mh style quick hits on today's news
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Posted by blindness on September 05, 2025 at 08:35:49
Except I'm too lazy for links and cogent thoughts:
- Musk is promised $900B pay package if he can take Tesla's value from $1T and change to $8.5T in 10 years. So (a) this is $900B in 10 years' money, so there's that, (b) what they're offering him is about 1/9th of the company's value, and finally, double underscored, (c) people have stopped comprehending what numbers mean. 1T is a thousand billions, which n turn is a thousand millions, so 1T is a million million. Any economic system that creates something like this cannot be a viable economic system for ordinary people. So f**k capitalism!
- Trump changing the "Department of Defense" to the "Department of War". At first, I thought "Oh, no, yet another embarrassing thing we'll have to change when he's gone". Then I had to pause with the thought that given how we have been such a militarily aggressive people and how we think a military response is our preferred mode of operation, maybe it's not that inaccurate. So maybe this is a moment when the truth actually crystallizes and we stop pretending to be a peaceful, defensive nation. We keep referring to our soldiers and military personnel as "warriors", after all ... and with a straight face.[*] [**]
- Trump is looking for ways to get Eric Adams out of the NYC mayoral race by offering him some government position or other (I first heard HUD, and now it's ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia) for the obvious reason that he wants Cuomo to win. Does that mean that Jeffries and Schumer and the Democratic leadership is rooting for the same guy Trump is? Sure, on the one hand, that's the power of AIPAC, but on the other, I'd file this under the heading "We have two right wing parties". One of them's moderate, and the other's extreme. Time for a party on the left, I suppose?
- This headline gave me an uncontrollable laugh in the morning "‘Our songs last three minutes but they feel like an hour’: the return of Spinal Tap" an interview on the Guardian. I didn't read it. I didn't need to. I had already achieved my perfect morning with that line.[***]
I think that was about it for my morning skim of headlines.
[*] He names his Department of Defense to Department of *War* (or War Department, who cares?) and then demand a Nobel Peace Prize? The incongruence is staggering. He coulda at least done the hippy thing and renamed it "Department of Peace" and then hoped that would work. Nope. The dude can't help it.
[**] Next up, we should call the Department of Health and Human Services "the Department of Disease and Automation".
[***] There are two instances I can remember that I laughed uncontrollably for a long time by just the thought of something: the first one is the inch vs foot gag on Spinal Tap and the final scene in which you see a tiny stonehenge on the stage. The second one was a lawyer character named Bob Loblaw. Just say it out loud.
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