And how is Trump going to respond to that? Doesn't it make Trum look like a loser?
Doesn't it make Trum look like a loser?
Not sure, but several possibilities come to mind:
1. Trump is aware that it makes him look like a loser but is also aware that Musk is richer than him and doesn't see anything wrong with anyone at all knuckling under to someone richer than them.
2. Trump is aware that it makes him looks like a loser and plans to do something about it, but no plan will succeed between now and the inauguration and by then he will have forgotten about it.
3. Trump doesn't think it makes him look like a loser. He's not doing what Musk wants because Musk wants it, he just happens to be of one mind with Musk.
4. Trump will have Musk humiliated or assassinated before February, the first step in a consolidation of power much like Putin's Russia.
5. Trump will try to have Musk assassinated and fail, leading to a falling out between them and rift between Musk and the Republican Party. This weakens them both in the short term.
If I had to guess which of those was more likely, I'd go with either 2 or 3, but obviously with a big margin for error.
I supposed this should have gone in the previous thread, but watching this stuff in expectation of disaster is my probably my main vice right now.
6: Someone else in the revolving cast of Trump toadies will get to him and Trump will do that until the next toady greases by.
I said I wouldn't indulge in Kremlinology, but yeah, this seems to be a very different dynamic from anything we saw in term 1.
And unlike all of Trump's other bad hires or hires he gets tired of, he can't just shitcan Musk like all the rest. Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He's got a bigger megaphone. And he's got his own brand. I'm pretty sure there will eventually be a really big and really ugly falling out between the two of them. But it will take a while to get there and the costs are potentially quite large for both of them.
Yeah, who knows on this one. I wonder if it will go in broad strokes like it did with Bannon. Ongoing annoyance and then a real breach, but still committed to the same project, but at arms distance and Bannon focusing more on places other than the US.
But musk's money and platform make it different, as well as Trump's age and the whole Band of Billionaires thing in general.
To not disappoint I will point out that the media coverage of Musk is as bad if not worse than for T himself. Somehow, the fact that Musk launched massive amounts of acknowledged targeted disinformation through the campaign is one of those not looking back things. And almost worse (and from well before the election) their credulous coverage of every technology dream he farts out gets some coverage. (Maybe the press does not want to "miss" the next Starlink/SpaceX even if his fantasies are completely self-interested hoohah, particularly in the are of mass transit and driverless vehicle.)
he can't just shitcan Musk like all the rest
Oh, he can. One of them is president. The other is not. "Put not your trust in princes!"
"Like", as in he can't in the same way. He has the power to fire Musk, but not to drive him into the outer darkness.
R House members have started floating the idea of Musk for Speaker.
where's my gif of Michael Jackson eating popcorn?
If that's yours, you need to get a lawyer. Half the internet is posting that with no attribution.
It's just my popcorn. Not the whole thing.
10: Possibly more Senators than House members - I've seen Paul and Lee on this so far. Which seems likely to provoke inter-chamber rancor.
MTG of course who ever heard a stupid idea she didn't immediately parrot.
I support ignoring the news and also enjoying the parts that make the opposition's life harder.
It's Musk that can fire Trump! The 25th Amendment is just sitting there ready to be deployed.
Trump can't fire Musk, because he doesn't actually have a job.
I know everyone wants to take a media break (besides maybe Stormcrow?)
I almost commented on this when it came up in the polio thread. So couple of things:
1) I am consuming less media and not following things as closely. And certainly not engaging or commenting on it as much. Despite it being such a target-rich environment.
2) In general I am definitely experiencing anhedonia (word thanks to RFTS on Bluesky recently). Every fucking thing feels like it has a thin layer of shit sprayed on it. Not a useful response, but there it is.
Having so many media outlets be basically loss leaders for billionaires is showing itself as athing.
Our downstairs drains backed up, and the plumbers are tracking mud all through the house, so everything here feels like it has a thin layer of shit sprayed on it, because it really does.
Okay, they're gone and in fact were incredibly nice and cleaned the floor with clorox before they left. But their estimate for recommended repair is wow, I didn't even know numbers went that high. Maybe I'll just have the bathroom boarded up and put up an outhouse in the yard.
Some non-Duolingo Spanish for you, Moby (also applicable to jms' plumbing situation-- so sorry). The title phrase is a nice ser-vs-estar mini-lesson.
I've been saying "Es Cabrón", which I guess is too pessimistic.
The bathroom is working, for now, as they fixed the immediate problem. (There's a related, less immediate, and more catastrophically expensive, problem, which they have threatened to come back and fix next month.)
The immediate problem was that tree roots grew into, and clogged, the pipes. They removed the roots, but my question is, if the roots grew into the pipes, have they not literally breached the structural integrity of the pipes, which is necessary for their barest function? How are the pipes working now? How are they not broken to bits by the roots?
You can buy sewer line replacement insurance. At least you can here. It's pretty common that the lines fail on my street because they are now 100 years old.
No, "toiletries" does not mean that, toddler Pokey.
If the pipe leaks a little, that's really no different than pooping in your yard, which everyone does anyway.
You're probably imagining like one big root, but it's usually a big mass of tiny roots that came in through some relatively small hole. The vast majority of the pipes are probably still in tact and work. But the roots will grow back (they can hear running water!) and gradually break up the pipes, so eventually you'll have to do something.
