Republican senators told Elon Musk Wednesday that the billionaire needs congressional approval for controversial spending cuts or they risk being overturned in court
— Bloomberg News (@bloomberg.com) March 5, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Tom Cole, speaking of decisions that include firing the people keep nukes secure and Avian flu at bay.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202…— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) March 5, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Perhaps the question is not Why is Musk using so much of a diassociative drug? as From what does Musk so badly need to dissociate himself? (And perhaps it’s no more significant than that it’s hard to ingest a fatal dose by accident.) From the Atlantic, “What Ketamine Does to the Human Brain” [gift link]:
… Ketamine is called a dissociative drug because during a high, which lasts about an hour, people might feel detached from their body, their emotions, or the passage of time. Frequent, heavy recreational use—say, several times a week—has been linked to cognitive effects that last beyond the high, including impaired memory, delusional thinking, superstitious beliefs, and a sense of specialness and importance. You can see why people might wonder about ketamine use from a man who is trying to usher in multi-planetary human life, who has barged into global politics and is attempting to reengineer the U.S. government. With Musk’s new political power, his cognitive and psychological health is of concern not only to shareholders of his companies’ stocks but to all Americans. His late-night posts on X, mass emails to federal employees, and non sequiturs uttered on television have prompted even more questions about his drug use.
Ketamine’s great strength has always been its ability to sever humans from the world around them. It was first approved as an anesthetic in 1970, because it could make people lose consciousness without affecting the quality of their breathing. In the 1990s, as a street drug known as Special K, ketamine took ravers to euphoric states. Then, in the 2000s, researchers found that doses of ketamine that didn’t put people to sleep could rapidly reduce symptoms of depression, because, the thinking went, the drug altered the physical circuitry of the brain. In 2019, the FDA approved a nasal spray containing a form of ketamine called esketamine (sold under the brand name Spravato) for patients with depression who hadn’t responded to other treatments. Spravato came with a list of rules for how the drug should be administered: in a certified medical setting by a health-care professional, and with limited dosage amounts determined by how long a person has been in treatment…
Research has not yet established the side effects of long-term ketamine therapy, but older studies of recreational users offer some insight on heavy, extended dosing. Celia Morgan, now a psychopharmacology professor at the University of Exeter, in England, led a 2010 study that followed 120 recreational ketamine users for a year. Even infrequent users—those who used, on average, roughly three times a month—scored higher on a delusional-thought scale than ex–ketamine users, people who took other drugs, and people who didn’t use drugs at all. Those who averaged 20 uses a month scored even higher. People believed that they were the sole recipients of secret messages, or that society and people around them were especially attuned to them. The psychological profile of a frequent ketamine user, Morgan and her team concluded, was someone who had “profound” impairments in short- and long-term memory and was “distinctly dissociated in their day-to-day existence.” Morgan’s study was not designed to determine whether people who are more likely to be delusional are also more likely to recreationally use ketamine, but Morgan told me that stopping the drug, in most cases, will dramatically reduce these side effects…
Musk hasn’t publicly acknowledged the risks of ketamine, despite having once claimed that SSRIs, the drugs commonly used to treat depression, “zombify” patients. Other highly visible ketamine promoters tend to do the same. Dylan Beynon, the founder of the ketamine telemedicine company Mindbloom, recently wrote on X, “Ketamine is not physically addictive. SSRIs are very difficult to wean off of for many.” (Beynon’s wife, the former head of engineering at Mindbloom, now works at DOGE.) Although ketamine doesn’t lead to the same kind of physical withdrawal symptoms as opioids or alcohol, Morgan, the University of Exeter professor, said its abuse potential is widely accepted, partly because people build a tolerance to the drug very quickly. In the United Kingdom, where health data are more centralized, more than 2,000 people sought treatment for ketamine addiction in 2023. More to the point, ketamine’s most dramatic risks depend on simply how much ketamine a person takes, and for how long…
Again, I'm going to posit that when the retrospective about all of this came out, it's that Elon/Vought/Trump and co. knew that this was going to get flayed alive in the courts, but the plan was to move so fast that they could outpace them.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 5, 2025 at 4:37 PM
there is no one more innocent of every sin, of any action, than Elon Musk. he is merely present, and then somehow unexpected events unfold.
