I’ll be completely honest: I was on board the hype train. I thought it was awesome that someone was investing in EV’s and pushing them into the market. Hell, I was even fooled by the whole hyperloop thing…

I’m glad it’s not too late to admit that I was terribly wrong about the guy.

At the same time, I don’t blame those that were fooled back then, and I most definitely don’t blame anyone for having bought a Tesla and keeping it even though the guy turned out to be who he is. Some years ago he honestly looked like he was trying to do a lot of good, at least for those of us that didn’t look very closely.

Honest question: Are there no limits in the US to what you can legally name your child? Where I’m from a name can be rejected if it can “cause significant harm or inconvenience to the child”. This prevents idiots from naming their child “Traitor” or “Terrorist”.

You are aware that what Israel is doing in Gaza is comparable to the nazi treatment of e.g. the Warsaw ghettos… right?

Take a step back, and look at the Israeli soldiers mocking Palestinian dead, mistreating the wounded and captured, and shooting at clearly unarmed civilians for fun. All this while they brag about it on video. Look at that and tell me that it doesn’t give you a sick feeling to your stomach of the type you haven’t had since you saw photos of concentration camps.

There are dozens of children that have literally STARVED TO DEATH in Gaza because of Israel’s actions. They’re dying the same deaths that Jews were put through in concentration camps. Don’t you see the horrifying irony in this?

Israel is at a point where humanitarian workers from recognised international organisations have been targeted and killed, and they brush it off as a “mistake”.

I cannot think about anything in the past 70 years that compares to what Israel is doing, and I hope beyond hope that some force will smite their government and armed forces such that the slaughter will stop. Because it is a slaughter. It’s not a war when Israel is counting its dead on its fingers, while there are enough missing Palestinians in the rubble to fill a football stadium. It’s just Israel wilfully bombing, burning and slaughtering, with nobody stopping them.

All this, and you have the fucking audacity to talk about antisemitism? Take a look at the world, and ask yourself how calling for an end to this can have anything to do with the religious beliefs of the perpetrators.

Israel recognised Palestinian civilian and security control of the West bank in the Oslo accords from the 90’s. They are blatantly shitting on their own promises whenever a genocidic occupier or their enabling security forces set foot on the West Bank without express permission from the Palestinian West Bank government.

Lol, this is actually top-level trolling, you really know what buttons to push to keep people going.

I should have listened to you… I took the bait, but got out now :P

You’re making arguments to attack positions I’m not trying to defend, and you seem completely unaware that you’re missing the mark.

I’ve repeatedly tried to clarify this for you, but the way you’re blatantly ignoring my actual position, and instead making up proxy opinions that you ascribe to me and find it easier to argue against makes me think you’re either a troll or a pigeon. Either way arguing with you is rather pointless when you’d rather make up what you think my opinion is, and argue against that, than try to assess a position I’m actually willing to defend.

Nah, you’re still just making up opinions you want me to have so that you can think I’m an ass. Then you’re twisting my words in order to convince yourself I’m saying something I’m not.

It’s honestly kind of impressive that you’re able to go from “I respect people who are willing to risk their own well being in order to protect others, without care for personal gain.” to what you just wrote. Like… that requires some pretty heavy handed misinterpretation.

Now you’re just coming off as disingenuous. So that I won’t need to repeat myself, just read my comments and try to figure out for yourself where you can find backing for what your accusing me of instead of putting words in my mouth and purposefully misinterpreting my comments or taking individual phrases out of context.

Take your time, I won’t be waiting up.

Ok, I’ll try to make this simple for you: I can hold respect for a combatant that puts their life on the line in an effort to do something they believe is making the world a better place, rather than for personal gain.

The KKK is immediately excluded, because there was/is little to no sacrifice being made by those lynching others. The same goes for SS soldiers running a concentration camp. I was quite clear in pointing out that what demands respect is the act of putting your life on the line to protect or help others.

