Godsdammnit...
I don't care about him or it.
But I stubbornly keep caring about smart people being duped.
Going around is some variant on the theme below:
"Friendly reminder that Musk told the UN that if they gave him a budgeted breakdown of how $6B could end world hunger, he would do it. Then they gave it to him and he didn't. Then he bought Twitter for $45B."
Yeah, about that plan.
The UN gave him a breakdown of how that much would feed those the UN determined "most in need."
For one year.
That's not ending world hunger.
That's growing existing programs that say they will do so in a year.
(Source in the first comment.)
So yeah, Musk didn't fund it. Because it was bullshit. I guess when you don't even pay your parking tickets, people get suspicious of what you say you can do with their money. Funny how that works.
How much bullshit?
The USDA spent $122B on their own nutritional and hunger programs just in the US alone, and doesn't seem to have done much, despite being the most that department has ever spent.
(source in the second comment)
So, to sum up: The UN is full of shit and the feds are wasteful.
But a whole lot of people fell for a line of fine-spun bullshit anyway.
And it's not even well-hidden bullshit either. That took me five seconds of WTF and thirty seconds of googling.
You are all smarter people than this. Stop falling for it.
Look, I get it. Billionaires with names and faces you can recognize are easy targets, especially when you're struggling yourself, I get that.
A snarky soundbite when you're convinced you're right is another dopamine hit in a day when you need every one you can get. I get that.
It's still falling for bullshit.
Bullshit that someone spun for a reason.
And every time an otherwise smart person falls for something like that, they end up acting like just the sort of dirt-scrabbling, witch-burning, hat-in-handing, pathetic little useful idiot peasant the bullshit spinners think they are.
Stop rewarding the bullshit spinners.
They're saying what you want to hear. But if they had to lie that clumsy to do it, do they really have your best interests in mind?
I'm probably preaching to a choir and empty pews, but fuck it.
Stop rewarding the bullshit spinners.
Think for five seconds. Especially when it's telling you what you want to hear.
Start by pondering the idea that if you're screaming bloody murder about the fact that a free speech absolutist is buying a venue that you yourself use to speak freely, you're not the good guys in that particular story.
*Gibbs slap*
Don't reward them again. No matter where they come from.
Take care of yourselves out there.