Light up another one, Elon
Whoa. Cautious, fair, thorough…Ronan Farrow reviews Elon Musk’s life. Imagine an angel of utmost probity assessing his soul at the doorway to heaven, nodding kindly as he summarizes each decade, and then, sadly, pulling the lever that drops him into a blood-drenched flaming tunnel to Hell. It’s so satisfying.
Here’s a short sample.
“Given unprovoked attacks by leading Democrats against me & a very cold shoulder to Tesla & SpaceX, I intend to vote Republican in November,” he tweeted last year. By the time he bought Twitter, he was urging his followers to vote along similar lines, and appearing to back Ron DeSantis, whose candidacy he helped launch in a technically disastrous Twitter live event. Although Musk’s teen-age daughter, Vivian, has come out as trans, he has embraced anti-trans sentiment, saying that he would lobby to criminalize “irreversible” gender-affirming care for children. (Vivian recently changed her last name, saying in a legal filing, “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”) Musk started spreading misinformation on the platform: he shared theories that the physical attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the former Speaker of the House, had followed a meeting with a male prostitute, and retweeted suggestions that reports accurately identifying a mass shooter as a white supremacist were a “psyop.” Some people who know Musk well still struggle to make sense of his political shift. “There was nothing political about him ever,” a close associate told me. “I’ve been around him for a long time, and had lots of deep conversations with the man, at all hours of the day—never heard a fucking word about this.”
See what I mean? Farrow doesn’t pass judgement, he just calmly describes Musk’s appalling history of imposing his awful ignorance on everyone around him.
Read the rest. You won’t enjoy it, but much respect to the writer’s skill.
It is not necessary.
A year ago, I had barely heard of Elon Musk and had no opinion on him one way or another.
Then he bought Twitter, so he could inflict his wacko personality on the rest of the world.
My contempt and dislike for Musk is as high as is possible and he earned it himself.
I will never buy anything even remotely associated with Elon Musk and never had a Twitter account and will never have an X account.
It’s his daughter I feel the most sorry for. Having a know-it-all father who probably felt his masculinity was threatened when she came out must have been hell. I hope she can live her best life in spite of him.
This is the latest on Elon Musk’s destruction of Twitter.
and
.1. Musk is taking out the block (ignore) function on X.
This is a usual troll control measure.
Without troll controls, any forum will inevitably be overrun by trolls and die.
It happened to Usenet, AOL, the newspaper comment threads, Yahoo, etc..
I’ve abandoned a few forums over exactly that issue, lack of troll controls making them useless.
.2. Not displaying news headlines or new articles destroys the only reason I ever visited Twitter.
It was a nearly universal practice worldwide and probably one of Twitter’s main sources of content and revenue.
So, why go to X to read right wingnut/Nazi content in a forum overrun by trolls and devoid of mainstream content that normal people would want to read?
I haven’t been there in many weeks now because there is no reason to.
Musk’s companies, Tesla and SpaceX have gotten huge amounts of Federal money in tax breaks and subsidies.
For SpaceX, it is something like 5 billion dollars in subsidies.
SpaceX’s main customer is…the Federal government and the US military.
They launch their rockets from US government facilities, Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg in California.
After all that money, what Musk has done is periodically kick the US government/military in the face.
Alienating your main customer isn’t all that smart but is typical Musk.
His latest is to go full Russian fascist and support their attempted genocide of Ukraine.
This might not be treason but it is similar, made a lot worse since SpaceX is a defense contractor and Russia is our and the free world’s enemy.
It’s starting to look like whenever there is a decision to make, Musk takes the choice to be the most horrible person possible.
raven @3: I wonder whether somebody could shove a bunch of left-wing troll-stuff onto X and measure how long it takes to get blocked. 8-)
I’m not willing to put in the effort myself because I really don’t give a damn about Musk [o]X; but I can imagine reasonably thinking that that would be fun.
SpaceX has received 5 billion dollars in Federal subsidies.
The US government/military are their main customers.
So Elon Musk sides with Russia when we end up in a proxy war with Russia.
I know the Pentagon isn’t very happy with him or SpaceX.
I’m sure they’ve had some words along the line of, if you ever want to launch a rocket again, you will leave Ukraine’s Starlinks alone, which the Pentagon actually pays for.
X wouldn’t block it.
They would just cancel that account forever.
Musk has been canceling left leaning accounts for a long time now.
“Dec 5, 2022 — According to a report in The Intercept, Musk has suspended several notable left-wing accounts over the past week or so. A number of them were …”
X has gone full Nazi, so why not?
