1. "Elon Musk’s ‘Hyperloop Prototype’ Was Always a Gimmick" (NY Magazine)("The so-called hyperloop is a theoretical pneumatic-tube transportation system that promises supersonic, emissions-free ground transportation, and people have been talking about it since the 19th century... [Musk] started tweeting about it... which led to many breathless profiles, which led to many people believing that Musk not only invented the concept of the hyperloop but was on the verge of building it").
2. "Elon Musk Is Bad at This/The Musk era of Twitter has so far been defined by unhinged tweets, fleeing advertisers, and botched layoffs" (The Atlantic)("Musk’s fans see the billionaire as a visionary, but it’s worth noting that many casual observers—people whose only real understanding of Musk is as the guy who put the fancy electric cars on their streets—have also internalized the heuristic that he is Good at Business and the type of man who spends his waking moments dreaming of how to save humanity from its existential problems. But what the past two weeks demonstrate is that Musk is, at best, a mediocre executive—and undoubtedly a terrible, distracted manager").
3. "Elon Musk has discussed putting all of Twitter behind a paywall/So far Twitter Blue is a mess and might even lose money" (The Verge)("Managers agonized over the [firing] decisions and jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve employment for the most vulnerable among them: pregnant women, employees who have cancer, and workers on visas among them").
4. Neuralink? "Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater/Elon Musk’s livestreamed brain implant event made promises that will be hard to keep" (MIT Technology)(“In a lot of ways,” Musk said, “It’s kind of like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires").
5. There will never be colonies of human beings living on Mars! Some people just love this fantasy, but come on!
6. I saw a Tesla driving in my neighborhood yesterday and I said out loud: "I'll bet a lot of Tesla owners are mad that the thing they thought made them look cool now seems right wing."
पोस्ट्स
१३७ टिप्पण्या:
Number 6 is spot on.
Musk is a visionary. Some visions don’t work out, but he’s owned twitter for about a week and we don’t know what his plans are. These people who think they’re smarter than him because they can laugh as they watch the sausage being made are astonishingly petty and stupid. Short-sighted and soon to be forgotten.
You know who else screwed up a lot? Thomas Edison! (What a loser!)
Ann’s number six what’s begat numbers one thru five…
Musk has earned billions. He’s no screw-up. Libs are just mad at him because he favors Free Speech and is doing something about it.
If he’d just stuck with Tesla and his space company, they still love him.
…and no matter how poorly Musk runs Twitter his eff u money means he gets to fire all the cartoon villains previously running Twitter. Just for fun.
How is the hyperloop "emissions free"? Does it run on unicorn farts or something?
The idea of a pneumatic tube has been around for 150 years or so. one was even built in NYC in the 1800s.
But I think Musk may be the only one to propose doing it supersonic ally.
I read the other day that SpaceX has launched half of all orbital rockets and satellites (by weight) since sputnik in 1957.
The last successful car company founded in the US was Chrysler in 1930.and it and gm have had to be bailed out on multiple occasions.
Tesla seems like it will be successful. So far its lasted longer than any other.
Twitter seems to be increasing subscribers but probably too soon to draw conclusions.
Musk is the world's richest man.
Co-founded PayPal
Just imagine what he might have accomplished if he weren't so mediocre!
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
I'd put Musk in the same page as Thomas Edison and Howard Hughes: they all had sometime special but were also flawed. I'm not sure if Musk will come out as a rabid racist (Edison) or live in the dark with uncut hair and bottles of his own pee (Hughes), but he's human and will surely screw up sometimes.
The Twitter purchase was as much a political statement as financial investment -- much like Trump running for president in 2016. These have huge cultural implications even if the monetary value isn't there. Musk made a lot of money through government funding (both SpaceX and Tesla), so perhaps government insiders strongly pushed the Twitter purchase behind closed doors.
More than a few people are sick of social media and cancel culture and Wokeness.
Lefties buying Tesla's financed the Musk purchase of Twitter. The irony of ironies. And Gavin the Great (D-Moron) has decreed electric* Tesla's and their ilk will be the future. So let it be written, so let it be done.
*Note: Speaking of ironies, it should be pointed out that within the last 4 days, President Assisted Living has issued a proclamation that all energy producing coal plants will be shut down and there will be no more drilling.
Tesla has received a lot of taxpayer money.
Has it received more or less, proportionately or absolutely than any other US battery car company?
Or other US car companies?
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
The author is projecting failure on some things that have yet to be played out.
And then there is:
Paypal
Tesla
Starlink
SpaceX
Zip2
The Boring Company
I'd say no.
#2 - I saw that he was rehiring some people he fired. (I did not read any of the articles.) To me, that's a good businessman. He had to rely on the information he was given initially. Perhaps he was ill-informed, perhaps he just made a mistake. When he understood better, he realized the mistake and admitted it.
#5 - It's exactly the same car it was before but I can see how people who boycott Chick Fil A would think the car wasn't the same now.
Ann Althouse said...6. I saw a Tesla driving in my neighborhood yesterday and I said out loud: "I'll be a lot of Tesla owners are mad that the thing they thought made them look cool now seems right wing."...
Dontcha love it? And the Tesla demographic almost perfectly overlaps (a Venn diagram would show this perhaps) with the moneyed elite who think these vehicles will be a solution for everyone.
What an interesting phenomenon for Musk to experience ...to go from the liberal media fawning interviews to the gang up in the falling from grace. In a way, it's a lot like what they did to Trump.
""I'll be a lot of Tesla owners...."
Sorry it took me so long to fix that typo.
"I'll bet a lot of Tesla owners...."
Space x is far more successful than NASA lately.
And I have been skeptical of Space X and Tesla from the beginning.
Musk did a good job of being what sci-fi fans can fixate on. He's inflated by their dreamy energy. And he's deflating now. He's only the richest man in the world because other people believed in him. But we're in the Emperor's oh-no-he's-naked-and-he-looks-awful phase.
As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?
I suspect that in many cases his goals are not precisely what they appear to be, so his public persona is not genuine. Much like everyone else, just on a larger scale. Whatever he is doing, it seems to be working well for the most part. If he fails at everything he touches from now until his death, he will have accomplished more than anyone else alive today. So, not a bad record for such a "mediocrity".
Humperdink said: " ... it should be pointed out that within the last 4 days, President Assisted Living has issued a proclamation that all energy producing coal plants will be shut down and there will be no more drilling."
In response, White House spokepronoun Karine Jean-Pierre stated the President words were twisted. What he really meant to say was: The president proclaimed that all energy producing coal plants will be shut down and there will be no more drilling."
Ann said ... I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?
Definitely not. I am retired and do not need a car for commuting. I drive from the Florida panhandle to Minnesota and back several times a year, so I cannot envision the recharging nightmare this would involve. Most of the time I am driving alone so I don't have a navigator to concentrate on a smartphone or my van's map/navigation system which would be dangerous if I tried to multitask while going 70-80 miles per hour.
"The Musk Era at Twitter."
Two weeks. The Atlantic.
The fear is palpable.
Regarding #1, I am unaware of any claim by Musk that he invented the hyperloop concept. Journalists went insane, as usual, and did no research, which is not his fault. I believe that his point was one could build a hyperloop to connect LA and San Francisco for a fraction of the cost of building high speed rail, and it would work. Compare and contrast with California’s current high speed rail boondoggle.
#2 is bullshit it’s a opinion based on hatred of the man vice any evidence for its truth.
#3 has me gritting my teeth. You choose employees to lay off based on their value to the company’s bottom line and manifestly not on their perceived vulnerability. The laid off people will be paid through February 3rd. That’s plenty of time to find a job if you have useful skills.
