Progressivism is one long fit of rage, constantly pushing toward the most absurd reaction to any given situation, and Elon Musk is currently its top target.

And because progressivism is one escalation after another, it was just a matter of time before Musk was connected to QAnon. It all started with a fairly innocuous tweet encouraging people to follow a rabbit emoji (i.e. the white rabbit). Then Caroline Orr Bueno, who studies disinformation and has half a million followers, showed up with this banger.

Apparently, they just give out doctorates like candy these days. The surest sign you are dealing with a deranged individual, though, is the fact that Bueno is a behavioral scientist living off the teat of academia. Thats an environment ripe for smelling ones own farts to the point of conspiratorial delusion.

Does anyone see an explicit call to follow QAnon in Musk posting a bunny emoji? If you dont, thats because one doesnt exist. Still, Beuno soldiered on into the bowels of QAnon trolling to find a few posts that confirm her priors.

That seems like a few less than 120 million people, but I dont have a doctorate in mathematics to know for sure. So are the above posts indicative of anything but a tiny number of people who like to troll left-wing academics? Nah, but Beuno thinks shes cracked the case, and thats the real entertainment value here. Over-educated individuals who have convinced themselves that their brilliance reveals a monster under every bed. You are just too much of a rube to see them.

In actuality, the opposite is true. Bueno isnt smart. Rather, shes so vapid as to have no possible argument outside of the most extreme, baseless interpretation. It couldnt possibly be that Musk has seen the Matrix or that hes a fan of Jefferson Airplane. No, its got to be that hes secretly QAnon, pushing his followers to join a domestic terrorist group.

Thats the same dynamic that leads the left to accuse those on the right of being nazis. Its beyond their mental capacity to argue for their policies in an affirmative manner. Instead, they fall on the lazy trope of comparing their opponents to genocidal maniacs because thats all they can come up with. They dont want to bear any scrutiny of their own positions so they attempt to simply disqualify the other side from consideration.

As to what Musk was actually talking about? Far from promoting QAnon, he was making a cryptic reference to a Twitter account that provided some stats on lockdowns and COVID-19 deaths. Reality is so much more boring than the leftwing mind.

I dont know what Musk will end up making off Twitter monetarily in the long run, but whatever it is, it will have been worth it. No man since Donald Trump has managed to cause the left more consternation, and that feels like a pretty good value.

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Elon Musk Accused of Promoting QAnon in Latest Leftwing Fit of Rage ...

Twitters former head of trust and safety claimed Friday night that Twitter CEO Elon Musk was putting peoples lives in danger by revealing internal company documents showing how employees censored conservatives and a negative news story about then-presidential candidate Joe Bidens son.

Yoel Roth, Twitters former Sr. Director, Head of Trust & Safety, complained about Musks decision to release internal company communications through journalist Matt Taibbi about the companys censorship of the New York Posts Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 presidential election.

Taibbi tweeted out screenshots showing that company officialswere in regular contact with Democrats and censored content that Democrats wanted removed.

Publicly posting the names and identities of front-line employees involved in content moderation puts them in harms way and is a fundamentally unacceptable thing to do, Roth posted on Mastodon.

Musk said that he decided to release the information because it was necessary to restore public trust in the platform after it censored the Hunter Biden story.

One of the tweets published by Taibbi showed that Democrats flagged content from conservative actor James Woods to Twitters content moderation team for removal.

Woods joined Fox News host Tucker Carlson as Taibbi was releasing the internal information from Twitter.

Ive been a target of these people for six years. They have destroyed my career, Woods said. They have destroyed my livelihood. Theyve destroyed my faith in this country that my family has defended in the military since the Revolutionary War.

I can guarantee you one thing, more than anything else youll ever hear in your life, I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee. No matter what, whether I win or lose, I am going to stand up for the rights of every American, he said. Im not a celebrity, Im hardly recognizable anymore because my career has been destroyed by these very people.

