But not much sympathy. She eagerly jumped at her job at Xitter, and is being paid handsomely…it’s just that she’s trying to do something impossible.
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X/Twitter, appeared to be trying some damage control this afternoon, as she posted, “X’s point of view has always been very clear that discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board — I think that’s something we can and should all agree on. When it comes to this platform — X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world — it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.”
Yaccarino has been trying to convince advertisers that X/Twitter is a safe place for them to place their spots. She wrote on Tuesday, “We’re always working to protect the public conversation.”
And then Elon Musk started typing and said all the things Yaccarino claims to be opposing. It must be hard to work in a company run by a modern-day Nazi, while trying to pretend not to be a bunch of rich fascists.
At the rate things are going right now, though, she may not have the job for long. Either she’ll wise up and quit, or the company will melt into toxic sludge right there under her desk. It was already unprofitable, and now a lot of big companies are yanking their ads away.
Major blue-chip companies are announcing they will suspend all advertising on X (formerly known as Twitter) after owner Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory and Media Matters reported that X was placing ads alongside white nationalist and pro-Nazi content.
So far, they’ve lost IBM, Disney, Lions Gate Entertainment, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Comcast, and Apple. Apple was their biggest advertiser (no wonder cables cost so much), shelling out $100 million per year on Twitter ads — that revenue has just evaporated.
In addition, the White House has condemned him, although that doesn’t immediately scorch his pocketbook.
Joe Biden has excoriated Elon Musk’s “abhorrent” tweets two days after the X owner posted his full-throated agreement with an antisemitic post.
A statement from the White House issued on Friday said: “We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans.”
Musk’s response? He’s suing Media Matters for posting news about the loss of advertisers.
Worst. Businessman. Ever. Get out while you can, Linda! Unless you’re also a closet Nazi.
It’s not a good day for the social media Nazi. Another rocket blew up, and you should read his whining lawsuit in which he complains that the media are attacking free speech.
It used to be that you didn’t say the quiet part out loud. Now you DO say the quiet part out loud, AND you double down when called out. And your mindless fans rejoice.
Okay, yes, Starship was self-destructed it seems. But it flew. The Space X team learnt. They will fly again and keep going further with this magnificent largest and most powerful rocket humans have flown so far..
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-second-test-flight-launch-explodes
We’ve seen SpaceX do that again and again before.
I won’t give Musk much credit for that & he’s a fascist douchebag I loathe but still – see text above. A lot of good and intelligent people worked to make this happen nd will keep working as the Starship keeps flying more and more successfully each time.
As for Linda Yaccarino, she’s made her choices and is getting her pay and my sympathy for her is very close to zero like zero with a whole whopping lot of zero figures after the decimal point.
StevoR@2- A “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Say, didn’t they use that joke last time? They couldn’t find someone to come up with new material?
@ ^ Matt G : A euphemism not a joke and not one that SpaceX created but one going back to NASA days if memory serves.
Suspend, not cancel. Some of them will wait until the furor dies down and then keep supporting nazis.
She was a Trump appointee at one point. Nope, no sympathy at all.
Outside of the pillow guy, who is probably too broke to pay for ads, it is exceedingly hard to understand why there still are advertisers on this toxic sludge dumpster fire. By now, it is obvious what type of person Musk is and what type of company he is running into the ground. There is hardly any one left who isn’t a nazi symp so what are the benefits to trying to reach that demographic?
Suing Media Matters for exercising free speech? I thought he was an absolutist.
Most of the advertisers will have contracts that were negotiated when Xitter had a lot more users. It makes good sense to pause and evaluate if they are getting the bang for their advertising bucks that they originally expected. A bit of favorable spin along the way is a no brainer..Part of the assessment will include estimates of the value of advertising to bigots vs. taking a moral higher road.
Yeah, but this is Musk we’re talking about. The furor won’t die down because he’ll post something else that’s just as bad before it does. He’s finally succumbed fully to the afflueza and has lost all sense of proportion or filter. So while they may suspend now, don’t look for many of them to be back to paying Xwitter any revenues any time soon, if ever.
Then, of course, there’s the waste of money that is this new lawsuit against Media Matters. The whole thing will be almost literally laughed out of court before it gets anywhere. All they did was accurately report on what Xwitter was doing with ads from these major advertisers. That’s simply not actionable in any US court under any circumstances. He can rant about it being a “thermonuclear lawsuit” all he wants, but the only things he’ll be blowing up with that are more of his reputation and more of his own money.
