this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Guess it’s appropriate that Musk should go from some sort of entrepreneurial tech guru who was going to save the planet to some right wing billionaire shitheel, steals “grok” from Heinlein, who went for sic-fi author darling to libertarian shitheel.
Musk appropriating "grok" from Stranger in a Strange Land is on-brand for him, seeing as he fundamentally misunderstands Banks' Culture series and reduces it to "the one with the cool ship names".
Edited for clarity
@gerikson @RememberTheApollo_
"Taking Tesla's name is such an Edison move"
I do chuckle a bit every time I see the logo. It really looks like an IUD.
@gerikson @cstross
Yeah he has no self-awareness at all that in the culture universe he’d be taken out by Zakalwe
@szbalint @gerikson @cstross
But Joiler Veppers was taken out by Lededje Y'breq.
@szbalint @gerikson @cstross
Now I think of it, he's also trolling for Gray Area.
@resuna @szbalint @gerikson @cstross IIRC by-as-in-close-to Lededje Y'breq, but by-as-in-responsible-for the avatar of the Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints.
But 100% with you on Musk = Veppers
@gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ As a member of The Affront, of course he would.
@gerikson GSV The One With The Cool Ship Name is a vessel in The Culture though.
"Why did you choose that name, Mind?"
"Well you see I happened to catch this "TV" show on this backwater planet and it really stuck with me!"
@gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ Wasn't that word coinedby R.A.H.?
correct, see edit
@gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ to be fair Heinlein had some fascist tendencies too even if Stranger In A Strange Land was just good (although I read it so long ago that I might have overlooked stuff)
@blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ The bits about homosexuality haven't aged very well and there's a certain amount of "society shouldn't inhibit hot young women's natural desire to fuck curmudgeonly ageing authors".
@chaucerburnt @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ thanks. I read the book 20 years or so ago, so I don't trust any memory I have of it.
@blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ to be fair to RAH, it's an ambitious book; he was trying to recognise and challenge society's assumptions, including his own, and nobody is likely to do that flawlessly.
@blikkie @gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ One way to read Stranger in a Strange Land is what happens when our society is visited by a radical pacifist (who knows how to protect himself). Another way to read it is "our society is stupid and we know better how it should work". I can see how Musk might be inclined to follow one of these interpretations over the other.
@gerikson @RememberTheApollo_
It's the least of the things he appropriates. He also appropriates a chunk of the federal budget.
@gerikson @cstross grok was from the Heinlein thing about the psychic kid raised by martians, who starts a polyamorous sex cult. The same book that the concept of air suspension beds came from
@Cuprohastes @gerikson @cstross I’ve great that described as “Heinlein’s later, post-talented stage.”
@gerikson @RememberTheApollo_ he doesn't grok it!
@gerikson @RememberTheApollo_
I thought it was a Heinlein reference.
correct, see edit
@RememberTheApollo_ @dgerard he was only ever cosplaying as an "entrepreneurial tech guru" though