Dustin Burrows claims he can be Texas Speaker of the House

OK, even for Tex-ass politics, things are getting weird. 

Current Speaker McDade "Dade" Phelan bailed out of seeking re-election yesterday. As part of that, I noted that Dustin Burrows of Dennis Bonnen/Mucus tape fame had filed for the spot, as well as David Cook, the unified Republican challenger to Phelan.

I also noted my thoughts that, because of that and his "Death Star" bill in 2023, Burrows probably couldn't get more than two-thirds of House Dems to support him.

I also said new House Dem caucus leader Gene Wu should have canvassed his members and dropped Burrows some numbers before the GOP caucus meeting earlier today. He probably didn't.

It probably wouldn't have mattered.

After previous rounds of voting today, most of Burrows supporters bailed, leaving Cook with a 48-14 advantage in the GOP caucus.

Now, the Trib piece gets something half-wrong if not full wrong. The "binding" nature of the GOP caucus vote is only if one candidate breaks 60 percent, and 48 is not 60 percent of 88. Or, will Cook's supporters claim that 48 is well more than 60 percent of 62? That said, shock me that Jasper Scherer is one of the three-headed beast reporting this for the Trib. Both he and Barragán have gotten shit wrong before. See here and here for examples of Scherer's previous craptacularness.

Now, it gets weirder. After the "bolting," this:

“The speaker's race is over,” he said in a news conference that lasted less than two minutes. “I have secured enough to be speaker of the House for the next session.”

Yeah, right. Sure.

No, he has now said "sure," and has counted to 76 with a public list of names. 

(Update: Per this and this by Scott Braddock, that may be 67 not 76; as many as, but not guaranteed at that number, as many as 8 Rethugs, and one Democrap for sure, have asked Burrows to pull their names. Burrows didn't help himself by including names already on Cook's list.)

Interesting, we know for sure two House Dems have already repudiated you. In addition, per Braddock, he has promised no vouchers and no end to taxpayer funded "lobbying" (TML etc), but has said no Dem chairs for committees. Given the no lobbying would be a big flip-flop per the Mucus tape, why would they trust you? Apparently you found enough to do so for now, at least. And, Gene Wu failed to promote a third option. Maybe he couldn't have. But, did he even try?

That said, a new follower on Shitter did my count for me. There's just 38 Dems on that list, or 37 with the Braddock update. That's less than 2/3, as I predicted yesterday.

Second — was it necessary for these Democrats to publicly commit, rather than per Tricky Dick Nixon with Clarence Kelley, letting Burrows "twist slowly" for a while?

Third — it seems like Gene Wu doesn't have much control over House Dems yet, if he couldn't persuade more of them not to publicly commit to Burrows for strategery reasons and to be more skeptical in general. (That said, we'll see if more ask to have their names removed.)

Fourth — where does this leave Ana-María Ramos? Well, per an updated version of the Trib story (the "leaving Cook" link up top), and this also ties to point three, some House Dems tried to line up an official endorsement but failed, and Wu released everybody to say whatever. Ramos fired away at the 30-something suckers:

"Supporting a speaker who is not backed by his own party's majority and and who seeks to appeal to Democrats by defending indefensible policies- policies that have allowed children to be slaughtered in schools, women to die without access to healthcare and public schools to close - repeats 25 years of submission to a leadership that has completely failed Texas families," Ramos told The Texas Tribune.

Frankly, yeah, Texas Dems are better living in the wilderness for two years, probably. That said? How many are comfortable if that two years becomes six? Or 12?

Fifth — where does this leave Burrows, per the Braddock updates? I joked on Twitter that he either had numerical dyslexia in confusing 67 and 76, or else told another whopper. And, as a political leader? Nobody wants a Speaker who either can't count or lies about a count.

Sixth — as for claims Burrows and other dissenters can be censured, or even kept off a ballot? If I'm reading correctly, today's vote approving censures happened after the last ballot and the dissenters left. While the state constitution doesn't apply, it it nonetheless in the general sense an ex post facto resolution. As for keeping anybody off a primary ballot? The Republican Party of Texas can do that; the House GOP caucus can't. And, the house GOP caucus' post-vote resolution? "Censurable" is used once; "censure" not at all. The former is used only for House Republicans pushing for a secret ballot for the Speaker's election, contra a MAGAts-type liar on Reddit. (Without going to check, I'm sure other bullshit is coming from the Luke Maciases of the world.)

