As y’all know, there’s no one weird trick to get us out of the authoritarian jam we’re in right now. But there is one weird oligarch whose wealth we need to keep targeting.
We talked about this last week when Trump’s corrupt AG threatened Tesla Takedown protesters. “We’re coming after you,” she said. It was the kind of “tough talk” Bondi has been practicing in front of a mirror since she was an assistant state attorney/spokeswoman in Tampa in the aughties.
But while Bondi’s hissing and frantic flapping is supposed to scare us, what it signifies is that the angry goose is keen to protect something. In this case, that something is Trump’s top campaign donor’s primary source of wealth.
Jason Sattler (@LOLGOP on Bluesky) shared some thoughts on that in his Last Billionaires newsletter here. An excerpt:
Elon Musk’s flagship operation’s inflated and entirely suspect value must go down because he has left us no other choice. We are obligated by our history as Americans to do our very best to destroy his companies and him through them until he wisely decides to leave us the fuck alone. Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor depend on it.
No one elected Musk Emperor of America to threaten our Social Security, cancer research, and personal data. Given the strategically broken manner in which our government now operates, the people have no other recourse for checking a private citizen determined to act as our eternal overlord and, through him, the wannabe tyrant he installed.
Yep. The Republican Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision put a FOR SALE sign on our democracy. There’s not a damn thing we can do about that right now except make the current owner — and other greedy fuck-sticks with similar designs — understand that there’s a hidden cost they didn’t consider when striking the original corrupt deal.
Anyhoo, go read the whole thing — it’s good.
Open thread!
Baud
The markets are free even if we’re not.
cope
It’s the invisible hand at work, no?
Leto
I’m thinking about how, after 5 years, we finally decided to invest my accident money to try to make a decent return beyond savings account money. And how since the orange fucks return we’re down $10k. Two months, $10k. I think about also because of the post immediately below. That was the township of my accident (Horsham), and that woman looks the age of the person who hit me. That person was also a teacher, 2nd grade.
Between that post, the savings thing, and what I read for school this morning, just dredging up a ton of memories and feelings about a whole ton of stuff. Anyways, class time.
jimmiraybob
@cope: “It’s the invisible hand at work, no?”
Casper says, “hold my beer!”
Leto
Also this was mentioned downstairs but wanted to bring it up again. Via Heather Cox Richardson:
<blockquote>From 1942 to 1945, the Code Talkers were key to every major operation of the Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater. The Code Talkers were Indigenous Americans who used codes based in their native languages to transmit messages that the Axis Powers never cracked. The Army recognized the ability of tribal members to send coded language in World War I and realized the codes could not be easily interpreted in part because many Indigenous languages had never been written down.
The Army expanded the use of Code Talkers in World War II, using members of 34 different tribes in the program. Indigenous Americans always enlisted in the military in higher proportions than any other demographic group—in World War II, more than a third of able-bodied Indigenous men between 19 and 50 joined the service—and the participation of the Code Talkers was key to the invasion of Iwo Jima, for example, when they sent more than 800 messages without error.
“Were it not for the Navajos,” Major Howard Connor said, “the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”
Today, Erin Alberty of Axios reported that at least ten articles about the Code Talkers have disappeared from U.S. military websites. Broken URLs are now labeled “DEI,” an abbreviation for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”</blockquote>
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-17-2025
Unkown known
This article in a local UK paper makes some great points about the importance of a Tesla Takedown: Yes Elon has other big companies, but many are not profitable, and they are all private, making it much harder for him to convert their value into cash money (i.e., he can’t just sell a few more stocks). Even Tesla’s stock is incredibly overpriced compared to its underlying financials – its value is mostly marketing glitz, and the promise of unlimited future wealth when it takes over everything. Once that image becomes apparent as vaporwear you would expect a big correction to its price.
As of now Tesla’s big ‘collapse’ has only taken its price down to roughly where it was a year or two ago, but if we keep going the reckoning could (dog willing) get more real.
New Deal democrat
Chief Justice John Roberts, at long last beginning to recognize the Rough Beast that he and 5 colleagues allowed to slouch towards Jerusalem to be born:
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
OldManGamer
@New Deal democrat: Time for a Leopard Eating Face appetizer?
Mai Naem mobile
Okay I was stupid enough to turn on the local news this morning. And they ran the Kristi Noem thank you dear leader ad. Phoenix not Palm Beach and not the FOX affiliate. They don’t have money for tsa dog care or VOA but they have money for this.
Mike E
Andrea Pitzer is terrific, I fear her message is getting the Cassandra treatment though.
SC54HI
Amused myself by watching a couple of videos that showcase the appallingly bad design & construction of Tesla vehicles. In this video, a Tesla fails to detect a Wiley E. Coyote facade across the road and crashes right through it. In this video, a cybertruck falls apart during tests of its advertised towing capacity.
While amusing, the videos opened my eyes – I had no idea that Teslas do NOT have LIDAR, unlike most vehicles nowadays. This is why the Tesla crashed through the facade and in fact can’t detect obstacles AND humans under certain conditions, as shown in that video. As to why Teslas don’t have LIDAR – fElon refused to pay the supplier. Sound familiar? As for the cybertruck, let’s just say that if I ever see one on the road towing something, I will do everything I can to get as far away from it as possible
ETA: According to longtime Tesla foe, Ed Niedemeyer, the guys making these videos were early adapters & fanboys of Tesla so the fact that they are now demonstrating how bad these things are is significant.
Gretchen
@New Deal democrat: What’s he going to do when Trump decides to remove him or have the Marshalls arrest him?
Old Man Shadow
@New Deal democrat: Is he saying that or is he saying, “Just kick it up to us and we’ll rubber stamp what you want, Sir.”
p.a.
@New Deal democrat: The barn and the barn door are a jumble of cinders.
ETA: typical conservaturd: only moved to action if/when their ox gets gored.
Old Man Shadow
@SC54HI: Tesla did have a few innovative ideas at first. But they’ve been coasting on glitz and glam and that doesn’t work when your CEO is taking a giant shit on your company image every day and your competitors have passed you in the EV market with better products, technology, and innovation.
Belafon
About Teslas, one of the hilarious things is Trump shutting down the infrastructure projects that might have built charging stations in places where it could be worthwhile for MAGAts to buy the cars.
chemiclord
@Belafon:
GOPers live by the mantra of “Have your cake and eat it too.”
Belafon
@Old Man Shadow: Those aren’t mutually exclusive. What happens when it finally dawns on Roberts that he’s allowed a system to form where he’s no longer needed?
twbrandt
Whenever I’m feeling down and need cheering up, I look at the chart of $TSLA stock over the last 3 months and perk right up.
Gretchen
@New Deal democrat: John Roberts will be surprised to learn that the leopards will be happy to eat his face.
New Deal democrat
@Old Man Shadow: Whenever Roberts has knocked the T—-p Administration down in the past, he has always given them a road map for a workaround.
But I would say he has begun to smell the leopard’s breath.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gretchen:
They have their own police force, so presumably they would protect him
kindness
In the end we’re going to need several new Constitutional Amendments. Talk about a heavy lift…
Belafon
@kindness: It’s gonna require New Deal majorities without the conservadems blocking amendments.
