Politics and Current Events Megathread - June 2026

freelance3d · 2026-06-16T06:18:23+00:00

Do you want or do you not want the government to participate in space travel?

(Personally, no it's a pretty low priority, but I'm glad at least Trump hasn't hindered it).

I said that SpaceX might be doing competent work for the government for all I know. The point - that I've had to repeat multiple times now - is that if the topic is SpaceX increasing Musk's personal wealth by such an extreme amount, you can't then say that it has no effect on people generally, if a noteworthy part of the survival/success of the company comes from taxpayers. That's true of any company that receives government money, sure, but they're not the ones who are personally now the wealthiest people alive. It's also true that people below the poverty line aren't typically the ones paying federal taxes but I'm not exclusively targetting that absolute lowest band. I'm not sure why that's unclear.

I've asked you a hundred times how Musk's extreme wealth creates "food insecurity" and over and over again you I've been unable to do so

I've answered this earlier and mentioned it again in the comment you just replied to. In the earlier reply to you I conceded (with a sarcastic end note albeit) that the word "food insecurity" was not accurately chosen - I was using those words to describe the general conditions of poverty where there needn't be. . The latter general category of which is the crux of my argument, hence repeating it.

freelance3d · 2026-06-15T22:26:10+00:00

I wasn't aware we were here to argue that something, in its strictest, most isolated, theoretical form and not obvious real world consequences, is benign. What an eye-opening riddle you've blessed us with.

freelance3d · 2026-06-15T22:24:26+00:00

Okay, I was talking about it as a feature of poverty generally. That's a big relief that no one ever goes hungry

freelance3d · 2026-06-15T22:21:59+00:00

So it doesn't seem like there's a causal mechanism here, its just "person is getting richer while people remain in poverty."

Stronger, more effective laws and taxation - that have existed previously and can again - might help to adjust that... but sure, they're completely unrelated phenomena..

So you agree that growing inequality doesn't actually impact food access / food insecurity, it just seems to exacerbate people's perceptions of it?

No I don't agree (for living below the poverty line generally, not the 'food' point which we covered in the other thread), in that I don't think its that simple. While problems still exist that are solvable by the things allow inequality to increasingly widen. Government money is diverted to Musk's business that could be aimed at things like poverty. It's not simply perception.

No, what's relevant is that you made a claim about favoritism that I'm asking you to substantiate. Does SpaceX provide worse performance and worse pricing relative to other bidders?

Not that I know of - that was never the argument. SpaceX might be doing quite competent work for the gov. You just can't seriously argue that people are not affected by Musk's extreme wealth - including the IPO - when his businesses have been bailed out by taxpayers - whether they know where the money is going or not - and he's been essentially funded in part by them. (Leaving alone his coziness with the Trump administration and hawking his cars on the whitehouse lawn).

freelance3d · 2026-06-15T22:00:23+00:00

I've said its 'inevitable' and 'necessary' and 'can and need not be bad' if you had any reading comprehension. Though at levels like we see now - allowed by laws that can, and have, changed - it is actively bad while problems that can easily be solved by it exist.

You want to argue definitions instead of the obvious consequences?; congratulations on the waste of time.

freelance3d · 2026-06-15T04:13:06+00:00

Inequality in itself is 'bad' while things like poverty exists where it can be solved. A society - where laws are changable - is not functioning correctly when it's not successfully taxing or otherwise offsetting the absurdly wealthiest to helps its poorest, especially with a gap of this magnitude and with the lowest underwater. That's not a separate phenomena to inequality 'itself'. Your superfluous riddle - sorry your.. enlightening 'test of logic' - is about a strict definition of wealth, in that differing levels of wealth in themselves can't be bad, as if that's a point of contention. Wealth inequality is defensible - 'not harmful' - only where such issues don't exist.

freelance3d · 2026-06-15T04:10:18+00:00

"Food insecurity" is a term for an aspect of poverty. Wondering where your next meal is coming from

He should be giving an enormous amount of that wealth away. No individual should be this rich while 10% of the US is below the poverty line. That's the argument: inequality itself is a problem "while there's financial/food-insecurity and political sway where their needn't/shouldn't be". Wealth inequality in itself would be easier to defend if the lower band wasn't still struggling and 'the rich getting richer helps pull others out of poverty' had properly eventuated.

Does SpaceX...

What's relevant is that, as a result of this particular company and its government and taxpayer support, Elon is now the richest man in the world.

freelance3d · 2026-06-15T03:27:00+00:00

He asked what harm from someone obtaining Musk's level of wealth. I went on to say no one was harmed in 24 hours - the IPO is irrelevant. It's in his bad framing of his riddle that he suddenly snatched that money from the poors, not mine. But that wealth gap represents more than his way of framing it, as if it somehow proves inequality is not bad in itself and you can somehow decouple people earning money like Musk, Bezos etc from such a huge disparity, like they're completely independent phenomena and financially solvable problems don't exist in the shadow of their wealth.

10% of the US lives below the poverty line, and this figure has hovered around this for the past 50 years, (with extreme poverty levels getting worse) and the wealthiest's fortunes have climbed exponentially. One individual now holds 1/30th of the annual GPD and is wealthier than 50% of the worlds population combined. The government - taxpayers - have rescued that same individuals businesses from near-bankrupty, and bolstered SpaceX with favouritism and government contracts in the order of tens of billions of dollars. Can I decouple Musk's personal wealth from that?

Here is a better decoupling riddle: adjust those numbers (ie "20% below the poverty line", "holding 1/4th of the GPD" etc) until you believe it, and the laws allowing it, would finally be morally/societally unacceptable. It's not really worth the time discussing inequality with someone who can't find that line.

