Tesla boasts it is built in America by Americans, yet it doesn’t pay those Americans, and forces them into bankruptcy.

As Musk has relied on small businesses to help him grow his multibillion-dollar empire, many contractors claim they were not paid – and at least two say they were forced into bankruptcy as a result, according to a CNN review of civil lawsuits and construction liens against companies including Tesla, SpaceX and X.

Even an attorney representing the carmaker in Meissner’s bankruptcy case acknowledged that Tesla has a habit of not promptly paying its bills.

“I don’t disagree that it does take Tesla some time to pay,” the attorney said in court last year, adding “that goes for legal bills, too … I know it full well.”

In Texas, where Musk has been rapidly expanding operations, contractors have filed liens for more than $110 million against Tesla in the last five years, with more than $24 million still allegedly owed to dozens of businesses, CNN’s analysis shows.

Even the lawyer representing Tesla says it’s unfair, as I’ve written about before.

The key effect described here seems to be that more weaker bonds help stronger bonds avoid absorbing too much stress individually.

The new work builds on a 2023 study from Craig and Jeremiah Johnson, the A. Thomas Guertin Professor of Chemistry at MIT, and their colleagues. In that work, the researchers found that, surprisingly, incorporating weak crosslinkers into a polymer network can make the overall material stronger. When materials with these weak crosslinkers are stretched to the breaking point, any cracks propagating through the material try to avoid the stronger bonds and go through the weaker bonds instead. This means the crack has to break more bonds than it would if all of the bonds were the same strength.

This is well-known already in studies of the human body, where many smaller muscles working together are considered safer and stronger to a few big ones.

From bad to worse, the new lawsuit by a security professional says Tesla was setup and managed like the Jim Crow South.

Working conditions at Tesla’s manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, have allegedly gone from bad to worse, with sexual assaults aboard company shuttle buses, drug and alcohol use onsite, all-out brawls breaking out between employees and “prevalent” bigotry – including widespread use of the N-word, a bombshell lawsuit reveals.

In a 159-page federal lawsuit filed Thursday and obtained first by The Independent, Ozell Murray, a former Fresno police officer in charge of security at the 22,000-person factory, claims he and his team “routinely” seized cocaine and fentanyl onsite…

Apparently the CEO even tried to normalize extreme racist abuse of non-white staff.

Murray’s supervisor… counseled him that Murray should be informing all new Black security personnel that the use of the ‘N-word’ was simply engrained [sic] in the culture at Tesla and, so, Murray should only be bringing aboard that are willing to accept and acquiesce to the prevalence of that word in the workplace. …an employee who had been previously victimized “had to actually resume working with their attacker and tormentor.”

Police raided bookstores in Kashmir this week to confiscate books by respected scholars and historians.

The authors named in this ban – Snedden, Schofield, Bose – are serious academics, far from propagandists. Perhaps to state the obvious, democratic societies don’t need to ban tepid scholarly books when government positions are strong on the merits. If India’s legal and moral case were unassailable, scholarly examination wouldn’t be criminalized.

Particularly notable is banning A.G. Noorani’s constitutional analyses, as one of India’s most respected legal scholars. If the state’s constitutional position were even a little bit sound, his work would be debated in context of the usual and useful scholarly work, instead of abruptly banned.

The bans also extend to historical accounts of what happened in 1947-48 (e.g. Pakistan independence from Britain), suggesting there’s an attempt to monopolize not just current policy but rewrite historical interpretations.

To make a finer point, the bans try to silence legitimate questions of regular political science.

• Why was the promised UN plebiscite never held?
• Was the Maharaja’s accession valid given the circumstances?
• What about documented human rights violations by security forces?
• How do we account for the massive military presence needed to maintain control?
• Why do many Kashmiris still reject integration after 77 years?

These aren’t on the fringe or conspiracy theories. They are documented concerns raised by international observers, UN reports, and human rights organizations. You know, the kind of pacifist stuff people are supposed to be debating to help avoid an abrupt escalation into militancy. The threat of 7-year prison sentences, for even being caught in possession of these ideas, isn’t messing around.

Why does a region need over a half million security forces to silence thought, if societal integration is supposedly a done deal and accepted?

Think about the stark irony of the ban. India positions itself as the world’s largest democracy, claiming superiority over Pakistan’s military-influenced governance and China’s authoritarianism. Yet Kashmir experiences severe lockdowns on the press, Internet shutdowns are routine (the 2019-2020 shutdown was the longest ever in a democracy), political speakers are detained under anti-terror laws, and now academic books are banned.

Can you see a massive credibility gap between India’s self-image and practices in Kashmir?

India is escalating tensions, closing off paths to genuine resolution. Real peace usually requires acknowledging difficult truths, the opposite of banning books that discuss them. What’s particularly striking is that the banned authors are known for proposing peaceful, negotiated solutions. The police raids to silence pacifists signals clearly that a narrative outside official doctrine – even the most common form of constructive criticism – has been marked unacceptable. That’s the opposite of what should happen in a confident democracy dealing with a settled issue.