Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[grumbler]

Dieppe came after several US Pacific amphibious operations.  The US learned lessons from them and honed techniques to improve the odds.  Casualties could be estimated.  There was a basis of reference.

Dieppe came 12 days after the unopposed US landing on Guadalcanal and Tulagi and a slightly opposed on on Florida Is. Those landings couldn't have influenced Dieppe in that short a time period, and were completely different to boot.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think he meant to say there were landings between Dieppe and D-Day that gave additional data points.

[viper37]

There were such things happening during the Republic era, it was only a continuation of the practice.

But you do recognize that government social spending can be a necessity to reduce social unrest?

173 BC was the Republic era.

Nobody has provided data on the cost efficiency of social spending to reduce social unrest.

What would have been the cost of providing a little bit of bread and some grain vs the cost of raising an army to quell a rebellion for the Senate.  Or later, for the Emperor to face an usurper while he has the support of the army and the public vs nothing.

Everything is a question of compromise, and sometimes, the models are theoritical or done in another country, in another economic situation and can hardly be translated directly.  So you have to try and make adjustement.

Universal healthcare is one thing.

It is a sensible measure to have wide coverage of healthcare services, as has been demonstrated elsewhere.  Who provides the services and how is another matter.  Sweden has one model.  Germany has another.  Norway has yet another.  The UK has one.  Canada as one. Each one has ups and downs.  Each one works better and worst than the current US one in some regards.  Each one of these is "socialized" medicine, i.e., communism as per the GOP.

Education is another topic.  How do you provide the services, who has access to it.  Again, various countries have different approach.  I generally find that going 100% one way or another does not work.  Dogma has rarely done anything good.

But you want hard data in a social science field before acting, the kind of hard data NASA would want before acting.  That's impossible.  The best you can do is have data that indicates the best course of action and then take corrective measures as you go.

If you are searching for 100% validation of the effect if a specific program, you will never get it and therfore will never act.  You don't even get that with police work, yet no one would seriously propose to dismantle police corps.

[Admiral Yi]

I think he meant to say there were landings between Dieppe and D-Day that gave additional data points.

No, I was misinformed.

[Sheilbh]

It costs 100 gold to move the slider towards social harmony.

I can't understand what you are asking. What's the standard measure of social unrest? What would « data » look like? When?

Revolutions are amongst the hardest elements of human history to analyze, to say nothing of the difficulty of comparing the Roman Republic to Bolshevik Russia.

Still, in all unequal polities, the core issue of governing has always been to make the greater number obey the smaller number. Elites, at least, worried quite a bit about that simple data point.

Yes - and I think that has been the frame of welfare in its very long history. There are other points around social conservatism and maintaining a specific social order hierarchy, buttressed by ideology. But fundamentally I think a concern with unrest has been a major motivating factor.

The exception, arguably, is briefly in the West in the short post-war era when I think there was a more expansive vision.

To tie it back to that nexus of what the state asks of individuals (conscription, jury duty, taxes etc) and what individuals can, in turn, ask of the state (a right to have a say in its government, welfare in all its forms etc). It is something that I find a little worrying about the direction of travel at the moment.

I've said before but I do think we need to try and get politics back into life that the state and public life is for something and that collective endeavour is capable of achieving things. Not least, because as this thread shows, our vaulting tech supermen are limited.

I agree that all Marxist inspired rebellions have been based to some extent on we're not all doing well.  But what fraction of total rebellions is that? 

Didn't say anything about Marxist inspired rebellions. I said I'm very Marxist in viewing rebellions as primarily products of their material conditions.

[Admiral Yi]

Didn't say anything about Marxist inspired rebellions. I said I'm very Marxist in viewing rebellions as primarily products of their material conditions.

You said basically almost all rebellions were about material conditions.  I partially agreed.

[OttoVonBismarck]

This may be one of the biggest, and dumbest, thread off-topic derailments in the history of this message board.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally on Twitter really striking that Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner who's wrote all those open letters (posted on Twitter) to Musk about the need to comply with EU law particularly the new DSA, has announced his resignation from the Commission. He did it by posting a letter on Twitter.

As I say with Labour's agonising - that's the issue. As long as Twitter is the social media for politics (government, parties and journalists) it will have a purpose and user base. 

(Breton's resignation was actually highly critical of VDL and interesting in its own way - but for another thread.)

[Razgovory]

Honestly, I get the impression that most rebellions are about local elites and the top tier elites squabbling over privileges. 

[Tonitrus]

Not manly.

https://www.businessinsider.com/chechen-warlord-says-elon-musk-disabled-his-cybertruck-2024-9

[crazy canuck]

Dieppe came after several US Pacific amphibious operations.  The US learned lessons from them and honed techniques to improve the odds.  Casualties could be estimated.  There was a basis of reference.

Dieppe came 12 days after the unopposed US landing on Guadalcanal and Tulagi and a slightly opposed on on Florida Is. Those landings couldn't have influenced Dieppe in that short a time period, and were completely different to boot.

Not to mention that the Dieppe landing was planned by the British and mainly involved Canadian troops.  While it is true that Churchill claimed that many lessons were learned by the disaster which helped informed D-Day, it is probably closer to the truth that it was just an ill conceived use of lives and material. 

In any event there is nothing which indicates the Dieppe plans were in any way informed by any American experience with other landings.

[Josquius]

Dieppe came after several US Pacific amphibious operations.  The US learned lessons from them and honed techniques to improve the odds.  Casualties could be estimated.  There was a basis of reference.

Dieppe came 12 days after the unopposed US landing on Guadalcanal and Tulagi and a slightly opposed on on Florida Is. Those landings couldn't have influenced Dieppe in that short a time period, and were completely different to boot.

