Ronan Farrow's Elon Musk profile just dropped.https://t.co/pzrCmrQtjG
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 21, 2023
From a quick read, there’s nothing in it that we haven’t previously known (and discussed — cue Adam’s Starlink Snowflake tales). But: RONAN FARROW PROFILE. In the NEW YORKER. For Our Very Serious Media, this moves Elmu’s various misdeeds from Is there, perhaps, a nasty smell coming from some odd corner?… to Which miscreant took a ketamine-fueled dump in the middle of the rug at our cocktail party?!?
“Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule: How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in”:
Last October, Colin Kahl, then the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Pentagon, sat in a hotel in Paris and prepared to make a call to avert disaster in Ukraine. A staffer handed him an iPhone—in part to avoid inviting an onslaught of late-night texts and colorful emojis on Kahl’s own phone. Kahl had returned to his room, with its heavy drapery and distant view of the Eiffel Tower, after a day of meetings with officials from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. A senior defense official told me that Kahl was surprised by whom he was about to contact: “He was, like, ‘Why am I calling Elon Musk?’ ”
The reason soon became apparent. “Even though Musk is not technically a diplomat or statesman, I felt it was important to treat him as such, given the influence he had on this issue,” Kahl told me. SpaceX, Musk’s space-exploration company, had for months been providing Internet access across Ukraine, allowing the country’s forces to plan attacks and to defend themselves. But, in recent days, the forces had found their connectivity severed as they entered territory contested by Russia. More alarmingly, SpaceX had recently given the Pentagon an ultimatum: if it didn’t assume the cost of providing service in Ukraine, which the company calculated at some four hundred million dollars annually, it would cut off access. “We started to get a little panicked,” the senior defense official, one of four who described the standoff to me, recalled. Musk “could turn it off at any given moment. And that would have real operational impact for the Ukrainians.”…
… That month, at a conference in Aspen attended by business and political figures, Musk even appeared to express support for Vladimir Putin. “He was onstage, and he said, ‘We should be negotiating. Putin wants peace—we should be negotiating peace with Putin,’ ” Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal with Musk, recalled. Musk seemed, he said, to have “bought what Putin was selling, hook, line, and sinker.” A week later, Musk tweeted a proposal for his own peace plan, which called for new referendums to redraw the borders of Ukraine, and granted Russia control of Crimea, the semi-autonomous peninsula recognized by most nations, including the United States, as Ukrainian territory. In later tweets, Musk portrayed as inevitable an outcome favoring Russia and attached maps highlighting eastern Ukrainian territories, some of which, he argued, “prefer Russia.” Musk also polled his Twitter followers about the plan. Millions responded, with about sixty per cent rejecting the proposal…
The senior defense official said, “We had a whole series of meetings internal to the department to try to figure out what we could do about this.” Musk’s singular role presented unfamiliar challenges, as did the government’s role as intermediary. “It wasn’t like we could hold him in breach of contract or something,” the official continued. The Pentagon would need to reach a contractual arrangement with SpaceX so that, at the very least, Musk “couldn’t wake up one morning and just decide, like, he didn’t want to do this anymore.” Kahl added, “It was kind of a way for us to lock in services across Ukraine. It could at least prevent Musk from turning off the switch altogether.”…
In the past twenty years, against a backdrop of crumbling infrastructure and declining trust in institutions, Musk has sought out business opportunities in crucial areas where, after decades of privatization, the state has receded. The government is now reliant on him, but struggles to respond to his risk-taking, brinkmanship, and caprice. Current and former officials from NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration told me that Musk’s influence had become inescapable in their work, and several of them said that they now treat him like a sort of unelected official. One Pentagon spokesman said that he was keeping Musk apprised of my inquiries about his role in Ukraine and would grant an interview with an official about the matter only with Musk’s permission. “We’ll talk to you if Elon wants us to,” he told me. In a podcast interview last year, Musk was asked whether he has more influence than the American government. He replied immediately, “In some ways.” Reid Hoffman told me that Musk’s attitude is “like Louis XIV: ‘L’état, c’est moi.’ ”…
