This just keeps getting funnier. Tesla operates like a startup, and it’s clear that comes from the lack of focus and seriousness at the very top of the organization. Build quality and reliability keeps getting worse, not better. https://t.co/dyrI9o33zR
— Jean-Michel Connard ??? (@torriangray) April 15, 2024
Cybertruck deliveries halted due to car being a big piece of shit that doesn't work: https://t.co/qUPo6eZthW
— Defector (@DefectorMedia) April 15, 2024
Patrick Redford, at Defector:
Tesla, a future case study for securities law classes across America, had to stop delivering Cybertrucks this past weekend. No, not because the hundred-thousand–dollar medium-duty pickup, which is only any of those things in the loosest interpretive sense, tends to brick when it gets rained on; nor because its stainless steel panels get all rusty and nasty-looking after weeks exposed to the rare, harsh condition of “being outside.” Perhaps you think it has something to do with the shorter-than-advertised driving range and longer-than-advertised charging time, but no: Rather, the cause of this snag is that the trucks struggle with the basics of stopping and going, by which I mean that the accelerator pedal cover slides off and gets stuck under a panel and locks the accelerator pressed down and keeps the Cybertruck stuck at maximum velocity…
Suckers who ordered Cybertrucks a few months or years ago and expected deliveries this weekend did not get their cars, nor a precise explanation for why they did not get their cars, but instead were simply told, “Hi, we have just been informed of an unexpected delay regarding the preparation of your vehicle. We need to cancel your delivery appointment for tomorrow and we will reach out again when we’re able to get you back on the schedule.” Maybe someone with a hot glue gun will get on this one…
As the Bay Area is both a nexus for world-class goobers and the region where Tesla used to be and kinda-sorta still is headquartered, I have seen a lot of Cybertrucks out in the wild over the past few months. They are remarkably fake- and shitty-looking in any context (Is that a big toaster with wi-fi next to me at the exit? Who’s driving the scrap metal assemblage with Bryan Colangelo-esque proportions? Why does every Cybertruck driver I glance at appear to be simultaneously peacocking for attention but also totally embarrassed, haunted by the unexamined knowledge that as a maneuver in a culture war they paid $100,000 for a car that doesn’t work?), though I saw one in the Santa Cruz mountains this past weekend. It looked even more jarringly synthetic and stupid in a truck-style environment, as if 10 seconds on a semi-paved road would undo the whole rickety car. I felt, amid standard-issue disgust and mockery, personal embarrassment to be paying through the nose to live in a place where the coolest thing you can do is cosplay as a 6-year-old’s idea of the coolest guy in the world.
Tesla to cut 14,000 jobs as Elon Musk bids to make it ‘lean, innovative and hungry’ https://t.co/5kXQNhJyO3
— Guardian Tech (@guardiantech) April 15, 2024
The BBC, via Yahoo Finance (British publications have a five-hour head start):
Tesla will lay off more than 10% of its global electric vehicle workforce.
In a memo, first reported by news website Electrek, billionaire owner Elon Musk told staff there was nothing he hated more, “but it must be done”.
The world’s largest vehicle-maker by market value had 140,473 employees globally as of December, according to its latest annual report…
The electric vehicle (EV) maker has been slow to refresh its aging models as high interest rates have sapped consumer appetite for big-ticket items.
There is also the ongoing pressure from China as the rise of their inexpensive EVs have begun to flood the market with affordable models.
The company is set to report its quarterly earnings later this month but has already reported a decline in vehicle deliveries in the first quarter, its first in nearly four years and also below market expectations. Some analysts described the results as “tumultuous.”…
Elon Musk has recently denied reports that the company has scrapped plans to produce an inexpensive car, which has been one of his longstanding goals to make affordable EVs for the masses.
Tesla shares were down 0.8% in premarket trading on Monday.
Sadly fitting that this comes right as they abandon the 'for the masses' goal mentioned right out of the gate. https://t.co/Usj4Ahmjv7
— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) April 15, 2024
Lol. Lmao. https://t.co/q40WNe4quL
— Mike Stuchbery ???? (@MikeStuchbery_) April 3, 2024
Possible US Tesla customers are now reconsidering buying the electric vehicle’s products, according to Caliber, a market intelligence company. This is mostly due to owner Elon Musk’s increasingly worsening reputation, fuelled by highly controversial statements, tweets and right-wing politics.
Caliber’s Tesla “consideration score”, obtained exclusively by Reuters, dropped to 31% in February 2024. This was a fall of 8% on January’s score, as well as a steep plunge from November 2021’s record high of 70%.
Conversely, the consideration scores for other high-end car makers, with both electric and gas options, such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi for February 2024 were all between 44% and 47%…
Tesla has been doggedly slashing prices in China, one of its key markets, for the past few months, in order to compete better with Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers such as BYD. This helped the company to see robust sales last year.