WaterGirl
PSA: Wil, I can’t contact you directly because none of the email addressed you have used here is valid.
If you are reading this, please get in touch with me about your status as a commenter on Balloon Juice. watergirl at balloon-juice.com
schrodingers_cat
Tesla stock is still overpriced IMHO by a factor of 10.
SC54HI
@New Deal democrat: We can only hope that Roberts is smelling the leopard’s breath or at least hearing its distinctive roar in his vicinity.
Captain C
@twbrandt: It looks like it’s lost over half its value since its peak in December. Down nearly another 10 bucks today. At some point, there will be margin calls or suchlike, and we’ll see how much TCFG is willing to break laws to help someone with obvious loser stink all over him.
Shalimar
@SC54HI: The refusal to use LIDAR is why I think people who insist robotaxis will justify Tesla’s massive stock price are high on something. Even if you assume we are moving to a world where people call self-driving taxis instead of buying their own cars, Tesla will never catch up with Waymo on safety and they are already years behind on implementation. Why is Tesla’s P/E at 110 and Alphabet, a much more profitable company with a longer history that includes Waymo, is only 20.9?
Professor Bigfoot
I rolled my remaining 401Ks over in December to an IRA account and most of that right now is in cash.
Gods help me, I’ve been considering buying precious metals and keeping cash stashed in the house; and the mere fact that I’m thinking this way pisses me off all over again.
These stupid motherfuckers… <grrrr>
suzanne
The Know Your Enemy podcast is doing a two-part deep dive into Musk. It’s enjoyable because they clearly loathe him. I listened to the first episode yesterday. If you need a good listen, I recommend it!
Ksmiami
@SC54HI: rumbles and roars in the distant savanna at least
zhena gogolia
@Professor Bigfoot: I KNOW! We were just feeling really secure, and with Harris-Walz, we would be moving forward IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.
No need to make protest signs, no need to go to public hearings, just let the kindly government people keep doing their jobs as we get on with our lives. BUT NO
Captain C
@Shalimar:
We should consider the possibility that Elon sends out free doses of ketamine to every buyer of Tesla stock. It makes as much sense as anything.
Ksmiami
Hi
@Professor Bigfoot: international vanguard indices /etfs aren’t a bad place. Corporate bond funds too since the target rates of nearly 5 percent keep up with inflation
sentient ai from the future
@Unkown known: when I’m in a gambling mood I like to buy options with money I can afford to lose.
The prolonged and serious downturn in his stock price has made it easy to bet on. Usually I try and target an option date of a week or two after quarterly earnings, but mid-april was a bit too pricey, and there’s a history there of musk doing his big flashy “reveals” at quarterly earnings time as a distraction. Usually the degenerate gamblers on wall street buy it, so there’s risk there.
But overall I’m betting it’s going to continue getting kicked in the yarbles.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: And if the D elders hadn’t freaked out after one not so wonderful debate performance we would be in a second Biden term.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: this is why I’m fundamentally down on America as a nation- we are too big and too diverse to really hold together-
sentient ai from the future
@Professor Bigfoot: I weighted heavy on bonds, overweighted international bonds, as well as a bit of equities ETFs (VGK, VEA, VWO) under the thesis that the Europeans are going to get their shit together for defense, and that the euro will get stronger relative to the usd.
New Deal democrat
@Shalimar:
A little OT, but on my recent trip to AZ I was blown away by the way o driverless taxis in Phoenix. Really unnerving to see a driverless vehicle in heavy traffic, but they performed flawlessly and I think they have supplanted Uber as The Youngs method of transportation.
Elizabelle
OT: Some good news: British cartoonist Becky Burke is back in the UK. Landed at Heathrow; was released from 3 weeks (!) in ICE custody yesterday afternoon.
I truly think the international community should boycott the US, and especially Florida (sorry, Betty C.) Money is the only thing that talks to The Felon and Musk.
Speaking of which: go lower, TSLA stock. Limbo! You know you can do it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
Somebody here called it a “meme stock”. Edolph and Tesla definitely try to play the system as if it were a meme stock.
Problem is it’s turned into a bona fide car maker but still acts like, well, a meme stock company. That’s *a* reason why it’s not adapting well to good ole ‘market pressures’, namely, actual competition. It’s never had it before the last couple of years and if there’s one thing most car companies globally understand, it’s how ruthless competition directs product development. Tesla’s never had to deal with that and ain’t dealing with it (at all well) now.
Tesla’s early days of building cars with the build quality of a 1980 Chevy Citation is well known. That’s changed to a large extent over the last 5 or so years, the Wankpanzer being a notable exception.
Nonetheless, people used to a certain build style are always struck by how “flimsy” Tesla’s feel. It’s not helped by their “gigacasting” production, designed to save Tesla money but is a nightmare for the owner if they ever get into even a fender-bender and another contributor to that “flimsy” feel.
pacem appellant
We are considering a solar and battery wall for our home. We made it clear to the contractors that a Tesla wall is a deal-breaker. No money for fascists. Once Te$la drops below $200/share, Musk is in for a world of hurt. Not real hurt, of course, he’s still too rich, but his ability to throw his fake fortune around will but severely curtailed. Keep up the protests. Don’t buy Tesla. Sell your existing one if you’re able. And as a two-fer, re-sold Teslas are cheap! So folks who couldn’t otherwise afford an EV are now able to to!
The Other Bob
I have always felt that a large amount of Tesla owners were very cult-like. When Ford came out with the Mach-E, people who traded in their Teslas on them received death threats from the Tesla weirdos. Auto journalists who reviewed newer electric cars received them too. It wasn’t isolated.
I like electric cars, but never liked Teslas. I always thought they were poorly built shit boxes.
Elizabelle
Why yes, I have just cruised through The Guardian’s news coverage.
And: it has been announced that late drag star The Vivienne died of an overdose of ketamine.
Why oh why can that not happen to Elon, DOGE disruptor?
One can hope.
SC54HI
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
In the cybertruck video I linked to, after the thing falls apart, they show how much of the rear end of the vehicle is actually GLUED together.
Ken B
@sentient ai from the future: Especially if/whenTrump and his GOP minions get the dollar dropped as the world’s reserve currency.
MobiusKlein
@New Deal democrat: In San Francisco, my wife used to hate the Waymos, but quickly realized they were the most polite cars on the road. Has become accepting of them.
My work with Waymo engineers (on non car stuff) has impressed me, and their dedication to quality.
Really know how to make the Realtime OS work.
zhena gogolia
@Ksmiami: But that’s been true for a long time.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
And a lot of other people’s opinions too. Telsa is currently making less money than GM and has a slower growth rate, but has 15 times the market price.
10x is probably optimistic, actually. More like 20, based on earnings.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: but we papered over it until Trump.
Fair Economist
There’s a funny pic I can’t find of a Cybertruck that has rear-ended a VW Bug. The Bug has a lot of parts knocked off the back, but is still structurally intact. In contrast, half of the Cybertruck’s hood is crumpled in.
