I think Musk might be playing Von Goom’s Gambit.
The people deciding who gets Prometheus Award are also extremely stupid.
From Goodreads:
"L. Neil Smith was a Libertarian science fiction author and gun rights activist…In 2016, Smith received the Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement for his contributions to libertarian science fiction…
…He was editor of LEVER ACTION BBS [now defunct], founder and International Coordinator of the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus, Secretary and Legislative Director of the Weld County Fish & Wildlife Association and an NRA Life Member."
more here: https://www.chessjournal.com/bongcloud/
notably,
It shows what can happen to an overconfident king, and historically pride has come before the fall.
or it’s just fools mate.
EM might be playing n dimensional chess, but that doesn’t mean he’s any good at it.
In 1966 Contoski wrote a story called “Von Goom’s Gambit”. Warped chess genius Von Goom devises an opening whose mere pattern on the board brings convulsions, insanity or death to his opponents. Spectators are turned to stone. It takes the combined efforts of the world’s finest chess masters to defeat Von Goom’s Gambit. Their counter-strategy, though brilliant, is unorthodox and may bend the rules a little. They shoot him.
I must have found an incomplete version of the story that ended after the gambit was first discovered, without mentioning any of that.
Edit: The site it was on didn’t like running without javascript. Reading it now.
Cool article. Bonus points for the article warning us about Elno before it was cool.
As an aside, I read about the Technocracy movement in Canada when I was in my early 20s. I was young, impressionable, and studying engineering; surely their target demographic for core believers. And even I could see it was nonsense. “But that’s not how people work”, I kept thinking as I read.
They were still around, and the article interviewed its current leadership. They were a weirdly self-deluded bunch.
It not the most important thing about them, but it felt like a microcosm of the whole ridiculousness of their ideas: They either didn’t know Greek when they picked their name, or didn’t care, or just hoped nobody else noticed. The Greek “technos” means “skill”, “logos” is thinking or gathering thoughts. So we made the word “technology”, which is something that arises from skill at thinking.
The suffix “-cracy” relates to political power. “Technocracy” literally translates as “skill at wielding political power”. Which doesn’t sound like what the Technocracy movement was trying to brag about.
I felt at the time (and still do) that the Technocracy movement most likely botched the wording of their name because they made a guess at something they knew nothing about, and stuck with it even when it was shown to be silly. Reading about their ideas and goals, that sort of fumbling with reality seemed very on-brand.
On the other hand, Elon’s financial partners in the House of Saud are pleased with his effect on Twitter.
I don’t go to Twitter very often anymore since almost everybody I follow has moved on to other platforms. But one thing I have noticed whenever I do a quick check-in is the huge decline in brand name advertising. Seems to be mostly made up of crypto finance bro schemes, sports book sites, alcoholic beverages, SEO sites, fly-by-night coding sites, and so many fucking ads for Hulu and Apple TV+. Naturally there’s not less advertising, just worse advertising.
He made a bunch of risky bets and gotten lucky a couple of times. Those bets were risky at least in part because he ignored prevailing wisdom, eg. “The first stages of rockets are not worth retrieving,” and “electric cars aren’t practical.” So those worked and people called him a genius for making them and now he keeps trying to do the same thing again and again. Even more than the money, he wants to be treated like he is a genius.
He was ALWAYS an asshole, and occasionally it can be useful to have a goal-directed asshole to get things done. But it is never a substitute for actual smarts and knowledge. It’s not like the original management of Twitter didn’t tell him REPEATEDLY, that the reason for moderation is that advertisers don’t want their ads associated with Nazis and other reprehensibles. But he keeps being an iconoclast because it worked before, albeit not as many times as it has failed. for him at this point. He’s a one trick pony, he doesn’t know anything else.
Poor Musk. It just hasn’t sunk into his wee brain that he shouldn’t expect others who dislike him to nonetheless financially support him and, thereby, betray their own ideals. What a fucking baby.
King Musk has already “lost” enough pieces due to layoffs and terminations to make the endgame predictable.
Maybe not directly affecting NeuraLink et al, but we have this: It feels like old news, but was still two months away when Brianna Wu wrote the above.
Elon Musk becomes first person ever to lose $US200b
Elon Musk is commenting under advertising tweets asking people to click like and attempting to drive engagement on them. The preview doesn’t show the details but the link should go to the right section of the page:
Maybe he could also walk around wearing sandwich board signs of the few remaining advertisers.
yup and these companies will stop being ‘woke’ as soon as it makes financial sense to stop.
companies that are ‘woke’ try so hard to be a liberals best friend. it’s hilarious.
it is encouraging though because it indicates that the vast majority of americans are on the right side of history. since these companies are likely just following the money, it’s reasonable to think that the majority of america’s population has some measure of compassion and all is not lost. that is a very promising conclusion.
that being said, i’m glad twitter is losing advertisers. although a) some twitter-like service is necessary at the global level b) i suspect musk will come out on top, because of his money and his cult.