Some people who know Musk well still struggle to make sense of his political shift. “There was nothing political about him ever,” a close associate told me. “I’ve been around him for a long time, and had lots of deep conversations with the man, at all hours of the day—never heard a fucking word about this.”
That shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. A spoiled, sheltered, clueless rich brat goes through half his life never having to learn or care about anyone outside his own circle of family and friends. Then somewhere along the line he gets a rude shock finding that lots of people don’t think as highly of him as he does of himself, don’t like what he’s doing, and want to restrict or regulate it somehow. So of course he immediately starts supporting the party that hates all the same people he hates (or at least wants to keep on ignoring), and tells him and his fellow spoiled plutocrats it’s okay to hate all those other people.
It kinda says something about this “a close associate” person that he is (or pretends to be) so puzzled by #QElon’s political leanings. Was he really so entranced and enamored of Musk as to be unable or unwilling to see the spoiled rich brat he really was/is?
I long for John Oliver et al to return, giving him another kind of treatment altogether.
Musk is a walking comedy generator without being aware of it.
raven @3: I wonder whether somebody could shove a bunch of left-wing troll-stuff onto X and measure how long it takes to get blocked. 8-)
You wouldn’t need to bother with “a bunch of left-wing troll-stuff” — all it took was a 2-3-sentence comment saying, yes, Musk should indeed hire a CEO to run Twitter, because he himself sucked at it. And that was in answer to a question he himself had recently asked on Twitter. It took me maybe 3-5 minutes to type it all, and one minute later I got a notice saying I was banned from upvoting, downvoting or posting anything. And I’m still banned.
Just another rich slowflake north of Richmond.
Raging Bee @8: Yeah, long before Muskrat tried to buy Twitter, there was the incident where those kids got trapped in a cave in Thailand and he came up with a moronic plan to manufacture a highly impractical cave rescue device to send over to get them without testing it and the Thai government said “no thanks” (and proceeded to rescue all the kids without such silly untested equipment). The rejection provoked him to go on an angry Twitter rant where he accused the Thai government of all being pedophiles. There was no justification for not figuring out what kind of person he was after that.
mocroraptor: I thought #QElon’s rescue device was already manufactured when he offered it. I know the Thai rescue team’s leader said no because the thing was simply too big to fit inside that particular cave. (And how long would it have taken to fly it out to that part of Thailand and get it ready to go?) All of which makes #QElon’s crybaby rant even less excusable.
The Guardian has an article about US business man Charles Haywood who is the “creator of the Society for American Civic Renewal” (SACR), a far-right network of secretive, men-only, invitation-only fraternal lodges. He styles himself as the “Maximum Leader” and says “he might serve as ‘warlord’ at the head of an ‘armed patronage network’”. I saw that story right after looking at this and did a search for “Charles Haywood and Elon Musk”. I won’t give them the benefit of a click to learn more but several hits are Haywood asking if Elon is the “Red Caesar”. I’m not sure what that is but my guess is dictator.
Haywod and SACR have financial ties with the far-right Claremont Institute where John Eastman is a senior fellow…fascists bedfellows.
@11: I think it was the diver who organised and took part in the rescue who rejected the privileged twits useless offer and was insulted by him in response. Makes it much worse in my opinion!
This was actually the first time I took notice of Musk as a person, mostly being interested in the technical side of his business so far. First impression proved to be true.
@4 & 6 : There are legitimate reason’s why Space X and Tesla get so much government money. If it wasn’t for Elon’s terrible personality and turn to the far right, I’d guess you’d be all for the governments funds flowing to his companies.
Both SpaceX and Boeing (among others) competed to provide human rated craft to take people to low earth orbit and beyond. SpaceX delivered and Boeing hasn’t yet. If it wasn’t for Space X, the USA would still be reliant on Russia for rides to the ISS. Launching a satellite or trip to the ISS on a SpaceX Falcon or Heavy Falcon can be done at much less cost than on any other system, including anything NASA or Roscosmos can do. SpaceX has earned every dollar the US government has paid to it.
Then there is Tesla. Most of it’s government income is from programs designed to accelerate the move away from fossil fuels. I can’t see that as bad in any way. If you’re concerned about climate change, you really need to recognize Tesla as the single corporation that is doing the most to combat it. It’s not just electric vehicles, but home batteries, home solar and grid scale battery storage. Sure they are doing it to make a profit, not out of love for the environment, but they are doing it better than anyone else.
I get the Musk hate. It’s completely logical. I am not a fan of Musk’s politics nor do I like his personality. But don’t let personal dislike cloud your judgement when it comes to the companies SpaceX and Tesla.
