Complex Numbers

Musk I?

Another one from "JAFBG"  [XGC] today.

Choose one famous person and rant or rave - your choice.

Funny thing about "rave." It's not precisely a contronym, like "cleave" or "sanction." But it can mean "talk crazy talk" and "heap praise upon." Unlike with "cleave," it's possible to do both. In fact, any raving I do about someone famous would probably be both.

And praising someone presents risks. I seem to remember, several years ago, praising Joss Whedon as a director. Well. That didn't age well, did it? Once it was revealed he was behaving like a douchecanoe, no amount of good that he did could ever make up for that. No matter how great someone is, at some point, they'll turn out to be human after all, and you'll look like an idiot for ever supporting them, because people are unforgiving. So praising someone has its dangers.

On the contrary, once someone reveals themself to be a cockmuffin, no amount of good stuff that they do can ever make up for that. They are always, forever, known as a cockmuffin, because, as I noted, people are unforgiving. That's why it's easier to rant about someone than to praise them: by ranting, you will always be right; if you rave, you'll eventually be laughed at for being so hopelessly naïve.

The risk, there, even with public figures, is that there are laws about talking too much shit about someone. In the US, from what I understand, it has to be both shitty and untrue. But I don't understand much, so I try not to shit-talk a lot.

But Muskmelon is too rich a target not to.

Oh, I admit, I was, like many people, taken in at first by his apparent business sense. I loved the stuff SpaceX was doing, and cheered the first time I saw a rocket booster land itself. I thought Tesla was doing great work: introducing electric cars that didn't look or handle like you were doing penance. Good stuff, all of it. Top of the world.

And then the raving began.

I don't remember all the details. Something about a bunch of people trapped in a cave, and false accusations of pedophilia? Making promises he couldn't keep, like with tunneling machines or high-speed rail? Some half-baked (actually, fully baked and burnt) scheme for founding a colony on Mars? Managing to turn public opinion against autonomous vehicles by leaping them into production before they were ready? I don't know. The details don't matter.

Taking over Birder and sinking it into the lava pits of Hell was just the cherry on top of the parfait of doom. I never liked that site anyway, so it barely affected me, but I still felt like it made Rachel Carson's prophecy of "Silent Spring" come true.

I get the feeling that if he hadn't had those initial successes, Muskmelon would be just another cracked pot. But he did, which makes the crash-landing even worse.

Maybe he should have paid more attention to his engineers. Not just the ones at the bird site, but the ones at SpaceX, who became really good at soft, controlled landings. Instead, he'll now be forever known as a lithobraking expert.