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Over the hump

Me watching Pelosi block T•••• impeachments: I can’t believe Dems would risk nuclear human extinction.

Me watching Dems re-run an impaired Biden: I can believe Dems would risk American democracy, oh I can believe it.

Reasonably bright people following crude racket incentives do incredibly stupid things. Need to align them so that to get paid / get ahead, pols must keep us safe, healthy and wealthy. Right now they make more $ risking nuke extinction, death of democracy by selling us out.

Pol is a multi-way racket like Facebook. Votes are just the entry price. The tax pot and regs are the product. Bribers domestic and foreign are the customers.

By aligning incentives you get pols paid by population health, e.g. M4A, rather than insurance and hospital bribes; paid by safety, e.g. keeping us out of dumb wars, rather than WarCo bribes; paid by prosperity, e.g. boosting worker salaries rather than oligarch bribes.

To do this you have to alter the incentives: bigger carrot so you outbid the bribers, bigger stick so it hurts to cheat. You have to do this basic self-governance reform by referendum, as the racket won’t do it willingly.

You have to have a big anti-disinfo plan as they’ll flood the airwaves with FUD to protect their extant dirty cash flows. And you probably need a crisis, need to hit the wall to get over the collective action hump.

Indulging Elmo

Tesla’s styling update cycle is way too slow. People lease EVs because they’re improving fast. Leases end every 2-3 years.

Model 3 is 7 years old, Model Y is 4. A legacy automaker would’ve done a Model 3 refresh in Y3, full redesign Y5-6. E.g. Ioniq 5 ’21 is getting a refresh this fall.

Tesla just dribbled out a mild M3 refresh in Y7, updating front and rear but same basic profile. Cheaper.

Meanwhile BYD’s spamming new EV models every few months.

Imagine MS just… forgetting to upgrade Windows. They did used to slip by years, but Tesla’s stretching the restyle more to save capital than over bugs and dev delays.

Tesla f’d themselves. The new model, tech and style energy went to Elmo’s extremely niche truck. Like if Apple moved the entire iPhone team to Jony’s silly little $17,000 Watch.

Vanity projects get small teams, not a whole of co effort. Tesla is wildly mismanaged and ripe for shareholder revolt, heading for takeover if unfixed. They should dismiss the board and fire Musk.

Elmo’s defrauding shareholders with his Cybertruck fixation as badly as his nonstop dipping into the corporate till. 

Monkeying around

Monkey Man is fun: great action, ok writing, shallow politics. Does next to nothing with supporting characters Alphonso and Sita. Why water down the Modi satire so much if it’s going to get banned in India anyway.

Tries to reclaim Hanuman from the Bajrangis, back to fighting for the oppressed. But it’s mainly about one guy’s trauma: Oldboy with a young boy.

Dev Patel returns to the setting of Slumdog and Danny Boyle’s propulsiveness, with a scene of slum kids relaying a stolen purse.

Patel’s final kill run is Matrix-like, god mode, powerful and effortless. Hanuman was once cursed to forget his powers, Patel finally remembers them.

Like a monkey, Patel’s character is a biter. One kill leaves a brothel owner disfigured like Surpanakha. Another is a knife away from a puma kill.

The needle drops are clunky and too on-the-nose: “Roxanne” for an escort, Jefferson Airplane for a drug scene.

Funny that British Patel’s fighting a villain with lion and crown logos, called “Sovereign” Party, with a lieutenant named Rana Singh (king lion).

Fictional Yatana’s police jeeps look like Bombay’s, while the name sounds like Haryana.

Sikander Kher is a magnificent bastard cop, looks like a brute. 6’2” like Dev Patel, but much beefier.

Makarand Deshpande plays the stock evil godman, shades of Sacred Games. Wonder how it feels for a veteran Bombay actor to work for a British kid with the shallowest gloss on Hindu myths and Indian politics :)

Fallout: La La Land

In Fallout, a major plot point happens because someone’s mad their partner ran off with Sarita Choudhury. And who could blame them?

Sarita Choudhury as raider leader “Lee Moldaver”

Raiding a vault

In her civil rights era (as a fusion researcher)

Worshiped by the vault cult

De-aged Choudhury, MacLachlan

Ashwin Nair playing an actor playing a cowboy

Desi vaulter extra

Inbred vaulter prejudice against surface dwellers

Mutant bear flag

Fallout: La La Land

It’s giving Bioshock

The New California Republic has cable cars

Pip-Boy GPS gag

The Ghoul = the Man in Black from Westworld

The Brotherhood of Steel = the Mandalorians

Gursimran Sandhu (#BadBatch, #GoT) writes an ep

Series involves Westworld alums—producer Lisa Joy, composer Ramin Djawadi.

The Washington Generals

Over time, Dems have engineered it so they pick their own voters, the rival parties allowed on ballot, their own primary challengers, and in the case of T••••, their Washington Generals.

At every step when the US pol system would’ve flushed a criminal like T••••, Dem elites threw a shield over him to keep him alive as the designated loser against Biden. Pelosi delayed impeachments, Biden / Garland delayed prosecution until Congress revolted.

No competition for Biden is bad for the country, but great for the racket.

Normally T•••• would’ve been removed and criminally convicted, and Biden would’ve lost to a normal-terrible, younger Gooper like Haley.

Crank / born loser T•••• is a massive subsidy to the Dem gerontocracy. If they had to run against Haley, they’d be forced to hand the reins to Harris or Whitmer.

Instead they’ve allowed Nazi derp to spread throughout the country for 4 bonus years, it’s their best Bubba bait. They could’ve impeached T•••• immediately for bribes, gotten the removal + criminally prosecuted after J6. They slow-walked it all.

Dems are like cops quietly striking, letting crime run rampant, to shake voters down for money. Way easier than competing in a free market for candidates.

Garland threw a presser over “3% of in-store payments are Apple Pay” and “23% of automakers will support extended CarPlay” while T•••• runs around inciting domestic terrorism. He’s nothing if not a reliable apparatchik, the gray man isn’t freelancing.

Trust-bust the parties before you prosecute some weak bullshit like “60% of Americans use iPhone.”

When T•••• finally goes down, it will be because his usefulness to the Dem Party has expired.