She signed on as CEO of a company owned by an overt racist, transphobic, multibillionaire piece of shit and has been playing damage control for him the entire time. Why on earth would anyone give her the benefit of the doubt that she’s not a fascist? She could quit at any moment but instead continues to deflect and obfuscate. Fuck all these sniveling cowards and the stochastic terrorism against marginalized people they continue to enable and amplify.
Put a hyperbolic word next to lawsuit. Sure, that’ll do something. Maybe Musk should join with those people looking for “super” abortion rights. You can go for the “mega wokesters” while they laugh in your face.
Strangely enough, there is still no replacement for Twitter.
Twitter was useful and I found myself there occasionally for good reasons.
A Twitter clone without Musk would be worth a lot and could easily eat Xitter’s lunch in days.
Call it the anti-Elon Twitter.
It won’t be Mastodon which is too decentralized and doesn’t have the server space.
It won’t be Facebook’s pathetic attempt, Threads, which missed the entire point and has now disappeared into irrelevancy.
Threads was a Twitter clone brought out by Facebook with its characteristic predatory but incompetent way of doing business.
It attempts to vacuum up huge amounts of user data, which makes it something that many or most people will avoid.
Wikpedia: Users are required to have an Instagram account to use Threads.
That is a deal killer right there. You have to be part of the Facebook product line to use it.
A pointless website that can actively harm you.
It has a small user base and is going nowhere.
Matt G@3, StevoR@4,
Recycling the jokes/euphemisms is surely in line with the main PR selling-point!
“discrimination by everyone should STOP” — This strikes me as coded language for more of the “both sides do it” trope. While there are bigots of all stripes, it’s the bigots who hold the reins of power, and who control the mechanisms to influence vast numbers of people who need to STOP. Elon Musk should STOP espousing his racist, sexist BS on his platform and his other media connections and in his businesses, disavow the attitude he is expressing, openly acknowledge the harm he’s doing, and apologize to the world.
I won’t wait for that.
Hey, one can file a thermonuclear lawsuit against a ham sandwich, that doesn’t mean that the ham sandwich doesn’t have an antimatter warhead defense.
But, Musk has made physics history. He’s proven the existence of a naked singularity.
Pity, I prefer not being able to see a singularity, due to it being clothed by an event horizon.
As for Linda, she moved from the outer accretion disc into the innermost region, on a course unlikely for ejection through a jet.
For, one does decidedly not soar with the eagles while flopping with the turkeys.
Which reminds me, gotta pick up a tiny turkey soon… 8 – 10 pounds would be ideal, 13 pounds doable, beyond would simply be a waste. Oh well, worst case, get a larger bird, then set it and my cutting board up in the lobby on the table there and give out bird chunks for those who want so and can’t wrangle a bird themselves. Although, if I go that route, I’ll need to pick up a bag of cranberries. Got worlds of stuffing mix accumulated from food bank drop-offs over the months. And I’d need some more yams, local corner store has some nice large ones as normal stock, one yam making for two meals, as they’re suitably immense.
wzrd1 @16: In a long-ago job, I had a poster in my office which was meant as a dig at managers; not sure they got it;
Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
Exactly. He’s already gotten billions in public subsidies, and somehow for all the White House’s words, I doubt the spigot will be shut off anytime soon.
Rob Grigjanis @ 17, no, weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines, they get incinerated by the jet exhaust.
hillaryrettig1 @ 18, indeed, what all commenting on wasting money on litigation by Musk is, said litigation is being conducted by Twitter’s legal counsel, not Musk’s personal counsel, so the money wasted is Twitter’s corporate monies and not his personal fortune.
Basically, pulling a Trump and spending the businesses monies, never his own. Hell, Twitter wasn’t bought entirely out of his pocket, but by leveraging other businesses he owns. Hence, his fortune isn’t endangered at all, although his other businesses could suffer or even close should Twitter become utterly worthless.
Wow. A Free Speech absolutist threatening a lawsuit over someone else’s free speech. And I’m sure he doesn’t understand the irony. It’s a lot different when your OWN ox is gored, amirite?
SpaceX has received $15 billion in subsidies and contracts from the Federal government.
SpaceX wouldn’t exist without the Federal government and NASA.
They use NASA launch facilities at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg to launch their rockets.
Elon Musk has zero hesitation in biting the hands that feed.
