Elon Musk's tech guru bullshit scientifically rated

18th April 2023

YESTERDAY’S SpaceX launch was predictably cancelled at the last moment because Elon Musk overpromises on all his tech projects. Like these:

Tesla cars

Teslas are cars, and they are electric, so Elon really delivered here. Or rather the people who created Tesla before he bought it did. Only niggling problems remain, such as complaints about build quality and costing ten grand more than a new Audi. But who hasn’t got a spare £10k kicking around? Have a look down the sofa.

Scientific bullshit rating: 2/10

Self-driving Tesla cars

Elon is so committed to this he’s been promising a self-driving Tesla every year since 2014. What’s more, it can be used as a taxi when you’re not in it, earning you an estimated $30,000 a year so you can retire! This vehicle is amazing, and doesn’t exist.

Scientific bullshit rating: 7/10

The Hyperloop

A vacuum tube would allow train-like pods to transport passengers at 760 mph. Dogged by minor problems like maintaining a vacuum seal on the biggest pipes ever and the extreme fatality of sudden deceleration, it was abandoned in 2022 before anyone got turned into jam.

Scientific bullshit rating: 8/10

Tesla robots

After years of promises and fake demonstration videos, Elon has produced an incredibly wobbly robot that performs undemanding lifting tasks at a snail’s pace in a controlled environment. If Tesla robots turn evil and try to enslave mankind they can be defeated by a small child gently pushing them.

Scientific bullshit rating: 5/10

Twitter

Musk promised to make Twitter a beacon of free speech, although only right-wingers had believed it was Soviet Russia before. Indeed, it was and still is a beacon of lies, racism and personal abuse. Elon is charging for verification, confident no deceitful person could afford $8 a month, and Joe Biden has tweeted that he agrees during a break from sucking adrenochrome out of children.

Scientific bullshit rating: 6/10

The Boring Company

Its highest-profile project was ‘custom pods’ zipping along at 150 mph beneath the streets of congested Las Vegas. Six years in 1.7 miles of narrow, vastly expensive tunnel allows normal cars to squeeze along at 30 mph at best. Still, the name appeals to anyone with a stunted sense of humour so has given Elon hours of hilarity.

Scientific bullshit rating: 7/10

Passenger rockets

Go anywhere on earth in less than an hour for the price of a plane ticket in a rocket that gently rotates and lands vertically? Who needs safety procedures that took the airline industry decades to develop? Or cost estimates that aren’t total bullshit?

Scientific bullshit rating: 9/10

Mars colony

Elon aims to have a Mars colony up and running by 2027, and a million people living there by 2050. None of it has been thought through; farming domes aren’t practical, so you’d spend the remainder of your short life in a claustrophobic box wondering which of a million possible technical failures would soon to kill you. Even the toilet breaking would be a source of constant terror with spare parts 243 million kilometres away.

Scientific bullshit rating: 10/10

The boyfriend's guide to explaining the incriminating targeted adverts on your phone

17th April 2023

HAVE you inadvertently informed the Internet about certain predelictions perhaps better kept to yourself? This is how to explain it to your girlfriend:

‘What is targeted advertising?’

Innocence is the defence nobody can bear to breach, so go for wide-eyed denial. If you don’t know what targeting is, it doesn’t exist, and everyone knows it’s a moral obligation to click ‘allow all cookies’ to help those struggling websites? And how is she so sophisticated she knows about omnichannel marketing and data harvesting? What’s she been up to?

‘They get sent to everyone’

If she doesn’t know that she’s paranoid. You don’t ask for recommendations for weed gummies, pirated OnlyFans streams or Filipino brides, you’re forced to see them by your phone. That’s capitalism and the Tories. A political tangent which acts as a smokescreen while you delete your online gambling site bookmarks folder.

‘It’s a virus’

Smartphones are simply computers, and like a desktop PC in the 90s browsed by a horny dad, they have compromised security. A tiny Trojan Horse, worm or bug is inevitable and nothing to do with sketchy porn sites. Pop-ups saying ‘seek medical attention now’ should be ignored, even if they do look exactly like they’re from the NHS app.

‘My mate borrowed my phone’

You left your phone on the table, the lads searched for something hilarious like ‘popular swinging sites Guildford’, and that’s all of a sudden your fault? No, they did it deliberately, and you’ve no idea what they thought was so hilarious about that Forestry Commission car park off the M5 they’ve put a pin in on your satnav app.

‘It was for both of us baby’

Of all the despicable filth you’ve searched, it’s the frivolous sex toy Instagram ad that catches her eye the most. Of course, you insist that the Love Honey deluxe lube set wasn’t meant for solo playtime. She’ll forget the whole advert argument after passionate, toy-assisted lovemaking while you try to remember if you went Incognito on your laptop.