Absolutely shocked that the South African oligarch/gamer is a white supremacist.
He’s not a gamer just wants the incel cred
His desperation to impress a bunch of dweebs on the internet is as bizarre as it is pathetic.
I genuinely wouldn’t swap spots with Musk if it meant I had to adopt his character and reputation. Fuuuuck that I’m happy where I am.
I agree, I’d rather make a million dollars ethically than have what Elon has along with his ethics.
I feel like this is an example of the dangers of surrounding yourself with a monoculture. Maybe Elon was always exactly this way, but he was seemingly previously tempered by the notably distinct moderation policies at Twitter. Once he owned it and stripped that moderation, there’s nothing holding the pendulum anymore and he swings pretty far the other direction.
Maybe he was always this way and not public about it, but things changed for the worse right around when his trans daughter came out.
Between that and covid I think he went down a rabbit hole further entrenching things and turned into a MAGA type as that rabbit hole does to those that go down it.
And now he won’t even listen when his brother and the chair of the board of Tesla tells him he’s hurting the brand.
Edit: just to clarify, “the woke mind virus” is what thinks took his daughter away, and now he is hellbent on destroying it, not realizing it’s him who’s been infected by hate and bigotry
Between that and covid I think he went down a rabbit hole
Nahh… he was always this way. If your daughter coming out as trans “turns” you into a right-winger, it just means you were always a right-winger.
I don’t think that’s quite the same.
You might always lean a certain way, but before, he maybe didn’t really care about trans people one way or another. As soon as his daughter came out as trans though he becomes faced with a choice.
Some people when they are faced with the choice, even if they might seem like they’d go against their child, don’t.
He doubled down unfortunately and made the wrong choice.
He doubled down unfortunately and made the wrong choice.
No, that’s not the choice he made. The status quo rewarded Phony Stark for being a right-wing douchebag - long before he even had a daughter . He chose to remain a right-wing douchebag because he was rewarded for it. He simply made the choice the vast majority of the rich either has made or will eventually make.
That doesn’t make sense.
Right wing and left wing have actual meanings, not “good guys and bad guys”
Right wing and left wing have actual meanings
Yes, they do… which is specifically why there is no such thing as a “good” right-winger.
So once he wouldn’t get in trouble for openly being a bigot, he openly became a bigot?
He owes his entire life to apartheid and slavery in all senses that matter. And even when he was everyone’s hero and a real life Tony Stark, he threw a temper tantrum when divers chose to rescue children and not stroke his ego. To the point he accused one of the divers of pedophilia, ran an investigation, and used a team of lawyers to protect himself from any consequences.
Musk has always been a dipshit
I mean that checks out. Trump has made his ilk say the quiet part out loud these days
And why democracy is important as a form of error correction. People can have their opinions, and inevitably we all get things wrong (magnitude of things we get wrong varies a lot). But when someone has a large concentration of power we all have to deal with the fallout from their malfunction. Companies the size and import of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit should be democratically controlled, some kind of cooperative.
Fully agreed. The authoritarian institution of shareholders and CEOs makes large companies prone to arrogance and short-term decision-making, democratic control of these large companies would make the economy much healthier.
I can’t tell which is the bigger influence but he has certainly gone down the right wing rabbit hole and also insulated himself from all critique as a billionaire who has everyone he talks to regularly on his payroll or otherwise benefitting from him. A bad mix.
I’ve noticed that a lot of these people will lean left for a minute, because they hope that it will get them a get out of jail free card for being problematic in specific ways.
They find out quickly that the left doesn’t do that. I can support your stance on XYZ while still disliking you and not wanting to do business with you because of ABC.
So then they switch to regressive stances, because those people will cheer you on for being awful.
Same thing happened to Reagan. He created the EPA as an executive agency to avoid Congress creating and empowering an independent entity that the executive wouldn’t be able to control. He thought it would get him votes from the left. It did not, and he pretty much immediately stated that he regretted it because lefties didn’t buy his bs.
Same thing happened to Reagan. He created the EPA as an executive agency to avoid Congress creating and empowering an independent entity that the executive wouldn’t be able to control. He thought it would get him votes from the left. It did not, and he pretty much immediately stated that he regretted it because lefties didn’t buy his bs.
Wait, what?
The EPA was created by Nixon in 1970, 10 years before Reagan was elected.
It’s an independent government agency, to this day. The administrator is appointed by the executive branch and approved by the Senate, but it’s not an official cabinet position nor part of the executive branch (but frequently involved in cabinet meetings).
