# Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 25, 2022, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442 "2022-04-25T22:50:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 356
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7106 "2023-10-11T09:52:00Z")
Elmo sez: > @TheirryBreton Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports. > > Please list the violations you allude to on 𝕏, so that that the public can see them. If I was Breton, I would respond: “Thank you for your concern for the public. The public will be able to find the full list of violations in the text of the court ruling ordering Twitter shut down in the EU.” And since Elmo claims everything is transparent and open source, I would ask for a copy of all of Twitter’s source code and the design of its current algorithms, so that the public can see them. I imagine “the public” might be interested to see how Elmo’s own posts are being promoted along with those of fellow Nazis, and others suppressed. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7107 "2023-10-11T09:56:23Z")
Graeber and Wengrow cover it in _The Dawn of Everything_ (by contrasting it with the conscious Californian Native rejection of the institution), and you can read an article by them here: [https://davidgraeber.org/articles/many-seasons-ago-slavery-and-its-rejection-amongforagers-on-the-pacific-coast-of-north-america/](https://davidgraeber.org/articles/many-seasons-ago-slavery-and-its-rejection-amongforagers-on-the-pacific-coast-of-north-america/) You can read an account of an actual (European) slave of a Vancouver Island tribe here: > **[The Adventures of John Jewitt Only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston...](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38010/pg38010-images.html)** ---
**Author:** ![Toxylon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f05b48/32.png) [@Toxylon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxylon)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7108 "2023-10-11T11:06:23Z")
Only exceptional environs in this world afforded hunter-gatherers a sedentary lifestyle. Those environs did have sedentary, or semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers, which are rare enough that they can be listed within a normal-length sentence. They cannot be a general model for the human existence over the eons. The vast majority of areas that agriculturalists found rich and fertile were only so for the agriculturalists, such as the loess areas in Europe. This is how the early agri folk wielding the same, or in many cases inferior weaponry, could displace the hunter-gatherers living there, much lower in numbers. The carrying capacity of the land without agriculture wasn’t that great for humans. This is a typical situation for the hunter-gatherers, not the salmon runs and fields of woka wider than the eyes can see. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7109 "2023-10-11T11:12:42Z")
I was happy to see this formerly closed thread re-opened in the Pit, where it could be free-wheeling and unrestrained in discussing anything and everything about Musk and Twitter. I was happy to see that it was relatively self-policing and able to stay on track with only occasional and sometimes entertaining digressions. I see that it has now been taken over by junior anthropologists, who I would ask to please fuck off and start your own thread, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7110 "2023-10-11T12:14:10Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > > [@Alessan](#): > > > > From Warhammer 40k to Mesolithic anthropology. > > AIUI, the Imperium’s dogma is that the Emperor was born during the Neolithic Era and was guiding humanity behind the scenes from the dawn of history, so those two things are probably more closely interconnected than you’d suspect. 🙂 Canonically (inasmuch as anything is) in the 8th Millenium BCE in Anatolia with his soul created from the souls of shamans merging after a ritual suicide pact. He killed his uncle with his psychic powers for murdering his father the old-fashioned way before he was even a teen. [Emperor of Mankind - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Emperor_of_Mankind) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7111 "2023-10-11T13:35:14Z")
> [@Toxylon](#): > > Semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers are mostly a late development, in many cases younger than the adoption of agriculture elsewhere. Again, for the vast majority of human existence, mobile hunting and gathering was the norm. We are not discussing the situation within the past 1000 years, or even 10 000 years. Citation needed. Nomadic hubter gatherers migrate _because_ agriculturalists took over the places where hunter gatherers could be sedentary (fertile river valleys). I’d like to see evidence for the claim that before agriculturalists pushed HGs off these sites HGs were still mostly nomadic. That seems farfetched to me. As MrDibble noted the fertile crescent was exactly such a sedentary HG site, until the development of agriculture. Now, I’d wager that being a thrall in such a society was probably a much better experience than being a slave in an agriculturalist society. The agriculturalists would work you to death because they can extract value that way, while the Hunter Gatherers were more about forcibly making you join their group. So HG slaves were treated better and had more social mobility. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7112 "2023-10-11T13:39:23Z")
> [@Toxylon](#): > > Only exceptional environs in this world afforded hunter-gatherers a sedentary lifestyle. Those environs did have sedentary, or semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers, which are rare enough that they can be listed within a normal-length sentence. They cannot be a general model for the human existence over the eons. Such environments are rare _today_, since they are the primary places exploited by our ancestors for the last 200,000 years and also the sites where agriculture has been going on longest. But I’d need a cite for the claim that these places were exceedingly rare back then, too. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7113 "2023-10-11T13:41:44Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I see that it has now been taken over by junior anthropologists, who I would ask to please fuck off and start your own thread, thanks. Another call to drop the anthropological hijack, please. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7114 "2023-10-11T13:46:49Z")
