Elon Musk

Or shit maybe not. Or maybe both. Big Tentin’

Elon Musk is one of the biggest obstacles to the acceptance of a post-personal-car world, which is what we really need more than anything. Don't think he gives a shit about climate change, electric cars are just the new thing, if this were the 30s he'd be selling asbestos and CFCs.

― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Monday, April 26, 2021 4:15 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is not me defending EM or cars. BUT

i think if you have to significantly reduce emissions in the next 10 years or else bad shit 4ever, theres a more realistic pathway in the US to doing this in that timeframe by electrifying as many vehicles as possible than focusing limited political capital on (and waiting on the completion of) absolutely necessary massive public transportation infrastructure. but then once that phase is done its back to banning cars.

wow sounds like someone who just bought an electric car.... very interesting

lol i did

bc my dumbass city will never build trains without helicopters full of federal money

the thing about musk FWIW is that hes actively advocating against public transpo and in fact trying to undermine it via the boring company and also the dumb vacuum tube idea (not sure if those are the same thing)

if he was just a simple electric car maker dont think people would be giving him shit in this case, but as usual with the ultra wealthy they got to be monkeying around where they dont belong

right. electrification of private cars (i.e. the short term fix) is happening without tesla in most of the world. if can happen without tesla here too.

AND

they are literally fighting the things that really will save us in the long term.

to clarify my position: fuck EM (and by extension tesla)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgDVdwxBgwY

i hope tesla stops lying about it and i hope they figure out how to do it soon. that guy actually driving a vehicle may be even more dangerous

...
And that brings us back to our back seat Berkeley driver. One of the people who recorded one of his dangerous stunts attempted to contact either the California Highway Patrol or Tesla proper to hold the driver accountable—and was hugely disappointed. From SF Gate:

He purportedly provided the info to Tesla’s customer service, who told him to contact CHP’s Oakland branch. CHP allegedly told him that there was nothing they could do, and to contact 911.

He called CHP’s main complaint line, and the representative allegedly suggested filing a report in-person, with the caveat that it wouldn’t punish the driver. All it would do, he explained, is hit him with a proverbial slap on the wrist — a warning letter to not do it again.

'Back Seat Berkeley Driver' an underrated 69 Love Songs track

he runs some really great companies:

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-spacex-is-reportedly-trying-to-gobble-up-thi-1846850735

there's an even better WSJ article about this, but it is paywalled.

Roughly 14 people not connected to SpaceX currently live in Boca Chica Village and the surrounding area, according to the Journal. One local, Celia Johnson, told the outlet she started having issues with SpaceX employees after rejecting the company’s offer to purchase her two properties located near the launch facility. One of her homes, a rental property, had a 1,600-gallon water tank suddenly vanish in 2019. A few months later, she arrived to find its window shattered by a brick and evidence suggesting that someone had been sleeping there. When she and her neighbors accused SpaceX workers of being the culprits, the company denied responsibility but reimbursed her in both cases.

However, in the meantime, Boca Chica Village residents are apparently getting screwed. Explosions from failed rocket tests have broken home windows, rained down debris, and started brush fires, according to residents who spoke with the Journal. Leading up to launches, locals say SpaceX workers leave them fliers advising them to vacate their homes in case of a potential malfunction. The company has even offered to put them up in a hotel during launches, albeit one 40 miles away (gas and food expenses not included).

Elon Musk sounds like a shitty cologne scent you get in a dollar store

That SNL skit is execrable. Why is that show still so popular?

Inertia. Also most popular shows are pretty bad.

yeah kind of hard to judge the Elon stuff. maybe the show is just that fucking bad now. at least they didn't do "Woke James Bond"

Here’s some good SNL discussion

Brilliant: he was invited on air to talk about Elon Musk and instead called out Newsmax for its election lies.

“Newsmax lied to its own viewers and had to settle that lawsuit...Are you still telling that lie or are you telling new lies?”
pic.twitter.com/dIE3uOttrD

— Jan Wolfe (@JanNWolfe) May 10, 2021

theres no way all of snl can be as bad as that wario sketch

The show is really, truly, deeply, almost unremittingly bad.

everything was fine until g.e. smith left and the saxophone guy took over

It was all over when Chevy left.

I sometimes wonder if I've missed out on anything after I stopped watching when president dumbfuck hosted but I never wonder for very long.

feels like this current shitty era has far outlasted the dark ages of the early 80s. I basically started avoiding it oh idk some time in 2016 and can’t say I’ve missed it a bit.

Just read in the Washington Post how NBC was happy with how well the show did in digital media, including social media. Which is funny, since the Post always puts a goddamm recap of every episode with Youtube clips on its front page every Sunday morning.

