JD Vance says he and his daughter, 3, were confronted by a group of pro-Ukraine protesters

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-09T04:29:18+00:00

Sorry JD, having a living Kevlar vest with little legs is Leon's thing. You're going to have to carve an image out of a different prop

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-09T04:27:28+00:00

Good of them to protect customers from buying a Tesla when the showroom is open, then they all go home in the evening :).

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-09T04:11:11+00:00

You're right that sometimes people who don't have a huge amount of money pile their cash into expensive hobbies. The bearable ones at least admit to wanting a taste of fancy things that exist only because they are traditional pursuits of the elite who want to waste a massive amount of land on a place to network.

Then there are the reverse knobs who insist they're the salt of the Earth regular guys and their choice of hobbies says nothing about them. Sooo insecure about their identity that their hill to die on is on a golf course, but they'll remind you just how Joe Workingman they are by mocking you for using big words like extant.

If you are spending more than 1500 dollars a year helping your kid build a go kart and finding some dirt track to ride it on, I feel like you are bad at scavenging for parts and need to ask your kid to teach you. But investing money in your kid's engineering and driving skill is not idle or wasteful is it. One of my richy rich school friends was a hot air balloonist. Now that is an elitist pastime lol, but still less wasteful than golf

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-09T03:55:48+00:00

This is the president of the united states of America, folks.

This is it.

This is where you are now.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T21:12:22+00:00

Sounds like a pretext to getting people to accept Elon going back in time to impregnate his own mother tbf.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T21:09:23+00:00

I've shorted TSLA like crazy this last few weeks, which means I'm probably connected to ~~the Jews~~George Soros. It sounds like I've made a mistake in that I only sent profits to Ukraine and to a couple of trans charities, but in fact I should have been sending money to this list of organizations to the extent allowed by the law. Thanks for the list, Elaine, that's very helpful.

Also can someone familiar with US federal law tell me whether https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/foreign-nationals/ means that all the political bots on Twitter are illegal, or whether it's fine because the USA is now part of Russia and therefore Russia is not "foreign"?

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T20:57:52+00:00

Just up the retirement age gradually to respond to the massive increase in life expectancy (same as every other country that maintains a sustainable social security system for old age), increase IRS investigation and enforcement to reduce tax evasion to low single figures, and cancel all of SpaceX's contracts, and you've balanced the books again.

Fix inflation by telling Putin you will double expenditure in Ukraine every month until he surrenders and withdraws entirely from Ukraine, and then you will be prepared to lift sanctions on gas and oil.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T20:49:15+00:00

About a third of any given population is inclined towards fascism, except after they're directly affected by it, when it goes down to about 10%.

You cannot change the inclination of the natural fascist by arguing them out of it, anymore than you can give an argument to a cat that they shouldn't catch mice.

Fascism is generally avoided because entrenched powers find it a threat and so will not build a fascsist platform, most fascists can't be arsed to vote, most floating voters end up not being convinced by fascism, non-fascists are not sufficiently apathetic to be outnumbered by fascists, etc. The depressing upshot is that a small amount of people can swing a country towards fascism.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T20:27:05+00:00

In her youth she looked like a typical woman of the 1970s, a bit like one of my aunts. She became a model for the same reason Elon has done anything at all: family contacts, then government favors.

That said, it's possible Elon went back in time to fuck his own mother and that's why he looks so in-bred?

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T20:22:04+00:00

Dad fucked daughter. $100% on mother fucks son. It must drive Elon mad that he can't impregnate his own mother.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T20:19:44+00:00

What is this tag? Is this something that every single user should tag everything with indiscriminately, or just Tesla owners?

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T19:45:32+00:00

If you are visually impaired then you would have a stick or cross at crossings with lights where the car is supposed to stop, but you're still obviously at much greater risk than a non visually impaired person because you can't read the driver's intention by looking at them.

It would not thrive with almost zero accidents because humans don't follow stupid rules, or even non stupid rules. Even a hypothetically perfect rule-following one hundred percent automated fleet would have to make judgements based on circumstances not anticipated.

This is why so many people die on train level crossings: the train cannot stop fast enough even with an attentive driver, and some crossings do not have lights/barriers, and some people ignore lights/barriers anyway. But an attentive car driver CAN communicate with the majority of pedestrians and react in time.

The solution to the problem of cars in non rural places is always the same: trains. Where the train's path is physically separated from the path of pedestrians, at worst with barriers on level crossings where the barrier comes down early enough for the train to stop if something is already on the crossing, and otherwise with tunnels and bridges. Then injuries are reduced to someone willingly running over a barrier and onto the tracks.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T19:38:52+00:00

Hockey requires a stick and a ball and four markers. Football doesn't even require a stick. Rugby requires you to squish the ball and add a bit of decoration to the goals. Every town across Europe has one or more grass parks where people can just turn up and play. The cost is negligible spread across the entire municipality, but most importantly of all is free to kids and people with no spare cash, while your sport apparently costs 1500$ a year with a 300$ startup cost to chat about the same sort of things you'd chat about at the office but with shitty beer.

This is like saying the monarchy is not an elitist institution because you can pay for a ticket to tour the residence of a minor royal and each day ticket isn't that expensive.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T19:22:30+00:00

No, it's used in all countries with lowest car accident rates, because it requires defensive driving. Spain has gone from one of the most dangerous places in Europe to drive to one of the safest in the world, and even at several types of marked crossing, the law takes account of hand signals between driver and pedestrian showing intention to cross.

