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utopiah 7 hours ago

Hmmm is it though? Quite a few articles like https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-musk-stiffing-contr... make me think they better ask to be paid upfront.

user00005 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Interesting article but not too thorough. Here is more about that contractor:

https://www.hagerty.com/media/great-reads/how-darryl-cuttell...

ecommerceguy 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Hmmm. Aquire all these properties under the guise of reviving things for racing and oopsie it failed what ever shall we do with all these properties now? Oh yeah do what we do best – build data centers.

ricardobeat 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why would a contractor continue working for two years racking up a $136M dollar bill?

dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because they believe the lies from Musk?

Dig1t 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Starbase, TX

Giga Texas

Giga Nevada

Terrafab

etc

There's plenty of examples of this company building these types of projects and following through.

Why do you think this one would be any different?

dgellow 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We are literally talking about a case where they aren’t paying contractors they work with

Dig1t 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

These types of allegations are extremely common with basically every type of construction project, especially when contractors know the client has deep pockets. None of this has been adjudicated by a court. Plus this story is written by someone with bluesky link in their bio by a publication that has an obvious bias:

>Elon Musk Just Said Something About AI That’s Literally Incomprehensible >Sure, man.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/elon-musk-ai-in...

s1artibartfast an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Because they got paid 1.4 billion for work before SpaceX accused them of fraud, put a hold on future payments, and sued them

micromacrofoot 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

because they know the company signing the contract can pay it

thegrim33 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's so interesting to me that the whole "futurism" concept got co-opted into some sort of political propaganda machine. All the articles are negative hit pieces, they're all reductive, they're almost all political in nature. I used to go on the futurism subreddit years ago and it's all the same there. You'd think "futurism" would be about .. promoting new technology, ushering in the future, you know .. futurism. Not just another political propaganda outlet.

jubilanti 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Futurism is a focus on the future. The future may be good or bad. Your desire to focus only on the upsides (for you) and not want to hear about the consequences, externalities, or dangers is one of the most "political" positions a technologist can have.

Do you hate reading most science fiction? Because the ratio of dystopic to utopic scifi is pretty unbalanced.

modeless 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, I hate modern science fiction. It's almost all terrible. Sci-fi written in the time of actual ongoing world wars and the Cold War's constant threat of instant nuclear annihilation was far more optimistic, and far more imaginative.

ethbr1 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Read more solarpunk then?

ralfd 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is a modern phenomena though. Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian. But today even Star Trek has to be bleak/gritty/depressing.

bodge5000 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Classic sci-fi was far from universally optimistic, it had more optimistic pieces than we do today but I'd still say on the whole it was more dystopia than utopia. Even for its own time, the original Star Trek was considered uniquely optimistic, though a large part of that is that its just much easier to write a good story where the setting itself provides the necessary challenges for a story to work, rather than an optimistic setting which rules out a lot of the usual challenges. Even Star Trek struggled, a good chunk of its stories are about encountering a race or civilisation without that utopia, turns out telling a good story without any conflict is pretty tough, especially a long running one.

But it does more generally reflect how society views technology as a whole too. People are generally a lot more pessimistic about new tech now, myself included, we've seen time and time again how its used to control or squeeze us. There actually was a Star Trek episode, "The Game" (season 5, episode 6) about an addicting device you could compare to smartphones (though the device in Star Trek doesn't spy on you to sell your every move to advertisers, missed a trick there), and that certainly wasn't supposed to be an optimistic look at technology, so you can see why things have gone the way they have.

sharkjacobs 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Classic scifi was optimistic and utopian

Yeah for sure, science fiction used to be optimistic and utopian, like Planet of the Apes, Brave New World, Frankenstein, 1984, Earth Abides, The Martian Chronicles, A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, and Island of Dr Moreau, We, Farenheit 451 ...

bodge5000 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Great to see Island of Dr Moreau mentioned, people often forget about that but its one of my favourite books

dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Forgot about We, I love that book

dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You mean like Dune, the Neuromancer, Bladerunner, the Time Machine?

5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
kulahan 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You could just say “no” - it would save a lot of space, be about as polite, and way less annoying.

Sometimes people want to talk about science stuff without talking about human fallout and political implications. It’s perfectly fine to want an occasional break from those types of discussions.

ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Talking about "science stuff" without even mentioning the political and human implications is pointlessly incomplete. It's like trying to talk about a programming language without mentioning variables.

Everything is human and everything is political. To pretend that it is not is, in itself, a political stance.

kulahan 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Let's take the two pieces you put out there and just look at logical conclusions., because it's kinda hilarious to imagine you actually hold this actually-insane position.

1. Everything is political

2. Talking about something without mentioning political and human implications is "pointlessly incomplete"

Topic: "Anyone wanna go swimming?"

Normal people: "Sure."

You, apparently: "Are you aware of how water is unequally distributed throughout the world? How can we possibly discuss swimming if we aren't willing to discuss the political fallout? This is pointlessly incomplete."

Next panel, you're just researching local water table rights while everyone else is swimming and having fun

mandolingual 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_Futurism

It's always been political

etc-hosts 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Mussolini and other Italian inventors-of-Fascism figures were closely allied with the Futurism movement and Marinetti.

https://www.booksontrial.com/mussolini-and-marinetti-a-timel...

api 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s Italian futurism, which was a specific movement. I think the term was being used more broadly here.

Go find some Soviet space art, or mid century American “space age” stuff, or less dark forms of cyberpunk / cyber culture from the 80s and 90s. None of that is fascist yet all of it is popularly called “futurism.” I’ve even seen the term associated with solarpunk.

As popularly used it means more or less the idea of trying to use human intellect to build or create something fundamentally new, or roughly that. It’s not a precise term more of a vibe.

mandolingual 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Mid century American and Soviet space art had transparent political purpose, as does solarpunk. Futurism is rarely if ever just "it's the future, and that's neat!". It comes with the inherently political baggage of "We got from where we are to the glorious future, by way of (ideology)". Star Trek is a great example of this.

api 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That could be said about everything including things usually not associated with futurism like romanticism. Everything carries at least a little political baggage.

I was responding to what seemed like the implication that futurism was fascist.

root_axis 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any particular issue you have with the content of the article?

api 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s just a microcosm of everything. The culture war ate the entire public discourse to the exclusion of practical concerns and even coherent ideas. It’s all vibes and tribalism and bashing the other tribes, while the tribes themselves become increasingly incoherent in terms of what (if anything) they really mean or stand for.

I just turned it all off, though it makes me fear for the future. Feels like the early stages of societal collapse.

Hoasi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Feels like the early stages of societal collapse.

Strongly agree, there is hardly any intelligent discussions with diverging opinions left anymore. People are too deep into their own propaganda, agenda, and echo chambers. Peak bullshit is near.

XorNot 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Okay but Musk himself deliberately and continuously uses his companies and wealth to participate in the culture war so it's no surprise it comes up when his companies do.

He could switch off and stick to building rockets and electric cars. It's very easy (notionally) to just not post on Twitter.

api 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes he does, and he’s also a social media addict. With X the alcoholic bought the bar.

Arodex 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>they're all reductive

What is reductive in the richest man on Earth not paying his dues on time? What nuance, what depth do you think is needed here?

s1artibartfast 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While workers are rarely paid up front, two week pay interval is pretty common

kurthr 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Contractors are commonly net30/net60/net90 or paid on completion and inspection of work done. This isn't a union job with biweekly paychecks.

s1artibartfast 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You think SpaceX is shopping out their infrastructure to individual contractors?

bix6 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

did we read the same article? The link above says nothing about pay period but does list hundreds of millions unpaid.

fastball 5 hours ago | parent [-]

hundreds of millions unpaid and zero investigative journalism to try to get at the truth, besides "liens filed therefore Elon Musk is a cheapskate".

bix6 5 hours ago | parent [-]

So you think multiple contractors in multiple states are just filing liens for fun?

s1artibartfast 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Anything at scale will have payment disputes. Did the work happen, was it for contract, did it run over? These types of questions are extremely common

s1artibartfast an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And SpaceX is suing that firm for 500-800 million for fraud and unauthorized labor markup.

maxlin 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Quite a few" while you're the woman from if Google Was A Guy with literally one result against an avalanche.

SpaceX makes plumbers millionaires. It's the employer of dreams

root-parent 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Its well known X did not pay their huge AWS bill. I would ask for cash first...