Seventh — Wes Virdell is claiming that all 88 GOP caucus members agreed at the start to support whoever got a majority. But, given he's a rep-elect, not a rep, his comment should probably be discounted right there.

And, that's not the only possible lying that may be coming from the non-Burrows side. Per an updated version of the Trib piece at top:

Burrows’ camp then requested a break to discuss their strategy before the third round. They said they were denied and abruptly left the meeting, throwing the proceedings into a scramble. However, Cook’s side said Burrows’ group left before the caucus had finished deciding whether to pause the action.

This is going to get nasty. If Cook gets the speakership, will he become a junior Dannie Goeb?

Eighth — back to Tex-ass Dems. Did the 37 (is that correct? who knows?) who said yes to Burrows do so without checking his list of names on the GOP side?

Dade Phelan bails out on Texas House speaker battle

Incumbent Speaker of the Texas House Dade "Dade" Phelan has officially bailed out (not "bowed out," but "bailed out") on seeking a return to the spot.

“Out of deep respect for this institution and its members, and after careful consideration and private consultation with colleagues, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw from the race for Speaker of the Texas House," he said in a statement. "By stepping aside, I believe we create the best opportunity for our members to rally around a new candidate who will uphold the principles that make our House one of the most exceptional, deliberative legislative bodies in the country—a place where honor, integrity, and the right of every member to vote their district takes utmost precedent."

Clearly he thought he not only was going to not only finish behind challenger David Cook, but not be able to keep Cook below the 60 percent mark in the House GOP caucus meeting tomorrow. Per its rules, at least on paper, if one candidate gets more than 60 percent, the entire caucus is bound to support them.

The Trib adds that Phelan, unlike Cook, had not released a public list of supporters, despite some pressure to do so.

For that reason alone, it's not surprising. But, the man's whole character also makes it unsurprising to me.

It also has where the math stood at before Phelan jumped out:

Heading into this week, Cook had touted 47 supporters, including two unnamed backers. He picked up support from state Reps. David Spiller of Jacksboro and Trent Ashby of Lufkin this week, putting him four votes shy of the 60% threshold.

Ahh, Spiller, my legiscritter, and flip-flopper on school vouchers, jumping on the Strangeabbott bus on the last special session of 2023.

Dustin Burrows is clearly the man with Phelan out, for the non-wingnut, or non-totally-wingnut, Republicans to rally behind.

Will House Dems do so?

Here's what the Trib has:

After Phelan announced his withdrawal, the House Democratic Caucus issued a statement saying that “[f]or any Speaker candidate interested in serving the House, the Democratic Caucus is available to listen, and hear their plans to finally give Texans a legislative session that puts people over politics."

It was unclear if House Democrats would unite behind Burrows. On Thursday evening as Burrows was courting Democratic support, state Rep. Ana-María Ramos — a Richardson Democrat who chairs the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus and is running for speaker herself — made clear she opposed Burrows’ bid for the gavel. She cited his role as the lead author of a sweeping new law aimed at sapping the power of local governments, particularly in Texas’ bluer urban areas.

“Working Texans deserve a leader in the House who will stand up for them, and not do the bidding of corporate donors,” Ramos posted on social media, along with a video of her sparring with Burrows on the House floor over his measure, dubbed by opponents as the “Death Star bill.”

IMO, if they can reach a deal with Burrows, House Dems will throw Ramos in the ditch.

But, can they?

What if Cook breaks 60 percent in the GOP caucus? Will Burrows officially withdraw? Will some other not-totally-wingnut Republican risk censure, or even party expulsion, to cut a deal with Dems, at least if they agree to give a unanimous vote from every member not named Ramos?

That said, it's not just Ramos. Senfronia Thompson also has little love lost for Burrows, per this piece.

Would Burrows step aside for a not-totally-wingnut Republican if Cook doesn't clear the 60 percent GOP caucus threshold but he can't get traction enough with Dems to cross the big 76 finish line?

