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Skippy McPants posted:It happened to Tumblr and has been slowly happening to Facebook for over a decade. I don't think Twitter will die, but I could definitely see it decaying to the point that it's no longer the mainstay social media platform for trends and current events. twitter is probably going to last if only because it's made itself useful for media personalities; journalists like it, and as such anyone who's reliant on journalists for their monetization stream (athletes, celebrities, politicians, pundits) is stuck meeting them where they are. as soon as there's some other social media platform that's The Place to get your journalism noticed, twitter's dead, but up until that happens there's enough important people's money wrapped up in it that it will be able to stumble along
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Oct 21, 2022 16:34
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Main Paineframe posted:I can't think of a bigger red flag of institutional rot in Twitter than newly instituting stack ranking in 2022. It's an infamously bad practice in the tech industry, notorious for its longtime use in Microsoft, where its numerous flaws have been very well documented. Throwing Twitter's entire workforce into a crab bucket and only keeping the first 25% to climb out could very well be devastating. I can't think of a better way to dissuade advertisers than "we are going to turn this into an unusable pile of poo poo the moment we get our hands on it". Can't imagine, if this goes through, that the company will be worth fuckall in 5 years. Imagine when section 230 is at its most imperiled, Musk suggests killing any content moderation. lol. Also Bannon was just sentenced to 4 months in club fed and a $6500 fine for contempt of court.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:37
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The law that created DeSantis' voter fraud prosecution department didn't actually give the office jurisdiction to prosecute voter fraud and the charges from the arrests have been dismissed. ABC News posted:Wood was facing up to five years in prison and $5,000 in fines and fees, for allegedly illegally voting in the 2020 election. I know the cruelty is the point with poo poo like this but shouldn't your own election systems have enough failsafes in place to ensure a voter who is known by the state not to be eligible to vote can't actually vote? The fact that there's no system in place for checking for this is a massive self-own on DeSantis 's part. "myah, they knew they couldn't vote and voted anyway!". well no poo poo you loving idiot. they are criminals after all. by his logic so we should expect them to want to commit more crimes especially ones that they're allowed to get away with easily. it's an indictment of the process that this isn't taken care of completely automatically. what people also fail to articulate with draconian sentences like these is that every correctional system is massively over capacity. so people with sentences for murder and rape are already getting out after a few years because there's simply no room to hold all of the rest of the criminals we're locking up for weed and cocaine offenses. something to think about when prosecuting people for five loving years in prison for voting when they're not supposed to.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:42
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DeeplyConcerned posted:I know the cruelty is the point with poo poo like this but shouldn't your own election systems have enough failsafes in place to ensure a voter who is known by the state not to be eligible to vote can't actually vote? The fact that there's no system in place for checking for this is a massive self-own on DeSantis 's part. It's not a self-own. It's going to be an extremely successful method for swinging elections to the right.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:46
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DeeplyConcerned posted:I know the cruelty is the point with poo poo like this but shouldn't your own election systems have enough failsafes in place to ensure a voter who is known by the state not to be eligible to vote can't actually vote? The fact that there's no system in place for checking for this is a massive self-own on DeSantis 's part. The even more insane thing about it is that most of those 20 people that were arrested were just confused about whether they could vote. Florida passed a constitutional amendment restoring voting rights to felons, but DeSantis pushed for a bill making it so that it only applied to felons who paid all of their fines and submitted a request to get their voting rights restored. Almost all of the 20 people were basically just confused because they heard that "felons got their voting rights back" and didn't realize what DeSantis had done or what they had to do to actually get their voting rights restored. So, most of them wouldn't even be doing anything "illegal" if DeSantis himself didn't intervene to set it up that way.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:49
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These 20 people were directly told BY THE STATE that they could vote, so they did. It later turned out that they actually could not, but it’s not like that would stop DeSantis from this dumb self-own
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Oct 21, 2022 17:08
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In addition to the cruelty being the point, the confusion about voting is a feature not a bug. The chilling effect and uncertainty are purposeful and specific. Pretty sure they can't yet write laws saying it's illegal to vote for the "wrong" party but they can make drat sure all the undesirables know their place and get the real message.
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Oct 21, 2022 17:09
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A federal judge said in upholding the restrictions in the law that the state has ‘no duty to tell felons what they actually still owe in restitution’. Which just says it all, really.
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Oct 21, 2022 17:29
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DeeplyConcerned posted:I know the cruelty is the point with poo poo like this but shouldn't your own election systems have enough failsafes in place to ensure a voter who is known by the state not to be eligible to vote can't actually vote? The fact that there's no system in place for checking for this is a massive self-own on DeSantis 's part. You're thinking about this all backwards because, like you said, the cruelty is the point. All those things you're concerned about there and framing as self owns don't matter when you're dealing with people who would prefer that any and all criminals be killed and also the worst crimes are race, sexual orientation, and being the wrong gender. It's like if someone made a gun that looks like an umbrella and you wrote about how it's an awful umbrella and a huge self own that they're doing to get wet while they shoot people with the gun that they meant to make an umbrella.
