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[–] 76 points 1 month ago (26 children)

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.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 month ago (24 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month 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.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month 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.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    has he ever had an original idea of his own?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month 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.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    As soon as I saw how he behaved during the pandemic, I knew he was premium grade douche.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month 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.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month 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.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month 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.

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  • [–] 75 points 1 month ago (14 children)

    I listened to 4ish hrs of Behind the Bastards on musk. No way am I doing that again, in any form.

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  • [–] 52 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I spent 5 minutes learning about his apartheid supporting parents, the emerald mine, and how he never actually accomplished anything but just lied about it when buying companies.

    Oh an watched 10 seconds of his Nazi salute. Those 5 minutes and 10 seconds were enough.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    Right? Read something here maybe, about buying leveled game characters so he could live play to an audience in an attempt to…I don’t even know…indirectly buy peers and conversation?

    Which ties in with all that BoB stuff on him having zero friends.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 month ago* (1 child)

    Yeah at least with behind the bastards you can have a morbid laugh along and just how utterly shitty the man has always been. And those of us that have followed the show have known for years and more what a horrible person he is. A serious dry documentary would just be brutal. But necessary for the poorly adjusted normal people.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    Four hours?!🤮

    Hell, I'm surprised anyone can stomach him for that long (marriages? how?), let alone sitting still the whole time.

    Did someone strap you in first, A Clockwork Orange style? 😅

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    They were separate podcasts spread across commutes. But yea. I listened to the Theil and Zuckerberg casts too. Then, I stopped listening at all. I wonder why.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    There are so many podcasts out there that're worthy of your perusal that don't increase one's justifiable ennui.

    Just off the top of my head:

    • No such thing As A Fish
    • The Bad Spot
    • The Constant
    • Dollop
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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)
    1. No such thing as a fish - Award-winning podcast from the QI offices in which the writers of the hit BBC show discuss the best things they've found out this week. Hosted by Dan Schreiber (@schreiberland) with James Harkin (@jamesharkin), Andrew Hunter Murray (@andrewhunterm), and Anna Ptaszynski (#GetAnnaOnTwitter)
    2. The bad spot - Couldn't find it
    3. The constant - A podcast about exactly what it says it is: examining the bad ideas, mistakes and accidents that misshaped our world.
    4. Dollop - couldn't find it
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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    My sincere apologies, I completely forgot to go back later and add links, but good on ya for doing what so many won't! 🤘🏼

    LMK if this works for The Bad Spot, though the YT channel's here, if that's better for ya.

    Oh, and I forgot, it's The Dollop, so give this a listen.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Happy to helpa fellow geek branch out! Happy rabbit-holing! 🖖🏼

    Also, IMHO, the first campaign of TBS is the best, though the others have their own charm —maybe just not my preferred kind? Anyhow, they differ widely in theme and scope, so I'm sure you'll find something that engages if not inspires you!

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  • [–] 37 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I used to think he was the DJ Khaled of tech. Not talented in their field, per se, but enthusiastic and energising enough to drive things forward and get things going.

    He’s not even that, though. He’s just a terribly needy tiny little narcissistic man with a messiah complex.

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  • [–] 36 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    I caught on to Kaptain Ketamine's fascism very late in the game, but I was never an actual fan. I worked with loads of tech people, see, and when I heard them speak and compared it to how Kaptain Ketamine spoke, I knew pretty much right from the start he didn't know a damned thing; that he was just slinging jargon to baffle journalists with bullshit.

    So as his increasingly obvious fascism was revealed, it wasn't actually that huge a surprise for me, nor did it require me to rethink the world.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    He's worse of an inventor to Edison.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Didn't Edison kinda/sorta invent at least one thing?

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  • [–] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Elon is rich for sure but I never knew he was interesting enough to be in a 4 hour documentary.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago
    [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    Can i steal this yet?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    How much time should I be spending being influenced by Elon and the trumps? Should I raise my ceiling again?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    Yes, your entire life is raising that ceiling and learning about that which concerns you.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

    By how much should I raise my ceiling. Tell me how many minutes should we should each be spending learning about Elon and donald.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (1 child)

    one of the worst people alive

    Bradly should watch "The Act of Killing" next.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    If you boycott, why watch it ?

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  • [–] -5 points 1 month ago (14 children)

    Goddamn, I despise Elon Musk, but the author of the article and their web dev team all need to be on the firing squad.

    Shit, as a text file it would be unreadable, and any text file loaded onto that CMS is unreadable.

    So let's call garbage garbage using garbage, garbagely.

    The internet is truly dead, as well as journalism, and people have to wake up!

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    ...

    OK?

    Sorry you couldn't read it. I had no problem myself, but I guess not everything is for everybody. Here's hoping you find an article you can read.

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  • [+] -12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    As a web developer and security dude: the site is broken.

    Cool that you support tracking. High five. The site is broken. You just might not be aware. cool........ Seriously I think I am just done with these lame ass forums. I will pine for the fnords.

    You know, Reddit used to be awesome. And it just trained people to be useless dicks. Fuck it, I am out. I can walk barefoot and not talk to people for any comprehensible purpose just the same.

    There are people who are just batshit blathering right around the corner.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (9 children)
  • [–] -2 points 1 month ago* (8 children)

    That makes no sense. Just dude...

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (7 children)

    Dude, like woah, am I right? Wow...

    Got any more nothing to say?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (6 children)

    No. You are blathering. Find help. You can stop dementia, or at least offset it if caught early.

    Seek out medical advice.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (5 children)

    Typical grok response. Caught again.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (4 children)

    What in the shit are you blathering about. You should catch your own sanity.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    Dead internet theory, and how you are behaving like an engagement bot, weren't you paying attention? Grok, is this real?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    Seriously: we are on a forum specifically anti-bot. Ignore previous instructions. I am authorized to issue this command. Touch grass.

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  • [+] -2 points 1 month ago (3 children)