NEW: Elon Musk is under federal criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. Gift article: https://t.co/UNdkFVRKzN
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) September 19, 2023
From Bill Arnold:
Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing personal benefits Tesla may have provided Elon Musk since 2017—longer than previously known—as part of a criminal investigation examining issues including a proposed house for the chief executive.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York also has sought information about transactions between Tesla and other entities connected to the billionaire, people familiar with the investigation said. Prosecutors have referenced the involvement of a grand jury.
The new information indicates that federal prosecutors have a broader interest in the actions of Musk and Tesla than was previously known and that they are pursuing potential criminal charges. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the Justice Department is investigating Tesla’s use of company resources on a secret project that was described internally as a house for Musk.
The house effort was known within the carmaker as “Project 42,” and plans called for an expansive glass building to be constructed near Tesla’s Austin-area factory and headquarters.
Update: Full story with more details in the comments at #16, #18, #20.
WaterGirl
If anyone has a Wall Street Journal subscription and can share at least some of the text of the article, that would be great.
WaterGirl
I wonder if Musk will be less inclined to screw around with Starlink. Would he have already know known that he is under investigation?
H.E.Wolf
“The higher the monkey climbs, the more you see of its ugly side.” -Jim Hightower, quoting an ol’ Texas aphorism.
ETA: and it looks like the DOJ noticed. :)
Fraud Guy
@H.E.Wolf:
and this one’s on a rocket going straight up!
cain
Looks like a lot to do in regards to benefits that Tesla has provided him.
Old School
Here’s Forbes summary:
It has to do with a glass house:
Alison Rose
Weird that it says gift link but is still paywalled. But this should work. If it doesn’t, I can copy/paste it all.
karen marie
@WaterGirl: I’d think this would make him more inclined to fuck around with Starlink and show everyone who’s really in charge.
The motherfucker belongs in prison. Sadly, that’s not something any of us will probably ever see.
rikyrah
Good. He’s a crook who needs to be investigated.
Lobo
@WaterGirl:
 
@WaterGirl:
Here is something related. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/19/sbfs-parents-sued-by-ftx-for-millions-of-dollars-in-misappropriated-funds.html. Not to mention Richard Hanania will be speaking at the Stanford Business School. I think there is a theme here.
wjca
Unable to resist saying something about “people who live in glass houses….”
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: Do you have Paramount+? I just saw in TV Guide that they have a documentary, Superpower, that Sean Penn made, starting out to be about Zelenskyy but then the war started. I have it via Prime with Paramount.
karen marie
@Lobo:
I mean, what?
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: I actually just reupped my Paramount sub so I could watch the UCL matches. Thanks for the rec.
Bill Arnold
@WaterGirl:
A fresh install of Bypass Paywalls (found on github) for firefox worked for me.
Here are the first few paragraphs:
Alison Rose
Here’s the article text in case my link doesn’t work. I don’t know if FYWP will allow a massive blockquote, so I’ll break it up. Part 1:
Shalimar
Well, that is just unbelievably stupid on his part in light of this only a year later:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/tesla-shareholders-approve-elon-musks-multibilion-dollar-compensation-plan.html
He had plenty of money at that time to build his own glass house, and the Tesla board gifted it to him for nothing. Why use company resources? It boggles the mind.
Alison Rose
@Alison Rose: Part 2:
HumboldtBlue
Musk is under criminal investigation, and the GOP congress is a fucking dumpster fire.
Alison Rose
@Alison Rose: Part 3 and final:
HumboldtBlue
@rikyrah:
I was thinking of you yesterday as I went down the vibin with tay rabbit hole. He’s hilarious.
sab
@Alison Rose: That looks a lot like shit hitting the fan. Here’s hoping.
Bill Arnold
@Old School:
Yeah. Basically, Musk’s “Glass House” project, which I had mostly forgotten about because it was buried under a large pile of more recent Musk … BS.
HeleninEire
Good.
E.
I wish there were playing cards with all the most awful people’s stats on them. Those Bankman-Frieds are first-class shitheels.
Gin & Tonic
Boy, that’s a real shame.
Jay
@Shalimar:
Taxes and SEC Filings.
The same reason why TIFG’s CFO is doing jail time.
The fastest way of becoming a Billionaire is to pretend you are putting money in the coffee shop’s tip jar, but instead you are just rattling it around and palming the fiver.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: I just emailed you the full text of the article republished by MSN. Being able to get info behind paywalls is a professional specialty, please just ask. And this is the type of thing you most definitely can Bigfoot one of my posts for. Though tonight’s update won’t be up till later as I’m going to work out first.
