Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall is probably responsible for starting the trend earlier this year. As the article noted, the nickname Elmo had been used to refer to the Tesla CEO at least since 2018 but it was never widely picked up until he announced that he was buying Twitter earlier this year.
Independent journalist Marcy Wheeler who goes by the name emptywheel had been previously credited for the nickname’s popularity but she denied it saying she picked it up from others.
This is a perfect article that encapsulates pretty much everything that’s happening with Twitter in the last couple of weeks.
The mercurial CEO is under fire from his own staff to the point that he can’t take a joke and can’t deal with employee uprising. He’s also very allergic to criticism and challenges to his statements which makes him very thin skinned. All the talk about being a free speech absolutist and comedy being legal on Twitter had unraveled mere days after he took over the company.
However, Musk has always harbored a vision for a service he calls X which is supposed to be the everything app, so all that he’s done to the Twitter corporation seems to be the steps into creating that company.
He always insisted that PayPal was meant to be X but it turned out differently and gave him the opportunity to create Tesla and SpaceX, along with everything around them like The Boring Company and Starlink. So now with Twitter he thinks he’s bought himself several years into creating this X.
When you see it from this perspective, it’s no wonder it looks like he’s destroying the company because he is treating it as a shortcut to building something else. It’s likely that Twitter may end up as a PayPal competitor or something else with a payment service at its core and the social network as just one of its products.
He’s a billionaire who probably is best at dealing with machines, not people, since clearly he has no regard for people. Meanwhile, Twitter is a company about people, so that’s not going to work. He’s going to have to turn it into a company about products, like his other companies, to be compatible with his vision and management style.
From Passwords to Passkeys. How to Use the New Authentication Technology
PC Mag put together a rather comprehensive guide to using the new Passkeys introduced in iOS 16. It’s also available on iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura. If it works with previous OS versions, let me know.
Passkeys let you log in to websites and apps without using a password, replacing it with unique, site specific set of cryptographic keys linked with on device authentication methods such as FaceID, TouchID, or other compatible authentication technologies. Microsoft and Google, who are members of the same trade group as Apple, have announced support for compatible tech, so it won’t be limited to just Apple devices and ensures a much wider adoption.
A caveat with Passkeys is the app or website has to support it before you can use it. If you make a new account on a passkey compatible service, you won’t be prompted to generate a password, but if you’re an existing member or account holder, you’ll need to go through steps to transition from password to passkey to use the new method.
Here’s a thread on Mastodon about the debate over the use of third party verification services.
The fediverse is what they call the federated universe, the part of the Internet that’s run by multiple individuals across multiple independent servers but interconnected as a larger network. A network whose existence is not dependent on a single corporation.
Anyway, here it is. Tap on “show more” to read the posts.
Sup? Now that I’ve decided to step away from posting on Twitter, I’m exploring different outlets and platforms to publish my thoughts.
These days video seems to be the prevailing media that people chose to express their thoughts, opinions, and creativity, but I’m first and foremost a writer, so it makes more sense to me to publish primarily on a text-based platform.
I’m a person with many interests, from politics to tech to entertainment and even sports, maybe to a lesser extent but still within my scope.
Having looked at my options, I’m thinking this would be a hub for all my writing and creative outlets. Anything of note of my own judgment that I publish anywhere on the web would be linked here. Not sure if I’ll link to absolutely everything, probably not, I mean I feel like it’s gonna be more like a blog repository after all.
It’s an experiment, so we’ll see where this is going.
Mr. Prime Minister, your outsized business delegation to the B20 conference shows that you place a very high value in the relationships between our two nations thanks to the remarkable opportunities you identify in this country and the region.
At the same time, Australia is also a very attractive tourism and education destination for many in this country and the region. So how about you make it so much easier for us Southeast Asians in general, to be able to visit your wonderful country and spend our hard earned money there as well?
You can easily bring your products over here for people to purchase and we can equally easily send people over there to spend money and enjoy what your country has to offer without having to endure these high friction barriers that you currently maintain, which had been placed by your predecessors.
We’ve always made it super easy for every one of your citizens to spend time in Bali and the rest of Indonesia almost as if it’s a domestic destination for Aussies, so it’s only fair for your government to extend the exact same travel facilities and affordances for us Indonesians to make our way to Australia. How about that, eh?
Well, it’s actually been 30 years now, but here’s a spew I did 5 years ago on the bird app to commemorate my 25 years as a TV writer.
I’ve edited it a bit for clarity. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.
1. In TV writing (and writing in general) there is only one unbreakable rule: Thou shalt not be boring.
2. Write characters people want to hang out with for an hour or so once a week for years to come. Even if they’re bad people, make them interesting, engaging bad people.
3. If your lead is a bad person, make them funny and/or sexy. Direct most of their bad behavior toward other bad people or themselves. Make them well motivated. Maintain rooting interest.
4. What makes a character special should be intertwined with what makes them struggle. Perfect people are boring.
5. Characters should complement/conflict with each other. No two characters should serve the same purpose/have the same backstory/have the same voice.
6. Cast the best actor, adjust the character to suit.
7. Give your leads the best lines/moments. No one is tuning in to watch the funny guest star. Like Garry Marshall said back on HAPPY DAYS, “I’m paying Henry Winkler $25,000 an episode. Give the Fonz the jokes.”
8. Your characters, good & bad, should reflect the reality of our
wonderful, diverse world. White male shouldn’t be the default.
9. Avoid stereotypes. Stereotypes are boring.
10. If all your POV characters know some secret, the audience should know it too.
11. If your show hinges on a big mystery, know more or less what the truth is from the beginning. You can change it later if you need to, but write to a specific.
12. If your story doesn’t test your characters mentally, physically, psychologically, emotionally, or spiritually, you don’t have a story.
13. You can start by figuring out the Beginning, the Middle, or the End, but you don’t have an episode until you have all three.
14. Big suspenseful act outs (the last moments before the commercials) aren’t just a gimmick. They’re a good way to structure an hour of entertainment to make sure the audience is invested and your pacing is solid.
15. Every scene should be a consequence of the previous scene or a refutation of it.
16. A scene also needs a Beginning, Middle, and End. The end should propel the characters and/or audience into the next scene.
17. Every scene is a negotiation/confrontation between two or more characters who want different things or have different ideas on how to solve the same problem.
18. A good action scene is still a character scene. With punching. (This applies to sex scenes too, but you know, with sex.)
19. A crap page is better than a blank one.
20. It’s easier to cut than to add.
21. Good things rarely happen in the #TVWriting room after dinner. Go home, get some rest, write pages at home if you have to, start fresh in the morning.
Writers who have a life outside the writing room are better writers. Beware the showrunner who doesn’t want to go home to their family.
That said…
22. Script by day one of Pre-Production. No matter what.
23. You’re a writer first. Almost nothing happening on set or in post is more important than the writing. Delegate when possible.
24. Make an extra effort to surround yourself with writers who are different from you (background, race, gender, orientation, etc). Listen to their perspectives, especially on experiences alien to you.
25. And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. In TV writing and life in general.
Hi! We’re introducing Important Blue Internet Checkmarks here on Tumblr. They’re a steal at $7.99—that’s cheaper than some other places, when you consider that you get not one but TWO checkmarks for your blog on web only (for now). Why, you ask? Why not? Nothing matters! ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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AuliaSays 