Are they into crypto? I bet they're into crypto.
My brother was very into BitCoin but he had the common sense to already be disillusioned, and he disinvested.
I spent years being anti-Elon Musk but now the Atrioses of the world have almost* pushed me into being anti-anti-Elon Musk. I should probably stop letting my opinions be driven by emotional annoyance with bozos on the internet, but on the other hand who cares about my opinions.
*only almost, Elon Musk sucks
I'm moderately pro, as I have mentioned before, on the grounds that we are apparently inevitably going to have very very rich people in the world for the foreseeable future;
and if that is the case then very very rich people who are sincerely trying to solve major problems that will affect the future welfare of humanity (like reducing carbon emissions) are better than very very rich people who are sincerely trying to elect Benjamin Netanyahu, or very very rich people who are sincerely trying to roll back all pollution legislation, or very very rich people who are sincerely trying to bring about a Christian dictatorship, or very very rich people who are molesting young women with impunity, or even just very very rich people who are spending millions on sailing huge pointless yachts.
I mean, I see no real reason to have very very rich people at all. But apparently that's not going to change any time soon.
Yeah 4 seems reasonable. More importantly I'd like to give a hale and hearty FUCK YOU to anyone on the "left" who is into slagging the rich dbag who makes electric cars for beimg a rich dbag while ignoring that at exactly the same time the Trump administration os for real removing fuel economy standards on American cars on ridiculous pretenses. If tou're more worried about Musk than actual vehicle fuel economy standards you can fucking eat me.
I agree with 4. I don't understand the Musk cult in the self-styled "rationalist" community, but I don't get the excessive hate either.
Launching sports cars into space is kind of silly, but at least he's spending his money on that instead of on voter suppression or undermining health care reforms or destroying the public education system, like so many other billionaire assholes.
5
"exactly the same time" is a little rich given that Trump announced his fuel economy changes like an hour ago.
I've said for a while that I find Musk annoying, but I root for his projects to succeed, because I think they would be socially positive if they live up to the hype.
Also, I'll admit to being petty, the thing which most makes me roll my eyes at him is when I happen to see some mention of whatever woman he's currently dating (apparently Grimes at the moment). That's a completely unfair way to judge people but it just makes him not seem like a serious person.
He's the NPR of billionaire dbags! We love to hate him because we think he's capable of so much more.
Musk donated donated $38,900 in June to "Protect the House", a committee dedicated to preserving the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives.
The link in 8 is bizarre because it starts out being superficial about Musk's girlfriend looking like a teenager, and then acts like it's maintaining a continuous thought as it discusses how Musk's dad impregnated his step-daughter (when she was 30 and he was 72.)
FWIW, he was considerably less insane and arseholey on yesterday's Tesla earnings call than the previous one. Though he did almost immediately contradict the company's own production forecast, which would be somewhat worrying if I were an investor.
If you compare him to Henry Ford, it helps.
It is possible to criticize Musk while thinking the Kochs are worse. Obviously so much worse that it doesn't even have to be said.
I'd love to invest in Tesla, but I have no confidence in their lasting power. They might pull it off, but they're scarily leveraged and Musk does not inspire. But given the cult of personality, I'm also not confident that it's time to short them yet.
I can't stand him. And I hope his hyperloop project fails badly and soon. We need to be spending public money on mass transit not hoping billionaires will save our ass by giving us all our own personal tubes in underground tunnels.
And yes, the Koch's are a thousand times worse. That should go without saying.
Elon Musk is the most hilarious billionaire and therefore my favorite. Well, not my favorite, but up there. Maybe fifth to last up against the wall? His marginal evil is minor and he takes himself so seriously. It's great.
15: I thought he set up hyperloop so it couldn't fail in any way easily ascribable to him - he open-sourced the concept so other groups could try and fail. It looks like SpaceX is convening competitions.
15: I thought he set up hyperloop so it couldn't fail in any way easily ascribable to him - he open-sourced the concept so other groups could try and fail. It looks like SpaceX is convening competitions.
Pretty much, though in theory the Boring Company was set up to do tunnelling for it. In practice it seems to be set up to get conventional tunnelling contracts from municipalities on the back of wild claims about costs savings and speed increases, none of which seem to be backed up by any actual engineering innovations.
Your original take is correct. I have no opinion about Musk, and am perplexed that I'm always hearing about him, and online it seems like an Urgent Matter To Have An Opinion About Him. He's like the tech billionaire Kim Kardashian.
I found Musk mildly annoying as a person before he inserted himself into the Thai cave rescue and moreso after. Tesla's financial troubles and the price tag on their cars make it seem more like it's selling an image and status symbol more than an product with an actually useful niche, so any pretense that he's changing the world or anything silly like that, is... pretentious.
On the other hand, I agree with the hive mind here, he's no more harmful than most billionaires and less harmful than many. As for 10, any money given to a Republican is bad, but what is that as a fraction of his total contributions?
Elon Musk gets a lot of flak online because he spends his time getting into (and hilariously losing) fights with web comic creators instead of just sailing around on his yacht that has a smaller yacht on it.
That said, 4 is about where I am overall on Musk.
I mean 20.last. Though I too agree with 4.
Come on, he sucks. His guiding principle seems to be that humans should never have to be near other humans in public. What are Tesla and Hyperloop but insanely over-engineered reactions to the horror of public transit? Who cares that anyone is worse? I've got plenty of hate to go around.
Because the opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference.
