Sleepwalking into War, Floyd Shocker, Choose Violins
The People's News for the People's Coin 10/18-10/24
Hey everyone,
This week’s digest covers Israel/Palestine, Tucker Carlson’s episode about George Floyd, AI propaganda, and Violin memes.
Don’t miss memes and news bites at the end!
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Sleepwalking Into WW3
On Monday, Elon gave his strongest statement yet about the Israeli-Palestine conflict by warning, “We are sleepwalking our way into World War three.”
He delivered his warning during a Spaces event with David Sacks and Vivek Ramaswamy. During the forum, a consensus emerged that Israel-Palestine could quickly morph from a regional to global conflict if diplomacy fails.
US political leadership appears intent on escalating the conflict. Last Thursday, Joe Biden asked Congress for $106B in combined aid for Israel, Ukraine, and other crises. Several other members of the Biden Administration have hinted that they expect the conflict to worsen when Israel begins a ground invasion.
From listening to the debate on 𝕏, I get the sense that another Middle East war would be extremely unpopular among regular people. There are early signs of an anti-war consensus among both young liberals…
and populist conservatives:
Yesterday, a man went viral after openly challenging Hillary Clinton in front of a crowd, calling on her to repudiate Biden’s aid package and listen (rather than dictate) to the American people.
Clinton’s response was to tell the man to sit down and be quiet. The crowd at the event cheered, but on 𝕏, the clip was passed around as an example of what it looks like when someone speaks truth to power.
Even a decade ago, the war machine would be able to brush this kind of pushback under the rug and manufacture consent for another US military adventure.
But lately there’s a sense that the political and media establishment has lost control of the narrative. The people have caught onto the ruse, and are watching the old-guard war mongers with beady-eyed scrutiny.
There are many reasons why this war feels different, but two stand out.
First, uncensored social media has played a big role at anti-war coalition, allowing continuous and free-flowing information about the conflict to inform public debate.
Second, historical circumstance has created a situation in which the America-First right and the newly reinvigorated anti-war left are for the most part pointing in the same direction.
They’re not exactly working with each other (yet), but they’re not wasting energy fighting each other either. This is a big step in the right direction.
Division tactics (e.g. conservative commentators describing all pro-Palestine protesters as “pro-Hamas”) are not working—regular people would rather devote their energy toward keeping the US out of another war rather than flaming their countrymen for having the wrong perspective.
The conflict’s most pressing question has still not been answered: how did the the most sophisticated intelligence agency ever allow a ragtag band of terrorists from an impoverished territory to overrun best-protected border in the world.
As a result, speculation persists that the attack was allowed to happen as a pretext for military escalation.
What do you think: will Warhawks escalate the conflict, or can the people mount enough pushback to keep it from getting out of control?
Floyd Shocker
On Friday, Tucker Carlson reported a bombshell: George Floyd was not killed by a police officer.
Carlson cited a new court case in Hennepin County, Minnesota tangential to the Floyd case.
In the case, a county prosecutor named Amy Sweasy gave a sworn deposition that state Medical Examiner Andrew Baker said Floyd’s autopsy showed “there were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck.”
Instead, Floyd’s death was attributed to a fatal concentration of fentanyl in his body, as well as habitual drug use.
The report was consistent with Floyd’s autopsy, which has been circulating on social media for over a year, and showed Floyd’s blood contained fatal levels of opiates.
Floyd’s death and the ensuing BLM riots of 2020 are a pivot point in American political and social history.
Carlson pointed out that, in 2020, various aspects of society were reshaped under the premise that Floyd’s murder represented an example of systemic racism. Many of the reforms made in Floyd’s name continue to be in place today, including the decriminalization of theft in several major American cities and reductions in funding for police.
Candace Owens’s in-depth documentary The Greatest Lie Ever Sold examined corruption within BLM, which organized nationwide protests in Floyd’s name during Covid, arguing that the organization funneled tens of millions in donations into suspicious real estate purchases. In May of this year, several outlets reported on BLM’s financial decline.
Next month, a new documentary on the Floyd saga releases called The Fall of Minneapolis.
AI Propaganda
Last week, a video of a car fire went viral on 𝕏.
The video was generated by Unreal Engine. To the naked eye, it is indistinguishable from real video footage.
On a recent episode, Joe Rogan discussed the how generative AI could be used for propaganda. The topic is timely given the way images on 𝕏 are being spread to elicit emotional reactions, and how difficult it is to determine which are and aren’t real. Take a look!
Meme Theory: Choose Violins
After a nearly two week draught, silly memes returned to 𝕏 over the weekend.
The subject was violins.
The gag started when Elon offered to pay Wikipedia a billion dollars to change its name to Dickipedia for a year.
