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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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_
I thought it was a Heinlein reference.
correct, see edit
@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!