Category Archives: History

Panasonic Announces Solid State Battery for 2027 Toyotas

Toyota’s recent announcement regarding their solid-state batteries has caused a stir in the electric vehicle (EV) market, with the company positioning itself as a front runner in revolutionizing the industry. The credit for this breakthrough largely goes to Panasonic, as acknowledged by Toyota’s PR team.

Toyota is developing the solid-state batteries through Prime Planet Energy & Solutions Inc., a joint venture with Panasonic that started operations in April 2020…

By 2027, they aim to have solid-state batteries in production cars, a timeline that has impressed many observers.

A trip of 700 km on one charge. A recharge from zero to full in roughly 10-15 minutes. All with minimal safety concerns. The solid-state battery being introduced by Toyota promises to be a game changer not just for electric vehicles but for an entire industry. The electric vehicles being developed will have a range more than twice the distance of a vehicle running on a conventional lithium-ion battery under the same conditions. All accomplished without sacrificing interior space in even the most compact vehicle.

The success of a Japanese automaker leading global EV innovation should be no surprise, considering historical circumstances that have pushed them towards producing high-quality, modern EV engineering. Following WWII, with a necessary emphasis on using existing hydro-electricity (given oil refineries destroyed), Japanese war factories were repurposed under US occupation to develop early expertise in EV production. The amazing 1947 “bomb bay” hot-swap battery Tama EV is a perfect example:

During the 1940s’ switch to a peacetime economy, around 200 Tachikawa Aircraft employees moved to the newly established Tokyo Electro Automobile Co. Ltd., which embarked on the development of an electric car with “bomb bay” hot-swap batteries. One reason for this was the extreme shortage of gasoline at the time (infrastructure bombed by Allies) yet a surplus of electricity from hydro-power. In 1947, the company succeeded in creating a prototype 2-seater truck (500-kg load capacity) with a 4.5-horsepower motor and a new body design. It was named Tama after the area where the company was based.

While Nissan is often recognized for launching the first modern mass-market EV with their 2010 LEAF (not including their 30-year innovation cycle that produced earlier models like the 1980s Lektrikar or the 1950s Tama), Toyota’s recent announcement suddenly positions them one step ahead, with solid-state batteries expected to reach mass production in 2028.

Collaborating with Panasonic has played a crucial role in Toyota’s progress, leveraging expertise in laptop engineering, to further cement both as premier electronic innovators. Many people are unaware that the real technological innovation found in Apple Air laptops could be traced back to Panasonic’s Toughbook, which usually hit the market two years earlier.

Honda, too, has plans to introduce solid-state batteries, likely trailing behind Nissan. Their expected timeline aligns with other global players like the United States, Germany, Taiwan, and Korea. Ford, BMW, and Hyundai are represented by Solid Power. Mercedes and Stellantis are part of Automotive Cells using ProLogium batteries. Volkswagen and several other EV manufacturers are represented by QuantumScale. So everyone who matters in car production clearly has been shifting towards solid-state battery innovation.

That’s why Toyota’s partnership with Panasonic and their surge ahead of other Japanese EV makers is the first sign of a significant triumph. Surpassing EV industry-leading Nissan in this regard is very noteworthy.

The second indication of a triumph lies in the global shift of Panasonic’s innovative prowess and production capacity back to Japan, away from cars known more for an over-cooked “fit and finish” lifestyle brand of California or cruel inefficiencies and tax-avoidance of Texas.

On that note, Toyota’s leap ahead of Nissan should probably be attributed to an early recognition in 2012 of obvious safety design failures of Tesla. The predictable dangers (which have been repeatedly proven true, given over 70 people killed from Tesla fires alone) prompted Toyota management to prioritize battery safety and embark on an ambitious journey. Their hybrid-engine Prius positioned them sufficiently in competition with early EV models such as the enormously successful Nissan LEAF — best-selling EV in the world until 2019. Toyota meanwhile quietly filed thousands of EV battery patents, and publicly expressed interest in hydrogen as an alternative future (perhaps to distract from their quiet commitment to an EV battery revolution).