The tagline was “not even the best built Nazi car” (the VW Bug was originally designed in Nazi Germany).
Matt McIrvin
The transformation of Tesla’s brand from the green-consumerism favorite of bougie liberals to a poisoned marker of Trumpism is one of the most amazing things I’ve witnessed in American business.
There was a time when Tesla was in a class by itself, offering the only electric vehicles that people could drive without making really severe compromises. But those days are over.
suzanne
@New Deal democrat:
When I lived in PHX, I ran out in front of one to see if it would stop. Glided to a nice, soft stop like buttah.
TBone
Mark Cuban says LNG producers are in a bind
(I fixed a typo for him – the thing he’s responding to is important, IMO – regarding tariffs and China):
https://bsky.app/profile/mcuban.bsky.social/post/3lkmnhznebc2s
NaijaGal
I’m ashamed to say that I was originally fooled by Elon years ago and had planned to buy a Model X to replace my hybrid. I bought Tesla stock, took a test drive in my friend’s Model S and marveled at how fast it went. I sold all my Tesla stock when Elon bought Twitter and my friend sold off his Model S once he realized Elon was a Nazi. It’s never too late to learn, I guess.
Flanders Other Neighbor
I was just thinking about this – stock now less than half the price it was in December. And the few “financial” articles I read today only touch on revenue and competition with not a single mention of his actions being a cause for the stock price. Cowards.
Lucky for me, I’m cheap and don’t covet technology, so I never entertained the idea of buying one.
NaijaGal
@kindness: I think people who lose a significant part of their social, financial and health safety net might see the value of not allowing a handful of people to buy your former democracy and play games with it.
zhena gogolia
@Ksmiami: I don’t know, I lived through the 1960s.
exbarrowboy
As something of an aside, I once worked several steps in the management hierarchy down from Ian Wright, who later went on to be one of the original Tesla founders. He was a really nice person and the world would have been so much better if it was Ian rather than Elon with all the Tesla cash.
Rose Judson
Re Musk, entertaining rant by an engineer about SpaceX. Goes well into the weeds on SpaceX’s approach to iterative design and why it sucks. Final paragraph:
Fair Economist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Cash in the house is a poor choice due to physical security, plus fires, beyond a smallish emergency fund. Not a place for significant investments, tempting as it can be.
Gold is OK in principle, but, again, physical security is an issue. Gold on deposit somewhere is often fictitious – your security provider doesn’t have it, but rather options to buy, etc. – or sometimes not even that. There have been some scandals with gold brokers and ETFs who really didn’t have the gold (just fraud fronts) and in some cases people lost their investments.
I keep meaning to shift to more international equities, but I’m doing my usual procrastination. I think it’s important to actually own *something*. Although Euro bonds should still be safe. I’m actually somewhat afraid of US denominated bonds in the medium term, because Trump is going to cause a serious recession, and then I expect he will gain control of the Federal Reserve and force them to print to stimulate, and that will cause some serious inflation. Not next year, but maybe starting in 2028. This is also a strike against cash or near-cash (money markets, etc.) for significant investment amounts.
Nettoyeur
@chemiclord: And its dual: “Eat your cake and then blame Democrats because there is no more cake.”
Trollhattan
@suzanne:
That they roam the hills of San Francisco is boggling. Maybe there’s a tougher city to navigate in the US? I’d hate to see it.
SFFD hates them.
patrick II
It’s the dictators’ dilemma; the more crimes committed while in office, the greater the chance of jail time after. So it becomes increasingly difficult to leave. The chances of us having real elections in 2028 is dwindling fast.
NaijaGal
Are US treasuries still safe? I have some inflation-linked savings bonds and 30 year treasury bonds that I was convinced to get because “stability” (to balance out my exposure to the stock market). Now I wonder…
Nettoyeur
@schrodingers_cat: Tesla had a P/E of 177. Now it is somewhere like 85. A factor of 4-5 more down brings it into what is usually a high range, ie comparable to a decent CD, but with risk. To be attractive, it has to go down to 10 to have an equity premium worth the risk.
Jay
@Fair Economist:
Polestar’s stock is $0.19. Kia’s stock is $67.
The difference between those stock values and the Swasticar stock is that major Institutions, Nation States and Oligarchs bought into Felon’s company, not as a financial investment, but as an investment in influence.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@suzanne:
@New Deal democrat:
Got to be honest, I don’t like them because it puts a lot of people out of a job
Trollhattan
@The Other Bob:
For the last several years they’re just something to buy instead of a Camry, in NorCal. We’ll see what happens once all the current leases expire, but they are EVERYWHERE in vast numbers here. You don’t really even notice them anymore; they were once as odd ducks as Priuii, and who pays attention to those today?
Matt McIrvin
@Rose Judson: As I’ve said before, Musk’s companies have done great work but their best work seems to be done in spite of Musk, and Starship to me always reeked of a “keep Elon occupied and out of our hair” project that got out of control. NASA made a big mistake by funding their proposal to use it as the basis for a Project Artemis lunar lander–that never made any sense to me. And if Artemis wasn’t doomed before it’s surely doomed now, with Musk effectively controlling the purse strings.
TBone
Tesla Board Members, Executives Sell Off Over $100 Million of Stock in Recent Weeks
https://bsky.app/profile/rcsmitheco.bsky.social/post/3lko65k3tcs2x
catclub
I would consider German Military industries. Also french or Swedish.
German Rearmament does have some history.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NaijaGal:
I own I-Series US Savings Bonds that I bought in 2022 when inflation was around 9%. I was originally planning on shifting my emergency savings into them gradually for inflation protection, but decided against it because of the five year lock in period and the taxes generated when you redeem them ie. cash them out.
If Trump and Co were to make up economic data, they could defraud investors in I-Bonds and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), not to mention retirees receiving SS benefits, messing with COLA
Steve in the ATL
@sentient ai from the future: I love currency arbitrage when I travel, such as our $38 dinner for two at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Istanbul. Soon, however, it will be Turks and Egyptians and South Africans and such coming here for inexpensive luxury!
Betty Cracker
@suzanne:
Hahaha! Seems kinda risky!
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: Of course, Elon Musk will be fine regardless. He could lose 99.999% of his wealth and still be richer than me, and I’m kind of rich. It’s everyone else who bet on him who is left holding the bag.
suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Considering how deadly driving is — and most frequently due to human error — I desperately want autonomous cars to be a successful thing.
suzanne
@Betty Cracker: It wasn’t going very fast.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I think it was Rev Al who said if they’re making a deal without you, it’s not about you
It is about Ukraine, of course. But the prime player is not involved
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
And that’s a feature, not a bug, to people on both sides of the aisle who push things like this. Since it doesn’t affect the progressive demographic they care about, white urban professionals, it’s seen as A. Good. Thing. It’s another technocratic thing that’s very cool in terms of technology, and can be sold under a number of other rationals that on the surface might have some merit, but are mostly about making their own lives easier while either missing the bigger picture or not giving a shit about it.