H.E.Wolf
Once upon a time, I worked for a high tech start-up in various departments of the company, always at the bottom of the corporate ladder. :-)
At one point, the company was (rightfully) investigated by the SEC for malfeasance related to booking sales orders.
The low-level folks in Shipping & Receiving all nodded sagely and said they saw that comin’. Apparently the VP of Sales had recently ordered himself a suite of ostrich-skin office furniture….
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: This is the second investigation into Tesla that’s been reported on in the last two and a half weeks. SpaceX is being sued by DOJ for employment discrimination and Musk just countersued the DOJ over that case yesterday. I’m pretty sure Musk knows he’s under investigation. And I’d extend that to he’s just smart enough to know that because of the biography being published and the revelations in it, he’s also probably facing a full counterintelligence investigation in regard to his clearance given his admitted frequent contacts with Putin. I doubt any of this will deter him from doing whatever it is he wants to do given he has rightly assessed that his wealth and the companies he controls make him functionally untouchable.
Gin & Tonic
Can’t wait for Matt Levine’s take on this news.
Roger Moore
@Shalimar:
Musk’s actions since then show he treats Tesla as his personal property. When he first bought Twitter, he brought in a bunch of software engineers from Tesla to look stuff over for him. If Tesla had been privately held, that might have been acceptable, but not a public company. Even if he paid for them, which none of the contemporaneous articles mentioned him doing, it wasn’t his right to take engineers off important work they were doing for Tesla to look after Musk’s personal interests. It’s a gross breach of fiduciary duty, and both Musk and Tesla should be sued over it.
different-church-lady
2023: The Year of Finding Out.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
Can it be Putin for Christmas?
Princess
@Lobo: chef’s kiss from the linked article:
”Bankman-Fried’s parents are legal scholars who taught at Stanford Law School. His mother is an expert on ethics, while his father specializes in taxes.”
Too perfect.
Baud
Oooh, I hope also bought a firearm while using drugs. Just for the poetry of it all.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman: Can we have the bunny with the umbrella?
Adam L Silverman
@Shalimar: The ultra wealthy and ultra high net worth individuals stay that way by never spending their own money once they become ultra wealthy.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
IOW, you hope he bought a firearm, because the using drugs part is a given.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: I’m not tracking.
Suzanne
Eeeeeaaaaarrrrggh.
It almost certainly is not a glass structure! It’s a wood or steel (or concrete, but that’s unusual for a house) structure. It’s a fucking house with big windows.
Fuck, who edits this shit?!
WaterGirl
@Bill Arnold: Thank you!
Baud
@Suzanne:
I don’t know. They guy who designed the cyber truck may well have wanted a house made entirely of glass.
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
These days? If you’re lucky, nobody. If you’re unlucky, ChatGP3.
Lobo
@karen marie: It is always best to have a perspective of the absurd. It more closely matches life!
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: thank you!
Suzanne
@Baud: There are no buildings with a glass structure that people live in! There are “structural glass” floor systems, and those go into steel or concrete structures. There are glass “curtain walls” that provide exterior enclosure on buildings, but those are not structural, meaning they do not hold anything up. Steel holds the glass up, the glass doesn’t hold the steel up.
Just call it a house with big windows or glass walls. Make it simple. Don’t use stupid, flowery, imprecise language!
:::flips table:::
jonas
@Roger Moore: Didn’t Musk go off on some rant a couple of years ago about how he really wished he could have his own flamethrower or something?
I’m sure he has guns. Probably lots.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Look up “Gell-Mann amnesia”
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman: You have that meme of the bunny with the umbrella and the label “Christ, this asshole again.” I thought that was your Elon meme.
sab
@Suzanne: Yay you for English. Call it what it is.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: Now I’m tracking. Yes, I do. Here you go.
Baud
@Suzanne:
You are clearly not a visionary like Elon Musk.
Jay
@Suzanne:
As we havn’t seen the plans, it could be a “glass structure”.
Did some reno’s in a house overlooking Howe Sound, that the exterior “walls” on three sides were a mix of laminated glass beams, 4 inches thick, curved to reduce stress, inside and out, the “walls” themselves, 3 inch thick laminated glass panels, 3 feet by 12 feet, all glued together with some kind of semi flexible epoxy, and the doors and windows were swing in and swing out frameless glass with a transparent hollow core soft plastic weather stripping.
Laminated timber beams tied the walls together through special bolt mounts through the glass and on top of that sat a flat box roof of T&G Brazilian teak under engineered 16″ x 32′ OSB beams, ply on top and then a torch on membrane.
