The thing is they might be passable as random folks. The problem is their power and aspirations far exceed random folks, and so, compared to what you’d want to see in those positions, they are very dumb, but exude so much confidence that people have a tendency to assume that confidence must be somehow justified.

And yet executives in your career field probably would have nodded sagely, assuming that affinity to Musk would confer an appearance of intelligence to them, because they have no idea about the field either.

After spending some time in that circle, it drives me insane that the biggest idiots in various fields are the ones ostensibly in charge of them. They toss buzz words with confidence each other in a great circle jerk of money while their results are frequently no better than luck.

About the only consistent ability they have is to be complete sociopaths to screw over customers, employees, and shareholders alike. Which admittedly is a pretty powerful ability…

For a “smart” person, his death was quite possibly a very unintelligent way to go. He basically decided to give all kinds of “holistic” crap a chance to treat his cancer and avoided medical intervention for almost a year. If he had gone with the medical path from the onset, he might still be alive today.

But he did have his moments. Like how he basically told the music industry to cut out the DRM, because it just made the ecosystem impossible. Or one time when someone was picking at him over abandoning OpenDoc in favor of Java (Java didn’t work out either, but his response was on point, without being dismissive of the person).

Frankly Hilary wasn’t a good candidate, Elizabeth Warren would have been better, to illustrate it wasn’t about her gender, but her specifically.

Hilary campaign was largely based around:

I’m a Clinton, remember us from 16 years ago, when my husband was president and I had nothing to do with policy, and mostly remembered as the woman who got cheated on? Clinton was remembered fondly enough I suppose, but that was 16 years ago, and any momentum from that had evaporated. The youngest voters were toddlers when that ended. If they wanted a bit of credibility by affinity to an administration, should have been Obama.

If you don’t vote for me, you are a terrible person.

“I’m with her”, which is just a terrible slogan that indicates a backwards relationship between a candidate and electorate. Even the megalomaniac asshole Trump managed to focus on “America” rather than himself with his slogan.

She didn’t do much to energize anyone, and despite lacking substance she still managed to have folks dislike her candidacy. Whether it be by ditching her home state to go somewhere that would give her a government position or by pissing off the Bernie wing, or, as stupid as it is, I even heard some Democrat mad at her for embarrassing Bill Clinton by “making” him cheat.

Can be both.

JD Vance and the rest of the PJ2025 folks sit back and get their agenda rubberstamped and executed by two idiots that can be plied by hollow praise to feed their egos, screwing up along the way but in ways the PJ2025 are perfectly fine with.

Now I’m going to have to use them to print out directions for my next big drive. So nostalgic.

I’m starting to think no one has kompromat on Trump, mainly because he’s too shameless and immune to everything that nothing can carry any weight.

What does seem to easily work on Trump is feeding his ego. The tech-bros were a realm of huge wealth and a party he wasn’t really invited to. To be invited to the table by those folks and flattered is plenty to make Trump putty in their hands.

His first wave of sycophants just can’t compete with the big boys that have started playing the games. The cool kids let him sit at the table now, so why acknowledge the losers he used to sit with?

They name it in the first sentence, and at least for me, given it’s longevity and word of mouth I know what Joe Rogan implies, but if you said “MeidasTouch” in the headline, I’d have no idea the implication of that shift, since I haven’t listened to either of the two.