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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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I think I found some potential timestamp fraud in government we should be looking at.

"DOGE is working 120 hours a week," Musk said Sunday on X. "Our bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week. That is why they are losing so fast."

No one is working 120 hours a week.

That leaves 7 hours a day (yes including weekends) for anything else that isn't working so they wouldn't be getting good enough sleep, they're not showering, they're not messaging their families, and all the fun Doomscrolling on social media Musk seems to have time for. And if they are spending lots of time not doing work while working (like other office jobs) then they should be revising down to reflect that they're counting their shower times and twitter scroll times. I don't get to claim I did 50 hours of work because every morning I get up, poop, brush my teeth and shower and commute taking up roughly an hour and the time I spend driving back and getting gas and other parts of life. (Edit: Also for musk specifically, what about all the other jobs he's supposed to be doing? Are we supposed to believe this man never sleeps?)

80 hours? Definitely possible.

100? Really pushing it.

120 for a sustained period? That's a lie. They're either lying or are doing other things while claiming they work which is also a lie. And either they're actually clocking in 120 (in which case that's a really strong sign of timestamp fraud) or he's lying about their hours worked to everyone else.

Why bring this up? Well Musk keeps lying, about a lot of things. They famously lied about the amount of money they cut forcing them to delete it.

He lied about social security by implying that all the people on numident were falsely receiving benefits

BBC verify did a debunking of the Gaza condom claims, he mislead people about FEMA spending being spent on migrant housing (they administered over funding from a separate program and none was using from normal FEMA funds), etc etc.

And in general the way I think about liars is these two points

1: We need to ask "why are they lying?". Why claim you're working 120 hours a day when it's obviously not true? Why mislead people on social security fraud or FEMA spending? Why lie?

It could be that they were trying to do something properly, could not find actual good evidence but wanted to save face. It could be that they have an ulterior motive. It could be that they're genuinely incompetent with what they are doing. But there is a reason and understanding that is important.

2: Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. When a known liar keeps making misleading or false claims, it's on us to stop taking the things they say at face value. Fool us again, shame on us. Whenever Musk makes a claim about fraud or waste or hours spent working, we should discard him as a tainted source. It's not to say he can't be telling the truth about something, but this water spout is corrupted and we should draw from the clean river of truth somewhere else. He can bring the receipts if he wants to be believed.

Edit: To be clear here the possibility here is.

  1. He's just straight up lying in general

  2. They do work a whole lot but they're including things like showering and brushing teeth and other morning/night activities in their time which is not normal and highly misleading.

  3. They're seriously truthful and they're working off less than 7 hours of sleep every day of the week for months not doing basic human things like showering, brushing their teeth, cleaning up their trash, or taking breaks ever. Or maybe they fit that in by only doing 6 and a half hours of sleep perpetually instead. Either way they are superhumans but disgusting ones.

Most likely it's just the first

Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

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Using statements by Musk and his team to draw a line is good. Extrapolating that line to a general “them” is less good. You could fix that by more narrowly tailoring your claims about just who is losing credibility.

The biggest issue is framing your conclusions as our conclusions. We need to investigate. We should discard him. No. This is a discussion, not a petition. Please don’t speak for everyone.

Also, the CW threads roll over on Mondays. Should you revise this, it’ll probably get more traction in this week’s thread.

Them is a pronoun used to refer to a prior named person and/or group. I know people are used to conspiracy "Them" usage as some vague Illuminati Jewish Conspiracy, but it's also just normal English.

The biggest issue is framing your conclusions as our conclusions. We need to investigate. We should discard him. No. This is a discussion, not a petition. Please don’t speak for everyone.

My thoughts on what people should do when seeing misinformation doesn't mean others have to follow it. I think we should call the police about a break-in but that doesn't mean a person has to if they got robbed.