Musk overpaid at $44B,

Yes, but about $14 billion was financed by debt rather than shares of stock, so the market cap immediately dropped to $30B as a result (enterprise value is market cap + outstanding debt because in a liquidation the debt would be paid out of the assets before the shareholders get anything). So in a sense, the current shares were worth about $30B at the time of the 2022 transaction.

If this new merger is a private transaction that values X at $33B and xAI at $80B, and everyone agrees, it’s functionally the same as if it were worth $3.3B and $8B.

That’s what I’m getting at in my first comment. Any explosive is inherently in a state of high stored chemical energy. That energy will want to come out somehow. And if it isn’t released, it will always stay there, ready to be released at any time.

It’s the equivalent to stacking a bunch of really heavy objects on really high shelves above where people walk. When that energy gets released, it’s going to be really destructive. And if that energy gets released in an unsupervised, unplanned way, people are gonna get hurt.

slowly release the chemical energy to the ground

In what form? Like a really hot rock that warms the earth around it for a few decades? That’s dangerous in itself, and, like my example about electrical batteries, susceptible to their own runaway reactions that cause fires or explosions.

That’s just not how chemistry works.

Every bomb, grenade, or other munition will have some kind of explosive substance, which contains a large amount of chemical energy that is ordinarily released very quickly as kinetic energy and heat, in a big explosion. These weapons are designed to where the explosive is resilient against accidental or incidental detonation. So there are a ton of safeguards in place to prevent these things from blowing up unexpectedly.

The problem is that the energy contained within those chemical bonds is still always going to be there. And there’s not an easy way to gradually release that energy. That’s why unexploded ordnance is usually disposed of by blowing it up, in place, with an external explosion. The deterioration of the safeguards around accidental detonation makes the whole thing less safe, so the safest thing to do is to detonate it in place.

Even chemical batteries, which are designed for gradual release of the stored chemical energy, can sometimes overheat and cause a runaway reaction of a battery fire. Deterioration of the device is bad for controlling how that immense quantity of stored energy gets released.

So if you have a device that is hard to accidentally detonate, how will you make it so that the explosive degrades over time, without causing an explosion at an unexpected time?

Veterans tend to vote republican. I’m guessing the numbers would be about the same for active members.

No, I don’t think so.

I think it’s worth noting that “veterans” as a population skew heavily towards old white men. If you weight for age, gender, and race, does that veteran population support Republicans at higher rates than non-veterans of similar demographic profiles?

Here’s a 2023 Pew profile of veteran demographics that shows that:

• 11% were women, and 89% were men.
• 74% were non-Hispanic white.
• 28% were under 50 years old, 36% were between 50-69, and 37% were over 70.

I couldn’t find active duty polling for 2024, but the active duty vote leaned Biden in 2020.

I suspect if people actually broke out veteran preferences by age, gender, and race, you’d see that almost all of the veteran support for Republicans can be explained by their other demographics, not really anything special about being a veteran.

Survivor children of social security beneficiaries do get social security, even if it’s just one parent. It’s not particularly common because you’d need to be young enough to qualify as a child, and your parent needs to be old enough to qualify for social security benefits, but some dudes have kids in their 50s and 60s.

SSDI, the main disability insurance benefit from social security, is not means tested. People pulling in millions can get it too, as long as they’re disabled (and qualify from working long enough in social security paying jobs). Usually that means they’re too disabled to work, but might have income from their investments or other sources. SSDI isn’t means tested, but does look to your earned income to determine whether you qualify (after all, the disability payments are designed to offset the loss of earned income, but someone who does still earn doesn’t need that stream of income as much).

SSI is the other disability insurance benefit from social security, and is explicitly an anti-poverty program that is means tested. So you have to demonstrate a lack of income in order to qualify.

Note that you can collect both, with concurrent benefits, but the SSI means test looks to your SSDI income, that counts against you.

There are a lot of anti poverty programs with pretty abrupt cutoffs based on income, or earned income, or even wealth, but many of the disability based ones have less stringent means testing or no means testing at all.

I think people paying attention to national politics but not necessarily state level stuff don’t realize just how impressive Andy Beshear has been. In 2024, Trump won Kentucky 65% to 34%, more than 30-point lead. In 2020, Trump won the state 62% to 36%.

And through that, during the Trump era, he has campaigned on unabashedly progressive policy positions (marriage equality, abortion, universal pre-k, renewable energy and EV production, legalizing marijuana), and won statewide elections in 2015, 2019, and 2023.

In many ways, the 2023 win was the most impressive, because that was when the Democrat brand was getting dragged down, and incumbents in that era tended to have a bit of a post-covid drop in the polling numbers.

People like Andy are who we need in politics: unafraid to vote his conscience, and using that charisma and voice to bring the public along to support those things.

(that’s bad)

The conversion therapy contains potassium benzoate.

Instead of blaming a victim, why don’t you get on the case of whoever made the post, for having an incomplete summary instead.

The summary contained what the person who posted it thought was important. You thought something else was important and then started making up conjecture about that, instead of looking it up yourself.

This is clown behavior. You’re not a victim of anything but your own ignorance. Digging in your heels, intentionally obtuse to the facts of the story you want to speculate about, is not productive. If you didn’t know, you’re welcome to look up the facts yourself, instead of claiming in multiple comments throughout this thread that this lady was a midwife performing surgical abortions, and that the actual charged conduct compares to the days of back alley abortions.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/texas/houston-texas-midwife-arrested-abortions-clinics/285-b028b728-0db8-4e4f-9255-7f6f11c77f47

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/17/texas-abortion-midwife-arrested/

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/texas-midwife-abortion-investigation-update-20227667.php

https://www.thecut.com/article/texas-abortion-arrest-maria-margarita-rojas-midwife.html

You’re welcome.

The article is paywalled, and I cannot read it, so I’m determining my opinion based on what I read in the summary of this post

Here’s a suggestion: how about instead of forming your opinion based on known incomplete data, you decide instead to just, like, not form an opinion at all until you get that information, much less spout off based on your own speculation.

She wouldn’t have been arrested for dispensing legally obtainable pills, normaly.

???

They made abortion illegal in Texas. She performed abortions in the manner that is legal elsewhere, using a procedure that matches the standard of care where it is legal, under training and qualifications that are sufficient elsewhere. So she was arrested for dispensing pills normally and in the manner that they are regulated elsewhere. This is the safe and legal method elsewhere, and was the safe and legal method in Texas until recently.

Comparing it to back alley abortions is intentionally misleading to the point of dishonesty.

There’s no surgery involved.

Not for the mid/late-term ones.

She…didn’t perform any of those. I’m going off of the facts of what she is being accused of doing in the criminal charges.

You’re up and down this thread misrepresenting the facts here.

These are medication abortions, and the safety of those procedures is pretty well established, especially when supervised at a clinic. There’s no surgery involved.

When I was dating that was basically my go-to reason for inviting someone over, but that usually was at least 3-5 dates in. Usually we’d have eaten at cool restaurants where we’ve had full blown conversations about food, and where I’ll have introduced the idea that I’m a great cook who knows what I’m doing, and then at a certain point I’d offer my place for a dinner date, and then show off. And we’d already be alone at my place so it wasn’t that much of a stretch for them to stay over.

Honestly I don’t know how I would’ve approached dating if I didn’t know how to cook.