Is Elon Musk the greatest visionary or the greatest snake oil salesman of our age?

[BigMoaner]

Everything has the feel of basement dwelling

 

[BigMoaner]

the logo:
View attachment 450936

looks like a stylistic echo of betheseda game stuff, Outer Worlds. The cog. Probably AI generated. Dangerous clown.

More context dot com please mate. Is that from one of his tweets?

 

[DotCommunist]

More context dot com please mate. Is that from one of his tweets?

yes, he's unveiled it as the new logo for the DOGE shit. The loyalty test & purge unit. Theres a few crappy articles knocking about. This efficiency (lol) drive is co headed by this cunt Vivek Ramaswamy, another entrepreneur and whack job.

 

[Ax^]

so efficient it needs two leaders

 

[frogwoman]

That's so cringe.

 

[two sheds]

Noooooooooooo it's lovely and cuddly - employees and their little kiddies will be happy to be sacked by such a friendly little mascot.

 

[klang]

I think it suits them tbh

 

[krtek a houby]

so efficient it needs two leaders

Should get on like a house on fire

 

[moochedit]

yes, he's unveiled it as the new logo for the DOGE shit.

I'd assummed it was a spoof. Wtf?

 

[frogwoman]

DOGE is named after that dog tho, which gave rise to a crypto which was started as a joke?

 

[BigMoaner]

yes, he's unveiled it as the new logo for the DOGE shit. The loyalty test & purge unit. Theres a few crappy articles knocking about. This efficiency (lol) drive is co headed by this cunt Vivek Ramaswamy, another entrepreneur and whack job.

Clown town

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

What even is government efficiency? What does it look like?

In my company if me and a staff member must travel to Bora Bora for two weeks to source a pack of biros, yeah, that's inefficient.

What does it look like to an agency that provides social care for vulnerable children?

 

[story]

DOGE is named after that dog tho, which gave rise to a crypto which was started as a joke?

Doge is also the name of the highest authority in the Republic of Venice. They were voted in for life via a super complicated process, when Venice was the centre of the most financially powerful place on earth.

Even though these pricks don't know anything, I doubt they don't know this.

 

[Septimus Rufiji]

Should get on like be in a house on fire

ffy

 

[tommers]

We didn't vote for the fuckers, though

I'm talking about humanity as a whole. Not me and you (altho we are part of humanity as whole obviously).

DOGE is named after that dog tho, which gave rise to a crypto which was started as a joke?

yeah, Musk was heavily involved in Dogecoin. Which was like Bitcoin but shitter, if that's imaginable. It was (is) crypto based on a meme.(Doge (meme) - Wikipedia) He pumped it and dumped it. Now he's decided that it's hilarious that the govt dept that he's somehow co-running has an acronym which spells out the name of a meme from 2013.

I would say that it's unbelievable that these people are in power. But we're fucking stupid, so of course they are.

 

[BigMoaner]

I'm talking about humanity as a whole. Not me and you.

yeah, Musk was heavily involved in Dogecoin. Which was like Bitcoin but shitter, if that's imaginable. It was (is) crypto based on a meme.(Doge (meme) - Wikipedia) He pumped it and dumped it. Now he's decided that it's hilarious that the govt dept that he's somehow co-running has an acronym which spells it the name of a meme from 2013.

I would say that it's unbelievable that these people are in power. But we're fucking stupid, so of course they are.

Didn’t know that link. Jesus Christ In A Greggs.

 

[Dillinger4]

This department has been created in order to make the machinery of US government less efficient, for the benefit of foriegn powers and enemies of the US. Everything about this, from the appointments, down to the logo, is an expression of this.

 

[Bus Honeygun]

Tick-tock:

Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X

We will stop posting from our official editorial accounts on the platform, but X users can still share our articles

www.theguardian.com

Regular users are leaving in droves. Bluesky has seen a lot of people signing up recently.

FC St Pauli are off too:

FC St. Pauli announce decision to leave X

FC St. Pauli will no longer communicate via the social networking site X due to the spread of hate and racism on the platform.

bulinews.com

 

[LDC]

This department has been created in order to make the machinery of US government less efficient, for the benefit of foriegn powers and enemies of the US. Everything about this, from the appointments, down to the logo, is an expression of this.

That is complete imagined conspiracy nonsense. It's just US capitalist economics and ideology hyped up on the current politico-cultural MAGA tendency, there's nothing more sinister to it than that.

 

[tommers]

Didn’t know that link. Jesus Christ In A Greggs.

Now I know why old people are generally angry. Maybe when you're younger you see somebody doing this, or people voting for Trump or whatever and cos that's all you've ever really known in your life you accept it as being "normal" or "they way it is". It's only when you get older that you realise that this is fucking insane and that, maybe, the whole of humanity is mad and that we're all doomed.

FC St Pauli are off too:

FC St. Pauli announce decision to leave X

FC St. Pauli will no longer communicate via the social networking site X due to the spread of hate and racism on the platform.

bulinews.com

And the clifton suspension bridge!

 

[Dillinger4]

That is complete imagined conspiracy nonsense. It's just US capitalist economics and ideology hyped up on the current politico-cultural MAGA tendency, there's nothing more sinister to it than that.

You are mistaken.

 

[belboid]

This efficiency (lol) drive is co headed by this cunt Vivek Ramaswamy, another entrepreneur and whack job.

and another one with massive government contracts that have sustained his own business.