#4 is perfectly feasible, but who would want it? Not I!
#5 is idiotic. Never say “never.” Musk May not be the person to make it happen but, yes, it will happen someday.
#6 had me chuckling.
As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?
Absolutely. They are quiet, fun to drive- even the mini vans are drag strip fast!, and you can fill up your tank in your driveway or garage at home instead of jockeying for a gas pump at Sam’s Club like your in the start if an America’s Cup race.
…and despite the sanctimony of peak electric loonies (I won’t name names but you know who you are) the grid can handle you buying an EV…
And they still probably owe 50 grand on that Tesla.
And no, I wouldn't buy an electric car. Try evacuating for a hurricane or a forest fire in one of those!
Also, he has the name of an evil comic book villian.
I don't think people realize the ridiculous impact this man has had on the world in his ~20 years or so he's been really in large scale busines.
Tesla
Starlink
SpaceX
He built the first scaled up fully electric vehicle fleet and national network of charging stations, while being told it would never work and never scale. His vehicles have proven ridiculously safe and reliable. If you study the operating+maintenance costs on his vehicles used in fleets (i.e. in taxi service) compared to traditional vehicles it's amazingly low.
A war with a global "superpower" was altered in course because he gave away FOR FREE a satellite-network of high bandwidth communication capability to the invaded country.
SpaceX cost and success per mission/development cycle is MULTIPLE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better than NASA and NASA's development partners. Not one order of magnitude better in most cases - multiple.
This is being driven by one man with vision in a ~20 year timespan. When I step back and consider it, his impact is blowing away many other inventors.
Side note: I own no Musk products and I don't use Twitter.
Tesla and cool is going the opposite direction of nuclear power and cool. It will be fun watching the left try to weasel out of that.
He is becoming a case study in how images and reputations get manipulated by our sore-loser power-diminish English majors (F/K/A journalists.) Watch carefully, then question everything you think you know about other similarly treated.
Out on the road today, I saw a BIDEN sticker on a Model S
A little voice inside my head said, "Get rid of that car, 'cause Elon's a mess!"
I thought I knew what Twitter was
What did I know?
Those tweets are gone forever
I should just let them go but...
"Tweets of Summer" - Meadehouse remix, 2022
I will never rely on an EV. I may borrow my husbands - if he ever gets one - to run a quick errand. I prefer to have the power generator under my hood, not miles away, thank you very much.
We recently moved to NC. Can you imagine needing to evacuate in an EV? Me neither.
There's always a new P.T. Barnum lurking about...
"Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.”
Or maybe...
“Comfort is the enemy of progress.”
Interesting that all of us lightweights are critizing the most successful entrepreneur there is.
Althouse wrote: "I'll bet a lot of Tesla owners are mad that the thing they thought made them look cool now seems right wing.
Which shows you lefties who are into virtue signaling their support for the fake green energy scam are all about "drive for show"...no putt for dough. They've all got Ukrainian Flags in their twitter profiles, and the "I got vaccinated" banner around their FB profile.
Just wait till they regret the mRNA shots they took. It'll make their Tesla purchase feel like chicken shit.
Ann Althouse said..."As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?"
No, I wouldn't buy one now, but we don't need new energy production inventions. We need to build nuclear power plants with existing technology. That's a political problem.
We do need better battery technology. Some would argue that is the entire point of Tesla. Musk is building businesses to get the market (investors, customers, gov) to fund his dream of establishing a Mars colony. Tesla is built to fund battery development. The role of SpaceX is obvious. Starlink is built to fund interplanetary communication technology and SpaceX. The Boring Company is built to fund boring tech that will be needed to build the underground colony.
Althouse said Sorry it took me so long to fix that typo.
Wish we could edit and fix typos in the comments section. I'm the king of typos. It's and autocorrect conspiracy.
Ann...do you think you could have Elon Musk add that feature for us?
Heh. A lot of screwups, who have never actually accomplished anything in their lifetimes, line up to supply their opinions on one of the few people who has.
To really succeed, you need to be willing to fail.
These same screwups were predicting that SpaceX would never be able to re-use its boosters. It has now had more than a hundred successful landings, and SpaceX will soon take it next major step up with Starship, a completely re-usable ship.
These same screwups were predicting that electric cars could never be more than a hobbyist niche market. They gleefully reported that Tesla was having "difficulties" ramping up production, and really should have listened to the industry experts like them. Tesla is now moving into position to challenge the production numbers of the major car companies. They also gleefully report on every trip on the way to full self-driving Teslas. Sometime this year Teslas are going to become better than the average driver. Within a few years they will be way better.
As for Mars, none of us has the least idea what will happen once access to space is cheap. There are resources out there, and once they have access some people will start going to get them; we'll see what the demand curve ends up looking like. Predictions now make as much sense as predictions in 1990 about whether data over phone lines will be a business. We'll have to see.
The was this Billionaire, you see?
He was LOVED by the media, he basically WAS the media
EVERY THING he did (or even, just Said) was Praised as genius!
THEN he left the reservation, and started talking off the script
NOW the media HATE him, and say that
EVERY THING he did (or even, just Said) was idiotic!
Serious Question: Which Billionaire am i talking about?
I'm pretty resistant to the idea of buying an electric car until and if the battery technology is not so dependent on rare earth metals (child mining labor is abhorrent, among other things) and the power grid has been transformed. When it comes to every new car being sold being an electric car by 2035, it just doesn't make practical sense.
No human being will never screw up. What sets Musk apart is his willingness to make big bets and his particular skill at driving companies to fruition. Maybe the Twitter bet will pay off, maybe it won't, but better this than a long, drawn-out ossification like Facebook. Man in the arena and all that.
John henry said...
Tesla has received a lot of taxpayer money.
Has it received more or less, proportionately or absolutely than any other US battery car company?
Or other US car companies?
Teslas didn't get the money, Tesla buyers got tax credits. Yes effectively a subsidy but that subsidy mostly covered the R&D of the battery system in the Teslas and the creation of an automobile factory system that is quite impressive.
GM on the other hand was just flat out given billions of dollars and for all intents and purposes nationalized.
“As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?”
Tesla is selling enough of them, I would never buy one but teslas perform well if you are a town driver and charge at home. They are too expensive, but that is because they Have expensive parts. He is selling ineffective enviro stupidity to people who are deluded enough to pay too much for it. Musk is not Al Gore, don’t blame him.
Space X destroyed the NASA Boeing model and added more than most things to the wealth of society. No matter what, Musk is a great man. Are artists, actors, politicians, and musicians morally superior to him? I guess many would say yes, I don’t.
Althouse said,
"As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?"
I wouldn't buy one, no. Not because of Musk. I think he's done a lot to improve battery performance with the technology we have on hand. Battery storage efficiency has a long way to go before it will become appealing to the average consumer. Getting the state involved is only going to delay and innovation.
@AA "Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?" My brother has two. You plug them in at home at night, and there's plenty enough charge for a day of normal driving. In between, there are a lot of charging stations by now, anywhere in the US.
As for the energy, that's part 1 of the issue. People want to go off of fossil fuels. A lot of people, pretty much everyone except die-hard Republicans. But even if you go off of fossil fuels, you must use fossil fuels to drive your car. There is no way around that part 2 of the issue, except Tesla. Tesla was the critical piece of a process that is going to have to happen sooner or later. Liberals should be lining up to thank Elon Musk for that.
It's silly to criticize someone for solving half a problem, when no one else is solving any of it. Good, work on replacing energy sources. Nuclear.
