#owner-operator budget

[artisticdivasworld]

Financial Survival Tips to Help New Owner-Operators

We are starting a new series here on the blog. We want to talk to and help new owner-operators understand what exactly is involved with running a trucking business. We have identified 10 areas that cause issues for new owners, so we will address each one individually here. Since FRC was founded to help independent truckers succeed in an unfriendly economy, we hope that by talking about each of…

[aesethewitch]

Loopholes

Thinking about general versus specific spells and loopholes in magic today…

I find that general spells are often less effective than spells that are really specific. Or, at least, a general spell’s effects are more difficult to measure than a spell with specific instructions and expectations.

Leaving spells general also leaves room for loopholes. Now, depending on the paradigm you’re operating from, loopholes may not be an issue. But they can cause unexpected and sometimes unwanted side effects, or cause the primary desired outcome to manifest in a way that isn’t ideal.

For another example, consider if you cast a spell for someone to take a romantic interest in you with no specifications on the type of person you’re looking for. That coworker you don’t particularly like but who already thinks you’re neat is likelier to form romantic feelings for you than, say, the unattainable hot guy whose name you don’t know and with whom your only conversation is “Would you like that small, medium, or large?”

This, in my paradigm, is because those connections either already exist or they’re stronger. You know that coworker better, they know you better, and you have more ties than the hot barista you see once every three weeks.

If you want the barista’s attention and not the coworker’s, it’s important to specify that — to close the loophole.

I always think about connections working against me, too, when I’m doing magic. If a person who hates me is the primary interviewer at a company I’m interested in, I have to account for their rancid opinion if I want to get that job. I have to do extra work to either get around, rewrite, or disconnect the existing connection in order to increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome.

My partner and I are currently looking at buying a house (yay!). Our area is pretty expensive, and very affordable homes tend to be… well, to put it kindly… shitholes.

Those conditions (those connections) are strongly ingrained into the environment. I can’t single-handedly change the economy, though I wish I could. And I can’t force a house to spontaneously appear between two existing houses, even though that neighborhood is absolutely perfect and I desperately want to live there. There isn’t room, and that isn’t physically possible.

Well, alright, I suppose I could do a spell to convince both owners to chop up their parcels into smaller pieces for sale, do another spell to make the parcels affordable, and then another spell for someone to build an affordable house on the land. But that’d be a teeny little house and yard! It might work better in a location with bigger parcels and more space between houses, but this is a cute little rural-type suburb, not the country roads further out of town. As it is in this location we’re looking at, to make it viable for our wants and needs would be physically impossible; we’d be compromising too much one way or another, and it wouldn’t be worthwhile!

But I can do spells for houses with specific qualities to come onto the market, and I can include my particular price range! I can do magic to encourage the bank to give us a better deal on our pre-approval! I can do a spell to urge sellers to drop their prices or accept an offer that’s under their asking price but within our budget!

It’s a matter of identifying what I want and what might stand in the way. It’s also about considering the things I’m leaving unsaid, or that could be taken in multiple ways. Like, if I say I want a basement, and we find a house that’s perfect, fitting all our desired qualities!

…except that basement floods several times a year, and that’s why it’s unfinished, so it’s wasted space that requires expensive yearly upkeep or a massive, pricey overhaul to prevent for the future. That would be a hell of a loophole to discover. Closing as many loopholes as possible can help a spell produce a result that’s exactly (or close to exactly) what I expect it to be with as few unpleasant side effects as possible.

Another method I’ve seen, which I think comes from @windvexer, is the “if/then” method of creating conditions within a spell. I find it’s really useful for closing loopholes, since it keeps a spell from deviating from your instructions or fizzling out when it can’t fulfill its purpose as written.

The method looks like this in practice:

“This spell is a money spell. Its purpose is to bring $500 in tarot commissions to me by the end of April.

“If April is not possible, then by the end of June.

“If $500 is not possible, then no less than $300.

“If not by tarot commissions, then this money will come to me via tips and subscriptions.

“If not by tips and subscriptions, then this money will come to me via other types of contract work.

“If any final condition (end of June, no less than $300, contract work) is not possible, I will receive a sign in the form of three cardinals sitting on the hood of my car, and the spell will end.”

Thus, the loopholes I’m worried about are closed, and I have a condition set to end the spell and send me a sign if it isn’t possible. It’s a simple but very effective method that I’ve found really useful for getting super specific in my spellwork!

Anyways, point is, loopholes matter because connections matter and therefore the space between those connections matter. If one of my spells fails or produces an unexpected result, loopholes are the first things I look for. What happened, and could I have prevented it? How so? Then note it down, and do the next spell.

[reality-detective]

POSSIBLE TIMING:

· In 2016 it was confirmed that the Military would be in charge of a transition from the privately owned by private bankers US Inc. to the Republic for the United States of America through passage of the Military Justice Act of 2016, which states: 1. Military law surpasses civilian. 2. President and Commander-in-Chief are separate. 3. Military rules above federal government. The military leads this transition.

· In 2020 President Trump had 650 plane loads of US Taxpayer’s owned gold removed from the Vatican. The 1871 Corporation Act (of the privately owned by foreign bankers US Inc.) was dissolved in 2020. The gold was not placed in the privately owned by foreign bankers US Inc. Treasury at Fort Knox, but President Trump had it taken to it’s rightful owners – the new Republic for the United States of America Treasury located on an Indian Reservation near Reno Nevada.

· In 2020 when Trump took over that gold and the Federal Reserve, it ended the power of Israel, Ukraine, and the Khazarian Mafia. Putin was also helping to end that power. Ukraine was the Khazarian Mafia’s base for child trafficking. Putin’s moves crushed their operations and saved hundreds of children.

· In 2020 Trump ended the Illuminati power by taking over the Fed.

· 31 Oct. 2023 marks the expiration of the State of Israel. Dual-citizen politicians lose power. The Rothschild Empire begins to collapse.

· “On Sun. 16 Feb. the Iraqi budget was ratified and was expected to be published in the Gazette on Mon. 17 Feb, along with Kurdistan resuming oil exports through Somo and Kash Patel becoming the 17th confirmation on a drop dead Q Drop Feb. 17 that has to be a blunt ‘Game Over’ Q Drop (3872).”

· On 31 Oct. 2024 the Charter for the State of Israel, the Cabal’s last holdout, expired and now faces collapse. Dual-citizen politicians of the US and Israel has lost their power. The foreign banker Rothschild control over the US Taxpayer Dollar has been shattered.

