Let me guess, Netcraft confirmed it?

What is this unhealthy fixation on what someone is "worth"? It is not a billion tons of gold, it is not a quintillion tons of grains. It is a fiction, a fleeting number on paper that signifies current valuation of a business. Musk does not have a trillion dollars under his mattress. Not even 2 billion.

I think Musk is a con artist, but why is it difficult to wrap your head around a person benefiting less from his billions than the society? Society gets to use these billions in many ways more than the person himself. Society gets the products made by the businesses that are valued at billions, society gets the jobs and paychecks from all of this money. What does the person get except for a headache of dealing with the norms and rules and taxes imposed by the society upon his business? He really doesn't eat much more than the next guy, though his meals will be more expensive because they are cooked by some private chefs. But the cost of the food, chefs, housing, airplanes, whatever is negligible compared to the value of the company that society gets to enjoy. Even just the trading of the stock market allows people to have something to invest into, there are jobs, there are products, then there are various contracts required to maintain this business, so there are other side businesses that rely on the gigantic companies owned by the billionaire.

Again, a billionaire personally can use maybe a few hundred million dollars, maybe even a couple of billion (if he buys a couple of yachts and a few mansions). The gain to the guy is completely negligible compared to the gain to the society. It is like infrastructure in itself, that's what these huge businesses are. To say that this is 'Libertarian-Randian gobbledygook' is simply to use a personal attack in place of an argument.

But again, I am fully convinced Musk is a gigantic fraud, running his empire almost exclusively on vaporware.

Women do not want children in more numbers than ever because they are not marrying, because they follow each other on instagram and other mass hysteria sites where they promote hedonistic living to each other and yes, much of it requires resources and time that otherwise would be allocated to rearing children. Unmarried women rely on the government systems that women (and womenized men) have promoted and voted for over decades. This promoted disconnect between generations, grandparents and other family members are not involved in helping with the kids as previously. Two income household means women are working (because of inflation caused by the women as a voting block people are forced to pay insane percentage of earnings as taxes). Taxes used to subsidise classes of people, especially single women require so much more money that women im families have no choice but to work. Their husbands' earnings are more than halfed by the taxes, so need 2 people to work where previously 1 would have sufficed.

So women as a voting block created the environment of high taxation and subsidization, this in turn requires that more women entered the workforce than ever before. None of this is child friendly, women as a block are truly pushing towards childless society. This is self defeating, the people with more children will inherit the world, which will roll back most of these anti child policies. This will require a demographic collapse first, which is coming within a few decades. Within just 2-3 decades most of the world that has anti child policies will be very old of-course. The age of single childless people will cause an age of single old people. Their policies will die off with them giving apace and rise of various fundamentalist cultures, for example Islam. The only hope is that Israel also keeps their births up and somewhat balances out the Islamists. If not, then the few remaining non muslims will feel very lonely on this planet indeed.

There are so many Richelieu's quotes.
I assume you mean this one?

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him"

He already stated more than once that he thinks these are intelligence tests and that he is very proud having aced them, unlike Biden. Says it all, really, both about his intelligence and his cognitive prowess. Or, about the lack of both, to be precise.

The USA used that oversized military to wage wars that had nothing whatsoever to do with NATO so I fail to see why you are accusing other NATO members for not having militaries strong enough to start stupid military adventures. Basically, throughout the whole history of NATO only one single war was caused by an attack on a NATO member, namely the USA.

Probably less than the time you spend in every bloody EV discussion on slashdot. Do you get paid for it or did an EV touch you in an inappropriate way?

If you haven't figured out that 'the peasants' pay for everything, you're just not figuring anything out. Blaming is not understanding.

'We' pay for everything.

Do you really think these hicks care about tech?

Inster is not just cheap, it is super useful too. I was able to load a 2 meter long Ikea bookshelf into mine despite the car being outright tiny and easy to park.

The serious projects like covering the desert, or canals, which seem really, really clever. It all depends on what they're covering. I guess sometimes not very nice to what they're covering. But it's really about choices. Responsible choices are going to be okay. I'm reminded though that there is no criticism of any power generation method that won't burn you, the scorn and ridicule and dismissal and rejection somehow. Doesn't mean anybody's right or wrong. Oh wait it does.

If it were just about the money, then nuclear would not be very attractive.

But it's the environment, stupid. Compared to fossil fuels, nuclear is an attractive option, cost be damned. Hydro is not without detriment. Solar uses space. Wind is going to be seen as a loser in so many ways, but it is a stepping stone.

Nuclear is the best option, and SMR among other technologies will improve the option.

ps - Previous comment about desalination in higher latitudes might, I think, miss the basic equation. Fresh water is more readily available at higher latitudes than lower, until you get into the ice. Nuclear powering desalination in Southern California, yes. Alaska? Dude?

Interestingly, here in Germany Samsung (and many other Korean companies) are located around Frankfurt/Main, a quite expensive location for the most part.

The only country to ever trigger the article 5 was the USA and the European allies came to assist dubya.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have an ungrateful bastard.