"Never mind the milk, comrades!" cried Napoleon, placing himself in front of the buckets. "That will be attended to. The harvest is more important. Comrade Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few minutes. Forward, comrades! The hay is waiting."
So the animals trooped down to the hayfield to begin the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it was noticed that the milk had disappeared.
The fractures in my fandom began in August 2014. Bloomberg reported on the culture clash between Tesla and Toyota in their RAV4 EV collaboration. Among other safety considerations, Toyota insisted on a robust battery shield to provide an abundance of customer safety. To use another’s words:
Toyota had wanted to bring the risk of a pierced battery pack down to virtually zero.
And Tesla refused.
Toyota eventually relieved Tesla of its duty and took over the design of the crucial safety feature themselves.
The Model S was Tesla’s first mass production automobile. By incorporating a battery shield such as the one Toyota fought so hard to provide its customers, Tesla could have brought the risk down to virtually zero.
But Tesla refused.
Instead, with the resolve of a Ford Pinto accountant, Tesla - which is to say Elon Musk - skipped the battery shield. He’d show those Toyota engineers how a white male 👇 Bachelor of Economics would evaluate customer safety.
Musk wasn’t the cure. He was the cause.
When I and others applauded the battery shield announcement, we weren’t praising the firefighter, but the arsonist. And it worked. If not for that Bloomberg piece, I’d still think battery punctures had been unforeseeable.
When they had been foreseen.
By one of Tesla’s automotive partners.
Before Musk decided he knew better.
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