Showing posts with label Elon Musk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elon Musk. Show all posts

Friday, December 27, 2024

27: Elon Musk

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Saturday, December 21, 2024

21: Elon Musk

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Thursday, December 19, 2024

A 2T Cut



Reducing the U.S. federal budget by $2 trillion is a significant task that would require carefully considered policy decisions and trade-offs. Here’s an outline of possible strategies across various sectors:

1. Discretionary Spending Cuts

  • Defense Spending: The U.S. defense budget is substantial, making it a prime area for targeted reductions. Potential savings could come from:
    • Reducing overseas military operations.
    • Closing underutilized military bases.
    • Cutting investments in redundant or outdated weapon systems.
    • Streamlining procurement processes.
  • Other Discretionary Programs: Identify and trim underperforming or duplicative federal programs in areas such as education, housing, and public works.

2. Mandatory Spending Adjustments

  • Healthcare Programs:
    • Reform Medicare and Medicaid to reduce costs, such as negotiating drug prices or promoting value-based care models.
    • Introduce means-testing for higher-income recipients of Medicare benefits.
  • Social Security:
    • Adjust the formula for benefits to account for longer life expectancy (e.g., gradually raising the retirement age).
    • Implement progressive benefit reductions for higher-income retirees.

3. Reforming Tax Expenditures

  • Tax expenditures are effectively government spending through the tax code (e.g., deductions, credits, and exemptions). Reforms could include:
    • Capping the mortgage interest deduction.
    • Limiting or phasing out tax breaks for specific industries (e.g., oil and gas subsidies).
    • Scaling back retirement savings incentives for high-income individuals.

4. Revenue Increases

  • Corporate Tax Reforms: Close loopholes and enforce a minimum effective tax rate for corporations.
  • Individual Tax Adjustments:
    • Raise income taxes on the wealthiest earners.
    • Implement a financial transaction tax on trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives.
  • Carbon Tax or Pollution Taxes: Generate revenue while promoting environmental goals.

5. Improving Efficiency and Reducing Waste

  • Increase investment in anti-fraud initiatives for government programs.
  • Improve oversight and reduce improper payments in Medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs.
  • Optimize government operations by leveraging technology to reduce overhead costs.

6. Growth-Oriented Policies

  • Encourage economic growth through infrastructure investments and education reform to increase productivity and tax revenues over time.
  • Pair budget cuts with initiatives to improve workforce participation and reduce dependency on government programs.

Considerations and Risks:

  • Economic Impact: Sudden, deep cuts could harm economic growth, especially in sectors reliant on federal spending.
  • Public Resistance: Many cuts may face opposition from voters and interest groups.
  • Fairness: Ensuring the burden of cuts and reforms is distributed equitably across income levels and regions is crucial.



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Saturday, November 30, 2024

30: DOGE



How Native Americans guarded their societies against tyranny When the founders of the United States designed the Constitution, they were learning from history that democracy was likely to fail – to find someone who would fool the people into giving him complete power and then end the democracy. ......... Twelfth-century Cahokia, on the banks of the Mississippi River, had a central city about the size of London at the time. ....... The American Colonists and founders thought Native American societies were simple and primitive – but they were not. ........ Native American communities were elaborate consensus democracies, many of which had survived for generations because of careful attention to checking and balancing power. .......... As they formed these new and more dispersed societies, the people who had overthrown or fled the great cities and their too powerful leaders sought to avoid mesmerizing leaders who made tempting promises in difficult times. So they designed complex political structures to discourage centralization, hierarchy and inequality and encourage shared decision-making........... the oral history of the Osage Nation records that it once had one great chief who was a military leader, but its council of elder spiritual leaders, known as the “Little Old Men,” decided to balance that chief’s authority with that of another hereditary chief, who would be responsible for keeping peace. .......... Another way some societies balanced power was through family-based clans. Clans communicated and cooperated across multiple towns. They could work together to balance the power of town-based chiefs and councils. ........... Many of these societies required convening all of the people – men, women and children – for major political, military, diplomatic and land-use decisions. Hundreds or even thousands might show up, depending on how momentous the decision was. .......... In some societies, it was customary for the losing side to quietly leave the meeting if they couldn’t bring themselves to agree with the others. ........... Leaders generally governed by facilitating decision-making in council meetings and public gatherings. They gave gifts to encourage cooperation. They heard disputes between neighbors over land and resources and helped to resolve them. Power and prestige came to lie not in amassing wealth but in assuring that the wealth was shared wisely. Leaders earned support in part by being good providers. .......... The Native American democracy that the U.S. founders were most likely to know about was the Iroquois Confederacy. They call themselves the Haudenosaunee, the “people of the longhouse,” because the nations of the confederacy have to get along like multiple families in a longhouse. ........... In their carefully balanced system, women ran the clans, which were responsible for local decisions about land use and town planning. Men were the representatives of their clans and nations in the Haudenosaunee council, which made decisions for the confederacy as a whole. Each council member, called a royaner, was chosen by a clan mother. .............. The Haudenosaunee Great Law holds a royaner to a high standard: “The thickness of their skin shall be seven spans – which is to say that they shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Their hearts shall be full of peace and good will.” In council, “all their words and actions shall be marked by calm deliberation.” ............. The law said the ideal royaner should always “look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground – the unborn of the future Nation.” ............. Of course, people do not always live up to their values, but the laws and traditions of Native nations encouraged peaceful discussion and broad-mindedness. Many Europeans were struck by the difference. The French explorer La Salle in 1678 noted with admiration of the Haudenosaunee that “in important meetings, they discuss without raising their voices and without getting angry.” ......... Leaders looked ahead and sought to protect the well-being of every person, even those not yet born. The people, in exchange, had a responsibility to not enmesh their royaners in less serious matters, which the Haudenosaunee Great Law called “trivial affairs.”