BuT HeY, tHeY CaN ReTrAiN As cOdErS. /s
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@suzanne:
I don’t think that would outweigh the amount of people involved in transportation who would lose their jobs and all of the knock-on effects of that mass unemployment. What will these people do? They can’t all become plumbers or electricians. Only so many spots
Betty Cracker
I’m such a swampbilly that I’m still agog when I travel to a city and see ebikes all over the place, and meanwhile y’all are seeing robot taxis!
TBone
Magnitsky Sanctions explainer. I dunno who would do the enforcement, but I have hope…
https://bsky.app/profile/shewandersferal.bsky.social/post/3lko5onudhe2j
Anonymous At Work
Twitter is private, worth around 10% of what he paid for them and would be impossible to resell at this point since the brand is in the toilet’s toilet’s toilet.
Starlink/SpaceX are 100% dependent on government support. What won’t be undone by removing Elmo’s security clearance can be seized under national security grounds and fair market value paid, rather than what he charges.
Heck, infer disloyalty from Elmo onto Peter Thiel and billions more go up in smoke.
sentient ai from the future
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): this is exactly what krugman has been warning the shitbird might do.
Jay
@Steve in the ATL:
I would not call ICE Concentration Camps inexpensive luxury.
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Our ebikes have gone on hiatus, it’s all scooters now and boy is it chaotic during tourist season.*
*Could be kidding myself that we have one, but who are these maniacs and were did they come from?
CCL
If anyone is interested, Code Talkers is a memoir by one of the last Navajo code talkers, Chester Nez. It’s an easy read. In Arizona, during the 50s, 60s, 70s, the existence and importance of the Navajo code talkers was an open secret, even if not officially declassified.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: it is very telling, who is selling…
azlib
I have always believe Tesla would eventually be sold. The biggest asset they have is the charging station infrastructure and perhaps some innovative manufacturing ideas. Selling the company cannot happen at the current stock price which is way overvalued. It seemed investors really thought Tesla would be the only electric manufacturer in town for a long time, but other car makers are getting into the game. Keep in mind car manufacturing has really tight margins. At the current decline in Tesla sales, the company cannot stay competitive for very long. Short sellers must be having a field day right now. however.
sentient ai from the future
@Steve in the ATL: dont think i havent also looked at the TUR ETF. its ishares, i think, so that’s one strike against it.
my main goal was to be ahead of any currency collapse, which is why i went for converting my SP500 index lump into mostly bonds in the first place, but a lot of these ETFs that do international stuff are “currency-hedged” and i’m not clear how that work or how it plays into my strategy.
i need to do more of the reading, i guess. i am comfortable where i am at right now, though i could probably stand to shift more from the bonds into equities, i’m at like 50/50 right now which doesnt make sense given my temporal distance from retirement.
catclub
@sentient ai from the future: That cheats you, and benefits the US government, but does it benefit Trump? If not, why would he bother.
Trump would not cut the IRS if he was getting a cut of the take.
suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I mean, a small plane’s worth of Americans dies in car crashes every day. Thousands more are injured. I consider that unacceptable and I hope we can not consider their deaths the price we simply must pay to keep people employed.
Baud
@TBone:
I think those orders were placed 6 months ago FWIW. SEC rule for insiders.
robtrim
Musk is a loose cannon. He’s been mouthing off about Social Security. Even the MAGA crowd, many of whom depend on it for retirement, realize that playing with SS is a fools errand.
But what Trump and his clowns really want is “Privatization” – turning over the many services provided by the Federal government to corporations and the private sector. This is the Oligarchy model: tax dollars going to Wall Street, corporations, wealthy donors and Trump cronies. Federal dollars are what they want. It’s the U.S. Civil Service vs guys like Bezos, Schwarzman, Zuckerberg and dozens of other greedy billionaires.
catclub
CNN:
“needs to end in both of us getting richer.”
FTFY
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@suzanne:
The people employed in that sector are numerous too. Again, what do you expect them to do if they get replaced? Learn to code? “AI” is taking over that, with some humans left behind to check the code and correct it when it makes mistakes. They probably won’t be as well paid as CDL holders can be. It’s coming for all white-collar, professional jobs as well
I’d suggest at least something like UBI but the Republicans certainly have no interest in it and Dems don’t talk about it AFAIK
sentient ai from the future
@TBone:
i mean, it’s not like the writing isnt on the wall here. if musk didnt see it himself at some level he wouldnt be pushing for the state department to buy, what was it, 4000 armored cybertrucks? (incidentally, that’s going to work out great when the armor falls off because the glue has lost its adhesion in the heat of a subtropical summer).
institutional investors in the eurozone especially are dumping his investments.
sales in the EU are cratering, and i’m sure the next quarterly figures will show the same for the US
china already is at capacity with what it’s going to buy, because even while he’s trying to scale up the other EV manufacturers are eating musk’s lunch and kicking him in the jimmies for good measure.
Trollhattan
Cool story bro.
Craig
@MobiusKlein: I’ve ridden in them a few times and the thing drives better than almost all Uber drivers I’ve had.
Old School
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I was curious what a *partial* ceasefire looked like.
It seems Putin says he won’t attack energy sites. Presumably, apartment buildings and schools are still options.
NaijaGal
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): One more thing to worry about. They will make up stuff to make the economy under him look better, since he seems to be stumbling towards creating another depression.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@robtrim:
Ah yes, 40+ years now of that Reaganomic mantra, which was and remains, a grift.
Dubya was gonna do this so as to redirect those sweet, sweet dollars that would go to SS instead to Wall St. We saw this template when the 401K concept was shoved down our throats, again starting with Reagan.
That’s how they’ll sell it this time: you’ll get MORE! if we Privatize! SS.
And unlike when Dubya made his first noises about this and the electorate wasn’t as stewed in Faux “News” as it is now, combined with an uncertain element of (D) “leadership”, they might pull it off. That’s my biggest fear this time around.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Trollhattan:
Veiled threat?
Craig
@suzanne: I was at a presentation by Waymo’s CEOs and they were showing how the lidar works to see obstacles before a visual. The lidar can see under a bus and recognize an obstacle behind the bus, a bicycle, before the bus turns. It was impressive how much thought was being put into viewing traffic as a system.
Miss Bianca
@Professor Bigfoot:
Pal D has a precious metals stash. I used to think “ah, goldbuggery, what a quaint delusion” but now I think he just may have been on to something when he started buying up gold and silver all those years ago.
catclub
and it went less than nowhere. No one can touch SS until they come up with an actually bipartisan fix.
suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t know the answer to how best manage from a policy perspective the workforce transition (that may never happen) to autonomous driving. Data would need to be gathered about feasibility, speed of transition, transfer of skills, etc. I trust that there are some smart people on this, and when it becomes more salient and requires my viewpoint, I will read about it.
It’s not a binary choice between human lives and employment, and I reject that framing.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Back when I was in my federal DOT mode and self-driving tech was in its even-more-infancy-than-now phase, a fellow mode that I worked with extensively were the safety people for motor carriers.
It was clear from the gitgo that the OTR trucking industry was slathering for self-driving technology for one reason and one reason only: to eliminate labor. They didn’t care about safety, it was cutting costs Uber Alles. In fact, even if self-driving was ultimately less safe, they didn’t care as long as it got rid of labor.
