International News Thread

[Free Northman Reborn]

17 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Now Now, Mormont. You know that rich people don't have to do silly things like ask how to help. They are wealthy, that means they already know.

Holy crap, is this Mormont I’m talking to. That explains a lot.

Anyway, here’s debunking pretty much your entire argument, Mormont.

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016686032907931656

Musk WAS asked to help.

He WAS in direct contact with the dive team leader on the ground, who asked him to please continue his efforts, as they were worried about the smallest child.

And there is the email correspondence to prove it.

[Jace, Extat]

Really what you need is an article spelunking his argument.

[Free Northman Reborn]

17 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Really what you need is an article spelunking his argument.

I would say it has effectively been torpedoed.

[mormont]

43 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I would say it has effectively been torpedoed.

Would you?

Oh. Well, that's nice, but your link starts with Elon Musk taking it upon himself to say who is, or is not, in charge of the rescue team, which doesn't exactly disprove the notion that he is an arrogant twerp. Amazingly enough, according to Elon, it's the white Western guy, not the Thai person who disagrees with him, who really matters. His evidence consists of three short sentences in two emails, plus a resounding endorsement from, er, Elon Musk.

Nobody else is on record as saying that the sub would have worked - just Elon.

Furthermore, the link does not show that Elon asked anyone anything before commencing work on the sub. Only that one person, elected as the only person that matters by Elon Musk, didn't tell him to piss off.

So, that link does nothing at all to debunk my argument.

 

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, La Albearceleste said:

So, that link does nothing at all to debunk my argument.

Could the link be substandard?

[Free Northman Reborn]

So for those who are still interested, the Musk-Thai Cave War of words has just escalated to a new level today. He seems to be taking this really personally. Especially after the sour looking British diver-dude went out of his way to insult his submarine idea.

Never one to bite his tongue, Musk has just taken the argument into new territory. Apart from some personal insults via twitter replies, it appears as if he has now decided to run the submarine through the cave and video the whole thing to demonstrate that it would indeed have worked.

At this point I'm just sitting back and watching this play out. This is highly entertaining stuff. Now to find that popcorn emoji if I can...

[Theda Baratheon]

On 7/10/2018 at 4:49 PM, La Albearceleste said:

I think you overestimate how emotional I am, but in any case it doesn't really matter whether I'm emotional or not, does it? Honestly, when I see this, I just conclude that you felt compelled to criticise my post, but could find no substantial criticisms.

I saw this point the first time. It wasn't very good then either.

We know what would have happened if one of the kids died during the dive attempt, since one of the divers did. No sub required. If several of the kids had been incapacitated, they'd have had bigger problems, and there's zero evidence the sub would have been a viable solution to this.

Finally, and this is the really telling point, you're having to resort to inventing hypotheticals to justify Musk building this submarine (unasked). This does not suggest that Musk was in fact doing a good thing. This suggests you're desperate to justify what Musk did after the fact. It does not address the main point, which is that this was an ego-driven, arrogant attempt to insert himself into the story which didn't start where any genuine attempt to help should have started, which was asking people what he could do.

ABsolutely agree. If he wanted to help he could have put forward money. If helping was his MAIN CONCERN - which it wasn’t. It was to show off. And so, SO transparent about it. 

[Theda Baratheon]

3 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So for those who are still interested, the Musk-Thai Cave War of words has just escalated to a new level today. He seems to be taking this really personally. Especially after the sour looking British diver-dude went out of his way to insult his submarine idea.

Never one to bite his tongue, Musk has just taken the argument into new territory. Apart from some personal insults via twitter replies, it appears as if he has now decided to run the submarine through the cave and video the whole thing to demonstrate that it would indeed have worked.

At this point I'm just sitting back and watching this play out. This is highly entertaining stuff. Now to find that popcorn emoji if I can...

So childish. And those British divers did bloody amazing work and have done amazing work in the past too. I don’t care if they’re sour looking - good on them. They did much for for those boys than Musk.

funny how you tried to criticise Mormont (?) for apparently being emotional but whenever Musk acts like a genuinely petty child it’s OK - lol. 

[polishgenius]

3 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Apart from some personal insults via twitter replies

That's a really low-key way to present calling someone a pedophile coz they dared to say you weren't helpful. The mask has properly slipped on this one.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

I think it is becoming clear that he should hand over his twitter account to his PR team. Same as a certain other public figure. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

I think it is becoming clear that he should hand over his twitter account to his PR team. Same as a certain other public figure. 

Probably not a bad idea.

The tweets were clearly over the top, but my take from this is that it is obviously not about PR for him, as this is pretty much the worst way to get good PR. Instead it is quite obvious that he is genuinely upset by the false claims that he wasn’t asked for help and that he didn’t come up with a serious solution.

Anyway, I still watch with interest to see how this will play out.

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Probably not a bad idea.

The tweets were clearly over the top, but my take from this is that it is obviously not about PR for him, as this is pretty much the worst way to get good PR. Instead it is quite obvious that he is genuinely upset by the false claims that he wasn’t asked for help and that he didn’t come up with a serious solution.

Anyway, I still watch with interest to see how this will play out.

Here's how it's going to play out: musk won't send the sub through because it will probabaly get stuck.  He'll probabaly say they were unable to secure permits or some other excuse,.or more likely, let the question of why they didn't send the sub through fade away.  

I'm actually very impressed with the hoops you've managed to jump through to support Musk through what has surely been a difficult time for him and his family.  Imagine being involved in that kind of rescue situation and having your expertise called in to question.  The mind positively boggles, Jeeves.

[Week]

17 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Imagine being involved in that kind of rescue situation and having your expertise called in to question.  The mind positively boggles, Jeeves.

Especially when everyone was rescued -- but, I mean, you gotta focus on the important stuff.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

20 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Probably not a bad idea.