Reasons for people in general to dislike Musk
- going around like the Simpsons Monorail guy claiming to have the solution to things like public transit and cave boy rescue while actual experts in the relevant fields respond the way actual medical testing people responded to Theranos (unique to Musk)
- acts like an immature asshole/cocaine fiend on social media (unique to Musk)
- treats workers badly (not exactly unique, and at least his factory makes things that benefit society)
- gets monumental government subsidies while claiming to be the embodiment of private enterprise (not exactly unique, but I think people actually believe it with him)
Reasons for investors to dislike Musk
- managerial incompetence (constantly distracting himself with new projects, stories that keep emerging about the car factory)
- managerial shell games with company structure
- see above point about government subsidies
What investor doesn't love government subsidies?
In fairness, the maximal-distance-between-humans theory doesn't accommodate the space capsules very well.
Do people tweeting shit about Elon Musk have to sign an affidavit that they care more about emissions standards?
I bet he could think of a 2-minute pitch for an app to do that with.
That'd be nice, but I'd settle for some evidence that people cared at all.
Anyhow, the Musk thing is pretty simple. Electric cars are good, having electric cars are good, Musk personally is a dbag, the hyperloop is dumb, the end. Ultimately Walt modified by 4 is right.
The theory I liked more (maybe heard here?) is that Musk prefers industries that get significant direct government subsidies...oh, I see ned covered that. All of ned's points are good.
Fair trade: everyone who says bad things about Musk has to sign the emissions affidavit. Everyone who says good things about Musk needs to spend an hour underwater in his child coffin mini sub designed and made overnight.
And they could hardly object. They are muskboys, after all.
"you know what's more important than climate change? My dipshit resentments, including resentment against a particular preposterous rich asshole"
Most people wouldn't confess to thinking that way, but I suppose most people, when you get down to revealed preference, actually do think that way. We deserve our fucking fate, myself included.
Apart from the lump-of-hate fallacy ogged called out, resenting Musk, or celebrating his downfall if it happens, doesn't affect climate change either way. EVs are being developed all over the world, and whatever contribution Tesla made to that happening* has already been made.
*I've no idea what that contribution is, or if it can be quantified. I'd be interested in any serious analysis people know of there.
resenting Musk, or celebrating his downfall if it happens, doesn't affect climate change either way. EVs are being developed all over the world, and whatever contribution Tesla made to that happening* has already been made.
Yeah no. I'm not even arguing against hating Musk (he's an asshole!) but Tesla's collapse would be fucking terrible for climate policy at least in this country, where it's both the marquee EV brand and a lobbyist for more pro-EV policy. How terrible, who knows, but terrible. The *best* not-just-"I hate that dude" argument for hating Musk is that he's personally a problem for Tesla.
But I wasn't trying to say in 38, at all, that hating Musk is ipso facto ignoring climate change. It's more a general point about where people put their emotional priority, and it's probably true for almost everyone.
The hardcore Musk stans are almost as weird as the Qanon cult.
"you know what's more important than climate change? My dipshit resentments, including resentment against a particular preposterous rich asshole"
Did you have any specific dipshits in mind, or are you just strawmanning? Because I'm all for calling out dipshits, but I'm not familiar with anyone on the left whose particularly cool with Trump's position on fuel standards.
Question of priority - I don't know of anyone who is explicitly saying that taking down Elon Musk is more important than fuel economy standards. But revealed by what people are talking about what do they actually care about? This isn't unique at all to leftists btw.
Yeah, certainly, people don't work that way. We don't assign maximal emotional priority to the most dreadful existential threats all the time because that's exhausting and largely self-defeating.
So it's a weird situation: I don't think you don't really disagree with me on anything (I'm almost exactly with you on 40), except you'd prefer I express those thoughts less because it reflects an emotional misprioritization. But I don't think what we talk about here (or Twitter) necessarily corresponds to underlying preferences that well. This is a fuck around website, for fucking around. It is fun to mildly dunk on the douchebag billionaire, and so that's going to occur more than might be warranted if we were all perfectly rational actors.
And honestly--and yeah, this sucks--energy to discuss existential threats has probably gone down over the past two years. We're all concerned with Trump ruining everything, too--I mean, really, that's the most obvious thing in the world, right?--but that doesn't mean we're necessarily going to talk about all the particular issues you're concerned about at the rate you'd prefer.
You know, people can only talk so much about whatever fresh horrors Trump is unleashing any given week. Just because they'd like to take a break and talk about some other shit for a while doesn't mean they don't also hate Trump.
I mean hell, you aren't talking about Trump's fuel economy standards either - you are talking about how hippies piss you off.
Exactly the motherfucking point I was making, so now you're pissing me off.
I think we should celebrate Mossy's theorising the lump of hatred fallacy. The discovery that there is no lump of hatred is possibly the most important lesson of 25 years of life online.
[Christ, there are now people voting who have never known a world without web browsers.]
Halford's gonna buy a Tesla if you guys don't stop dunking on Musk.
I suppose I should accept that for some people, fucking around means complaining that other people aren't expressing worry in the exact same way they do. We all relax in our own ways.
49.2: It won't be long before there will be people voting who have no real conception of physical information media.
I think he's doing some good things while at the same time being sort of a douche. The web-comic site Wait But Why has a Unified Musk Theory derived from interviewing him (multiple?) times.