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Oct 21, 2022 17:40
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Clarste posted:RIP Twitter, we hardly knew ye. Knew ye? They just banned @ye! So where does news go post-Twitter? It's been at the very least this forums' primary source of breaking news for nearly a decade because they stand out so well in posts, and I don't know of an easier way for journalists to publish scoops than just tweeting them out. Toxic as the place could be Twitter is (but soon was) vital to keeping abreast of current events as they happen, and now we're losing it. Twitter sucks, but the vacuum of the lack of Twitter bums the hell out of me.
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Oct 21, 2022 17:51
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Clarste posted:RIP Twitter, we hardly knew ye. Actually it sounds like we're going to get to know ye a lot better. Edit: I can't believe I was beaten to this joke. Sub Par fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 17:53
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Gumball Gumption posted:You're thinking about this all backwards because, like you said, the cruelty is the point. All those things you're concerned about there and framing as self owns don't matter when you're dealing with people who would prefer that any and all criminals be killed and also the worst crimes are race, sexual orientation, and being the wrong gender. yeah I'm with you. Sometimes I like to pretend it's debate club and you can score points on these assholes. that can't match the warm fuzzies you get from oppressing people though
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Oct 21, 2022 19:23
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I can't find an economics thread, but if the inflation is due to corporate price gouging, why have the markets been reporting losses per quarter and the stock market been so low?
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Oct 21, 2022 19:31
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I can't find an economics thread, but if the inflation is due to corporate price gouging, why have the markets been reporting losses per quarter and the stock market been so low? Depends on the company. Some companies are reporting record profits, but seeing stock prices plunge because people assumed that they had a huge pandemic boom (like Peloton), but are going to inevitably go bankrupt or just can't maintain the profits/size going forward. Some companies really are losing a lot of money. Part of a stock price is the company's ability to generate future revenue/value and another part is people guessing about future value. Amazon's stock shot up a long time before they were profitable because people (correctly) assumed that Amazon was going to end up a dominant force and worth a lot of money in the future, even though it was losing money at the time. There is an element of price gouging to inflation (in the sense that people will pay for it and they may have reduced supply, so they can raise prices to make more profit per chicken breast to cover up the loss of moving lots more inventory), but it's not something you can mathematically calculate the exact portion of inflation it is responsible for and it is probably not the biggest source of inflation (or else every major currency in the world, except for Japan, wouldn't have seen nearly the exact same amount of inflation all at the same time and companies didn't suddenly realize they could price gouge now after decades of not being aware). Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 19:38
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Main Paineframe posted:I can't think of a bigger red flag of institutional rot in Twitter than newly instituting stack ranking in 2022. It's an infamously bad practice in the tech industry, notorious for its longtime use in Microsoft, where its numerous flaws have been very well documented. Throwing Twitter's entire workforce into a crab bucket and only keeping the first 25% to climb out could very well be devastating. I cannot understand why the majority of the substantially talented project managers, various task administrators of various types / people who make tasks get done ever, and qualified senior engineers who get the poo poo put together (to say nothing of the marketing and design people who have to fight to keep twitter appealing and relevant) would ever, ever, ever want to fight an endless battle royale amongst each other for the privilege and honor of sitting atop the mismanaged ruins of the company. They're dusting off their everything.
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Oct 21, 2022 19:40
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Main Paineframe posted:
Facebook could go on forever as is, the problem is that when you can't project growth, Wall Street gets upset because number must go higher or why am I even invested in this?
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Oct 21, 2022 19:44
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The comeback of stack ranking is amazing. It's an epically tried-and-failed approach but it just appeals so well to powerful narcissists that they can't resist.
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Oct 21, 2022 19:47
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Depends on the company. Some companies are reporting record profits, but seeing stock prices plunge because people assumed that they had a huge pandemic boom (like Peloton), but are going to inevitably go bankrupt or just can't maintain the profits/size going forward. Okay, so the market is expecting a recession so people are cautious to put money in. But if the majority of the inflation is price gouging then why has the Commerce Department been reporting that the economy been shrinking?
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Oct 21, 2022 19:48
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I can't find an economics thread, but if the inflation is due to corporate price gouging, why have the markets been reporting losses per quarter and the stock market been so low? Earnings growth is slowing but the markets have not been reporting losses in aggregate, as seen in the chart below. 
plogo fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 19:48
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plogo posted:Earnings growth is slowing but the markets have not been reporting losses in aggregate. Can you explain the second part of your sentence in detail?