· Mon. 17 Feb. 2025: The Trial for the Crimes Against Humanity has begun. The experimental spike protein jab rollout is in violation of all 10 Sections of the Nuremberg Code.

· The Global Military Alliance has confirmed that Mass Arrests were in progress and Trump has given the Green Light for the Emergency Broadcast System to be activated.

· On Thurs. 30 Jan. 2025 the privately owned Fed and IRS officially dropped dead – when the US Treasury withdrew from the Cabal’s Bankrupt Central Banks across the World. President Trump has said he will replace the IRS with the ERS (External Revenue Service) where taxation on goods will replace taxation on The People and their income.

· Since Friday 3 Feb. 2025 all Basel 4 Compliant banks have gone public with the new Gold / Commodity-backed currency International Rates as required by the GESARA Law. This is the Re-evaluation of all the global currencies (meaning the global currency reset).

· Tues. 11 Feb. 2025 Official Notification: Leaders in the Global Currency Reset received signal payments authorized by the Quantum Network

· This week the Quantum Financial System was said to be fully operational for completion of that Global Currency Reset.

· The use of the FIAT US Dollar will be used for up to 90 days Feb. / March / April parallel with the new United States Note (USN), they may cut it off by April 30th or soon thereafter. 🤔

- Julian Assange

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk has pledged that the work of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, would be “maximally transparent.” DOGE’s website is proof of that, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, and now White House adviser, has repeatedly said. There, the group maintains a list of slashed grants and budgets, a running tally of its work.

But in recent weeks, The New York Times reported that DOGE has not only posted major mistakes to the website—crediting DOGE, for example, with saving $8 billion when the contract canceled was for $8 million and had already paid out $2.5 million—but also worked to obfuscate those mistakes after the fact, deleting identifying details about DOGE’s cuts from the website, and later even from its code, that made them easy for the public to verify and track.

For road-safety researchers who have been following Musk for years, the modus operandi feels familiar. DOGE “put out some numbers, they didn’t smell good, they switched things around,” alleges Noah Goodall, an independent transportation researcher. “That screamed Tesla. You get the feeling they’re not really interested in the truth.”

For nearly a decade, Goodall and others have been tracking Tesla’s public releases on its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features, advanced driver-assistance systems designed to make driving less stressful and more safe. Over the years, researchers claim, Tesla has released safety statistics without proper context; promoted numbers that are impossible for outside experts to verify; touted favorable safety statistics that were later proved misleading; and even changed already-released safety statistics retroactively. The numbers have been so inconsistent that Tesla Full Self-Driving fans have taken to crowdsourcing performance data themselves.

Instead of public data releases, “what we have is these little snippets that, when researchers look into them in context, seem really suspicious,” alleges Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor and engineer who studies autonomous vehicles at the University of South Carolina.

Government-Aided Whoopsie

Tesla’s first and most public number mix-up came in 2018, when it released its first Autopilot safety figures after the first known death of a driver using Autopilot. Immediately, researchers noted that while the numbers seemed to show that drivers using Autopilot were much less likely to crash than other Americans on the road, the figures lacked critical context.

At the time, Autopilot combined adaptive cruise control, which maintains a set distance between the Tesla and the vehicle in front of it, and steering assistance, which keeps the car centered between lane markings. But the comparison didn’t control for type of car (luxury vehicles, the only kind Tesla made at the time, are less likely to crash than others), the person driving the car (Tesla owners were more likely to be affluent and older, and thus less likely to crash), or the types of roads where Teslas were driving (Autopilot operated only on divided highways, but crashes are more likely to occur on rural roads, and especially connector and local ones).

The confusion didn’t stop there. In response to the fatal Autopilot crash, Tesla did hand over some safety numbers to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the nation’s road safety regulator. Using those figures, the NHTSA published a report indicating that Autopilot led to a 40 percent reduction in crashes. Tesla promoted the favorable statistic, even citing it when, in 2018, another person died while using Autopilot.

But by spring of 2018, the NHTSA had copped to the number being off. The agency did not wholly evaluate the effectiveness of the technology in comparison to Teslas not using the feature—using, for example, air bag deployment as an inexact proxy for crash rates. (The airbags did not deploy in the 2018 Autopilot death.)

Because Tesla does not release Autopilot or Full Self-Driving safety data to independent, third-party researchers, it’s difficult to tell exactly how safe the features are. (Independent crash tests by the NHTSA and other auto regulators have found that Tesla cars are very safe, but these don’t evaluate driver assistance tech.) Researchers contrast this approach with the self-driving vehicle developer Waymo, which often publishes peer-reviewed papers on its technology’s performance.

Still, the unknown safety numbers did not prevent Musk from criticizing anyone who questioned Autopilot’s safety record. “It's really incredibly irresponsible of any journalists with integrity to write an article that would lead people to believe that autonomy is less safe,” he said in 2018, around the time the NHTSA figure publicly fell apart. “Because people might actually turn it off, and then die.”

Number Questions

More recently, Tesla has continued to shift its Autopilot safety figures, leading to further questions about its methods. Without explanation, the automaker stopped putting out quarterly Autopilot safety reports in the fall of 2022. Then, in January 2023, it revised all of its safety numbers.

Tesla said it had belatedly discovered that it had erroneously included in its crash numbers events where no airbags nor active restraints were deployed and that it had found that some events were counted more than once. Now, instead of dividing its crash rates into three categories, "Autopilot engaged,” “without Autopilot but with our active safety features,” and “without Autopilot and without our active safety features,” it would report just two: with and without Autopilot. It applied those new categories, retroactively, to its old safety numbers and said it would use them going forward.

That discrepancy allowed Goodall, the researcher, to peer more closely into the specifics of Tesla’s crash reporting. He noticed something in the data. He expected the “without Autopilot” number to just be an average of the two old “without Auptilot” categories. It wasn’t. Instead, the new figure looked much more like the old “without Autopilot and without our active safety features” number. That’s weird, he thought. It’s not easy—or, according to studies that also include other car makes, common—for drivers to turn off all their active safety features, which include lane departure and forward collision warnings and automatic emergency braking.

Goodall calculated that even if Tesla drivers were going through the burdensome and complicated steps of turning off their EV’s safety features, they’d need to drive way more miles than other Tesla drivers to create a sensible baseline. The upshot: Goodall wonders if Tesla is allegedly making its non-Autopilot crash rate look higher than it is—and so the Autopilot crash rate allegedly looks much better by comparison.