I like the hijack: if you start a new thread please post a link. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2023, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7115 "2023-10-11T13:55:47Z")
Last year anthropologists discovered a bunch of old emerald mines. Now, this was in Egypt, not South Africa, but at least I can partially bring it all together. > **[Vast Roman-Period Emerald Mines Revealed in Egyptian Desert](https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/emerald-mines-0016493)** > > A topographic scan of emerald mines in Egypt’s Eastern Desert has revealed scores of time locked chambers, tunnels and sacred spaces dating to the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine periods. Well, apologies, y’all go have a fun anthropology thread. Meanwhile, to bring things back to Muskie, guess what? It turns out that claiming that free community policing is going to clear up misinformation - rather than funding a group to do it - might not be effective, at least in a timely manner. > **[Elon Musk's fact-checking system delayed Israel corrections for days](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/elon-musk-x-fact-check-israel-misinformation-rcna119658)** > > X's CEO has said the platform was increasing Community Note publishing speed. > An approved Community Notes member gave NBC News access to the feature’s volunteer interface, which showed that many false posts with hundreds of thousands of views had no notes, while other notes sat unapproved for hours and sometimes days on posts that accrued tens of thousands of views. On a perhaps related note, I was approved to be a community notes creator more than a month ago, but the promised tools to actually do it have not been afforded to me yet. ---
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2023, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7116 "2023-10-12T08:07:34Z")
Aww, I was enjoying the anthropology lesson. Educational thread hijacks have always made this place special. 🙂 But back to Elmo-bashing, which is also highly entertaining. Did people ever figure out if he was really wearing that cowboy hat backward? ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2023, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7117 "2023-10-12T08:11:23Z")
To be fair it’s extremely difficult to tell how the hat is sitting when his head is so far up his ass. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2023, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7118 "2023-10-12T15:13:20Z")
> [@WolfpackJeep](#): > > But back to Elmo-bashing, which is also highly entertaining. Did people ever figure out if he was really wearing that cowboy hat backward? My theory is that the hat was worn correctly but his head was backward. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7119 "2023-10-13T00:19:51Z")
And I say it looked wrong because it’s a size too small and it’s perching awkwardly on his head. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7120 "2023-10-13T01:19:02Z")
A Belgian-born character in William Gibson’s _Pattern Recognition_ comes back from a trip to Texas, wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat set perfectly evenly across his head, which he doffs by holding the sides and gently lifting. The American with whom he is speaking shows him the correct way to put it on, remarking as she does that the way he’s wearing it, he looks like he’d need a stepladder to get on the horse. That’s exactly what came to mind when I saw that picture of Elmo. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7121 "2023-10-13T06:47:51Z")
Half a year ago, NPR and several local affiliates broke up with Twitter over Musk’s bullshit. What has been the impact? > **[Six Months Ago NPR Left Twitter. The Effects Have Been Negligible | Nieman...](https://niemanreports.org/articles/npr-twitter-musk/)** > > The numbers confirm what many of us have long suspected — that Twitter wasn’t worth the effort, at least in terms of traffic. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7122 "2023-10-13T07:03:15Z")
I haven’t read the last 1301 posts in this thread but just wanted to pop in to say FUCK THAT GUY. ---
**Author:** ![Sylvanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7123 "2023-10-13T08:24:07Z")
Wow, that pretty much sums up this whole thread. Well done! 👏 😃 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7124 "2023-10-13T13:22:15Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Half a year ago, NPR and several local affiliates broke up with Twitter over Musk’s bullshit. > > What has been the impact? I’m not greatly surprised. At the same time, what’s the overlap between the kinds of people who read NPR, and the kind of people who are glued to twitter & twitter-like products? If you want up-to-the-second “what just happened 5 minutes ago as best the confused locals can figure out yet.” news, some sort of twitter-like product is the way to go. If you want sober analysis of what’s really going / gone on, long-form professionally written & curated news is what you need. The people who want the latter can find the delivery vehicles like NPR without needing twitter-equivalents as intermediaries. When Twitter itself was the new hotness, there was a certain amount of “everybody gotta post there or be irrelevant” vibe. But that was mostly people buying into riding Twitter’s own hypecycle. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2023, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/7125 "2023-10-13T13:57:51Z")
Things are going well on Xitter today: [![Imgur](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53255339223_236a26c962_b.jpg "Screenshot\_20231013\_085635") ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/68782016@N08/53255339223/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=355) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=357)