A Three Part Plan for Elon Musk's Happiness

Offered for free to the richest man in the world

Good Morning:

I feel your pain, Elon.

You know how it is. You spend $44 billion to buy a social media platform. You let back on it all the unsavory dregs of society whom prior efforts at content moderation have purged. You drive away all the civilized folks who don’t want Nazis and racists and Russian propaganda and porn bots to assault them constantly. And you relentlessly make yourself central to everyone’s experience on the site.

And still there are people who don’t like you.

And still there are people who say mean things.

And still there are people who don’t have the courtesy to flatter you.

And, of all the nerve, they speak their minds on your own platform. It’s like they come into your own home to insult you at your own dinner table—right in front of your many concubines and your innumerable offspring.

I live in fear that people will insult me on #DogShirtDaily and #DogShirtTV. I howled with rage for hours, for example, when the estimable

Jonathan Rauch

showed up on my own platform to question my fucking use of language. So I really understand where you’re coming from here, Elon. I really do.

And I have a suggestion for how to fix the problem, how to make people stop criticizing you and say more nice things, how to get people to actually like you—which your recent efforts have so entirely failed to do.

You might call it a three-part plan for your peace and prosperity:

1. Shut up.

2. Give money away.

3. Stop being an asshole.

I would be happy to consult with you, at no charge, on implementation of this plan.

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The Sol Invictus on Steroid sale is winding down. Just three more days to get half off on all subscriptions to #DogShirtDaily—including access to the highly coveted Greek Chorus on #DogShirtTV. Just three more days to have half of your remaining subscription costs donated to a basket of charities. And just three more days to honor the Sun, may it ever go unconquered, by spending money on content. Come on, people. I’m running out of ways to beg:

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Thursday on #DogShirtTV, we tested the true dedication of our Collegium: would anyone actually show up on Boxing Day? Yes, as it turned out.

The estimable John Hawkinson came by to discuss Wikipedia with me. Apparently Musk hates it now, or something like that. So I set up a small monthly donation.

Also, the murder hornets have all been murdered. Will the cycle of violence never end?

Yesterday on #DogShirtTV, we had a veritable smorgasbord of content. The estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher told us about her last day at the CIA and also shared with us a talking cactus. The estimable Antti Ruokonen told us about Russian attacks on underwater internet cables and consoled Holly on thirty-year-old romantic disappointments involving Finns. The estimable Eve Gaumond mocked my accent.

I am constantly insulted on this platform!

We have some great guests lined up for this coming week. On Monday, the estimable Jody Freeman of the Harvard Law School will join us to discuss what she calls “structural deregulation,” a means of deregulation by denuding agencies of budgets and staff.

On Tuesday, we will return to the subject of attacks on undersea cables with the very estimable

Minna Ålander

.

Wednesday, we will be dark because it’s New Year’s day. But I am finalizing guest plans for Thursday and Friday as well.

A reminder that you can join these and all #DogShirtTV recordings live by availing yourself of the remaining hours of the Sol Invictus on Steroids Sale:

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Tell Me Something Interesting

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Here is a very incomplete list of reasons Christians have hated Christmas:

1. God doesn’t have a birthday and claiming otherwise is pagan claptrap:

   In the late Third Century, the estimable Arnobius complained that, “We men gather our vintages, and they [i.e. pagans] think and believe that the gods gather and bring in their grapes; we have birthdays, and they affirm that the powers of heaven have birthdays.” (Adversus Nationes, VII.34)

2. Birthdays themselves are sinful and unworthy of celebration:

   An early Third Century theologian, the killjoy Origen opined that, "Not one from all the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth. No one is found to have had joy on the day of the birth of his son or daughter. Only sinners rejoice over this kind of birthday....the saints not only do not celebrate a festival on their birth days, but, filled with the Holy Spirit, they curse the day." (Homilies on Leviticus, VIII.3.2)

3. It’s an inconvenient disruption of normal business:

   Per the Scottish Parliament, in its 1640 Act banning Christmas celebrations: “the keeping of the said Yule vacance heath interrupted the course of justice in this kingdome to the hinderance and heavie prejudice of the leiges thairof…”

4. Christmas contains the word “Mass”:

   The excellently named Increase Mather complained in 1687 that “The word Christ-mass is enough to cause such as are studious of reformation to dislike what shall be known by a name so superstitious. Why should Protestants own any thing which has the name of Mass in it? How unsuitable is it to join Christ and Mass together? i.e., Christ and Antichrist.”

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Do you need another hint?

Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the Gila monster. You can learn more about this beast in the video below, but do not mistake me. The Gila monster earns its position today not on its own merits, but for having been the occasion for the following quotation:

I have never been called to attend a case of Gila monster bite, and I don't want to be. I think a man who is fool enough to get bitten by a Gila monster ought to die. The creature is so sluggish and slow of movement that the victim of its bite is compelled to help largely in order to get bitten.

–Dr. Ward, Arizona Graphic, September 23, 1899

The experience of the expert in this video does seem to me to bear out Dr. Ward’s observation.