I didn’t start this tradition of responding to Trump as if he’s a random demented asshole who wandered into a commercial establishment to harangue cashiers with unhinged rants, but I think everyone should respond in a similar way from now on.
Sir, this is Burger King. Please either place your order or stand aside for the next guest.
— Betty Cracker (@bettycrackerfl) August 14, 2018
And I mean everyone. Next time Trump calls Prime Minister Shinzō Abe at 3 o’clock in the morning because he, Trump, doesn’t understand time zones, Abe should say, “That’s an, um, interesting theory on bilateral trade, sir, but this is the 24-hour State Farm customer service help line. Do you need to upgrade your vehicle insurance?”
When he calls Theresa May at midnight, she should say, “This is British Airways. How may I help you?” Ditto Macron, except change the company to Air France. Justin Trudeau could impersonate Bank of Nova Scotia, and so on.
That motherfucker has been gaslighting the entire planet for a year and change. We should gaslight him right back. If we all stuck together, he’d crack inside a week…
satby
I like it! Bet we could get total buy-in from world leaders too, because they’re at least as sick of him as we are!
Mike J
I think everyone should respond to Trump with, “bitch, I’m a cow.”
I’m not a cat, I don’t say meow.
Boris, Rasputin's Evil Twin
Please proceed.
Is there room for Jake from State Farm in this? My brother Grigori and I want to play this game, especially while drunk
Ramalama
Hilarious. And probably brilliant. But what would it look like, Trump cracking?
Paul W.
Two tweets in a row of otherizing people of color (Omarosa) and Muslims (“animals”). There is going to be a blood reckoning from those who receive this message from Trump and act on it.
danielx
@Ramalama:
All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men….couldn’t put Donnie together again.
Nor yet a corps of highly paid psychotherapists.
Ramalama
Also, Betty’s suggestion that world leaders get in on it kind of reminds me of This American Life’s episode on how Brazil convinced its own people that their money had value (when it was worthless), and it worked.
spudgun
Wonderful idea, but I’m too busy being gobsmacked by the fact that the president* of the United States called a woman (who I’m certainly no fan of, but COME THE EFF ON) – a DOG. On Twitter. For everyone to see.
SMDH—
MattF
Old orange guy behind me in line, muttering to himself. Wearing a wig-like object.
Tokyokie
I don’t think such a tactic would work with Abe, because I doubt his English is good enough to carry it off, but he could instead reply with a stream of yakuza slang obscenities snarled in the most impolite form of Japanese. Sure, der Trumpenführer wouldn’t understand the words, but he couldn’t mistake the tone.
Amir Khalid
Angela Merkel: “Guten Abend, das ist der Deutsche Telekom Kundenservice. Drücken Sie eins für Deutsch. Drücken Sie zwei für Englisch. Drücken Sie drei für Französisch. …”
MomSense
We have a large, orange manchild with yellow hair at the customer service desk. Will the secret service please come to the customer service desk to retrieve your lost manchild.
cmorenc
@Tokyokie:
Trump is fluidly conversant in the language of abrasive asshole.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Drucken sie vier fur Dummkopf.
Scamp Dog
@Tokyokie: I wouldn’t worry about that, I’m sure Abe has someone on his staff who could pull it off for him.
Tokyokie
@Amir Khalid: Amir, the saddest part of all this is that Merkel’s English is much better than der Trumpenführer’s.
Ruckus
@Ramalama:
Exactly what it looks like now.
dmsilev
Question: Did the original version of that Tweet describe Omarosa as a ‘dog’, or was it edited from the original of ‘bitch’? I’m going with the latter.
khead
Someone should tell Bess that Trump said something bad about Elon Musk. (Just skimmed that thread).
Baud
I happen to know Abe is an avid Juicer so he might do this.
Ruckus
@khead:
Was it “Elon who?”
schrodingers_cat
@dmsilev: Is Bess DougJ?
OzarkHillbilly
@Ramalama: About like what you see now.
lollipopguild
2020BaudBeBest!
The Midnight Lurker
Thank you, Ms. Cracker! This made me laugh out loud. And you’re right, maybe we should start gaslightin’ his ass. ‘I’m sorry Mr. President, but the golden elevator is out, try this speedy (garbage) chute instead’.
LAO
@khead: I looked at it last night and boy was it crazy.
randy khan
The possibilities are endless!
“You have reached the Internal Revenue Service customer service line. Press 1 to accept our audit findings. Press 2 to pay your overdue taxes from your secret Russian account.”
A Ghost To Most
@Ramalama: He doesn’t crack; he outgasses
mad citizen
@Ramalama: one of my favorite maxims from teaching economics: “money is accepted because it’s accepted.”
JCJ
@MomSense:
Drücken Sie fünf für Arscloch…
JCJ
@JCJ: can’t edit
Arschloch
Yarrow
@LAO: It’s the most hilarious thread. When Amir starts batting the commenter around you know it’s over the top. The cray is strong with that one.
jimmiraybob
The hold entertainment could be recordings of John McCain’s greatest speeches……soundbites.
Please hold for our next available world leader: Beep “My fellow Americans……..
LAO
@Yarrow: It went on for days! I can’t believe I missed it when it started.
Amir Khalid
@Yarrow:
I aim to please.
Jeffro
man, Twitler is just going nuts this morning…I think he just put up about six tweets in a row about how Strozk = Sessions should resign, the Special Counsel’s investigation should be over/re-done (what the hell does ‘re-done’ even mean?), Hillary should be arrested, and (new character!) Ohr should be next to be fired from the FBI
Can we get Uber Eats to deliver a couple quarter pounders, stat? I think he’s just hangry while trying to hang in there ’til lunchtime…
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
I take Bess at her word (only because I’ve heard similar arguments in person); somebody completely serious about climate change and seeing Elon Musk as somebody with the drive and money and talent to make a difference. The defense of every move of a billionaire playboy is a little much. (Wikipedia lists him as single, with three ex spouses.)
I’m in a similar ideological position; we need many more billionaires competing for wealth-positions in a post-carbon economy (and fewer in other areas), and taking some public mindspace(including lobbying) away from (very wealthy) fossil fuel interests, and he’s a start. I just wish he would spend less mental effort on escapism-for-billionaires projects like colonies on Mars, and have more focus on thinking about where to best spend effort (both short and long term) related both to limiting and to adapting to human-caused climate change. I will assume he’s read the recent study on runaway greenhouse effect.
(Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene )(August 6, 2018) (pdf))
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@jimmiraybob: Trudeau could have the audio of some Canadian Broadcasting Corporation special on Klondike brothels; “The gold fields the German-Americans brothel owners were widely despised for curious clothing choices and tenancy towards bonespures”
Yarrow
@LAO: Well, it only started Sunday night, so not yet two full days. It’s fantastic though and still going. I think this has to be one of my favorite parts of the cray comments:
Extremely serious! The bold is in the original. LOLOLOLOL. Too funny. Apparently the most important thing is the timeline in which events happened, not the fact that he accused someone of being a pedo and then doubled down on it an hour later.
khead
Bess is the tip of the iceberg. The mere mention of Elon over at the Gawker sites (er, formerly Gawker) brings them out in the comments like someone sending up a Greenwald flare here at BJ.
schrodingers_cat
@Bill Arnold: I asked because I have had some totally nonsensical arguments with Bess before. Once about DACA and the other was about self driving cars.