The discrepancy is still puzzling to the researcher, who published a peer-reviewed note on the topic last summer. Tesla “put out this data that looks questionable on first glance—and then you look at it, and it is questionable,” he claims. “Instead of taking it down and acknowledging it, they change the numbers to something that is even weirder and flawed in a more complicated way. I feel like I’m doing their homework at this point.” The researcher calls for more transparency. So far, Tesla has not put out more specific safety figures.

Tesla, which disbanded its public relations team in 2021, did not reply to WIRED’s questions about the study or its other public safety data.

Direct Reports

Tesla is not a total outlier in the auto industry when it comes to clamming up about the performance of its advanced technology. Automakers are not required to make public many of their safety numbers. But where tech developers are required to submit public accounting on their crashes, Tesla is still less transparent than most. One prominent national data submission requirement, first instituted by the NHTSA in 2021, requires makers of both advanced driver assistance and automated driving tech to submit public data about its crashes. Tesla redacts nearly every detail about its Autopilot-related crashes in its public submissions.

“The specifics of all 2,819 crash reports have been redacted from publicly available data at Tesla's request,” says Philip Koopman, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University whose research includes self-driving-car safety. “No other company is so blatantly opaque about their crash data.”

The federal government likely has access to details on these crashes, but the public doesn’t. But even that is at risk. Late last year, Reuters reported that the crash-reporting requirement appeared to be a focus of the Trump transition team.

In many ways, Tesla—and perhaps DOGE—is distinctive. “Tesla also uniquely engages with the public and is such a cause célèbre that they don’t have to do their own marketing. I think that also entails some special responsibility. Lots of claims are made on behalf of Tesla,” says Walker Smith, the law professor. “I think it engages selectively and opportunistically and does not correct sufficiently.”

Proponents of DOGE, like those of Tesla, engage enthusiastically on Musk’s platform, X, applauded by Musk himself. The two entities have at least one other thing in common: ProPublica recently reported that there is a new employee at the US Department of Transportation—a former Tesla senior counsel.

[suzukiblu]

A bit more of "Match is technically also a Luthor".

Match frowns. Director Beta wasn’t involved in making Superboy, so what is Luthor talking about, “keep” making him children? 

Match and Superboy aren’t his children, obviously, because they’re metaweapons and clones, and no matter whose DNA was or wasn’t used to build them, they’re not anyone’s children or even anyone’s idea of people. But that’s the language Luthor is using, so Match is using it in his head and for clarity of communication. 

For the moment, at least. 

“So this is revenge?” he asks slowly, eyeing the man warily. 

“No,” Luthor says. “I’m perfectly grateful to her for her efforts. But I don’t want her in your lives, obviously.” 

“. . . ‘obviously’,” Match echoes, having no idea what should be “obvious” there. Luthor makes a dismissive little gesture, not looking up from his tablet. 

“You don’t need any other parents,” he says. “You have me. And all joking aside, I don’t like to share, in fact.” 

Match wonders why Luthor would expect him to want to share with Superboy, then, but supposes Luthor just doesn’t care about his opinion.

Which . . . well, why would he? 

He almost asks anyway, but he’s not stupid enough to question his new owner. Whatever the man’s calling himself, that’s obviously what he means. Match is being stolen–has been stolen–and he belongs to him now. 

He could’ve at least fought it, he supposes, but no one told him to. 

And no one has ever wanted him to do anything he hasn’t been told to. The only person Match has ever said “no” to in his life is still Superboy, because Superboy is still the only person he ever could have.

That’s . . . something he’s thought about, once or twice. 

“Now then,” Luthor says, glancing towards his chauffeur and bodyguard in the front seat. “I’m not used to children your age, so what do you need for your living space?” 

“. . . six hours of daily training room access and twelve thousand calories a day, for ideal performance,” Match replies, too mystified to know what else to say. Luthor will want to know how to keep him in optimal condition as a weapon, he supposes. Luthor just wrinkles his nose, though, looking appalled. 

“Only twelve?" he says. “You should be pushing twenty thousand, at this developmental stage.” 

Match has literally never once heard “you’re not eating enough”, but that seems to be, in fact, what Luthor is saying. 

“That would be over budget for the project,” he says, and Luthor immediately looks dubious. 

“I’m worth more money than most countries, Lysander,” he says, and Match feels–strange, being called that designation. Something about the way Luthor says it, maybe. “And budgets are for the board room.” 

“The project doesn’t have a budget?” Match says skeptically. 

“We’re going to start feeding you sixteen thousand and go up from there,” Luthor says. “I know you don’t have dietary restrictions, obviously, but I suppose dietary preferences would be too much to expect?” 

“‘Preferences’?” Match repeats blankly. What does that even mean, dietary “preferences”? 

“We’ll just start with the basics, I suppose,” Luthor sighs, looking exasperated. Match frowns. He doesn’t know what “the basics” are any more than he knows what dietary preferences are. Restrictions he understands, obviously, but . . . “preferences”? 

The drive is long and quiet. Match would be bored, if he were capable of boredom. It’s already the longest length of time he’s ever spent outside of an Agenda facility, but that’s not relevant to anyone but him, so it’s not an observation he voices. 

He doesn’t generally voice his observations at all. 

Why would he? 

It’s strange, though, that something so new and unexpected could be this boring. 

Not that Match can actually feel anything like that, again. 

Match doesn’t know where they’re going until the road signs tell him, and even then he’s mystified, because the road signs say Metropolis, and obviously that’s Luthor’s base of operations, but there’s also literally no way he’ll be useful in Metropolis. Nothing about his capabilities as a weapon is anything that Superman can’t handle, and Superman isn’t going to let Luthor keep a Kryptonian-based weapon around–even one that’s only half-Kryptonian. Match will end up in government custody the moment Superman finds out he’s here. 

He doesn’t . . . want to be in government custody, but it’s not as if he has a choice where he ends up anyway. And it’s not–he doesn’t want things anyway. It’s irrelevant, if Luthor’s being reckless with him. 

But the government might vivisect or dissect him, where Luthor already has his files and designs and doesn’t actually need to. So that’s . . . that’s . . . 

Relevant, Match thinks, and then pushes the thought back down. 

It’s not relevant. It isn’t up to him, and even if it were, it wouldn’t matter. He’s a weapon. If his owners want to take him apart, that’s their prerogative. 

Their right, really. 

It’s not up to him, and it never has been. 

The towncar stops in front of a shining skyscraper of an apartment building, and Luthor gets out. Match waits in the car, because Luthor doesn’t tell him to follow him. He assumes he’s going to be dropped off at a new lab, because obviously Luthor doesn’t intend to take him into an apartment building. Maybe the lab is outside Metropolis, and Match won’t immediately end up in government custody. That would make more sense, so–

Luthor leans down and looks back through the open door, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Problem?” he asks. 