That second link also notes Burrows' past connection to Mucus shivving Dennis Bonnen; it also makes clear that, aside from intra-GOP political stances, the not-totally-wingnut Republicans want a more collegial leadership style than Burrows had. It's possible another contender does jump out at the GOP caucus, even on late numbers. More on that here; the "Death Star" bill is related to the 10 House Republicans that Bonnen, and Burrows as the then leader of the GOP caucus, were willing to throw off a cliff. It was the bill that would have made folks like the Texas Municipal League "lobbyists" who couldn't represent local governments. Joe Straus had previously 86'ed it. Also of note? Ramos was on the "Mucus tape" that led to Bonnen blowing himself up.

Meanwhile, House Dems have their own change. Gene Wu has defeated incumbent Trey Martinez Fisher to run the Democratic caucus. Wu appears ready to fight Republicans more than TMF was, which will add to the complexity of negotiations with Burrows or whomever.

My guess is that Burrows won't be able to get more than 2/3 of House Democrats.

So, my bottom line? To riff on this r/Texas subreddit piece? Yes, Texas Democrats, you're cooked unless somebody else besides Burrows enters the list to challenge Cook. Frankly, I'm pretty sure Burrows knew, before he filed his paperwork, that lots of Dems wouldn't support him. And, no, I don't think he can outpoll Cook in the GOP caucus.

He looks almost like a bell cow of controlled semi-opposition.

Update, Dec. 7: Burrows also either, jokingly, has numerical dyslexia changing 67 into 76, or he thought he could create a stampede with easily refuted claims. If he was trying to bum's-rush wavering House Rethugs, it's blowing up in his face. If he just told lies, or semi-lies or something, it's blowing up in his face.

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Addendum: Wu should right now be contacting the entire House Democratic caucus for a yea/nay so he has some numbers to present to Dustin Burrows in particular and to opponents of David Cook in general, as to how many members of his caucus will not support Burrows. No names, of course, but to give Burrows some sense of the House Democrats. You're the leader, Gene.

I don't owe Sam Husseini COVID apologies after all, because he's kind of a nutter

Let's go back three-plus years, to September 2021. I wrote about Husseini's take on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and his apparent willingness to equate gain of function research to bioweaponization of the COVID-19 virus. To say I was skeptical puts it mildly.

Move forward not quite two years, to June 2023, when I said I might owe him an apology. That said, in a comment to the piece six months later, I said that I had become more skeptical again, and that bioengineering is not bioweaponization.

The kind of a nutter? Being a full-on Zionist conspiracy theorist about the assassinations of both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy over Zionism issues. That includes uncritically citing Whitney Webb and linking to pieces like this.

I jokingly said a year ago, on the JFK assassination 60th anniversary, that Mossad whacked Jack over Dimona. Note the word "jokingly."

I seriously said earlier this year, building on previous writing, that Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby because he was a Zionist.

As for his take that Karen Silkwood was whacked by Mossad because she discovered that high-grade plutonium was being smuggled out of Kerr-McGee's plant by the CIA to Israel, who was then reshipping cuts of it to Shah-era Iran? Also laughable, IMO.

First, Rolling Stone notes the difficulty of smuggling 100 pounds of plutonium out of Hanford. Could it have been intercepted in transit to Kerr-McGee's plant? Yes.

More likely, per that, and per this piece from a researcher in Silkwood's case is that, given the massive management and safety clusterfucks at Kerr-McGee, this plutonium was indeed "lost" in some way. Also per that piece, it was 40 pounds, not 89 claimed by Husseini, that was originally missing, and half of it was discovered soon thereafter. The remaining 20 pounds? Enough for two Nagasaki bombs. Something, but NOT "all that."

The reality? French help in building Dimona included a reprocessing plant. India got the material for its first bomb that way.

This isn't quite antisemitism, but it's a type of conspiratorial anti-Zionism that gets very close to that.

Looking at the LA Times butt-hurt opinion world once again

Harry Litman, a legal columnist for the LA Times, announced he was resigning from its op-ed board over the paper's non-endorsement in the presidential election and related matters.

My comment?

Lemme see. If I recall correctly, Dr. Soon-Shiong admitted that, per his daughter, the non-endorsement in this year's presidential election was in part over Gaza. What's YOUR take on genocide, Harry Litman? (My one problem was that Doctor Daddy didn't nudge the editorial board into considering third-party candidates)

Followed by a link to my previous look at reality at the LAT and the non-endorsement. (That comment drew one quick comment from "Andy in Burbank":

Endorsing democracy with Harris/Walz should've precedence over not endorsing anyone, which helped electing Herr Drumpf, who's taking sides with Israel.

