Norway sovereign wealth fund rejects Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay deal
Tesla’s Board of Directors is asking shareholders to approve a pay plan for Musk that could see him granted almost $1 trillion in stock and expand his voting powers at the company. The full award would be contingent on Tesla hitting certain milestones over the next 10 years.
And we wonder why socialism is on the ballot these days.
Supreme Court case to decide the fate of Trump’s tariffs
The Trump administration declared three national emergencies to justify tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China, which prompted the first lawsuit. In total, Trump has declared nine national emergencies since taking office in January.
Totally normal.
Tech billionaire’s donation brings Tesla Cybertrucks to Las Vegas police | AP News
“Welcome to the future of policing,” Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said during a recent press conference, surrounded by the Cybertrucks while drones hovered overhead and a police helicopter circled above him.
They’re really leaning into the whole dystopian future look…
I’ve been de-stickering my laptop today. Only one left. I’m thinking of leaving it on. It speaks to my current view of the world.
We went to see “Back to the Future” last night in the theater. Two reasons, really. 1) It is a classic and I love it. 2) To escape the hellscape that is current America for just a little bit of time.
And I must say, it was delightful. Even despite the mother/father/son love triangle 🤣
Also, Lea Thompson. Wow.
During October 30th’s episode of Slate’s Polotical Gabfest, David Plotz said the following:
People are not intimidated out of voting in this country right now.
David, how can you say that? People are afraid to go to the Home Depot right now.
Be careful. Your privilege is showing.
No one should be surprised by this. This is the same Republican talking point regarding any social program (welfare, food stamps, etc).
Helping people is NOT in their makeup.
I don’t understand smoke detectors. At 1:57am, I awoke to the dreaded chirp. I fumbled around upstairs and found the offending device. Not having a 9V battery handy, I couldn’t change the stupid thing. So I got up and did a little work, and went back to sleep around 5.
Got up at 7:30, showered, and went to the coffee shop for breakfast and news. Got back around 9, and…nothing.
No chirping. No sound. Nothing.
What in the actual hell?
Last night, Jayme and I attended a launch party (so to speak) for Ken Burns’ new documentary film “The American Revolution”. Sponsored by Georgia Public Broadcasting (our local PBS affiliate), it was hosted at Jayme’s own Georgia Highlands College. Clips of the six-episode documentary series were shown, and a discussion with local professors and museum coordinators followed. All in all, a nice, nerdy evening.
Side note: The documentary looks phenomenal. I can’t wait to watch it.
It didn’t escape me why this particular film may be coming out when it is. According to people familiar with production of the film, Burns has been working on this for about 10 years. I would have to guess he planned on its release to perfectly coincide with the lead up to America’s 250th birthday. Certainly a milestone year.
But as I was watching some of the excerpts, a really depressing and resigned feeling came over me. (And this is not exactly new for me these days. I’ve been struggling with this for a while now.) When you study this period of American history and the birth of the United States, you are inundated with stories. And you read (and even memorize) some passages that capture the ideals that we like to think define America and the American way:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
“…with liberty and justice for all”
“…land of the free, and the home of the brave”
These are cornerstones of what America stands for. Or what America is supposed to stand for. The problem is, right now, America doesn’t stand for these things. In the current climate, America stands for bigotry. It stands for division. It stands for exclusion. It stands for (blatant) corruption. It stands for freedoms for only a certain type of people. It stands for pulling people off of the streets by masked men. It stands for a government not of the people and by the people, but a government by a singular authority. It stands for removing healthcare assistance in order to enrich the wealthy.
I’m dreading the next 9 months, if I’m being honest. Leading up to July 4, 2026, there will be celebrations. There will be calls for an outward displays of patriotism. There will be pressure put on all Americans to get behind the country, because “it’s our birthday!” There will be whitewashing of the current climate and a reversion to the “ideals of our forefathers”, as we put on our hats and make way for the Uncle Sam float to come barreling down Constitution Ave.
And I just…can’t.
How can I cheer for a country that doesn’t even live up to its own ideals?
