Steve Scott

Let's agree to respect each others views, no matter how wrong yours may be.

[RAF_Luton @RAF_Luton]

Photo of the Day: The Millennium Falcon undergoing a £800.85bn refit at HNAS Yeovilton (Gloucestershire) to make her ready for this year's #MayTheFourth celebrations

May the Force be with you! #StarWars

Photographed from a Canberra

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

2026 is 5% complete.

[McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team @McLarenF1]

This team won it all 🧡

#McLaren

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

2025 is 83% complete.

[Steve Chalke @SteveChalke]

Wisdom from the great CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters - a series of letters written by Screwtape, a senior demon, to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter, to guide him in corrupting a human soul. As true in the present moment as it was in 1942 when it was first written!

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

A British writer penned the best description of Donald Trump I’ve ever read:

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”

-Nate White

[Steve Scott @DiscipleScott]

https://t.co/QEuhXh8Vdn

[Steve Scott @DiscipleScott]

Says someone who has never read a useful book in his life & really understands nothing about law.

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.

[ARCHIVED - NASA Voyager @NASAVoyager]

35 years ago, I captured the image that would come to be known as the Pale Blue Dot.

From my vantage point beyond Neptune and about 3.7 billion miles from the Sun, my team asked me to look back toward home one final time. -V1

What do you think of when you see this image?

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

2025 is 5% complete.

[Chris Anderson @TEDchris]

With a certain amount of trepidation, I'm posting this open letter to @elonmusk, someone I have admired, but who, right now, is causing me concern. I know I'm not alone in thinking these thoughts. Please like or repost if you're willing... And Elon, if you're listening, please know this is offered in a constructive spirit.

-----

Dear Elon,

A thought hit me this morning.

On top of all your achievements in technology and entrepreneurship, you have become this century's single most influential writer.  You have more than 200 million followers on a powerful platform that you yourself control. And the words that you write flow well beyond just those followers into almost every user of X and far beyond courtesy of extensive media coverage.   This makes Rupert Murdoch at his prime seem inconsequential.

It must feel exhilarating. You made a huge gamble buying Twitter and it seems to have paid off spectacularly to the point that you can use it to massively impact the world, including changing governments.  You believe that X can largely replace most mainstream media. It is the new platform for citizen journalism, and you are citizen number 1.  You don’t need the hassle of editors and fact-checkers. Every single thing you post garners millions of likes and reposts. In a heartbeat you can change the global conversation.  No one in history has had this much power.

So there’s a lot at stake here, and, as it happens, journalism is something I care deeply about. I began my career as a journalist because I believed that good journalism was essential for the healthy functioning of democracy. Today I am worried — quite deeply worried, actually — that in your triumphant seizing of the global conversation, some of the core tenets of journalism are being forgotten. Without them, I think your efforts to make X the respected home of citizen journalism will fail.

There are numerous journalistic principles that matter — Grok can summarize them quite nicely. But there’s one in particular that’s been troubling me. It’s the fairness doctrine. The one that says that before you publish savagely critical claims about an individual, or an institution, you reach out to them for their side of the story. After all, just possibly, you may have missed a key fact or two that would change how people assess what has happened. Just possibly your sources were motivated to cause damage to that individual. Just possibly there’s an alternative explanation of what happened.

So, for example, when you tell hundreds of millions of people that someone should be hanged or jailed for outrageous crimes against humanity, just possibly you should first sound out what those who know those people really well would say about them. Some of your recent posts could literally get someone killed. Do you really want to risk that? How is it possible that you can do this at the very same time that you’re calling on people to make X more positive, more beautiful?  You say you want to maximize un-regretted user-seconds on X.  By far the simplest way you could do this, Elon, is simply to thoughtfully edit what you yourself post.

I get that from your eyes the issues you are championing are unbelievably important and worthy of extreme efforts. But the way you are presenting them is not citizen journalism. It's playground bullying. It’s crass and it’s cruel, and it’s therefore not nearly as effective as it could be.  You’re hearing the cheers of your most loyal followers, but missing the fact you’re making yourself a laughing stock among many who you really want on your side. Long-term that’s going to damage X, your other businesses, and indeed your long-term dreams for humanity.  No one wants to follow a playground bully to Mars.

I miss the old Elon. You can be funny, interesting, insightful and inspiring. You've fought incredibly hard for what you've built. And you may feel you're entitled to do whatever the hell you want with it. But I also know that you understand the danger of holding too tightly to the ring of power, how it can distort someone's judgement and turn them ugly.

I’m hoping you can loosen that ring just a little. For the love of humanity that you profess, I really urge you to embrace the fairness doctrine and showcase a better face of X.

Thanks for listening.

Chris

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

2024 is 88% complete.

[Sandford Police Commentary @Sandford_Police]

Happy Easter to all our residents and visitors in #Sandford

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

2024 is 13% complete.

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

2024 is 2% complete.

[Years Progress @YearsProgress]

2023 is 83% complete.

[Steve Scott @DiscipleScott]

There are two rules for success: 1) Never tell everything you know.

[Steve Scott @DiscipleScott]

Just pay a bit more for your website-server. Extra $10 a month should do the trick. Ask a friendly webmaster about it.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Rate limits increasing soon to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified

[Phil Gould 🇵🇸🖕🥁 @bongosaloon]

The Machine Stops is a short story which blew my 16 year old mind at school, and ten years later in 1983, aged 26, I wrote a song about it …

https://t.co/IhbOl80SCO

[Adam Mastroianni @a_m_mastroianni]

People spend their lives learning hard things the hard way, and then they die, and the next generation has to learn pretty much all the same stuff all over again. Can we do something about that?

https://t.co/XdyZzn0s5j