my girlfriend is listening to the Ezra Klein-Kara Swisher while working the rowing machine, and she is having to stop every few minutes to shriek stuff like "OH MY GOD HE JUST SAID THAT TESLA IS SUCCESSFUL BECAUSE THE CARS ARE SO GOOD"
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You must be one of the annoying censorious lefties Swisher referenced on the podcast 🤣 seriously trying to be fair by giving Elon props for some things that are objectively untrue (he “re-revolutionized electric vehicles”, what?!) but there were many other better bits of the podcast, too. Be fair
I'm guessing so, but she also has me blocked so it's not like she's being exposed to the substance of my criticism anymore. Makes it easier for her to just dismiss, I guess.
Anyway, yeah, the gf said a lot of the show was actually pretty good, but Ezra lacks a lot of important facts.
Tesla is so good? I have 🇺🇸 friends that have them & most are happy, but they only commute short distances with them & can plug them in at home. Here in Germany they are laughed at by most &,as with most EVs, we don’t have the infrastructure to support (pop. majority live in apartments).
I agree that EVs are positive. Unfortunately, they don’t make much sense for folk who can’t recharge at home. Plus, the distances that can be travelled in one charge and the battery performance in cold weather is still suboptimal.
I do know someone who owns an EV and does not have a charger at home, and they don't live in a state with a ton of charging infrastructure! Range anxiety is real but it is possible :) battery performance in cold weather is uniquely bad in Teslas but some makers like Polestar have improved it a lot
Also true. PHEV vehicles are a better option (IMO). I know that my OEMs Herr in Europe are increasing the PHEV volumes in the next 2 years. That trend will continue if the EU decides to push back the new regulations.
There was a time when they were “good” when you take into account what’s easy(ish) to get in the US market. But there are definitely better EVs in terms of battery life, power, and reliability now, it’s just a relatively recent development.
Kara Swisher brags about lobbying the Biden administration on Musk's behalf, saying that they should have invited him to the White House EV summit, saying that Musk would never forgive them. She says she ran into her Biden contact more recently, who said Swisher was right. THAT IS NOT THE LESSON!!!
The lesson is not that if Biden had caved to Kara Swisher's lobbying on Musk's behalf, he would have gone back to being one of her nice, sweet tech boys. The lesson is that Swisher was continuing to be part of the problem by insisting that nobody should ever tell Elon "no." That is the pathology!
That the self-appointed toughest journalist in Silicon Valley would rather lobby the White House rather than explain to Elon that violating labor law and trying to destroy the NRLB (not to mention ongoing securities, Autopilot, and environmental investigations) has consequences is the ENTIRE problem
Yes, our opponents are quite good at using propaganda and political technology to pollute the discourse around climate so their lies tend to become what most people believe sadly.
It's been that way for a long time and it is so hard for the few of us to care to try cleaning up the infosphere.
You don’t think excluding the leading EV manufacturer from a summit on electric vehicles was performative and petty? I am not a fan boy of Musk but it was silly to exclude Tesla.
The Biden administration wasn't being "petty," it was standing on a principle: technological progress shouldn't come at the cost of basic labor rights. Elon Musk is currently destroying the NLRB in a way that it may never come back from, which suggests this was hardly a "petty" principle to stand on
Musk is an emotionally stunted, broken man who is good at manipulating the govt/people. That said, it looks like _not_ inviting him didn't stop him from destroying the NLRB, no? So what would have been worse if Musk had been invited? It's all hypotheticals, but maybe he wouldn't have swung to Trump?
Oh sure, if you rolled out the red carpet for him and gave him the adulation he so desperately needs, he never would have gone Nazi and started hating his transgender kid
Hate this talking point/faux explanation because he’d already been giving to Republicans years before Biden was president. Hell he blocked me on Twitter at the time for asking him about it.
I wasn’t even mean to him I asked if climate change was so important to him why half his political donations were going to the climate change denial party.
Kara is incapable of making a salient point that isn't littered with name-dropping. Her takes are almost always a flex about how many people she knows.
That's just silliness. They were invented in the late 1800s, with several attempts since, we just didn't have the necessary energy density until recently. Hybrids were a temporary solution, and were/are very popular to overcome range limitations.
Elon’s an evil insane ketamine addict, but I thought Kara had a good point. It was an electric car summit, at that time it was silly not to invite the owner of the most successful electric car brand by far.
