Elon Musk Launches Into American Politics

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This is a transcript of a New York Times podcast from December 13, 2024. All rights belong to the originator and owner.

The world’s richest man may now be the single most influential figure in the emerging White House of Donald Trump.

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

rachel abrams
From “The New York Times,” I’m Rachel Abrams, and this is “The Daily.”

[THEME MUSIC]

After single-handedly remaking the auto industry, social media, and the global space race, Elon Musk is now turning his attention and personal fortune to politics. Over the past few months, he became the single most influential figure in the race for president and now the emerging White House of Donald Trump. Today, my colleagues Kirsten Grind and Eric Lipton on what exactly Musk wants from the new president and why he’s so well-poised to get it.

It’s Wednesday, November 13.

Kirsten, we spent the last few months watching as Elon Musk really became kind of the face of Donald Trump’s campaign for president. And in the days since he won, Musk has only increased his proximity to President-elect Trump. And last night, of course, Trump announced that Musk would lead a new government agency. What will Musk’s specific role in the Trump administration be?

kristen grind
Late Tuesday evening, Donald Trump announced a bunch of new appointments to his new administration. And included in that was this role for Elon Musk. And what Donald Trump said is that Elon Musk will be leading up this completely new government department focused on efficiency. Efficiency is something that Elon Musk has been obsessed with for years. And basically, it’s just showing how much power Elon Musk is going to have in this administration and how much Donald Trump respects his opinion.

rachel abrams
Kirsten, you’ve covered Musk for years. Did any of this surprise you?

kristen grind
So I’m an investigative reporter who has written a lot about Elon Musk. And I have to say, I could have never predicted this political transformation that has happened over the last year. For him to become so involved in politics after really staying out of it for most of his life and career and being in the room with Donald Trump on election night is a metamorphosis I definitely was not prepared for.

rachel abrams
How did we get from a guy you would never have expected to get into politics to someone who’s about to potentially serve the White House?

kristen grind
The thing to understand about Elon Musk is that he really believes his goal in life and his mission is to save humanity. He has made it his focus and the focus of all of his companies to save the world. For example, he started SpaceX more than two decades ago with the goal of getting humanity to Mars in case something happened to Earth. He was an early investor in Tesla and became its CEO because he was worried about fossil fuels.

rachel abrams
And he’s become the world’s richest man by doing all of these ventures. But how do we go from that and from him wanting to save humanity, possibly by colonizing Mars, to basically becoming a key supporter and really a surrogate for Trump?

kristen grind
It’s a very unusual and unconventional transformation. For most of his early career, he had leaned Democratic, but really he just wasn’t into politics at all. And for the most part, he stayed out of it. But there’s a few things that happened in the last four years that really started to shift his outlook.

[QUIRKY MUSIC]

So let’s start in 2020, the pandemic.

archived recording 1
All of California this morning now under a shelter-in-place order.

archived recording 2
Governor Newsom’s order, an unprecedented action, calls for —

kristen grind
California had tons of stay-at-home restrictions on residents and businesses. And most of Elon Musk’s company operations were in California. And Musk speaks out against what’s happening.

archived recording (elon musk)
Is it right to infringe upon people’s rights, as what is happening right now?

kristen grind
He is extremely antiregulation, hates to have the government or really anyone tell him what to do.

archived recording (elon musk)
This is fascist.

kritsten grind
And so the fact that he was going to have to close his Tesla factories because of the pandemic made him so angry.

archived recording (elon musk)
This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.

kristen grind
And finally, he threatened and then ultimately did move factories out of the state.

rachel abrams
Wow, so this really pushed him over the edge what happened in California.

kristen grind
It really did. But then something happened the next year in 2021 that was even more angering to him, and which seems like a small thing, but has been something that he’s like never been able to get over.

[APPLAUSE]

archived recording (joe biden)
Please, everybody sit down. Please, please, please.

kristen grind
The Biden administration held this electric vehicle summit.

archived recording (joe biden)
And I also want to thank the leaders of the big three companies for being here today.

kristen grind
And they invited all the big carmakers from all over the country to go.

archived recording (joe biden)
— when they make the first electric Corvette, I get to drive it.

[chuckles]
Right, Mary?

kristen grind
Except for Tesla and Elon Musk.

archived recording (elon musk)
Biden held this EV summit.

kristen grind
Elon was furious.

archived recording (elon musk)
He didn’t mention Tesla once and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution.

archived recording 3
So you were a pissed.

archived recording (elon musk)
Does this is sound maybe a little biased?

kristen grind
And he has never been able to let this go, the snub from the Biden administration.

archived recording (elon musk)
It’s not the friendliest administration.

It seems to be controlled by the unions, as far as I can tell.

kristen grind
And basically, it created so much tension between Tesla and the administration that that also kind of set him on his political journey.

rachel abrams
So it sounds like the Biden administration is on notice at this point that Musk is really upset. And it’s not just for business reasons. It’s really becoming kind of personal.

kristen grind
That’s right. But it also becomes ideological, too, because remember, around 2022, he buys Twitter, renames it X. And he basically says he buys it to make it a free speech platform. He especially thinks that conservatives had been censored on Twitter. Remember, at this point, Donald Trump had been kicked off Twitter and other conservative voices.

