On Elon Musk And Free Speech

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/25/on-elon-musk-and-free-speech/

But maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason why every website learns that you have to do some moderation. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll come to understand that the “principles of free speech” also include the right of private companies to set their own policies and to exclude those who violate those policies. I mean, usually, that’s done in a more systemized manner than Musk banning a journalist for criticizing him, but, hey, everyone makes mistakes sometimes.

The Russia we have lost

https://unherd.com/2022/03/the-russia-we-have-lost/

Friends are booking flights to Tashkent. The FSB are interrogating them at the border. Others are panicking; there are hardly any flights left: they’re all booked up, everything’s grounded, sanctions have closed allied airspace in every direction. And these are same people, the same generation, who only ten years ago, were marching happily through Moscow, raising money and fighting corruption, only to dash their heads, just as the Decembrists  had, when it frightened Him, when it enraged Him, when He turned out not to be this pathetic topless clown — he was Gollum in all of the memes — but truly a beast. Those were the protests that set it in motion: the squeezing of freedom, the arrests, the filetting of journalists, until now we have this.