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That cash giveaway is a clear federal election crime. I'm continually surprised at how toothless the authorities are in these situations.
One theory is that there isn't really any downside for musk and those like him. Nation states have largely been unwilling to sanction these guys in any meaningful way, playing up to the right gets those who are in that mindset frothing and it's easy to bring more of them in. More engagement, more clicks, more ad revenue. The tech bros have long lived by the 'move fast and break things' mantra and now they're applying it to the fabric of society.
cant quite work out what is in it for him?
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/10/donald-trump-is-elon-musks-trojan-horse/680309/
In Elon Musk’s vision of human history, Donald Trump is the singularity. If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own superintelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American government—not to mention the business opportunity of the century.
Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy. With his influence, he stands to capture the state, not just to enrich himself. His entanglement with Trump will be an Ayn Rand novel sprung to life, because Trump has explicitly invited Musk into the government to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American state—and therefore American life—in his own image.
^^ Pretty chilling assessment there.
Gotta be some huge tax breaks in it for him too…
And government contracts, plus relief from the import tariffs that seem to be Trump's answer to every problem.
Billionaires are a separate superpower now, working against the benefit of wider society. They will probably create a greater negative influence on the lives of working people in the west than either China or Russia.
Some good stuff on the latest Thunderfoot Musk video - like the link to DOGE :
In fact most of them over the years have ended up in criminal or civil court crying how they were misled.
What's that saying about dancing with the devil?! 😉
I don't think Musk cares about money that much, he knows what he has and he's after power these days, Trump for all his faults is an easy read compared to Musk, and all he wants these days is to be president again, but then probably spend more time on the golf course than the white house, leaving others to make decisions, just be thankful Musk can't run for president!
I don’t think Musk cares about money that much
Probably pretty easy when you've got all of it to be fair. Him getting power would not be good. He's an egotistical man child and all round despicable human being. Even his own kids don't like him.
Even his own kids don’t like him.
One of many things I dont get about him. Id be dedicating every spare moment I have to improve relations with my children. What else really matters, they are our only real legacy in life.
For all his money, he'll be in a hospital one day as the end of his time nears, contemplating his achievements and regrets, the same as we all will. All the money and influence in the world wouldn't make up for leaving this world knowing my own children couldn't stand me.
All that money and an obvious talent to inspire innovation and he's chosen the path he has. I just find it hard to comprehend.
It is really easy to comprehend Poop. The man's a total ****.
I've just read that Elon Musk has just made a large automotive acquisition, I can't find it on any news pages I know to be reputable (I don't want to propagate links to the stuff I've read). Is it real and just super hot off the press or are there games being played with 'fake news'?
Looking at it more, it's an albanian news website I think, and the associated photo looks like it's probably fake.
Musk senior is on Newsnight tonight.
Musk senior? How? Elon is a malfunctioning cyborg created from a vague description of Tom Cruise or John Barrowman. Surely you mean his creator.
He's just a nice person trying to make sure we can escape to other planets in the event of an extinction level event. lolololol
One of many things I dont get about him. Id be dedicating every spare moment I have to improve relations with my children. What else really matters, they are our only real legacy in life.
He doesn’t care, his legacy is all of the tech that he’s been building, which will forever be associated with him - compared to that, children really don’t matter. He’s got an ego the size of a Jovian moon, like Diaper Don, and all that’s important is themselves and what they can accrue in money and power. That’s what being a narcissist is all about.
What's betting that NASA is incredibly inefficient & all their problems can be solved by transferring the government contracts to Space X?
Same with all vehicle related purchasing, if I was Ford or GMC or whoever & I had a contract to supply to local or national law enforcement etc I'd not be banking on that getting renewed because Tesla are suddenly going to be a far "better" choice.
^^ He's just an average hard working, self mafe man looking out for the little guy.
He's an obvious choice to get rid of he elites holding the country back. Stands to reason
What’s betting that NASA is incredibly inefficient & all their problems can be solved by transferring the government contracts to Space X?
There was already talk that Dementia Don would be defunding NASA along with the EPA, FBI and many of the civil service agencies as soon as he gets the power to do so. And as for JFK Jr in charge of health, as a committed vax denier the funeral business could be looking to expand its operations.
There was already talk that Dementia Don would be defunding NASA along
Never. Going. To. Happen. There are way too many NASA centres in States all over the US for them to even think about getting it through congress, even with a majority in both houses. So many of their own senators and congressmen wouldn't allow it. Those NASA centres are hubs of technical innovation. Aviation and tech startups all begin on the same grounds.
People at NASA are every bit as clever as those at SpaceX, they just have a lot more plates spinning and arguably less time and effort to put into each one. And no matter what Musk states, he's got to remember DARPA (P-Falcon) and NASA (CRS) foresight allowed for the creation and expansion of SpaceX.
The year is 2237
The Musk-Yutani deep space mining ship, Nostromo, awakes the crew from their cryo sleep after the ship receives a distress call from a nearby planet
Yeah the guy is absolute scum
https://bsky.app/profile/hardeepmatharu.bsky.social/post/3lcalhtlfis2a
Trump and Musk's huge egos will be the down falk of their bromance.
I don't even include Farage in that as he's a political minnow by US terms but let's face it, bunging him a few $100 mill is chump change and could still prove useful to MUSK years after Trump has expired. Have you guy heading the worlds 6/7 largest economy that has its own nukes and an NHS ripe for harvesting. Pretty good investment.
He's overpaying though, Nigel would sell out the country for far less.
Singapore on Thames could still come to me.
Are the gas guzzling hill billies now going to be Tesla fanboys?
Are the gas guzzling hill billies now going to be Tesla fanboys?
That's quite the philosophical dilemma! I wonder how they will square that circle!
That’s quite the philosophical dilemma! I wonder how they will square that circle!
Diesel burning smoke stack generator in the back yard so they have a way to charge their Cyberstuck.
Pretty sure they'll make sure the exhaust is pointing towards the nearest childrens hospital, immigration centre... or give it 18 months, they'll point it at the nearest "Librul Reeducachun Cnter".
He doesn’t care, his legacy is all of the tech that he’s been building, which will forever be associated with him
A legacy of stolen tech and being an unmitigated bellend who no one likes.
I very much doubt that history will be kind to him. Unless his bestie bud, dementia don, manages to get history rewritten.
He doesn’t care, his legacy is all of the tech that he’s been building
His legacy will be the fact that he's rich, and that'll be the start middle and finish of it. Everything else he does is disaster zone from his personal relationships of children and partners to just generally being an offensive prick. As for the 'tech that he's been building' He didn't have anything to do the design of the Tesla battery tech, Space X hasn't done anything innovative - everything they do has been done for at least six decades more cheaply and just as effectively, the Boring Co is literally just a way of making sure that public transport isn't built, and he bought TwitterX to get fanbois to laugh at his jokes becasue he's got no friends and doesn't know how to make any.
Absolute failure of a man.
Space X hasn’t done anything innovative – everything they do has been done for at least six decades more cheaply and just as effectively
I'm not a fan of his but that statement is simply ridiculous.
I’m not a fan of his but that statement is simply ridiculous.
I will give you re-usable rockets*, and that's pretty much it. Even the chopsticks landing thing is decades old, look up the Ryan X-13 Verti-jet, and that was flown by a human pilot, I'd imagine using modern computers makes it hundreds of times easier.
They launch satellites and take food up to manned orbital space stations, and that's it. We've been launching satellites for 60 years now. All the talk about Mars missions is just marketing shite, the only way we're going to do that is publicly funded, Musk's investors and shareholders are going to take one look at a Mars mission and will not let it happen, no commercial organisation will ever do anything so risky - although once the technology's proven, they'll happily muscle into the space and do it more expensively no doubt - like SpaceX do now with satellites and re-supply.
*And honestly; in a world where the Space Shuttle was first built 40 years ago, that feels generous. Fun fact Space X has destroyed 3 times as many Falcon engines as NASA did testing the F1.
Anyone still using twitter because they claim they only see pictures of fluffy kittens are deluding themselves, it is absolutely a far right propaganda machine, and if you are on it you are supporting his efforts.
They launch satellites and take food up to manned orbital space stations, and that’s it.
Well they do need to feed those astronauts stranded on the ISS by Boeing.
You may not like the guy but downplaying achievements as being a piece of piss and nothing special is totally ridiculous.
but downplaying achievements as being a piece of piss and nothing special is totally ridiculous.
All I've said is that Space X haven't done anything innovative, and that what they do is established technology, not that what they do is nothing special or a piece of piss. But they're certainly not advancing the science than publicly funded programmes haven't achieved already. Sometimes quite a long time ago. recyclable rockets look cool, but honestly; we've known how to fly things for quite a while now.
Don't believe it? Here's Neil De Grasse Tyson agreeing with me.
Elon Musk talks shit all the time, recently he said something utterly stupid about drones and F35 showing although he knows shit all about a subject, he still feels like he can just wade right on in, and he can rely on the lap dogs just cheering him on from the side-lines
I was thinking earlier, if the democrats want to end Musks and Trumps bromance, they need a couple of senior dems to do interviews suggesting that Musk is the organ grinder and Trump is the monkey, don't go too heavy on it, just keep slipping it in every couple of weeks.