Immanentize
My alternate idea about responding to Trump is that people just text, or say softly, “collusion.”
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think DougJ has that much time anymore. He’s pretty busy with the baby.
Booger
@Yarrow: Link please? I can’t find it…
Gin & Tonic
@khead: I wonder what the Venn diagram of Elon fanbois and Steve Jobs fanbois would look like.
Elizabelle
@Yarrow: Missed the thread in real life.
The TBogg thread, Sunday night, with 546 comments, with 138 mentions of “Bess.” Elon Musk, Amir, etc. Woo boy.
It’s All fun and games until …
LAO
@Immanentize: Hey. Looks like the Manafort Jury will get the case later today or tomorrow. I’m almost excited.
Elizabelle
@Booger: Just put it up. They got me curious too.
Yarrow
@Booger: This thread. Blew past the Tbogg yesterday.
LAO
@Yarrow: Wait — it’s still going. It’s amazing the level of hero-worship a self-interested, libertarian billionaire can generate. Personally, I don’t get it. The guy comes across, to me, as a giant, whiny dick.
Yarrow
@LAO: What’s the defense going to do? Nothing? I saw this morning the public was ushered out for some reason.
Gin & Tonic
@LAO: Defense isn’t calling any witnesses?
Caracal
@Amir Khalid: This. Made me laugh. TY
Platonailedit
Sneaky assholes.
LAO
@Gin & Tonic: @Yarrow: According to the post, it doesn’t look like the defense is going to put on my of any kind of case. And, honestly, it’s rare to call many defense witnesses at trial. (It’s not an alibi case). Looks to me like Manafort is going to live or die by cross-examination.
I do wonder what all the closing of the courtroom has been about.
different-church-lady
@Platonailedit: KILL YOUR
TELEVISIONSMARTPHONEImmanentize
@LAO:
I am excited. Very interested to hear the closings! What’s your take? I think the prosecution put on more than enough evidence for conviction. And it seems Judge Ellis has finally been tamed/shamed by the Mueller team….
Shall we start a pool?
Immanentize
@LAO:
I’ve seen Judges close the courtroom when they want to speak directly to the defendant about, in one case I had, whether the defendant fully understood what their right to testify meant. It was a complicated situation — a retrial — but the judge wanted and got a direct right to testify colloquy on the record in a closed court setting.
LAO
@Immanentize: Who knows? I no longer trust my judgment (Hello Oregon) — as to the pool — yes! I think the jury returns a verdict in 1 and 1/2 days. You?
LAO
@Immanentize: Interesting. I’ve never seen a courtroom closed for that discussion but it makes sense in a high profile, high drama case.
Gin & Tonic
@LAO: Thanks for the explanation.
I can’t join in any pool because I am unable to be objective about the blood-soaked mercenary Paul Fucking Manafort.
Immanentize
@LAO: Lots of documents, the jury wants to look like they are doing their job…. I vote guilty on all the tax charges, hung on one bank fraud charge (because Ellis muddied the waters) and final verdict in two days plus whatever was left in the day the jury retired to deliberate. Pretty much the same as you.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic:
I wish you were on that jury!
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
Betty, you are priceless. This made me laugh so hard. Thank you!
PS: I can’t stand Omarosa but Trumpov calling her a dog just sets my teeth on edge
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: I’m pretty sure I’d have been disqualified.
Yarrow
@LAO: You made me to to the WaPo liveblog. Can’t tell what’s happening. The last entry was a motion from the defense:
I guess Manafort could have put on his applications that he was employed by air and his money grew on trees and the bank would have just signed off on it. Okay. Totally sounds like how normal people live.
Jack the Second
@Bill Arnold:
Two ex-spouses from three divorces.
Doug R
Well the Canadian government is buying the Transmountain pipeline…
.”Hello/Bonjour this is the Transmountain pipeline/pipeline de transmountain. Pour les Français, composer les deux.”
David Evans
When I started reading science fiction in the 1950’s we would never have believed that getting into space would routinely require throwing away 95% of the vehicle on each trip. I don’t think our descendants will believe we tolerated it for so long either. They will have Elon Musk to thank for the fact that they don’t have to.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow: IANAL but I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t have a MAGA hat not seeing the whole exchange with that banker from Chicago who apparently saw himself as trump’s Clark Clifford as anything but an attempt to arrange a payoff, an incredibly, laughably, delusionally corrupt quid pro quo arrangement.
MSNBC just showed a tweet from one of their formerfederalprosecutors saying that it looks ike a defense motion about some impropriety with a juror may “have some teeth”. One of his FFP colleagues said Ellis would be extremely reluctant to grant a mistrial. I think I’ve heard there are four alternate jurors.
A Ghost To Most
Although the evidence appears overwhelming (even to lawyers, apparently), I’m still thinking there is at least one juror who will hold out. Facts don’t matter to fascists.
Yarrow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wonder why, in such a high profile case, the jury wasn’t sequestered.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What could possibly blow back on them ?
Timurid
I assume the Manafort defense will be going with Ye Olde Jury Nullification?
If the jury has white people on it, it has Trump supporters on it.
LAO
@Timurid: I know I shouldn’t say this out loud but most defense strategies involve Ye Olde Jury Nullification.
@Yarrow: In 20 years of practice, I’ve never seen a jury sequestered. I don’t think it’s done often.
eric
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That would not cover her time in the white house or before the campaign (eg, the N word at the apprentice)
A Ghost To Most
@Doug R:
“I’m sorry, sir, but the Propecia side-effects hotline is thinly staffed today”.
H.E.Wolf
@David Evans:
You missed the road sign for the catbox. It’s a few threads back. When you get there, enjoy!
gVOR08
Old, supposedly true story. Air France set up an office in Atlanta. They trained all the employees to properly pronounce the company name. So if you called, you were greeted “Air Frawnce, kinahhepya?”
satby
@Yarrow: That was /is a person in need of a medication adjustment.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
huh, Manafort defense has rested
Paula
Perfect!
randy khan
@different-church-lady:
@Platonailedit:
The difference between what Google is saying about privacy in Android and what Apple said – both in response to specific questions from Congress – is quite remarkable. Or it would be if you didn’t already know that Google is selling you to advertisers and Apple is selling phones to you. (It is somewhat remarkable that Apple doesn’t monetize its customers the way that Google monetizes Android users. Of course Apple monetizes its customers, but mostly by sucking them into the ecosystem.)
randy khan
@Timurid:
In the Eastern District of Virginia, not necessarily. Alexandria (where the courthouse is) and Arlington are mostly white and very heavily Democratic. It’s a slightly better place for Manafort than D.C., but not by too much.
brantl
@Tokyokie:
; Der Trumpenführer can mistake any words or any tone, just give him the chance.
Yutsano
Y u hate Air Canada BC?