However, Tesla is still expected to report declining first quarter 2024 sales in the coming few days, most likely due to a combination of clients’ cutting back on spending, as well as lagging deliveries…
Tesla’s deliveries, which touched about 422,875 in Q1 2023, are expected to be considerably less in Q1 2024. The company’s share price also took a nosedive of about 30% in the first three months of this year, eroding about $40 billion (€37 billion) of Elon Musk’s wealth…
Recently, Musk’s $55.8 billion Tesla pay package was also declared void by a Delaware judge, who called it excessive and “unfathomable”. This came after a shareholder sued Tesla, claiming that Musk was overcompensated. The ruling led to Musk losing his crown as the world’s richest man and sliding down to second place, following Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury goods company LVMH.
He spent $44 billion to renew his Babylon Bee subscription https://t.co/lWAcgOX8cU
— zeddy (@Zeddary) April 15, 2024
Baud
Love seeing people complain about Tesla’s on Twitter.
Ishiyama
Mad Magazine used to run a feature of kid’s drawings of cars, airplanes, etc., turned into real products.
Jay
I do not get the reference.
Can somebody explain?
cain
Glad my wife only has a 2 year lease on her Tesla model 3.
MagdaInBlack
Wonder if this includes their Tesla body shops? My company lost a bunch of technicians and managers to a big Tesla shop, because they pay (paid?) very well, they pay hourly and they run 3 shifts.
RaflW
Still amazed that opening the car door during a software update might break a Tesla.
Anne Laurie
@Jay: It’s a joke that Musk isn’t as rich as he was because he (theoretically) spent $44 billion to buy Twitter… when he could’ve gotten the same current quality blue-check content by reading the Babylon Bee. (Which is a Mormon-based version of the Onion, only even less funny & considerably more racist / sexist / homophobic.)
Starfish
@Anne Laurie: Oh, it’s mormon? I didn’t know.
I felt like it was low-quality rightwing nonsense, and if you called them on any of it, they would claim “parody.” But a lot of people were circulating the articles as if they were real.
hrprogressive
10 years ago, the idea of buying a Tesla as an electric vehicle seemed like a goal.
Now, you couldn’t pay me to own a Tesla.
It seems increasingly likely that Musk’s reputation was always built on a foundation of sand, but a more competent and far less Fashy sleight-of-hand artist could have kept up the charade indefinitely.
Now, everyone but his most ardent Nazi-Chan.eft bros sees him for the shambling totalitarian Non-Genius that he really is, and likely always was.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Fritscher says whether it goes anywhere (especially with Democrats) depends on the text of the rules that the votes occur under. We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Jay:
The Babylon Bee is a (not funny) right-wing version of The Onion. As such, Musk is popular with them and features in their “humorous” fake news. Beyond that I don’t know.
Melancholy Jaques
@Jay:
Babylon Bee, a favorite of my Trumpster brother, is a right-wing attempt at a humor site. It is popular with fans of Andrew Dice Clay’s early work.
HumboldtBlue
Redford’s opening paragraph is delightful.
Baud
@Another Scott:
What kind of rule would be problematic?
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
Let me guess: the 14k laid off were in quality control.
bbleh
I’m pretty sure more than one ethical/religious tradition disapproves of schadenfreude, and I am here to represent! that I don’t care.
Anonymous At Work
Patrick Redford’s material will be read by every would-be satirist in the coming centuries like Jonathan Swift has been. And to make matters worse for Elmo: He moved Telsa OUT OF DELAWARE. Delaware’s corporation law is as follows: Corporations win!*
*unless your Board of Directors is mostly your friends/family rather than retirees/failed politicians collecting honoraria by not making waves.
HumboldtBlue
@Anne Laurie:
That name makes much more sense now, the bee is considered industrious and hard-working and therefore a fave of the Mormon crowd in the aptly named, Beehive State.
smith
Elmo’s applying his genius idea of slashing the workforce to attain more efficiency to Tesla, seeing how it worked so well at Xitter.
hueyplong
@bbleh: In this Trump/Musk-obsessed world, there are times when I live on Schadenfreude alone, and declare the diet “healthy.”
Another Scott
@Baud:
Presumably rules that limit what Democrats can do if the GQP tries to pull a fast one.
Dunno.
Fritscher says:
(No link because there’s some inappropriate soft porn in the reply thread.)
TheHill.com:
Assuming the Feedom Forus folks are actually upset, he’ll need Democrats for it to be on the floor with a 2/3 requirement for passage (as I understand it).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Almost Retired
Tesla had a demo model of that ghastly cybertruck at the Hermosa Beach St. Patrick’s Day parade. Rather than the usual bikini models auto companies hire for this sort of thing, there were two young men in expensive tight blue suits opening and closings doors and caressing the product like a 70s era Price is Right models. I heard a lot more “what the fuck is that” from passerbys than I heard “ooh, cool.” The suits were nice, though.
Tulip
I saw a Cybertruck the other day, in “person” it is so gawd awful ugly and big. And it’s so true, a few years ago my goal was to buy a Tesla, now I wouldn’t consider one. Hopefully, Detroit can fill the void.