Elon has been roasting Wiki and its founder Jimmy Wales lately for shady connections to a censorship organization called NewsGuard
MyDoge founder Bill Lee commented that Elon “chose violence this morning”, a popular meme phrase.
Elon responded he was choosing violins.
Elon’s post inspired some funny playing on the violence/violins homophone.
I hadn't realized violin/violence was a thing, but it seems right up Elon's alley, similar the "let that sink in" meme.
The strange/spooky thing about this is that 𝕏 hasn't been as much fun lately because so much energy on the platform is directed toward the Israel-Palestine war—i.e. because of violence. I can't remember a time since E took over that the vibe felt this low.
Elon acknowledged ad revenue drops during war because advertisers don't want their products associated with violence. The negative war energy has stopped any funny memes from gaining traction too.
Part of the magic of memes is that they can transmute negative energy into positive. Sunday night, Elon kept the violin meme going this evening with another post.
I guess the lesson is that when life gives you violence, choose violins.
Dogey Treats: News Bites
𝕏
Walter Isaacson praised the democratization of journalism on 𝕏.
𝕏 is rolling out a new feature called “see similar posts.” Elon said,”This is our biggest application of AI so far. Much more to come.”
Elon and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales exchanged views on the quality of journalism on 𝕏 and in the legacy news. Elon highlighted Wales’ connection to a censorship-focused organization called Newsguard, writing, “Disband Newsguard! Anything with a name that sounds like it came out of an Orwell novel should never be trusted.” On Sunday, Elon offered to donate a billion dollars to Wikipedia to change its name to “Dickipedia.”
Elon said he would bring back Vine. He said the right way to think about 𝕏 was as open-source news.
US Politics
The House Speaker drama continued to unfold with Congress entering its fourth week without a speaker. Steve Scalise’s mainstream bid was blocked by populist Republicans, and Jim Jordan’s populist bid was blocked by mainstream Republicans. Tom Emmer (mainstream GOP) became the leading candidate, but withdrew his bid after after Trump criticized his bid and it became clear he would not win over enough Republicans. Tuesday night, Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy floated the idea of returning to the position and making Jim Jordan “Assistant Speaker.” Congressman Troy Nehls said he would move to nominate Trump, and #SpeakerTrump repeatedly trended over the weekend. Is the entire Speaker drama staged?
Douglass Mackey was sentence to seven months in prison for posting memes about Hilary Clinton. Elon weighed in: “[Mackey’s memes] had no material impact on the election. What prison sentences were given out to those who suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop information? That *did* have a material impact on the election.”
RFK Jr reparations debate, war support, moving to left as independent? A clip of RFK explaining to the Breakfast Club explaining why he favors strengthening communities instead of cash reparations.
Biden paid $2.7M cash for home, James Comer 200k check from Biden’s brother Jim.
After Joe Biden visited Israel, he gave an impromptu interview on an airplane. The interview caught fire online, not for anything he said, but for the sudden appearance of a double chin on his face, and the chin went viral as a meme on both X and TikTok, with Biden was wearing a mask. In a rally on Tuesday, Trump appeared to reference the meme.
A hilarious Vivek Ramaswamy impersonator went viral on TikTok.
Global Financial System
Are Wall Street investors being forced to sell real estate investments?
Elon pinned responsibility for SBF’s criminal activities with FTX on his mom, who “literally wrote a book about how crime is not the fault of the criminal, which her son clearly internalized and landed him in this pickle!”
Israel/Paletine
Monday night, Tucker Carlson hosted Col Douglass McGregor, who argued that America is angling for war with Iran.
Glenn Greenwald questioned conservatives were suddenly supporting censorship against pro-Palestine protestors. Ron DeSantis directed Florida universities to deactivate pro-Palestinian groups for violating Florida’s laws against anti-Semitism. An EU Commission recommended fast-tracking a Digital Censorship/Surveillance Act because of attacks by Hamas
The Evangelical Church in Jerusalem said they were given three warnings by Israel prior to hospital bombing. Israel claimed to intercept a recording from Hamas admitting to bombing the hospital by mistake. The authenticity of the recording was disputed. Did the US media intentionally manufacture consent for bombing hospitals ahead of Tuesday’s strike? NYT was found to have used a fake photo to report on the bombing.
A hostage freed by Hamas spoke positively about her treatment by the organization, but CNN misrepresented her story.
Vladimir Putin said US aircraft carriers are within range of Russia’s supersonic missiles
Joe Biden said Hamas’s attack on Israel represented fifteen 9/11s.
Israel bombed a 12th-century Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza, causing an outcry among American religious conservatives.
Israel’s X account argued that the country is not bound by the International Geneva Convention rules for warfare.
Health
Joe Rogan and Coleman Hughes discussed why no pro-vaccine experts will debate RFK Jr.
Is AI an effective tool to facilitate certain modalities of therapy?
Memes of the Week
Elon’s memes
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