Wow.

Let me get some popcorn. This might be amusing.

Lol now Trump and Elon are publicly feuding. Elon is shitting on the budget and telling everyone on X that Trump is in the Epstein files. Truly glorious.

It was safe to say it in March.

Elon Musk is a fucking idiot.

Now that Elon is out is it safe to say he was in fact a "fucking idiot" during his tenure in government?

He failed so badly at DOGE it caused a literal shoving match between him and the Treasury Secretary (acknowledged by the White House). He didn't last even 6 months.

What I'm struggling with is the fundamental issue that if there was clear and convincing evidence of criminality then you'd expect him to be arrested, and if not you'd expect the Democrats and the media to be kicking up an almighty stink. But what we have seems to be a solitary Reuters article that's not exactly overloaded with detail.

So my inclination is frankly to ignore it unless something rather more substantial develops with the story. A member of staff of the government might have done something that might have been illegal at some point before joining the government team? Who gives a shit? If the Democrats were running things you could easily see them spinning a similar scenario as a redemption story about a talented bad boy turning good. There might be something more to it, and I am entirely content letting others do the digging.

Well my point still stands that little mister "big balls" is accused of proactively helping people he knew were cyber criminals, rather than just happening to be the provider of an IT service that they just happened to subscribe to.

Funny you should say that. That county lines gangs typically paid in full to reduce their visibility, and preferred to use teenage girls travelling alone in the late evening to make it impossible for anyone with a conscience to throw them off the train. They were frequently reported to the British Transport Police, of course, but you then had to rely on BTP to do anything about it (which was depressingly rare). Truth be told that with the lack of police interest and reluctance of guards to throw girls off in the middle of nowhere they could have got away with not paying anything very easily

Octavious wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:03 am

Yeah... I'm not saying that he's innocent or guilty. I genuinely don't know how these things work from a legal perspective, and I don't have a great deal of understanding about the more technical areas of IT either.

To use a real world analogy, I am certain that I've provided a great deal of aid to county lines drug runners by driving them up and down the country (as a guard I've also probably sold them train tickets. During covid they and the odd nurse were the only reliable customers the railway had ). But there was nothing illegal about providing someone who may be dodgy some transport, and my instinct would be to assume that providing someone who may be dodgy with IT support works alone similar lines

The allegation is that he knowingly provided that particular group with IT support for free (they posted on Telegram thanking him for his "generous" support) and that he was also at the time active in various Telegram and other internet forums supporting / encouraging / positively discussing cybercrime, cryptocurrency theft, etc.

To use your analogy, it would be more akin to you, as a train guard, allowing county lines drug runners onto the train without a ticket so that their movements would be harder to track (and to allow them to dodge fares). That would be pretty dubious activity, would it not?

Yeah... I'm not saying that he's innocent or guilty. I genuinely don't know how these things work from a legal perspective, and I don't have a great deal of understanding about the more technical areas of IT either.

To use a real world analogy, I am certain that I've provided a great deal of aid to county lines drug runners by driving them up and down the country (as a guard I've also probably sold them train tickets. During covid they and the odd nurse were the only reliable customers the railway had ). But there was nothing illegal about providing someone who may be dodgy some transport, and my instinct would be to assume that providing someone who may be dodgy with IT support works alone similar lines

Aiding and abetting a criminal gang / organised criminal conspiracy, according to Reuters.

For clarity, what is the crime this person is guilty of?

Reuters has in the past 24 hours revealed that a senior member of Elon Musk's DOGE team has links to a major cyber-crime ring:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/doge-staffer-big-balls-provided-tech-support-to-cybercrime-ring-records-show/ar-AA1BGOUK

America, this is your government now. Criminals, hucksters, and neo-Nazis. I hope you're happy.

It's extra stupid because it doesn't work. Real money knows that a US-government supported plea for gullible people to flood their meager savings into Tesla is a very bad sign for the firm's prospects.

Trump supporters with any common sense whatsoever no doubt see this as a grift at their expense. Tesla was a woke, climate hysteria engaging, west coast elite brand mere months ago - any of them who are paying attention must have whiplash. I would hope episodes like this serve to increase the reluctance of the many reluctant Trump voters.

Prior to his government appointment, Secretary Lutnick was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment firm that held a significant position in Tesla. All his friends and former associates benefit directly from this.

And even if they didn't, a Cabinet member trying to talk up the price of an individual stock is something that has never happened before in the US or basically any other major democracy. In Canada it would trigger an ethics investigation and be a major news story for many weeks. In the US...it's somehow less concerning than 90% of the other crazy shit that's going on so it flies under the radar. Unbelievable really.

Esquire Bertissimmo wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 21, 2025 2:55 pm

Esquire Bertissimmo wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 11, 2025 10:27 pm

The whole Trump-Elon car commercial today was rather embarrassing.

The US president should not be endorsing a specific product or firm. Senior US government officials should keep their business affairs in a blind trust during their tenure in government.

