Tech-bros... are there any more annoying people on this planet? Today, I listened incredulously to the news report about Elon Musk's plan to build highway tunnels under the surface of Hawthorne, California. Congratulations, Muskie, you invented a subway system, albeit a stupid one... these tunnels are meant for individual automobiles to navigate, rather than moving vast quantities of people in an efficient manner. It's not a mass transit system, but a masters' transit system- a sort of transportation network in which the Master of the Universe tech titans can travel free not only of freeway traffic, but of the presence of other human beings, sometimes indigent or incoherent ones. Why put up with the common people, even people suffering afflictions, if you can travel alone in your own private tubeway? These tech titans, unlike the original Tubeway Army, won't even have to disconnect from anyone, not having made any connections with the hoi polloi:
As an individual who loves the subway system of NYC, even with its frustrations and discomforts, I find this plan ridiculous, and cannot escape the conclusion that it is based on class, and I would even say racial, animus. It hints at a dismal future in which public infrastructure is allowed to deteriorate while a second, parallel infrastructure earmarked for wealthy users is constructed in its stead. To some extent, this parallel infrastructure exists, especially in the field of private aviation, but Musk wants to ramp it up by constructing what promise to be members only subpar subways.
Yeah, Elon Musk - what an awful guy:
ReplyDeleteTesla - changed the world by creating an actual model and infrastructure for useful electric cars. Perhaps the most important concrete change to a global fossil fuel economy.
SpaceX - In a single decade (and without taxpayer money) created a civilian space program, along the way solving many previously intractable problems like launch vehicle reusability and reducing the cost of access to both Low Earth Orbit and now, with Falcon 9, the solar system.
The Boring Company - Developing technology to dramatically reduce the cost of creating underground infrastucture with automation and intelligence.
Yeah, sure. We really need less guys like that...
Honestly, Mr. Bastard, you used to think critically and offer interesting points of view. Frankly, all you do these days is jerk your knee and repeat whatever the liberal facebook meme of the day is without any historical, economic or political context.
ReplyDeleteUh, Mikey? Funny, but in walking around New York I don't see any electric car infrastructure. (By "infrastructure" specific to electric cars, I assume you mean someplace where they can plug in.)
ReplyDeleteAnd excuse me, Mr. "Context," but without taxpayer money, there would have been no NASA space program solving hundreds of thousands of other problems that made Space X possible. Besides, as best I can see, the sole application for Space X so far is to provide extra-atmospheric joy rides for millionaires, while further polluting the atmosphere with oodles of carbon-based jet fuel burnoff.
Suggestion. Go to your room.
Yours with extreme crankiness,
The New York Crank
1.) Hmm, maybe New York should try to get it's shit together. Everywhere I go - businesses, hospitals, even the grocery store has EV parking with plug-in chargers. And yes, that was driven and originally funded by Musk.
ReplyDelete2.) Yes, NASA was created and funded with taxpayer money, and they did invent thousands of important, even critical breakthroughs. Which is, to be charitable, tangential to the point. The last time NASA was capable of even reaching low earth orbit was 2011. They have been dependent on Russian launch vehicles to provide access even just to the ISS. SpaceX has done made all the major breakthroughs since, resupplied the ISS and provided launch services for both commercial and government satellites since. And NASA's future heavy lift vehicle is still TEN years in the future (assuming funding) and they haven't even begun work on a next generation crew cabin. SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon exist now and are in testing.You probably should be able to tell the difference between SpaceX and Virgin.
Suggestion: Get out of your room and read something now and then.
Oh, and you DO know that rockets don't use jet fuel, right? I mean, does New York not have Wikipedia either?
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Sure looks to me like there's a whole lot of EV infrastructure in New York...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/maps/search/ev+charging+stations/@40.6964721,-74.2598641,10z/data=!3m1!4b1?hl=en
Musk is a strange duck, he has some really good ideas, and some really daffy ones. This underground highway stuff is just plain silly- it's a bad simulacrum of a subway system, the sort of thing someone with social anxieties and a distaste for his 'lessers' would devise.
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