"He's only the richest man in the world because other people believed in him."
Yes, thank God for those others. rolleyes
"I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?"
As an only car? No. But it seems that you would be a perfect candidate. You have the truck/camper for your longer distance forays but the rest is all pretty local.
Ann Althouse said...
As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?
People who don't know how things actually work say the best stuff.
Most likely in 20 years you will be telling everyone how you always thought electric motors were the best.
They run for millions of miles with almost negligible maintenance, are quiet, and much more energy efficient.
Right now it is the power source, the size/weight of the battery, and the infrastructure gap that are the issues.
If The Shit Hits the Fan and society collapses it is going to be a lot easier to figure out how to charge a battery than it will be to figure out how to pump oil and refine it into gasoline.
But we're in the Emperor's oh-no-he's-naked-and-he-looks-awful phase.
Musk isn't naked. See list in Wa St Blogger's comment above.
It's far too soon to tell what the outcome will be with Musk's Twitter. And why would anyone not want him to succeed?
These media attacks on Musk are not thoughtful and they aren't intended to inform. They are driven by the same psychological phlogiston that fuels a pack of mean girls in high school.
Hilarious and predictable.
Elon Musk before Twitter: He's a genius He's like the rest of us, in fact, he's just like us. He's brilliant, moving humanity forward, very progressive and smarter than anyone else, except other tech giants who are also much like us.
Elon Musk after buying Twitter and suggesting everyone vote Republican: He's a charlatan.
Achilles: GM got billions and still make a crap vehicle.
Loss of Twitter as a safe space promulgating only the most censored content, or if you prefer curated content, favorable to Leftists, really has the apparatchniks peeved. Do it more, Elon, and do it harder.
Ann Althouse said...
Musk did a good job of being what sci-fi fans can fixate on. He's inflated by their dreamy energy. And he's deflating now. He's only the richest man in the world because other people believed in him. But we're in the Emperor's oh-no-he's-naked-and-he-looks-awful phase.
Wow. Your worship of the beautiful people that write these stories is sad.
This looks a lot like your criticisms of Trump and working class people in general though.
People who actually do the things that make our society awesome get a lot of this sort of snide condescension from people who never actually build or make things.
Journalists and Educators are on the bottom of the totem pole of accomplishment.
Might be a good time to find a smokin' deal on a used Tesla.
Logans run people ah jenny agutter and farrH fawcett in a small role.
@Gusty Winds - hear, hear! If you're first in typos then I occupy second in that line.
I'll admit Hyperloop never made sense to me, but unlike California's highspeed rail; it was Musk's own money. How's that highspeed rail project coming? Oh...:
October 26, 2022
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – After careful consideration and given the current economic climate, supply-chain challenges, and 40-year high inflation, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has determined it is not in the State’s best interest to extend the time for the Track and Systems procurement in its current form.
The project began in 1996. How long has the current economic climate been going on? Well, according to the Atlantic Magazine in 2015: Bold Bets: California on the Move? The bold bet was with taxpayer's money, and we lost the gamble.
Those $Billionairs are such idiots. How do I know? Because a writer at the Atlantic told me so.
All of the things listed? I am so far from understanding or knowing all the facts, I cant form any opinion. Other than writer is exposing their own ignorance.
name twenty new and life altering inventions, and then find someone predicting the technology 10 years before it hit the drawing board. In 1972, we had computers, because we did a section in first year accounting on marking those cards to run through the computer to do calculations. But are Teacher, fresh out of UNI teachers college about 3 years informed us computers are to big and too expensive to ever be owned by the common man.
Anyway, I get a kick out of people with zero basis, telling me billionaires are stupid.
Musk moved to Ontario, Canada, at 17 and studied at the University of Pretoria. He later studied at Queen’s University before he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics, Musk moved to California in 1995 with the goal of studying at Stanford University but ultimately decided on a different path.
Let's look at Musk's ability to deliver by comparing 3 rocket engines of similar power:
SpaceX Raptor: SpaceX aims at a lifetime of 1000 flights for Raptor.[48] In 2019 the (marginal) cost of the engine was stated to be approaching $1 million. SpaceX plans to mass-produce up to 500 Raptor engines per year, each costing less than $250,000. Each Starship booster will use 33 sea-level Raptors, while each Starship spacecraft will use 3 sea-level Raptors plus 3 Vacuum-optimized Raptors.
Rocketdyne RS-25D: On May 1, 2020, NASA awarded a contract extension to manufacture 18 additional RS-25 engines, with associated services, for $1.79 billion, bringing the total SLS contract value to almost $3.5 billion. Only 400 times as expensive as Raptor and will each be used once.
Blue Origin BE-4: Run by Bezos, considered a good businessman--still in development, so we don't know what it will cost, but at least Blue Origin lands their boosters and can therefore re-use the engines.
6 month Tesla owner. Very satisfied with product and systems. No it doesn’t do everything we need - the truck is for towing and gravel roads. But if you accept that we are at the 1920’s stage of ‘refueling’ a vehicle And trip planning (per conversations with my 92 year old Dad and his recollections of his older brothers) things are progressing well. Tesla continues to add charging Super charger stations
As far as next moves - nuclear is essential. Range anxiety is an issue in case of emergency. I always charge to the maximum overnight so I am some hat prepared for whatever tomorrow brings. Theoretically I have 300 miles available. If you start a storm evacuation with a quarter tank you too may have range anxiety.
Ann Althouse said...
As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?
11/8/22, 6:00 AM
--
I wouldn't either...for now. However, if they improve battery technology including a full recharge in under 5 minutes, I would reconsider but would still have reservations.
I'm not a Eco nut but I'm skeptical on whether EV's are net eco friendly. Have you seen what's required to mine lithium and the other rare minerals required for battery technology. And what happens to those batteries at their end-of-life. If EV's become main stream, where do we get the energy to power them? Certainly not wind and solar. Nuclear is best option but Left won't even consider it. Finally, I will always be leery of the fire hazard.
I agree with this, from Michaela:
"I'm pretty resistant to the idea of buying an electric car until and if the battery technology is not so dependent on rare earth metals (child mining labor is abhorrent, among other things) and the power grid has been transformed. When it comes to every new car being sold being an electric car by 2035, it just doesn't make practical sense."
Furthermore, the demand for those metals will soar if EVs become a major alternative, and the prices will soar. And dependence on China will soar. More even, the drain on the grid means MORE fossil fuel use, since 80% of the grid is fueled by coal and gas. Given the use of fossil fuels in all that mining and processing, I seriously doubt there is any overall CO2 reduction at all.
As to Tesla drivers in Madison, I say if a town can call a dumb rock "racist." why can't it call the Tesla racist? Who want to drive a racist car?
I'm pretty resistant to the idea of buying an electric car until and if the battery technology is not so dependent on rare earth metals
An electric scooter bust into flames in an apartment building killing one and leaving the rest homeless.
A media guy was going to take a new Ford f150 lightning on a 250 mile trip in Michigan to tout the electric vehicle benefits. 8 hours later, and 3 stops to recharge he still wasn't to his destination. The truck was supposed to have 350 mile range fully charged. Another story about the lightning, had it pulling a small camping trailer, he made about 40 miles.
There is a lot to work out with EV's. We are not even close to seeing wide spread use. And thing like city buses bursting into flames does nothing to address the hesitation.
Sure. He's a techhead. That means he may not be that good at human interaction, and social media involves human interaction. Zuckerberg could code Facebook, but he relied on other people to humanize his creation.
