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Posted
38 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Most accounts of her parents state that they were adherents of Technocracy Incorporated," which was one of several Technocracy movements after WWI.

All of the technocratic movements are or were highly autocratic, so that part gibes.

Also based on the idea that scientists and engineers know better what's best for society, which has a lot of parallels to Musk and to the common gooders.

And, perhaps most amusingly, all of the technocratic movements fell apart and reorganized constantly, because most of the adherents were socially retarded.

 

Which is why revolutions/movements may be made up by engineer types, but they need a poet or historian to inspire.

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Posted (edited)

They did incredibly stupid shit like claim $8B savings when it was an $8M contract, and claiming $1B in savings when it's a 6 year contract for tech services and we're now in year 5.

 

Edited by Chopper
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Posted

Remember when Leon pushed for a “Bitcoin reserve” in Texas?  Some legislators are pushing it, but it appears to (hopefully) be left pending in committee.

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/crypto-reserve-proposed-at-texas-legislature/

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“[Crypto] can be very, very volatile. It can go up very quickly, and it can turn around and go down just as quickly,” Garrison said. “Switching from very safe investments that the state of Texas has today—like government bonds, index funds, hedge fund investments—to cryptocurrency is really increasing the risk in that portfolio.”

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That sentiment was also echoed by Cesare Fracassi, the director of the Blockchain Initiative at the McCombs School of Business. “It has a high correlation with the market. Meaning, when the market does well, bitcoin does well. When the market does poorly, bitcoin does poorly,” Fracassi said.

I wonder how many Teslas were bought with Bitcoin. It would make perfect sense that a bunch of the Cybertrucks were bought with it.

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Posted
12 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Do you think Trump stands or sits down when watching Elon artificially inseminate Melania? 

 

 

 

 

Stands at the side, holds the tray with all the tools on it. Like the butler cuck he is.

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Posted

https://www.jalopnik.com/the-cut-off-for-those-i-bought-this-before-i-knew-elon-1851757974/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIi_BtleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHd1J-GEtdifRt9llMHdhNVhnTfj6ZygQ97LJTMrwaM36QensGKUYhYsmpg_aem_57Mke1wsEn2Gcx_5opsbVA

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Elon Musk is a salesman, and recently he's been selling two things: Electric cars and eugenics-backed fascism. His pitches for the latter have gotten loud enough that folks who bought into the former can no longer quietly ignore it, which has led to all sorts of Tesla owners plastering their cars with stickers that read some variation on "I bought this before Elon went crazy." Here's the thing: I don't think they did.

We've known for a long time that Musk isn't all above-board. It's particularly egregious on Cybertrucks, a vehicle Tesla didn't release until long after Musk began showing his true colors, but the same can be said for the best-selling Model Y — by 2019, when that crossover launched, we'd already seen Musk's worst side at least a year earlier. Let's go to the tape.

If you have an original Roadster with this sticker, you're in the clear. Sure, Musk had bought his way into Tesla by 2008, but back then he appeared to largely be just some guy. Unless you knew the phrase "PayPal Mafia," Musk just seemed to be a guy who wanted to make electric cars cool. Twitter wasn't even around yet. You're fine.

Fast forward to the launch of the Model S in 2012, and you still would have purchased from a Musk who still outwardly cared about the climate. He was cringe online in some of the same ways — his Twitter bio included the location "1 AU," meaning Earth — but he was largely some harmless dork. He was an Obama fan, he tweeted about his companies and his thoughts on "The Dark Knight Rises" instead of far right conspiracy theories. If you have an early Model S, your sticker is justified.

By the time of the Model X's launch in 2015, Musk's eccentricities were showing through. We had the falcon wing door debacle on a car that came with a "bioweapon defense mode" — not things that come from normal car companies with normal CEOs. Musk was getting weirder and weirder, less and less tethered by the bounds of societal norms, but he wasn't yet doing so in ways that hurt people.

In 2018 we got the launch of the Model 3 in all its tent construction, bumpers falling off, panel gap glory. Tesla's clothes were looking a bit transparent, and Musk started pulling his personal mask off. He was reading cult media (not the fun "Rocky Horror Picture Show" kind), getting paranoid about sabotage at Tesla's Fremont plant, and most famously calling the diver who saved a cave-trapped soccer team a pedophile. This wasn't a one-off tweet, this was a genuine belief that Musk backed up multiple times and eventually faced a lawsuit over — a suit that revealed Musk's larger distrust in the media, which would eventually lead to his takeover of Twitter and reorganization of that platform to benefit the far right.