There is no organ grinder, just monkeys. Monkeys everywhere!
But they’re certainly not advancing the science than publicly funded programmes haven’t achieved already.
Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?
Sometimes quite a long time ago. recyclable rockets look cool, but honestly; we’ve known how to fly things for quite a while now.
Then how come so many companies still can't do it?
Ars Technica has posted this today:
Then how come so many companies still can’t do it?
How many other companies have been given tens of billions of dollars to fund the research by the US government to do that?
Regardless of whether SpaceX is clever or not can we stop pretending it’s all down to that irritating **** who runs Twitter? There will be some big challenges ‘the industry’ defined that were solved by many smart people using a mix of public and private investment.
How many other companies have been given tens of billions of dollars to fund the research by the US government to do that?
Boeing.
can we stop pretending it’s all down to that irritating **** who runs Twitter?
100%
Musk is a dick (never said he was).
Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?
Everything SpaceX achieves is in spite of, not because of Elonia.
Elon Musk talks shit all the time
Seems to be a recurring thing for idiots who inherit billions... correct me if I'm wrong but Musks money came from his parents exploits in African mines?
Self made man; my bum cheeks.
Everything SpaceX achieves is in spite of, not because of Elonia.
Absolutely.
He was rich beyond the dreams of most of us at birth, then he lucked out being an early investor in PayPal. His greatest achievement is marketing a myth of great leadership.
Everything SpaceX achieves is in spite of, not because of Elonia.
Sadly, and I hate myself for saying this, but that’s not true. The use of materials, the method of rocket catch, the fully automated Dragon. All of these things may be ideas of others at SpaceX or they may well be Elon’s ideas, but either way. Once he gets it into his head that it’s the right way to do something, no matter the naysayers, it gets done. That’s rarely the case elsewhere. Other space companies have too much history, inertia and management. SpaceX has Elon. Convince Him it’s the right way and you’re off.
Once he gets it into his head that it’s the right way to do something, no matter the naysayers, it gets done.
Weird cave rescue idea
Hyperloop
2 off the top of my head that were absolute pot head fantasy bollocks
Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.
Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?
OK, despite the fact that I acknowledged on the previous page that reusable rockets was a development by Space X that is innovative, and the answer is probably; any suitably funded avionics/aeronautical company that had a reason to pursue it. The actual technology is still based around the fact that we've been able to direct unmanned vehicles with "cm accuracy" since more or less the advent of flight, the first UAV was flown in 1917 and was a radio controllable target, that fact that you're impressed by a big tube landing on it's end is mostly becasue the only time you've seen it is probably a sci fi movie. All airplanes (and for that matter GBU and J-DAMS) that use GPS can reach the same sort of levels of accuracy, and as I said at the time, in a world where we bought back a space shuttle (with cm accuracy, it's really not as new as you seem to think) and children are building model space rockets that can land vertically, it's really just combination of 1. building on what everyone has done in the past, and 2. actually being paid (by US tax dollars) to develop it.
None of which means that SpaceX is doing anything beyond putting satellites in space and taking and bringing back stuff from low orbit which are both things that we've been doing for some time now. I mean; we went to the moon 60 years ago, and that's still the furthest humans have been in space. In that respect Space X hasn't achieved anything new. But y'know; a big tube...landing all by itself...on its end...etc etc
Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.
Someone has to win the lottery.
I think he got very lucky with his bets early on. We now live in a world where it's pretty much impossible for the uber-rich to not continue getting richer. That was more of a collective effort to control governments, anti-competition laws, and tax laws in order to extract the maximum wealth from the rest of us rather than any genius move by an individual billionaire.
It shouldn't really be possible to spend 44 billion on a company and then reduce it's value to 20% of what it was at purchase within a couple of years and still be the richest person in the world but the billionaires and oligarchs have done their job well.
Enlighten us. Which other company or organisation had already been landing rockets [with cm accuracy] returning from 70km altitude at a speed in excess of 4000km/h before SpaceX did it?
Blue Origin did it first,,,
It shouldn’t really be possible to spend 44 billion on a company
Although he didnt spend all that money himself but got a bunch of other suckers to pay in especially a few banks (the only people trying to back out of the deal faster than he was were the banks but they accepted contracts were contracts).
On his cash front a judge has once again turned down his payout from Tesla. So expect Tesla to finish their move to a more musk friendly jurisdiction before asking a judge again.
2 off the top of my head that were absolute pot head fantasy bollocks
Cybertruck...