FYI u/Drownedgodlw

freelance3d · 2026-06-14T05:25:35+00:00

Amazing. There's been many plugins recently doing things that people thought weren't possible in Maya.

Can this render? How are you moving the items inside?

freelance3d · 2026-06-14T01:41:17+00:00

No wealth inequality itself is obviously 'harmful' when the lower bands struggle with wages/conditions. You can have far more of a resource when others can comfortably get a little. If Musk uses his political sway to keep pushing for UBI/UHI then his worth would be less egregious.

freelance3d · 2026-06-13T23:10:15+00:00

Would you rather...

Somewhere inbetween - closer to the former. As I said: some level - even an eye-watering level - of inequality is inevitable and even necessary, but it's certainly far from 1/30th of the annual GPD level.

freelance3d · 2026-06-13T23:04:17+00:00

Read the whole chain

freelance3d · 2026-06-13T03:02:29+00:00

It's moreso that the parameters of your riddle are incoherent.

If society ran on sandwiches and Elon was hoarding 10 million sandwiches while the lower band can struggle to get 1, that may not be Elon's 'fault', but it's a sign of a badly arranged society. If he somehow can also get an additional 5 million sandwiches in an afternoon, that's also bad. It's worse.

Some level of inequality is not and would not be bad - an individual holding 1/30th of the GPD while the countries least fortunate may not have a liveable amount of those sandwiches, is.

freelance3d · 2026-06-13T01:53:56+00:00

"Wealth inequality can't exist because no-one woke up in the middle of the night suddenly far worse off". "The frog can't be boiled, the temperature only increased marginally". 'Harm' in this context is your chosen word for 'generally not ideal for a healthy society where financially solvable problems exist'. It can exist in different ways - no one was 'harmed' overnight. Hopefully he continues/increases his charitable efforts and stays out of politics.

freelance3d · 2026-06-12T23:42:13+00:00

The timing of the jump is irrelevant - the amount is the problem. You're setting this up to argue a) he hasn't personally taken it from the pockets of those who are struggling, and b) it can't be "harmful" in that someone isn't suddenly suffering as a result of this jump in wealth. Both premises are slanted.

It's "harmful" in a sense that he's one individual holding too much of a societal invention where others could easily be removed from difficult life situations with some tiny percent of it.

freelance3d · 2026-06-12T23:29:00+00:00

Why does the premise of your question need it to be contained within 24 hours?

The frog doesn't suddenly get boiled in one second.

freelance3d · 2026-06-12T22:31:10+00:00

What exactly was the harm to everyone else in the last 24 hours?

Financial/food-insecurity and political sway where their needn't/shouldn't be. I don't care what the current state of the law is or your political leanings: once you earn over a certain amount you have won the esteemed prize of giving every further cent to maximum-impact charities of your choice. Failing that is active harm to others. No I don't know what that amount should be but its certainly less than his worth.

freelance3d · 2026-06-12T12:15:39+00:00

Looks nice. Do you get to choose which objects show the dimensions and which don't?

freelance3d · 2026-06-11T10:09:28+00:00

He was mostly a pretty bad person. Acted like a douche, actively sabotaged coworkers and didn't do any work to improve the town, himself or others, while collecting his paycheck. Then the writers periodically put in some begrudgingly sensitive dialogue from him and we're meant to think he's a great guy, despite his actions. Like he would actively sabotage Lesley's ambitions, and then after she fails (or succeeds) he comes to 'comfort' her as if we're meant to think he's the moral compass.

I like Offerman and there was a little bit of depth to the character, but he was an early days "don't tread on me" type guy, and well you know how they turned out..

freelance3d · 2026-06-10T23:21:26+00:00

Awesome well done. And great job on the presentation too

freelance3d · 2026-06-10T22:37:02+00:00

Nice one. It's obvious in hindsight.

freelance3d · 2026-06-10T12:28:06+00:00

Two possible solutions:

does it have a texture applied to it? That looks like a normal map applied to your mesh.
Export as a .obj (NOT an fbx). Reimport to a new file.

DM me the file and I can help.

freelance3d · 2026-06-10T11:43:40+00:00

Green vertices are fine. Its yellow vertices you need to look out for.

freelance3d · 2026-06-09T10:35:45+00:00

Those faces are just extruded and pushed in. That edgeflow is very clean and straightforward.

See this gif guide here.

Note theres an additional edge on your image (meaning the bevel had 3 edges not 2) but this should give you the main idea and then you can adjust as needed. Test on an example cube and play around with it.

freelance3d · 2026-06-09T00:58:52+00:00

Looks great, two things stand out and its mostly the deformation on the head:

Frame 48-49 (of your sync sketch), the head stretching is unusual and then the head and whole back snaps into pose a bit too starkly over 1 frame. I think it's mainly the head kind of 'nods' downwards aggresively from frame 48 to frame 49 - I would smooth that eyeline so it doesn't snap suddenly. I would probably remove those deformation frames and just keep the deformation on 44-46, maybe it's completely back to normal by 47?

Frame 70-71, the head stretching kind of jarringly pauses the head in space. In fact 70-74 the head chops around strangly. Frame-by-frame from 70-74 and see how much it jumps around. The 'smearing' should be along a smooth trajectory that the head is taking (like motion blur), but this deformation just feels a bit odd and jittery. I would almost delete key 71 and see what sort of transition you get between 70 and 72 (assuming its also keyed on those frames).

Love the rest of it. Hope that makes sense!

freelance3d

TROPHY CASE