How can I boast that America is the greatest country in the world when ICE can snatch and arrest students on their way to school?
How can I stand proudly and sing the National Anthem when it specifically calls out a “land of the free”? We are literally in the process of removing freedoms from American citizens.
How can I sing the praises of “all men are created equal”? Clearly, in the America I live in right now, we are not all equal. The Supreme Court said as much.
How can I stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance when it ends “with liberty and justice for all”? (Put aside the idea of indoctrination, which is a concept that has been purposely (and erroneously) thrown around re: universities recently. Let’s just focus on the “for all” part.) It doesn’t represent where our country is right now. It just doesn’t.
Day after day, week after week, all I want to do is scream at the top of my lungs “Don’t you see how messed up we are right now?!?!”
And yet, I don’t believe lots of people see what’s happening as bad. In fact, I think they really do believe it’s good. My logical brain just cannot square that circle. If [what’s happening right now] is good, then are the ideals set out by our forefathers…bad? Both of these ideas can’t be good or bad at the same time. They oppose each other. Am I the only one feeling this?
It’s maddening.
My naive hope is that the next 9 months are be focused on fixing it, not celebrating it. But it won’t be.
And I’m really struggling with that.
Body camera video captured the moment that Baltimore County police confronted a high school student after an A.I. gun detection system mistakenly determined that a student had a weapon.
County leaders are now calling for a review of that system.
During the footage from Monday’s incident, officers are seen approaching the student at Kenwood High School, searching him, and then stunned when they themselves realize what A.I. flagged as a gun was just a bag of Doritos chips.
A.I. is definitely ready for prime time! Yep!
JPMorgan will let chatbots write employee reviews
Jesus Christ…what are we doing? 🤦🏻♂️
A good question…
Did I miss something? Wasn’t the entire point of the DOGE failed experiment to save money and not spend it “recklessly”?
Why exactly are we spending money to build a fucking ballroom where the East Wing used to be? Oh, it’s private donations, you say. I understand. So it’s not taxpayer money. Got it.
And who are these private companies again? Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, defense contractors, crypto companies, agro companies. I’m sure these are all just private donations because they care about a ballroom.
Right?! Right?!
Can’t imagine there was any other place in the government where these companies could so generaously donate their money to help actual people. Healthcare certainly doesn’t need it. It truly is great right now. No need to support that.
Trump backs off SF federal deployment after Huang, Benioff calls
President Donald Trump said in a post on Thursday that the federal government was preparing to “surge” San Francisco, but he was swayed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and others to hold off on the deployment.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he also spoke with Democratic Mayor Daniel Lurie, who “was making substantial progress” on crime.
“Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great,” Trump wrote.
The reversal marks a major political win for the city of San Francisco and Lurie, who is in his first term.
Yep, this is how things are supposed to be done. Billionaires deciding when or if the National Guard should be deployed to a given city.
Yep. Checks out.
Trump Pardons Convicted Binance Founder - WSJ
Since Trump’s election, Binance has also been a key supporter of his family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, a business that has driven a huge leap in the president’s personal wealth.
Making Trump wealthy again!
Wait, sorry, that was supposed to read “Making America Great Again!” We regret the error.
Trump wants $230 million from DOJ for investigations
President Donald Trump wants the Department of Justice to pay him $230 million in compensation for criminal investigations.
You will never convince me he’s not simply a grifter.
My baby girl turned 21 yesterday. That doesn’t seem real.
Went to the last Atlanta United game this year to say goodbye to Guz on Saturday.
It didn’t end well, as we drew against DC United. Turns out it was the perfect encapsulation of the entire season.
But hey, we didn’t end up dead last. Just 2nd to last. Small wins 🤣
If you weren’t convinced this administration is not a blank check for bigots and white victimization, please give this a listen:
Sorry Dodgers, but I think it would be beneficial to all (of humanity) if the Blue Jays won the World Series this year. Just as a big “Fuck you!” to Trump.
Imagine 20 years ago the idea of “promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a BAD thing?!
