Hello, and welcome back to the week in review. I’m Nellie Bowles, and this is your brain on TGIF.
→ Is Trump privatizing Social Security?: Trump Accounts are turning into a very interesting little charitable financial vehicle. Elon Musk announced this week that he’ll be giving SpaceX shares “to every kid in America.” The shares will apparently be distributed through Trump Accounts. And now the plan is to expand Trump Accounts to anyone under 40 (Gen X screwed again). It’s starting to look a little like a new Social Security system being built in parallel. And the exciting twist: This one can actually invest in the stock market and, like, grow. Wouldn’t that be something? Everyone gets to go for a fun ride with SpaceX stock. By the way, as a CEO, it’s a great way to sway the public in your favor: All of America’s children are by default invested in the success of this one company? Perfect. I could see this being a great tool for embattled CEOs in general, even on a smaller scale. Sue my sweet company? You mean you want to punish all the children in Memphis who received these shares? You monster.
→ Congress is going to flip, adjust your scams appropriately:
Alert! Alert! The House and Senate are likely both flipping, and will have a Democratic majority. Nate Silver gives Democrats the edge (to be fair, others think it’s more of a toss-up). Everyone, please adjust your scams. Drop the word America from your NGO and add the word Equity. But before you dye your hair blue, you should know that tons and tons of polling you read is fake. Like, literally just fake. The latest here is a public opinion polling shop called Wedgewood Polling, which was cited on MS NOW and in The New York Times (places that would never lead us astray). Wedgewood made this statement on their now-terminated X account:
WEDGEWOOD POLLING, an experimental project to demonstrate the vulnerabilities, lack of oversight, and overall low barrier to entry in the modern political polling industry, makes this public statement. . . . Despite having no history, formal credentials, or real data behind the vast majority of our releases, Wedgewood Polling was added to major polling aggregators, including The New York Times, FiftyPlusOne, and VoteHub, and repeatedly treated as a legitimate data source.
Ha ha. Cool. You got us, Wedgewood! Why do I increasingly feel like we’re all a part of a YouTube prank show?
→ President Elon: Elon Musk—America’s technological savior and also its most in-demand problematic sperm donor—is apparently setting geopolitical policy through his control of space internet. Here’s what happened: Musk slowed down Ukraine’s military Starlink internet, called Starshield, after the country bombed Russian diesel refineries, which apparently he didn’t like, according to The Wall Street Journal (which is on such a run, my god it’s good, good lord I’m mad). So he capped their internet speed, which made some of their drones unworkable. There are conflicting reports of whether the administration knew about this or not. Now, on the one hand, Musk made Starlink. If the government is so good at stuff, why didn’t it make Starlink? On the other hand, Starlink is so valuable that it literally might need to be nationalized. Sure, then the satellites will never be repaired and every Starlink tech will have to prove that they have one disability.
But the alternative is Elon Musk alone, between rapid X posting, will control geopolitics. He’s going to hit the wrong button and whoops, bye Europe. As a notoriously stable genius once said: No one should have all that power. Especially a man who can’t seem to manage his own warring harem, so I’m doubtful about his ability to singularly manage the postwar international rules-based order. Like, when one of the mothers of his children needs his attention, she will quite literally post about it, begging for him to respond. Or appear in a documentary. In a world of Starlink controlled by Elon Musk, all world leaders will have to act like Elon Musk’s harem does. Xi Jinping, I hope you’re ready to post about how special your time together has been for you and how you miss him, if you want strong Wi-Fi on your drones to Taiwan. Benjamin Netanyahu, if you want the Wi-Fi to work in Gaza, you’re gonna need to post a bikini pic and tag Elon.