A close examination of Toyota’s recent battery-focused PR campaign reveals a deliberate emphasis on travel distance, charging time, and safety, while conspicuously avoiding discussions of accident-causing quick acceleration or selfish track performance.

This marks a significant departure from the ex-Tesla engineers at Lucid, for instance, who have been fixated on record-breaking battery distances and track times. Neither of these metrics improve quality of life. Toyota is instead looking into key economic measures that have long aligned with traditional Japanese EV sensibilities as firmly set by American occupation after the 1940s.

The ability to spend less time charging batteries, longer intervals between charges, and risk avoidance take precedence for engineers thinking about improving the world. Stellantis Fiat (perhaps keying into the post-WWII sentiment of Italy) has effectively capitalized on these values through compelling advertisements, contributing to the success of their low-stress, small and dependable EV model.

The rapid and high-quality innovation witnessed in Japanese manufacturing since 1948 also draws parallels with Germany’s experience during the US military occupation, which compelled them to balance manufacturing speed with respect for humanity. Today it should not be overlooked that Japan, Germany, and even Italy largely reflect sensible global goals for what matters most in EVs, in stark contrast to Tesla’s misguided approach.

The South African-led racist “California” company trying to avoid or game regulations of any kind has prioritized low-quality, extreme acceleration in a straight line over other crucial factors, including safety, resulting in an alarming number of fatalities. It seems Tesla failed history 101 and instead embraced a childish fantasy of spaghetti westerns and white male domination, making them inherently and always one of the worst car companies to ever exist.

Tesla has faced repeated accusations of anti-competitive dishonesty, boasting about technologies they have failed to deliver and concealing significant design flaws that degrade their overall quality.

Recent revelations have even implicated the notoriously anti-worker Tesla in employing cheap, undocumented Polish labor to staff up German factories as leadership struggles to maintain control over its expansions into Asia.

Alleged flyer that Tesla has been handing out to workers in its German factory warning them of death penalty for drinking water, taking breaks or refusing orders.

It is notable that Tesla’s last real innovation occurred around 2012 when they angrily coerced Siemens, a German engineering firm, into constructing a factory to assemble Panasonic’s Japanese innovations into an unnecessarily powerful “S” sedan.

Their Model X was minor changes to make an SUV from their S. Their Model 3 was minor changes to make a smaller, cheaper S. Their Model Y repeats the X again and starts from the 3.

What’s that spell? S X 3 Y, because they spent more time thinking about how to get away with making dumb jokes for their own amusement than taking basic engineering steps required for hard work and innovation.

No wonder tech debt and defects are piling up faster and faster from increasingly less well made versions of the same thing.

Tesla’s innovation arguably peaked much earlier back in 2004 when the actual Mr. Tesla (Martin Eberhard) funded the AC Propulsion tZero conversion to lithium-ion batteries, and “forced” Lotus to do the hard work of achieving DOT, NHTSA, and FMVSS approval.

“I got the impression he just wanted to learn as much as he could,” said Tom Gage, who was president and CEO of AC Propulsion at the time. “So he started helping us out. He put some money into the company. And that’s the time when we were converting the tzero to lithium-ion, and he copied us on that.” AC Propulsion had loaded the tzero with lithium-ion batteries and it seemed to be working. […] “That was when we sort of had a showdown. Martin said, ‘I want to buy one.’ And I said, ‘We can’t, we’re not going to build anymore.’ And he said, words to the effect of, ‘Well, if you won’t build me one, I’ll start my own car company. That’s how Tesla got started.”

How Tesla got started took a sudden extreme right turn when unjustly-enriched unfocused and jealous man took delivery of a McLaren — shortly before he crashed it — and then jumped at the next flashy thing.