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Sunday, November 24, 2024

24: DOGE

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Thursday, November 21, 2024

21: DOGE



Musk, Ramaswamy lay out plans for ‘mass’ federal layoffs, rule rollbacks under Trump Tech entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said Wednesday that their brand-new government efficiency panel will identify “thousands” of regulations for President-elect Trump to eliminate, which they argue will justify “mass head-count reductions” across government. ...... “The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings,” they wrote. “We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.” .......... Slashing regulations should allow for “at least” proportional cuts to the government workforce .......... “A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy” .......... “Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited” ............ Musk and Ramaswamy pointed to several recent Supreme Court decisions that have taken aim at the power of the administrative state, arguing that a “plethora of current federal regulations” exceed agency authority and could be on the chopping block. ............

“A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy”

........... “Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited” ........... Musk and Ramaswamy preemptively addressed arguments about civil service protections that could potentially block Trump from firing federal workers. ......... “The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation,” they wrote. “But the statute allows for ‘reductions in force’ that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to ‘prescribe rules governing the competitive service.’ That power is broad.” ........ “With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of ‘rules governing the competitive service’ that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area” ........... Government workers are already mobilizing in the face of potential mass cuts, reportedly hiring lawyers and preparing public campaigns while also hoping Congress will step in ........... Musk has spent much of his time at the Palm Beach, Fla., resort over the past two weeks, reportedly weighing in on Trump’s Cabinet picks and attending meetings, including those with world leaders. ........ He also hosted Trump in Texas to observe the launch of a SpaceX rocket Tuesday afternoon.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decadeslong executive power grab. ....... Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections. ........... On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it. .......... The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic .......... We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs. .......... We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.

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Wednesday, November 13, 2024

13: Elon Musk

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‘$2 trillion’ Worth Of Waste

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Sunday, November 10, 2024

The Structure Of Trump's Victory

He won all so-called swing states. He has the Senate. He might as well get the House. And if he does not, I got to know Hakeem Jeffries before he ever ran for public office. :)

In a democracy, you try to read the political mandate. Trump has won a mandate. What does it mean? Different people will interpret it differently, of course.

(1) America In Decline

The slogan Make America Great Again can be seen as wanting to face the fact that America is in decline, but it does not have to be.

(2) Defunding NATO

This is not about not being serious about defense. This is about asking allies to foot the bill.

(3) The Border Blame

America has not just been a country of immigrants. It has been a country of illegal immigrants. When there were no airplanes, Europeans came to the American shore on boats, and they did not exactly have papers, and they were not exactly royalty. They tended to be the misfits. Illegal immigration rejuvenates America. It is not like they are increasing the quota for the legal ones, either. Crime is a separate topic. The crisis is the economy.

(4) The Bloated State

How do you downsize the permanent state? It's like, how do you build a wall? How do you deport 25 million people and still harvest food in Central Valley, California? How do you get rid of overregulation?

(5) Ukraine

North Korea, South Korea. Frozen conflict?

(6) Political Realignment

The composition has changed. More Hispanics coming in does not mean a bigger Democratic Party. It is not automatic. 2024 is proof.

