Musk's new idea
Ryantific_theory @ Ryantific_theory @lemmy.world Posts 0Comments 186Joined 2 yr. ago
Musk's new idea
I mean, he had a genuinely good reputation prior to the big money and PR back in 2012-ish. I followed him because I love space stuff, and he was this awkward nerd pushing for electric cars, solar power, and reusable rockets, which were so insane it was basically considered impossible. Most of his early twitter conversations were discussing rocket details with other space nerds, pulling videos of RUDs on request, and sharing some of the hidden numbers that we'd normally never have access to. He was genuinely involved in the early years at SpaceX.
Up until he called the guy who saved the cave children a pedo, he was basically held up as one of the individuals who would be responsible for changing the world for the better. An actual example of capitalism being used to push society forward. Then it was a steady downward spiral, but early Elon was basically just a nerd that liked rockets and green tech. Had he stuck in that lane, and not been greedy about squeezing every penny of profit out of Tesla workers, he'd probably still be considered the "real life Iron Man" instead of another classic example of how capitalists are consumed by greed.
So, don't get me wrong, I am deeply disappointed in what he's decided to do with himself, but he was a legitimately popular figure and led SpaceX to face off against the military-industrial space industry and break a monopoly that's been in place for half a century. The myth was exaggerated, but his initial popularity was earned before being wasted.
To authorize repelling a slowly gathering military coup? That's an incredibly low bar to commit treason, since honestly, even at the highest levels military bureaucrats aren't going to be much wealthier than 10 mil. Unlike Congress, there's a much closer eye kept on the finances of military leaders because they're paranoid about foreign nations bribing them. It's physical national security, which is one of the few areas that money doesn't hold absolute power.
Even if they stood to lose a few million, there are plenty of genuine patriots, as well as people smart enough to realize that overthrowing the government by force does not mean the law instigating it gets repealed, but that the entire legal structure of the United States is no longer functioning. That's fifty different militias reporting to states, Naval, Army, and Marine branches with hundreds of billions of dollars in ordinance that's explicitly empowered to not follow unethical or illegal orders. It'd be a disaster for the coup throwers unless they managed a movie villain level simultaneous takeover of the Pentagon.
I'm not saying a coup is impossible, but the idea of rich people successfully overthrowing the American government by "hiring an army" is so cursed to failure that I almost don't know where to even start. Could they cause unprecedented chaos and potentially kill a large portion of the government? Possibly. Could they succeed? Absolutely not.
Also, this whole chain completely ignores the fact that Congress would never set the cap at 10 million. I doubt they'd set it at a hundred million. My bet would be one billion, where it wouldn't actually affect any of them. Were they to actually pass a 10 million dollar cap, the world would be such a different place that we wouldn't need to worry about a handful of grumpy generals inciting treason.
Sure, but that's something for reddit users to do. There are 63k active Lemmy users monthly, and there are 430 million active Reddit users monthly. I dropped Reddit with the app death, but people are vastly overestimating the direct impact that Lemmy could possibly have on Reddit.
Reddit's not gonna start dying until the population starts migrating in significant amounts to alternatives, which is probably going to be a little cataclysmic for Lemmy.
I'm pretty sure "we're" not doing the r/place protest. Lemmy has 63k active users per month, per the most recent user stats. Reddit pre-protest had 52 million daily active users and 450 million monthly active users.
I'm sure Reddit's metrics have probably taken a hit, but it's going to be the future people leaving Reddit for alternatives that kill it, not Lemmings that have already jumped ship shunning it. One small subreddit could individually take over Lemmy.
I like Lemmy, but it's pure hubris to think that we would even be noticed by Reddit, outside of being a place to siphon users away to.
Yeah, the initial concept work for Rick and Morty was absolutely awful, but between the two of them it somehow fused low brow insanity and nihilistic narrative depth into something way better than it had any right to be. I can see people being thrown off by losing Roiland as a voice actor, but I think the real hit is going to the unreasonably solid blend between their script writing.
What do you mean "now what?" lol. Assuming an American-centric or Euro-centric point of view, they would use their extremely expensive military armaments that can't be purchased in large quantities by private organizations, and crush the rebellion. The government is the government because they have a monopoly on violence.
I mean, really. Their money is in banks subject to the oversight of the countries they're trying to raise an army against. People may be relatively cheap, but they still need to be paid quite a bit to attempt to fight the military head on. Freeze their accounts and they're screwed. Musk's entire fortune isn't even a single years worth of funding for the US military, and even if all the billionaires pooled their money it would take years to accumulate the excess hardware that is allowed to be sold and then train their PMCs on hardware. Years that they wouldn't have if a bill was passed to cap wealth inequality.
We may yet reach the corporate dystopia where businesses can directly challenge governments, but we're not quite there yet. At least not in the first world. Russia may have shot itself in its confusion, but that's because the rich already are the government there.
Yeah, bit of a shame that the acronym wound up being a lightning rod for engagement instead of, you know, the actual article lol. But despite it being around for at least a year (from when I was poking around), I think this was the first time many people saw that particular acronym. Especially after LGBTQ+ became the definitive inclusive option, albeit not as permanently as I'd imagined.
At any rate, I feel like GSM is at least easy to use as an umbrella and lacks the charged history of queer being a reclaimed word. It might not spread awareness of smaller groups directly, but at least it keeps the focus on topic.
I assume it's 4.5k rupee, since Gurgaon is in India. No idea what that means in practice though lol.
Yeah, Reddit gets something like 52 million daily active users and 450 million monthly users. Lemmy has 500k total and 150k active.
