The first ten on today’s playlist:

One of the weird claims you hear when writing about space tech is that Elon Musk didn't do anything at SpaceX – he just paid for a bunch of engineers. I used to go into an a spiel on how a room of engineers doesn't automatically make useful stuff. Now I'll just say "Metaverse."

— Zach Weinersmith (@ZachWeiner) October 30, 2022

Ex-fucking-actly! That “all he did was hire some engineers” argument is so assclownishly dipshitty. I know why people hate Musk, but that assertion doesn’t even pass the sniff test.

Musk hired and kept Gwynne Shotwell — perhaps the greatest hire of all time. There is more to running a company and hiring than most people realize or will ever understand. Especially if it’s a large company with extremely high capex like SpaceX. Meta is spending $10 billion a year on the Metaverse and that’s the biggest dud since Juicero (but way more expensive).

People’s simplistic explanations for and facile understandings of processes and events just fall apart under even the slightest examination.

I read so many pieces in political media this week (axios, punchbowl, wash post, etc) about how dems were about to be obliterated. It’s almost like they were all being fed the same narrative.

— Aléx Young (@AlexYoung) November 9, 2022

The GOP is much better at messaging and propaganda. Much, much better than Dems. The press repeats what it’s barraged with and what seems plausible. And what seems plausible to them is what they are barraged with — a never-ending circle.

The point of all that GOP agitprop was to suppress Dem voter turnout by portraying Republican victory as inevitable. It didn’t work because many Dems were absolutely enraged about Dobbs, as they should be. Sans Dobbs, the Repubs would’ve captured the Senate and House easily — would’ve been a rout.

Trump’s future looks dead in the water. And Biden is a zombie.

I suspect Ron DeSantis has about a 60% chance of being president in 2025. He’s a terrible speaker but no one seems to care about that anymore. Other than that, the stars are aligning for him.

I genuinely think I’m too dumb to figure out Mastodon

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) November 5, 2022

Nah, it’s crap. Designed by doofuses who never met a real human ever.