It goes like this (much paraphrased):
1. He is worried about the future of humanity.
2. He believes climate change could totally kill us off.
3. He believes a big-ass asteroid is likely to wipe us out at some future point.
4. He's also worried about AI.
Therefore:
* We need to stop or reverse climate change, and the biggest bang for the buck on that is to develop big-ass batteries for renewable-energy storage. To develop big-ass batteries you need demand for batteries. Tesla exists to provide demand for ever-better big batteries. He's also got a solar-panel roof shingle in some state of development, btw. I think profits from batteries were originally supposed to help pay for SpaceX. Kinda the opposite now, if anything.
* To stop a big-ass asteroid we need to get into space so we can move it or destroy it before it hits us. SpaceX gets us up there to do that (and provides other benefits).
* If we can't stop climate change we need to get away from our broken planet. SpaceX does that, too.
* Presumably he hates AIs because he thinks they threaten our future. Not sure what he's doing about that other than muttering darkly about it.
* I don't know where the Boring Company comes in, it started after the above article was published.
(The WBW guy is a total Musk fanboy, or was when I read the article that I'm mangling above, so many grains of salt are recommended.)
I suppose I should accept that for some people, fucking around means complaining that other people aren't expressing worry in the exact same way they do. We all relax in our own ways.
That's fair, if annoying. But some shit is legitimately way more important than other shit. It's fine to traffic in the unimportant shit, everyone does, but we should all recognize its total fucking worthlessness.
As well as our own worthlessness for being concerned with it.
At the end of the internet lies the only real truth: Everyone should just shut the fuck up about their fucking takes about everything.
53: It's more that I don't disagree with your points but I find your way of expressing them holier-than-thou (sometimes at the meta level), aggressive, and off-putting. I would rather learn to take whatever use of them that I can, instead of getting annoyed and frustrated and thus ignoring what's right in your message. Honestly, I have a lot to work on there.
54: You should hang out with the Buddha and Wittgenstein, I bet you'd have a lot to not talk about.
Ogged & Barry covered it for me, adding only tgat EM's amplification and mobilization of attacks on public transit & government provided services in general is gross & cynical (see subsidies) but really harmful bc of disproportionate impacts on poor and non white people. Also for a technical person he doesn't seem to have any grasp of urban geometry. I don't care if your car is electric & powered by renewable sources, in a city of reasonable density single person vehicles are always going to impose externalities & over reliance on them v v problematic. There is a place for single person vehicles in a city, but not as a primary mode of transit for majority (even if in underground tunnel tubettes).
There was a great FT interview with a very smart, experienced urban transit dude who EM had picked a fight with, no time to find it but dude concisely articulated a reasonable take on urban transport design. Worth looking up if interested.
It was easy to find! Good read: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/01/26/2198114/a-conversation-about-how-public-transport-really-works/
55 - I dunno exactly what your deal is, but if it helps, what I have to say on this site is essentially worthless bullshit, so feel free to just get pissed off.
I have been fascinated by the several assholes who became billionaires by convincing investors they could lose money on every sale and make up for it with volume. E.g. Uber, MoviePass, GroupOn, Twitter, even Amazon for a few decades. All are detestable, but Musk is less detestable than the others because he produces a physical product that works pretty well, and that some people like.
I have been fascinated by the several assholes who became billionaires by convincing investors they could lose money on every sale and make up for it with volume.
Well, Amazon is now making profits, and careening toward quasi-monopoly status that would promise much more. That may have breathed new life into the proposition, which Uber is similarly going for. (Twitter, Snapchat, etc., by contrast, I have no idea.)
...because he produces a physical product that works pretty well, and that some people like.
Technically, I do that same every morning after my oatmeal and coffee.
Well, Amazon is now making profits, and careening toward quasi-monopoly status that would promise much more.
But on the scale of their revenues, going from red to black is meaningless That is, if you invest a million dollars in something, whether 10 years later the inflation-adjusted sale price is $1 more or less than $1M doesn't define whether it was a good investment.
As for potential monopoly profit, even if you stipulate that governments wouldn't do anything about this, there's quite a bit of evidence that online shopping isn't very sticky at all. You have to clear a threshold of convenience and speed, but the bottom line is... the bottom line. If Amazon jacked up their prices, people would start buying from others again (and the global supply chain is such that Amazon can't literally create a monopoly, where barriers to entry are so high that no one can enter the market if/when they jack up prices).
Because of 62, most people who worry about Amazon as a monopolist think that its monopoly power (and thus profits) will work in some much more subtle way than simply jacking up prices at some point. Like, for example, it will get people so used to its platform, and be so able to predatory-price selectively when it needs to, that it will be able to keep competitors at bay for a long time while working as a monopsonist on suppliers, keeping consumer prices relatively low and taking its profits by hammering suppliers. And also that it will have enough cash and power to find new business areas (i.e. like AWS) to take over and monetize, even if margins on retail stay low, simply because it will be so world-dominant and will have unique opportunities to use platform and network effects etc. etc.
I dunno that I find all of that super-convincing, since it seems like they'll have to keep very-low-margin pricing for consumer goods forever and will be constantly at risk of investors calling their bluff. Which would seem to mean that either investors subsidize consumers' benefit from Amazon, kinda like we have now, with big benefits to consumers (and costs to other businesses, but antitrust is about competition not competitors dontcha know) or else Amazon's retail business goes under and it's no longer a monopolist. But a lot of people much smarter than I am about these things seem convinced.
Psychologically, I suspect people are also happy to invest in something changing and growing, because eking out slim, steady profits with brick-and-mortar retail doesn't offer much more prospects than already exists. (Of course, both Amazon and Walmart exploit workers out the wazoo, they're not very differentiated there.)
Birds have an undifferentiated wazoo.