And he wants it to be this sort of place for free speech of all kinds. And around this time, he really start to see a shift in what he is posting about on X. And it becomes way more focused on what he’s called the woke mind virus. What this basically means is, for example, diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, transgender rights, pronoun use, all of that seems to be angering Elon Musk significantly on X. And he starts posting about it more and more.

[TENSE MUSIC]

archived recording (elon musk)
So it’s very possible for adults to manipulate children who are having a natural identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender.

kristen grind
And I want to bring up this other thing that, to me, really shows how far down this rabbit hole he had gone —

archived recording 4
Why are you willing to make this an issue, do you think?

archived recording (elon musk)
Well, it’s happened to one of my —

kristen grind
— which is that his daughter, Vivian, who’s one of his older children, had come out as transgender.

archived recording (elon musk)
I was essentially tricked into signing documents.

kristen grind
And Musk claimed in an interview that he was tricked into signing these medical forms for Vivian and allowing her to do her transition when she was 16.

archived recording (elon musk)
This is before I had really any understanding of what was going on. And we had COVID going on. And so there was a lot of confusion.

kristen grind
That he had not been aware of this basically.

archived recording (elon musk)
They call it “deadnaming” for a reason.

archived recording 4
Yeah.

kristen grind
And he said in this interview that she had been killed.

archived recording (elon musk)
Killed by the woke mind virus. So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we’re making some progress.

kristen grind
She had some choice words back to him and also said that he was not tricked into signing those forms. But the whole incident just really showed how his thinking has changed and been radicalized over these last few years.

Another example of his ideological transformation is immigration. And that’s kind of ironic because Elon Musk, himself, is from South Africa. But over the last couple years, he starts really focusing on illegal immigrants. And he keeps talking about how he feels the Democratic Party is allowing in these illegal immigrants so that they can get a majority and win the election.

rachel abrams
So he’s just espousing this conspiratorial rhetoric right out in the open on his own platform.

kristen grind
That’s right. And it’s really this ideology that is so different from what you saw from him even just a couple years earlier.

rachel abrams
OK, so all of that helps me understand how by 2024, Musk is increasingly aligned with right-wing ideology. But when do he and Donald Trump actually get together in some meaningful way?

kristen grind
So it’s a little hard to tell because Musk’s world is very insular. But you can kind see why, at this point, he and Trump are so aligned. So the two people are so similar.

rachel abrams
Really? Like how?

kristen grind
I mean, they both have immense wealth and power, but they both act like outsiders and victims. I think this one is maybe the most important, which is that they both think the system is broken and they both really think that they are the ones to fix it and they kind of refuse to stick with the status quo.

And so we know at one point earlier this year, Musk met with some billionaire friends his, one of whom was encouraging him to get involved in the campaign and to donate, which would be pretty normal for someone of his stature and wealth. And then we know at some point earlier this year, he did also meet with Trump. And then by June, he had established a super PAC ready to invest in Trump’s campaign.

rachel abrams
So can you just break down for a second? What does that support actually look like?

kristen grind
It is above and beyond what a normal donor would do, that’s for sure. So his Super PAC has donated more than a hundred million. That would be kind of normal for a billionaire or another donor, perhaps. But what has been unusual is the Super PAC, which is called America PAC, was in Pennsylvania knocking on doors. They knocked on 11 million doors in battleground states. [CHEERING]

archived recording (donald trump)
Come on up here, Elon.

kristen grind
But the most amazing thing to me has been watching him at these rallies.

archived recording (elon musk)
The energy in this room is incredible.

kristen grind
Right up on stage, he was with Trump.

archived recording (elon musk)
America is just not not going to be great, America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before. The future is going to be amazing!

[CHEERING]

kristen grind
He was just right out there with him, almost like he was running for president.

[crowd chanting, “elon”]
archived recording (elon musk)
You guys are awesome. Honestly, this is like ah. Wow.

rachel abrams
But wasn’t this man trying to run like six companies and colonize Mars? How did he have time for all of this?

kristen grind
[LAUGHS]: Yes, well, that’s a very good question. He has a lot of good people running his companies. But meanwhile, to take it back to his whole life’s goal, which is to save humanity, that’s actually exactly what he thinks he is doing here. And, in fact, he has said recently that he still really did not want to get into politics, but that he had to because civilization was on the line. So that, again, is why he is out there.

And on election night, there’s this big family photo with Trump, and Melania, their kids, their grandkids, and there’s Elon Musk just right beside them. And in the few days since the election, he’s basically been camped out at Mar-a-Lago.

He was reportedly on this phone call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump. He’s been advising Trump on cabinet positions. And then, as we know on Tuesday night, he got his own position appointed.

[INQUISITIVE MUSIC]

And we’ve just never seen anything like this, this super billionaire, Elon Musk, suddenly with all this potential power in the federal government.

rachel abrams
After the break, I talked to my colleague Eric Lipton about what Musk stands to gain from a Trump White House.

