That’s what happens when your administration doesn’t care about people using their own devices. None of these people are using official government devices and communications protocols. They’re all using their own private phones and communicating via signal. In a normal administration, you would have to surrender any private electronics before being let into the oval office. But because they’re arrogant and don’t care about security, it’s easy for anyone there to record what is being said.

As far as why? Simple power play. Musk currently holds a lot of power and influence in the administration. And if he’s driven out, then that power and influence will flow to someone else.

The world’s richest man, the guy who’s spent years cosplaying as Tony Stark, was reportedly bawling his eyes out in the Oval Office, begging the former President to save his crumbling empire.

This is so stupid. Musk even now could save his crumbling empire. He could do the following:

1. Resign from the DOGE crap.
2. Announce that he’s cutting a large check to every government employee he fired as recompense.
3. Sell Twitter and make it a publicly traded company again.
4. Announce that he’s done with politics and will never donate to a campaign again.
5. Make a billion dollar donation to the ACLU and other human rights and civil society groups.
6. Publicly apologize, blame it on the ketamine, and announce he’s going to sober up and focus on his companies from here on out.

He could do that today. And it would cost him a tiny tiny fraction of what this meltdown is costing him. And you know what? It would probably work. Sure, some people would never forgive him. And I wouldn’t blame them for that. But if he showed genuine contrition and a willingness to do what he can to make things right? Most people would probably forgive him. He’s still relatively young, and in time, his foray into politics would be largely forgotten, a tragic misstep on an otherwise bright career. In time his reputation would return more to what it was in the mid 2010s, rather than whatever the hell his current madness is.

Even now, it isn’t too late. Get out of government and politics, throw a few billion around as restitution, and go back to making cars and rockets. People love a good redemption arc. And in time, Tesla sales and the stock price would likely recover.

This would be completely out of character for Musk, so I don’t expect him to ever do this. But it does show that he is absolutely not the victim here. If he really wanted to, he could wash his hands of all of this. He holds the keys to his own jail cell.

Exactly. So if we want to be pedants, earth or Earth would be fine here. Even if he’s in a building, that building is still on the soil. Even if he’s flying in an airplane, that airplane is supported by air, which it itself supported by earth. The only way you can’t be “on earth” is if you’re in space and/or in freefall. And Musk is too much of a coward to climb aboard one of his own rockets.

At an individual level you are right. But this is more an issue with numbers. Immigrants do not just bring themselves; they also bring their culture. Think of it this way. Let’s say Germany decides to bring over a million politically disaffected American progressives. How many mosques do you think those million people will want to build in their new home? Maybe one or two, there will be some Muslims in that group. But most of those million won’t even be religious. And most of those that are will just help fill the pews of half-empty German churches. There won’t be a titanic shift in the German religious landscape from these million American immigrants.

Immigration starts having issues not at the individual level, but the societal level. Too many immigrants too quickly, and people start feeling like their culture is being replaced. The slower assimilation happens, the more people start feeling like their culture is being replaced. The more culturally different the immigrant population is from the native population, and the more people feel like their culture is being replaced. And the more people feel like their culture is being replaced, the more they start voting for hard right parties like AfD.

There’s nothing wrong with Muslims or with people building mosques. But I mention mosques because they are a highly visible symbol of immigrant populations with very different cultures, a symbol that right wing politicians gleefully exploit.

If Germany brings over a million disaffected Americans, what culturally disruptive things will they bring? I guess Germany will get some more McDonalds franchises and a few other American brands? But those million Americans really aren’t going to stir things up too much. It’s not like you’re going to let the Americans bring their guns with them. They’ll have to leave those behind. And the big gun nuts aren’t likely to take Germany up on its immigration offer in the first place.

And just due to genetics, give it a generation or two, and you won’t even able to tell who is descended from those immigrants without checking ancestry records. The first generation will be noticeably American, but the second, third, or fourth? Indistinguishable from the native German population. Completely assimilated.