@randy khan: Oh I wish I had time today to really run with this idea. So much alphabet soup from the acronyms I could put up!
Jeffro
Just trying to picture the reaction if Obama had called a white female a “dog”…you’d definitely want to go long on pitchforks and torches…
brantl
@Jeffro: It’s just like a stray dog, if you feed him, he’ll never go away.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: I missed that epic thread. Probably just as well I guess.
different-church-lady
@randy khan: It’s a little hard to have customers without monetizing them, no?
The basic difference here is Apple is mostly a hardware company that also does some data, and Google is mostly a data company that also does some hardware. People expect hardware to cost money and have become conditioned to think that data should be free. So a certain amount of subterfuge has become a necessary part of Google’s business model.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Platonailedit:
Only the Democratic ones though, so not much will get done outside of a few states they control.
Kay
FOX has “Omarosa’s shocking claims”
“Shocking”. Guffaw. Completely predictable and extremely credible claims.
We all know they talk like this.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
All the far Right lawyers are hearing from their (awful) clients today, apparently. Such tough guys. Boldly… issuing letters!
Roger Moore
@jimmiraybob:
Obama’s WHCD. Cut no corners.
MomSense
Nancy Smash tweeted the best response.
JDM
And why exactly would any sane, competent person give a “crazed, crying lowlife” a job at the White House?
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, this has me wondering. Either they’re giving up, banking for a pardon, or they’re pretty sure someone has compromised the jury. Their defense has been… pretty awful to non-existent at this point. If they’re not even going to try and bring their own witnesses, that seems like a major sign of “something”.
I don’t see too many other options, though I suppose they have to exist.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: I went to Nancy Pelosi’s twitter page but I didn’t see that. Maybe it was so far down the page that I missed it?
WaterGirl
Maybe
the 2016 electionlast 5 years have left me jaded, but I won’t be at all shocked if there is a hung jury in the Manafort trial.Chyron HR
@David Evans:
When I started reading science fiction in the 1950’s rocket ships and bikini space babes from Venus were the stuff of imagination, but thanks to Elon Musk(tm), all of humanity will benefit from the rocket ships he imagines building and the bikini space babes he imagines finding on Venus!
MattF
OT, I guess. Hannity has declared that the infamous Trump Tower meeting was set up by the Clintons. See Twitter for details. I mean, yeah, who else could possibly be guilty? But still…
sdhays
@MattF: Whenever Hannity goes poopy in his pants, I can just imagine him saying, “Damn you, Hillary!!” while shaking his fist.
Roger Moore
@Platonailedit:
My suspicion is that this is a result of incompetence/the right hand not knowing what the left is doing rather than pure malicious intent. Basically, the individual app teams aren’t talking to the OS platform team or to each other. So the people who designed the location tool only think about tracking your location through that tool, and turning off location history does actually stop that tool from tracking your location. Meanwhile, Maps and Search want your location so they can use use it to refine their results, and they just aren’t thinking about whether that amounts to tracking you when you have asked not to be tracked.
I’m sure there are other places where location is used that also aren’t listening to requests not to share location history. For example, Google wants to map the world’s WiFi hotspots so people who don’t want to drain their batteries by using GPS can still get an approximate location fix from local WiFi. I’d bet they share information about your location when you connect to a new WiFi hotspot so they can refine their database, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that also ignored your request to ignore location tracking. Photos can have GPS coordinates embedded, and turning that off is a separate preference. And so on.
I don’t mean this to excuse Google from tracking people when they’ve asked not to be tracked. They’re a big company with the resources to think about all the ways their apps can leak people’s location without their knowing, and they just haven’t done it. I think that reflects a generally cavalier corporate attitude toward user privacy that’s reflected in the way they make money.
ruemara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Who doesn’t love discovery?
Platonailedit
Politico: U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III rejected a last-minute bid by the defense to toss out the charges against Paul Manafort.
Manafort defense rests without calling witnesses.
What’s going on?
MisterForkbeard
@MattF: Some Fox NewsBlonde was floating this a few days ago. “I think it’s pretty clear Hillary and Putin conspired to make Trump look bad”, basically.
There’s some fairly impressive wanking out there in service of Trump. Like, brainwashing-level.
MattF
@Roger Moore: This is a linguistic/cognitive deficiency also known as ‘nerdview‘.
Amir Khalid
@MattF:
The Clintons set up a meeting with the Russians? For the Trump campaign? To get dirt on the Clintons? Hmm. Mighty generous of the Clintons.
Roger Moore
@David Evans:
The Space Shuttle gave up throwing away 95% of the vehicle on every launch back in the 80s. Musk is doing better- he’s not throwing away an object as big as the external tank- but he’s following in Nasa’s footsteps.
Yarrow
@Platonailedit: Pophat has a thread on why the defense rested.
More in the thread.
Crashman
@Platonailedit: Counting on the pardon coming through after conviction, I guess.
sdhays
@Amir Khalid: JFC, can’t Spankee do ANYTHING for himself?? I suppose he had Hillary launder the Russian oligarch money through his properties for him too, because laundry is “a woman thing”… //
Calouste
@different-church-lady: Apple sells you hardware.
Microsoft sells you software.
Google sells you.
Jeffro
Oh hey look here’s Bob Rubin, both-sides-ing his ass off: America’s Debt Has Exploded. Why Does No One Care?
We do care, BOB, and while one side had plans to keep the country on track, the other side wanted tire rims for dinner. Dumb ass.
Get a load of this:
Why…it’s almost like BOB is saying we need to raise revenue (ie, stop giving away the store to the rich and corporations) and bring health care costs down in a smart way (coughObamaCarecough)
Hey BOB, how about if you recognize the fucking obvious: the “narrative and strategy that will spur action by elected officials” ought to be, MUST be, “elect Democrats everywhere”??? The politics of ‘all this, and whatever else might be considered’, ain’t all that difficult once that happens.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro:
“Hello Allstate? Yeah, I’m gonna need to take out a home insurance policy. Oh, it’s not that big I guess, couple floors and some office space. Just an old white house. And make sure it’s covered for fire damage. Thanks.”
Elizabelle
K-Thug today. Paul Krugman, NY Times. Who’s Afraid of Nancy Pelosi?
Nancy Pelosi to Jonathan Capeheart on MSNBC this weekend: “I know NBC has been on a jag, this is one of their priorities, to undermine my prospects as Speaker …”
What has Andrea Fucking Greenspan ever done for any of us?
I have Nancy Smash’s back.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
I wish Hillary Clinton were as devious as media made her out to be. That would be great and we’d all be better off.
She needed to amp up the deviousness, as far as I’m concerned. They tagged her with it anyway. What the hell. Go for broke.
Platonailedit
@Yarrow:
Thanks.
Hmmm.
J.
I love this post so much.
MisterForkbeard
@Platonailedit: Whoah. I hadn’t heard about that. Sounds like they tried for a hail mary and failed… and then just gave up.
Given some of the speculation that something went on with the Jury, I wonder if they tried to induce jury tampering or say the prosecution had damaged the jury somehow and the whole thing had to be thrown out. I just don’t know anymore.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: If Clinton was even 10% as devious as Republicans/Media made her out to be, Hillary would be President over a unified Democratic Government.