I don't even click on the twitter links anymore. I see that Wario screencap and think, yeah, I'm pretty sure I can grab the gist of this.

you should watch it its shockingly bad!

couldn't bring myself to watch that one but I saw two minutes of "Gen Z Hospital" and it was straight up the worst sketch I've ever seen and I've watched a dozen episodes of Mad TV

like it sucked so bad it that wound up becoming racist

"Here, smell this milk! I think it's gone bad!"

you should watch it its shockingly bad!

i don't think it's more shockingly bad than a recent simpsons episode to someone who stopped watching around season 10. the idea that SNL was ever good seems to be what the newspapers here call a "falsehood".

im not an snl fan or as you say it across the pond supporter but that wario sketch is like barely even recognizable as tv

*i do like the sketch "the californians" lol

I've heard of warioware, but wario wear?!

everything was fine until g.e. smith left and the saxophone guy took over

easily the highlight of the dylan show i saw in 1989 despite having fixed leering ghoul visage

i don't think it's more shockingly bad than a recent simpsons episode to someone who stopped watching around season 10. the idea that SNL was ever good seems to be what the newspapers here call a "falsehood".

right but the Simpsons is like....an actual TV show. it's not easy to wring humor out of the same sitcom characters for over a decade. SNL turns over half its cast/writers every few years and they can do pretty much anything. you'd think they'd luck into a few funny shows here and there. Key & Peele was watched by fewer people and has had like 10x the amount of viral sketches as SNL during the entire internet era. it's weird how aggressively unfunny it consistently is.

the other thing is that it's just a really bad format for a sketch show. like "lets have an extremely competitive cast cobble together a sketch show based on some random celebrity, but all the shows have to be written in a week and must be performed live?" it's as if its designed from the ground up to prevent funny things from happening. I think a lot about "Roundball Rock", which is legitimately very funny (it's one of the Tim Robinson sketches), but like...I can't even make it to the second half. the joke is revealed but there's 6 minutes to go before commercial so there's nothing for the characters to do but just start throwing shit around. if it was an ITYSL sketch it would be 2 minutes

lorne michaels hates comedy

and so does elon musk

haterday night live

im not an snl fan or as you say it across the pond supporter but that wario sketch is like barely even recognizable as tv

I remember when Something Awful would have people do readings of really bizarre fanfics and that's what this sketch resembled to me more than anything (granted this is based on the first 2 minutes that I just watched, I had to tap out after that)

Ego Nwodim as the "Woman in a dark place in her life" during Weekend Update made me laugh. So, it was not a complete waste of time.

the idea that SNL was ever good seems to be what the newspapers here call a "falsehood".

What Up With That is a thing of pure joy.

SNL turns over half its cast/writers every few years and they can do pretty much anything.

Pretty much anything that Lorne Michaels specifically approves of.

Jost graduated college in 2004, started writing at SNL in 2005, and became co-head-writer in 2012.

I bought a DVD of Phil Hartman's SNL bits and even that - even him - even their peak - still had some really cringey limp moments. Maybe I just dont get that certain kinda US comedy I dont know.

this is the only good SNL bit in living memory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ

the show's spirit was broken when lorne put on andrew dice clay over jan hooks and nora dunn imo

dunn did a great, honest intervew a few years ago - https://www.salon.com/2015/04/07/nora_dunn_snl_is_a_traumatic_experience_it’s_something_you_have_to_survive/

where she basically says SNL wasn't a smart enough show to deal with a guy like clay, and it's true. not sure it ever was. but she also says it was the first cast that made it iconic, and everything else since has ridden on though, no matter how talented everyone was. 'the outsiders who became insiders' is a good way of putting it.

We were lucky because we had a really stable cast. And I think as maybe three seasons went on, Lorne added a couple people, but we weren’t introduced to those people as new cast members. It was very strange. Suddenly there was just another person there. And I think it was very hard for those people. Like, Who are you? What are you doing here? Are you a visitor? Or are you in the cast? Then we got Adam Sandler, and he was pretty much just doing his own thing. A lot of these people came on and just did their standup routines on News Update. We had been an ensemble-type cast, and I think we were at our best when we were working together, and the show started to become solo performances and I started losing interest.

My theory has long been that SNL’s appeal was that it was the only show comedy fans could follow like a sports team, due to its weird format and wholesale cast changes. Lorne is basically like the team owner. It had its good eras and bad eras – the good eras usually looking better than they felt at the time through the benefit of nostalgia – and people could argue about which cast (team) was the best. But even at its most dire you could still check in from time to time to look for signs of improvement. Somewhere along the way – the run-up to the 2016 election, I think – it’s like they forgot how to scout for talent or the weight of the show’s history and weird cultural role started crushing them and it became unrecognizable to me as comedy. It seems like a celebrity cameo farm with a bunch of theater kids running around. It’s like they’re playing a different sport.

it’s like they forgot how to scout for talent

There are funny people in the cast who are not typically funny on the show.

I would agree with that in the case of some of the people who have been on the longest; not Kate McKinnon though, who along with Colin Jost embodies their whole problem.

Chris L otm, I've never been a sports person but yeah SNL was basically my sports team for most of my life.

Is it possible to use the strikethrough tags on the thread title and just make this another SNL thread, y/n

It's not a coincidence that the best bits are almost always the pre-recorded bits, which implies the problem is not necessarily the cast or even the writing but what to do with either in the context of a "live" show, with no second takes, no refining, etc. "Murder Durder," for example, was really funny and silly this week (it's the only "skit" I saw) but I don't know if it would have worked live. It needed the look of "Mare" to seal the deal. So yeah, what sic said: there are funny people in the cast who are not typically funny on the show. The question is why? At least Keenan always seems to acknowledge the half-assed absurdity of what he's asked to do. Yang, too, imo. But most of the other people aren't being funny, they're *acting* like they're supposed to be funny, which makes the whole thing feel sort of off balance. Che and Jost are not my faves, but there's a looseness to Weekend Update that often contrasts with the rest of the show's rote parade of fake game-shows or whatever. Maybe that's always been the case, but it seems pretty stark lately.