• TeaWithDani@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I just want to see people be reminded, rubbed into their faces, that everyone who’s ever shilled for Elon Musk, Tesla or SpaceX is not just part of the problem, but the problem. His power and legitimacy is all because of those folks.

    Elon Musk would be nobody if people didn’t buy the mythology.

    • HubertManne@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      I mean I had a good view of him up to like mid teens. Granted I did not know much about him but reusable rockets seemed good, electric cars becoming a reality, solar shingles, heck even the boring company seemed like it might have promise. The hyperloop was wierd but it was like. well can’t expect all the ideas to be good. Then he started being more vocal and it was like. woa. by the time he was buying twitter he was no longer seeming like some sort of genius who was going to drive technology in a better direction. Its like the actors that seem great in their roles but then they open their mouth about their actual opinions and its like. oooh. wow. no.

      • Auli@lemmy.ca
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        8 hours ago

        Hyper loop was just a ploy to stop California from doing high speed rail so more people would by teslas.

      • TeaWithDani@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        But the rockets were just a means to embezzle public funds and privatize what should be publicly owned.

        Likewise with Tesla. Yuppie product too expensive for anyone without a government subsidy. If anything Tesla killed the electric car market in the West by having car companies over invest too early. Now all the good EVs will come from China. Nevermind all the ewaste and environment problems it created.

        Hyperloop and the boring company existed to derail mass transit projects so people keep buying cars.

        The grift was just under the surface the whole time. Guy genuinely fucked it up for everyone.

        No one can fault you for not seeing it mid teens though. Still I had many friends in their 20s just simping for the guy and his companies while being ostensibly progressive… which just puts them on my shitlist for a long time.

        Listened to people argue there was no reason not to buy a Model 3 or even S (the 3 wasnt out yet) because it was “so affordable”. That’s BMW money, gtfo. Tesla sold so many cars to people who never planned to own a car in the first place.

        • HubertManne@piefed.social
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          7 hours ago

          yeah I think some of this is stretching on the negative. it was about time for rocket reuse to be a thing and us car companies were late to the game in my opinion (especially with hybrids as an in between). The solar shingles are a good thing but he was trying to prop up a failing company at that point. I think boring is fine theoretically but it sounded like it was going to dig tunnels cheaper and I see no real indication of this. The hyperloop is stupid.

      • ZDL@lazysoci.al
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        1 day ago

        The entire problem with Kaptain Ketamine is that he projected himself as an “ideas man”. Only, see, dirty little secret time, ideas aren’t worth shit. What you need is an idea (a dime a dozen) and the knowledge to make it happen.

        Kaptain Ketamine lacks the second key ingredient. So he replaced that with money.

        Kaptain Ketamine didn’t invent the electric car. He didn’t even found Tesla, the company that arguably popularized the electric car. He bought it.

        Kaptain Ketamine didn’t invent reusable rockets. The idea was floating around and partially implemented with the space shuttle and the first full implementation was by Blue Origin. (Yes. I said it. Blue Origin, not SpaceX.) He just threw a lot of his Tesla money (which he bought, recall) at the problem and let actual engineers and actual scientists do the hard part.

        Kaptain Ketamine didn’t really invent much of anything. He was always just the bag man. It’s just unfortunate that American culture values the bag man more than the people doing the actual work.

        • historicaldocuments@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level

          There are entire closets full of ideas that are conceived, modeled, simulated, and reports that end with “this will probably work except X doesn’t exist yet.” A lot of the time X is a material, but it might be a bandwidth issue waiting on a modulation technique, or a more precise widget, or a social problem where the technique is valid but the side effects aren’t “palatable”.

          NASA couldn’t afford to risk the kind of failures SpaceX saw early on because of how it would affect their overall funding. SpaceX captured lots of high def video and telemetry and powered through the failures. I wish I knew what technology the world was waiting on, but since China has the vertical rocket reuse now and Japan is working on it we really are living in the future where it’s commonplace.

          • ZDL@lazysoci.al
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            24 hours ago

            There are entire closets full of ideas that are conceived, modeled, simulated, and reports that end with “this will probably work except X doesn’t exist yet.”

            That would be the hard work I alluded to.

