Tesla: FSD, Cybertruck, Semi, Optimus and the spandex dancing man, solar shingles, solar farm, thermonuclear explosion proof glass, bullet proof chassis, battery-swap, range under full charge, share value, etc
Boring Company: Hyperloop, Not a flamethrower, Vegas loop, pods, tunnel bricks, etc
SpaceX: Martian colony, surface to surface starship, in-orbit refueling (to get to moon), in-situ methane production on Mars, etc
Neuralink: Telepathy, Brain backup
Twitter: Free speech
Musk himself: His net worth, The man who knows more about manufacturing than anyone else alive
I meant to reply to you yesterday, but I forgot. Your link was amazing, thanks for posting.
I had to stop reading after a while though because I was getting too fucking depressed that so many morons keep willingly giving this chuckle-fuck their money even though all of the available evidence points to him being a pedantic child and pathological liar who’s companies exist in spite of him rather than because of him.
Consider they are morons. They did delegate the problem to the person they saw was the expert and implemented the expert’s idea. They didn’t have much patience, but you can’t dispute the delegation.
Finally! It’s just too bad my insurance score is still too low for me to get the required homeowner’s insurance because the car company shared my driving data with insurance data brokers, and they don’t like that I park in front of bars every Friday night, they don’t know it’s because I have a third job as a busboy. It’s ok though, cause at least I’m still free to tip my landlord, and employment rates are up!
But remember. You’re paying his mortgage and you can’t deduct that from your taxes but he can deduct his mortgage from his taxes (the same mortgage that you paid)
I had a family member like this… They’d go off about how awful capitalism is, and the shit that goes with it (to which I’d generally agree) but have a house full of google home devices, brag about how much they buy on amazon, and simp for the giant megacorp for which they worked a retail job…
Varoufakis is just one of many people who have come up with fancy new terms for capitalism and imperialism. It’s not to say that he doesn’t have an important perspective on some things, but coming up with new terms for things defined over a century ago only serves to distract.
Wouldn’t the best term be mercantilism? Power through the accumulation of wealth, but instead of nations it’s now corporations. It’s definitely not capitalist since capitalism is about having competition, and that doesn’t happen without constant government intervention to break up monopolies and trusts.
over a century ago Lenin has defined imperialism as capitalism in decay, monopoly capitalism, capitalism that has outgrown competition, that has stopped playing a progressive role in history and became solely a force of reaction, and since then not much has changed
I think the problem with capitalism isn’t the cool stuff that has been produced under it, it’s everything else about it. Literally the only reason to forgo buying a MacBook or a Google Home device as some sort of anti-capitalism spite move is to have the upper hand in conversations like this. In reality, you not making those purchases won’t move the needle in any way. If it did, it would be in the negative. Our entire economic system and system of employment relies on making purchases like that. Consumer spending is the economy.
Fundamentally there is no difference between buying an iPhone vs any other phone in terms of its support for capitalism. If anything, an iPhone might be better. Apple actually inspects its factories and at least pays lip service to stopping the most egregious abuses like forced or child labour. That white box Chinese android phone? If anything was built by forced or child labour, it’s that.
So targeting individuals for their purchases is both pointless and counterproductive. If you want to affect change, then vote, protest, organize. Push for and support proper regulation and controls. Make it so that people’s employment isn’t required for them to get healthcare, services, shelter. Make it so that an economic recession impacts those with the most, not those with the least.
Stressing about trying to make the least capitalist choice under a capitalist system just does exactly what they want you to do. The more time you spend judging your neighbour, the less time you spend looking up and see who’s really fucking you.
Thank you. I was trying to figure out how to express my opinion on this matter, and you pretty much did. We’re all allies in this, just by virtue of the fact that we were born into it. Let your fellow man do their thing, knowing they probably made the best decision possible with the information they had, and focus on systemic improvements, instead of trying to control one dude at the end of the line.
I spose you missed the part where I generally agreed with his criticisms (as someone who is also part of the system), and how the focus of my reply was the simping and bragging.
When you look at that process of waiting on somebody who has told you they were going to do something and told you they were going to be there for you and they were not, they are showing you in that moment exactly who they are. That means that’s somebody who cannot be trusted. So why would you the next time trust that person?
So, Maya Angelou said to me, when I was telling her one of these stories about, “I’m waiting and I couldn’t believe it and he didn’t call me and I don’t know what happened,” she was saying, “My dear,” in her Maya voice, “My dear, when people show you who they are, why don’t you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are? Why can’t you get it the first time?”
And so the adjunct of that is, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. Don’t wait for the twenty-ninth time."
The full quote is “When people who you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Which I think is the best version of the quote, honestly. We’ve been letting conservatives scream about who they are without really believing them for 70 fucking years now. Now they’re not even afraid to put on a mask, they’ve gone fully mask-off on abuse and racism. This is what you get by enabling them through not believing them the first time. To me that’s the further issue that Angelou didn’t touch on. You’re enabling that behavior by treating them as though they will somehow magically change. For Oprah it was assuming that man would suddenly start calling and treating her right. For the US political establishment it’s for assuming conservatives are operating in good faith.
(It is Oprah Winfrey rephrasing statements she had been told by Maya Angelou. So the quote often gets attributed to them both, but I would consider it a Winfrey quote simply because she’s paraphrasing someone else, using her own words.)
(Also, while the quote is good and Maya Angelou is good. Fuck Oprah Winfrey and all the fucking snake oil peddling freaks she promotes.)
What you all needto realize is, those last 70 years have been DEMOCRATS showing you who they are: Useful idiots for the truly evil Republicans.
Yet no one believes it despite that being the only thing Democrats do… Obama care is a Republican plan from Mitt Romney from the 90’s. Biden is now ALSO screeching about “securing the border”…
Democrats are the blissfully unaware idiots helping evil people, and nobody believes it.
I didn’t say them by name, but Democrats are who I was thinking about when I discussed how pretending they are operating in good faith is enabling that behavior.
Democrats enable Conservative criminality, because they play an endless shell-game of “but they’re really operating in good faith this time, we promise. We just need to reach across the aisle get a reach-around.”
“If we ‘meet them in the middle’ and shift a mile to the right for the 3,041st time, they’ll totally meet us in the middle THIS TIME instead of sprinting another two miles to the right like they have every other time, we swear!”
I understand the panic in marginalized communities and them saying if dems don’t win they’re going to be fucked now, but they don’t get that we’re only a couple election cycles from democrats throwing them under the bus same as Republicans.
Well, I voted Biden in 2020, and here we are four years later and I ain't in a camp yet. Kind of seems like that's an inaccurate prediction, and you would be served by considering the chain of reasoning that led you to this pass, to see what improvements might be made in your process to enable better predictions in the future. Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change.
Sure, there’s no way the inexorable march rightward the dnc follows and the explicit moves it makes to ensure leftists, third parties, and other establishment “outsiders” are acutely informed (including via court rulings stating that voters can eat shit the dnc does what it wants) that they have no place in the dnc ends badly.
Trump hasn’t put you in a camp either yet so by your logic he’s totally fine!
Trump and the rest of the red team are loudly and proudly proclaiming that they want to and moving that way in territory they control.
Do you have a suggestion as to what I should do that isn't accelerationism or removing any power I have to influence outcomes by turning to fantasy as a solution?
I agree that that's fucked. Giving the red team power means that number gets bigger, faster, and that no improvement whatsoever takes place. Perfection isn't on my political menu, do you have a suggestion that isn't accelerationism or not influencing the situation at all? Because "vote third party" sure doesn't seem to have "sent a message" in any way I can recognize. It just enshittified the country faster. Looks like harm reduction is the order of the day in politics while encouraging improvement via other means.
Leftists and third parties didn’t enshittify the country faster -
That was Democrats who roll over and enable Republicans. That dedicate WAYYYY more energy to fighting anyone left of Joe than they EVER have fighting Republicans. That move the goalposts every time a third party meets the requirements for inclusion.
You blame third party voters for not “voting blue no matter who (even if that blue is anti labor and pro genocide)” but refuse to place blame with your precious democrats for actively stifling any voices left of mid right corporatism and actively changing the rules to keep anyone but the duopoly out of the system.
Fascism is fascism, and your insistence that the people actively supporting a racial cleansing will NEVER support it for other marginalized groups is lunacy.
I'm not sure why you think that letting the Republicans win by voting third party does anything but make things much, much worse, than not letting them win. First past the post elections are in part a keynesian beauty contest, and if you can't recognize how that is the case, I don't think you have a lot to correct me on.
That’s funny, because things like the voting uncommitted campaign have already done more to move Biden to the left than any “strategic voting democrat” has done in decades.
You keep giving them your vote, you say, definitively “I agree with your current course.” They don’t hear, “oh they don’t like us so we’ll move left” they say, “lefties are more willing to sacrifice their values and still vote for us, so let’s move right and court more right wing votes”.
Unless you live in a swing state, there is vastly more strategic value in voting third party than there is in signing off on austerity and genocide and fascist immigration policy.