Match stares blankly at him, not understanding the question. 

“. . . get out of the car, Lysander,” Luthor says. 

Match doesn’t understand that either, but it’s an order, so he follows it. He gets out of the car, and Luthor looks him over with a sigh. 

“We’re going to need to get you in actual clothes,” he says, then heads towards the front door as the chauffeur closes the car door behind him. The bodyguard follows him. Match doesn’t know what–“This way.” 

Match still doesn’t understand anything, but follows the order. He heads after Luthor, staying a step behind him with the bodyguard and wondering if he’s assuming too much, but figuring that until he has an actual assignment, he should operate under the assumption that his purpose here is parallel to hers. 

Assuming things doesn’t tend to work out well for him, but Luthor isn’t giving him enough to go off here, so he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t know much, right now, but Luthor clearly isn’t prioritizing providing him with the necessary intel for . . . whatever he actually wants him for. 

Not like it’s the first time someone hasn’t bothered to do that, though, so Match can work with that.

[brightlotusmoon]

I’m heartened by the actions our courts have taken so far, and I’ll continue working closely to support these efforts.

And while we’re not in the majority, I am also determined to fight back in the Senate with every tool we have. Without Republicans on board, we don’t have the numbers to stop Trump’s moves outright, but we can slow him down. That’s why I have said the Senate should NOT operate under business as usual. And that’s why I’m voting NO on Trump’s nominees. Along with Senator Brian Schatz, I’m holding up every Trump political nominee for the State Department – as well as other nominees – until Trump stops wrecking our government.

For example, this week Senate Democrats held down the floor for 30 hours – the maximum time allowed under Senate rules – to delay the vote on Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget. I went to the Senate floor as part of this effort to make the case against Vought, who is a leading architect of Project 2025. At his confirmation hearing, I asked Vought if he’d follow the law—and he refused to say yes. That should be no surprise; he broke the law the last time he held that position.

Right now, I’m hearing from thousands of Marylanders who have been personally affected by Trump’s actions. Firefighters and small business owners who fear that federal resources will be ripped out from under them. Federal workers who fear being forced out of their jobs. Families terrified of losing their health care. I’m committed to fighting back for Marylanders each and every day. Again, if you are being harmed by Trump’s actions, you can share your story with me by clicking here.

Trump and Musk are engaged in an illegal power grab, trying to accomplish through executive orders and other means what can only be legally achieved through congressional action. They want us to believe they are more powerful than they really are. They want us to think we can’t do anything about it. But it isn’t true. Together, we can and will keep fighting back.

-Chris Van Hollen

[copperbadge]

Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Just a reminder, I do these every once in a while -- except in specific cases, unless folks fill out the Radio Free Monday submissions form, I generally don't put anything not submitted via form into RFM. Partly this is to ensure I even SEE the request (tagging me on tumblr has no guarantees, I'm afraid) but it's also to ensure that I have all the relevant information. The form is linked in the bottom of every RFM post, as well as in the header of my tumblr; if you want me to see something that's the place to put it, or if you want to direct someone to Radio Free Monday, giving them the link is super helpful. Thanks all!

Ways to Give:

webkinzcode is a disabled artist and unable to work at the moment; he's raising funds to cover rent, and currently accepting donations and offering commissions. You can read more, reblog, and find giving and commission information here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for Ola, a grad student and teacher in the faculty of science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, whose life is one of many turned upside-down at the moment; she's raising funds to cover basic needs like food and water for her and her family. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

chibifukurou has a friend who has vertigo and EDS, and is raising funds for a second-hand Alinker (a foot-propelled mobility device); following an illness they are at an increased fall risk, and a recent fall subluxed the shoulder and collarbone on their crutch arm. You can read more and give via paypal here.

a-hackneyed-premise is raising funds for a car that is suitable transport for her disabled son; he is neurodivergent and frequently has mobility issues, and they need to be able to get him reliably to and from transport to his school. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Anon linked to longhorned's fundraiser for Laureae, a small Native farmer who has built up her farm over the last five years and was recently served an eviction notice; she had been promised by the land owner that she would be given a purchase agreement, but the land can now be sold off and both her and her tenants like Longhorned removed. You can read more and reblog here or support the fundraiser here.

liminalweirdo is raising funds for emergency vet fees for their cat Quintin; you can read more and reblog here or support the fundraiser here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for Pillowfort, which needs to meet a $5K goal to keep in operation beyond December of this year; they're currently at just over $3K. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Recurring Needs:

thegeeksqueaks's school district has shorted her on her summer teacher's budget; she can't afford her own bills much less stocking her classroom for back-to-school. She's raising funds to get her students school supplies and personal support -- food and hygiene tools for underserved kids as well as various aids for neurodivergent kids. You can read more and reblog here, give via DonorsChoose here or via paypal here, or purchase from an Amazon wishlist here.

onedollopofsourcream is raising funds for food and medication for their family including young children; they need medication that is important for family mental health. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

chingaderita's family was recently impacted by a house fire that destroyed their home; their partner has been unable to work and is now ill. They're raising funds for basic needs such as food and water, as well as medication for their partner and other family members. You can read more, reblog, and support the fundraiser here.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

[thenten]

@ahrencmeptn said: ❝ If you let me out, I promise I’ll behave. ❞ - Let Viola out of gay baby jail, Ben. You can trust her.

MUA3 Starters- Accepting!

When he'd gotten the alert of yet another Forever Knight prison operation, he already expected most of what he'd found tearing through it- innocent kidnapped aliens, unethical experiments, lots of new quirky knightly tech, Argit was there for some reason...

... but, as he blasted his way into the deepest, most secure section of the underground castle, he finally found something he didn't expect: a human, or at least someone that looked the part, locked up the tightest cell they could create on their shrinking budget. A sight that made the Opticoid on the other side tilt his head curiously.

Upon hearing the request with the ears taking up his entire face, the creature merely smirks and nods with little convincing.

"Sure, eye can handle that." He puns, painfully so, as the green eyes adorning his shoulders began to grossly merge together into larger ones, firing two beams of plasma that quickly melted through both the cell and the bindings that clearly weren't designed with his species in mind- freeing the other in seconds.

Clearly caring more about spiting the owners of the facility than he was why the girl was even here, already turning away.

"Exit is this way. Eye can-" The alien begins, before being quickly interrupted by an even angrier alarm than the ones he'd already triggered began to blare, followed by the sounds of every metal boot in the facility forgetting what they were doing and heading their way. "... high-priority prisoner, huh?"

[fire-on-fuel]

If anything I think andor season 2's only problem is that its a little too proud of itself if that makes any sense. Like great, love the imperialism commentary, keep doing what you're doing cause you do it very well. But. Very heavy but. Where are the aliens. Why is chandrila's culture all kind of lazily yanked from east asian culture on the visual front. Why does everyone have a core worlder accent even outside the galactic core. Why are the "rougher" accents still all variations of english and other accents of that region. Are we in the mid rim? the outer rim? the accents are no longer a usable marker. Why is there an abundance of these sort of empty habitable farming planets/moons populated by sharecroppers or subsistence yeoman land owners- not that that's an impossible or uninteresting star wars concept but it gets old and fills its own cracks in with questionable implicit messaging about colonialism and "empty land". Why is yavin-4 also completely empty minus the giant predator creatures. Again, where are the aliens. Is it a budget thing? We're teetering on the edge of almost all the important imps being white. Human racism has never really been established in star wars within the narrative itself specifically, I want to know where theyre going with this and if they're trying to make a more blatant signal regarding racism and forgetting worldbuilding is in that equation in the process. Re: the aliens, it has been established that the empire is overtly speciesist and human-supremacist but right now only inferencing is covering for how andor answers the question of showing it. A less generous analysis would say that andor gets so excited about connecting itself to the real world it's almost like it considers operating within the parameters of star wars a chore when the structure of star wars isn't in service of building confident lines to hook to real life with. Not world ending by far, but like it's tripping on it's own feet a little. It would be a damn shame if all of these smaller things that effect immersion and connection to the greater star wars universe fell by the wayside because it wants to pat itself on the back for having direct themes of anti-fascism or being relevant, and because the audience might be willing to overlook them for the same reason

[girlactionfigure]

🔘THE PENTAGON SAYS, GOOD MORNING FROM HEZBOLLAH - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

✡️Shabbat Parshat Noach (Torah Portion “Noah”) - Genesis 6:9 - G‑d instructs Noah—the only righteous man in a world consumed by violence and corruption—to build a large wooden teivah (“ark”), coated within and without with pitch. A great deluge, says G‑d, will wipe out all life from the face of the earth.

( VIDEO - IDF demolishing Hezbollah town used to launch extensive attacks on Israel - Kfar Kila, street by street. )

💧RAIN tomorrow with strong wind in most of the country.  Prepare for the first rain on Shabbat.  ( For those overseas, Israel receives seasonal rains, for most of the country there has been no rain since last winter - people store things outside that can be water damaged until rainy season. )

▪️NEWSPAPER CEO SEMI-APOLOGIZES.. (Amit Segal) Owner Shoken made a reserved apology. He did not retract his call for sanctions on the State of Israel, does not say to whom did he meant are freedom fighters? Hamas in Judea-Samaria? Islamic Jihad? Shoken read his words from the script. Suddenly he "reconsiders" his words. Amazing what an advertiser and subscriber boycott can do.

▪️NATIONAL BUDGET.. The Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar decided to vote against the state budget: "The treasury decided to delete the cultural bodies and sports support in Israel." ( The budgetary battles over must-have vs. nice-to-have vs. ministers defending their area will go on through the end of the year, due to war finance pressures. )

🔹PENTAGON SAYS.. The Pentagon: American Defense Minister Lloyd Austin talked tonight with Defense Minister Yoav Galant about "opportunities to reduce regional escalation". In a telephone conversation, the two discussed the demand of senior American officials to reach a solution to the situation in Gaza and Lebanon and to prepare for an Iranian response to Israeli attacks in Tehran.

♦️The IDF in an unusual official announcement: "Hezbollah rockets killed 7 civilians yesterday, Hezbollah attacks cannot go unanswered.”

♦️LEBANON - widespread wave of attacks overnight in Beirut, and Nabatia after evacuation warning.

♦️LEBANON - IDF airstrikes and artillery and the firing of more than 20 phosphorus shells in the area of ​​the Al Khayyam village detention center. A Lebanese source explained that the area of ​​the detention center is at a high point that allows fire control in the area.

♦️SYRIA - Syrian report, IDF forces attacked about half an hour ago Iranian militia sites in Kusayr in the western countryside of Homs.

⭕Overnight 2 INTERCEPTIONS OVER EILAT, suicide drones from Shia Militias Iraq.

⭕DRONE FROM IRAQ Shia Militias intercepted over Syria.

⭕HEZBOLLAH says good morning with a ROCKET BARRAGE (at least 20 rockets) at Upper Galilee towns.

⭕JUDEA-SAMARA.. 3 armed terrorist groups claim to have carried out 3 shooting attacks in the last few days in northern Samaria and in the northern Jordan Valley.  

.. IDF operating in Kalkilya and Shechem overnight - firefights!

🔸CEASEFIRE NEWS.. Lebanese origin: Great anger at the US envoy Amos Hochstein who did not even contact the decision makers in Lebanon before leaving the region yesterday and returning to the US.

[artisticdivasworld]

The Ripple Effect of Fuel Costs

Fuel pricing is one of those unpredictable forces that every trucker wishes they could control but can’t. It’s like trying to plan a picnic while watching storm clouds roll in—you know something’s coming, but you can’t be sure how bad it will get. For truckers, this unpredictability doesn’t just dampen the day; it can completely throw off budgets, schedules, and sometimes even livelihoods. When…

[hollywritesinstardust]

Hey all,

Unfortunately this isn’t anything fun. 2024 has been rough. But this is I think more important.

If you live in the United States, you probably know about the political tumult and the very real threat to our democratic institutions. Nearly every large platform has come out with a statement endorsing one candidate or another. Oftentimes this represents a fundamental ideological difference that I don’t believe I have the type or size of platform to talk about meaningfully. But in this case, the Washington Post - one of our largest national newspapers - was prevented from publishing a political endorsement by its owner, Jeff Bezos. You may know Bezos as the ultra-rich and exploitative founder of Amazon.

As a result, reportedly hundreds of thousands of subscribers to the Washington Post have canceled their subscriptions. Nowadays, media outlets like newspapers make a significant amount of their operating budgets from subscription fees. Regardless of the percentage of budget that comes from subscriptions, the subscriptions also serve as an indicator of readership and reach. We know that the staff of the paper are not the ones who chose to pull this article and in fact it appears that many of them are as frustrated as their readers are. While wholly understandable to pull away and “punish” the paper for this decision, this punishes the staff of the paper and may threaten the ability of the Washington Post to operate with the kind of political independence and integrity that we want our reporters to maintain.