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity.com) February 27, 2025 at 2:54 PM
ColoradoGuy
The ultra-wealthy live in a closed, airless world, compared to the other 99.999% of the human population. They don’t shop in stores, unless the store is closed just for them. They rarely, if ever, drive their own cars. They never take public transportation, and never fly on commercial airplanes. Their private jets go to private airports miles away from major airports.
The only people they meet, who aren’t other hyper-rich, are servants that take care of every need. Hungry? Ask for dinner any time of day or night. Want a bath? They will draw it for you. Want the lights on? Ask a servant. Under the weather? Call your private doctor, and get treated immediately in a private clinic. Make a tweet? A servant will transcribe your words and add creative spelling if that’s your trademark.
It’s a childlike existence that is notorious for destroying the lives of rock stars who haven’t grown up in this airless way of life. Add a taste of drugs, though, and reality floats right out the window. They have almost no experience of reality at all.
tsquared2001
I was obsessed with the computer game Dope Wars and buying Special K was a profit maker, much better than weed.
Geminid .
Some Syria news from Ragip Soylu. He posted this Wall Street Journal headline:
Soylu posted these details of the potential deal:
I wonder if this is negligence on the part of Trump’s foreign policy team, or coordination with Moscow?
Lapassionara
@Geminid .: Why not both?
ETA: Does Mike Lee really believe that, or is he lying?
Geminid .
Westchester, New York Democrat Tom Watson has an opinion:
Tom Watson posts on BlueSky at guitarwatson.bsky.social, and seems like a decent source for New York political news. Watson self-describes as an “unreconstructed liberal.”
Splitting Image
For his next trick, Mike Lee will explain that Leonard Leo does not have the authority to appoint people to the Supreme Court, and therefore everyone who demogogues the Federalist Society is attributing to it authority that it does not have.
I guess he’s showing us, huh?
Jeffg166
My trump voting neighbor turned 90 yesterday. I had been out to the bank and on coming home he was sitting on his front porch with another neighbor. He waved me over.
I went over to wish him a happy birthday then colorfully badmouthed the felon. He knows how much I loath Putin’s puppet. He sits there and jolts at points in my ragings. He tries to counter with winger talking points which he hears daily on his AM transistor radio. I shoot him down. He sits there and broods.
I expect he will be the one to finger me to our home grown Stasi.
NotMax
@Splitting Image
Mike Lee is not the sharpest spork in the picnic basket.
Baud
@Geminid .:
In Cole’s thread, someone said Fetterman was complaining about the protests too. Everyone want to be the critic, I guess.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin, y’all.
Congressional Republicans have the power to stop this. That they aren’t tells you all you need to know: They’re fucking lying.
Nukular Biskits
@Jeffg166:
I find it difficult to engage with people like that.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Pretty sure the problem lies solely in Democratic tactics of resistance. I know this because I did my own research.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Are you giving Pitchbot a run for his money? LOL
Baud
@Jeffg166:
He shouldn’t have waved you over if he didn’t want to hear the truth.
WereBear
@Jeffg166: A relative called to confess they didn’t vote this year, to which I replied, “we could have used you.”
What really blew through the defenses was me countering with, “You’ve been lied to.”
It activates the paranoia… For good.
Because whatever they thought they were going to get, it’s not happening.
Suzanne
@Geminid .: A lot of those wine moms and Resistance ladies are just as progressive in their politics as the dudes who think they’re cool.
I am coming around to the view that our coalition is less separated by positions on any issues than we are by style. In some ways, a more difficult situation to navigate.
TBone
@Jeffg166: points for astute prediction based upon the current trajectory. I really hope that doesn’t come to pass, but I suspect that the mass psychic pain suffered by a percentage of our populace simultaneously when the shit really hits the fan might lead in that direction.
Which is prolly what Pooty is counting on.
TBone
Joyce Vance:
TBone
@NotMax: that fucking guy is a pet bugaboo for me. GAH.
TBone
@TBone: the rest of Joyce White Vance
https://joycevance.substack.com/p/justice-for-sale
Official Crypto Reserves, hell yeah!
TBone
A little lighten the mood music is in order after reading today’s Heather Cox Richardson (she is really kicking ass these days).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uiZtXvECE_Y
Jeffro
uh oh…clearly Mrs. Fro has been slipping me ketamine…possibly for decades!
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Like I said in the other thread–protesters can never expect to be loved in the moment except by people who are already with them. Protest is an annoying act, by design. But it sticks in the mind.