To which I replied:

You either didn't read or ignored the sentence in parentheses in my comment. And, as a third-party voter who's seen plenty of Democratic Pary ballot suppression efforts, don't try to make the "protecting democracy" claim that way, either.

And, that's that.

With that? Who's Harry Litman? Per Wiki, someone who's a definite Democratic Party apparatchik, which is not disclosed in the piece.

That includes:

• Deputy AG under Janet Reno in the Clinton administration.
• USDA for the Western District of Pennsylvania under Clinton.
• Legal counsel in 2004 in Pennsylvania for the Kerry campaign in 2004 and Obama in 2008.

Other op-ed board members there and at other papers have GOP backgrounds, of course. That said, this should be mentioned. He has motive for protesting the non-endorsement.

Now, the biggie? This video episode of his podcast, and various comments like this on Shitter make clear he's some sort of Zionist. How deep-fried of one, I don't know. But, some level? Yes. Read the comments on the YouTube for basic background.

Now, that said, I'm not in agreement with owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong's most recent actions. His wanting advance screening on op-ed headlines is ridiculous micro-meddling. His "bias meter" idea will have its own bias — toward the duopoly more than toward Trump per se.

Beyond the above? Hanging out with the likes of Tim Snyder on Shitter, plus apparently indicating he's going to the blue skies of Blue Sky?

Third-party news roundup

The Green Party's Jill Stein and Party for Socialism and Liberation's Claudia de la Cruz will be among individual leaders in an ANSWER-connected National Day of Action Jan. 20. That should give genocide-backing Cort Greene a coronary and set off his blather-meter. Dood? Do you hunt down every third-party commenter?

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The Liberal Party, the libertarians who broke from the Libertarian Party — the fourth-place Libertarian Party that imploded this election — when they could no longer tolerate the Mises Mice, have announced details of their planned initial convention this weekend. Former Illinois Congresscritter (presumably former on the GOP as well) will be keynote speaker. (I still say that in states where they had a friendly state Libertarian Party, or an independent group planning on joining the new org, they should have run their own presidential line this year, but they didn't. Not being officially organized yet may have been one reason.) And, interesting is that former Liberertarian National Committee Chairman Whitney Bilyeu will be on one panel. Will the Mice get indignant, even trash-talking indignant, or will they try to ignore this?

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On the "imploded" issue, neither IPR nor Richard Winger's Ballot Access News has yet to discuss it in depth. Will it come up at that Liberal Party confab? 

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Meanwhile, per Independent Political Report (where the main links for the first two came from) the Mice continue to have a hard-on for Brainworm Bobby, even as he lies about "always" being a libertarian. Dood, there was nothing libertarian about your old stance on environmentalism.

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Also per IPR, Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware has confirmed he plans to run for governor on the VP line in 2026.

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I'm with the Colorado GP: Why IS Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis, sporting a hard-on for Brainworm Bobby to run Health and Human Services? The hard-on is weird in its particulars, too.

Polis not only supports Brainworm Bobby as an antivaxxer, he thinks Trump will actually do something about RFK's call for drug pricing parity when Trump said nothing about it in his first term. Ditto, on FDA doing more to regulate kids' meds or whatever Brainworm is proposing.

Texas Progressives think hard to work off the turkey

Will the Lege follow the warnings of voting security activists left and right who said that pushes for ballot transparency, legislation to that end and a Kenny Boy Paxton advisory made it worse? Or will some wingnuts use this as an excuse to get even more wingnutted? The Trib takes a look.

The Fifth Circuit has said (for now, preliminary injunction) that the feds can't tear down the razor wire at Eagle Pass. This is a stall-out until Jan. 20 with the Trump administration likely to, but not guaranteed to, drop the case.

The original death penalty warrant judge in Robert Roberson's case has recused herself. Good.

Portia Ngumezi became the third Texas woman to die over mistreatment for a miscarriage or similar issues. This will get worse if Texas follows Louisiana and makes mifepristone a controlled substance.

SocraticGadfly talks about his personal experiences with censorship at Facebook.

The Monthly looks at why Uvalde broke Trump.