Musk often talks about his science-fiction influences. Some have manifested in straightforward ways: he has connected his love of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” novels, whose characters grapple with a mathematically precise prediction of their civilization’s collapse, to his obsession with insuring human survival beyond Earth. But some of Musk’s touchstones present ironies. He has said that his hero is Douglas Adams, the writer who skewered both the hyper-rich and the progress-at-any-cost ethos that Musk has come to embody. In the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” novels and radio plays, the latter of which were broadcast in South Africa during Musk’s childhood, a narcissistic playboy becomes the president of the galaxy, and Earth is demolished to make way for a space transit route…
[Murphy the Trickster God, Musk thinks the Vogons were the *heroes*… ]
… In 2000, X.com merged with a competing online-payments startup, Confinity, co-founded by the entrepreneur Peter Thiel. In events that have since become Silicon Valley lore, Musk and Thiel battled for control of the company. Various accounts apportion blame differently. Hoffman told me, citing the story as an example of Musk’s disingenuousness, that Musk had pushed for the merger by highlighting the leadership of his company’s seasoned executive, only to force out the executive and place himself in the top role. “A merger like this, you’re doing a marriage,” Hoffman said. “And it’s, like, ‘I was lying to you intensely while we were dating. Now that we’re married, let me tell you about the herpes.’ ” People who have worked with Musk often describe him as controlling. One said, “In the areas he wants to compete in, he has a very hard time sharing the spotlight, or not being the center of attention.” In the fall of 2000, another coup, executed while Musk was on a long-delayed honeymoon with Justine, overthrew Musk and installed Thiel as the company’s head. Two years later, eBay acquired the company, by then called PayPal, for $1.5 billion, making Musk, who remained the largest shareholder, fabulously wealthy…
In March, 2020, as pandemic lockdowns began, Musk e-mailed Tesla employees, telling them that he intended to violate orders and show up at work, and downplaying the significance of COVID-19. Soon after, he lost an initial fight to keep a factory in Alameda County—Tesla’s most productive in the U.S.—open. That April, after county officials extended shelter-in-place orders, Musk was on a conference call with outside financial analysts. His rhetoric became nakedly political, to an extent that would have been uncharacteristic just a few years earlier. “I would call it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all of their constitutional rights,” he told the analysts, speaking of the lockdowns. “What the fuck?” he added. “It’s an outrage. An outrage. . . . This is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddam freedom.” The pandemic seems to have sparked a pronounced shift in Musk. The lockdowns represented an example of what Hoffman told me Musk considered to be a cardinal sin: “getting in the way of the mission.”…
This bit from Ronan Farrow’s latest profile on Musk explain everything. pic.twitter.com/jlyPhQTxtP
— Renee (@PettyLupone) August 21, 2023
The Ronan Farrow piece on Musk is really eye-opening. One reveal is Musk's alleged ketamine use. Would explain a lot. https://t.co/CDqVXlAl6T pic.twitter.com/sE4vBeLkVn
— DrDinD🟧🇺🇲🇺🇦 He/Him (@DrDinD) August 21, 2023
Wait – is Elon talking directly to Putin? He denied it last year, but today Ronan Farrow writes this: “To the dismay of Pentagon officials, Musk volunteered that he had spoken with Putin personally.”
https://t.co/Sion9N9szu— Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) August 21, 2023
I’m also on Threads here: https://t.co/UN0TaFKEKb https://t.co/Jx09ojVGlh
— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) August 21, 2023
Baud
I can’t believe he chose Threads.
UncleEbeneezer
I tried to read that New Yorker piece, because I generally like TNY and Farrow does good investigatory journalism but had to tap out after a couple ‘graphs. I’m just so burnt out on reading/hearing about this arrogant, racist, transphobic asshole.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
People setting up professional accounts usually aren’t doing it based on the politics of the social media network they’re using. They’re picking based on what they think will get them the most exposure.
RepubAnon
Elon sees himself as Hober Mallow, the first of the Merchant Princes in Azimov’s Foundation series.
Baud
So Threads now has web-based access. Wasn’t it app only for a while?
ETA: Now I see you need the app to see more posts.
Yarrow
@Baud:
Speaking of not-Twitter options, the right column here still has a section titled “Twitter/Spoutible” that lists accounts for front pagers. Twitter isn’t Twitter anymore. Is anyone using Spoutible? I don’t see people talking about it much the way I do Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon.