At the moment, the people who are being directly hurt by Trump and Musk’s rampage are mostly federal workers (some of them loyal MAGA voters). That’s going to change–systems are going to start to break down, or become noticed by their absence. What happens when hurricane season comes and the National Weather Service is broken or gone? When there’s a flu pandemic and you can’t even get shots, even though they’ve existed for ages? When the Social Security payments stop?
When that happens, you want to be the person who was visibly, vocally against it, not part of the problem.
You also want to signal to the people who are with you that they’re not alone and you’re not afraid. I think that’s absolutely key. If no one dares visibly oppose Trump, that has a suppressive effect in itself.
TBone
Furthermore mood music 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2nf5VyHEB6k
Baud
@Suzanne:
@Matt McIrvin:
People should visibly oppose Trump in their own way IMHO. And they should just ignore haters and mockers who claim they’re opposing Trump the wrong way.
Weak people always gonna snipe.
TBone
DEI musician
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GuuNm7Sb1WQ
TBone
@Baud: we’re holding a Womens Day protest at the Court House in Bloomsburg on March 8. It will be hubby’s second protest, he is a newbie. I’m taking the same sign I made for his first ever protest event. And a better camera.
Baud
@TBone:
👍
The Thin Black Duke
@Matt McIrvin: Inevitably, the rubber is going to meet the road, politically speaking. As reliable a tool as Blaming The Democrats for the havoc the GOP did to this country throughout the years has been, it won’t work once the loyal Republican voters are kicked in their racist sleepwalking asses by the new reality. There’s a big difference between being pissed off by a rainbow flag and having your comfortable suburban life being destroyed by the loss of your job, the loss of your home, the loss of your social security benefits. To be blunt, their selfishness will be the deciding factor this time.
sentient ai from the future
@Baud: i agree, the democrats are doing it wrong, and that is the sole reason fascism is triumphing. obviously, this would not be the case if i were in charge.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Agree. Protesting is inherently annoying. There’s too many people, on both sides, who gauge their response to an issue by how annoying the issue’s supporters are. It’s a normal but regrettable part of politics that people just don’t want to associate with people they don’t like, and that association extends to even belonging to the same political party or movement.
I think we get hit by that a lot. At BJ we talk a lot about white people who think that the Dems are the party of black people, and I think that’s part of the story, but by no means all of the story. For a lot of people, the Dems are also the party of the women they hate, or the non-binary Starbucks barista with visible tattoos, or their brother and his husband (who they love begrudgingly but don’t talk about and think is kind of gross).
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
Resistance is futile. 😁
TBone
I adore the scent of snark in the morning!
sentient ai from the future
the ur-ketamine-casualty, for those unfamiliar, was John C Lilly. there was a terrible movie made loosely about him called “Altered States” eon ago.
he began to believe ketamine allowed him to communicate with dolphins, among other things.
musk’s habit is way more malign.
MagdaInBlack
@sentient ai from the future: The William Hurt movie? I did not know that was based (loosely) on anything.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Agree. I think our national organizations — especially the ones we donate to — have a responsibility to measure and maximize their effectiveness. When you accept money from the public, I think you have a duty to spend it well. But individuals should do their thing. At this point, we need everyone we can get in the coalition.
TBone
Feeling a bit grateful I was too old and missed the ketamine bus. Also missed the raves and the ecstasy, praise teh lort! We already had enough on our plates for crying out loud.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Baud: Really frustrating and I don’t quite understand how the Republicans rigged things so the rules of decorum only apply to Democrats in the minds of everyone whose an independent, or how even people ostensibly within the tent feel like they have to take off style points.
On the topic of those DOGE shits being “merely advisory” I mean how dumb do you think we are? When every career staffer that bucks DOGE’s recommendations gets fired they’re not just advising they’re deciding and enforcing that decision.
Matt McIrvin
For what it’s worth, the 538 aggregate of Trump’s job approval went net negative over the past few days. His approval is creeping down, but it’s mostly because of “don’t know/not sure” people who were withholding judgment going to “disapprove”, which is something that often happens at the beginning of a presidential term. It’s hard to see this trend looking at individual polls, in part because there are some niche ones with big pro-Trump leans that keep dropping in between the major polls.
None of that is necessarily good news for Democrats because I don’t think there are any emerging Democratic figures who are regarded favorably. But I figure that comes later if at all.
Matt McIrvin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: The Republicans are the asshole party so if they act like assholes, they’re just in character. There’s always a double standard.
