• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • Providing he doesn’t become a dictator, which is certainly probable, his impacts on the environment will be bad, but not catastrophic.

    Historically, when the incumbent is out, the president flips to the other party. Businesses plan strategy out for 5-10-20 years. Trump dismantling regulation won’t force them to reconsider their strategy entirely. They’ll use the 4 years as breathing room knowing it’s probable a democratic executive will return in 2029. They’ll slow walk progress, but they aren’t going to abandon everything and start ramping up emissions. They still have to sell products in CA and the 16 states that follow CA emissions rules. We already saw that in 2016, auto makers stayed the course. They enjoyed the extra time to get their fleet MPGs up, but they knew time would eventually out and they’d need to be competitive when that happened.

    Trumps “drill baby drill” plan sounds good to idiots, but oil is still subject to supply and demand. They already lease more land than they could ever use. They’ll use trump to buy up leases that would otherwise go to renewables, but they aren’t going to start pumping oil past demand and driving their profits down. Especially considering retaliation tariffs could cut into exports as well.

    The IRA benefits red states more than blue and they are already begging GOP leaders to leave it alone. Trump might be able to cut individual tax credits for the middle class. Slow some solar and EV purchases, buy that’ll cut into Elon’s business as well, so maybe he won’t even get that done.

    Of course, if he goes full dictator, we’re fucked anyway. But if he stays within the confines of our flawed democracy, and money prefers he do so they can continue to buy laws forever, then there’s a chance his damage will be confined as well.










  • First, let me clarify I bought my Tesla used, before Musk went full fascist, and autopilot came free. The car was updated to the newest hardware for free, since the original FSD equipment couldn’t do it either.

    That out of the way, FSD sucks, and it’s getting worse, not better. When if first come out of beta it was okay. I remember describing it as driving with a teenager, they got the general idea, but would make bad decisions so you had to watch them. Years of updates later and it’s practically unusable to me. It tries to go way under or over the speed limit, it hesitates or slams on the brakes for green lights. It slams on the brakes for cars that pull out with plenty of gap but doesn’t even notice the risky merges. It can not seem to navigate intersections anymore, damn near stopping in the middle of a turn. It actually just updated yesterday and I tried it again, it took me less than 5 miles to disable it again. It is, in my opinion, a hazard to use. I talked to my partner about it and we both agree it didn’t used to be this bad.

    Anyway, the stupidest part of all this, is they changed it so it’s either full self driving all the time or not. You want cruise while you’re in traffic because you know it’ll try to cut in front of someone? Silly idiot, no you don’t. So you now have to have a second profile* for cruise control and lane keep without FSD. And the odd thing is that lane keep and cruise are fine. They function like FSD used to. They can drive the highway with no problem and trust me, I do not have much faith in the car so I’m watching it close. It can’t navigate city streets, but neither can FSD…

    TLDR, my car was a better deal for me than Tesla. After years of FSD access, it’s bad and getting worse, not better. I can’t believe people pay 5 figures for it and maybe that’s why they feel the need to clip perfect drives or defend it.





  • I know Billionaires going to billionaire and all, but with Elon Musk so obviously having a strong position in Trump’s cabinet, wouldn’t it make sense to advocate against that administration? Elon is going to crush every private space and EV manufacturer in favor of his own companies. Elon is doing his best ‘toddler in a bounce house’ impression at the rallies. No way Bezos is going to compete or overcome Elon’s influence, especially since I doubt Trump will give a single fuck what his cabinet does.

    Again, avoiding taxes is all they care about, but damn. Harris might raise his taxes a fraction of a sliver, but at least Blue Origin would get a fair shake at contracts.


  • You’re right, there are a lot of very liberal people in the ranks. There’s no disputing that. I’m just saying there are plenty of MAGAs around too, more than enough to cause havoc. And if shit starts going south, the GI bill nerds with degrees will head for the door because they have the qualifications to do so. They can stand up for the constitution because they will land on their feet after they get kicked out.

    Generalizing myself here, the more conservative a troop is, the more likely the military is all they know. The promise of being special and fighting for the America they believe Trump will give them is more than enough to push some of them over the edge.