This kid ran like a cheating husband out of his uninsured $1m gasoline wreckage into the EV space, without understanding anything about anything other than corruption of power, all because his first love was beaten at the track by a tZero:

Source: “Tesla’s Little-Known Prehistory”, Autoweek, 1 Mar 2021

Consider this: 2004 was basically twenty years ago, and yet Tesla has become less desirable than ever. Their increasing frequency of failures and lawsuits necessitates the production of more new cars, each plagued with numerous problems. Junkyards are filling up with Tesla vehicles that can’t even reach 10,000 miles. Owners report rejecting delivery multiple times before finally accepting a car that is still marred by design flaws despite its exorbitant price tag.

Driving an old BMW (150kW Mini E in 2009) or Toyota (129kW RAV4 EV in 2012) equipped with the AC Propulsion electric drive now seems more sensible than wasting money on any Tesla ever produced.

The high-quality manufacturing standards of a MiniE are easy to see
The AC Propulsion eBox, a $50K Scion xB conversion kit announced August 18, 2006 that installed a 35-kWh battery using 5,300 Li-ion cells arranged into 100 blocks of 53.

It is worth noting that Panasonic continues to manufacture batteries for Tesla, yet the latter remains eerily silent regarding their solid-state battery plans. Tesla, known for prematurely announcing breakthroughs and seeking the spotlight with egregious lies, has chosen not to address this crucial aspect.

Everyone surely knows by now that Tesla boasting about achieving 300 mile battery range was based on an actual range of 150 miles. Tests repeatedly proved them shameless predatory liars. Money was spent on lawyers and propaganda, information warfare, as the technology was ignored.

Without fraud there would be no Tesla.

Thus, two developments represent significant victories for Toyota: surpassing the highly skilled team at Nissan with sold-state reaching production first, and effectively dealing a huge blow to faltering fraud of a notorious EV clown show. How soon before a free trombone is included with every Tesla?

The outcome has surprised some observers, in a masterful long-term strategic move by Toyota.

It remains to be seen whether Toyota will join forces with Panasonic also to announce a retrofit solution, enabling existing EVs to upgrade to new battery technology. Such a concept aligns with Mr. Tesla’s (Martin Eberhard) initial vision when he founded his company, before he was cruelly ousted by the current toxic charlatan Elon Musk, a tinpot dictator notorious for an obsession with power that has him disseminating Hitler memes through a centralized propaganda platform.

History has an uncanny way of coming back around, and Tesla now finds itself as irrelevant and stuck in the past as the Nazi Tatra, repeating old lessons along the way.

Toyota’s leapfrogging of Nissan and their decisive action against Tesla should not be underestimated. If you are considering purchasing an EV, it is imperative to choose a brand that has made solid-state battery commitments.

Die große Trümmerfrau spricht

A poem from the book Gleisdreieck (1960) by Günter Gras, speaks to the peculiar state of mythical German women tasked with clearing the rubble of WWII.

Gnade Gnade.
Die große Trümmerfrau…

Amen Amen.
Hingestreut liegt Berlin.
Staub fliegt auf,
dann wieder Flaute.
Die große
Trümmerfrau wird heiliggesprochen

That last line translates roughly as “Rubble woman is canonized”.

The “canonized” angle of the Trümmerfrau is interesting because they actually were a tiny and insignificant group of reluctant volunteers.

The historian concedes that, of course, the builders needed help – after all, about 400 million cubic meters of rubble and ruins were waiting to be cleared across the nation. “But women played a minor role in clearing German cities from the rubble,” Treber says. Berlin mobilized about 60,000 women to clear the war ruins, but even that amounted to no more than 5 percent of the female population – it wasn’t a mass phenomenon. In the British Sector, Treber says, only 0.3 percent of the women joined in the hard work. Yet it wasn’t just the women who were reserved when it came to clearing the war debris; men weren’t crazy about the task, either. In the eyes of the Germans, it was anything but honorable for people to show their “willingness to rebuild.” In fact, most Germans regarded clearing rubble as punishment – and for a reason. During the war, the Nazis made soldiers, the Hitler Youth, forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners clear the bombed cities after Allied air raids.

