Elon Musk needs his own thread because he's in every damn thing/positive Elon Musk

Seriously. Or at least TikTok.

 

But will there be food on the table?

 

The time has come. A fact’s a fact.

 

Elon Musk disagrees.

 

If you look hard enough...it's Jaap Stam.

 

I always knew he was a wrong'un from that time he laughed at Didier Drogba getting fouled by Johnny Evans

 

I remember laughing at that too but that was long ago when Chelski was a winner.

 

The company takes what the company wants.

 

The Secret Service is looking into Elon Musk’s post on X that suggested it was strange no one attempted to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, Bloomberg reports.

 

DEEP STATE! OPPRESSION!!!!!! WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST AMMENDMENT! LIBERAL INTOLERANCE!!{!!

 

That's it that is tweet

Kadyrov says Musk deactivated his Cybertruck.

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) September 19, 2024

 

Yeah!

I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: "I have a dream, where the political party of the candidate we are thinking about assassinating is of no more significance than a man's right to make such threats as long as he can get away with it by telling the Secret Service that he didn't really mean it."

Or something like that.

 

I was expecting more insight, but it is a good read on the rise of Apartheid politics in the GQP:

A must read from @KuperSimon: "Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid South Africa" https://t.co/4uzQziW98E via @ft

— Saad Mohseni (@saadmohseni) September 19, 2024

 

Direct link to the article: https://www.ft.com/content/cfbfa1e8-d8f8-42b9-b74c-dae6cc6185a0

Doesn't seem to be paywalled, but just in case... https://archive.ph/2Yia2

I did not know that Thiel had South African connections.

Some highlights:

In short, four of Maga’s most influential voices are fiftysomething white men with formative experiences in apartheid South Africa. This probably isn’t a coincidence. I say that as a fiftysomething white man whose formative experiences include childhood visits to my extended family in apartheid South Africa. (My parents left Johannesburg before I was born.) We’d swim in my grandparents’ pool while the maid and her grandchildren lived in the garage. These experiences were so shocking, so different from anything I experienced growing up in Europe, that they are my sharpest childhood memories.

So what connects these men’s southern African backgrounds with Maga today? Southern Africa under apartheid offered an extreme version of some of the main themes of American life today. First, there was tremendous inequality. The mine where Thiel’s father worked was “known for conditions not far removed from indentured servitude”, writes Thiel’s biographer Max Chafkin. “White managers, like the Thiels, had access to a brand-new medical and dental centre in Swakopmund and membership in the company country club.” The mine’s black migrant workers lived in work camps.

To whites of a certain mindset, this inequality wasn’t due to apartheid. They thought it was inscribed in nature. Certain people were equipped to succeed in capitalism, while others weren’t. That was simply the way it was, and it was pointless to try to mess with nature. Two of Thiel’s contemporaries at Stanford in the 1980s recall him telling them that apartheid “works” and was “economically sound”. His spokesman has denied that he ever supported apartheid.​

​

There's more, but the line about "An old white South African mindset lives in Trumpism" is worth thinking about.

That Kupar guy is pretty good. I hope he turns his attention to soccer some day.

 

Seriously folks the article is worth a look. And rep dapip for the link.

 

Couple of videos by concerned EV advocates.

 

LOL. Neither of these videos are of EV advocates. The first video is of a guy that literally says he likes the idea, but not for him. May is a bit closer as he at least owns EVs, but again, his "concern" is based on the current EV market, with current EV tech, and current charger networks. I'd also argue that neither one of them represent your average UK driver. Both say that they take long drives in their vehicles, something that is unusual for UK drivers.

It is certainly fair that long trips in an EV take longer than in an ICE due to the shorter range and longer refill times of EVs, but that is changing. Solid state batteries are, reportedly, going to start entering the high end vehicle market in 2027, which likely means they start filtering down to the peons in 2030ish or sooner. Once that hits, you'll be looking at batteries being lighter, being more energy dense, and recharge time on public chargers being just about as fast as filling a gas tank.

The other issue is the price of EVs right now. There really is no low end market for EVs outside of Chinese vehicles and those are heavily subsidized to the point that they could be sold at almost any price and still turn a profit. The lack of low price EVs is a huge issue and one that auto manufacturers need to resolve at some point.

 

They've both said they'd prefer EVs and have highlighted why it's not a good idea to buy at the moment.

 

That doesn’t make them advocates.

Here’s someone that is actually an advocate:

 

Depends on your definition of advocate. I'd suggest owning 6 EVs makes James May an advocate.

This guy sounds like a paid marketeer or just delusional.

 

I take it you never met someone who is an advocate for something then.