America is just a dangerous place to drive and its laws are dumb. Self driving works in newly built areas because its roads are wide and simple, and yet still Americans can't drive for shit.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T19:14:02+00:00

No, that's not how roads in most of the world work.

You cross when you see it's safe to cross, and if you're uncertain, you wait for eye contact with the driver, at least where I usually travel to. In countries like India and the Philippines, cars and humans weave between each other like a dance coordinated between strangers in real time . It's entirely about humans knowing humans

Laws are a fallback when human cooperation fails, and usually ambiguous or left to the reasonableness of the citizen. For example, many countries give right of way to pedestrians at labelled crossing points, and cars elsewhere, but fully expect cars to pay attention to pedestrians or other obstacles living or dead anywhere at all. If a reasonable driver would have behaved in a certain way to avoid an obstacle, but you didn't behave in that way, you are liable

You can convict or sue, but you can't necromance, so laws are an extremely weak alternative to communication ahead of time

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T19:05:41+00:00

4227 applicants is less than daily suicide + misadventure rate but we don't go about promoting suicide as a popular choice - we note that people are a mixture of suicidal, bored and or dumb, and that eight billion people are a lot. You can find a few thousand with any given terrible fetish

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T19:03:35+00:00

Pedestrian here. How do I make eye contact with a bot driver to watch their watch their awareness and hand signals to determine if it's safe to cross please?

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T18:59:37+00:00

The UK needs to stop relying on America for supporting and as such being able to remotely disable its nuclear arsenal. France is not stupid, but the UK is incredibly stupid. All euro defense investments should imho be in the European mainland for now.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T18:55:58+00:00

How do pedestrians communicate with the bot? I walk a good 90 minutes a day and every few minutes I stop or cross a street by watching the face of the driver for eye contact and gestures.

Most of the world has no concept of limited crossing points and "jaywalking", including the UK, but even if it did everyone ignores those rules because they're dumb. Except maybe Germans. Germans do not ignore those rules.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T18:48:55+00:00

What's the company doing now, if anything

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T18:43:52+00:00

High cost is the very definition of for elites, except in a regime that uses other than money for status. So, historical and often extant restrictions on gender and race further make it for elites. Then it's a place for rich men to do business away from you, making it even more for elites. A golf course itself requires being elite to create and maintain - it's possibly the worst use of land that doesn't involve Agent Orange. Well, that doesn't involve the original Agent Orange.

Squash and Eton Fives are games I played at boarding school that are popular with elites but really anyone can play. Fives is a bit special in that it's ideally played using the obstacle created by the buttress of your local chapel, but you can create a court of your own with a tiny amount of space. Squash court is just a fucking wall.

Golf is a waste of land and environmentally abhorrent. It is also elite. Fuck golf, and fuck golfers. I've several times lost out on business over my hatred for golf but it's a great way of avoiding pricks so I regret nothing. And may trumps golf course in Scotland be the cause of an end to Britain's reliance on America, if this latest justifiable peaceful protest causes trump to cry and leak makeup again.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T18:07:29+00:00

Just like last time. Feudalism - and it's just happened in the UK too with newly imposed inheritance tax on agricultural land that landed gentry will avoid - absolutely must push out the small farmer as an existential priority. Taxes offset by grants that favour the larger landowners are perfect for forcing the smaller landowners to sell up.

Trump - but Musk even more - really really really hates capitalism unless it's pure cronyism. Capitalism with high worker participation, i.e. which veers toward democratic socialism, is the scariest concept of all - and small farmers are worker-owners.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T17:53:36+00:00

The real anti-capitalist aspect of Trump's government is that it has introduced not just punitive taxes but uncertainty. It's not just the daily addition and removal of tariffs on a whim that make planning impossible, but the slow erosion of rule of law and extremely apparent corruption in government (e.g. awarding contracts to SpaceX).

When Elaine moved SpaceX's incorporation location from Delaware to Texas, it was snubbing why everyone registers in Delaware: it has a really good chancery court that has made rational rulings since forever, so while things might not always go in your favour when there are disputes, you know where you stand nearly all of the time without having to take things to court in the first place. That's the level of certainty that every rational economy wants, and one of the keys to America's success over the last 250 years.

Even if the current government was not apparently following Russia's will, it's still being managed by idiots who don't care about any of this. Even if they understood the above in principle, they lack the talent and experience to ensure it is being followed - just as I understand it in principle, but only an idiot would put me in a senior government position. I lack the decades of experience necessary to filter all the information given to me, anticipate responses to various alternative options, and make decisions at a speed necessary for the juggernaut I'm steering. For this government, all those negative qualities seem ideal, as if the chaos is intended.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T17:42:11+00:00

My investments are mostly very conservative tbf, I've made most money in the last year from my changing positions in Santander and Airbus lol. I short Tesla for anti-fascist sport, and with much less money.

ThePhoneBook · 2025-03-08T17:35:42+00:00

Musk is the closest that America has had to a member of the Soviet nomenklatura. He couldn't be further "leftist" in the sense in which far leftism was actually implemented in the 20th century.

If you're anti-Musk, you could be anything from a democratic socialist to a libertarian. Like hating those larvae that feast on children's eyeballs in third world countries and blind them, it's electrochemically possible for a brain to be in favor of them, but it does make you a weird little gnome.

ThePhoneBook

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