TBone
@Suzanne: I’m hoping to win the raffle for one of 100 T-shirts that say
https://donorbox.org/help-ukraine-finish-the-war
But even if not, I’m still winning.
sentient ai from the future
@MagdaInBlack: i mean, this is what i’d always been told. i tried to watch it once and it was pretty awful (i did not finish) so i don’t rightly know.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I’m not sure there’s agreement about what spending it well means.
eclare
@sentient ai from the future:
It also killed Matthew Perry.
Suzanne
@Baud: That’s probably true. But there’s measures of effectiveness besides polling and election outcomes.
MagdaInBlack
@sentient ai from the future: I googlied, you are correct.
Matt McIrvin
@sentient ai from the future: When I was active in the science groups on Usenet, there was this guy who posted to sci.physics a lot who’d been somewhat notorious as a “counterculture physicist”–he had a crackpot scheme for communicating faster than light using quantum physics that he kept pumping (and kept changing his position in slippery ways when people made the effort to pick it apart–I have to give him credit; it was a cut above most such things and debunking it took graduate-level knowledge). Kept talking about hanging out in hot tubs with Richard Feynman at Esalen back in the day.
My impression is that he did a lot of ketamine. Sometimes he’d go on about the communications he got from future intelligences at the Omega Point at the end of time. Sometimes he referred to himself as an officer of Starfleet, from Star Trek. Everything he said was grandiose and erratic.
Elon Musk’s antics totally remind me of his weird, manic, slippery persona.
TBone
@TBone: some get up and go music
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0eOHu0rMqMI
Ramalama
@TBone: Same. I’ve been finding myself thinking, again and again, “what’s the deal with this ketamine?”
The worst thing people could take way back when was Angel Dust. And it just stuck there. People having problems with H or K or whatnot? Me: Well, it’s not Angel Dust.
Also: while I was going about driving from Boston to Montreal every week, I’d hear the news from rural VT and also NH about this resurgence of people getting addicted to heroin. Early 2000s. Me, hands at 10 and 2: At least it’s not …
TBone
@Ramalama: I do believe pure, snortable THC was worse than The Dust. Don’t ask me how I know.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Matt McIrvin
@MagdaInBlack: Well, the movie obviously goes completely bonkers in ways that could have no connection with reality (the protagonist physically transforms into a proto-human, a disembodied vortex and a glowing energy-blob-man), but Lilly’s experiments with drugs and sensory deprivation provided the starting point.
The script was Paddy Chayefsky basically going kids-get-off-my-lawn about the dangers of this stuff, but Ken Russell was more interested in making an insane head trip.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
TBone
Catcalls! Later, operators!
MagdaInBlack
@TBone: See, just stick with the simple…
Champagne and Reefer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHowqKYSXNI
lowtechcyclist
@TBone: Terrific song, takes me back to early 1969. 🙂
lowtechcyclist
@MagdaInBlack:
Done both, never thought to combine them!
The song’s new to me too. 🙂
hells littlest angel
You’re hurting us! And maybe our constituents, too, who knows, could be.
MagdaInBlack
@lowtechcyclist: Glad I could introduce you =-)
Matt McIrvin
…ah, and the other shoe drops: Disney/ABC is pulling the plug on 538, so I guess we won’t have that aggregate any more. Surprise surprise. Ex-538-guy Nate Silver talked about it:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/a-few-words-about-fivethirtyeight
He’s going to be getting back into it, I guess.
AM in NC
@Suzanne: I guaran-damn-tee that a lot of us “wine Moms” are more progressive in our politics than the “progressive bros” performing for social media. We get more progressive policies enacted, that’s for damn sure. While holding down full-time jobs and raising kids and volunteering outside of politics too.
But I welcome them into our coalition. Come sit by me, brogressive dude. You know I definitely have the best snacks.
Matt McIrvin
@AM in NC: In the 2010s, it seemed like there were a lot of “socialist” bro-gressives whose thing was that the left needed to shut up about cultural issues and go all in on class war, and had this particular preoccupation with hating Hillary Clinton–and when Trumpism appeared, a lot of them just went MAGA.
The ones who didn’t are still writing articles for Jacobin or whatever about how Trump’s “anti-DEI” crusade isn’t what they signed up for, but they still have to do this throat-clearing about how much they hate Hillary Clinton.
