Hi, this is a well known phenomenon in politics that is much discussed in political science and sociology, and goes by many names (strategic polarization, racial capitalism, split labor market theory, etc, and depending upon how you frame it, it encompasses all politics going back to Plato’s Republic). There are many examples where elites have stoked division amongst the poor (usually along ethnic or religious differences, but any difference can be utilized).
The most famous examples in America were the divisions created between poor white and poor black Americans during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era to prevent them from forming class solidarity, and then later, the Southern strategy that enabled Nixon and the Republican Party to regain power during and after the Civil Rights era.
If you are unfamiliar with this topic, you can look at wiki articles and blogs like these, and then go deeper by reading academic papers and books on the subject.
The article claims that the whole project only cost $40,000, and then compares that to electric conversion offerings that cost $75,000 (and mentions that the global conversion market in 2024 was $5.9 billion). I think the implication is that there could be a large market for FSD conversions that goes beyond passion projects because it is not only possible but affordable.
I would be surprised however if this project only cost $40,000, when you factor in the cost of labor and maintaining a facility to do this work.
Neat. I would have preferred the original interior over Tesla's, but I guess it would then just be an electric conversion and not a "Tesla" conversion with "FSD".
That could be, but you should also be aware that many people will have the knee jerk reaction to reject statements like yours as being paranoid and delusional. Assuredly sometimes that is an appropriate response, but the drive to immediately reject narratives like yours is to protect ourselves from the doubt that validating your story would elicit. We do not want to believe those things are happening to those around us (even if we accept that they might be in general), and that is a fact that these organizations take advantage of. I wish you luck either way. Stay calm and suspend belief. We are human, and not only do we not know most things, the most important things we cannot know. You can build a composure that allows for many things to be true and not fully know which and still proceed. Otherwise you might be racked with doubt about who and how things appear and have trouble moving forward from this.
It's hard to take them seriously given the omission of the biggest catastrophe of the 2000s-2020s that underlies everything they do, i.e., wealth inequality, the creation of a parasitic ruling class that uses propaganda to control the political narrative (and seeking AI for even greater control with less support), and the destitution of the poor by the rich, from the manufactured opium epidemic, gig economy, financial crises, etc.
Their sundry list reminds me of the smarty boys in undergrad philosophy who pretend to be great philosophers before they have taken even one step into self-criticism and self-knowledge.
The best liquor I ever had was by a state police detective who had been home distilling since he was 12. It was made from rye and corn, but tasted like peaches.
I think it is kind of magical to witness the process. I only experimented a few times, and never aged it, so every was very sharp. The best was a sharp brandy made from a bottle of wine I bought. The worst was using a leftover keg of beer, which bittered the copper pipe, so everything after tasted like gin.
I would recommend people try it. You can make one out of copper pipe from a hardware store, a few fittings and a pressure cooker. Be safe, of course, and remember that ethanol is used as a preventative for methanol poisoning :)
Thanks for sharing your comment. I was skeptical about your claim that black mold would be a consequence of living near a distillery, but in fact, it is. It is called Whiskey Fungus and is related to the aging of the spirits.
Neat idea, but that sounds like it would eventually become weaponized if built; not only by using the energy beams destructively, but by choosing who does and who does not get power. One thing that has become glaringly obvious over the last decades is that power should not be centralized.
I don’t have kids, but suggested something years ago to my siblings when they started confronting similar issues: we should do a version of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” for personal computers.
Kids should start off with Commodore 64s, then get late 80’s or early 90’s Mac’s, then Windows 95, Debian and internet access (but only html). Finally, when they’re 18, be allowed an iPhone, Android and modern computing.
Parenting can’t prevent the use of LLMs in grad school, but a similar approach could be taken by grad departments: don’t allow LLMs for the first few years, and require pen and paper exams, as well as oral examinations for all research papers.
You originally made the statement that "Hegel is irrelevant in the age of measurement", to which I objected. Unless you're going to back pedal further, you did find studying Hegel questionable.
I'm not going to go on the attack, but your pronouncements and self-certainty do not sound well considered.
That’s bs. Even just the preface to Phenomenology of Spirit is chock full of ideas that folks would be better off if they contemplated. Hegel can be considered a visual thinker (or visionary) whose ideas don’t need “measurement”. If folks understand his thoughts on the master-slave dialectic, for example, they would have an idea as to why we have such incompetent leaders like trump. His thought suffers from the same problem of any thinker who tried to be systematic, but it is still worth being inspired by.
The most famous examples in America were the divisions created between poor white and poor black Americans during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era to prevent them from forming class solidarity, and then later, the Southern strategy that enabled Nixon and the Republican Party to regain power during and after the Civil Rights era.
If you are unfamiliar with this topic, you can look at wiki articles and blogs like these, and then go deeper by reading academic papers and books on the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_labor_market_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Reconstruction_in_Americ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://belonging.berkeley.edu/new-southern-strategy