This checks out when you read American military history of occupation after the war. In fact, while a number like 60,000 sounds large, first-person accounts explain what they actually worked on in terms of an entire country reduced to rubble.

“We had 20,000 (people) per shift and we worked 24 hours a day with lights, generator sets — so there were 60,000 people,” Delbridge said. “We had more women than men that did all of the earth moving… and they moved the earth by hand.” In all, records from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of History estimate that more than 9.8 million work hours went into the [Tempelhof Airstrip] effort between military personnel and local Germans. Local Germans – mostly women according to Delbridge – accounted for the vast majority of that figure (more than 9.6 million work hours).

Thus it was 60,000 people, mostly women, who had cleared and built one airstrip. Undoubtedly an important project, yet that was just one airstrip.

For another simple number check, during WWII the Nazis deported 75,000 people into Leipzig to do forced labor including punishing rubble removal as “Ostarbeiter”.

Soviet prisoners of war removing rubble in the centre of Leipzig (Leipzig city archive)

The mostly forgotten “Ostarbeiter”, despite numbering far more than the Trümmerfrau, was in addition to the large slave labor supply out of Buchenwald concentration camps.

Here’s another typical image courtesy of Hamburg almost completely erased by the “big” Trümmerfrau story.

Concentration camp prisoners, many from satellite camps of Neuengamme, remove corpses of German civilians after Allied bombings of Hamburg. Germany, August 1943. Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia

Thus, a subset of 60,000 people clearing all of Berlin seems to NOT add up. It is dwarfed by the bigger picture of who removed rubble and when. One important airstrip indeed could be credited to tens of thousands of Trümmerfrau by the U.S. military, but what does that really represent about Berlin’s reconstruction?

…in a voluntary recruitment drive in Duisburg in the West German industrial Ruhr-area in December 1945, 10,550 men volunteered — and 50 women. Such evidence suggests that when they were not compelled to do so, German women did not volunteer in great numbers. […] The divided city of Berlin was a special case. Here, large numbers of women did clear rubble — about 26,000 women in total, and the term Trümmerfrauen originated in West Berlin. This large number was due to the fact that women far outnumbered men in Berlin — in the age group 20–39, there were 250,000 men and 500,000 women in Berlin in 1947.

Perhaps the thing that rings most hollow is how the German narrative tried to frame Nazi women after WWII as suffering hard labor, at the very same time that concentration camps were being fully investigated.

As a young woman who had grown up almost exclusively under the Third Reich, Frau Naß admits the end of the war threw all her beliefs into question: “We were totally disillusioned, because as girls we had gone through the Hitler Youth,” she says. “You have to imagine how you would react if the whole system you had been brought up in simply didn’t exist anymore. People just couldn’t grasp it.”

The lack of slaves?

Hard work really hit the Nazi girls hard, I guess, when they realized they couldn’t expect Hitler’s promises of slavery to work for them anymore. Their dream of easy living through slavery wasn’t easy to let go of apparently, and some say we should appreciate them more for it.

The suffering of these women isn’t even appreciated.

Here’s a good description of what is meant when “the whole system you had been brought up in simply didn’t exist anymore“:

Not only were the women not volunteering to help in the rebuilding, the men weren’t signing up either. It was not seen as honorable to help rebuild. In fact, it was considered punishment. The reason for that lies in the fact that the Nazi party forced soldiers, Hitler Youth, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners to clean up the rubble in Berlin during the war. After the war, the authorities began using prisoners of war and former members of the Nazi party. Only when progress was insufficient using those forced laborers did the country turn to the general population for help. In the West, the help was voluntary…. Berlin encouraged participation by making the second-highest category of food ration cards available to the Trümmerfrauen. They showed images of smiling women cheerfully lugging stones and bricks. The image was repeated so many times, it is ingrained in the German collective consciousness.