Reagan tried to dismantle it by appointing Anne Gorsuch, who was very pro-business and anti-“big government”. She ended up slashing their budget by 22% and was held in comtempt of Congress for refusing to provide subpoenaed documents explaining why.
And Reagan won reelection in one of the largest landslides in US history in 1984.
(All of this is on
)
Thank you.
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Also the part where his parents ran an emerald mine there.
Zambia. That’s where the mine was.
There are days I wait for it, but I imagine one of these days the top is going to pop on South Africa and we are going to not like the skeletons we find there.
but I imagine one of these days the top is going to pop on South Africa
What do you mean by this?
The answer is, I do not know.
People like Elon’s family didn’t get rich in an emerald mine without Tesla’s business ethics. After all, who do you think Elon learned it from?
And was Elon’s family the only one? Are we sure of that? Corruption like that doesn’t happen in a vacuum and not without support.
They got rich the same way rich people everywhere get rich - by exploiting impoverished and disempowered labor to the max. The only difference with the Apartheid-regime (to whom Elon owes his riches) was that they were pretty overt when it came to who it was that got to be the impoverished and disempowered labor.
To be clear… that hasn’t really changed all that much in South Africa. But, then again, it hasn’t really changed in the US, either.
Wait do you mean any day now we could be confronted with the revelation that South African mining companies under apartheid weren’t exactly top of the class in business ethics? But how
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He didn’t get rich from the emerald mine. Its a real thing, but he only made around 400k (in 2021 dollars) on his roughly 200k investment. He didn’t own it either.
Any actual riches were something else.
Not to say that 200k is nothing, but it’s not the source of any rich level money his father had.
The whole emerald mine story has been overblown.
To be fair, gamers are the most oppressed minority…
/sarcasm
Once an Afrikaans always an Afrikaans. I bet he vacations in Orania lol
Imagine being literally the richest person in the world. You can afford anything, you can go anywhere, you can do anything. But you spend most of your free time begging for attention from absolute strangers. What a pathetic little bitch.
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Enough money helps you have the time, energy, and nutrition to craft happiness. You can pay someone to do the lawn, clean the house, and handle some day to day tasks. You can sleep without worrying if you’ll afford food and a roof tomorrow. You can get healthcare.
After that it’s up to you. If you put the money in charge you’ll be miserable. If you spend all that extra time going down conspiracy rabbit holes you’ll be miserable and try to make everyone else miserable. If you craft some hobbies that you enjoy, get in shape, maybe learn to play an instrument, go rock climbing, travel to see the sights, and generally don’t worry about what loud people on the Internet do or think of you then you’ll have a pretty good shot at happiness.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can give you the opportunity to find it.
Kanye has really gone off the rails but still one of the lyrics he got most right…“Having money’s not everything, not having it is.” If you’ve got money, it doesn’t make you happy. But not having money is crippling and debilitating.
That is exactly it. I’ve been middle class. I’ve been poor as fuck. My mental health much prefers middle class.
Even rich people have conspiracy theories believe it or not.
We have to assume all this pleases him
Right? If I had even a fraction of a percent of his wealth, I’d disappear into a life of anonymous bliss, never to be heard from again.
MySpace Tom comes to mind. Bless that guy.
This is the line of thinking that gets me to listen to the “no such thing as an ethical/moral/good billionaire” types. These are people who had $50 million, $100 million, $500 million, and decided they had to keep working, acquiring, and exploiting.
After awhile, it becomes competitive. Like achieving a high score on a leaderboard. Most of the billionaires are now over 70 hence the race to squeeze everything before they die so that they can “win”.
Right? If I was that rich I’d get attention by… actually doing helpful things with the money.
Shit commission a giant statue of yourself that urinates Coca-Cola into a public fountain, free coke for everyone, just go to the PP Statue! That’s what I’d do…
Course I’m female so my statue would have to be squating, that may make it unwieldy…
Creative liberties may be taken when designing a statue of yourself, so don’t worry, you can take any pose you want
If you’re squatting, it comes straight down instead of in an arc where the wind can blow it around. Easier to fill your cup that way. I endorse this plan!
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He really does need a hobby. Maybe he can take up sailing or adventuring. Then we don’t have to hear about him at all until some fawning obituary lauding his contributions to humanity and recognizing the pioneering spirit that led to his tragic and early demise.
NOW can we fucking can this guy? SpaceX? Tesla? He’s already flushed the cancer-formerly-known-as-twitter so we’ll leave him that one.
