Tesla stock plunged 15 percent on Monday, its steepest drop in five years. The price is down over 50 percent since its December highs. Tesla owners, disgusted with Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn tactics for the Trump administration, are selling their vehicles at a big loss. And Tesla showrooms across the country are becoming magnets for large crowds of protesters who want to see the company fail spectacularly.
But at least Musk can still count on one guy to have his back.
“I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American,†President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???â€
But it will probably take more than a Cybertruck in the presidential motorcade to make Tesla great again. It will take an actual commitment to more affordable electric vehicles. It will take a more serious and safer approach to driverless cars. And it may take a change of leadership to get the company back on track. Let’s run down the company’s problems.
For years, businesses, governments, and researchers have struggled with a persistent problem: How to extract usable data from Portable Document Format (PDF) files. These digital documents serve as containers for everything from scientific research to government records, but their rigid formats often trap the data inside, making it difficult for machines to read and analyze.
"Part of the problem is that PDFs are a creature of a time when print layout was a big influence on publishing software, and PDFs are more of a 'print' product than a digital one," Derek Willis, a lecturer in Data and Computational Journalism at the University of Maryland, wrote in an email to Ars Technica. "The main issue is that many PDFs are simply pictures of information, which means you need Optical Character Recognition software to turn those pictures into data, especially when the original is old or includes handwriting."
Computational journalism is a field where traditional reporting techniques merge with data analysis, coding, and algorithmic thinking to uncover stories that might otherwise remain hidden in large datasets, which makes unlocking that data a particular interest for Willis.
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There’s been a lot of ink spilled over the last few months attempting to explain what exactly happened to America. Possibly even more than the last time this happened, 10 years ago. Because unlike 2016, it doesn’t feel like fascism is some kind of invasive force seeping in from the dark corners of web, but, now, instead, it has become the air we breathe, like cultural microplastics. 4chan slang, red pill ideology, and Substacker race science has become so prevalent that even when you try and avoid it, your behavior is still defined in opposition to it.
And while there are a myriad of ways this amorphous world of hypermasculine fascism arose, there is one chief architect. A man who has spent years connecting the various nodes of comedy, sports, influencers, platforms, and politicians that power it. And that man is Dana White.
White, the president and CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and, as of January, a Meta board member, created the new masculinity underpinning Trump’s second administration. And, over the weekend, all of the spheres of influence that it touches came together to welcome podcasters and alleged human traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate to Las Vegas. The event, UFC 313, was a victory lap for the newly energized manosphere. A showy display of power meant to prove that awful men never have to face consequences ever again.
(Photo by Ian Maule/Getty Images)
White bought UFC in 2001 after being, he claims, chased out of Boston by mobster Whitey Bulger. (Yeah, you and everyone’s uncle, Dana. Every fucking meathead in Boston born before 1985 tells some version of this same story). That’s when he hired podcaster Joe Rogan to be a commentator for UFC matches. That’s also when White met President Donald Trump, who, at the time, was hosting UFC matches at his venues in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. White would go on to officially endorse Trump during the 2016 Republican National Convention, telling the crowd, “Donald was the first guy that recognized the potential that we saw in the UFC and encouraged us to build our business.” It’s been memory-holed, but Republicans weren’t actually very excited about professional mixed martial arts at the time. Sen. John McCain once referred to it as “human cockfighting” lol.
Both White and Rogan got more vocal in their support for Trump during his first administration. Rogan always treated Trump as more of a fun character, while White told The Hill in 2018 that he and Trump had become even closer since Trump entered the White House. But the real turning point was during the pandemic. Which is when White connected with a team of YouTubers that may have been more instrumental than even Rogan in helping Trump get elected a second time.
The Nelk Boys are a group of American and Canadian YouTubers that started out making prank videos. In 2015, a few of them were arrested after telling cops that they had coke in their car (it was Coca-Cola). Around 2020, White was introduced to the Nelk Boys channel through his son, Dana Jr. During the pandemic, the Nelk Boys were flown out to UFC’s Fight Island in Abu Dhabi. And right before the election in that year, the Nelk Boys were invited on to Air Force One to shoot a video with Trump. He also went on their podcast Full Send after the election, but the episode was removed by YouTube because Trump couldn’t stop ranting about election interference. In 2022, Elon Musk made an appearance on Full Send and in 2023, Trump did another interview with them.