I could never understand people who insisted she was a criminal murdering mastermind that somehow controlled the entire federal government into failing to find evidence of her horrific crimes. Like, she had control over the Republican Leadership too? How are they still alive, given her all-powerful ability to create scandal, dirt and murder anyone without repercussions? It never made any sense at all.
Yarrow
@Platonailedit: I’m skeptical about the pardon. What’s the upside for Trump unless he can somehow make sure Manafort flees to Russia or is otherwise taken out of the picture? Once Manafort is pardoned he can’t take the 5th because there’s no self-incrimination risk. And every damn thing Manafort knows about Trump, and there’s plenty, will be made public.
Ruckus
@LAO:
A giant, whiny dick.
Ladies and germs, 3 words, all it takes to define Sir Elon.
Platonailedit
@MisterForkbeard:
Throw in a cantankerous judge to muddy the waters further.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
I think there’s a little bit more to it than that. The way I tend to think of it, Google’s operation is built around the idea that aggregating and organizing data lets you find new information that makes it more valuable. So their operation has three basic parts:
1) Getting access to as much data as possible
2) Building tools to organize that data and find the new value hidden there
3) Monetizing the valuable chunks they’ve found
You can look at the various parts of the Google empire and get some idea about which parts are related to which activity. For example, a lot of their research projects, like using AI to tag people and objects in photographs, are part of organizing and data mining. There’s a tendency to see their phones as primarily a content delivery and hence monetization tool, but they’re doing way more data collection than most people think about.
Part of this is that they’ve been blurring the line between parts 1) and 3); every time you do a search or request content, they’re monetizing that search or content, but they’re also learning more about you and your interests. But a huge part is that their devices are built to collect way more data than most of us think about. It’s not just your location history. It’s also every photo you take with your phone, every call and text you make, etc.
zhena gogolia
@Corner Stone:
DJT and Melania over dinner:
youtube.com/watch?v=fdVG_cANJUQ
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
I wish. We could have used a megolamaniac master mind. I hope Elizabeth Warren is mean as hell.
Martin
@Roger Moore: The thing non-Apple users don’t get about Apple users, is that the thing we are paying for is ‘trust’. You can’t put it in a spec sheet, but man is it valuable when you really think about it. That’s not to say Apple can’t do better in a host of areas, but anyone who worries about Apple taking user information really doesn’t get it. Their disinterest in that information is one of their biggest value-adds to their products.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I’d be happy with someone that combines “inspirational” and “knife fighter”. I don’t think that’s Warren… but maybe Harris? Not sure.
In the meantime, I’m happy to unleash Warren on everyone, because she’s super good at the whole “liberal amounts of scorn and chastisement” thing.
eric
I am assuming that the “last minute” motion was a motion for a directed finding on (at least) the fraud count where the bank person had knowledge. (Could argue for all counts, but almost certainly no real basis.)
Tip for young lawyers before filing papers with the court: always do “find” for a particular misspelling of ‘count’ or ‘counts’. No joke. (also for ‘public’ — saw the misspelling on a resume of my CPA roommate in law school. fun times.)
Thus endeth the lesson
Another Scott
@Platonailedit: Popehat is great, and IANAL, but I can’t see any reason why Donnie would pardon Manafort. He’s already written him off. E.g.:
What’s the upside in a pardon? Compared to the upside of using his (probable?) conviction as a cudgel to beat up on Mueller some more with his base? “Witch hunt! Going after a good man!!11”
Manafort is expendable to everyone – he’s only useful when he’s useful.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“But we’ll see what happens.”)
eric
@Another Scott: You only pardon him if, and only if, he is willing to go to jail for refusing to testify. And, i think we can all agree, even the nazis, that Manafort is not going to jail for ANYBODY.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: While Google definitely wants to mine as much data as possible, I would argue they have less interest in making it available to anyone but themselves. IMO, they have severely damaged their value by the revamp/changed algorithms in their Google search tool. It’s complete garbage now and I have stopped using it at all. I doubt I am the only one.
Litlebritdifrnt
Trump is not going to pardon Manafort, and even if he tried Manafort wouldn’t accept it. He is going to die in prison because the alternative is worse. At least in prison he gets three hots and a cot and his family get to visit him. The alternative is an umbrella in a rainy street in broad daylight.
chopper
@LAO:
.
Corner Stone
Between the antics of the judge and white people in general, it would not surprise me in the least to get a hung jury on Manafort.
MisterForkbeard
@Another Scott: My favorite piece of this is that Manafort was running Trump’s campaign for FAR longer than Strzok was involved with the Russian Investigation. And that Trump continued to keep in regular touch with Manafort afterwards, and Manafort kept an office a floor or two below Trump’s campaign HQ.
Anytime Trump complains that Manafort had a minimal effect on the campaign and was only there briefly, someone should really point and laugh at his Strzok conspiracy theory. Like, do that to his face.
Platonailedit
fwiw
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: California could get Google’s attention really quick considering how Google’s consumed the city of Menlo Park.
chopper
@Platonailedit:
damn, they didn’t call a single witness? their entire defense is ‘the witnesses for the prosecution are big dumb poopyheads and also it’s all gates’ fault’?
trollhattan
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I like the image but must counter that the family ain’t visiting Paulie, ever. Why would they?
Make it so.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
It’s just weird the way they hate her, like it was weird the way they hated Hillary Clinton.
It’s unprofessional. They need to back the hell off with their bizarre personal grudges.
trollhattan
@chopper:
One wonders if his lawyers asked for payment up front.
Elizabelle
@Martin: This Apple user is paying for the “Genius Bar”, and getting to go in and get help and support in person. No “Sheila” or “Patrick” on the phone in Bangalore. Also, good security apparently. Knock on wood, no problems with viruses, as with Windows products.
Laptops are too expensive to become doorstops.
A Ghost To Most
@Corner Stone:
Especially since the judge apparently spoke to each juror individually this AM.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I like that Krugman called out the media for pushing the “dump Nancy Pelosi” stuff.
Which they are. Nancy Smash called out the vile NBC, but they are all doing it. This season’s “Emails!!”
And the disparate treatment of GOP vs. Democratic speaker. Shame on the fucking MSM.
trollhattan
@Kay:
It’s weird, it’s reflexive, it’s never changing. Luckily, she’s made of the toughest steel and is well past caring what they say.
I can verify the same types still refer to Jerry as “Governor Moonbeam” while questioning his intelligence. It’s all they’ve got, “Hey look, it’s still 1976!”
Uncle Cosmo
@Yarrow:
So what’s to prevent him from simply refusing to answer any & all questions under oath? The institution in question can cite him for contempt & have him sent to jail – IIRC Susan MacDougal (sp?) spent 20 months in the slammer for contempt after refusing to testify re Whitewater – but there’ll be a pardon from Twitler waiting for him at intake processing. Blather, rinse, repeat.
What (if anything) am I missing here?
Platonailedit
LOL.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: One of the things I learned about Republicans this cycle is that they think it’s a good thing to hate people. Like, specific people.
