The statue that inspired Keats’ “Ozymandias”
On Tuesday, Musk gathered a group of engineers and advisors into a room at Twitter’s headquarters looking for answers. Why are his engagement numbers tanking? “This is ridiculous,” he said, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. “I have more than 100 million followers, and I’m only getting tens of thousands of impressions.”
[…] Employees showed Musk internal data regarding engagement with his account, along with a Google Trends chart … [and] found no evidence that the algorithm was biased against him.
Musk did not take the news well.
“You’re fired, you’re fired,” Musk told the engineer. (Platformer is withholding the engineer’s name in light of the harassment Musk has directed at former Twitter employees.)
This is eerily reminiscent of another such display, as recorded by Herodotus. Persian Emperor Xerxes was engaging in the second invasion of Greece …
During the time Xerxes and his huge army were marching from Sardes to Abydos, then an important harbor on the Hellespont, two bridges were built from there to the opposite side near Sestos over a distance of seven stadia (some 1,300 m or 1,400 yd), but were destroyed by a storm before the army arrived. Xerxes was enraged and had those responsible for building the bridges beheaded. He is then said to have thrown fetters into the strait, given it three hundred whiplashes, and branded it with red-hot irons as the soldiers shouted at the water.
For many millennia, this has been considered a classic case of hubris.
As they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
AI illustration by Hart Williams ©2023
Assuming that Platformer is correct, we now have the equivalent of a senescent old man with Parkinson’s disease driving a bus. Metaphorically.
Time will tell.
Courage.
his vorpal sword 