The age thing I’m less interested in, but competency tests and health checks probably more so. Think they’d do the same thing but more precisely (some people shit out in their 70s, some people stay sharp until they’re 100)
Some people shouldn’t be eligible in their 30s. I don’t know how we decide it though is the issue, and I don’t trust that some conservative won’t gain power and say “anyone who thinks corporations shouldn’t be regulated is mentally ill” won’t gain power.
This is probably an unpopular view, but when you look at actual actions in Congress, I’ve barely seen Bernie do anything effective, but I have seen The Squad work fairly effectively to (1) push the agenda in a positive direction (sometimes, usually maybe, they fail, but they do have successes) and (2) hold the right to account (AOC’s questions during the Michael Cohen was a masterclass in using power effectively rather than grandstanding, which is what her colleagues were doing for the most part)
Bernie is obviously in the other place and doesn’t have the same opportunities, but where he has similar opportunities he rarely seems to use them. He’s a good orator, but he doesn’t have to be in Congress to do that. Losing Bernie would be a shame, but losing The Squad would be a disaster.
Fuck this shit. I e been reading all the details about it for 30 years now. 30 years. Nothing I can do to stop it, nothing that anyone that can do something about it will do, we’re fucked.
Within 10 years civilization as we know it will be on its knees and all because a tiny fraction of assholes wanted more than the rest, and most of the rest were too dumb to care.
I’m not going to stress myself anymore s out it. Yes, this is an extremely fatalist attitude but I think it’s realistic enough. Governments will not take any meaningful action “economy is important too you know!” Scientists have been ignore for decades and now get threatened for telling facts.
Humanity does t deserve to live. Maybe that is what causes the great filter.
I’m not trying to be a doomsday thinker, but man, I totally agree with you I think the only good news I’ve ever heard about climate change is that the hole in the ozone layer has disappeared, but other than that is has only ever been bad worse worst.
Lol the hammer attack would have been a great exit strategy. Oh well would you look at that, ever since my husband got his head beat in with a hammer he just can’t seem to pick stocks as well.
He did not disable anything, he refused a foreign (Ukrainian) request to enable it, that was contrary to his country’s (US) stance at that moment: sanctions forbidding him to provide any service over Russia or Russian assets.
Others say he disabled the system. Malicious narcissist & pathological liar says he didn’t. If Musk disabled the system it makes him look very bad and may result in a major government response that would harm Musk and his business.
The US imposed sanctions on private businesses from offering services to Russia
Starlink blocked all service over Russia and Russian assets
Ukraine asked Musk to extend the service over Russian assets
Musk followed US’s rules
Shit happened
Suddenly, the US DoD scrambled to get a contract for Starlink… wonder why?
As much as I dislike Musk —and I wouldn’t be surprised if he used this to negotiate a better contract—, this one was a total fuckup by the US DoD, and in part by Ukraine for not pressuring the DoD into signing a contract much sooner.
Facts come from history, most are recorded for everyone to check, particularly these ones are public. You may even find the exact dates for each one.
The “shit happens” is Ukraine botching a military operation because they asked a private US citizen to break US law. You may have confused “action” with “inaction as ordered”.
Thanks for the link. So many people online just pull stuff from their ass it’s a surprise when sources actually exist.
I see nothing in those links regarding the DoD contract specifics and I think you’re making assumptions about how US law is applied in foreign war zones involving our allies and hostile adversaries. US law is amazingly flexible in just about any situation that can be said to involve our or our allies national security. The Defense Department has withheld almost all information about the Starlink contract, and from what I can see even the date it was signed hasn’t been made public. All I can find at multiple sites is that a contract has been signed with almost zero additional information.
The Defense Department acknowledged the decision but withheld virtually all details about the agreement, including how much it will cost U.S. taxpayers and when the contract was signed.
SpaceX, Musk’s space-exploration company, had for months been providing Internet access across Ukraine, allowing the country’s forces to plan attacks and to defend themselves. But, in recent days, the forces had found their connectivity severed as they entered territory contested by Russia.
At a conference in Aspen attended by business and political figures, Musk even appeared to express support for Vladimir Putin. “He was onstage, and he said, ‘We should be negotiating. Putin wants peace—we should be negotiating peace with Putin,’ ” Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal with Musk, recalled. Musk seemed, he said, to have “bought what Putin was selling, hook, line, and sinker.” A week later, Musk tweeted a proposal for his own peace plan, which called for new referendums to redraw the borders of Ukraine, and granted Russia control of Crimea, the semi-autonomous peninsula recognized by most nations, including the United States, as Ukrainian territory. In later tweets, Musk portrayed as inevitable an outcome favoring Russia and attached maps highlighting eastern Ukrainian territories, some of which, he argued, “prefer Russia.”
