Then came the pedo guy comments. I cut him slack, he must be tired/strung out, he'll apologise. He never did.
Now he's become like a meme of himself, or perhaps just himself as he always was but now right out there, and it's not good to see.
Now I can clearly see he's just some guy who is both smart and also a raging narcissistic asshole who came from daddy's apartheid era emerald mine money.
Turns out that shitposting your way through life like an edgelord 14 year old boy on the internet is not an admirable lifestyle unless you are a hardcore musk stan.
Same. It's one thing to use a slur like that in some personal dispute; but this was against a hero who had saved children, and on a public forum. I've lied to myself that this was a minor dispute. And it would be that if he'd apologized. But the lack of apology is a very serious red flag of character. Impulsive unkind and unfair behavior is something we all are guilty of some time. But to not acknowledge it and make amends? That's wrong. Because the easy thing was the apology, sincere or not. Musk must have pushed back against his people to not apologize. Musk wanted to hurt that man, and he still wants to hurt him, would hurt him again if given the chance, worse if it was legal. And for what? Publicly criticizing Musk's (frankly hair-brained) idea to save those kids. (Honestly, I don't remember the details.) He reacted very badly to a fair criticism, with personal malice and rage, and he believes these reactions to be appropriate and, if anything, displaying admirable restraint.
I can't help but see echos of that lack of empathy, that meanness, as he takes his various actions now with Twitter - firing large swaths of staff, sending demanding emails to the remaining staff on very short term. We are all capitalists and so give a proven leader like Musk enormous leeway in this position. But his behavior has been absolutely rotten. Even layoffs can be delivered with more grace! His words and actions, apart from layoffs, feel like angry, vengeful behavior rather than "effective leader" behavior - all echoes of the "pedo guy" incident.
Oakland PD has a couple of 500s which is neat, but what always brings a chuckle is the tale of how New Zealand farmers went all in on the 500 because nothing else could touch the performance for… hunting deer.
Unless you do it to the outgroup. Then it's fine! Laudable even!
Same as shutting down journalists and other accounts. It was nothing to fret about when the opposite side used to do it, "they were misinforming or borderline bad anyway, and they could always start their own blog or something, so it wasn't censorship" and so on.
This doesn’t appear to be true
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min...
Tinfoil hat off: all the admiration and money he received turned him into whatever it is that we are seeing today.
Think about a wedding. Think about a bride and groom happily dancing, looking forward to their life together. And what does Elon say at this moment? "As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, 'I am the alpha in this relationship.'"
I recall having conversations with some people, who seemed to follow the "scene" more than I, telling me that his image was relatively well curated and managed by PR people in and around his companies, and that his "quirkiness" was allowed out in managed quantities so as to maximise interest and attractiveness without being off-putting.
I never looked into it because I didn't care much. The rockets stuff is cool but also profitable so good for him and capitalism. But I found it highly believable and never really understood the cultism around him. I wouldn't have predicted this twitter or doucheness, but I certainly don't find it surprising.
Whether that made him millions is less clear.
If Twitter took loans from interests either connected to or sympathetic to foreign governments e.g. Saudi Arabia, Russia then simply trying to keep them onboard could be enough to influence his decisions.
America is probably saturated, it's not even like it wants to buy Musk products, and Musk feels so much more like a Chinese boss than the head of an american social platform having to navigate impossible compromises :D
The strategy to act like a republican douche courting Trump to try to maybe make them like barely finished EVs might pay off, but it's such a risky bet. I d pay good money to witness one day american conservatives "owning the libs" through buying his electric cars.
Twitter itself will never yield him 44bn, so there s no economic rationality for the buyout: it can only be now a derivative gain.
It's also comic: pundits pissing on free speech (tons of cheering when people were cancelled before, and lots of articles on how it's justified and free speech is not the be all end-all) making a u-turn to call for free speech and condemn Musk's account shutdowns now, while Musk and co that was defending free-speech before is now censoring accounts, while the "free speech" proponents in the previous round are now cheering him for it...
If anything turned him into who he is, it would be his childhood. When he writes the xmas card to his half sister / niece, it must be difficult deciding how to fill out the card.
Paid for (at least partially) by the U.S. government [1]. You can't easily say "no" to your own government even if you are a foreign asset.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/spacex-ukraine-elon-musk-...
Not having EV's wouldn't have made everyone suddenly switch to public transit and bikes, as cool as that might be. They'd just keep driving gas and diesel vehicles.
And realistically, you can't get rid of cars and trucks entirely. Even super dense areas with strong public transit still use plenty of cars and trucks, because they're useful. You think Singapore and Tokyo and Seoul could run on no cars or trucks whatsoever?
I think a lot of my friends think I'm a die hard Musk fan when I say a criticism is unfair. I actually just think he's a human being under a microscope coping poorly. I'll support the criticism when I think it's warranted. The is a culture of everything is bad because bad man is bad, that unsettles me.
As for this particular story on HN, I really don't know. Twitter is a chaos box at the moment, It's hard to tell whether Musk is directly involved. These actions (or any actions really) might be policy, edicts from the top, officious middle employees or just plain screw ups.