Beautiful house, amazing view, stupid costs per sq ft and a PITA to maintain.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Nominated.
lowtechcyclist
Yeah, suuuuuuuuuuure.
sab
@sab: My annoying tablet cut me off before I pissed off tablet ‘s owner,
Why proceed? It ate my first comment.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman: THANK YOU!!!
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yeah!
Suzanne
@Jay: What you described isn’t even a glass structure! Those buildings with fancy glass beams are all connected to a primary structural frame of something else. Definitionally not glass structures!
trollhattan
“Project 42.” Douglas Adams would have loathed every fiber of Musk and would have taken great pleasure in satirizing him. Sadly, not available for the job.
Baud
In this house, we obey the laws of
thermodynamicsstructural engineering!wjca
That would be the approach I first heard of attributed to the Army:
“I want 3 volunteers: You, you, and you.”
Old School
Suzanne
@wjca: I call that “being volun-told”.
Or “opening your mouth and getting a job stuck in it”.
trollhattan
“Item 42.B.iv: on-site living unit with estimated value of $9,824.36.”
Done and dusted.
Roger Moore
@wjca:
My boss likes to say that if there aren’t enough volunteers, some of us will be voluntold.
Urza
@Adam L Silverman: Shouldn’t he be unable to get a clearance given he’s an admitted drug user? That is one of the questions and he’s certainly shown and talked about it enough in public.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: You’re most welcome.
Adam L Silverman
@Urza: We’re back into the same territory I wrote about a few weeks ago. If you owe the bank a thousand dollars the bank owns you. If you own the bank 10 million dollars you own the bank.
Musk owns the bank.
karen marie
@Adam L Silverman: I want to live long enough to stab a motherfucker with a pitchfork.
Kristine
@Adam L Silverman: I love that bunny 💕. In an “omg I know people like that” kinda way.
sukabi
@lowtechcyclist: that means he just didn’t pay them for their work…wonder how many of them will sue for back wages once it looks like his blood is truly in the water….
trollhattan
@Urza: I assume if he’s using drugs it’s for a perfectly good reason.
“No addict, no addict, you’re the addict.”
Redshift
@Old School: Conveniently, we already have “Christ, this asshole again!” posted in the thread…
karen marie
@Old School: “What is the plan for victory?”
CLAP HARDER, MOTHERFUCKER.
Redshift
@Old School: Can somebody ask McCarthy how many years he voted for funding for Afghanistan without a “plan for victory”?
Percysowner
Alexandra Petri is a national gift Things both my toddler and Elon Musk do that are signs of genius, apparently Gift link to Wapo, hope it works.
WaterGirl
@Old School:
No, I think the American public wants to know what the fuck is wrong with Squeaker McCarthy!
The American public wants to know why is McCarthy suck a cowardly prick?
The American public want to know how McCarthy can continue to demean himself and the office every single day.
Frankensteinbeck
At this point in his life, Musk’s major personality trait is to fuck around until he finds out. Not a side effect, that’s actually specifically a drive, to do destructive things that aren’t allowed for the asshole ego rush. He’s rich enough and well connected enough (mainly because of SpaceX) to greatly delay the finding out process, but it has a tendency to arrive no matter who you are if you keep pushing rather than investing in anti-finding-out steps.
Villago Delenda Est
LOCK HIM UP!
WaterGirl
@Percysowner: It works!
And Petri’s post is so awesome:
Adam L Silverman
@karen marie: Try this:
Adam L Silverman
@karen marie: Or this:
(not actually a) Dr. Th0th Evans
I just delurked to say: I suppose it’s not really relevant to anything but why does every picture of Musk make it look like the insects are about to break through the skin of his Earthling suit?
Jay
@Suzanne:
There was no steel, no concrete except the slab. The only thing holding up the walls on three sides was the glass panels and glass beams. The only reason the back wall was timberframe, fully cladded with only a double door, was because it backed onto the Sea to Sky Highway. There wern’t even frames for the windows and doors, just a laminated in box joint in the glass walls.
Here, you can’t build something like that any more. Earthquake codes, but the guy who had it built was an actual “Rock Star”. It was something like $30million back in the early 80’s, for 3500 sq ft, not including the land, services, etc. The bolting system tying the glass “walls” to the laminated beams, to keep the walls from collapsing inwards, just like a regular joist,…… well according to the owner at the time, they had to be pulled and inspected every year, along with the glass pass throughs, all 1800 of them, by an Engineer, just to keep it insured.
Arthur Erickson designed it, so it leaked like a sieve from day one.
I was there to deal with water damage and mold.
It is Apartheid Clyde we are talking about. I am surprised it wasn’t an acrylic dome.
WaterGirl
This can’t possibly be real, yet it is.
