2018-09-30: The Transience of Innovations... Or: Be a Body (δΎε―)... not an idiot.
As of September 30th 2018, there is no UTF-8 codepoint for marijuana. December 20th will mark the 30th anniversary of the signing of United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. Until that treaty is repealed, it is highly unlikely (pun-intended) for a codepoint to be added (The Unicode Consortium, while an independent organization, works with a variety of other organizations, including UNGEGN).
Someone that dabbles in multiple disciplines in tech would at least realize the social implications of this. Even more pertinent, someone in charge of a multi-billion dollar company wouldn't be frivilous for the sake of stoner humor. Yes, everyone likes a decent stoner film. Haha, stupid people act high. Insert Seth Rogan Punchline here. In the end thought, there's a reason I thought the 10th anniversary of a major financial crisis was more important to write about than the 30th anniversary of a classic film.
Lucky for Elon, it turns out he won't have to give up his CEO position. Musk doing asinine things shouldn't be a surprise. Five years ago he started Hyperloop. Three years later he started "The Boring Company" when he realized that if he wants to solve the thermal expansion problem (amongst others) preventing Hyperloop feasibility, that he would need to revolutionize excavation engineering. Musk then decided to solicit money via Limited Edition Flamethrowers(While not stupid from a marketing perspective, was definitely juvenile and a potential legal liability)
This post however, was intended to be less of an attack on Musk, and more of an attack on Refinery 29. The title of the article in the second link mentions Musk's girlfriend's by her stage-name (read real-name: Claire Boucher) "Musk does stupid thing because he thought girlfriend would find it funny" would be a more accurate headline. If there was a point that she got involved in all of this, it was back during the Tesla labor dispute. Otherwise she's at best tangential to Tesla.
Again, this is less about Musk, and more about the "meta" of the whole situation. (If you want to read about "Shit Elon Says, well," there's literally a web-site for that) If during your reading of this, you've felt I've been obtuse about the content of some of the links in this post, you would be correct. Article 11 is one step closer to being realized in the EU. It will be interesting to see if and how enforcement is done with web-sites hosted outside the EU linking against content in the EU. I don't want to get caught up in any of it.
You're now asking yourself "What the hell is this post about then?" Pick one of the following: 1) The dead hand of international treaties makes reform hard (See the Berne convention). 2) We should not place our hope for a better society in Crony-Capitalists or Vexatious Bureaucrats. 3) "Your favorite is problematic" goes both ways. 4) Your free press downplays what actually matters. 5) Some combination of all of the above. Or...
6)Get Loc'ed, go broke.
2018, Fr8train
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.