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In April, before launching his long-winded $44 billion takeover bid, Elon Musk posed the question: ‘Is Twitter dying?’

He may have been on the money, as new internal documents show that the social media platform has had an ‘absolute decline’ in users since the pandemic.

The report, obtained by Reuters, reveals ‘heavy tweeters’ make up less than 10 percent of the site’s monthly users, but generate 90 percent of all the content and half of the company’s revenue.

It’s dying. So is META.

A Social Media Status Update – Top social media apps are struggling after a decade of dominance.

For years, most of the conversation about social media companies was about how powerful and dominant they were.

These days? Not so much.

The tech industry has had a rough year, and social media companies have been hit especially hard. The stock price of Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has plummeted more than 60 percent. Snap, the maker of Snapchat, has fallen more than 80 percent. Layoffs and hiring freezes are common, and some companies have begun cutting their famously cushy employee perks.

Liz Truss has dramatically resigned as prime minister after just 45 days in the job.

The PM said her successor will be elected in a Tory leadership contest, to be completed in the next week.

Tory MPs urged Ms Truss to go after her government was engulfed by political turmoil, following the ditching of most of her economic policies.

Ms Truss was elected by the Tory membership in September, but she lost authority after a series of U-turns

Liz Truss resigns after just weeks as PM #liztruss #liztrussresigns pic.twitter.com/VqTGNauqk9

— WalesOnline 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@WalesOnline) October 20, 2022

An off-duty police officer was among multiple people killed in an “active shooting” situation in Raleigh, North Carolina on Thursday, a report said.

Raleigh police confirmed there was a shooting in the area of the Neuse River Greenway near Osprey Cove Drive and Bay Harbor Drive.

An off-duty officer was killed in the chaos, a high-level city leader told local outlet WRAL News. Multiple others have also been killed, the outlet said.

🚨#BREAKING: Active shooter with numerous victims reported dead

📌#Raleigh l #NC

Multiple law enforcement agencies are responding to Active shooter with numerous victims The incident is near a neighborhood golf course and trail police are asking everyone to stay inside pic.twitter.com/BRQa2rn4NT

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) October 13, 2022

I’ve seen the Brave New World of food prophesied in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel — and it doesn’t work.

Set in the World State in AF 632 (AF standing for “After Ford”, he of the Model T), Huxley’s dystopia offers nothing but synthetic nosh. At a party for the World State’s Alphas, the guests are induced to “take a carotine sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pâté, a glass of champagne-surrogate”. Even the proles get “beef-surrogate” — which these days we might call a plant-based burger.

BERLIN (AP) — Climate activist Greta Thunberg says it would be “a mistake” for Germany to switch off its nuclear power plants if that means the country must burn more planet-heating coal.

The German government is now debating whether to phase out nuclear power as planned this year, despite the specter of a looming energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine.

The Ontario government will ask the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for an extension to run the aging Pickering nuclear plant until 2026 to cover a looming shortage of electricity, the Star has learned.

Although Energy Minister Todd Smith said as recently as last month there were no plans to seek an operating extension for past Pickering’s long-planned closure date of 2025, he will detail the application Thursday, sources said.

Canada – The Original Post 1st World State!

New York stores begin enforcing ban on sale of whipped cream canisters to those under 21

ID checks for whipped cream are rolling out at stores in New York as more retailers begin to enforce a year-old state law banning the sale of whipped cream canisters to anyone under 21.

The law passed last year amid concern that teenagers are increasingly getting high by inhaling the nitrous oxide used as a propellant in the canisters, according to the Albany Times Union.

The first offense of selling whipped cream canisters to someone under 21 comes with a $250 fine, with fines of up to $500 for subsequent violations.

No more good “Good Guy with a can of Whipped Cream” stories where a local hero tops up your sundae or piece of pumpkin pie.

Today’s my dog’s fifth birthday. Please enjoy this video of him eating whipped cream out of a can in slow motion to celebrate! pic.twitter.com/ngcgC9WuG0

— Dr. Sarah Sheffield (@sarahlsheffield) November 13, 2019

Diversity Minister Ahmed Hussen says the government has cut funding to an anti-racism project over “reprehensible and vile” tweets by a senior consultant involved in the strategy.

Hussen says the project helmed by the Community Media Advocacy Centre – which received $133,000 from the Heritage Department – has been suspended.

This is bullshit. Marouf was hired because he is a racist.

Security forces in Mogadishu are still fighting Islamic extremist gunmen who seized a hotel in the Somali capital on Friday evening in one of the most deadly and high-profile attacks in recent years.

At least 15 people are believed to have been killed and 40 wounded during the attack, which has been claimed by the al-Qaida-linked group al-Shabaab.

Detonations sent huge plumes of smoke over Mogadishu, and gunfire reverberated around the city. Large sections of the hotel were destroyed by the fighting, witnesses said.

Iran’s deranged state media has today gleefully celebrated the sickening attack on Salman Rushdie, hailing the British author’s suspected knifeman and branding the novellist an ‘apostate’ and ‘heretic’ whose book The Satanic Verses ‘blasphemed’ the Prophet Muhammad.

Rushdie, 75, was stabbed up to 15 times – including once in the neck – on stage in upstate New York – more than 30 years after the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran issued a fatwa calling for the murder of the writer and anyone involved with the publication of the 1988 novel.

Of course Canada imports this evil.

At least 15 people have been shot dead in a bar in the South African township of Soweto, police say.

Police said gunmen entered the Orlando East tavern in the early hours of Sunday morning and started firing randomly at a group of young people.

They then fled the scene in a white minibus. No motive for the attack has been established, police said.

Several more people are in a critical condition in hospital, the BBC’s Nomsa Maseko reports.

Hundreds of people in Nigeria’s northwestern city of Sokoto demonstrated Saturday over the arrest of two students following the murder of a Christian student accused of blasphemy, residents said.

In the early morning of Saturday, Muslim youths took to the streets of the city, lighting bonfires and demanding the release of the two detained suspects despite the earlier deployment of policemen to maintain order, residents said.

The irate mob retreated downtown where they attempted to loot shops belonging to Christian residents but were dispersed by security patrol teams, said another resident.

Vladimir Putin is ‘very ill with blood cancer’, a Russian oligarch has claimed according to a new report, amid on-going speculation about the strongman’s health.

An audio recording of the oligarch’s comments was obtained by a Western venture capitalist and shared with New Lines magazine, the publication said.

In it, the oligarch – who has close ties to the Kremlin and named only as ‘Yuri’ to protect his identity – claimed a number of the health problems Putin is believed to be suffering from are linked to him having blood cancer.

Putin has no blood.