I like Ezra but the fact that he went to Yuval Levin and Kara Swisher to understand what's happening w/ Trump and Musk shows a definite lack of contact w/ ppl who are not completely in the bubble of privilege.
I almost threw my phone when he said "his rockets have made the world a better place" WTAF? How out of touch with real life to think billionaires spending money on rockets is helping the world. Unreal
2 writers that that got to where they were with some writing talent only to capitulate fully to all forms of corporate power.
Combined is the most unhinged pundit brain monster imaginable
This Ezra Klein video makes me more pessimistic. He seems too confident that the Courts will actually stop Trump/Musk from breaking the law when decades of precedent say otherwise.
He acknowledges the Constitutional crisis of Musk/Trump flatly ignoring an injunction, but thinks they're too afraid to bulldoze it.
Why wouldn't they have the hubris to ignore the courts? Who's gonna stop them? The military? The Legislature? They've gotten away with plenty so far, why stop now?
i’m so done with her. first the disgust and confusion she showed when talking about the online reaction to our lord and savior Luigi Mangione on her Pivot podcast, now a nazi apologist?
I stopped listening to the Automotive News Daily because one of the hosts said something along the lines of Elon usually keeps his promises even if it takes him a little longer than he hoped.
I like Kara but when she says shit like this it is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Even among people that loathe him there is this vestigial adoration that I don't get. You know he is a fraud, you know he didn't invent shit yet, you know he is horrible yet you still fanboy/hate him.
I think we like the idea of Elon, much like we like the idea of Tony Stark, or the myths of Edison and Ford - that a lone inventor can change the world and solve all our problems.
The reality - that technology is a team sport, and is wicked hard even with a good team - doesn’t fit myth making.
I like her as an interviewer and how she is wired into SV enough to get access and understand the pathologies of those people but far enough away to sniff out insecurities and point them out, but I don't get her continued optimism about the altruistic motivations of some of these tech folks.
Her interviews with Sam Altman remind me of Sam Harris' interviews with SBF when he was talking about effective altruism. Like, this mother fucker is saying all the right words but something is deeply off with this dude.
Like those old Sam Altman interviews where he was talking about it being a non profit then a capped profit and she was just a little to credulous about that structure when Sam was talking about it. Really? You think this is going to be a nonprofit?
Spot on, RG. Trump gets the same unearned deference. A record 6 gigantic BKs and endless failures like the Plaza Hotel (deed surrendered in lieu of foreclosure) and the Trump Shuttle yet he’s treated as if he a legendary entrepreneur.
They still think that if someone owns a company they're personally responsible for everything good that company creates. Actual engineers don't get invited to their dinner parties and they would feel stupid and get bored listening to them if they did.
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Anyway, yeah, the gf said a lot of the show was actually pretty good, but Ezra lacks a lot of important facts.
Tesla was not invited to a summit on reducing tailpipe emissions from vehicles automakers are manufacturing.
EVs do not have tailpipe emissions!
It's been that way for a long time and it is so hard for the few of us to care to try cleaning up the infosphere.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/08/05/white-house-answers-why-tesla-wasnt-invited-to-united-auto-workers-ev-event/amp/
https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.online/post/3lhlz3npkic2s
But he has none.
it is amazing how normal he is
Stupid, bad, lazy. troll, troll, troll, normal, actually trump is good, normal, lazy, clickbait, creepy, normal, troll
:)
https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.online/post/3lhlxc6mbbk2r
#Neverforget
Combined is the most unhinged pundit brain monster imaginable
I mean, don't, because it's a curse. But still.
At least 50% of Americans don’t get it and likely never will.
So kudos!
https://youtu.be/K8QLgLfqh6s?si=-2QeYVuyQuTqpMQH
Why wouldn't they have the hubris to ignore the courts? Who's gonna stop them? The military? The Legislature? They've gotten away with plenty so far, why stop now?
Of fucking course.
Paused. Deleted. Unsubscribed. Immediately. 🤦🏻♂️
The reality - that technology is a team sport, and is wicked hard even with a good team - doesn’t fit myth making.
You mentioned her "access," which she has because she laundered the reputations of these tech folks in exchange for it.
@parismarx.com wrote about her book retconning her complicity.
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/kara-swishers-reality-distortion-field