Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1)

The BBQ Pit
3904

I have voiced skepticism of the Tesla semi, I’ve criticised the Boring company and his underground roadways, and I’ve said the Mars colony was not going to happen.

I have no idea what the ‘dugout loop’ is. Starship Earth to Earth is actually feasible, but has a number of development issues. I doubt we’ll see it, but it’s not crazy on its face - especially for military and cargo uses. In any event, passengers on a Starship are a long way off, since the vehicle has to be certified safe through use. Musk has said people won’t ride in it until it’s made ‘hundreds’ of safe flights.

How about we talk about successes? Like for instance that SpaceX was given 2.6 billion for the same crew contract to the ISS for which Boeing was given 4.2 billion. The difference was explained in that Boeing brought more experience to the table so were worth more.

SpaceX delivered, Boeing did not. In fact, SpaceX will have completed its entire contracted number of missions before Boeing launches a single crew, and has taken over some of Boeing’s contracted missions.

I thought the Boring company was ridiculous, and his idea of building underground roadways to be stupid. But it appears that company is doing quite well. We are going to Vegas soon to play some poker, and booked a room at Resorts World. I was surprised to find that there is an actual Boring company tunnel being built there as we speak. And it actually makes sense. The problem with the place is that while it’s on the strip, it’s at the north end and cut off from the rest by construction of other new casinos. So they’ve put in a connector between it and the Las Vegas convention center. That makes a fair bit of sense, especially in Vegas where weird touristy features abound. Instead of catching a cab to the convention center, it’s a four minute ride underground. It’s not meant to get rid of congestion, but more like a specialty transportation system like a tramway, but underground. The Vegas loop is already running, as is phase 1 of the Resorts World loop. And Vegas is now paying to expand the loop, so they must like the results so far.

Musk invested $100 million of his money in the Boring company. It now has an estimated worth of $1-$10 billion. It would appear that there are a lot of people who don’t think it’s stupid. And unlike Hyperloop, it has real hardware and has completed actual projects.

Shall we compare those results to the California High Speed Rail project, which a lot of people here supported and I said would be a gigantic boondoggle?

3905

I don’t even understand his underground loop nonsense. As far as I can tell, a traditional subway would be strictly better in every way.

3906

But then you might have to breathe the same air as a poor - or worse yet, one might talk to you! Imagine the indignity!

3907

I’m just thinking of drunk bachelor and bachelorette parties puking in all the vehicles. I feel like if you wanted to, you could maintain a pristine subway better than a bunch of…is it just electric cars? Essentially a micro-rental, I guess.

I also feel like it’s a claustrophobic traffic jam waiting to happen as soon as one of the vehicles suffers mechanical problems halfway through.

3908

I’d say that for ANY tech billionaire. If I was young and looking to build a career, and had a chance to get on a team directly reporting to the CEO who happens to be the world’s richest man and a serial company builder, you’re damned right I’d take the job and work my ass off. All you have to lose is some time, but if you can impress and gain the confidence of that person you have a chance to leapfrog the hierarchy and set yourself up for life. I’d do it if the person was Jeff Bezos or even George Soros, and I can’t stand that guy.

It might be a pain and the guy might be an ass and fire everyone and it will all be for nothing, In which case I still got paid, got some valuable experience in a unique situation, and just have to find another job. But if I stand out and he notices, I might find myself a decade or two ahead of my peers on the career track.

I can’t imagine why you think this is a crazy idea.

3909

As this November '22 WSJ article notes,

I mean, AFAICT they are basically in the tourist-attraction business. Which is fine, Las Vegas is an excellent place to build tourist attractions. But it’s not the same thing as actually innovating effective approaches to urban mass transit.

See, that’s the weirdest part. You seem to have complete indifference about whether the billionaire in question actually inspires any confidence in his vision, his abilities, his appreciation of those who work hard for him, and whether the experience of working for him actually will prove valuable. The mere off-chance of being able to get close enough to that kind of money that it might somehow rub off on you if you curry favor well enough is what you’re focusing on, rather than any critical analysis of whether the job or the project is desirable.

I can’t imagine why you’re surprised that this often comes across as a “fanboy” attitude.

3910

No, in this construction chica is the adjective that modifies the noun boca and in this context “boca” would refer to the mouth of one of the various streams of the Rio Grande estuary you can see when you look at the aerial picture. So it means “(Little/Small) (Inlet/Mouth)”

3911

Cite, please? Considering that this is a complete 180 from your previous stance of ‘I was critical of the hyperloop, which was the exception to everything else Elmo has done’ to ‘I’ve been critical of well, literally everything Elmo has done apart from Tesla’.