Last October, the Nelk Boys were instrumental in building a youth coalition for Trump’s campaign. They launched a voter registration program, threw a music festival, and bought ads on other bro-y podcasts, like Kill Tony, which records in Rogan’s comedy club, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, and BS w/ Jake Paul. If you woke up on November 6th and wondered where the hell all these guys came from, the answer is they’re very popular with young men on YouTube and are getting very rich from supporting Trump and, most importantly, supporting UFC.
Interestingly enough, White admitted in November that he kind of regrets going all in on Trump last year, telling The New Yorker, “I want nothing to do with this shit. It’s gross. It’s disgusting.” He’s happy Trump won, but it seems like stumping was a bit more involved than he expected. But I also think it’s an important detail here. The end goal for White has always been about enriching himself and UFC. One of the more insightful things I’ve read about White’s motives was actually a Reddit comment from a few years ago in a thread asking what the deal was with UFC and the Nelk Boys. “I think it's a strategic relationship on Dana's part (and the Nelk boys too, probably),” the user wrote. “He's knows they're extremely popular with young men and Dana wants to make sure UFC doesn't go the way of boxing; being viewed primarily by middle-aged/older men.”
Which is how White ended up personally greeting the Tate brothers in Vegas last weekend. Oh, apparently Mario Lopez is a fan of the Tates, as well, he was filmed saying hi. Also in attendance was Trump-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel, who wants to hire the UFC to train agents, and Mel Gibson. They fistbumped at one point during the match.
Like every other villain in Trump World, I think it’s important to not give White too much credit here. He’s not some kind of mastermind, but he has been instrumental it changing American masculinity, making it inseparable from conservatism and, of course, inseparable from the UFC brand. And now he and every other weird muscle man that comes to UFC fights are all aligned in their hatred of women and deep desire to feel masculine and powerful. A sea of, usually, very bald men in tight shirts that want to hurt the world and be celebrated for it. But if you drill further down into their ideology you’ll also find the same thing every time. Someone who is trying to get rich, has failed every thing they’ve tried, and realized that manipulating sad internet men was the easiest way to do it.
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Vivian Wilson, Elon Musk’s transgender daughter, seemingly confirmed a theory that’s been floating around for the last few weeks about Musk. “My assigned sex at birth was a commodity that was bought and paid for. So when I was feminine as a child and then turned out to be transgender, I was going against the product that was sold,” she wrote on Threads yesterday. “That expectation of masculinity that I had to rebel against all my life was a monetary transaction.”
If you haven’t been following this, a graphic has been going around, claiming that all of Musk’s known children were assigned male at birth and that Musk was likely paying for sex-selective in vitro fertilization to ensure that he only had male children. Which would explain how quickly his politics shifted when Williams came out as trans in 2020. He has since disowned Williams and has told reporters he considers her dead.
Bernie’s On Tour
TUNE IN to our rally in Altoona, WI, where we discuss how we take on the greed of the billionaire class and create a government that works for all and not just the few.
Sen. Bernie Sanders did what every single — and I mean all of them — Democrat should have done two months ago, and hit the road on a national campaign against the Trump administration and DOGE. He is, so far, the only Democrat doing it. Though, there’s some chatter that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be joining him soon and organizing her own events. A lot of readers have been emailing me asking what exactly the Democrats can do and, well, this is as good of an idea as any, frankly. The internet is flooded with fascist garbage (see above), so they should go outside, connect with actual people, and, in the process, make a lot of content they can flood the zone bacj with.
Also, click here for a wild video of a senior citizen that showed up to watch Sanders speak rocking a Hasan Piker shirt. Bands like The Armed and Laura Jane Grace have been opening for Sanders, which is also pretty cool. But it’s not just Sanders and AOC that are finally wrapping their heads around the current moment.
