'The Playboy of The Western World' - (When Fascists Come to Town)

[CharonY]

28 minutes ago, exchemist said:

But maybe he’s not in it for the business any more, but for his power to  influence politics. 

I don't think it was ever about business. Twitter never made a huge lot of business sense. It was mostly a vanity project (also evidenced by the rebranding).

[MigL]

There's a reason they call enormous wealth 'fu*k-you money'.
You say and do what you want, and don't need to give a damn what anyone else thinks.

Explains why most millionaires/billionaires are assholes.

[iNow]

19 minutes ago, MigL said:

Explains why most millionaires/billionaires are assholes.

Technically, you have a sampling bias and only hear about or from the assholes. “Most millionaires/billionaire” are never even on your radar. You don’t who they are or even that they exist. /pedantic

[exchemist]

5 hours ago, iNow said:

Technically, you have a sampling bias and only hear about or from the assholes. “Most millionaires/billionaire” are never even on your radar. You don’t who they are or even that they exist. /pedantic

Half the middle class professionals in London are millionaires these days, myself included, thanks to the appreciation of house prices.

And I'm not an..............oh, wait..... 

[dimreepr]

10 hours ago, MigL said:

There's a reason they call enormous wealth 'fu*k-you money'.
You say and do what you want, and don't need to give a damn what anyone else thinks.

Explains why most millionaires/billionaires are assholes.

Bc they don't understand why getting the highest number is a problem for other's, but only arseholes understand why and do it anyway, and that's got nothing to do with money...

Edited August 10 by dimreepr

[KJW]

4 hours ago, exchemist said:

Half the middle class professionals in London are millionaires these days, myself included, thanks to the appreciation of house prices.

And I'm not an..............oh, wait..... 

I think billionaires is the new millionaires.

 

[dimreepr]

24 minutes ago, KJW said:

I think billionaires is the new millionaires.

 

I think, you don't understand the numbers...

[geordief]

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

Half the middle class professionals in London are millionaires these days, myself included, thanks to the appreciation of house prices.

And I'm not an..............oh, wait..... 

We had a neighbour who owned a gift shop in Southend in the 60s .We always  thought of him as a millionaire (presumably  because he told us)

They were the nicest people and used to walk down to the  pier every morning to jump into the sea ,even in '63 when he broke the ice  when even the sea water froze.

He had heart problems and his doctor eventually  told him to   stop the practice.

When the next door house to both of us was demolished  by the council as a health risk he paid me and his son piece rates  to gather  the old  bricks  which my father  used to build a new wall beween the houses and all around our own all around - (his nickname was "Myrddin the wall" and he used to ferry  extra bricks from  across the river  in our sailboat.

His son was 6 foot 10 and once  made the mistake of diving off the pier  into shallow water  ,damaging his neck(nothing like what happened to poor Hanif Kureishi   thankfully)

Edited August 10 by geordief

[dimreepr]

Building a wall is kinda the playbook of the fascist's, climbing the wall is all I can do to stop them... 😉

[KJW]

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

5 hours ago, KJW said:

I think billionaires is the new millionaires.

I think, you don't understand the numbers...

I think you don't understand what I said.

 

[MSC]

16 hours ago, iNow said:

Technically, you have a sampling bias and only hear about or from the assholes. “Most millionaires/billionaire” are never even on your radar. You don’t who they are or even that they exist. /pedantic

And I'd just add that what little you do know, is PR. Like the humble billionaire who drives a pos car. It's bs. 

Ultimately Elon Musks rage can be summed up as butthurt. Butthurt that he had dreams of owning a cloud fief like Zuckerberg and Bezos, but because he threw his lot in with Alt-right crap, Nazis etc, advertisers bombed away from twitter so less people to buy data from the data mine of us. He literally thinks he'll gain more power with twitter (not calling it X because I will not enable musks alphabefetish/lazy naming conventions.) If public policy is rolled back to how it was before the 60s and advertisers can overtly be as openly horrible as he is without ruining their reputations because they are backed by a Trump presidency or some other wannabe fascist nutbag. 

It's the same story as Trump. Elon is getting investigated by the feds and he feels a move to technofuedalism under the heel (or to be the heel?) of a dictator is what will get him out of the fire and the frying pan, and able to continue on with abusive business practices with zero consequences. 

