Ain't nobody gonna be gutsy enough to bully Elon's son, let's be real.

I am 100% for distrust!

It's interesting because it appears to be true here too. A lot of Muslim people here at my local practices, including urgent care facilities.

They're friendly, at least the ones I've had the misfortune of having to interact with, but it definitely was something I noticed. If this is becoming a trend elsewhere, that is surely cause for concern.

Well, some people have been pretty quick to throw them under the bus without reasoning it through more, insisting that they're "compromised" or "the enemy".

Not a ton, but some.

Qualifications are also downstream from everything else.

What decides your qualifications? Education on paper and work experience are a good start. When you're dealing with rocketry as an example, you're not going to get any form of apprenticeship to train you, you're not going to be seen based on personality or a willingness to work like you can be in other sectors.

So, say further education gets denied. Say you get denied a scholarship for a good school because the quota for your background/race/sex/sexuality was filled already.

Say you are denied jobs that would allow you to show your skill and eagerness to work within your field because of that same quota.

Now you have people who may have been qualified, but miss out on the opportunity because less qualified people were given those opportunities. But those people can't scrape by in any meritocracy, so now they search for cheaper labor where quotas like these don't exist.

A hell of a lot of things start with DEI initiatives. We need to abolish any fashion of "protected class" and we need to ban quotas, and people need to be able to successfully sue if they're discriminated against.

I agree it's not just DEI, but DEI impacts everything from schooling (and grooming) as well as hiring practices (what spawned this whole thing with "angry dad" -- although I have a problem with people thinking that someone named "suspended1233" wasn't just trying to stir a pot and then deactivate for exactly the effect that is happening, e.g. stringing Elon up for banning him.)

DEI can prevent bright people from even getting further in their education, because that's what "equity" does. It brings everyone else down to try and raise others up, which helps prevent the best from standing out.

Without that, consolidation is easy. Consolidation through cheap labor from other countries even easier. No ability to compete.

Correct, it will take time. I have fewer issues with H1Bs I'd say than all of our manufacturing being overseas. At least if we had that, we'd be more resistant.

I don't fully disagree with his statement, but it is a bad statement for someone with political and specifically presidential aspirations.

There are definitely a lot of culture issues in the U.S., and with how our school system has completely been dismantled in favor of DEI and social agendas it has definitely ruined a lot of what made American ingenuity and work ethic strong.

More to the point, we've become so focused on memes -- so indescribably focused on memes that so many bright minds seem to be focused on being "witty" and "snarky" now.

There are definitely a lot of problems...but that's what we're trying to fix, and someone with presidential aspirations should understand that.

Vivek's allowed to be wrong, or he's allowed to have a misguided opinion. I'm not prepared to verbally slaughter him for that, because I also think it's being magnified too much.

But it does mean that he would not be so easy to support in the future for a presidential candidate.

As for Vance..It doesn't matter that his wife is Indian. That doesn't mean he's suddenly India First. Why attack Vance for the words of Vivek? That's lunacy.

From Elon's point of view, he wants to be able to hire the best minds from anywhere. That's just cutting edge business, and he needs the ability to have cutting edge labor. You can't just train people in a short time for physics. That's something that takes a lot of dedication, time and passion that they have to have outside of their work hours...which is another cultural problem America has right now.

One has to separate Elon and Vivek because Vivek ran for President, and Elon literally cannot. We must assume Vivek has future aspirations as well, and therefore a greater scrutiny should be applied there.

"Russia, Russia, Russia".

It's so tiresome.

Any true DINO has left or is leaving the Democratic party. That's the difference I suppose. They don't tolerate anyone who steps out of line.

It's insane. It's also totally insane that the people who inject this garbage can look at someone carted away during an adverse event and then still give the next person a shot.

I do not have it in me. Even if I had a good belief that I was helping people, watching someone potentially die in front of me would make me harbor serious doubts and I'd walk away.

Thanks! It's "just" a kidney stone but it feels like the end of the world. It's the first thing that has ever made me revise my pain scale.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks! Merry Christmas.

It was probably a picture of Barron wearing a shirt and the shirt was just yuge.

I'm not so sure how good mine is going to be this year, but hopefully everyone else has a great and memorable one.

Renal colic attacks will ensure that I'll be on my ass one way or another it seems. Hope you get the rest you need.

Pulling out of the WHO would be insane...in the best way possible.

Fuck that tyrannical bullshit.

There are absolutely questions to be had about this for sure.

There's a graph that shows that coexisting with few is easy, but coexisting with many is impossible.

It's a good graph.

Which wasn't an insurrection. Don't out yourself that readily.

They can do that, yes. If you are important enough to them, and they can get judges to sign off on it.

It cannot be allowed to happen.

Nor can apathy to legalizing it, which is even worse and anyone should understand this.

There is no check or balance once it's legalized. It is already nearly impossible to repeal this sort of thing.

Once that door is built, it's going to keep being opened.

You stopped this from being a friendly conversation from the jump. Downvoting instantly when you could have simply argued a point ("parallel construction") and then understood where I'm coming from (we can't become so apathetic to their garbage that they actually legalize it) was pretty lame.

Apologies if I am overreacting, I probably am. My patience is thin as I am having my first kidney stone and it is a truly awful experience.

Healthcare is such a complex and multifaceted issue.

Big Pharma has no interest in cures, but government regulations often go too far for promising treatments but not far enough for truly dangerous or new treatments.

Do we put it in the hands of government, or private sector?

One thing we need to do is demand cures, not just treatments-in-perpetuity. We also need to prosecute those who would do harm.

There is also a government grant conflict of interest for research and studies, but if the government has no control then the private companies will stick to their treatment as a subscription philosophy.

Difficult questions all spiraling out of control due to a lack of accountability. An honest government would be coming out against vaccinations. An honest government would never give immunity for bad practice in medicine either.

I'm fine with CEOs making bank, but some of them get totally absurd.

For any gamers out there, Bobby Kotick was basically paid a small country's GDP.

I feel bad for the people who are sent to "serve their country" by fighting for an entirely different country.

Truly awful.

Separate issue.

The chances of you breaking a federal law is just about 100% at some point or other due to how bloated the laws have gotten.

Have you gone to prison for it?

Doubtful.

Legalizing it is a red line, period. The snark about how "it doesn't stop them from spying" is true, but it makes it much more difficult to actually prosecute.

Which is why I said it stops them in courts, and not that it stops them from spying to begin with.

To be clear, we need to get the reins on this -- on said "easy warrants", and on spying. But the way to get reins on it is not to act apathetic to them spying regardless while they attempt to legalize it. The first step is to aggressively oppose that legalization. It is always harder to repeal.