scarabic

Um, well, they are first of all complying with the decision, in spirit. When someone has indicated to you, even in very diplomatic terms, that you may be unwelcome, it’s a reasonable response to stand right up and walk the fuck out.

Secondly I think they are doing it swiftly and abruptly to take advantage of this moment of public awareness. They want to create as abrupt a break as possible no doubt to maximize the outrage of their many millions of users and advertisers while everyone has the news fresh in their mind. They probably hope that this will create enough pain and disruption to stir opposition to the ban or at least political fallout for those who caused it.

Yep, agree. What makes this more complex is that movie culture has relentlessly programmed all of us to think this way for decades. I don’t think it’s just a case of genetic predisposition toward solipsism, though that is surely in there as well.

Virtually all blockbuster movies and many smaller ones are about some kind of chosen hero who shatters a corrupt system, often with a single act of redemptive violence (killing the bad guy, destroying the evil machine, etc).

From Star Wars: A New Hope to The Matrix to The Hunger Games this formula has been virtually the same. It’s so relentless and consistent, and people grow up on it from an early age. Is it any surprise, with this kind of programming, that people grow up lacking the will to dedicate themselves to making a small contribution toward incremental change? No. They need shattering upheaval that saves the world, and everything less is complicity in the evil of the system.

As Zizek said: you never get to see what the hero does the day after shattering the machine. How do they rebuild a better society? Okay, redemptive violence, then what? Popular culture has no answer to this. In real life it’s about compromise, hard work, incremental improvement. But we have generations of people who’ve been fed compelling narratives about everything but that.

Yes and there is one other aspect. When they get into this conspiracy shit, there is a whole community of people ready to welcome them. They are congratulated for seeing the light and joining the movement. This fulfills a social need for a lot of these people, who are lonely or in some cases estranged from family.

This process of feeling like you’ve drawn back the curtain on life, and, in the same stroke found “your people” is incredibly exhilarating to them. It’s like a whole new day in their lives. And THAT’S why they’ll defend their crap beliefs to the death. Because giving them up means going back to the humdrum world where they are just a nobody again.

Yes, let’s not confuse having a degree with getting an education.

no employer has ever given me any amount of money for that degree

I don’t see how you can know this. If it helped you, it was as a baseline qualification that helped you get hired at all. Were you expecting some kind of moment where an HR person said, on your first day, “oh hang on a moment, you have a degree - we’ll need to raise your salary for that - terribly sorry for the oversight.”

Established car makers have businesses that are easier to predict. They’ve been operating for a long time and you have a pretty good idea what “doing well” or “doing poorly” would look like for them. A much newer company like Tesla, which is based on emerging technology, does not have so well-understood of a future. There’s a lot more unknown about how big it might become.

Most times, this is seen as big unknowns and risk, therefore investors are wary. But Tesla has had enough real world success to be encouraging, yet is still new enough to enjoy “we don’t know how big this thing will get” speculation. Basically a lot of people think it’s a reasonable bet that Tesla will be huge in the future. Therefore their stock has high demand.

I think you make a good point. Choosing your timing for a Supreme Court ruling is important. But the court is likely to be hostile for a very long time, and the businesses bringing the case are probably reeling from having to block half of the US market, so they can’t wait forever.

If I were them writing the law it would be based on viewed content. Not files sitting on servers.

Occupancy is hard to monitor and easy to fake though. Purchases are impossible to miss and are a single point of enforcement as opposed to an ongoing burden like you’re suggesting. Though I do appreciate the spirit of your plan.

These people are addicted to this feeling that they have discovered some secret that destroys conventional wisdom and sheds a whole new light on everything. They are addicted to this feeling that they’ve found a big lie everyone’s swallowed and they’re going to spit it out.

Every part of their worldview has to have that quality or they can’t hold onto it with their brains. There’s a great deal of straightforward, plain-as-day information that’s totally missing from their worldview because it doesn’t contain the drug their brain is addicted to.

They nose their way in at a fold and then tunnel around, stopping as soon as their face pokes out. It makes for some adorable photos.