Elon Musk's big lie about Starship launch costs

If there's one thing the great deceiver Elon Musk knows about, it's highly creative, fantasy accounting. And, it's a great way to sell products. So, while spending 2 billion dollars a year to launch two Starships a year, he is claiming actual "launch costs" are mere millions. That's a discrepancy of three orders of magnitude! So, where on earth is he getting his figures from? Well, all he's counting is the fuel costs, and the immediate ground crew costs on the day of the launch. No preparation, refurbishment, development or maintenance costs, at all. So, basically, nothing! So, why do so many people believe him? Well, I guess people have to believe in something, don't they? That's why they say his falcon rockets are reusable, when they're not. They're actually just partially salvageable, not fully reusable, like your car, for example. They have to be massively restructured and refurbished, every time they're supposedly "reused". Actually, it costs a full 2/3 as much to "reuse" the falcon rockets as to build them from scratch. That's a good savings, of course, but, hardly spectacular. However, with so much money riding on Elon Musk's total technological incompetence, and systematic deception, there are an awful lot of people, investors in Tesla, for example, who don't want to believe that his inventions actually do not work, at all. Or, cost a thousand times more than he says they do! Is Elon Musk "too big to fail"? Well, probably not. And, it may be in the U.S.' best interests to recognize that fact, sooner rather than later. Rather than have the entire nation collapse, along with Elon Musk, and his drug-induced fantasies of "technological genius".

Canadian Government authorizes lifetime imprisonment for those "advocating genocide".

https://news.yahoo.com/canadian-law-endorsed-trudeau-government-015837943.html Isn't it time for the U.S. to have another go at invading Canada? I mean, just for the benefit of Canadians. This is a country that euthanizes the mentally ill, and wants to imprison people for life who "advocate hatred". Ummmm...say what? I mean, does Justin Trudeau want to imprison himself for life? Or, does he think he should be euthanized? The Canadian government's policies are so self-contradictory, irrational, and self-destructive, that, it really sounds like they're asking for help from the U.S. Like, "we're totally insane, stop us before we kill again!" So, maybe the U.S. government, and the U.S. military should do just that?

Ukraine is manufacturing and controlling its drone boats from civilian apartment buildings in Odessa

You've probably noticed that Russia is launching a great many missiles at Odessa lately, including one that came within half a kilometer of President Zelensky's motorcade in which the President of Greece was also travelling. It destroyed a civilian apartment building, and killed five people. Zelensky's comment was "they don't care who they kill." Well, maybe, and maybe not. Russians online are claiming that, with the intelligence assistance of Russian sympathizers in Ukraine, Russian missiles are specifically targeting drone boat factories and drone boat controllers located in civilian apartment buildings in Odessa. In other words, the Ukrainians are using Ukrainian civilians, in very large numbers, as human shields for their drone boat activities against the Russian navy. If you think about it, where else could these drone boat factories, and drone boat controllers, really be? If they were out in the open, the Russians would have annihilated them long ago. Where else could they be but Odessa, hidden amongst the civilian population, since the rest of the Black Sea Coast, and all other ports where the drone boats could be readily and systematically released from in the large numbers required, are occupied by Russia? So, effectively, once again, the Ukrainians are reduced to Hamas-like terrorist activities against the Russians, all heavily subsidized by Europe and America. Is this really the kind of war we should be supporting? Should we be sacrificing the needs of our own citizens for pure terrorist destruction of this type? Why, exactly?

Translation of Vilya song from Franz Lehar's "The Merry Widow" Operetta

Come, all ye gathered here, Let's sing together loud and clear, Of a good fairy, you've all heard, Sure her name's Vilya, that's the word! Vilya's a pretty maid of the wood, A hunter espied her by the cliff where she stood, The poor boy was stricken, He shouted out loud, With a terrible shudder He sighed to the clouds -- "Vilya, O Vilya, my wood nymph divine! Embrace me forever Your true love is mine. Vilya, O Vilya my life's in your hands, I'm dying for love's gentle balm." The Wood nymph lent him Her soft, sweet hand, And showed him to her stony home. The poor boy nearly lost his mind! So lovingly kissed No child of Earth Evermore.

Why don't female teachers accused of "inappropriate relationships" with male students simply cry "rape"?

I mean, I've never heard of a single case of a female teacher accused of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a male student simply saying that they were assaulted, and that it wasn't consensual. Why not, exactly? Surely, it would be perfectly possible, even rather likely, for a sixteen year old boy to physically force a 24 year old lady teacher. And, who could possibly prove that this isn't exactly what actually happened? So, why aren't these lady teachers simply crying "rape" to defend themselves in cases of accusations from male students?

What if the Athenian Sicilian Campaign , 415 -- 413 B.C. , had been successful, during the Peloponnesian War?

There were two great and devastating disasters that are particularly credited for Athens' loss to Sparta during the great Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C. The first was the Great Plague of Athens, striking just one year into the war, that wiped out 25% of the population of Athens. The second was Athens' devastating defeat during the Sicilian Campaign, some fifteen years later. The purpose of this extremely ambitious campaign was, apparently, to establish an overwhelming and invincible Athenian overseas empire stretching over perhaps a thousand miles of land and sea, and the control of the extremely rich land of Sicily, and the great city of Syracuse. In principle, control of all of this territory might have made Athens virtually invincible, and might even have led, eventually, to Athenian control over the city of Carthage, and the Carthaginian Empire. Given this level of power, would Rome have ever even have arisen to become a great power? Would we have the prospect of a Greater Athens stretching over most of Eurasia, larger even than Alexander's Empire? How durable could such an Empire have been, given the nature of Athenian democracy? The campaign itself was crushed, eventually, with massive loss of men, ships and military power, and it was this defeat that clearly led to the ultimate defeat of Athens some ten years later. Nevertheless, it's by no means clear that the Athenians couldn't have won. They won many battles, and took much territory. So, let's suppose they did succeed in taking full control of Sicily. What happens, historically?

What if Pol Pot had become leader of Communist China?

I don't think this is quite as impossible/implausible as many people might think. Pol Pot was, I believe, attempting to reunite Indochina with China again. And, if Mao Zedong had lived a few years longer, or if Maoist policies had still been in place and Deng Xiaoping hadn't moved China to a more centrist approach quite quickly, he might well have achieved his goals. Almost certainly, Mao Zedong would not have given up his invasion of Vietnam after just a month the way Deng did, in 1979. That really wasn't Mao's style, at all, when he did things. Mao did not do things by halves! Mao would have pursued his invasion of Vietnam to the end, even if it cost millions of Chinese casualties, and, he would have totally conquered Vietnam. And, the USSR would not have started a war over it, if only because the U.S. had a limited alliance with China at the time, to counterbalance the USSR. So, Indochina would have been reunited with China again, and Pol Pot, as the instigator of this achievement, would have almost certainly been the Chinese lieutenant in charge of Indochinese integration into the greater communist Chinese commonwealth. And, no doubt, as the "hero" responsible for this great achievement, within five or ten years, Pol Pot might well have found himself as leader of China as a whole. So, we have an enormous Maoist communist China running from the Siberian wastes to Indonesia, all under the control of our very good friend, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, by 1985 or so. What happens next? First of all, the USSR is definitely NOT going to appoint a bureaucratic windbag like Mikhail Gorbachev to run their nation under these circumstances. They'd be much, much too scared of China! More likely, the USSR goes neo-Stalinist. And there are indeed "reforms" in the USSR, but not in terms of liberalization. Instead, the USSR becomes more centralized and controlled. And, needless to say, communism does NOT fall in the Soviet Union. Thoughts?