Martin
Tesla cancelled their lower-price Model 2 in favor of some kind of robotaxi plan.
Been arguing for a while that US automakers are fucking up their industry by chasing profits over meeting the nations transportation needs. Tesla is all but conceding here that their cars aren’t affordable (hence the robotaxi) and they’re not interested in making ones that are (cancellation of Model 2). Cheap batteries won’t make for cheap cars, because investors don’t want cheap cars.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Not sure why this plan helps him over just passing the Senate bill, but ok.
Maybe he plans to slash Ukraine funding?
OzarkHillbilly
Wanted: One straight off the factory line Tesla vehicle, any make or model, for the one time over valued price of $500. Yes, I know, I am way overpaying, but I figure at some point the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry will over pay me $750 or maybe, maybe, even $1000 for a Tesla in mint condition.
Please reply to OzarkHillbillyfuckyouyoudumbfuckidiotmfucker.com
MattF
‘Elon @ Tesla’ will be the title of a study in precisely how incompetent corporate leadership is gradually uncovered. It’s taken a few years and the narrative will continue for a few more, one assumes.
Martin
@Melancholy Jaques: Best way to describe it is that every joke is a variation of ‘my pronouns are attack/helicopter’. They have one joke. Every other effort to make a joke turns into that joke.
Delk
Has there ever been any other time when so many people have completely destroyed their reputations?
WaterGirl
@MagdaInBlack: I haven’t seen your nym in awhile, how are you doing?
Another Scott
@Baud: If he passes the Senate bill then sensible people will ask why he sat on it for months. So, he can’t do that.
I don’t know how he squares the circle about refusing to pass Ukraine aid without addressing the CRISIS AT THE BORDER while refusing to pass a bill to sensibly address the CRISIS AT THE BORDER.
Might be an interesting week on the Hill. Or, it might be another week of “what on earth are they doing up there??”
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
You broke blog.
SpaceUnit
Hell of a lot cheaper to just write I’m a dope on a sticky note and slap it on your forehead.
Martin
@smith: Yeah, you can’t cost-cut to growth. You can cost-cut to avoid losses, but that’s a different thing.
Jeffro
@OzarkHillbilly: 🤣
I am interested in getting a hybrid or EV next time around. It will definitely NOT be a Tesla.
in fact, I might cough up for a custom-made bumper sticker for it: “EV? Why yes it is! Tesla? No, certainly not!”
Anne Laurie
And ‘Babylon’ is, of course, a standard Christian trope for ‘secular’. So the ‘Babylon Bee‘ is (as they see themselve) a bunch of industrious, worthy (and yet HIP! KEWL!) religious people critiquing our risible ‘woke’ modern world. No wonder Elon finds them the funniest satire site (that isn’t under government surveillance for AFT violations.. )
HumboldtBlue
@SpaceUnit:
Hahahaha, the visual on that is perfect.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Again????
Another Scott
@Baud: There’s much more in Fritschner’s timeline.
https://nitter.poast.org/fritschner
Could be an interesting week. But we’ll have to see. Johnson has a demonstrated ability to fail.
Cheers,
Scott.
ArchTeryx
Babylon Bee is just yet another piece of evidence on a giant pile that kicking down, which all right wing “humor” media does, isn’t comedy. It’s just naked bullying. And that’s the way they like it. Just all hate and bigotry, all the time, with the thinnest veneer of “Can’t you take a joke?” to sneer in our faces, because they have the power and we don’t.
Bobby Thomson
When you buy a Tesla, you are buying not just the product, but the bundle of service contracts you are forced into for the life of the vehicle. With mounting evidence that Musk is at least a vindictive sociopath, if not a psychopath, you’d have to be awfully stupid to put your life or the resale value of your car in his hands.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffro: I would love to buy an EV but I suspect I will never be able to afford anything but a Tesla that somebody is desperate to unload.
No thanks.
JaneE
The original Teslas had issues with structural integrity, with reports of water splashing into the cabin when they drove through puddles. Good enough here where it almost never rained, I guess.
I have seen exactly one Tesla Cybertruck on the road. I see two or three Rivian SUVs on just about every trip south. Lots and lots of the Tesla model 3’s though. The charging station expanded from 4 to 12, and sometimes it is full on weekends.
I still think we are too far out to be comfortable with the range on any of them, but a lot of people do have them here, and use them to drive 395 regularly.
I am also seeing more and more other EV’s. For years our local 4 bay charger sat empty every time I went by. The last few times it was being used, and once had all 4 chargers in use. Progress.
Martin
@Another Scott: I think the non-bomb-throwers have given up on the border issue. They had a bill, Lankford appears to have done a competent job of getting the GOP what they wanted and then Trump killed it, because he doesn’t want the problem addressed. So the GOP has created this problem that it has to be solved and can’t be solved, and a lot of people, including a lot of republicans, are likely thinking that they can’t just stop doing anything given these impossible conditions, so the only option is to leave it as a separate matter.