(7) The Tariff War

Used to be the US government was funded not by taxes but by tariffs. That is ancient.

And, of course, there is a distinct possibility Trump is a bullshitter. "We will buid a wall and Mexico will pay for it." That was the promise in 2016. Was never going to happen.

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Tuesday, October 22, 2024

22: Elon Musk

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Monday, October 14, 2024

14: Robotaxi



Adobe Launches AI Video Generator
Nobel economics prize goes to 3 economists who found that freer societies are more likely to prosper
How have social media algorithms changed the way we interact? “the features of social media platforms don’t allow for free and fair competition of ideas to begin with… the ‘value’ of an idea on social media isn’t a reflection of how good it is, but is rather the product of the platform’s algorithm.” .......... “algorithms on social media platforms have fundamentally reshaped the nature of free speech, not necessarily by restricting what can be said, but by determining who gets to see what content” ......... “Rather than ideas competing freely on their merits, algorithms amplify or suppress the reach of messages… introducing an unprecedented form of interference in the free exchange of ideas that is often overlooked.” ......... Facebook is one of the pioneers of recommendation algorithms on social media, and with an estimated three billion users, its Feed is arguably one of the biggest. ......... Determined by the interactions on each post, this came to prioritise posts about controversial topics, as those garnered the most engagement. .......... Because contentious posts are more likely to be rewarded by algorithms, there is the possibility that the fringes of political opinion can be overrepresented on social media. Rather than free and open public forums, critics argue that social media instead offers a distorted and sensationalised mirror of public sentiment that exaggerates discord and muffles the views of the majority. .......... is “free speech” purely about the right to speak, or also about the right to be heard? ......... Our era has been labelled “the algorithmic society” – one in which, it could be argued, social media platforms and search engines govern speech in the same way nation states once did. .......... While Professor Candeub is a “free speech absolutist”, he’s also wary of the power concentrated in the platforms that can be gatekeepers of speech via computer code. “I think that we would do well to have these algorithms made public because otherwise we're just being manipulated.” ............ There is a right to freedom of speech online but not a right for everyone to be heard equally: it would take more than a lifetime to watch every TikTok video or read every tweet.” ......... “Chronological feeds are not … neutral: They are also subject to rich-get-richer effects, demographic biases, and the unpredictability of virality. There is, unfortunately, no neutral way to design social media.” ............ Platforms do offer some alternatives to algorithms, with people on X able to choose a feed from only those they follow. And by filtering huge amounts of content, “recommendation engines provide greater diversity and discovery than just following people we already know”, argues Bertram. “That feels like the opposite of a restriction of freedom of speech – it’s a mechanism for discovery.” ............. “Regular TikTok users are often very deliberate about the algorithm – giving it signals to encourage or discourage the recommendation engine along avenues of new discovery” ........... just 28% of Americans say they like documenting their life in public online, down from 40% in 2020. People are instead becoming more comfortable in closed-off group chats with trusted friends and relatives; spaces with more accountability and fewer rewards for shocks and provocations. .......... Meta says the number of photos sent in direct messages now outnumbers those shared for all to see.

Israel faces a fierce and evasive foe in Hezbollah’s drones The unmanned aerial vehicle, laden with explosives, evaded Israel’s multilayered air-defense system and slammed into a mess hall at a military training camp deep inside Israel, killing four soldiers and wounding dozens. .......... Hezbollah, which said the attack was in response to Israeli strikes in Lebanon, said the drone was “able to penetrate the Israeli air defense radars without being detected” and reach its target. It claimed it had outsmarted Israel’s air defenses by simultaneously launching dozens of missiles and “squadrons” of drones simultaneously.......

Drones are harder to detect and track than rockets or missiles

.......... Israel has a formidable arsenal of drones, capable of carrying out spy missions and attacks. It has developed a drone capable of reaching archenemy Iran, some 1500 kilometers (1,000 miles) away. .......... In July, a drone launched from Yemen travelled some 270 kilometers (160 miles) from Israel’s southern tip, all the way to Tel Aviv, slamming into a downtown building and killing one person without it having been intercepted. .......... The Israeli security official said drones are harder to detect for a number of reasons: They fly slowly and often include plastic components, having a weaker thermal footprint with radar systems than powerful rockets and missiles. The trajectory is also harder to track. Drones can have roundabout flight paths, can come from any direction, fly lower to the ground and — because they are much smaller than rockets — can be mistaken for birds. ........... Israel spent years focusing on strengthening its air defense systems to improve protection against rockets and missiles. But drones were not seen as a top priority. ........ The militant group has launched roughly 1,500 surveillance and attack drones since it began striking Israel in October 2023 ...... Hezbollah has also used drones to erode Israel’s air-defense capabilities by slamming them into the very batteries and infrastructure meant to take them down. Earlier this year, Hezbollah said it used an Ababil explosive drone to down Israel’s Sky Dew observation balloon, a component of its aerial defense. ........... there were ways to combat the drones that could be considered. Detection capabilities could be expanded to include acoustic radars to pick up on the sound of the drone’s engine or electro-optics, which could allow Israeli surveillance to better identify them. He said rockets, fighter jets and helicopters could be deployed for interception, and that electronic warfare could be used to overtake the drones and divert them . ......

'Petty, partisan, un-American': Social media on Harris-Biden Not Congratulating Elon Musk On SpaceX Feat Elon Musk had a clash with California as it rejected Elon Musk' request for more frequent SpaceX launches from the state's central coast and it cited Elon Musk's politics as the reason for the rejection



US to send anti-missile system and troops to Israel, Pentagon says The United States has been privately urging Israel to calibrate its response to avoid triggering a broader war in the Middle East, officials say, with Biden publicly voicing his opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites and his concerns about a strike on Iran's energy infrastructure........ The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, is a critical part of the U.S. military's layered air defense systems and adds to Israel's already formidable anti-missile defenses. ....... "While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests," Araqchi posted on X.

The trouble with Elon Musk’s robotaxi dream Scaling up self-driving taxis will be hard, and competition will be fierce .......... Elon Musk’s choice of Warner Bros Studios for the long-anticipated launch of his robotaxi on October 10th is entirely appropriate. Hollywood’s film studios are as much a dream factory as Tesla, his electric-car company. The vision he served up, accompanied by whoops of delight from the superfans in the audience, is an autonomous Cybercab so cheap that it will serve as “individualised mass transit”. But Mr Musk’s promises were, like many Hollywood movies, long on bombast and short on reality. The road to self-driving taxis will be long, and Tesla will have tough competition along the way............ The Cybercab, a two-seater without steering wheel or pedals, will be on sale “before 2027”, according to Mr Musk, though his timelines often slip—he once promised a fleet of 1m robotaxis by 2020. He also showed off a Robovan, which will carry 20 passengers, and pledged that his humanoid robot will be the “biggest product ever of any kind”. Yet the event, which was light on details, disappointed investors; Tesla’s share price slumped 9% the following day. ........... Waymo, a division of Alphabet, has raced ahead in America. After 15 years and perhaps $30bn of investment it now has a fleet of 700 self-driving cabs running in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix, and will soon launch in Atlanta and Austin. ........... China has also become a hotspot for autonomy. Apollo Go, the robotaxi unit of Baidu, a Chinese tech giant, launched its service in Wuhan in 2022 and has since expanded to ten other Chinese cities. It aims to double its Wuhan fleet to 1,000 robotaxis by the end of the year. Other Chinese firms including Pony.ai, WeRide, and Didi, the country’s biggest ride-hailing firm, are also trying out robotaxis in several big cities. ............ Waymo and its competitors so far mostly operate in places where the weather is fine and the roads are straight and wide. ............. The cost of the self-driving cars themselves—around $150,000 a piece for Waymo—also remains a problem. Around two-thirds of that is estimated to come from hardware. To run their vehicles autonomously, Waymo and others are relying on a battery of expensive sensors including cameras, radars and lidars, which use lasers to create a 3D image of the vehicle’s surroundings, as well as lots of in-car computing power to make sense of it all. .......... Human drivers account for well over half the fare of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, which suggests a big opportunity for self-driving cabs. ............. Bernstein, a broker, calculates that once all costs are considered, self-driving taxi fares will remain higher than human ones for some time. What is more, replacing the fleet of Uber and Lyft cars in America with robotaxis would require up to 400,000 vehicles, Bernstein reckons. At the current cost of a Waymo vehicle, that would mean an investment of around $60bn. ............ Tesla is betting it can make a cheaper option work. Its “Full-Self Driving” system, which will be the underlying tech for its robotaxis, relies only on cameras to collect information. Data from these will go into an “end-to-end neural network”—an algorithmic black box trained on 9bn miles of driving data from the 6m Teslas already on the road—to produce driving commands. As a result, Tesla says its robotaxis will cost under $30,000 and will be easier to transfer from one city to another. .................. JPMorgan Chase, a bank, does not expect “material revenue generation...for years to come” from Tesla’s robotaxi efforts.



New ChatGPT prompt goes viral with Sam Altman’s approval this particular ChatGPT prompt has found a way of resonating with people, providing an instant peek into their own psychological makeup......... Responses on Reddit ranged from Newmoonlightavenger who said simply “It was the best thing anyone has ever said about me” to Jimmylegs50 who wrote, “Crying. I really needed to hear this right now. Thanks, OP." .......... User PopeAsthetic wrote, 'Wow I did it, and GPT gave me the most profound advice and reflection of myself that I’ve ever received. Even told me I seem to have a desire for control, while at the same time having a desire to let go of control. I’ve never thought about it like that.' ............ It turns out that ChatGPT doesn’t mess around when you ask it to roast you, and the results can be quite brutal! ........ In fact, when I tried the same prompt the results were scarily accurate: “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, you’re probably the type to say, 'Draw me like one of your French girls,” only to immediately follow it up with, “But make sure my espresso is ready in exactly 1 minute 45 seconds. And don’t forget to set up the camera – I’m planning a tech review after this sketch.”'

U.S. officials say Israel has narrowed down its targets for strike on Iran The strike could happen at any time, U.S. and Israeli officials told NBC News, and could come during this weekend's Yom Kippur holiday. ........ Iranian military and energy infrastructure. ........ There is no indication that Israel will target nuclear facilities or carry out assassinations ........ Iran's attack caused little damage in Israel. ........ U.S. and Israeli officials said a response could come during the Yom Kippur holiday........... U.S. officials have continued to urge the Israeli government to make their response proportional, sticking to military targets and avoiding oil, gas and nuclear facilities.

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Friday, October 11, 2024

11: Elon Musk



I’ve Covered Politics for 50 Years. Here’s Why So Much Hinges on Electing Kamala Harris. Beirut, clearly, had been a civilized and sophisticated city; parts of it still were — and yet it was descending into the unthinkable. The lesson was stark: My American soul, my life experience, had assumed that civilization was a rock-solid given, especially in historic cultural and commercial centers like Beirut. But it wasn’t. It was a tenuous state of grace. It needed to be nurtured, protected. ............ we have been flirting, dangerously, with disorder and disunity in the Trump era. ........... Ms. Harris, who was trained in the rule of law, understands viscerally the importance of the stability that government provides. Donald Trump doesn’t. He has attempted to destroy our faith in the institutions that keep us safe — the courts, the F.B.I., the intelligence community, the diplomatic corps, the military, even our electoral process and, this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ............ Let’s focus just for a moment on the military: It is the template for the highest form of citizenship. It requires a solemn pledge to subsume your individuality to protect the greater good. According to his former chief of staff John Kelly, Mr. Trump has referred to service members as “suckers” and “losers” — though he has said that this was “a total lie.” The former president has absolutely no idea of the rigors the military requires, the notions of service and sacrifice. He is a stranger to the most basic requirements of a democracy................ Impediments do exist, of course, and bigotry will always be part of the human condition. But the liberal failure to acknowledge the steady progress toward a cosmopolitan, heterogeneous society has been as purposefully myopic as Mr. Trump’s fever dream that white America is under siege — most recently, by legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. .................. the great choice we’re facing: whether we’re ready to follow our destiny as a wondrously creative, inclusive democracy or crash on

the straitened delusions of antique white nativism

, an American tendency of long standing but always a losing one in the past. .............. he has become the emperor of the irrational, pursuing a dismal vision of “American carnage” at a moment when crime is down, illegal immigration is down, inflation is down and our economy is the envy of the world.

How Harris Can Finish Strong audiences “will not tune in to watch information.” They will “only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama.” ........... strong drama is built around intention and obstacle. The hero has to be seized by a strong, specific desire, and she needs to face a really big obstacle. ........... You don’t communicate your deepest desire when your campaign is run by a committee. ......... George W. Bush used to tell that story about struggling with alcohol and then coming to faith. ............ Nixon, who saw himself as the scrappy outsider perpetually facing establishment foes. ............ As the election went on, Obama gripped our attention by showing greater depths of himself. By contrast, I can think of only one time we learned something surprising about Harris during her short campaign — that she owns a gun. Otherwise, she seems to hold conventional Democratic postures on all things. That’s not gripping. ........... “A great way to reveal character is to show somebody in crisis.” In any great story there are moments when we think the hero faces near certain defeat but then flips the tables. That’s when we find out what she has inside. .......... hold-backism is a common disease in our politics. Mitt Romney is a first-class human being, but during his 2012 campaign, he held himself back. In 2016, Hillary Clinton held herself back. Al Gore was said to be charming in private but held himself back. ............ It’s understandable. So much is at stake. You’re surrounded by consultants and strategy memos. A candidate can lose herself within the machinery.