Yeah it’s a political tight rope. And you definitely wouldn’t want to put in place any kind of horrific race or skin color requirements. You don’t want some nightmare Nazi-esque racial fraction rule. Literally just, “did you have an ancestor from this country? Ok, you can come here.” And yeah, if Norway decides to do that, then there will be some black Americans who happen to have some Norwegian ancestors who want to move there. And you have to be OK with that. There aren’t millions of pure-blooded Norwegian Americans sitting around in the US eagerly waiting their chance to return to the homeland. There are instead people like myself. I have ancestors from all over Western Europe. The single biggest chunk of my ancestry is Norwegian, but that piece is still only like 1/4 of my ancestors. I have ancestors from Norway, Germany, France, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and bunch of places I don’t even know about. For all intents and purposes, my ancestry is just “generic white American.” American was once called “the great melting pot” for a reason.

It’s a political tight rope. There’s a good argument to be made for it from a purely practical perspective. If immigrants are needed, why not recruit immigrants from countries that are most similar to yours culturally? Sure, Norway and the US aren’t as similar as Norway and Denmark. But there aren’t tons of Danish immigrants just waiting for a chance to move to Norway. And while not the same, Norway and the US are a hell of a lot more similar than Norway and Afghanistan are.

If Norway imports 100,000 disaffected politically liberal Americans, how many mosques do you think those new immigrants are going to want to build there? Most probably won’t even be religious, and most of those that are will just help fill the pews of the already half-empty Norwegian churches. There’s nothing wrong with building mosques. But again, we’re talking about cultural friction here. Too much change too quick, and people feel like their culture is being replaced, and they start voting for reactionary politicians. One population intrinsically causes less disruption in integration than another. And if you need immigrants, why not select from those immigrants that can most easily assimilate into the existing culture? Normally this is a moot point. There normally isn’t a potential reserve of millions of culturally-similar immigrants that European countries could draw upon. But right now, due to the political situation in the US, there actually are millions of such potential culturally-similar immigrants.

There’s a good practical argument, but it’s hard to make the case without making yourself sound like a militant racist.

While Fuck Trump, there is something deeply disturbing and creepy about constitutional monarchs.

You don’t think that amongst their families in quiet hushed tones, they discuss and yearn for the prospect of returning to real power someday? They’re basically tyrants-in-waiting. They’re just quietly hanging out in the background, waiting for some crisis in democracy, some loss of confidence in the system, etc. Then, when confidence in democracy is at some historical nadir, they can sweep in and restore themselves to power and glory.

They’re vultures. They’re just biding their time, living the high life, pretending to be kind, benevolent, and harmless. Yet deep in their heart of hearts, they yearn for the power they know was taken from them. They know their ancestors had it. And they want it back.

You don’t think it could happen? Democracy hasn’t existed in European countries for all that long. There are many examples historically of royal restorations where royal houses returned to power, after periods out of power far longer than the existence of many European constitutional monarchies. The idea of a royal restoration returning the King of Norway to real power seems absurd. But by historical standards it’s really not that absurd. Monarchy in Europe existed as a tradition for over a thousand years. Constitutional monarchy is just 1-2 centuries old, or less, in most European countries. Rome’s Republic lasted half a millennia before it collapsed into an absolute monarchy. Don’t dismiss the idea that the monarchs could return to power. I have little doubt that most of today’s constitutional monarchs secretly dream and fantasize about the idea.

And that’s what’s so creepy about them. They may claim to truly believe in democracy. But if they really did, they would give up their crowns entirely. No one who really believes in democracy could accept a position that puts them as a monarch, someone entrusted by power from right of birth. Democracy begins with the proposition that all human beings are created equal. A monarch, however limited in power, is anathema to this. I don’t care how constrained that power is. You cannot truly believe in democracy while serving as a monarch. In their hearts, every “constitutional monarch” dreams of the slim chance that they might see a royal restoration. They are vultures, simply waiting for democracy to get sick and stumble.

