Random News not worthy of own thread

[felter]

Chips I don't know what I have done to upset you, but whatever it was, I'm sorry it wasn't personal.

Anyway to go over some of the things, first I have never said Facebook is good or even Twitter is bad, if anything, if you take both of them together I would actually say Twitter is the lesser of the two evils that they are. What I have said was that the way Zuckerberg did things was the correct way to sack, pay off, lay off or whatever you want to call it as it was done with respect, dignity and honour rather than with obnoxious arrogance and pure rudeness like Musk did, there is no debating that as that is how it was done.

Also, you keep saying Facebook fired people, they didn't it was their parent company Meta that did so. You have to take it into context for example as of November 30 this year Meta employed 87,314 full time employees, that does not include part-time, contractor or agency employees, now as far as I can gather, though this is hard to confirm, and I doubt anyone actually knows the figure, but it is reckoned that there are around 500,000 people worldwide employed by Meta, and they got rid of around 11,000, which also as far as I can gather is taken their employment back to the numbers they had in November last year. That works out at around 13% of full time employees fired, though I haven't seen it being said it was just full time employees they were getting rid of, but it could be I don't l just don't know. Even saying that for a company of that size numbers will fluctuate on a daily basis, as people come and go and jobs come and go, also remember not all of those firings, though I suspect some of them were, were made at Facebook, it was at Meta.

Then there is the part you have not noticed the Twitter mass sackings, what do you call sacking over 3700 in one afternoon. As for these stories about Twitter and Musk, they are everywhere, and I barely have touched on them, all you have to do is go to any news site and use their search engine to search for Musk or Twitter, and you will soon find them. Even the Register that I linked to on the Tesla story, they had 3 or 4 different news stories just yesterday.

Tell you what, I just did a YouTube search for CNN and the second video was at the time this, worthless Billionaire it's worth a watch, I watched it and found it interesting. This weekend is going to be a free for all on Twitter, if you use it don't log out, as you may not get back in.

One other thing, if I spent $44 billion on Twitter I would be doing everything to make it good, so I can't understand what Musk is doing. Do you know he had to sell Billions in Tesla shares plus take out a massive loan to get enough money to buy Twitter, the interest on the loan itself is supposedly higher than Twitters yearly revenue, and he is dragging the company through the mud, I don't get it, seems just pure stupid to me, why do such a thing?

[Observe]

So Mr Musk, an advocate for free speech believing one can say whatever they want, went on another sacking spree yesterday not because they weren't needed for the continued running of Twitter no he sacked them because they disagreed with something he said and pointed out his mistake, so he sacked them, so much for freedom of speech.

I don't know about you, but throughout my career, I never worked at a company where publicly criticizing the company or it's management was acceptable. It is always a firing offense. I'm not saying this, in defense of Musk in general, just that in this particular case I think his actions were justified.

[clakclak]

[...]
One other thing, if I spent $44 billion on Twitter I would be doing everything to make it good, so I can't understand what Musk is doing. Do you know he had to sell Billions in Tesla shares plus take out a massive loan to get enough money to buy Twitter, the interest on the loan itself is supposedly higher than Twitters yearly revenue, and he is dragging the company through the mud, I don't get it, seems just pure stupid to me, why do such a thing?

I don't think either you or I, or anyone on this forum will be able to understand that. I personally think William Gibson had a point even though I do think he overdid it for the sake of writing and entertaining novel:

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

We should not forget that people like Elon Musk are not bound by any laws or restraints the same way in which we are. People like him are free of basic rules of society, who knows what that does to the brain of a human. Maybe we are simply not made to hold that much unchallenged power. Ethan Couch for example had only a fraction of the wealth Musk had, yet his wealth allowed him to only serve less than two years in jail for killing four while driving drunk, a crime which is usually punished with longer sentences in America. The prosecution wanted 20 years in jail. However "[...] a psychologist who testified in Mr. Couch’s defense argued that he suffered from 'affluenza', psychological afflictions said to result from growing up with wealth and privilege", thus the shorter sentence.

The perverse thing about it: The psychologist probably is not wrong. Being/growing up exceedingly rich and privileged may very well lead to mental illnesses. Gibson's sentence about them not being human is wrong as they are very clearly still human. In fact it is their very humanity that to me constitutes the problem. Humans seemingly have a very hard time to psychologically cope with intense amounts of power (be that in the form of wealth, fame or political power), which then leads to behaviour that seems erratic to the rest of us.

