The funniest thing about this situation is that Elon Musk is so pissed off at not getting to do something illegal and get away with it by being a billionaire for once in his life that he has been -and I’m 100% serious here- making photo edits of our Supreme Court minister dressed as fucking Voldemort. Literal little kid taping a picture of someone they don’t like to a dartboard kind of behavior.

Brazilian Supreme Court: Hey, uh. Just letting you know that what you’re doing is a crass violation of Brazilian law and if you don’t remedy it on the next 24h we’ll shut your website down in Brazil.

Elon Musk:

Sorry, I just looked it up and it turns out I got it slightly wrong: Elon Musk didn't photoshop a picture of Alexandre de Moraes, the Brazilian Supreme Court minister into Voldemort. Pretty silly of me to think someone like him would put in the effort to actually edit a picture himself.

What ACTUALLY happened was that Elon Musk first compared Alexandre de Moraes to Voldemort, then posted an Al generated image of him behind bars and told him to "mark his words because it'll happen for real someday", then posted another Al generated picture of him as a roll of toilet paper and then, finally, posted a picture of him photoshopped into a Sith Lord that he claimed had been generated by that shitty Grok Al thing they came up with, just to eventually admit that it was actually some random edit someone else had made he took from Google Images because "Al made him look too badass". In this order.

Well, it’s a little bit of a convoluted story, but remember the US capitol invasion by Trump Supporters in January 2021? Brazil was being governed by our own far-right asshole back then as well, Jair Bolsonaro. When he was running for president, his political party orchestrated a large misinformation campaign, speeding fear mongering rumors about the left through social media and instant messaging apps to try and sway people into voting for them. A bunch of these rumors were, unsurprisingly, about how “the left is teaching your kids to be gay in school.” Even after he Bolsonaro was elected, there still were lots of people and communities in these platforms dedicated to spreading rumors in his favor.

Bolsonaro, however, did such a shitty job handling the COVID pandemic and was responsible for (and very indifferent about) so many people losing their lives that it irreversibly soured his popularity. As a result, he wasn’t reelected in 2022 and lost to Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftist party candidate. So, in January 2023, two days after the anniversary of the US capitol invasion, Bolsonaro’s remaining supporters were called to arms through these misinformation spreading platforms to storm Brazil’s Supreme Court building, the congress building and the presidential palace to try and stage a coup and reinstate Bolsonaro as president. They weren’t successful, thankfully, but they caused a lot of damage to the buildings and hurt people in the process.

Ever since this happened, the Brazilian supreme court has been trying to properly identify and bring every person responsible for this attack to justice, including the people who were behind the scenes spreading rumors and organizing the whole thing. So it was ruled that the social media and messaging apps that were used to spread misinformation and organize this attempted coup should hand the information they had about these people over so they could be properly investigated and prosecuted, and ban them from using their services. Not doing so was, by very definition, obstruction of Brazilian justice and therefore a criminal act. Twitter, at the time not ran by a conservative dipshit, was cooperative at first.

Enter Elon Musk, known conservative dipshit, who takes over Twitter, changes it to X and refuses to cooperate with the investigation, saying that it is a “violation of the free speech of the accused”. Upon being told by our Supreme Court minister, Alexandre de Moraes, that he was breaking Brazilian law, he got all pissy, ordered all of the X offices in Brazil to be closed down, accused Alexandre de Moraes of “just wanting his political opponents to be silenced”, threatening to unban everyone involved who had been previously banned before he took over X and calling him “not even a real minister because he wasn’t elected” Yeah, no shit, dumbass. Ministers get appointed by the president over here.

Anyway, due to being a dumbass, Musk didn’t realize that closing down X’s offices in Brazil wouldn’t really change the fact that he was still breaking Brazilian law and, in fact, was just more obstruction of justice. So, Alexandre de Moraes gave him until the 31st to send or appoint a new legal representative for X in Brazil to handle the court proceedings or X would be shut down in all of Brazil until he did. That’s when Musk started the Voldemort shit and made it clear he would NOT do that and saying that Alexandre de Moraes should be the one sent to jail for… I don’t even know. Wanting people who committed crimes to face the consequences of it?