Some ups. Some downs. Even for the rich creative guy. Leftmediaswine will focus on the downs now that they know he isn't a lefty idealogue.
According to the Media Research Center, whose algorithm seems to reflect observable facts, the leftmedia coverage of Republicans during this election cycle is 87% negative; of Kari Lake, 100% negative.
There is no reason, ever, to accept their assessment of anyone or anything unless you choose the alternative to reality they offer to imbeciles.
"There will never be colonies of human beings living on Mars! Some people just love this fantasy, but come on."
You've obviously never read Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Keep hope alive! (But when someone dies on the trip to Mars, don't quote me.)
Once Starlink is complete, Musk will be able to be a global internet provider. What do you suppose is the global value of cable, broadband and cell phone services? This alone (forget about Paypal, Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX) will make Musk the first trillionaire--if Bezos doesn't reach that mark first.
That $Trillion will fund a colony on Mars.
Blogger Ann Althouse said..."As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?"
No matter how good Musk may be, he can't defy the laws of physics. I'd say he was smart to limit his efforts to things that aren't impossible.
I want an electric car like I want a hole in my head. My great fear is the movement to outlaw the internal combustion engine. They intend to force you to buy one. Only question in my mind is whether the great masses will rise up and say "NO!" I believe they will, but I don't think it's certain.
I always say, if you want business advice, go to The Atlantic.
Elon Musk is one of the great promoters of all time. He can develop an E-car with a huge federal subsidy of its purchase price and convince the public that it is a good thing and that he is a free-spirited libertarian.
He can way over-pay for Twitter and act like an owner. He can try to create a revenue stream that is not beholden to large but soft members of corporate America. He says new Twitter accounts are way up. I believe him, but how many will pay $96 per year for Twitter Blue? That's about what I pay for the digital Chicago Trib, which I buy for the local sports coverage. It has become disgustingly woke in every way. The Trib's "news" stories are mostly three-hankie weepers about the troubles of the POC in a city where thugs rule the streets in poor neighborhoods.
That article from The Verge is a knee-slapper in the way that it characterizes the old Twitter workforce--entitled, lazy, absent. Let's start a rumor that Elon is trying to hire back half the people he laid off. He probably can hire everyone he needs without rehiring anyone who ever worked at Twitter. I hear there are some Meta/Facebook veterans out there who are looking for new positions and don't want to get laid off again.
That's entertainment!
If The Shit Hits the Fan and society collapses it is going to be a lot easier to figure out how to charge a battery than it will be to figure out how to pump oil and refine it into gasoline.
You are trying to compare the two, stand alone. What the Green Leap Forward, insists, is banning fossil fuels now, and figuring out electric after we have no fossil fuels.
If, a big If, Electric Vehicles are the answer, no legislation or govt involvement is needed. The free market will always take the right path.
Why must every public figure be portrayed as either a hero or a villain by progressive “reporters?” For people who so often identify as non-binary they sure see the world and write about it as if “there are only two kinds of people.” This is like the bizarre habit my fellow Althousians have to Trump: we must either love and “worship” him like cult members or hate him with the same irrational fervor they have. There’s no normal Americans in this binary fantasy world. No people who choose the best candidate in the moment, which is weird and unhealthy and rejected by normies all over.
Anyway, no surprise Musk is getting the “if you ain’t fur us yer agin us” treatment now. Anyone who doesn’t mouth the right platitudes gets the same. Such a big beautiful country. Such a shame to be ruled over by small minded people.
"Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up?"
Isn't that exactly what he's doing? Perhaps it's a bigger problem than he expected?
They stole this country and crashed it on the rocks like they did in hoyts portugal look around
Rejahm,
What is "peak electricity" and am I one of the ones you think are promoting it?
Ftr, I do not think that we are at peak electricity in the sense of running out. We can always add more generation.
In addition to more generation we need to add more capacity to the grid from hv distribution to local transformers to, in many cases the meter box on the house.
About 300 nuke plants or equivalent just for cars. (300GW)
No limit on doing that other than cost and politics.
California is already rationing juice for charging. Voluntarily for now.
So no "peak". Just a need to upgrade the entire electrical grid if battery cars gain significant penetration.
I suspect that SpaceX is working on space based solar power. If so, this could be beamed to local (city? Neighborhood? House? Level) receivers bypassing most or all of the distribution system.
You want to see some really pissed off people? Wait till Elon makes the power grid obsolete.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
’…18 additional RS-25 engines, with associated services, for $1.79 billion…’
Criminal.
MikeR wrote: "People want to go off of fossil fuels. A lot of people, pretty much everyone except die-hard Republicans."
Because "everyone" is well-versed on the subject of fossil fuels, climate and the economy. Right? Because the same mediaswine now portraying Musk as a dunce and Republicans as demons have painted an accurate picture of fossil fuels. Right?
All in on that are you?
Of course, he's a screw-up! He favors private space travel, high technology, and Constitutional rights. That's automatic screw-up territory among the feature writers of New York Magazine and The Atlantic.
However, his genius creds can be rescued. Care to guess how?
MikeR said..."My brother has two. You plug them in at home at night, and there's plenty enough charge for a day of normal driving. In between, there are a lot of charging stations by now, anywhere in the US. As for the energy, that's part 1 of the issue. People want to go off of fossil fuels. A lot of people, pretty much everyone except die-hard Republicans...
Not everyone has a single-family home where a charger can be installed. Not everyone commutes on a daily back and forth. Since the charging takes much longer than refueling a gasoline or diesel-engined vehicle, how will they ever create enough charging stations for vehicles not on a regular commuting cycle? Also, with the proliferation of battery fires, will you auto and homeowners' insurance stay affordable?
The e-vehicle revolution will keep most lower and middle income people sitting at home due to the high costs. But you're prolly one of the cool kids.
Speaking of screwup...
"Not Enough Lithium To Satisfy US EV Adoption Goals, Says Mining CEO." @https://insideevs.com/news/609121/lithium-supply-cant-meet-demand-ev-targets/
You would think that the geniuses who mandate an entire state to only drive EVs would do a little research first. Double ditto for an entire country run by a cabal of magical thinkers using a demented octogenarian as their puppet.
Suppose it were possible to beam space based solar directly to a car?
A small battery with 25 miles range for acceleration and getting through tunnels.
But kept charged continuously via a rooftop antenna.
That would solve the battery cost, charging, range problem.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
iowantwo said...
If The Shit Hits the Fan and society collapses it is going to be a lot easier to figure out how to charge a battery than it will be to figure out how to pump oil and refine it into gasoline.
You are trying to compare the two, stand alone. What the Green Leap Forward, insists, is banning fossil fuels now, and figuring out electric after we have no fossil fuels.
Yeah. I am comparing the two. I don't see your point here.
If, a big If, Electric Vehicles are the answer, no legislation or govt involvement is needed. The free market will always take the right path.
I totally agree. We don't want the government involved in any of this.
But electric vehicles are the superior technology in the 20 year time frame for all the reasons I listed. And they take much less infrastructure to run then gas powered vehicles do.
As for electric cars, they need energy. Couldn't he have applied his genius to making it easy to get and keep these things charged up? I wouldn't buy an electric car. Would you?
Electric cars as discussed in this post and thread are a status symbol. They're meaningless to carbon emissions (which are fine btw).
Bigger issue are the transport of life sustaining goods that rely on fossil fuels. Farm equipment that feed the masses. Who's gonna fly on an electric airplane??? How you gonna heat homes, schools, and places of business? Check out Europe this winter.