Jeffg166
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s no way for 538 to pretend the felon is losing the popularity contest. He will scream bloody murder as reality rears its ugly head.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Seriously? Even Republicans have moved on from Hillary.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I’ve been mostly seeing mentions of her from lefty people who are still kind of worried that she might try to run again.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
These people will never defeat capitalism.
Jeffg166
@Baud:
We have a loose support system in place of 7 old people looking out for each other on my block. I expect we will all be dead in fives years one way or another.
My 90 year old neighbor loves to talk. He will even put up with me he gets so desperate at times.
Ramalama
@TBone: I didn’t go much into drugs. Had some health issues young.
One summer job was working in corn fields with other girls who were monsters at sex, drugs, drinking, smoking, sex. On the bus I was waiting to get transported to another field with 4 other girls, and they asked me which drugs I took after they compared the highs of hash versus pot, coke, other stuff. I was 14. They were 16. I wanted to avoid coming off as Catholic school uptight, so I said, “I prefer over-the-counter drugs.” They nodded, never having heard of that. Probably wondering how THEY could get over the counter, and which over the counter would be best…
My mother laughed until her dying day about that.
trnc
Dear Media,
This conversation doesn’t make any sense if Musk is just an advisor.
ETA: Dear Sen Lee,
DOGE has fired agency administrators.
Jeffg166
@TBone:
Right wingers do have a habit of their fantasies blowing up in their faces. As much as they try to convince everyone in this country they are doing what the majority wants they really don’t have that majority.
Not sure what will set the powder keg off but I feel like it is coming. Then the felon and company will point fingers all over the place or flee.
Matt McIrvin
The other thing discussion of ketamine reminds me of is that, like PCP, it’s used as an animal tranquilizer–when my late cat Nestor was undergoing treatment for his chronic bowel issues, they gave him ketamine. Based on my experience of the Usenet counterculture physicist I remember feeling relieved that cats can’t write.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: I love a lady who knows the classics! It’s a great giggling event when that confluence comes together 😎 my very favorite and I retested it out with fresh OJ mimosas and a new vape all afternoon on Tube Removal Monday 🐾
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: bwahahahaha!
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffg166:
They probably could pretend it if they wanted to-there are hack “polls” they could aggregate to give receipts (some were part of their mix already, but weighted way down). But I don’t think the staff wanted to. Regardless, they’re laid off.
TBone
@Ramalama: GOOD ON YA! 💯 💚🤘
Where I grew up, it was seriously unavoidable. My parents moved us to try to avoid the worst of it when I was 13, but we landed where the kids all had more money for better drugs.
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: ah, there it is! Peer pressure hahahaha!
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: as always, yours in service 🐕🦺
trnc
Maybe I’m taking you too literally, but this analogy doesn’t work. Leo is highly influential, but he has never been given any fake authority and then illegally used it. While he is entirely ethically corrupt, all action on his recommended nominees went through the normal constitutional route (except for Garland’s nomination being illicitly held up by Mitch).
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
This really struck home for me when they say with RFKjr there is no certainty of fall flu shots this year.
TBone
@Jeffg166: TBone says, while spitting out a tooth
Son, you have no idea what yer fucking with, do ya.
ironcity
@TBone: We moved out of the area with a middle school that hung a banner “Welcome to XXX Middle School. Our students Read!” The first day of school. I comforted myself that my daughter would be hanging with a better class of deralicts and when she was in a car wreck it would be in a Mercedes or a BMW, not a Chevy. She was eventually and it was in a Corolla. You can’t evade karma forever, just maybe for awhile.
TBone
@ironcity: especially if you’re in an area where it is manufactured! And highly lucrative trafficking goes on out in the open. Everyone gets a cut…
Glad she lived!
Jacel
@MagdaInBlack: I think of “Altered States” as The John Corigliano Film, due to the soundtrack created by someone generally known as a classical composer.
Jacel
@Matt McIrvin: This description of Ketamine reactions sound a little like default state for cats: “People believed that they were the sole recipients of secret messages, or that society and people around them were especially attuned to them. “
Tern
I just realized we’ve become the People’s Republic of Haven
hitchhiker
A normal person would put the harm to innocent people first in that sentence, wouldn’t they?
Elizabelle
@Jeffg166: Your Trump voting 90 year old came in with a Depression, and he can go out with one too. Good times!
FWIW, I am glad the old guy is still interacting with neighbors. He probably loves having someone to scrap with.