It hasn’t hurt him much yet, so he doesn’t see that as a losing strategy.
To take another example, after paying a lot for the Starlink system, the US armed forces are setting up another Starlink system just for them.
Because Musk has already abused the system by cutting off Ukraine and favoring our enemy, Russia.
They even said they needed a satellite system that wasn’t under someone else’s control.
This means they have ended up paying for the same system twice.
Rightly or wrongly, I occasionally ponder the provision of platforms for bigots and sundry nasty persons. Should people expressing and consolidating around views that are demonstrably of a “certain type” {cough} be “given/permitted” fora in which to do so?
From a Freeze Peach(TM) angle, I think it’s possible to argue “yes”. Note: I said nothing about which platforms, who provides them, or where they exist. I think, to be fair, the “yes” part is the easy argument, even though it goes to Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance. The thing I wonder about is a bit more practical: if a platform is permitted, is it easier to keep track of the wrong’uns? Or, by keeping track of them, will they shift platforms endlessly to avoid scrutiny? Perhaps this essentially makes them (nearly?) as obscure as if no platforms were “given/permitted.”.
‘S tricky.
Louis
@StevoR #2:
Teehee.
SpaceX is killing and maiming those good and intelligent people (tldr excerpt), at rates far higher than the industry average, and evading accountability.
I can’t see that bluesky post without having to join it. I can’t join straight away because I need an invitation code. Bluesky sucks.
Gijoel
This is definitely not a Bluesky code. It might, however, look like one. {cough}
bsky-social-wb6gf-xhsng
Louis
@gijoel #24:
Bluesky announced it will add a public web interface around the end of this month, to read without an account.
@23. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain :
Then after a lot of explosive failures they achieve what people think and say can’t be done and then manage to do so consistently. For example :
How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster – just over 2 minutes long and note how it ends. (Hint : NOT a failure to land.) Its how SpaceX do bold things and it eventually works resulting in their long and growing list of achievements :
https://interestingengineering.com/science/destination-mars-15-incredible-spacex-milestones-past-and-future
When it comes to the second Starship flight there’s an excellent serious, informative analysis here by Scott Manley (just under 12 mins) which is a lot better, more intresting and more worthwhile than a simple and simplistic giggle.
That is a real worry and problem I agree. They should be taking better care of those people and be accountable, I won’t dispute that at all. That is something something that needs to be addressed.
(You may have noticed I commented on that very thread? So yeah, of course I read it?)
Whilst I’m here I’ll also address the argument that doesn’t need to be addressed but is a common argument that this is a waste of money and that that funds could be used for other things eg education, housing, welfare etc.. becuase it keeps coming up and getting raised regularly despite the obvious flaws in it of zero-sum thinking. Note that we can do and fund BOTH. I don’t think this is either / or and remember the money gets spent on Earth and the people working get paid and employed to do something extraordinary and worthwhile. I loathe Musk as a person and his politics and certainly do NOT worship the man but he and others are making space more accessible to everyone and making real progress in technology and exploration which ultimately does help us all.
@20: there’s a strong probability that one of Muskrat’s main incentives to buy Twitter was to be able to stop people from using it to say anything that hurt his feelings.
@10–
When Musk talks about a ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’, he is leaving out the ‘Pyrrhic’.
StevoR:
We can and do fund trillions of dollars for armies and for fossil fuel subsidies.
Right? we can do and fund BOTH.
So, is that a good idea, do you think? Perhaps it’s an appeal to tradition.
No doubt you are aware of the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost — do you think that may apply in this case?
Whatever sympathy I might have had for YC’s difficult position is completely negated by the fact that (1) it was her decision to take the job, (2) Musk’s behaviour has deteriorated this year, but it was demonstrably terrible long before she took the job — indeed, the position only only exists because Musk’s behavior was spooking shareholders, (3) she continues to cover for bad behaviour rather than establish boundaries and penalties to change that behaviour, and (4) continuing the job makes her complicit.
She’s probably suffering all the way to the bank.
John Morales @30
I thought StevoR was talking about funding both high tech industry AND social programs. Your armies and oil binary seems a bit removed no?
Allegedly funding high tech, including military tech can have spin off side benefits. Arpanet and GPS come to mind. Yuppies transitioning from BMWs to Hummers because Ahnuld might be a bad example of military tech going pop culture. MREs too.