The significance that it’s IBM calling it first should not be lost on anyone.
Significance = IBM supplied Nazi Germany with the tech to catalogue the Jews during the Holocaust.
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Anyone still on Twitter at this point for whatever their reasons, have to recognize what group they are in.
Sadly my local emergency services still uses them to let the community know what’s going on. Denver PD is still doing a good job updating their page and I wish they would move to Mastodon here sooner rather then later
You could suggest to connect their Xitter to a mastodon server so it automaticaly forward posts (crosspost), could be a good thing for a first move!
It’s not that easy for a lot of users. People created a network on it and they can’t change so easily as theirs jobs depends on these networks.
That is true and is something those in control of these sorts centralized social media services count on. Why Reddit was so cocky about the impact of the protest just blowing over. Sort of did. We the people feed the powerful and cannot stop.
I was thinking about researcher and research. A lot of people working in these fields and people interested in these fields can’t move to somewhere else. They would change but it’s really hard and everyone has to move.
The way things are going they are not going to have much of a choice.
Looking at my twitter feed it’s immediately obvious what group I’m in; Gays. Gays everywhere.
Yep, if you have a Twitter account you’re a Nazi. Full Stop.
“If there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there with him, you got a table with 11 Nazis.”My Mom told me I couldn’t have a second helping of ice cream, she’s LITERALLY Hitler!
Like buying a Tesla at this point. You’re a Nazi cunt if you do so 🤷
Damn, TIL I became a Nazi when I first visited my grandparents as a child. Thanks for letting me know, at least I can lean into it now. /s
So, Elon dislikes that white people can’t be proud of being white.
Why would a person of any race be proud of their race? Shouldn’t people be proud of their own accomplishments, and those of the people they’ve helped?
I never really understood the rationale here. I support Pride Month for example, but I think the language is kind of wrong.
Shouldn’t people be proud, despite traits which have historically been denigrated?
This is a serious question BTW.
When your ancestors have been targetted, racialized, abused and enslaved for centuries and the effects of that are still felt to this day, and when you are still being racialized and abused because of the colour of your skin and your heritage, you feel like you have nothing to be proud of. The world is telling you you don’t matter, that ‘your kind’ deserves it.
THAT’S why POC are so adament about being proud. Because when a racist tells them they’re worth nothing, and when the world tells them they’re nothing, they need to rely on themselves and their community.
Being proud is resistance. Against all the shit that has been done to POC, and the shit that is still being done today.
White pride is not resistance, other than resistance to the idea of black pride taking over from a centuries old status quo where white people were the only ones who ‘mattered’. You’re not resisting anything with ‘white pride’. You’re taking away voices and dignity of POC.
It’s no wonder the only people who unironically say ‘white pride’ are fucking nazis. That should inform anyone about the whole concept of it. Don’t weaponize your whiteness.
I was sitting here thinking it’s pretty silly to be proud of things you have no control over, even if you appreciate it over other possible variations of a given attribute. Using it as a means of personal or societal deprogramming is valuable, though, so long as it doesn’t extend to denigrating people who are ‘other’, otherwise you end up with the same problem but different people suffering.
That’s a great writeup
In my mind, LGBTQ Pride is generally called that because Shame was, at least in contemporary history, a huge driver in suppressing LGBTQ existence and freedoms. If it was called LGBTQ No-More-Shame, it would remain antithetical but might not be as catchy. I’m sure other groups will employ the same argument, but it is difficult to overstate how powerful shame and social stigma specifically suppressed LGBTQ expression, and still attempts to in some ways.
There are other better choices than No-More-Shame.
LGBTQ Honor / Dignity / Glory (on second thought, this one may conjure images of bathroom stalls, so maybe not this one)
Dignity is pretty solid.
To be fair, the right would immediatly counter with “white dignity” or “straight dignity” and accuse everyone holding up LGBTQ±dignity or black dignity of denigrating white dignity and complain about an atmosphere where “whites aren’t allowed to feel the dignity of their race anymore”.
Because that’s just how they work.
I think there are a few major problems here:
There legitimately are powerful people who are systemically oppressing non-whites/non-straights.
There is a significant amount of people that lack empathy and have never experienced personally this type of systemic oppression, and thus don’t believe it’s real. This is particularly evident on the right where empathy is in short supply. See also: my abortion is the only moral abortion, the government shouldn’t be supporting these freeloaders (but make sure my HUD/food stamps/social security show up on time!), Obamacare needs to be abolished (but don’t drop me from my insurance I need my meds!), etc.