Also a lot of the things that Elon chooses to take an interest in, when looked at together, look suspiciously like supervillain plans. He wants self driving cars to efficiently move all his worker drones to where they need to go for their 16hr shift in their 7 day work weeks, he wants to have a space fleet, he puts satellites all over the globe and wants to put computer chips in everyones brains, so they can mentally connect to twitter where his posts are given massive amounts of artificial exposure and he has the power to bore into the earth and create as many supr villain hidden fortresses as he wants. 

Honestly the satellite thing freaks me out the most. There was an episode of stargate that was just a vision Daniel was given, of the sort of evil shit he would do if given the knowledge of the Goa'uld and he straight up went darkside and deployed satellites all over the globe in a eerily Elon Musk like manner, slowly turning more batshit as the power went to his head aaaannndd.. boom. His satellites attack every spot on the planet. 

I know it's highly unlikely, but I bet you he is just narcissistic enough to believe he can do that one day. 

Seriously, a chip in your brain, in the right place, connected to twitter, Elon tweets and all of a sudden, pleasure centers are stimulated and before long you are addicted to Musk tweets and him. They were doing experiments like this in the sixties and research participants would end up completely infatuated with the researcher who had control of the electrical stimulation in the pleasure centers of their brains. 

Obviously all just speculation on my part that Elon is intending to do that but I really really don't trust the mf and his motivations are creepy at best, evil at worst. 

[MigL]

There seems to be some confusion, and some misunderstanding, so I'll clarify.
My definition of millionaire, and billionaire, is a measure of 'disposable' wealth or assets.
I would venture that most people who own homes in certain parts of North America, Europe, and some other parts of the world, are worth more than a million, but I don't consider a house 'disposable', as you need it to live.

... and I didn't want Exchemist to feel like an a__hole ...

Edited August 10 by MigL

[exchemist]

22 minutes ago, MigL said:

There seems to be some confusion, and some misunderstanding, so I'll clarify.
My definition of millionaire, and billionaire, is a measure of 'disposable' wealth or assets.
I would venture that most people who own homes in certain parts of North America, Europe, and some other parts of the world, are worth more than a million, but I don't consider a house 'disposable', as you need it to live.

... and I didn't want Exchemist to feel like an a__hole ...

You are too kind. 

6 hours ago, geordief said:

We had a neighbour who owned a gift shop in Southend in the 60s .We always  thought of him as a millionaire (presumably  because he told us)

They were the nicest people and used to walk down to the  pier every morning to jump into the sea ,even in '63 when he broke the ice  when even the sea water froze.

He had heart problems and his doctor eventually  told him to   stop the practice.

When the next door house to both of us was demolished  by the council as a health risk he paid me and his son piece rates  to gather  the old  bricks  which my father  used to build a new wall beween the houses and all around our own all around - (his nickname was "Myrddin the wall" and he used to ferry  extra bricks from  across the river  in our sailboat.

His son was 6 foot 10 and once  made the mistake of diving off the pier  into shallow water  ,damaging his neck(nothing like what happened to poor Hanif Kureishi   thankfully)

The pier in Saarfend? That's a long walk. I bought my first house in Standford-le-Hope, just up the river towards Tilbury, when I worked at Shell Haven refinery. That was 1981.    I recall in the 1987 storm I was unable to use the railway line for 3 days because a whelk stall had been blown across the track at Southend. It seems to fit the vibe of the area.

SE Essex is generally a bit of a dump, but one thing they had in Stanford-le-Hope was a good, traditional baker: very good bloomers and really excellent jam doughnuts with proper raspberry jam. 

 

[geordief]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

You are too kind. 

The pier in Saarfend? That's a long walk. I bought my first house in Standford-le-Hope, just up the river towards Tilbury, when I worked at Shell Haven refinery. That was 1981.    I recall in the 1987 storm I was unable to use the railway line for 3 days because a whelk stall had been blown across the track at Southend. It seems to fit the vibe of the area.

SE Essex is generally a bit of a dump, but one thing they had in Stanford-le-Hope was a good, traditional baker: very good bloomers and really excellent jam doughnuts with proper raspberry jam. 