By then, Musk’s sympathies appeared to be manifesting on the battlefield. One day, Ukrainian forces advancing into contested areas in the south found themselves suddenly unable to communicate. “We were very close to the front line,” Mykola, the signal-corps soldier, told me. “We crossed this border and the Starlink stopped working.” The consequences were immediate. “Communications became dead, units were isolated. When you’re on offense, especially for commanders, you need a constant stream of information from battalions. Commanders had to drive to the battlefield to be in radio range, risking themselves,” Mykola said. “It was chaos.” Ukrainian expats who had raised funds for the Starlink units began receiving frantic calls. The tech executive recalls a Ukrainian military official telling him, “We need Elon now.” “How now?” he replied. “Like fucking now,” the official said. “People are dying.” Another Ukrainian involved told me that he was “awoken by a dozen calls saying they’d lost connectivity and had to retreat.” The Financial Times reported that outages affected units in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk. American and Ukrainian officials told me they believed that SpaceX had cut the connectivity via geofencing, cordoning off areas of access.
The senior defense official said, “We had a whole series of meetings internal to the department to try to figure out what we could do about this.” Musk’s singular role presented unfamiliar challenges, as did the government’s role as intermediary. “It wasn’t like we could hold him in breach of contract or something,” the official continued. The Pentagon would need to reach a contractual arrangement with SpaceX so that, at the very least, Musk “couldn’t wake up one morning and just decide, like, he didn’t want to do this anymore.” Kahl added, “It was kind of a way for us to lock in services across Ukraine. It could at least prevent Musk from turning off the switch altogether.”
I find it laughable that Musk would assert that Putin wants peace and that Ukraine should negotiate. Putin can achieve peace by unilaterally withdrawing his forces and restoring pre-war borders. In other words Musk wants peace on his and Putin’s terms and that means victory for Russia.
We don’t know the specific timelines of what else has gone on with Musk and Ukraine yet. We do know that Musk lies constantly about things as important as major government contracts, buying out major corporations, taking companies private, the capabilities of Telsa vehicles and even about things as mundane and ridiculous as showing up for a cage match with Zuckerburg. It strains credulity to suggest he’s not lying about what he’s done with Starlink if telling the truth might make him look bad. Given his history of openly siding with Putin and pushing Ukraine to surrender significant parts of their country, it is more than reasonable to assume he’s lying in support of that goal too.
Not sure if it was in an article or on TV, but at some point there was a map showing Starlink coverage over Ukraine, and how it faded towards the borders in order to go down to zero in the conflict areas. Obviously the moment Ukrainian forces started to push, they went into the blackout areas and were SOL.
Regarding the DoD agreement… I’m not sure where I’ve read it, but apparently he asked the DoD to foot the bill for Starlink around the end of 2022… and then when the agreement was drafted and they were about to pay for it, he decided that “nah”, he’d follow providing the service for free. I highly suspect that was a weasel way to negotiate better terms and/or amount, knowing that the DoD needed a contract to hold him accountable, and that they were actually willing to pay.
You’re not wrong in not trusting the guy, nobody should; according to his recent biography, he seems to take everything as a big game with the main objective of making more money.
What I find especially disturbing about this entire scenario is that Musk is literally choosing to protect the Russian war machine instead of the people who are being attacked - including seniors, women, infants and children. Taking steps to protect an aggressor while actively preventing a country from defending its non-combatant citizens from unprovoked attacks is just plain evil.
I expect Musk will have a movie made about him someday. It won’t be flattering.
I understand what you’re saying, but it seems like you’re in this sort of essential/existential purgatory. Do you really believe a lack of pride is one of our collective shortcomings?
It’s just what I feel. It’s hard for me to feel humanity is worth saving. But I’m happy to hear another point of view. Do you feel we are worth saving?
Not really. He’s just afraid that his satellite constellation will get targeted by the Russians. They probably threatened him and he being who he is (attached to his companies) started to cave.
Plausible but wouldn’t they already be a target at this point, and to counter wouldn’t this have been a known risk when he signed the contract with the US Government on providing the coverage for Ukraine?
The reason rich families and giant corpos buy politicians. The Koch family specifically bought up every Republican they could for the express purpose of making more money- because buying politicians up was less costly than not polluting.
And before some pubbie dumbass gets up in here with “they were just not maintaining records chill out bro!”:
Their bad record keeping was by design.
The us regulatory frame work relies on self-reporting- in this case benzene leaks and releases. By simply not reporting it or keeping those records, they covered up the crime of polluting Corpus Christie for years. That’s why it’s not just some bad record keeping.
Stocks aren’t going to inside trade themselves! Get out of the way you old cunt. Hopefully someone primaries her and the people in SF vote her out. Still worse to have a Republican in the seat but jfc this is infuriating.
As a fan of SpaceX, I’m so sad that this company is tied to him, as they are doing amazing stuff. Today he could have zero involvement with it it would continue to be great, but his name makes it look bad to the public.
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