Good things about Elon Musk:
1. His large multi-ethnic family.
2. "Humans should never have to be near other humans in public."
3. Every so often a Tesla owner's car ignites.
I care very, very little about Elon Musk, but what is it that people have against the cars? I have never driven one, but they seem like such nice upstanding cars that never hit me or honk at me or tailgate me. They seem like the most innocuous things on earth.
As with a few others here, most of my dislike of Musk is based on his trying to undermine public transit with unfeasible, expensive proposals. (And also because it's due to his explicitly expressed distaste for riding transit with other people.) I don't have a big opinion on Tesla except that electric cars don't mean much in the very large proportion of the US where coal is still like 40% of electricity generation.
67: They seem to have a lot of manufacturing defects, in addition to the criticisms in 69. Not sure that they have many more manufacturing defects than anyone else, but they seem to have problems with things (like leaks) that would be unusual in a "normal" car.
70 Also things like catching on fire.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the cars per se. I just think that any car that costs more than twice the median income should, from time to time, assault its owner.
I don't have a big opinion on Tesla except that electric cars don't mean much in the very large proportion of the US where coal is still like 40% of electricity generation.
This is one of those things that depends a lot on the specifics, but at least in some cases an electric car powered 100% by coal generation is still a net improvement because the coal plant is more efficient than a gasoline engine.
You should retract 69 as anti-environmentalist garbage for a number of reasons. First, most electric cars are sold in states (mostly California) which generate essentially no power from coal. Second, and a more important, coal is now around 30% of current generation in the US as a whole, and declining rapidly as a percentage of US electric generation (this will be true regardless of Trump) so bringing in a lot more electric cars (with accompanying infrastructure) will see increasing benefits over time even in areas that have more coal generation. Third, even in the absolute worst generation-regimes in the US (basically parts of the Rocky Mountains) the equivalent emissions even from a fully coal powered power plant are equivalent to an extremely high (by US standards) MPG car (like, 35-40mpg). So there's absolutely a reason in even the worst power-generating areas to want to move people into electric cars. Obviously it's also extremely important to move US power generation (even more) off of coal and that will make electric car use even more important and necessary.
Obviously, 74 isn't an endorsement of Teslas specifically, but it is really really dumb to say that electric cars aren't a good idea.
Also, I am 100% on board with criticizing Elon Musk's dumb transit schemes. But they have had approximately zero impact on the world, and won't (unless he can somehow use the Boring Company to build subway tunnels, which he probably can't). On the other hand, the electric car company is real and operational.
40:
Tesla's collapse would be fucking terrible for climate policy at least in this country
1. America isn't the world. Other people are electrifying anyway. The US auto industry might get left in the dust but that's not exactly a new development.
2. That said, America is a very big chunk of the world, so I'll amend 39 to say hating Musk personally, distinct from Tesla, is a wash.
(note that the thing I linked in 74 is from 2012, and since then US reliance on coal for power generation has dropped a lot, making EVs even more important)
they seem like such nice upstanding cars that never hit me or honk at me or tailgate me. They seem like the most innocuous things on earth.
AITIHMB, I drive more carefully around the Model X, which I've started to associate with unpredictable braking patterns and cutting me off so close that I have to hit the brakes hard. I get cut off a lot because assholes rule the roads in the Bay Area, so I probably wouldn't feel more aware of the Model X if it weren't for the braking patterns.
And also there was that one time a Model X pulled out of a driveway in front of me so close that for the first time in my life I just had to hit the brakes and hope for the best, barely avoiding a crash. The driver just blithely drove off like nothing had happened.
Whether it's autopilot or the type of person who drives the Model X, one thing is clear: this is totally not confirmation bias and I'm not just imaginging things.*
*To be explicit, it could be just random! But I also think the Model X is ugly so don't tell me things that keep me from hating it.
"they have had approximately zero impact on the world" - in the world i live in public transit relies on political support, and that is undermined by EM's and similar bozos' lazy swipes that become smart-assed received "wisdom."
What dq said. A lot of the good in EV R&D and PR that Musk has done is offset by undermining popular support for public transit. Plenty of people are working on EVs without talking shit about mass transit. I have a lot of hate to go around, RH. Don't piss in my cornflakes.
I'm now trying to decide whether I'm curious enough to look for an analysis of the manufacturing issues at Tesla (i.e. is it culture, sourcing, more idiosyncratic blind spots?), or if I'm going to keep reading about crypto-Muslims in early modern Iberia. Maybe I can somehow connect the two, although probably not before I fall asleep.
I would totally believe that my benign interactions with the Tesla fleet are not typical, maybe in part because they're slightly more likely to be "environmentalist" signalling here in the East Bay vs "Silicon Valley status symbol" signalling further south?
2nd 83.
The bit I've read about Tesla manufacturing problems say it's basically mismanagement: premature optimization of production lines, premature expansion, premature launches of new models, all resulting in inventory and QC problems. Generally, failure to adopt industry best practice.
Cars made in tents, no parts, fires, anti-unionization...
Yeah, 69 is the kind of rubbish that people like Scott Pruitt come up with, combining as it does bad reasoning, strategic vagueness and outright lying.
Also: Hyperloop is undoubtedly a very strange and very possibly impractical idea, but it is none the less a form of public transport; the proposal was for capsules carrying 20-30 people, if I remember.
But you're right that Musk's hatred for all forms of public transport means that he would never announce, for example, a Tesla minibus explicitly aimed at the public transport market.
