NVGiant Waste of Time

Lots of that to go around. Like I said earlier. Elon was pro-subsidy when he needed the government's help to scale up Tesla. Now he is seemingly anti welfare for anyone but him. Anyway, I was and still am pro EV subsidy. I have zero issue with Musk using that government support as it was intended to create an innovative, booming company (well, Tesla used to be innovative, anyway) that employs thousands, made him the richest man on earth, and made the U.S. the center of the early EV market. I just hate how he—and as @happycamper pointed out, plenty of others—push to change the game to snuff out competition that is using the same support he enjoyed.

SpaceX has been a great company, for sure. But I have one more gripe about Tesla, another company I admired and the business that made SpaceX possible. Tesla took billions in subsidies and guaranteed loans to help make it a successful, profitable company, and those programs helped make Elon unfathomably rich. It was a great partnership that I would do again in a heartbeat. But now it seems Elon wants to cut those same subsidies and guaranteed loan programs, in effect limiting his competition before it can truly flourish. I get that some have been against those subsidies from the beginning. That's a perfectly defensible position. But that's not Musk. He's the largest beneficiary of them and now is cool with getting rid of those same programs, which will cut less mature competitors like Rivian off at the knees. That stinks. And if he gets his way, it is going to end up ceding the EV market (which is to say the auto industry in a decade or two) to the Chinese.

Option 4: Just fire all the climate scientists. Boom. Climate change solved! I’m not sure about logging the Pacific Palisades. … But obviously the West needs a shift in management policies — increased logging, more controlled burns, etc., etc., etc. — that better account for a changing climate.

10-page thread? Overreaction from the same posters who spend all day on here decrying the left’s overreactions? I’d say you still have it.

Me too!

Say what you want. But Trump would have been a fucking AMAZING car salesman.

It doesn't even need to be respect for the office. Just respect for themselves. I didn't watch the speech. Just the post-speech video clips. ... They looked ridiculous and it was hard to look at the spectacle and feel like that was a party ready to meet the moment. Slotkin looked like someone to take seriously. Everyone else was fighting for a seat in the clown car.

Right?!

I have already clearly articulated that weather forecasting won't end. It will change and be put into private hands, which will come with significant downsides. Enjoy your wagering though.

I believe my response to most of this stuff has been far more tempered than yours. But thanks.

Pretty wild how much this is cheered on by a crowd unwilling to consider the functions of each agency and each department. To their point, though, we aren't going to lose the ability to forecast the weather. Instead, we are going to contract a private company to do it for us (Hi Starlink!), and it will be some combination of less reliable, less accessible, more expensive, and/or more limited in function than what we had.

That was one of the better rebuttals I've seen. Which is to say, Slotkin didn't hurt herself. I've been intrigued by her whenever I've heard her interviews. She seems like a smart, serious person, and we're in dire need of serious people in national politics.

Opinions vary.

I mean, that IS going to happen. Then again, AI is definitely coming for me, too.