So who are the corporations and billionaires funding the American far right?
A lot of the discourse around the US far right, on both the left and the right, has presented it as being essentially a working class movement.
White working class Southerners (perhaps with some manipulation from Russia) advocating for their prejudiced world view, the narrative goes.
But what if that's not the situation? What if the rise of the far right has been funded with millions of dollars from extremely wealthy individuals?
Where are the resources coming from?
You probably already know about Rupert Murdoch with Fox News and Elon at Twitter, but there's a few others...
"Two billionaire Texas brothers whose fortunes derive from oil and gas fracking have pumped millions of dollars into rightwing media outfits that have promoted climate-crisis denialism.
...
"Farris and Dan Wilks have each doled out millions of dollars through separate foundations over the last decade to a number of high-profile conservative and religious groups including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.
"The Wilks brothers, for instance, have poured millions of dollars into PragerU and the Daily Wire
...
"In 2015, Farris Wilks gave $4.7m to help launch the Daily Wire and remains an owner of the media company, whose founding editor and co-owner Ben Shapiro has forged ties with Dennis Prager, the PragerU founder and talkshow host. Shapiro and Prager are slated to attend a PragerU “founders’ retreat” in September for donors who give at least $100,000 a year."
"[One America News] founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.
"AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms ... according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant."
"[Robert] Mercer is a Christian conservative, gun enthusiast, a climate change denier, religious, small-government proponent and a man who despises the political establishment as incompetent and corrupt. He has donated over $100 million (€84 million) to various right-wing candidates and think-tanks. Most of that money has gone through the Mercer Family Foundation, run by Robert Mercer's daughter Rebekah.
"The Mercers hold a major stake in a company called Cambridge Analytica, which uses digital data to tailor election propaganda to voters.
"The Mercers first met Andrew Breitbart, the founder of what is now Breitbart News Network in 2011 ... The Mercers also invested $10 million in Breitbart and gained a large stake in the nascent company."
Why the hell did #ElonMusk even bother to do this interview with #DonLemon? He was clearly in a repressed rage throughout the discussion, actually shaking with tears forming in the corners of his eyes as Lemon asked completely fair, and straightforward questions. This is not a reasonable person. This is someone on the brink of uncontrolled violence.
@slcw I'm disgusted with many of the statements and things #Elon posts. I went out and watched the entire interview. But to say Elon was in a "rage" and "shaking with tears" in this interview is completely false.
A year ago he released the promised algorithm for determining content pushed upon you (if you use twitter).
Perhaps more surprisingly, He admitted that even internally, that the #spaghetti_code comprising it isn't even fully understood internally by their staff. That's more #transparency than was expected.
But now, just a few hours ago, he released the source for #xAI's #Grok chatbot too, under the #Apache_license:
Our neighbor--a dude that my wife and I refer to as "the Schlemazel"--just bought one of these despite not really being in a financial position to do so.
Daily reminder that Elon Musk's charity pocketed $6.84 billion out of the $7 billion they made.
Elon Musk Has a Giant Charity. Its Money Stays Close to Home.
After making billions in Tax-Deductible donations to his philanthropy, the pro-fascist elon gave away far less than required — and what he did give supported his own interests.
His charity supports HIMSELF and then the fascist takes big tax deductions.
Yes, NYT sucks. But also, Elon is a greedy fascist, thin-skinned, petulant, insecure, vindictive wannabe nazi.
OVER THE WEEKEND, the Wall Street Journal published a long report on the accidental death of the shipping magnate #Angela#Chao, sister to former transportation secretary Elaine Chao and sister-in-law to soon-to-be former Senate Republican leader #Mitch#McConnell.
News of Angela Chao's death first appeared in shipping trade publications with no explanation, then was vaguely reported as an automobile accident;
McConnell, in announcing his plans to resign from his leadership post, said her dying had prompted him to think about the end of his own career.
What the Journal reported was that Chao had #drowned inside her #Tesla Model X after accidentally backing it into a pond on her Texas estate, on the short drive between the guesthouse and the main house.
According to the story, she called a friend in the guesthouse from inside the sinking car to ask for help:
While making a three-point turn, she had put the car in reverse instead of drive, she said.
