Elon Musk

i always hear about lyft's end goal being self driving cars and, having driven lyft, it's fucking mystifying to me, like do they know how fucking chaotic people are? especially at bar time?

like picking someone up a club downtown, fucking drunk people tottering all over, crossing in the middle of the street, cops on horseback walking around, oh wait we're not on that side of the block we're by this other place oh wait one of our group is missing oh hey i know we said to drop off at my apartment but chelsea needs to be dropped off at her apartment can we swing by there too? wait don't go that way i know a better way

thats why you just run them over

Dead people can't give you a bad rating

My city refuses to even consider buses so we have 12-16 passenger van city-sponsored rideshare bullshit instead. It's the worst of all worlds - small and inconvenient without regular stopping points, drivers who aren't professionals at moving people around. I get passed by the vans doing 15-20 over on semi-residential streets regularly.

wait don't go that way i know a better way

I mean as a passenger I have certainly been in Lyfts that took a very bad route because the algo instructed them to, presumably the auto-driven cars would do this as well

yeah I mean you what the app tells you to, I've also had people who insisted on a different route that was an absolute clusterfuck

at the end of this the bottom car disgorges like 20 people

lol yeah theres like no rhyme or reason to the #s of people exiting those cars, 15+ passengers exit at least 3 times by my count

inching closer to mass transit imo - sounds like a dead end project!

SpaceX Mars prototype blew up during a test flight today. This is considered a success, due to Musk's policy to "embrace mishaps during the early stages of new spacefaring technology development."

EGG on Musk

would actually pay for an Elon-breaking machine

Has this guy invented a space bus that runs on earth highways yet? How about terrestrial boats that drive (on wheels!) through tunnels *under* the water's surface rather than float over the top?

Sad to say that Elon probably missed his opportunity on this, though
https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/GUEST_3bb6e264-6eb6-4e8b-8723-64334ea568a5?wid=325&hei=325&qlt=80&fmt=pjpeg

musk's genius brain coming at us with SpaceMall

Wait was there another crash today? I know there was this crash 6 days ago:

Belly flop, engine restart, flip, and boom.

SpaceX’s Starship SN8 rocket spectacularly guided itself back to a landing pad in South Texas after a high-altitude test flight Wednesday, but it couldn’t nail the touchdown.

See our video of the entire flight: https://t.co/fUlhxwYevv pic.twitter.com/1odZgAS3R1

— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) December 10, 2020

trying to observe that from the perspective a future archivist/researcher.

the people of earth...are cheering for the test of a self-landing reusable rocket...they cheer for it as it deploys its automated systems and seems to be landing correctly...and then when it crashes and explodes...they cheer with even more enthusiasm

...unclear what 2020 people want or think

I think multi-billion dollar space ship crashing to earth pretty much sums 2020 up.

I love that this billionaire dumbass with unlimited resources keeps trying and failing to do something NASA did in the 80s

i believe nasa had some crashes back in the day as well, though! rocket science is probably pretty hard

and i think the idea is to continue the idea of reusable components that nasa had partially accomplished (the space shuttles)

karl, this thread is for posting stuff like "can this guy even wipe himself?" after somebody links a tweet

Wait was there another crash today? I know there was this crash 6 days ago

this was almost certainly me misreading something late and tired, ty for video

Has Elon Musk thought about radically disrupting the personal fragrance industry? Because that really seems like what he was born to do.

pic.twitter.com/qbNT1dUsED

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2020

in the thread's defense, it is p hard to believe this guy can wipe himself

richest person in the world as of today

i find that bizarre

and sickening, obv

both are valid responses

I don't see why we call a person "rich" when all it means is that some object he holds claim to has been arbitrarily assigned a larger number, it's not like he's going to sell it. If somebody lives in a house that shoots up in value, they're not a millionaire unless they sell it, and if the house goes back down in value, they never were.

I mean I'm not saying Musk isn't rich, I'm just saying the temptation to declare that "the current price speculators are paying for a thing" represents its actual value is to be resisted.

Pretend value behaves like real value, I suppose.

I mean I'm not saying Musk isn't rich, I'm just saying the temptation to declare that "the current price speculators are paying for a thing" represents its actual value is to be resisted.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, January 7, 2021 5:21 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is literally the definition of value

what is to be resisted, imo, is "rich people aren't that rich because they don't have a bunker full of cash"

all that is solid kills versus maims

listen, i know you're saying this ps5 is $400, but that's just speculation

this is literally the definition of value

it is a very bad way to think about value imo, but i recognize it is popular

The problem is mostly that the bunker full of cash has disappeared into an asset that will provide nothing to no one, except Musk, for the foreseeable future.

what is to be resisted, imo, is "rich people aren't that rich because they don't have a bunker full of cash"

― dean bad (map), Thursday, January 7, 2021 12:26 PM (four minutes ago)

otm. cash also fluctuates in value iirc

'Tesla cranked out about 500,000 cars last year, about as many as General Motors makes in a month. But despite that, Tesla is worth more than Ford, Honda, BMW, General Motors, Daimler, Volkswagen and Toyota put together.’ From CBC.

I don't see why we call a person "rich" when all it means is that some object he holds claim to has been arbitrarily assigned a larger number, it's not like he's going to sell it. If somebody lives in a house that shoots up in value, they're not a millionaire unless they sell it, and if the house goes back down in value, they never were.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, January 7, 2021 9:20 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you know that money changes in value as well? if someone has 10 million dollars are they not rich because hyperinflation could happen and their 10 million may not be enough to buy a a 1990 subaru forester then?

Musk's wealth also feels a lot more.. tenuous than Bezos. I mean, Tesla still seems constantly on the edge of losing their market share and SpaceX is probably a couple exploded rockets away from falling apart.

1st gen Teslas are exploding so there's that...

Also afaict Bezos has yet to tweet something out that manipulates his stock price.

It's just a bubble.

i was under the impression that spacex was doing really well and that they are maybe NASA's biggest contractor? or is it Boeing, still? plus, beyond delivering payloads to space stations and making the re-usable crafts for NASA, i'd assume that there will be a neverending series of rich people who are willing to pay $500K to fly in low-orbit space for a few hours

Most of Musk's wealth is tied in Tesla, SpaceX moves the needle by 5% of his total worth.

it is a very bad way to think about value imo, but i recognize it is popular

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, January 7, 2021 12:28 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

How do you define value?

Because if people are willing to spend 5% of their savings on one stock, that's value to them, and Musk's worth (mostly) is an addition of all those investments.

if he tried to wield power consistent with his paper wealth, other rich people and nations etc. would laugh at him.

also tesla stock isn't bitcoin, but it's not like he can sell it and get dollars equal to the number of shares * current price. obviously this is true of anyone paid in stock, but it's particularly true of tesla.

The amount power he yields is not inconsequential in that millions of people now have money tied to his fortunes. He can also use Tesla's cash flow to buy whatever he wants for a long time now.

i'm not saying he's not rich and powerful!