u/ErnestoLemmingway

This is from the Washington Post. Automod autodeleted my quote attempt for the usual inscrutable reasons, so you'll have to click through.

So much Elon bs, so little time:

>The flying version of the Tesla Roadster would be remotely operated with no driver inside, according to The Information. The car is not designed to be street legal. Audience members at the event would have to be positioned several hundred yards away from the car because the thrusters could potentially damage their hearing, according to The Information.

Wilson wanted to make the world safe for democracy, Elon wants to make it safe for white supremacy.

alt link: https://archive.ph/7PcDC

Raising the inevitable question, which smells worse? Random clip:

Dobronsky says he wants to support Israel's technology sector; it's reported that Netanyahu would want to appoint him to be Israel's first minister in charge of AI. That's where the Muskophilia comes in. Netanyahu has a years-long bromance with the entrepreneur who has a penchant for Sieg Heiling, Holocaust denial and the German far right. In 2023, he said he'd had an "insightful" conversation on AI with Musk, a man, Netanyahu wrote, "whose genius & impact on humanity are formidable."

Readable at https://archive.ph/z5Kw3

Plans by Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a vast rocket launch site on a stretch of Louisiana’s rapidly eroding coastline have stirred a backlash among some local opponents who fear it will badly damage the area’s fragile ecosystem.

A deal for SpaceX to take control of 130,000 acres of coastal Vermilion parish is reported to be close to being finalized, allowing the company to escalate its number of launches, including of its new Starship mega rocket. SpaceX also has ambitions to deploy artificial intelligence datacenters in space, and while some experts have doubts about this, it has submitted regulatory filings to build a constellation of up to a million of them.

The deal with Louisiana’s Republican state leadership will enable SpaceX to build on an 18-mile strip of Pecan Island, a low-lying slice of land with just a few hundred inhabitants that sits south of the city of Lafayette. The land was previously given up via a legal settlement with the oil giant ExxonMobil, which was accused of worsening land loss and pollution through its activities in the area. ExxonMobil has described the lawsuits against it as “meritless”.

Another user shifted the focus to Musk's broader public influence, writing that 'the biggest problem we face isn't that Elon is poorly read and sophomorically trite, but that society will somehow equate his abject stupidity with his success.' A third commentator drew parallels with 1930s Germany, arguing that the Nazis came to power with the backing of industrial elites who, in the user's view, shared similarities with today's influential business figures, including Musk.

https://preview.redd.it/2nu0az2vseih1.png?width=731&format=png&auto=webp&s=50ebb6c8cc0ada440b5cd8c723ca44b30c294150

https://preview.redd.it/a5gjq2d1teih1.png?width=739&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f73f9019b5c682640e07ef749a4cca91008133a

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

First Elon came for the starving children and then whined like a stuck pig when called on it, but that's another story.

He certainly seems to devote enough effort in that directions.

I00m sq ft is about 2 miles x 2 miles in area, so I guess Elon will have to pull in Tesla and the Boring company to get people around it via robotaxis in tunnels or something.

Noted without comment.

With its Q2 results behind it, a big overhang still looms.

"[On Tuesday afternoon] SpaceX🚀 (SPCX: NASDAQ) reports as a public company for the first time, and two days later, Aug. 6, its lockup frees hundreds of millions of insider shares — roughly triple the current tradable float," Epistrophy Capital's Cory Johnson wrote in a client note.

The lockup expiration will free up to 20% of shares for sale, and investors are worried that the added supply will keep the stock under pressure.

Elon says the darndest things. And by darndest I mean dumbest.

Elon Musk has developed a troubling obsession: the film “Citizen Vigilante.” For the Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, Musk’s latest fixation reveals a broader embrace of far-right ideas. He argues that it’s time to stop thinking of Musk primarily as the billionaire behind electric cars and rockets and instead recognize him as what he believes Musk has become: a radical white nationalist.

[ We do our best here. Elon is quite comprehensively a lame excuse for a human being. His racist white supremacist bs can't be called out often enough ]

[ and what a horrific abyss he saw ]

I’ll admit I’m a little late weighing in on “The Odyssey.” Chalk it up to having young kids. I don’t make it to the movies much. But what a trick its director, Christopher Nolan, has pulled off. Elon Musk did not understand what this movie was. But this movie understands what Musk is. It understands who we are becoming and who we have become, and it points a way out. ...

But weren’t those iron laws replaced by the Golden Rule? When Odysseus concocts the trick of the Trojan Horse, taking advantage of Troy’s veneration of the same gods he worships to sack the city and make its streets run red with bl**d, is he a hero or a villain? Is it a trick or a crime? To Homer, he was a hero. To Nolan, he is a soul in need of redemption. Between Homer’s time and ours came a revolution in civilizational values, an upending of what civilization even means. Which side of that divide are we on?

The modern right believes that Western civilization has lost the appetite for strength and dominance and hierarchy that built it. There is a reason a theorist like Bronze Age Pervert has become required reading for young Trumpists. There is a reason right-wing intellectuals like Curtis Yarvin and Michael Anton have mused about the need for an American Caesar. There is a reason the Trump administration is obsessed with Roman-style architecture. It is not an accident that they keep circling this era, both intellectually and aesthetically.

A recent exchange Musk had on X reveals how far this thinking has gone. A user told Musk it was time to “wise up” and abandon classical liberalism, because “universal suffrage leads to universal suffering.”  His reply: “I have wised up.”

[In stark contrast to Elon's ongoing noxious bs wrt this interview , Minton Beddoes is quite gracious in her response here.]

But then the last part got a lot of attention. I think an important side of Elon is his political side — his role in the Trump administration but also his interventions into European politics.

I was, and am, genuinely baffled by the gap between the extraordinarily expansive view of humanity that he shows when he’s talking about the future, and interstellar travel, and being a multiplanetary civilization, and all that stuff and then the kind of tribalism cesspit of social media that he’s in. He says that the most important thing with AI is to ensure that it is truth seeking and curious. Then you look at the stuff that he propagates on X and it’s not truth seeking, a lot of it. It’s caricature. It’s dystopia.

There’s a disjuncture.

It’s what’s so fascinating about him. But it’s also really alarming because he does have 240 million followers and he has a whole bunch of followers basically for whom he can do no wrong and who believe everything that he posts. As a result, many people’s views of Europe or political views are shaped by what Elon says.

I find it really disturbing. That’s partly why that last part of the interview became a bit heated. I wasn’t pushing an agenda. I disagreed with his characterization of Europe. I don’t think the facts back it up.

Elon Musk recently sat for a wide-ranging interview with The Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, who challenged him over his support for Europe's far right, his anti-Muslim rhetoric and his cuts to humanitarian aid during his stint in the Trump administration.

Afterwards, on his own social media network that he routinely uses to amplify his personal views, Musk lashed out against his interviewer. "She is a traitor to the West, plain and simple," he wrote.

By Musk's assessment, society is full of "traitors." As he declared over the weekend, "anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor." So is "anyone who doesn't love America." He has also leveled the charge at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, to name a few. CNN has reached out to Musk for comment.

Because of course he does,