[Warenwolf]

No need to go so deep - narcissism covers most traits you see in people like that (and I am not sure it is linked to affluence in any way - it simply amplifies the already existing diagnoses).
I was very unfortunate to work for such people twice before in my life. I will not go out and give diagnoses to a guy I have never met but his actions are boringly similar to the one I have in my mind (scale was different though).

[Chips]

Chips I don't know what I have done to upset you, but whatever it was, I'm sorry it wasn't personal.

Nothing... I'm not upset, I'm just baffled why some think X is being a good guy in a scenario and Y is being a bad guy. Does Musk a douche, yes. Demonstrably so. But being sacked is being sacked. Musk heads Twitter, Zuckerberg heads Meta. Both have fired thousands. The reasons for why people are being fired differs. One is rude and obnoxious, the other apparently isn't. But I was pointing out one is firing people because of a belief it's needed (it's a bit quick, I mean he's barely through the door to assess what he's working with!). The other is firing people not because the company is losing money and has been since it started. He's firing people because it's profits are down and share price is down so shareholders must be placated that action is being taken to trim costs and address possible issues.

However, a few points.

Also, you keep saying Facebook fired people, they didn't it was their parent company Meta that did so. You have to take it into context for example as of November 30 this year Meta employed 87,314 full time employees, that does not include part-time, contractor or agency employees, now as far as I can gather, though this is hard to confirm, and I doubt anyone actually knows the figure, but it is reckoned that there are around 500,000 people worldwide employed by Meta, and they got rid of around 11,000, which also as far as I can gather is taken their employment back to the numbers they had in November last year. That works out at around 13% of full time employees fired, though I haven't seen it being said it was just full time employees they were getting rid of, but it could be I don't l just don't know. Even saying that for a company of that size numbers will fluctuate on a daily basis, as people come and go and jobs come and go, also remember not all of those firings, though I suspect some of them were, were made at Facebook, it was at Meta.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_Platforms

Meta is Facebook.

In November 2022, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, 13% of its workforce. Zuckerberg said the decision to aggressively increase Meta's investments was a mistake, as he had wrongly predicted that the surge in e-commerce would last beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. He also attributed the decline to increased competition, a global economic downturn and "ads signal loss".

He's sacked more than the entire Twitter workforce.

I'm not hoping Twitter fails (although honestly, if it did, it may give Musk and his self-ego a good sharp slap -- but at what cost) and do think he's a dick. But I don't think we should be pointing to others who are laying vast numbers of employees off while still being highly profitable (remember, Twitter *isn't* profitable at all so something had to be done at some point, and the prior board didn't ever seem to grasp that nettle while relying upon endless funds from shareholders) as being "nice guys". They're laying people off just before the holidays so that costs can be trimmed and therefore more profits made available to shareholders. Likewise the ex-board of Twitter and those who led it should be sharing responsibility for people being fired. Obviously it's entirely within Musk's power to *NOT* cause Twitter to fail too. Just do what shareholders have done so far - pump more money in.
You're right, what on earth is he doing? Who knows. Why we even bother with feeding his ego is another matter

Successful people are usually successful because they're bloody ruthless. For some reason Musk seems to think he also needs to try and be a living meme on Twitter at the same time. Could he have handled it better? Obviously. Doesn't mean I'd suddenly sit here and go "what a nice guy!"

[CBJ]

I do get your point, Chips. It's pretty standard behaviour for large companies to hire and fire on the basis of financial constraints that are more about squeezing every possible ounce of profit out of their operations, rather than out of necessity to keep the company running. And from the employee's point of view, losing your source of income is losing your source of income. Nobody should be fooled into thinking that any of these companies give a damn about individual workers in the big scheme of things.

But, that said, there is still a right and wrong way to go about firing people. US employment law is notoriously skewed in favour of the employer compared to, say, UK or EU law. With that in mind, Facebook/Meta are most likely following the rules that apply in any given jurisdiction; what Musk is doing almost certainly wouldn't be legal in the UK or EU, and might not be even in some US states. But even putting legality aside, being told formally that you're being let go for financial reasons is still less unpleasant than finding yourself locked out of your office and/or laptop without warning, told that you need to sign up for "extreme" working conditions when you are already working a 70 hour week, or any of the other horror-stories coming out of Twitter at the moment.