The article suggests that he is demented due to drug-taking.
There were legitimate reasons for why Federal money flowed to Tesla and SpaceX. Note, the past tense.
Once again.
.1. Elon Musk is biting the hand that feeds. And trying to rip the face off the hand that feeds.
And stabbing the hand that feeds, which BTW includes the taxpayers such as I/we, in the back.
I don’t want my money going to someone like that.
.2. You are assuming Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Tesla are not replaceable.
Sorry, not in my world with the blue sky and oxygen atmosphere. Everyone and everything is replaceable.
We were launching space vehicles to the moon (1969) before Musk was even born (1971).
We can do it again.
We’ve already done it again.
It might take a little longer but SpaceX is replaceable.
.3. Musk and SpaceX have proven unreliable and a national security risk big time.
I posted that in #6, so read it again. Find a thinking brain service dog if you have trouble reading.
.4. SpaceX with its Starlink and Elon Musk problem have proven so unreliable that the Pentagon is about to copy the system and put up their own version of Starlink.
We are paying for this system twice.
Once with SpaceX to find out that there is a national security problem with Elon Musk.
And then once again, minus SpaceX and Musk.
At one time, it made sense to have Federal money flowing to Tesla and SpaceX.
As Loree failed to notice, things have changed, and changed a lot in the last year.
Elon Musk is a Nazi who hates me, my society, my government, and most people who aren’t cis het white, right wingnuts, which includes the vast majority of the world. He is also becoming more and more unreliable, hostile, and a national security risk.
I don’t want my taxpayer money going to someone like that.
He is the richest man on the planet. He won’t starve.
Yeah, that makes a big difference.
.1. Musk hates me, my society, my friends, most people who live in the USA and the world, and is actively opposed to our current form of government.
You accidently got it.
No, I don’t want my hard earned money going to someone like that.
.2. Elon Musk and Space X have now become a national liability. They are unreliable and a national security risk.
It is to the point, where the Pentagon is actively trying to replace them.
There is no point in spending money on SpaceX and Musk when we are also about to spend money trying to replace them.
I haven’t really dealt with Tesla the electric car company because at least Tesla isn’t that important.
There are lots of electric car companies these days and they might well eventually overtake Tesla.
I won’t ever buy a Tesla simply based on Musk. There are millions of people that won’t buy a Tesla for the same reason. I’m sure the Tesla sales department is unhappy every time Musk insults another minority.
Besides which, I haven’t heard all that much good about Tesla cars. Overrated, overhyped, and with issues of build, range, and reliability.
I get the Musk hate. It’s completely logical.
Then why are you defending him?
But don’t let personal dislike cloud your judgement…
Make up your mind already — is it “completely logical” or “personal dislike?”
@dstatton 16
I missed the part where dementia was attributed to drugs.
“There was nothing political about him ever,” In what sense? You don’t just suddenly develop the ideology and behaviour of the far right de novo.
nomdelume @21
The obvious sense to my mind would be that they shared similar political views so the chap never noticed that Musk had political views. People who share the same views, particularly centre or right wing ones, often think they and their friends are not political because they all agree.
@22 yes. Right wing views of course are just normal common sense…!
@21. nomdeplume : Musk seems to have become pretty quickly radicalised and gone far reichwing where before he wasn’t – at least not that extreme :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Personal_views_and_Twitter_(later_X)_usage
That wikipage also notes Musk used to describe himself as “moderate” and has spoken out on Global Overheating describing it as ” the greatest threat to humanity after AI” criticising Trump on climate resigtn ing from some positions and advocating a carbon tax in 2017. Whether he still views the issue that way I dunno but again, he used to be much less of a total mnzai douche than he’s now become FWIW.
Also find it somewhat curious that despite launching DeathSantis’es Presidential campaign it seems he’s no longer fully backing him..
@15. Loree & #17-18 raven : SpaceX have been remarkably successful and impressive despite their shitshow of a boss.
I agree with Loree here :
SpaceX has developed, built and flown some extremely impressive and worthwhile spacecraft and rockets. I wish they had someone other than Musk in charge of them. Musk is
.. the problem here but I don’t think SpaceX should be punished or their work and value denigrated becuase of him. Yes, there are other private space companies plus of course NASA and other govt ones that potentially could step in & possibly replace them – yet mostly esp ther private ones achieved as much yet or built as impressive spacecraft and rockets as SpaceX have.
(Hit submit instead of preview dangnabbit.)
