Baffled European

Category: It’ll never work

  • Nothing’s gonna stop us now

    I was thinking of writing something about the imminent start of World War III, but it has been postponed for 14 days. Maybe in that time the disorganised mess of US government structures will have sorted themselves out.

    Instead, let’s look at another setback for engineer extraordinaire Elon Musk. The latest test of Starship resulted in a spectacular explosion on the test stand. Not only was the rocket destroyed, but most of the test facility as well. I guess Musk won’t be going to Mars in 2026.

    SpaceX aren’t even trying their “partial success” story for when a rocket blows up. This time it’s a “serious anomaly”.

    Unsurprisingly, morale among SpaceX employees is rock bottom. It’s not just the run of failures, but also the poor working conditions and dissatisfaction with Musk’s foray into extremist politics. Many engineers have left this year, even when considering the high personnel churn at Musk’s companies. A wall of NDAs is in place to stop people from talking, but that just makes things worse.

    It’s amazing just how things are unravelling for Musk. In the past you could look at Tesla and SpaceX and they were undeniable achievements. No matter what you might have thought of him personally, he delivered. Now it looks like all of it was built on sand. There’s no culture, no institutional knowledge in his companies, they are just hollow shells. This slow-motion implosion is spectacular in its own way.

  • Tied up in blockchains

    Is cryptocurrency inherently fraudulent, or is that simply the way it has turned out? It is useless for any everyday task and indeed hostile to normal users. You got an elderly relative who struggles with online banking? Not only will they not understand how to set up and use a wallet, they also won’t understand how they suddenly lost all their coin. Or how somebody managed to steal it all.

    It’s no accident that the convicted fraudster should cash in on this scam himself. After all, it’s not so long ago that he was bilking the gullible with a set of NFTs (remember them?). Apparently, 40% of his wealth comes from the two coins he launched earlier this year. The value of both has collapsed, that’s no problem. The point of them was to transfer money from fools to the fraudster, and that has happened. The biggest “investors” in this scam have earned direct access to the president.

    The aim is now to tie various coins – including those from the president – to the US dollar. This is driven by the greed and corruption of the government, as well as the subservient Republican party. It will happen because some Democrats are fascinated by this shiny thing and think it is the future somehow.

    It’s as if the whole establishment of the USA is determined to destroy the country by every means possible. I don’t understand why so many are so enthusiastic about this project.

  • The most beautiful word

    Liberation is not quite going as planned. The trade war that was supposed to make the whole world treat the USA “fairly” is starting to make a mark.

    After weeks of trying to get China to start negotiations, the USA finally gave in and announced a great new deal. It was nothing of the sort, merely suspending the absurd 145% tariffs for 90 days and replacing them with an only slightly less absurd 30% rate in the meantime.

    Scott Bessant proudly announced before the talks that they had identified five or six areas of importance to the US economy and they were going to focus on those. I’m no expert, but I would have done this part first, and only then picked a fight with a massive, powerful rival. Alienating the rest of the world does not help. In fairness, it does look like none of this was Bessant’s idea, ace economist Ron Vara being the likely source of the policy.

    Walmart has announced price rises, leading to a wave of orange fury. Apparently, Walmart and China should “eat” the tariffs, although it’s not clear how anybody can absorb a rise of 145% of the purchase price. Even 30% is asking a lot.

    Hard to sympathise. Corporations, big and small, were so afraid of the “socialism” of Harris, they voted for a criminal who has now hit them with effectively a massive rise in corporation tax. Serves them right.

  • Cancer in the USA

    Joe Biden has cancer. From the announcement, it sounds pretty terminal, so all we can do is hope that his final days are happy and peaceful.

    His successor responded to the news with a crude and paranoid tirade on Truth Social. I know these people despise empathy, but this is just plain bad manners.

    On the whole, cancer is not quite the death senstence it was 30 years ago. It’s a serious matter, but treatment and management has improved enormously. Literally millions of people are still alive as a result of the advances in medical science.

    Further improvements are now unlikely. RFK has cut billions from the cancer research budget and he doesn’t care. “It’s going to hurt,” he boasts. The arrogance of the truly clueless who happens to be in charge.

    A third of government spending for cancer research has been cancelled. Thousands of researchers sacked. Websites containing clinical data and other information have been shut down. Combined with the attacks on the pharmaceutical industry, RFK is destroying medical research in the USA.

    He wants to concentrate on “chronic illness”, which appears to be code for “nutrition and supplements”. This is the line taken by Casey Means, the nomination for Surgeon General. She runs a wellness company, is an anti-vaxxer and a loyal supporter of the president. The usual, basically.

    On top of this, massive cuts are coming to Medicaid. I don’t see how US medicine and health can survive these amateurs.

  • Fox government

    I gotta get me a fix of Pete Hegseth. The latest disaster is that another jet has fallen off the USS Truman. That’s three now, meaning that they have transformed approximately $200m worth of aircraft into wrecks fit only for seeding coral in less than three months. That’s not counting the damage done to a merchant ship that the aircraft carrier accidentally collided with.

    There are obviously problems onboard, and these didn’t start in January, with the accession of the new regime. On the other hand, Hegseth extended the tour of the USS Truman, rather than calling it back home to find out what was going on. He’s got other stuff to do: those books won’t burn themselves.

    Usual rule applies: each dollar they waste on vanity and incompetence is one dollar less they can use for evil stuff.

    With any luck, we will see more vanity and incompetence. The godfather has appointed Janine Pirro to be the new Attorney General of Washington DC. She is another former Fox News host, taking the number of alumni now to 39 in the administration. Like Hegseth, she’s also an alcoholic, so she’ll fit in well.

    Her greatest hit was the lies she told about Dominion Voting Systems, claiming they fraudulently awarded Biden the election. The company sued, winning $800m in damages. This, alongside her rabid, unswerving loyalty to the president, is what got her the job.