If I have to be the flag-bearer for this, then so be it. Ill be proud to do it, Woods added.The government of the United States conspired to take my free speech and throw it in the gutter. And theres something that they should fear more than anything they have ever imagined in their wildest dreams. The most dangerous man, these corrupt, vile vermin is an American, whos not afraid of him, and Joe Biden, and all those rats who work with you at the DNC, to close down my speech, I am not afraid of you. And Im coming for you.

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Ex-Twitter Executive: Elon Musk Is Putting Us In Harms Way By ...

Did Elon Musk's first actions at Twitter lose the social media platform users to Mastodon and Hive Social?  Sky News

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Did Elon Musk's first actions at Twitter lose the social media platform users to Mastodon and Hive Social? - Sky News

Serena Williams Husband Alexis Ohanian Targets Elon Musk as He Dishes Out Physics-Based Advice to the Controversial CEO  EssentiallySports

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Serena Williams Husband Alexis Ohanian Targets Elon Musk as He Dishes Out Physics-Based Advice to the Controversial CEO - EssentiallySports

Latest Feud

Another day, another Elon Musk feud on Twitter — except now, he's the owner of the social network, and he's beefing with a sitting member of Congress.

The whole thing started innocently enough earlier this week, when firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY, and better known by her initials, "AOC") subtweeted the website's new owner.

"Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that 'free speech' is actually a $8/mo subscription plan," the New York Democratic Socialist tweeted in a post that, upon Futurism's perusal, appeared to load only half the time.

Sweat Equity

Not one to be shown up, Musk later posted a screenshot of an AOC-branded sweatshirt from the congressperson's website, with its $58 price tag circled and an emoji belying the billionaire's alleged affront at the price.

In response, Ocasio-Cortez said she was proud her sweatshirts were made by union labor, and that the proceeds from their sales were going to fund educational support for needy kids. She later dug in further, noting that her account was "conveniently" not working and joking that Musk couldn't buy his way "out of insecurity."

Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me pic.twitter.com/e3hcZ7T9up

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2022

Bricked

To be clear, any suggestion that Musk personally had anything to do with any Twitter glitches on AOC's part would seem ludicrously petty. But then again, this is a guy who once hired a private detective to investigate a random critic.

Occam's razor, though, suggests that it was probably AOC's mega-viral tweet that broke the site's notoriously dodgy infrastructure. Of course, that's not a ringing endorsement of the site that Musk just acquired for the colossal sum of $44 billion.

More on Twitter: Twitter Working on Plan to Charge Users to Watch Videos

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AOC Says Her Twitter Account Broke After She Made Fun of Elon Musk

Now that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, the billionaire has been frantically shuffling through ambitious plans to turn the ailing social media platform into a revenue-driving business.

Case in point, according to internal email obtained by The Washington Post, Musk is plotting for Twitter to charge users to view videos posted by content creators and take a cut of the proceeds — a highly controversial idea that's already been met with internal skepticism.

The team of Twitter engineers has "identified the risk as high" in the email, citing "risks related to copyrighted content, creator/user trust issues, and legal compliance."

In short, Musk is blazing ahead with his infamously ambitious timelines — a "move fast and break things" approach that could signify a tidal change for Twitter's historically sluggish approach to launching new features.

Musk has already made some big structural changes to Twitter, having fired high-up positions at the company and dissolved its board of directors.

The company will also likely be facing mass layoffs, according to The Washington Post.

The new feature detailed in the new email, which is being referred to as "Paywalled Video," allows creators to "enable the paywall once a video has been added to the tweet" and chose from a preset list of prices, ranging from $1 to $10.

"This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators," Musk tweeted on Tuesday, adding that "creators need to make a living!"

But whether Twitter users will be willing to pay for stuff that was previously free remains anything but certain.

Musk has already announced that he is planning to charge $8 a month for Twitter users to stay verified, which has been met with derision.

The billionaire CEO is facing an uphill battle. Now that the company is private, he has to pay around $1 billion in annual interest payments, a result from his $44 buyout, according to the WaPo.

Compounding the trouble, Reuters reported last week that Twitter is bleeding some of its most active users.

Meanwhile, Musk's chaotic moves are likely to alienate advertisers, with the Interpublic Group, a massive inter-agency advertising group, recommending that its clients suspend all paid advertising for at least the week.

