ELON Musk is trying to build a rocket that can bring people to Mars, but he won’t put his hand in his pocket to pay his Twitter bills.
It’s being reported in the US that the world’s richest man (*fact check required) hasn’t paid Google Cloud the one billion dollars it’s owed for hosting Twitter services and that’s why the social media platform appears at times as if it’s about to fall apart.
With capacity severely reduced by Musk’s default, Twitter users have for the first time had limits put on the number of tweets they can read.
And if Twitter does indeed fall apart, it will be following the aforementioned SpaceX rocket, which came tumbling to Earth when it blew up moments after its test launch in April.
Musk’s rocket people described what happeded as “a rapid unscheduled disassembly” – a neat way of avoiding using the word ‘explosion’. A frozen valve is the chief suspect in the post-failure investigation, but now that it seems that Musk is not keen on paying bills, perhaps more mundane possibilities might be looked at. The superheated carbon composite sandwich that serves as a rocket’s heat shield is eye-wateringly expensive. What’s the odds we’ll find out Musk ordered a double layer of turkey tinfoil instead?
As for the guidance system, cutting edge information technology is required, and that’s’ not cheap either. When all the pieces are finally gathered and examined, will the SpaceX’s nerve system turn out to have been a Fisher-Price My First Computer? The propulsion system the engine from a 1997 Renault Clio?
Before Musk started issuing Twitter ration books in the wake of the Google Cloud payment default, he had already cut staff costs by getting rid of 4,000 workers – many the tech boffins who kept the servers and the systems ticking over. Immediately Squinter was one of millions of users who began getting regular “Aw, shucks! Looks like something’s gone wrong”, or “Snap! Something’s broken but we’re fixing it” messages.
That suggested to Squinter that rather than paying Massachusetts Institute of Technology grads Elon was letting anybody who ever changed a lightbulb run the platform. Throw in the vastly reduced capacity of the site caused by the Google Cloud brouhaha and the world’s stupidest genius has in months turned Twitter from a global hub of communication into a groupchat hosted by a 10-year-old pawnshop laptop.
Scrub-a-dub-dub
THE oven needed cleaned, it really did. And in the (admittedly gender unbalanced) division of labour Chez Squinter, that’s a job that falls to him.
As men so often do, he kept on putting it off, not because he’s lazy – or to more accurate, not solely because he’s lazy – but because the standard oven-cleaning technique he’s deployed down through the years makes it a particularly unattractive chore.
It's the oven-cleaner product that makes it a pain. The warnings on the can make it clear that whatever is inside is seriously heavy-duty gear. The user is instructed to use it in a well-ventilated area, opening windows and doors if possible. Not only are gloves and arm coverings required, but a face mask and goggles too. Keep children and pets out of the room and do not under any circumstances let the product come into contact with adjacent kitchen cupboards or worktops.
Having suited yourself out like a Chernobyl inspector, and having sprayed the three sides and base of the oven and the glass door, you’re instructed to retreat for half an hour to let whatever lethal corrosive substances you’ve just unleashed go to work on the grease, the splatters, the smears and the spillages.
JOB DONE: The oven after the scrubfest
First time Squinter ever did it, he was so shocked/ impressed by the safety regime required by the foam he was convinced that when he returned after 30 minutes to go to work he would be required only to gently wipe the oven clean, but not a bit of it. Despite the life-threatening potency of the legal chemical weapon, the amount of elbow grease required to sponge off the foam vastly exceeded the amount of actual grease to be removed.
Squinter couldn’t get any sweatier if he played an hour of squash in a sauna, but he kept doing it the same way again and again, naively convinced that if the oven-cleaner preparation regime wasn’t followed, the job would take five or ten times longer.
This time he decided to do things differently, this time he went back to basics: sponge, basin of hot, soapy water and two nylon scrubbers. He’d had enough of the fumes and the sweat and the personal protection equipment and surely another way was possible.
He set to work softening up the oven with the soapy sponge, paying particular attention to the most egregious smears and stains. And then he got the big guns out and went to work with the nylon scrubbers. The big concern was that they would scrape the ceramic lining of the oven, but it quickly became apparent that material designed to endure roasting temperatures for years is bound to be fairly robust and the robust and strategic application to problem areas of a small square of abrasive nylon left zero trace.
And the result you can see for yourself. No chemical warfare suits, no sending the children and the dog to an underground bunker. And now Squinter gets to stop and have a peep of pride inside the oven every time he walks past it. Which to a man of a certain age is all the thanks he needs.
Time to beat the Drumcree drum again
SO the DUP want to get up the Garvaghy Road again. 25 years after the last outbreak of Drumcree madness they’ve decided that what’s most important during an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis is a clatter of oul’ lads getting to walk somewhere they’re not wanted.
Let’s be completely clear about this. Drumcree is over. There is more chance of Jim Allister attending Rebel Night at the Rock Bar than there is of the brethren walking that route, but then the march is not the point. The point is division and tension because that’s the safe place of those who are members of or support an organisation which has been pickled in conflict and controversy for its entire 230-year existence.
There’s no such certainty that Orange Lil won’t get past the Ardoyne shops again since it’s a mere six years since an agreement was reached which roasted that chestnut. Let’s just say it’s highly unlikely. And yet the brethren have torn up that contract and are agitating to get round the roundabout again.
The Loyal Sons of Get it Right Up Ye are engaging in what’s called ‘flooding the zone with shit’, a tactic invented by pardoned Trumpist fraudster Steve Bannon, who figured out that if an administration pumps out an endless stream of misinformation, lies, distractions and irrelevancies then people become disoriented, angry, immune to political truths and open to manipulation.
FLASHPOINT DRUMCREE: The DUP are pining for a return to the halcyon days of conflict and division
The Loyal Ulster version is rather less sophisticated: reignite settled issues; reopen closed wounds; stoke up cooling enmities. But the hoped-for result is the same: disorientation, anger, immunity to truth; malleability.
Because the truth is that the air is coming out of the Protocol protest balloon with an ever-louder hiss. A series of polls suggest a growing acceptance among the unionist middle ground that the Protocol is here to stay, for better or worse, and pressure is being heaped on the DUP to get back into Stormont by a Conservative Government not only willing but eager to point the finger of blame directly at Sir Jeffrey Donaldson for cuts to services and blows to living standards both threatened and actual, both real and made-up.
And while Jeff can complain all he wants about what is clearly a crude Tory tactic, the attritional effect is nevertheless taking its toll. So here comes Carla Lockhart, the Lurgan Lioness, taking her demand for a Garvaghy go-ahead to the House of Commons while elderly constituents in Portadown ride around in buses all day to keep warm and young mothers in Armagh visit foodbanks with the hoods of their coats pulled up.
Carla knows as well as Squinter that the Garvaghy walk is not going to happen; so does Jeffrey; so do the brethren; but that’s not the point.
The point is division and anger of sufficient quantity to flood the zone; of sufficient quantity to distract voters from the sound of that hissing balloon.