SpaceX could benefit from an enculturation of safety. NASA had to learn the hard way about O-rings, foam, and spacesuits filling with unexpected water. Luckily the last one wasn’t yet fatal. The astronauts though are the ones expected to take high risks, not the people building the stuff in an unsafe workplace. NPCs in Simulated Muskworld?
hemidactylus,
No. Not even slightly.
The claim is that two things can be done at once, and are actually being done at once. What you call the “binary”. And that therefore it’s fine to do both.
(I’m noting that it’s a fallacious bit of reasoning, and even included the name of the fallacy)
This is a very silly argumentative approach. Anything can have spinoffs.
For example, having an army is convenient for disaster relief–all those troops and all that equipment and all that training–but much much better disaster relief could be had for the cost of that army and its war equipment.
So could anything anywhere.
If cars were speed limited to 5 kilometers per hour, that would make them exceedingly more safe than they now are.
(Also, I’m pretty sure safety is a cost of doing business, and of course profit is the goal. This is known as cost-benefit analysis)
Nah, people who want to advance themselves and make a good living.
They’re not slaves or anything, you know. At least give them agency, unless you want to think they’re silly people who know not what they are undertaking.
(Yes, I know you refer to your imagined caricature of Musk as a sociopath, but whether or not he thinks they are NPCs they themselves choose whether to sign on the dotted line and whether to carry on)
John Morales @34
OMG one can do two worthwhile things at once. I got both my flu and COVID shot almost simultaneously.
You’re framing StevoR and me (two things at once) by shifting to two negatively valenced things. Yep. I see that.
I was thinking more of the either-or notion which forces a choice. I admit thinking in binary excludes the range of potential choices besides the two highlighted ones.
But there are trade-offs, unintended negatives, and cost-benefits.
Adam Grant in Think Again speaks of psychological safety and process accountability as beneficial features of learning (over performance) cultures. Maybe Musk should read the book. Grant introduced these ideas to Melinda Gates. How much psychological safety is there when boss manbaby is sporting a flamethrower?
Are you blaming SpaceX workers for seeking employment given boss-peon asymmetry? Agency only goes so far in corporate America. I guess then you’d presume safety is in the hands of the worker?
I read Nomadland recently which highlighted Amazon’s CamperForce workers and what they went through. They signed on too. Needing to make a living is coercive.
hemidactylus:
Sure. And one can do two worthless things at once, too.
I did quote that to which I responded, you know.
See, StevoR is attempting to argue that space travel is beneficial (which is quite the digression from the actual post topic) by saying it’s actually being done.
(Presuming the conclusion in order to argue for the conclusion is a type of fallacy too)
Nah. Not even slightly.
You are the one attempting to frame it; again: I quoted that which I addressed.
The fallacious argument, the circular argument.
Adam Grant can speak all Adam wants to, but Musk is the richest person in the world. What, he should read this book and therefore make himself even richer?
Not even slightly.
Here, I quote myself: “At least give them agency, unless you want to think they’re silly people who know not what they are undertaking.”
You want to imagine it’s either working for him or being destitute and starving to death, you go ahead.
(Peons, oh my!)
<snicker>
And carrying a kitchen sink, too.
That’s what he does in the office all day, donchano.
heh heh heh. Sure, and Elon needs to make a living, no?
(Perhaps if he read this or that book, he wouldn’t have to?)
A Twitter clone without Musk would be worth a lot and could easily eat Xitter’s lunch in days.
Or, we could find some excuse to nationalize Xitter…
@StevoR #27:
Taking the company to the brink of bankrupcy until it was bailed out by Peter Thiel of all people.
Their Falcon 9 had a very good run, in hindsight. At the time though, they were doubted for chasing contracts without a track record to justify them. Also stunts like this.
And those achievements and cost cuttings came at the price of blighting workers (not just the ones who were injured, harassed, etc.) and the market with normalized unethical/exploitative business practices.
The opportunity cost isn’t only versus public works. Those employees would’ve been working anywhere else in the absence of SpaceX (which eventually happens with the layoffs). Aerospace or otherwise, they’d likely be better off. Bezos’ company was envious of the abuse.
Even granting the argument from incomplete devastation, one of the primary purposes for using those rockets is blighting orbit with greater volumes of Starlink chaff. Making space less accessible to everyone.
