self

I'm so down for this I might unbury my good microphone

"and then Dick Cheney appears and that's the final boss and he beats your ass. no, not a character based off of Dick Cheney..."

it feels so much like he’s reaching for… something? from nerd culture and missing the mark so much it’s unrecognizable. my brain went to the old RedLetterMedia review where they kept pronouncing “geteven” as one word, but like… musk, buddy, you’re the one who insisted on naming it a robovan, this doesn’t work

and speaking of reaching for nerd culture and missing, “your own personal R2D2 C-3PO” is exactly how my mom would describe a robot after a bit too much wine, and it’s really embarrassing it’s this easy to pander to nerds

I’m friends with people who used to be gigantic musk fans (and they’ve fortunately gone in the opposite direction since then), and the vocal tics are absolutely something they mythologized — I vividly remember one of them cooing over how adorable his stutter is during the original cybertruck/neuralink announcement way back, which they of course insisted we watch live

and as someone who’s struggled with mild to severe vocal tics and other difficulties verbally communicating off and on for decades: I’m not an expert, but it’s real fucking weird he can turn the tics off when he needs to for an interaction. for example, during the Twitter space when an ex-Twitter engineer surprised him and called him out for making shit up about Twitter’s infrastructure, he instantly went from “shy mess” to “the worst executive you’ve ever met is trying to get you fired” — all steel, no stutter, an entirely different persona designed to make musk feel like he won that interaction. and if I were in that spot (and thank fuck I never will be that big an asshole), I’d be a fucking mess — that kind of stress makes me stutter, fuck up my phrasing, and talk in weird loops right away. I get a lot less confident as my brain overanalyzes what I’m saying.

and again everyone’s different and I’m not an expert, but it’s real weird the guy’s pattern is the exact opposite of myself and essentially everyone else I know who struggle with speaking under pressure. to be honest, I’m fairly certain the richest boy in the world can afford a vocal coach — and I’m also convinced he paid that vocal coach to sound like more of an adorable, vulnerable, relatable nerd

you know, humidity control is one of the few parts of my house that isn’t controlled by a handbuilt Linux system I’ve fastened to the wall

…so what I’m saying is now I’m writing one in nix, yes

can it even fit a robovan? the thing barely fits the cars it was designed for, and I wouldn’t put it past musk to forget his past failed shit or assume it can easily be expanded when it can’t

instance admins have a button for it

do you think they ever got round to reading the article, or were they spent after coming up with “hmmmm I bet chatgpt didn’t somehow prompt itself” as if that were a mystery that needed solving

it’s kind of comforting that the current attitude towards generative AI in some tech spaces is “of course it can’t do cognition and it isn’t really good for anything, who said it was” which is of course rich from the exact same posters who were breathlessly advertising for the tech as revolutionary both online and at work as recently as a couple of weeks ago (and a lot of them still hedge it with “but it might be useful in the near future”). the comfort is it feels like that attitude comes from deep embarrassment, like how the orange site started claiming it is and always was skeptical of crypto once the technology got irrevocably associated with scams and gambling and a lot of the easy money left

you’re right! now I’m trying to think back to which kiosk chain was active in my area growing up. I do know they’d take my dad’s awfully shot film and make even worse prints, and that feels weirdly appropriate for Matt

anti-ai bots

there’s nothing I hate more than when people who hate chatbots flood me with chatbots

e: please stop sending soldiers from your anti-war militia to fight me

actually that sounds like a metal gear plot point I’d overexplain while intoxicated

what does this have to do with the article

I stumbled on the landing page and this shit’s somehow even worse in context:

If you are reading this on automattic.com, and you don’t currently work at Automattic you’ll see a selected set of pages that will give you a sense of our onboarding and welcome documents from the Field Guide. Over time, we hope to add more.

fuck me. I swear to you my ears are ringing from how corporate twee this bullshit is, and you’re telling me there’s more of it? thank fuck they let the public know there’s infinite free swag though (limit $250/year or you’ll get a visit from the Human League cause they can’t have you do anything crazy like donate Matt’s swag or repurpose it)

It’s confusing at first. You won’t know where what is and who is doing what. If you do get to know all that after a time, it is perfectly possible that it’ll change or even already has. Also tell us how you did it.

The only correct approach is to embrace the chaos, not fight it. As Buddha says:

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

oh fuck off with this. your company barely functioning isn’t a strength, it’s just a shitty thing that’s burning out your employees.

but for real though… do you think Matt sees himself as a Buddha-like figure? do you think that’s what’s going through his head when he throws an extremely online rich boy tantrum?

You too, like all of us, will become a strange attractor.

this is it, we’ve found the portal to startup hell