Is Elon Musk finally losing it? If not, why the heck is he going off on Twitter about snails named Gary? Is he a SpongeBob SquarePants fan perhaps? Well, perhaps that last one¡¯s a yes, but the Tesla/SpaceX CEO is certainly not losing his mind.?
Musk went off on Twitter today, starting out a strange (more so than usual) thread with a snail emoji. He then declared its name was Gary, and that it¡¯s The Boring Company¡¯s current milestone for how quickly they want to eventually carve tunnels.
In case you¡¯re somehow still lost, The Boring Company is currently making tunnels underneath Los Angeles, using a digger they lovingly call Godot. Unfortunately, Godot goes about 1/15th the speed of a snail right now, to hear Musk tell it, and the hope is to eventually get it to at least 1/10th a snail¡¯s speed, however fast that is.
Thing is, this isn¡¯t a new eccentricity on Musk¡¯s part. Gary the snail actually came up during a TED Talk back in April 2017. ¡°We have a pet snail named Gary,¡± Musk said at the time. ¡°Gary is capable of currently going 14 times faster than a tunnel boring machine. We want to beat Gary. He¡¯s not a patient little fellow, that will be victory. Victory will be beating the snail.¡±
Gary came up once more earlier this week, at a community meeting in LA to discuss The Boring Company¡¯s progress. The idea of getting to one-tenth walking speed means the project would be digging out a mile of tunnel every 3.3 hours.
In the meantime, Gary gets to enjoy the view of his competition, from a prime spot on The Boring Company site.