PS. I wonder whether Musk could be removed as boss of SpaceX on national security grounds and replaced by someone better solving that Musk issue with them? Or if Musk’s seeming meltdown and focus on his X-Twitter mess could see him replaced from inside the company by people who have had enough of his shit? If they could get rid f him and just have SpaceX doing their thing.. wishful thinking? Possible?
StevoR, you’ve missed the entire point. Which is really simple.
Really, you are just babbling like an idiot about something you know nothing about.
Who in the hell buys satellites and rockets and launches them into orbit?
This isn’t a common consumer item like toasters or microwave ovens here.
The vast majority of SpaceX’s business and income is from the US government and the US military branch of the US government.
It’s estimated that 98% of SpaceX’s revenue is from the US government.
They are a defense and government contractor. That is it. That is where they get their money.
So, right now we have an important defense contractor owned and run by an enemy of the US which is Elon Musk. Musk is actively hostile to the US government and a huge supporter of Putin and Russia.
This isn’t good.
It’s like putting American Nazis in charge of making US tanks and ammunition during World War II.
While you can’t see the obvious, the US Pentagon is well aware of this and not happy.
And they are already taking steps to deal with this.
We had a successful space program before SpaceX. Which BTW, was 85% funded by…the Federal government. We will have a successful space program when Musk is gone.
Given what we’ve seen of Musk, I doubt he even had much to do with SpaceX. He managed to hire some smart people and got distracted enough that they were able to get something done.
It’s pretty ironic that Musk has ended up as a US enemy.
He isn’t even an American except as an immigrant by citizenship. He is from South Africa.
If he wasn’t a citizen, we could deport him as an undesirable alien.
No one here seems to know where SpaceX came from.
I didn’t know either until I looked it up.
SpaceX is a creation of the US Federal government.
They put up 5 billion dollars in R&D money.
That is 85% of their original funding.
@24 A remarkable mental decline!
The part that stood out to me was this:
Make a profit by receiving tax payer money, and then establish a monopoly. This is the story of 21st century capitalism and we are also using the last remnants of our natural resources. This is not going to end well.
I thought an actual Nazi had been instrumental in the development of the US space program because Nazi experience making rockets. Huntsville AL is a shrine to Redstone. I actually liked Huntsville more than Canaveral for presentation. But still…we have had actual Nazis associated with the space program from the get go. A right-shifted entitled loon is not surprising now in any way. Musk is someone we should start divesting from, but he’s no product of Paperclip. I wouldn’t call him a Nazi, but I still despise him. I can’t quite recall my own arc, but the pedo comment against the guy in Thailand was significant for me and the silly ruminations about our alleged simulation status. Pinker’s disagreement with him and the whole evil AI demonology in general was instrumental also, though I dislike Pinker too for many reasons.
https://history.redstone.army.mil/bio-vonbraun.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-wernher-von-braun-and-nazis/
@28. raven :
Emphasis original.
I do not agree that that was the point here – it certainly wasn’t the point I was making which is :
Don’t punish and blame SpaceX for Musk being toxic and evil.
Space X deserves respect and has done amazing worthwhile things.
Examples : https://interestingengineering.com/science/destination-mars-15-incredible-spacex-milestones-past-and-future
Musk OTOH has not and does not & has forfeited any respect he had earnt by being, well, a nazi scumbag basically.
Yes, that’s where they get their money. Not sure I’d say that was “it” since I think there’s a little more to it than just that but yes.
No, no it isn’t. I agree.
Musk is the problem here which is what I’ve said – & I suggested a solution here in # 27. Keep SpaceX, remove Musk.
Hope so, yeah.
Not sure exactly what point you think I’m missing..
Yes – and then Obama cancelled the Constellation program ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program ) and the Space Shuttles stopped flying before they were replaced with another NASA launch system – until Artemis 1 flew last year anyhow.
Yeah, okay. So..?
Sure hope so!
Agreed – mostly.Musk did put in a lot of dedication and time and I think did his best sucha sit is for SpaceX but yes. I don’t think he’s what made them the success they are but he did lead them during their collectiove successful efforts resulting inthe results already linked above here. I wouldn’t give him sole credit by any menas but I willgive himsome credit frobeing part of SpaceX in their rise as best private space company here. Which does NOT mean I like him or are a fan of his any more than I am of Von Braun but credit (& criticism) where due.
Agreed – and so?
Space X OTOH, your thoughts on that Musk aside and ignored?
You think I’ve missed your point. Perhaps have. I think you’ve missed mine. Maybe?
PS. “We will have a successful space program when Musk is gone.” – raven #28.