Back to point number one, even the blue team has been unfortunately ignorant about the level of systemic oppression and often serves as a validating factor. It’s one of the small things that I think have been positive about the social media era, these stories are getting to far more people than they used to. When I was in school in the 2000’s, if you asked basically anyone in my predominantly white school (including me, tbh) they probably would have said racism is basically a solved problem and is only a tiny little fraction of the actual experience for POC/LGBTQ++, etc. People with empathy pick up on this faster, but if you say ACAB in a room full of blue team, you’re probably still going to get a lot of pushback…
Speaking of ACAB, a big part of the problem is that people just do not fucking get nuance. Most of even the staunchest ACAB supporters don’t believe that everyone who is a cop or will become a cop is a bastard/bad person, the point is that the institution of policing in this country is systemically racist, systemically corrupt, and systemically insulated from consequences in a way that is unjust and bad for society. Or, shorter, we have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and know that when you give people this type of power you can expect bad things. Thus, there isn’t a way to be a moral cop because the system removes the ability to stay moral, which is also why a lot of those that we would call “good” cops are forced out of the field. Anyway, pretty fucking hard to fit that on a bumper sticker, so we end up with things like ACAB/BLM/Pride, etc.
Extremely well said!
Yeah, but at least then you can retort with saying “that’s not a very dignified thing to say” while sipping tea with your erect pinkie finger.
Also, I would just open up the gaytes on Pride month, henceforth known as Dignity Month. Let the straights celebrate their missionary position all month long!
Idk the stereotype that gays are indignant polyamorous debaucherists still persists to this day. Even though the straights are still equally as debaucherous. Put differently, people have a different perception of guys who have a lot of Tinder hookups as opposed to guys that have a lot of Grindr hookups. Gay men are much more likely to be slut-shamed than straight men.
I don’t actually think Dignity is a better choice than Pride, I just didn’t feel like being argumentative to someone who I think was receptive to my initial argument. I agree with you 100%.
I think everyone should be proud of their race, which is the human race… No matter ones ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. we are all the same race. Yes, I know in this context race means something else. But, my point still stands. If everyone would stop worrying about our little meaningless differences and realize that we are all the same race. We would be much better off. Yes, I know that will never happen.
This has always bugged me. It’s strange how labeling someone as “racist” actually works in the racists favour; you’re partially validating their point by implying there’s a greater biological gap than actually exists.
Bigot works well as a replacement if this bugs you, and it’s probably more accurate, people with “racist” views are more likely to be homophobic too.
I mean, idk about other cultures/langages but it does feel weird as fuck to french speakers that English even has a concept of “race” for humans in the first place. In french we only use the word “race” for animals. If you want to refer to someone’s ethnicity, well, that’s the word you use (“ethnie”). Although iirc the distinction is quite recent (from the enlightenment period or something).
And we also have the word “raciste” which refers to one’s belief that there are human races, it doesn’t validate that belief.
I’m considering this from the perspective of taxonomy. Race is basically a synonym for “subspecies” which is pretty fucked up.
Yeah iirc that’s also why human races aren’t really a thing in french.
Although we do use that word for animals’ breeds (which are just subspecies iirc) but I guess that’s just because it wouldn’t really be french if there were no weird exceptionsAt least the French got that going for them.
Hurry up and overthrow your government already, everyone is waiting for one of your classic revolutions.
yea yea yea we’re waiting till the very last moment so it can look all theatrical and fabulous
Nah, racist is a descriptor of a viewpoint, not something that’s inherently built into people because of their ethnicity. So it makes about as much sense to say that calling someone a racist is “validating their point” as saying calling someone a flat earhter somehow validates their ideas about flat earth theory. It’s just a silly line of reasoning.
Biologically we’re the same species, not the same race. There’s no concept of race in humans
Race was actually invented to justify invading and enslaving people who were different colours
This is human nature at end of day. If it’s not being white/black, it’s your football team, what country you’re from, or on lemmy crap like whether you use Linux or not.
I never understood it myself but people are morons.
Absolutely. Tribalism is toxic.
At least Linux is a choice.
I use Arch BTW.
Because in this case it’s talking more about KKK type of “white pride”.