Oh, wait.
https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/master-plan-part-deux
Is it a good time for ekranoplan news? It's always a good time for ekranoplan news.
Judges will also accept airship news.
87: yes, I saw that! All sounds extremely promising...
I've posted on things related to him on the premise that he seems to generate a splash and maybe people will argue.
Oh, how well she knows us.
As I posted earlier, Tesla is a way-station in Musk's plans to develop super-large-capacity batteries for electricity storage. They already sell house-level batteries, but not that many. Electricity comes from many sources, but the batteries don't care. Whining about how some electricity comes from coal is ridiculous, in a "the perfect is the enemy of the good" way. Yes, we obviously should all wait until we have perfected clean, green fusion power a la the Back to the Future DeLorean before we allow cars to use electricity. New technologies will spring fully-formed and perfect from the brow of Musk as they did (not) from Edison eventually, I suppose.
The house-level batteries are pretty neat, and if I could ever convince myself that it'd be feasible to install solar panels (our neighbors to the south have a bunch of large trees) I would consider getting one.
Soon, climate change will kill the trees.
Less soon, enormous tropical trees will grow to replace them, possibly eating your house in the process. But between those two times, you're golden.
OK, this is way underdeveloped, but I think Halford and a bunch of you are missing an essential point here about meaninglessness and human nature. Instead of looking at each individual human as a completely independent agent, with respect to how much that person (a) thinks about EM and (b) hates EM, let's consider each person to be more like a starling, in a vast flock of starlings, involved in a big murmuration. The data point about where any individual starling is at a given moment, their direction, and the directions of activity around them is useful in forming a prediction about where the flock is going to be in the near future. More importantly, rather than thinking about the exact location of a starling as the result of its independent judgment about where it ought to be flying, think of it as an indication of the strength of the various forces acting on it, moving it one way or the other.
Maybe starlings are a bad example, and some sort of subatomic particle is the better analogue. The point is that where an individual is on these things -- and on whether to buy Wheaties or Corn Flakes -- is nowhere near as meaningful as an expression of free will as it is an indication of the forces pushing and pulling.
OK, I do like my bird analogy, because, to mix threads, I've long described whatever silly things my inlaws would say in a language I didn't really get -- or, eventually, understood but didn't care about, as 'birds chirping.' What twitterati have to say about EM is, to me, like a bunch of birds, and I don't care to spend any time trying to decipher it. On the other hand, one can tell alot from the various chirps one hears at different times of day, in different seasons, and locations. That is, the content of the chirps may not be meaningful, but that it's the chirp of a meadowlark and not a toucan matters.
I should probably just stop and ban myself right now.
SO WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN CHARLIE??!!! WHERE'S THE FLOCK GOING?!
In this analogy, I think we are the birds.
You're a muskrat. I'm a musksloth.
I can't tell if the starlings are proMusk or antiMusk.
Musk supporters are like a vector field. We just can't tell if it's a conservative field or not.
102: You need to be more specific. There are well over a 100 species of starlings.
Has anyone tried to inter-breed them into a single species to make it easier to track?
The introduction of starlings to North America was particularly idiotic.
The European starling was purposefully introduced to North America in 1890-1891 by the American Acclimatization Society, an organization dedicated to introducing European flora and fauna into North America for cultural and economic reasons. Eugene Schieffelin, chairman at the time, allegedly decided all birds mentioned by William Shakespeare should be in North America. The bird had been mentioned in Henry IV, Part 1, and a hundred of them were released from New York's Central Park.[6]
That's dumb, but not as dumb as hippos wandering out of Pablo Escobar's zoo because no-one remembered to feed them.
Starlings definitely aren't awesome.
"you know what's more important than climate change? My dipshit resentments, including resentment against a particular preposterous rich asshole"
Most people wouldn't confess to thinking that way, but I suppose most people, when you get down to revealed preference, actually do think that way. We deserve our fucking fate, myself included.
The psychological dynamic identified here needs to be more widely recognised for the danger that it is. It's what led to Trump in the first place. That is, there are a whole lot of people out there who more or less knowingly handed the nuclear codes over to a maniac because Hillary rubbed them the wrong way. They'll do it again because otherwise the people who downsized She-ra's boobs would be happy. It used to be called lack of perspective.
In space, no one can hear you chirp.
106 IIRC there's a somewhat similar story about the introduction of the invasive phragmites in US wetlands.
Basically some rich prick thought it would look picturesque in the American landscape but they produce little food value and reduce biodiversity. Kind of like shooting a Tesla into orbit around Mars, when you think about it.
Wasn't that the plot of the first Star Trek movie?
For the second Star Trek movie we'll have Peter Thiel as Khan Noonien Singh.
Cross-over with the Q thread incoming.
116: But Q doesn't appear in Wrath of Khan.
[yawn] Good morning, everyone. I'm still 30 comments back.
83: it's just some literary criticism, but if I find a good historical source I'll let you guys know. Or if there are good excerpts from the lit crit (I spent years training myself to read selectively). Very introductory stuff so far:
At the beginning of the sixteenth century -- eight years after Granada's fall -- roughly half a million Spanish Muslims were still living under Christian rule (out of a total Spanish population of just under eight million). These mudejar communities were centered mostly in and around Granada and Valencia, though there were also sizeable communities in Aragon and smaller, more assimilated groups scattered throughout Castile.
