(July 24, 2025 at 9:11 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote:

(July 24, 2025 at 2:30 pm)AFTT47 Wrote: So simple and predictable too. Stay out of politics and everybody judges your product on its merits. Dive deep into politics and you turn off about 50% of them - regardless of what side you take. Such a no-brainer to not mix business with politics. It's a guaranteed loss.

It depends; and it seems like especially if you're diving into left-wing poltics (and I mean "left-wing" in the loosest way possible, because the right tends to not grasp differences in ideas like Stalinism and saying that maybe putting immigrants into what may as well be death camps is something we shouldn't do), it can work out pretty well for you. Even from the right, at least as long as the right-winger in question doesn't understand things like "if you buy something just to destroy it, they still have your money."

To be fair, when Bud Light, an unreasonably popular brand of beer here in America, featured a transgender model on some cans and in some ads, their core base of Redneckistan alcoholics stopped buying BL and shifted to other watery beers of equally-questionable provenance. Coca-Cola saw something similar happen a few years ago, though not to such an extent, because of their corporate support of equal-rights. Hobby Lobby, Tractor Supply Co, and others as well have garnered conservative consumers who do not want to do business with companies which treat employees decently without regard to race, gender, or sexual identity.

Conservatives are not averse to "cancel culture"; they don't mind mounting boycotts and avoiding companies they don't like. I'm not complaining about that here, either. I'm just pointing out their hypocrisy

A new report found that in just six months, Elon Musk's cost-cutting agency wasted more than $21 billion. Other estimates have found that the cuts will cost more than they save in the long run.

In order to quickly thin the ranks of government, Musk offered federal employees the opportunity to retire early with their benefits and pay through September 30—a deal that around 200,000 took. The Senate report calculates that the government has spent $14.8 billion to pay these employees not to work for eight months.

Roughly another 100,000 employees were also involuntarily fired from their jobs, and had to receive severance pay that amounts to an additional $6.1 billion.

DOGE's funding freezes also resulted in massive waste: freezes on loans for energy utility projects meant that the government lost out on $263 million worth of interest payments and fees. Meanwhile, $110 million worth of food and medicine was left to spoil in warehouses due to the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

DOGE's firing of thousands of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees could cost $395 billion in lost revenues over the next decade, and potentially as much as $2.4 trillion if the decrease in enforcement leads to more tax-dodging.

Musk also virtually eliminated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has returned over $26 billion to American consumers since its creation in 2011 while costing a fraction of that amount to run.

Even the $125 million cut from USAID—which the White House has claimed results in "no return for the American people"—is projected to result in nearly $29 billion lost each year by U.S.-based organizations.

Meanwhile, the human costs to these cuts, especially to USAID, have been catastrophic, with hundreds of thousands already dead from preventable diseases in a matter of months, and potentially as many as 14 million by the end of the decade.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/doge-w...f-billions

"This Will Open the Floodgates": Tesla In Trouble as Jury Orders It to Pay $329 Million After Autopilot Death

On Friday, a Miami jury ruled that the Elon Musk-owned automaker's Autopilot driver assistance software was partially at fault for a horrendous collision that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend.

In total, the jury ordered Tesla to pay $329 million to the surviving family of the victims, Naibel Benavides and Dillon Angulo.

The ruling could drastically impact Tesla's autonomous vehicle efforts — which it's been increasingly leaning into as its sales falter — and perhaps reshape the self-driving landscape at large. These are enormous damages, and the prospect of being on the hook anytime the experimental software kills or injures a bystander could dampen investor enthusiasm for the tech.

It also comes at a critical moment for Tesla, which launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, and expanded its driverless fleet this week to San Francisco. Musk is hoping that a pivot to robotaxis could rake in the company trillions of dollars. Prior to the launch, he estimated that Tesla could have a million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026. In light of the ruling, that's a lot expensive legal liabilities waiting to happen.

"This will open the floodgates," Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the lawsuit, told the Associated Press after the ruling. "It will embolden a lot of people to come to court."

This may have been a long time coming for Tesla. Its self-driving software — which are actually driver assistance features, regardless of their overconfident brand names — have been involved in multiple deadly crashes. The automaker has frequently been criticized for exaggerating how autonomously its cars can operate and has been repeatedly investigated by federal regulators and sued by state authorities.

https://futurism.com/jury-tesla-autopilot-death

(August 1, 2025 at 11:39 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: "This Will Open the Floodgates": Tesla In Trouble as Jury Orders It to Pay $329 Million After Autopilot Death

On Friday, a Miami jury ruled that the Elon Musk-owned automaker's Autopilot driver assistance software was partially at fault for a horrendous collision that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend.

In total, the jury ordered Tesla to pay $329 million to the surviving family of the victims, Naibel Benavides and Dillon Angulo.

