I am grateful I have dodged some bullets.
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| Near miss |
I didn't buy Tesla stock when it was flying high. It didn't make sense to me that it would be valued like a tech company that can create additional iterations of a useful software product at no cost, but sell them at a high price. That would be Microsoft. Cars are physical and they cost money to produce. Tesla stock price is coming back to earth. I dodged that bullet.
I thought owning a Tesla vehicle, though, would be cool and trendy. It would make a positive statement somehow about my values. It would communicate that I was an "early adopter," not a fuddy-duddy.
Elon Musk has changed the brand. Now the whole "Tesla idea" represents more of that Elon Musk-style devil-may-care mania. He is acting like an impulsive teenager with a new Twitter puppy that he is treating very carelessly. There is something about watching Fox and Friends hosts praising Elon Musk for putting Trump and anti-Semitic trolls back onto Twitter--everyone look out!!--that changes the meaning of Tesla. Maybe now an owner buys an AR-15 to go in the trunk of the car. Pedestrians better watch out for the semi-self-driving car. Tesla customers are really just doing beta testing.
Tesla isn't cool anymore. I had been waiting until one of my current vehicles had trouble. Now I won't buy one. I dodged that bullet.
Dodging a Tesla bullet is a small thing. Nuclear war is a big thing. The Guest Post here on Tuesday about nuclear war gives me the willies. I'm grateful that so far we haven't blundered our way into civilizational suicide. I will stop with that.
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11 comments:
I’m thankful the Rogue Valley has dodged some bullets – a lot of them, in fact. We’re fortunate not to have suffered one of the 607 mass shootings so far this year in the U.S. Unfortunately, with all the guns and hate floating around out there, it could just be a matter of time.
I'm grateful that I have some good friends to share a meal with, and like Mike, that we here in the Valley, at least for now, have avoided the Plague of mass shootings.
An addendum to my original post;
I'm grateful that I didn't fall for the Bit Coin grift, mostly because anything that sounds too good to be true, probably, almost indubitably, is just that. Too good to be true.
A little off topic (at first but stay with me)
I thought your metaphor was interesting. The bottom of the front page of today’s Seattle Times reads “In Week’s 2nd Mass Shooting, Virginia Walmart Manager kills 6”
Mass shootings these days are so common they come in bunches and don’t even make headlines anymore (even by those “liberal mainstream media” that some of your readers despise). Dodging real bullets may mean staying away from Walmarts, schools, movie theaters, night clubs, Church Bible studies, country music festivals…. The list keeps growing.
But to your comment about Musk. Much has been written recently about how power affects the brain neurologically. This quote from a recent study struck me as unsurprising “The brains of powerful individuals react differently to social cues in ways that resemble psychopaths or patients with frontal brain damage” - from Psychology Today “The Brain Under the Influence of Power How power can "deform" the brain. Doesn’t it seem that wealth and power are like megaphones on a person’s worst impulses?
Looking over the span of human history, can you think of any extremely rich or powerful leader who has been both virtuous and wise? Even people who were once valorized in their time - we find to have had a very dark side.
Personally, I look back with embarrassment and some regret at my attitudes and behaviors when I had a relatively powerful or influential position with a big platform, and was getting well-paid for overseeing very large budgets. I thought I was a pretty big deal and it inflated my ego. So I observe but don’t criticize too much. Except to be saddened by the incalculable damage the rich and powerful do - damage that lasts for generations.
Happy Thanksgiving, Peter! Thanks for everything that you do.
Frankly, there is little to celebrate this season and I find it incredible that so many around us are entertaining a fantasy of normalcy including the de rigueur "I'm thankful for..." which seems somewhat indecent under the circumstances.
If "I'm thankful there's isn't a nuclear holocaust" or "I'm not a victim of a mass shooting" is your baseline, (By the way, we are all victims.) you might want to recalibrate your attitude.
My thoughts to day are of the people of Ukraine, who are taking the brunt of a war that is being waged on humanity, on all of us.
I think we should suspend the "holidays" for the duration.
I’m thankful for the people in my life who I love and who love me.
""There is something about watching Fox and Friends hosts praising Elon Musk for putting Trump and anti-Semitic trolls back onto Twitter"".
What a fallacious comment by Peter Sage. The GOP strongly supports Israel and Jews. Israel and Jews couldn't ask for a better friend than the GOP. There's no antisemitism coming from the GOP.
Conversely, the Democrat Party is heavily antisemitic. Democrats Rashida Talib and Ilhan Omar openly hate Jews with a passion, and they are vocal about it. The Democrat Party heavily favors Arab states (and Muslims) over Israel. Obama was notoriously anti-Israel.
It's sad when people have to lie in order to push their weak agenda.
Bad investments abound, fortunately I wasn't in a position to take a risk or maybe I was just risk adverse. The old saying "It's too good to be true." is the wisdom of the ages and the aged. I lump personal and financial "investments" together and my life lived has proven the adage true. Happy Thanksgiving as we have much to be thankful for this year.
Regarding Rick's comment about suspending the holidays, I couldn't agree more that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is unacceptable. Nor is it the only atrocity currently being perpetrated. We should do all in our power to improve the situation, but that doesn't mean we can't still appreciate our blessings. We'll all be leaving this mortal coil soon enough. Meanwhile, those of us who have friends and family should give thanks, and give whatever support we can to those who don't.
Happy Thanksgiving.
“… can you think of any extremely rich or powerful leader who has been both virtuous and wise?” Maybe, maybe Jimmy Carter, Bill and mlinda Gates?
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