Running up his score with a cheat

Crisis! Emergency! Elon Musk discovered a terrible injustice!

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s.

Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration.

I’ve never really worried about this before, but my tweets make less of a splash than Joe Biden’s. I would have thought this was no big deal — he’s the president, I’m some schmoe in Minnesota — but now that you mention it, that is unfair. People should pay more attention to me! So far, all I’m able to do is lie on the floor and kick and scream and cry about it, but Elon has control. He has engineers. He can hack the code.

That’s what he did. He told his engineers to cheat and artificially inflate his numbers.

By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his tweets will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.

Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told. The code also allows Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the core ranked feed, now known as “For You.”

That explains why people opening the app Monday found that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to one internal estimate.

Keep that in mind when Musk brags about how important he is, based on “engagement” and “followers” and “traffic”. He’s cheating big time at this game.

Here’s a good thing to remember: Elon Musk is just dumb.

Magic is not mechanism

Today’s Oglaf is appropriate and entirely work-safe!

It makes a good point, that magic isn’t an explanation for much of anything — you need some chain of causality and evidence, with some mechanism at each step. You don’t just get to say “it’s magic” or “it’s a miracle.”

Bonus, the comic pokes fun at that absurd ad hoc magic system in the Harry Potter books that is nothing but lazy plot gimmicks.

Worst review ever

I would be the worst person in the world to review this new video game, Hogwarts Legacy. I don’t play many video games, and I dislike all the Harry Potter stuff — I got the books to encourage my kids to read, but found them boring and repetitive and full of plot holes myself. And ever since JK Rowling has demonstrated that she’s a revolting bigot. I’m not going to touch this game, let alone play it or review it.

The person you want to review it is someone who loved Harry Potter, who was a deep Rowling fan (at least once upon a time), and an experienced game reviewer. Something like this review in Wired. You can tell it’s driven by the disappointment the author feels.

When I was a kid, every word that flowed from J. K. Rowling’s pen wrote magic into my world, but now every word she puts out just hurts my heart. Every homophobic or transphobic thing queer kids hear growing up becomes a voice that follows them for a long time. We hear relatives, friends, and parents say awful things about us and to us. For a lot of us, we fight those voices every day. When one of those voices comes from the author who taught you about accepting yourself, a person you thought truly saw you and kids like you, it hurts in a way I honestly hope she never understands. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

The final assessment:

The story is rooted in anti-Semitic tropes. The gameplay feels dated. The graphics feel like they’re a couple generations behind. All the characters are one-dimensional. It doesn’t stay true to the established lore. Every character feels like an off-brand version of the characters we know and love. There’s no sense of place. No magic, no heart.

Yeah, I don’t think there’s any way I’d ever play this game.

Keep authoritarians away from all children

They look like normal human beings!

I have a confession to make: I’m a heterosexual male. I find women’s bodies attractive. I’ve looked at porn, and even found some of it titillating.

That fact does not overwhelm my interactions with women, and isn’t even a minor factor in how I regard them. I don’t “rate” women, and I don’t collect pornography — it’s not that interesting. Collecting photos of random naked women is more than a little creepy.

So there are a lot of things I don’t understand about this.

A former deacon for Moscow’s Christ Church has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for possessing child pornography.

Alex Lloyd was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Coeur d’Alene this week. Judge Lynn Winmill handed down the sentence and ordered Lloyd to pay $5,000 in restitution and placed him on probation for 20 years.

Lloyd pleaded guilty in federal court in August.

Adult pornography isn’t criminalized, but if it were, I’d be safe, even after confessing that I like women’s bodies. I don’t find the idea of collecting computer images of sexy people at all appealing. Don’t they know that real relationships are much more satisfying? What is going on in the heads of these fools? They’re obsessed with some of the most vile pornography I can imagine!

And then there’s this recent bust.

A Chicago man faces several child pornography charges in Cook County after a federal investigation infiltrated the encrypted media app Telegram and found a cross-country network of people sexually exploiting children, the Sun-Times has learned.

The work of Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona, dubbed Operation Swipe Left, led agents to Norris “Nick” Stauffer, 27, who is charged here with disseminating child pornography, records show.

It also resulted in criminal charges against more than a dozen people elsewhere — including at least two with political ties — amid allegations of livestreamed abuse, kidnapping threats and the production and distribution of child pornography.

A federal judge called some of the allegations “horrific.” When agents raided one suspect’s home, video depicting the sexual abuse of an infant was allegedly playing on a screen. And Cook County Circuit Judge Mary Marubio stressed to Stauffer in February 2022 that “this is not a victimless crime.”

“This is a crime that preys on children and exploits children,” the judge said, according to a court transcript.

At least 17 people have been charged in all, including in Arizona, Wisconsin, Washington, D.C., California and South Africa, authorities say. Judges have handed significant prison time to nine of them. Ages of the group’s victims ranged from 6 months to 17 years old, according to a Homeland Security Investigations official.

Yeesh. It’s like trying to understand serial killers — it makes no sense, but somehow the culprits find gratification in it. The investigators can’t find any thread of a connection between all these wicked people.