Is your average CDL driver a (D)? Probably not given my anecdotal experience with them. But pushing for technologies under some other guise that may or may not play out as the pushers say it will that are just another example of how Dems alienate another slice of the electorate has become SOP over the years.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@catclub:
That’s always been my mantra. Yeah, Dubya’s grift went nowhere but given how the overall picture has changed, we have an Executive willing to breach every rule and protocol and fuck any consequences (if there are any), I’m not so sure anymore.
I hope you’re right. I know Jeffries has stated there will be no (D) support for such efforts and I hope he’s talking closely with Nancy Smash about how she handled this back in the day, but again, our world’s turned upside down, so I hesitate to fall back on “it’ll require bipartisan support.”
JoyceH
Has anyone seen a current breakdown of the sources of Musk’s wealth? Like what percentage is Tesla, Starlink and so on. From my understanding, almost all of his wealth is in stock, which means it could evaporate as easily as it appeared. This guy was worth something like twenty odd billion five years ago and now over three hundred billion? It’s not lunacy -it’s FICTION.
A while back I saw a piece about someone buying a piece of digital art for over sixty million dollars. I thought that was crazy but then realized it was paid for in Bitcoin. Oh, that makes sense. Non-existent art paid for with non-existent money.
Somehow we’ve got to break people of their awe at these “billionaires”. Too many of them are just cosplaying Monopoly in the real world.
jonas
@New Deal democrat: I sense Roberts is concerned. I mean really, Susan Collins-level concerned. Fucking concerned.
suzanne
@Craig: That’s really interesting. From what I have read and heard about Waymo cars, they represent a significant improvement in safety over human drivers.
ETA: That’s from some industry research, so results would need validation from neutral third parties.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Hard to sell when people who have 401ks have just seen them get hit by a market drop. Fine, if you’re far enough from retirement you can wait out the dip, but someone is proposing to just get rid of that Social Security backstop? no.
People my age have been hearing from Republicans and investment advisers their entire lives that “you won’t see a dime of Social Security; it’s broke, so it’s going away,” so the fact that it’s still there seems like a small miracle. But for Republicans to then yank it away at the last moment, when we’re in that home stretch? When a lot of us don’t actually have any personal retirement savings at all? I have a hard time believing it’ll go down easy.
Jay
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-stages-of-trumpist-economic-grief
TBone
@Baud: not all, according to the article.
https://futurism.com/even-tesla-board-dumping-stock
Another Scott
Google tells me the lowest point in the TSLA stock price in the last 5 years was $113.06 on January 6, 2023. It’s got a ways to fall yet ($226.05 at the moment)…
That said, I whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment. Monsters keep monstering until they face consequences. Societies crumble and progress stops if there are no consequences for those who break systems that the commonweal depends on.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
robtrim
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: And, I forgot to mention Health Care. Privatize Medicare and Medicaid. Health care provided by Private Equity vultures at a profit who will deny care as they see fit. Good bye Senior Care, rural Hospitals and clinics, hospice care, pre-natal care for the poor – hell any kind of care for the poor, affordable drugs, and any access the PE firms can’t monetize.
Matt McIrvin
@Jay:
I think I know what step 5 is, it’s “exterminate the useless eaters”.
TBone
@sentient ai from the future: You love to see it! So do I hahahaha
Craig
@suzanne: neutral Anectdata. When I’ve ridden in them(3 times) the decisions the car made were interesting, safe, and decisive. It’s still freaky watching the wheel turning. Of course I felt like an idiot when my friend and I got out and by habit I turned and said ‘thank you’, to an empty car.
Jay
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-epa-kills-chemical-plant-lawsuit
suzanne
@Craig: Obviously more testing, data, etc. But…. the potential to save the lives of 120 Americans every day (and upwards of 2 million injuries every year) is compelling, and shouldn’t be given up on.
Martin
Musk is merely the most visible of the billionaires doing this. There are plenty of others that are doing their part from Bezos to Ken Griffin.
Lily
Been wondering if there will ever be a noticeable dent in sales, services, subs for the other blastoff corp.
Shalimar
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: From my time driving a truck 5+ years ago, CDL drivers are getting more diverse and less white male dominant by the year. But you would make a lot of money betting that any white guy you see driving is listening to rightwing talk radio while they work. The majority of them do.
Sister Golden Bear
@Fair Economist: FYI, the image of the Wankpanzer and the VW Bug was AI-generated.
Jay
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minnesota-sen-justin-eichorn-arrested-bloomington-prostitution-sting/
TBone
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): stochastic terrorism
Miss Bianca
@Jay: You know who may have “Trump Derangement Syndrome”…
ETA: It’s always amazing to me to watch how these guys who have the self-awareness of your average stoneware garden gnome manage to self-diagnose!
WTFGhost
@jonas: Wow. But not at all concerned that he was handing over the tools for authoritarianism to a man who’d already tried to overthrow a free and fair election? I mean, *literally*, as in, he WROTE DOWN the tools for authoritarianism, literally in the “as written” sense, he never thought “someone like Trump could be President with this ruling standing”?
I knew the man was *stupid* but… now I’m starting to question the premise of “Suits,” that law school, and the state bar associations, protect us from rank incompetence, except in cases of singular heroism. Oh, wait, Suits was often concerned with lying and cheating to avoid discovery of the lack of credentials… man, if you can’t trust TV, what *can* you trust?
@Matt McIrvin: Well, The Man (for want of a more dickless word), with The Plan (for want of a more intellectually vacuous word) says that prices will drop once the mass deportations start, getting rid of the vermin gnawing away at the foundations of civil society.
@Jay: You see, they wouldn’t have brought that action, except they were fighting environmental racism, and the word “racism” is in there, so, ending the lawsuit means a victory against DIVERSITY, EQUITY, and INCLUSION. Which is bad, because, it’s okay to poison people if (I’m not sure what they put here, but I’m sure they have some reasoning – maybe they skip the part about how it’s okay to poison people, and just leave that to the imagination of evil corporatists?).
Trollhattan
Trucking Fump.
NaijaGal
@Craig: That made me laugh. As someone who’s said “same to you” when someone wished me a happy birthday, thanking an empty car is right up my alley.
Belafon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I mean, not letting the 29,135 die who died last year in traffic accidents means that those jobs won’t open for other people.
Jay
Funny that. The transcript from the White Supremacy House and the transcript from the Kremlin of the “ceasefire” agreement “phone call” are almost completely different.
Belafon
@Craig: Be nice to all of the robots and hopefully they’ll remember it in the robot revolution.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ksmiami: If we don’t hold together, then we’re looking at years of internecine *warfare.
Jay
@Belafon:
As we have recently learned Alexis is listening in, and recording, in theory to train better AI.
What safer place to have a confidential conversation, than a Robot Taxi, until you learn it is listening in and recording to “facilitate better customer service”, or not.
Scamp Dog
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My guess is that Putin is telling Trump stuff that Putin wants him to believe, that Trump will believe whatever Putin tells him, and that our gullible media will take it all as true, while Putin keeps the war going.