Majority Report host Sam Seder went on Jubilee, that YouTube channel that makes conservatives and liberals argue for internet traffic, and, honestly, knocked it out of the park. The video, in which he debates a bunch of young Republicans, is hard to watch, but I think he did a pretty good job. Definitely better than how Charlie Kirk did on his episode.
Ultimately, though, the Democrats have one real job right now. As TV writer Grace Freud wrote on X last week, “I have a new theory called The Guy theory of politics. No democrat is The Guy right now. They have no The Guy. You need a The Guy to even possibly confront Trump who has insane levels of The Guy-ness not seen since 2008 Obama.” Democrats need to find a Guy (not gender specific). And they need to find one fast.
Vice President JD Vance tried to get in on the rare vances meme. He, of course, shared one where he doesn’t look like a grotesque monster or gross little boy, opting, instead, to share one where he’s been photoshopped on to Leonardo DiCaprio. Elon Musk liked it, I guess. Don’t worry, though, someone fixed it. Either way, meme’s probably over now.
Claude Plays Pokémon is a Twitch stream where the AI model Claude, developed by Anthropic, tries to play through Pokémon Red and Blue. And while it’s not as fun or exciting as Twitch Plays Pokémon, arguably one of the best things to ever happen online, it has been an interesting experiment.
The AI was instructed to name the Pokémon it caught and immediately started being more protective of them in battle once it had named them. It’s also very bad at navigating the map. It spent three days stuck in Cerulean City because it couldn’t figure out the hedges. And it’s currently stuck again in Mt. Moon. It’s been there a week and is now crashing out hard, implementing what it’s calling “the blackout strategy” to kill itself in-game, possibly as a way to get out of the dungeon.
It’s All Kicking Off On The Balatro Subreddit
The subreddit for the whacky poker game Balatro (which recently consumed my entire life) is in full meltdown mode right now. There are, apparently, a few issues at play. The first, and most important, is that the subreddit is very divided over AI art. Some users want to be able to post it, others do not.
The pseudonymous creator of the game, LocalThunk, for the record, is not a fan of AI art. They recently wrote on Bluesky, “I don’t condone AI-generated ‘art’.” One of the users on the subreddit who wanted to allow AI art, however, was a mod named u/DrTankHead, who also runs a Balatro erotica subreddit. Yeah, I know.
The horny AI evangelist mod responded to the controversy over on the Balatro erotica subreddit they’re still modding and wrote a big long thing about why they wanted AI art to be allowed so badly. “It is NOT my goal to make this place AI centric, I’m thinking it'll be a "day of the week" thing,” they wrote. “Where non-NSFW art that is made with AI can be posted. My goal is to be objective and keep the space safe. (Safe-For-Work Sunday's?)” The explanation didn’t really clear anything up and, honestly, makes all of this even weirder, but oh well.
It’s best to let this just sort of wash over you and never think about it again. But while we’re talking about Balatro, LocalThunk published a blog post this week all about how it was created, which is a great read.
"Because unlike 2016, it doesn’t feel like fascism is some kind of invasive force seeping in from the dark corners of web, but, now, instead, it has become the air we breathe, like cultural microplastics. 4chan slang, red pill ideology, and Substacker race science has become so prevalent that even when you try and avoid it, your behavior is still defined in opposition to it. [...]ut if you drill further down into their ideology you’ll also find the same thing every time. Someone who is trying to get rich, has failed every thing they’ve tried, and realized that manipulating sad internet men was the easiest way to do it. "
Updated: 2025-03-08 07:00:00 Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, the French senator Claude Malhuret gave a powerful speech about the implications for Europe of the reversal of American policy toward Ukraine. Malhuret is the former mayor of the town of Vichy as well as a doctor and an epidemiologist, and the former head of Doctors Without Borders. He is a member of the center-right Horizons party representing the district of Allier. The speech, whose dark urgency and stark rhetorical force made it a social-media sensation, follows, translated and adapted by The Atlantic.