So, Eric, we just heard from our colleague Kirsten Grind that it has not taken Elon Musk very long to insert himself into this emerging Trump presidency in a way that feels without precedent, frankly. And you’ve been looking into exactly what Musk could stand to gain from access to a Trump White House. But first, can you just remind us, what is Elon Musk’s current relationship with the federal government?

eric lipton
I think it’s underappreciated the extent to which Elon Musk has relied on the federal government to help build his own wealth and the size of his companies. He has at least a hundred different contracts pending with the federal government with 17 different agencies. The majority of that work is with SpaceX, which has really owed its existence, largely, to the federal government. NASA kicked it off by giving SpaceX the money that it needed to build the Falcon 9 rocket, which now puts almost all of the world’s cargo into orbit each year. More than every other nation in the world combined.

rachel abrams
Oh, wow.

eric lipton
And SpaceX alone has gotten $10 billion worth of contracts from the federal government over the last five years to deliver stuff to space. That includes cargo to the Space Station, astronauts to the Space Station, spy satellites, missile defense systems, and dozens of other items for the federal government. And it’s unlike any other commercial space company in the history of the United States, in terms of the extent of its dominance and the money that’s going to it to provide those services to the federal government.

rachel abrams
So government contracts really made Musk in a way. Like, he’s clearly been very successful under the status quo. So that sort of begs the question of, what more is there for him to gain?

eric lipton
I mean, since Musk created SpaceX back in 2002, he’s been completely fixated with getting humans to Mars. And one of the things that incredibly frustrates him is when he encounters paperwork requirements and regulatory slowdowns. He often comments about how he can build his rockets faster than federal bureaucrats can move paper from one side of their desk to the other. It just totally burns him up.

And that’s, in part, what has motivated him to get more involved in politics. He thinks it might give him the power to help defang them, and to limit their power, and to reduce what he considers to be redundant or ridiculous requirements to help wipe away some of this slowness that really frustrates him. And Musk was clear during the presidential campaign that he wanted to be named to a position in the future Trump government that would give him the power to help oversee significantly cutting back on federal regulations, federal employees, and federal spending.

He liked to jokingly call this the “Department of Government Efficiency,” nicknamed DOGE, which is the same name of one of his favorite crypto coins. Musk has a tendency to love little names like that he can repeat that are insider jokes. And he would be this superpowered czar overseeing the reach of federal government operations and looking for ways to eliminate what he considers redundant federal regulations and cutting as much as $2 trillion in federal spending, which is a crazy and really unachievable goal, but that’s what he says he wants to do.

rachel abrams
Which is basically the position that Trump just announced for him with this new government department that’s in charge of making all kinds of cuts across the government, kind of spiritually similar to what Musk did with Twitter.

eric lipton
Yeah, Trump likes to tell Musk that he’s super impressed with what Musk was able to do at Twitter. He jokingly calls him Cutter In Chief. He sees Musk as having an incredible capacity to find ways to reduce costs and get rid of waste. And, in fact, at Twitter, when he bought it, Musk, of course, cut something like 2/3 of its staff. And it’s a bit bumpy, but X does function without more than 2/3 of the people that it had when he purchased the company. So Trump has confidence that Musk is the guy that he needs to actually really significantly cut federal regulations and spending.

rachel abrams
But a tech company works a lot differently, obviously, than a government agency. Like it doesn’t really seem feasible that he could just go in, slash a bunch of jobs overnight, like what he did with Twitter, and have that work the same way.

eric lipton
Yeah, and a level of reduction in spending and regulations, that has never been achieved before in the history of the United States. And when it comes to actually cutting federal regulations, and laying off federal employees, and cutting federal spending, this is a process that obviously Congress participates in and it is a very hard thing to do. There’s a constituency for every little agency out there. And so it is a lot harder than simply announcing one day they are laying off thousands of people at a private company that you own.

rachel abrams
How do you think all of this is actually going to play out?

eric lipton
We don’t know what Elon Musk’s first targets would be. But there’s a couple of examples that frustrate him in terms of conflicts that he’s had with federal regulators. Probably the best example is with SpaceX and what he’s trying to do down in Boca Chica, Texas, near the Mexican border, where they’re testing out the Starship rocket.

And they have repeatedly caused some environmental damage in that area. And it’s right on the edge of a national wildlife refuge and a state park. And as they were developing the rocket, they were repeatedly disregarding what the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Interior Department said was the limits on their operations.

rachel abrams
What exactly were those limits?

eric lipton
I mean, for example, recently on one of their launches, there’s so much power that comes out of these rockets, it sent sand and rocks flying into the nearby state park, and it destroyed a bunch of nesting areas for the local bird population, and ripped open the eggs and destroyed the nests of the birds that were there.

I saw that right after the launch. I walked out into the area once they’d cleared it for the public. And the egg yolk was there staining the ground. And that’s another matter that’s being investigated by Fish and Wildlife Service for potentially harming migratory birds. It’s something that frustrates him. And he thought that our coverage of it was so offensive, he said he would restrain from having omelets for several days.

rachel abrams
Oh, my god.

eric lipton
He thought it was so ridiculous that we were even worried about these nests that were destroyed by his launch.

rachel abrams
So you can imagine that the EPA would be the first target on his efficiency to-do list.

eric lipton
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the first places that he goes and he looks to try to roll back some of the regulatory powers that it has. But that certainly would not be the only agency that he would go after. I mean, all you have to do is look at Tesla.

And he is being currently or recently investigated or sued by really an acronym soup of federal agencies — the Equal Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities Exchange Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Department of Justice, of course, the EPA. All of them are looking at Tesla and suggesting that it has overstepped the law. I mean, most importantly, there’s concern about the autonomous driving tools on his cars and whether or not they’ve been involved in fatal accidents.