Tom Levenson
This, to me, was one of the under-the-radar keys to the article and to Musk:
There is no doubt in my mind that he’s doing a worse job at his actual job(s) because of his commitment to what he calls hard-core working life. There’s little doubt that for all the privilege and luxury he commands his day to day existence is probably miserable. And it’s also clear that his response to that is to double down–and play the role he’s assigned himself as the center as well as a master of the universe–which will drive more of the same, only more so.
I have no sympathy: he’s making the same mistakes he’s made over and over again. But it is a reminder that Silicon Valley culture is…catastrophic even on its own turf–as well as ferociously dangerous in its implications for the rest of us.
Tom Levenson
@Yarrow: I am on Bluesky and Mastodon and enjoy both. (More science engagement on Mastodon; more snark and good humored nastiness on Bluesky.) Never touched Spoutible and no one I know has suggested I follow them there.
WereBear
I will always give Mr. Farrow a read. Thanks.
Just a reminder that I invented a cocktail for Indictment Summer: the dark rum gimlet. I’ve had two the past few weeks. He’s up to 97 indictments last I heard. So the celebratory savoring looks well aspected.
Knit a hat, plant a tree. Make a memory. I’ve been waiting for this since 1980.
scav
E’s for effort don’t get you anywhere.
persistentillusion
@UncleEbeneezer: I listened to the article instead, because I agree with you about SFB fatigue.
trollhattan
Thank goodness for the whole cain’t be a furriner and be preznit thing in the Constitution.
UncleEbeneezer
@persistentillusion: He’s almost as bad as Trump, as the colossal a-hole you just can’t get away from.
trollhattan
@Tom Levenson:
Substitute “hellbent on destroying” for “just so dedicated to” and it fits the dude we know and loathe, much better.
Read a bunch of new Musk ragegasm stories last week about his antics at Tesla, all of which were more outrageous than any I’d read previously, and the old stuff was quite awful. He should ride on one of those rocketships. Soon.
trollhattan
@UncleEbeneezer: A younger Trump with more money and concubines. Whee!
Ken
@WereBear: I hope you’re not playing “have a cocktail each time he’s charged,” you could easily end up in a coma. Even “have a cocktail every time he’s indicted” is looking a little dangerous.
Jay
https://nitter.net/TamieUSCongress/status/1691962806289981574#m
MisterDancer
I have accounts on Spoutible and Bluesky. I’d much rather post on Spoutible, given it’s ownership and focus on balancing a host of challenges, even if it had some early issues. Since Instagram locked me out from my account and the email aligned to it isn’t receiving emails, I doubt I’ll be on Threads anytime soon.
I 1000% acknowledge that there’s far from a consensus on using Spoutible, or any service. So the above is just about my usage, not anyone else’s.
That said: I say “much rather post on” because I have even less time for scouting/posting on those places than I do here. I don’t thin I’ve even posted once on either service, in fact, much less provide any bon mots of thoughtful content. I’ll get the accounts added to the sidebar if that changes!
WereBear
@Baud: My wu wei is in conflict with the house of Zuckerberg.
Facebook randomly doesn’t work, and my Instagram will let me post, but not leave comments, and now I’m locked out of Threads and it keeps saying they have sent me links and codes but they don’t. And each demands access to the other.
I suspect they built one on top of another like MS-DOS mid-nineties and so nothing really works.
MattF
At first, Musk appeared to have recently settled into the ‘self-medicating right-wing billionaire’ political niche— now it looks like he’s been there all along. I agree it’s a good thing he’s a furriner.
Ken
@Tom Levenson: That is a little reminiscent of Howard Hughes, in the recluse stage of his life.
WereBear
@Ken: That’s why I am spreading them out. There’s no time limit 🤣
Frankensteinbeck
@Tom Levenson:
There is a lot of doubt in my mind. The man is a raging narcissist in a tech culture where hyperbolic exaggeration of everything they do is a success trait. I think he factors hours of scrolling Twitter into his work hours. A luxury vacation where you visit a business buddy in the process is a business trip and all hours worked. Sexually harassing employees is definitely counted in working hours.
