@IV_Musketeer My whole yard is clover and while it is low maintenance I cut it once a week because otherwise the whole thing is bees and you can’t walk anywhere. I leave them a few uncut patches to work.
This is a fake comparison.
SpaceX did not “lift America out of poverty.”
It created paper millionaires for people close enough to the equity structure.
That is not the same thing.
An IPO or liquidity event can absolutely make employees rich. Good for them. But that proves ownership works for people who are allowed into the ownership pool. It does not prove the economic system works for everyone else.
SpaceX’s value was not created in a vacuum by Elon handing out magic capitalism dust. It rests on NASA contracts, defense spending, public research, launch infrastructure, regulatory protection, tax law, capital markets, public procurement, engineers, technicians, welders, logistics workers, and years of investor tolerance.
So when someone says, “SpaceX created thousands of millionaires,” the honest translation is:
A public-private, state-backed, capital-market-driven company had a massive equity event, and people close to the cap table became rich.
Fine.
But that is not a rebuttal to Warren.
Warren’s job is not to mint millionaires through stock options. Her political argument is about wages, consumer protection, bankruptcy rules, health care costs, student debt, corporate power, taxation, and whether ordinary workers get a fair deal.
Saying “Elon created millionaires and Warren did not” is like saying a casino jackpot did more for one gambler than food stamps did for a hungry family.
It confuses concentrated upside with broad public welfare.
The real question is not whether 4,000 or 5,000 SpaceX insiders became millionaires.
The question is why America treats that as a civilization-level achievement while millions of workers still cannot afford housing, health care, child care, retirement, or a few months without a paycheck.
That is the propaganda move.
Turn rare proximity to capital into proof that the system works.
Then tell everyone outside the cap table to applaud.
@RealSimpleAriel@elonmusk@SenWarren@BernieSanders Elon’s companies have received $38B in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits according to the Washington Post. The question is can we have capitalism that does ANYTHING for the middle class and working people? There needs to be a middle ground.
@puddleg@prog_1211 There you go. Everyone has their favorites. The Beatles are life but I usually skip this one. George naming all of Clapton’s favorite candy doesn’t really do it for me. Nice horn arrangement.
In September 2007, a bird weighing barely more than a pound lifted off from Alaska and flew across the Pacific Ocean without stopping once.
No landing.
No food.
No water.
No sleep on the ocean.
Seven days and nine nights later, she arrived in New Zealand.
Her name was E7.
She was a bar-tailed godwit — a shorebird small enough to fit comfortably in your hands.
Scientists had long suspected these birds made one of the greatest migrations on Earth, but nobody had ever tracked an individual bird across the entire journey in real time.
E7 became the proof.
Researchers fitted her with a tiny satellite transmitter before migration season began.
Then they watched in astonishment as the signals kept moving south.
And south.
And south.
More than 7,000 miles across open ocean with no break.
What makes the journey even more unbelievable is how a godwit prepares for it.
In the weeks before departure, the bird transforms itself into a living fuel tank.
E7 spent late summer eating constantly, nearly doubling her body weight in fat reserves.
Then something extraordinary happened inside her body:
Her digestive organs began shrinking.
Her stomach and intestines partially atrophied because they wouldn’t be needed during the flight.
At the same time, her heart and flight muscles grew larger and stronger to handle the nonstop effort ahead.
By the time she launched into the sky, her body had essentially rebuilt itself for one purpose:
Survival in the air.
Once E7 left Alaska, there was no room for mistakes.
A bar-tailed godwit cannot rest on the ocean like a seabird.
If she landed in the Pacific, she would drown.
So she kept flying.
Hour after hour.
Day after day.
She navigated using the sun, stars, Earth’s magnetic field, and atmospheric patterns scientists still don’t fully understand.
She rode favorable winds southward while slowly burning through the fuel stored inside her body.
And when the fat reserves finally ran low, her body began consuming its own muscle tissue to keep her alive.
After more than 200 straight hours in flight, E7 finally descended onto the mudflats of New Zealand.
She had lost over half her body weight.
Her digestive system had effectively shut down.
Her muscles were severely depleted.
But she survived.
Within hours of landing, her organs began rebuilding themselves again.
The tiny bird that crossed the Pacific started eating, recovering, and preparing for the next stage of life as though this impossible journey was simply normal.
And that’s the part scientists found most humbling.
E7 wasn’t some miraculous exception.
She was just the first godwit carrying technology that allowed humans to witness what her species had quietly been doing for thousands of years.
Every year, tiny birds rise into the Arctic sky and cross an entire ocean powered only by instinct, endurance, and a body engineered by evolution to do something that still feels almost impossible.
A one-pound bird.
Seven days nonstop.
Over 7,000 miles of open ocean.
And somehow, she knew exactly where she was going.
It’s becoming genuinely painful to watch society grow more ignorant, more cruel, more weird, more stupid, and increasingly stripped of empathy every single day.
I genuinely don’t think people understand how insane this is.
In just 50 years, we’ve wiped out around 70% of animal populations on Earth.
Not hundreds of years ago.
Not ancient history.
In one lifetime.
Entire species disappearing.
Forests going silent.
Oceans being emptied.
And somehow the world treats it like just another statistic instead of a full-blown emergency.
That should scare all of us a lot more than it does.
It is with deep sorrow and profound love that we announce the passing of Sonny Rollins. The Saxophone Colossus died this afternoon at his home in Woodstock, NY at the age of 95. 1/2 https://t.co/6AGmFrB7x4