Paul in KY
@Baud: That’s a good line. A sad line, but a good quip.
cain
@Trollhattan:
This sounds like a threat to me.
Jay
BTW, more Tesla’s burning at a Tesla store in Las Vegas.
tam1MI
The same D’s who’s response to Trump’s depredations is, “Thank you sir may I have another”.
lou
A meme claimed that 114 is the tipping point for Tesla stock. If that’s the case, it’s definitely inching closer.
Citizen Alan
@pacem appellant: At some point, if the Tesla Stock goes low enough, won’t the banks who financed the Twitter takeover have certain options to really fuck him over? As in, demanding more collateral be put up? I thought I read that somewhere.
Belafon
@Jay: In Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter makes the claim that we will know we’ve achieved true sentience when they tell us they don’t feel like doing what we ask them to. There was an article in Wired the other day where a guy was using an LLM to create code for a game he was working on. It had already generated around 800 lines, but after a request it replied “I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. The code appears to be handling skid mark fade effects in a racing game, but you should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly.”
Stuart Frasier
@Another Scott: Was that the Google AI? It was hallucinating again. Tesla stock was $28.50 five years ago. Which is probably a fair price for Tesla based on its fundamentals.
Gretchen
@Scamp Dog: It sounds like Putin let Trump cool his heels waiting for Putin’s call. Putin laughed when reminded that Trump was waiting.
Old School
@Jay:
Must be a terrorist attack!
Paul in KY
@Old Man Shadow: Road around in my friend’s S Class one. First one I’d been in. The only things I really thought were ‘cool’ were the door handles electronically (I guess) popping out from door and the whole roof is smoked glass that you can see through. I also do think the S Class (and that one only) is a nice looking car.
Trollhattan
@Old School:
This aggression will not stand, man!
JoyceH
@Scamp Dog: Well, in this instance Trump could unwittingly be being OUR useful idiot – just keep him sitting at the Resolute desk all President-like, cosplaying Big Important World Leader and eat up Putin’s time fiddle-farting around with the moron while Europe can work at top speed to get Ukraine’s armaments and battle comms back up to scratch without having to rely on the product of a ketamine fueled Nazi – and then maybe Ukraine can end the war by defeating Russia and chasing their sorry asses out of the country, killing the ones who aren’t running fast enough.
Jay
@Belafon:
“Nobody wants to work anymore!”// said AI Kleptocrats to Business Insider in an interview.
Jay
@Old School:
Saw vid of the event. When the batteries cook off it’s quite the event.
Captain C
Tesla stock is now down over twelve and a half bucks today, over 5% from yesterday.
rikyrah
It is still amazing that Apartheid Clyde didn’t know who the natural base for his lousy cars was😒😒😒
Fair Economist
Those of you who are impressed with Waymo driving should be aware they are not fully autonomous. There are human supervisory drivers controlling it via internet. It’s similar to the Tesla “autonomous” driving – always with a human hand on the wheel to fix errors. My hubby’s Tesla drives pretty well too if you ignore him having to override every few miles.
Captain C
@rikyrah: Perhaps he figured (wrongly) that just like the FTFNYT (eta: and the WaPo) figured (also wrongly) that they could tell their customers to fuck off like the stupid customers they were, and said customers would just keep buying their goods without complaining. Assuming he thought that far ahead.
WTFGhost
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/teslas-set-fire-molotov-cocktails-shot-las-vegas-attack-rcna196942
Geez, suddenly a bunch of billionaires think “what happens in Vegas follows you the eff around” and it’s over electric cars? I didn’t have that on my BINGO card this geological era
ETA: (in full pious voice mode)Of course, you should *never* damage property or use firearms or explosives to register displeasure.
catclub
@Trollhattan:
Too late, motherfuckers.
Belafon
@catclub: Just wait until Trump declares them economic terrorists.
catclub
@Scamp Dog: Putin is probably fully in favor of Ukraine pausing attacks on Russian energy infrastructure.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: I think a lot of the 1970s-era thought about Turing Tests and such was a bit naive–though even back then, Joseph Weizenbaum was freaked out by how much intentionality normies would attribute to his “psychologist” chatbot ELIZA, which used a really simple algorithm and was trivial to see through by modern standards.
But I also remember one of Isaac Asimov’s Multivac stories, “Key Item”, in which the computer refusing to do anything unless you said “please” was a crucial milestone.
Steve in the ATL
@Jay: the shocking part is that he was after a young girl rather than a young boy. Obviously he is not a good Christian!
Paul in KY
@New Deal democrat: I can see a wow or coolness factor in being driven around by a robot car.
M31
A few years ago tesla went below 200 and was heading for 100 and I thought “hmmm time to think about shorting it?” but playing with meme stocks is too risky for me, and that old saying “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” turned out to be correct and it shot back up. I think it was ‘on paper’ worth 40 or something then, I assume less now.
this time? a better bet but still a bet and nope just sitting on my boring index funds, and hoping that my international stock allotment cushions some of the US blow
hoping to retire in a few years so can we hurry up and get slightly rational please
oh right it’s America, fuck
TBone
Chief Justice Issues Rare Statement Over Donald’s Call To Impeach Judge
Poor Donold.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Charlie Stross’s novel “Halting State” (set in an independent Scotland in what was then the near future) imagined taxis that were just remotely driven by some slave-wage worker in a boiler room on the other side of the world.
Gloria DryGarden
Only half OT, because it mentions Mr Tes(tickles)-La
Guardian article on returning astronauts
If that link didn’t work try this one
splash down around 6 pm EST today
article briefly discusses things said about space X and mr Tesla x.
cckids
@SC54HI:
Last fall, driving N of Seattle, I saw a Cybertruck that had been towing a boat, broken down by the side of I-5. And by “broken down” I mean it looked like the rear axle was broken (not a car person, but it was listing badly to one side, and the wheels were wonky.)
The boat it was towing was TINY – barely as long as the CT. It looked as though a couple of fit people could pull it.
I laughed so hard I almost had to stop for fear of causing an accident.
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: I wonder how many divisions Justice Roberts has.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: that might be worth a front page thread. Even though it’s unpleasant …
RevRick
@schrodingers_cat: There is no evidence that that thesis is true. In fact, there’s plenty to suggest the opposite.
David Schor and Ezra Klein have done a massive survey of voters and found that—
If the only voters who turned out had been 2022 voters, Harris would have won both the popular vote and the electoral college.
If every potential voter turned out, Trump would have won the popular vote by 5%.
Inflation/the economy was the most important issue for voters, far exceeding loan forgiveness, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights, voting rights, climate change. Harris’ results were depressed by her association with Biden.
Trump did not increase his share of white voters. All his increase was due to shifts among conservative Hispanic, Black and Asian voters, and especially among naturalized citizens! He even increased his share with Haitians!
Hate of the NYT is de rigeur here. NYT readers actually moved left! Trump won, because he captured the votes of the disengaged and uninformed.
