Making the weekend into a year

by liberal japonicus

With apologies to Katy Perry and Zedd, it's been 3 days and it seems like a year. Maybe the superpower is to make things so bad that time slows down. It's like hitting the event horizon of a black hole. And, just like the event horzon, I'll put the rest of this after the break

I think a lot of that is due to the Musk. As Stephen Fry points out, Musk isn't a Nazi, the Nazis built good cars. If you laughed at that, you may want to watch Ezra Klein and Kara Swisher discuss to the Boy Wanker.

Comments

[liberal japonicus]

If you aren't into watching a youtube video, here is the edited transcript, but I feel like it is a lot better listening to it

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-kara-swisher.html

[russell]

In case we needed further evidence of the paranoia and general weirdness of our morbidly wealthy overlords.

Although at a mere $55K per bunker, this might be the low rent version. For the aspirationally insane, as it were.

Remember this quote from My Dinner With Andre?

I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built. They’ve built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners, and as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomized, the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or to even see it as a prison..

That's been relocated.

You, too, can be a human prairie dog, living a life of fear in a bunch of holes in the ground in the American Great Plains with a few hundred like-minded pals.

And all of that is fine with me - go live your weird prairie dog dream, o techbro pioneers! - except they insist on dragging the rest of us into their paranoid dystopia along with them.

[russell]

We also have the case of Bryan Johnson, who was injecting himself with plasma donated by his own son in an attempt to live forever.

I really do think a lot of these people (almost all men) are nuts. Like, really nuts, borderline clinically insane or maybe more than borderline.

My own thought is that they've spent so much of their lives living in a technology bubble that they've lost contact with the natural world, including the basic limits of the natural world.

And they want to impose what they see as some kind of artificial utopia on the rest of us. They think they're gonna save the world by transforming it.

Into what, I don't really know. And they seem little interested in whether the rest of us want that new improved future.

It's freaking disturbing. Too many madmen with Great Big Ideas For All Of Us and too much money.

[Michael Cain]

You, too, can be a human prairie dog, living a life of fear in a bunch of holes in the ground in the American Great Plains with a few hundred like-minded pals.

In 1972-75, my summer job was at a micro-climatology field lab. Part of the area where the lab was located was a former WWII munitions storage facility much like the one shown at the web site. We used one of the buildings to keep heavy equipment and material. Fifty years ago they were starting to be structural wrecks; I would need to see a whole lot of engineering analysis before I trusted one to live in. Not to mention the obvious questions about electricity and water supply.

I notice that Vivos' risk map shows a submergence zone that includes most of Colorado's 14,000-foot mountain tops :^)

[Michael Cain]

This past Friday Boeing held an all-hands meeting for everyone working on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The meeting was held on short notice, as in a few hours, and lasted six minutes. Management announced there was a risk that NASA might cancel the SLS project, with some contracts terminated as soon as March. That coincides with when Congress needs to pass another continuing resolution.

Terminating SLS will pretty much put the entire US return-to-moon effort into Musk and Bezos' hands.

[russell]

I would need to see a whole lot of engineering analysis before I trusted one to live in.

My own guess is that the Vivos business model is "separate fools from their money".

And I'd say their odds of success are fairly high.

[CaseyL]

Michael Cain - Then the entire US return-to-moon project will come to nothing, since SpaceX and Blue Origin both depend heavily on NASA infrastructure and expertise. I mean, yes: the money will vanish into Musk/Bezos pockets, but there won't be any actual space program stuff happening.

The kleptocrats now running the country seem broadly to come in three categories:

The ones who want to live forever, by injections of plasma, or pineal glands, or blood. I think Thiel comes into this category.

The ones who want to run away to Mars. That would be Musk and his groupies.

The ones who want to upload into computers and live forever as simulations. Sam Altman is, I think, one of these. Maybe most of the most fervent AI evangelicals are as well.

[Michael Cain]

Oh, the cash will come from NASA, just that Bezos and Musk will provide all the hardware.

SpaceX is run by Gwynne Shotwell, who also wants to get to Mars (but not under the "backup when Earth's ecosystem collapses" banner). I understand that she has told Elon that they're going to do the Moon first because that way NASA will pay for the cost to develop the things they need for Mars. Also that Gwynne is one of the very few people in the world that Elon actually listens to.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I, for one, am ALL IN FAVOR of Musk+Zuck+Theil having their frozen heads stationed on Mars.

They can be placed next to Elvis.

Long after the demise of humanity (2026 or so, the way things are going), an alien ship will land on Mars and go "WTF?1??"

Totally worth it.

[GftNC]

One of the reasons I read the Times, despite it being a Murdoch-owned paper, is that it does have halfway decent journalists writing for it, including some of the more sane rightwing ones, always allowing, of course, for their bias (as we should try to do when consuming news from any source, as our recent discussions have emphasised). I thought this, today by Matthew Syed, was worth putting here within that context, particularly since in the absence of McKinney we haven't heard much about "Western civilisation" recently, and it was interesting to see how its admirers were dealing with the Trump clusterfuck:

Trump’s jackals aren’t ‘saving the West’ in any sense I recognise
Maga Republicans’ disdain for the institutions of democracy is a grave danger to our way of life
Matthew Syed
Sunday February 09 2025, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
You’ve seen them. Perhaps read them. Maybe even, who knows, nodded along with them. To be honest, I have too. I’m talking about the books, columns and assorted writings that proclaim to be defending “the West”. They have titles like Ten Years to Save the West, The Salvation of the West, The War on the West etc. And by “the West”, they don’t tend to mean some geographical region demarcated by longitude. They mean something more: a concept, an ideal, a civilisation.

And these authors are, in their different ways, impressively clear about the identity of these threats, dangers and creeping calamities. Immigration. Islamism. China. Cultural Marxism. I worry about those things too, by the way. These authors also worry about woke ideologues, hyperliberals and ultraprogressives, by which they mean the virtue-signalling elites that were recently described by one pundit as the “internal enemies of the West”. As I say, you may agree with much of this analysis. I know I do.

Yet it was only last week that I realised something that, frankly, should have struck me yonks ago. In all these years of reading these people, listening to them, I’d only ever gained a sense of what they were against. “The West” was defined in terms of its enemies. It was (to use a reference they might warm to, given they’re such scholars of western literature) what Socrates characterised as definition by negation. But what was their positive account of “the West”? We knew what they were against; what were they for?

Well, I now realise that “the West”, as a concept, is rather more amorphous than I’d imagined. You see, watching these people gurning and grinning at the inauguration parties for Donald Trump and justifying each new calamitous action during a dizzying couple of weeks, I realised that their conception of “the West” is somewhat different from my own; that when they describe Trump as the “saviour” of western civilisation, as one did, it doesn’t quite tally with my idea of salvation or, indeed, civilisation.

You see (and apologies if I’m a tad slow), I’m struggling to square Trump’s brazen disregard for the rule of law with the luminous writings of Cicero; struggling to see how inciting an assault on the Capitol and putting pressure on officials to overturn the peaceful transfer of power tallies with the prose of Jefferson; struggling to see how threatening to invade an ally (Denmark) coincides with the imperative of the West standing together against the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party and its puppets in Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang.

I don’t see how the deployment of tariffs (including threatening them on Mexico, Canada and the EU) is in line with the work of Adam Smith — so often cited by these jackals, sorry, intellectuals — given that it would impoverish American workers and push the victims of the policy towards closer trade links with China; don’t see how scapegoating pilots for a tragic air crash before the black boxes have been retrieved lives up to Locke’s writings on natural justice; don’t see how removing armed protection from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton because they didn’t always agree with you, leaving them vulnerable to assassination, fits with the notion of impartiality meticulously articulated by Kant.

Strange, isn’t it? Strange that these staunch “defenders” of the West are the chorus section during one of the most brazen attacks on western values in my lifetime. Strange that their paeans to rationality, due process and law seem rather quaint now that they’re clapping like seals for Trump’s scorched earth policy. Strange that the more they excuse, dissemble or merely ignore Trump’s pardoning of people who attacked the police, serial dishonesty and corrupt monetisation of personalised memecoins (he and Melania have reportedly made billions while those who invested are on the hook for similar amounts), the more they see themselves as “defenders” of the West.

Indeed, one almost feels like saying that these people have unmasked themselves. By offering a substantive definition of what they mean by “western values”, if only through association with the man they keep eulogising, they have been outed as people who don’t have a Scooby-Doo about the West or its values. I mean, did Locke, Montesquieu and Wollstonecraft go to their graves fervently hoping that their writings would be used to justify the turning of a political community into the cult of a narcissist who seemingly believes he is World King?

