International News Thread

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

19 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I think he should sell his shares in Tesla, cash out the $10 billion dollars or so this would net him, and invest it all in SpaceX.

It is Tesla that cops most of the criticism, as it is a public company and has so many vested interests opposing it.

At SpaceX, which is a private company in which he owns the majority of shares, he is beholden to no one and it is where his real passion lies. While $10 billion isn’t enough to fully fund his Mars dream, it is enough to build BFR and get Starlink up and running. That will make SpaceX a $100 billion company and truly revolutionize the space industry.

Tesla will probably die a slow death once he has left, perhaps settling as a niche firm catering to rich enviro hippies rather than becoming a mass car producer as he currently intends.

But that’s not his problem. Tesla was always a means to an end, and his holdings in SpaceX already exceed the value of his Tesla holdings in any case.

Tesla could have done a lot of good, but the resistance is just too fierce. It is effort he could spend more productively elsewhere.

Maybe. I don't think he would get 10 billion dollars for his shares though, precisely because this 

Quote

Tesla will probably die a slow death once he has left, perhaps settling as a niche firm catering to rich enviro hippies rather than becoming a mass car producer as he currently intends.

would be a common interpretation of Tesla's future should he decide to cash out and leave. 

But yes, breaking into the mass market segment for cars is nearly impossible. So it is not at all surprising that Tesla has to struggle so much. 

14 hours ago, Altherion said:

I'm not sure how a thread on international news became about Elon Musk, but what makes you think Tesla is in enough trouble for him to give up on it? There's a lot of FUD about it in the media lately, but its main problem is still that it sells cars faster than it can manufacture them which, given that the manufacturing rate is improving, is not a bad problem to have (especially with at least a year's worth of pre-order reservations). Also, there's fierce resistance to SpaceX too, it just takes place behind closed doors.

Tesla's main problem is a negative cash flow of a scale that makes it dependent on massive amounts of debt and equity investments being issued just to last the year. You can sell how many cars you want, but if they don't cover your expenses you will eventually run into trouble. 

Unless you can continue convincing other people to lend you money, which Elon Musk is very good at. 

The issue with the mass market segment for cars is it takes huge amounts of capital investments and lots of time to reach the kinds of cost efficiencies that the established actors have. Maybe the improving manufacturing rate you mention will be enough to save them (I hope so myself), but don't be surprised if it isn't. 

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Maybe. I don't think he would get 10 billion dollars for his shares though, precisely because this 

would be a common interpretation of Tesla's future should he decide to cash out and leave. 

But yes, breaking into the mass market segment for cars is nearly impossible. So it is not at all surprising that Tesla has to struggle so much. 

Tesla's main problem is a negative cash flow of a scale that makes it dependent on massive amounts of debt and equity investments being issued just to last the year. You can sell how many cars you want, but if they don't cover your expenses you will eventually run into trouble. 

Unless you can continue convincing other people to lend you money, which Elon Musk is very good at. 

The issue with the mass market segment for cars is it takes huge amounts of capital investments and lots of time to reach the kinds of cost efficiencies that the established actors have. Maybe the improving manufacturing rate you mention will be enough to save them (I hope so myself), but don't be surprised if it isn't. 

With that basic understanding in mind (not a basic understanding in terms of everyone knows this, but hopefully prospective auto-industry investors should know this as a basic understanding in large scale manufacturing business), one would think that investors and lenders take the long view and place a realistic time frame on generating investment returns. I don't know how long Tesla should be given to become a sustainably profit-making car manufacturer, but I would have hoped that a timeframe for that, with some margin for error, would have been established from the outset.

And it'll be interesting to see how far this goes:

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/world/cave-diver-considers-suing-over-musks-baseless-pedo-accusation

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Cave diver considers suing over Musk's baseless 'pedo' accusation

Personally I don't think it's worth suing over it. I'd rather want to see the cave diver try to leverage Musk into perhaps making a substantial donation to NGOs who are actively fighting against child porn and child prostitution, as an apology.

[mormont]

I'm not sure that this thread is the place for a discussion of Tesla's investment prospects.

Let's just acknowledge that Elon Musk has shown us all just who he is, and move on.

[LongRider]

In non-Musk related news...…………..Jupiter has tons of moons!!

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Astronomers who were searching for a planet beyond Pluto discovered 12 previously undetected moons orbiting around Jupiter.

Astronomers spotted the moons in spring 2017 while they were searching for Planet X, a possible planet located beyond Pluto and at least as large as Mars. The scientists embarked on a yearlong process that involved several observations to confirm the moons’ existence, according to a Carnegie Institution for Science press release.

After the team of scientists initially saw the moons via a telescope at Chile’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, at least four other telescopes were used to verify the moons. The newly discovered moons’ relatively small size — between 0.6 to 1.8 miles across — is probably why scientists did not know about them before.

Scientists classified the findings as 11 “normal” outer moons, and another that they are calling an “oddball” for its strange orbit.

Pretty darn cool.

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/12-new-jupiter-moons_us_5b4e28fde4b0de86f48766bc

[Week]

On 7/17/2018 at 5:47 PM, LongRider said:

In non-Musk related news...…………..Jupiter has tons of moons!!

Pretty darn cool.

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/12-new-jupiter-moons_us_5b4e28fde4b0de86f48766bc

Not appropriate for this thread - please create a separate Interstellar News thread. 

Agree, pretty cool.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Week said:

Not appropriate for this thread - please create a separate Interstellar News thread. 

Agree, pretty cool.

Seriously, respect the rules of the thread! 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

After 20 painful years, Ethiopia and Eritrea have finally decided to create a meaningful peace.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

This week's international roundup:

https://the1a.org/shows/2018-07-20/friday-news-roundup-international

[LongRider]

On ‎7‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 1:20 PM, Week said:

Not appropriate for this thread - please create a separate Interstellar News thread. 

