Tesla was started by a handful of really smart people with a great idea. Musk was ceo as it grew from an idea into the first new major automaker in almost a century. As it grew from a dismissed toy that no one would buy, into an industry-wide paradigm shift. Most of that time musk preached the gospel. You can’t disregard that influence, you can’t claim the guy in charge had nothing to do with it. You might decide his skill was more manipulative than visionary, but you can’t deny that him being the front man was part of the success. You might decide any engineering or problem solving ability was not real, but he was the guy in charge, he did make decisions, and Tesla has generally been a huge success (until recently).

We just need some drug rehab and find a way to reset the god complex ….

For whatever reasons Musk has found himself as ceo of some wildly successful visionary companies. It has not changed that they are finally bringing the future to the present, disrupting old technologies in favor of newer and better, for a better world. And the musk from before his breakdown deserves a lot of credit.

At this point I no longer care about musk either, but SpaceX and Tesla are critical. Or at least SpaceX is. Tesla has not yet finished disrupting vehicle manufacturing , but if we’re content to let Chinese companies go ahead, they’re ready and willing. Legacy manufacturers have been slapped up the side of the face, but if they’re still not awake at this point it’s on them

It would save electricity

That’s in the article too.

I don’t know their reasoning for the 5’ and I live in a different climate, but ….

• sides of my house with shrubs tend to catch dead leaves, weeds,brush
• sides of my house without, all those dead leaves blow away

Maybe it’s as simple as avoiding things that catch dead leaves near the house

Or on whether there’s a drought and watering shrubs is allowed

The problem is that we don’t yet have a practical alternative to jet fuel, except high speed rail and Zoom. The technologies are all too young.

And it’s not just cost, it’s trying to make them useful enough. Batteries will not take you across a continent, for any cost.

We’re more at the stage of “fuck the cost. Give me another option to try”

I wonder if that takes an appreciable amount of carbon out of the air, and if it is somehow persisted in solid form.

Roosevelt had time, that no other president ever will, and a much simpler world.

I’d argue there are a lot of parallels with what Biden was building. The investments made during his term could have really built our future, really changed our posture on the world stage. Not only built a better tomorrow but keep us in a position where we can lead, can influence, can bring the world together. Maybe I’m too naive but my biggest objection to his presidency was so many investments that really would have set us up in the decades to come, but not quickly enough to get him reelected. Not quickly enough to stay the course long enough to deliver the results. Now it’s all undone. All that investment thrown away, turned into a waste of money because it’s not allowed to deliver on its investment

I thought if this quote so many times with the long battle for the environment. Finally it seemed with Biden, we were there. We tried so many things with ignoring the problems we were creating, buying our way out of them, hiding them, pretending they weren’t real, sending our lead in renewable to China, we exhausted all the possibilities. Finally people realized they can’t hide da in the sand, finally we even got manufacturers to face the truth, finally we were focussed on building industries and supply chains, good jobs for the economy of the future while making the world a better place.

Then we tear it all down over what seems like personal spite. People really think the industries of the 1950s will save them and decided to throw away the industries of the 2020-2040s. Resource extraction and exploitation will save us over high value manufacturing

We very well may not recover the science and technology lead we had. Or medical - we may have a horrible system of healthcare but top notch development of treatments and technologies.

Or more importantly, we’re squandering the possibility of developing manufacturing for the next few decades on the attempt to develop manufacturing of the past.

And yes, immigrants. So much of what has made the us great has come from immigrants coming here to build a better life for themselves. So much of our economy, our innovation, our research, and yes our culture. If we succeed in driving away that flow, then we’re just another aging has been, with too many old people, not able to afford to maintain everything we built in the past

The thing is you can’t deny they are a center of science, research, innovation. Harvard is one institution that makes US stand out globally, and drives so much of what we think of as our exceptionalism. This truly is an attack on our future.

When my son was little, he had a very aggressive form of cancer. He came through it with treatment developed by Harvard research. In the couple decades before, Harvard directed research had driven mortality down from 90% to 10%. Now Trump wants to punish Harvard out of personal spite and one of the first things he does is cut research at Children’s hospital? How can you still call yourself human?

For a dead mall under redevelopment?

The article didn’t do their research but certainly implies it’s the landlord making a quick buck on storage fees why waiting for redevelopment to start

Effective rates

1. The ladder of progressive rates ends too early, so actual income tax rates do not go up after something like half a million income. That’s a lot for most of us but does not begin to cover the wealthy
2. Many tax cuts over the last few decades were specific to other types of income, generally available to the wealthy

For example if you were like Elon Musk, the richest person in the world (sometimes) who gets little to no salary and is paid mainly with stock options, you’d pay at most 37% on your salary, same as any basic millionaire but the bulk of your income would count as long term capital gains and taxed at 20%, lowering your effective rate. Even better, you could take loans against your stock and never “realize” the gains so never pay taxes on it.

There are many other tricks you can pull to count your income as other that income and taxed at a lower rate. Last time we had that debate, Warren Buffet, another of the richest men in the world wrote an opinion piece in support of changes that he could take advantage such that he paid a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. Nice try but quickly disappeared under a flood of propaganda from other rich people

Technically anyone could be paid in stock like Elon musk, and live off loans on stock like Elon musk, and pay a much lower effective tax rate like Elon musk, but it’s a practical Impossibility for most of us

Technically we could all form a trust like the Kennedys and many other wealthy families, hold all of our assets. The trust has several ways to avoid taxes and i believe is taxed at the corporate rate, which is also now lower than personal tax rates. And the trust can cover all of our expenses and write them off from its income, while we owe little to no income tax. Realistically most of us couldn’t afford the lawyers to make that happen much less the prerequisites to dodge the taxes

I can definitely see the fear of letting ai do something like that. Someone will always try to trick it. That’s why we can’t have good things.

However, like you said, they didn’t think to make that an option in the voice menu. If it were an AI, you could drop the process into the knowledge base and have it available much more easily than reprogramming the voice menu

In the US we do that to some extent but not for the wealthy. Somehow we ended up with upper middle class paying the highest rate, then tax rates dropping as you get wealthy. It’s fair that I pay a higher rate than someone with less income, but very much not fair that I pay a higher tax rate than wealthy people

True, but there’s no reason that can’t coexist with a sense of fairness, and witha long term greater good

Of course I don’t want to pay more taxes. However I realize I’ve been more successful than some, and a more progressive tax scheme is fair. I realize I have vices and don’t mind if there is a discouragement, as long as it applies to everyone fairly. I realize my success is based on a successful society and understand it is only fair to leave society in at least as good condition as I found it. Most importantly I have kids so I’m all for building a better future for them …. And understand that includes the society they will live in, the environment they will live in

This is the most unbelievable part: a us court held management responsible for criminal behavior? Did that not pay their fines? Did no one have a spare jet to offer?

Hopefully you can see the difference between working for someone else profit, vsinvestments in all of our well being and a more fair tax structure

That’s communism! But yeah, that seems like a good idea for some of those communities. You can’t easily fix isolation, poverty, and lack of industry, nor are changes imposed from outside likely to succeed. However they claim to be independent, resilient, and to look out for their neighbors - why not take that to the next level? Build things their way. Lean on each other. Let their strengths build on each other.

From the outside, the best way we can help is infrastructure: roads, bridges, internet, services like health services, clean air and water, a strong department of education to ensure their kids get a good education even if localities can’t afford it on their own