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If Trump picks [DeSantis] as VP he might still have a shot but I think Trump has someone else in mind.

If Trump picks DeSantis as VP only one of them could win any given FL electoral vote.
If the FL EVs are relevant (hardly unlikely) to the winner of the presidency, enough of them would have to vote Trump in order to put him over the top. Those FL electors would have to vote for someone not a resident of Florida, and if that’s over half of the FL EV total, that would throw the election of the VP into the Senate. Imagine the stink if half of the Electors had to vote for someone other than Trump for POTUS. It would call into question the fatuous assumption that electors cannot be “faithless” to the at-large popular vote in their state.

Presumably, given the favorable map for Senate elections this cycle, the Republicans could then select DeSantis but we have been overoptimistic in the past.

The safest way to avoid a media circus would be to have the Trump ticket in FL only contain a name of a non-FL resident. The only really safe approach would be to nominate and elect me to the VP slot - and let me step down after the inauguration so that Trump could then name DeSantis to the slot - always assuming the Republicans hold the House. So that’s not so safe, either.

with almost 100% automation - a UBI will be necessary - the problem is what do people do with their time that gives them long term life satisfaction? It’s a difficult question.

“UBI” would be a misnomer, just UI - to the extent that robots eliminate scarcity, there will be no reason to limit “universal income” to “basics.” Elimination of scarcity would call the very idea of economics - and of money as we know it - into question. But it would seem that, in the industrial age, “plenty” has always been a moving target. People might protest that their own yacht is smaller than that of Bill Gates . . .

The fundamental issue of such a future is the theory that it would cause people to deliberately break it just so something unexpected could happen. This issue was identified over a century ago.

In future there might be a Neurolink app for that . . .

Elon Musk (says, at least that he) is working to make a maximally curious, maximally truth-seeking, AI.

The legal principle is that official facts are determined by juries. So ultimately a truth-seeking AI must become a prosecutor/plaintiff lawyer and, equally, a defense lawyer.

Stipulating that not every thing that every Republican says is going to be true, Adam Schiff Democrats have no analog in the Republican Party. Unless you count rogues like Liz Cheney or (2012 Republican nominee for POTUS!) Mitt Romney, whom mainstream Republicans repudiate. The reason is of course the fact that the business interest of any journalist favors excitement/fear inducing stories, and such stories need not actually be true.

It occurs to me that Jordan Peterson says a couple of germane things. One is that it is all very well to get all absorbed by the issue of intelligence - but there is such a thing as wisdom - which he says is not only different from, but actually uncorrelated with, IQ. But nobody is explicitly talking about “artificial wisdom.”

Another is that Peterson asserts that

• conscientiousness is highly correlated with conservatism, whereas
• openness/creativity is very highly correlated with opposition to conservatism.

This is somewhat counterintuitive. But since conscientiousness and openness are uncorrelated, I suppose someone like Elon Musk can be very high in both dimensions of personality.

The other three dimensions of personality, BTW, are extroversion, agreeableness, and anxiousness. Seems odd that the “five dimensions of personality,” are all uncorrelated with IQ and with each other, and yet Peterson never suggests how wisdom fits with the “five” personality traits. Does it stand alone, like IQ?

The other way that a conviction wouldn’t matter a lot is if Biden raises the issue, and Trump simply demands that Biden explain what the alleged “crime” was. Of course Biden would lie, there not being a truthful answer that could be justified to an Independent , let alone a Republican . . .

seems like Trump would probably succeed in illustrating just how tendentious the prosecution was. Just for starters, there is federal law against using campaign contributions for personal expenses - and yet the prosecution wants to convict Trump on the theory that hush money for Daniels was strictly a campaign expense having nothing to do with the feelings of Trump’s wife, and should have been accounted as such, rather than as a personal expense. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

How important could the distinction possibly be to the public??? Prosecuting a case which, at best, depends on how many angels you think can dance on the head of a pin is no way to actually - you know, pursue justice.

They want a conviction. Doesn’t matter if it will be overturned on appeal, because that won’t happen until after the election.

There are two ways in which that might not be true. Nominally, normal course of events, reversal would not occur fast. But that is an extreme case of “justice delayed is justice denied” - so extreme that Trump could appeal all the way to SCOTUS, IMHO, on the basis that no lower court would take the appeal on a timely basis.

It would be like allowing an execution to occur while the defendant is waiting for his appeal to be heard. Waging lawfare against the nominee of a major political party is no small thing.

If the judge isn’t thinking about limiting damage to his own reputation, I’m sure some of the jurors are.

The jurors are all thinking, among other things, how they will personally be “cancelled” if they do what they all know to be right.

The question is whether any (or, strength in numbers, all) jurors are more concerned about their own safety or in the reputation of the US as not being a banana republic.

Was [Hitler] equating Jews with Communists?

Hitler hated Jews (thereby attracting antisemites - and antisemitism was pretty mainstream in Germany, and FTM was far from unknown in America) and was competing directly with the Communists for the support of those who hated/feared (actual) liberalism.

Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under 'communism' and 'fascism'. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939,

'the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.’

No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.

What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as 'the general welfare'. There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.
____________— F A Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (May, 1945 Reader’s Digest Condensed Version)

If you read The Road to Serfdom (Reader’s Digest Condensed Version here), you will see that FA Hayek used the term “liberal” to denote people who today would be called “conservatives” in America. That is because Hayek, an Austrian, learned English in America before the meaning of “liberal” was essentially inverted, according to Safire's New Political Dictionary, in the 1920s. And the meaning of “liberal” was not changed in Britain, where Hayek wrote Serfdom during WWII.