Truly, the French and the Soviets had the right idea on how to deal with royalty. Give up your crown or give up your head. That is how you deal with kings properly.

banished to New Jersey

That’s almost as bad as being banished to Detroit.

Seriously. I wonder why European countries aren’t massively jumping on this opportunity. Like every developed country, the nations of Europe need immigrants to prop up their demographics. Most of Europe’s immigrants have been coming from countries in the global South. And while such immigrants have done well for the nations of Europe, there will always be less friction in bringing in immigrants from countries of more similar culture. Fuck any racists who hate Muslims. But the cold truth is it’s probably a lot easier to integrate large numbers of politically liberal Americans into European countries than it is to integrate immigrants from Muslim countries. European countries desperately need immigration, but right wing politics is on the rise, in large part due to the frictions of immigration. Obviously American and European cultures are not the same; there are still very real cultural differences. But European vs. American culture is far closer than many other cultural pairings out there.

European countries do have some very limited ancestry-based immigration policies. But they usually only go back a generation or two. If your parent or grandparent immigrated from a European country to the US, you can get easy immigration in a lot of EU countries. But for most Americans of European descent, that immigration happened generations ago.

If the EU countries were clever right now, they could take advantage of this opportunity to bring in large numbers of disaffected Americans. They could offer relocation assistance, make it cheap and easy for educated American progressives to pack their bags and jump the pond. And in exchange they get workers in their economies they don’t have to train to educate, and immigrants who would assimilate quite readily into the existing cultural milieu.

Hell, personally, I’m a typical American in that I have a hodgepodge of European ancestry. But my ancestors came over before 1900, there’s nowhere in Europe I qualify for immigration based on ancestry. But if one of the countries my ancestors came from wanted to made it cheap and easy for me to return to the old country, I would jump on that.

Hell, the politics of it sell itself. Bill it politically as “bringing the European diaspora home.”

I don’t understand the cat food thing. A can of cat food is usually the same cost or higher as a can of cheap tuna or other canned meat. You’re eating cat food for no reason!

THAT IS NOT DEAD WHICH CAN ETERNAL LIE.

Or maybe…some rogue inventor discovered a revolutionary technology that would disrupt the status quo, and The Man had him declared insane! Tell me more about the machine!

This transactional relationship with minority groups is precisely why Democratic popularity among minority groups is slipping. You pretend to stand for racial justice as a principle. Then, the moment a racial group no longer supports your movement, you abandon your principles of racial justice. You join with the fascists and openly celebrate that group’s persecution. Yet you still ask other minority groups to vote for you, as you stand for racial justice, LGBT rights, etc. Yet how can people not see what is in front of their very eyes - the moment support for their group becomes politically inconvenient, that group will be thrown away like an old tissue.

The same Democrats who said that people needed to ignore Palestine in order to protect LGBT people are now those throwing the trans community under the bus.

Does this asshat realize that the only non-immigrants in this country are the Native Americans?

Watch out. He’ll try to deport all the Native Americans to Northeast Siberia. Their ancestors were just very, very early illegal immigrants.

Nah. Let the drama queen go out like a drama queen. Make him be the test dummy on the next Starship test flight. We could use more entries on the “Inventors Killed by Their Own Inventions” Wikipedia page.

I mean, I don’t want to kill Musk, but I would certainly toast his obituary. The world would objectively be a better place without him on it.

They were sold into slavery. That prison leases out convicts.

Better yet. Let’s make the border between the two countries fluid. Any US state that borders Canada, or any Canadian province that borders the US, can vote to switch countries at any time. Require a large 2/3 majority threshold. Which nation does a better job providing for its citizens? I say we let states/provinces decide for themselves and vote with their feet.

What makes you think the cafe still has bins inside? The OP here is claiming the bins were removed from the cafe/picnic area.

How do you know that? You’re not OP.

Read the fucking post for fucks sake. It’s right fucking there.

The sign says the bins were removed. The post headline says the bins were removed from the cafe area. This is a cafe at a visitor center at a forest.

Before you go insulting the reading comprehension of others, try working on your own.