Saw this on Mastodon this morning from JA Westenberg:
The discourse cycle:
Day 1: Interesting study published Day 2: Journalists misinterpret it Day 3: Twitter dunks on journalists Day 4: Someone reads the actual paper Day 5: Paper is flawed actually Day 6: Everyone was wrong Day 7: No one learned anything
Repeat forever.
I see no lie.
No notes.
Hot take from Scott Galloway on this week’s Pivot podcast: AI is enabling Trump and the fascist takeover of America.
An entire PhD study could be conducted on what thought process goes into how people sit in conference meetings and sessions. It’s fascinating, and I have to think there’s some pattern or reasoning (however weird) behind it.
If anyone asks me what I think about Sora2, I’m just going to point them to the video Myke describes here:
This week I want to make just one recommendation, because it’s something I really want you to watch. There’s been a lot of talk about the AI-generated videos coming from OpenAI’s Sora 2. Hank Green made a three-minute video where he very loudly and clearly shares his view on this type of content. He says everything I wish I could have articulated about how I feel on the topic.
I am realizing that my architecture/framework style and conventions are truly an amalgamation of various frameworks I’ve been exposed to in the past 19+ years.
Someone just said that nothing has ever been the same since the Cubs won the World Series in 2016.
Now it’s all I can think about.
Why is the “entering” side of this escalator on the left? Why???!!???
Norms, people. Expectations. Come on!!
I am having a real hard time keeping two potentially opposing ideas in my head, and letting them both thrive at the same time. I see and read all of these warning signs about AI and AI-related business deals and think “this is not sustainable” and/or “this is not a good thing for the world”. While at the same time, I am literally at a work conference to learn about how to utilize and implement that very technology.
I love pissing off these redneck vacationers in FL with my “Make America Smart Again” shirt.
They always give me the confused side eye of “I think he’s one of them damn liberals, but I’m not real sure”.
It makes me happy.
Ethan Marcotte: A right to copy.
I mean, here’s the thing: my books are copyrighted. They became copyrighted the minute they were published, and that applies to everyone who wrote a book for my former publisher. Heck, the Copyright Office itself says that registration is voluntary. The fact that copyrighted works aren’t eligible unless they’ve formally registered feels like a lawyerly dodge: a legal maneuver to help Anthropic reduce the size of its payout pool, and thereby keeping the company from getting rendered down into its component parts during bankruptcy proceedings.
He’s not wrong.
Scott Galloway, appearing on Piers Morgan’s show:
Once you get above a certain level of wealth, you get no incremental happiness. So why on earth would you not go back to a tax policy of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80s? Where, say above $10 million, you actually pay more than 10%? Maybe more than 20%? Maybe more than 50%? Because the difference between $30,000 a year for a household and $50,000 is enormous to the well-being of that household…But the difference between making $10M a year and $15M a year offers you no [extra] happiness.
I’ve been saying this for years, but it’s always thrown back at me as “too socialist”.
And yet, the statement is still true.
Overheard today:
LLMs were never made to be 100% factually correct. It was only supposed to mimc human interaction.
inessential: Why NetNewsWire Is Not a Web App
If it were a web app instead, I could drop the developer membership, but I’d have to pay way more money for web and database hosting. Probably need a CDN too, and who knows what else. (I don’t have recent web app experience, so I don’t even know what my requirements would be, but I’m sure they’d cost substantially more than a couple hundred bucks a year.)
Brent points out things that I’ve said forever. It’s not easy, or cheap, to host a successful web application. It takes time, care, and resources.
Hot take: I despise “Hey Ya!” by OutKast so much.
The compact asks universities to ensure a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” and to bar employees from expressing political views on behalf of their employer, unless the matter affects the school. It seeks to create a more welcoming environment for conservatives, asking colleges to make governance changes and abolish departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
What a wonderful “vibrant marketplace of ideas” this sounds like! Let freedom ring!!!!
I swear to god the mob is running the government at this point.
The Tale of the Ring, According to Sauron – Now I Know
History books in the Soviet Union were typically filled with propaganda and misinformation, recounting world events in a way that emphasized Soviet greatness and castigating the West as evil imperialists.