So here is the message I want to share: keep your WaPo subscription if you have one. If you already cancelled, please consider re-subscribing. If you were considering buying one, please don’t change your mind because of this incident. There are better ways to lodge our mass complaints in ways that don’t have a greater impact on the wellbeing of a well-respected paper and its staff than on the person whose actions we object to.

For example, we could start a challenge to refuse to engage with Amazon on the week of the election. Spend no money. Watch no Prime. Don’t open any Kindle files. Don’t even open the apps. Amazon is where most of Bezos’ wealth comes from and his financial wellbeing is strongly tied to its shares. His wealth comes from our willingness to use his products, and his actions can have financial consequences.

What do you think? Should we spread the word?

[emeraldspiral]

Zim episode where Zim's budget gets cut and he needs to make some extra cash to fund his operations. He gets the idea to become a space DIY YouTuber posting tutorials on how to create devices and set-up elaborate schemes to complete your own invasion since you're obviously so inept you need the expert advice of the amazing Zim. Of course, most of Zim's tutorials aren't even for stuff that could be used to conquer a planet, they're just for petty mischief against annoying humans like his neighbors, classmates, and Dib. Most of Zim's viewers can plainly see the obvious design flaws and how his plans will either not have the desired effect or would do so in an extremely inefficient manner while others comment that they tried following his tutorials and were either led to their doom or just couldn't get anywhere because his instructions were so bad. Zim just deletes all the comments and blocks all the haters because they're clearly just naysaying his brilliant schemes out of jealousy. He quickly starts getting lazy and recycles content, posting the same clips in a different order as compilations so he can have new videos up every hour of every day without having to actually make anything new.

Eventually someone posts a video essay "exposing" Zim's schemes for being ineffective and dangerous and Zim responds by attacking them in-person. This only gets Zim a temporary demonetization because he uses bots to inflate his numbers on the platform to make the owners think he's a more valuable creator than he actually is. It's only when he shit-talks a sponsored product to deflect blame off himself for one of his inventions failing that advertisers drop him like a hot potato and he quits Space YouTube forever.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 4, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 05, 2024

Long tonight, folks, but it’s been quite a day. And even still, I did not mention the day’s horrific shooting at a Georgia school.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a series of proposals to help entrepreneurs create small businesses. Like President Joe Biden, she and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, argue that small businesses and entrepreneurs are the “engines of our economy.” In a statement today, they noted that “small businesses employ half of all private-sector workers in America—creating 70 percent of net new jobs since 2019—and do trillions of dollars of business every year.”

The Biden administration has boasted of the record number of new businesses created since Biden and Harris took office. There have been 19 million new business applications in that time. Harris said she and Walz are setting a goal of 25 million new business applications in their first term. Their plan, they say, is to “kickstart…more young, small, and innovative firms.”

To make this happen, they propose raising the deduction for startup expenses from its current level of $5,000 to $50,000, noting that the average amount a new business spends to get set up in its first year of operation is $40,000. They also propose funding a network of new and existing “federal, state, local, and private incubators and small business innovation hubs” that will make it easier for small business and local suppliers to get technical assistance, funding, customers, and so on. 

They also promised to make low-interest and no-interest loans available for small businesses, to protect and expand the support of the Affordable Care Act for small business owners, and to guarantee that one third of federal contract money will go to small businesses. They promise to make it easier for small businesses to file taxes, reduce excessive occupational licensing requirements, and urge state and local governments to cut the red tape of burdensome regulations by streamlining them across jurisdictions. 

Harris and Walz said they are committed to making the investments that will build the economy while also paying for them and reducing the deficit. “They also know,” their statement said, that “we need to support America as a locus of innovators, entrepreneurs, and workers coming together to create a better future.  

Harris calls this a New Way Forward, but it is curiously close to the old Republican reforms of the Progressive Era, when entrepreneurs joined forces with workers and farmers to demand access to capital and a fair economic playing field after decades in which a few wealthy industrialists stacked the system in their own favor. When we look at that era, as well as the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, we tend to emphasize reforms designed to benefit workers and farmers, but members of those groups always allied with entrepreneurs shut out of the system by wealthy industrialists. The demand for securities and exchange law in the 1930s, for example, did not come from western farmers, but from entrepreneurs who knew they could not break into the system if established businesses made up the rules amongst themselves.

Harris recalled that Republican reform impulse when she said we must make the tax system fairer. She called for rolling back Trump’s tax cuts and implementing common-sense tax reforms for corporations and the richest Americans. She calls for setting a minimum income tax for billionaires, the corporate tax rate to 28% (it was 35% before the Trump tax cuts), and quadrupling the tax on the stock buybacks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

She emphasized that no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes under her plans, and called for a tax rate of 28% on long-term capital gains for those who earn more than a million dollars a year. This is up from the current 20% rate, but less than the 39.6% rate Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. 

A Fox News Channel host applauded some of Harris’s ideas, saying, “When a political candidate comes up with what I think is a good idea, I have to call it a good idea. And a fifty thousand dollar…tax credit for startups or small businesses, coupled with less red tape, I’ve got to say, that is a good idea, regardless of her other tax ideas.” 

This was a nice endorsement of Harris’s policies, coming as it did after yesterday’s assessment by economists for the Goldman Sachs Group saying that the nation’s economic growth would take a hit if Trump wins, but will grow under a Harris presidency if she also has the support of a Democratic House and Senate.  

In her statement about economic policy, Harris called out Trump for supporting “himself and the biggest corporations” and noted that sixteen Nobel laureates have said that Trump’s policies would ignite inflation and trigger a recession by mid-2025. That recession, economists project, would cost more than 3 million jobs, explode the deficit, and raise costs. Harris pointed out that Project 2025 would cut funding for the Small Business Administration and make it harder for small businesses to get access to money. 

For his part, Trump has doubled down on the idea that the United States is a failing nation. For the past week he has been telling a story about a residential building in Colorado taken over by a gang from Venezuela. But it appears the story is entirely made up. Similarly, Trump on Friday said at a right-wing Moms for Liberty event that public schools in America kidnap children and operate on them to change their sex. This is bonkers, but it is bonkers in a way that deliberately demonizes Trump’s opponents.