@ 30 John Morales
Hey, Morales, while you’re lecturing us on the opportunity cost of spending money on space, would you estimate the opportunity cost of not spending money on space? I’m not talking just about SpaceX (because neither is StevoR). Like if the year were 2023 but the Soviets never launched Sputnik, and therefore the US never launched a satellite, and nobody ever launched a satellite because people like you said the money was better spent on “education, housing, welfare etc.”?
In your answer give consideration to land resources satellites like Landsat; weather satellites that give forewarning of hurricanes, etc., communications satellites, GPS satellites that allow us all to have global positioning in our cars and our phones, etc.
What is your estimate of the opportunity cost of not going to space, Juan Ramón?
*******************************
Separately, StevoR is quite right that mocking SpaceX because a rocket blew up is ridiculous. It was a test people. It’s almost supposed to fail. Tests are where you find the problems and fix them. That is what they are for. You do the test to see where the thing fails and then you fix it. If the thing works perfectly first time with no testing that’s what known as “a fucking miracle”.
SoylentBug, I expected your dribble, of course. Belated as it is.
Why is that in any way relevant to anything?
Also, why do you, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
over and over and over and over
over and over and over and over
over and over and over and over
over and over and over and over
over and over and over and over
over and over and over and over
use a name that, though it is my natal name, is not my nym?
Why are you so very, very, very cowardly that you won’t dare reveal the name I should use instead of your nym, so that I can stop calling you SpewButt and so forth? I have asked you many times, but you’ve always blushed away.
Ah well. You’ll keep misnyming me, and I shall return the favour.
Anyway, to address your irrelevantly stupid request:
Whatever I estimate is not going to change the nature of the claim that because two things can be done at once either of them is worth doing. Right?
It is an irrelevance what I think, I’m discussing the basis of the claim, not the veracity of the claim.
Do you even get that just because I point out that some argument for some claim is specious does not mean I have to provide an argument of my own to the contrary of that claim? I doubt it.
Why you and other people forever imagine I am arguing against some proposition just because I note the reasoning supposedly supporting said proposition is vacuous is left to the imagination, but then, I don’t have a feeble, withered one like some people do.
I was not doing that, you stupid person you.
But hey, step up, stop being a drive-by, and quote me supposedly lecturing about the opportunity cost of spending money on space.
Nah. You never, ever, ever try to sustain your stupid claims once I’ve shot them down. I’ll give you that.
Might as well indulge.
Yeah, almost as ridiculous as mocking X because it lost revenue when testing new policies and changing its business structure.
heh heh heh
@ ^ John Morales : X platforming nazis and charging users and generally wrecking the former Twitter is not even close to the Starship flight ending in a couple of explosions here. Look at the aims, the trends and results here. Just comparing apples with nazis really.. As for laughing at tests predictably failing because, well, you’re testing and learning and improving stuff, well, you seem to be totally missing the point.
@30. John Morales
False equivalence. Subsidies for fossil fuel companies which already make obscene profits and damage the environment are a very different thing as are trillions of dollars wasted on military spending. These are destructive uses of money and priorities vs constructive ones and very different things. Look at things on their merits and pros and cons and, yeah, choose the many good things to fund and support and NOT the many bad ones. Mileages obvs varying from thing to thing.
Apply in what way? To what extent? Who gets to decide that?
@37. Raging Bee : “Or, we could find some excuse to nationalize Xitter…”
Yes please – and fb too whilst we’re at it. Or at least start enforcing some laws and making sure they don’t actively betray and undermine our nations eps our democracies and science and do quite as much harm with polarising algorithims and spreading utter disinformation – often extremely racist and damaging lies as happened in Australia’s Indigenous Voice to Palrt referendum. Lies need to be stopped not shared and tensions de-escalated not inflamed for profit and political gain. Truth and facts and ethics need to matter more than cracking down on swearing and nudity.
@309. Silentbob :
Quoting for Truth. Spot on and well writ.
Likewise #35 hemidactylus :
Exactly!
It isn’t binary, there are many options, we can do more than just one thing at a time. We don’t have to pick one or t’other. Nor are funding negative things that are destructive for our society remotely the same as funding positive ones that improve our lives and bring wonder and inspiration as well as tangible technological improvements into our world.
Too much Cap’n Obvious here? Still seems it needs saying.
Like trying to explain it to my dog, this is. Fine.
From a relevant BBC news article :
Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/live/science-environment-67462128
I’m confident that SpaceX will indeed get there with Starship again too. They have form and set the precedent and record to show exactly that.