The tweets were clearly over the top, but my take from this is that it is obviously not about PR for him, as this is pretty much the worst way to get good PR. Instead it is quite obvious that he is genuinely upset by the false claims that he wasn’t asked for help and that he didn’t come up with a serious solution.

Anyway, I still watch with interest to see how this will play out.

That's probably true, yes. Being the CEO of a company struggling to survive can't be fun, and he has always been a bit of a crazy guy. Add those things together and you get weird tweets. 

I think this is quite bad for him, honestly. Calling someone a pedo is very serious, probably one of the worst things you could say to someone in today's society. Doing that with nothing to back it up doesn't look good at all. Also international media seems to be picking up on this story big time right now, so lots of people are going to be hearing about it. 

If he had been an oil executive or someone else who doesn't really give a shit what the public thinks that might have been one thing, but Elon Musk has put so much effort into building up his reputation.  

[Free Northman Reborn]

3 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

That's probably true, yes. Being the CEO of a company struggling to survive can't be fun, and he has always been a bit of a crazy guy. Add those things together and you get weird tweets. 

I think this is quite bad for him, honestly. Calling someone a pedo is very serious, probably one of the worst things you could say to someone in today's society. Doing that with nothing to back it up doesn't look good at all. Also international media seems to be picking up on this story big time right now, so lots of people are going to be hearing about it. 

If he had been an oil executive or someone else who doesn't really give a shit what the public thinks that might have been one thing, but Elon Musk has put so much effort into building up his reputation.  

I think he should sell his shares in Tesla, cash out the $10 billion dollars or so this would net him, and invest it all in SpaceX.

It is Tesla that cops most of the criticism, as it is a public company and has so many vested interests opposing it.

At SpaceX, which is a private company in which he owns the majority of shares, he is beholden to no one and it is where his real passion lies. While $10 billion isn’t enough to fully fund his Mars dream, it is enough to build BFR and get Starlink up and running. That will make SpaceX a $100 billion company and truly revolutionize the space industry.

Tesla will probably die a slow death once he has left, perhaps settling as a niche firm catering to rich enviro hippies rather than becoming a mass car producer as he currently intends.

But that’s not his problem. Tesla was always a means to an end, and his holdings in SpaceX already exceed the value of his Tesla holdings in any case.

Tesla could have done a lot of good, but the resistance is just too fierce. It is effort he could spend more productively elsewhere.

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

Tesla will probably die a slow death once he has left, perhaps settling as a niche firm catering to rich enviro hippies rather than becoming a mass car producer as he currently intends.

.

And the irony is that it'll be the envirohippies, if anyone, who colonizes mars

 

[Altherion]

4 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Tesla could have done a lot of good, but the resistance is just too fierce. It is effort he could spend more productively elsewhere.

I'm not sure how a thread on international news became about Elon Musk, but what makes you think Tesla is in enough trouble for him to give up on it? There's a lot of FUD about it in the media lately, but its main problem is still that it sells cars faster than it can manufacture them which, given that the manufacturing rate is improving, is not a bad problem to have (especially with at least a year's worth of pre-order reservations). Also, there's fierce resistance to SpaceX too, it just takes place behind closed doors.

[Free Northman Reborn]

2 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I'm not sure how a thread on international news became about Elon Musk, but what makes you think Tesla is in enough trouble for him to give up on it? There's a lot of FUD about it in the media lately, but its main problem is still that it sells cars faster than it can manufacture them which, given that the manufacturing rate is improving, is not a bad problem to have (especially with at least a year's worth of pre-order reservations). Also, there's fierce resistance to SpaceX too, it just takes place behind closed doors.

I’m not saying that Tesla is failing. I’m working from the premise that effort spent on Tesla is distracting him from the main goal of colonizing Mars. That effort is worthwhile as long as the long term payoff is going to be big enough to financially give his Mars plans a major boost.

But currently Tesla seems to increasingly bog him down just to keep it treading water. Not to mention the stress pushing him off the deep end. 

In the context of Mars Tesla is starting to not appear worth it.

[Altherion]

7 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I’m not saying that Tesla is failing. I’m working from the premise that effort spent on Tesla is distracting him from the main goal of colonizing Mars. That effort is worthwhile as long as the long term payoff is going to be big enough to financially give his Mars plans a major boost.

But currently Tesla seems to increasingly bog him down just to keep it treading water. Not to mention the stress pushing him off the deep end. 

In the context of Mars Tesla is starting to not appear worth it.

I never got the impression that he was focused exclusively on Mars, but even if that was the case, keeping the pollution down on Earth is still important if only because, barring some sort of near-magical tech breakthrough (e.g. nanobots that fabricate almost anything from almost anything else), any Mars colony will be reliant on steady support from Earth for decades. Electric cars are an efficient way to help Earth because burning gas for fuel not only pollutes the air and wastes non-renewable resources that can eventually be spent on materials instead, but also contributes to geopolitical instability.

[The Anti-Targ]

On 7/16/2018 at 10:56 AM, Free Northman Reborn said:

Probably not a bad idea.

The tweets were clearly over the top, but my take from this is that it is obviously not about PR for him, as this is pretty much the worst way to get good PR. Instead it is quite obvious that he is genuinely upset by the false claims that he wasn’t asked for help and that he didn’t come up with a serious solution.

Anyway, I still watch with interest to see how this will play out.

It might not be about PR, but it certainly seems to be about his ego.

Inherently there is nothing wrong with developing a rescue sub for tight spaces, so long as it works. He should continue working on something that can be deployed in tight situations that allows underwater rescue of people with little or no swimming or diving experience. But to suggest the tube he came up with in the short space of time he had would have done the job for this rescue mission seems very far fetched.