To understand Musk's renewed obsession with X and focus on financial services, you REALLY need to understand the X/Confinity merger that became PayPal.

And, particularly, the Peter Thiel-led coup that kicked Musk out as CEO/Chief Strategist.

Here's how that happened. 1/🧵 #history #technology

@gunchleoc inspired me to pull all the #TwitterAlgorthim findings on what amps and best pushes content inside the Twitter world to better help with #Maystodon and other Twitter actions to evangelize the Fediverse there,.

Here it is, in a public Google doc form:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iikf7cEBCQIT7-bRptx_WqBIlBGx1EYj2JcrgtVmXgo/edit?usp=sharing

Last week Christopher Harborne gave £1m to Boris Johnson.

This week a UK defence company whose biggest shareholder is Harborne, won an £80m govt contract.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/boris-johnson-christopher-harborne-donation-mod-contract-80m

What is astroturfing? And why should we care?

We’ve embarked on a series of legal interventions focused on the opaque lobby groups based at Tufton Street: https://glplive.org/qen

6 Toot 🧵 ‼️
1/ Sunday Times: SCOOP by Harry Yorke and Gabriel Pogrun

The BBC chairman, the prime minister and the £800,000 loan guarantee

Bloody hell. So the BBC in the form of its chairman, Sharp, has been sitting on this story FOR YEARS @Ofcom

Impartiality⁉️ Not even lip service.

The BBC chairman - Sharp- , a Tory donor, helped to arrange a guarantee on a loan of up to £800,000 for Boris Johnson weeks before the then prime minister recommended him for the role.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-bbc-chairman-the-prime-minister-and-the-800-000-loan-guarantee-f7nt5kfml

As promised, I've done a proper write-up on how I created the custom #SteamDeck buttons I shared yesterday in a short #projects post. I even got it out a bit faster than originally hoped for - I got the impression that there was some interest 😊

You can find my post and many pictures of the process here: https://foosel.net/blog/2023-01-19-custom-steamdeck-buttons

I got myself a laser cutter, and my first project is designing a paper diorama of the "This is Fine" dog.

Constraints:

- must fit on A5 card stock (that's what I have lying around)
- one single piece, folding only, no glue (because I like a challenge)
- one-sided printing only (precise duplex is impossible on my printer)

Still work in progress, but here's what I have so far, including all prototypes up to this point.

Sunak, who recently asked to be judged by his achievements, has become the first politician to receive a fixed penalty notice whilst in the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer AND Prime Minister.

Bravo 👏

#GeneralElectionNow
#ToriesOut198

I keep seeing articles, about people trying to violently overturn election results, that use phrases like “motivated by election lies”.

They aren’t motivated by lies, they are motivated by not liking the result. Repeating the lies just makes them feel powerful because it makes them part of the grift. They think they’re fooling people.

Blaming the lies lulls us into thinking that this is an education/disinformation problem which, if addressed, will eliminate the violence.

These folks aren’t deluded. They’ve learned from their leaders that violence and lying are the route to power.

For most of my life I thought these problems could be solved by education. I no longer do. As far as I can tell, about 30% of the population believes that getting away with grifts and bullying people is proof of power and leadership that should be respected, worshiped, and emulated.

We can’t educate these folks. We can only build a society that ensures that they cannot gain control. Unfortunately, the entire human race has largely failed to do so, and we’re suffering the consequences on a planetary scale.

Every day we act as though they don’t *know* that the elections were valid, is a day we risk losing the fight for democracy, equality, and a stable environment.

#brazil #JAN6