say what you want about elon musk but you gotta admit it’s extremely funny that the rescue team got those boys out before elon could even finish masturbating all over his shitty little escape pod
like he was hemming and hawing over what kind of music to load it with and the thai rescue teams just. got the job done normally. without him. he contributed jack shit and his shitty little submarine was rendered useless by completely standard scuba gear and a few determined workers.
dude tried playing the white savior just got blown the fuck out by people who actually cared about what was going on
hey wanna hear something even funnier, imo?
one of the key pieces of tech in the rescue was the heyphone, a 20-year-old caving radio used by the British diving team who made first contact with the boys.
If you look into the heyphone, you’ll find out that it’s 1. ancient by tech standards, 2. initially designed/assembled by a team of dedicated volunteers from the British Cave Rescue Council and 3. easy to make and fix on your own because the creators (who really wanted better and safer caving equipment) made the specs freely available online.
so in other words:
elon musk’s e-vape spaceship submarine got beat out by a fuckin tech dinosaur, which was still viable SPECIFICALLY because of the altruism of volunteers working not for personal profit and glory but for public safety. that’s symbolism babey!!!!!
Related to this: one of the world-leading companies in the portable communications space (i.e. radios used by rescue services and in a whole lot of other industries) is a NZ company whose founder left it fully-owned by a charitable trust, with all profits re-invested in R&D or donated to charitable and educational causes. They also, at least in the mid-2000s, paid summer interns *very* well (which is how I know about them; a friend did one there years ago.)
The exploitative/extractive nature of high-tech companies, and Elon Musk’s personal wealth-building from his own companies, is entirely a choice.
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tora42's nonsensne 