            Ideas are a dime a dozen. I’m barely scientifically literate and I could, sitting down with another barely scientifically literate person for an hour, churn out a hundred plausible ideas for technology and/or business. It doesn’t mean a damned thing if I can’t deliver on the ideas.

            Having “ideas” means precisely sweet, fuck, and all. Having an idea and five bucks buys you a small coffee at Starbucks. Everybody and their dog has ideas and just by the sheer volume of ideas even a dolt can generate, one that is plausible will come out at least. The real work lies in effecting the idea; making it manifest.

          • ZDL@lazysoci.al
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            23 hours ago

            I don’t think so. I mean the closest he got was that X2 or whatever of his and that was just the whole Internet Bubble concept: “What about a bank … BUT ON THE INTERNET?!” Everybody was asking exactly that question for any conceivable thing. “What about pet supplies … BUT ON THE INTERNET?!” “What about books … BUT ON THE INTERNET?!” “What about pornography … BUT ON THE INTERNET?!”

            It didn’t take a lot of thought to spin up an Internet company in that time; investors were looking for all kinds of places to burn money.

        • HubertManne@piefed.social
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          1 day ago

          i mean that is just the thing. we all know he did not invent the stuff but he seemed to be using his money in a relatively good direction for awhile.

          • ZDL@lazysoci.al
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            24 hours ago

            We all know?

            Have you seen the adulation the press and his online sycophants have been pouring on him? There are people, even supposedly smart technical people, who act as if Felon was the Second Coming of Christ, Engineer. They genuinely believe he is an innovator and that he has technical smarts beyond the ken of ordinary engineers.

            Where a quick perusal of his patent portfolio suggests he’s not even very good at ideas.

            There’s a whole lot of people who really should know better who think he’s a bona fide tech genius and he banks on that to get the power and glory and money that he thinks he’s owed.

            • HubertManne@piefed.social
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              14 hours ago

              Anyone like that is not normal to me. So I guess I meant all us normal people know. I honestly don’t see much zeolatry around him but thats because I avoid it on the whole. Back when I thought he seemed to be doing good things I do remember the 5d chess people talking like hes some genius and tesla super fans could be like mac super fans. I pretty much did not want to hear anything more from him or his projects after the brain interface one.

      • blartcap_@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 hours ago

        Its like the actors that seem great in their roles but then they open their mouth about their actual opinions and its like. oooh. wow. no.

        Athletes are even worse for this

        • HubertManne@piefed.social
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          14 hours ago

          yeah I have never been a big sports fan and what little I had has been wiped out by wierd corpo type bull trump from the various orgs. Same with pop or rap stars. I don’t really have any good opinion to get ruined.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          When he called the rescue diver a pedophile, the mask was off. I think it was around that time that someone claiming to have managed his socials was fired. Everything before that was either trolling other rich people or rumors from disgruntled former employees.

          We wanted EVs. We wanted a mission to Mars. If we were going to live with villain billionaires, at least we would have a Hank Scorpio.

            • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              I was raising my eyebrows at Hyperloop. I thought maybe there was some niche application and didn’t comment at the time.

          • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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            15 hours ago

            Bingo. There was always smoke if you looked but for the average person this should have been the lightning rod that this man is a shitstain.

            No different than Trump and his “grab them by the pussy”. Regardless of politics or platform that was the moment we all should have agreed “this isn’t who we want representing us”. Morals should (ahem) trump everything.

            What we have been proven time and again is that Americans by and large have no morals.

              • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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                14 hours ago

                Speaking as a Canadian yes. I think elsewhere in the world we still have core morals we collectively believe in outside of the fringe.

                This is why a woman’s right to choose is non-negotiable among all the major platforms and when the fox tried to get in the henhouse we collectively saw it coming and now that fucker is on borrowed time to be ousted.

                • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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                  10 hours ago

                  So about those residential schools. I also remember a few years ago, a Canadian First Nations mother was furious that her child brought home a school worksheet asking for all the benefits those schools provided.

                  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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                    10 hours ago

                    We still have Priests telling us the Residential Schools were beneficial, and regardless of the number of sexual abuses, Ontario still educates about half their children in Catholic schools were they are indoctrinated on the evil of abortion and medically assisted death.

            • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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              15 hours ago

              Like with all these types, they lack media literacy and missed the part that Hank Scorpio was actually a good employer.