 

No ,most of the people in our road were second homers from London (and Southend)

It was Mersea and not really a pier .Just a jetty to moor small boats and go crabbing  .Think it was part of  the River Colne and we had the best known  oyster population  until  the winter of 63  wiped them out.

 

[exchemist]

7 hours ago, geordief said:

No ,most of the people in our road were second homers from London (and Southend)

It was Mersea and not really a pier .Just a jetty to moor small boats and go crabbing  .Think it was part of  the River Colne and we had the best known  oyster population  until  the winter of 63  wiped them out.

 

Oh, Mersea. That’s very different from the Thames estuary part I knew.

[dimreepr]

16 hours ago, KJW said:

I think you don't understand what I said.

 

Perhaps, but right back atcha.

My point is, money is not a measure of arseholery, it just looks like it is, bc of this western drive to the bottom of the pile; reducing taxes is the mantra of the uber-arsehole.

I think your target is wrong...

[StringJunky]

On 8/10/2024 at 3:21 PM, dimreepr said:

I think, you don't understand the numbers...

Millionaires are common. Mainly those with it tied up in houses. 

Musk's daughter has him sized up:

All the world's a stage, eh?

Edited August 12 by StringJunky

[MigL]

With his new found 'Christianity and family values', along with his so called business acumen, maybe he's positioning himself for the next Republican messiah, after D Trump fails.

[StringJunky]

4 hours ago, MigL said:

With his new found 'Christianity and family values', along with his so called business acumen, maybe he's positioning himself for the next Republican messiah, after D Trump fails.

 

[dimreepr]

5 hours ago, StringJunky said:

 

I don't know about mini me, their arsholery seems roughly equivalent; that of 'Cartman' (from south park) an 8 year old mummies boy, with a devious mind.

They're are but pigmies when compared to the statesmanship of Nixon. 😉

[MigL]

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

They're are but pigmies when compared to the statesmanship of Nixon. 😉

Nixon's biggest fault is that he got caught doing what every other President/politician does ( except maybe J Carter ).

I love this picture of him in the Kitchen with N Khrushchev, when he was vice-President to Eisenhower 

I

 

I'm sure D Trump ( or E Musk ) would be kissing his ass, not poking him in the chest.

Kitchen Debate - Wikipedia

Edited August 13 by MigL

[Phi for All]

On 8/10/2024 at 7:54 AM, KJW said:

I think billionaires is the new millionaires.

I hope this isn't the general sentiment. It isn't possible to be a billionaire (US) without unethically exploiting many aspects of the free market. You've probably heard the math by now. We pretend your "position" pays you $1 every second you're alive. That's $60 a minute, $3600 an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At that rate it takes a little more than 11 days for you to become a millionaire. At the same rate, it takes just short of 32 years to become a billionaire. If you have multiple billions of dollars, you have it at the expense of many, many people. You've used your money to do things nobody should be allowed to use their money to do, you avoided paying your fair share of taxes, and underpaid those who actually did the work you got paid so much for.

[MigL]

Never thought of it that way.
I do remember the old saying
"No one ever got rich by doing an honest day's work"

[Phi for All]

16 hours ago, MigL said:

Never thought of it that way.
I do remember the old saying
"No one ever got rich by doing an honest day's work"

I just heard someone do the math to show that the average McDonald's employee would have to work for 3000 years to earn what the McDonald's CEO made in 2017.

[toucana]

According to Sky news, Trump has now confirmed the appointment of Elon Musk to his cabinet to co-lead a new 'Department of Government Efficiency' (DOGE for short) with Vivek Ramaswamy.

https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-confirms-elon-musk-in-his-cabinet-13253406

 

Quote

 

The appointment fulfils a promise Mr Trump made to the tech billionaire after he endorsed him in the race for the White House, and poured more than $119m (£92m) canvassing for him in the seven battleground states.

In a statement, the president-elect said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy "will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies".

The department will provide "advice and guidance" from outside the government, Mr Trump said, which will likely mean both Mr Musk and biotech entrepreneur Mr Ramaswamy will be allowed to continue working in the private sector and serve without Senate approval, Sky's US partner network NBC reported.