[1] https://uwm.edu/free-speech-rights-responsibilities/faqs/wha...
in case anyone else wonders what’s a “supervisor”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Board_of_Super...
This is not borne out by historical events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Sham...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
Stochastic terrorism
(Edited to add: However, an article discussed yesterday in a now-flagged discussion did have the letters: >>39199703 )
https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/garry-tan-death-wish-sf-sup...
He hasn’t liked it when the threats were the other way:
> In the past, Tan has not been receptive to jokes about him: When commenting on San Francisco community organizer Julian La Rosa, who had said that “millionaires and landlords should be guillotined,” Tan seemed to take the jest deadly seriously.
> “This is not a joke,” he posted. “This guy wants to guillotine people.”
> “This kind of stuff should have zero place in San Francisco politics,” he later said.
When people with power stay things, other people take it as permission to do things that are said or implied in that speech. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
edit: ah yeah he is lol:
> Stochastic terrorism refers to political or media figures publicly demonizing a person or group in such a way that it inspires supporters of the figures to commit a violent act against the target of the speech. Unlike incitement to terrorism, this is accomplished by using indirect, vague, or coded language that allows the instigator to plausibly disclaim responsibility for the resulting violence. Global trends point to increasing violent rhetoric and political violence, including more evidence of stochastic terrorism.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/22/technology/one-family-man...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XASNM1XEQPs
Like I said, this "online rant, threat of harm" stuff (to paraphrase the story) is pretty supremely cringey.
> COWEN: Isn’t it the voters you need to replace? Those people got elected, reelected.
> GRAHAM: Well, the reason San Francisco fundamentally is so broken is that the supervisors have so much power, and supervisor elections, you can win by a couple hundred votes. All you need to do is have this hard core of crazy left-wing supporters who will absolutely support you, no matter what, and turn out to vote.
> Everybody else is like, “Oh, local election doesn’t matter. I’m not going to bother.” [laughs] It’s a uniquely weird situation that wasn’t really visible. It was always there, but it wasn’t visible until Ed Lee died. Now, we’ve reverted to what that situation produces, which is a disaster.
Ranting on Twitter should not be a crime IMO
Mission Local is a non profit org in SF that has done really great work.
Many of their articles focus on corruption in the city government, for example https://missionlocal.org/2022/08/nuru-sentenced/
You can see their funders here: https://missionlocal.org/our-donors/
Or, you know, just be drunk off of Twitter?
Elon barely gets away with it, and everyone else isn't that rich.
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ugD3_yt756w (goes without saying, but NSFW)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Board_of_Super...
Huh?
There were whole articles written about the song and the context of the time in which it was written. Tupac lived a notoriously violent life and saw himself as a legit street gangster despite the actual reality of the opposite.
From 2017:
That opening line—that egregious, confrontational, hate-filled opening line—was one of the most unforgettable utterances ever committed to wax by the late Tupac Shakur. It’s been 20 years since the release of 2Pac’s scathingly brutal diss track “Hit ’Em Up,” a song that came to embody the venom behind the Death Row/Bad Boy beef of the mid-’90s and an easy reference for the antagonistic figure many saw 2Pac as in his final months on this earth.
There was a palpable sense of dread hanging over hip-hop in mid-’96.
The final paragraph of the article sums it up:
In the wake of Shakur’s murder, “Hit ’Em Up” would become a chilling epitaph for a feud that seemed to spiral out of control—even more so after the Notorious B.I.G. met a similar fate in March 1997. Taken on its own merit, it’s one of the greatest diss records in hip-hop history; but attached to the moment, it was a lot more than that. Something more volatile. Something more dangerous.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tupacs-hit-em-up-the-most-sava...
Reminded me of a fascinating video I recall; Bush and Reagan debate illegal immigration in 1980's primary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok
They sound more liberal than half of today's Democrats.