Is not equivalent to
> came from daddy's apartheid era emerald mine money
“Came from” and “apartheid” are doing a lot of work here. That sentence is written in such a way to:
1) imply a not insignificant portion of daddy’s money came from that mine
2) associate that mine with all the bad things we associate with apartheid
3) imply daddy’s money had a not-insignificant impact on Elon’s outcome
4) so it can then associate Elon’s current state with the crimes of apartheid
If the above isn’t true, I have a hard time understanding why GP would mention apartheid or the mine.
He apologised more than once. Including on Twitter and again in court where he looked the guy directly in the face and apologised.
I mean, it was widely reported but somehow you missed the headlines at the time such as Washington Post's "Elon Musk apologizes for ‘pedo guy’ comment: ‘The fault is mine and mine alone’"!
The Saudis are major shareholders in Twitter, although personally I doubt they're telling Musk what to do so much as being content to let him run it into the ground; it's a win for them whether Twitter under Musk succeeds or fails.
For example: how would you or I behave if, no matter what we did, over 50,000 people immediately reaffirmed us online? Would it take 50,000, or would 10,000 be enough? 5,000, 1,000?
This isn't mean to exculpate Musk: he's encouraged this behavior for years, and his own behavior long predates mega-engagement by his fans on social media. And still I can't help but wonder how many of us would be able to similarly contort ourselves, if so much affirmation was on the line.
...Too bad about Dave Chappelle, though. He's on his way to pulling a Gallagher.
This is to say nothing of Elon's small-potatoes stealing from local governments via Boring.
This is an issue that allegedly involves Musk's family. He's tweeted about it directly multiple times stretching back to his initial offer of cash for @elonjet to go away, and has directly discussed this policy change in his own tweets over the past 24 hours, including tweeting about this round of bans.
Are you actually saying "it's hard to tell whether Musk is directly involved" in this specific issue, or...?
No thanks. Sounds like you're trying to pile rubbish on someone's name by promoting personal hit piece articles from their ex-partners. That's low quality.
Interview anyone's ex and you'll find grubby things to hold up in the light, if that's your agenda.
You don't like the associations that "apartheid" evokes? And yet, for an emerald mine in Zambia, apartheid was certainly a big factor in the working conditions there. The mines in Zambia (mostly copper) benefited the most by apartheid, where white workers were paid over ten times what black workers were paid. Even during the 80s, when supposedly the color bar had been dismantled, mines got around that be defining all black labor as "local" (even if the workers were immigrants) and white workers as "skilled expats" (even if the whites were born next door). [1]
Mining, indeed, was heavily tied to the apartheid from the very start. [2]
So it's very relevant that it's an "apartheid era." You could not invest in a mine in Zambia or South Africa without knowing that you were investing into a apartheid system, and hoping to make money off the backs of the apartheid abuses.
> imply a not insignificant portion of daddy’s money came from that mine
Yes, I agreed that that wasn't backed by known evidence in my statement above.
1. https://theconversation.com/zambias-copper-mines-hard-baked-...
2. https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/cjpmefoundation/pages/...
EDIT: "barefaced" intentional because there's significant evidence to claim that these character traits were always present (see - the famous essay by his ex-wife), just less noticed.
Henry Ford bought a newspaper. Musk bought Twitter. The more the things change the more they stay the same.
I guess a definition of "value" as "the intangibles that allow it to keep functioning" would make your statement correct, but a definition that relies on "how it generates revenue" would probably not.
He blasted: "He's an old, single white guy from England who's been travelling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time.
"There's only one reason people go to Pattaya Beach. It isn't where you go for caves, but it is where you'd go for something else.
"Chiang Rai is renowned for child sex-trafficking."
He was a diver- just not a rescue diver in this case.
Or in having a Twitter that has more lax rules around what they can say.
Sounds like something a bot would write.
Musk's Twitter apology to the 'pedo guy' at the time made headlines. A simple google will sort out your confusion. He also apologized in court, and repeatedly stated how it was the stupidest thing he's done.
> "We are all capitalists..."
Again, sounds like something a chat bot would write.
Here's some facts... The diver guy launched a public attack on Musk at a time when kids needed help. Everyone was focused on helping the kids, but this diver decided to get some attention by insulting Musk out of the blue, in a CNN interview.
Musk's sub wasn't used for the cave rescue, but was kept by the Thai Navy who said they could use it for future rescues. The navy were trained in how to use it.
The diver guy was wrong to attack Musk. So the sub couldn't be used in the cave, so what? It was help, undeserving of scorn. I'm not excusing Musk's reactionary comments, but I'm glad the diver lost the court case. The diver wanted 160 million dollars and was awarded zero by the jury.
And speaking of apologies, the diver never apologised or backed away from accusing Musk of a stunt and telling him to stick his sub up his rear end. A sub that a team of people worked on, not just Musk.
The chain of relevance is broken.