Trump’s vision of the United States is one of darkness and carnage. As Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said today, “It is a deliberate effort by some people to make them believe that our political system is broken. To make them believe that things are pessimistic. My God, every time I hear Donald Trump give a speech, it’s like the next screenplay for Mad Max or something. They are rooting against America.”

That bleak version of the United States, it turns out, echoes the talking points Russian handlers gave to their operatives working in the U.S. in an effort “to steer the U.S. public opinion in the right direction.” The Russians directed their U.S. employees to emphasize the following “campaign topics”: “Encroaching universal poverty. Record inflation. Halting of economic growth. Unaffordable prices for food and essential goods”; “Risk of job loss for white Americans”; “Privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled”; “Constant lies of the [Democratic] administration about the real situation in the country”; “Threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants”; “Overspending on foreign policy and at the interests of white US citizens”; “Constant lies to the voters by [Democrats] in power.” 

The target audience of the campaign was “[Republican] voters,” [Trump] supporters, “Supporters of traditional family values,” and “White Americans, representing the lower-middle and middle class.” The focus was in particular on “[r]esidents of "swing states whose voting results impact the outcomes of the elections more than other states. 

This information came out today when the Departments of Justice, State, and the Treasury announced sanctions against 10 individuals and 2 entities, and criminal charges against two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, who allegedly funded a company in the U.S. to hire right-wing social media influencers to push Russian propaganda before the 2024 election. 

While the indictment does not name the Tennessee-based company the Russians funded, it appears to be Tenet Media, a company registered by Liam Donovan and Lauren Tam, who is associated with The Blaze and Turning Point USA, as well as RT. The two appear to be married. The indictment alleges that the company’s two founders knew they were working for the Russians, but suggests the six commentators—Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, all staunch Trump supporters—did not know where their massive paychecks originated. After the story broke, five of the commentators denied any knowledge of the source of the company’s funding; some insisted their words were entirely their own. 

One of the videos the company pushed at the request of the Russians was what appears to have been right-wing host Tucker Carlson’s visit to a grocery store in Russia where he praised the low prices (which even the company’s founders thought “just feels like overt shilling”).

Separately, the Department of Justice seized 32 internet domains that “the Russian government and Russian sponsored actors” have used to influence the 2024 election. In a malign influence campaign called “Doppelganger,” these domains produced fake articles that appeared to be from major U.S. news sites, to which influencers and fake social media profiles on Facebook, X, Truth Social, and YouTube then drove traffic. 

Russian operatives called in bold type for Russia “to put a maximum effort to ensure that the [Republican] point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of [Trump] supporters) wins over the US public opinion. This includes provisions on peace in Ukraine in exchange for territories, the need to focus on the problems of the US economy, returning troops home from all over the world, etc.”

One of the documents produced in the affidavit justifying the seizure of the internet domains called for trying to stir up a conflict between the U.S. and Mexico in order to distract from the fact that the U.S. economy is “very healthy” under Biden.

Tonight, in an interview with Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Trump appeared to think he is running against Joe Biden. An internal email leaked to the press from the Trump campaign showed managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles warning staff not to communicate with the press and suggested anyone doing so would be fired.

Today, Steph Curry of California’s Golden State Warriors basketball team and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “Endorsing Kamala Harris is important for me and my family,” Curry said. “Knowing Kamala and having been around her, I understand she's qualified for this job."

“There was never a doubt that the courageous Liz Cheney would endorse Vice President Harris,” conservative judge J. Michael Luttig wrote, “because  Liz Cheney stands for America.  She is the very embodiment of country over party and country over self.  And she fears no one—least of all the former president.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[democracyunderground]

I'M ONE OF THE "WASTEFUL EXPENDITURES" THEY WILL CUT.

The incoming Trump administration’s solution to government spending is a NEW Department of Government Efficiency led by co-department (2 NEW) CHIEFS: the world’s richest man and Trump’s former political opponent.

But while on the surface the plan to cut government spending seems simple, the “department,” led by multibillionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is fairly unorthodox. The U.S. Constitution states the President: “may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments.” That section implies a primary leader and explains why the 15 executive Cabinet departments including State, Defense, and Treasury have a single secretary with a chain-of-command from the President on down. However, other agencies, like the Federal Trade Commission, are governed by a commission structure; the President taps one commissioner to serve as chair.

What is it? In a statement on Truth Social Tuesday, president-elect Donald Trump gave the department a broad mandate to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Trump compared the department’s importance to that of the “Manhattan Project” which led to the creation of the atomic bomb in the 20th century.

Trump added in the statement that the co-leaders would target waste and fraud that Trump said exists throughout the $6.5 trillion yearly federal budget. The department will operate through July 4, 2026, wrapping up its operations just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Trump said in the statement.

Co-leader Elon Musk said in a Wednesday post that the massive cuts and reforms “will be done much faster.”

Why two department heads? Both leaders of the department, multibillionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have been avid supporters of the president-elect. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of social media website X, reportedly supported Trump via his super PAC with about $200 million in funding and often spoke with him at campaign rallies leading up to the election. Musk is the richest man in the world, with a net worth of $319 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Although he ran against Trump in the Republican primary race, Ramaswamy dropped out and endorsed Trump in January. The entrepreneur, who founded pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, has also appeared with Trump on the campaign trail.

Some leaders of the democratic party have already criticized the co-leaders of the department, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“The Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person. Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient,” Warren wrote in a Tuesday post on X.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Will the Department of Government Efficiency be a new government department? Contrary to its name, the new “department” will not be a part of the federal government, but rather more like a consulting arm that “will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government,” according to the statement. Musk flagged the fact that the new department exists outside of the government as “important details” in a post on X Wednesday. Musk especially has his hands full elsewhere with his other companies, Tesla, SpaceX, and social media site, X.

Despite its separation from government, the department’s leaders have Trump’s support and have pledged myriad internal changes to try to cut back on federal spending.

What have the co-leaders said about government spending? On the campaign trail with Trump, Musk said he wanted to cut the federal budget by $2 trillion, and added in an October rally that “some pretty big moves” were required.

“Our defense budget is pretty gigantic. It’s a trillion dollars,” Musk said during a rally. “The interest we owe on the debt is now higher than the defense budget. This is not sustainable. That’s why we need the Department of Government Efficiency,”

Ramaswamy has previously floated the idea of eliminating the Education Department, the FBI, and the IRS by executive order to cut spending, the New York Times reported. Ramaswamy has said the federal workforce should be cut by 75%.

The pair have said the cuts will be transparent and Musk added that the department would create a “leaderboard” to display the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.”

