Designers

"While the early days of visualization go back over 200 years, actual research to understand how it works really only started in the 1960s. Jacques Bertin’s Sémiologie Graphique (Semiology of Graphics), published in 1969, was the first systematic treatment of the different ways graphical representations encode data. Bertin coined many terms of the trade, such as the mark, which is the basic unit of every visualization, like a bar, line, or circle sector. He also defined a number of retinal variables, which are the visual properties we use to express the data; these include color, size, location, etc."

"The author has the reputation of being against color. I am indeed against color when it masks incompetence; when it allows the superimposition of characteristics to the point of absurdity; when people believe it capable of representing ordered data."

"[The special properties of visual perception of data]... is the visual means of resolving logical problems."

"A graphic is a diagram when correspondences on the plane can be established among all elements of another component."

"A graphic is not 'drawn' once and for all; it is 'constructed' and reconstructed until it reveals all the relationships constituted by the interplay of the data.... A graphic is never an end in itself; it is a moment in the process of decision-making."

"The aim of the graphic is to make the relationship among previously defined sets appear."

"The plane is the mainstay of all graphic representation. It is so familiar that its properties seem self-evident, but the most familiar things are often the most poorly understood. The plane is homogeneous and has two dimensions. The visual consequences of these properties must be fully explored."

"When the correspondences on the plane can be established between:"

"[Overall level questions involved an] understanding of the deep structure of the data being presented in their totality, usually comparing trends and seeing groupings."

"There are as many types of questions as components in the information."

"When the correspondences on the plane can be established among all the divisions of the same component, the construction is a network."

"Information is the reply to a question."

"And now, at the end of the twentieth century, with the pressure of modern information and the advances of data processing, graphics is passing through a new and fundamental stage. The great difference between the graphic representation of yesterday, which was poorly dissociated from the figurative image, and the graphics of tomorrow, is the disappearance of the congential fixity of the image."

"Graphic representation constitutes one of the basic sign-systems conceived by the human mind for the purposes of storing, understanding, and communicating essential information. As a "language" for the eye, graphics benefits from the ubiquitous properties of visual perception. As a monosemic system, it forms the rational part of the world of images."

"To analyse graphic representation precisely, it is helpful to distinguish it from musical, verbal and mathematical notations, all of which are perceived in a linear or temporal sequence. The graphic image also differs from figurative representation essentially polysemic, and from the animated image, governed by the laws of cinematographic time. Within the boundaries of graphics fall the fields of networks, diagrams and maps. The domain of graphic imagery ranges from the depiction of atomic structures to the representation of galaxies and extends into the spheres of topography and cartography."

"Graphics owes its special significance to its double function as a storage mechanism and a research instrument."

"[Bertin's 'color' refers to] the repertoire of colored sensations which can be produced at equal value."

"Value perception dominates color perception."

"If, in order to obtain a correct and complete answer to a given question, all other things being equal, one construction requires a shorter observation time than another construction, we can say that it is more efficient for this question."

"This notion though, that you can just sort of send checks out to everybody and things will be fine is not true, obviously. Some have this absurd view that the economy is like some magic horn of plenty… that just makes stuff. There’s a magic horn of plenty, and the goods and services, they just come from this magic horn of plenty. And then if somebody has more stuff than somebody else, it’s because they took more from this magic horn of plenty. Now let me just break it to the fools out there: If you don’t make stuff, there’s no stuff. If you don’t make the food, if you don’t process the food, if you don’t transport the food, medical treatment, getting your teeth fixed, there’s no stuff. We’ve become detached from reality. You can’t just legislate money and solve these things. If you don’t make stuff, there is no stuff."

"We must pass the great filter!"

"We [the United States] will coup whoever we want! Deal with it."

"If somebody wants to stay in their house, that’s great. They should be allowed to stay in their house, and they should not be compelled to leave. But to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom."

"No, just like [Unsworth] didn’t clarify he wanted to sodomize me with a submarine. I didn’t think it required clarification, I think that would have been worse. If you called someone a motherf’er I don’t think you would have to clarify you don’t actually commit incest. It would sound disingenuous."

"According to the geological records, earth has been around for around 4.5 billion years, although it was mostly molten magma for about half a billion years... The sun is gradually getting hotter and bigger, and over time, even in the absence of global warming — the man-made stuff — the sun will expand and it will overheat the earth. My guess is probably... there is only several hundred million years left.... Basically, if it took an extra 10% longer for conscious life to evolve on earth, it wouldn't evolve at all, because it would have been incinerated by the sun. ... It appears that consciousness is a very rare and precious thing, and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness, and the window has been open; only now after four and a half billion years is that window open, that's a long time to wait ... I'm pretty optimistic by nature, but there's some chance that window will not be open for long, I think we should become a multi-planet civilization while that window is open, and if we do the I think probable outcome for Earth is even better, because then you know Mars could help Earth one day. And so I think we should really do our very best to become a multi-planet species and to extend consciousness beyond Earth, and we should do it now. Thank you."

"The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is not well understood. It’s 1000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes. The machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself."