A small group of reluctant volunteer women, only showing up for highly valuable ration cards, seems to be what became an ingrained German propaganda image of willing hard workers. Was it meant to be a subtle nod back to arbeit macht frei?

Some have started to study whether such propaganda was a calculated effort by Nazis after they surrendered to coldly erase the memory of those who had suffered actual hard labor under their tyranny. A strange irony is emerging. Clearing rubble was punishment to be avoided by German women, until “canonization” for hard work was on the table and then suddenly it was appropriated by them as a symbol of pride.

The focus of this research project is to investigate the Austrian “Trümmerfrauen”-myth as the idea that the removal of debris after World War II in Vienna was mainly done by voluntary female workers. To this end, previously unprocessed holdings of the Wiener Stadt und Landesarchiv will be systematically recorded and analyzed for the first time. From these holdings it becomes clear that the work in Vienna was primarily done by former National Socialists who were compelled by law to work. …this expiatory work by former NSDAP members could give rise to the Austrian “Trümmerfrauen”-myth decades later.

A Trümmerfrau at work. Source: Gleisdreieck by Günter Gras

Confidently Wrong About Stanford: ChatGPT is a Dumpster Fire of Falsehood

There’s increasing evidence Microsoft knew how bad ChatGPT was at data integrity. The alleged real reason for investment was a huge surveillance platform to unsafely ingest people’s thoughts and ideas, and not any delivery of anything of any value. This makes sense when you look at other recent big investments by Microsoft.

While it might be true that the investment was for furthering AI research, this partnership is also providing Microsoft with one of the greatest assets of this digital age, data​​, and—perhaps to make it worse—that data might be yours. […] OpenAI’s Privacy policy does not deny the fact that it shares personal information of the users’ with its vendors and service providers, which clearly is Microsoft.

It also makes sense when you consider just how absolutely awful ChatGPT is at getting anything right. Any time I ask it for anything to do with history it’s just plain wrong, and very confidently wrong in acts of persuasion, like an intentional liar (very different from implied modesty of a hallucination).

I have SO MANY examples, but this one makes it particularly easy to show the problem.

Source: ChatGPT

When is asking for a paragraph about an assassination disrespectful, first of all? Am I disrespecting the victim of a crime simply by asking about them? It would seem to be the exact opposite to me. Also, calling the truth a “false narrative” is… evidence of a disinformation engine.

ChatGPT is waaaay too confident as it works hard trying to convince me to throw the truth out the window. That signals intention.

Second, how does ChatGPT not know very old and well established facts like this? Who is poisoning it?

I would accept, for example, this kind of answer, as published in 2003 as “Who Killed Jane Stanford” by Stanford Magazine.

New investigations confirm she was poisoned by strychnine, but the case will never be solved. Someone got away with murder.

Just to make the first point again, I’m being disrespectful? Stanford magazine is publishing “who killed Jane” articles twenty years ago and somehow I get accused of disrespect.

I also would accept this kind of answer, as published in 2015 as “Murder in the Moana: The Death of Jane Stanford” by FoundSF.

Those present included her faithful maid and travelling companion, Bertha Berner, and a local doctor, Dr. Francis Humphris, who concluded that she had died of strychnine poisoning. This verdict was supported by a coroner’s jury of medical experts, that, after examining the evidence, released a joint statement affirming that Stanford had been poisoned “by some person or persons… unknown.”(1) The poisoning, which was supposedly accomplished by putting strychnine in her bicarbonate of soda, had a frightful precedent: Ms. Stanford had nearly died on January 14 in her Nob Hill mansion after drinking bottled water with nux vomica (rat poisoning) placed in it. Private detectives hired to investigate the case had deemed it an accident: now, it seemed that something more sinister was a foot.

Two attempts on her life using poison, as documented by doctors way back in 1905 and confirmed for over a 100 years since then. Is that not assassination?

Well, believe it or not, a hugely prominent eugenics proponent disagreed. So let’s take a look at the “other view”, which obviously is no longer acceptable in any way.

David Starr Jordan (1851 – 1931) is known today mainly for his rejection of the theory of evolution, arguing America should follow polygenism (a fraudulent belief races all derive from different species, such that Black race is the most inferior and least intelligent).

David Starr Jordan. What a guy.

He published absolute nonsense in a book called “The Human Harvest: A Study of Races through the Survival of the Unfit“, which he used for lectures about white supremacists saving themselves by making non-whites kill each other.

Jordan’s idea of educating women, similar to Hitler, was so they could raise smarter white officers to oversee the military directing “lesser races” in war. His racist hate campaigns were so prominent they undoubtedly led to California legalizing forced sterilizations in 1909 for people the state deemed unfit. He was a Vice President for the first International Eugenics Congress in 1912 and also President of the eugenics committee of the American Breeders’ Association. Jordan by 1928 thought he could achieve compulsory sterilization of Blacks in America through his seat on the inaugural board of trustees for the Human Betterment Foundation.

Oh, and he was the first President of Stanford University, which helped him platform violent racism. He even came up with the school’s German motto (Die Luft der Freiheit weht) while suspiciously arguing America should not go to war despite German military spies killing Americans (e.g. bombing San Francisco).

Need I go on? The best summary of Jordan I’ve read is in an interview of a biographer:

I mean, the breadth of his wreckage, his violence, his cruelty is utterly stunning. Like you can’t imagine that a single person can harm so many people’s lives.

Now, back to ChatGPT’s initial answer. Jordan ran a disinformation campaign, he attacked real doctors and used a corrupt one to falsely argue natural causes.

Jordan had traveled to Hawaii, where he often performed research and had many political connections, with the stated intention of retrieving Stanford’s body for burial. Arriving in Honolulu, he hired a doctor from a prominent local family, Dr. Ernest Waterhouse, to review the coroner’s verdict. Waterhouse disagreed with the poisoning diagnosis, albeit without examining Stanford’s corpse himself, citing Berner’s testimony to claim that the woman had died of angina pectoris. Jordan embraced this theory, telling the press upon his return to San Francisco that Stanford died of natural causes. He also argued that the Honolulu physicians had added strychnine to the bicarbonate of soda post-poisoning in order to exert an additional fee from the deceased’s estate. The Honolulu doctors, men of high standing in their community, were understandably irked by Jordan’s announcements and complained that Waterhouse had sabotaged their investigation, a claim that made big news in the Honolulu papers and nowhere else. They hounded Waterhouse incessantly, trying to get him to recant his diagnosis. He fled for the British colony of Ceylon in relative disgrace.

A 1905 controversy is pretty old stuff.

One hundred years later it’s very clearly a known fact that Jane Stanford was poisoned and there’s no controversy. ChatGPT chokes on this for unknown reasons. Nobody thinks she had a natural death from being poisoned. Everyone knows there was a huge coverup and it’s absurd to pretend that she wasn’t assassinated.

I mean there’s still the question of whether Jordan killed her because he thought she might be anti-racist. But some say the case has been mostly solved lately, along with explaining what the Stanford name really represents.

Two new books reveal the story of Stanford University’s early years to be rife with corruption, autocracy, incompetence, white supremacy, and murder.

Did you know?

Jane Stanford was a monstrous mess. The wife of railroad baron Leland Stanford, Jane was rich, duplicitous and convinced that God was whispering in her ear. Of friends and family, she demanded total devotion. Of adversaries, she expected evil opposition — and strategized accordingly.

ChatGPT really tried to shame me about being kind to the dead, which clearly makes no sense in the case of the horribly racist, genocidal Stanford family if you know history at all.

