Yep, I remember years ago when at a national student aerospace conference, attending a small talk by some guy named Elon Musk about his fairly new company, SpaceX. At this point I think they had only launched one (failed) rocket. He was a bit awkward, but seemed passionate about his Mars vision, and did a great job answering a bunch of technical questions by a group of aerospace engineering students. A lot of us were skeptical of him and his company, but more from the standpoint of aerospace being hard for even the least aspirational companies to succeed in.

Later when I starting hearing more about SpaceX I learned that Elon was also an asshole as a manager, but he still came across at least as being technically competent. And he was great at getting funding and driving excitement in an industry that desperately needed it. While there were already some cracks showing in his public image, it was only around the time of that sub rescue pedo incident where that erratic edgelord and asshole behavior became too much too ignore for myself and other people I know.

My wife bought me a Beard Bib as a joke gift after I found it online one day. It’s basically a smaller version of the bibs you wear when getting your hair cut, but with suction cups attached to the bathroom mirror to hold it horizontal and catch stray hairs when using an electric shaver. It looks ridiculous.

I now use it every time I trim my beard, even if my wife still laughs at me every time she sees me in it. Cleaning up all the stray hairs was always a pain in the ass, but this thing does a surprisingly good job at catching 99% of the hair, and I can just brush it all into the trash when I’m done.