“Definitely never seen this type of response to a FOIA request,” quipped one journalist.

  • PhatalFlaw@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    This is very common for Muskolini, any press contacts are often let go, makes obtaining damning information impossible/improbable. None of his companies staff a PR department as far as I know. Why anybody puts up with this guy and his companies is beyond me.

      • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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        3 days ago

        The word Duce (a title used by Mussolini - il duce) and Doge, have the same Latin etymology

        The word is from the Venetian language, reaching English via French. Doge, along with the related English word duke and the Italian duce, duca (masculine) and duchessa (feminine) all descend from the Latin dux, meaning either “spiritual leader” or “military commander”.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          No, absolutely not. I’m sorry, but that’s a bullshit false cognate that gives Musk way too much credit. The reality is much simpler, and stupider: it’s just a meme misspelling of “dog” that, even in its initial conception, was canonically coined by an idiot.

          The etymology of “dog” is admittedly a little mysterious, but I can’t find anything at all to suggest it’s even slightly related to “dux.”

          • Hawke@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            He’s right in that there’s a word doge (as in Doge of Venice) that matches what he said. I don’t think I’d consider it a false cognate, but a true cognate to a different word with an unrelated etymology. They just happen to be spelt and pronounced identically.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              I don’t think I’d consider it a false cognate, but a true cognate to a different word with an unrelated etymology.

              That’s literally the definition of “false cognate.”

              • Hawke@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                No, a false cognate is a word with similar sound and meaning but different origin/etymology.

                Doge (of Venice) - duke - dux - duca - duce

                All true cognates, he’s perfectly correct there.

                There’s no similarity to the meaning of the doge meme at all. The word sounds the same and is spelled the same, but has a different meaning. Therefore not a false cognate. You might get to a false cognate if you make the connection that DOGE (government organization) is somehow a mid-level ruler of something, but as you say that’s probably giving Musk too much credit.

                It could be a false friend though.

                • grue@lemmy.world
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                  3 days ago

                  You might get to a false cognate if you make the connection that DOGE (government organization) is somehow a mid-level ruler of something, but as you say that’s probably giving Musk too much credit.

                  Right. That’s the connection the guy I replied to was trying to make, that’s what I called a false cognate, and you’ve now agreed with me that I was correct in doing so.

                  I never said that “Doge (of venice)” was a false cognate of duce/duke/dux. I said that DOGE of the fucking shiba inu meme/edgelord government wrecking agency was a false cognate of it.

                  • Hawke@lemmy.world
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                    3 days ago

                    That’s the point I was trying to make:

                    It’s a weird thing because DOGE of government could be argued to be a false cognate because you could interpret it to have a meaning that was never intended…but you kind of have to stretch it.

                    And DOGE Shiba Inu as Musk intends it (shitty “fellow kids”/“hur hur space sex boring company” meme) is a false friend but not a false cognate.

                    But Doge as OP wrote it, he’s correct and it’s a true cognate.

                    Anyway, I think we’re pretty well in violent agreement and there’s not much else to say. Cheers!

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      Same thing happened with the Twitter takeover.

      All the official, PR/Communications staff were fired or quit, nobody had any idea what any actual policy changes were real or not.

    • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      They were already doing this in the first Trump term. They started clearing out a lot of the science-focused agencies, telling numerous agencies they couldn’t release ANY statements without approval from on-high. That was literally almost a decade ago now.