"I have this mantra. It's called, "If a schedule is long, it's wrong. If it's tight, it's right." And I've just, basically just go recursive improvement on schedule, with feedback loop. "Did this make it go faster? OK. If it didn't, we're going to need to fix it." If the design takes a long time to build, it's the wrong design. This is the fundamental thing. Over and over, the tendency is to complicate things. And I have another thing which is, the best part is no part. The best process is no process. It weighs nothing, costs nothing, can't go wrong. So, as obvious as that sounds, the best part is no part. The thing I'm most impressed with, when I have the design meetings at SpaceX, is "What did you undesign?" Undesigning is the best thing. Just delete it. That's the best thing."

"The fundamental message that consumers should be taking today is that it's financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla. It would be like owning a horse in three years. I mean, fine if you want to own a horse. But you should go into it with that expectation. If you buy a car that does not have the hardware for full self-driving, it is like buying a horse. And the only car that has the hardware for full self-driving is a Tesla."

"It’s so insane the way rockets work today. It would be like if you got a plane and the way you get to your destination is you bail out with a parachute over the city in question and your plane crash lands somewhere. That’s how rockets work today—with the exception of Falcon 9. This is completely bonkers. ..If it were to take longer to convince NASA and the authorities that we can do it versus just doing it, then [SpaceX] might just do it [ourselves]. It may literally be easier to just land Starship on the moon than try to convince NASA that we can."

"im actually cat girl here’s selfie rn"

"[Artificial intelligence] is just digital intelligence. And as the algorithms and the hardware improve, that digital intelligence will exceed biological intelligence by a substantial margin. It's obvious. Ensuring that the advent of AI is good, or at least we try to make it good, seems like a smart move. We're not paying attention. We worry more about what name somebody called someone else, than whether AI will destroy humanity. That's insane. We're like children in a playground. ... The way in which a regulation is put in place is slow and linear. If you have a linear response to an exponential threat, it's quite likely the exponential threat will win. That, in a nutshell, is the issue. .. Your probability of dying on Mars is much higher than earth. Really, the ad for going to Mars would be like Shackleton’s ad for going to the Antarctic: "It’s gonna be hard. There’s a good chance of death, going in a little can through deep space. You might land successfully. Once you land successfully, you’ll be working nonstop to build the base. So, you know, not much time for leisure. And even after doing all this, it’s a very harsh environment, so there’s a good chance you die there. We think you can come back, but we’re not sure." Now, does that sound like an escape hatch for rich people? .. No one should put this many hours into work. This is not good. People should not work this hard. They should not do this. This is very painful. ...it hurts my brain and my heart. ... This is not recommended for anyone. ... I just did it because if I didn't do it, then there was a good chance Tesla would die. .. I believe there’s some explanation for this universe, which you might call God."

"Nuke Mars! T-shirt soon."

"Nuke Mars refers to a continuous stream of very low fallout nuclear fusion explosions above the atmosphere to create artificial suns. Much like our sun, this would not cause Mars to become radioactive. Not risky imo & can be adjusted/improved real-time. Essentially need to figure out most effective way to convert mass to energy, as Mars is slightly too far from this solar system's fusion reactor (the sun)."

"All designs are wrong, it's just a matter of how wrong."

"I don't think most people, even in the aerospace industry, like, know what question to ask. Like it took us a long time to even frame the question correctly. But once we could frame the question correctly, the answer was, I wouldn't say easy, but, the answer flowed once the question could be framed with precision. Framing that question with precision was very difficult."

"I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole. He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time. As for this alleged threat of a lawsuit, which magically appeared when I raised the issue (nothing was sent or raised beforehand), I fucking hope he sues me."

"Off the record. We haven't had a conversation at all. I sent you an off the record email, which very clearly and unambiguously said "off the record". If you want to publish off the record comments and destroy your journalistic credibility, that's up to you. As for answering more questons, I would be happy to do so, but not with someone who just told me that they will not honor accepted rules of journalism."

"People tend to think like, 'Why should electric vehicles have a subsidy,' but they're not taking into account that all fossil fuel-burning vehicles fundamentally are subsidized by the cost—the environmental cost—to Earth, but nobody's paying for it... We are going to pay for it, obviously—in the future we'll pay for it. It's just not paid for now."

"Never saw this British expat guy who lives in Thailand (sus) at any point when we were in the caves. Only people in sight were the Thai navy/army guys, who were great. Thai navy seals escorted us in — total opposite of wanting us to leave. Water level was actually very low & still (not flowing) — you could literally have swum to Cave 5 with no gear, which is obv how the kids got in. If not true, then I challenge this dude to show final rescue video. You know what, don’t bother showing the video. We will make one of the mini-sub/pod going all the way to Cave 5 no problemo. Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it."

"if you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from reality we could be in base reality this is just about probability there are many, many simulations you might as well call them reality, or multiverse they're running on the substrate ... that substrate is probably boring"

"Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors."

"I love Twitter. How much is it?"

"Rocket tech applied to a car opens up revolutionary possibilities."

"It would be an incredible adventure. And life needs to be more than just solving every day problems. You need to wake up and be excited about the future"

"I can be on my own private island with naked super models, drinking mai tais, but I'm not. I'm in the factory working my ass off, so I don't want to hear about how hard everyone else in the factory works."

"People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually. You look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it."

"Holy flying fuck, that thing took off!"

"I don’t get the little ship thing. You can’t show up at Mars in something the size of a rowboat. What if there are Martians? It would be so embarrassing."

"Guardian is the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth."

"I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen."