Outside the Beltway

Friday Tabs

Steven L. Taylor
40

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None of that is to suggest that Musk’s salute wasn’t genuine. A practiced troll consistently crosses redlines because they want to offend and trigger. They also swaddle their actions in enough detached irony and cynicism that allow them to relentlessly mock or harass anyone who dares take them seriously. There is every reason to take a right-wing troll at face value, and yet doing so often means giving them what they want: an intense reaction they can use against you.

  • Apropos of the above question. (But, you know, the guy who is smart enough to colonize Mars is too dumb to understand what he was doing).
  • Interesting.
  • This is such a weird timeline.

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40 responses to “Friday Tabs”

  1. Sleeping Dog Avatar
    Sleeping Dog

    The best response to Musk, is for anyone interested in an EV to purchase something other than a Tesla. It’s rare that an individual can use their individual purchasing decision to strike back at a loathsome lout.

    6
  2. charontwo Avatar
    charontwo

    Apropos of the above question. (But, you know, the guy who is smart enough to colonize Mars is too dumb to understand what he was doing).

    I see nothing “smart” about Musk’s Mars infatuation, the idea of a manned presence on Mars is egregiously stupid or ignorant.

    Transporting people to or from Mars is problematical, given energy, radiation hazard, weightless hazards and probably others.

    And when you get there, what? Colder than the South Pole of Earth, no free water except light frost seasonally at one of the polar caps, extremely thin atmosphere that is mostly carbon dioxide.

    Best explored with unmanned missions and robotic technology. So people would what – wear spacesuits constantly, where else would they live? Where do food, water, oxygen come from? Where does waste go?

    5
  3. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @charontwo:

    I see nothing “smart” about Musk’s Mars infatuation, the idea of a manned presence on Mars is egregiously stupid or ignorant.

    I was snarking that many people, especially those defending him, see him as a genius who will, among other things, colonize Mars.

    I find his infatuation with the notion to be juvenile, TBH.

    5
  4. Kingdaddy Avatar
    Kingdaddy

    @Steven L. Taylor: @charontwo: As a lifelong enthusiast for space exploration, colonizing Mars is not a great idea, especially if there’s no follow-on activity that depends on a Mars presence. For details, please read.

    As a lifelong fan of planet Earth, I spit in the face of the stupid, destructive notion that we should just give up on saving Earth, and just go live on Mars or other inhospitable places. For just a few of millions of reasons why, see here.

    6
  5. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @charontwo:
    @Steven L. Taylor:
    @Kingdaddy:

    To revive an old and not at all funny joke, we’ll go to Mars because it’s there.

    We’ve had the capability to send people to Mars for decades. What’s lacking is the will to spend massive amounts of money to do it. The Apollo program was hugely expensive. A Mars program would make Apollo’s expenditures look trivial. If nazi in chief Xlon thinks he’ll do it in his lifetime without massive cash infusions from the government, I have a bridge, a tower, and a waterfall I’d be willing to sell him cheap.

    He could do it on his own dime. He should do it. He should also bravely lead the expedition himself. Of course, he’ll need a few dozen extra Xtarships to ferry his ego along, but that’s his own damned fault.

    BTW, I highly recommend unread any book by Kelly and Zach. they’re as good, if a tad less snarky, than Randall Munroe of xkcd.

    5
  6. Not the IT Dept. Avatar
    Not the IT Dept.

    The Bulwark is not my favorite online publication but I do make occasional exceptions for Will Saletan, who has an unsettling new piece on how a country goes authoritarian one step/one rationalization at a time:

    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/how-republicans-learned-to-excuse-political-violence-trump-january-6th-pardons?r=1emko&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

    3
  7. Matt Bernius Avatar
    Matt Bernius

    @Kingdaddy:

    As a lifelong fan of planet Earth, I spit in the face of the stupid, destructive notion that we should just give up on saving Earth, and just go live on Mars or other inhospitable places. For just a few of millions of reasons why, see here.

    So completely this… Or the underlying notion that we won’t just fuck up another planet the way we have Earth.

    I swear that a whole bunch of folks read “Of Mice and Men” and came away thinking “If only they had gotten to California everything would have turned out ok….”

    —
    Ok, on that last note, a somewhat rambling anecdote.

    About two decades ago, I got the chance to see Werner Herzog screen his film “Stroszek” and then do an extended Q&A. One of the first audience members was a person who was moved by the tragic end of the film and commented along the lines of:

    “I’m the daughter of German immigrants like the ones in the film. But they’re experience of America was so different and successful. Why couldn’t the films characters have overcome their challenges in this wonderful new country and live happy?!”

    Herzog, in the way only he can, paused… thought… and responded in his sing-songy way by saying something along the lines of:

    “I appreciate your family’s experience. As a writer, I believe change is very hard and most of us are not capable of radical change. I don’t believe that where you move changes who you are…

    But if it helps, imagine they went to Canada instead. Their endings would have been the same there as well.”

