In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The Institute for the Study of War, normally a snoozer on my list of sites to visit, gave me a surprising flash of insight in last night's summation of the Ukraine war : A pro-war Russian ideologist, Alexander Dugin, openly criticized Putin — whom he referred to as the autocrat — for failing to uphold Russian ideology by surrendering Kherson City on November 12. Dugin said this Russian ideology defines Russia’s responsibility to defend “Russian cities” such as Kherson, Belgorod, Kursk, Donetsk, and Simferopol. Dugin noted that an autocrat has a responsibility to save his nation all by himself or face the fate of “king of the rains,” a reference to Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough in which a king was killed because he was unable to deliver rain amidst a drought. I hadn't thought of Frazer in decades. I ran into him in graduate school, a 19th century bourgeois optimist along the line of Hegel, Darwin, or Carlyle, a distinctly minor figure, but the trope was so intriguing ...

One of my favorite films of all time is The Big Short . My sixth sense tells me it's time to short Elon Musk, and at the end of yesterday's post, I began to muse on how his kids (who apparently owe him very little) might lock in their inheritance in the event he dies a pauper. Of those, one died in infancy, and another, Vivian, changed their name based on "gender identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form." This would make Vivian an unlikely candidate for the strategy I have in mind. But if the others can get their act together, they need to approach Dad in a body and propose jointly that each has a reasonable expectation of $xx,xxx,xxx inheritance at the time of Dad's demise. (Among other things, they would need to engage serious financial analysts as well as estate attorneys in determining this amount.) However, given Dad's recent record, there appears to be a significant chan...

The other day I noted that Elon seems to be making things up as he goes along with Twitter, and recent developments aren't changing my mind. This story goes into considerable detail about how last week's layoff process went down. Earlier, I quoted Musk on how if you think a policy would make a great Dilbert strip, it might be a bad policy, but the problem there is that Dilbert is supposed to be funny, and this saga is turning out to be anything but. Friday’s layoffs had been brutal for all involved, including those involved in planning them — many of whom themselves lost their jobs. While the process varied by team, some managers were asked to submit to Musk’s team two sentences about all of their direct reports: one sentence explaining what the employee did, and one sentence justifying their continued employment at Twitter. Wait a moment. "Those involved in planning them"? The new boss takes over and gives the company one week to lay off half its workforc...

I gave myself a day to let the results of the midterms sink in, and as of now, my takeaway is that I just don't understand the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth on the Republican side. The bottom line is that what had been predicted for months, the Republican takeover of the House, appears all but certain. In fact, I briefly saw Fox News at the end of Bret Baier's hour yesterday, and Fox announced that the Republican takeover had been "called" (whatever that means), but nobody as far as I can tell has repeated it, even at Fox. Nevertheless, the House Republicans are setting up for leadership elections, while the House Democrats aren't. This was going to be the key event of the cycle: with a Republican majority, the House can stop Democrat legislative initiatives, while Republican-controlled committees will have subpoena authority to pursue investigations into issues like COVID and the Biden family finances. The possibility of Republican control of th...

I couldn't help but notice this morning's news: Elon Musk is dipping into his electric car company to pay for his share of the $44 billion Twitter purchase, according to reports. He sold another $3.95 billion of Tesla shares Nov. 4-8, the Associated Press reported from regulatory filings, following up the $7 billion he sold in August as he tried to exit the Twitter deal on allegations of fraudulent account figures. He's now sold more than $19 billion of Tesla shares since April, when he started the Twitter deal. Forbes reported this was the first time Musk's personal wealth, which is tied up in Tesla, has dipped below $200 billion since May 24. It also happened Oct. 1, 2021. Tesla shares closed at a 52-week low Tuesday at $191.30. As I've looked at the Twitter takeover, on one hand from a considerable distance but on the other from a career in tech, I can't escape the feeling he's making things up as he goes along, which doesn't bode well....

As I noted the other day, the news late last week and over the weekend was that Elon was going to fire half of Twitter's work force. I was skeptical, if for no other reason than the managers he tasked with drawing up the lists of whom to fire had an incentive to sabotage the process by firing the people who actually made the company run, insofar as it did. But in any case, a project that big planned in the space of a week wasn't going to turn out well. As of yesterday, Twitter has asked dozens of employees that were laid off after Elon Musk took office to return. This is just days after nearly half of the company’s workforce across countries were asked to go, as per multiple media reports. According to sources cited by Bloomberg , a few of those who are being asked to return were “laid off by mistake” while others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features the new boss Elon Musk envisions. Once again, l...

The German theoretical physicist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder has a blog as well, where she often posts text versions of her YouTube presentations. I follow several physics YouTubers, in part because I have a suspicion that there are theoretical physics classes in Purgatory. However, Dr Hossenfelder also posts opinions on general topics, sometimes quirky ones. In a recent post, she talks about a school of thought she calls "longtermism", which it seems to me is in opposition to the current neo-Malthusian strain among globalists. In doing so, she gives an insight into Elon Musk's thinking, although I can't completely disagree with anyone who asks, "Why would you want to have that?" Have you ever put away a bag of chips because they say it isn’t healthy? That makes sense. Have you ever put away a bag of chips because you want to increase your chances of having more children so we can populate the entire galaxy in a billion years? That makes. . . That ...