Interesting Links for 25-07-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Terrifying biology facts

(tags:facts biology terrifying )

2. Operation Gomorrah - the British attempt to wipe out the civilian population of Hamburg

(tags:history viaDanielDWilliam wwii explosives Germany UK )

3. A masterclass of incompetence from Elon Musk

(tags:ElonMusk branding epicfail viaPatrickHadfield )

Comments

[nancylebov]

The bombing of Hamburg would be better remembered if there were a major novel about it.

[fub]

It's amazing how a lot has happened with Twitter, and none of the decisions Elon made were to solve a real user problem. (Unless, of course, the problem was: "I am a nazi and I am not allowed on twitter", but Elon's decision there created a problem for all the other users.)
This will be a product management case study for years to come.

[andrewducker]

I think he has this idea in his head of how Things Should Be, and he keeps trying to make it happen, despite it clearly not working every time.

[fub]

I think that at his successful companies (however you want to measure success) he is surrounded by people who take his vision and turn it into something practical and do-able. At Twitter, that layer of competence is not there (anymore) and so there is nobody to tell Elon that something is a bad idea. It would be tragic if it wouldn't be so funny to see a billionaire blow his fortune on something that will never work.

[rhythmaning]

What gets me is that it is all so pointless.

He could have got out of his bid (at a cost - a lot less than buying Twitter).

He could then have built the social netork-everythig app he seems to want, at a fraction of the price of buying Twitter.

But then to buy Twitter, crash the value of the company, and THEN decide to get rid of a famous brand (which has become a verb!) and an immediately recognisable logo, and replace them by unprotectable names and logo, well it's just bizarre.

If anyone knows Musk, could you let him know I've some magic beans to seel him?!

[snippy]

I would really like it if the lesson is "being this rich is deleterious to people's mental health, particularly their good judgment, and it is essential that we protect people from this."

[rhythmaning]

Even more stupid - X (X?!!) is only half-thought through.

To write a post you still have to press "Tweet". The url (which I couldn't get in my screen shot) is still Twitter.com. The search box reads "Search Twitter".

[ninetydegrees]

#3 Thanks for this. I found the thing about trying to take down the HQ sign particularly hilarious. Fun fact: in my native language, X has become a noun to mean 'porn'. Like we would say 'this is x' or 'they are an x star'. Fun times ahead.

[mountainkiss]

I like the careful ordering of the tags in the first item.

[andrewducker]

It did feel a bit like: Facts (Biology (Terrifying))

And it always makes me happy when the tags map onto the titles so well.

[mountainkiss]

I particularly liked that it was neither alphabetical nor in the order of the article's title, so appeared pleasingly random.