With a majority of the ‘good’ people I know, they think relentlessly focusing on someone, dragging them, lying about them and injecting how much you hate them into ordinary conversation is… well, creepy and incredibly weird. But Republicans not only approve of this, they *NEED* a target of this kind to focus their energy. So you have designated targets, and Republicans go after the en masse. Like Hillary, or Obama, or Pelosi, etc. And they’re almost always women or african american, by some odd coincidence.
Mandalay
Since this is an assholes thread, …finally!….
Howard didn’t just lie about having a degree. She had a fake degree made. And only owned up when the university said it was a fake, and still didn’t withdraw when fellow Republicans refused to criticize her.
I suspect the threat of further dirt being revealed finally persuaded her to withdraw.
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
That’s not quite true. Yes, the information they know about everyone is Google’s crown jewels, and they aren’t going to sell that data off wholesale. But they have to have some way of monetizing that information, and they do it by selling off selected little tidbits. So I can’t go to Google and buy their file on you for love or money, but they’d probably be willing to tell me what you like to eat for breakfast if the price was right. They’d certainly be very happy to sell me your eyeballs if they thought you were inclined to buy my product.
rikyrah
@Platonailedit:
With the pardon, no 5th Amendment rights. He has to start singing.
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
that entire story was ridiculous;.
germy
So Levi is as much of an asshole as his father.
Martin
@Roger Moore: Apple is interested in 1) and 2) as well, but their focus is on doing it entirely on-device, so that you have control of what does and doesn’t get collected. It’s harder and doesn’t work as well, but long term its probably the better route.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: Cheesecake. That’s your freebie for the day.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: One wonders if his lawyers can accept payment via wire transfer from Cyprus.
trollhattan
@germy:
My shocked face is at the cleaners, but in lieu let me just observe that the entire family evidently comprises assholes. Unfortunately, many are attracted to assholes so we’re far from done with the lot.
A Ghost To Most
@Martin:
The Apple big brother ecosystem doesn’t want to share. That’s fine. I’ve never owned an Apple product, but then I never needed one. YMMV.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
No. He can still clam up and the worst he could be faced with is contempt. Coincidentally, Trump has already pardoned a supporter for contempt…
Gravenstone
@danielx: Donnie was never together in the first place. Unfortunately, he’s now risen to a place of prominence where he can’t hide all his psychoses and mania. And that place is only exacerbating them, to make things even worse.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: Also, I may not have been clear but I think my larger point was that in their (Google) relentless campaign to mine personal data they have damaged their most efficient tool, the search engine. If I’m not using it any longer, and some percentage of X are also fed up with the garbage results, then they have lost dollars in the long run.
Kay
@trollhattan:
I love Jerry Brown. He’s exactly the kind of politician I like- I don’t agree with him all the time but he KNOWS things- he knows what he wants to do and why. I think that comes from experience, not just “experience” but learning from it.
That’s why they suck so much. They take a kind of practical, confident person like him and name him “moonbeam”. They’re morons. It’s not even funny – it’s just dumb. It doesn’t describe him in any way.
chopper
@germy:
so he also learned math from his old man.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MisterForkbeard:
That’s pretty much the story of every conspiracy theory; if the Conspiracy is that effective why are the guys who write the books uncovering it not murdered and their books disappeared or co-opted by the Conspiracy?
MisterForkbeard
@germy: That’s the 2016 primary all over again, especially the state party conventions: “‘Insurgent’ campaign fucks up the known rules, complains that they’re being discriminated against.” Sigh.
I still have friends who are convinced the state parties (especially Colorado, I think) were incredibly mean and corrupt to Sanders supporters, when the Sanders people just literally didn’t have a fucking clue what they were doing. It’s not *other people’s jobs* to make sure you know what you’re doing, idiots.
Gravenstone
@A Ghost To Most: Gas evolution stops once all the reactants are consumed.
chopper
@rikyrah:
also, state level charges can be leveled against him, i’m sure.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: Which search engine do you use?
A Ghost To Most
@trollhattan:
Putin’s getting better ROI with Wilmer&Co. than Stein.
Litlebritdifrnt
Pete Souza just posted a pic of Bo waiting for Obama in the Oval office and titled it “a real dog waiting for a real President”. I LOVE this guy.
A Ghost To Most
@Gravenstone:
You think Big Macs, Diet Coke, and KFC aren’t reactants?
/Notachemist
Baud
@A Ghost To Most: I have both Android and Apple products, and at the end of the day, I prefer how Android works, and I’m willing to put in the extra work to control what gets collected. Anyway, if privacy is important, I think regulation like the EU is willing to do is the key.
Martin
@MisterForkbeard: The only thing the GOP stands for now is owning the libs. Every other thing they pretended to care about they’ve abandoned. It’s just white power now.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve been trying to use DuckDuckGo . And while the results are ok, the overall features and presentation are subpar. I can’t stand Bing. I need something like a cross between DDG and Google. IOW, Google before the change to the algorithm. The recency bias has destroyed it’s usefulness.
I’m always looking for other suggestions so if anyone has any.
Gravenstone
@David Evans: ruh roh, Rhraggy!
NotMax
@Corner Stone
One word: Ixquick. (Note that it is now called StartPage but I can’t shake the habit of using the original name as I find it easier to remember.)
Been using it for over a decade. Ixquick Wikipedia page.
Martin
@A Ghost To Most: The ecosystem shares, it’s just that you get to decide what and when, rather than someone else.
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: Right. I mean, there’s some “policy”, in the sense that “rich and white people and men should be allowed to do whatever they want”, but that’s the only real consistent point. Everything else is either in service of that goal or in hating on liberals, and that’s really all the party is anymore.
They haven’t been ‘small government’ in… well, since Reagan and probably not even before that. They don’t believe in the free market. They don’t believe in freedom of minorities or equality. They don’t believe in strong alliances or getting foreign respect. They don’t believe in law and order or national security if it inconveniences them. They certainly don’t believe in “democracy”. What’s left, other than white surpremacy and liberal hating?
Just One More Canuck
@LAO: great – now “Bess” is probably going to crap all over this thread
Corner Stone
@NotMax: Hmm. Their Advanced feature looks interesting. I’ll give it a stretch, thanks.
Gravenstone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s nice. She was working for the Trump administration at the time of her firing, not the campaign
lamh36
Omarosa could be talking out her azz. but still
POPCORN GIF!!!!!
Roger Moore
@Corner Stone:
Two points:
1) I think you’re the exception in feeling their search engine has been ruined. It still works far better for me than any other I’ve used, and I think that’s a common feeling. Not to mention that a lot of search now happens on phones, and it’s so much easier to use the default search engine that people are going to wind up using Google a lot even if they generally prefer Bing or Duck Duck Go.
2) I think their search engine is much less important as part of data mining than it used to be. They run a substantial chunk of web advertising, which means they’re tracking people wherever they go on the web. Add in all the stuff they learn from phone apps, and all their other properties (Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, etc.) and it starts looking less important to completely dominate search.
Mandalay
Wow!…”Friends of Special Agent Peter Strzok” set up a GoFundMe yesterday, with a goal of $350,000.
