Well here is a headline you do not like to see about a man who has his fingers in basically every corner of the American defense establishment
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by [email protected]
Imagine wanting to talk through your personal problems with somebody, and thinking "I know, I'll call VLADIMIR PUTIN"
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Grant Gulovsenreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
@jalefkowit Seems like it could be an issue. Would be cool if someone who could do something about it actually did something about it.
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Grant Gulovsen last edited by [email protected]
@gulovsen The optimist in me hopes that it's a lame-duck problem -- levering Musk out of his unique position would be an enormous political lift, Biden doesn't want to try it with Harris out there trying to win an election, assuming she wins it'll be on her to-do list for then.
The cynic in me however worries that the optimist in me is an idiot
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@jalefkowit @gulovsen if they were going to do something to him, they would have done it a few years ago, like the first time he blew off the SEC
Like a certain other dipshit who likes to call Putin, he is dumb enough to make everyone else in a position to stop him feel like they can get what they want by humoring him a little longer. That’s the grift
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@jalefkowit Good thing the story's behind a paywall where only GOPer subscribers to WSJ will see it.
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@12thRITS I don't get a paywall for it in either Firefox or Chrome. Maybe they just like me better. Who knows
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Jason Lefkowitzreplied to Jason Lefkowitz last edited by
@12thRITS I should probably note here that gripes about news stories being behind a paywall are a real gear-grinder for me, because:
1. I can't do anything about it
2. If you're on fedi, you probably know how to get around a paywall
3. Reporters who break stories like this deserve to get paid, and paywalls are the only way anyone's found to make that work reliably -
Jason Lefkowitzreplied to AN/CRM-114 last edited by [email protected]
@flyingsaceur @gulovsen The optimist in me says that the difference between then and now is that now there are probably big brass in the military-industrial complex screaming that Musk is a national security problem, and those are voices presidents actually listen to. (Well, most presidents anyway.) Whereas no president is going to take a political risk to enforce an SEC violation.
Meanwhile the cynic in me is yelling at the optimist to stop talking in public
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@12thRITS @jalefkowit Do paywalls really work to get reporters paid though? Has anyone ever seen an article, hit the paywall, and decided to get a subscription so they could read that article? Do reporters get paid based on how many people read their articles? What percentage of subscriptions goes to reporters?
I think it's a convenient story for newspaper owners to have us believe that there isn't a better way to -
@charles @12thRITS You can tell paywalls work, because all the publications that used to not have them either have them now or are out of business.
There are lots of publishers who only put them up reluctantly, because they would have preferred a model that did not restrict circulation. But nobody has been able to find a reliable one yet; the ad market has collapsed, donations never amount to much, government funding is non-existent, private philanthropy means being in the pocket of a mad billionaire.
If you've got a non-paywall model that would generate reliable revenue without cutting circulation, you should pitch it to them.