    I love Herzog.

    4
  8. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    The Village People are so desperate for attention/gigs that they had to do a Trump rally? That’s really sad. [One tear emoji]

    2
  9. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    I don’t see the infatuation with Mars as juvenile, just as I don’t see the early desire to go to the moon as juvenile. If he can do it, great – better to spend billions on that than buying TikTok or some other vanity culture-war project.

    Like the Apollo project, such a massive endeavor would almost certainly have many side benefits and technological advances, even if it ultimately fails. And we are already seeing some of them with SpaceX reducing the cost to orbit by orders of magnitude. Those efforts are very much intended by Musk as stepping stones to Mars and not merely the commercialization of space.

    2
  10. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Matt Bernius:

    But I thought there are plenty of life-bearing worlds in the solar system. I mean, if you read 19th and early 20th century science fiction, all planets are inhabited and have oxygen atmospheres. Mars, Venus, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its moons, even some asteroids and even the Moon!

    So, we can easily chew them up and spit them out for the greater glory of the wealthy for decades yet. We should wreck the Earth faster to make the cowardly Zuck, the nazi Xlon, and the weathervane Lex Bezos as rich as they deserve to be.

    Science? Who are you going to believe, science or wishful thinking?

    3
  11. inhumans99 Avatar
    inhumans99

    @charontwo:

    I mentioned to my Brother that Musk, and now President Trump, as I believe he also declared we are going to Mars, watched The Martian, and said to themselves, if Hollywood can get Matt Damon to Mars, then we (President Trump and Elon) can get America to colonize Mars in what, maybe 2 years tops, certainly before President Trump’s first term is up, lol!!!!

    I recently re-watched The Martian for I believe the 5th time, and I love the film (I did not get a chance to see it in theaters, but lots of viewings via purchasing the extended cut on Prime Video), as it really is a great movie, but yeah…we are not colonizing Mars any time soon, certainly not during President Trump’s current term as President, and also not during his next term as President (American’s really should brace themselves that this could come to pass, as time flies and before you know it we will all be waking up to news that President Trump is bucking norms again and running for a 2nd term, which he could very well win).

    The Russians got used to Putins never ending stint in Russia’s equivalent of the White House, so I am sure us American’s can also get used to President Trump being a permanent fixture in the White House. I am starting to believe folks when they say the only way President Trump removes himself from the White House is if he dies (and they really are not joking), and he might be one of those guys who lives to be nearly a hundred, so we may be in for some fun decades to come under Republican rule.

    President Trump is like a barnacle, even if by some miracle he allowed the GOP/Americans to vote (sham vote or note) for someone other than himself, say J.D. Vance, and Vance of course gets the votes to become our next President, it will be funny to see Vance walking through the White House as he drags President Trump alongside him as he is pretty much permanently tethered to President Trump.

    I seem to be in a bit of a silly mood this Friday, but better to try and find humor in things than get depressed and cry.

    3
  12. gVOR10 Avatar
    gVOR10

    Re the FloraBama tee shirt, the last few days weather must have played hell with their business. But I expect most of the locals will see no reason to consider there might be something funny going on with the climate.

  13. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @inhumans99:

    There’s already a proposed constitutional amendment to give the rapist in chief a third term.

    It won’t pass, as though I need to say this, but it shows the party of the rapist wants him to be pretend president for life.

    That said, I wouldn’t mind having his head on a pike kept permanently at the white house, “as a warning to the next ten generations that some bad electoral choices come with too high a price.”

    BTW, Marx claimed history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. He may have been wrong, in that the farce might come before the tragedy. What kept the felon rapists’ first pretend term to be all farce, are the over one million deaths from the trump disease.

    3
  14. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    So Obama raising his hand to acknowledge a crowd is equivalent to Musk making the exact gesture used by neo-nazis and we should just set aside the fact that Musk has been promoting an actual fascist as German Chancellor, frequently likes, retweets and promotes actual nazis and white supremacists, embraces eugenics, and well, the list goes on and on. I can’t believe you’re buying this “awkward gesture” nonsense.

    3
  15. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Andy: Understand that I am a space exploration enthusiast.

    But I also find Musk’s infatuation with Mars to be juvenile. He talks about it the way a middle schooler might, IMO.

    1
  16. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @MarkedMan: My interpretation of the clip was that, in fact, Obama, Harris, et al. was very different from Musk, whose motion is identical to the neo-Nazis in the clip.

    Indeed, the whole point, to me, was that the video shared rather underscores that it wasn’t an “awkward gesture.”

    You did read my post on this, yes? And please note the newest one I just wrote.

