Tuesday 14 January 2025 09:40:21 PM CDT

Many observations in Dune have relevance to the situation here on Earth today because Frank Hebert had firm grasp of sociopolitics. So do many of the best SF writers. While one expects opportunism among businessmen the bootlicking of President Trump's enemies is something else. Besides being deliciously hilarious.

The pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago began immediately after the election was clearly over. Most of the everybody who is anybody crowd have been by now. Perhaps the most amusing was the two stars of what we in the resistance refer to as MSLSD or MSDNC. What their aim in a grovel session with the newly-elected 'once and future president' as some are calling him is unclear. If they were hoping to salvage their careers it was a mistake - they alienated most of their audience and even if MSNBC remains in business it will no longer pay the massive salaries they enjoy now. Whether

The exodus of viewers only after Scarborough and Brzezinski went to Mar-a-Lago shows just how low witless their audience is. They couldn't see that they were acting - sure they hate Trump but money is more important and relevance even more so to their type. I don't know what they hoped to accomplish - probably Trump had a good laugh and may or may not throw them a bone occasionally just for grins. ~ Varinax
I read somewhere that their show was down to 50K viewers before they did it. CNN is in the same boat and whether it's officially for sale yet I don't know but neither Comcast nor Warner is likely to see any upside to continuing to subsidize an operation that has tried to destroy the president. Most people I know hope that one or both will be bought by a neutral entity like Fox that will have no place for them and they can stew in their own putrid juices like James Carville. Don't people ever get old enough to stop hating?

Zuckerberg went down right away - he was making conciliatory noises before the election, probably because he saw it coming. No word on Dorsey - he had already left the company before Elon bought it and may not care. Jeff Bezos went and he had already been hedging his bets by not allowing the Post to endorse a presidential candidate. It may be that he hasn't been redpilled as Elon was but he's smart and knows that the country falling apart the rest of the way won't be good for business. I won't be surprised if the Post is either sold or reformed. If it becomes a legitimate purveyor of news it will be another blow, a big one, to state control of the news media. Larry Ellison - one of a handful of legitimate genius billionaires like Elon - hasn't said much and apparently hasn't visited. Intellectually he does seem to be in the camp with Elon.

Who hasn't been? The only big one I can think of right off is Gates. He might want to be looking for some places that won't extradite him to stash some loot. There are rumors that he asked for meeting but nothing on one happening. Gates is another one he can ignore - maybe make some jokes about him but otherwise ignore him. Cook from Apple went but other than ingratiating himself so if Apple gets into some legal difficulties he can call and get it fixed. So he kicked in a million for the inauguration fund - that seems to be the most common amount for the really big dogs.

Zuckerberg not only kowtowed but announced (a few days later for looks) that Facebook and its siblings would stop censoring and start using the community notes like X. Actually he said they would stop using fact-checkers. Fact-checkers check to see if the fact is one they don't like and it is they deny it. And if they have control over your means of communication they don't let you say it. I don't know if he figures it's advisable for the survival of Facebook or becoming more relevant in the arena of sociopolitical discourse - something they forfeited during the Plandemic and with their vilifying of Donald Trump. X is the center of that universe and that isn't likely to change anytime soon. I suspect that when Elon has his email project going (and a rumored search engine) that will cause a lot of migration. Not so much closing Gmail accounts as just not using them anymore as they move to Xmail. I had Yahoo and AOL accounts once, briefly. They were already on the way out and Gmail was better and Google wasn't expected to be going away unexpectedly. Elon has the money to launch a serious rival to Google - the smart people already know Google is biased and deceptive and use Yandex (the best I've found so far for finding stuff that Google doesn't want you to see) and other alternatives if they suspect Google isn't reliable on some subject. Whoever gave Elon the red pill - actually forced it down - didn't foresee the negative consequences:

Someone or other commented on the futility of arguing with someone who buys ink by the barrel. It was indeed mostly an exercise in futility when that was first uttered. Newspapers were still the main source of news for most - television had been around a while most people had one by then but newspapers were still considered to be the most influential on public opinion. The Internet has sufficiently eroded the power of legacy media that we are now at the point - as the past election showed - at which they are largely irrelevant because transmitting electrons is not free but cheap enough that anyone who wants can play . Elon Musk wasn't regarded as a threat to the 'mainstream' narrative when he was just building electric cars and rockets - in fact the left loved him because EVs. When he saw them as the malignant cancer that they are and began working to eradicate it the game changed. He was now their mortal enemy and they set out to destroy him.

Had Trump lost the election and the Democrat regime continued (Biden was never in charge and Harris would have had less input) the plan - openly boasted about - was to give Musk the same treatment of lawfare take everything he had and put him in prison. NASA could barely send astronauts up and then couldn't get them down but they could take SpaceX. X had become the center of the universe for political discourse and they could again control it. Musk knew that and while before he would have merely been relieved at a Trump victory and gone back to his businesses. He found himself staring into the face of a beast insane with rage and fear and wounded to boot and knows that it must be caged. ~ Marlenus
Elon Musk was the guy who could buy barrels of ink - in this case Twitter. As a political tool of the regime it used mostly to generate content for the 'news' media and dissenting views were suppressed. As X it is free to all and the lefties are leaving but that's their choice. When the email service and browser are available Google may see some erosion. Whether it will motivate them to clean up their act remains to be seen.















































"You don't need experience to know what they'll do," Gurney said. "They're sending a new flag up on the tall ship," the watcher said. "The flag is yellow... with a black and red circle in the center." "There's a subtle piece of business," Paul said. "The CHOAM Company flag." "It's the same as the flag at the other ships," the Fedaykin guard said. "I don't understand," Stilgar said. "A subtle piece of business indeed," Gurney said. "Had he sent up the Atreides banner, he'd have had to live by what that meant. Too many observers about. He could've signaled with the Harkonnen flag on his staff--a flat declaration that'd have been. But, no--he sends up the CHOAM rag. He's telling the people up there ...." Gurney pointed toward space. "... where the profit is. He's saying he doesn't care if it's an Atreides here or not."
Do not confuse 'duty' with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants 'just a few minutes of your time, please — this won't take long.' Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time — and squawk for more! So learn to say No — and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. (This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is 'expected' of you.) Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love