Today’s #throwbackthursday is this simple animated NiGHTs chao that I did sometime in mid-2009. All of the frames were drawn in MS Paint, and I used a website to animate it, don’t remember the name of it right now. My chao anatomy went through a weird phase during that time.
OVER THE WEEKEND, the Wall Street Journal published a long report on the accidental death of the shipping magnate #Angela#Chao, sister to former transportation secretary Elaine Chao and sister-in-law to soon-to-be former Senate Republican leader #Mitch#McConnell.
News of Angela Chao's death first appeared in shipping trade publications with no explanation, then was vaguely reported as an automobile accident;
McConnell, in announcing his plans to resign from his leadership post, said her dying had prompted him to think about the end of his own career.
What the Journal reported was that Chao had #drowned inside her #Tesla Model X after accidentally backing it into a pond on her Texas estate, on the short drive between the guesthouse and the main house.
According to the story, she called a friend in the guesthouse from inside the sinking car to ask for help:
While making a three-point turn, she had put the car in reverse instead of drive, she said.
It is a mistake she had made before with the Tesla gearshift.
The car had zipped backward, tipping over an embankment and into a pond.
By now, whenever anyone dies in a Tesla, the natural question to ask is whether or not the Tesla killed them, or helped kill them.
How do you put a car into reverse instead of drive?
The online manual for the Model X, has a diagram showing how you put the car in gear
It shows an interface on the Tesla's touchscreen.
It has no label for either "Drive" or "Reverse"; the blue arrows, judging by the diagrams in the rest of the manual, are not part of the display, but the manual's indication of how the driver is supposed to move their finger.
The text explains:
When you press the brake pedal when parked, the drive mode strip displays on one side of the touchscreen. Use the drive mode strip to shift Model X: swipe up for Drive, swipe down for Reverse or touch the P for Park or N for Neutral. The drive mode strip is always available on the touchscreen when you touch Controls.
Even by Tesla's ridiculous design standards, this is a shockingly bad control system.
There is no stable convention around whether swiping up means "go up" or "go down";
notoriously, Microsoft and Apple have completely opposite theories about which way makes sense.
And that dispute is only about manipulating text on your computer screen, not setting a two-and-a-half-ton vehicle into physical motion.
Tesla's choice of direction
—flicking the little car-glyph upward, as if you're pushing the car itself, rather than flicking it down, as if you're pulling the landscape so the car moves forward
—is not only the opposite of the way you advance along the road on a touchscreen in Google Maps, it's the opposite of how you drop a normal automatic-transmission car into Drive with a physical shifter.
The wrist and shoulder rotate down and back, and the car goes forward.
Presumably this had something to do with why Angela Chao had previously had trouble shifting the Tesla into the correct gear.
#Elon#Musk's design team, committed to his adolescent theories of futurism
—and to moving as many controls as possible from physical buttons, knobs, or levers to the much cheaper touchscreen, even in a car that starts at $79,900
—built a system that runs contrary to a driver's muscle memory of how to put a car in gear.
It's also theoretically possible that the Tesla put itself in gear.
The Model X includes a beta feature, which a driver would need to specifically activate, in which the car scans its surroundings and makes a guess on its own as to whether it should shift into Drive or Reverse:
When Auto Shift out of Park is enabled, Model X is designed to automatically select Drive or Reverse. The instrument panel displays the selected drive mode when the driver's door is closed and seat belt is buckled.
To override the selection, press the brake pedal and use the drive mode strip on touchscreen to shift into your desired drive mode (Drive, Reverse, Park; see Shift Using the Touchscreen).
Confirm the drive mode selection and follow the instructions on the instrument panel before you press the accelerator.
With your car rolling backwards out of control, simply turn your attention to the touchscreen
—because there is no physical button to feel for
—stab your finger at the letter P, hit it precisely, and hold it there.
It’s been quite a long while since I’ve last done a #throwbackthursday post. This is a piece done about a decade ago. Unfortunately, it’s low quality, as I currently don’t have access to the original files for most of my older drawings. This was done shortly after the 2013 Sonic Boom convention, and is loosely based off a quote from a Tails Doll cosplayer at the event.