    2
  17. Gavin Avatar
    Gavin

    Musk shows exactly zero signs of autism. Assh0le is not a condition on the spectrum. But autism is the reason Musk gave the nazi salute.. and not his family’s decades-long support for outright Nazi ideology?

    Or is autism something negative we should do everything possible to avoid, including confirming RFK as HHS secretary?

    Which is it? Or is autism now MAGA’s Schrodinger’s Condition, whose symptoms and effects are whatever the person in front of the mic says they are? Haha nothing matters, right?

    1
  18. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @just nutha: I assume there was a big check involved.

    2
  19. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @Steven L. Taylor: Do you mean this comment, which I assume was yours? It’s the one I was reacting to.

    None of that is to suggest that Musk’s salute wasn’t genuine. A practiced troll consistently crosses redlines because they want to offend and trigger. They also swaddle their actions in enough detached irony and cynicism that allow them to relentlessly mock or harass anyone who dares take them seriously. There is every reason to take a right-wing troll at face value, and yet doing so often means giving them what they want: an intense reaction they can use against you.

    I took that to mean that you thought Musk was legitimately giving a sieg heil, but that he was just trolling. In other words, that it didn’t represent a true belief but rather just a desire to own the libs.

    1
  20. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @just nutha: Much to my surprise there is actually one original member of the Village People left, and he was the lead singer to boot. As Stephen pointed out, it was probably just because of money, but I hold out the hope it was to make a more subtle point. After all, (Legal) President Donald J Trump stood up on stage with a band who almost defined the gay pride movement, and danced with them including the guy with his bare bottom exposed.

    2
  21. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    Just to reinforce Stephen’s point about the size of the check the Village People needed to dance with Trump (from an article in The Atlantic):

    The band formed in the 1970s when two French producers, one of them gay, put out a casting call that read “Macho Types Wanted: Must Dance and Have a Moustache.” Today those founders are dead, but the band’s frontman, Victor Willis, is alive to deny, at every chance, that “YMCA” is a queer anthem. Over the past few years, he’s also moved from condemning the Trump campaign’s use of the song to embracing it, in part because, as he recently explained on Facebook, “The financial benefits have been great.”

    2
  22. Jen Avatar
    Jen

    @Kathy: If the constitutional amendment would allow Trump to run for a third term, it would allow Obama to run for a third term too, wouldn’t it?

    2
  23. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @MarkedMan: That is quote from the Atlantic piece linked.

    I do think that it was Nazi salute. I do not know the degree to which it was trolling or something else.

    1
  24. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @Jen: They clearly have thought of that:

    ‘‘No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms,

  25. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Steven L. Taylor: Even so. Still as sad as the PBS shows 20 years ago featuring grannies and grampses with tears in their eyes screaming about seeing The Platters and hearing Duke of Earl again.

    YMCA is from 1978. I was 26. 46 years ago. It’s just pathetic, more than anything else. Their moms aren’t even alive to be proud of them anymore.

    It must be sad to have been a “big noise with all the big boys”*.

    Well, the time slips away and leaves you with nothin, mister, but boring stories… [emphasis added]*

    * two more shout outs to the era–Boomers: we never get off the stage (not even for the janitor to sweep).

    3
  26. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @MarkedMan: And declared the the United States only recognizes two genders the next day. Is your point that it’s sad that the last remaining Village Person sold out? I agree.

    If it’s anything else, Put down the bong, Marked, you’ve smoked enough.

    (If it wuz “Trump’s a hypocrite!” I be just smh.)

  27. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @MarkedMan: That original singer was out of the band for many years, and was also always claimed to be straight.

    He was out before the Village People movie, if memory serves me.

    #NotAllVillagePeople

    1
  28. steve Avatar
    steve

    I really loved this. Seriously, he says stupid, crazy stuff like this all of the time so now people just ignore but if any normal person said stuff like this they would lose all credibility.

    “He claimed Los Angeles limits residents to just 38 gallons of water a day, and referred to some mythical “valve” that could bring limitless water to L.A., but that officials instead diverted to the ocean.

    “They have a valve, think of a sink but multiply it by many thousands of times the size of it, it’s massive. And you turn it back toward Los Angeles. Why aren’t they doing it? They either have a death wish, they’re stupid or there’s something else going on that we don’t understand,” Trump said.”

    Steve

  29. Paine Avatar
    Paine

    Trump wants to condition disaster aid to California on voter ID laws. IS this sufficient grounds for Calfornia and ever other blue state to consider secession? Going forward every red state is going to get a blank check to handle disasters and every blue state will have to make concessions to get the same.

    1
  30. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @steve:

    or there’s something else going on that we don’t understand,” Trump said.

    Don’t understand or won’t understand, or fully understand and just lie about.

    I look forward to a Presidential trip to visit the big valve. Show us where the valve is, Mr. President!

    (Is it in the basement of a pizza shop?)