This was followed up by the Commerce Secretary begging MAGA morons to buy Tesla stock on Fox News. Unprecedented grift. Never before has a US Cabinet member done a commercial for a specific stock.

Tesla is not $TRUMP coin (Jesus Christ I can't belie that's a real thing) — that is, it's not a scam that can self perpetuate based on yokels buying $20 worth at a time. TSLA has lost half its share price *this year*. If it's going to recover it needs to rebuild confidence with actual investors — the Trump admin clown show is hurting, not helping, its prospects.

I am sure this is illegal, but the rule of law does not apply in the USA anymore.

Esquire Bertissimmo wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 11, 2025 10:27 pm

The whole Trump-Elon car commercial today was rather embarrassing.

The US president should not be endorsing a specific product or firm. Senior US government officials should keep their business affairs in a blind trust during their tenure in government.

This was followed up by the Commerce Secretary begging MAGA morons to buy Tesla stock on Fox News. Unprecedented grift. Never before has a US Cabinet member done a commercial for a specific stock.

Tesla is not $TRUMP coin (Jesus Christ I can't belie that's a real thing) — that is, it's not a scam that can self perpetuate based on yokels buying $20 worth at a time. TSLA has lost half its share price *this year*. If it's going to recover it needs to rebuild confidence with actual investors — the Trump admin clown show is hurting, not helping, its prospects.

agree on the potential harm DEI is doing, esp with the incorrect paper citing (I haven't read it, not going to any time soon, so I'll take your word on it), but if science is your focus, while the Trump administration is purging this bit, they're also taking a ton of other important funding that will advance science much more. Medicine in particular, but doubtless in other fields too.

There have been a number of rallies around where I live, and one of my teachers who attended has shared stories about researchers who've lost funding. One researcher at the NIH(iirc it was NIH, maybe some other place, unimportant) got his funding nuked right as a lot of progress was being made and he felt results were around the corner. Universities are losing overhead grants, and thus having to shutter various projects, and overall science is suffering under this administration. I don't remember where it was, but one of the big big famous research universities lost like several hundred million in overhead and thus had to close some projects that would've advanced science as a whole. My friend's parents work at a university, they're seeing their colleague's projects lose funding, and while not totally closing down, they're losing people. Even as a high schooler looking for internships, this is extremely stressful and scary, both from a selfish personal perspective and from a 'future of science' perspective. Can't imagine what it's like for uni students or the professors and researchers doing this almost full time... This shit is actually so fucked up. Let science just be science, let our researchers do what they need and give them the resources to do so.

Also, getting rid of probational workers is like total bs. I don't have any stories close to home i know of with respect to this, but like... messed up af. there was a guy on reddit who got promoted, had to serve probation, and was removed. that's just messed up and wrong.

this is a bit ranty (I hope my points still shine through tho) so sorry, also holy yap that was a lot, but like... fuck DOGE dude >:(

Jamiet99uk wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 17, 2025 8:08 pm

As a committed left winger, I'd just like to say:

I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. You appear to be tilting at windmills.

I am showing you just one important example of how science has been corrupted by activism. There are so many others. This is just the tip of the iceberg. It goes incredibly deep. You are just putting your fingers in your ears and saying "la, la, la, I can't hear you".

In some ways it is even worse than the corruption caused by money...because the activists actually believe they are doing the right thing. It is not just the BS papers which are the problem. There are the papers which are never published because they go against the narrative, there are the activists that get papers they don't like retracted because they don't like its conclusions. This rot in science is terrible.

And the worst thing about it, while it may temporarily provide one side "culture war" points, this fake science hurts the people they proport to represent.

This is what Trump's anti DEI drive is doing:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/16/defense-department-black-medal-of-honor-veteran

Erasing military heroes because they are black.

flash2015 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 17, 2025 4:25 pm

I am sorry but I really have an itch I can't stop scratching here.

One of the most toxic things which has come out of the DEI era is the assumption that any difference in medical outcomes between different races can be explained by racism...with pseudo-scientific studies being published which allegedly back this up. One of the most famous of these was a study which allegedly showed that black babies had much better outcomes when attended to by black doctors vs. by white doctors. This has been cited widely, even by Supreme Court justices like Ketanji Brown Jackson in a dissent to a decision on affirmative action.

The problem is that the paper was nonsense. Once you take into account the birth weight of the baby this alleged racism effect goes away:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409264121

This doesn't mean there isn't any racism in medical care (I am sure there is)...but we should NOT be assuming it like the original authors did.

This toxic ideological crap needs to be purged from the scientific and medical institutions. The rot is so deep and institutions are so ideologically compromised that this will be painful. I hate that it had to be the Trump administration to at least try and fix this.

Unfortunately this is also going to take time. I expect that ideologues on the left will continue to refer to debunked papers like this for many years to come.

As a committed left winger, I'd just like to say:

I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. You appear to be tilting at windmills.