I’m so glad we, as great again Americans, would never do that.
What the Public Memory of Charlie Kirk Revealed - The New York Times
Jones landed on it under the tag “racial ideology” when she published an article citing research about how distressing it is for Black people to go to work after witnessing news coverage of police killings. She told me someone had sent her a picture of a house thought to be hers, but it turned out to belong to another Angel Jones. Someone else had threatened to hang her from a tree and burn her alive. The scholar changed her classroom and removed her name plate from her office door. The university where she was working at the time installed a safety alarm button under her desk.
This is horrifying.
YouTube Settles Trump Lawsuit for $24.5 Million - The New York Times
You fucking cowards.
Oregon sues to block Trump from deploying state’s National Guard in Portland - POLITICO
Kotek said Trump told her by phone Saturday he’d heard of multiple fires, and of the federal courthouse in downtown Portland being besieged, which she said may be based on the president watching video of unrest five years ago.
“We cannot be looking at footage from 2020 and assume that that is the case today in Portland,” the governor said.
We are living in a farce.
Attorney general: ‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ sign cannot be displayed in Idaho schools
West Ada administrators said the signs — including one displaying open hands of different skin tones — violated district policy. Inama refused to remove the sign, and in March, her story attracted national media coverage.
The IDE asked the attorney general’s office if Inama’s signs in particular violated the new law.
The attorney general’s office said yes.
What the fuck is wrong with us? We can’t even promote the idea that “all people are welcome here”? Is that really where we are? We’re so fucking filled with straight, white fragility that we are now writing into law the practice of discrimination?
Jesus wept.
On yesterday’s “The Bulwark” podcast, Ezra Klein was the guest and he said the following in the wake of his own comments re: Charlie Kirk “practicing politics the right way”:
I just have a view that the 12 hours after somebody is publicly murdered for participating in politics is not the time when you need to fully litigate all your disagreements with them. I think it is a time when we can try to sit with each other, across a pretty wide party divide, and say:
“I see you. I can see your friend at least partly the way you saw your friend. And I can grieve with you.”
And I think that’s part of the political practice that I hope will keep us from falling into genuine, ongoing political violence.
You know, I’d be willing to get with that statement (in and of itself) if (and only if) the following were not being done throughout the exact 12 hours in question:
Let’s not get it twisted. Klein wasn’t the only one to say this. But I will I ask this re: the groups I just mentioned above:
Where is their care?
Where is their sensitivity?
Where is their humanity?
(…crickets…)
Yeah, didn’t think so.
Watching the pilot episode of Friends from 1994 (almost 31 years ago to the day). Jennifer Aniston, age 25 then or 56 now, is just gorgeous. Period.
Also, Nickelodeon shows re-runs at like 1.5x speed. All of them sound like they’ve inhaled helium.
Why wasn’t Kate Bosworh more of a star?
Opinion | Civility Is a Fantasy - The New York Times
“Every single day, I read the news, and I can hardly process it all. I keep wondering when we will reach a cultural breaking point, when finally, the Trump administration will go far enough to shove us out of the comforts of our day-to-day lives. I look at our elected leaders, especially the Democratic ones, and hardly recognize them. I’ve written, many times, about how no one is coming to save us, but I never imagined that our leaders would agree, that they would comply with so much in advance, that they would rely as a political strategy more on embracing conservative policies than standing up for progressive ones.”
Man, this hits hard. I live this every day right now.
Conservative White Christians Will Worship Anyone But Jesus
To anyone paying attention for the past few decades, and particularly during the last ten years, seeing White Evangelicals build idols out of people whose lives and public work are the antithesis of Jesus is something we’ve grown accustomed to.
This. This. This.
A thousand times, this.
Trump expected to sign deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. - CBS News
On Monday, a senior White House official said Mr. Trump would declare that the deal is a “qualified divestiture” and satisfies a law passed by Congress that requires TikTok’s parent company to divest or face a ban.
Why is this up to Trump again? Why is he the authority to say that this “satisfies” the law?