Agree, pretty cool.

 

On ‎7‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 2:43 PM, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

Seriously, respect the rules of the thread! 

ahem

 

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These new moons were first observed in the spring of 2017. Gareth Williams from the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, said, “The identification of them took several confirmations from different laboratories.”

[Altherion]

Here is a story about an American who, having already accomplished notable things in the US, is moving to Europe in order to facilitate cooperation between certain American and European groups and help the latter:

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The Movement’s headquarters are expected to be located in Brussels, Belgium, where they will start hiring staff in coming months. It is expected that there will be fewer than 10 full-time staff ahead of the 2019 elections, with a polling expert, a communications person, an office manager and a researcher among the positions. The plan is to ramp that up to more like 25 people post-2019 if the project has been a success.

...

The operation is also supposed to serve as a link between Europe’s right-wing movements and the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus in the U.S.

...

Up until now insurgent populist groups across Europe have often suffered from similar problems: lack of expertise and finances. Le Pen’s party was kept afloat by Russian loans back in 2014, when French banks refused to extend lines of credit for the Front National. Le Pen was back in Moscow shaking Putin’s hand before last year’s French elections, which the NSA  subsequently revealed had been hacked by the Russians.

The Movement plans to research and write detailed policy proposals that can be used by like-minded parties; commission pan-European or targeted polling; and share expertise in election war room methodology such as message discipline, data-led voter targeting and field operations. Depending on electoral law in individual countries, the foundation may be able to take part in some campaigns directly while bolstering other populist groups indirectly.

Isn't it nice to know that despite the current tendencies towards isolationism, there are still Americans of all parties willing to work with Europeans?

[LongRider]

14 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Here is a story about an American who, having already accomplished notable things in the US, is moving to Europe in order to facilitate cooperation between certain American and European groups and help the latter:

Isn't it nice to know that despite the current tendencies towards isolationism, there are still Americans of all parties willing to work with Europeans?

Vomit, celebrating sleazy white supremacist nut case, doesn't this belong in the U S Politics thread?

[Altherion]

25 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Vomit, celebrating sleazy white supremacist nut case, doesn't this belong in the U S Politics thread?

Such hostility towards increased cooperation between political parties of different nations. And no, I think it belongs here: there is one American involved and another briefly discussed, but the article is mainly about various political parties in Europe and thus is truly international.

[The Anti-Targ]

In other Twitter sin related news, boycotts on Trevor Noah being called for in Australia because of his racist jokes against Aborigine women. The calls are being made by some Aboriginal activists.

I have to admit, in my less woke days I used to laugh at racial humour directed at a race different to the comedian's (and mine), and maybe there are still some occasions where such a joke might still be OK, but they would be pretty rare. But I don't find that kind of humour funny any more. I feel pretty much the same way about jokes relating to any kind of otherness. Comedy these days kind of has a problem of mostly being about taking the piss (i't probably always moistly been about taking the piss). So when you take the piss with a group to which you don't directly identify its treading on thin ice. And when you take the piss with a group that has suffered a lot of oppression and marginalisation it probably crosses a line, even if you come from an oppressed and marginalised (but different) group.

I think Trevor Noah's response to the criticism was pretty good and more or less the only reasonable thing he could do at this point: yeah I said these things, and I apologise and am embarrassed that I made a joke of Aboriginal women. But it's still disappointing that he went there in the first place.

I don't know how far I am going to go in choosing my entertainment based on people's public personae, but as soon as an artist is identified as holding views that are in conflict to my own I tend to go very cold on them and tend to choose not to give my money to them. I'm consistently inconsistent with this at the moment. Sometimes my fandom of the material overwhelms my moral and ethical sensibilities and I give in, but I do want to be more conscious and deliberate about where my entertainment money goes. The Aboriginal women humour hasn't turned me off Trevor Noah, but I have lost a wee bit of respect for him (or at least his past self, people should always be given the opportunity to redeem themselves).

[mormont]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

moistly been about taking the piss

I see what you did there.

Wait, now I see what *I* did there. 

Humourception!

[Errant Bard]

On 7/22/2018 at 3:42 AM, Altherion said:

Here is a story about an American who, having already accomplished notable things in the US, is moving to Europe in order to facilitate cooperation between certain American and European groups and help the latter:

Isn't it nice to know that despite the current tendencies towards isolationism, there are still Americans of all parties willing to work with Europeans?

Ah, yes, European right wingers of course needed the guidance of civilized people to grow out of their natural ineptness. Maybe then will they be able to seize power and set into motion some grand plan, that their American big brother will of course suggest to be dubbed the final solution, it has a nice ring.

[Corvinus85]

Current British divorce laws don't allow this woman to divorce her husband.

This coming from the country where divorce was basically made popular thanks to Henry VIII. 

[mormont]

You'll have noticed a key difference between a male monarch and this woman, though. Anne Boleyn wasn't getting no divorces, you know?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Current British divorce laws don't allow this woman to divorce her husband.

This coming from the country where divorce was basically made popular thanks to Henry VIII. 

That's nutty. 

[Which Tyler]

10 hours ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

That's nutty. 

Nutty, and untrue as presented; though it is still an example of the law being an arse.

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Current British divorce laws don't allow this woman to divorce her husband.

This coming from the country where divorce was basically made popular thanks to Henry VIII. 

But it also doesn't allow a man to divorce his wife under the same circumstances. So it's a bit disingenuous for there to be any implication of it as a gender issue.

Fundamentally I'm not opposed to a waiting period in cases of "no fault" divorce. But 5 years seems excessive. I would imagine if there's no reconciliation within the space of a year (or maybe 2) that would be enough for the divorce to be completed.