It’s pretty clear it’s bullshit like this that caused Ken Buck to leave and others. It’s not like there needs to be more than 3 other reps telling Johnson that if they don’t start passing some things they can campaign on, they’re out too, and then Johnsons majority is gone. So, hand forced.
Baud
@Another Scott:
He is the cyber truck of House speakers.
Martin
@OzarkHillbilly: We bought a plug-in hybrid for $12K. For 90% of our driving it’s an EV.
OzarkHillbilly
@Martin: I would love that. Details?
MagdaInBlack
@WaterGirl: I’m doing my usual lurking and sneaking in a comment here and there. I’m doing pretty well, actually, thank you for asking ❤️
Spring has sprung here and the windows are open, Gordita sprawled in front of the patio door and kids playing outside. Its just a damned nice evening at the penthouse 😉
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
Mike in NC
Leon Skum, a close third to being the worst person in the world, behind Fat Bastard and Vladimir Putin.
Bobby Thomson
@Anne Laurie: I thought the joke was that like many right wing ventures, the Babylon Bee would have gone under a long time ago without Elmo using Twitter to hype/promote/elevate them.
Jay
@Another Scott:
lollipopguild
@ArchTeryx: What good is it to be rich and self-important if you cannot use your riches and self importance to bully and make fun of people you do not like?
Jeffro
@Martin: hybrids are doing quite well, sales-wise!
Gas if you need it but EV for the (amazingly large amounts of) time that you don’t.
ArchTeryx
@lollipopguild: The problem is that it never stops with just “making fun” of Those People, i.e., the rest of us proles. They want to stomp us into the ground flatter than the finale of Attack On Titan. And there are a lot of days that I think they’re going to succeed. Biden’s doing a lot of great things, but nothing is going to stop the billionaire star chamber known as the Supreme Court without utter ruthlessness. We just don’t have it. And they have the system fully on their side, between the Senate, political cycles, and extreme overrepresentation of rural America.
The Babylon Bee is easy to make fun of. The powers that fund it are just plain dangerous. They want genocide. And that makes it no laughing matter.
Baud
@lollipopguild:
Just goes to show that money can’t buy happiness
RaflW
Jonathan Bernstein (via bsky):
This isn’t nuts if they’re clean bills – there may not be a majority right now in the House for both Ukraine and Israel aid, but there are probably separate majorities for both. He’s going to need Dems for the rule vote, I would think, even though they (I assume) oppose the 4th bill.
Josh Huder (Senior Fellow at the Government Affairs Institute): “There’s either a deal with Democrats to move these or it’s fig leaf to defense hawks.”
Scout211
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch:
Did you see her on SNL Weekend Update?
Baud
@RaflW:
Which is the 4th bill that Dems oppose?
Betty
@Baud: Or make it a loan as Trump keeps saying.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
I (seriously) expect that he and his pro-Russia(/anti-USA) accomplices are planning to attempt to arrange for the Ukraine vote to fail, or never happen.
One approach might be a clean Israel bill vote, then poison-pill amendments to the Ukraine bill, which will be smaller than asked, styled as a loan., and with amendments designed to make it fail to pass.
There are several obvious approaches that they can take to that end (not passing a Ukraine funding bill), and some less obvious tricks/approaches.
Gaming of the Senate by the House would be a bit more difficult.
lollipopguild
@Baud: I had a right wing BIL who in the early 80’s was making over $100,000.00 a year as a sales rep for a heavy equipment leasing co. After he found out that everyone else was making a lot less-$15,000.00 or $10,000.00 he explained to us that he thought that he was not making any money and that he was “poor”!
HumboldtBlue
@Jay:
Putin pays well.
Another Scott
@Baud: The Tiky-Toky ban, I think.
Cheers,
Scott.
moonbat
I saw one of those Tesla cyber trucks tooling around the park near Geno’s steaks yesterday. For those unfamiliar, Geno’s is where bigots feel comfortable getting their racism on in Philly. Didn’t see it uncontrollably accelerate though.
But here to report that it looks even stupider in person.
caringandsensitive
@Jeffro: I have a plug in hybrid. Goes 30 miles on straight EV (which is 90% of my trips) and an 11 gallon fuel tank which is good for about 600 miles in hybrid mode. All the benefits of EV with no range anxiety
SiubhanDuinne
@MagdaInBlack:
Atlanta and Spring were made for each other. It’s simply a beautiful season here, what with all the azaleas and rhodos and dogwoods and all. But we do have the gritty yellow oak pollen that gets into (and on, and under, and around) ev.ry.fuck.ing.thing, inside and out. Including, apparently, my nasal passages, throat, lungs, and eyes. My throat is scratchy, and I go on insane sneezing jags lasting 5-10 minutes. Never used to affect me, and I don’t know if the pollen’s getting worse or if I’m getting more sensitive to it as I get older.
But the flowers are right pretty.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Thanks.
