Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoktorDelta | Hacker News Reader

Crazy that there's a weapons company called Anduril as well

Creative people seem to be rather pacifistic. Warmongers seem less so, they have to "borrow" from the creative ones.

Why? Naming a weapons company after Aragorn's sword makes sense. "The Daily Beast" on the other hand is a rather cynical name...

Anduril as a 'tech' weapons company is ironic. In the books, it is Saruman, with his "mind of metal and gears" who is the scientist and engineer. The sword Anduril powerful not because of technology but because of the craftsmanship of its make and the valor of its wielder.

"Techne", I've read, had a meaning of "craft". It referred to ceramics and weaving before, say, the antikythera device. If attic greek had the word "technologist", then a sword maker would be one

I'd call my company Sauron's Eye (we'll figure out what the company does later), but sadly that's trademarked to the LOTR franchise.

Crazy? It's backed by Thiel as well IIRC.

Anduril is quite a positive name, it is a broken sword reforged later to save humankind. Quite a metaphor about western reindustrialization.

except of course that Tolkien, as a Catholic was quite adamant that he didn't write a story of Western chauvinism. The sword is not a metaphor for industrialization, which is quite literally the villain of the story, it's a symbol for restored kingship and hope.

Right, and his concept of nobility and just kingship was about mercy love justice and a love of nature, good food, merriment, harmony, and treating others with respect. His works are full of cautionary tales of people who reached for immortality, power, self-aggrandizement, and control over others and fell as a result.

(Though he was obsessed with lineage and blood quotients and pale skin)

It's very difficult to judge the attitudes and held values of people who lived in the past - I mean the parentheses.

We don't know how much of it is real flaw or corruption and how much is just the zeitgeist they lived in.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Musk's capital T today would end up becoming the beginning or turning point of a cautionary tale in the future. And, for better or worse, I know a lot of otherwise great and talented people who are still his fans.

tolkien largely copied the nibelungsenlied and accidentally inherited western chauvinism and many other ideas from that lore, including especially a great amount of racism

Nibelungenlied (not Nibelungsenlied) was racist? That needs a citation

You misunderstood me, Palmer Luckey made a metaphor when picking the name, not Tolkien of course.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com