Of course you don’t know what the Dugout loop is. You’d only know that if you’d invested the 14 minutes in watching the video explaining it - or, you know, taking the ten seconds of typing ‘dugout loop’ in google if that’s too much for your delicate senses. Claiming to have thought the Boring company was ridiculous, and Elmo’s ideas of underground roadways as stupid doesn’t carry much weight when you go on to praise its success in getting a return on investment for Elmo to demonstrate its alleged usefulness. Of course the Vegas loop was success for Elmo, as would the Dugout loop have been if it had been built. Why? Because he grifted Las Vegas into paying him to build the Vegas loop, as he would have also grifted Los Angeles out of the money to build the Dugout loop had he managed to pull that one off. Sucking off the government teat for financial gain isn’t the kind of thing I thought a good libertarian such as yourself would consider a capitalist success story, comrade.

As for your lunacy in considering Starship Earth to Earth to be feasible, with only a number of development issues, I’ll save you the trouble of having to click a link and post the video directly. Feel free to ignore it, as I’m sure you will, but then again, I’m not actually posting it for you.

Deciding that it’s not crazy on its face because it has some imagined potential for military or cargo applications ignores the fact that it isn’t what it is being sold on, its being sold on providing public transportation, the same as looking at SpaceX’s successes ignores that its stated goal isn’t ‘to put stuff into orbit’ but ‘to colonize Mars’, which it has not only done nothing to accomplish in 21 years that isn’t a CGI rendering of fantasy land, but is also now already a year behind schedule in starting to set up said colony, a colony which you yourself acknowledge ‘was not going to happen’. Not much of a success story when you admit its goal is the delusion of a man-child who thinks he’s Ironman.

3912

See also Ben Carson - brilliant neurosurgeon, absolute idiot about pretty much everything else.

And don’t forget the ones in Ogdenville, Brockway and North Haverbrook.

3913

3914

I never realized during any of the many hours I’ve spent in the Holland/Lincoln tunnel that I was actually seeing the brave new Musk Future . . . truly we are blessed to share the planet with such a visionary!

3915

So, you are saying that it applies to someone who thinks that they know better than the experts?

Not sure how that squares with you earlier use:

Where you were comparing him to the likes of

So, were you using it in the same disparaging sense that your flight instructor was using it to you, or were you using it in the sense of the “great man” theory, as would be indicated by placing him in such company?

No one thinks you actually think Musk is a god. However, what you have said does imply that you think that he’s so talented that we just can’t understand his brilliance.

Just as your flight instructor didn’t understand your brilliance when you thought it would be a good idea to ignore procedure and do it your own way.

3916

This is, in fact the plot of 90% of every Horatio Alger story ever written.

3917

If you mean “Horatio Alger story” in the generalized sense of “fictional rags-to-riches success fantasy”, fair enough. But with regard to the particular works by the particular author Horatio Alger, Jr., I gotta push back a little bit.

Alger’s success-fantasy stories, while admittedly very paternalistic and problematic in a lot of other ways, are very earnest about the importance of morality and benevolence in commerce. Alger heroes aren’t scouting around for a rich man, any rich man, to suck up to and take abuse from in the hopes of achieving a shortcut to wealth. They are resourcefully doing the best they can in their straitened circumstances while still maintaining rigorous standards of personal ethics. And that’s what eventually attracts the attention of a good employer or patron, who may not even be more than moderately prosperous, but who consistently rewards the virtuous youth with loyal appreciation and increasing prosperity.

That’s a very far cry from Sam’s recommended approach of trying to maximize your proximity to some super-rich guy, no matter how much of an asshole or schemer or schlemiel he may be, on the chance of his taking a shine to you and granting you early admission into the rich guys’ club. In fact, in Alger novels, when the crafty rich asshole offers the young hero a lucrative role in his shady-rich-asshole business dealings, the hero always disdainfully rejects it in favor of his own more humble but honorable career path.

3918

Point taken. I did read the stories as a child (my grandparents had some compendium of them) and you’re correct in their description re: the morality aspects. But, as a forewarning for those who wish to go this path, the boys who earned the attention were never turned into capitalists themselves, they were largely given jobs running the morse code machine for the old man’s railways or turned into accounting clerks.

3919

They got mocked because the suppositions were shitty.

Then you got the sadz because you put forward shitty suppositions, and accused us of being just politically motivated or “mere mortals.”

It’s past time for you just own the fact that your suppositions, arguments for debate, and cites are shitty.

3920

@Sam_Stone, I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I want to say it another way: what if?

What if you spent the next month–like, from now until April 16–only posting cites that you’d read carefully and double-checked to make sure you weren’t missing important details (e.g., they were posted six years earlier than what you thought they were in response to)? What if you didn’t post fact-free hypotheticals? What if you paid attention to context instead of saying you didn’t care about context?

How do you think the responses to you would change? What if you actually tried it, so you could see how the responses changed?

What if?

Think of it like Dry January, only for bullshit.

3921

Still unappealing, but Dry Bullshit is certainly preferred to Wet

3922

According to the MCU, in that “What if?” scenario, Ultron takes over the world and much of the multiverse.

Or was that the one with the zombies?

3923

It flakes off pretty easily, but I do recommend wearing a mask because that’s not a dust you want to inhale if you can help it.