But everything having to do with disrupting union activities, who he hires at his auto factories and whether or not he’s properly treating refugees and people who have asylum. I mean, he is the subject of so many different simultaneous investigations. It really frustrates him. And that’s another part of the reason that he’s active with Trump is he wants to crush those investigations. And it’s likely that many of them will now be shut down.

rachel abrams
So everything you’ve laid out so far, Eric, it helps us understand why Musk’s own personal business interests could benefit from the regulatory environment that he’s potentially going to be reshaping. But is this all legal? It seems to me that what you’ve outlined could be a major conflict of interest.

eric lipton
It’s going to create a conflict of interest that really has few precedents in American history. Here’s a guy who has $10 billion or more of ongoing federal contracts. He has a couple dozen pending federal investigations and lawsuits that he’s targeted in. And, of course, there are federal conflict of interest laws that prohibit just this kind of mixing of duties, and violating them could be a federal offense.

So how is it possible that Elon Musk could simultaneously play the role of trying to cut back on federal regulations if he is, himself, being regulated? And the announcement we saw from Trump on Tuesday night actually sort of hints that they recognize that there’s this clash. And they’re attempting to sidestep it by suggesting that Musk would somehow be the leader of this new federal department of government efficiency, but he would do it while remaining, quote, “outside of the government.”

rachel abrams
So basically, he can have the ear of the president, but not have the formal government position and all the conflict-of-interest headaches that come with it.

eric lipton
Yeah, it’s a lot more attractive. But this is a very murky arrangement. And all of this assumes that Trump and Musk are going to stay on good terms. There are two personalities that have a history of exploding with people that they’ve been close with, with business partners, and even some of their most trusted employees. And so they’re guys that also hold grudges and are a bit impulsive. So there’s no guarantee that this is a relationship that’s going to last.

rachel abrams
So after all of this, your investigation and how it revealed the various ways that Musk’s potential reshaping of the government could benefit him, what is your big takeaway?

eric lipton
I think the thing that’s really fascinating and that we, at “The New York Times” are going to be watching closely, is the extent to which this new administration is one that’s going to be defined by the desires of billionaires. And the first Trump administration was really more focused on things like the oil and gas industry and the Christian right wanting to see more appointments to the Supreme Court.

But the array of economic interests being pushed by billionaire donors to Trump in this second term is much broader and their buddy-buddy relationship with Trump is much tighter. I mean, it’s the crypto industry. It’s artificial intelligence. It’s the tech industry and the antitrust approach that the government has to the tech industry.

[TENSE MUSIC]

There’s a bunch of players that have surrounded Trump, and Elon Musk is at the center of this crew. Many of these folks are friends of Musk. And he is the ringleader of the whole group. And I think that they are going to have much more influence in what happens in the White House and across the federal government in the next four years.

rachel abrams
Right. I mean, billionaires have always had some sort of influence in government, but we just haven’t really seen the proximity that you’ve outlined between this incredibly rich and powerful man, the world’s richest man, and the president of the United States.

eric lipton
Yeah, I think that it’s just a different set of players at the table this time around, who have such vested interest in so many sectors of the economy that reach really across the playing field. “Oligarchs” is too strong of a word. But we are entering a period where people with immense wealth are interacting with a president, who is known and has a history of being extremely transactional. And these are folks that now helped Trump get a second term and are expecting to see a return on that investment.

rachel abrams
Eric, thank you very much.

eric lipton
Thank you.

rachel abrams
We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated military veteran and FOX News host, Pete Hegseth, as his defense secretary, but his lack of relevant experience has already generated pushback. Hegseth is one of several political appointees Trump has picked in recent days, including South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for secretary of Homeland Security and House Representative Elise Stefanik for ambassador to the United Nations. Trump is expected to meet with President Biden at the White House later today. It’s part of a long-standing tradition of the outgoing president greeting the new one.

[THEME MUSIC]

Today’s episode was produced by Rikki Novetsky, Olivia Natt, Rob Szypko and Luke Vander Ploeg. It was edited by MJ Davis Lin, Brendan Klinkenberg, with help from Chris Haxel. It contains original music by Dan Powell and Rowan Niemisto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

Peanuts: Stereophonic-Fussing (and more)

Posted on by The Old Wolf

According to the Peanuts Museum on Facebook, the strip below was first published on January 7, 1957⁠:

Now that’s a cute strip, but I’ve also seen the following panels out there:

I’m quite intrigued by these additions, and would love to know if they are part of the same strip, or are subsequent strips, or fan-created materials. Google and Lens have been no help.

Any ideas out there?

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Political Correction of Sesame Street

Posted on by The Old Wolf
Fortunata

Cross-posted from LiveJournal, originally posted 11/4/2009. Still valid today.

I read today an interesting and disturbing article about the evolution of Sesame Street over the last 4 decades, written to coincide with the show’s 40th anniversary. According to Katie McLaughlin of CNN, “In the early days of “Sesame Street” — that is, B.E. (Before Elmo) — Sesame Street was a pretty grimy place.” It was designed that way, in order to reach inner-city kids and bring both facts and a thirst for learning into a milieu that they could relate to.

The Cookie Monster smoked a pipe, which he ate on occasion, along with anything else that he hallucinated looked like a cookie; Oscar was a mean S.O.B., kids rode bicycles without helmets, and kindly neighbors invited little girls into their apartments for milk and cookies.

The only way to re-live the Sesame Street of the 60’s is on DVD, where the episodes are preceded by some mealy-mouthed attorney’s caveat: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” By Mogg’s adamantium claws, that is so disingenuous it makes me want to puke myself.