[Gavrushka]

I can't believe Trump has been reinstated on Twitter... I'd not appreciated just how far you could fudge the words 'free speech' to incorporate 'hate speech.'

In other news I've opened an account on Mastodon!

[CBJ]

I'd not appreciated just how far you could fudge the words 'free speech' to incorporate 'hate speech.'

That boat sailed a long time ago. You must not have been paying attention.

[matthewfarmery]

I think this could end up been a bad decision, Musk has more pressing issues to resolve rather then reinstate a former president.

Also if Trump does come back, it will mean his own platform was a total failure, (but that was bound to fail anyway) Now it will be interesting to see if advertisers and celebs leave twitter. As some have said they will if Trump is reinstated. So maybe then, Musk might end up losing even more money on twitter.

[clakclak]

I do get your point, Chips. It's pretty standard behaviour for large companies to hire and fire on the basis of financial constraints that are more about squeezing every possible ounce of profit out of their operations, rather than out of necessity to keep the company running. And from the employee's point of view, losing your source of income is losing your source of income. Nobody should be fooled into thinking that any of these companies give a damn about individual workers in the big scheme of things.

But, that said, there is still a right and wrong way to go about firing people. US employment law is notoriously skewed in favour of the employer compared to, say, UK or EU law. With that in mind, Facebook/Meta are most likely following the rules that apply in any given jurisdiction; what Musk is doing almost certainly wouldn't be legal in the UK or EU, and might not be even in some US states. But even putting legality aside, being told formally that you're being let go for financial reasons is still less unpleasant than finding yourself locked out of your office and/or laptop without warning, told that you need to sign up for "extreme" working conditions when you are already working a 70 hour week, or any of the other horror-stories coming out of Twitter at the moment.

Your comment basically hits the nail on the head even though I do not agree with your conclusion that there is a difference between the two.

This issue is political. Both Meta's and Twitter's (or Musk's if you will) way of dealing with employees are only possible because the laws allow for it. It is a bit of fruitless effort to think about who or what company is behaving "immorally" as that is pretty much down to personal political leanings and what one thinks is "moral".

[Vertigo 7]

I do get your point, Chips. It's pretty standard behaviour for large companies to hire and fire on the basis of financial constraints that are more about squeezing every possible ounce of profit out of their operations, rather than out of necessity to keep the company running. And from the employee's point of view, losing your source of income is losing your source of income. Nobody should be fooled into thinking that any of these companies give a damn about individual workers in the big scheme of things.

But, that said, there is still a right and wrong way to go about firing people. US employment law is notoriously skewed in favour of the employer compared to, say, UK or EU law. With that in mind, Facebook/Meta are most likely following the rules that apply in any given jurisdiction; what Musk is doing almost certainly wouldn't be legal in the UK or EU, and might not be even in some US states. But even putting legality aside, being told formally that you're being let go for financial reasons is still less unpleasant than finding yourself locked out of your office and/or laptop without warning, told that you need to sign up for "extreme" working conditions when you are already working a 70 hour week, or any of the other horror-stories coming out of Twitter at the moment.

Your comment basically hits the nail on the head even though I do not agree with your conclusion that there is a difference between the two.

This issue is political. Both Meta's and Twitter's (or Musk's if you will) way of dealing with employees are only possible because the laws allow for it. It is a bit of fruitless effort to think about who or what company is behaving "immorally" as that is pretty much down to personal political leanings and what one thinks is "moral".

It certainly is hypocritical, if anything, at least ol' Elon's behavior. Mr champion of free speech and destroyer of "cancel culture" is firing anyone who ever sent someone else a private message that said something mean about him or disagreed with his "hardcore" vision for Twitter employees. Literally, that's the priority given to the remaining employees - scrub messages for anything related to Elon and go tell on them if they're still employed there. Certainly a lesson that children should never be given money.

[CBJ]

It is a bit of fruitless effort to think about who or what company is behaving "immorally" as that is pretty much down to personal political leanings and what one thinks is "moral".

My conclusion wasn't supposed to be about morality. I tried to make it clear in the first part that I acknowledged that both companies were essentially doing the same thing from that perspective. The second paragraph was about a) the legality of it and b) the personal experience from the perspective of the employee.

