If The Smoke Comes Out Turquoise, I Think That Means They Ordered Mexican For Dinner (Ow Stop Hitting Me)

In what are very dark times indeed, I know I shouldn't be snarking on stuff but the whole "Elect a New Pope" thing is just open for humor. 

For example, the news report that the Vatican had to re-install the smokestack they use to announce to the crowds if they elected a new pope or not (via Clare Marie Schneider at NPR):

Throughout this secretive, locked-door affair, the recently installed chimney will be the only indication to the public about how the process is going. After a ceremony within the Sistine Chapel is held to mark the beginning of the conclave, the doors are locked, Bry Jensen, host of the long-running Pontifacts podcast, told NPR.

That's when "the verbal and communicative gates go down," Jensen said. "There is no further communication until a pope has been elected, aside from smoke."

As the cardinals deliberate, they vote until they reach a two-thirds majority agreement on who to elect. With each vote, they burn their ballots in a stove installed in the Sistine Chapel for this purpose. If black smoke plumes from the chimney, the cardinals aren't in agreement and will need to vote again. Once white smoke can be seen from the chimney, it signals to the public that the Roman Catholic Church has a new leader. The process relies on chemicals to produce the desired color...

When that article popped up on Bluesky, I just HAD to Reply Guy with this:

This time, it's been set to provide a vast array of colored smoke: Black = no pope Blue = the pancakes were soggy Red = they've decided on watching "Sinners" Green = they've found the hidden stash of Irish whiskey Pink = it's Roan Chappell! Purple = Prince has returned! White = pope

— Witty Librarian Resistance (@paulwartenberg.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 9:21 PM

(I'm Unitarian. I'm *allowed* this amount of levity towards my Catholic brethren. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it)

That said, there's a few more colored smokes that the cardinals can send to signal their intents:

• Violet = They've agreed to buy for Janis Joplin her Mercedes Benz
• Beige = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a White guy
• Taupe = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a Latino guy
• Onyx = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a Black guy
• Fuchsia = They're just messing with us. Seriously, is fuchsia even a real word?
• Olo = How are there even new colors to be found? Don't we have a full palette of 256 blends and tints and gods know how many options to choose from in the RGB chart?

There will be no Orange smoke. There is no way the cardinals will vote in trump after his ill-humored and tone-deaf mockery of their papacy.

That all said, to the cardinals getting locked in with each other over the next couple of days - they rarely elect a pope on the first go, there's too many candidates and factions to winnow down thanks to the two-thirds majority requirement, and I doubt one of them will get over 50 percent the first round - and we're all praying they select a new Pope who does look to the future, towards the more positive virtues of faith such as charity, humility, love of others, and grace.

The Great Twitter Skedaddle of 2024

If there's any positives in the wake of the disastrous 2024 election results, it's that a lot of people on social media are voting with their feet and fleeing Elon Musk's Twitter (stop calling everything X, you moron) in droves (via Luca Ittimani at the Guardian US): 

Social media platform Bluesky has picked up more than 1 million new users since the US election, as users seek to escape misinformation and offensive posts on X.

The influx, largely from North America and the UK, has helped Bluesky reach nearly 15 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September, the company said.

Social media researcher Axel Bruns said the platform offered an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, including a more effective system for blocking or suspending problematic accounts and policing harmful behaviour.

“It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else,” he said.

What had happened since Musk's hostile buyout of Twitter is that Musk brought back a lot of the Far Right - even Nazi-fueled - vitriol under the excuse of "free speech". Not only did Musk gut the staffing needed to manage the social media environs, he also gutted many of the protections that the app had put in place to protect users from harassment and direct attacks. Indeed, one of the truly last straws that drove people away from Twitter is a rule change Musk enforced on blocking that effectively made the tool useless.

When Musk bought Twitter back in 2022, I questioned - and found my own answer - why a billionaire was so desperate to waste $44 billion like that:

Forget the line he's trying to sell to the public about his interest in Twitter. This is not about encouraging free speech, or bringing his "brand" of innovation to improve security or service to a cornerstone of global social media. No, what Elon Musk is doing is Buying speech, there is nothing FREE about what he's doing. From here it's looking like Musk wants control over one of the many social networks that have openly derided his - and other billionaires' - obsessions with space travel, his self-marketing overkill, his lack of genuine philanthropy, his business model of racism in his workplaces, and more.

Musk's call for a more open Twitter runs the serious risk of creating an environment of lax rules governing online behavior. Twitter already has problems with online harassers, raging haters, and sociopathic doxxers looking to bully and threaten people because of their gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, and/or political beliefs. Musk is poised to make things worse...

Well, now it's post-election 2024 and we have a clear answer: Musk spent all that money so he could campaign for donald trump, pushing lie after lie on his own account(s) to prop up trump's chances, and gaslighting a low-information electorate into voting for the goddamned rapist/felon. Musk alone didn't win the election for trump, but he clearly assisted in the damage done.

And so with that, whatever counts as a liberal/progressive audience within Twitter is bolting for the lifeboats to head over to Bluesky.

There are other social media apps similar to Twitter that people already set up accounts; such as Facebook Threads, Counter Social, and Spoutible. Bluesky quickly became the destination of choice because they set up an effective blocking system that can prevent the more hostile and deceptive Far Right trolls from gaining any audience there.

The Far Right "Free Speechers" are already complaining about the blocks - "Waah, you're denying me my right to be heard" - but for all that the First Amendment represents there should be an individual's right to NOT LISTEN TO YOUR BULLSHIT. We have the freedom to peaceably assemble with like-minded persons, and the haters do not have a right to bulldoze their way in and shout at everybody until we surrender to their hate.

We don't want to listen to your gaslighting fearmongering, Nazis, and you can't make us.

As for myself, I kept saying I was leaving Twitter after Musk bought it out, but I kept getting dragged back in because like a fool I wanted to stick around and document the atrocities. Well, no longer. I don't owe Musk or any of the haters that took over Twitter another second of my time. So I downloaded an archive for the last time, waiting until I got the ZIP file, and then parted ways with Twitter with a final salute to the goddamn billionaire who ruined it all:

Both barrels, motherfucker

No regrets, America.

See you on Bluesky at @paulwartenberg.bsky.social