Fossil fuels are a renewable gift from God that feed the world. All those fables about oil coming from dead dinosaurs were bullshit. Didn't Jimmy Carter tell us we were going to run out of oil in 1978?
Perhaps the flux-capacitor is the answer. Macron seems desperate for a nuclear answer.
Dave Begley: "If he’d just stuck with Tesla and his space company, they still love him."
False.
The establishment still hates him for both Tesla and Spacex, and for the same reason.
With Spacex, Musk has, with help from lots of talented people who bought into the vision, brought forth a revolutionary mindset in how to cost to design, fast iterate, redesign and manufacture rockets and rocket engines that has already "relaunched" (heh) the US back into the clear global lead for launch services based on cost and reliability.........but in doing so Musk has made the Military/Space Industrial Complex look as flatfooted, inefficient and costly as they have clearly been for decades. Those companies are space programs, they are politically driven jobs programs.
With Tesla, Musk has worked his magic in doing what all the bigger car companies could not do.....but he did it without unions. So Musk is despised for that as well. Witness how Biden's Earpiece invited all and sundry car manufacturers to meet at the White House and they not only do not invite Musk, they don't even mention Tesla, the far and away global leader. Instead Biden's earpiece pumped up that loathsome moron running Ford as the visionary! LOL
So no, things were already trending for a quite rocky relationship between Musk and lunatic left/establishment and anyone could see the writing on the wall: Musk really didn't have anything left to lose by purchasing Twitter to solve another of the problems he believes is critical for future success of humanity: A structured "townsquare" environment where all views are welcome and the best ideas can emerge.
The lefties, as we've seen at Althouse, really really hate the idea of idea's being in competition.
I mean, they really hate it.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
Why must every public figure be portrayed as either a hero or a villain by progressive “reporters?” For people who so often identify as non-binary they sure see the world and write about it as if “there are only two kinds of people.” This is like the bizarre habit my fellow Althousians have to Trump: we must either love and “worship” him like cult members or hate him with the same irrational fervor they have. There’s no normal Americans in this binary fantasy world. No people who choose the best candidate in the moment, which is weird and unhealthy and rejected by normies all over.
This is an outgrowth of the tribal nature of Humans as a race. We are naturally threatened by people that are different and who are not in our tribe.
Anyway, no surprise Musk is getting the “if you ain’t fur us yer agin us” treatment now. Anyone who doesn’t mouth the right platitudes gets the same. Such a big beautiful country. Such a shame to be ruled over by small minded people.
Politics is about power and social contracts.
It attracts the corrupt and the small minded because all you have to do to get power through politics is convince enough people to support you. By definition half of those people are on the left side of the bell curve so you have a head start.
It is much easier to convince a bunch of idiots to support you than it is to put a satellite into space.
Josephbleau: "Space X destroyed the NASA Boeing model...."
The NASA Boeing ULA Blue Origin Model.
I threw in Blue Origin because when Bezos started out, he simply hired all the same dudes and "ideas" that had been at NASA for the last 50 years, which is why, in the end, the GRAND PLAN of the establishment space "vision" (LOL) is to, now get this, send a capsule with 3 humans to the moon and, get this, return them to earth!!
Hooray!!!
Unprecedented!
I wrote about the impact of battery cars on the pretzel business a couple of years ago
https://www.packagingdigest.com/flexible-packaging/will-electric-vehicles-put-pouch-machines-out-business
John henry said...
Suppose it were possible to beam space based solar directly to a car?
A small battery with 25 miles range for acceleration and getting through tunnels.
But kept charged continuously via a rooftop antenna.
That would solve the battery cost, charging, range problem.
The resistance of air to electrical power flow is really high. I suppose the air molecules could be aligned somehow using magnetic force or heat? That still requires power. Speculative and fun to think about but decades on the future.
Running power underground into inductive chargers built under parking spaces seems more appropriate.
Also the charging speed will be the limiting factor always. Some of the graphene battery designs being tested are really promising.
Why does anyone assume Musk's work on the Tesla was altruistic? Why does anyone assume he is obliged to make electric cars more practical?
Twitter was a blight. It's employees were leftist propagandists. Musk apparently had $44 billion to spare. Why assume his goal was to make it a profitable panacea of enlightened communication?
Because the leftmedia tell us so? Bwahahaha!
Achilles said ...If The Shit Hits the Fan and society collapses it is going to be a lot easier to figure out how to charge a battery than it will be to figure out how to pump oil and refine it into gasoline.
That puts you on a short tether, just like Brandon and company desire. I believe the southern and middle states that form flyover country will keep drilling and producing oil and natural gas but exporting the excess to the rest of the world while watching the NY and New England states, and some other places (California, Seattle??") go without. Think of it as forming a large new sanctuary for common sense and continuing prosperity.
But you be you, Achilles.
Wow. Who do to libs hate the most now Trump or Musk? Seems like it might be Musk because they have in effect muzzled Trump to the part of country that only get main stream news.
I suspect the hate for Musk is he is interfering with the lefts control of the messaging and narrative.
They're meaningless to carbon emissions (which are fine btw).
Don't you mean carbon dioxide emissions, gusty?
A completely different substance in a dozen or more ways.
As different as water and hydrogen.
And also completely fine.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
All the arguments about Elon' foibles need to pass through the 'Explain why he's the world's richest man, and you're not' starting gate. Then the first hurdle after that should be: 'Compare his electric car progress to GM's and Ford's, and anybody else's, and please include capital values.' Followed by, 'Compare Space-X's progress and project execution to NASA's, including budget'. I'm still blown away every time I see a pair of empty boosters come hurtling down out of the sky, blasting away at the last moment as the legs unfold, to land perfectly perched as shown on every 1950s science fiction movie or Bugs Bunny cartoon (take your pick).
We live in a large research university town and there are lots of doctors and professors in the neighborhood, driving their Teslas. Good for them! Not for me - I'll stick with my 25 year-old beater heavy-duty pickup-with-a-drinking-problem, because it can pull my tractor and dump trailer.
Tesla was Elon + State Subsidy cool before Twitter was Elon + State tentacles cool
By the way, I challenge anybody here or anywhere else to tell me what their actual hydrocarbon signature is, right now or at any other time. Let's use BTUs per year as the descriptive unit. Isn't it funny, how absolutely nobody can do this, or will even try?
Hydrocarbon-derived energy and consumer products are so imbued into everything that we use or touch, that hydrocarbons have become invisible - or rather, indistinguishable and inseparable - from our lives. The end of the fossil fuel age is a very long way away, indeed - and we really haven't taken anything but baby steps to get away from it, at the present moment. The first grownup thing to be done is to replace our hydrocarbon-driven power generation industry sector with 100% nuclear-driven generation. Do this - then, we'll tackle what's achievable with the rest of it.
The math will stop the EV madness. The electrical generation and the battery building are not feasible. Hell California’s current power supply is unreliable and cannot handle more capacity, much less 2000 more charging stations. Fun fact: average charger installed under Joe’s Five Year Plan is only charging 1.25 cars PER DAY. Then there’s all the pollution displacement going on to import energy to CA for “green” vehicles. There’s plenty of exhaust involved, more than an ICE tailpipe, but it’s far away from smug Tesla drivers and the CA politicians pushing them.
Given the sources cited and expected negativity/hit jobs therein, I think it’s safe to say that the Left dislikes Elon Musk.
Unexpectedly.
If you assume everything else Musk ever did is a failure, and that everything Musk ever attempts in the future will be a failure, SpaceX is still the single most successful provider of space launch services in all human history to date.
