Almost everyone is beholden to an employer, a committee, or an oversight board of some kind so we all have to censor our public thoughts to a huge extent. I think some people are upset that Elon doesn’t have to, and they’re upset that he’s “above the law”.
Woke culture truly is the new church.
Folks on HN lauded the CoinBase stance that people should check their politics at the door; Musk is doing the exact opposite of that.
It’s wild to see people so deranged and obsessed with the bandwagon hating to comment something like this and trying to be dead serious about it.
Anyway, for a good laugh you can check out the lawsuit and read past the “Elon rage porn” headlines on it.
Highly suggest if you are ever on the Internet and find yourself getting hyped angry about something to shut it off.
How exactly? People can't focus on their work on engine design, or combustion simulation, or reentry trajectory because Musk is involved in some Twitter fights? Or maybe because Musk fails to be a role model? Are they kids, or grownups?
Musk called Bill Gates fat because he shorted Tesla stock. Is that a pleasant surprise? A breath of fresh air? Finally, someone is speaking their mind!
Musk doesn’t have to be woke. All he has to do is be professional and that will clean up his image.
Back when I was a student, there was a professor emeritus of communications who liked to say things like "communication usually fails, except by accident". The idea was that if you intend to say something but many people interpret it otherwise, that was you failure to communicate. Musk is certainly smart enough to realize that his tone changes the meaning of what he says, but he keeps doing it anyway. That makes him a kind of a troll.
The thing with trolls is that people often don't like them. They may barely tolerate trolls they agree with and actively hate ones they disagree with.
Musk reminds me of another person: a former communist (of the minority faction who supported the USSR) who later made a 180-degree turn and became a successful investment banker. He is one of the richest people in Finland who didn't inherit their fortune, and he is probably also one of the most hated people in the country. And he genuinely enjoys trolling. Often when business leaders or right-wing ideologists have something that needs saying but can't be said aloud, they let him say it.
Are you talking about Osmo A. Wiio? https://jkorpela.fi/wiio.html
I feel like I don't understand this. Is the idea that you need to try very hard to communicate well?
Why anyone credits anything he says will forever escape me.
Amen.
But really the goal is to make SpaceX as productive as possible, to do something productive for the world, not to serve Musk's whims. If there is a trade-off between the whims and the productivity, it's clear which should be sacrificed.
You are allowing your emotions and dislike of Musk to cloud your judgement.
I’d argue there probably isn’t enough substance to the complaint yet (Space-X brand is probably still a net positive having him in front of the company), but your line of argument would cause a quiet brain drain from organizations, not keep them healthy with open discussion. The fact that this open letter was described outside of the company might be the only reason I might side with you.
…and then be quite concerned that the CEO’s attention is seemingly quite scattershot now, and perhaps too focused on a social media site that nobody outside the chattering class uses.
If prior letters like this are any indication, it's on the order of 12 out of 12,000.
"It was shared and discussed on HackerNews, a forum with reportedly more than 1,000,000 members"
there's a lot of spam posted in large company channels that doesn't drive any engagement.
The Verge is eager to play up the significance of this effort to drive clicks, as they're "breaking" this story. They've timed the release well to capitalize on the Elon coverage
Which company? All of them? Elon has no individual identity or voice any more?
Elon on twitter is obviously speaking as and for Elon, not representing a specific company.
This is absolutely incorrect. I don't know about SpaceX, but Tesla notified the markets in a 2013 filing that it intended to use Musk's Twitter account for official announcements. There was very well-covered SEC enforcement that followed.
Then you can say whatever you want. Even journalists can blatantly lie. It gives you complete indemnity! Those are the rules of engagement bestowed upon most blue-checks on Twitter.
The subtext is the unspoken 'culture war' - everyone sees it, so it's a bit bizarre to me that it's unspoken - between, on one hand, a subculture in society (including on the Internet and in business) that celebrates power (including its abuse and corruption) and disruption; and on the other hand, one that advocates responsibility, basic human dignity, productivity, and innovation.
IMHO, the former subculture, of power and disruption, is indefensible. Maybe that's why the contest is unspoken, and instead we debate Musk's behavior as a proxy.
(Starship is wholly inadequate to even start colonizing Mars. It might be just barely adequate to start an outpost with a half-dozen staff. It probably could support an active moon base.)
He has anyway not lied about the possibility of suborbital passenger or freight service lately, to my knowledge. BTW, Shotwell has, too.
Starship is wholly inadequate to take more than 17 crew to Mars; that would be if you don't mind some killed on the way there. So, you send 4 or 5 cargo ships, 500 tons of stuff, and two ships swinging on the ends of a cable, so their bones don't melt on the way there. (Which, BTW, takes 9, not 6, months.) Maybe one is a spare, with everything duplicated. The main ship fits 8 crew with just-tolerable comfort, with stuff you will actually need for 9 months unimaginably distant from all possibility of help. Change of underwear, you think? Water, food. Air? Space suits, to go outside when they arrive? Maybe a hand truck.
They get there, and now have to unship and set up 500 tons of crap. It only weighs 170-some tons, which is not much better. Set up a massive solar farm and methane and oxygen factory. Debug it. Assemble vehicles, freight handlers, bulldozer and excavator. Individual pod huts, so crew can sometimes get away from others they have come to detest.
Look around and think, "This place is a dump." Because every last detail is way worse than the worst place on Earth. Cold, dim, featureless, bone dry, dusty. The dust sticks to everything, seemingly leaping up to soil any clean surface.
Enough is enough, but nobody can go home until the launch window opens, and the fuel is banked.
Like, thank you Musk for backing smart people like Gwynne and JB and giving the powder that they need to fire their flintlocks of excellence.
Dislike, no thank you Musk for your distracting and pointless pre-occupation with meme currencies and "I am 14 and I just read Heinlein and this is deep"-tier libertarian twitterings.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