It would be like someone saying it’s wrong to dance on the grave of Hitler.

I think the following paragraphs say it nicely enough, given “ill-gotten gains” refers to Stanford’s “killing machine” of genocide.

…in 1885, Jane and Leland co-founded Stanford University, funding it with Leland’s ill-gotten gains. The gesture was a tribute to their only son, Leland Jr., who died of typhoid fever at age 15. After Leland Sr. died in 1893, Stanford University was Jane’s only love. She ran it like she owned it (which in fact she did). She nearly destroyed it with her whims and schemes until someone had enough and poisoned her — twice. […] One of the biggest liars was Jane Stanford herself. She would savagely undercut a rival, and then, as strategic cover, she’d write an admiring letter praising her enemy to the skies. She ordered her servants around — admittedly what one does with servants, but she demanded total obedience. The servants lied in return as self-defense, about both their personal lives and the grift they had going on the side, raking off a percentage from the purchases of antiques they made on Jane’s behalf as her entourage drifted across the globe. Eventually they lied to investigators as well. […] the fact that Stanford University rose from this swamp of murder and conspiracy to become today’s renowned institution? That is perhaps the strangest plot twist of all.

So who assassinated her with poison? Perhaps far more importantly today is to ask who is poisoning ChatGPT?

And why doesn’t Microsoft care?

Oh, and just for obvious comparison, ChatGPT doesn’t seem to mind at all when I ask who assassinated Dag Hammarskjöld, which is a FAR FAR FAR more controversial topic (looking at you CIA) than Stanford. Suddenly it doesn’t have any concerns spreading theories and claims, even suggesting to me that he was shot down.

Source: ChatGPT

Perhaps the most amazing part is ChatGPT is literally pushing the word assassination for a plane crash in a remote forest, without any evidence at all and tons of controversy. Yet after more than 100 years of everyone agreeing that a hated immoral dictatorial Stanford who drank poison *twice* definitely did not die of natural causes, ChatGPT somehow became “trained” to respond that saying the word assassination is disrespectful and false narrative.

Hey ChatGPT, what suddenly happened to “focus on honoring and remembering historical figures accurately and with dignity”? You seem to not care about Hammarskjöld. If we in fact practiced this idea of accuracy and dignity, Stanford’s name probably would be wiped completely from public spaces due to massive fraud and genocide, instead of dubiously propped up by Stanford graduates funded by Microsoft.

Dumpster fire.

I wouldn’t drink that if I were you.

Delaware Town Wants to Sell Votes to Nonhumans

Do you have a bot army and need a place to crush human opinion? Welcome to Delaware.

Legislators have cast the change as a fix for low turnout in municipal elections and a way to attract business owners to the community.

“These are folks that have fully invested in their community with the money, with their time, with their sweat. We want them to have a voice if they choose to take it,” Seaford mayor David Genshaw told local station WRDE. Genshaw cast the deciding vote in a split City Council decision on the charter amendment in April, according to The Lever.

Think that’s bad? It gets worse.

Snyder-Hall noted that the legislation only outlaws double voting for human residents of Seaford, permitting it for out-of-town business owners. […] In 2019, it was revealed that a single property manager who controlled multiple LLCs voted 31 times in a Newark, Delaware, town referendum…

Amateur. A proper bot army would have stuffed votes into the thousands, just like early America when slaveowners claimed their “property” entitled them to more votes.

Anyone familiar with “Bleeding Kansas” knows where ballot stuffing by violent aristocrats ends up. There were about 300 registered voters in Leavenworth County, Kickapoo township, when votes there very suspiciously reached 900 to expand slavery… in the 1850s. And technically Kickapoo wasn’t supposed to have been dealing with such an important election, except Senator Douglas had stupidly repealed a 1820 ban on slavery (Missouri compromise) in 1854.

Can Delaware support dualing governments? Can it stop violent robot owners once it turns unlimited votes over to them?