Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[viper37]

Eventually, Trump will tire of Musk and no longer see abuse in him. Their fallout will be spectacular.

Musk will not be so easily dislodged.

Why do you say that?

He put him where he is, and he has all the contacts with the business world.

Having him declared "mentally unfit to govern" by his Whitehouse doctor and getting him replaced by Vance would be easy enough.

Or you know, if push comes to shoves, there were already 2 assassination attemps.  So many guns in the US, so many gun nuts.  Inspire the right propaganda in the right people wouldn't be too hard with X' algorythm data.

Trump is President, and Musk is not though.

Trump has the secret service protecting him.  Musk heavily relies on government contracts.  The 25th amendment doesn't work that way.

Vance was not really picked by Trump.  He is there for a reason.

Yes, the Secret Service is there to protect him against any conspiracy.

But Trump will soon realize he controls less than he thinks.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Eventually, Trump will tire of Musk and no longer see abuse in him. Their fallout will be spectacular.

Musk will not be so easily dislodged.

Why do you say that?

He put him where he is, and he has all the contacts with the business world.

Having him declared "mentally unfit to govern" by his Whitehouse doctor and getting him replaced by Vance would be easy enough.

Or you know, if push comes to shoves, there were already 2 assassination attemps.  So many guns in the US, so many gun nuts.  Inspire the right propaganda in the right people wouldn't be too hard with X' algorythm data.

Trump is President, and Musk is not though.

Trump has the secret service protecting him.  Musk heavily relies on government contracts.  The 25th amendment doesn't work that way.

Vance was not really picked by Trump.  He is there for a reason.

Yes, the Secret Service is there to protect him against any conspiracy.

But Trump will soon realize he controls less than he thinks.

 

Though that's also assuming Trump is even mentally capable of making his own decisions at this point.

[Sheilbh]

Trump is extremely disloyal and easy to annoy. Musk is extremely annoying. It is inevitable.

Agree - also I think basically Trump will not like someone on his team seeking and getting more attention than him with a fanbase giving him credit.

As if on cue, I saw today that Trump is apparently telling friends that he finds Musk "clingy" - which sounds like something he'd phone into Page Six pretending to be John Baron to report about a soon to be ex-wife.

Vance was not really picked by Trump.  He is there for a reason.

Worth noting Vance is very, very close to Trump Jr. I think that does mean he has a degree of protection from within the family.

I don't know that Musk is tight to anyone in the Trump family. He's a bit of a hanger-on which I think can be a dangerous position.

[crazy canuck]

Eventually, Trump will tire of Musk and no longer see abuse in him. Their fallout will be spectacular.

Musk will not be so easily dislodged.

Why do you say that?

Musk controls his own Social Media network and has a whole collection of followers of his own.

But this is Trump's last term so why would he care? His plan is to burn it all down before the midterms.

And if things work out the way Trump plans, or rather the way the 2025 game plan is laid out, whatever people say on social media, or the real media if it continues to exist, won't matter.

In other words, Elon only matters if political norms are observed, and Trump gives no indication those norms bother him in the least.

[Syt]

On whether or not Musk is going insane - if he is on the Autism Disorder spectrum as people have surmised (and which is hard to remote-diagnose), then it could be that he's just unmasking in public more and more (i.e. not suppressing his "natural" self and impulses).

[Syt]

Also, does this count as threat of violence?

[Legbiter]

Especially because I think the lessons for the police, in particular, boil down to doing their jobs and investigating reports of crimes and not treating victims as people and not with misogynist, racist and classist contempt.

Yeah, I am stunned by just how grim, miserable and thirdie low state capacity modern Britain displays.

[Legbiter]

Zuckerberg announcing big changes at Facebook. 

[Grey Fox]

Does it matter anymore? Meta properties are increasingly AIs talking to AIs.

[Sheilbh]

I regularly think about this piece:
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Edit: What a massive waste of time, energy, money and brainpower (that could have been going into politics and organising) for 8 years

[Syt]

Yes, if you flood the room with enough b/s so that your opponents spend their time and resources on debunking all the nonsense while you've already moved on to the next b/s - great way to shift focus and attention away in a giant sleight of hand.

[Sheilbh]

Although also worth asking why there was space in the room to begin with which is that these platforms destroyed the economic model of open news publishers. The only business model that seems sustainable is a paywall. The NYT is the most successful and actually makes money - but it employs 10% of America's journalists and even then its paying subscriber base (which won't all be American) is about 10 million. I think CNN is planning to go behind a paywall too.

I think the whole focus on disinformation (which is fantastic for the big tech companies/social media platforms) is misguided and the article is worth a read. But to the extent it's a thing I think the fact that we've made good, well-reported, legaled, editied information a luxury good is a vastly bigger problem - and, relatedly, comment is cheaper.

In a perverse way I think AI might offer some hope here. The companies building AI models like news content because it's legaled, edited etc. If we push to protect their copyright rights and require Google to pay for a license to build its LLMs that would be good.

[Tamas]

Yes, if you flood the room with enough b/s so that your opponents spend their time and resources on debunking all the nonsense while you've already moved on to the next b/s - great way to shift focus and attention away in a giant sleight of hand.

Yes, if you flood the room with enough b/s so that your opponents spend their time and resources on debunking all the nonsense while you've already moved on to the next b/s - great way to shift focus and attention away in a giant sleight of hand.

And we are still doing it. How can anyone sunk so low as to dignify Trump's Panama and Greenland BS by asking him about it and writing about it? Trump, his fans and the media be it "mainstream" or online/social are in practice all in on having turned politics into a reality show style entertainment industry. Once it goes bad enough the pendulum will eventually swing back towards more serious people succeeding in politics but it may take decades and a world war or two.

[garbon]

Yes, if you flood the room with enough b/s so that your opponents spend their time and resources on debunking all the nonsense while you've already moved on to the next b/s - great way to shift focus and attention away in a giant sleight of hand.

Yes, if you flood the room with enough b/s so that your opponents spend their time and resources on debunking all the nonsense while you've already moved on to the next b/s - great way to shift focus and attention away in a giant sleight of hand.

And we are still doing it. How can anyone sunk so low as to dignify Trump's Panama and Greenland BS by asking him about it and writing about it? Trump, his fans and the media be it "mainstream" or online/social are in practice all in on having turned politics into a reality show style entertainment industry. Once it goes bad enough the pendulum will eventually swing back towards more serious people succeeding in politics but it may take decades and a world war or two.

Yeah I'm not sure it is worthy to be discussed bar say huh, look how he is trying to distract from issues actually facing Americans. I don't need breathless articles on every development 'Trump son travels to Greenland!!!1'

[garbon]

Although also worth asking why there was space in the room to begin with which is that these platforms destroyed the economic model of open news publishers. The only business model that seems sustainable is a paywall. The NYT is the most successful and actually makes money - but it employs 10% of America's journalists and even then its paying subscriber base (which won't all be American) is about 10 million. I think CNN is planning to go behind a paywall too.

I think the whole focus on disinformation (which is fantastic for the big tech companies/social media platforms) is misguided and the article is worth a read. But to the extent it's a thing I think the fact that we've made good, well-reported, legaled, editied information a luxury good is a vastly bigger problem - and, relatedly, comment is cheaper.

In a perverse way I think AI might offer some hope here. The companies building AI models like news content because it's legaled, edited etc. If we push to protect their copyright rights and require Google to pay for a license to build its LLMs that would be good.

I can't imagine reading let alone paying for the drivel served up my the NYT.