Gvg
@suzanne: employed tends to equal eating, possibly for them and family, and there are a lot more of them than a small planes worth. Plus I can’t see autonomous cars being perfect and everywhere right away so many deaths would still happen. In fact I am rather sceptical of the whole concept, what with weather and remote areas etc, but anyway I think the job losses might kill more people than it would save even theoretically if it’s not done right and planned. These people can’t be trusted with a plastic knife. Even if the self driving cars are a good thing, if they come out now, they’ll end up discredited because of how badly things will go. They will work badly and the process will be handled as badly as possible just because of what kind of people are in charge now. So it’s better if it doesn’t happen for some time.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Anything that enhances automotive safety is a good thing. “Self Driving” assumes facts not in evidence, that it will, in fact, is safer. Or be safer. There’s no guarantee.
What is interesting is how this line of technology is being worked into “Active Driving Assistance” packages with very mixed results. Consumer Reports has done a really deep dive on this:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/active-driving-assistance-systems-review-a2103632203/
GM’s ‘Super Cruise’ is easily on par with CR’s view of Ford’s package:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/15/24072850/gm-super-cruise-expansion-hands-free-750000-miles
Not “self driving” but a helluva lot better than what Tesla’s been trying to do. My favorite quote from the above article:
Trollhattan
Heh.
More here.
https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/cruise-waymo-autonomous-vehicle-robot-taxi-driverless-car-reports-san-francisco/
Martin
@Citizen Alan: In theory. That’s why Trump is willing to specifically target companies for retaliation so they won’t do that.
Federal government as shakedown operation.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: but even in the turbulent 60s, Americans did not vote to handover social security to a couple fraudulent mobster bust out creeps aligned with Russia
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: Have you seen Sleep Dealer, about VR sites in Mexico where the workers control robots that took their place when the US severely restricted border travel?
Jay
@Gloria DryGarden:
It probably will be in a day or two, once people with better insight, linguistic and journalistic skills, (Ukrainians), compare and contrast.
And we see if its just empty words,…..
Darth Putin’s take so far is that Ukraine has to stop hitting refineries in ruZZia, but he can keep bombing hospitals, apartments, shopping centers, kids schools, hotels, Aid Organizations,…………..
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Among my car’s whizbang features is an automatic lane-following feature that uses cameras mounted on the front. We turned it off because it’s annoying as hell–it tries to steer for you, but it makes a lot of mistakes because lane marking paint after a New England winter is a bad joke.
Worse, they realized that having the car automatically steer could cause you to zone out or fall asleep, so there’s another feature that nags you with a beeping alarm if you don’t seem to be giving it any manual input–which means that it steers on the freeway, but then requires you to *fight* its robo-steering to some minimum degree to avoid getting the alarm, however good it might be. Forget it, I’m going to just steer the thing myself.
suzanne
@Gvg: Well, the good news is….. we don’t have to rush. We can — and should — work on improving autonomous or “technologically assisted” driving, however you want to refer to it, and let it come to the market if it works well, increases safety, etc. I have no doubt that will take time, and research, and multiple iterations. Like every other safety or technological improvement in the history of this country.
But it’s a false choice between people’s safety and employment of drivers. That’s not a binary that anyone should accept as a frame for this discussion.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
People make excellent Soylent Green.
Gvg
@Citizen Alan: yes but I think the problem is it’s more like he is fucking the banks. They thought they could off load their investment in him (diversify) but discovered everyone thought he’d paid too much, so they still have most of the stock….if he defaults, it’s a threat to them.
Martin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Fundamentally you cannot make cars safe. They have too much kinetic energy and operate in a space without hard constraints. The sidewalk the 2 year old up the street was riding her scooter on wasn’t able to stop the minivan that ran her over. Contrast this with trains which have a LOT more kinetic energy but are strongly constrained.
Right now you can make some gains in safety, but that’s mainly because Waymo vehicles in general operate much more slowly and cautiously than the public, with some constraints due to GPS speed limiters, etc. You can achieve the same results by simply slowing cars down and installing GPS speed limiters. Why getting in a rideshare car that is subject to those constraints is liberating but having those constraints on your own car is tyranny is a bit of cognitive dissonance that we need to work on.
What’s not known yet is what kind of emergent behaviors occur as the share of autonomous vehicles goes up, such as the Waymo parking lots where the cars perpetually follow each other and honk. We also don’t know the economic optimizing of this system where it’s likely to be cheaper for rideshare companies to never park their cars, constantly driving and only stopping when they need to charge, because parking lots are expensive in terms of real estate, but they can occupy the roads more or less for free, and renewable electricity is really cheap. As such, they may simply make the roads incredibly congested driving around with nobody in them. How do you regulate that without doing all the things we could do now in terms of road usage fees, etc.
IOW, all the policy you need to keep autonomous cars from breaking things can be done now to largely eliminate the need for autonomous cars.
Jay
@Baud:
Nope, too much microplastics and forever chemicals in them.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: You should be able to set the amount of resistance so you can get an upper body workout.
Belafon
@Martin:
Gloria DryGarden
@Captain C: fun with math: in 20 days at 5% /day, we could get some way lower values..
@JoyceH: meanwhile, I’m rooting for your vision:
Martin
@Belafon: What the fuck are you talking about? How is lowering speed limits ‘rewiring how humans work’?
Baud
@Martin:
I Can’t Drive 55
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: “Techbros reinvented the train” is a whole subgenre on YouTube.
Belafon
@Martin: I live in Dallas, and getting people to slow down, or want to slow down, isn’t going to happen. You won’t sell a car with a GPS based speed limiter.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: of course there will be empty words, and so many nuances to interpreting between the lines..
appreciate your excellent summary of what Russia gets to continue bombing..
Tears easily inspired from just one sentence, or two. But it’s so desperately not ok. A few days ago I called a Ukrainian American friend, to check on her. She’s not enjoying how helpless she feels.
Martin
@Belafon: None of that is human nature, by the way, unless you prescribe to some extreme form of Texas exceptionalism.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
An “acceptable death rate” when discussing automobiles is always better when looked at with data as opposed to some broad statement based on wtf knows what:
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/road-traffic-accidents/by-country/
What one sees is that “death by automobile” is downright embraced to varying degrees worldwide.
The US is ranked 120th which ain’t great when looking at most western Yurpean countries. Which suggests there are ways to lower that death rate per 100K people that don’t depend on some techno solution being pushed by interests who don’t have actual safety in mind, only the lowering of labor costs.
The WHO actually has a target for this: 3.6/100K. Currently the US is at 11.1 while a country like Denmark is an even 3.0. Perhaps a better comparison for a US context is Canada and Australia who are around 4.5.
Jay
@Belafon:
Our One Neat Trick here is potholes.
Doc Sardonic
@Matt McIrvin: We have a running joke with the service manager at our dealership, since we have problems with it frequently. Call in to dealer goes like this:
Service this is Frank
Hi Frank, It’s Doc, the DUI assist has gone out again. When can I bring it in?
zhena gogolia
@Ksmiami: We had newspapers and Walter Cronkite then.
Gloria DryGarden
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: do they also have an injured by car accident ranking? It’s a real thing to live with long term injury from car accidents.
