Mike

In the very late 90s - so only a year or two after the Good Friday Agreement - he gave a talk in Dublin. The only part I remember was when he went off on his tangent about access to guns being an essential component of a free society and then stood there wondering why he was suddenly being heckled.

He’s on the hunt for that one special female who’s really, really into Ferengi.

Dear Mr Anus, it’s not anti-AI, it’s anti-bullshit and anti-shyster.

Very strong “University rag committee who spend half their time telling you how completely mad!!! they all are and the other half telling you solemnly how important the work they’re doing is” vibes here.

also why does he think people will take on his “wacky” pronunciation of “Robovan” to rhyme with “gas oven”? I generally leave actually listening to Musk’s live ramblings to the professionals but damn, this guy is a terrible public speaker. Has his schtick always consisted mostly of awkward pauses and ers and ums or is this a new thing?

Anthony Levandowski (the Waymo guy) on the robot cabs: "You’re putting the power back into the people’s hands, where a small business owner could have, you know, a fleet of 10 cars or 20 cars that they run themselves as their business. It’s a great model for the future where it’s lots of mom and pops, rather than one mega corp that does that.”

Because that is EXACTLY what will happen and it will absolutely NOT be the case that megacorps will simply do exactly what megacorps do and flood cities with robotaxis running at a loss in order to control the market and then jack up prices. No siree, it’ll be all Mom and Pop’s Friendly Robotaxi Company.

Don’t have much use for a protocol droid either.

Knuth should have a special Nobel Prize for Being Donald Motherfuckin’ Knuth.

There was a new government elected last week on a platform which can be broadly summarised as “no more insane politics shit”. So far they’re showing dangerous signs of competence and rational thought. What a load of weirdos.

If you want more crazy, that political party is actually a limited company in which the leader is also the majority shareholder and the bylaws permit him to fire and appoint a majority of directors at will. I’m not sold on whether all those candidates were actually fake, but journalists from more credible outlets than Byline Times are no doubt working on physically tracking down every one off these candidates as we speak to verify their existence or otherwise.

I vaguely remember his original car crash on Wogan after he went loopy and it was barely veiled antisemitism even then - lizard people and the like

It’s just in European. it’s an entirely reasonable assumption that people in this continent with even a passing interest in the world will know what an NGO is (that’s not even European-specific) as well as what the GDPR is. Your argument suggests that people from the US, for instance, should be forbidden from talking about IRAs and the IRS and their 401(k)s and the DMV because those terms mean very little to nothing over here.

Pedants being wrong on the Internet is exactly why I have an OED subscription. :) “Beg the question” in the sense of “to assume without proof” doesn’t have a supporting quote newer than 1870, which suggests to me that… yeah, it can be considered obsolete.

Romania is putting Andrew Tate on trial. Elmo probably wouldn’t dare show his face there.

It’s really hard not to draw parallels between Musk’s attitude to protesters and the attitude so many white South Africans had to protesting black (and progressive white) people in the 70s and 80s – just replace “left-wing” with “communist” and you’re there. Maybe he grew up seeing the cops beating the shit out of people for protesting on the TV news so often that he thinks that’s the norm.