🇺🇦Max Plaid🇺🇦

The thing about leaving X for alternative platforms is all very interesting, but I'm not sure that publicly stating you're intolerant of differing views is the win people think it is. It's fine to leave quietly. One of the things I've enjoyed about the platform historically is the ability to have exchanges with people who possess different views, chiefly to test my own and revise them as appropriate, insofar as others' opinions weren't censored under the previous regime. This was particularly valuable during the Brexit years, when, with a couple of exceptions, I somewhat disappointingly found surprisingly little informed opinion on the part of my opponents, but when I did, it was enjoyably challenging. Had I missed important information in forming and indeed changing my opinions over previous years? Had new aspects come to light I might have missed? The urge to silence differing views is not a great trait in anyone: ignore them or counter them with more robust narratives. Musk's takeover of X has clearly riled many because they now see opinions they don't like no longer being suppressed… or they just don't like Musk's politics, which, like many others who've been on a similar journey, used to be quite different. But if ideas are bad, let them be shown as such with the oxygen of publicity. It's always worth reminding people that in the UK, the openly (and actually) racist BNP was finished after its leader Nick Griffin was given the oxygen of publicity on BBC Question Time and was allowed to freely express his views for all to hear. People don't need the support of self-important and self-appointed gate-keepers of opinion to keep them from "dangerous narratives". They just need better evidence and more convincing arguments. If you don't have them, maybe you need to look a little closer to home. Stating you're removing yourself from challenging views or being unable to challenge or ignore them isn't really of much interest to others. If you're merely saying you're opening an account somewhere else and inviting others to follow you there, that's one thing and all well and good. But if you're an individual, or worse still a company, organisation or (heaven forbid!) a media outlet (cough, the Guardian), and you're not capable of dissenting opinion or engaging in debate (the Guardian showed it wasn't capable years ago, when it turned off comments on its articles because it was forever being ratioed), and you're therefore wholly disengaging from X, frankly you won't really be missed anyway, as you're not bringing anything useful to the table. Flouncing off in a sulk doesn't impress most normal people. Most of us learn that when we're unspoilt children whose peers keep us grounded.

The biggest problem that legacy automakers have is not even their inadequate BEV technology, but the incentives they receive from governments that cause them to not cut costs fast enough and avoid innovation, and the short-term thinking of unions' outlandish demands that drive them into bankruptcy. The winners are Asian automakers and Tesla. $tsla

All numbers are showing that Russia is dying and this short video summarizes from that perspective I have been mentioning from time to time when referring to the extraordinary high Russian casualty rates which lately exploded even more.