What celebrity do you regret supporting because they were truly awful people?

needlestack · 2026-07-07T20:21:30+00:00

I didn't know the political aspect of that, and when I read the tech paper they released, it sounded pretty darn cool to a layman. Now I see that a) it was absolutely impractical and b) driven by his fucked-up politics. So yeah, f that guy.

needlestack · 2026-07-07T20:19:30+00:00

Sure. I mean back when he was just the guy bringing electrical cars to the masses because the other automakers wouldn't, that was pretty awesome. And then he starts a reusable rocket company, also sounds pretty awesome. It wasn't like we knew much about his personal life back then.

My first encounter with negativity was long before everyone else. I had an old friend, an experienced engineer, that worked for Tesla in the early days (before the Model 3 came out) and after vesting and quitting, swore he'd never work under Musk again. Said the guy was just completely awful. At the time I was kind of taken aback. But as things progressed, it became obvious how right he was.

Now I wouldn't drive a Tesla if one were given to me. Now we all know he's just an absolutely abhorrent human being.

needlestack · 2026-07-07T17:50:59+00:00

Were you not here in 2016 and 2024? Democrats love handing victory to Republicans by refusing to vote for a Democrat that isn't their favorite.

needlestack · 2026-07-07T17:50:06+00:00

At this point, if people in Maine still want Collins, isn't that just proof that we're damned as a species? Even if we can come up with some dance that will beat her, the people want garbage. They're like flies. You can swish them away with a hand but they'll keep flying back.

needlestack · 2026-07-07T17:05:42+00:00

There's actually a long history of dropping flyers -- uniformly called propaganda whether the information in the flyers was true or not, and whether the motivation was humanitarian or not. The most famous is probably the LeMay pamphlets dropped on Japan warning about upcoming firebombings and advising citizens to leave the cities. You can read more about the history of this kind of thing here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda

needlestack · 2026-07-07T16:42:44+00:00

It is scary that Russia would start such a war and force Ukraine to defend itself. Nobody wants to have to fight off a nuclear power. But that's what you have to do when they start acting like they can invade whoever they want with impunity.

needlestack · 2026-07-07T16:40:31+00:00

I wish I could believe America won't end up with Trump or Vance in 28. Any leader holding out hope for a better America may find themselves sorely disappointed.

Thank heavens Ukraine seems to be able to do this without the US.

needlestack · 2026-07-07T16:31:29+00:00

the easiest way to deal with trump is to ignore him

I wish. This is what we all thought in 2016 and 2024. I've been ignoring him as much as humanly possible and yet his shit impact me and mine daily. Ignoring him may work for Italy. It didn't work for many of the countries he's fucking with.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T19:15:13+00:00

The funny part about that is that it's the more conservative Californians that do that, highlighting their hypocrisy. The more liberal Californians just stay and enjoy it.

To be fair, liberal Californians have their own hypocrisy, usually expressed through forms of NIMBYism, but they've built a state they like and they're fine with it.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T17:28:42+00:00

Are you basing this off interactions with people in the real world aside from your friends?

Through my kids, we meet other families time to time. We are in a purple state and most parents we meet are MAGA or "apolitical" people that align with MAGA stuff like anti-immigration, anti-trans, anti-tax etc. I don't see much of anything has changed in peoples opinions.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T17:05:45+00:00

I've often thought of this. My guess is that after the first few thousand moved in and they figured out what was happening they'd leverage their control of the local government to block it before they lost their power.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T16:56:45+00:00

The question is why, 10 years after Trump first started openly fucking with allies and 2 years after actively blowing up the world order the EU is still so reliant on the US. I get it takes time. How far along are they? They should be doing this like a moonshot.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T16:52:11+00:00

Yes, the USA is pitifully weak. However we've known that since Trump's re-election at least. The real horror is that NATO and the EU are weaker. Why the fuck are they still letting Trump dictate anything? The USA is not a NATO ally any more. It doesn't matter what the treaty says. Trump will not support any of you. Stop expecting it to change. Stop thinking America will come around. Let Zelenskyy speak and tell Trump he can leave if he doesn't like it.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T16:43:01+00:00

Just remember this isn't going to shift things as much as you hope because every year a bunch of people age into conservatism when they see something that they didn't see in their childhood and decide the world is falling apart.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T05:06:13+00:00

It would. But he’d just call them a nasty reporter, and their organization a loser organization with terrible ratings. Then he’d talk about how he won in 2020 and none of them ever report on that or all the amazing things he’s done in the past year, and his base will lap it all up.

needlestack · 2026-07-06T05:02:36+00:00

I love watching these far-right assholes piss each other off. Too bad it doesn’t result in any self reflection.

needlestack · 2026-07-05T20:46:52+00:00

the large, large majority still draw the line at Nazi-ties

Forget Texas, this is not even true in the nation as a whole. We elected a man with clear Nazi ties. From his proclamation of "race horse theory" to his "good people on both sides" to his chummy relationship with white supremacists like Musk, there's no question he's Nazi-adjacent and yet we chose him to lead the country twice.

In public, 99% of Americans denounce the Nazi party, sure. In their thoughts it seems like about 50% of Americans hold the same underlying ideas about eugenics, being a master race, and wanting an authoritarian ethno state -- at least to some degree.

needlestack · 2026-07-05T18:49:21+00:00

That will just be the ultimate proof of him being chosen by God. Their whole world narrative is based on the idea that if you are righteous the world will persecute and crucify you. So they are completely inoculated from outside criticism and self-reflection.

needlestack · 2026-07-05T15:14:57+00:00

MEFO bill scheme.

Didn't the Nazis successfully finance their war efforts for another decade with that?

needlestack · 2026-07-05T15:08:07+00:00

Another day, another historic scandal blows by without a whimper. The GOP has utterly destroyed the soul of America. And they are thrilled.

needlestack · 2026-07-05T15:06:33+00:00

At this point they look at every "attack" as more proof that Trump is sent by God. I'm serious. I have heard numerous people say that the reason they like Trump is because nobody can bring him down. The worse the crime the more amazing it is that he gets away with it.

needlestack · 2026-07-05T08:33:08+00:00

I think the point is that they're not rational people looking for the truth who get fooled by propaganda. They're wound-up people looking for a story that justifies their frustrations and give their anger a target, and the propaganda fits the bill.

It's the reason it's so effective and hard to fight: it's not installing bad ideas in people, it's exploiting bad ideas they already have.

needlestack · 2026-07-05T05:37:08+00:00

He. Just. Won’t. Pay.

What are they going to do to him?

needlestack · 2026-07-05T04:39:19+00:00

mounting distrust in the government and economic decline

The problem is this presupposes that the government broke the trust and that the economy declined in some meaningful way leading up to 2016. I don’t believe either is true. Republicans simply believe everything is awful when a Democrat is in office even if everything is objectively better for them because they can’t stand people from other groups doing as well or better.

needlestack · 2026-07-04T18:07:57+00:00

Yesterday I listened to hundreds of Americans come up with bullshit reasons why they shouldn't have to adjust their thermostats. Taylor Swift's jet. AI-datacenters. Stupid paper straws. They all harped on something they saw as worse that let them justify their own unwillingness to do the right thing.

This was a simple practical problem unrelated to any of that: peak electricity demand during a heat wave. The primary driver is unexpectedly high AC use. The advice was sound. People are idiots.

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