This year’s tenant.
The Duck! City is something of an aviary all of a sudden.
I’ve heard a couple hummingbirds buzzing around (haven’t actually seen one yet). Quail I have seen, and heard. Finches are hitting our feeders like the working press swarming an open bar.
And we have the usual dove nesting beneath the overhang by the front door.
Speaking of our feathered friends, it seems E. Lawn Mulch must’ve gotten lonely in those Twitter offices he’s worked so diligently to empty. His latest attention-getting ploy is to do a flyby on newsletter platform Substack, which has announced plans to launch the latest Next Twitter Thingie, called Notes.
Captain Free Speech — who croaked his own newsletter platform — has apparently gone all Twitter Über Alles on Substack, forbidding embedded tweets in Substack posts, links in tweets to Substack articles, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
According to Taylor Lorenz at The Washington Post:
On Thursday, Substack writers discovered that they were no longer able to embed tweets in their Substack posts. Writers who tried were met with the message, “Twitter has unexpectedly restricted access to embedding tweets in Substack posts.”
On Friday morning, Twitter began blocking users from retweeting, liking or engaging with posts that contained links to Substack articles. Users also could not pin posts containing links to Substack to the top of their profiles. On Friday evening, Twitter began marking links to Substack as “unsafe.”
Even Substack’s corporate Twitter account was restricted, with users reporting that they were unable to retweet or quote-tweet the handle’s posts.
A number of Substack writers are very much not amused, among them Matt Taibbi, who announced that “beginning early next week I’ll be using the new Substack Notes feature (to which you’ll all have access) instead of Twitter. …”
Judd Legum, Matt Swider, and Laura Jedeed were likewise critical, with Jedeed telling The Verge that she sees subscription bumps “every time Musk does something stupid.”
“I think people realize Twitter is dying and they want to keep hearing from me after it falls apart,” she says. “He’s driving traffic my way by being stupid but, like everything he does, it’s killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”
Hey, dude’s still laying eggs. The smelly brown ones. Anyone promoting an online presence anywhere other than Twitter should probably invest in umbrellas and air fresheners.
Tags: E. Lawn Mulch, Substack, Twatter
Mad Blog Media 
April 8, 2023 at 10:33 am |
Twitter is even more like a 4th Grade food fight than it was a year ago, if that is possible. Whatta world.
April 8, 2023 at 10:57 am |
Some business people, they do crazy stuff, and you can call it unpopular or going against the grain or whatever, but at least there is a sub text that they are trying to make money with the idea. This knucklehead is doing everything he can to drive away, advertisers, harm, customers, reduce engagement, and otherwise hinder the revenue generating aspects of the business.
The only thing that makes sense is that we are witnessing in real time the biggest short in stock market history. And he’s doing everything in front of everybody so he can’t be accused of insider trading.
April 8, 2023 at 10:58 am |
Can’t say as I miss Twatter. It’s been more than five years since I farted in its general direction.
April 8, 2023 at 11:28 am |
After musker designated NPR as “state sponsored media”, I sent them a email telling them to quit twitter. Who needs it, specially a media outfit like NPR. Billionaire brats, even those that claim to be, are getting on my nerves. I did notice that the dumpster isn’t on the front pages of a lot of websites anymore. That’s nice.
April 8, 2023 at 2:23 pm |
It gets better. From The Verge:
I bet if you search Substack for “dick” you get a pic of E. Lawn Mulch.
April 9, 2023 at 3:41 am |
He’s a raging fascist, and we all know how much smarts it takes to be that.
April 9, 2023 at 7:50 am |
He must’ve been fun as a child. Doesn’t get picked by either side in gym class, so he buys the school, expels the team captains, lays off faculty, administration, and support staff, and has the building slowly dismantled, brick by brick, while the community watches in stunned disbelief.
The gym will be the last bit to go. Saving the best for last.
April 9, 2023 at 9:14 am |
A robin almost tripped over me this morning. Dude was so intent on finding seeds amongst the grass, bobbed up to me until he was a foot away before cocking his head to one side and then deciding to skeedaddle. Or maybe it was the 95 lb Lab panting next to me that made him think a tree branch was the smart move.
The geese seem to have flown north for the spring already, the pelicans are here a little early, and yesterday I saw three great blue heron all hunting the same crook in the river.
Just one week without snow on the ground, and everything is different.
April 9, 2023 at 9:44 am |
For reals. I was headed out to reload the bird feeders and one teeny little finch was camped at the bottom of the larger one, eating like a junior racer at a free pasta feed. There were still a few morsels left and he didn’t give a damn if I was there with the fresh grub or not. That dinner bell was ringing.