How did you Americans allow any of this?
More than half of us voted for this. And we love what is going on; that action is being taken. Don't presume everyone thinks the same way you do.
Enjoy the Kool-Aid.
Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
371–380 of 411 posts
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
So a review of at most millions warrants cancelling billions in the meantime that literally keeps people from dying? Not a great indicator of how much you value human life there, buddy.
[flagged]
You clearly don't know much about the rest of the world.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> Who is incompetent in this list? The definition of competence is "having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully." You're posting in a forum mainly followed by engineers. Your average experience engineer knows well what a kid straight out of college brings in in terms of ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully. We know, because some of us are tasked with onboarding…
+1. And “figure out a government ledger” sounds like a friend who would ask why google spend so much money when “it’s just one page with a search box”. Government spending and the amounts involved in budgeting and appropriation etc are far more complex than that, even for small countries.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I've learned recently from these meritocracy advocates is competence is about your skin color. Black person working on a plane = disaster waiting to happen, no further evidence needed, but if you've got a nice and competent skin color and no other relevant credentials you're good to go at Andreessen Horowitz
My favorite example of this is Pete Hegseth. The fact that a man with zero qualifications, experience, or demonstrated aptitude to run an organization with 3.4 million employees and an $850 billion annual budget can go on and rail about how "woke hiring" allows unqualified people to rise to positions of prominence in government just shows that some people are completely incapable of shame or introspection.
The resumes of our former and current Sec of Defense:
General Lloyd Austin (Black):
- 12th Commander of United States Central Command
- 33rd Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
- 40th Director of the Joint Staff
Command:
- United States Central Command
- Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
- United States Forces – Iraq
- Multi-National Corps – Iraq
- XVIII Airborne Corps
- 10th Mountain Division
- 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division
- 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment
Awards: 31
Major Pete Hegseth (White):
- Fox News Weekend Host
Command: None
Awards: 4
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
I speak from personal history, but it's really easy to take a bunch of theoretically smart, high-achieving young people, give them a singular purpose, and have them work in overdrive with a level of arrogance that fits their lack of wisdom. It's essentially exactly how Mao was able to create the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.
Semi-counterpoint: the actually smart, high-achieving young people adapt to the status quo. The ones one rung lower, who the prevailing system cast aside for some deficit or other, begin their own independent revolutions (often at the margin of society, and achieving little). The rubes who blindly join someone else's revolution are neither the smartest nor the most high-achieving; they're just... useful.
You're describing Yarvin. Smart, but not smart enough to make it in the mainstream because he has racist authoritarian leanings. So he was cast out of mainstream hacker culture to toil on Urbit and his dark enlightment projects. The rubes are the kids in TFA.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand? I keep hearing on HN about how the US is being "taken over", that there is a "coup in place" and Musk is a "fascist" and so on (I'm not making these up, these are genuine HN comments in this thread and elsewhere). I'd like someone to clearly explain to me, an outsider about why such hostility has been ushered in this community ? Please point me to specifics so that I can understand what law(s) are bei…
Sure, happy to expand. Stepping back quite a bit, the US constitution divides up responsibilities between the Legislator (Congress), the Executive (President), and the courts (Supreme Court). The Legislator is given rights over declaring war, applying tariffs and levying taxes, federal budget, approving international treaties, and of course writing laws. Over the past 250 years, the legislative branch has slowly give…
> The US populace voted for this, so if it's a coup it's a bloodless one.
The role of Trump's normalization of political violence cannot be understated. It's well known that going against Trump results in death threat and spawns acts of stochastic terrorism.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the link, that's helpful. > Claiming the new Haitian community threatened “the good White residents” of Springfield, Blood Trump members descended on the city in August during Springfield’s annual Jazz & Blues festival, marching downtown while displaying guns and waving swastika flags. That's horrible. The city sued them, hopefully they all land in jail for a long time. > “the Blood Tribe made good on thos…
Now ask the question -- if Trump hadn't amplified allegations of this community as illegal immigrants eating dogs and cats, would they have been harassed and threatened? To me, the counterfactual clearly points to no. The Harris/Trump debate gave a set of clear accusations on film, so many that the denizens of the internet made several clever remixes to fight bullies with humor. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l…
> if Trump hadn't amplified allegations of this community as illegal immigrants eating dogs and cats, would they have been harassed and threatened?
Agree you're probably right. I never watched that debate, thanks for the clip. I won't watch it further I didn't like either one of them too much.
I did like the remix though, I am sure there are plenty of more of those.
But it seems that group is being sued and that's hopefully they lose and that'll be the best outcome here.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Cite the regs. Cure what you feel is inaccurate.
This isn’t a serious request. The ability of authorities to grant arbitrary people access to classified information has been the law of the land forever. If you are unfamiliar with this then you are not in a position to make a credible argument. I am not going to play a game of “fetch a rock” with someone incapable of cursory research.
This is my world, I know how it works.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's probably a fishing expedition to uncover some "scandal": https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/03/the-twitter-files-playbo...
And the fisherman definitely isn't controlling for selection bias.
It's Twitter Files but for the US Government.
Total nothing burgers but you still have people foaming at the mouth about whatever slanted headline they managed to cook up and do performative outrage over.
And to be clear, they all knew that going in. They're intentionally using false stories to attack and threaten people and organisations and have turned it into an industry.
Re: Elon Musk's Demolition Crew
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
So a review of at most millions warrants cancelling billions in the meantime that literally keeps people from dying? Not a great indicator of how much you value human life there, buddy.
[flagged]
PEPFAR, created by _Republican_ George W. Bush, is dead as part of this, here's _Republican_ George W. Bush claiming it saved 25 million lives in a talk two years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIOUWlL_HLQ
Unless we're all pointing at everyone we don't like, regardless of if they were the most notable _Republican_ of the past few decades except for maybe Trump, and calling them Democrats.
Here you go with this most Democrat of websites: https://www.bushcenter.org/publications/global-health-update... - on that website they now list 26 million lives - and "it’s a matter of life and death".
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - George Orwell