Hi. I voted uncommitted. In the primary. Also, I advocated for others to vote uncommitted, in the primary. There, it's a useful signal. In the general, it's handing the country to people gleefully proclaiming they want to round you up, and who openly and blatantly showed their disregard for your continued existence by letting a plague run rampant on the basis that cities vote blue and are more crowded so would suffer more death.
Bro my state has voted over 60% democrat in the last 4 presidential elections, nearly 70% in the last 2. Unless Biden has disaffected millions of voters, in which case it reflects on his complete and total failure as a candidate, leftists voting for third parties will not result in his loss, but it will signal that his support has weakened significantly in just 4 years time.
I think we will both have to do what we have to do. I don’t agree that voters in non-swing states voting third party is the same as voting for the other major party, and neither do the results of our elections.
Right, the affordable care act ISN’T based on Mitt Romney’s plan, and Biden totally didn’t say, “give me the ability to close the border and I’ll do it!”.
Ya’ll are in fucking denial and it’s beyond pathetic. The fascists are winning because you’re too fucking weak to understand that the Dems have been the “good cop” to the Republicans’ bad cop for decades.
Again, grow up and engage with the real world before it’s too late.
I am NOT saying, “don’t vote for Biden over Trump”. I’m saying, “don’t trust Biden to fix much without GREAT pressure.”. Yet you fucks cannot even hear the basic truth that not even the Dems are your friend unless you make a HEALTHY six figures or more. Pathetic. Fucking Pathetic.
Telegram added stories not too long ago and I feel the same way about that. It’s UI pollution we don’t want, and that we didn’t ask for, and that serves no real purpose.
Telegram started the enshittification route already. Premium version, locked features and stickers, spam about their crypto crap, and now these useless stories
Be glad it’s still there and found an okay way to pay for costs. Pavel might be rich, but tgram grew a bit big for a hobby/vision payment alone. And there’s nothing behind the paywall anyone really needa, so it’s fine for me. Better than selling my data and calling the app “free”. He never said it would never happen. He just promised (back then) that it would always remain free to use. Which it is.
The stories are annoying, yes. But people are using this shit. I don’t understand why, but I don’t get social media in general.
Floss and brush before bed is probably most important, yeah, but I feel gross if I don't brush in the morning. If I'm feeling lazy and my mouth feels relatively clean, I'll use mouthwash but usually it's toothpaste.
I think it’s the opposite - I only brush in the morning, no cavities, one slightly cracked tooth (tiny enough to leave alone, my dentist had the same issue, and my outcome is better than his was - he needed a crown, my teeth are all natural)
Brush your tongue - that’s key. Brush your teeth when your mouth feels gross, like when you wake up or if you don’t eat all day. Floss promptly if you feel something stuck in your teeth.
Don’t use mouthwash if you don’t need it… Cultivate a good microbiome if you want good health - mouth and gut.
My teeth aren’t pearly white, they’re natural off white. The year my dental report card jumped to an A+, I also started eating extremely spicy food… I’m pretty sure the tongue brushing was the bigger deal, but the two trends started the same year
I just use the back of the toothbrush - most of them have a scraper on the back these days… Better than the type I used to use - they were hard to clean and the groves would get nasty
My sister swears by this flexible metal blade-like style though, I’ve never tried it but she got my mom to use it
On waking up, after lunch and after dinner. I, specifically, also brush with toothpaste after breakfest and afternoon tea. That’s a personal choice and not a recommendation.
The former government contributed a lot to this, specially in the last year. Poverty has been steadily on the rise since 2003. I cant (imo) blame Milei for this, but I can’t deny that if anything Milei has accelerated the impact of Kirchners’ missmanagement.
Another things to keep in mind, the Kirchners were famous for lying about inflation and poverty indices and this government is consequently “taking pride” in transparency. Milei is also using this numbers to show how bad the economy is… so numbers could be biased or exaggerated.
Poverty here is generally measured by household income, which means that inflation leaves a lot of people under the poverty line, which may or not be momentary cause we get constant salary increases… always under inflation, of course.
The thing is really bad, and people is living out of savings. A sign of that is that we can buy US$ by 1400 pesos in a bank, but people is selling so many dollars in the black market to pay bills that we can buy them for 1000 pesos on the streets.
If all this mess will pay out in the long term, I cant tell, but appealing to our erratic history, I would say that it won’t.