It’s totally okay to be proud of aspects of your heritage. It’s important to also own up to harm done by your ancestors too, especially when you benefit in tangible or intangible ways from that history, which becomes less expected of you the more injustice was done to your ancestors vs done by your ancestors. However… “White” is not a race, white is a skin tone, there is no universal white heritage, even “European immigrant to America” is far from a monolithic heritage. “Black” being considered a heritage confuses some people but that’s because “black” is shorthand for two things that aren’t directly skintone. “Black” refers most commonly to the shared experience and built/rebuilt heritage of the descendents of slaves who’s culture and heritage were stolen from them, brought mostly to the Americas from West Africa, and then systemically oppressed for generations. “Black” can also be used to describe people who share the experience of oppression based on their black skin color regardless of their specific history.
I think white people have the least to be proud of of any other people.
What have we accomplished? We stole land, science, math, technology, the whole concept of civilization, and pretty much anything else you could think of, from non-white people. We stand on the shoulders of colored giants, and act relish the scent of our own shit because of it. Literally a lesson in “history is written by the victor”.
Basically all we really have that’s purely our own is our art, philosophy, and religion. And even a lot of that is stolen and built upon.
Damn, now THAT’S some racism
Why would a person of any race be proud of their race?
I support Pride Month for example,
why would a person of any gender would be proud of their gender? You seem pretty selective.
The irony of claiming I’M the selective one by quoting me, but missing the next line which reads “I think the language is kind of wrong”.
The implication is I support the idea of a time to celebrate marginalised communities and to raise awareness for their current battles, but I think the word “pride” is the wrong word.
The irony of claiming I’M the selective one by quoting me.
Damn, can you just say: “well my bad, indeed I’m contradicting myself”.
LGBTQI are not marginalized anymore, they are becoming noisy now and it starts to become a bit too much… we have now a “pride month”, wtf.
It’s not a contradiction at all.
The intent behind saying “I support pride month” was about what it represents, not the vocabulary used, which is what I went on to articulate.
I’m really not looking to get into it, but I am convinced LGBTQIA+ people are marginalised and discriminated against.
About fucking time, IBM.
Given what I have seen from working with a company that worked with them chances are the person who handles the ads is about 80 years old and hasn’t actually clocked in the past decade.
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People were unironically comparing this man to Tony Starks lol. 🏃🏾♂️
Phony Stark
Ironman was the bad guy for that whole civil war thing. … oh fuck
Um…hate to say it, but Steve was the bad guy in Civil War, not Tony.
It’s all blatant army propaganda either way, does it matter?
Guys guys guys! No fighting!
Anyway, the real villain was Zemo.
The funny bit is that originals Tony Stark was meant to be utter human scum but Hollywood wanted to make him less of a douchebag.
I mean there was a point where he was someone worth championing…now? He’s scum.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino has said that most of the platform’s biggest advertisers have returned after dropping the site due to its moderation changes, but Media Matters previously showed that they’re spending far less than they used to. Yaccarino responded later on Thursday, writing that X has been “extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination.”
“There is no bombing at the airport”
“There is no
bombing at the airportwar in Ba Sing Se”I try to help
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Elon is slowly but surely tearing down everything he has created.
Elon is slowly but surely tearing down everything he has
createdBought.
Always a good distinction. Ever see presentations from the actual founders of Tesla? They are impressive.
What has he created? He bought himself into Twitter and Tesla… and the work is essentially done entirely by other people. i.e his employees
Yep. And his pet projects that he personally drives always crash and burn. He’s the one that pushed the autopilot feature hard despite his engineers publicly objecting.
what has he created
One of the best PR campaigns in modern history. Just five years ago people on both sides of the political spectrum were seeing this guy as one of the smartest humans alive, who would actually put man on another planet.
Then he got rid of the PR team and started doing his own PR, and it went as well as it always does when Elon has direct control.
That last part can and probably will happen despite his public perception
Elon is slowly but surely tearing down everything he has
createdbought.Fixed that for you
Every single accomplishment he has involves buying a company that was already doing it, establishing himself as a “founder”, and then taking all the credit.
He could have gotten away with it too. I never drank the Kool aid with that guy. I know the charismatic sales tech evangelical type too well. I deal with them daily at work. When they stay in their lane they are fine, they bring in the business.
I was about to buy a white Tesla but now I’m not so sure about the Tesla at all, but especially that combination.
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Not to defend deceptive business practices, but software battery limits are slightly different from a fuel tank being smaller. By not allowing the battery to charge as close to its full capacity, a software size limit can actually significantly improve the longevity of the lithium cells. Batteries sustain the most damage when they’re charged completely to full, and even the best battery management systems can’t prevent all of the damage. This is also why charging speed is significantly slower near the end of a full charge cycle.
