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

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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Saturday, October 05, 2024

5: Elon Musk

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Monday, June 24, 2024

24: Elon Musk



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Saturday, June 04, 2022

Elon Musk's Irresponsible Economy Comment: "Super Bad Feeling"

Elon Musk started believing his own hpye, the image created by him and his rabid fans on Twitter, an echo chamber that just might mirror Putin's TV shows across Russia. Capitalism can be its own autocracy. I am on record for being for a wealth tax.

Musk's Twitter move would have been good if his motive were right, but now we know it wasn't.

Should Elon Musk Be Owning All Of Twitter?
Musk's 44 Billion Dollar Give To Foolish Fascism

Maybe he should hang out with Peter Thiel less often. He might end up leaning less right. Stop texting.

Musk's "super bad feeling" about the economy is him trying to blame the market for the tumbling shares of both Tesla and Twitter. There seems to be nowhere to go but down. Musk fears the Tesla shares might go further down, with the Twitter deal albatross around his neck, and so he is trying to prepare the market. I don't think it is going to work.

I am neither bullish nor bearish on the economy. On those matters I let Paul Krugman talk.

From: Paramendra Kumar Bhagat
Date: Tue, May 31, 2022 at 9:11 AM
Subject: Paul, you are my favorite part of the New York Times, my favorite newspaper
To: krugman-newsletter@nytimes.com

Hello Paul. I was just reading this https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/opinion/inflation-prices-stagflation.html and for the first time, I noticed this email address at the bottom and figured, hey why not write to him? I could help balance out the hate mail he gets. It could not hurt!

The only thing I disagree with you on is Bitcoin. It is exotic to me how you are missing out. This is like missing out on the Internet in 1995. My thoughts on Bitcoin are here: www.paramendra.xyz It would be a coup for me if I could "convert" you. Bitcoin is biblical. The Age Of Abundance that has been promised in the scriptures is upon us. Bitcoin is the best thing to come out of the 2008 crisis.

Your arguments tend to be so lucid, I am often tempted into thinking, if only Marjorie Taylor Greene could subscribe to this newsletter, American politics would see a tectonic shift for the better. :) But we both know that is not in the cards. The mental blocks are real. It is not your writing that is lacking.

I wish NYT also featured a right-wing Paul to balance things out, the column clearly labeled right-wing, something like A Voice From The Right. You succeed so fully in your writings, sometimes you make me feel like I am in an echo chamber. :)

I was a fan of your column before you won the Nobel. You are the only NYT columnist who shows in my email. If I see your column anywhere, I read it.

In fact, my respect for the Nobel people went up after you won. Even a columnist can win the Prize. How Ivory Tower can it be?

NYT should emphasize the psychology of some of the right-wing phenomena. But then it does. Only last week I read the transcript of the Ezra Klein Show. The guest argued people are lonely. And then they fall for all that hate.

Sangham Sharanam Gachhami. (I go to the community.) As the Buddhists say. "Whenever two or more of you gather in my name, there I will be." That is a promise in the Bible. One-third of Americans live alone. That is blasphemous.

I subscribe to the NYT online for $1 a week. Probably the best bargain I ever got. Except for when there was no paywall. :) Come to think of it, crypto can solve the paywall problem. Super micropayments are the way.

What I admire most about you is your earnest desire to reach out to ordinary people with your complex topics explained as simply and clearly as possible. I wonder how many rewrites that might take.

Check me out on Mirror https://mirror.xyz/0x065e533120b87e5b4F5bfBF0802EB6428c237487 and see if you don't want to start creating Writing NFTs yourself. When you mint your first Writing NFT, you are converted. And I will take a victory lap. :)

Have a good day.

--
www.paramendra.xyz
www.paramendra.com



Before he makes his off the cuff science fiction announcements, perhaps Elon Musk should hold a convo with his top engineers.



With his Twitter antics Musk has managed to kill two birds with one stone. Both Tesla and Twitter seem to be going down.



Musk had been giving the impression there was a time not long ago when he was hanging on to the Tesla rocketship barely by the fingernails. And now he is saying he can walk and chew gum at the same time? Already people thought he spent all day on Twitter. And then he threatened to buy Twitter and become CEO. Tesla also had been facing some bad news of its own.



Elon. Renounce Trump. Repent. There are plenty of Republicans to choose from. Well, maybe not that plenty. But still, you get my point. Trump is fascist. Look at January 6.

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Monday, May 30, 2022

Elon Musk's Cyber Stalking AOC

Elon Musk tweeted at AOC for a public comment made by AOC. It was not even directed at anybody. It was a general comment made about social media in general.

You could argue the social media tries too hard through their algorithms to take people away from the first five commandments.

Musk said, don't hit on me, I am shy. AOC deleted her tweet.

Musk is a 300-pound gorilla (literally) who had a chilling effect on the conversation. He made a hugely sexist remark to drive away someone from the conversation. What he said had a silencing effect.

This is wrong. He is trying too hard to be a right wing gadfly.

This is the kind of racism that his car factories are in trouble for.

AOC is the progressive star. She is the next generation of leadership. She is America's own Greta Thunberg, only older.



AOC is a public official. She is a Congresswoman. She is an elected person. She represents We The People. She made a legitimate criticism. An appropriate response would have been a legitimate or a lame defense of social media. But what Elon Musk did was racist and sexist.

Granted Elon Musk is a complex picture. He has taken a heroic stand for Ukraine, and done heroic things for Ukraine, and I admire that.

But he is not a package deal I have to accept. I have and will praise his good work. But I will also criticize his bad behavior. This was bad behavior.

On thate note, how about a wealth tax? I call it forking. Beyong a billion, your net worth forks. You keep the voting power in your company. We The People take the money and solve drinking water and housing. And the planet.



Regret, apologize, and get a fresh start, Elon.

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