https://hubski.com/A thoughtful web.https://hubski.com/images/discussion.pnghttps://hubski.com/https://hubski.com/pub/469542https://hubski.com/pub/469542https://hubski.com/pub/469537https://hubski.com/pub/469537https://hubski.com/pub/469531https://hubski.com/pub/469531https://hubski.com/pub/469530https://hubski.com/pub/469530come for the rehashed ideas, stick around for the gemvomitVuitton recycling that damn Kanye bullshit foreverhttps://hubski.com/pub/469510https://hubski.com/pub/469510https://hubski.com/pub/469507https://hubski.com/pub/469507https://hubski.com/pub/469501https://hubski.com/pub/469501The first, only, and perhaps last Texas meetup went down yesterday. spencerflem has been living in the further realms of my neck of the woods, so we met up at Pedernales Falls (pronounced "perda-nahl-us" if you're white, for some reason, trust me). We trekked around the mostly-dry riverbed (pictured in link) for about a half hour, then went further down the river to hang out on a sandy shore, in the shade. Heat index somewhere in the mid 90s F. I kinda regretted not having a swimsuit.We talked some physics and talked some hubski, mostly conspiring against every single one of you in an effort to seize absolute power from mk and ruthlessly rule this domain over the 15 hapless users still around from our castle in Texas. But we decided against it. Instead, a family showed up, and we threw rocks at one specific rock perched on top of another rock a few feet off the river bank until someone knocked it into the river. It was strangely bonding, two small groups, complete strangers, silently making a pact to do the most primitive thing imaginable.Then we went for bar-b-que. It was sooo dope, spencerflem picked damn well. The brisket melted in my mouth. Mrs. am_Unition (be absolutely sure to call her this if you ever meet her) couldn't tag along, unfortunately, but we probably couldn't have done bar-b-que if she had. We woulda had more fun at Pedernales with her, though. Once the sunscreen made it into my eyes, I don't think I was very enjoyable, lol, but spencerflem was a great sport about it. Here we are after successfully late-lunching:One of the things I mused to him about was how maybe Hubski is what a social media website of highly successful people looks like. Mostly, the community is busy out in meatspace, but still checks in from time to time.kleinbl00, he's headed your way! Take care of mah boy.Next, I will hopefully see wasoxygen in December.https://hubski.com/pub/469499https://hubski.com/pub/469499nohttps://hubski.com/pub/469495https://hubski.com/pub/469495https://hubski.com/pub/469493https://hubski.com/pub/469493https://hubski.com/pub/469490https://hubski.com/pub/469490A day late, but certainly not a dollar short!https://hubski.com/pub/445278https://hubski.com/pub/445278At the end of 2018, Inc. Magazine ran a piece on Forever Labs. It was an exciting time for us. We had a lot of press online, from publications like CNBC, Well + Good Bloomberg, etc. But the one that was the most exciting to us was Inc. Magazine. Why? Because it was not just online, it was on the shelves, in real life! I remember seeing the shelves in the airports with them on it and feeling a huge sense of pride. I even rearranged them to be in front of competing magazines. Yes... I'm that ridiculous. We had investors find us through this magazine, many new clients and I still use it as a link to share with prospective clients and business partners. It was written by a guy named Jeff Bercovici. By the time Jeff wrote the piece mk and I had done a lot of press. We were used to how it works. They are introduced to you by your PR company and much of the narrative is predetermined. They talk with you to get some quotes and then write the same piece they would have written even if they'd never met you. Most of the time it's flat, riddled with inaccuracies and bombastic. Click bait. Titles like, "Tech CEO's are paying a small fortune to buy eternal life." Or some such nonsense. Jeff didn't do this. Jeff actually took the time to come and witness a procedure in Orinda, CA. We knew from the first sentence that this would be a different article. It started, "In a clinic in leafy Orinda, California, Anthony, a 45-year-old medical sales rep, lies facedown on an examination table, a sterile sheet draped over his bare bottom."I've been to this clinic many times. "Leafy," is literally the most perfect description you could muster. The scene he sets with the patient is also perfect. He actually wrote this piece. The first paragraph ends, "Attaching a syringe, he slowly draws out 60 milliliters of marrow.It's a rich, dark red. Like beet juice."This is also PEFECT. Not only by description but in the accuracy of the amounts being drawn, etc. SO MANY journalists don't give a damn about the accuracy of things. It's actually scary, because it makes you think, "if they're this off the mark on what they wrote about us..... how off the mark are they about everything else? What