Will it work? Experts have cast doubt on whether Musk and Ramaswamy will be able to find $2 trillion to cut from federal spending without impacting long-untouched programs such as social security and defense spending.

The consequences of such big cuts could be massive layoffs for government employees and even some temporary economic pain. When a user on Musk’s social media site X wrote in October that Musk’s massive spending cuts could cause a temporary overreaction in the economy, Musk replied with “sounds about right.”

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in a speech at The Economic Club of New York on Tuesday that Musk would be lucky to find $200 billion worth of cuts, much less $2 trillion, CNN reported.

Why the acronym “DOGE?” The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE as Trump abbreviated it in his official announcement, is a callback to the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk has often promoted over the years.

The cryptocurrency was originally created as a joke but has grown to become the sixth largest cryptocurrency with a Wednesday market cap of $56 billion, greater than that of major companies such as Volkswagen or Ford.

The cryptocurrency jumped 20% following Trump’s announcement Tuesday and was up just over 1% on Wednesday afternoon.

[mariacallous]

Tesla brought in 20 percent less automotive revenue at the end of last year compared to the year previous, the company reported today, as demand for its electric cars appear to have dipped precipitously across the globe. The drop exceeded even some pessimistic Wall Street analysts’ predictions.

By late afternoon, before CEO Elon Musk and other company leaders appeared for a quarterly update call for investors, stock prices appeared relatively stable on the news. Overall, however, the electric automaker’s stock price is down more than 40 percent from its late-2024 high.

In a slide deck prepared for investors, Tesla pinned the drop on declines in deliveries, some which it said were related to the need to retool some of its production lines for modified versions of its best-selling electric cars.

Unmentioned explicitly in the document were the controversies surrounding Musk and his involvement with the government of President Donald Trump. Musk, who has been called the “First Buddy” and regularly spends weekends with Trump in Florida, heads up the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is responsible for sweeping federal budget cuts that have affected everything from the data privacy of immigrants and groundbreaking disease research to federal disaster response and consumer financial protections. Musk’s involvement has led to a boycott of Tesla’s cars and mass protests across the US and Europe.

On a call with investors, Musk suggested, without evidence, that the protesters had nefarious motives. “The protests—they’re very organized, they’re paid for, they’re obviously not going to admit that the reason they’re protesting is that they receive fraudulent money and are the recipients of wasteful largesse. But that is the real reason for the protests,” he said.

Musk said he would spend less time on DOGE starting in May, though he will continue to dedicate “a day or two per week” to the effort through the end of Trump’s term.

Overall, the company’s revenue was down 9 percent compared to last year.

“We’re not on the ragged edge of death, not even close,” Musk told investors, arguing the company has been in worse spots in the past.

The numbers put extra pressure on Tesla’s forthcoming self-driving service, set to launch in Austin, Texas, in June, and the Cybercab, a purpose-built robotaxi. Musk said on Tuesday that both are on track. “There will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year,” he told investors on the earnings call. (Musk last promised that Tesla would have 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020.) He said Tesla would have 10 million autonomous vehicles on roads in “a few years.”

Beyond taxi services and Cybercab, Musk said Tesla owners in “several cities” should this year be able to operate their cars completely autonomously, so that “you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination.” He emphasized, though, that Tesla would focus on safety.

Musk has argued that Tesla’s future is pinned on its success in self-driving and autonomous technology, which includes not only self-driving cars but also the company’s humanoid robot, Optimus. “The value of the company is primarily on the basis of autonomy. That's really, I think, the main driver of our value," Musk said in 2023. (He has expressed similar sentiments many times since.)

Earlier this year, Musk told investors that Tesla would launch autonomous driving technology in Austin and California this year, with a robotaxi service launching in the Texas city in June. (The service is slated to launch with Model Y’s rather than Cybercabs.) Tesla has since obtained a permit to operate a driver-ed taxi service in California, though will need to apply for and win several more permits to operate that service without drivers behind the wheel. It has entered talks with the city of Palo Alto, where its engineering teams are headquartered, to eventually offer a ride service there, according to emails obtained via public records requested by WIRED. (Because of Texas’ less stringent regulations, the carmaker does not need extra permits or government sign-off to operate a driverless service in Austin.)

The success of Cybercab, which is set to go into production in 2026, is especially important because Tesla does not seem to have many other car projects on the horizon. A long-awaited, more affordable electric vehicle was downgraded last year to a modified but still cheaper version of Tesla’s popular Model Y rather than a whole new vehicle. Last week, Reuters reported that the more affordable vehicle had been delayed by at least several months.

A robotaxi service puts Tesla into direct competition with Google sister company Waymo, which has been operating a paid, self-driving taxi service in metro Phoenix and in San Francisco for nearly two years. (Waymo also operates in Los Angeles and Austin and is set to launch in Atlanta and Miami in the coming months.) Amazon’s Zoox is also preparing to launch service in Las Vegas and, later, San Francisco.

Both Waymo and Zoox took more measured approaches to self-driving than Tesla, with years of testing with supervising drivers behind the wheel to monitor the technology. Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” feature is available on all of its US cars for an added fee, but the company warns that drivers must still pay attention to the road while using its tech. Still, the company has emphasized that it will leap from this less advanced, “level 2” autonomy to full-blown unsupervised driving.

Technology experts have cast doubt on Tesla’s ambitious timelines. Self-driving watchers should be mindful of the high levels of safety and reliability demanded by an autonomous vehicle service, says Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT who leads the Advanced Vehicle Technology consortium, which brings together industry experts and academics to study how people interact with automated driving features. ”I think the world is wondering, can Tesla do this?” says Reimer. “And my answer is, yeah, they can do some demo, probably with a safety driver.”

A Tesla robotaxi service will also need much work beyond even the complex technology required to make the cars go. “Until you actually pull the safety driver out, you don’t realize all the other things they were doing for you: answering questions for the passenger, helping them navigate the whole system, [navigating] the picking up and dropping off,” says Jeff Schneider, a robotics researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who once worked for Uber’s self-driving-car project.

In a slide deck for investors, Tesla wrote that it expected to be affected by uncertainty related to “evolving trade policy,” which the company says will likely affect both Tesla’s global supply chain and what it spends to build its products. “This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term,” the deck said.

Musk told investors that Tesla was still the “least impacted” car company in terms of tariffs, because so much of the company’s vehicle stock is made and assembled in the US. “That puts us in a better position than many of our competitors,” he said. Musk said he would continue to speak with the president about tariff policy. “I will continue to advocate for lower tariffs rather than higher tariffs, but that's all I can do,” he said.