I just looked up Michael Hastings on Wikipedia and I find his ‘car accident’ to be a little too damn suspicious.

Not just hearing loss, your sense of balance will be fucked. So it’s double whammy.

This is true. Always has been, always will be. Many Trump voters are already regretting their decision after seeing the early consequences of Trump’s statements. But that won’t be permanent. Many will likely be duped again by another conman using the same tactics.

I need to mention that old school ‘patent medicine’ (ex: snake oil) in the 19th to very early 20th was not destroyed by advancements in actual medicine and education and awareness… it was done by simply banning the patent medicines and forcing others to disclose their ingredients. When buyers of said medicine were aware of the bullshit of old snake oil, they just moved onto another brand of snake oil (which may or may not have been made and sold by the same guy).

If they removed regulations on medicine and legalized many of the old hard drugs we would see a resurgence in patent medicine that caused so many problems in times past. There was actually a reason why people who avoided all medication in the 19th century actually had a longer than average life expectancy.

Israeli terrorism with their pager bombs is something that is already happening, but with those they had some explosive material planted. The thing you are mentioning doesn’t require anything dubious to be added and they can work as is. This shit is just scary as hell.

I played Cyberpunk 2077 many times and in the game they have vehicle quickhacks that allow you to stop a car temporarily (emergency break), force the car to full throttle (Floor it), taking control of the car… or making the car blow up with self-destruct.

Now it’s just a game and this can be excused, but at the same time I wondered how the hell could you make a car blow up? Then I realize Tesla cars can burn quite viciously, and the mechanisms of opening the door CAN be jammed. The other shit is probably going to be quite possible soon if not already. Meaning we could see high-tech murders happen by people who find weaknesses in car cybersecurity and exploit it to kill their target, and if they cannot trace where the hacker was or how it would be an unsolvable murder…

But that’s only if a random ass murderer does it. It wouldn’t surprise me if corporations wanted to off someone they didn’t like for any reason and that person was driving one of their cars then… yeah, it doesn’t take much imagination there, does it?

Maybe it’s because I am an elder millenial who never owned a car, but only rented cars when I need them, The most I ever used is google maps (now Osmand… which is the superior Open source option!) to find my way. But I never felt the need for anything else other than blindspot detectors (which don’t need to be connected to anything!) to help in lane changing since it makes that task easier. I listen to all my music and stuff on my phone (which is another tracking device I fucking hate) so I don’t even bother with the radio.

In short. I would like my automobile to be like what automobiles were… a hunk of metal that is used to travel from point A to point B. This is coming from someone who LOVES technology and I recently took the time to buy a 6000$ desktop because I fucking wanted the most high end machine I could get and I love it. But even I have my limits.

Sail ships continued to be used well into the 20th century. The absolute last purely sail powered warship served during WW1!

I never used X. I did half-assedly make an account in 2013 but I have long since deleted it. I have no real use for twitter.

This is why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

The other thing I need to mention is that is that Elon Musk is far from the only billionaire with a massively disproportionate influence on elections and society. Or even the biggest. He is just the biggest attention whore of them all.