can I trust?" Well... I trust Jeff Bercovici. Several months after this piece ran Forever Labs had the opportunity to put together a panel for SXSW. mk was on the panel, and two other friends of ours that run biotech company in the longevity space. But... we needed a moderator. The PR company suggested Jeff. "Great!" was our reply. The panel was awesome. We had a pretty full room and some amazing questions. Jeff was a great moderator. After, we all hung out and Jeff and I got to talking. Where are you from, etc... I always ask everyone if they're a musician. It's one of my first questions. My wife is always embarrassed, not by the question but by how quickly within meeting someone I ask it. Jeff mentioned that one of his longtime friends lived in Michigan and was also a musician. He told me that this person had an amazing family and threw the best party ever. Fortress Party. He told me that his friend converted his 10k square foot home in to a giant fort. The kind you made when you were a kid. The walls were all covered in sheets and pillows, etc. There were many rooms throughout the house all with different themes. This sounded compelling. Compelling enough that I pinged him when I got home for the introduction. That's when I cold emailed hardtaco to hangout. Not only was he completely cool with the cold intro. He suggested he and his entire family meet me and my entire family. We essentially set up a family blind date. We had them over. They were/are awesome. They LOVE to game. In fact, if he's up to it I would highly recommend sharing your blog on the games you are playing and reviewing during quarantine. It's something like a game every day... it's insane. He's insane. His whole family is, but in the best possible way. In the, this is how American's got to the moon kind of way. Anyways, this is all a very long post to say that Forever Labs has had some awesome press over the years that has brought us clients and awesome strategic investment and business partners, but hardtaco is the coolest thing to come out of me hiring a PR company. Welcome to Hubski!Oh, check out his song/project. He posts one song a month and has for like 30 years... (yeah, that's right.. just one a month. Slacker.) Let's hope that hardtaco contributes beyond his once a month song posting. But even if he doesn't, please welcome him. He's become a good friend. lil steve kleinbl00, ButterflyEffect, flac, rezzeJ, ghostoffuffle, ecib, coffeesp00ns ... ya'll would dig his hardtaco project.Onward!-TNGhttps://hubski.com/pub/469484https://hubski.com/pub/469484The election has drawn too close not to document a lot of this. For posterity/myself, at the least.I created a pseudonymous twitter account when it was clear Elon would be forced to buy the thing, which you probably know as “X, The Everything App”. I wanted a first-hand experience inside the descent of one of the most powerful modern communication technologies into an outright fascist propaganda tool, and I got what I wanted. Gone are the innocent days of little family kerfluffles. I was wrong, by the way ("...he's almost done unintentionally ruining it"). After the deal was made, e-neo-Nazi square was the only planned destination. I was naive.JD Vance is white, neo-Nazi, christian theocrat, twitter. Embodied. The foretold One. A shitposter even more hated by the wokes than legend dared promise. But don't be fooled, JD's Haitian blood libel tweets are only a fraction of the reason some city in Ohio is asking for emergency powers; DJ Trump is still spinning the main set, and he's so back on the square. A lot of the agitation (cough tim pool et al.) is stirred up and amplified by foreign actors, overwhelmingly Russia, who basically ran the Hunter laptop op, and the GOP repaid in kind with anti-Ukraine policy and messaging. JD is now openly broadcasting that he is testing the limits of government abstention from intervening with a clear use of twitter to wage stochastic domestic terrorism (crtl+f "Springfield")."But what do the polls say?”. They say establishment media has completely fucking failed, and pretending like this is naught but a horserace same-sidesy election makes you look like a dumbass. Worse than feigned or actual aloofness, WSJ on down and around have completely de-legitimized themselves. A "left-wing", not-daring-at-all article is about as good as we’re gonna get. Perhaps things like Elon suing advertisers for not advertising on twitter (again; advertisers might have left cuz of the Nazi stuff) are primarily about broad legal intimidation, including discouraging any remotely borderline cases of "libel" against Musk. And.. that’s Elon’s actual lifelong business, right? Leveraging what wealth and power he has to get more.On that note, there is probably no way to completely disable twitter with "lawfare" in the united states anymore. Elon has already made a test run in Brazil circumventing a ban of twitter using Starlink. The US military's emerging reliance on Starlink (and that's