I have noticed that Argentina seems to go in 25 year cycles since Peron. The junta in the 70s privatized a lot and cut social services (not to mention the catastrophic human rights violations), then Menem at the end of the 90s did somewhat the same, and now in 2024 Milei is cutting public spending / social services, and privatizing whatever can be privatized. Is that at all what really has been happening in Argentina?
First, this is just my opinion and I don’t fully understand the situation cause it started way before I was born, and being inside this mess makes everything fuzzy.
The peak of argentinian economy was in the 20s, 30s, when our economy was tied to UK. UK built extensive infraestructure and produced a constant demand of our grains, our lands were more vast and fertile than today, Northern lands (uruguay, brazil) were not as suitable for cattle and sowing as they are today, Panama canal was just starting to operate and most of the international commerce was still being forced to move thorough our waters. All of that faded away and we never truly matched our population growth and needs with our slow lose of wealth and relevancy.
After the 30s we started a slow debacle. Social unrest let Peron rise to power in 45’ and from then on we got into a loop of crisis mixed with military coups and with our two main parties prioritizing destroying each other over making this land viable. Peronism tried to destroy the aristocrat class by milking the land which was their main source of wealth and ucr/military tried to suppress peronism by leaving them out of elections. Since Peron, Menem was the first peronist president that ended his term, and Macri the first non peronist to do so.
Nepotism, corruption are a common thing in both parties. And specially today, peronism has grown into a big mafia.
25 years is too much, we live in constant crisis here with small windows of economical “growth”.
If you ask me what our problem is, it is that our erratic political decisions are inconsistent with what we have and what we can offer to the world.
As a joke, we generally say that the problem of Argentina is that it is full of Argentinians.
Also, whenever you see a pretty good economical growth like the first government of the kirchners, it is that we either had a pretty good sowing session or that we are just recovering from a strong crisis.
First move of any new management is to take the worst possible stocktake and shine the worst possible light to last management’s figures. Then any meagre positive movement or even if things remain the same will look like improvement.
The thing is, I’m not. But if you buy legal dollars, it’s ~800 +75% (a part of that are 30% or so taxes, the other part are 45% or so retentions that are returned as tax deduction doing the proper paperwork).
I held the retained part as taxes because of high inflation, but that’s just me.
You can follow that as “dollar tarjeta”
The blue was near 1350 some time ago and started falling when people began to sell their dollars. Now it is slightly cheaper than buying legal dollars + taxes - retentions.
I’m not sure if Milei has been in power for long enough to have any sort of meaningful impact.
Doing things the regular way, he wouldn’t have.
That’s not what he’s doing, though. He’s tearing apart huge chunks of the government apparatus that people depend on with no safety nets or other mitigation of inevitable consequences.
It’s like the “let’s tear down each wall until we find out which ones are load bearing” approach to governance. Except they all are and he just keeps swinging his +5 Sledgehammer of Demagogue Stupidity.
Yeah. I’m hardly a fan of everything he says or does, but it’s a bit like appointing a new captain an hour after the Titanic hit the iceberg, then blaming him for not stopping the ship from sinking. Argentina was well on its way to hyperinflation long before the presidential elections.
The poverty spiked exactly as fast and exactly as much as the social programs he dismantled, he’s trying stuff out and his first speech explained that this would happen.
I don’t believe he’s gonna pull off any kind of 2nd phase.
The chart below shows the ARS/USD exchange rate over the last five years.
The peso has been in steady decline for years, with the last big drop in December, about a week before the presidential election.
The exchange rate doesn’t tell the whole story of course, but neither does attacking Milei for dismantling Argentina’s social programs. The reason for Argentina’s ongoing problems is that the state has literally dozens (if not hundreds) of social programs that it simply cannot afford, along with regulations strangling otherwise healthy businesses. The Peronists have always ‘solved’ this problem by a) borrowing whatever they can (and then defaulting on the debt) and b) printing more money. This has unsurprisingly led to ever-increasing inflation and rampant poverty.\
The Peronist/Kirchnerist presidential candidate (Massa) planned to counter the threatening hyperinflation by printing more money for more subsidies to counter the effects of the inflation. Let that sink in for a moment.
The point is, Argentina’s current system of subsidies and handouts is not sustainable, and hasn’t been for decades. That’s not a political opinion but simple math: you cannot spend more than you earn forever.
How that problem can and should be solved is of course debatable. Milei is certainly far from an ideal president, but when you bash him, keep in mind what the alternative to him would have looked like… and maybe give him a chance to prove his critics wrong if he gets Argentina’s economy back on track, which would be something the faux-left Peronistas/Kirchnerites have failed to do for the better part of eight decades now.
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