So let me say to western politicians: find courage. You don’t need to genuflect before Trump or accept the grotesque parody of western values his sycophants are pumping out like sewage. You can demonstrate your fidelity to those values by calling out this bully and standing up to the platoons of Russian bots that amplify his divisive, wicked nonsense. That will strengthen the West, not weaken it. And it needs to be done collectively. Tactical retreats, even cosmetic ones like that of Canada (which appointed a “border tsar” to stave off punitive tariffs), will only feed this bully, as appeasement always does.

And let me say one other thing. I’m convinced that there is a solid majority in virtually all western nations for a push against woke madness and open borders, not to mention government inefficiency and bureaucratic overreach. Most sane people can see that sections of the Democratic Party became an ideological cult, a view in no way diminished by its convention. The British Conservative Party was one of the more egregious examples in Europe with its radical policy of mass immigration and other betrayals.

Yet I hope people will agree that this “negative” diagnosis of what went wrong doesn’t mean we must acquiesce in a pendulum swing to cultlike insanity on the other side. Can’t one be deeply worried about Islamist extremism while being horrified by those who tarnish all Muslims; wish to protect single-sex sports and spaces while abhorring the demonisation of trans people; recognise that multiculturalism went way too far while abhorring outright racism against immigrants? (Oh, and don’t give me the cant that populist stooges were the first to speak out about these dangers — some of us have been warning about uncontrolled immigration for decades.)

This, for what it’s worth, is my positive definition of western values. Rationality. Due process. Fairness. And standing up to bullies and would-be tyrants because we wish to preserve the normative structure of this luminously impressive civilisation. The very men who shout loudest about democracy are the ones who destroy it, Demosthenes observed more than two thousand years ago in the cradle of western civilisation. Today, our task is to ensure that this bitter irony doesn’t repeat itself.

[wj]

My financial advisor has remarked, occasionally, that he appreciates the fact that, unlike some of his clients, I don't call him freaking out every time the markets hiccup. But today I felt compelled to write and inquire about my options for shifting some of my portfolio into offshore assets denominated in euros or something.

Sure, there are risks everywhere if Musk succeeds in implementing Trump's latest blather about stiffing the holders of Treasuries. But the impact, while severe worldwide, would be less elsewhere.

[wj]

Because it's always good to have a little humor in one's life.
https://nitter.poast.org/PStyle0ne1/status/1889096983828148256#m

Text, for those who hate links:

PS01 □
@PStyle0ne1
4h
NO MORE VEHICLE: 🐴 “Due to the lack of motor transport and fuel and lubricants in the military unit, I request your petition to the higher command to provide me with a war horse in the amount of 1 (one) unit of the Apsheron or Steppe racehorse breed and harness for it in accordance with the order of the Red Army of 17.01.1918, which is still in effect, to perform official (combat) tasks on the line of combat”😁😁😁

From a closed Russian channel

Feb 10, 2025 · 11:39 PM UTC

Ah, but is it actually sarcasm? Other people have real problems, too.

[bobbyp]

live forever? LOL. Piss on their grave.

Go to Mars? Don't let them return.

Upload yourself to the Cloud? Pull the plug.

As an aside: Is short interest in the stock marking making any big moves? I'm thinking of purchasing a couple out of the money index option puts.

[Michael Cain]

Go to Mars? Don't let them return.

I've been a math/science geek all my life, reading about Mars colonies in junior high in the 1960s. I'm willing to bet that even if I make it to 90, there won't be an outpost on Mars, let alone a colony. I use outpost in the sense that the ISS is a low Earth orbit outpost.

If I had a chance to speak to either Bezos or Musk, I'd leave my advice at "You can't extract enough wealth from serfs to do off-earth colonies. You'll need a planet with a lot of rich workers to start with."

[Michael Cain]

My financial advisor has remarked...

How did you find an advisor you trust? I've taken care of my own money, with reasonable results, but I'm getting older. At some point I need (or my children and wife in memory care need) someone else to take care of the modest pile.

[Michael Cain]

Using this as an open thread...

I'm cleaning up old project stuff before I start a large new one. A few years ago when it looked like this site's hosting service was going to abandon the (then with broken database extraction) software, I wrote some code to extract the site contents. The service decided to upgrade the software, but in the process broke my code. I haven't decided if updating my software and extracting a current copy of the database should be on my list. Comments?