I’m definitely in agreement in general but it’s hard to find anything that quick, which is my favorite part of my aging c63, for the price of a model 3 performance.
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Prius is slooooooow :( Bolt EV!!! (though that is not c63 fast and certainly not as nice)
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He’s tearing down everything that other people created, you mean?
All he had to do was shut up. He could’ve thought all this stuff, maybe done some of it, and still been hailed as a hero. But the more he opens his mouth, the harder he makes it for anyone to overlook who he really is.
The lack of self-reflection going on here is so painful to watch.
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He’s smart enough to keep quite
Or he’s unlocking the only way to sell EVs to American conservatives.
Other people always did the actual work - he’s just less effectively handled now, so his personal incompetence is harder to hide.
Except that so far he hasn’t faced any real repercussions. He keeps selling cars and internet and getting contracts from NASA. A bunch of banks may have to write off their twitter investments but, much like trump for several decades, it will not significantly impact his ability to get new credit.
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For context, here’s the full tweet Elon is endorsing as all these articles are omiting it for some reason
Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.
Huh, my dogs are going crazy. Weird.
Thanks for transcribing the tweet so that others don’t have to give it excessive clicks. This might be his new worst mask off moment.
Unfortunately, a bunch of people will probably act shocked while continuing to use the platform that he owns 80% of rather than move to alternatives.
I appreciate you providing the actual tweet… but I have no idea how to translate it. The double/triple negative really throws me for a loop and I don’t even know how to read this. I assume there’s more that has Elon talking white pride somewhere else? Am I blind or naive in not seeing the problem in the post?
Edit: Oh, I see, the post BEFORE that one was saying asking people to “just come out and say ‘Hilter was right’” if that’s what they believed and this was a response by someone. Ouch.
Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites
Translation: Jews are woke anti-white “cultural Marxists” pushing “reverse racism”.
that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
Translation: antisemitism and woke stuff are literally the same
I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.
Translation: I don’t care about Jews recognizing antisemitism in minority populations.
I honestly have no clue which minorities he’s talking about here, or if it’s just some generic conflation of all non white groups.
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Apple’s already out. Disney dropped today as well.
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Why were they even adversing on Ten?
You mean 10-Chan?
…do you mean xitter?..
I’m honestly not going to do business with anyone who still maintains a presence on that platform much less advertise on it. Cheers to IBM for stepping up.
Tell me you’re South African without you know.
That scene at the South African embassy in one of the lethal weapons movies. Oh man, fiction is so crazy. Right?
I find an odd sort of satisfying humour that we know exactly where IBM draws the line, and it’s right there.
It hasn’t always been exactly there though…
All the more reason to have a hard line there now, I suppose.
Yep, now look up the dark past of basically any large corporation that existed at that time… wild stuff.
it makes me wonder why, when we see WWII movies or documentaries, why they are doing everything analog? Typewriters, handwritten letters, when we know they had IBM computers, which were sold to the Nazis including during the war, in direct contravention of sanctions. Could it be they want to hide that unsavory bit of history
Early computers were weighty, unreliable, and insecure. We’ve come a long way with network management, parity checking, digital encryption, smaller machines, and input devices that don’t require punch cards. Even if we thought they could have adopted widespread use of computers in the 1940s, it would be a long time until people adapted to the sudden change.
You couldn’t even purchase a modem until 1958. ARPANET was the first wide area network actually put to use in 1970 connecting computers on opposite coasts of the United States after four years of development, and it largely wasn’t improved upon until ARCNET in 1986.
The Nazis literally used custom made IBM punch cards to keep records of their undesirables. I know society at large was mostly unaware of computers, but did they did play a role in WWII. We see cipher devices like Enigma in historical documentaries and fiction, but we don’t see the computers that calculated bomb and rocket trajectories, and least of all the Nazi’s database which seems quite well buried in footnotes, though it was critical in the holocaust.
I still stand by the answer to your likely rhetorical question is that it wasn’t really hidden that much it simply was utilized so little that the exact sites and personnel that used computers of the time are incredibly few in number, so while easy to document and possibly quite impactful: it also wasn’t a very big part of the era as a whole.
I find some dark amusement in knowing there is a wiki page called “IBM and the holocaust” haha. Not gonna read it though
Tldr the arm tattoo #s were the ID in the IBM asset tracking database for the efficiently run coal mines.
Doesn’t have to be a line, might just be the last straw