Given how much deep-pocketed competition SpaceX had (Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic/Orbit, Arianespace, Roscosmos, JAXA, CNSA, ISRO), it requires willful blindness not to acknowledge that Musk has to be a pretty good manager for SpaceX to have accomplished that. You can't just luck your way into massively outperforming a large number of well-funded competitors in a highly-complex physical engineering project.
(He just hired good people? Hiring the right people and giving them the conditions under which they succeed at a world-beating level is good management.)
The lefty loons can cry more...
"Don't you mean carbon dioxide emissions, gusty?"
Don't you get tired of this?
Yes, it must be sad that you buy a car as a status symbol and then find out it has no status. Of course, if they plaster their Tesla with a bunch of "bernie for President" and "Help Ukraine" "fight climate change" stickers they might get by.
People swayed by blatant propaganda hit-pieces are shallow thinkers. But these articles are meant to appeal to Democrat voters so to be expected.
Musk is the richest man in the world. I wish I could screw-up like that.
Random thoughts...
I have a musk fan-boy relative. They've owned all 3 teslas. I'm sure he's heavily invested in Tesla. It'll be interesting to hear his comments at lunch today.
I've leased two ev's, a Fiat 500e and a Chevy Bolt. Got a reliable 190 miles from the fiat, and 230 from the bolt, in mixed driving. The fiat especially was the perfect car for daily use in my metro area.
Last year travelling between LA and Seattle, I was astounded at the mass of Tesla charging stations along I-5, but I noticed only light use of them.
When Falcon was first launching, I noticed that Space x had made a very conservative choice of fuel for the first stage. (RP-1, basically kerosene, dating back to the 60s.) I agreed with my fanboy relative that they were putting their risk dollars into booster recovery instead. Looks like that paid off.
I'm glad my father is not alive to see what's become of NASA.
Musk is running a conglomerate. I thought conglomerates were long out of fashion.
And I’m crazy ‘bout a Mercury!
@john henry: As long as we're picking ideal technologies, suppose we developed a way to synthesize octane? It has high energy density and we already have an efficient delivery system and machines that use it. The green ideal would use harvest waste (or CO2, but that sounds slow) as the raw material, but coal would probably be easier.
I agree with Drago at 8:45a.
Progressives hate Tesla and SpaceX, because as both exists as success proves that government and unions are not the best solutions for complex problems. The sad part is how Tesla and SpaceX began with simple premises dismissed by others. Before Tesla, electric car design was about making them as lightweight as possible. This meant anemic engines, small batteries, a shell of a frame, and tiny tires. Your local golf course had more substantial electric vehicles lining fairways than what GM, Toyota, and Nissan were producing. Tesla made cars twice as heavy than your normal sedan, gave them a useful range with a fast charge, and they can pull off the line like a supercar.
SpaceX began Falcon Heavy development about the same time as NASA started SLS (excluding Ares-V). Falcon Heavy has successfully flown 4 times including last week. SLS hopes to have its first flight in two weeks and won't launch its 4th flight no earlier than 2027. None of SLS is reusable. 2/3rds of Falcon Heavy was successfully recovered minutes after launch.
But electric vehicles are the superior technology in the 20 year time frame for all the reasons I listed. And they take much less infrastructure to run then gas powered vehicles do.
If we see the left/Democrats suddenly start supporting nuclear power, I will believe they are serious and this is not just a scam. Hasn't happened yet.
Elon is such a screw up, he went from an immigrant with no money to the richest man in the world in the space of twenty years.
Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. The first rule of social progressive crowd is that you take a knee, advocate, and donate.
It's because he's African-American, People of Peach, right? Diversity past, present, and forward-looking.
"If The Shit Hits the Fan and society collapses it is going to be a lot easier to figure out how to charge a battery than it will be to figure out how to pump oil and refine it into gasoline."
If society collapses you're going to have a hard time finding any place to charge you're electric vehicle. It takes 220 volts to charge a Tesla for a minimum of eight hours. I think you're going to be more worried about keeping warm and keeping food from spoiling.
Aggie said, "All the arguments about Elon' foibles need to pass through the 'Explain why he's the world's richest man, and you're not' starting gate."
Oh, so wealth is a stellar indicator that foibles can be ignored?
Joe Biden, who has a stellar reputation for messing things up, is not near as rich as Elon, but he's sitting prettier than most of us. Why? He's a con man. And so is Elon, just a better, brighter, flashier one.
It is arguable Musk got conned in China (or at least conned himself into thinking he was beyond conning -- shades of Richard Feynam's "you must not fool yourself" wisdom). The contract which allows him to build cars there allows the government to seize his plant if they don't like his performance -- or for any reason at all.
I think Musk is far more intelligent and imaginative than most of us on the planet. But intelligence alone does not by itself confer good judgement.
“The Twitter purchase was as much a political statement as financial investment -- much like Trump running for president in 2016. These have huge cultural implications even if the monetary value isn't there. Musk made a lot of money through government funding (both SpaceX and Tesla), so perhaps government insiders strongly pushed the Twitter purchase behind closed doors.”
Yes - the government buys SpaceX launches - because they are so frighten cheap. As noted above, NASA tried to jump start private spaceflight through Boing, one of the federal government’s go-to contractors, at least since WW II. Didn’t work, of course, since that company is in the business of cost plus government contracts - the more they can charge, the more money they make.
Putting the pneumatics aside, the Boring company demo project under Las Vegas appears to involve self driving Teslas driving through the Boring tunnel. You can’t do that effectively with ICE engines, due to the CO engines. For me, it’s his synergy that jumps out at me. Everything is tied together. Mentioned earlier is that battery technology requires rare earths, and they mostly come from China. But where is there a much, much larger supply of them? In space. And who is best situated to extract them? The guy behind SpaceX and cheap reusable space vehicles. And he is likely to have control over Internet access for many more people on this planet than anyone else due to StarLink. And it will cost less. A lot less, from his launch expenses, to mass producing satellites (pioneered by Motorola/Iridium). Others have tried, but the technology never took off because space launches cost so much, as did satellites (I worked on a USDA/Sprint effort in the latter 1980s using satellites to tie together remote sites).
It’s not that no one has thought of these things before. Science Fiction is filled with them. A couple decades ago, I read a depressing article about humans having one chance at establishing ourselves in space, where energy and materials are dirt cheap, before we ran out of hydrocarbons to get the stuff needed up into space to build the infrastructure there, and we were blowing it, with NASA and similar state run organizations around the world spending more and more, for less and less launch capability. It got so bad that the US was buying launches from the Russians. NASA was more interested in Muslim outreach than actually getting anything into space. A staple in Sci-Fi is reusable rockets. Why couldn’t we build such? I think, mostly, because NASA, etc, had better things to do.
The missing piece to me, right now, is distributed energy production or transmission. I think that there are two real alternatives: beaming energy from solar collectors in space, and small, modular, nuclear energy production. I expect to see Musk jump on one, or maybe both. I expect that his natural preference is solar energy collectors in space, given his exigence and resources in both space launches and solar power. But that may be higher risk than modular nuclear, since the key piece of technology, getting the energy down to Earth and collected still seems missing. Small modular nuclear power plants appear to be just around the corner, tied up bureaucratically, and not scientifically. We shall see.
the thing they thought made them look cool now seems right wing
I was once part of the consensus, me, too, we in royal fashion, but, alas, it's just him, his, me, and I in an individuated personality from my father's wing to informed consent in my mother's womb.
Hybrids.
Electric for in-town.
Gas for long travel.
It works.
Danno said...
Achilles said ...If The Shit Hits the Fan and society collapses it is going to be a lot easier to figure out how to charge a battery than it will be to figure out how to pump oil and refine it into gasoline.