Kamala Harris Is Turning a Trump Tactic on Its Head Her particular Achilles’ heel — pointed out by her opponent, who, whatever his manifest unfitness for the job, does have a talent for identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities — is contained in the word “protection.” ........... As much as the Harris campaign promotes “joy,” the national mood radiates fear — of exposure, threat, bodily harm. How’s a woman supposed to protect us from that? .................. In the public sphere, as in the personal, he who would dominate offers to protect. Forty-seven years ago, the feminist philosopher Susan Rae Peterson identified the syndrome of the “male protection racket,” asking, “Since the state fails them in its protective function, to whom can women turn for protection?” She explained that “women make agreements with husbands or fathers (in return for fidelity or chastity, respectively) to secure protection. From whom do these men protect women? From other men, it turns out.” She continued: “There is a striking parallel between this situation and tactics used by crime syndicates who sell protection as a racket. The buyer who refuses to buy the protective services of an agency because he needs no protection finds out soon that because he refuses to buy it, he very definitely needs protection. Women are in the same position.” .............. Donald Trump has it figured out. “Sadly, women are poorer than they were four years ago,” he told a Pennsylvania rally in late September. Also: “less healthy,” “less safe on the streets” and “more stressed and depressed and unhappy.” In a part of his speech aimed explicitly at female voters, he added, “I will fix all of that and fast, and at long last this nation, and national nightmare, will end.” Women, he promised, “will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger.” Why? “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.” .................. Mr. Trump is a master of the protection racket. He takes the old domestic savior scam national. He’s running a Halloween campaign, leaping from behind every podium to yell “Boo!” to scare his base, male and female both, with any hobgoblin he can conjure — migrants who are “vicious monsters,” who are “poisoning the blood of our country” and who will “rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill the people of the United States of America,” “radical left thugs” who “live like vermin” and “steal and cheat on elections,” Democratic governors who want to “execute” babies after they’re born, liberal schools conducting a “brutal operation” to change a child’s gender. Mr. Trump and his running mate have conjured childless women whose only companions are feline and illegal immigrants dining on felines. To save us from these monsters, Mr. Trump proposes himself. .................... His protection, of course, is as mythical as the threats he manufactures. Violent crime is near a 50-year low. Homicides fell nearly 12 percent from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year drop in six decades, and rape declined by more than 9 percent. Women — and especially never-married women — have made significant economic gains since 2019. As for stress, as the “Daily Show” comedian Desi Lydic remarked after Mr. Trump’s speech, “I love how he’s acknowledging that we’re stressed out, as though he’s not the one stressing us out.” ................... Many voters, especially men, perceive the prospect of being protected by a woman as a threat. In a society where men judge their worth by their ability to protect, being protected by a woman is seen as a disgrace, a stain on one’s honor. ............... Women are allowed to play the protector in one arena: as mothers. The vice-presidential contender Sarah Palin famously tried to market herself as the “mama grizzly” candidate and said in 2010 in a speech to the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, “You thought pit bulls were tough. Well, you don’t want to mess with the mama grizzlies.” It’s no coincidence that at the same time that the Trump campaign is leaning on the “protector” theme, it’s disparaging Ms. Harris because she’s not a mother. ................. With his “I am your protector” speech, Mr. Trump was baiting Ms. Harris to cast herself as a protector, knowing he’d have her in a bind. He is a wizard at rope-a-dope, issuing an outrageous assertion in order to goad a response that will trap his opponent. He cast doubt on Ms. Harris’s racial credentials as an invitation for her to come out as an identity warrior..................... For them, war’s the point, not victory — outrage, not outcomes, as victim cultures on both the right and the left amply demonstrate. ........... This is how recent Republican administrations have profited from their own incompetence. Their inability to provide real protection (from, say, Osama bin Laden) fed the public’s desire for a symbolic act (like the “defeat” of Saddam Hussein). George W. Bush’s failure at practical protection — to heed the multiple warnings that a catastrophic attack on American soil was in the works — allowed him to play to the hilt the role of symbolic protector. A political advocacy group backing Mr. Bush in 2004 against John Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, aired a multimillion-dollar TV spot in which a girl whose mother was killed on Sept. 11 declared of Mr. Bush, “He’s the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is make sure I’m safe.” Mr. Trump has pulled a similar switcheroo on countless fronts, from trade to manufacturing to immigration to lost elections. ............... If Mr. Trump embodies the make-believe rescuer, the bombastic redeemer who speaks loudly while carrying a tiny stick, Ms. Harris is his levelheaded, no-nonsense opposite. Her record of public service and her utilitarian policy plans attest to workable fixes to actual dangers instead of the amplification of invented ones. ............... I want reasoned and stable governance, exemplified by a president whose lodestar is the well-being and security of her citizenry, not the bloodlust of his base. ........... In 1977, Ms. Peterson observed that, under the laws of the state, women are like the “victimized, unwilling clients of an organized protection racket, because they cannot turn to each other, being unorganized themselves.”