I’ve nothing against him except that he seemed a bit full of himself, and I can think of a gazillion more deserving causes. But he’s already received $306,757 in one day so he doesn’t need my help anyway.
Martin
@Elizabelle: Exactly. Apple devices cost about $1 a day. Considering how much money people are willing to spend on a cup of coffee, that they give relatively little thought to, and has almost no durable value, putting a little bit more into your phone or laptop seems like a smarter use of money to me.
schrodingers_cat
@Corner Stone: I have tried Duck Duck Go too, its not completely satisfactory. I agree with you about Google. They have become too creepy and stalkery and as a result the search results are not as good as they used to be. When I am doing some serious searching I log out of my google account, that seems to give me marginally better search results.
Corner Stone
@LAO: That’s not very nice, you should be more kind. #BeBess
MisterForkbeard
@Gravenstone: Is this the guy that came up in the epic thread from a day or two ago?
The thing is, he’s not WRONG that SpaceX is making some very useful and cool strides. But… why are we talking about it in THIS thread?
MisterForkbeard
@lamh36: I mean, there’s some strong circumstantial evidence that Trump knew about the hacked emails before their release and it’s the best explanation for his actions. But Omarosa isn’t credible without supporting evidence, so I hope she’s got something to back that up.
Kay
He can’t get rid of her though. She bought that job and her family paid top dollar for it.
Luckily for America’s public school students she doesn’t have much of a work ethic, so it’s mostly a no-show position.
A Ghost To Most
Trish just turned to Bartiromo and said “Hold my champagne!”
rawstory
Patricia Kayden
@Immanentize:
Or tweet “Fake President” or “Putin’s Puppet”. Or “What comics would you like to read in jail?”
Mandalay
@Martin:
This is such a lame argument, and gets trotted out all the time. You could just as easily argue that you can get rid of your Apple and have more coffee: “Considering how much people are willing to spend on an absurdly overpriced Apple…“.
Companies selling life insurance play this nonsense game all the time.
Corner Stone
@Roger Moore: Yes, I would agree that a majority of people probably do not use the search tools on a regular basis the way I do. But I disagree with your assessment of the impact their search engine has on overall data mining. I’m not a SEO expert but I tend to think that, in general, searching is forward looking. The cookies can tell you where you’ve been, how long you’re there and how often. That’s valuable but relatively static, IMO. Trying to sell you to places you already go has to have a limited value.
Jeffro
I know y’all don’t like the NYT but today’s editorial – The Raging Dumpster Fire of a President vs Omarosa – reads like straight up Balloon Juice
A Ghost To Most
@Martin:
Point taken for data, but they’ve been a greedy, selfish company since I lived/worked in Sunnyvale 82-83. My opinion of Apple formed then, and hasn’t changed.
Bess
@Bill Arnold:
I have no interest in restarting the issue but let me point out that I was not defending everything Musk has done. Only pointing out that some commentators on this site were repeating what looks like incorrect information.
What some commenters are doing is similar, IMHO, of claiming that Hillary is running a child sex operation in the basement of a pizza parlor. Repeating a charge with no foundation.
If challenged to back up a statement then back it up or admit you can’t and quit making it. Is that too much to ask from good people?
Bess
@schrodingers_cat:
I made a suggestion of how Democrats might deal with the DACA issue and you disagreed. We simply disagreed. You are not some sort of superior being whose opinion should be consider better than that of others.
A for self-driving cars, they are operating now in limited situations. Pretty much the entire auto industry says they are coming. It’s not a question of if but a question of when.
Elizabelle
@Mandalay: I think $1/day is actually high, Mandalay.
I still have my first MacBook, which still runs but is retired. Bought it in summer 2007; it was a reconditioned product a few months old. Replaced it in summer 2016, I think. That’s 9 years. My 2007 MacBook sure did not cost $3285. Not even close. It was middle of the line then.
I have never had a Windows OS computer more than a few years. A very few years. At most 3, I think. And problems then.
If my gorgeous MacBook Air lasts another two years — which is a solid bet — it will be more than paid for on the $1/day scheme.
Gravenstone
@MisterForkbeard: No, that was Bess. But the invocation of St. Elon of Musk might be prone to dragging that T-bogged shitshow over here, or other points forward.
And yes, Space-X is an interesting twist on the venture, but as pointed out upthread, NASA headed down that path 40ish years ago with the Shuttle.
Gin & Tonic
@Bess: Please don’t derail this thread. The last one is enough.
Bess
@LAO: @Roger Moore:
It’s a cost issue. SpaceX has been able to bring down the cost of putting objects in orbit. Cheaper ways to take climate measurements. The route to a low orbit, low cost internet service that covers all parts of the globe.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Bess:
Oh fuck. Mrs. Musk is back.
Another Scott
@Bess: Um, you’ve heard of Sea Lioning (it was mentioned in the previous thread).
Don’t do that.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
lamh36
@MisterForkbeard: meh…she’s no less credible than anyone else…so yeah she could be talking out her azz.
It’s interesting who media (and others find credible) vs who they automatically don’t, and who they feel have to have absolute proof.
Either way… I’m just hear for the sparks…and eating my popcorn.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Reminiscent of BiP and Ukraine, innit?
;)
MisterForkbeard
@lamh36: Well, no question at all that it’s entertaining and given Trump’s past behavior… we should basically assume the worst whenever there’s an accusation. It still needs *proof*, but I’m sympathetic towards accounts like Omarosa’s that are circumstantially backed up by evidence and fit Trump’s established behavior.
So… sparks and popcorn! :)
sukabi
@Ramalama: not sure it’d be any different than what he’s doing now.
Corner Stone
@lamh36: I don’t know about the media, but if we were in a downpour and O told me it was raining I would still need to check for myself. It’s not often you run in to someone who has been on 4 sides of a two sided discussion.
So, I am glad she has tapes. The more the merrier. Please to keep dropping them like they’re hot.
Just One More Canuck
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
pamelabrown53
@Bess: #199.
Bess. If you have no interest in “restarting an issue” why not branch out to other areas where folks can have a broader vie of your views!?
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@LAO: @Corner Stone: @Just One More Canuck: Well, you’ve summoned her and now she’s crapping right in the middle of this thread.
Corner Stone
And what pisses me off at least as much as Google changing their search engine is they changed their damned Finance page. I fucking hate the new version of it and would punch the person responsible in the face if I had the chance. I’m really tired of them providing a product for free and then just changing it any time the feel like it. What about my feels, huh? D’ya ever think about that, assholes!
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Not for phones. A lot of people replace their phone every 2 years or so, which works out to around $1/day for a high-end smartphone. Yes, you can keep using them for longer (or buy an the older model) and save more, but it’s a reasonable cost estimate.
I’ve had plenty of my work computers last for close to a decade. I have one box at work our IT department wants to swap out because it’s still running XP and they consider it a security risk, but it’s still functioning great. And I just replaced my home computer- admittedly a Linux box rather than than Windows, but using the same kind of hardware- when it was 8 years old. Well, not precisely. I replaced most of the guts, and the motherboard, processor, and memory were 8 years old. The video card was newer than that and got replaced, but the case was even older but is still fine. I did have to replace the thermal compound on the heat sink a couple of times over the life of the computer, but that was the only thing that failed. So generic PC hardware can last a good long time if you take good care of it.
randy khan
@eric:
I once received a document in which someone apparently had done a spell check and gotten it exactly backwards – all of many instances of “public” were replaced by the other word. I’m not even sure how you’d do that.
Corner Stone
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ: Don’t blame that on me! I just wanted LAO to consider other people’s feelings when she comments and to #BeBess. It’s not like anyone asked for this!
sukabi
@Gin & Tonic: an article this morning said the defense called 0 witnesses and rested. Either Manafort will appeal result when he’s found guilty. (Ineffective counsel) Or they’ve managed to buy off a couple of jurors and are sure he’ll walk. Or trump has “guaranteed a pardon and “safe space” so he won’t be compelled to testify in any upcoming trump related trials.
randy khan
@chopper:
And Manafort didn’t prepare or review any of the documents, or write any of the emails.
I suspect that their problem is that the only witness they could call – the only person who could even attempt to refute the prosecution’s evidence – is Manafort himself. And I don’t think they want him to be cross examined.
LAO
@Corner Stone: What can I say — I’m insensitive. I’ll work on being #BeBess
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ: Bess isn’t beetlejuice. Just ignore. (And by the way, I wish I were that powerful…evil laugh).
LAO
@sukabi: Not to argue — but defendants rarely put on defense cases. I really wouldn’t read to much into it. @popehat has a good twitter thread on this issue.
Doug R
@schrodingers_cat:
I only log in to my Google account to report scam pages, report map errors or to watch my movies.
Vhh
@Tokyokie: Her Russian is good. She should do the Kundenservice thing in Russian.
randy khan
@Roger Moore:
If you’re the kind of person who is willing to (or likes to) swap out motherboards, video cards, and memory yourself, a PC almost certainly makes more sense for you than a Mac. But that’s about as common as people who changed their own oil 30 years ago. You’re probably also the kind of person who regularly cleans up your software, and who keeps up with updates and upgrades. (This is not a criticism – quite the opposite.)
Average users aren’t like that. And on PCs in particular, one problem is that they get junked up for various reasons and in ways that average users have a hard time fixing. So a Mac is likely to last longer than a PC for an average user.
randy khan
@Uncle Cosmo:
@Roger Moore:
There are two kinds of contempt. Civil contempt is what happens when you refuse to testify. It can’t be pardoned because it’s not a crime – the purpose of civil contempt when you don’t testify is to change your mind about not cooperating.
The pardon you’re thinking of was for a criminal contempt conviction. That happened when Arpaio defied a court order telling him to take certain actions. Criminal contempt is pretty rare.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
I must disagree. Trump has pardoned a hardcore white supremacist with no direct ties to Trump for being brutal to minorities despite a court order. In Trumpland, this has no relevance whatsoever on whether to pardon or throw to the wolves someone involved in his crimes.
Mandalay
@Elizabelle: To be clear, I have absolutely nothing against Apple devices. I just get irritated by this smoke and mirrors argument that if you give up coffee (or soda, or some other arbitrary item) then you could have product X instead, as though it’s an either/or choice in the first place.
George Will uses it all the time: “Our government could implement “X” for less than what Americans spend on potato chips every year…“. It’s so lame.
Bess
@pamelabrown53: At the end of an open thread on which there was a discussion of what car to buy I asked why people weren’t considering a used Nissan Leaf. Plenty of range for most people’s second car, selling for under $10k, and would pay for itself in fuel savings.
The conversation moved on to EVs in general. At some point someone made what I viewed as unfounded charges about Musk. I replied that I did not know of anything to back up those charges. From there on it, IMO, turned into a piling on by a handful of people who for some reason seem to hate Musk.
I’m not sure what you mean by “branch out to other areas”. If you mean other topics I generally get to the site after most conversations are over so I’m out of the “what I’m having for lunch type discussions” and I use this site for insites on political matters offered by people with more extensive backgrounds in the law and politics than I have.
I do have an extensive background in renewable energy and petroleum-less transportation. I’m generally surprised at how little some people on this site seem to want to learn about the alternatives we have to get off fossil fuel while professing concern over climate change. Once in awhile I try to bring some information to the site. I attempt to do so in a non-disruptive place.
Roger Moore
@randy khan:
I think the problem with Windows computers is as much hardware as it is software. Apple computers have a reputation for being expensive because Apple uses quality components and engineers their systems to take full advantage of them. You can buy Windows PCs that are similar quality and will tend to have similar lifespans, but they also have a similar price point. The difference is that Apple doesn’t make anything but those relatively high-end systems, while plenty of PC makers happily make trash. If you buy the cheapest components and skimp in every area that doesn’t show up in the spec sheet, you can make a PC that’s less than half the price of a new Mac; you just have to expect a lifespan that’s less than half of the Mac, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bess: You are sea-lioning again.
Bess
@Omnes Omnibus:
Answering a direct question –
– is not sea-lioning.
Isn’t it about time for your daily loss of control where you go all batshit crazy on someone?
Omnes Omnibus
@Bess: Nah, I’ll wait a bit. Thanks for asking though.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Is that daily now? I know you’ve been a bit of the crankypants for a bit but didn’t know it was an every day kind of thing.
Doug R
i.pinimg.com/originals/d3/62/4c/d3624c6bc37567c88c115c5e339b6dbc.jpg
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
1976 is the future as far as they are concerned. Hell that’s at least two decades away in their timeline.
TenguPhule
@mad citizen:
Wrong!
Money is accepted because its acceptable.
/pedant
Ruckus
@randy khan:
Used to be a Windows user because all the mfg software I needed ran only on that. But since I don’t use that anymore, when my last ms box decided to take a permanent nap, I’M gone mac. I like it much better. OS is based on Unix, a much better system.
TenguPhule
@Bess: Musk’s tunnel transportation idea is stupid. Atrios can dissect it in one sharp sentence.
Bess
@TenguPhule: Can you provide a link?
ETA: I searched and did not fine that one sharp sentence.
Stuart Frasier
@Bess:
I understand where the Musk dislike comes from. He is probably personally a douche and definitely someone who should stay off Twitter. Tesla is financially wobbly. However, if they hadn’t come along, the rest of the auto industry would be years behind where they are in respect to electrification. If they fail spectacularly in the future, but it leads to VW and other manufacturers moving up their timeline, then their existence will have been a net benefit.
As for SpaceX, they really are delivering. That can probably be attributed to the leadership of Gwynne Shotwell. The Shuttle is really a red herring when talking about rocket reuse. It was a payload, not a stage, and was refurbishable at best. It cost about $1.5 billion per launch. It was also a deathtrap that lead to the deaths of 14 astronauts.
TenguPhule
@Bess: Points to right side of the blog, “Blogroll, Atrios and Co.”
You may have to scroll back a few pages into the archives if he hasn’t brought it up again recently.