The ruling could drastically impact Tesla's autonomous vehicle efforts — which it's been increasingly leaning into as its sales falter — and perhaps reshape the self-driving landscape at large. These are enormous damages, and the prospect of being on the hook anytime the experimental software kills or injures a bystander could dampen investor enthusiasm for the tech.

It also comes at a critical moment for Tesla, which launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, and expanded its driverless fleet this week to San Francisco. Musk is hoping that a pivot to robotaxis could rake in the company trillions of dollars. Prior to the launch, he estimated that Tesla could have a million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026. In light of the ruling, that's a lot expensive legal liabilities waiting to happen.

"This will open the floodgates," Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the lawsuit, told the Associated Press after the ruling. "It will embolden a lot of people to come to court."

This may have been a long time coming for Tesla. Its self-driving software — which are actually driver assistance features, regardless of their overconfident brand names — have been involved in multiple deadly crashes. The automaker has frequently been criticized for exaggerating how autonomously its cars can operate and has been repeatedly investigated by federal regulators and sued by state authorities.

https://futurism.com/jury-tesla-autopilot-death

Schadenfreude level increases.

(August 1, 2025 at 11:54 pm)Fireball Wrote:

(August 1, 2025 at 11:39 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: "This Will Open the Floodgates": Tesla In Trouble as Jury Orders It to Pay $329 Million After Autopilot Death

On Friday, a Miami jury ruled that the Elon Musk-owned automaker's Autopilot driver assistance software was partially at fault for a horrendous collision that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend.

In total, the jury ordered Tesla to pay $329 million to the surviving family of the victims, Naibel Benavides and Dillon Angulo.

The ruling could drastically impact Tesla's autonomous vehicle efforts — which it's been increasingly leaning into as its sales falter — and perhaps reshape the self-driving landscape at large. These are enormous damages, and the prospect of being on the hook anytime the experimental software kills or injures a bystander could dampen investor enthusiasm for the tech.

It also comes at a critical moment for Tesla, which launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, and expanded its driverless fleet this week to San Francisco. Musk is hoping that a pivot to robotaxis could rake in the company trillions of dollars. Prior to the launch, he estimated that Tesla could have a million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026. In light of the ruling, that's a lot expensive legal liabilities waiting to happen.

"This will open the floodgates," Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the lawsuit, told the Associated Press after the ruling. "It will embolden a lot of people to come to court."

This may have been a long time coming for Tesla. Its self-driving software — which are actually driver assistance features, regardless of their overconfident brand names — have been involved in multiple deadly crashes. The automaker has frequently been criticized for exaggerating how autonomously its cars can operate and has been repeatedly investigated by federal regulators and sued by state authorities.

https://futurism.com/jury-tesla-autopilot-death

Schadenfreude level increases.

"Scotty, I'd like 1200 PSI on the target."
"M'capt'n, she can't take that!"
"I want what pressure you can give!"

I want to see this little cocksucker crack like that sub that visited Titanic a couple of years ago. I want to see Elon implode.

DOGE’s “Big Balls” Was Beaten Up—and Musk Is Already Lying About It

Quote:Elon Musk appears to be greatly exaggerating the extent of the attack on former DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, a.k.a. “Big Balls,” who was jumped in Washington, D.C., earlier this week.

The billionaire claimed that Coristine heroically stopped “a gang of about a dozen young men” from assaulting a woman in her car at night.” He said that Coristine ran over to defend the woman and saved her in spite of being “severely beaten to the point of concussion.” Musk ended his retelling by calling for the federal government to take control of D.C.

Trump used the attack on Big Balls to echo the same inaccurate, made-for-Fox News sentiments, calling for the federal takeover of D.C. and the mass criminalization of mostly working-class Black and Latino children.

---

Neither of these highly dramatized accounts aligns with the Metropolitan Police Department’s report. While Trump and Musk claimed a brutal assault involving a gang of men, the MPD reported an unarmed carjacking, with only two 15-year-old suspects detained, a girl and a boy.

Fearmongering and hyperbole are common tactics for Trump and other conservatives, especially around events like these. But Washington, D.C.’s unique nonstate status has emboldened the president, as he has hinted at taking over the city countless times before. Everyone deserves to feel safe in the city they live in, but Big Balls getting mugged is not a valid excuse to start rounding up kids and revoking the little autonomy the city has.  

Assuming the nom de guerre "Big Balls" is pretty much asking for a beat-down.

I bet big balls is the kind of kid who thinks he can get pissy with a carjacker.

(August 6, 2025 at 9:19 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I bet big balls is the kind of kid who thinks he can get pissy with a carjacker.

I bet his Wheaties were running down the inside of his leg when push got to shove.

Reminiscent of, "We bad, that's right!", from Stir Crazy.