Perhaps unsurprisingly . . . the laws of 1566 -- along with new royal policies that actively sought to rob agricultural land from Moriscos -- also met with more combative, violent resistance. This was especially true within Granada and Valencia, where Arabic speech and Muslim customs had been most widely preserved. Combative resistance in fact led to open rebellion in Granada, where an army of roughly ten thousand Moriscos took to the hills of the Alpujarras in 1568, gamely resisting Spanish military forces for nearly three years. The rebellion was violently [as one does -ed.] put down by a seasoned army under the direction of Don Juan de Austria in 1570, and in its aftermath the Moriscos of Granada -- not just the surviving combatants but the whole population -- were forced to leave Granada and relocate to other regions of Spain, principally Castile. This mass relocation constituted a significant socio-cultural change for both the transported Granadans and the largely assimilated Castilian Moriscos, who in fact had very little in common with their new neighbors.
84: See, this is the kind of thing that actually makes me angry: I guess I'm bourgeois enough to be more outraged by well-compensated mismanagement than by Musk siphoning government subsidies from serious urban planners. Is Tesla more destructive than Uber and Lyft? Not a rhetorical question; I don't know...
I guess Tesla is one of the several companies working on car self-driving, but the "don't bother with public transit because self-driving cars will let everyone drive everywhere cleanly Real Soon Now" crowd is pretty diffuse and I think would have thrived without Tesla or Musk being on the scene.
119: This is a bit OT, but if you're interested in southern Europe in the 16th century, Noel Malcolm's Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World is a really fascinating read. And more of a page turner than you might expect for this sort of book.
so this needs political support: https://www.sfmta.com/press-releases/san-francisco-commits-all-electric-bus-fleet-2035
and here's what gets pumped into our local discourse: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-transit/
SFMTA has a huge mass of problems that need fixing, and improving its services while reducing the amount of ghg getting everyone around the city puts into the atmosphere is a political project. brother musk is not helpful even if that seems an uncool observation to some.
okay, one quote from the first link for those disinclined to read it, why i bother as am quite sure no one is reading at this point, but anyways:
"San Francisco's transportation sector generates approximately 46 percent of the City's total greenhouse gas emissions mostly generated by the use of private cars and commercial trucks. By contrast, Muni carries 26 percent of all trips in the city, but accounts for less than two percent of these emissions."
OT? I think we can get from Tesla to ekranoplans to corsairs and back again. Who's with me?
120 - right, plus I'm not aware of any evidence that even the broader autonomous cars sort of thing has taken even $1 from mass transit funding that otherwise would have been available -- people in power are more likely to see driverless cab utopianism (or whatever) working in hand with increased public transit. The enemies to more public transit are what they've always been -- high implementation costs, skeptical pro-car suburbanites, NIMBYs, and cheap municipal governments.
I mean I live where Musk is literally building tunnels for his (stupid, not well thought out I think) mini-subway and it hasn't cost a dime in public transit funding, if anything it's helped the vague general idea that transit is the future. Meanwhile on the other side of the balance you have a functional standalone electric car company and important functional solar company but who cares because RICH DOUCHE ON TWITTER.
I mean the idea that the problem with funding MUNI is primarily or even significantly Elon Musk is so incredibly unpersuasive I don't even know where to begin. Annoying ideas that should be criticized? Site. Things that matter in any way to actual mass transit policy? No.
RH you sure choose odd hills to die on.
Still waiting for evidence that Elon Musk has cost MUNI a single fucking dollar in transit funds. Of course that's because you don't have any.
128: especially when we could be, c'mon people, pivoting to small autonomous commuter corsairs? A water route to Palo Alto would be A+++. OTOH I guess I don't want Palantir to have a pirate fleet, sigh.
But I must say this beats the pretentious blathering about your fucking kid.
I THINK YOU'LL FIND THE PALANTIR IS IN THE OTHER TOWER, IYKWIM.
132: hey, that's really rude.
It is, and I shouldn't have said it. Feel free to redact, or not.
Thank you heebie, and to the extent my opinion matters re redaction - I'd prefer you not.
DQ, I have a related question for you: do you know to what extent Benioff and Salesforce are subsidizing the downtown transit center? I'm a little sorry that I'll almost certainly be done commuting to SV by the time the underground Caltrain station opens. (The misreading where I'll finally reach my destination in a few years is pretty accurate.)
[July 11, 2017] San Francisco tech mammoth Salesforce is in the process of securing the naming rights of the Transbay Transit Center and City Park, the 2.5-block transit hub and raised event space. The company, who are the anchor tenants of the city's tallest skyscraper, Salesforce Tower, agreed to a 25-year, $110 million sponsorship.
An acquaintance who from his employment is in a good position to know told me Salesforce is contributing $110m over 25 years. I don't know if that's just for the naming rights (barf) or for a deal covering more items.
Minivet is Google? Somehow I expected more.
I can see both sides. I'm on a bus, but I don't like children.
It must have been telemetry like that that turned Saruman.
The naming rights and the ability to close the park (but hopefully not the transit center) for its annual user conference, which IME paralyzes every mode of transit into and out of SF for days. Put another quarter in this thing and I'll spout more unutterably boring facts.
I'm afraid that, if I admit that I don't get 134, someone will explain the entire plot of LOTR to me.
147.2: TOO LATE!
Sauron wants the ring. The good guys want to destroy it.
Sorry, I don't get it either.
145: Now I want someone with verbal abilities to write a verse of "Both Sides Now" about Unfogged.
I can't read the emoji in 149, but I pasted it into Google and got a lot of stuff about trains.
151: Oh! I thought those were legs, but I guess they could be train tracks.