Is Google’s NotebookLM Going to Disrupt the Podcasting Industry? Especially if all it takes is 1 click to turn any content into podcast .......... NotebookLM is a personalized AI research assistant powered by Gemini 1.5 Pro, designed to make sense of complex information........... With just one click, it generates engaging “deep dive” discussions that summarize the key topics in your sources. ............ What’s even more impressive is how it transforms any piece of content, no matter how dry, by generating two AI hosts (one male and one female) who discuss the document’s contents in a podcast-style format.

The Trumpification of American policy
Elon Musk unveils Tesla’s ‘Cybercab,’ plans to bring autonomous driving tech to other models in 2025
BlackRock Hits $11.5 Trillion With Push into Private Markets BlackRock Inc. pulled in a record $221 billion of total client cash last quarter, pushing the world’s largest money manager to an all-time high of $11.5 trillion of assets as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for stocks, bonds and, increasingly, private assets.
Musk Is Going All In to Elect Trump Elon Musk is planting himself in Pennsylvania, has brought his brain trust to help and may even knock on doors himself........... In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the richest man in the world has involved himself in the U.S. election in a manner unparalleled in modern history. .......... He has effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania, the place that he has recently told confidants he believes is the linchpin to Mr. Trump’s re-election. ........ He has relentlessly promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy to his 201 million followers on X ............. Above all, he is personally steering the actions of a super PAC that he has funded with tens of millions of dollars to turn out the vote for Mr. Trump, not just in Pennsylvania but across the country. He has even proposed taking a campaign bus tour across Pennsylvania and knocking on doors himself, in part to see how his money is being used. .......... Mr. Musk’s battle plan as he directs his efforts to elect Mr. Trump with the same frenetic energy and exacting demands that he has honed at his companies SpaceX, Tesla and X. ............. These days, in private conversations, Mr. Musk is obsessive, almost manic, about the stakes of the election and the need for Mr. Trump to win. He praises Mr. Trump’s courage under fire — he endorsed him on the night of the assassination attempt in Butler — and talks about how funny he is. One person who spoke recently to Mr. Musk recalled him saying, without any hint of irony, “I love Trump.” .......... Mr. Trump has privately used grand — and unverified — terms to describe what Mr. Musk is donating to the super PAC, telling one associate recently that the figure is $500 million. .............. But friends and colleagues say Mr. Musk is adopting the same strategy that he has used during other crises he has considered existential. Just as Mr. Musk worked late into the night as his companies teetered on the verge of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter, Mr. Musk has deemed this an all-hands-on-deck moment. ........... And so, just as he recruited friends, family and trusted lieutenants to Twitter after he bought the company, Mr. Musk has done the same at America PAC, which he founded to help Mr. Trump. Most recently, Mr. Musk added Steve Davis, a former SpaceX engineer and the head of his tunneling company, to the group, with Mr. Davis reprising a sidekick role that he played after Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter. ........... “I’m not sure there is a precedent in modern history to how Musk has inserted himself into the presidential race,” said Benjamin Soskis, a historian of the ultrarich. ............. Mr. Musk, who once privately called Mr. Trump a “stone-cold loser,” possesses in abundance the things Mr. Trump values most: wealth, fame and a massive platform. ............. Mr. Musk initially supported Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for president and suggested that Mr. Trump should “sail into the sunset.” Mr. Trump replied that Mr. Musk begged on his knees for government subsidies. ............ ... After Mr. DeSantis flamed out of the Republican primary, Mr. Musk began to tell friends that he wanted to find a way to support Mr. Trump — secretly. .............. He dismissed the power of television advertising and spoke sweepingly of an organic movement to elect Mr. Trump, with supporters persuading others to join the cause. Two voters by two voters — that was how Mr. Trump would win, he said. ............... Mr. Trump has made clear that he appreciates the help, promising to appoint Mr. Musk to oversee a government-efficiency team if he is re-elected. ............ At a rally in Reading, Pa., on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump appeared preoccupied with Mr. Musk, telling stories about his talks with Mr. Musk in three unrelated tangents and celebrating the “dark MAGA” hat that some attendees said they had bought because Mr. Musk wore it in Butler. .................. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account............... At the core of Mr. Musk’s project is America PAC, an organization that the Trump campaign is relying on for significant help in knocking on doors in battleground states and encouraging 800,000 to one million voters to cast ballots for the former president. ........... The group has spent about $80 million to help Mr. Trump according to federal records, primarily on its canvassing program. Mr. Musk’s advisers have told donors that the group has about 2,500 organizers in the field, and the group has effectively acquired the Wisconsin assets of another group, Turning Points USA, taking on about 200 new canvassers in the state. Some canvassers, during training, have been shown Mr. Musk’s social media posts about the group, as a way to encourage them. .............. The Trump campaign is conducting something of an experiment by outsourcing portions of its voter contact operation to America PAC and other groups. That is possible because of new federal election guidance that allows political campaigns to coordinate their activities more closely with outside organizations. .............. Some donors to the super PAC have groused that Mr. Musk is relying on the same team that formed the core of Mr. DeSantis’s advisers when he attempted a similar effort in the Republican primaries, to no avail. ............. Veterans of past campaigns argue that canvassing operations generally take months or even years to become effective machines. There is little precedent for successfully standing up a group of this scale just months before a presidential election. ................ Since publicly endorsing the former president in July, he has posted at least 109 times about Mr. Trump and the election. And while he has said in the past that the platform should be “politically neutral,” he has used it to advance election misinformation and the baseless claim that Democrats are engaging in “deliberate voter importation” and “fast-tracking” immigrants to citizenship to gain control over the electorate. ..................... “Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars,” Mr. Musk wrote this month in a post that has gained nearly 18 million views. “This is existential.” ................. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged “trashing Kamala nonstop” and being all in for Mr. Trump. ......... If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, “how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”