The Musk of 2018 was a man who reportedly aggressively pursued whistleblowers, and who famously tweeted that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private at a price allegedly chosen in an attempt to impress electronic musician Grimes with a weed joke. This was the year where Musk grew beyond the position of "space and EV guy" into being a a person known for his antics, a move that made the world worse for everyone.

If you purchased a Tesla after this, you really should've known what you were getting yourself into. The dam broke in 2018, and the years that followed brought more and more groyper-tinged fascism that led straight to today: A world where Elon Musk controls the Treasury Department of the United States of America. If you drive a Model Y or Cybertruck — both vehicles introduced after Musk's heel turn — your lack of knowledge about Musk's actions is on you.

You're welcome to slap that sticker on your car. You can be one of today's lucky 10,000 — learning more about the world around you is always better than the alternative. But if you own a post-2018 Tesla, and you're only now learning the type of person who got the money from your purchase, it's worth interrogating why. Think about where you get your news, the perspectives and opinions you get in your daily life. Then, scrap them all and tune in to the only news source that matters: Jalopnik.

Read More: https://www.jalopnik.com/the-cut-off-for-those-i-bought-this-before-i-knew-elon-1851757974/

 

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Posted
28 minutes ago, C-Man said:

In 2018 we got the launch of the Model 3 in all its tent construction, bumpers falling off, panel gap glory.

They've always been poorly constructed.

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Posted (edited)

It's crazy to me how some people just have the cockroach ability to never get cornered, never get stomped out for the long game, they just somehow get away with it all. Reminds me of the Trump meme "all well, nevertheless..."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-19/musk-s-x-is-in-talks-to-raise-money-at-a-44-billion-valuation

Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is in talks to raise money at a $44 billion valuation, Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources. That's the same as what Musk paid for the company back in 2022, in a "remarkable turn of fortunes" after the takeover and subsequent loss of advertisers caused its value to plummet. The talks, which mark the first known investment round since it was taken private, are ongoing and could change.

Edited by Vegas64
Posted
7 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

That sentiment was also echoed by Cesare Fracassi, the director of the Blockchain Initiative at the McCombs School of Business.

Business schools are such a fucking joke. 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

I had been told on good authority that there have only been 2 fatalities all time by Tesla's autonomous driving. @Guadaloopy promised!!

 

 

You are conflating auto-pilot data with FSD data.  They are different.  I stated that there have been two confirmed fatalities associated with FSD in over 2.5 billion miles driven by FSD vehicles.  That's all I said.  Nothing more, nothing less. 
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Posted
6 hours ago, Vegas64 said:

It's crazy to me how some people just have the cockroach ability to never get cornered, never get stomped out for the long game, they just somehow get away with it all. Reminds me of the Trump meme "all well, nevertheless..."

He can’t pull Tesla back from where it looks like it’s headed sales-wise.  He’s completely turned off the biggest chunk of people who would happily buy an EV, and the people he is catering to either can’t afford it, don’t have the infrastructure to support it, or are not going to give up their gas- and diesel-burners.

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Posted
15 hours ago, BrickHorn said:

Business schools are such a fucking joke. 

Law schools are behind the times, still teaching that the rule of law, precedence, and stare decisis matter. I bet they still cling to the antiquated idea that no one is above the law. 

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Posted

image.thumb.png.0b00ae9c9c95e94fe49932a55da2cf76.png

https://archive.is/2025.02.20-045506/https://www.wsj.com/business/media/x-hinted-at-possible-deal-trouble-in-talks-with-ad-giant-to-increase-spending-feb122a6#selection-5913.0-6055.342

 

Quote

 