Well, Bernie, the reason oil prices went up is perfectly simple:            

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

The minute Biden “read the riot act” to all the oil companies, telling them that oil was going to become a non factor in the economy, the result was directly and exactly “a conspiracy against the public, and a contrivance to raise prices.” Far from demanding that they compete at arm’s link to satisfy society’s need/desire for energy, as any liberal antimonopolist would do. Biden’s dictum constituted permission and encouragement for the oil companies to cease competing. So they did, reducing their expenditures on producing more oil and reducing the supply - forcing up the price of oil precisely as a cartel would do.

In the past year I have been listening to “reason,” as Bernie would have it, to the extent that I now can relate to Elon Musk’s prediction that - a critical tipping point having been passed due in no small part to abusive Biden action - battery electric vehicles have become seriously competitive with gasoline-fueled vehicles. I have bought what for me is a serious chunk of Tesla stock as a result. But - recall the “Osborne Effect” - it is at present a good time to hold off on buying a new car, if you can.

The problem is precisely that BEVs (read almost exclusively Teslas) have been coming down in price and can be expected to continue to do so in the future. Which means that used Tesla prices face serious price competition from new Teslas. So if you’re considering a new car, sharpen your pencil to see if you should prefer a new Tesla - but altho I wouldn’t expect a Tesla’s performance to degrade I would expect declining resale value. So try not to buy - any car - unless you can be happy holding on to it for the longish term.

Bitcoin^{The dollar} is not a business which produces anything. Bitcoin^{The dollar} has value because people buy into it, but there isn’t any underlying business operation with bitcoin^{the dollar}.

missing from that laundry list is the fact that the transmission of electricity is not at all 100% efficient.

And at the end of the day, that electricity probably came from the burning of a "fossil" fuel. And if it did somehow come from wind or solar - those are not at all 100% efficient, nor anything nearly reliable.

I’m not married to the idea that we must stop burning oil, natural gas, and coal yesterday. Even Elon Musk doesn't think that.

When we’re talking about solar and wind power, “efficiency” is a flawed concept. We’d like to turn vast amounts of solar energy into electric power available when and where we want it. Viewed from that overall perspective, our “efficiency” of converting solar energy into electric power is basically zero because we have hardly any of the earth covered with solar panels. ‘Way more solar panels would be valuable, but no one is putting them on my roof, or yours, for free.

The question isn’t “efficiency,” it’s bang for the buck. The learning curve and economies of scale are changing the bang for the buck equation in favor of solar and batteries. And in favor of “more than enough” solar panels, allowing the use of fewer stationary batteries. And less or even no fossil fuel consumption.

Efficiency becomes crucial at “the tip of the spear,” - ie, where the rubber hits the road. There, efficiency plays into lower requirements everywhere up the supply chain.

electricity is “100% available” energy

Although much more than an ICE, electric motors are not 100 percent efficient. Chargers are not 100 percent efficient. Batteries do not take up the charge, nor discharge at 100 percent efficiency. Nor is the entire drivetrain 100 percent efficient.

All true, in the real world. In an ideal, lab bench, world, I make no doubt that conversion of electrical energy to mechanical work could (e.g., using superconductors in the motor) be done with awfully close to 100% efficiency. And I did use scare quotes around the expression “100%” available.

But I must quibble about “drive train” efficiency - in that no transmission is required for the EV. One less (mechanically complex) part of the drive train . . .

Tesla actually offers insurance to owners of its cars in some states.

To me, the issue of safe transportation is ultimately an issue for regulation by civil tort law. It seems to me that when Tesla concludes that its “FSD” software, unsupervised by humans, is safer than the preponderance of human drivers, Tesla should make a push in one or a very few low-population states to get “licenses” for unsupervised computerized driving with Tesla insuring the concomitant risks.

And when that results in a tort, and the cry is raised to ban “cars without drivers,” that opposition would logically be answered by pointing to any accidents unambiguously caused by human error, and asking for proof that FSD would not have prevented it. It being unanswerable either way.

That appears to be the solution to highway carnage in the long run. This approach would lead to casualties, but we are already suffering casualties now.

On Gutfeld, Tyrus made the point that if all whites are erased from history, none of the evils of history will be attributable to whites.

Prayer of agreement bump.

Prayerful bump.

That’s Graphite, not Graphene

Not that you’ve ever seen any graphite in the absence of graphene . . .

Wow.

Great article, very fine post.

[Elon Musk] works hard, he is wealthy(very), and intelligent, has visions of possibilities for the future and he works hard (yes I repeat myself).. so yes, in a way, elon is above the law, due to the other laws of action he practices day to day.

Jordan Peterson described Musk as perhaps one in a thousand in creativity, and one in a thousand in conscientiousness, making his combination of those traits one in a million. And on reflection, upped that to as much as one in a billion.

I don’t LIKE all that he says, believes or implicates... but he due to wealth, action, effort and some vital inspiration... IS above the law. In that aspect, so is Donald Trump... above the law.

When Musk bought Twitter and turned it into “X,” it was probably a braver act than he even realized, considering the corruption he was going up against. It is widespread corruption in high places which thinks to be above the law, not Elon Musk or even Donald Trump.

According to Scott Adams (who says he was a bank’s loan officer before he was told that because of his not being black or female he was never going to be promoted) describes the charge against Trump that he inflated the value of the collateral he offered for his loan as being presumptively true and utterly irrelevant. In the sense that no bank ever takes a loan applicant’s word for the value of offered loan collateral. Ever. Exaggeration of offered collateral’s value is nominally illegal but absolutely routine. And the bank that Trump “defrauded” testified but only during the sentencing hearing (wonder why they didn’t get the chance during the prosecution phase) that the bank would like more of Trump’s business. Some criminal, some crime!

“Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.”

I don’t think Elon Musk fits that mold perfectly.