Am I so old that I am misremembering or is this meme like 25 years old. I feel like I saw this image in the late 90s or early ‘00 slowly load over my 56k.

Something to keep in mind, while Elon is SpaceX CEO/CTO, and does have influence over the company, the operation has changed greatly over the last decade. He does not finance the company in any form.

The funding is coming from both government contracts such as NASA, DOD and other the letter agencies, as well as private payloads for various other firms including his side piece Starlink. The operation is under intense scrutiny and is being closely monitored.

Further don’t fall for the PR campaign, while EM is a capable engineer, he is predominantly a figurehead that talks a good talk. The day to day engineering is done by hundreds of much more qualified people. The man splits his time between a bunch of different organizations, it’s an impossibility that he is responsible for anything you are seeing happen today, in much the same way a retired football players commentary on todays game has any influence on its outcome.

It wouldn’t be completely surprising if one day he and his brother are ousted by the board of one of these companies.

I was curious if what I had been told had any reference online, a quick search did turn up this post which pretty much says the same:

I have this down the street from my house and I asked a lineman about it. He was saying they will never leave this on power lines, just on the telecom lines. The arborists work for the power company, because even thought the utility poles are jointly owned the power company has the highest risk so they are responsible for management.

They will always remove the wood from power lines because wood is somewhat conductive, especially when it still fresh because of the water content. Leaving it on a high voltage line can increase the potential for a short. They don’t bother to cut them completely off the telecom lines because there is no risk of shock but a big risk to line damage. If they damage the telecom line they have to pay high fees to the telecom company for repair and risk creating an outage. Also the lines are designed to bear a certain amount of weight, as engineer have accounted for natural burdens like trees, ice and animals.

Also the wood eventually rots after a few seasons and will eventually fall off on its own.

Already some good suggestions here but adding Grist if you want more of a smart spreadsheet solution…

Backpedaling in 3…2… oh there it is

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/vultr_content_controversy/

There is also Komga , Librum and Stump.

This article covers the solution https://access.redhat.com/solutions/7044059