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Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In the continuation of Elon Musk PoE2 journey, he went on a xitter feud with Asmongold, one of the streamers who posted expose videos about it. I think that answers the question on whether Musk actually cared about being the best at the game, or simply got a boosted account for expediency.

https://open.substack.com/pub/samharris/p/the-trouble-with-elon?r=4gi50d

Somewhat related.

Elon Musk apparently owes 1M USD to some charity based on a very silly bet, from Elon's side, made with Sam Harris about the covid pandemic. A braindead move from Musk's side and he started hating Harris instead of admitting he was wrong.

He can't stand to be made to look stupid.

I can definitely believe that Elon would make the bet and then renege.

That said, Harris is himself an icky creature at times. Particularly, he advocated tactical lying to help prevent Trump getting elected. Understandable? Maybe, except that Harris is also the author of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_(Harris_book)

Lying is a 2011 long-form essay book by American author and neuroscience expert Sam Harris. Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie.

Harris has a Trump sized blind spot that makes him beclown himself regularly. Trump is living rent free in his head, ruining the quality of his content. And, more importantly, why should we listen to someone who admits to tactically lying to us?

Particularly, he advocated tactical lying to help prevent Trump getting elected.

Is that really true? From the linked post:

Not only have I never advocated lying to defeat Trump (despite what that misleading clip from the Triggernometry podcast might suggest to naive viewers), I’ve taken great pains to defend Trump from the most damaging lie ever told about him. Elon knows this, because we communicated about the offending clip when it first appeared on Twitter/X.

What is the evidence here?

I just love going for these source hunts that you assign me!

https://x.com/Brian_Kennedy/status/1878561046362791991

Sam Harris said that burying the Hunter Biden laptop was a left-wing conspiracy to deny Trump the presidency and that it was absolutely warranted.

Maybe we can charitably say that Harris wasn't advocating lying, only hiding information. But the Biden laptop story was also (falsely) called "right wing propaganda" by the media. Harris gets destroyed in this interview and he doesn't have really any defense.

Yeah, not a good look. Some claim that the context makes a difference but none of them explain how and I don't want to go further into the sam Harris cinematic universe so I'm going to call this one confirmed.