@rodhilton

Love it, lol.
I am sure you are right about this! 👍

@rodhilton - the rich buy (or at least, rent) all those that actually make the rich what they are. Remove that, and it's 'The Emperor has no clothes'. He challenges the above by divesting himself of those that make him wealthy - showing he knows even less than we thought. As Fox News has shown, talking and being knowledgeable are too different things.

@rodhilton THIIIIIIIIIIIIIKJKJKJJJIIIIIIIIIIIS

@rodhilton perfectly stated

@rodhilton So happy you posted this! I don't have that knowledge but suspected that might be the case so it's nice to have it confirmed.

@rodhilton

sounds quite reasonable :-)

@rodhilton
Definitely "Toot of the Day" on my feed! Masterfully composed!

@rodhilton THIS!

@rodhilton
Maybe just out of his lane? Have Starlink. It’s great. Rocket boosters that return to their launch pad and are reused are amazing. Our Tesla 3 has been flawless (🤞). Twitter he destroyed….

@rodhilton no, his cars are genius, but he didn’t invent them. He just bought the company. Other electric cars are just copies and will be for some time.

@rodhilton oh this happened to me when he talked about bitcoin. I imagine it happened to many cave divers a long time ago too.

@rodhilton Right on the money. What I still was on the fence about was management style, but it’s also becoming quite clear that most of his companies operate DESPITE his management style, likely not because of it.

@rodhilton tbf, he isn't the CEO of SpaceX and they're pretty competent. They also enjoy all that government money! Also no idea how involved he is with OpenAI but they've done amazing work. Hopefully he keeps his grubby hands far away from them.

@rodhilton Hi Rod, these comments are spot on. Well said!

@rodhilton It's like when you wonder why doctors get upset watching movies about doctors, or lawyers get upset watching movies about lawyers and then you, as a software dev working for RSA, watch Swordfish.

(Which bizarrely my entire team did together because for some ungodly reason RSA helped sponsor the movie...)

@rodhilton Elon understands engineering in exactly the way Trump understsnds finance.

@rodhilton this is the most accurate and eloquently worded description of EM I’ve ever read.

@rodhilton Absolutely Brilliant.. 🎯 🎯 🎯 This should be reposted a million times.

It’s been gratifying and validating seeing software people lose their damn minds the same way transportation planners lost their damn minds when he started going on about tunnels.

@rodhilton Elon must have written the Tesla autopilot software since it can’t see Black people.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/5/18251924/self-driving-car-racial-bias-study-autonomous-vehicle-dark-skin

@rodhilton *nodds in agreement*

@rodhilton @josh yup…

@rodhilton
Working for him must be like being stuck in a never-ending rant scene from Downfall (already parodied to good effect).

@rodhilton brilliant 😆

@rodhilton same, buddy. same.

@rodhilton the funny thing is he was quoting his joe rogan/incel sciency nonsense at real (celebrity) scientists and they just nodded along because some of them are children who really wanted to watch somebody die on mars

@rodhilton
Elon Musk doesn’t know shit about the products that his company’s produce. He simply buys businesses in an attempt to increase his own financial bottom line.
The man is no genius. He knows nothing of tech, space exploration, or automobiles. He inherited his money and uses it to buy companies and people that he wishes to control. He contributes nothing to society and is just an all around bad human being.
He’s the best example of the problem with capitalism.

@rodhilton Probably the funniest, most sensible post I've ever read! 😅👍

@rodhilton possible but not necessarily true

@rodhilton stay away from them out of principle! That a-hole doesn’t need any more money.

@rodhilton 😂 👍

@rodhilton weird, I can't share this post outside of Mastodon? Or any of your other posts... #helpfediverse

@rodhilton
EXACTLY!!!

@rodhilton The thing is Elon Musk is the kind of guy who gets all the credit for what his workers accomplish. He's not a rocket scientist or an engineer, I really question what he actually offers up.

@rodhilton I thought all along he was obviously a con man, and I don't understand how anyone could fail to see it. Same as Trump, but with cars and rockets instead of steaks and universities. I genuinely don't get how anyone could fall for either of them (even the racists and fascists, who don't realize they are the marks).

@rodhilton 😂

@rodhilton ha ha brilliant thank you

@rodhilton he can promise nonsense when it comes to complex hardware projects. But software , he’s full of shit. King is naked.

@rodhilton The chance anyone is a genius is very small, so usually when lots of people use it, it is incorrect

@rodhilton first they came for the cars, but I was not a car…

@rodhilton a genius who has to fake his degree? I'll pass

@rodhilton so true, the first time I knew he was full of it was when he said Tesla would have full autonomous driving in a couple of years

@rodhilton So aptly put. Same exact feeling.

@rodhilton this reminds me of "The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect"

"the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding"

—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect

@rodhilton see also all the people who know about #mobility stuff who've known he is certainly not a genius for a Long Time. IMHO not only is he not a genius, he's quite possibly the most pathetic person on the planet.

@rodhilton good plan

@rodhilton The reverse of Gell-Mann amnesia, also known Gell-Mann's club-to-the-head.

@rodhilton I'm honestly amazed that a guy who could come up with something as gobsmackingly stupid and unworkable as car tunnels hasn't drowned from staring up at the shower head.

@rodhilton they called JJ Abrahams a genius, too, and he single-handedly planted Star Trek and Star Wars with his crap. Especially, the Trek franchise, something he had no right even being in the same room with, as far as I am concerned.

I was going to buy a Tesla this year. Then musk showed me who he really was when he destroyed all the value in Twitter, you can imagine the relief I felt at not having spent a nickel with him. I’d have subsidized a piece of shit facist.

@rodhilton “Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.”