It is a mistake she had made before with the Tesla gearshift.
The car had zipped backward, tipping over an embankment and into a pond.
By now, whenever anyone dies in a Tesla, the natural question to ask is whether or not the Tesla killed them, or helped kill them.
How do you put a car into reverse instead of drive?
The online manual for the Model X, has a diagram showing how you put the car in gear
It shows an interface on the Tesla's touchscreen.
It has no label for either "Drive" or "Reverse"; the blue arrows, judging by the diagrams in the rest of the manual, are not part of the display, but the manual's indication of how the driver is supposed to move their finger.
The text explains:
When you press the brake pedal when parked, the drive mode strip displays on one side of the touchscreen. Use the drive mode strip to shift Model X: swipe up for Drive, swipe down for Reverse or touch the P for Park or N for Neutral. The drive mode strip is always available on the touchscreen when you touch Controls.
Even by Tesla's ridiculous design standards, this is a shockingly bad control system.
There is no stable convention around whether swiping up means "go up" or "go down";
notoriously, Microsoft and Apple have completely opposite theories about which way makes sense.
And that dispute is only about manipulating text on your computer screen, not setting a two-and-a-half-ton vehicle into physical motion.
Tesla's choice of direction
—flicking the little car-glyph upward, as if you're pushing the car itself, rather than flicking it down, as if you're pulling the landscape so the car moves forward
—is not only the opposite of the way you advance along the road on a touchscreen in Google Maps, it's the opposite of how you drop a normal automatic-transmission car into Drive with a physical shifter.
The wrist and shoulder rotate down and back, and the car goes forward.
Presumably this had something to do with why Angela Chao had previously had trouble shifting the Tesla into the correct gear.
#Elon#Musk's design team, committed to his adolescent theories of futurism
—and to moving as many controls as possible from physical buttons, knobs, or levers to the much cheaper touchscreen, even in a car that starts at $79,900
—built a system that runs contrary to a driver's muscle memory of how to put a car in gear.
It's also theoretically possible that the Tesla put itself in gear.
The Model X includes a beta feature, which a driver would need to specifically activate, in which the car scans its surroundings and makes a guess on its own as to whether it should shift into Drive or Reverse:
When Auto Shift out of Park is enabled, Model X is designed to automatically select Drive or Reverse. The instrument panel displays the selected drive mode when the driver's door is closed and seat belt is buckled.
To override the selection, press the brake pedal and use the drive mode strip on touchscreen to shift into your desired drive mode (Drive, Reverse, Park; see Shift Using the Touchscreen).
Confirm the drive mode selection and follow the instructions on the instrument panel before you press the accelerator.
With your car rolling backwards out of control, simply turn your attention to the touchscreen
—because there is no physical button to feel for
—stab your finger at the letter P, hit it precisely, and hold it there.
”I wrote the DUNE series, because I had this idea that charismatic leaders should come with a warning label on the forehead: MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH.”
-Frank Herbert, 1985
Rich tech people; Guaranteed to miss the point of critical science-fiction since forever.
I knew the Odysseus landed on the moon and fell over. But I didn't know this:
"Intuitive Machines discovered that the range finders on Odysseus were inoperable a couple of hours before it was due to attempt to land on the Moon last Thursday. This was later revealed to be due to the failure to install a pencil-sized pin and a wire harness that enabled the laser to be turned on and off. As a result, the company scrambled to rewrite its software to take advantage of three telescopes on a NASA payload, the Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing, for altimetry purposes."
Basically, the craft had to land blind, using clues cobbled together at the last moment from a variety of sources. The fact that something so simple caused the failure and the scramble to find a way to salvage the mission... Absolutely jawdropping!
Well the first thing you know
Ol' Jed's a millionaire,
Kinfolk said "Jed move away from there".
Said "California's the place you outta be".
So they loaded up the truck
And they moved to Beverly.
OpenAI Responds to Elon Musk's Critique, Affirms Commitment to Ethical AI Development (www.infoterkiniviral.com)
In a recent turn of events, OpenAI, the prominent research organization in artificial intelligence (AI), has addressed criticisms voiced by Tesla CEO