Miss Katie goes on to say, “For better or worse, today’s preschooler is very different from the 1969 version. And children’s television programming simply has to reflect that.”

Horsehockey.

Today’s preschooler is exactly the same as those of 40 years ago, or those in the 1890’s, or those in 1492. What has changed is the hypersensitivity of the liberal media to anything that might offend anyone, and the capitulation of society in general to the whims of attorneys hungry for billable hours.

In my day, kids fell off of jungle gyms and out of tree houses regularly, suffered black eyes and broken arms, and nobody got sued. Watch E.T. again, and see how many of the wicked boys in that movie wore helmets as they ripped and tore around the hills on their BMX bikes. S̶e̶x̶ ̶e̶d̶u̶c̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶m̶m̶a̶r̶ ̶s̶c̶h̶o̶o̶l̶ ̶c̶u̶r̶r̶i̶c̶u̶l̶u̶m̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶g̶n̶a̶n̶c̶y̶ ̶r̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶r̶a̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶d̶a̶y̶. [I have been corrected regarding this claim] Kids who used bad language or were disrespectful to their elders developed a severe drug problem: they were ‘drug’ to the woodshed, or ‘drug’ to the bathroom to have their mouths washed out with soap.

No, it’s not the preschoolers who have changed, but the society around them. And if you ask me, having a show as freshly original as Sesame Street (designed for those who needed it most and had access to the very least) “power washed” to conform to the sensibilities of the toffee-nosed elite is a sin, a shame, and a crime.

The culprit is apathy.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I just saw today a Facebook post by a valued colleague encouraging people to take the high road with political commentary and memes, implying that such things are beneath people of good will. While the sentiment is worthy and I respect his desire to have charity, the danger is also real – much more real than most people are willing to admit.

Germany happened just as much because of apathy as it did because of active malice. When I have returned to the dust, I want my posterity to know what I stood for and what I did to resist evil. If America devolves into a fascist autocracy, it will not be because I did nothing and said nothing.

This article from 20 October 1974, saved by the Maryland State Archives during the height of the Watergate era, is powerfully revelatory; today’s political situation makes Watergate look like a Romper Room picnic.

“The culprit is apathy. Few people will ever commit themselves. They aren’t for or against anything. They just remain indifferent. Most German people were not Nazis because of their convictions, but because they had none. They did not help Hitler, they just let him happen.” – Dr. Hilgunt Zazzenhaus

The memes may be, on some level, mean-spirited. But the target of those memes – Donald J. Trump and the MAGA cult who either worships the ground he walks on or who view him as a useful idiot for the furthering of their own ends, specifically power and influence, are more mean-spirited and cruel and destructive than the political statements.

If you care about America’s future, vote all Republicans out, everywhere, at all ballot levels, from now until the heat death of the universe.

The Old Wolf has spoken, and is not ashamed.

The confusing world of Chinese drop-shipping

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I start by saying I have no understanding whatever of how this works. But here’s what happened with my last online order from a company called “buletboard.”¹

I wish I had bought these directly from Amazon, I could have gotten an instant refund, because these things are:

So poorly designed that there’s hardly an American car that the device will clip to. I barely got it to stay on my Rav4, and then the phone essentially blocks my view of the road. The device does not take phone cases into consideration, the phone barely fits in the clips, and getting the phone into the holder is close to impossible. Shame on me for buying from China once again.

The product was ordered on August 16, and arrived today, September 10th. But the most interesting thing was the emails I kept getting from the company about “The status of your parcel has been updated.”

  • Belfast,bt170wg,United Kingdom,The shipment has been processed in the parcel center of origin.
  • The shipment has left the sorting center.
  • Lincoln,LN4 3SD,United Kingdom,The shipment is in transit in United Kingdom.
  • The shipment arrived at the customs of United Kingdom.
  • The shipment is being inspected at the customs of United Kingdom.
  • The shipment has been shipped to United States.
  • The shipment arrived at the customs of United States.
  • The shipment is declared at the customs clearance of United States.
  • Departed Shipping Partner Facility in the United States.
  • Transit: New Orleans,70139,United States,The shipment is in transit in the country of United States. (four days after the parcel arrived.)

When the package arrived, it had several labels, one on top of the other. The first one was in Chinese, and included my name, address, the product description, and a bunch of barcodes.

The second label indicated that it was shipped from “Online Seller, 2700 Center DR, Dupont, WA 98327.

This is far, far from the East coast where I would have expected the package to arrive, if it were indeed being shipped from Belfast, and being processed through customs in the UK. It’s also an Amazon fulfillment center.

The second, final label indicated that the sender was:

DEBRAG HABOUSHS
3511 VICTORY BLVD
STATEN ISLAND NY 10314

A self-storage office? This makes no sense at all. I mean, I can see the package being sent from Washington on the West Coast if the item were shipped from China, to a distribution point in the East, since we live in Maine. But a self-storage office, and with such a phony-sounding name?

One thing is clear: the chain of emails sent to me by “buletboard” was 100% bogus, since the product obviously came directly from China. Combine that with the poor quality of the product I received and essentially wasted my money on, should be a glaring drudge siren flashing in my eyes to remind me never to buy anything from a Chinese vendor again.

The Old Wolf has sadly spoken.

Footnotes

¹ Most of these Chinese companies must use random name generators for their popup companies which are here today and gone tomorrow, re-appearing somewhere else with a new name after the first one is shut down for shady dealings.