As for who put those regimes in place: That is completely irrelevant as to whether you can have respect for an individual who sees the atrocities committed by the regime, and believes they are doing good by fighting it. I have a hard time thinking that a soldier in Afghanistan is thinking a lot about who put the Taliban in power, or what they personally stand to gain from the fight when they decide to go there.

“All the troops, both sides” is half my point when pointing out that enemy combatants historically have often held respect for each other.

Yes, I respect a combatant fighting for something they believe in that’s bigger than themselves, people not fighting for personal gain, but because they want to give someone else a better life. That’s regardless of what side they’re on- even if they’re on the side I’m actively trying to kill.

This take just baffles me… you can disapprove of a war, and still respect people willing to put their life on the line for something they believe is right. Even in war, opposing sides have a long history of showing their enemy a certain amount of personal respect, even though they clearly disagree about something to the point of killing each other over it.

Your take is just condescending and unempathetic. You can respect someone for sacrificing themselves without agreeing with them about what they’re sacrificing themselves for. Regardless, it shouldn’t be hard to see how someone fighting to depose an infamously brutal dictator (Iraq) or a fundamentalist regime that stones women for wanting a divorce (Afghanistan) can believe that they are doing something good.

Check out the actual statistics on what women and men choose an occupations when both people-related and non-people-related jobs are otherwise equal. There’s quite a bit of evidence that men and women tend to prefer occupations in one or the other category.

Honestly, looking at how different men and women are physically, it is slightly absurd to assume that they are identical psychologically (i.e. have the exact same preference regarding people-oriented vs. technical occupations).

Please tell me how, getting up at 5 (and going to bed at 21) is going to give me more time than getting up at 7-8 and going to bed at 23-00.

Also, I would like to know why “society” thinks you are “better” if you exercise at 6-7 before work, rather than 20-21 after work.

Look: We are loads of people that agree that more can be done. Don’t use that as an argument to say that this isn’t good. He’s doing good things, and if we keep voting in candidates that are more progressive than the previous candidate, we’ll see progress. Biden is better than trump, next time let’s get someone better than Biden.

I agree that genocide is horrendous, but you seem to be missing the fact that your alternatives are voting for the candidate that has publicly pressured Israel to stop, and withheld weapons, or voting for the candidate that wants to arrest and deport people that oppose the genocide, and has actively urged it on.

Not voting means you don’t care who wins: The candidate trying, at least somewhat, to reduce the scale of the genocide, or the candidate urging for it to increase in scale.

In that case, you are complicit if the latter wins, and the genocide gets worse.

I never said the current system is great: But given the choice between driving off a cliff and veering into a tree, your response seems to be to not tough the wheel and letting whatever happens happen.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that someone will win the upcoming election. By not voting, you’re leaving it up to everyone else to choose.

By all means: Something needs to be done to fix the broken system, but saying that we should have pumped the brakes long ago, and then doing nothing about the most immediate issue - who the next president will be - doesn’t help. We need to ensure that we get some president that doesn’t persecute political opponents if we want to have the option of electing an actually good president in the future.

By all means: Start or join a movement to get better candidates in the future, vote for other candidates in local elections and primaries to lift them up. The fight you’re talking about has to be fought long before the final two candidates are locked into the ballot, and complaining that it’s lost won’t effect who wins in the end.

And your solution to the problem is literally not vote, which is doing exactly nothing. I have a really hard time seeing how you can expect yourself actively not influencing the system to somehow influence the system.

Your suggestion to fix this failure of a system is literally “do nothing”. Please try to recognise that: You are advocating for fighting the status quo by doing nothing.

It will not work. If you want change you need to take action. Not voting is the exact opposite of attempting to change things. Use the influence you have to push for a change in the right direction.

I mean, in a perfect world, yes. The issue comes up when someone wears out or breaks the drill, and it needs to be replaced or repaired. Whoever spends time and resources ensuring that we have a drill needs to be compensated somehow, because that’s time they’re not spending on making sure they have food and shelter.

Follow along that line of reasoning for a couple steps, and you end up with some kind of economic system, and likely some kind of enforcement system, so you’re suddenly back at an early stage proto-state/government.