On the other hand, I see no sign he actually has ‘hang out’ friends, because even for a tech bro he’s just too narcissistic. So he’ll wake an employee in the middle of the night to yell at them or deliver an insane demand. Sleeping at one of his companies is a minimal hardship, because he can do his goofing off there as well as anywhere, and there’s always someone handy to give orders to so he feels powerful.
WereBear
Myself as well. Maybe…only the best people 🤣
Ohio Mom
I am under no illusions that our intelligence community is especially intelligent but that it occurred to no one in any position of authority there, or at the Pentagon, that depending on a private company owned and run by a clearly nutty individual might not be a great idea — smacks my gob.
Jay
https://nitter.net/MeidasTouch/status/1693426932569026902#m
WereBear
Musk doesn’t really have one. It’s got to be like hangin’ with King Jofrey from GOT.
Bill Arnold
@RepubAnon:
Or Joiler Veppers, the evil ambitious extremely wealthy industrialist in Iain M. Banks’ “Surface Detail”. (It would be a spoiler to mention the foundations of his wealth.)
Bill Arnold
@Tom Levenson:
Recently saw a quip somewhere, approximately “if I were a billionaire, I would tell all my rising competitors that the secret to success was starting work at 4:00 AM every day.”
WereBear
@Bill Arnold: Musk not worthy to be compared to Gully Foyle from The Stars My Destination.
That man had been driven insane, but kept his focus.😎
Roger Moore
@Tom Levenson:
I’m sure this is true. There is a lot of research on workload vs. productivity, and the overwhelming consensus is that overwork kills productivity. People achieve more when they give themselves some time away from work to rest and recover. It’s possible to get more done in the short term by putting in more hours, but it really is a short term expedient. After a relatively short time working overtime, total production drops so much workers are getting less done with the overtime than they were without it. Once workers get to that degree of burnout, they need a vacation to recover.
The figures I remember were something like a 40 hour week was about the best tradeoff between quality and quantity, which is probably why businesses accepted it. Typical workers who worked 50 hour weeks got more done for a few weeks, but after a month they were getting no more done than they had in 40 hours before, and beyond that they were less productive working 50 hour weeks than they had been doing 40 hour weeks. After about one 60 hour week, most people were already losing productivity; their second 60 hour week was only as productive as a 40 hour week had been before, and after that they were burned out and pretty useless.
It’s possible some people are able to do more than others. Maybe Musk is the exceptional person who can work 60 hour weeks without losing productivity. But anyone who tries to push past their personal limits will still get into burnout territory. It’s also likely 50+ year-old Musk is not able to keep up the pace that 40 year-old Musk could manage, and he’ll only burn himself out by trying.
Tony Jay
Musk wants so bad to be one of those sci-fi gazillionaire geniuses rich enough to slob around in t-shirt and ripped jeans all day because their inventions literally rewrite the future of humanity, but he’s just a real world arsehole who’s hitting middle-age around the same time as his stubborn lack of any actual genius beyond Barnumesque salesmanship is hitting his bottom line.
As soon as he stops being share-rich, he’ll just be another cautionary tale. Dead of a drug overdose before his creditors can tear him apart.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
I max out at 10 hours.
WereBear
@Roger Moore: From what I’ve observed from my life in offices, I could probably work 40 hours and get done as much as some of my 60 hour coworkers, perhaps more.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer:
Same. I am reading comments here but not the article.
FelonyGovt
I’ve been concerned for years that our space program was relying so heavily on (a) Russia and (b) SpaceX, a private company which (while it does provide a lot of employment in my area) is controlled by a narcissistic, unpredictable asshole. Now our foreign/military policy with respect to Ukraine also has to contend with his delusions of grandeur and his itchy trigger finger. Not great.
Fraud Guy
I always thought he preferred D.D. Harriman, the man who sold the moon…
Eolirin
@Roger Moore: I believe there’s new research suggesting this number is actually closer to 30 hours.
Burnspbesq
Other EV owners look at me funny when I suggest that the Tesla Supercharger network is a giant antitrust violation. But I have no doubt that Leon Skum’s objective is to monopolize EV charging, and if he succeeds the price of a kilowatt-hour will go from the current 40 cents or thereabouts to around two bucks.
OlFroth
There is a very simple solution here, which has been used time and time again when a sector becomes indispensable to defense and national interests. Nationalize the asset until the crisis passes.
Jay
@WereBear:
EU studies and North American experiments have shown that 32 hours with 3 consecutive days off up productivity 38% over the 40 hours/5 day work week, massively increase staff retention and creates more satisfied and energetic employees.
Also, for some strange reason, getting paid a living wage also seems to be important.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
Having followed @elonjet on Mastodon, I’m also suspicious of Musk’s claim to spend most of his time near the SpaceX launch site in Texas. Unless he’s letting someone else fly on his jet all the time, he’s spending a lot of time flying around. He could be answering calls and emails while he’s doing that, but he isn’t spending a lot of time at his simple home in Texas.
Eolirin
@Jay: Thanks for the numbers. I thought it was more like that.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WereBear: quant suff!
eclare
@Jay:
That makes sense. The trend in corporate life that I last noticed was allowing people to work four days, but require ten hours each day. Since I had a dog at home who needed to be let out, that was a no-go for me.
There was also the “summer hours” trend of four nine hour days with one half day off on Friday. Still a no-go because of my dog.
Very glad I no longer work for that company, which I will not name but is Fortune 100.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
The key point is that your 60 hour coworkers could probably get as much, or maybe more, done in 40 hours than they currently do in 60. The demand that employees spend their whole lives at work is about management’s desire to control their workers, not any realistic attempt to get the most work out of them.
Roger Moore
@Burnspbesq:
I would have an easier time thinking Tesla was planning on monopolizing the charging network if they hadn’t just agreed to make their charging connector into a SAE standard.
JML
@Jay: Gym Jordan didn’t pass the Bar? Hells bells, I passed the Bar out of law school and I’m basically the worst lawyer ever. The GOP will take anyone, they really will, so long as they pledge their fealty to tax cuts, hatred, and fascism.
Can’t say I’m surprised by any of this from Musk. People like him might appear cool and human…right up until they’re thwarted on something. Then you see the real persona, where rules and restrictions are for other people, and the people are supported to get out of the way and obey. Of course he’s into Putin these days, oligarchy is exactly what he craves.
WereBear
@Mr. Bemused Senior: “I rot you, Vorga. I rot you filthy!”
sdhays
@Jay: Well, that’s the target quality level DeSantis has for Florida’s university system, so he wasn’t really lying, just ahead of his time.
Roger Moore
@Jay:
Of course all these studies need to be taken with a grain of salt. Different jobs probably have different productivity curves. How much of the job is sitting around waiting for other people to show up? How physically demanding is the work? How mentally taxing is it? Engineers, office workers, sales clerks, construction workers, assembly line workers, and truck drivers have different demands and thus probably have different productivity curves.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WereBear: @Roger Moore: [… more than 40 hours/week …]
It is commonplace in startups to put in absurd hours. My experience is that a brief spurt can be productive, but keeping it up week after week, month after month, leads to introducing more errors than you fix, and eventually burnout. [Talking about engineering here.]
Kristine
@Roger Moore: They’re also grabbing their name.
Bill
Some people can be “productive” working even less than 32 hours
Roger Moore
@Kristine:
I hadn’t thought about name grabbing, but that’s probably more important for someone who depends on name recognition. I am not too worried about anyone else claiming my usual handle (VATVSLPR). Nobody is going to think of it randomly, and nobody would bother impersonating me.
MomSense
Shit is fucked up and bullshit. The only good thing about this clusterfuck is that another ridiculously overrated, mediocre asshole billionaire has been revealed.
I try not to think about how undervalued people who actually contribute to the betterment of society are because I’m already feeling pretty damned stabby.
zhena gogolia
Not a fan of Musk or Farrow.
Another Scott
@Tom Levenson: (I haven’t read the Farrow piece and probably won’t.)
Your description reminds me of the stories of the early days of Silicon Valley at Fairchild. Run by a brilliant, controlling guy. Brilliant people working there. Eventually, a team of them got fed up and left and started Intel…
In all of these companies, it’s the people doing the work that matters. If the management gets to crazy and controlling, the people will leave and start new enterprises.