John Morales @43
Is that a blanket derision? We do appreciate you coming down from the mountaintop and poking at our form, we really do. But if it’s just to score points arguing with baying hounds, what sort of hobby is that?
Wow! Testing is supposed to fail, NASA got the first dozen highly experimental Saturn flights wrong, only getting the 13th right when that rocket exploded in orbit.
Glad that Musk’s company is around to show NASA how to blow rockets up on test flights each time they’re tested!
That isn’t saying there were no malfunctions, only that every mission succeeded, despite malfunctions until a test to see if a sudden depressurization of the O2 tank would cause the stage to buckle, which it did in AS-203.
So, to listen to some, NASA fucked all of those tests up, as the Saturn rocket, a brand new design, didn’t explode in mid-air as it should, per the SpaceX standard.
And since all testing should fail, obviously PZ is doing things wrong, as his students keep passing their tests, they’re supposed to fail.
And obviously, taking a car out for a test drive is just way too dangerous for me to do at my age.
Testing is conducted to verify operation, check safety systems, check compensatory systems, validate a platform component configuration and one thing a rocket system test is not expected to do is explode or disintegrate. That’s for ground testing’s worst case scenario, once one’s validated on the ground, a full flight is scheduled and an undesired thing is it raining flaming rocket components upon the planet.
Whenever NASA’s safety culture failed, their missions failed – fatally in most cases, save with Apollo 13, where they barely improvised a safe return of the crew. And oddly, NASA’s ground accident and injury rate was also far below SpaceX’s rate, as NASA considered worker safety paramount.
Compared to Musk, who had safety colors prohibited from his plants, as he hates those colors, so dark colors are used. You know, like Safety Black (I’m not joking) and prohibiting safety vests. OSHA, yet again, fails the workers.
But then, safety means firing a flame gun at people to robber barons. Amazing that none fired back with a bullet gun.
John Morales @36
I wasn’t taking the Musk-eyed view. Were you? If so why? I was merely pointing out Musk reading said book could be of benefit to his employees. Per psychological safety it might be a good thing if employees could, without fear of retaliation, say stuff like “It’s perhaps not a good idea safety-wise for people of whatever stature in this organization to be walking around with a flamethrower.”
And Musk might ideally say: “You know what? That’s an excellent point. I was wrong in doing such a thing and will stop such behavior now. This company needs more bold thinkers like you. Thanks. People should feel safe criticizing me and pointing out my many blind spots. I just acquired a social media company. Does anyone know of any short comings I might have in that realm? I do recall tweeting stuff I shouldn’t which the SEC didn’t appreciate and I called that cave diver guy a pedo. See I’m self-critical and not afraid of making myself vulnerable to you poorly scripted NPCs. Let’s have coffee and donuts and share your safety concerns sometime real soon. I like this.”
I’ve decided that if I ever am in the vicinity of Elon Musk he will be “that fucking clown shoe”.
Sympathy for Yaccarino?
No. Never. Never ever. She chose this. She knew, or should have known, what she was getting involved with. Lie down with hellhounds, get up with horrible demonic marrow-sucking fleas.
Is being Musk-eyed the same as cockeyed?
@StevoR:
I’ve generally found your comments on the blog worthwhile. The SpaceX engineers are doing the best they can in a toxic environment, and not without impressive successes. My childish giggle was a cheap shot that ran contrary to both sentiments.
@Wzrd1, #50,
How dare you insult the noble cock! Is “Wankereyed” a word? ;-)
Mandatory Bill Hicks quote for terminological wrangling:
Boy, I’ve never seen an issue so divisive. It’s like a civil war, isn’t it? Even amongst my friends, who are all very intelligent; they’re totally divided on abortion. It’s unbelievable. Some of my friends, for instance, think these pro-life people are annoying idiots. Other of my friends think these pro-life people are evil fucks. How are we going to come to a consensus? You ought to hear the arguments around my house: “They’re annoying, they’re idiots.” “They’re evil, they’re fucks!” Brothers, sisters, come together! Can’t we once just join hands and think of them as evil-annoying-idiot-fucks? I beseech you. But that’s me…
Louis
hemidactylus:
Good grief.
I know it’s hopeless, at least as far as StevoR and my pissant sniper goes, but perhaps you might care to read what I actually write, paying enough attention to what it is I quote and realising I am addressing what I quoted, not other things.
My comment was very simple, very focused. Just not enough for some.
Again, the claim:
“Whilst I’m here I’ll also address the argument that doesn’t need to be addressed but is a common argument that this is a waste of money and that that funds could be used for other things eg education, housing, welfare etc.. becuase it keeps coming up and getting raised regularly despite the obvious flaws in it of zero-sum thinking. Note that we can do and fund BOTH.”
So, the claim overall is that there is an argument that will unnecessarily be addressed, to the effect that “this [space travel] is a waste of money and that that funds could be used for other things”. And address it he does, by noting “we can do and fund BOTH.”
I made a brief comment to the effect that noting that is not a compelling dismissal of that argument. No more than that.
Too subtly, apparently. Too confusingly, evidently. Too obscurely, obviously.
Ah well. Sometimes, some people get me. That’s all I can hope for.
—
As for the claims of “psychological safety”, clearly it’s only necessary to the degree someone is psychologically fragile.
(Oh! The humanity!)
I don’t get why anyone would imagine she needs sympathy.
“As the new Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino is slated to make around $6 million per annum plus bonuses she gets for fulfilling some objectives. In bonus pay alone, Yaccarino is entitled to an extra $2 million and another $4 million in stock options after her 3-year contract on Twitter expires.”
(https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/celebrity-net-worth/2023/05/19/6467ac97e2704e67218b461b.html)
John Morales @53
Well:
https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety
Maybe the higher ups are the snowflakes fearing feedback from the peons?
I’m not able to cheer for any success by SpaceX or for the cleverness of his engineers and technicians, because as far as I’m concerned anyone who works for him and helps to enrich him is morally bankrupt. They are as culpable as he is.
I do not give two fucks how cool you think rockets or spaceflight are. Or if you’re delusional enough to believe we can colonize anyplace other than Earth in any of our lifetimes. All scientific endeavors scheduled to fly on SpaceX rockets can wait until he’s been defeated or taken out of any kind of power. The stars will always be there. He must be stopped. Now.
The spaceflight and astronomy community is filled with indifference and cowardice with regard to the activities of SpaceX. Few within it will acknowledge that stopping creeping fascism is more important than the success of his rocket flights, which enable his continued chaos. Yes, I’m going to rain on all your parades by pointing out that whatever good you think comes from the hard work of SpaceX engineers and technicians, the fact is that their participation in his enrichment is enabling harm. Enormous harm. To our citizens and others on Earth.
Hatred is being deliberately sown on his platform, through his own well-documented demands and desires. Hatred and threats to women, to trans people, to Jews, to nonwhites. He pushes anti-vax propaganda, which carries a massive death toll.
I shouldn’t have to point out that juvenile rationalizations such as “space and spaceflight are so cool!” are just indicators that you find your own entertainment more important than the lives of your fellow citizens, especially those who are marginalized.
“But we can walk and chew gum” you retort. “We can celebrate and encourage the marvel of exploration while also condemning bigotry!” you say.
No. Not in this particular case, you can’t. Because the perpetrator of both of those things is the same person.
Which means that to stop the source and continued energy of the hatred means he must be stopped. His source of financial energy must be stopped. You cannot have it both ways. You have to pick a side, whether you’re a SpaceX astronaut, engineer, or cafeteria worker.
Believe me, I get the marvel. I’ve been a close follower and enthusiast of the American space program my entire life. I went to the cape to witness Sally Ride’s first flight on the Space Shuttle. I got Buzz Aldrin to autograph a copy of the Case For Mars program that I attended. The American space program is one of the reasons I chose aerospace as a career.
I can name the crew of every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo flight. I’m old enough to remember watching Apollo 17, the Apollo-Soyuz test program, Skylab, Viking, Voyager.
But if one man had been responsible for the ongoing funding of those missions, and had as his personal mission to harm millions of innocent people for no reason other than bigotry, I would be happy to see it all stopped.
You can talk about Wernher von Braun, of course, and the United States could have been successful without him (with more time). Difference is, Wernher von Braun never advocated Nazi ideology after being rescued by the USA in September 1945, just after the end of WW2. I could not find if von Braun ever explicitly renounced nazism. But Musk today blabs nonstop anti-Semitic crap and pro-Russian talking points while the USA lets him launch our NRO payloads.
The stars and planets will still be there when we mature enough to realize what’s more important – thrills or lives. And yes, in the case of Musk, those things are mutually exclusive.
Until he’s no longer in the picture, no longer pulling strings, no longer setting out to harm innocent people, I cheer for every single one of his rockets to fail. Yes, that includes the manned ones. Those riding them ought to know better. If they do know and still climb aboard, they simply do not care about their fellow human beings and only care about their own self-aggrandizement. Everyone who helps him is culpable for the hatred he propagates. There’s no avoiding it. It’s time to grow up.
hemidactylus, you focused on that, thereby implicitly assenting to the substantial part of my comment. Fair enough.
Now.
what-is-psychological-safetyHere we go with the feeble posturing; ostensibly, you are pointing me to that which I apparently do not understand, imaginining I went by a purely linguistic understanding of the individual terms instead of either looking up to what you referred (or the dude who so impresses you), possibly because I was a tad jocular with my response to that little flourish. As if.
Not that I actually needed to know any of that to make the point I made.
Put it this way:
Elon, he who is being painted as a sociopath and an egoist and a man-child.
“Maybe Musk should read the book.”, quoth you.
Under your hopeful hypothetical though unlikely possible future when he feels the urge and has the disposition to read the book and grok it and thus become enlightened about how to properly treat his employees — like the one featured in this very post — surely he will personally benefit thereby from greater employee satisfaction, no? If no, how not so?
(That way, he could squeeze a bit more $$$ out of the little fuckers ;) )
PS
Peons, eh?
(“You keep using that word,” Inigo Montoya says to Vizzini in The Princess Bride. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”)
Is this helpful, John?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peon
Although, plebeian would probably be a finer fit. Well, save that sociologically, they’re essentially one in the same.
So, would you prefer six or a half dozen?
I want half a baker’s dozen!
@51. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : Thankyou. Much appreciated.
@ 56. Robert Westbrook :
(Emphasis both original and added. Italics substituted for original bolding & bolding mine for clarity.)
Wow. Just wow. Not cool.
You realise that NASA astronauts – public servants / sector workers of an unusal sort really – fly to the International Space Station about SpaceX Dragon vessels right?
I loathe Musk too and reckon he is a spoiled, toxic, douchebag and bigot who has degenerated into being an outright nazi and a terrible boss. I think someone else should take over SpaceX – maybe merge it with NASA or make it a sub-group within it? .
But to want other people who don’t get a much of a say in their jobs and who they work for and who have their own lives, careers and dreams and families and friends dead just becuase of who they working for or whose ships they are flying on? That’s messed up.
Also the only reason American NASA (and European too I guess) astronauts can get the space right now is aboard SpaceX ships since NASA cancelled the Shuttles and, hmm.. Wait, actually, I almost forget the SLS Artemis which did fly successfully a year ago. However, they’ve still not yet flown that with a human (or animal) crew aboard and haven’t built many of them or Orion capsules yet. So anyhow.
Most astronauts at least for the future will be flying with Space X; the Artemis -Orion crews aside. Not using SapceX on its scedhuled ISS and other flights will likely have significant negative ramifications for the USA’s space program and Europe’s and for the ISS which again, I’ll stress the first word of that.
Thus, we do need SpaceX – NOT Musk but SpaceX here. I think you need to make sure you distinguish between them. as I do here.
PS. When it comes to your “grow up”</> line at the end, take your own advice here, Robert Westbrook. Sometimes you do have to settle for less and compromise on getting some of what you want rather than what you’d ideally most like Biden or HRC as POTUS rather than Sanders or Nader given the alternative is Trump being exhibit A here. Sometimes you have to work for and live with people you don’t like and wish you didn’t but sometimes that’s life and NOT something that throwing a temper tanty or sabotaging things will help with. Work to change things where possible, work to make things better absolutely but don’t just cheer on and support disaster out of nose severing face-spiting, can’t get my first ideal preference I so refuse to allow the second best choice to happen and thus get the worst least desireable outcome instead-ness. Yes, grow up indeed!
Once again, I’d ideally prefer Musk to NOT be in charge of SpaceX -to be remoevd from power and position as CEO there and jailed but that ain’t happening is it? So is it better to still have SpaceX and see it suceed than not? Definitely!
Youremidn me of the Repugs saying the USA should be & will be destroyed just becuase Biden or Obama is POTUS here..
Example I really wish we could edit here but I’m not getting that am I? Sigh. Obvs italics fail is obvs.. :-(
Looks like this thread sorta continues over onto this one :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/11/20/oh-come-on-now-2/
really.