only what's public) will make it very difficult to enforce any shutdown order in a crazy hypothetical situation I made up where e.g. Trump uses twitter to incite violence in service of his attaining the presidency. Elon, a recipient of billions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies, is then eyeing both some whack-ass new government efficiency(?) cabinet position and the lucrative possibility of millions of Americans subscribing to Starlink if other providers comply with a ban, and Donald Trump's potentially prolific and outright blood libel twitter terrorisms and incitements cannot be silenced. Twitter then leads the fascist revolution terrorist communication media. I now know that this is at least what Elon is hoping for. He’d even use that framing.And regardless of what you think of Brazilian law or neo-Nazi violence incitements, what we are being shown so nakedly, here, is that members of the multi-billionaire class are now fully able to act as a powerful and extra-legal international sociopolitical force, if they want. Elon, daily, signals that he will continue to escalate his defiances.Some of the Trump missteps lately are actually probably somewhat a result of Twitter's re-configuring to boost conservatives, and also because of users leaving due to lack of moderation. At this point, the MAGA and twitter echo chamber is so strong that a lot of MAGA are having serious trouble keeping reality straight. We have no actual stats or information about it whatsoever. I can tell you, unequivocally, that the antisemitic shit especially has exploded. You can find it in most big post threads now. There is no good/easy way to scrape twitter for data from the public side anymore (APIs are tens of thousand$/month to license and I honestly kinda doubt it works anymore) and discern "legitimacy". The only people able to do it are on the inside, and.. yeah something tells me that's not what's being implemented right now.Let’s talk about revenue. A guaranteed power-user twitter botnet is eight dollars per month per bot account. The blue checks. Not All Blue Checks, but many, are bots. Sometimes people will get in a good LLM hack, maybe a full sonnet, but more often, no dice. The single-most damaging configuration change to twitter is putting blue checks at the top of every thread. These people are usually fantastically dumb, if they’re people. And now, you’ll get served an ad if there is one or more response in a thread. It was two replies, up until a few months ago, and several, if not many (at least five, I think) replies before an ad was inserted, two years ago, I think. So Elon is still trying to collect whatever he can, but the fascist pet project is obviously the main utility, for him.But in between all that? Might as well use the most famous celebrity alive's unfavorable political endorsement as an invitation to offer her your sperm, knowing that you're too rich to get your ass beat by her NFL boyfriend. And that's why I recently got banned for 12 hours, for tweeting that I wanted to see Travis Kelce kick Elon Musk's ass. That's incitement of violence. But you can just come back and post a screenshot of the "banned" tweet, I think Elon fired all of their image-to-text capabilities when he came in.Predictions: X (usually referred to as “the everything app”) will undeniably be (/has already been) used to mobilize violence in support of Trump winning the elections and/or illegally taking the White House if he doesn’t. Springfield, Ohio, where THEY ARE EATING THE DOGS was a trial balloon. It’s important to e.g. judge his base’s response to instruction, gauge the responses of local and federal law enforcement, etc., and, so, Trump, while out on bail for an indictment regarding the last insurrection attempt, will be granted a sustained period of extralegal “free speech" from Musk long after Trump has used the platform to perhaps even get (more) people killed. In swing states, especially Pennsylvania, expect roving neo-nazi paramilitary voter intimidation ops, and bomb threats, some or all coordinated in part on twitter. Trump and Musk will blame illegal immigrants for voting irregularities that don’t exist, and many will probably still conduct their public messaging on twitter about all of it. It’s almost certainly going to get nyyasty, guys.Cannot believe this stupid era is still ongoing.https://hubski.com/pub/469474https://hubski.com/pub/469474https://hubski.com/pub/469444https://hubski.com/pub/469444"was going to transform Frozen Airless Radioactive Desert Hell into a place where people could grow wheat?"https://hubski.com/pub/469442https://hubski.com/pub/469442delving - All Paths Divergehttps://hubski.com/pub/469433https://hubski.com/pub/469433Serving up a smoked pecan old fashioned today!https://hubski.com/pub/469421https://hubski.com/pub/469421https://hubski.com/pub/469413https://hubski.com/pub/469413No pic today, don't have time to find a fun one :(https://hubski.com/pub/469412https://hubski.com/pub/469412