The Trib profiles David Cook, the man looking to replace Dade Phelan. It also looks as to whether or not Phelan has as secure a claim on Democrats as he thinks.

Off the Kuff doesn't like using percentages of percentages when making comparisons.

City of Yes wants us to get back to real philanthropy.

Therese Odell does her best to be thankful.

The Texas Signal reminds us that not everyone targeted by Texas' discriminatory laws can just leave the state.

Evil MoPac has some strong opinions about certain Thanksgiving foods. And, yours truly has strong opinions about a paywalled Substack over Thanksgiving foods. Won't see something like this in my edited version of a future Roundup.

Reform Austin warns of future water shortages.

Frank Strong is already tracking a number of anti-book bills in the Lege.

Top blogging for November 2024

These are the 10 most-viewed posts in the past month. Not all of them were necessarily written IN the last month, though; those that were not will be noted.

And with that, the usual drumroll ..... and we start at the bottom with ...

No. 10? This was about climate change cheating in Paris, ie, the "overshoot" that nations and corporations of the world could let global temperatures increase more than 1.5°C while finding (usually tech-neoliberal) angles to then pull us back below that mark. I wrote it in mid-November in run-up to COP29, which, like Paris, did shit.

No. 9? Nothing simpler than "The enshittification of Shitter gets worse." That said, the particular issue I was complaining about was ended (for now?) just a day or two after I wrote. Hold on to that "for now."

No. 8? I put out my version of a Texas Progressives Roundup the week after election day, since Charles Kuffner was too foxhole-crushed to do one.

No. 7? Bob Marley-themed snark (which Facebook/Fuckbook/Hucksterman) kept trying to censor, on the 61st anniversary of Nov. 22, 1963: "I shot the JFK, but I did not shoot the LBJ."

No. 6 was more snark, and election-related: "Librul guilt over Palestine." And yes, "librul" is the way you spell it.

No. 5? Yes MOAR snark. MAGA-sized snark! Riffing on Ken Klippenstein's running the Iran-hacked JD Vance "vetting" research, I posted what was allegedly Trump's "hiring interview" with Vance.

No. 4? Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski were full of shit with their left-BlueAnon "Bernie would have won" piece, and I had no problem calling them out.

No. 3? Also serious election-related. It's my election wrap, focused on third parties, and taking a look at the Libertarian Party's presidential implosion, something that the likes of Independent Political Report and Ballot-Access News so far refuse (that's the word) to od.

No.2? My look at the Arab-American and Muslim-American "break point" in this election.

No. 1? Actually made the last weekend in October, it's my presidential election prediction. And yes, I got it wrong. And, I added a post-mortem, that included a call-out of Brains, who still basically denies that ethical mutual funds are the ethical thing to do if you're a third-party presidential candidate.

More reasons why Kamala Harris may have lost — Millennial librul snowflakes

This Substack piece by Akilah Hughes, apparent left-of-center #BlueAnon, is one reason.

Yeah, I think you're a snowflake for turning off mentions.

And, as a leftist who did my duopoly exit at the start of the century, I think you're full of crap if you think all or most leftists who voted outside the duopoly did so to "own the libs" from the left.

Ultimately, it's a backdoor version of a Dem saying that Dems still own my vote. Given that, per her Substack's "about," Hughes worked at post-Dear Leader imperium PR shop Crooked Media, none of that is surprising. Sorry that she had to use a GoFundMe for serious health issues, per her link. More sorry yet that she didn't use that to call for national health care. Did she also use GoFundMe to make up what she had to pay Sargon of Assad?

Beyond that? No, you're not famous enough to write a memoir at 30.

And, per this piece, since you're an identitarian, and you were at least 18 in 2008, why didn't you vote for Cynthia McKinney?

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If this person is halfway representative of professional-class Millennial-class Democratic voters? The party's up shit creek. These people (Hughes is the same age as AOC) have their own smugness toward third parties. Mark my words; taking the Greens as the largest of the (theoretical) leftist third parties, whomever the party nominates for president in 2028 will get a smug-attack, just like this from Hughes and the ones that Ocasio Cortez launched during the past campaign.

==

And, it's not just her. Per Ron Brownstein at the Atlantic, the folks at "Pod Save America" in general are still in some degree of denialism.

The AP reports similarly.

