Monday, April 22, 2024
Everyone Is Either Churchill or Chamberlain
You don't have to think much of Churchill (you probably shouldn't) to get that agreeing to put a budget up to vote does not merit any comparison with being the WWII wartime PM of the UK.
Shunning
It is Good, Akshually to shun people who are bigots, who believe in a hierarchy of people that rejects the humanity of most people. And good to shun those who don't see the need for this.
Yes you probably have to be civil to your asshole brother-in-law. That isn't what I'm talking about.
Covers a lot of our prominent journalists and Thinkfluencers, who are bigots themselves or find no problem tolerating it (in fact, consider the intolerance of bigots more troubling than the bigots).
Oh No Elmo
He's desperately trying to loot Tesla before it implodes, and it's pretty likely he'll succeed.
Also, this is genius business brain.
But even by Tesla standards, this year has been unruly. Its stock has slid more than 40% amid slumping sales, confusing product decisions and more price cuts. Its once-dominant position in China’s EV market is under assault. A visit with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an anticipated investment announcement was called off at the last minute. All the while, the board has tried to revive a $56 billion payout to Musk that a judge voided in January, on the grounds that directors had acted as “supine servants” to the CEO.Even a pretty negative article about Tesla has this:
On Tuesday, Tesla is expected to report a 40% plunge in operating profit and its first revenue decline in four years. Musk has ordered up the company’s biggest layoffs ever and staked its future on a next-generation, self-driving vehicle concept called the robotaxi. People familiar with his directives, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations, are unsettled by the changes the CEO wants to push through.
The idea of creating an autonomous taxi service has been kicking around Tesla for at least eight years, but the company has yet to stand up much of the infrastructure it would need, nor has it secured regulatory approval to test such cars on public roads. For the moment, Musk has put off plans for a $25,000, mass-market vehicle that many Tesla investors — and some insiders — are pushing for and believe is crucial to the carmaker’s future.Ah, yes, that idea has just been "kicking around."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the company should have robotaxis on the roads in 2020.And (2019):
Elon Musk has made quite an important claim about Tesla vehicles today; the CEO said that Tesla’s vehicles are now ‘appreciating assets’ due to their self-driving capability.One more grand stock pump before it falls apart, though I've thought that before!
Also, this is genius business brain.
The actual number of people ushered out may exceed 20,000, according to people familiar with the company’s planning. Musk’s reasoning, according to one person with direct knowledge of his edicts, was that Tesla should reduce headcount by 20% because its vehicle deliveries dropped by that amount from the fourth quarter to the first quarter.I think this is claiming it's "learning" now instead of just reacting, which is what Tesla fanboys believed for years.
Cameras placed around the company’s cars are taking in video and using this footage to dictate how the vehicle drives, instead of relying on software code. Ashok Elluswamy, a director of Tesla’s Autopilot program, wrote on X last month that this should lead to “unprecedented progress.”
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Amazing Stuff
Probably everyone will forget about it tomorrow.
BASH: So you voted yes on the foreign aid package. Do you have confidence that, at this point, given that it is still possible that Marjorie Taylor Greene will push to vacate, to kick him out of the speaker's chair, that he can survive?
REP. TONY GONZALES (R-TX): He will survive.
Look, the House is a rough and rowdy place, but Mike Johnson is going to be just fine. I served 20 years in the military. It's my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags.
Look, Matt Gaetz, he paid minors to have sex with them at drug parties. Bob Good endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they're walking around with white hoods in the daytime.
Incompetent
Being academia-adjacent, I'm often struck by how incompetent administrators can be (#notalladministrators). Sometimes what seems like incompetence is just them doing their actual job, but that job isn't what you think it is, should be, or what they claim it is (implicitly or explicitly). However, often they're incompetent at carrying out their actual mission!
Whatever "problem" the Columbia president thinks she is trying to solve, she isn't solving it!
Whatever "problem" the Columbia president thinks she is trying to solve, she isn't solving it!
The Future Of The Democratic Party
An African-American cop who pretended to be a "police reformer" but obviously wasn't was the perfect guy to "stick it to the lefties." Suddenly the winner of a 5-away primary (!) in New York City (!!) was obviously what Middle America (centrist dipshit pundit bros) desperately wanted.
NYC - Mayoral Vote:
— Polling USA (@USA_Polling) April 21, 2024
Someone Else: 65%
Adams: 16%
Unsure: 19%
Manhattan Institute / April 11, 2024 / n=700 pic.twitter.com/gIwh6g5PBM
I actually don't think the political appeal of "centrism," as defined by DC political journalists, is always incorrect, but trying to make Adams the standard-bearer of that was hilarious.It's probably foolish to think a NYC mayor will successfully translate into being a national political figure, but I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for "who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden?".
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 3, 2022
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Racist Grifters Down
It isn't understood widely enough that when some rich asshole gives an important university some money they'll probably take it. It's basically renting the brand.
Oxford University this week shut down an academic institute run by one of Elon Musk’s favorite philosophers. The Future of Humanity Institute, dedicated to the long-termism movement and other Silicon Valley-endorsed ideas such as effective altruism, closed this week after 19 years of operation. Musk had donated £1m to the FIH in 2015 through a sister organization to research the threat of artificial intelligence. He had also boosted the ideas of its leader for nearly a decade on X, formerly Twitter.This is all just code for "the money ran out and the university might have let us stay if any of us could do any real work."
The closure of Bostrom’s center is a further blow to the effective altruism and longtermism movements that the philosopher has spent decades championing, which in recent years have become mired in scandals related to racism, sexual harassment and financial fraud. Bostrom himself issued an apology last year after a decades-old email surfaced in which he claimed “Blacks are more stupid than whites” and used the N-word.
“Eventually a pressure to conform began bearing down (we were administratively housed within the faculty of philosophy, even though the majority of our research team by this time were non-philosophers), and there was a death by bureaucracy.”
But They Were Such Good Friends
Oh well.
The observation immediately went viral, provoking an irate denial from Trump’s campaign and reigniting the former president’s antipathy towards Haberman, who has been reporting on him for years. The resentment lasted the entire week, the sources add. It did not help Trump’s denial that he continued to doze off while seated in the Manhattan courtroom throughout the rest of the week. “Trump appears to have fallen asleep in court again,” Haberman wrote on Friday. “His eyes were closed for extended periods and his head dropped down twice.”Guess she'll be in the camps with the rest of us.
In recent conversations with Republican associates, Trump has repeatedly torn into Haberman and her CNN appearances, attacked her journalistic credentials, and bizarrely insisted that she was wrong about him falling asleep. Despite his dozing being widely reported, the former president has laid much of the blame for the detail going viral at Haberman’s feet. He was even observed glaring at her on Monday as he exited the courtroom following her CNN appearance.
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