That puts you on a short tether, just like Brandon and company desire. I believe the southern and middle states that form flyover country will keep drilling and producing oil and natural gas but exporting the excess to the rest of the world while watching the NY and New England states, and some other places (California, Seattle??") go without. Think of it as forming a large new sanctuary for common sense and continuing prosperity.
But you be you, Achilles.
There are going to be multiple systems built. They will all have good and bad points.
I will personally have a map of gas stations with buried tanks of gasoline and a way to pump the gas out of those tanks along with a pre-2000 vehicle without any computer chips in it.
But in the end setting up a small hydro-electric damn and having an electric car is going to be the lowest cost of investment vehicle solution if the state decides to put the boot down.
Something to keep in mind with Twitter is the possible synergy with Musk’s other companies - in this case, probably StarLink (launched by SpaceX). Just from how he seems to think synergistically, I would bet that he has something planned there, much more than merely opening up free speech, for the sake of it. I think that he realized that Twitter was greatly limiting itself by taking sides in political debate, and trying to set left wing narratives. And eliminating that inefficiency may be part of the plan to make the deal profitable. His plan may be as simple as driving demand for StarLink with demand for Twitter around the world. But I suspect more is planned. Twitter is an up and running communications service with millions of customers. I don’t see how he can turn it into a gold mine, but expect to see him try to do something with it anyway. WaPo was pocket change in comparison with Twitter. I just don’t see someone like Musk just blowing that amount of money on a purely vanity purchase. I think that he sees some opportunities for synergies. I just don’t see how right now - but if I did, I would probably be a lot richer than I currently am.
LA_Bob said: "Oh, so wealth is a stellar indicator that foibles can be ignored?"
Well, where did I say any of that? I thought I laid out an argument with constructive steps to evaluate Musk's contributions in a critical-thinking way, but it looks like you got hung up on the first one and proceeded no further.
No wealth is not a 'stellar indicator', but arguably success is.
My point is, Musk has taken things that previously existed only in the imagination of rather futuristic thinkers, and he made them happen in real life, where other better-funded and resourced efforts failed to.
He'll continue to make things happen because he's a visionary. I don't think many people can share these bragging rights. That doesn't make him immune to mistakes or even failure.
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
And The Atlantic tweeted out that this was a big failure because they couldn't tell day from night.
Of course the Fourth Estate's main beef:
'As our main source of what we write, ass in chair - stories, trends, quotes, what's popular - Twitter cannot be left in the hands of an unpredictable businessman/inventor.'
Aggie said...
“All the arguments about Elon' foibles need to pass through the 'Explain why he's the world's richest man, and you're not' starting gate. Then the first hurdle after that should be: 'Compare his electric car progress to GM's and Ford's, and anybody else's, and please include capital values.' Followed by, 'Compare Space-X's progress and project execution to NASA's, including budget'. I'm still blown away every time I see a pair of empty boosters come hurtling down out of the sky, blasting away at the last moment as the legs unfold, to land perfectly perched as shown on every 1950s science fiction movie or Bugs Bunny cartoon (take your pick).” “We live in a large research university town and there are lots of doctors and professors in the neighborhood, driving their Teslas. Good for them! Not for me - I'll stick with my 25 year-old beater heavy-duty pickup-with-a-drinking-problem, because it can pull my tractor and dump trailer.”
Interesting to me is that he has been so successful in multiple endeavors. PayPal is still around, but hasn’t done much since Musk and cofounder sold it off. Tesla has the best EVs for the money. SpaceX has, by far, the cheapest launch costs in the world. And StarLink is likely to be the biggest Internet provider in the world very soon. Contrast that to, for example, Bill Gates, who could only produce good compilers on his own. DOS fell into his lap - he just saw how it was valuable, and how to steal it. Windows was stolen from Apple (thanks to his compilers, which also gave him DOS). Most of the other people with real fortunes earned over our lifetimes were one hit wonders like Gates.
“We live in a large research university town and there are lots of doctors and professors in the neighborhood, driving their Teslas. Good for them! Not for me - I'll stick with my 25 year-old beater heavy-duty pickup-with-a-drinking-problem, because it can pull my tractor and dump trailer.”
We live in a small subdivision a mile east of the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, complete with research facilities for entities like ASU. Right next to Snottsdale, but without the Snottsdale property prices. The Teslae are ubiquitous here. In our section of the block of 4 houses, there are 4 Teslae - and we don’t have one, which means that the neighbors just to the east have a His and Hers Teslae. Another house that we have to drive by to get in or out of the subdivision also sports two of them - prominently parked in the driveway so everyone can notice their high moral standards. My guess is that most of my neighbors, and esp the Tesla owners, are somewhere in their 30s. Definitely making some money - the neighbor to the west has a Jaguar, and the family two down on the east have a mid range BMW as their ICE vehicle. My daughter and her husband, entering this age group, are thinking of a Tesla when they replace their next vehicle (which was bought while they were in grad school). Except that it snows in Colorado, and they do a lot of stuff outdoors in the mountains.
Of course, if they plaster their Tesla with a bunch of "bernie for President" and "Help Ukraine" "fight climate change" stickers they might get by.
I voted for her... who?... "her", would be a conversation starter.
"The Twitter purchase was as much a political statement as financial investment -- much like Trump running for president in 2016."
And if Democrats/progressives weren't such colossal dickheads when they manage to get themselves into positions of power, neither of those things would likely have happened.
(Eaglebeak)
1. Jut tell Tesla drivers you can be cool and right-wing at the same time. Easier than being cool and left-wing, for sure.
2. The best thing about Musk is that he's funny, by which I mean, he has a sense of humor.
"I want an electric car like I want a hole in my head. My great fear is the movement to outlaw the internal combustion engine. They intend to force you to buy one."
They don't want you to have a car at all. Only allowing EVs while not having the capacity to charge them all is one way to achieve that goal. Who wants to buy a car they can't use because there's not enough available electricity to charge it?
Re: your (6), Ann,
We have a Tesla. A large number of close neighbors also have Teslas. (None on our cul-de-sac, but at least eight in the immediate vicinity of a few blocks.) My husband's family, in CA, basically all have Teslas. Two per household, in more than one case.
We don't think of Tesla as "right-wing" b/c Elon Musk bought Twitter. Why should we? Is progressive-everyone also avoiding Starlink? Any of the benefits of SpaceX? I thought not.
Not all rare earth metals are in China. We have quite a few here in the US but our environmental laws keep us from exploiting them. What China did was buy up as much of the rare earth capacity world wide especially lithium. In Canada, South America and in Africa.
Readering: "Musk is running a conglomerate."
Yes, you would believe that.
Readering: "I thought conglomerates were long out of fashion."
Once you've gone down the wrong path, you really ought to just turn around and go back.
But that may be higher risk than modular nuclear, since the key piece of technology, getting the energy down to Earth and collected still seems missing. Small modular nuclear power plants appear to be just around the corner, tied up bureaucratically, and not scientifically. We shall see.
I'm now starting to see Democrats question "What could we do with nuclear waste?" That is a small sign of reality intruding. We, of course, have a site for nuclear waste that the government spent billions on until Harry Reid killed it. Maybe it is still viable or maybe Harry sold it to China like he tried to do with the Bundy ranch.
Speaking of Teslas, I used to commute on the 405 to a place near LAX. In 2016, the only car I saw on the freeway with a "Trump" bumper sticker was a Tesla.