HumboldtBlue
Here’s a better link, MLB
RaflW
@Baud: edit: Johnson’s Xit list four bills. The fourth is a murky “additional measures to counter our adversaries” which seems like GOP-babble for random nat-sec adjacent goodies R’s like but Dems won’t?
MagdaInBlack
@SiubhanDuinne: I work in a body shop, so I find the beauty there where I can AND! I discovered a large patch of violets all along the opposite side of our back fence. I mean, masses of violets. Purple, white, bi-color. They’re all in bloom, along with the fuchsia flowering crab. That’s my spring at the body shop story 🤗
Eta: also too, boss drove his ’72 Chevelle to work today, proof positive it’s spring.
Martin
@OzarkHillbilly: We bought a 4 year old Prius plug in. This was a few years ago, so no idea if you could still get one that cheap, but it started as a pretty inexpensive car – certainly cheaper than a Tesla.
My guess is that the value didn’t hold as well as the EVs because of the demand for EVs, and it gets about 20 miles on a charge. In the US 50% of all trips are 6 miles or less – and that’s true for us (might be less than 6 miles for us). So essentially we never buy gas unless we need to take a longer trip such as driving up to see my son. It’s 350 miles up there, so would likely require a charge stop for any other vehicle. But it still gets a solid 60MPG, so about 12 gallons round trip. We do that trip about 6x a year, and that’s our gas budget.
People that are concerned about climate change need to look at new EVs the same way animal lovers look at puppy mills. It already takes several years for environmental cross-over on a new EV over a gas car because their environmental cost of construction tends to be so high – some of that is a product of being an EV, and some of it is that pretty much all new EVs are huge, heavy, and have a lot of added stuff in them to justify their higher price – and all of that carries an environmental cost. They’re better out the tailpipe and on brakes and worse almost everywhere else – tires, most notably, which is the source of 80% of the microplastic found in the ocean.
But the used Prius has already paid that off with the first owner. Its costs are sunk. I don’t feel great about the gas usage, but it really is pretty minimal relative to a gas car, and 80%+ of our miles are done on battery, just like an EV. And it’s light – 3,000 lbs, so 3x less road/tire wear than the lightest EV. Meanwhile, we got rid of one car for my e-bike, we put up solar, we’ve switched a gas water heater for an electric one, etc. The $20K+ that we would have spent on even a used EV has paid for even more reductions in other areas.
Eventually an EV will replace it, but it might be a small import should those become available. Eventually HSR will let us skip the drive up to see the kid as well.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
@Scout211: My phone blew up. I was like why is the phone going nuts at 12:30AM and then I did a double take and yelled, “OMG!”
smith
@Another Scott: I thought that the Orange One had changed his mind about Tik-Tok after meeting with one of its major investors, who also is a megadonor to the GQP. Did he change his mind again or have his flunkies in the House just not heard about his change of heart yet?
zhena gogolia
@Jay: Sickening.
Gin & Tonic
10-ish years ago my sister’s husband, a leftish, organic, ethically-sourced college prof and self-professed techno-nerd, did the forward-looking and wicked cool thing and bought a Tesla Model S (the only vehicle they sold at the time.) I suppose he’s embarrassed now, but I’ve not taken the opportunity to rub his nose in it, as that seems like a cheap shot.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
@HumboldtBlue: Carly Simon’s full rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” is soulful and moving (link)
Martin
I have an editorial suggestion for the blog. Front pagers should refer to the NY criminal case not as ‘the Stormy Daniels case’ but as the ‘2016 stolen election case’. The case is that Trump broke the law to hide information from voters in the runup to the election. It’s an accurate description.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: HSR? To go see your grandkids’ college graduation, if you’re lucky.
Manyakitty
@Martin: I like this.
Anonymous At Work
Can I just say, that I used the Direct File by IRS, and holy crabclaws!!! Ten minutes, in and out with little hassle (aside from finding my 1099 from among the 10000000 documents my bank sends me each week). This will make a splash each year until a Republican wins the White House. Hopefully will be as settled as Obamacare before too long.
different-church-lady
Oh, gosh, they’re going to have to recall all seven Cybertrucks now.
Hamlet of Melnibone
“Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith
different-church-lady
@Martin: It’s more of an embezzlement case than anything else.
CaseyL
I saw one of those godawful Cybertrucks today! In Seattle, going north on Montlake Boulevard as I was waiting to cross the street to the train station.
It was painted black. With all apologies to the Rolling Stones, not “black as night, black as coal,” just plain old black, not quite matte but not quite glossy, either. It did, I must say, look less godawful than the standard stainless steel.
So instead of being so ugly one feels required to comment on its ugliness, it was mostly on the homely side. And the shape didn’t help; the shape, and the black, made it look like the love child of a funeral hearse and a farmer’s truck.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jay:
Fuck him so much.
frosty
@Scout211: That was great! Thanks for the link. That’s the third SNL bit I’ve watched lately and they were all funny. A nice change!
