Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Looks completely worthless, thanks for sharing.

lol I thought this was the star trek thread at first because the season premiere of the Picard show does have him harvesting grapes and making wine

too bad that's not a Kickstarter, I'd like to see how many dummies are setting $300-700 on fire

automatic espresso machines aren't even good and all they have to do is grind beans, tamp them and push hot water through, they're not synthesizing Colombian crops

It’s not 3d printing anything afaict. It’s a sodastream.

That is connected to the internet and charges per drink.

https://i.imgur.com/8v8GTM8.mp4

what i am gleaning from this is that cock is welcome, and i think that’s nice

if this was actually real it would be fuckin cool as hell

They must be doing a marketing push today, saw a post from Simone Giertz (a usually awesome builder/maker Youtube person) about her role as a seed investor in the company. At least she didn't go down the NFT route.

I drink only NFTs now

I find it very hard to believe that isn't an outright scam.

"Yeah, it uses, um, molecules"

Like what the fuck is in that cartridge than can make merlot, coffee, lemonade & gin?

"molecules!" gimme a fucking break

kinda wanna poll the staff photos but maybe every snake oil startup has a gallery like this, i don’t browse enough of them to know

it's a sodastream. there are multiple cartridges.

each bursting with molecules

It's borderline Ali G. "Everyfing is made o moleules. So wha if me had all the kinds of molecules in one machine, me could make anyfing"

I mean, it's not wrong in a sense so broad it's being catcalled by a legion of dudes from Guys and Dolls

xp but I am proud of this terrible joke so I am posting it

i got yr drink right here
it's called the musk-ateer
and here's a guy that says ...

she is GETTING that emmy pic.twitter.com/wXo0aL1pte

— lucy (@heylucymay) April 8, 2022

that felt too uncomfortably real

It was a pretty good series. Waiting on the final episode of Super Pumped on Sunday (well, the final one of this season -- there's going to be a second focused on Facebook, in line with Mike Isaac's forthcoming book on same).

I have trouble imagining workers actually expressing enthusiasm for having that dude as a boss / leader. I've only seen the first episode of Super Pumped so far and I can understand the workers sitting around fucking off and getting paid, or doing their tasks in the background, but actually enthusiastically cheering for dude's speeches?

Yet we see it happen. WeWork was notorious for it, the “fuck you Carreyrou” chant at Theranos occurred, people do buy in. It’s goofy as hell but there ya go.

Once a company reaches a certain size, you get a number of employees where their role isn’t easily connected to what the company actually sells, and bizarre corporate sloganeering pops up. I think the majority of people at non-startups just kind of passively ignore it, but there are outliers who latch on to that internal marketing to justify their work lives

My impression is that startups, especially ones that don’t turn a profit, push that company culture bit a lot harder because the company doesn’t necessarily do anything yet!

i just wonder about the people who buy into it. the followers, as it were. otoh ... idk why i have trouble accepting this since Hitler and Trump but ... sometimes i have to be reminded

I think the majority of people at non-startups just kind of passively ignore it

yeah, this attitude I understand ... like, clerks at Walgreens don't seem really gung-ho about "Team Walgreens"

Companies regularly place more demands on their workers than even a good, conscientious worker can satisfy. I always figured if I delivered somewhere between 90% and 95% of 'perfection' I was not just earning my pay, but an excellent employee. I totally ignored the motivational hoo-hah and quietly met my own standards.

I totally ignored the motivational hoo-hah and quietly met my own standards.

Yup.

Well you're hardly going to get yourself a waffle party with that attitude, are you?

I feel better already.

;) I'm enjoying Severance

Having a couple of times in my life been around cultish professors or bosses and gotten taken in by them (though nothing to those extremes) I found myself kind of willingly suspending disbelief just because (1) it was sort of fun and (2) it can be self-serving to do so, since true believers tend to reap benefits. I always maintained a little bit of psychic distance and had almost a split consciousness about it, but I get it.

Sucks that the main takeaway from Steve Jobs' story is that everyone thinks you have to be an asshole cult leader to be an effective CEO.

Now speaking of cults

Elon has decided not to join our board. I sent a brief note to the company, sharing with you all here. pic.twitter.com/lfrXACavvk

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 11, 2022

Perfect.

VC Marc Andreessen has railed against cities like San Francisco for failing to build more housing.

But when his own hyper-rich, manicured SF suburb proposed a zoning change to allow a small number of multifamily homes, Andreessen and his wife wrote this. https://t.co/YzqdfSV20q pic.twitter.com/Aq9HhDpKPk

— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) August 5, 2022

the egg man is bad

This guy on Hacker News is buying up the entire town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas for reasons that seem unclear even to him. Someone please help him go home to his children pic.twitter.com/6wO0JIyxQ1

— Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) August 15, 2022

His twitter handle is the same as his username there, it's just post after post of him getting robbed by Pine Bluff tweakers.

a new wrinkle I didn't see yesterday

oh. pic.twitter.com/TFiddlxQAA

— Amy Hoy (@amyhoy) August 15, 2022

Pine Bluff thing is like one of those great, long, self-owning threads slowly documenting a guy's deranged and ill-informed home renovations, or hapless efforts to establish a utopian compound or whatever.

that falls under the reddit DIY-fail thred or whatever

lol great minds xp again

twit’s creek

this is like if something from the SA forums got VC money

lmao max phoned this guy

https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas

my "read max" subscription money going to good use

omg of course he's a utahn

I enjoyed this bit:

New York was terrible, in the ‘80s. Everything they’re saying about Pine Bluff now they were saying about New York in the ‘80s! And I sure wish I could have bought some real estate in New York in the 80s!”