I had it happen to a random hard drive I bought, old bastard found in a bin at a local thrift store. Anyways had a big dent in it and while it started up, even booting into windows XP it cooked itself made a screeching noise and was hot to the touch. Don’t think I need to explain that the big dent was probably the source of the overheating, anyways had to use an oven mitt to relocate it to a metal bucket of water where it boiled for a minute.

Libraries are a scam if they weren’t they’d still have VHS rentals.

Hi communist I’m hungry.

Does my 2001 Toyota Tacoma single cab count?

The thing is they’re fucking over everyone military included, sure they could theoretically give guns to untrained morons but that’s only so effective. Also I kinda doubt there are enough mud boots to lock down LA let alone every city. There may be a million active military personnel but a solid majority of that is support staff that would be hard to shift around if not impossible.

That’s all just looking at the basic military aspect. Plenty of them own property but that’s kinda meaningless if the enforcement mechanics also break down. I doubt any of them have billions in physical assets and yet again would any of it be worth anything could they enforce their ownership properly or would their own security start stripping the copper from the walls.

Also when empires collapse it’s never for one reason, and the US has many reasons. Don’t believe the hype of the rich, they have nothing of worth short of their organs in a collapse scenario of any type.

They are currently doing their damnedest to collapse the US economy, it’s entirely possible that a simple recession let alone a depression could collapse the federal government. This would make their billions monopoly money and make them easy pickings, the ravens would feast.

So there are multiple factors with his rise, which I’ll try to list as coherently as possible but my autistic logic doesn’t want to accept the irrationallity of a lot of it so if it seems scattered that’s why.

So an easy point to start is that I think he was way more functional in the late 90s and early 2000s, looking at what little there is of him he seems a bit more rounded with less random incoherentcy. He seems less impulsive and generally more deliberate, not to say he was great since he still has rich dipshits failson energy but he wasn’t the mess he is today.

Secondly I think he has a specific nact for getting money from rich folks, I suspect he learned what made rich folks interested in investing in things growing up. This social intelligence made him great at getting his foot in combine that with him being a decent hype man and ya have an easy way to get money. Theres a story of him shoving a standard computer into a big fancy box then showing it to investors which is rather clever and a good bit of showmanship.

Then theres some incredible luck first PayPal buys his company and he gets a shit tonne of share, then he gets paid to fuck off because he was a liability to PayPal. Then he invests into Tesla really fucking early on and gets a controlling share, then electric cars pop off and oh look Tesla is right fucking there. He got really lucky with the previous points only amplifying his luck.

To summarize musk had the perfect mix of luck, charisma, and just enough intelligence to capitalize on it. But here’s the thing the Elon Musk of today ain’t the one of 2001 hell it ain’t even the one of 2012, he has fried his brain on his own ego and ketamine. Also the very traits that made him successful are the very traits now making folks wish for his death or have outright disappeared.

His showmanship lead him to outright lying to the public which folks remembered. His charisma failed because he forgot how to read a room. His luck may have given him power but now folks may actually kill him. His worst traits like his thrill seeking have taken him from ripping a super car in half to ripping a government in half.

Musk of 2001 was lucky and vaguely intelligent, Musk of 2025 is just lucky and who knows how long that’ll last

We have a lot of land in the US that is a pain in the ass to get to, would be harder to set up but I could see some spiteful folks setting up something in the remote asshole of the mountain ranges. Would also be a lot harder to follow them if they pissed off as well.

I know you jest but I will note that freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence, if you say something abhorrent enough and I decide that you in fact are a threat that deserves to be gutted then I am in my right to take said action and face said consequences myself.

Only usable for federal highways, shit could still be banned by the DMVs or equivalents which would basically be a death knell for it.

It is and if he loses that wealth I’m pretty sure he is getting kicked to the street. He has no other skills that aren’t readily available by folks who aren’t utterly unstable drug addled dipshits.