Eric McLoughlin, deputy special-agent-in-charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Phoenix, Arizona, said most of the defendants charged come from more varied backgrounds than Hageman and Verastigui. They included a youth soccer coach, an amusement park employee and the son of a police officer, McLoughlin said.

Records show Stauffer worked for a grocery chain.

“We often see that the types of individuals involved in these horrific acts, really, they come from all different walks of life,” McLoughlin said.

Except, maybe, one thing they’re overlooking. One of the scumbags worked for the Republican party, another for Turning Point USA. All of them were using Telegram, a service popular among conservatives. They were happily chatting with one another, thinking they were protected by encryption, and reinforcing their sickness with extreme comments.

Separately, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., filed charges in February 2021 against Verastigui, who has been identified as a former Republican National Committee staffer in multiple news reports. Prosecutors alleged Verastigui told a group he “can’t stop thinking about touching, raping and killing a newborn baby.”

All of them conservative. Alex Lloyd was a member of a notoriously conservative church. Also, all of them men. These are the kind of men who protest loudly about “groomers” and think drag queens reading books to children is somehow nefarious. There’s got to be a connection in there, somewhere.

So that’s what it’s like to work with Musk

He’s just a horrible man, and he’ll fire you for telling the truth.

On Tuesday, Musk gathered a group of engineers and advisors into a room at Twitter’s headquarters looking for answers. Why are his engagement numbers tanking?

This is ridiculous, he said, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.

Uh-oh. He’s got socialmediaitis. The first sign of the problem is when you get obsessed with your numbers, and then you start believing that the number of people who look at you is a measure of your personal worth, and then your head starts to swell and you begin to believe you deserve every bit of attention. Musk is exhibiting ‘influencer’ ego.

One of the company’s two remaining principal engineers offered a possible explanation for Musk’s declining reach: just under a year after the Tesla CEO made his surprise offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion, public interest in his antics is waning.

Employees showed Musk internal data regarding engagement with his account along with a Google Trends chart. Last April, they told him, Musk was at “peak” popularity in search rankings, indicated by a score of “100.” Today, he’s at a score of nine. Engineers had previously investigated whether Musk’s reach had somehow been artificially restricted but found no evidence that the algorithm was biased against him.

Yes. He’s demonstrated beyond any doubt that he’s a hardcore twit, and has become much less interesting. His critics (like me) are realizing that he’s substanceless, and I suspect many of his fans are becoming uncomfortable at seeing their hero’s frequent gaffes. All the news about Musk is bad news nowadays.

Musk did not take the news well.

You’re fired, you’re fired, Musk told the engineer.

And that’s how an incompetent boss drives his company into a crater.

For this day of social media glitches, we thank you, O Lord

Twitter is back up, which gives me mixed feelings. At least I am grateful that Elon Musk is once again exposed as an incompetent manager. How many more times must that happen before his legion of worshipful fans realize it?

Another blessed event: YouTube has banned Kent Hovind! His KentHovindOfficial channel has been shut down, all of his videos erased. Hallelujah! To add insult to injury, he briefly appeared to complain about his deletion, and then urged everyone to go to his second channel, Dinosaur Adventure Land…then that was wiped out and deleted! Ah, such sweet schadenfreude.

There is still work to be done. Matt Powell, his mini-me, still has his MattPowellOfficial channel, which he can use to trumpet hate. Amusingly, Powell just recently left Dinosaur Adventure Land to return to his ‘ministry’ in Michigan. Hovind had a little farewell party in which he suggested Powell could return in a few years to take over DAL, clearly offering to make him his heir…and in the video, Powell flatly said no. Poor Kent. Abandoned. Denied. In public.

I guess it was Whack-a-Creationist Day.

I think Twitter might be done

Today, Twitter rolled out a new feature for subscribed users: they can post 4,000 character long tweets now.

But what if I don’t want to read long blog posts on a micro-blogging site? What if I’d rather not deal with long-winded assholes clogging up the feed? I guess I don’t have a choice, except, of course, that I’ll instantly block anyone who posts a treatise.

Worse still, though, I just got this message:

Oh no! I must have been chattering up a storm today. Got carried away. I just couldn’t shut up. Supposedly, the limit is 2400 tweets/day. But I’ve been tied up in lab and classes all day! How could I have done that?

So I looked to see how much ol’ blabbermouth PZ had babbled today.

6.

It was 6 tweets, and that broke Twitter’s capacity.

OK, that’s fine, I can switch to my Mastodon account and go crazy. Maybe I’ll post 8 times today. 10 times if I feel like flooring the accelerator.

Could we come up with a more boring title?

This weekend, it’s time for another Podish-Sortacast, and this one is called “Organizations”.

OK, I’m falling asleep already. It’s all a ruse, though, to lure everyone into a false sense of security: the plan is to talk about all those organizations that have failed us, discussing things like the Andrew Torrez case.

Uh-oh, I just realized…Freethoughtblogs is an organization, of sorts. A very loose organization, with me as the nominal head. This could take an ominous turn, becoming a revolution and a coup, all in real time during the broadcast. Maybe it’ll be painfully exciting after all!