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Oct 21, 2022 19:52
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I can't find an economics thread, but if the inflation is due to corporate price gouging, why have the markets been reporting losses per quarter and the stock market been so low? (a) inflation is not due to corporate price gouging. corporations always want to raise prices. they like money! they always want more! inflation is what happens when they can raise prices; because many times they cannot. right now they can raise prices, because demand (in dollars) is higher than supply. this is like when people say that oil prices are high because oil companies are greedy. they're always greedy! that's not an explanation! (b) the stock market is going down for two reasons. first, as interest rates rise, it makes more sense to buy bonds than to buy stocks. stocks are risky, but generally produce a better return than bonds. but as bond interest rates rise, that difference becomes smaller so you'd rather have less stocks. second, the point of interest rates rising is to curb demand in the economy (by making it more expensive to borrow) and thus economic growth will slow, which means less future earnings for your equities.
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Oct 21, 2022 19:52
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Okay, so corporate profits have been shrinking despite the price gouging? Does that mean that people are spending less on the inflated prices? If so, why are the prices inflated then? Corporate profits have been increasing at a slower rate, not shrinking.
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Oct 21, 2022 19:53
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evilweasel posted:(a) inflation is not due to corporate price gouging. corporations always want to raise prices. they like money! they always want more! inflation is what happens when they can raise prices; because many times they cannot. right now they can raise prices, because demand (in dollars) is higher than supply. this is like when people say that oil prices are high because oil companies are greedy. they're always greedy! that's not an explanation! plogo posted:Corporate profits have been increasing at a slower rate, not shrinking. Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 19:55
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Okay, so the market is expecting a recession so people are cautious to put money in. We don't really know exactly how much of inflation is price gouging. But, it is possible for the GDP to shrink if more money if being devoted to servicing existing costs that don't generate additional value (like paying more for existing houses or electricity) to the point that people cut back spending on other "less necessary" things and the businesses/employees who operate in the "less necessary" areas of the economy (plus the companies and suppliers that rely on them) can lose more money than the value created by the oil company getting more profits. Even assuming a nearly perfectly efficient market, an oil company can only invest in so many oil wells, so many jobs for drillers or engineers, or so many suppliers for their materials. They can't necessarily make up the productivity, employment, or GDP of multiple ancillary businesses failing solely through their investment. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 19:55
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Okay, so corporate profits have been shrinking despite the price gouging? Does that mean that people are spending less on the inflated prices? If so, why are the prices inflated then? I don't have particularly strong views about the exact decomposition of inflation but you can see here (from the same document) that profit margins for large (S&P 500 firms) are historically high, which is consistent with price gouging. https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/market-insights/guide-to-the-markets/ 
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Oct 21, 2022 19:58
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plogo posted:I don't have particularly strong views about the exact decomposition of inflation but you can see here (from the same document) that profit margins for large (S&P 500 firms) are historically high, which is consistent with price gouging. Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 20:01
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Automata 10 Pack posted:...that doesn't answer my question. Corporate profits are not the sole determinate of the aggregate size of the economy. I would suggest taking some time to look at the income accounts that increased and decreased, that should clear things up for you.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:02
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Okay, history high profit margins. Cool. Why is the economy contracting then? if you want people to explain a specific quote it might be helpful to link it.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:02
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plogo posted:Corporate profits are not the sole determinate of the aggregate size of the economy. It would be helpful if you simply stated the point you wish to make rather than posting, essentially, "do some homework"
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Oct 21, 2022 20:09
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:We don't really know exactly how much of inflation is price gouging. But, it is possible for the GDP to shrink if more money if being devoted to servicing existing costs that don't generate additional value (like paying more for existing houses or electricity) to the point that people cut back spending on other "less necessary" things and the businesses/employees who operate in the "less necessary" areas of the economy (plus the companies and suppliers that rely on them) can lose more money than the value created by the oil company getting more profits. plogo posted:Corporate profits are not the sole determinate of the aggregate size of the economy.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:09
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Okay, history high profit margins. Cool. Why is the economy contracting then? The post right after your first one asking kind of summed it up. Corporate profits aren't the only thing that factors into GDP. Publicly traded companies are a very large part of the U.S./global economy and employment, but they aren't 100%. More money going to existing energy costs doesn't make it "more productive" in a way that it might for other businesses. There is also only so much employment and GDP growth an energy company can provide. If other businesses are losing money/going under/reducing employment because of the increased cost of energy (that is not providing additional value for the increase in cost), then the total GDP number can go down even if many companies are making more profits. Example: One of those figures that people like to point to is that every dollar spent on SNAP provides about $1.21 in economic value, while the Bush tax cuts provided about $0.31 for each dollar spent because of the distribution of the funds. Even though they both have the same absolute value ($1), both of those dollars have a different effect on GDP.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:10
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So it's energy then? The high price of energy is going to likely force the economy to contract regardless, and other businesses can use this as sort of a "cover" to increase prices and profit while people assume that the company is just suffering, because technically the economy is contracting?