Using my numbered list above (arrow is chain of relevance): 2 -> 1 -> 3 -> 4
If you’re getting tripped up about apartheid and the mine being separated, just combine them.
1+2 -> 3 -> 4
In GPs post, 2 is not relevant to 4 unless you establish 3. Unless GP is trying to make an unfounded claim that “Elon’s current state is associated with the crimes of apartheid” (where associated means having a not insignificant impact on that state), including 1+2 isn’t relevant. It’s irrelevant that it’s an apartheid era mine because it’s irrelevant that it’s a mine. 4 is not associated with 2 by way of 1+3 like, IIUC, GP implied.
Also you are making a logical fallacy by assuming I am saying that -EV's- (sorry: "EV industry", different thing) are singularly responsible for the lack of decent climate policies. I just said they were an attack on the objective. One of many.
FYI: I live in Seoul and there's certainly a lot that could be done to reduce the insane amount of cars from current nightmare levels. Korea has a very powerful auto industry, one thing they could do is stop subsidizing it. Switching to EV's will undermine any effort to do that "bEcaUsE EV's aRe grEeN!"
I really don't think Elon would do well in quietly taking orders from CCP.
Whether those banned were actually in violation of those rules I don't know. I would have said remains to be seen, but I fear such details will be lost in the news churn.
Yeah no shit. That's why EV's are super useful, even if you wish we had a lot less cars, like me.
> I just said they were an attack on the objective. One of many.
Doesn't matter. EV's still help the climate relative to keeping gas and diesel vehicles around. Blaming them is stupid.
> Switching to EV's will undermine any effort to do that "bEcaUsE EV's aRe grEeN!"
Nah. The problems preventing greater uptake of public transit are largely unrelated.
That said, Musk's comments were unnecessary.
We all sometimes ridicule the stilted corporate speech of some rich people and their reluctance to appear in public, but increasingly I feel like some of them do it to not fall into the social media trap.
Having a public team write your statements and asking them to provide a weekly/monthly report on the good and the bad seems like a working strategy.
Those people are doing their job and you can even employ different teams to get a more nuanced view while you yourself can be more distanced and collected.
Of course Elon Musk specifically is s social media addict who seems to enjoy being praised by sycophants no matter what he does. He chooses this.
But it won't make genuinely nice person into an asshole that kicks kittens, the money just acts as enabler for stuff they might've been afraid to do before coz of consequences. Like for example pretending to be nice to get promotion at work vs unleashing assholery once there is nobody there to kick you down for your behaviour
My guess is that both the diver and Musk desperately wanted to help the kids. The divers attack on musk (I believe attack is too strong a word, but sticking with your terminology) was likely motivated by the view that Musk was making things worse, not better, with impractical ideas. From what I've read of the case, musk's submarine was indeed not practical - for this requirement.
However, whatever the divers motivation, responding by falsely accusing someone of being a paedophile is vicious, uncalled for and indicative of being a giant douche. Apologizing and then unapologising - and doubling down on the false smears of someone way below him on the ladder - is more of the same.
So yes, the vast majority of revenue generators (and therefore value generators) for Tesla (at least in Q1 2021, as per the article you linked) are the things I listed in my first comment.
You were seemingly thinking about what was generating profit, which is generally not how value is calculated, otherwise my (profitable) two-man company would be more valuable than Twitter. But given that you explicitly said "how it generates revenue" at the end of your comment I'm actually a bit confused as to your position.
"Hey everyone, read what his ex wife said"... is nothing but encouraging others to look for dirt as you have done. Nothing to do with the current topic about twitter bans. Similar to what cheap tabloid reporting does.
You're claiming to know the motivations of others, but your record of accuracy is not great in this thread.
Building and delivering a sub with the intention to help, is never going to "make things worse" even if the sub isn't used.
If my colleague writes a program that ends up not fitting the application, I would never tell them to shove their code up their arse. Who would do that other than a giant douche?
Both the Diver and Musk engaged in a squabble in public, started by the diver, escalated by Musk. You're focusing too much on the contents of the insults, and deciding Musk's was not only the greater crime, but the only crime. You've pardoned the diver of any fault, and invented a squeaky-clean backstory to explain his remarks.
It's just abhorrent design of cities, that is the problem, especially in US.
It's strange you doubled-down on Musk not apologizing, when it was headline news at the time about his multiple apologies and statements of regret over the incident.
You stated: "honestly, I don't remember the details" yet proceeded at length with your analysis and judgement.
People have been using the new chat AI tools to post comments. Your comment was strangely drawn out, laboring on disjointed ideas, pressing inaccuracies like how the new bots do it.
518/533 ~= 97%, not 5%. I must be misunderstanding something somewhere. Explicitly, I'm saying that (per my understanding of that article) Tesla derived more income from selling emissions credits than from selling cars in that particular quarter (and, I think it's reasonable to assume, other quarters, given how overwhelmingly that seems to be their business model).
Even the emission credits being "pure profit" is misleading, given that the only reason Tesla can sell those is because of the cars/batteries/etc they are producing, so realistically the cost of producing those things should be deducted against the revenue generated by selling the credits.