CSotD: Getting Our Stories Straight

Watching Twitter twitch has become a favorite sport, and for some a major compulsion, and Bill Bramhall notes Elon Musk’s tenuous grip on reality, priorities and life in general.

Bramhall manages to conflate Musk’s mismanagement of Twitter with his neglect of Tesla, as the stock plummets to ever-deeper troughs while the boss is driving Twitter through the guardrails. Surely, if Musk is paranoid about people knowing his jet’s publicly-registered flight plans, he might spare some concern for Tesla stockholders, who surely wish he’d start showing some plan at all.

Musk is now conducting another of his unscientific polls, asking Twitter users if he should step down as CEO there. Last time I looked, “Yes” had a substantial lead, which is curious given how many bots and trolls are generally supportive of him. But Musk has repeatedly shown an ignorance of the wisdom in “Never ask a question to which you do not know the answer.”

It’s famous among lawyers, for obvious reasons, but it’s also well-established among parents of toddlers. Never ask “Are you ready for your nap?” Instead, just say, “Okay, time for your nap!”

Not sure whether Musk would do better with the guidance of a good lawyer or that of the experienced parent of a two-year-old.

 

But he’s not the only person who can’t seem to get his stories straight: It was good fun to point out that, for all his paranoia about his jet’s flight plans, Musk himself announced his location during yesterday’s futbol match.

Musk’s hastily tossed-together anti-doxxing rule didn’t forbid people from giving up their own locations, but his fear of assassins might have caused him to be discrete, if he were firing on all six cylinders. Still, he didn’t break a rule in breaking cover.

OTOH, some Twitter users, while properly identifying the Saudi investment standing by Musk’s side — and leave us not forget that there is also Saudi money in the Twitter purchase — assumed that those other people in the picture were Saudis rather than Qataris.

Well, y’know, they all look alike …

 

The more important question is not how to tell Saudis from Qataris but what you plan to do about the gigantic imploding disaster itself.

Joy of Tech has created a chart to help you decide, and it’s much bigger than this because there are so many questions on which you should probably get a grip. The entire thing is here and it may help or not but you weren’t really expecting objective advice, were you?

 

Meanwhile, if you can’t get the complicated stuff straight, how’s about getting the simple stuff right?

 

Juxtaposition of wait — what?

(Gary Varvel — Creators)

 

(Michael Ramirez — Creators)

This seems like Officer Krupke’s analysis of the southern border: The trouble is Title 42, but the trouble is that Title 42 is being abandoned, and, as the lads sing in the song, “Krupke, we’ve got troubles of our own!”

There’s little doubt that emigration on our southern border is a mess, but it would be nice if the critics could get their stories straight.

Then we can focus on questions like “Do more apprehensions mean more attempts or better enforcement?” and the importance of performative photo ops.

Biden is being criticized for not gripping-and-grinning, but the same thing came up when W flew over Katrina instead of landing, to which first responders gave thanks, since they’d rather be out helping people than posing for photos with POTUS.

Well, that shoe’s on the other foot now.

 

I’m not sure who needs to get their story straight on this one, but it’s good to see Lalo Alcaraz (AMS) address it, because he has standing in the matter, being strongly identified with one branch of Latino Culture.

My own gabacho opinion is that sharing a language is not the same as sharing a culture and certainly not the same as sharing a political stance. I lived in Colorado for nearly 20 years and met left-wing Chicano activists and extremely conservative American Legion officers and spent an evening shooting pool with some politically neutral Tejanos, and that’s only a sample within native-born people of Mexican heritage.

Add in Florida’s Cubanos and New York City’s Puerto Ricans and the Caribbean and Central American and South American folks scattered throughout the USA and I have no idea what culture or voting bloc you think you’ve assembled.

Though I agree with Lalo that expecting them to reject immigration is a pretty depressing thought, even if those whose parents fled Castro seem unwilling to extend the same welcome to those fleeing Maduro.

As the old saying goes, there are no rearview mirrors in a Cadillac.

 

Matt Davies offers a “get your story straight” opportunity with some serious meat on the bone. Jerome Powell, who has indeed been raising interest rates, has also been quoted as blaming nearly-full-employment for inflation, suggesting that, if we had more workers than jobs, wages would come down and the economy would benefit.

He’s probably right, though it’s also true that if a whole lot of people were to drop dead, the law of supply-and-demand would result in lower grocery prices. (The Republicans tested this theory, by the way.)

But I haven’t seen linkage between the process of raising interest rates and the goal of increasing unemployment. I suppose if people stop buying so many new cars and paying exorbitant rates on housing, there will be a shakedown as companies lay off workers, but the two factors are hardly the only ones sharing that link.

As for a labor shortage, gosh darn it, we can only wish there were people who wanted to come to this country, because we could then set up a regulated system of work permits and supervision for both them and their employers.

 

Finally, today, First Dog in the Moon shames us all by not only investigating and reporting on a social problem, but then actually doing something about it.

Talk about getting your story straight!

The Go Fund Me has already topped its goal, but there’s another story to get straight: We’ll never raise so much money that this problem — in Australia or anywhere else — will disappear.

If you don’t want to help these three women, find someone in your community to help.

It’s not hard.

 

3 thoughts on “CSotD: Getting Our Stories Straight

  1. Yes,, where oh where could we posibly find people willing to fill job vacancies?

    The braceros program was initiated to handle worker shortage during WW2. It was not without some criticism about worker exploitation but it did provide for a flexible workforce, one that could expand when needed and shrink when not.Immigrants could enter the country , work and then go home. That program was allowed to expire and in subsequent years, the border tightened. This had the unintended consequence of increasing the undocumented population . Workers came out of economic necessity but stayed because thet couldn’t risk additional border crossings.
    When my brother in law (somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun) and my tree hugging daughter agree on this it bears consideration.

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