It was ever thus.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Righteous Hazard
I remember when astronomers were sounding the alarms about him. He was launching Starlink satellites at a breakneck speed, and astronomers were simply asking that he slow down a little bit and figure out how to make them a little less light reflective, because they were destroying ground based observation. Musk refused to lift a finger.
Now I understand. Starlink, if he could get it up fast, would give him immense power in global communications. And that dude hungers for power.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Decades ago we used to work a 50 hr week and some Saturdays. That’s 10 hrs/day Mon-Fri and if Saturday add in another 8 hrs. OT over 8hr/day or 40hrs/week. And this was pretty standard in a lot of industry over 40 yrs ago. It hasn’t been for a long time. And we are better for it.
schrodingers_cat
Speaking of guys with Jupiter sized egos, did you guys read Ramaswamy’s profile on the Atlantic?
Old School
@Jay:
My favorite detail:
Frankensteinbeck
@Righteous Hazard:
Honestly, I think it’s simpler than that. He just doesn’t care about anyone else’s happiness.
TS
@MomSense:
And one has already been elected president – maybe this one thinks that is his next option.
Alison Rose
The word “technically” here is doing more work in this sentence than Musk ever has in his life.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
most of the reputable studies, factored all that in, rather than just use simplistic MGMT measurements. At my last job, my productivity was measured by billing hours, which were a fixed rate per tool, per issue.
So if I got it fixed in 1 hour, and the chart said two, I billed 2 hours. But the billing chart was simplistic. And while they compared my stats to the other tech’s stats, then didn’t compare what they were giving me to inspect and fix. Eg. a robotic pipe cutter from the early 60’s for which no manual existed, or sewer snakes with “wrapped” cables, that the standard technique was to use a grinder or sawsall, and cut it into 2 foot chunks hoping that the tension in the cable didn’t rip you arm off. I figured out a safer way to strip the cable safely with out cutting it, and it was a lot faster. Anytime there was a “tough” fix, they threw it to me, like the pipe threader that was electrocuting anybody who turned it on. The metric’s however, were simplistic, so my “productivity” was always compared to the “easy jobs”.
Omnes Omnibus
@JML: I don’t think Jordan took the bar exam. He went to law school doing evening classes while he was a member of the Ohio legislature.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
No, but he’s gaining on DeSantis!
Jeffro
OT but Betty I’m not sure I can forgive you for posting that picture (shudder) of the zombie MAGAts (double shudder, times eleventy) in the last thread.
I’m serious! I better not have nightmares tonight. >(
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He is a practicing Hindu, whatever that is supposed to mean. I wish someone asks him that question. What exactly does he practice.
As for the R party, its a clown show, not a party.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Does his morning aarthi?
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: He makes puja? (my Raj Quartet knowledge displayed in its minuscule form)
Jeffro
Or just nationalize it, period.
Would work quite well with several extractive industries too.
Jay
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
Yurp, and part of it is mismanagement. The joke at one of the Tech’s that I worked at was “new software in 6 months”. The more the programmers worked, the longer the timeline went out, the more errors in the code. 18 months was the record. By the end of the cycle, we would be coming in at 7am and the programmers would be leaving for a few hours of food and sleep, then trooping back in at 11am.
Being on the manufacturing side, we couldn’t do “the new” until the software was complete and tested safe, so yeah, we would plan for 18 months for the new hardware. Never got caught out, other than one time, having to skid up hardware and put it into a rented warehouse for 6 months while turning off the supply chain.
Jeffro
hey whoa WHOA now
Jackie
@TS: Thankfully Musk wasn’t born in the US – otherwise I’m sure the Presidency would be his future goal!
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia:@Baud: Apparently DeSantis is going to ask him about caste. I mean his wiki proudly states that he is a Brahmin
ETA:FYI Pooja is something you do, not make.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Remnants of TS Hilary are coming through town now (Brookings, OR). Winds are picking up and now we have smoke, ash and the marine layer all mixed up into a broth of suck. I hear that it’s hot out there but you wouldn’t know it living here…lol!
I helped my wife process a gallon of blackberries for a batch of syrup so the house smells real good right now. Blackberry shakes are planned for after dinner, natch…
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Jeez, what could DeSantis possibly ask him about caste?
karen marie
@Tom Levenson: Musk is not “sacrificing” shit. Nobody asked him to live the way he does, he chooses to.