The USPS “Undelivered Package” scam

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Public service announcement: If you get a text like this, ignore it:

The Post Office will never send out text messages like this. But if you happen to be unaware enough to click the link, you will get something like this:

The bad URL (the legitimate post office site is https://www.usps.com/, and nothing else) and the bad grammar are red flags that this is a scam website.

Again, bad English (to ensure the successful delivery).

“Lump sum: 3¢”… right. Give these scummy drones your credit card number and they’ll use it or sell it and at the very least you’ll have to get that card cancelled and get a new one. At worst, you might be on the hook for fraudulent charges.

Be careful out there, and protect your vulnerable loved ones.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

If you’ve ever worked retail

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Barking, unreasonable, terrible managers. Mind-clenching Corporate stupidity. Unpredictable schedules. Lazy or arrogant or brown-nosing co-workers. And, of course, the ubiquitous customers: arrogant, entitled, insouciant, demeaning, demanding, illogical customers… with the occasional gem of a human being hidden in the regular flow. All these are things that the average retail worker has to put up with on a daily basis.

The worst and most outrage-generating stories can be found at Not Always Right, but there’s one place a retail worker should go – if you haven’t already – to smile, cringe, laugh, and find kindred spirits: Retail, by Norm Feuti.

Retail, Strip One, by Norm Feuti, January 1, 2006.

Anyone who has ever worked in retail or still does owes it to themselves to be familiar with this lovely, long-running comic strip. It sadly came to an end after 14 years when the artist wanted to move on to a different career in illustrating children’s books, but the entire thing is available online as an archive. I greedily devoured every one, because it so perfectly captures every aspect of the retail experience, from managers, to co-workers, to the most horrible customers… all of which have to be dealt with in a day’s work if you’re interested in keeping your job.

But it’s not just about the horrors; along the way you will get to know and fall in love with a delightful cast of characters who grow, and learn, and survive the journey. Of course there are the ones you love to hate, but that only adds Tabasco sauce to the chimichanga, as it were.

Only the first year was captured in hard copy, but if Norm were ever to think about publishing the other 13 years in dead-tree edition, I would be first in line to buy them.

There was also a companion volume, “Pretending you Care,” which included many strips from year one along with wonderful expositions about what it’s like to work in the retail world.

Both are available on Amazon, but neither one is cheap, sadly – I was fortunate to score a copy of each through AbeBooks, my go-to source for difficult-to-find books, at much more affordable prices. They occupy honored places on my bookshelf.

While I never actually worked a retail floor, I did work in pizza shops for 3 years, and spent 6 months in a customer-service chair for a software company – essentially the same as retail work without the face-to-face interactions with customers. It was, to be very honest, the most soul-sucking job I ever did in my entire career, and would never again repeat the experience even if I had to. Thank Ṣiva H. Viṣṇu for retirement.

That said, I undertand. And I have always done my best to be a bit extra kind and appreciative to those people on the floor or behind the register who serve my needs, who endure the daily horror, and who long for nothing more than the end of their shift.

To all retail or customer-service workers out there, thank you.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

American Food Culture and the Joy of Leftovers

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Reposting this from… well, I’m not sure where, but it looks like Tumblr. Anyway, it’s 100% on-target. Very slightly bowdlerized.

My wife and I have started taking our own re-usable plastic containers when we eat out, to bring our leftovers home without adding to the landfill.

Pervocracy

Note to vacationing non-Americans: while it’s true that America doesn’t always have the best food culture, the food in our restaurants is really not representative of what most of us eat at home. The portions at Cheesecake Factory or IHOP are meant to be indulgent, not just “what Americans are used to.”

If you eat at a regular American household, during a regular meal where they’re not going out of their way to impress guests, you probably will not be served twelve pounds of chocolate-covered cream cheese. Please bear this in mind before writing yet another “omg I can’t believe American food” post.

nettlepatchwork

Also, most American restaurant portions are 100% intended as two meals’ worth of food. Some of my older Irish relatives still struggle with the idea that it’s not just not rude to eat half your meal and take the rest home, it’s expected. (Apparently this is somewhat of an American custom.)

xenoqueer

Until you’re hitting the “fancy restaurant” tier (the kind of place you go for a celebration or an anniversary date), a dinner out should generally also be lunch for the next day. Leftovers are very much the norm.

From the little time I’ve spent in Canada, this seems to be the case up there as well.

jumpingjacktrash

The portions in family restaurants (as opposed to haute cuisine types) are designed so that no one goes away hungry.

Volume IS very much a part of the american hospitality tradition, and Nobody Leaves Hungry is important. but you have to recognize that it’s not how we cook for ourselves, it’s how we welcome guests and strengthen community ties.

So in order to give you a celebratory experience and make you feel welcomed, family restaurants make the portions big enough that even if you’re a teenage boy celebrating a hard win on the basketball court, you’re still going to be comfortably full when you leave.

Of course, that means that for your average person with a sit-down job, who ate a decent lunch that day, it’s twice as much as they want or more. that’s ok. as mentioned above, taking home leftovers is absolutely encouraged. that, too, is part of American hospitality tradition; it’s meant to invoke fond memories of grandma loading you down with covered dishes so you can have hearty celebration food all week. pot luck church basement get-togethers where the whole town makes sure everybody has enough. that sort of thing. it’s about sharing. it’s about celebrating Plenty.

it’s not about pigging out until you get huge. treating it that way is pretty disrespectful of our culture. and you know, contrary to what the world thinks, we do have one.

theunnamedstranger

atreefullofstars

Reblogging because I honestly never thought about it but yeah, this lines up.