Although he didnt spend all that money himself but got a bunch of other suckers to pay in especially a few banks (the only people trying to back out of the deal faster than he was were the banks but they accepted contracts were contracts).
The other trick billionaire's seem to enjoy is blurring the lines between what is 'their' money and what is their company's money. The money they use to buy stuff comes from lines of credit secured by the shares they own in their company.
Helps if you want to keep all the profits to yourself but spread the losses around amongst as many people as possible, I would imagine.
Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.
Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.
And as it goes, he'll secure his place in the history books as some sort of visionary. But its often been said that it is exactly that type who further technology etc.
What SpaceX did, at Musk's behest, was make space affordable. His goals rely on cheap access to LEO, whether it's to reach Moon/Mars, deliver Starlink or customer hardware to orbit. Lockheed and Boeing both said this affordability was impossible, NASA doubted it, but today the internal cost of a Falcon launch is around 15 million dollars. Nobody else is even faintly competitive with that- in fact I reckon that the market lead is such that if SpaceX was run by one of the established companies then they'd not be bothering to develop Starship, looking on it as not needed.
The delivery mechanism is kind of by-the-by - if single shot solid fuel boosters were the quickest and most economical method of sending lots of stuff up then that's what SpaceX would be using.
The Bill Burr sketch on Steve Jobs will equally apply to Musk when he drops down dead.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1liOZ1fW1F8
And as it goes, he’ll secure his place in the history books as some sort of visionary. But its often been said that it is exactly that type who further technology etc.
There's a lot of assumption that we will get to Mars etc, honestly if we do, it won't be a utopian paradise , itll be the future of Phillip K Dick; billionaires like Musk living in luxury while the plebs kept in their place down the mines...
Im not convinced his legacy won't be dissimilar to that of Jeffrey Epstein or Mohammed al fyed .... hes got 11? kids, a long history of mysoginy, associating with some very unpleasant people.... im sure his wealth has bought plenty of silence but that won't last forever
There’s a lot of assumption that we will get to Mars etc, honestly if we do, it won’t be a utopian paradise , itll be the future of Phillip K Dick; billionaires like Musk living in luxury while the plebs kept in their place down the mines…
That's true, it's easy to think of Mars as some lifeboat where a new society thrives and learned the lessons of a failing Earth. Instead it will be taking all of Earths problems with it, in fact, they will likely be totally embedded into it's social structure from the get go because the likes of Musk will ensure it's built in their image.
I can see Musks Mars mission now, they'll take at least a dozen Cyber trucks to get around on the surface, these will break down within a month and no one will have taken tools, because tesla service comes to you, they'll also take 8 days to charge using solar. Couple of Boring company tunneling machines to build the underground city but no way to get them from the space ship to the lander and then to the ground, the hydroponics lab will only be geared up to grow weed and they'll forget to take water, or any way of extracting it. So they'll all be drinking prime by the bucket load and the toilets will require a subscription.
Musk will run it like twitter and fire 75% of his staff before they've left LEO. Navigation will be autonomous using cameras only.
Can't see it going well.
Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.
If 1000 people each bet on 10 coin tosses, one of them will probably get all 10 right. And it's a lot easier to make big bets when you've got bank of daddy to fund your start-up habit. There are plenty of turkeys in his cupboard too.
Say what you like about him but he can pick a winner.
Confirmation bias. The world is full of ****s like him trying to make it big. Statistically, a few are likely to succeed now and then.
I'm part way through his biog and if it's truthfully written, then he's not from significant money, his dad is an ar$eh0le, he's very smart and he works damn hard. He's obviously driven and he pushes people to perform.
That makes it sound like i admire him when I really don't but I don't think that SpaceX or Tesla would be what they are without his singlemindedness.
The Mars thing is, in itself, just ridiculous but it is, at least, striving towards something bigger. Whether it's something that we as a race need to be doing rather than fixing the things it's aiming to "rescue" us from is another matter. I mean how bad would life on this planet have to be that living on Mars becomes an viable alternative? Unfortunately his ego needs feeding and fixing the actually important stuff isn't much of a draw.
He certainly works hard at Diablo IV. Is he playing this whilst at work or what?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1859304361547182451
Teaches you to see the matrix, rather than simply exist in the matrix.
What a ....
he’s very smart
How do you define 'smart' ?
I’m part way through his biog and if it’s truthfully written,
It's a hagiography, it's not particularly truthful.
I would never deny that he's done some impressive things. But those who were blinded to his grotesque narcissistic nature by his wealth (any time past the 2018 thai cave thing at least, if not prior to then) need to take a long hard look at themselves and their poor judgement of character.