When did America stop dreaming big? On colonizing/exploring Mars and hating on Musk

[Alexander]

plagiarized wholesale from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which serves as an analog of Campbell's monomyth for reactionary conservatives.

no it doesn't. Campbell's monomyth is a story motif that has zero relevance to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is not a story.

I do appreciate the irony of a bunch of people looking at a half-assed diagram of conspiracy theories and treating as serious analysis because it validates their prejudices..

 

[Alexander]

Sorry, but what coup in Bolivia? Morales was not legally allowed by their constitution to be President for another term and a proposal to allow him more terms was, via referendum, voted down by the populace. It was Morales who commited fraud and the military did ask him to resign due to that (and the fact he couldnt legally be President). To call that a coup is pretty ludicrous.

Morales still had months left on the term he was elected to in 2014 when he was compelled to flee the country.

When the military forces the head of state to step down, along with every politician in the line of succession belonging to the majority political party, and arrests every member of the electoral commission, the commonly used term for that is "coup." When a socialist majority party is pulled from power and a minority party representing the economic elites and friendly to American business interests is installed, and the OAS is hovering over the whole thing, the commonly used term is "US-backed coup"

Jeanine Anez, the minority party member who was installed as president, is currently in jail, along with multiple high ranking military officers. The charges are conspiracy, sedition, and treason, aka "participating in a coup." Yes that's banana republic tit-for-tat political chicanery. No the charges aren't invented out of whole cloth. They really did force the elected government out of power.

No one got shot, so you can make a semantic argument over the definition of "coup" if you want. But the military really did step in and force the elected majority political party out of power and installed a US-friendly government (that shockingly, went on to massacre indigenous people and do other stupid right-wing South American coup shit)

 

[Alexander]

Here's a better analogy:

You go to a city council meeting. A homeless advocate makes the claim "[ars poster] has a $70k car parked outside. For the amount they paid for their car, we would be able to end homelessness forever in this city."

You know that's bullshit, so you say, "okay, show me. Draw up a workable plan to end homelessness in this city for $70k and I'll give it to you. I don't think you can do it but I will sell some assets and withdraw from savings and write you a check for 70 thousand dollars if you show me how you can end homelessness here."

So a week later they come back with a plan to house four families for a year and upgrade the local food bank.

I don't like to be in the position of defending Musk, but that's what happened. Somebody from the UN made a spurious claim that Musk could end world hunger for $6bn and Musk called bullshit on it.

 

[Alexander]

Elon Musk's father Errol has multiple child sexual abuse allegations:

The allegations against Errol Musk involve five of his children and stepchildren, whom he was accused of abusing in South Africa and California, according to police and court records, personal correspondence, social workers and interviews with family members.​

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[...]​

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Errol Musk, who has at least nine children and stepchildren and has been married to three women, maintains a powerful grip over much of the family. The former stepdaughter, whom he was accused of touching when she was 4, said she later had a child with him when she was in her 20s.​

NYT archive link


The article is ostensibly about Elon Musk's entanglement in the family drama but as I read it the unstated implication is that he too could possibly be a victim.

 

[Alexander]

People keep correctly pointing out that it's a meme stock but honestly I think the entire stock market is bloated with so much money the real economic currents barely show up.

Corey Doctorow recently gave a speech where he pointed out that the "Magnificent Seven" (Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Meta, and Tesla) account for 1/3 of the valuation of the US stock market, and when the AI bubble pops ...


EDIT:

The only thing (I said) that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble as soon as possible, to halt this before it progresses any further and to head off the accumulation of social and economic debt. To do that, we have to take aim at the material basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by claiming that defective AI can do your job).​

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"OK," the young man said, "but what can we do about the crash?" He was clearly very worried.​

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"I don't think there's anything we can do about that. I think it's already locked in. I mean, maybe if we had a different government, they'd fund a jobs guarantee to pull us out of it, but I don't think Trump'll do that, so –"​

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"But what can we do?"​

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We went through a few rounds of this, with this poor kid just repeating the same question in different tones of voice, like an acting coach demonstrating the five stages of grieving using nothing but inflection. It was an uncomfortable moment, and there was some decidedly nervous chuckling around the room as we pondered the coming AI (economic) apocalypse, and the fate of this kid graduating with mid-six-figure debts into an economy of ashes and rubble.​

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/

 

[Alexander]

Yes! I made a thread specifically on this, but it got moved to the Lounge (so I can't respond anymore), and it turned into a debate about the relative productivity gains of LLMs, which I think is really missing the point, and not why I started the thread.

ChatGPT whispering in your ear that you're a good person while you stomp on a human face, forever.