That doesn't bode well. It's not out of the question that a paywalled video feature may facilitate the monetization of pornographic content, which may end up scaring off advertisers even further — but Twitter's exact intentions for the feature are still unclear.

According to Reuters, around 13 percent of the site's content is currently marked not safe for work (NSFW).

It's part of Musk's attempt to shift revenue away from advertising on the platform. In a tweet last week, he promised advertisers that Twitter wouldn't become a "free-for-all hellscape."

But that hasn't stopped advertisers from already leaving in droves.

All in all, a paywalled video feature could mark a significant departure for Twitter, a platform still primarily known for short snippets of text.

For now, all we can do is watch.

READ MORE: Elon Musk’s Twitter is working on paid-video feature with ‘high’ risk [The Washington Post]

More on Twitter: Elon Musk Pleads With Stephen King to Pay for Blue Checkmark

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Twitter Working on Plan to Charge Users to Watch Videos

A provocative manslaughter case is about to kick off in Los Angeles later this month, involving a fatal crash caused by a Tesla vehicle that had the company's controversial Autopilot feature turned on.

It's the first case of its kind, and one that could set a precedent for future crashes involving cars and driver-assistance software, Reuters reports.

We won't know the exact defense until the case gets under way, but the crux is that the man who was behind the wheel of the Tesla is facing manslaughter charges — but has pleaded not guilty, setting up potentially novel legal arguments about culpability in a deadly collision when, technically speaking, it wasn't a human driving the car.

"Who's at fault, man or machine?" asked Edward Walters, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University, in an interview with Reuters. "The state will have a hard time proving the guilt of the human driver because some parts of the task are being handled by Tesla."

The upcoming trial is about a fatal collision that took place in 2019. The crash involved Kevin George Aziz Riad, who ran a red light in his Tesla Model S, and collided with a Honda Civic, killing a couple who were reportedly on their first date.

According to vehicle data, Riad did not apply the brakes but had a hand on the steering wheel. Perhaps most critically, though, the Tesla's Autopilot feature was turned on in the moments leading up to the crash.

Riad is facing manslaughter charges, with prosecutors arguing his actions were reckless.

Meanwhile, Riad's lawyers have argued that he shouldn't be charged with a crime, but have so far stopped short of publicly placing blame on Tesla's Autopilot software.

Tesla is not directly implicated in the upcoming trial and isn't facing charges in the case, according to Reuters.

A separate trial, however, involving the family of one of the deceased is already scheduled for next year — but this time, Tesla is the defendant.

"I can't say that the driver was not at fault, but the Tesla system, Autopilot, and Tesla spokespeople encourage drivers to be less attentive," the family's attorney Donald Slavik told Reuters.

"Tesla knows people are going to use Autopilot and use it in dangerous situations," he added.

Tesla is already under heavy scrutiny over its Autopilot and so-called Full Self-Driving software, despite conceding that the features "do not make the vehicle autonomous" and that drivers must remain attentive of the road at all times.

Critics argue that Tesla's marketing is misleading and that it's only leading to more accidents — not making the roads safer, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has argued in the past.

In fact, a recent survey found that 42 percent of Tesla Autopilot said they feel "comfortable treating their vehicles as fully self-driving."

Regulators are certainly already paying attention. The news comes a week after Reuters revealed that the Department of Justice is investigating Tesla over Autopilot.

Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced an investigation of accidents in which Teslas have smashed into emergency response vehicles that were pulled over with sirens or flares.

This month's trial certainly stands the chance of setting a precedent. Was Riad fully at fault or was Tesla's Autopilot at least partially to blame as well?

The answer now lies in the hands of a jury.

READ MORE: Tesla crash trial in California hinges on question of 'man vs machine' [Reuters]

More on Autopilot: Survey: 42% of Tesla Autopilot Drivers Think Their Cars Can Drive Themselves

The post Manslaughter Case Has a Strange Twist: Tesla That Killed Couple Was on Autopilot appeared first on Futurism.

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Manslaughter Case Has a Strange Twist: Tesla That Killed Couple Was on Autopilot

Advertisers are fleeing Twitter in droves now that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken over control.