    He always picks the best people.

  • Streamline, modernise, innovate

    Pete Hegseth appears to be bulletproof. For weeks now, people have been briefing newspapers about his vanity, incompetence and arrogance. Lots of people, even his own, at every possible level. He seems to be hated by everybody who comes into contact with him. And yet he remains in his job.

    This television presenter turned military genius has now revealed his plans for the future of the US armed forces. He wants bulletproof soldiers. Specifically bulletproof straight white cis male soldiers.

    One of the main reforms is to move away from heavy armour to light, mobile units that are nimble and quick to react in a modern warfare situation. Sadly for everybody, this has already been tried. A scourge of Gulf War II was the IEDs which would explode at the roadside, turning the vehicle going past into a motorised coffin.

    Still, that was a long time ago and humans have probably evolved since then. In any case, Pete is doubtless looking at the success of the Russians when they adopt such tactics. This is fine unless you also consider the Russians do this because they can’t afford anything better, and that their soldiers get blown to smithereens by anything resembling a well-equipped opponent.

    So these new units will be useless for any sort of war. Maybe controlling civilian areas? Not in the USA, surely? The population is too heavily armed. Mexico? Greenland? 51st state? All this policy will do is reaffirm the effectiveness of the Molotov Cocktail.

  • Destruction, piece by piece

    Reagan is ultimately to blame. In 1986 he gave this famous quote: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

    It gets your attention, pithy and direct. If you put it in the context of the time, it also sort of makes sense. Unfortunately an entire right-wing religion has sprung up around these words. The modern idea seems to be that government is evil, extraneous and needs to be destroyed entirely. At the very least, that’s what they are trying to do.

    The latest efficiency drive against government waste is the National Weather Service. Over 1000 meteorologists have been cleared out, with 30 offices no longer having any senior officer. The person who liaises with media and local emergency services when there’s a problem. Such as a hurricane in Florida, one of the closed offices.

    I mean, why is the government involved in this at all? If you want to know the weather, you just go to an app and it will tell you everything you need to know. All that weather data, it’s just simply there! An unalterable fact of nature.

    The trouble is that all this reorganisation is being performed by people who have no idea what they are doing. They take the world as it is for granted and do not understand the processes and systems in operation. Literally nothing at all will work after they have finished.

  • Golden balls

    Tasteless, gaudy, ostentatious bling. That’s the impression you get when seeing the Oval Office nowadays. All a lot of show, a fool who thinks he can impress people with displays of extravagant wealth. Then again, many fall for it. This obsession with gold has led to a new fantasy called the “Golden Dome” and he’s putting down an opening bet of $10billion for this bauble.

    It is basically a new version of the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars”: Reagan’s attempt to create a magic shield of defensive weapons which would protect the USA from a nuclear attack. Year after year, the project consumed endless billions of dollars without any results until Clinton killed it.

    Now the tech bros think they can do it. Their proposal is for a fleet of 1000 surveillance satellites to detect incoming missiles and a second fleet of attack satellites to shoot down the missiles.

    SpaceX comes into this with launching the satellites, so Musk will get a vast amount of money up front for something that will never work. Even better, these satellites will remain the property of SpaceX, with the US paying a yearly subscription to use the system they have paid for.

    Go for it. Every dollar they waste on this stupid and corrupt scheme is a dollar less that they can use to threaten everybody else. Specifically Canada, which is strategically necessary if ever such a system is to work. Hopefully they won’t realise this.

  • Did they use AI for this?

    I’m starting to understand the purge of academics in USAian universities. The regime is not interested in anything they have to say. So why pay for them?

    The new tariffs were announced today. A seemingly random set of numbers, all with huge increases. It didn’t take long to work out what was going on. They have taken the total trade with each country, divided it by the trade deficit with the USA and set this percentage as the new tariff. Essentially, they have converted the US trade deficit into a tax on US citizens.

    Why stop at that point? If tariffs are so good, why not set them at 1000%?

    A few countries have been spared, such as Russia, Belarus and North Korea. For most countries, there is a flat rate of 10%, including the Heard Islands, which are uninhabited, except for penguins. They’ve also hit Diego Garcia, a US naval base, with the same tariff.

    It’s not merely the idiotic policy, but the way they are pursing it. Resentment about countries “cheating” and “victimising” the USA. Vietnam is one of these countries, but all of South East Asia is being clobbered by a policy designed to drive everybody into the arms of China.

    An incredible quote by SoS Howard Lutnick, who said the EU “hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak.” How can anybody say stuff as stupid as this?

    These people are lunatics.

  • 4-dimensional chess

    Elon Musk was boasting a few days ago that his predictions have generally come true. This comes as a surprise to me.

    It turns out it was as long ago as 2013 that we all got excited about self-driving cars and their imminent arrival. Musk has made regular promises about such technology, usually several times a year, but still no self-driving cars.

    We all know he wants to go to Mars. In fact, he reckoned he would send two rockets there by the end of 2022. That moved to 2025, now 2029. Not to mention that StarShip, among all the rapid unplanned disassemblies, does not meet specifications and will probably never work as promised.

    Then there’s his Boring Company. The idea was to have a tunnel for public transport. He expects cars to travel through this tunnel at 250kmh. They don’t. His sales patter following the obvious failure is like that of a perpetual motion crank: the prototype is there, we just need more money.

    Predictions for Neuralink are for 2025. Maybe they will come true. On the other hand, research suggests that the human brain is like a very very slow modem in computing terms and cannot be linked to a gigabyte stream. I await the breakthrough.

    Most recently, he predicted he could put a puppet in charge of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Despite spending $25million on this project, and engaging in outright election fraud, he got that wrong as well.