I won’t read the article because fuck Musk, with prejudice.
Steve in the ATL
@UncleEbeneezer:
Oh great—another thread about Omnes!
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Omnes isn’t racist or transphobic.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I have no fucking clue. I would love to watch that grifter squirm.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I have a feeling DeSantis will be the one that will come out looking bad in that exchange. But that may be because he comes out looking bad in every interaction these days.
Ramaswamy should respond that his caste is woke.
Alison Rose
@Jay: I like MGMT measurements.
Dan B
The killer of the clothing store owner in California because she had a rainbow flag in front of her store has been ID’d as a Japanese American crazy Christianist and conspiracy nut who posted about eliminating LGBTQ people, police, Freemasons, etc. He had an unlicensed gun.
Baud
@Dan B:
We have the most diverse crazy people on the planet.
ETA: I didn’t realize people still cares about the Freemasons.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: I AM NOT TRANSPHOBIC! And, honestly, I am only racist about Belgians.
ETA: They know what they did.
Righteous Hazard
@Frankensteinbeck: I agree that he definitely has some kind of sociopathy. But he does seem to “care” what some groups think of him, as part of his image; and astronomers are the kind of people he wants to admire him.
The fact that he gave them the finger is telling, imo
karen marie
@Jackie: He could simply buy it. I’m surprised that, like Thiel, he hasn’t bought himself a US senator yet.
Jeffro
Is it just me or does the idea of DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and oh pick any three other GOP contenders feel like an out-take from Idiocracy?
I mean literally WHO is going to be inspired by this “exchange” of “ideas” on Wednesday? Minds changed? Insights gained? Nah. Just sheer stupidity from start to finish.
(and why am I complaining? I’m not sure that I am complaining)
Alison Rose
@Dan B: Watch the right use this to crow about how wrong the libs are that only white guys shoot people. Which is not a thing we’ve ever said, but it’s something they like to claim we believe.
Jay
@Baud:
like many things, blame Bruckmiester, National Secrets and Nicolas Cage.
Dan B
@Baud: I was surprised at Freemasons. He has tweets about all sorts of demons.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m worried I’m becoming a normie. I didn’t care enough about DeSantis or Musk to read about them today. I already know what I think about them, and it’s not good, and I don’t want to think about them at all.
Sure Lurkalot
@MomSense: I’m stabby too after an everything went wrong day.
The 40 year “government is the problem let the private sector do it” came home to roost 39 years ago. The private sector is not immune to waste, fraud and abuse and has the added feature of engendering a dizzying bunch of narcissistic sociopaths. A well run organization can be public or private, those distinctions don’t define “well run”.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Frankensteinbeck:
He’s not happy, nor has he ever been truly happy. Denying others their own happiness gives him pleasure that he is making the lives of others miserable because they should be unhappy like he is. Musk has no real friends in his life because he can’t trust that they are befriending him because they actually like him.
So he ends up with admirers that he eventually shits on for his own amusement (see: catturd) and nothing else. What a shit life…
Jay
@Jeffro:
will Pence bring his emotional support fly to the debate?
Baud
@Jeffro:
The debate will be over those who love Trump and those who criticize Trump.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We’re a bad influence.
Sure Lurkalot
Deleted a dupe. What a dope am I.
Ken
So I once thought. Then people argued with a straight face that the emoluments clause couldn’t be enforced because there was no enabling legislation, and I’ve seen the same about that pesky insurrection clause.
Maybe someone could persuade a 22-year-old to run, and use that to press the issue of constitutional qualifications for office.
Doc Sardonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Bad experience with a waffle?
zhena gogolia
@Baud: 😂
geg6
@Tom Levenson:
He has a mental illlness, IMHO. That’s why he self medicates. If I had to guess, bipolar disorder. He acts a lot like my brother did as he was circling the drain with BPD.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: But will still vote for him if he’s the nominee.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I read the comments. BJ commenters are much more clever and amusing than DeSantis or Musk.
Gin & Tonic
I know Leon is one of the unofficial nicknames for the subject of this post, but every time I see that name I think “The tortoise is laying on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun…”
frosty
You and me both! (Although I love to read Betty C on DeSantis)
Dan B
@geg6: Musk has said he’s on the spectrum but bipolar seems quite likely as well.