    5
  31. Kathy Avatar
    Kathy

    @Jen:
    @Steven L. Taylor:

    During the Terry Schiavo case, Republicans in Congress proposed a law that would have been applicable only to that patient and no one else. Now one of the rapist Republiqans is proposing a constitutional amendment that would apply to only one individual.

    2
  32. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    @Paine: If I were trying to craft policies to break up the US, tying FEMA aid to who the state voted for would be a good place to start.

    I don’t think that’s his intention — I think he’s trying to force submission and expects to get it — but it’s a good place to start. It hits at the heart of what the federal government is there for.

    I think it will backfire when Republicans in the House from California have to try to defend this. In the midterms, a bunch of those seats will go blue.

    1
  33. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @just nutha:

    it was probably just because of money

    The fact that I choose to hold out hope doesn’t mean I do t acknowledge the likely reality

  34. Just nutha ignint cracker Avatar
    Just nutha ignint cracker

    @MarkedMan: I don’t care that it was probably just for the money. I think it’s sad that an 73-year-old is still desperately seeking “one last time on stage.” It’s pathetic. It’s time for somebody else to get a chance at the spotlight. Of course, if being on the stage and/or money are the only things that give validation…

    No. It’s still pathetic. (Maybe even especially so in that case.)

    1
  35. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    The really hiarious thing about “colonizing Mars” is that there are huge areas of Earth that are enormously easier to utilize than Mars, and more or less empty:
    Northern Canada; northern Alaska; the Sahara Desert; the Australian “Empty Centre”; Patagonia; northern Siberia; Tibet. Even Antarctica and Greenland are paradisaical compared to Mars
    The reason we do not: it’s too bloody expensive and unpleasant.

    The extreme outside case for a Mars colony is: in case Earth gets hit by a dino-killer.
    But to avoid that probably requires just an orbital/Moon infrastructure orders of magnitudes less costly than establishing and sustaining a Mars habitation project.

    Unless and until we get to full AI directed nano/bio-tech, a Mars colony is a pipe-dream.

    Why not just focus on making life in the poverty-stricken areas of our planet more pleasant and productive, and on preserving our own biosphere?
    (Unless you have dreams of being the Sandworm Emperor, of course.)

    4
  36. Eusebio Avatar
    Eusebio

    @JohnSF:

    there are huge areas of Earth that are enormously easier to utilize than Mars

    Add to that the 70 percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered by oceans. Any part of the oceans–on the surface or hundreds of feet below it, warm regions or cold regions, areas prone to tropical cyclones or not–would be far more hospitable than Mars.

    2
  37. Eusebio Avatar
    Eusebio

    Some presidents’ plans for sending crewed missions to Mars:
    George HW Bush called for sending humans back to the Moon and ultimately to Mars.
    George W Bush announced a plan to send astronauts back to the moon by 2020, and use the moon as a base to launch crewed missions to Mars and beyond. His announcement, as I recall, sounded too much like JFK’s famous speech, and as such, unrealistically ambitious for what we were in 2004.
    Obama announced a plan to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and to Mars by the mid-2030s.
    The Biden administration announced a plan to land astronauts on the moon in 2025, and on Mars by 2040.
    Trump stated an intention to have astronauts plant an American flag on Mars. Musk has said that a crewed mission to Mars could potentially occur in 2028, before Trump leaves office, while NASA’s timeline is to put crewed landers onto Mars in the 2030s.

    I don’t expect us to send astronauts to Mars and return them alive to Earth by 2040. However, there are a lot of sciencey types who have said they’d go to Mars even if there’s a good chance it would be a one-way trip, so I’m slightly more optimistic that we’ll have a crewed mission to Mars by then.

    1
  38. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @Eusebio:
    A mission to Mars is entirely possible.
    Incredibly expensive, and with little point, but possible.
    But Musk’s fantasies of a self-sustaining Mars colony are laughable.
    We can’t even operate locally sustainable operations in many locations on Earth.
    (See South Pole Base)
    The Moon might be do-able, as the Moon is actually fairly close.
    Mars ain’t.

    1
  39. DrDaveT Avatar
    DrDaveT

    @JohnSF:

    The really hiarious thing about “colonizing Mars” is that there are huge areas of Earth that are enormously easier to utilize than Mars, and more or less empty

    …and yet already owned by somebody. Except for Antarctica, which is the hardest of all. (Though, as you note, much easier than Mars.)

  40. JohnSF Avatar
    JohnSF

    @DrDaveT:
    Yes, but: ownership issues would not, imho, be likely to rule out a “Megacity on Baffin Island for massive tax gains” transaction. Or similar in southern Algeria, or central Australia, or Siberia, or wherever.
    It’s just not economically viable, given our current technical capabilities.
    So Mars is the same, but turned up to 11.
    It’s just not practicable.

    1

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