This is also why the idea of “pay a lot for fancy food on tiny plates” pisses so many Americans off. Unless you are rich enough not to care about throwing your money away, it’s not just a ridiculous ripoff in terms of not filling you up, it’s stingy. Restaurants are places of hospitality. If I pay that much for a plate it had better be damn good and it had better be generous. Otherwise they are just trying to fleece me out of my money AND saying they don’t value me as a customer.

If I go to IHOP or Olive Garden or whatnot, I absolutely don’t need to eat again until evening if I had leftovers, and until the next day if I did eat everything (you can’t really take pancakes home as leftovers).

But EVEN IF I DID EAT EVERYTHING and then ate a full meal on top of that, later, it’s really not anyone’s place to criticize what other people eat. It just isn’t. Let it go. It’s old.

Making fun of American food culture and food habits isn’t original or surprising or witty or funny or getting one over on us or crafting a clever retort or whatever. It’s lazy and petty and childish.

Yeah, we eat a lot of hamburgers. They’re delicious. Cope.

“Recently I’ve become very much aware that there are fewer days ahead than there are behind.”

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Attending a funeral yesterday brought this quote by Jean-Luc Picard (from Star Trek Generations) powerfully to mind, and made me ruminate once again about certain realities. The first of which is, “Tomorrow is never given.”

We never know when the bus will come to get us.¹

What is the measure of a person’s life? The funeral I attended was for a young husband and father, a well-beloved endodontist, who was taken too early in an automobile accident precipitated by a drunken driver. Many people turned out to send him off to his next life; many tears were shed, many good words spoken. He had a large family, his wife had a large family, and he will certainly be long remembered for his goodness.

But as memories fade and those who knew the person also move ahead, all that remains of a person’s life is often a gravestone with two dates: birth, death, and that little dash in the middle, which stands for everything that person did, thought, and was during their walk on this green earth.

Linda Ellis wrote a famous poem, “The Dash,” which begins thusly:

I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning to the end.

He noted first came the date of the birth and spoke the following date with tears.
But he said what mattered most of all was the dash between the years.

For that dash represents all the time that they spent life on Earth.
And now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth.

But nothing lasts forever, not even stone. The natural processes that can wear down mountains or create the grand canyon over the course of millions of years will inexorably erase even the most beautifully-carved memorials, and then there is nothing to mark that person’s passage through mortality.

But I believe in giving everyone a shot at being remembered. My mother had a younger sister who lived less than two months. She was loved, and cherished, but for some unknown reason failed to thrive. She was buried in the same plot as her grandmother, with nothing there to indicate that she had even existed. While it’s the sad truth that countless individuals upon the earth have no graves or are buried in unmarked locations, I found myself in a position to do something for my little aunt, and had a marker prepared and set in the appropriate location.

Someday it, too, will be nothing but dust, but in the meantime those who wander Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park in Salt Lake City will be able to see and take note of her passage. And to me, that’s important.

As the title of this essay intimates, at some point – hopefully a while in the future yet – the bus will come for me. I wonder how I will be remembered? I’m an only child, and so is my wife. We have 7 kids between us, but only one remains active in our community of faith, and all are scattered around the country. It’s my intention to give my body to science² – I can see no point in paying thousands of dollars to have an old shell preserved when it might still do some good somewhere – so I don’t think I’ll have a grave anywhere, but I’d like to be memorialized in some way. A cenotaph³, perhaps? An entry over at FindAGrave? My Facebook site will hopefully be memorialized, but as we have seen, even the biggest entities don’t last forever. Even this blog, which contains many of my thoughts about the world around us, will someday go away, when the domain name is no longer renewed and WordPress is no longer paid.

Ultimately, all we are and all we did are known only to God, but our deeds in this life, like ripples in a pond, will continue to continue onwards in time through the effects of how we treated others, both for good and for ill. I can only hope that when the time comes for me to cross the river Styx and my heart is weighed against the feather of Ma’at, that I will not be found wanting.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Footnotes

¹This is a reference to a lovely and under-appreciated film starring a young Robert Downey, Jr., “Heart and Souls.”

² Unless this happens:

³A monument to someone whose remains are elsewhere

A rant against racism

Posted on by The Old Wolf

A Twitter Thread by VoteHeaux™; A creole banjee bitch from ⚜.

In the interest of keeping my blog relatively family-friendly, I have lightly bowdlerized (and edited for readability) the thread below, with full respect to the author, but if you are not offended by salty language, the effect is much more powerful. The full thread is here, with lots of additional images and links: https://x.com/voteheaux/status/1809893232416825675

Also, she has read her entire thread in a YouTube video, which brings the full impact of her outrage and disgust with the crusty, old, white guys in our government who are all hot and bothered by the fact that maybe another Black person might actually be in charge of our government. View it here: https://youtu.be/l1xP-qBf-C4

Transcript begins:

“How insane is the hate for Black people, that non-Blacks would sacrifice their daughters and sisters in order to keep power over the country out of Black hands? Sacrificing *women* isn’t that surprising, but risking fascism just to avoid a Black woman as president? My God.

A lot of these political pundits cannot be trusted to have unbiased, community or country-minded motivations nor opinions when it comes to our legislature. Neither can men of other races who clamor to be white-adjacent.