Most surviving PALANTIRI having come under the sway of the DARK TOWER, Sauron believed himself to have unmatched situational awareness, but found the boot was ON THE OTHER FOOT when the fleet of the UMBAR CORSAIRS was captured by YOURS TRULY and unexpectedly delivered to the siege of Gondor reinforcements from Dol Amroth loyal to the WHITE TOWER.
DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MYSELF
It looks like it could be either a diamond engagement ring or the Invisible Man swathed in bandages.
Now I want someone with verbal abilities to write a verse of "Both Sides Now" about Unfogged.
I've looked at blogs from both sides now
From trolls and psuedonyms and still somehow
It's the mineshaft I recall
I really don't know blogs at all.
OT: I spent a good minute convincing myself that noise wasn't gunfire, but I needn't have bothered.
If you get shot at in a grocery store parking lot, shooting back seems reasonable. Running into the store seems reasonable. Shooting back while running into the store seems selfish.
What you hadn't returned the shopping cart yet?
I wasn't in the store at the time, but I do frequent it.
|| Is there a Hebrew (or Yiddish?) word that sounds like [fɪləm]? While walking past a synagogue at sunset, a younger Orthodox man stopped me and said something (I had headphones in) along the lines of "Don't you know it's Shabbat?" He didn't want to believe I wasn't Jewish. He alternated between asking me to validate my maternal genealogy, and saying single Hebrew words and then silently blinking at me, as if I'd say "Ach, you got me! I'm totally not a goy, and was just testing you!" He also told me I gave off some sort of Jewish aura, which I assume was just ethnic profiling. He ended by saying that word, whatever it was, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I feel like I really let the guy down. I didn't have the heart to say I was going to go pick up a pepperoni pizza. |>
162: then he'd just have thought I was a muscular Jewish dude.
163: thanks, maybe! "Tefillin" seems like such a weird conversation ender, but would sort of make sense under the theory that I'm some sort of amnesiac Jew and he just needed to say the right code word to activate my true nature, Winter Soldier style.
Anyway, he was probably trying to think of a way to ask to see your penis.
Probably one of the Labuvicher Chasids of Brooklyn. They consider it a mitzvah to put tefillim on, and mumble a quick prayer with, non-practicing Jewish males. They harass swarthy, short, glasses-wearing, hatless white guys in New York most Fridays. From time to time they fan out around America.
We have our own Hacienda (sp?) Jewish people. Also, that's a not a very good description of dalriata.
The pointless nastiness earlier in this thread has been bothering me all day. Shabbat sounds comforting.
The hacienda Jews are sephardic.
They harass swarthy, short, glasses-wearing, hatless white guys in New York most Fridays.
Years ago I used the word swarthy on myself here and everyone mocked me because they said it meant "black" and not Jewish-ish. I'm still licking my swarthy wounds.
I cannot get the image of 24-Hour Party Hasidim out of my head.
I have long wavy/frizzy brown hair, so if you ignore all the rest of it I technically have sidelocks. Anyway, poor dude. It seemed like I was a beast he just didn't know what to do with.
174: Somewhere other than here, I hope?
It doesn't mean black, it means dark. Swart means black, but modern English doesn't have that anymore.
But that's just nitpicking. Heebie is clearly lily-white on the inside, and that's what really counts.
If it isn't you'll have to ask a gentile to do it for you, remember.
Is anyone else hearing the title to this post to the tune of "Bad Boys" or is that just me?
Musk boys (musk boys) don't quite build it
Musk boys (musk boys) never take the bus
Musk boys (musk boys) need your sub-sid-eyes
Musk boys always... whine
I'll always be there for you, man
My old neighbor's ex-husband was a convicted arsonist and either Jewish or married to somebody Jewish.
181: You too. (I don't think anything has ever so reinforced for me how far west and north Alaska is.)
As a late addition to the conversation upthread, the idea that autonomous vehicles could comprise an effective replacement for public transit, and that transportation planners should be funding AV deployment rather than busses, say, isn't that uncommon in the AV world. I assume it doesn't have that much currency with actual transportation planners, but agencies (transport for London, LADOT) are definitely funding programs to investigate AV use, so on some level public transit budgets are certainly being partly directed to AVs.
196: Autonomous buses could be a boon in SA, where drivers' strikes are a serious obstacle to making public transit work, and drivers are vulnerable to violence by private minibus operators, which is an obstacle to expanding public transit.
I realize saying this will cost me Internet Virtue points, but this is a case where unionization has the effect of one, quite small, set of workers extracting rents at the expense of everyone else. (Mostly at the expense of other workers, who spend far too much of their income and time on and in transit.) I expect similar dynamics could be be found in other developing countries.
(All this is of course entirely hypothetical, as the technology doesn't exist yet. For the record, I also don't think automation would be optimal, it would be better to employ people where possible; nor do I think the technology is necessary to solve the problem. In theory though I can see AVs being used as leverage as part of a wider political settlement.)
The neighborhood next to me, the one I go through daily, is now up to three shooting in 24 hours.
Let that be a lesson to you, Moby. That's what happens when you don't return the shopping cart to the grocery store.
197: Strikes, strikes, strikes, violence, violence. Violence against BRT expansions.
They have a suspect in yesterday's shooting.
They don't know where he is or anything.
||
As I think we're likely to be having a lot of people you'd better weed me out all those women with lots of kids and put them on a jornal of 30 centavos.' By 12 April 1901 he appears to have been satisfied with arrangements: 'Thank God you managed to get rid of all those lazy, child-bearing women. You'd better see next if you can make a start on all the other lazy vagabonds who don't like work.'|>
||
'deeds had not been adequately preserved in notary and registry offices as a result of civil wars, carelessness, disorganization, and pillage'.|>
OT: Is the older guy in the Wiggles the only one left from the cast when I saw them?
