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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29394 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

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Hell, how much of this was made possible by Elon buying Twitter?

All of it. Pre-Elon it was a regular occurrence for me to go "oooh, there goes another one" as another mildly interesting, not even very spicy, account gets the ban hammer. If it was still under old management, they'd probably be cracking down on Peanut the squirrel memes. That's without mentioning the impact of things like Community Notes.

have you re-evaluated Elon, given these developments? Still confident he's a grifter?

I'm mostly sticking to my guns. There are things that are causing me to adjust - I kept my mouth shut, but internally I was expecting a giant fireball at Boca Chica, not a successful booster catch. But I don't think that's enough to change my appraisal on him running his companies mostly on hype. Also if you check my big anti-Elon post, I ranked his companies from best to worst, and I rated Twitter at the top. If it wasn't for the advertiser boycott - which I consider a political affair, rather than anything market-driven - he'd be making bank off of it, and taking it to profitability, I think for the first time ever.

I'm actually somewhat worried he'll tank the whole MAGA thing by using his connections to Trump to try to save himself. But if it helps - I hope I'll be proven embarrassingly wrong, and y'all will get to shit on me for being a retard for all of eternity.

But I don't think that's enough to change my appraisal on him running his companies mostly on hype.

have you seen orbital launch graphs? launch cost graphs? SpaceX is far from dud (even if there is also enormous pile of hype)

spaceX just dominates, even at spaceX vs all humanity except spaceX

reducing costs with reusable rockets was a joke before spaceX

have you seen orbital launch graphs?

Yes, most of them are for themselves. If Starlink doesn't cover their costs, and there's not data to show that either way, this number doesn't mean anything. Though there's a wildcard here, where the whole Starlink thing might turn out to be a front for some Pentagon and/or CIA black-op, which would money is not an issue, but there's no way to tell with publicly available information.

launch cost graphs?

I straight-up don't believe them.

reducing costs with reusable rockets was a joke before spaceX

I think it still is.

I straight-up don't believe them.

What would it take for you to believe them?

An independent audit would be nice. Also, just time, I guess - at some point it will start looking awfully silly if they keep doing their thing, and I keep insisting it's price dumping.

I doubt they'd do an independent audit just for the sake of proving their launch costs, and I don't expect they'd have another reason to do so.

How long do they have to keep this up before you stop insisting that it's dumping?

My model for how Elon's companies work is something like:

  • Create hype for $thing
  • Investors get hyped and shower Elon with money
  • Deliver $thing
  • Thing does not bring enough profit to justify investment
  • Create hype for $new_thing
  • ...

This worked well enough until now, but there are signs things are starting to break. I don't think they'll be able to repeat the same thing past Starship, so to answer your question - if Starship becomes their workhorse, or they'll bin the program, but it won't end the company*, I'll concede.

*) Modulo the shady stuff he can potentially do with a direct line to Trump, but I don't know how to explicitly factor that into my prediction.

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