Hypocrisy of the The Slovenian Sphynx

Melania Trump's criticism of Jimmy Kimmel has been met with calls of hypocrisy – and social media users have the receipts that show it.  In a post on social media, the first lady tried to criticized Kimmel’s “hateful and violent rhetoric”, labeling him a “coward” and called for the TV network to “take a stand.”

Last week, late-night TV host made a joke about the first lady, suggesting she had “a glow like an expectant widow”.  On his Monday night show, Kimmel explained the joke was in relation to Melania and Donald Trump’s age difference (56 and 79, respectively), and was “not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination.”  As if anybody with half a brain needed an explanation of the obvious!

It didn’t take long for people to point out that the rhetoric coming from none other than her own husband is pretty violent itself. 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, back at the office . . .

Madonna - I Feel So Free

As If You Needed Another Reason to Avoid Tesla

When Tom LoSavio bought hisTesla Model S in 2017, he thought he was buying a car that would one day drive itself.  LoSavio paid more than $100,000 for the luxury sedan, including $8,000 for lifetime access to its most advanced driver-assistance features. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said that the hardware in the company’s cars would eventually allow all of its cars to drive themselves.  “My wife and I talked about what a great thing it would be if we could just get in a car and have it drive us places,” LoSavio told The Wall Street Journal.

In the nine years since, LoSavio said it has become clear that Tesla took him for a ride. He is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that alleges that Tesla charged customers thousands of dollars in pricey upgrades for a product that didn’t, and still doesn’t, exist.  LoSavio alleges that Musk and Tesla have made repeated claims that were false about the self-driving capabilities of these vehicles and misled consumers who paid extra because they believed the company’s marketing. His lawsuit is one of several ongoing efforts by Tesla owners looking to hold the company accountable for overpromising and under-delivering on its Full Self-Driving (FSD) product.

Tesla is facing mounting legal issues in Netherland and Australia, over charges that the company misled customers about the cars’ capabilities. The matter calls into question Musk’s decade-long marketing pitch that Tesla’s autonomous vehicles were just around the corner. That promise kept Tesla’s stock near all-time highs—and with a market cap that exceeds most other automakers combined—even as its share of the electric-vehicle market has eroded.

The lawsuits and European campaign represent just thousands of Tesla customers. Wall Street analysts, however, estimate that there are millions of Teslas on the road with the outdated hardware no longer capable of running the most sophisticated version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software.  LoSavio won class-action status for his lawsuit in September. The class represents approximately 3,000 people in California, a figure that excludes the many Tesla owners who have signed arbitration agreements with the company that prevent them from suing. 

Tesla started including early versions of its self-driving tech in its vehicles in 2014. By 2015, Musk was publicly claiming that Tesla vehicles could drive themselves entirely within two years. Then in 2016, Tesla announced that all new cars built from then on had the hardware required for full self-driving. Musk told the press that a Tesla would drive itself from Los Angeles to New York City by the end of 2017.

But it was all bullshit.  Eventually Tesla’s plans required a more sophisticated computer and cameras than were installed in LoSavio’s car. In 2020 and 2021, it started offering customers upgrades to the third edition of its computer and camera set. Some customers like LoSavio, who paid upfront for lifetime access, got complimentary upgrades from Tesla. Others who wanted to use the FSD/self-driving technology but paid monthly could pay $1,000 for the upgrade.

Then in 2023, Tesla upgraded its hardware for the fourth time and started selling new cars with its latest chip. That meant that customers like LoSavio, who got updated to the third-edition computer a few years prior, once again had outdated equipment. The company hasn’t made any moves since January 2025, when Musk told investors that the company would have to do yet another computer upgrade for customers who bought the lifetime FSD (Full Self-Driving) package.

 

Earth Day Revisited

Keystone Kash Paranoid About Being Fired

On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.”  News of his emotional outburst ricocheted through the bureau, prompting chatter among officials and, in some corners of the building, expressions of relief. The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI.  It turned out that the answer was Patel-- he had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved. “It was all ultimately bullshit,” according to one FBI official who spoke with the Atlantic.

But Patel, according to multiple current officials, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. And he has good reasons to think so—

Meanwhile, Back at the Office . . .