“Ethically and follicly challenged” Frank Luntz

“The matrix.” Dude, you are a billionaire. You hang out with billionaires, and the most powerful public officials in the world. You are the matrix. Fuck off with this gaslighting fake-populist bullshit.

When assholes like Musk and Friedman say garbage like this, they are advocating for taking away people’s power. People as collective wield power through government. They want to, instead, concentrate power in a small ruling elite class of oligarchs. It’s fundamentally un-democratic, and un-American.

Earlier today I was writing about how we are in a full blown constitutional crisis now. Then I realized that we aren’t. The crisis is over and the Supreme Court chose to abandon the constitution. The crisis was happening before this decision was made, but very few people were aware or alarmed about it. We are now in a state where I doubt there’s any legal recourse. We’ve moved on to another stage and that terrifies me.

Sotomayor’s written dissent explicitly says that this decision makes the US President a king that and can now act with impunity. This is effectively the end of the republic as described by the constitution.

Ok, sounds like the Supreme Court is just sorta all-in on institutional corruption. Got it.

As an organization, they are actively and intentionally interfering with electoral politics. Their lifetime appointments were designed to remove them from that dynamic, but they have decided to bypass that principle. The structure of our federal government is designed to deal with problems like this by having the other branches check them when they step out of line like this. Unfortunately, neither of the other branches have shown any desire to take action. As a result we are currently caught in a self-reinforcing death spiral of anti-democratic corruption that will eventually undo the union unless something changes. What a time to be alive.

It’s remarkable how quickly OpenAI has speed run into evilcorp status.

Oprah is a bullshit artist. She has always been a bullshit artist and she got rich peddling bullshit. Her efficiency promoting pseudoscience throughout her career makes her a blight on society, forever deserving scorn for the people she helped to hurt. We are collectively dumber because of her efforts, and she gets to live her life lavished by luxury and adulation as a result.

Veritasium. After he put that uncritical commercial for the self driving car company on his feed I couldn’t take any of his content seriously anymore.

Hans, are we the baddies?

Tesla spent years building a brand identity that is intimately woven together with Musk. It’s damaged goods now as far as I’m concerned. Every time I encounter one of its products I think about it. It wasn’t too long ago when I was eagerly following product updates in the hopes of eventually buying a car power wall or that solar roof system. I was enthusiastic about rationalizing away the poor build quality and terrible customer support. Now, I would never buy a thing from them and I’m happy to pass judgement on anyone who does. $tslaq