Aims To Solve AI Slop Problem With More AI Slop

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2025 @ 05:11am

    Word of the Week: Brunchlord

    On the Substack "Fritinancy" by writer and branding expert Nancy Friedman, she named Brunchlord as the word of the week for December 2, 2024.

  • On the post: Another Startup Implosion Set To Brick $700 ‘AI Pins’

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2025 @ 04:35am

    Save This Life shutdown

    A similar thing has happened to pet owners throughout the U.S. earlier this month. A Texas company called Save This Life, which registered microchip info for pets, shut down earlier this month. It means that pet owners' information might be lost since it no longer links to a major national lookup database. Many might not know the chips used in their pet or even the ID info on the chip. They now have to visit a vet or an animal shelter to have this info scanned and re-entered for their pet.

  • On the post: Buzzfeed CEO Aims To Solve AI Slop Problem With More AI Slop

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2025 @ 08:47pm

    Doctorow's Dictum

    What is enshittified cannot be unenshittified.

  • On the post: John Oliver’s Content Moderation Episode Isn’t Just Funny — It’s Absolutely Accurate

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2025 @ 06:17pm

    The best place for Zuck to redeem the masculinity he's so concerned about is in a prison.

  • On the post: Musk’s Big Accomplishment This Weekend Was Apparently Throwing The Entire Federal Government Into Chaos

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2025 @ 03:27pm

    Wise Guy Sammy is wise

    Anybody who has ever played the third "SimCity" would not make the same stupid mistakes Elon Musk is making by monkeying around with the government. The game had these pithy sayings in its scrolling news ticker. Some were "From the desk of Wise Guy Sammy". Musk will learn the hard way that this is true: You Can't Outwait A Bureaucracy.

  • On the post: Musk’s Big Accomplishment This Weekend Was Apparently Throwing The Entire Federal Government Into Chaos

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2025 @ 03:09pm

    Sorry, but no. Attributing Trump's election to Musk's purchase of Twitter is post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Both are things that happened, but one didn't cause the other. Nothing will change the fact that Musk's purchase of Twitter will be a case study in one of the most colossal decision failures in history. Musk did spend $44 billion, and not only was it an epic fiduciary malpractice just on the financial basis alone (he irreparably destroyed the value of Twitter as an enterprise), but Musk did more than anyone else to poison the well of social media. XTwitter in 2024 was a lesser social media force than it was in the 2020 election, by virtue of the decline in active users. Engagement doesn't tell the true story, because a lot of the content was backfilled by spam, porn and myriad grifts and hustles that Musk encouraged. Also, Twitter's decline led to splash damage throughout social media. KPIs are going the wrong way for its rivals, except for alternatives like Bluesky and Threads that are serving merely as safe harbors. The youngest users are leading this decline. The disengagement snowballs. Young people disengaging might not seem like a big deal, but when advertisers see that the engagement base trends older, they leave or pull back on ad spend. When advertisers leave, the social media companies start laying off workers and go into "line go up" mode where they actively enshittify service to their remaining base (things like move around buttons or hide functionality by making you take more steps that would've only taken 1 or 2 touches, oh and flood you with ads).

  • On the post: Musk’s Big Accomplishment This Weekend Was Apparently Throwing The Entire Federal Government Into Chaos

    Bobson Dugnutt ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2025 @ 02:41pm

    Musk has asked Twitter developers to print their code then to show him (because he’s some code genius, apparently).
    This is like that scene in "Amadeus" where the emperor who employed Mozart didn't like his composition because it had "too many notes".

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