Originally published at: Isaacson's new Musk bio is an "insight-free doorstop" | Boing Boing
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And much like in Dante’s Inferno, they start off tortuously bad and then get progressively worse.
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Musk is the ultimate unreliable narrator. “Elon didn’t just exaggerate, he made it up,” a former colleague tells us.
As I said before, Isaacson would have done better if his subject was dead, and therefore more honest.
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“insight-free doorstop”
That sounds like a pretty accurate description of Musk.
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It is no wonder that Musk has renamed Twitter “X” after his favourite letter. X is also a crossing out, the opposite of a tick, and that is what Musk has been steadily doing to his legacy. Isaacson’s book constantly tries to build dramatic tension between the species-saving visionary and the beaten bullied boy. But we know the ending to Musk’s story before we even open it. In the end, the bullies win.
I don’t think this metaphor will survive the translation into American English.
☒ does not mean negation.
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I tittered a bit when I drove by the sign, but because I thought Twitter was advertising they were a joke now.
The slang never occurred to me.
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Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad and grew up in New York.
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If only he were that harmless…
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It does when reviewing things on paper (or rather 
)… Like homework is graded with a check mark for correct and cross mark for incorrect. Or I’ll use the the same marks when picking a graphic design or something from a set.
But it does get muddled for me since crossing things off my list means the same thing as checking things off my list. Also since checking a box and exing a box on a form both indicate the same thing.
And of course, the whole x marks the spot treasure thing is usually good. And multiplication or cross products.
That said, it’s still a terrible name for a company. Who wants to spend a lot of time with their ex?
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Catchphrase of the late Frankie Howerd, probably only familiar to UKians of a certain age.
(Maybe I’ll see if I can find a clip, later.)
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It’s such a great review. The combination of tearing both the book and Elno down and damning them with faint praise:
To his credit, Isaacson is a master at chapter breaks, pausing the narrative when one of Musk’s rockets explodes or he gets someone pregnant, and then rewarding the reader with a series of photographs that assuages the boredom until the next descent into his protagonist’s wild but oddly predictable life. Again, it’s not all the author’s fault. To go from Einstein to Musk in only five volumes is surely an indication that humanity isn’t sending Isaacson its best.
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A couple years ago this probably would have made my reading list, but given Musk’s actions recently I think I’ll pass.
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I’ve never been much of a fan of Isaacson’s work, the quality of which seems to only get worse the more idiosyncratic his subject is. And the more alive they are, apparently.
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I think of him more as a doorknob.
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Yeah, I’ll wait until it ends up on the remaindered shelf at my local bookshop for a Euro. Hopefully posthumously.
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Nary a mention of titters, but some quality Howerd delivery, nonetheless.
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Now waiting to see which organized group(s) will purchase enough of the bio to make it a bestseller. Or will Musk handle that task.
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and then there’s always japanese:
In Japanese schools, teachers use circles (maru (○)) to mark correct answers and crosses (batsu (×)) to mark incorrect answers. Triangles (sankaku (△)) are also sometimes used to mark partially incorrect answers.
A confusion which arises from this system is that Japanese teachers abbreviate the cross using a tick (✓), thus to the Japanese a tick is seen as marking an incorrect answer.
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