Thread by @Pinboard

Here's the steps to this dance:

1. Flying car woo gets profiled in NYT
2. Everyone clicks because, hey, flying cars!
3. Investors throw money at "as featured in NYT" startups
4. $400B later, someone will demo 3 wingless "flying cars" on rails in a tunnel
nytimes.com/2021/06/12/tec…

A fundamental obstacle to having anything smallish fly around is that, unless you just hang it from a gas bag, it will be noisy as hell. But this never stopped drone hype and I am sure it will be no barrier to fundraising for this next VC bonfire

What's described in the article is just a variety of ultralight aircraft that could be made into a luxury air taxi service if we repealed a ton of aviation safety regulations (like requiring a pilot). My favorite is the one that costs $150K and has a 25 mile range.

If a bunch of recreational pilots called for the elimination of half the FAA so that ultralights could rain down on Manhattan during the first big thunderstorm, they would not get a NYT profile. But computer programmers arriving at the same place from first principles get respect

Why can't Silicon Valley just build the public transit system of any fourth-tier Japanese city? Why does money that could pay for that a dozen times over get funneled into this shit, or firing Bezos into space?

But that's the state of innovation in America. Any fun technology targeted at individual wealthy users gets funded, often on promises of regulatory repeal. Meanwhile the most modest attempts at public works, no matter how much they improve quality of life, have no chance.