SiubhanDuinne
@MagdaInBlack:
Oh god, I love violets. They used to grow in great abundance along with masses of lily of the valley next to the house I grew up in.* Those flowers are a true sign of Spring for me I don’t think they grow down here haven’t seen them in years
*Next to the house up in which I grew, for the pedants. You know who you are.
Martin
@different-church-lady: No it’s not. Trump didn’t steal from the corporation. He had the corporation make an illegal contribution to the campaign and then hide it. He, personally, didn’t benefit. The Trump Campaign did, from the Trump Corporation.
Ultimately it’s an election interference case, no different than if Russia released propaganda to cause voters to have false information about a candidate. We’d call that election interference. Well, here, the Trump Corporation did the same thing, and then hid their efforts.
frosty
@CaseyL: Black! So it’s a Black Bumper Amish Cybertruck. Cool.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Martin: maybe this has already been addressed, but I have to ask: if he had just written the check himself, from his own funds, would it have been completely legal? Not an illegal campaign contribution, just a private transaction.
HumboldtBlue
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
That’s what Bill Clinton did with Paula Jones, wrote her a check for $800k, I believe.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I don’t care who you are, that is the funniest thing you’ll read today.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jay:
This is not just a side joke. Babylon Bee is actually central to the whole Twitter/Musk disaster.
Babylon Bee was banned from pre-Musk Twitter for transphobic ‘jokes’. You know stale conservative punching down supposedly humor.
This was a major cause for Musk. All of Musk’s talk about making Twitter safe for comedy was about that event. The first thing he did when he took control was unban Babylon Bee, and then brag that, yes, Twitter was safe for comedy again.
Musk spent $44 billion dollars to make Twitter a safe place for transphobia, and Babylon Bee was the standard he waved in that fight.
Suzanne
@hrprogressive:
SRSLY. They are very, very trash.
3Sice
Tesla needed a Soichiro Honda, and got a moron.
Gin & Tonic
@SiubhanDuinne: Who was it who came up with “Aw, Dad, what did you bring that book I don’t want to be read to out of up for?”
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
[ womp, womp ]
(via MuellerSheWrote)
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
Alison Rose been around?
citizen dave
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch: I’m a longtime Hoosier, and live Indy-adjacent. The Pacers are my #1 team (other than US Women’s Soccer national team) that I follow, although that fandom is admittedly fair weather. Have never been to a Fever game, but glad Caitlin Clark is coming to our fair city.
Main thing I wanted to say is that I’ve just realized in the last day or two that the “Fever” is kind of a stupid name for a team. (The Pacers name was chosen as an affirmation, to “pace” the league (ABA); and not after a race pace car as many think.)
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
[ womp, womp ]
(via MullerSheWrote)
Cheers,
Scott.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
@HumboldtBlue:
It was a law suit. It was dismissed, but she appealed, and instead of continuing the litigation, Bill’s insurance company settled with her because that was they cheaper option over additional years of paying appellate attorneys. He never actually paid her any money.
Keith P.
And yet all Musk has really tweeted about today is population collapse, NPR being liberal, and a little more on his Brazilian adventure. The man needs different drugs.
Martin
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Even candidates that give money to their own campaign need to report it, so if he reported the money as a contribution to his own campaign, then yes, that would have been legal as far as I understand it.
citizen dave
@Ishiyama: RE: Kids things that are now real, I often think of my childhood Hot Wheels (late 60s/early 70s) cars’ colors, and how I see them on real vehicles today. The other day I saw a metallic green something (Jeep?) that reminded me of the Hot Wheels 1968 Beatnik Bandit Spectraflame Green Original (ebay listing but link is too long) that I had. There was also a purple version of that one, I believe.
David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch
@citizen dave:
they held a watch party tonight and Indy is going nuts (clip)
sdhays
In the case of Tesla, I think they could fire a single, very expensive, extremely underperforming employee back to growth. But it might be too late for that already.
Old School
@raven:
She comments periodically on Silverman’s threads, but seems to not comment on other threads for quite a while now.
Martin
@sdhays: Fair enough. I agree that would work.
citizen dave
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch: Thanks for that! I know the Fever unexpectedly won the WNBA title a few years back–think the great Fever player Tamika Catchings was involved. She has stayed in town, and I think works for the Fever.
like a metaphor
So I spent all day Saturday at the Houston Art Car parade. It was spectacular. Like, 300 different examples of boundless beauty and unspeakable hideousness, sometimes in the same vehicle. But nothing there had prepared me for the horror I saw coming down my street this morning- a cybertruck
Somebody really needs to hurry up and knock the snit out of Trollon Musk
.
OldDave
Understood. There’s one running around South Florida with a “CyberTrump” wrap. It’s not exactly good looking.
HumboldtBlue
@citizen dave:
So is Heat.
Or Browns, for that matter.
“Hey, what’s your favorite team?”
“The Browns.”
Has all the verve and jazz of a Trump speech.
NotMax
Speaking of stock prices —
DJT all time high (March 26) $79.38
DJT close last Friday: $32.59
DJT close today: $26.61
.
like a metaphor
sorry, is it bad form to nominate your own candidate for a revolving tag ?