Democrats' ugliness toward No Labels getting exposed in court

Via Ballot-Access news, a boatload of stories about how Democrats tried to sabotage No Labels, which eventually chose not to run a presidential candidate. None of this will surprise Green Party backers or independent leftists who have seen Democrats' dirty tricks against Greens in court, other than noting this wasn't courtroom dirty tricks but personal ones. 

No Labels filed suit for trademark infringement over another org also having a "No Labels" website, and now, all sorts of shit connecting this to Democrats is spilling out during discovery. Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog has the big picture, a long pull quote from a Washington Post story. Second, the Daily Mail has more on the details of plans to harass No Labels founder Nancy Jacobson. She's married to former Slick Willie pollster and consigliere Mark Penn. The Dems also planned to harass Congresscritters who were in the Problem Solvers Caucus. Taibbi has yet more.

Cory Doctorow actually comes a cropper on his take on social media

More specifically, his take on fediverses in general and even more, on Mastodon in particular. I quote, from his take on the enshittification of social media:

I have watched virtually every service I relied on, gave my time and attention to, and trusted, go through this process. It happened with services run by people I knew well and thought highly of.

Enshittification can be thought of as the result of a lack of consequences. Whether you are tempted by greed or pressured by people who have lower ethics than you, the more it costs to compromise, the fewer compromises you'll make.

In other words, to resist enshittification, you have to impose switching costs on yourself.

That's where federation comes in. On Mastodon (and other services based on Activitypub), you can easily leave one server and go to another, and everyone you follow and everyone who follows you will move over to the new server. If the person who runs your server turns out to be imperfect in a way that you can't endure, you can find another server, spend five minutes moving your account over, and you're back up and running on the new server

Wrong on multiple counts.

First, there's a high egotism level in assuming that anybody and everybody who follows you on one "instance" or server on a place like Mastodon has enough emotional and intellectual investment in you to follow you to a new server. That's why a "federated" book review site like Bookwyrm doesn't interest me.

More of how this is a problem here:

Communities are not siloed independent bubbles. People are Venn diagrams of lots of communities and interests. Selecting a username can be difficult, deciding which community you want as part of your identity—even if you can change it—is too much. The act of choosing a server has kept more than a few people away from Mastodon.

Exactly. What if Doctorow, for example, hates baseball? Or hates classical music (which has less of a following than baseball, but still)?

There's another issue, also mentioned at that link. That is the cost in both time and money to run an "instance." The former? Good luck getting more helpers; look at subReddits and moderator churn. The money? Founder Eugen Rochko is still running on donations, basically, and the donations, AFAIK, all stay 100 percent with him.

Second, of course, specific to Mastodon, it ignores Mastodon's own problems.

Beyond the racism? Child sexual abuse postings. Now, that and racism could be special problems at any decentralized social media. OTOH, the founder of a particular fediverse-type system could require anyone starting a new "instance" to sign an official hierarchical code of conduct.

That said, there's not only the racism, and child sexual abuse, but Internet security issues. That and more are all here. And, if that's not enough, yet more here. And the issue that its founder, Eugen Rochko, not only does not run away from, but openly embraces, the appellation of "Benevolent Dictator for Life."

Beyond that, it continues to have some degree of functionality problems from the decentralization. Take this piece. If, because a person's on another server, I can't fully see their profile? Hard pass on engaging with them. 

Finally, as far as people using Mastodon? As far as actually using Mastodon, rather than starting an account and then getting frustrated? The reality is far different from the claims. Indeed, the top commenter to that post specifically mentioned trying to follow Doctorow on long threads. And?

4) Nothing frickin' threads...For example, I used to follow Cory Doctorow and his 30-post thread would litter my bleeping timeline. Why can't Mastodon collect all that and automatically collapse it unless I expand the view? This is a serious usability issue.

Not a good recommendation.

And, also, arguably a statement of how it's not just capitalism that causes enshittification.

And, if Doctorow is not just once but repeatedly papering over the reality of Mastodon, we also have a petard-hoisting moment.

That's especially because he has called out tech-based cults, including those on specific products and services, like the bros of Apple's i-cult.

As for what the future is? None of the above, IMO. If Shitter gets incredibly worse, I'll just use it less, but not go to BlueSky and not try to reactivate my old Mastodon.