But if you just want the gist of it, Musk’s tunnels are highly inefficient versions of what we call “subways”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Martin:
I worked at an outsource company were they were literally building Apple and Windows machines side by side. The tech next me was a Mac head and had an awesome amount of excuses for it when we would point to the obvious.
Bess
@TenguPhule: Save me the trouble and just give us the one sharp sentence.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Roger Moore: No, one of my on line buds was a QA engineer for Apple. The difference is Apple is willing to pay to have their engineers sit there and watch the production line in China 24/7 so the Outsource company can’t get away with skipping the board tests and ship untested or known bad product.
Also, let us note Musk Tesla and Space do their manufacturing in the US. Wonder why?
TenguPhule
@Bess:
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Bess said it. It must be so.
Bess
@Stuart Frasier:
I’ve seen nothing online that talks about Musk being a douche. He seems to have a decent circle of friends and seems to be liked by those who work with him. He wasn’t the problem partner at PayPal.
Trump has not been successful at marriage. Apparently part of the problem is that he works too much.
As with other charges bring some proof and I’ll adjust my opinion.
Tesla almost certainly has their economically wobbly period behind them. M3 production levels of 5,000 per week with a 15% gross profit margin and an average selling price of $50k would cover the worst year Tesla has ever had.
In 2017 Tesla showed a bottom line loss of $2 billion.
A $50k car with a 15% GPM would yield $7,500 per car.
5,000 cars per week over a year with a $7,500 GPM would give Tesla $2 billion from the M3 alone. Add in additional profits from the MS and MX (20% GPM on over 100,000 ~$90k cars) and from their storage system sales.
Additionally, expenditures were unusually high in 2017 largely due to ramping up to produce the M3. There was a similar but smaller bump up in 2015 as they brought out the MX.
Bess
@TenguPhule:
We won’t know if it will work or not until there is a decent test to see if it will. The test track that one company has set up in Nevada is working. Pods are reaching high speeds but limited in top speed by the length of the track. Personally I think Musk’s approach is better because it goes underground. The advantages I explained upthread.
There are no public dollars involved in at least the initial versions. Musk has said that the system could be financed with private money just as private money owns airliners. Again, we’ll have to wait and see. The first step, the high speed subway, will definitely be privately financed. From that project Boring Co. will obtain the needed data to cost out a hyperloop system.
I’m not sure why this wouldn’t be a form of mass transit. Pods with a few dozen people aboard would move from one point to another. That seems to fall into the realm of mass transit. I suppose that people are free to create a definition of mass transit that rules it in or out as they please. Merriam Webster defines as “the transportation of large numbers of people by means of buses, subway trains, etc., especially within urban areas”. The Loop is being designed to carry up to 30 people per pod with pods capable of leaving every 30 seconds. That’s potentially 3,600 people per hour per tunnel. If there’s a need to move more people dig more tunnels.
BTW, city buses carry a normal max of about 50 people and run about ever 15 minutes in a lot of places. Buses are mass transit.
I hope that wasn’t the one sharp sentence. .
Waynski
@eric: Also, never leave out the “t” in “assets”
Ruckus
I see we are TBooging today
I wonder who gets a bonus when BJ goes TBoog discussing unnamed gods of electricity.
Bess
@Ruckus: John gets the funds to move the willow tree.
TenguPhule
@Bess:
You are wrong. They’re 200 million in the red. Minimum. 1.3 Billion budget, 1.5 billion projected expenses for this year.
TenguPhule
@Bess:
It won’t work because you can’t understand that objects have to both accelerate and slow down to arrive at a designation. And that Musk’s tunnel’s are really inefficient subways without the carrying capacity of an actual subway.
Actual math is hard.
Bess
@TenguPhule:
I gave you the numbers in #248. Please review.
Bess
@TenguPhule:
Your it won’t work argument makes no sense unless you can describe why accelerating and decelerating is a unsolvable problem.
A single tube probably won’t transport as many people per hour as a single subway tunnel. But as long as the tunnels are profitable more can be dug.
Bess
@Bess:
Let’s try a thought experiment.
Imagine two 20 mile single lane parallel roads.
Imagine we have a number of cars and we send one off every 30 seconds.
They all accelerate at the same rate, reaching a top speed of 120 MPH.
As each approaches the end of the road it slows down enough to pull into a parking space.
After unloading and loading each car pulls out of its parking space, loops around to the second road, and returns to the starting point.
Rinse and repeat….
Want to increase volume? Don’t send off one car, send several multi passenger buses off in a bumper to bumper train. One 30 passenger bus moves 30 people out every 30 seconds. 10 buses moving as a train moves 300 people every 30 seconds.
Now you’ve got a very fast subway ‘train’ and mass transit.
J R in WV
Tesla was a genius… I’m not sure what that says for the geek (not a put down, I was a professional geek for decades) using Tesla’s name to make his cars sound earth-shattering …
The first time two of Musk’s pods cram together in a merge upstream of a station, will be the end of his pneumatic subway system. I hope he keeps his hands off the SpaceX development and production team, it’s his best contribution to society.
Only a dirt-bag (Musk I;m speaking of here) would call a successful rescue worker a pedophile for no reason. Or even because he was pissed at something a successful rescue worker said. Also a prick.
Hope you’re buying stock in Musk’s businesses, put everything into it!!
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
For some reason, this entire dialog seems to have left the rails. I’m not positive, but I suspect that someone drove the train right the fuck off the tracks. I’m not saying who but I’m pretty sure that an even uneducated guess would hit this nail square on the fucking head.
Bess
I don’t understand. You do understand that this is not a pneumatic system? Can you explain the problem you see in a different way?
—-
And one bad word use makes someone a dirtbag? You’ve never called someone a bad name when they pissed you off? Word choice is a one strike and you are out forever game?
TenguPhule
@Bess:
Musk proposes a system that goes too fast for humans to survive in them with zero margin for error.
TenguPhule
@Bess:
Math is hard and you’re not even trying.
TenguPhule
@Bess:
Closed tunnel systems are not public roads.
Bess
@TenguPhule: Is that something like cars can’t go faster than 60 or people wouldn’t be able to breathe?
The Hyperloop would have a top speed about that or a bit lower than the Concorde. People sipped champagne as they flew across the ocean.
Bess
@TenguPhule:
Isn’t that a good thing? Not going to have to worry about cows wandering in your path.
Bess
@Bess:
That was a bit flippant. I hope it doesn’t make me a dirtbag. Here’s a bit more fact ladden response. It’s a description of the Japanese maglev train expected to start service in 2027.
The train could go faster but it will be pushing air.
Bess
@TenguPhule:
It would help if I knew what sort of math you need for me to do. Is it acceleration and deceleration? Certainly you don’t need that for the Loop, the high speed subway. We’ve got trains that run faster. As for the Hyperloop we can look at the Concorde for guidance.
The Concorde accelerated from 0 to 225 mph in 30 seconds with no discomfort to the passengers. At that rate the Hyperloop would reach its top speed in less than two minutes.
The Concorde cruised at 2140 km/h or 1334 mph
After the pod hits cruising speed the experience should be similar to flying in a passenger jet except without the turbulence.
Earlier comment correction: About half the Concordes top speed.