Terry Pratchett
“Witches abroad”

@rodhilton I know about cars which is why I always said he was full of it because despite certain good qualities about them, his cars suck.

@rodhilton people like him are the reason bullshit bingo was invented

@rodhilton the moment of realization for me was him talking about trains in vacuum tubes.

@rodhilton Agree; it was his blatherings about AI that woke me up.
I still bought a Tesla because at the time it was the best way to support the fledgling EV industry, but I’m very much looking forward to my next EV not putting a dime into his pocket.

@rodhilton

The Realization.

#tslaq

@rodhilton the one (excellent) thing Tesla did for electric cars was start with a high-end sports car: low volumes, high margins - and killed all myths that electric cars couldn't be superior to IC cars.
Now it's just another volume car manufacturer, but with bad quality control.

SpaceX's ideas came from the founders; Musk brought money and benefitted from a workforce *really* into creating reusable rockets.

@rodhilton In fairness, CEO domain expertise almost never impacts the product. They need enough knowledge for a vision, but if they're working the line, something is horribly wrong.

@rodhilton so a genius has to be a genius at everything? We're all morons then. And I'm not saying Musk is a genius.

@rodhilton fortunately i stay away from cars and rockets in the first place

@rodhilton Not many people need a rocket 🚀 Electric cars are sold well in China. Software remains to be seen.

@rodhilton That is such a good point! A lot more of us are programmers or adjacent to finally get that he's full of shit.

@rodhilton saw this posted to reddit and immediately knew I should follow you haha

@rodhilton I think a lot of us feel the same way; I know I do.

@rodhilton

There is an alternative explanation
he actually is a genius in cars/rockets, but then like many ultra rich people he became arrogant and as C Munger puts it, stepped out of his sphere of competence

@rodhilton 👏 👏 👏

@rodhilton not a bad take. He has been saying his cars drive themselves for like 10 years, right?

@rodhilton the only advantage, at least with the rockets, is there are a bunch of really smart people working there making the rockets not suck (I know some of them). I don't know if it's because he doesn't have as much free reign over the rockets as he does over the software, because he's fired the people who make the software not suck

@rodhilton He was called out for bullshitting on Twitter’s software, so I do know one thing: he’s a skilled bullshitter.

There are principles of psychology that say he almost surely uses the same method in all fields.

(I’m not a psychologist, but I am a skilled psychiatric client.)

@rodhilton have you seen his car tunnel though? #genius

@rodhilton (*intones*) This is the way.

@rodhilton It's like reading Consumer Reports. The reviews/recommendations seem authoritative until they review something you happen to know about. Then it's a trip to "who is writing this crap and why?" land.

@rodhilton
Hes been an expert fkwit on twitter for years now.
@ajsadauskas

@rodhilton this whole process has been EYE OPENING. It's crazy how fucking clueless he is

@rodhilton I never bought into his bs.

Musk has done something right. Tesla and Space X completely upended their century-old competitors. Even if he is a complete idiot, he chooses competent people to manage production. One sign of leadership is who you surround yourself with; he chooses excellent teams. I rate our recent presidents and candidates. Bush I B+, Bush II C-, Obama A+, Hillary C-, Trump F-, and Biden A+. I give Kamala Harris. a C-, and worry about this because of Biden's age.

@rodhilton
Tesla to a lesser extent, but very much so at SpaceX spent a lot of time and energy making sure that EM had nothing to do with actually running the company. Twitter did not.

https://i.redd.it/hd8tugbf632a1.png

@rodhilton
Apropos of nothing the Glass Onion is out on Netflix. You might find some resonance in the character played by Edward Norton.

@rodhilton seriously

@rodhilton His rockets are good though.

@rodhilton post of the month right here

@rodhilton
To get why Musk looked remarkable you have to go back to the 2000s.
In the 2000s it was widely believed that EVs were a pipe dream and that oil depletion would halt all modern civilization. Remember “the oil drum” or dieoff.org?
Space was the same. Economical launch was impossible. There’ll never be a space age.
Then Musk bursts out with practical EVs and reusable rockets. It seems magical, superhuman, like he was some kind of savior. I definitely felt that way.

@rodhilton same

@rodhilton he made a mockery of Tesla the original was meant to be self sufficient, but musk made it so you had to recharge it Nikola Tesla would be writhing in his grave

@rodhilton TY

@rodhilton I know quite a bit about cars and the auto industry, so imagine my surprise how when I pointed out that many of the things he said about it were beyond stupid, people would respond with how I just "lacked vision" or was just "spreading FUD."

@rodhilton stablest genius ever ever ever! Believe me!!!!!!!👍👍👍👍👍

@rodhilton I used to run the marketing end of a Fortune 100 consumer website. I didn't do the coding, but I worked closely with the people that did, and I could mostly hold my own. He sounded like our marketing VP, who went along with the $3M project to revamp the order management and ecom foundation. That VP and most of upper management were out months short of the 2nd year, and it was scrapped a year past go-live.

@rodhilton too right. Too damned right.

@rodhilton and I know something about brains, stay far away from his brain chips.

@rodhilton same! It slapped me across the face… This guy can’t code!

@rodhilton You know the only move left is to re-brand like meta. I present to you Elon's new Twatter™ social network, where everyone is a twat.

@rodhilton When he bought Spacex he was contractually barred from speaking to anyone below the board because they’d seen what he’d done at Tesla when he bought it. And Teslas just burst into flames like, whenever.

@rodhilton he talked about electric cars. I know quite a lot about electric things in general, and when people said he was a genius I figured they must have meant in business stuff, so okay, maybe he was a business genius. I don't know much about business. the shit he was saying about electric stuff was pretty stupid, but hey, if he can finance it then whatever.