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#isaacson — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #isaacson, aggregated by home.social.

  1. "Having made a pattern of writing biographies of important men — and one important woman, Jennifer Doudna of #CRISPR fame — #Isaacson is now in the position of a kind of kingmaker. To keep up his pattern, everyone he writes about implicitly is branded a genius."
    #Musk #biography

    theverge.com/2023/10/1/2389506

  2. Great take-down of Walter #Isaacson's #Musk #biography:

    "I am lingering here because it highlights a major problem with Isaacson’s biography. We are dealing with not one but two unreliable narrators: Musk and Isaacson himself."

    Come for the snarky comment and stay for a long list of the many stories that Isaacson should have really looked into more closely.

    theverge.com/2023/10/1/2389506

  3. The #Musk #Isaacson thing is perhaps best summed up by this from mstdn.social/@fka_tabs

    We are three levels deep at this point. Person A (Shawn McCreesh) is writing about person B (Isaacson) who is talking to a third person about Musk. All three of these people, two of them respected writers (until recently) are confused about simple facts …

  4. As a colleague just pointed out, there's now special joy in reviews of unreleased books that can't be written by #ai ...especially ones so creative and deliciously irreverent

    "Famed biographer of intellectually muscular men Walter Isaacson’s dull, insight-free doorstop of a book casts a wide but porous net in search of an answer."

    theguardian.com/books/2023/sep

    #elon #elonmusk #isaacson

  5. And finally the story behind X🤔

    “It is no wonder that Musk has renamed Twitter “X” after his favourite letter. X is also a crossing out, the opposite of a tick, and that is what Musk has been steadily doing to his legacy.

    #Isaacson’s book constantly tries to build dramatic tension between the species-saving visionary and the beaten bullied boy. But we know the ending to Musk’s story before we even open it. In the end, the bullies win.”

    #X #twitter #musk

  6. This review on Elon Musk book is better than the book 🤣 — ‘Arrested Development’ — worth a read 👍

    “To go from #Einstein to #Musk in only five volumes is surely an indication that humanity isn’t sending #Isaacson its best.”

    “Elon didn’t just exaggerate, he made it up,” a former colleague tells us”

    “The messianic part of the #Muskiverse is his attempt to put 140m miles between himself and his father as he tries to turn humanity into a “#multiplanetary civilization”

    @TheGuardian
    theguardian.com/books/2023/sep

  7. "Even dumber is that the “lesson” that Walter #Isaacson seems to take from this little episode is not that #Musk’s impulsivity is a dangerous, out of control wrecking ball that is going to destroy some serious stuff, but that (ex)#Twitter’s employees had to learn how to better “manage” the man-baby in charge:"
    by @mmasnick

    techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-ba

  8. "That may be because there is a tacit pact between author and subject in the #Isaacson “great man” #biography: The author will unearth unflattering personal anecdotes and share stories about the subject’s capacity to be cruel. In exchange, the subject’s greatness will be treated as an assumption [...]" writes @brianmerchant and what better example than this episode:

    #ElonMusk moving servers himself shows his ‘maniacal sense of urgency’ at #X, formerly #Twitter

    cnbc.com/2023/09/11/elon-musk-

  9. Let’s put a stake in the ‘great man’ #biography — starting with Isaacson’s #ElonMusk
    by @brianmerchant

    "Yes, #Isaacson spoke to “adversaries” like Jeff #Bezos and Bill #Gates, but not (at least per the list) to line workers, not to #Jenna, not to anyone whose family member died in an #Autopilot crash, nor anyone who tried to organize a #Tesla plant.
    [...]
    It’s the book Musk would have written himself.""

    #Twitter #TwitterTakeover #SpaceX

    latimes.com/entertainment-arts

  10. 🧵2/2: Why is the #US army itself subcontracting to private companies? Why are its own #satellites failing? Where were they when #Starlink's #geofencing policy of war zones was decided? Unless proven #ElonMusk deliberately sat on his convo with #Ukraine for days, which #Isaacson doesn't corroborate, I think he had a rare sane moment officially contracting satellites to the #US government so they make their own decision rather than keep on unofficially surrendering power channel4.com/news/elon-musk-bi

  11. I've read a couple of Walter Isaacson's books - "Benjamin Franklin" and "Einstein". There's no way I'm wasting my time and money on his latest book. Musk represents everything that's wrong with corporate America and Silicon Valley.

    When I read a biography, I'm trying to understand the life and times of that person. I know more than I need to know about Musk. None of it is good.

    The latest Starlink information, apparently from Isaacson's book, is further proof that there is nothing good about Musk.

    #Musk #Isaacson #Starlink #Ukraine #Biography

  12. @maxkennerly "Sneak attack"? That could be misread to imply that the Ukrainian government was attempting something underhanded/unethical and interference by #Musk was to "save Russia".

    #Musk didn't proof the book? My guess is #Musk is threatening #Isaacson with his favorite weapon: a defamation lawsuit.

  13. Musk needs good psychiatrist & get off #ketamine!

    “The way that Musk blustered into buying Twitter and renaming it #X was a harbinger of the way he now runs it: impulsively and irreverently. It is an addictive playground for him. It has many of the attributes of a school yard, including taunting and bullying. But in the case of #Twitter, the clever kids win followers; they don’t get pushed down the steps and beaten, like #Musk was as a kid…”

    #isaacson @wsj #narcissist
    wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-twitter

  14. Autistic, sociopath or both 🤔

    “Walter Isaacson, whose upcoming biography about Elon #Musk is expected in September, said one of his takeaways from three years of observing the voluble executive is that he may lack #empathy.  
    "I'm more impressed with him as an engineer," #Isaacson said in an interview on CNBC's Squawk Box, which tweeted a clip of the segment on Monday. "I think that he does not have a fingertip feel for, you know, empathy, emotions." 
    businessinsider.com/elon-musk-