Well it’s the weekend so we’ve won already, make the most of it.
We say it repeatedly on Horizon Scan, Elon isn’t perfect and if one day his interests no longer align with the publics’ he may well become a nightmare, but as it stands no one else is doing this kind of thing. The above is one of the reasons the establishment hate him, he will not play their game and has the pockets and balls to endure the financial and reputational hit for that. The best thing about this is the European Commission have brought this entirely on themselves and it’s going to blow up wonderfully in their faces. As Elon has done before, he uses the system against you. By refusing to comply this will become a very public legal battle that ensures the release of information far more damaging that the original issue and obviously it’s in Elon’s business interest by showing up his competitors who did comply. I know from experience of dealing with the EU’s MICA regulation for digital assets what a controlling, backwards thinking and dishonest organisation it is. The European commission is the perfect example of what globalists in particular believe is the desirable future. Unelected bureau/techocrats who believe they know whats best for society and seek to force compliance. As with anything like this it will be presented as about your safety, when in reality it’s completely about control of your thought and speech. That’s no exaggeration. When Margrethe Vestager speaks of ‘researchers’ she means those who will monitor and censor your speech. Where do they have any right to do that? The establishments’ hubris led to them missing the chance to properly restrict the internet when it became mainstream because they lack imaginative thinking and thought it was a fad. The last 10 years they have been in a flat spin trying to regain control of the narrative. DSA and the UK Online Safety Bill are the tools to do that.
On a slightly (maybe) less serious connected note, the resistance to innovation by utilising regulation just holds prosperity for the EU back and ensures they’re a laughing stock globally.
Naval is a highly respected tech VC guy, when he talks people listen.
Comments turned off tells you everything you need to know. Absolute warmonging turd screamer this bloke. It’d be great if he ended up on the bins, but he’ll have something lined up with an NGO or related to his work with 77th Brigade that probably allows him much more influence without the distraction of his constituents. Pretty sure he’s now either dying his hair or wearing a wig too. He’s now a civvy so he can do what he wants with his account, but it seems to me that ‘Grey ticks’ on X - Government orgs etc, as opposed to ‘Blue ticks’ who are just verified people and ‘Gold ticks’ who are business’s shouldn’t be able to hide comments or restrict who can reply to them. Community notes already does a good job of stopping them lying opening by autistically fact checking them in real time, but the first thing people do on X when there is controversial post is go to the comments to see what everyone else is saying. If you know how to spot bots this is a great way of gauging public opinion.
Mask off moment from a Civil Servant. If this was isolated you’d write it off, but there have been far too many examples to include the highest ranking, of criminally partisan action by member of the Civil Service. Impartiality is vital for some professions, it should be a point of pride that they are able to carry out their job to the best of their ability whilst remaining so, it should be a valued skill in itself. But leadership have allowed expression of personal belief and opinion, encouraged their staff to bring their whole self to work so that they ‘belong’. This is the result, human nature all but guarantees it. In groups and out groups are created and on a long enough timeline, the minority view will be selected out and the majority view will then fight to retain power. In my view this is why any sort of ‘group for X people’ within an organisation is an error and a distraction with potential for more trouble long term than it’s worth. I know Hugh and I really disagree on this. The institution needs dismantling and rebuilding, it’s no longer fit for purpose.
Sometimes we don’t really examine what something means and the upshot of it. The person elected by the people of the US (let’s just pretend for a minute 😅) is not running the country. So if he’s not running the country who is? Well obviously the immediate team around him and senior people running the various organisations of the US state, most unelected. So the elected office of President is not essential and can be just for show, then what’s the point of it other than giving the public a figurehead and a feeling of representation. I’m not being naive in explaining the above, but in the modern day I don’t remember an example like this so public that shows democracy in this light. These things matter and if you value democracy as a system - I think potentially we’re very slowly seeing the end of it - then allowing the Biden and wider the uniparty situation, along with general shenanigans in western elections to manage the results, is a very bad idea.
A few thoughts on this. NIMBYism is a huge problem in the UK, people want solutions to the issues the country faces but just somewhere else please. Also, if the land owners - to include farmers - want to sell/allow their land to be used for this then that’s up to them, they own that land, that’s the whole point of ownership. The main issue I think is why on earth are we trying to build solar on the UK? I’m not against renewables, it seems sensible to use something if the tech is mature, efficient and it’s suitable for the location. To argue that solar power the most suitable method of generating power in the UK’s climate is laughable and points to the complete lack of seriousness displayed by those decision makers in Government. Even the wind turbines that are unarguably FAR more suitable for the UK climate that solar have proven to be an expensive and rapidly deteriorating failure, propped up by the tax payer. If there’s land up for grabs put a Rolls Royce mini reactor on is surely?
Anyway, that’ll do I think.
Enjoy your weekend.
Really enjoying these so far. Nice little info snippets to get the brain going for the day!