1. "Elon Musk’s ‘Hyperloop Prototype’ Was Always a Gimmick"
Reusable spacecraft engines were a "gimmick" until SpaceX actually started building and using them
2: "Elon Musk Is Bad at This/The Musk era of Twitter has so far been defined by unhinged tweets, fleeing advertisers, and botched layoffs"
Mocking Hillary is NEVER "unhinged"
The advertisers are fleeing because of Left wing pressure, not because of anything Musk has done
The layoffs have been looking awesome from here in the cheap seats
3. "Elon Musk has discussed putting all of Twitter behind a paywall/So far Twitter Blue is a mess and might even lose money"
"Might". A weasel word for a hack wishcasting
(The Verge)("Managers agonized over the [firing] decisions and jockeyed with their peers in an effort to preserve employment for the most vulnerable among them: pregnant women, employees who have cancer, and workers on visas among them").
So, didn't want to preserve the best / most productive employees, just the politically favored ones
It's not Musk who's the "mediocre executive"
4. Neuralink? "Elon Musk’s Neuralink is neuroscience theater/Elon Musk’s livestreamed brain implant event made promises that will be hard to keep" (MIT Technology)(“In a lot of ways,” Musk said, “It’s kind of like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires").
Brain implants have been a "coming gimmick" for the last 40 years. See #1
5. There will never be colonies of human beings living on Mars! Some people just love this fantasy, but come on!
If there are never any "colonies of human beings living on Mars", it will be because humanity went extinct
Those who can, do. Those who can't are journalists.
Seems to me that EVs are at the "bag phone" stage, similar to cell phones in the glory days of the 1980s. Ongoing investment in research and engineering may or may not solve some of the currently insurmountable obstacles. As long as people keep purchasing EVs with the help of government subsidies, the research and engineering will continue. The question no one can answer is: will an insurmountable road block arise that kills the whole thing? I tend to think not, simply because society has had this same discussion about ships, air travel, automobiles, computers, etc.
Musk snatched away the left's favorite sledge hammer, made it available to the riffraff and now they're going insane over it.
It is to enjoy.
And they take much less infrastructure to run then gas powered vehicles do.
Nope.
If The Shit Hits the Fan and society collapses it is going to be a lot easier to figure out how to charge a battery than it will be to figure out how to pump oil and refine it into gasoline.
History says nope too. Unless you insist it has to be gasoline rather than the more common refinement of kerosene, which in historical terms would be like insisting the battery must be charged by fusion power.
“I'm now starting to see Democrats question "What could we do with nuclear waste?" That is a small sign of reality intruding. We, of course, have a site for nuclear waste that the government spent billions on until Harry Reid killed it. Maybe it is still viable or maybe Harry sold it to China like he tried to do with the Bundy ranch”
Well, the next generation of Bundys is making things exciting this year in Idaho, where Ammon Bundy is running for Governor as an independent. He was going to run as a Republican, but changed his mind. He seems to believe that Republican politicians are almost as corrupt as Democrats. I was surprised that he seems to have jumped on the bandwagon of opposing High Priest Mormonism, which he claims that his father, attorney, and their nemesis, Harry Reid, all belong(Ed) to (I was surprised to discover, from my partner, who grew up with the Reid kids, that Harry Reid was an LDS convert, after seeing that the Mormons had a lock on political power in NV at the time). Keep in mind that the NE corner of Clarke County is only a couple hours from where a lot of the (Mormon heretic) polygamists live, on the UT/AZ border. Not sure if that was where he was coming from or not.
To clarify a bit - most of the Bundy ranch involved BLM leases. Reid gave those leases to Chinese benefactors for a solar panel site. If you have ever driven across much of Clark County, it is really, really, desolate. It takes far more land than you could foreseeably homestead (160 acres) to raise enough cattle to make a living (it takes multiple sections of ranch land for a chance of making a living). Kill off the BLM leases, and you kill ranches in Clarke County. And that is precisely what happened, thanks to their late Senator, who now has a major airport named after him.
Yes, Original Mike, I am GODDAMN! tired of it.
People say "carbon" when they should be saying "carbon dioxide" for 2 reasons as far as I can figure out:
1) They are pig ignorant and do not understand that one is normally a solid, often flammable and elemental. While the other is normally a gas (though liquid and solid CO2 is not uncommon in daily use. Think dry ice and fire extinguishers)
This people are scientifically illiterate and no amount of correction will stick. Probably a waste of time thinking I can change them.
I do not think Gusty is in this category.
2) People who know the difference and continue to use carbon anyway. This is pure propaganda for the warmenistas. When people, not in group 1, hear CO2 they think of all the benefits: Fire protection, donuts, beer, plant growth. How can we expect people to get worked up over such a benign substance?
Coal, OTHO, is the most common form of carbon and probably what most people think of first. It is also graphite, used in pencils, carbon black(soot), smoke. Mostly pretty dirty and easy to get people worked up against it.
Diamonds are pure carbon too, though we don't hear much about that.
Within the 2nd group I think there are 2 types of people:
2A: People who understand that miscalling it carbon is pure useful propaganda for the warmenista cause. They do it purposely as a propaganda tool. I probably don't accomplish much calling them out either.
2B: People who know or should know better but spread the propaganda because they are too lazy to hit 3 keys (CO2) instead of 5 (carbon)
They spread the propaganda. Perhaps unwittingly. Doesn't matter whether they do it on purpose or unwittingly, the end result is identical. Perhaps even more effective if they are non-warmenistas.
Those are the ones I am trying to reach. Those are the ones I think I can persuade not to spread the lies.
I suspect I know which of the 3 groups Gusty is in but will not presume to put words in their mouth. I just hope they, and others, will stop using carbon when they really mean CO2.
Will you commit to that, Mike?
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
Re SHTF times and the benefits of ICE over battery cars.
I'll stick with ICE. It is much easier to make my own fuel than it is to make my own electricity, especially in the quantities needed for vehicles. Fuel can also be stored cheaply in homemade storage while electricity storage requires expensive batteries.
1) Central Indiana stinks of pigshit in certain areas. That stink is the smell of fuel. Load the pigshit in a home built fermenter and you can convert it to methane and fertilizer all day long. The methane can be stored in homemade tanks as simple as old inner tubes.
In older cars, some fairly minor changes to the carburetor lets it be burned directly. My home generator runs on gasoline, or with the flip of a valve, propane. I am sure it could run off methane (natural gas) as well.
Here is an article about a commercial application using cowshit.
https://www.farmprogress.com/dairy/renewable-natural-gas-win-large-dairy-farms
If you can find an old Whole Earth Catalog from the 70s they had instructions for home built systems.
2) Charcoal fired engines. They are ugly and cumbersome and not very efficient but were commercially available in Europe in the 40s when gas was not available. Similar kind of digester but you feeds it grass, wood, or anything cellulosic.
Search charcoal burning car for a bunch of images.
3) I could grow algae. Once I have the algae, I can do some chemical treatments to convert it into a liquid fuel. That might or might not be within the capabilities of DIY. Or, I can run the algae through some rollers and squeeze out a fairly low grade fuel. Probably not good enough to run an ICE but could be burned for heat. So not for transportation.
John Stop fascism vote republican
Someone mentioned hydro. Nice but you need a lot of water and a fairly significant head to generate much power at all. The Hoover Dam/Lake Mead complex generates about 500MW. Not a lot considering how much resources are consumed building and maintaining the dam and facility. And considering that a 500MW coal plant, including trainyard or port, coal handling and storage will probably take up less than 10-15 acres.
John Stop fascism vote republican
Babe Ruth struck out a lot, too.
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