Ever since officially closing the $44 billion deal, Musk has been busy gutting the company's executive suite and dissolving its board. Senior executives, as well as Twitter's advertising chief Sarah Personette, have departed as well.

After all, Musk has been very clear about his disdain for advertising for years now.

The resulting uncertainty has advertisers spooked — major advertising holding company IPG has already advised clients to pull out temporarily — and the billionaire CEO is in serious damage mode.

Now, Reuters reports, Musk is spending most of this week meeting with advertisers in New York, trying to reassure them that Twitter won't turn into a "free-for-all hellscape."

According to one of Reuters' sources, the meetings have been "very productive" — but plenty of other marketers are far from satisfied.

Advertisers are reportedly grilling Musk over his plans to address the rampant misinformation being spread on the platform, a trend that Musk himself has been actively contributing to since the acquisition.

And if he's succeeding in ameliorating advertisers in private, he's antagonizing them publicly. On Wednesday, Musk posted a poll asking users whether advertisers should support either "freedom of speech," or "political 'correctness'" — a type of false dichotomy that echoes the rhetoric of far-right conspiracy theorists and conservative pundits.

"Those type of provocations are not helping to calm the waters," an unnamed media buyer told Reuters.

Some are going public with the same sentiment.

"Unless Elon hires new leaders committed to keeping this 'free' platform safe from hate speech, it's not a platform brands can/should advertise on," Allie Wassum, global media director for the Nike-owned shoe brand Jordan, wrote in a LinkedIn post.

So far, Musk's plans for the social media platform remain strikingly muddy. In addition to the behind-the-scenes advertising plays, he's also announced that users will have to pay to retain their verification badge, though he's engaged in a comically public negotiation as to what the cost might be.

He's also hinted that previously banned users — former US president Donald Trump chief among them — might eventually get a chance to return, but only once "we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks."

The move was seen by many as a way to wait out the impending midterm elections. After all, Twitter has played a huge role in disseminating misinformation and swaying elections in the past.

While advertisers are running for the hills, to Musk advertising is clearly only a small part of the picture — even though historically, social giants like Twitter have struggled to diversify their revenue sources much beyond display ads.

Musk nodded to that reality in a vague open letter posted last week.

"Low relevancy ads are spam, but highly relevant ads are actually content!" he wrote in the note, addressed to "Twitter advertisers."

Big picture, Twitter's operations are in free fall right now and Musk has yet to provide advertisers with a cohesive plan to pick up the pieces.

While he's hinted at the creation of a new content moderation council made up of both "people from all viewpoints" and "wildly divergent views," advertisers are clearly going to be thinking twice about continuing their business with Twitter.

With or without advertising, Twitter's finances are reportedly in a very deep hole. The billions of dollars Musk had to borrow to finance his mega acquisition will cost Twitter around $1 billion a year in interest alone.

The company also wasn't anywhere near profitable before Musk took over, losing hundreds of millions of dollars in a single quarter.

Whether that picture will change any time soon is as unclear as ever, especially in the face of a wintry economy.

But, of course, Musk has proved his critics wrong before. So anything's possible.

READ MORE: Advertisers begin to grill Elon Musk over Twitter 'free-for-all' [Reuters]

More on the saga: Elon Musk Pulling Engineers From Tesla Autopilot to Work on Twitter

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Elon Musk Meeting With Advertisers, Begging Them Not to Leave Twitter

Elon Musk said that he hopes for peace and respect between the U.S. and China. His answer was in response to a question asked by a Tesla shareholder at Teslas Annual Shareholder Meeting.

One of the questions asked by Tesla shareholders via Say.com and upvoted was how is Tesla viewing the geopolitical risk between the U.S. and China. Recently, U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, took a trip to Taiwan and China isnt taking this too well.

Her visit has already affected Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd (CATL) which delayed its North American battery factory plans until September or October.

When he first saw the question, Elon jokingly asked,

Now what could possibly go wrong in answering this question?