Europe is at a crucial juncture of its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned, and Russia is being strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service.
This is a tragedy for the free world, but it’s first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. [President Donald] Trump’s message is that being his ally serves no purpose, because he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories, while supporting the dictators who invade you.
The king of the deal is showing that the art of the deal is lying prostrate. He thinks he will intimidate China by capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but China’s President Xi Jinping, faced with such wreckage, is undoubtedly accelerating his plans to invade Taiwan.
Never in history has a president of the United States surrendered to the enemy. Never has one supported an aggressor against an ally, issued so many illegal decrees, and sacked so many military leaders in one go. Never has one trampled on the American Constitution, while threatening to disregard judges who stand in his way, weaken countervailing powers, and take control of social media.
This is not a drift to illiberalism; this is the beginning of the seizure of democracy. Let us remember that it only took one month, three weeks, and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its constitution.
I have confidence in the solidity of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in the four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator; now we are fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.
Eight days ago, at the very moment when Trump was patting French President Emmanuel Macron on the back at the White House, the United States voted at the United Nations with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Two days later, in the Oval Office, the draft-dodger was giving moral and strategic lessons to the Ukrainian president and war hero, Volodymyr Zelensky, before dismissing him like a stable boy, ordering him to submit or resign.
That night, he took another step into disgrace by halting the delivery of promised weapons. What should we do in the face of such betrayal? The answer is simple: Stand firm.
And above all: make no mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic states, Georgia, and Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to the Yalta Agreement, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The countries of the global South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe, or whether they are now free to trample it.
What Putin wants is the end of the world order the United States and its allies established 80 years ago, in which the first principle was the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.
This idea is at the very foundation of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the aggressed, because the Trumpian vision coincides with Putin’s: a return to spheres of influence, where great powers dictate the fate of small nations.
Greenland, Panama, and Canada are mine. Ukraine, the Baltics, and Eastern Europe are yours. Taiwan and the South China Sea are his.
At the Mar-a-Lago dinner parties of golf-playing oligarchs, this is called “diplomatic realism.”
We are therefore alone. But the narrative that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is doing poorly. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country with about a quarter its population.
With interest rates at 21 percent, the collapse of foreign currency and gold reserves, and a demographic crisis, Russia is on the brink. The American lifeline to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made during a war.
The shock is violent, but it has one virtue. The Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in a single day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands, and that they have three imperatives.
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that Ukraine can hang on, and of course to secure its and Europe’s place at the negotiating table.
This will be costly. It will require ending the taboo on using Russia’s frozen assets. It will require bypassing Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself through a coalition that includes only willing countries, and the United Kingdom of course.
Second, demand that any agreement include the return of kidnapped children and prisoners, as well as absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia, and Minsk, we know what Putin’s agreements are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
Finally, and most urgently because it will take the longest, we must build that neglected European defense, which has relied on the American security umbrella since 1945 and which was shut down after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The task is Herculean, but history books will judge the leaders of today’s democratic Europe by its success or failure.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is a recognition that France has been right for decades in advocating for strategic autonomy.
Now it must be built. This will require massive investment to replenish the European Defense Fund beyond the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonize weapons and munitions systems, accelerate European Union membership for Ukraine, which now has the leading army in Europe, rethink the role and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, and relaunch missile-shield and satellite programs.
Europe can become a military power again only by becoming an industrial power again. But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and above all in the face of Putin’s collaborators on the far right and far left.
They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump says is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of a de Gaullian Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain under Putin’s thumb.The peace of collaborators who, for three years, have refused to support the Ukrainians in any way.
Is this the end of the Atlantic alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have finally stirred Americans into action. Poll numbers are plummeting. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.
The Trumpists are no longer at the height of glory. They control the executive branch, Congress, the Supreme Court, and social media. But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They are starting to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine will be decided in the trenches, but it also depends on those who defend democracy in the United States, and here, on our ability to unite Europeans and find the means for our common defense, to make Europe the power it once was and hesitates to become again.
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of great sacrifice. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.
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