However, just because it's narrowly legal to say something doesn't mean it's a good idea; this kind of thing does tremendous self harm to the speaker's public reputation.
The act of providing "thoughtful criticism" doesn't make it OK to tell people you wish them dead.
>Ranting on Twitter should not be a crime IMO
I don't really see anyone saying that it should be. People are welcome to rant on Twitter, just as people are welcome to take issue with said rant, and then form an opinion of that person based on the words they chose to post.
Folks interested can read what CCHO said about SB35 here: https://www.sfccho.org/in-the-news/2018/10/13/opinion-alarmi...
The crux of their concern/prediction is:
> As currently written, the practical outcome of SB 35 will be to further expedite and accelerate market-rate approvals in the small handful of California communities where the real estate market is already hot – communities that are overwhelmingly urban, low-income, and predominantly people of color. These are the same communities that are currently grappling with displacement and gentrification, and typically have terrible imbalances of market-rate housing development compared to affordable housing. Simply accelerating approvals in those communities is just a recipe to spur even more aggressive gentrification.
I personally think folks like the CCHO are taking a misguided policy approach to solving/ameliorating the problems they worry about, and sometimes behave disingenuously (and should be called out, with specific details, when they do so). But that doesn't make their concerns illegitimate.
Here's an example of an earlier direct reply by Wiener to CCHO about the bill: http://www.beyondchron.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Senato...
> This housing crisis will never be solved without a solution that includes a significantly increased supply of all types of housing, at all income levels, in every community throughout California, both subsidized and non-subsidized. The devastating eviction crisis and rapid displacement of low- and middle-income people from cities results, in large part, from failing to build enough housing for the past half century. SB 35 empowers the state to take action and ensure that every single community is approving its fair share of housing – especially those communities currently punting their housing needs to neighboring jurisdictions.
What's wrong with the "woke crowd?" Is that not merely a nebulous group of people who have political opinions with which you disagree? What's wrong with them wanting to "cancel" you? Is that not an exercise of free speech and free association? Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from consequences. "Cancellation" just a social consequence, is it not?
Behind each of these question marks is nuance: I like Ken White's treatment of the topic: https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham...
Here is Calvin Welch, friends with Marti and Cohen and housing guru to Sup. Preston, saying Home S.F., a gentler streamlining measure vs. SB35, was ethnic cleansing: https://missionlocal.org/2016/01/sf-delays-controversial-hou....
I’ll keep looking for the other statement I had in mind.
I am going to quote your post out of order to answer easier(hopefully you don't mind).
The reason I broke it down is to make the point that I feel those real world consequences are minuscule enough to the point where it does not matter. Maybe I should have clarified more in my prior post.
> I know several people who love tesla cars, but wont buy them due to Musk association, so I am going off that.
Its funny as I know multiple college professors with the same mindset. They ended up buying 80-100k BMWs or Mercedes Benz instead of Tesla. The market above 50k represents a small portion of the market. I call this the managerial class price tier. The further you go down the more people become price sensitive and that is what Musk is counting on.
He was never going to own 100% of the car market in the US, there are just too many players with more entering soon(The Chinese). So if some(maybe even the majority of) liberals refuse to buy Teslas, I am not sure if it would matter long term. The demographic makeup of his buyers may shift but the absolute numbers wont (once the numbers settle after the Chinese enter the market). His cars are just so much more competitive vs everyone else and selfish interests will sway enough buyers especially when the majority of buyers are price sensitive above all else. Its like that old push in the 70-80s to "Buy American" as the Japanese flooded the market with much better products at way better prices. In the end GM saw their market share crumble from ~50% to what it is today (~17%)
Ditto for everything else. The DOD working less with him is only a net negative to themselves. Its been 1+years since the announcement of the twitter takeover. If anything would have changed at DOD we would have seen it by now. Instead efforts at SpaceX have only accelerated since he exposed his views on Twitter.