HumboldtBlue
@David 🏀Caitlin Clark🏀 Koch:
Point taken, the fact that it was done above board is where the magats have been losing their minds, much to my amusement.
citizen dave
@HumboldtBlue: Yes, I’m sure owner Paul Brown was an important man and all, but to go with, “I shall call this team ‘The Browns'”; along with BROWN as the color, is just…off. (speaking as someone whose high school colors were also orange and brown (the Bruins–bears can be brown). Although orange and brown aren’t that bad.
But then to go on and found the Bengals and use the wildly different color combo of orange and….black. Whatever Paul Brown.
Can you imagine Jerry Jones saying, “I’m renaming the Cowboys; they are now the “Jones..es.””
Ruckus
@hrprogressive:
Sand may be more useful……
CaseyL
One thing I don’t understand about Tesla TTS’ing the way it is: I thought they had an entire department of the company whose sole job was keeping Musk away from making actual decisions about, well, anything.
Then again, SpaceX supposedly had the same massive Musk Avoidance System in place, but it hasn’t stopped him from making that company do disastrous things, either.
Elon Musk: Everything he touches dies, too.
wjca
Nothing particularly stupid about naming a team for their (deservedly legendary) coach: Paul Brown.**
** It might help if you see the virtual apostrophe, making it a possessive.
wjca
Tonight’s baseball game features commercials for the Mustang EV. “Nothing satisfies your craving for adrenaline like a Mustang!”
EVs: no longer just a bleeding heart liberal thing, Eat your hearts out, RWNJs.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
Funeral hearses and a farm trucks are useful machines but I can’t imagine having one vehicle that is both.
Here in LA county there are quite a few Teslas and on occasion I’ve seen other electric vehicles but rather rarely. Other than the UPS truck that delivers here is electric. But regular gas is $4.50 to $5.80/gal around here.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Nailed it in one!
Quinerly
Jay…if you are around, thanks for the Pack Rat info in that now dead thread. Really love the pissing on the nests advice. Thanks!
HumboldtBlue
@citizen dave:
The man was a wizard at football, nearly created the modern game his own damn self, but he was not a man of Bill Veeck’s style and dash.
NotMax
Power went out for around two hours this afternoon. Managed to force myself into nap mode.
;)
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Penny stock, here we come!
CaseyL
@NotMax:
DJT is an influence-peddling, money-laundering operation posing as a stock offering.
The intent is completely and totally not to be an actual company, and the principals don’t give a damn if it bottoms out as long as they can skim a couple billion off before it does so.
danielx
Reuters article about Tesla issues:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/
Usual contempt of ‘visionaries’ for stuffy oldster-types like, you know, competent manufacturing engineers.
Jay
@Quinerly:
welcome. Packrat’s mark and glue their nests together with their own dried urine. They also collect and store shiny stuff* in their nests. Pissing on the nest let’s them know that a predator was there. Tearing it apart scatters the debris around, let’s you retrieve the shiny stuff and as packrat’s will reuse their nests or abandoned nests, prevents reoccupation.
*there was a famous case in Arizona, where a guy checking out an abandoned mine site found an ancient packrat nest with $50K of gold, the packrat had “borrowed” from the mine.
NotMax
@
Scamming the willfully blind (WaPo link).
Quinerly
@NotMax:
Hope he loses everything. Including house, family, job. Gets what he deserves.
NotMax
Oopsie.. #131 supposed to be @CaseyL.
MisterForkbeard
@NotMax: After hours trading has it down another 0.70 or so, too.
Jackie
Only a short time left for TIFG to make good on his $125M bond before AG James can evict him from Trump Tower, where he intends to stay while forced to attend trial for election interference.
Quinerly
@Jay:
I’m chuckling….my yard guy right now is a cool artist/musician…and friend who has moved to the area from CA. His father was a Little Feat fan and named him Bogart. He’s going thru some transitions on the job front. We are hoping he gets this “Bud Tender” job he has applied for as his regular job. Fingers crossed.
Bogart is a hard worker and has been trimming dead limbs/clearing tumbleweeds, etc. for me. Digging holes for me for my roses. Clearly, I will be plying him with more water and a few PBRs thru out the day. I’m putting him in charge of peeing on the packrat nests.
NotMax
@<Quinerly
“Do Biogart this joint, my friend.”
;)
Quinerly
@NotMax:
😈
Mr. Bemused Senior
@NotMax:
“If you want to know what God thinks of money just look at the people He gives it to.”
Feathers
@danielx: US business schools being completely contemptuous of manufacturing has had a cost.
Jay
@Quinerly:
Don’t forget to toss in a couple Gatorade.
Quinerly
@Jay:
And Emergen-C.
I look after my crew.
wjca
Is it really fair to assume that “who He gives it to” is the same as “who ends up with it”?
wjca
Say rather that US business schools being completely contemptuous of anything except finance has had a cost. Since, after all, they have shown no particular esteem for service industries either. Or things like agriculture, for that matter.