A lawyer at advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group fielded a phone call in December from a lawyer at X.The message was clear, according to multiple people with knowledge of the conversation: Get your clients to spend more on Elon Musk’s social-media platform, or else. 
X CEO Linda Yaccarino has made comments that seemed like similar warnings in conversations with Interpublic executives, according to people with knowledge of those talks.
Interpublic leaders interpreted the communications from X as reminders that the recently announced $13 billion deal to merge Interpublic with rival Omnicom Group could be torpedoed, or at least slowed down, by the Trump administration, given Musk’s powerful role in the federal government, some of the people said. They also had a front-row seat to Musk’s continued criticism of advertisers that ditched X since he bought it in 2022, when it was known as Twitter.
Interpublic has recently signed a new annual deal with X for potential client spending, people familiar with the agreement said.
“We do not make spending commitments on behalf of clients to any partner or platform, and decision-making authority always rests with the client,” an Interpublic spokesman said. Yaccarino and representatives from X didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday. 
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.

Days after the Interpublic-Omnicom merger was unveiled, Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, launched a probe and said the tie-up raised anticompetitive concerns. Interpublic and Omnicom work with an ad trade group that the committee investigated last summer, and which the committee determined in a July report might have violated antitrust laws by withholding ad spending from social-media platforms and conservative media outlets.
X filed a federal antitrust lawsuit in August, accusing the World Federation of Advertisers, an ad trade group, and several big brands such as candy maker Mars and CVS Health, of coordinating an illegal boycott of X following Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the platform in late 2022. 
The trade group shuttered an initiative dedicated to safeguarding marketers from harmful content after the suit was filed. It has said that the lawsuit misconstrues the purpose and actions of its responsible media efforts.
X upped the ante in early January by alerting the court that it planned to add more names to the lawsuit, which left advertisers fretting for weeks over whether they would be next. On Feb. 1, X added about a half-dozen more advertisers to the litigation. 
“Some of the advertisers we work with have expressed that they feel there is an implied threat from X that they could be added to the lawsuit if they don’t return to X,” said Ruben Schreurs, chief executive officer of Ebiquity, a consulting firm that works with advertisers.
That legal threat has hung over the industry, including in sideline conversations during CES in January, a major event that attracts top advertisers, agencies, and media and tech companies.
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WPP offices in London.

Yaccarino and her top staff met with executives from several large ad companies including Omnicom Group and Dentsu during the conference, according to people familiar with the matter. During a meeting with WPP executives, Yaccarino pushed the London-based firm to sign an annual upfront deal, according to people familiar with that meeting, and later sought for spending commitments above prior levels, one of the people said.
Ad companies often sign deals with media and tech firms to set annual spending targets, which enable them to secure better ad rates and perks for clients. The pacts typically allow for agencies to adjust if client demand drops. While advertisers control spending, the brands often follow agency recommendations on where to direct their money. Some agencies that had annual agreements with X let them expire after the client exodus in 2022.
WPP is still negotiating with X, a person familiar with the discussions said. Publicis Groupe, the world’s largest ad company by net revenue, is in the process of signing a nonbinding annual ad pact, according to a person familiar with the matter. 
The push for agency agreements follows a flurry of brands returning to spending on X, including Amazon, the Journal reported. Apple has also returned, according to a person familiar with the matter, and telecom company Verizon is also planning to begin spending again on X, according to a person familiar with the matter. 
074da3ef8d527e2c527dcbedde42d12bf19fa7cc.avif

A trader works in front of a monitor displaying the Omnicom Group logo at the New York Stock Exchange.

One ad-buying executive said Yaccarino brought up X’s antitrust litigation during their recent discussion and detailed X’s intention to find out which agencies and advertisers colluded to withhold spending from X. 
New brand safety tools that help advertisers avoid having their ads appear near content they deem as unsuitable and extra premium content, like from the NFL, have helped X convince some brands and agencies to return, industry executives said. They said the rebound may also be driven in part by fear over the continuing federal antitrust lawsuit and Musk’s growing power in Washington.
“We now see brands returning in quite significant numbers, because the easiest route is to just spend a minimum viable amount on the platform,” said Ebiquity’s Schreurs. “Not because they want to advertise there and run their ads adjacent to the content on X, but because they are afraid of legal and political ramifications of not doing so.”

 

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Posted

Brisket - Well yea. I mean we have a little over half the country who seems to believe that we live in a complete shit hole that’s circling the drain and the only way to save it is to burn it all down and start over.

Gee, I wonder where that idea might have come from? Regardless, here we go I guess.

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