I Didn't Do It

You cannot post a big whiny tweetstorm about how you acted ethically and are the victim and then immediately fall apart the second you are asked one of maybe four extremely obvious questions

— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) January 15, 2023

This is indeed true, the FDIC had to tell Brett to stop making ridiculous false claims. This isn't a kind of "oopsy." The FDIC doesn't insure anything like this, even without crypto shitcoins.

Consider how many influential people - many clearly on the take! - supported this fraud, and how they're all just "tweeting through it" hoping you won't remember.

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Night

Rock on.

Saturday Happy Hour

Get happy.

Oh, Elmo

No secret which side I'm rooting for this week!

The trial centers on Musk’s tweets in 2018 about taking Tesla private. His lawyers argued much of the bias he faces in San Francisco concerns his use of the social media platform, and his honesty on it, and they emphasized that his reputation in the city has been damaged by negative reporting about his make-over of Twitter Inc., which he bought in October for $44 billion.

"Rich guys get away with everything" is not new, but I think they're increasingly aware of it. Or, perhaps, while the legal amnesty is nothing new, any social pressure to do the right thing has evaporated as well.

But How Will We Pay For That

Such things are above my pay grade, but it wasn't that long ago that supposedly more sensible people were assuring "us" (ha ha) that the F-35 was really surely really going to work now.

"We"

I'm not sure if I'm just noticing it more, or if it's something editors used to put the big red pen through and now they don't, but the increasing use of "we" in opinion pieces is my new pet peeve. Like, "we just don't care about Prince Harry anymore." Or, "we love our gas stoves." That kind of thing.

Tends to be in a lot of headlines/titles, if not always the pieces themselves, but make it stop!!!*

(I know I use it too, at times, but I try to put scare quotes around it, to highlight that it's a bit absurd and that "we" certainly does not mean "all of us" but instead some more defined subset, as in, "We, the readers of this very fine blog.")

Morning

Slacker Saturday.

Happy Hour

Friday edition.

Afternoon Distraction

This is why I stopped ordering pizza delivery - "good" pizza doesn't survive it. I actually like some "bad" pizza (embarrassed to say which companies), but I can pass on that, too.  

A pizza box has one job—keeping a pie warm and crispy during its trip from the shop to your house—and it can’t really do it. The fancier the pizza, the worse the results: A slab of overbaked Domino’s will probably be at least semi-close to whatever its version of perfect is by the time it reaches your door, but a pizza with fresh mozzarella cooked at upwards of 900 degrees? Forget it. Sliding a $40 pie into a pizza box is the packaging equivalent of parking a Lamborghini in a wooden shed before a hurricane.

Steps

 Only one steep needed.

U.S. will hit its debt limit Thursday, start taking steps to avoid default, Yellen warns Congress

(source)

Oh No Elmo

His argument was - and I am not making this up - that people in SF hated his fucking guts too much.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s request to get his upcoming securities fraud trial moved out of San Francisco was rejected by the judge handling the case https://t.co/PTC8aV32P9

— Bloomberg (@business) January 13, 2023

Lunch Thread

Fish Friday.

What's Even Happening

What the hell happened here.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — Administrators at the Virginia school where a first-grader shot his teacher last week learned the child may have had a weapon in his possession before the shooting but did not seize the 9mm handgun he brought to his classroom, the school system’s superintendent said.

Why Can't They Stop Doing This

It's been a long time since Ross Perot, aided by the media, convinced everybody that the biggest threat to mankind was Teh Deficit. Nobody under 45 gives a shit.

Our Administration has worked hard to lower the deficit by $1.7 trillion.

The first bill House Republicans brought to the floor would help wealthy people and corporations cheat on their taxes – increasing the deficit.

Their very first bill.

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 13, 2023

Our Special Little Boy

It has been quite stunning, though it's not just class affinity. SBF spread a lot of money around to media outlets and personalities, directly and indirectly. I suspect quite a lot more than we know!

It’s all got this little lost boy tone!

— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) January 12, 2023

Morning

Friday edition.

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

 Get happy

Pretend and Extend

The costs and benefits of any particular covid-related policy might be unknowable - and maybe we've done it all just correctly - but of course there are ongoing costs.

Some 1.5 million people missed work because of an illness last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The month before that, it was 1.6 million. In October, 1.3 million and in September 1.2 million. In fact, the last time there were fewer than a million Americans missing work because of an illness was November 2019.

That year, in fact, there were nine months with fewer than a million people missing work because of an illness. In 2018, there were another nine such months. In 2017, there were seven months under a million, but every single month that year saw fewer people missing work because of an illness than the month with the lowest level of missed work in 2022.

Of people I know (including myself), getting knocked out of commission for 5 days was pretty typical when testing positive for covid (recently, post-vaccines). Some industries can tolerate those kinds of absences in various ways, but some can't function very well with them. Planes can't fly if enough flight crew fail to show up, and there often aren't that many extra available local flight crew on standby, for example.

Ongoing disruptions are inevitable!