[wj]

How did you find an advisor you trust?

Honestly? Dumb luck. He was my in-laws' (randomly assigned, I believe) advisor at Schwab. Then became ours as well. When he left, I tracked him down. (Via LinkedIn. Which, as a Luddite, still surprises me.) He set up on his own, and I went there.

I funds earn a bit above market rates. Any time I ask for money, say for mew car, heat pump, etc., it arrives promptly. He actually pays attention to things like my marginal tax rate, moving money from traditional IRAs to Roth IRA. I confess, I don't have all my funds with him. But what's there is doing well.

[JanieM]

Michael -- Thanks for the heads up, and for raising the question.

Unless I'm missing something, the main point of having the history would be to reconstruct it if we had to migrate to a new host.

Unlike a few years ago (pre grandkids IIRC), I can't imagine having time to work on a migration in the imaginable future....

Speaking only for myself, of course.

[nous]

Michael Cain - We don't have a financial advisor yet, but I have an old college classmate that does sustainable investments and that is where I would go if we were to need assistance. Everyone there is very ethically focused.

https://horizonssfs.com/about-horizons/

[Michael Cain]

Unless I'm missing something, the main point of having the history would be to reconstruct it if we had to migrate to a new host.

Yes. Among a variety of other things, preserve a couple thousand hilzoy posts and comments.

Twenty-some years ago I used to occasionally take my large corporation's head librarian to lunch. We often discussed digital versus analog archiving. She regularly told me that if I wanted to provide the source material for historians 150 years in the future, to use pigment-based ink on acid-free paper and convince my grandchildren to store my journals in a trunk in the attic. Also that if I insisted on digital, to use open-source markup as close to flat text as I could. The other day when I was going through old digital files, I came across 45-year-old documents done formatted anticipating "troff -mm". I note that "groff -mm" produced correct documents.

[JanieM]

Yes. Among a variety of other things, preserve a couple thousand hilzoy posts and comments.

For sure. Hilzoy in particular was and is a treasure.

And if you were to update your code, I would love to have a copy of the history -- I'm just trying to be realistic about my energy levels and time commitments given what's going on in life (mine and everyone's).

[GftNC]

Of course, I know nothing at all about the technical side of any of this, nor the amount of time and trouble preserving it would cost. But for what my vote is worth, I agree that it (the archive? the database? I don't even know the right term) should definitely be preserved. I too am thinking particularly of the years of lucid, thoughtful and impressive hilzoy posts (and discussions) which I'm guessing were the thing that attracted most of us to ObWi in the first place. If you decide to do this, Michael, we will all owe you a great debt of gratitude.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

For LONG term digital storage, I really should get around to modifying an old dot-matrix printer to make digital-cuneiform on clay tablets.

Why yes, I *do* have a dot-matrix printer, although it hasn't been used for a couple of decades.

I keep it next to my Polaroid camera.

[wj]

To do cuneiform (or any other script) on clay tablets, what you really need is a 3-D printer. Might need a few modifications, if you insist on clay. But the standard plastics are at least as resistant to destruction, not even counting to susceptibility of clay tablets to water.

[Hartmut]

Bakelite all the way!

[Michael Cain]

Why yes, I *do* have a dot-matrix printer, although it hasn't been used for a couple of decades.

Doesn't everyone? And a box of fanfold paper with perforated tear-off strips down the sides, and a USB-to-parallel port cable? Given that my Ghostscript copy was compiled with support for Epson 9-pin printers, I could print almost anything on it. Slowly. Assuming the ribbon hasn't dried out completely. Even then, I could print tomorrow because Amazon can next-day deliver a new ribbon.

Curse you, Snarki! You know that sometime in the next few days I'll give in and hook that thing up. (I'll post pictures when I do.)

[bobbyp]

OK, OK.. I'll let my old paper fax machine go along with the mimeograph machine and a carton of the delightfully smelly paper it used. Also looking for a good home for an 8 track tape machine.

You will have to pry the hickory shafted mashie niblick from my cold dead hands.

[Michael Cain]

Hooking up the Epson printer was easier than I thought it would be. It actually took longer to print off a copy of the tiger.ps image (originally from some early version of the PostScript language) than to get things running. I didn't bother getting the paper properly aligned.

http://mcain6925.com/obsidian/tiger.jpg