Princess
@Martin: I’ll say in here that I don’t get the case against Trump at all. Without the second crime, the first crime would be a misdemeanor. I don’t understand why the second crime is a crime at all. Candidates don’t have a legal obligation to release info about themselves. I do not understand why this is election interference in a criminal sense. Not sure the jury will either.
wjca
Laws on election finance require candidates to disclose the source of campaign funds above a certain amount. If the money paid was in aid of the election campaign (it was), and it was above the reporting threshold (it was), and it was not disclosed as required by law (it was not), that is a crime. In this case, both a Federal crime and a state crime as well. Also, there is a limit on the amount that can be donated by any one individual or organization to a campaign.** And the amount here exceeded that limit which is also a crime.
If the Trump campaign had disclosed a donation (from the Trump Organization), that would have avoided the lack of disclosure crime. Or, if Trump had paid the hush money from his personal funds (he didn’t), that would have avoided the donation limit crime.
** Donations to a political action committee (PAC) are a different deal. But in this case, a PAC was not involved.
Princess
@wjca: Yes, all that is true, but that crime is a misdemeanor unless it is done in furtherance of another crime. It is clear he committed a misdemeanor but what I don’t see, yet, is how trying to conceal information about yourself amounts to election fraud/interference. And without that, the other crime is not a felony. IANAL etc etc.
Martin
@Princess: I agree that there’s a concern people won’t understand it.
One of the threats that Trump presents is his inability/unwillingness to respect separation of legal status. He doesn’t see a difference between him and the office he holds (hence the classified documents case), him and the Trump Corporation (where he is an executive and responsible to the board), him and the campaign.
You said “Candidates don’t have a legal obligation to release info about themselves.” You are correct. That’s not the issue here. There are two issues here:
So when Donald J. Trump, officer of the Trump Corporation directed the Trump Corporation to pay Michael Cohen and others to bury a story that was unfavorable to Donald J. Trump the presidential candidate, that constituted a thing of value for the campaign, and therefore an in-kind campaign contribution (you can’t skirt campaign finance law by, say, doing free printing of mailers and avoiding an exchange of cash, the value of the mailers still needs to be documented as a campaign contribution).
So the latter part of the case is that the campaign never documented that in-kind contribution because that would have revealed the deception that the payments were designed to hide. And because they couldn’t document the contribution on the campaign side, they couldn’t document it accurately on the corporation side, so they lied to the IRS and the state of New York on the nature of the payments as something tax deductible. That’s the misdemeanor that gets elevated to a felony when it’s in the furtherance of another crime (that’s not an uncommon thing, by the way, so no reason to think juries will have trouble with that – they routinely don’t).
It is true that this case probably wouldn’t exist if Trump had just paid from his funds. It’d still be a campaign finance violation but those are very unevenly prosecuted. But because he, as officer of the Trump Corporation directed this independent legal entity to do that, and in the process defraud the taxpayer, that’s what makes the case exist. We’re laying in out in a few seconds of comments, but the DA will walk the jury through this over the course of hours with various experts and witnesses. The jury should get it just fine in the end.
Trump has gotten in this kind of trouble before treating the corporation as his own piggy bank. The whole point of the government allowing corporations and giving them specific legal protections and responsibilities is to protect investors and other parties. Trumps repeated abuse of this part of the law will likely also be called out during the trial. It’s not at all new. It’s also why his charity got shut down by NY State – he was doing the same thing there. This is a recurring pattern, and it’s not improper for prosecutors to get increasingly persistent with repeat offenders.
Martin
@Princess: To append to my prior comment – the prosecution doesn’t need to prove the crime you don’t yet see as a crime as it’s already been proven. The crime is what Michael Cohen went to prison for, and where Trump was named as ‘Individual 1’, an unindicted co-conspirator. Cohen’s charges were:
5 counts of tax evasion
1 count of making false statements to a financial institution
1 count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution
1 count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate or campaign
1 count of making false statements to a congressional committee
The relevant charges are the felony campaign contribution and the unlawful corporate contribution. This is that case finally catching up to the co-conspirator (Trump) after 6 years.
So the thing that elevates it to a felony has already been established.
Princess
@Martin: okay, thanks. This is helpful.
Chris T.
@SiubhanDuinne:
My theory is that global heating is making the plants angry at us, so the pollen grains are sharper now.
(as usual, add the question “do I need a /s?”)
fancycwabs
One thing about Elon Musk’s Garbage Cars that people don’t talk enough about: Because of how they’re built (a process called “gigacasting” where a lot of the basic structure of the car is formed from a single piece of aluminum) they’re largely unrepairable after getting into what would previously be minor accidents, and have to be totalled. It effectively makes those cars “disposable.”
This means that insurance rates for Teslas are significantly higher, but it also means that insurance rates for, say, a Honda Civic are also higher, because what if you hit a Tesla? Elon out here ruining shit for everyone.