 

[LDC]

Sorry, you are wrong.

Ok, rather than just state this as fact, what evidence do you have for it then? And exactly who are working for which foreign powers and enemies of the US? Trump, Musk, the whole Republican party... the entire US State? In what way does this mysterious 'they' benefit if the US is made more 'inefficient' by this new department of efficiency? In what areas is this department going to make the machinery of the US State less efficient, rather than it just being about making sweeping cuts and be far less involved in service provision or maintaining standards such as environmental protection?

 

[two sheds]

What even is government efficiency? What does it look like?

In my company if me and a staff member must travel to Bora Bora for two weeks to source a pack of biros, yeah, that's inefficient.

What does it look like to an agency that provides social care for vulnerable children?

Indeed, it's the same con the tories (and labour) have been pulling for years. Cutting costs and throwing people out of work leads to a 'streamlined' and 'efficient' service. Only there are two measures involved with efficiency: cost but also service delivered. The cost cutting of local authorities has pushed costs back on to local residents: cutting bus and train services pushes transport costs back onto travellers, cutting NHS services makes people less able to work, cutting youth schemes raises youth crime ...

 

[Dillinger4]

Ok, rather than just state this as fact, what evidence do you have for it then? And exactly who are working for which foreign powers and enemies of the US? In what way do they benefit if the US is made more 'inefficient' by the department of efficiency? In what areas is this department going to make the machinery of the US State less efficient, rather than just cut right back and be far less involved in service provision or maintaining standards such as environmental protection?

‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.

Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.

According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.

Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.

The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”

Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”

The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing scepticism about US participation in Nato. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.

Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.

The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.

They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.

Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.

By this point Trump was the frontrunner in the Republican party’s nomination race. A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use “all possible force” to ensure a Trump victory.

Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.

Active measures

Active measures (Russian: активные мероприятия, romanized: aktivnye meropriyatiya) is a term used to describe political warfare conducted by the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The term, which dates back to the 1920s, includes operations such as espionage, propaganda, sabotage and assassination, based on foreign policy objectives of the Soviet and Russian governments.[1][2][3] Active measures have continued to be used by the administration of Vladimir Putin.[4][5]

Active measures includes the establishment and support of international front organizations (e.g., the World Peace Council); foreign communist, socialist and opposition parties; wars of national liberation in the Third World. It also included supporting underground, revolutionary, insurgency, criminal, and terrorist groups. The programs also focused on counterfeiting official documents, assassinations, and political repression, such as penetration into churches, and persecution of political dissidents. The intelligence agencies of Eastern Bloc states also contributed to the program, providing operatives and intelligence for assassinations and other types of covert operations.[3]

Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of the Soviet intelligence":[6]

Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.[6]

You really must be very uninformed.

 

[LDC]

‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy



Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House



Active measures



You really must be very uninformed.

Those articles don't say what you're saying though. There's a huge and important difference about him attracting some Russian State interest (almost certainly) and him willingly working for the downfall of the US for the Russian State and making all his appointments based on that. There's plenty of options inbetween, like that his isolationist and transactional approach to foreign affairs suits the Russian State much more for example.

You seem to think it's a Russian plot to get their sleeper agent Trump elected, start this DOGE, make all the other appointments to weaken the US State, and then Russia can...?

 

[Artaxerxes]

That is complete imagined conspiracy nonsense. It's just US capitalist economics and ideology hyped up on the current politico-cultural MAGA tendency, there's nothing more sinister to it than that.

It’s essentially going to be used to gut regulation and anti trust legislation and outsource everything it possibly can and reduce employment


It’s going to absolutely wreck what it comes into contact with. It’s not a conspiracy it’s a capitalist wet dream

 

[Dillinger4]

Those articles don't say what you're saying though.

So you think it's a Russian plot to get Trump elected, start this DOGE, make all the other appointments to weaken the US State, and then Russia can...?

It does say what I am saying.

 

[Dillinger4]

The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia

The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia (Russian: Основы геополитики: геополитическое будущее России) is a geopolitical book by Aleksandr Dugin. Its publication in 1997 was well received in Russia; it has had significant influence within the Russian military, police forces, and foreign policy elites,[1][2] and has been used as a textbook in the Academy of the General Staff of the Russian military.[1][3] Powerful Russian political figures subsequently took an interest in Dugin,[4] a Russian political analyst who espouses an ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist ideology based on his idea of neo-Eurasianism,[5] who has developed a close relationship with Russia's Academy of the General Staff.[6]

In 2023, Russia adopted a Eurasianist, anti-Western foreign policy in a document titled "The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation", approved by Vladimir Putin. The document defines Russia as a "unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power" that seeks to create a "Greater Eurasian Partnership" by pursuing close relations with China, India, countries of the Islamic world and the rest of the Global South (Latin America and Southern Africa). The policy identifies United States and other Anglo-Saxon countries as "the main inspirer, organizer, and executor of the aggressive anti-Russian policy of the collective West" and seeks the end of geopolitical American dominance in the international scene.

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism against neoliberal globalist Western hegemony, such as, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists" to create severe backlash against the rotten political state of affairs in the current present-day system of the United States and Canada. Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".[9]

 

[LDC]

The Russian State is definitely involved in trying to influence internal US (and other) politics, and vice versa.

There's a very big jump from that to saying Trump is purposefully establishing DOGE and making appointments to weaken the the US State on Russia's orders which is what you seem to be suggesting.