I can say from experience that you can deal with a corporate HR department that is "behaving itself" legally, and potentially even negotiate a little around your legal minimal severance entitlement. The same is probably not true if you're summarily fired by a capricious new owner, who has very little understanding of your value to the company and more than enough money to keep throwing lawyers at you until you have no option but to just walk away.

And personally I still think I'd rather hear that I was let go because of corporate restructuring (or whatever euphemism they happen to be using for wanting to make more profit) than because the new boss didn't like me disagreeing with them about something, or didn't think my already-long working hours were good enough for them. Maybe that's just me, though.

[matthewfarmery]

Seems some advertisers have paused their ads on twitter since Trump has been reinstated.

https://fortune.com/2022/11/22/civil-ri ... mp-return/

“Musk either changed his mind or lied to civil rights leaders and advertisers,” Gonzalez said. “He is a reckless and erratic billionaire who puts his whims ahead of concerns for the welfare of the online community.” She urged advertisers that care about brand safety to join the exodus of companies that have already pulled their ads off Twitter.

And

A number of brands, including Balenciaga SA, General Mills Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Volkswagen Group, have paused their ad spending on Twitter as the company undergoes significant changes under Musk. Some of the platform’s top advertisers, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., have yet to make any public announcements about whether they will cease advertising. 

I say Twitter could be in even more serious trouble. It very well could be the end of Twitter if more advertisers pause their adds.

[chew-ie]

Strrrrr-ik-e!

Hate to interrupt the Musk'ing but having yet another blow for Trump@court is just as good: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ress-house

[Vertigo 7]

Oh it is indeed wonderful but he's also facing criminal indictments from New York and Georgia and now there's a special council for the DoJ jan 6 investigation and stolen documents, which will likely also be bringing federal indictments against the Oompa Loompa king. And the GoP has all but turned their back on him after a boat load of his endorsements lost reelection in the midterms. Don't see him weaseling his way out of prison.

[matthewfarmery]

Strrrrr-ik-e!

Hate to interrupt the Musk'ing but having yet another blow for Trump@court is just as good: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ress-house

While Trump has won some cases, but now it seems the tide is turning, also the 11 Circuit Court of Appeals has heard the DOJ argument to shut down the need for a special master, who is overseeing the classified document case, (when Trump home was searched) and Trump went Judge shopping.

Trump's lawyer did a very poor defence,

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/23/poli ... index.html

I think the court will overturn the need for a special master, and if that happens, the case against Trump will be in full swing. I bet Trump will be fuming!

And about time with his tax returns, he should have revealed them when he first announced he was running for president.

All in all, I think Trump is increasing likely, he is finished. Another thing, He now having to pay his lawyers, the RNC will no longer be footing his legal expenses. So those lawyers will have to watch their pay checks, as Trump may stop paying them.

[felter]

And another Trump headache arrived today, it looks like E Jean Carroll who is suing Trump for defamation after he accused her of telling lies when she accused him of raping her. Well today a new law came into effect in New York called Adult Survivors Act where...

The state law allows a one-year period for victims to file sexual assault lawsuits in New York over claims that would have otherwise exceeded statute limitations.

Which means he is now going to be in court over not just defamation, but he will also have to answer against the charge of rape. It's not a good year to be Donald Trump, and I think with the way things are going it is going to be an even worse year next year.

[matthewfarmery]

It would be interesting on how he will try and wiggle out of trying to answer questions? I mean, if he does answers questions under oath, can be plead the 5th? or will the judge force him to answer? and if he does answer with lies, with the judge hold him in contempt? Also will be interesting what evidence the lady will have? and hope that she doesn't settle out of court. And sticks to her guns and make sure he gets humiliated in court.

But overall, not a good day to be Trump, and next year, he has some nasty loans to pay off, and he already lost nearly 1 billion in 2 years. So he losing a lot of money, and even more soon. I think going for president again, and this soon will be a huge blunder.

[Warenwolf]

Meanwhile in India:

Rats eating 600 kg of weed in the evidence room. Also in neighboring state they drink 1 million liters of impounded alcohol which, again, was stored in the evidence room.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/2 ... storeroom/

Yep, totally legit explanations...

[felter]

Well, Trump should quit running for President now, as Kanye West he is putting himself forward in the 2024 presidential race. Trump will not stand a chance against him, as you could not get a better person to be president as ye would be, he is a totally mentally stable person, unlike Trump, not to mention he was once married to Kim Kardashian, you just can't get anyone more qualified than that.