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Oct 21, 2022 20:14
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Fritz the Horse posted:It would be helpful if you simply stated the point you wish to make rather than posting, essentially, "do some homework" My point is that increasing profits and a contracting economy are not inconsistent because corporate profits are not the sum total of the economy.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:15
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I can't find an economics thread, but if the inflation is due to corporate price gouging, why have the markets been reporting losses per quarter and the stock market been so low? Who says the inflation is due to corporate price gouging, and why are they saying that? Is there a particular claim that you've seen that you don't think is right? What kind of arguments have they made in favor of that claim? There have been several mainstream theories to explain the inflation, and while the "corporate price gouging" one is ideologically compelling for many people, it's hardly the only proposed explanation.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:18
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Alright, so the price gouging with more necessary items is causing people to forgo spending in certain areas that are causing those other businesses to be harmed? Thus a contraction? Are those businesses then increasing their prices so they can stay profitable from those who can afford to spend their money there? So a few companies are making record profits at the expense of the rest of the economy? Without going into a ton more of the nitty gritty, this is pretty much right. A lot of economic activity is centered around/produced by growth. If you have less growth, then you need to hire fewer people, if you need to hire fewer people, then leverage for higher wages goes down, if fewer people are employed and leverage for higher wages is down, then people have less money to spend on average, if people have less money to spend, then "non-discretionary" spending will decrease while they spend a larger percent on "necessary" spending, if "non-discretionary" spending decreases, then the businesses that usually get that money, employ people, and support suppliers for those businesses will become less profitable and hire fewer people. That has ramifications that ripple out for the economy at large. It is why Fed rate increases usually lead to economic contraction. If money is more expensive to borrow, then people take fewer risks, if people take fewer risks, then fewer people are going to risk putting a lot of money into building a business, hiring people, or expanding.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:18
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Automata 10 Pack posted:So it's energy then? The high price of energy is going to likely force the economy to contract regardless, and other businesses can use this as sort of a "cover" to increase prices and profit while people assume that the company is just suffering, because technically the economy is contracting? Fewer products (as in the gross domestic product) being produced and consumed has nothing to do with the profits made by that elite class selling the products.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:19
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Main Paineframe posted:Who says the inflation is due to corporate price gouging, and why are they saying that? Is there a particular claim that you've seen that you don't think is right? What kind of arguments have they made in favor of that claim? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wde_2RH4ctM&t=8541s Gerund posted:Fewer products (as in the gross domestic product) being produced and consumed has nothing to do with the profits made by that elite class selling the products. Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 20:24
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Automata 10 Pack posted:It's one I hear from the left a lot, I was just watching this video that Sam Seder was hosting about it and the whole "it's actually price gouging" and "commerce department keeps reporting the economy is contracting" isn't making sense to me. The tl;dr is: - Price gouging is likely part of it. Nobody can mathematically calculate exactly what percentage of inflation is caused by price gouging, but price gouging isn't likely the primary cause. - If Cup A and Cup B both have 50 gallons of water, then you have 100 gallons of water total. If you remove 20 gallons from Cup A and add 10 gallons to Cup B, then you only have 90 gallons of water total. That means you have less total water, even though Cup B increased its water by 20%. Cup A is privately-held corporations, S-Corps, owner-operated businesses, employee productivity and wages, international trade, personal discretionary spending, government spending, and "small businesses." Cup B is publicly-held corporations. The water is GDP. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 20:29
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Automata 10 Pack posted:It's one I've been hearing from a left a bit and kinda brushed it off as copium, I was just watching this video that Sam Seder was hosting about it, which was a little more convincing, but the whole "it's actually price gouging" and "commerce department keeps reporting the economy is contracting" isn't making sense to me. If you hold a trickle-down ideology that private profit must inherently create and lead to economic growth, being presented with facts that those profits are rising and the economy is contracting will be very confusing.
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Oct 21, 2022 20:29
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Fritz the Horse posted:It would be helpful if you simply stated the point you wish to make rather than posting, essentially, "do some homework" So a further step would be to weight these numbers by GDP contribution (or go further into detail into these accounts, or use a different decomposition, or whatever), but mechanically, these are what happened to GDP subaccounts to cause GDP to contract while corporate profits rose. Some of these have an obvious story, like declining Government spending is obviously the result of the end of fiscal stimulus. Other accounts are maybe more complicated, but this is a first step to getting at the question. Obviously, GDP is a flawed measure, but it is the measure that was cited to have created this (non)paradox. 
plogo fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 20:30
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