Yes. Musk.
Musk ain’t SpaceX . He’s their boss – but he ain’t them.
That’s my point in the metaphorical nutshell.
I’d love someone else running SpaceX and SpaceX continuing its good work without Musk. Can we agree on that?
Can NASA & the USA’s space exploration and science and human space program do without SpaceX?
(Note : NOT Musk – SpaceX.)
Dunno but hope we don’t need to find out.
Because SpaceX have done and continue to do some pretty awesome things in terms of building and flying rocketships.
nomdeplume@21: we aren’t born with all our political opinions already formed. Extremists recruit. Musk has clearly been recruited (seems like circa 2018 is when he really started down the rabbit hole) and now has become a major recruiter. He was a shithead from the start, so there was a seed to be fed, but this culture war stuff is new.
I do it every day … it doesn’t get “blocked” or cancelled–presumably you don’t mean the individual block function, person who knows nothing about Twitter. People here generally don’t know much of anything about Twitter (and proudly proclaim that they’ve never used it) but make a lot of ideologically driven assumptions. Musk is a disgusting evil asshat who seems set on destroying Twitter (I refuse to call it by his new designation) but so far that does not extend to your fantasies about bans and cancelations of left content.
@36- Baltar
Musk has made it near impossible for those without X (was it the Malcolm X hats popularized by Spike Lee or MDMA underground rave culture as a popularized reference though he didn’t call it Molly) to meaningfully dive into former Twitter content. Definitely not gonna get an account now to bother with that, but it is a huge loss of accessibility to cultural history and evidence.
There’s no such thing as downvoting on Twitter (I’ll allow that liking a post is equivalent to upvoting) so this is inaccurate at best. I’ve called Musk and thousands of other right wingers “stupid ignorant lying sociopathic maggots” without consequence. I have however received 1 week bans for saying things that were interpreted as threats or abusive (e.g., calling someone “deranged”). Bans are a combination of algorithms and user reports–there’s no evidence that they are based on one’s ideology or politics. However, it has been documented that, pre-Musk, Trump and other right wingers were often whitelisted. Musk dismantled most of the moderation mechanism, at the same time that he replaced the PR department with an autoreply of a 💩emoji.
@37 Um, https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/twitter-silently-removes-login-requirement-for-viewing-tweets/
@38- Baltar
Umm.. I get no surrounding context with:
https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/502106262088466432
https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/494012678432894976
https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/316101862199791616
Oddly I now get a poorly organized curation of tweet history which I didn’t before when accessing a profile:
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins
But tweets are devoid of context and rendered useless. Before you go off on some typical Baltar keelhauling, I have them bookmarked. That’s why.
But this is done mostly for other commentariat and not you, who I have found to be an obnoxious one-upping sort so your reply to me won’t disappoint. It must be lonely to be so much better than everyone else here.
More ignorance about Twitter. The “ignore” function is called mute. The block function is mute plus blocking the blocked party from seeing your tweets. Musk argues that only mute is needed and block “doesn’t make sense”. Numerous people have pointed out to him that he’s wrong, including arch right winger and former Musk supporter James Woods, whom Musk blocked for challenging him on the value of block — the irony was of course not lost on anyone other than Musk and his simps. (Musk said it was to show Woods the pain of being blocked–Woods responded that it was Musk’s preogative to block him. Numerous liberals acknowledged that they agreed with Woods for once.)
Some people have argued that removing block violates the Google and iPhone app store safety requirements, but this isn’t true–the “block” feature that the app stores require is not well defined and appears to be a moderation tool to block people from using the platform, not a feature for users to block other users. And what some services call “block” is actually “mute” or an inverse block (ignore)–on Disqus you can’t see the blocked party’s comments but they can see yours.
It’s ok, I’m used to it.
Ummm, you’ve moved the goalposts … this was not your previous complaint.
Without a time machine or extensive screenshots it’s impossible to tell whether these things have changed for non-logins since pre-Musk. Numerous things have changed, mostly for the worse, since Musk took over and fired most of the staff. I’m certainly not defending him, just pushing back at specific ignorant intellectually dishonest assertions.
P.S.
I take that back … you wrote “to meaningfully dive into former Twitter content” and your followup demonstrates that. Mea Culpa. I apologize.
@43- Baltar
I haven’t moved the goalposts nor am I being intellectually dishonest. Nice way to frame it there. I could backtrack through tweets before Musk and get a feel for context now I cannot. Full stop. That you assume you are the smartest person in the room gets in the way of your listening skills or understanding the perspective of others who are typically beneath you.