Links 34
Farhad Manjoo: “Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla. Unlike just about every other carmaker, Tesla spends almost nothing on advertising. Musk is and has long been the company’s sole marketer and chief evangelist, the main force driving the world’s desire to buy Teslas. And so any alteration in Musk’s cultural standing will affect the company’s standing, too.”
Matthew Yglesias: “Crypto’s basic model starts from the idea that […] the current reliance on trusted intermediaries is a necessary evil, and that developing a means to conduct electronic transactions without a trusted intermediary is a big win. But this just isn’t true. For the bulk of the world’s economic activity, the trusted intermediary system is a much better way to do things. Not just for technical reasons related to blockchain energy consumption, but because alternative approaches leave you dangerously vulnerable to criminals. This means in turn that the primary bona fide use of an alternate system is for committing crimes.”
From Herzog by Saul Bellow: “Some people thought he was cracked and for a time he himself had doubted that he was all there. But now, though he still behaved oddly, he felt confident, cheerful, clairvoyant and strong.”
