This morning I was reading about the Volkswagen Kübelwagen, the Nazi-era military vehicle. Which a Brazilian Paulo Sérgio Renha used as an inspiration for the Formigão, based on a VW Beetle chassis.
'Free Speech Champion' Elon Musk Promises Trump Will 'Go After' You If You Say Bad Things https://www.wonkette.com/p/free-speech-champion-elon-musk-promises
Fire at Tesla dealership near Rome destroys 17 cars https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/31/europe/tesla-cars-fire-rome-intl/index.html Has anybody considered it's Elon burning them to get the insurance money? Nobody was going to buy them anyway.
When Elon Musk Hears About Lives He's Destroyed, He Reportedly Responds With Laugh-Cry Emojis https://futurism.com/elon-musk-lives-destroyed-respond-laugh-cry-emojis As billionaire Elon Musk continues to ravage the government's budget with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, sources inside the White House are increasingly getting fed up with his antics. As Rolling Stone reported today, some senior State Department officials have come to call him "Crazy Uncle Elon," a nod towards his grating persona. But the story contained another alarming revelation: the depth of Musk's antipathy toward the people's whose lives he's been turning upside down. The effects of the budget cuts he's overseen so far have been devastating, to say the least. Tens of thousands of federal employees have been fired. Lifesaving aid and research are being canceled, and the nation's Social Security system is hanging on by a thread. Just last week, the Social Security Administration wrongfully informed some recipients of Supplemental Security Income, financial assistance for disabled Americans and low-income senior citizens, that they were no longer receiving benefits, causing chaos. But to Musk, the massive amount of hurt he's inflicting on all those people has come as a source of amusement. According to Rolling Stone, the billionaire has been reacting with laugh-crying emojis to reports of federal staffers' lives being upended. The reporting highlights the richest man in the world's active disdain for federal employees. Case in point, earlier this year, Musk retweeted a post that blamed the atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong on public sector workers. Workers who haven't yet been caught up in the sweeping layoffs will have to contend with a very different working environment and a new level of workplace scrutiny. Earlier this week, news emerged that DOGE was using AI to monitor federal workers for anti-Trump sentiment. Musk also blasted out an email in February, requiring all federal employees to report what "they got done last week." "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation," Musk wrote in the email. A day later, several federal agencies told employees not to respond to the demand, sowing even more confusion. Employees have also had to deal with Musk's army of teenage and early-2o-something operatives who have threatened officials and grilled Pentagon employees about guarded information, per Rolling Stone. In short, Musk's gutting of the federal government isn't just falling far short of saving $1 trillion, as he'd previously promised. It's also being led by a billionaire who is reportedly getting a kick out of making federal employees' lives as miserable as possible. How long the cruel farce will keep going remains unclear. According to the president, Musk will be leaving his post in the upcoming months, a move that'll likely come as a big sigh of relief for countless federal workers.