Even if all of Lemmy went over and engaged with Reddit, it wouldn't even be a blip compared to Reddit drawing a portion of their monthly users in. Especially when the discontent is over whether someone is contributing a fractional percent to the vagaries of engagement, and whether that meaningfully benefits Reddit, which is further predicated on this being a big brain move to collect engagement numbers and not Reddit flailing for anything to distract the community.
Might as well sneak a sign for Lemmy into there and use the unhappiness at Reddit to spread the news.
I mean, mythologically speaking, vampires care about the religion of man because god actually exists and literally defends the faithful from their predation. Vampires also aren't lawyers, barring an exceptional sci-fi series, so the rules they operate by are mystical and holistic. They can't enter a home because it is a threshold defined and empowered by those living within, not by the laws that declare their ownership.
Squatters would be safe so long as they saw the place they lived as home. Generally someone who lives within the home and therefore contributes to the threshold is required to invite them in, but sometimes agency can be granted to others (i.e. a doorman or friend), but agency cannot be taken (i.e. the state). So the 4-year-old can invite them in, because it is their house until their parents kick them out. They also can't cross running water because it purifies evil, same with why they're burned away by the sun.
That said, it's not like there's a clearly defined foundation for their operation, and modern authors have modified how vampires work numerous times, so it really varies on a case by case basis.
I like the rule lawyering, but the fuzzy conception of vampire law is that they require an invitation to enter a home, but nobody would expect an abandoned home to stop them, indicating a holistic rather than a technical definition. The state can repossess the home, but if the entire police force is vampires they'll be unable to cross the threshold so long as those living there view it as a home.
For example, a worker drone that keeps a bed at their office and lives there part-time, it makes sense that a vampire could enter their office without invitation because it isn't a home despite living there. However, alter the situation to an even sadder worker drone that lives full-time in their office and considers it to be their home, can the vampire enter? I posit nay, the vampire will need an invitation to enter their sad office home.
From poking around, it seems like GSM (Gender and Sexual Minorities) is the general successor to LGBTQ and all assorted acronyms. Obviously not as popular but it at least has everyone baked into it and doesn't have any charged language, given the ongoing debate over whether queer has been reclaimed as a word or remains a slur.
Though, immediately after discovering it I did see people adding an R to make it GRSM (Gender, Romantic, and Sexual Minorities), which in theory covers every possible member of the LGBTQ+ family.
I guess I don't quite see why they would then be joining the queer community if they feel being under the queer umbrella isn't accurate. Wouldn't they be allies, and not members?
I know that membership and support are delicate topics and I don't want give the impression of pushing against acceptance, but if you want your identity to be represented as a headline letter in the queer community, but also don't consider yourself queer, what exactly is the intent?
It just seems like at that point switching over to GSM makes a lot more sense than attempting to represent every identity directly, especially when it begs the question of why non-binary, pansexual, and others are excluded in preference to IA2+ folks. Idk, just seems like a fraught topic.
What if you wanted to go to heaven
But god said "your hands are full of penis."
Well, I guess it's good for Lemmy to get this out of the way now, so when it happens again in the future, everything will have already been worked out.
I mean, at least President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho actually listened to people smarter than him in an attempt to fix the issues plaguing the country that he governed, even when it went against enormous corporate interests. So, arguably Idiocracy is actually a step up from where we're at.
I guess it's less of an issue in text, but LGBTQIA2S+ is way too much to say in conversation, and attempting to use terms that can't really be spoken feels weird. Just being able to say queer community instead of listing five letters every time the LGBTQ community came up in conversation was a relief, so to see it potentially expanding in the other direction almost feels stressful.
I mean, wasn't the purpose of LGBTQ for the Q to encompass everyone that's not heteronormative and not lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans? Not trying to rag on attempts at representation, but attempting to enumerate every member of a diverse group, as the acronym for the group itself feels doomed to be unwieldy. Being honest, it reads like a product ID at first glance.
Plus, if you check out the link OP posted, they offer "Gorgeous call girls in Gurgaon in 4.5k with free home delivery" lol. How could they turn down the Amazon Prime of escort services 😂
I mean, isn't RFK Jr. getting a ton of money from Republicans, as well as support from folks like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, and favorable right wing news coverage? Guy was also once celebrated as a champion of the environment?
Can't say I'm terribly impressed, even before his ethnically targeted Covid conspiracy. Though I do laugh at the fact that he's out fundraised all but Desantis and Trump on the Republican side, with only 20% of his donors identifying as Democratic donors. It's such a hilariously bad attempt at a spoiler candidate, that the amount of faith I would lose in humanity if it worked would be on par with Trump winning.
There's nothing wrong with SpaceX's Mars launch plan, and while the rocket travel plan is niche (read: ultra rich), it's viable assuming Starship winds up hitting the same reliability levels as airplanes. Course, worst thing that happens is a couple hundred millionaires and billionaires die, so... I see no downsides lol.
Obviously, I'm not gonna defend Elon himself, but sending a Super Heavy to Mars isn't some grand project like it would be for NASA. For one, other than the engines it only takes a couple of months to build a new booster and Starship, and for two it would take a minimum of 6 months for the Starship to reach Mars after launch (from the optimal window), essentially tying up a single Starship. It also tests low gravity propulsive landing, which is being designed for one of the Artemis landers, as well as the fuel conversion process using solar power to convert CO2 into methane rocket fuel. Which would greatly simplify future NASA projects for Mars.
I doubt there would be a NASA mission on an untested launch platform, but the lack of payload is also what makes it so cheap. They might toss some projects as a just in case, but it's otherwise an interplanetary proof of concept. I might hate Elon, but SpaceX is currently the best rocket company around, with the Super Heavy likely to make the Space Launch System obsolete the moment it's certified for government launches.