Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about the meteorologist who was fired for criticizing Elon Muk’s nazi salute. In first place, it’s Maura with a reaction to the whole ridiculous situation:

I hate that Elon Musk’s fans are using his autism diagnosis to excuse his behavior. I’m on the autism spectrum. Like Musk, I have autism 1 (formerly Asperger’s syndrome), and like Musk, I struggle with the non verbal, implicit communication primates use to learn complex social behavior. My issues are thus: autism or not, Musk is keenly aware of the political climate. There is no way he did not or could not understand that such a gesture would be extremely controversial. Second, plenty of smart autistic people have self stimulatory behaviors that can involve movements and gestures ( I point at things with my whole hand with my ring finger bent), and if Musk’s stimming truly looks like Nazi salutes (), it’s on him to explain that or change the way it appears. Autism should definitely be a mitigating factor when it comes to consequences, but having autism isn’t an excuse to act like a jackass or to make people uncomfortable. The world needs to be accepting of autistic people, but autistic people (ESPECIALLY those of us w/o intellectual disabilities) also need to be good citizens, and understand that the rights to community life come with responsibilities to others… except if they’re billionaires, I guess.

In second place, it’s an anonymous correction:

it’s not a nazi salute

it’s 2 nazi salutes back to back.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments about the Sixth Circuit restoring Tennessee’s age verification law. First, an anonymous reaction to the court decision:

The argument the Sixth Circuit presents doesn’t even have anything to do with the Tennessee law (which just says to implement age verification if Any sort of ‘pornographic material’ is available, not just specific kinds of porn like the argument mentions). This is like if I wrote a law preventing the sale of cookies which got an injunction and then the the circuit rolls it back because one time someone put a razor blade in a cookie. What?

Also not surprised to see Kristof’s NYT article cited – I don’t know if there’s any one newspaper article that’s done as much damage to the open internet as it in recent years.

Next, it’s MrWilson with thoughts on the law itself:

The law is vaguely worded because it’s like a Personal Improvement Plan from an employer who is planning on firing you, but wants documentation first and so presents you with terms it doesn’t expect you to meet. The law is basically saying solve the issue either by shutting down access entirely or we’ll accuse you of failing to comply by whatever metrics we decide you’re not following. Conservatives have already admitted that age verification is a first step to banning porn.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Pixelation with a comment about Trump pardoning Ross Ulbricht despite his hardline rhetoric on drug dealers:

In other Trump news, it’s amazing that the Ukraine war is over. Trump ended it on day one, just like he kept crowing about. Truly amazing! Oh, wait…

In second place, it’s an anonymous reply to a tiresome comment full of false bravado:

Please continue to do a smashing job of convincing us that you’re really happy with your life because shit that doesn’t actually benefit you is happening. Post again, please. Just once more will definitely show us that you’re happy and healthy. Any minute now. No really. I’m really close to believing you.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with one more comment from MrWilson, this time in reply to another commenter on our post about DOGE, who asked “why would any U.S. citizen object to the federal government becoming more efficient and less wasteful of our precious tax dollars?”

Just curious: Why would any German citizen object to the government enlisting the aid of industrialists to rebuild the German economy circa 1933?

Finally, it’s an anonymous comment about one of our post headlines which mentioned “evil billionaires”:

seems a little redundant

That’s all for this week, folks!