Just as a small example: In 2023 1 year post twitter: World record for launches of any rocket in a single year (96) beating the second best record (Soviet Union at 60 launches) and anything the US govt has done, Falcon heavy improvements surpassed the world record for heavy lift vehicles(Saturn V). A record number of those launches have also been private for the government. I dont see any evidence the DOD is slowing down with them. They are speeding up.
Source of the above claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8GZ0H0xSFo
>Similarly, Musk wants twitter to be successful, and hostility to and from the political left has made that all but impossible.
There are theories that he wanted to move twitter in this direction as it killed the only major way for people to push back against the powers that be. Just think of how many revolutions started on Twitter and sustained itself due to the real time nature of the platform. Now we are seeing Pro-Palestinian people being banned. I really don't know what his plan is for Twitter and it is still baffling that he continues to execute brilliantly in his other companies yet this remains a dumpster fire.
>Early musk benefitted greatly from his social reputation and hype. My perspective is that his public persona since ~2019 has been more of a drag than boost.
I was part of the Tesla "skeptic" community from 2016-2020. I saw first hand how so many industry experts were shouting from the rooftops at how terrible Musk was as a person. The Left only discovered this side of Musk when it was inconvenient for them. Before that they were happy to ignore the actual people working in industry and enjoy this "real life tony stark". The skeptic community was continually wrong about him. Every giant pitfall that they said was coming did indeed come but he always found a way around it. He has proven (to me) that in this country, the kind of success he has gotten makes his public persona not important in the grand scheme of things. Until something drastically changes, (maybe an extreme anti-corporate government that is just impossible until at least 2028) he is going to keep flying further and further forwards regardless of what people think of him. Hell this year is the year I finally started believing that landing someone on Mars will happen and he will be the one that makes it possible. If that happens no one is going to remember the leftists that criticized him in the history books.
* and past explanations over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Take OpenAI's Head of Research (quite the public role given they're a research company) openly calling for genocide in Gaza, asking to "finish them", "More! No mercy!" including civilians, over a series of 80 deranged tweets. [1] Zero repercussions, still happily heading research at a company whose supposed objective is developing AGI for the benefit of mankind.
Also very quickly scrubbed off of HN [2].
[1] >>39124666
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20231226171217/https://news.ycom...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RFZJKA736UBAH/ref...
I'll reserve judgement until we see how a16z's "digital asset class" thing pans out. Some might even say blockchains are eating the world.
That stiff upper lip has, perhaps, become a bit more relaxed.
> Verbal harassment
> Peskin has been known to make inappropriate late night phone calls to public officials and private citizens.[9] For example, he called the Port of San Francisco director Monique Moyer several times about cutting their funding over disagreements concerning waterfront building height limits. Mayor Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle that people around city hall had been complaining about Peskin's behavior for years.[49] However, former San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos has said Peskin's alleged behavior falls "well within the boundaries of the system" and that it's "not unusual in politics at any level of government."[49]
> In 2018, at the scene of the St. Patrick's Day fire in North Beach, Peskin was reportedly intoxicated while he verbally berated then-Deputy Fire Chief of Operations Mark Gonzalez. Peskin has denied being intoxicated at the time but has apologized for his behavior.[50]
> In June 2021, Peskin announced in a statement that he would be entering into alcohol treatment.[51] Peskin apologized for behavior that he attributed to his alcohol problem, but also announced that he planned to remain in office while in treatment.[52]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Peskin#Verbal_harassment
>“I apologize to the Board of Supervisors for my comments late last night in a post,” Tan wrote. “There is no place, no excuse and no reason for this type of speech and charged language in discourse. I am sorry for my words and regret my poor decision. I love San Francisco. I know the community will hold me accountable and keep focused on our true mission: making San Francisco a vibrant, prosperous and safe place.”
Having seen him talk on video he seems like a decent guy who is not very good at dealing with conficts. See eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yMc99fpfY&t=630s