Michelle and I watched Donald Trump’s speech announcing his third run for the presidency up to the point that he actually said he was going to run for president. We were watching it on CNN, and at that point in the speech, CNN broke in and commentators started to talk about it. So we watched some of the discussion, but after that was over, Michelle noticed that Trump was still speaking. At the speech, his walk-off music was the Temptation’s “Get Ready.” But after that, he played “Heroes.”

This has apparently been an issue for Bowie’s son, the filmmaker Duncan Jones. Jones had previously tried to block Trump from using Bowie music, and in reaction to Trump’s most recent use of the song, Jones Tweeted, “Pretty sure he’s just doing that now to wind me up.”

With that, a series of events transpired on Twitter— after Jones Tweeted his response, the Bond villain, Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account, and I quit Twitter. While on Twitter, one of the people I followed was Duncan Jones, but I never followed Trump’s personal account. I did follow the account of the President, which, was President Obama’s official account when I started and is President Biden’s now— but for four years I would see the frequent, unhinged Tweets from President Trump. That was more than enough for me.

Since Musk took over Twitter, extremist, right wing Tweets began proliferating in my Twitter feed. I had followed several political figures and commentators, some of whom were conservative. The apparent mechanism for feeding me extremist Tweets was that some of the conservatives I actually followed also followed extremists, and so Musk’s algorithm used that link to feed me extremist Tweets…I guess. (Of course, these were all extremist Tweets from the right rather than the left. Apparently Communists don’t Tweet).

My experience with Twitter was never that it was a “town square,” a “marketplace of ideas,” or a sanctuary for “free speech.” It was a funhouse filled with funhouse mirrors, along with links to cute animal videos and New York Post sex stories. A small, small minority of Tweets were either genuinely funny (Duncan Jones was adept at the funny Tweet), or showed me something useful (usually a link to an actual article that lived elsewhere). Ah, I won’t miss it.

As for the Wallflowers video…yep, I was just using it as an excuse to write today’s entry…

Update 11/21/22: OK, on the video…the song was recorded for the soundtrack for the 1998 Godzilla movie. This was the American movie staring Matthew Broderick. I saw the movie a while ago but don’t remember where the song came in. That said, I consider an added bonus to this version of the song is that it ends with the Godzilla roar.