Teslas factory in China is its largest export hub and China has been very supportive of Teslas ambitions in the nation. However, China and the U.S. are having a bit of tension as of late. While I personally dont agree with Chinas stance on a lot of things, I understand that Elon Musk and Tesla asked a very loaded question.

Let me just say that I hope for peace and respect.

One of the attendees advised Elon to move to the next question which I think was wise.

After all, he is Elon Musk and all too often, his words get twisted by those with their own agendas and narratives to spin.

Im adding my thoughts on this and I agree that peace and respect are important. I also think that this drama between the two nations (and yes, I feel its drama) hurts both nations and the people of these nations more than it does the leaders or their own egos.

At the end of the day, we all have to live our lives and these political tensions affect how we live our lives. War is, in my opinion, unnecessary and harmful. Like Elon, I too, hope for peace and respect.

Disclaimer: Johnna is long Tesla.

Id love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1

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Elon Musk hopes for peace & respect between the U.S. and China - Teslarati

SpaceXs Starlink high-speed satellite internet connection is now available at a bargain, Tesla North reported, citing emails from the company sent to users shared on aReddit thread.

Starlinks monthly use fee is reduced from EUR 99 ($100.64) to EUR 50, the report said. This huge reduction, however, comes with new soft data caps on bandwidth usage, as per a new fair use policy, it added.

The fair use policy stipulates that all users will continue to have unlimited data, with priority given to users consuming 250GB data or less, the report said, citing an email sent to French customers of Starlink. Those whose data usage exceeds 250GB/month may experience slower speeds during periods of network congestion.

To regain priority, these users can opt to buy additional data at EUR 10 per 100 GB, the report said.

Related Link: Elon Musk Applauds His SpaceX and Starlink Ventures Accomplishing These Feats

The new pricing and related changes will take effect from August 3 and the new fair use policy will be implemented in October.

SpaceX reportedly said in the email this pilot program will serve to connect the greatest number of people without degrading the quality of service.

The long-term payoff will be the same Starlink service at half the price, it added.

SpaceX and its subsidiaryStarlink are led by Tesla, Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk.

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Elon Musk's Starlink Pricing Reportedly Slashed By 50% In France But There's A Catch - Benzinga

To solve this illusion would be a cubic feat.

Puzzle lovers are frazzling their noodles over this physics-defying optical illusion, in which stationery cubes appear to be spinning. The trick first went viral on Twitter in 2020 whereupon it notably caught the eye of Tesla boss Elon Musk the square-o-dynamic image is currently gaining traction amid the internets current optical illusion craze.

[Warning: Spoilers Below]

The visual jigsaw shows two cubes sitting in place; however, when the viewer clicks on the shapes, the screen flashes black and they appear to rotate like disco cubes. But heres the catch: the boxes were actually static the whole time.

The illusion is reportedly caused by a perception principle called the phi phenomenon, an illusion of movement created when a pair of stationary objects are placed side by side and illuminated rapidly, per the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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Unfortunately, the exact mechanism behind this optical parlor trick is yet unclear, writes the New World Encyclopedia. But most scientists believe its a physiological phenomenon rooted in the ways the brain and optic nerves communicate.

One of the most powerful motion illusions I've seen: The cubes appear to be rotating in opposite directions but they're not actually moving at all

Credit: @jagarikin pic.twitter.com/RgUFskZbZU

Nevertheless, the illusion has caused a stir on social media and not just among the hoi polloi: Even SpaceXs Elon Musk was impressed with the corneal confuser, notably replying Wow to a tweet detailing the illusion in 2020.

There have also been numerous variations on the moving cube trick, including one posted in May by a Japanese illusion aficionado who goes by Jagarikin on social media. In it, the illusion of movement is created by the fact that theyre situated on a pinwheeling black-and-white circle.

In the realm of illusory motion, few images compare to this purple-and-yellow pattern shared last month, which looks as though its both three-dimensional and moving, but is, in fact, stationary and flat.

Not content with merely feeling like you have the spins? Take a gander at this trippy image, which reportedly fools the viewer into thinking that they have gone colorblind.

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Can you solve this brain-busting optical illusion that stumped Elon Musk? - New York Post