When The Arctic Melts



Grappling With the Talmud in the Midst of Crisis What the words of ancient rabbis could and couldn’t teach me. ............. Daf Yomi — the practice of reading a page of the Talmud every day over the course of seven and a half years .......... that famously dense compilation of arguments among ancient rabbis. ........... The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, is Judaism’s foundational holy book, but it’s not a cohesive manual for daily life. That’s where the Talmud comes in. A 63-volume collection of interpretation, storytelling and debate ............ Less-observant Jews, like me, often regard it with mystification and awe, leaving the studying to our more orthodox cousins. .......... before I started Daf Yomi, my relationship with the actual texts behind all that culture and history was superficial at best. .......... I started receiving my Daf Yomi emails just before the pandemic. As the world locked down, that “daily dose of Talmud” gave structure and meaning to an otherwise blank expanse of days. I found an unexpected joy in the Talmud’s humanity and community-minded ethic. ................ But the most important lessons, for me at least, were in the ritual of reading. It became transformative, returning day after day to the same debates, doing my best to engage with a text that for over a thousand years has instructed Jews in the importance of productive argument and paying careful attention to even the smallest of details, like marriage rites or what to do with an unruly ox. Though the Talmud is an ancient text, steeped in the mores of a very different world, the underlying values don’t feel so foreign to me. The rabbis were almost always guided by a sense of fairness and justice, an urge to protect the most vulnerable and to preserve the sanctity of human life. This last principle is encapsulated in a Talmudic maxim that, in its earliest iteration, reads: “Whoever destroys a single life is considered by scripture to have destroyed the whole world.” ............... “That which is hateful to you do not do to another,” he said. “That is the entire Torah, and the rest is commentary. Go study.” ............ the Talmud itself was born of crisis, compiled at a moment of catastrophe. Following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., Jews were forced to reimagine their religion without the temple that had for centuries served as its center. All those arguments on subjects like whether adjoining rooftops constitute public or private space serve a larger goal: a radical reimagining of practice and faith, a new way of thinking about personhood, mutual responsibility and coexistence. That process of rebuilding and rethinking continues even now, with every person who grapples with the text. ................ even in the most profound crisis, it’s possible to imagine new ways of being, new political structures, new models of coexistence and mutual support. In fact, this is when the reimagining is most urgent.

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