The punditry during this presidential election cycle is proof positive. White men have taken a 3 year age gap between 2 old-azz men – which has NEVER CONCERNED THEM LIKE THIS BEFORE (i.e.: Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell) and exacerbated the issue into something akin to a nuclear war threat.

(NEVER MIND THAT THE “YOUNGER” ONE OF THE 2 OLD-🤬 MEN IS AN *ACTUAL* *FACTUAL* *PROVEN* NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT, THAT SHOULD NEVER BE WITHIN 1000 FT OF THE NATION’S CAPITOL AGAIN)

The whole entire reason we have a VICE PRESIDENT is to have someone capable to step into the role of President if something, God forbid, happens to the President, or if they decide they’re done with dealing with the duties of the executive branch and wanna leave the job.

That’s the thing: IT’S A 🤬 JOB. Not a  knighthood, not a coronation, not a canonization; A 🤬🤬 JOB. Experience should count A LOT. And Joe Biden has worked in this field his entire life, through every trial life tossed his way. But here’s where Joe messed up:

After all his years on the hill, and actually applying for the top job a few times himself, he helped a Black dude get it. They punished him by being uncooperative, but he was retiring anyway and leaving public service on a high in 2016.

*sigh*

No good deed goes unpunished.

Allow me a tangent here to tell you what I know about grief: it can break you like nothing else in this world and, concurrently, it can put a battery in your back. It can make you hyper-focus and get 🤬 DONE on the days you aren’t inconsolable or in a useless crippling fog.

I have never lost my spouse. I’ve never lost a living child, let alone two. I have lost people I loved though. And when those people leave, if they ever expressed potential they see in you, it replays in your mind over and over. It compels you to want to live up to their vision.

I honestly believe that’s why  Joe Biden came back to politics. His son Beau believed he could help keep the country from falling to fascism. The country he fought for, quite possibly contracted brain cancer protecting, and died for.

Grief isn’t exclusive to death.

Biden’s living son, Hunter, has had his personal addiction struggles and bad decisions paraded across the country by bad political actors and is facing jail time all because Joe decided to take this job. NO ONE would give a flying 🤬 about Hunter’s gallivanting if Joe wasn’t Pres.

That is a grief he carries too, along with the caskets of his wife, daughter, and son. So it irks my last nerve when people harp on his age, because I have never had anything half as important to do as Joe Biden, but I know how grief has had me in a bed ridden chokehold before.

Joe Biden was born the same year as my daddy, who died in 2017. The fact that he gets up every day to run this dumpster fire; deal with idiot press; deal with insolent former coworkers on the hill; deal with the machinations of SCOTUS; deal with foreign leaders; deal with 🤬’s criticizing him, thinking he has powers he DOESN’T; deal with the damn dog-biting people, like—YOU’RE CRAZY IF YOU THINK THAT MAN IS COMPLETELY SENILE. Slower? Sure. But incapable of running the country? 🤬, get BENT. Your 🤬 couldn’t even do it WITHOUT the grief.

I’m half  Joe Biden’s age and in my grief would have probably sent drones to nuke various states by now, ON G.P. *stares at FL, MS, TX, KY, TN*

Or at the very least, I’d be punching Senators and House members who played in my face daily *stares at Joe Manchin and Lindsey Graham*

All that to say: if you think Joe Biden is incapable of doing the job, your opinion is misguided, unintelligent, not comprehensive, and quite frankly, INVALID. You are not taking the full extent of what this man deals with and has accomplished so far, into consideration. Therefore and thereto, it would behoove you to either reevaluate your opinion, or SHUT YOUR STUPID 🤬 THE ENTIRE 🤬 UP BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW WTH YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT 🤬.

But back to the point: hatred of Black people and refusing them power.

These white dudes and trash pandas have decided that Joe Biden runs the country on an island. That he couldn’t POSSIBLY have a competent staff and cabinet, let alone a whole-azz highly qualified and capable VP, so now it’s time to PANIC AND REPLACE HIM WITH ANOTHER WHITE DUDE, STAT.🙄

Because 🤬 the Black woman who is his literal, rightful successor. They would rather roll the dice on Gavin Newsom, who is hated by half his state…which would then make California, the most weighty state in the Electoral College-a swing state.

Then, they trotted out Pete Buttigieg, even though Ohio—a current swing state—incorrectly blames him for the East Palestine train derailment. Then they threw out Big Gretch from Michigan—which wouldn’t fly, but ESPECIALLY NOT OVER Kamala Harris w/the base of the party.

Pundits are supposed to take all this into consideration when forming their political opinions and offering them to the voting public, no? They’re supposed to be so dialed-in and well-informed that they consider angles laypeople don’t, right? So how’d they miss Kamala Harris?

Here’s how: They know that if  Joe Biden  is reelected and retires, Kamala Harris gets a chance at 10 years in the oval. They know if he stays and the Biden-Harris admin has another successful 4 years, it’s harder to hide their racism/sexism and justify not supporting her in 2028.

So it all boils down to the thought of Black people having power in this country SO MUCH, that they’d WILLINGLY sacrifice their own daughters’ and sisters’ health/safety to a fascist regime to stop it from happening again—ESPECIALLY w/A BLACK *WOMAN*. Vote Heaux!

My God.”

Transcript ends.

The Old Wolf has nothing else to say, she has said it all.