I’ll google it later, I guess. It’s surely much harder to measure and quantify
suzanne
@Gloria DryGarden: Over 2M non-fatal injuries from car accidents in the US every year.
pluky
@Another Scott: Aha! Read somewhere that margin calls on loans collateralized with Tesla stock start if the price drops below $114/share. Number seemed oddly arbitrary, but given an historical low of $113, it makes sense.
Belafon
@Martin: The ideal of autonomous driving is that I can use the transportation time to do something else. Slowing people down and forcing them to drive is the exact opposite. An autonomous vehicle could drive a little slower and that would be fine, but making people do it will not happen easily.
TBone
Call to Activism:
Video:
https://bsky.app/profile/wutangforchildren.bsky.social/post/3lkohsrxdo225
Gloria DryGarden
@suzanne: thanks. So across 10 years, 20 million, across 20 yrs, 40 million. That gets it up to 10% of the population, or so.
35 years ago, I was working with folks with soft tissue injuries and I became one of the injured. Some things have persisted, and there have been physical limits. A lot of people live with that.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: Love it!
Support your friends and neighbors by learning a new song!
TBone
This one is in my locale. I am fresh out of spray paint though. Per WuTang:
https://bsky.app/profile/wutangforchildren.bsky.social/post/3lknzjwyffk2g
Need moar spray paint.
Favorite reply so far:
frosty
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That’s the death rate per 100K people. What is it per 100K miles or passenger-miles? The latter is how air travel is shown as much safer than driving.
I guess I could look it up LOL
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gloria DryGarden:
They don’t. It’s a really complex picture that can be sliced and diced a gazillion ways.
I asked this exact question years ago to the safety engineer in our office. He pulled all the agencies data sets and we had a fine time going thru things. The problem he stated was that different countries have different metrics, different reporting standards and many had no reporting. Thus, it made it virtually impossible to make apples-to-apples comparisons.
Soooo, it’s easy to compare deaths because, well, deaths are very quantifiable.
When looking at a country like ours, we have a higher accident rate that’s based in part on the vast amount of roads and geography. I know that there are data sets that look at this from a vehicle miles traveled vs accident rate (as opposed to death rate) but those are hard to track down online.
It’s *a* reason automakers have focused on a variety of safety features, that and the fact that emerging demographics have put more of a market demand on automobiles having such features. And in a rare example of how trickle-down actually works, features that were once considered “high end” eventually do make their way down to more inexpensive cars. My 2023 Chevy Bolt EV is a case in point. It has alert systems that clue me in if somebody’s behind the car and off to the side, thus, no backing out in front of another car or backing into somebody. It has a radar for cruise control. It also has the annoying lane-changing feature mentioned above and like mentioned above, that’s turned off.
I would like to see injury rates per 100K (not just generic bulk totals given with no sourcing) for various countries, particularly in western Europe and published analysis comparing them to other places with some musings on the differences.
frosty
@frosty:
That didn’t take long. Fatalities per billion vehicle-km
US 6.9
Denmark 3.9
Via our old friend Wikipedia, data from 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@frosty:
I was gonna look into that because it’s another very useful metric to get a more nuanced look at “safety”. Didn’t have time so I was hesitant to just toss out a number.
I know from a general sense that death rates per 100K miles driven has gone down but again, I’m loathe to say that with any certainty.
A useful snapshot from 2022 just looking at the US:
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state
I’m now trying to find the historical data to see what, if any decline, there might have been.
Again, “just” death rates, not accident/injury rates. I recall from other previous talks with our safety engineers over the years that as better safety measures in cars have become more available in more new cars, the level of serious injury rates/deaths have gone down but again, I’d need to find a citation for that other than my years of general talks with people in the industry who knew wtf they were talking about.
Quinerly
@RevRick:
Thanks for providing data and facts.
schrodingers_cat
@RevRick: And why did they not turn out for Harris? Would they have turned out of Biden?
Ezra Klein and the NYT wanted Biden gone long before the debate happened. NYT is totally deserving of hate. They were a big factor in his 2016 win and his 2024 comeback. They gave Hillary and her emails and Biden’s shoes more coverage than the crimes committed by the current occupant of the Oval Office.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
I read somewhere (can’t find citation) that Shor’s firm was responsible for much of her “abandon the base, embrace the Cheney’s” strategy has a huge conflict of interest here.
There’s millions of dollars to be had shifting the blame from himself.
Anything pumped out by him and Little Ezra should be met with plenty of skepticism because they have an agenda. Vox has simply been the training ground for new Atlantic writers, Little Ezra is simply an ideological counterpart to fellow Vox founder, good ole Yglesias.
Another Scott
@Stuart Frasier: Whoops – good catch. I should have phrased it differently – I meant a local minimum (with a bunch of other constraints).
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Agreed with everything except the contention that she abandoned the base, she didn’t. The media was not interested in covering what she said to the base.
I heard many of her campaign speeches and she never abandoned the base. Leftier-than-thous were unhappy with her because of Gaza.
Another Scott
@pluky: Stuart at #148 pointed out that my description was wrong. The number I cited was a local minimum, not the price 5 years ago.
On the margin calls, I assume it’s somehow related to the stock price when Melon was buying Twitter in mid-April 2022. But it’s not immediately jumping out at me from the noisy price history graph.
Dunno.
Sorry for the mistake in my description!
Best wishes,
Scott.
catclub
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I figure every single gettable GOP vote with that strategy was in a commercial. fit in a phone booth, etc
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: I know you think Biden’s debate performance was overly criticized, but it was appalling to me (as you know)—the whole thing, not just a few minutes of it. And what if he had done something worse in a month or two? I didn’t feel lucky.
And I don’t think he would have won if he had stayed in. Too many people had doubts. Turnout already declined even with Harris taking over. Biden graciously bowing out and having an actual primary would have been better, in my opinion.
Bill Arnold
@robtrim:
In the current correction-approaching-bear market, I get a daily smile from Forbes THE WORLD’S REAL-TIME BILLIONAIRES – Today’s Winners and Losers – Reflects changes since 5pm EST of prior trading day.
It shows the top of the list, which is current, 1-4, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg. Larry Ellison
And it shows the (5) top winners and (5) top losers.
Ella in New Mexico
“Kill the Beast! Spill his Blood!!!”
Chris T.
@Paul in KY:
That’s the “Model S”, not “S Class” (the “class” system is mostly Mercedes at this point, they have C and E and S classes; BMW do something similar with the first digit of the model number). It’s worth noting that the Model S’s exterior design was done by a Car Design Guy. That’s why it looks nice.
I was somewhat interested in perhaps getting a Model S back in the early 2010s, but the plastic-y econobox interior was a big turnoff for a car that was luxury priced. Except for that, the Model S was not bad for its day.
Paul in KY
@Craig: Hope to ride in one some day. Should be a interesting/weird experience for this old guy.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: My cousin was a long haul trucker for 2 or 3 years and he said that for every trucker that you would consider a ‘stereotypical’ wild-man partier type, there were 3 nutwad Christian types.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: The debate was terrible. Maybe, in hindsight, we should have stayed with Pres. Biden, but that debate was fucking catastrophic (IMO).
Paul in KY
@Chris T.: My bad on botching the nomenclature.