FelonyGovt
@Dorothy A. Winsor: No, you are a reasonable person with some perspective on what’s important, unlike, say, me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Doc Sardonic: Mayonnaise related. That’s all I can say while it’s being litigated.
Gin & Tonic
Way OT, but hasn’t our friend Amir Khalid been absent for a while? I hope that new cat hasn’t done him grievous harm.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Good question. I don’t recall seeing his nym lately.
Jay
@Baud:
nope, the debate will be over who loves Trump the most, while taking cheap shots at each other.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Doc Sardonic:
Maybe a Belgian Malinois attacked him while he was eating a Belgian waffle during a visit to Belgium?
@Omnes Omnibus:
Darn… missed it by this much (imagine a narrow space between thumb and forefinger)!
Eyeroller
@Gin & Tonic: I was thinking about exactly that in the thread about the German dog because there was some discussion of ei versus ie in German, and Amir at least writes very good German and I thought he might chime in. I was concerned because he has a heart condition, and he recently spent time in the hospital for dehydration during Ramadan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I did come down with the flu in Antwerp.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ah ha! Close enough for me! ;)
sdhays
@TS: No real billionaires have ever been President of the United States.
schrodingers_cat
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Same here. I did read a profile about Ramaswamy though. I am fascinated and horrified at that train wreck in motion.
He is a sepia toned fun size mini-me of the Orange Error.
The Pale Scot
@Old School:
I think this is even better
Look at his press photo, it’s photoshopped and he still looks like a meth head
Layer8Problem
@Gin & Tonic, @Baud:
I was actually wondering about him today, thinking it’s been a while since I’ve seen him commenting. Hoping all’s well.
Spanky
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, you had to bring up the fucking Belgians again.
cain
@schrodingers_cat: I’m sick of that guy – he needs to find a tennis court and stay there practicing for debates for the rest of his life.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spanky:
Steve in the WTF started it.
Yarrow
@Tom Levenson:
Kind of my point. No frontpager here seems to be on or at least active on Spoutible. Why is it getting special mention in the right column? It would be more helpful to list the accounts for front pagers at places they actually use.
cain
@schrodingers_cat: lay odds that he’ll bring caste bullshit into this race.
Yarrow
@Gin & Tonic: Was thinking the same thing. Can someone reach out to Amir?
Also, did Martin disappear again?
cain
@Yarrow: probably since there might be few journalists – mastodon only has a few of those kind of influencers.
Another Scott
@sdhays: The first guy was pretty close.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tom Levenson
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Let’s talk about documentary film production. Brief bursts of intense 70-80 hour a week work followed by catastrophic collapses.
The high (low) point of my career was when I had to take over a colleagues edit room as well as my own for a two part film about Einstein, special and general relativity (so…light reading). Six weeks of no waking hours spent anywhere else.
Took me a month to recover. Sort of.
mvr
@Ohio Mom: The whole thing brings out my “socialize them!” impulses. If one large oligopoly gets in the way of the security and human rights interests of half the globe, I have trouble seeing any reason not to.
Roger Moore
@Dan B:
I call bullshit. A lot of people who are just assholes claim to be on the spectrum to try to defend themselves, and Musk seems very much like that. I don’t think his brand of assholery fits autism spectrum very well.
Jackie
@Baud: I hope he’s in good health and just busy teaching his kitty to play the guitar!
Glidwrith
@Omnes Omnibus: Hey! Leave my waffles alone!
Betsy
@UncleEbeneezer: Same on every point!
Betsy
@eclare: I hate that flextime bullshit.
It doesn’t work for anyone with a kid or a pet or a digestive system that needs more than an hour between dinner and bedtime.
It’s still the same weary, idiotic 40 hours a week that was the standard that male office workers worked when they all had wives at home to fix supper and sign for packages and make the beds and do the shopping and household management. In other words, not workable for modern people.
Four 10s, or 4 9s and a 4, doesn’t help anything. It’s just cutting one end of the blanket off and sewing it on the other end.
BSChief
A sleazier, wealthier, and more culpable Neville Chamberlain. He’ll burn in Hell if there’s an afterlife. Wish there were something comparable awaiting him in this life. Not hopeful, though.