Not to mention that the Dieppe landing was planned by the British and mainly involved Canadian troops.  While it is true that Churchill claimed that many lessons were learned by the disaster which helped informed D-Day, it is probably closer to the truth that it was just an ill conceived use of lives and material. 

In any event there is nothing which indicates the Dieppe plans were in any way informed by any American experience with other landings.

The main things feeding into it were earlier raids like St Nazaire. Which involved a totally different and much lighter troop makeup. And also was technically a success but involved huge casualties.
The idea of a full-scale invasion and seizure of a town followed by a withdrawal was quite out of nowhere.

[Syt]

LOL

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/world/americas/elon-musk-x-brazil.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Elon Musk's X Backs Down in Brazil
In an abrupt reversal, the social network's lawyers said it was complying with court orders that it had previously defied. Brazil's Supreme Court could allow the site to return next week.

By Jack Nicas and Ana Ionova
Reporting from Rio de Janeiro

Sept. 21, 2024
Leer en español

Elon Musk suddenly appears to be giving up.

After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk's social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company's lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil's Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.

The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.

Now, X's lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil's democracy. X also complied with the justice's other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.

Brazil's Supreme Court confirmed X's moves in a filing on Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.

The abrupt about-face from Mr. Musk in Brazil appeared to be a defeat for the outspoken businessman and his self-designed image as a warrior for free speech. Mr. Musk and his company had loudly and harshly criticized Brazil's Supreme Court for months, even publicly releasing some of its sealed orders, but neither had publicly mentioned their reversal by Saturday morning.

The moment showed how, in the yearslong power struggle between tech giants and nation-states, governments have been able to keep the upper hand.

Mr. Musk has had to come to terms with that reality in other countries, including India and Turkey, where his social network complied with orders to censor certain posts. But in Brazil and Australia, he complained about government orders he disagreed with and accused local officials of censorship. His company's responses to governments have often been in line with his personal politics.

Brazil is one of X's most important international markets, with analysts estimating that it had more than 20 million users there. Since X has been blocked, Brazilians have flocked to the social network's rivals: Bluesky and Threads, which is owned by Meta.

The longer X remain blocked, the more Mr. Musk risked losing market share and revenue — problematic for a company that has alienated many American advertisers by allowing users to say just about anything on the site.

Another Musk-controlled company, the satellite-internet service Starlink, was also caught in the crossfire. Brazil's Supreme Court took $2 million from Starlink in Brazil to cover fines it had issued against X.

Many of the accounts X had been ordered to take down in Brazil belonged to prominent right-wing Brazilian commentators who had once intensely praised Mr. Musk for resisting the court's orders. Some were now conflicted about his backpedaling.

Mr. Musk "has bowed down," Paulo Figueiredo, a right-wing pundit who had his X account blocked in Brazil, wrote in a post on Thursday, when X first hired new lawyers in Brazil, signaling a shift in stance. "It's a very sad day for freedom of expression."

A day later, Mr. Figueiredo said he understood Mr. Musk's stance "and appreciates his efforts."

The turn of events was a major victory for Brazil's Supreme Court and the powerful justice who has led the push to regulate online speech, Alexandre de Moraes.

Justice Moraes has become one of Brazil's most polarizing figures since the nation's Supreme Court granted him broad authority to order tech companies to take down content that he deems a threat to Brazil's institutions.

Since 2019, he has ordered social networks to take down at least 300 accounts, according to a New York Times analysis of a portion of his court orders, which had been leaked or released publicly. For more than half of those accounts, Justice Moraes did not provide details in the orders for why they should be taken down. He has generally issued such orders under seal, but The Times analyzed orders published by X and U.S. congressional Republicans. There are likely many more orders that remain secret.

Justice Moraes has said that he takes down accounts that attack Brazil's democratic institutions. When ordering X to be blocked last month, he said it was because Mr. Musk intended to "allow the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law."

Mr. Musk had made confronting Justice Moraes one of his pet issues this year, at times posting repeatedly about the judge, insulting him, calling for his jailing and vowing to defy his orders. The issue came to a head when X stopped complying with the judge's orders and then closed the company's offices in Brazil to avoid consequences.

The first signs of the reversal came on Thursday, when Justice Moraes said in a court filing that X had hired new lawyers in Brazil.

One of those lawyers, Sérgio Rosenthal, said in a text message on Thursday that X planned to comply with all of the judge's orders to take down accounts. "The goal is to regularize the company's situation in Brazil," he said.

On Saturday morning, a different lawyer, André Zonaro Giacchetta, said the conditions to return to Brazil "have already been met, but it depends on the assessment of" Brazil's Supreme Court.

As recently as Wednesday, X seemed to still be defying the court. The company appeared to use a technical maneuver to evade efforts by internet providers to block its site in Brazil, allowing it to go live for many users in the country.

The company said in a statement that its return in Brazil on Wednesday was "inadvertent." Mr. Musk himself seemed to suggest that the return of his network was a supernatural phenomenon rather than an intentional move to sidestep the authorities.

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology," he posted on X.

But Brazil's telecommunications regulator, Anatel, said in a statement that it believed the change was "a deliberate intention to disregard the Federal Supreme Court's order."

��Justice Moraes seemed to agree, issuing a fine of $1 million per day and blocking the social network again. X remained inaccessible across Brazil on Saturday.

[crazy canuck]

Musk complies with basic legal norms and the right wing despairs.

[Valmy]

Musk complies with basic legal norms and the right wing despairs.

I mean he did the same in India and Turkey.