At our house most of the old crappy pipes had been replaced by modern plastic pipes, but in order to save money instead of replacing them all the way to the sewer main under the street they just replaced them up to the edge of the street and then kinda shoved the new pipe into the old one. Since the new pipe was smaller this worked in terms of flow, but there was a huge gap for the roots to come in. It cost $7k to dig up the street and replace that pipe. Then after everything settled the roots found a different way in and backed up the pipes again. This time it was under the sidewalk! So another $7k. But now it seems to have all been fixed and we haven't had a problem in like 7+ years.
One interesting thing that we learned is that if everything is outside the house then you don't have to hire plumbers. Usually the plumbers have to hire an excavator to do most of the work, but you can just hire an excavator directly as long as it's all outside.
Oh wait, it was a bit cheaper than that. $7k is what our plumber originally quoted us. The excavators charged $4k each time. Of course this was pre-inflation.
If roots can hear water, why not play a louder recording of water running somewhere away from the pipes?
One fundamental problem at our house is that the city planted a red maple between the sidewalk and the street right over our sewer line. Sometimes I think about planning the perfect tree murder.
I'm really working on the pronouns.
In woke America, pronouns work on you.
One interesting thing that we learned is that if everything is outside the house then you don't have to hire plumbers. Usually the plumbers have to hire an excavator to do most of the work, but you can just hire an excavator directly as long as it's all outside.
We had a similar issue a few years back (not roots but rocks getting in because the pipes had become misaligned) and did the same thing. It was good to avoid the markup the plumbers would have charged to hire the excavator themselves, but excavating is a lot more expensive than plumbing! Also the excavator we hired looked exactly like Aaron Rodgers but was a lot nicer than he is reputed to be.
So, I learned via Bluesky that last night Musk X-ed "Only the AfD can save Germany."
I'm remember a post by Ogged, maybe 2015? when he asserted that Musk was just a younger Trump.
At the time, Musk still had enough of a veneer of sanity and/or I wasn't paying close enough attention that I tut-tutted his claim.
I take that back now!
I think he's worse than Trump. Trump is motivated by dominance and money and will use any tools available but isn't going to put in the extra effort to foment a race war if it's not profitable for him. Musk is a true believer in racial superiority, not surprising given his background. Not going to reach for the obvious Godwin comparison, but see 47- when you endorse a German neo-Nazi party what does that make you?
But can he bring down the price of eggs?
42/43: You exist in the context of all those who came before you.
51, though dealing in crude and offensive ethnic stereotypes, did prompt me to look up the relationship between romantic as in loving, and Romance as in languages - now I know that romantic comes from romance, which, before it meant "a story of adventure and courtly love", was originally a term meaning "a story composed in the local language rather than in Latin" and this comes from Old French "romanz" meaning "the vernacular language of France". There is also no connection between the Roma (Sanskrit), Rome (Latin), and roaming (Germanic) (which is a shame because it would be good if the English word for travelling around came from the name of a group best known for travelling around; a rare example of an ethnonym being used as a non-derogatory word).
Though presumably "ramble" is the frequentative form of "roam", cf "spark/sparkle", "grunt/grumble", "crumb/crumble", etc.
It would be hilarious if Musk got deported once the new administration actually takes power.
It's only the frequentive form of grunt if it's from the Grumble region of France. Otherwise it's sparkling moaning.
Also, if you don't already have an easily accessible "clean out" on the sewer line outdoors, absolutely get one if they're already doing work on it. With a cleanout plumbers can deal with stuff like cutting roots without ever entering your house! Plus it's super easy to see whether the sewer is backed up in the pipe before it reaches the point where it's backing up through the toilets. (We never actually had backup coming out of our fixtures, showering would cause the toilet to bubble and we were able to work out that meant the sewer was backed up.)
We did have water flooding the floors because the wax ring on the toilet had failed. I replaced it with a more durable type, which was not much more expensive and easier to install than a wax one.
And yes on the cleanout. If you don't have one definitely get one installed if you start having sewer line problems.
We have a cleanout in our new French drain. The old one had a cleanout that I made with a hammer during a bit of flooding.
What if I have lead in my sewer line pipes?
We probably need to buy a car soon ish. I hate buying cars. We haven't bought one in nine years. Also we want a big SUV AWD that can tow 5000 lbs, because we are going to make this purchase exceedingly annoying.
It's easier if the 5000 lbs is on wheels.
I bought the world's stupidest SUV, but it's still running 18 years later.
The front bumper might be held together by gorilla tape, but also heart.
52: Isabel Fonseca quotes a young British Roma fellow making the same joke in "Bury Me Standing": "It's cos we're always roamin', innit?"
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The people you talk to when playing Whack-A-Mole with fraudsters though!
Civilian DOD employee in a state with a lot of Mormons, met someone online who convinced him to invest in an obviously fake cryptocurrency website, has already lost at least $380,000 that we know about, including $235,000 that he took out a HELOC loan for, with no plan for repaying the loan except his notional profits from the crypto trading, and we've had three very serious conversations with him making it absolutely clear that this is the exact scam methodology we see at work every single day, and yet he still thinks he's going to get all his money back and more besides! Why are people so goddamn stupid? Bet you anything he voted for Trump
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They named a whole NFL team after those.
Its bad to measure your MPG in touchdowns.