And ex co-workers. And most of his family. DOGE is making the person Musk more known and (judging by these precedents) knowing Musk better doesn’t seem to be conducive to liking him more

but Putin’s invasion wouldn’t have looked like an invasion at all, if it had gone according to his plan. He infiltrates territories, creates areas heavily inhabited by Russians, assumes more and more direct control of them through puppets and only then eventually moves in with the army to “liberate them”.

And then we all collectively pretend to look the other way and resume doing business with him as soon as possible. That’s how it mainly worked with Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, so not a new thing. This time NATO didn’t play ball (and Trump is trying to go back to the usual routine).

When the “move in with the army” phase happened with Ukraine, the way I remember that last part, it was pretty abrupt as far as invasions go; “drills” was a brief excuse when they couldn’t hide all the troops that were amassing near the border, not a continuous flexing of military muscle.

Not saying that “Putin did it better” here; in fact I hope he’s going to get the right comeuppance for what he’s doing to millions of people (Ukrainians and his own). Just saying that whatever China is doing with Taiwan looks different to just-a-schmuck-on-the-internet me…

That’s probably true… Still looks a bit ridiculous though. It’s like somebody is planning to steal your wallet but instead of jumping you in a dark alley, they start showing up in front of your house every day, do 100 push ups on the sidewalk, then glare at you and leave.

Maybe Putin didn’t do enough drills before trying to invade Ukraine and that’s why he’s not done great, I don’t know. My expertise invading countries (or mugging people for that matter) is pretty low, so don’t mind me.

You make a great point. But just to stay on the example of cars: besides the innovation on EVs, there’s this horrible tendency to consider cars as tablets on wheels, both in the sense that you can forget about repairing them by yourself and in the sense that they are now increasingly becoming low-margin hardware to run higher margin subscription services. If anything warrants high valuation for a car company it would arguably be the innovation on EVs, rather than the SaaS model.

I hope the idea of Car Software As a Service dies before becoming too widespread. But if it doesn’t, maybe car companies wouldn’t become “Tech” companies, just more shitty subscription vendors. And their stock should be valued as such, not for the largely unwanted “Tech innovation”.

what is the point where having continued drills becomes just ridiculous? What is it that they are actually testing at this point?

Hahaha I hadn’t laughed so hard since the beginning of this hour!

By that measure shouldn’t Disney be considered a Tech company too? Or I guess banks and insurance companies.

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but maybe the article (at least the small part I can read with no paywall) is on to something, Companies that sell access to technology or rely on technology to sell something else (he does give the example of e-commerce) should not be “Tech” companies.

The part I didn’t get to is where the author draws the line to tell what companies ARE Tech. I guess OpenAI or Google would qualify. They sell services but they are services they invented and made, with considerable researxh and investment. But what about Amazon or Netflix?

trying hard to see the glass half full: it’s good that he implies that there will still be elections

I misread as left the country and was disappointed on second read…

Agree. The MO is totally different: funding for bis research would be cut, he would be fired and then deported very publically.

And this makes like… 10 of them now who changed their minds? Seriously, what the heck?

Trump’s polls are still pretty high: https://news.gallup.com/poll/658661/republicans-men-push-trump-approval-higher-second-term.aspx Better than his first term overall and 92% among Republicans. 92%!

but this IS the end

With Grok looking more and more like the only one working for Musk with enough (digital) balls to stand up to his boss, that might be better than the alternative of “Big Balls” and the rest of the Digital Oblivous Goons of Elon

Hahaha, good point. On the other hand, “cheap” depends on the perspective. From Musk’s it’s an incredibly cheap way to get a big payoff…huge ROI!

“Hey we said ‘rapidly’, nobody said anything about it still working when we’re done”

“Nasty, failing Norway, they should just hand over Greenland. That Helsinki is a horrible place, we have so many cleaner and better looking places here in the US!”

sure, but let me be just as obvious: the issue is not with what they want, it’s the “grab them by the p__y” approach to international diplomacy. You know those groups of teenagers that do stupid, violent things to be cheered by the gang? That’s modern politics, apparently.

Trump’s thing are 1:1 negotiations, like with Putin. He’s all about making a deal personally and people gushing over how great of a deal he made. Unfortunately he’s not nearly as good as he thinks he is.

Tariffs are meant as his opening power move, like the used car salesman’s firm handshake. Same (I hope…) as the fuckery on Canada or Greenland. They are the “I am strong and I want something, let’s sit and negotiate”.

Problem is that the used car salesman only has two outcomes: customer buys the clunker or customer walks away. But it rarely happens that “customer is strong-armed into buying the clunker but customer is fire-fighter and next time will let the car dealership burn down”.

I’m in another country and not speaking about Indians in particular, but my family have been immigrants. One thing I observed is that immigrants tend to have a stronger anti-immigration stance than other demographics.

I think it’s one part shame. You worked hard and now you feel superior to the “fresh off the boat” person you once were and (by extension) to all those new immigrants.

One part it’s that inside, we all have these shitty feelings toward other people but, as immigrants ourselves, we feel legitimised to express them openly because hey, that can’t be racist if you’re talking of your own ethnicity, right?

And then of course,in many places immigrants tend to be pigeonholed into specific types of jobs, so more immigrants not from your family = more competition. But that is not for the Usha Vance types who made it close to the top.

I see that dynamic being actively exploited for politics everywhere. The lesbian leader of the neonazi AfD in Germany, for instance. “I can’t be racist, I have an Indian wife” is just not true. You can and the Indian wife can be too.

Only one way to settle the debate: let’s build that Large Fascist Collider