To sum it up… X is almost definitely going to close down indefinitely in Brazil because Elon Musk can’t stop himself from acting like a petulant toddler whenever he’s told to do something he doesn’t want, is dying on the hill of “protecting the of free speech” of far-right criminals and the social media website he was forced to buy in order to not be charged of market manipulation that he has been steadily fucking to shit ever since is going to lose around 21 million users overnight. Masterful gambit, sir!

I just want everyone to remember that Donald Trump has spent the last several weeks mocking and berating everybody who suggested Biden step aside because the republicans really did not want to run against someone other than Joe Biden. They have no plan, no playbook, no protocol, for running against someone other than Joe.

If you're feeling defeatist right now, please just understand that the Trump Campaign Strategy People are having the worst, most stressful day of the campaign as they scramble to figure out how to beat somebody who isn't Biden in November. Their ace in the hole was a hunk of Kryptonite up their sleeve and now they find out they won't be fighting Superman. THAT is the mood of today.

Like, the people who know me know that I'm rarely the guy with a positive outlook about anything. But it's really important to realize that

Nothing's a guarantee, there's no such thing as "safe," only "safer," and it isn't over until it's over. But, I really can't stress this enough: the events of today were a bowling ball dropped on a house of cards for Trump. It's possible he could rebuild it by November! But it's objectively good news that he has to.

can you elaborate on that "he tried to have his previous vice president murdered" bit

There's really not a lot more to it than that. When asked to do so, his former VP Mike Pence refused to participate in a planned coup and illegally seize power for their administration after they lost the election. Trump, in response, sent an armed mob of his insurrectionist followers to violently seize the US Capitol by force after telling them that the VP was a traitor. The mob stormed the Capitol attempting to murder various Representatives and Senators, chanting "Hang Mike Pence," and erecting a gallows to carry out that effort. Trump was reportedly in the White House watching the insurrection unfold, his aides begging him to call off his followers, while he acted confused for several hours as to why anybody would want to stop them. From murdering dozens of public officials including his own vice president.

Ultimately I think there are two main reasons why there is so much fearmongering about January 6th. Firstly, that it is a break in the "respectability" of bourgeois politics, and secondly that usamerican liberals understand what a coup is only as far as its aesthetics.

Essentially, the usamerican liberal understanding of coups is backwards. They understand the coup as the moment where the faction doing it occupies government buildings. In reality, that is only the final step. They understand that occupying the building is what produces political power and pressures allies into support. In reality, the function of occupying political buildings is as a symbol of their already accumulated power and it also provides the convenience of moving your political faction into a building that is already furnished for the purpose of being a political headquarters.

Even if they somehow managed to hold the Capitol building for longer, nothing significant would've been achieved because they lacked the political and military backing to do enact anything. It would be about as meaningful as if they occupied the Statue of Liberty.

Basically the coup faction occupies political buildings as a result of the coup. The coup didn't happen because those buildings were occupied.

I FELL ASLEEP AND TOOK A NAP A COUPLE YEARS AGO AND SLEPT THROUGH JAN 6TH. I FELL ASLEEP A COUPLE DAYS AGO AND MISSED TRUMP GETTING SHOT. I JUST TOOK MY FIRST AFTERNOON NAP IN A BIT AND NOW THIS?

built in time-skip to the next story event i guess

still believe that one of the greatest bits of all time was on January 6th, 2021 when. well. you know. and twitter was understandably an echo chamber of panic and fear and Justin McElroy just tweeted a selfie with a filter that was like “have a delicious national spaghetti day” followed by 3 tweets that were like “fuck. i’m sorry. i don’t know how to delete scheduled posts” and as i type this two years later i’m laughing

a belated delicious national spaghetti day to you all

UNANIMOUS VOTE BY THE COMMITU TO SUBPOENA TRUMP LMAO GET HIS ASS