Is Alaska on fire?
No? Is it supposed to be?
Siberia is totally on fire so I thought maybe you'd be trying to keep up. But obviously you don't care about American Greatness, so.
I'm sure the Alaskans can see the smoke from Russia just fine.
Montana isn't even on fire.
Yet.
We've had some bad fire seasons in recent years, but this one hasn't been very noteworthy so far.
California is planning ahead by trying to leave little to burn in future years.
We did just have a guy accidentally sail to Russia, so there's that.
Compasses are notoriously unreliable at high latitudes.
I keep mentally singing "Musk boys like cabaret. Musk boys are glad to be gay. They're not afraid now."
I see them snorting and glowering, all long fur coats and lowered horns in a circle about their young.
It would take a lot of malfeasance before I could hate any Musk-associated company more than I hate Wells Fargo. Burn it to the ground.
In 2009, the Treasury Department set up a program to help which allowed Americans who were struggling to make mortgage payments to apply for a loan modification. However, approximately 625 applicants who should have qualified had their application turned down by Wells Fargo due to the computer glitch.
Some 400 customers among the 625 eventually had their homes foreclosed, the bank said. According to the filings, the foreclosures took part between April 2010 and October 2015, when the issue was rectified.
The musk boys never have no money
The musk boys wear the most expensive clothes
The musk boys are always at the party
Where the money comes from heaven only knows
NMM to Mrs. Garret. You know who you are.
What the hell? Now it's KSA versus Canada?! I bet, like the Qatar idiocy, KSA got an okay from 45* & co.
Be careful Canada. What's the tallest building in Toronto?
I should really have posted this a few days ago, but incredibly appositely Musk has gone and done it again, quite probably violating securities law by tweeting that he plans to take Tesla private (and has "secured funding") to do so. Without providing any details, let alone evidence that he does in fact have funding. Even better, it's not clear what he actually means by taking private, since he is claiming existing shareholders will be able to remain shareholders if they want. Which seems pretty incompatible with being a private company. The SEC is investigating, with the fantastic line from a Bloomberg article that "attorneys from that office are also examining whether Musk's tweet about having funding secured to buy out the company was meant to be factual".
Tesla's factory is now officially a garbage fire.
Counterpoint: no, it isn't, according to two well respected auto analysts who spent two days on the factory floor.
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/08/16/1534435108000/Here-s-what-s-really-going-on-in-Tesla-s-factory/
Tesla tried to do a lot more with robots than other manufacturers, and they tried to make a lot more parts in house. The robots didn't work out. The in-house manufacturing has.
Earlier reports of manufacturing defects were true, but these have now been corrected, and Tesla's factory is now comparable to "premium German manufacturers" with some parts of the operation best in class, and should have no problem hitting the company's production targets or going well beyond them. The much-mocked "tent" production line is basically "very much like general assembly at other auto plants which we have visited".
Musk is getting erratic and the company's finances are highly questionable, but the factory itself seems to be doing fine.
I was referring to the actual garbage fire, not the production line.
I was referring to the production line.
NYT just ran an interview with Musk about how hard it is to be Elon Musk. He worked for 24 hours on his birthday! He arrived to his brother's wedding only two hours ahead of the ceremony by private jet and returned to work shortly after. Recently, he spent three straight days in the factory. His friends are worried about him.
Make new friends, kill the old.
One is human and the other gold.
Ah come on! Back in our day we had to jet to our sibling's weddings in the snow. Uphill both ways.
Of course, in those days nobody heard of a cash bar.
Zillionaires working 48 hour days is often a sign that they're about to go tits up.
Musk: "Yeah, so, I kind of made up all that stuff about a go-private deal. Can we forget about it please?"
Money quote: "There is also no proven path for most retail investors to own shares if we were private."
No shit, Sherlock. That's what private means.
https://www.spacex.com/news/2018/08/06/merah-putih-mission
On Tuesday, August 7th at 1:18 a.m. EDT, Falcon 9 successfully lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida carrying the Merah Putih mission for PT Telkom Indonesia. The satellite was deployed approximately 32 minutes after liftoff into its targeted Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO).
Following stage separation, Falcon 9's first stage, which previously flew on the first Block 5 mission in May 2018, successfully landed on SpaceX's "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
233 he's just a few steps away from going full McAfee
Since this thread, Pete Townshend's Rough Boys has been occasionally going through my head as "Musk Boys".
If I were industrious I suppose I would try to rewrite the whole song, but I'm lazy.
Musk news update, and boy is there a lot of it. Tesla's chief accounting officer and head of HR have resigned, and the stock has fallen by 10% overnight. It's probably not all due to the resignations, because Mr "I sleep on the factory floor" also found time in his busy schedule to smoke a joint on the Joe Rogan podcast yesterday.
The diver has sued him for defamation.
And they're planning to send a Japanese dude round the far side of the moon. First human beyond LEO since 1972, and if he's on a free-return trajectory he'll be further from Earth at apogee than any other human in history.
That's a lot of trouble to make it hard for a process server to find a guy.
Musk has completely lost the plot, no? The nice men in white coats will be coming to call soon.
The board. White, because winter comes late in California.
Me, ten minutes ago after seeing this page update: Oh, hey, Tesla stock has mostly recovered from the resignations and the blunt talk.
Me, now: Oh.