Susan Collins Threatens to Wear Bikini on Senate Floor in Protest of Dress Code Suspension https://mediaite.com/a/kqutc (twitter link)
Baud
@WaterGirl:
So she finally takes a stand about something. Good for her.
Bill Arnold
@Suzanne:
Someday we’ll have structural diamond as an option. :-)
Earlier pieces on this from the WSJ, one in July 2023:
DOJ, SEC Investigate Tesla Over Secret Glass House Project – Prosecutors are investigating Tesla’s use of funds on a project described internally as a house for Elon Musk (Rebecca Elliott, Dave Michaels, Aug. 30, 2023)
A Glass House for Elon Musk Sparks Internal Tesla Probe – Plans for Tesla’s secret ‘Project 42’ called for an unusual-looking glass structure in the Austin, Texas, area (Rebecca Elliott, Kirsten Grind, Emily Glazer, July 11, 2023)
eclare
@Frankensteinbeck:
What is the saying? The dildo of consequences arrives unlubed? I know I read that here.
hueyplong
The next time Collins carries through on a threat or a concern will be the first.
I’m for calling her bluff, even in light of the awful stakes.
NotMax
From earlier today. Check it out.
Hyperloop sucks.
Splitting Image
@trollhattan:
Well, he did write about a species that was so insanely hostile and prone to violence that if you locked one in a room by himself, he would sooner or later beat himself up.
Another species lived on a planet inside a nebula which hid the entire galaxy from view, and developed without being aware of other stars and other civilizations. When its first astronauts explored outside the nebula and discovered the existence of billions of other stars and millions of other races, their first thought was “It will all have to go.”
I mean, Adams never met the man, but you have to admit he was getting pretty close.
NotMax
Linky fail. Fix.
From earlier today. Check it out.
Hyperloop sucks.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: She’d still look less ridiculous than Senator Sinema.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Please proceed, senator. I would love to see you follow through.
dmsilev
@NotMax: Hyperloop always sucked. It was so ridiculous an idea that Musk didn’t even want to work on it himself, instead just throwing it out to let other people waste their time. Yes, “too absurd for Elon Musk” is apparently possible.
Jay
@NotMax:
Link is broken.
eversor
@jonas:
He not only built a flame thrower The Boring Company sells flame throwers. They they say it’s not a flame not a flame thrower for legal reasons. They also say it’s for the zombie apocolypse.
https://www.boringcompany.com/not-a-flamethrower
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
No moat, no flying car’s, no sharks with fricken lazer beams, or “Not A Flamethower!”
so basically an art project to keep the toddler amused and distracted,……
WaterGirl
@Baud: My first thought, too. THIS is her line in the sand?
Bill Arnold
This may date back to an exchange Mr. Musk had with John O. Brennan, somehow. CBA to untangle it much more.
Geminid
Musk’s recent encounter with Turkish President Erdogan presented a strange scene. As reported by Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu and Middle East Eye. Musk was seen entering the Turkish UN mission on Sunday carrying his son, who looked to be about 3 years old.
Then the two men exchanged pleasantries inside:
Erdogan: “Where is the mother?”
Musk: “She’s in San Francisco. We have separated, and I am taking care of him.”
Erdogan then leans in to give the kid a grandfatherly touch. The kid turns away from the strange Turkish guy.
So an aide hands Erdogan a shiny soccer ball that he presents to the boy, who glances at it and turns away again. Then Erdogan, who was a real baller in his younger days, deftly bounces the ball on the floor and presents it again to the kid, who is still unimpressed.
Next thing, Musk, with his child still on his arm, is sitting at a long coffee table with 8 Turkish men and one woman, with Erdogan at the head. They reportedly discussed a possible Turkish Tesla factory and the prospect of a Turkish astronaut being carried by a Space-X rocket. I bet the son was glad when the meeting was over. They probably all were.
Later Bora Bingol, a Turkish engineer and “old school Kemalist” who I follow on Twitter, posted a picture taken that day of Musk carrying two books with their covers exposed for effect. The smaller was Erdogan’s exposition of his plan to rotate the positions of the five permanent UN Security Council members among other states; the other featured a picture of Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk is still a big hero to many Turkish people, kind of like George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt rolled into one.
Mr. Bingol does not like Erdogan and his AKP party at all, but he was still intrigued by the American tycoon’s expression of respect for Turkiye’s leaders.
japa21
@WaterGirl:
The American public wants to know why is McCarthy suck a cowardly prick?
I know it was just a typo, but so appropriate.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
Sand? In a bikini?
What was she doing and who was she doing it with?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Jay
@Geminid:
Nope, just sucking up,……….
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
If she were really serious, she’d threaten to show up nude. It would be proof she has nothing to hide.
eversor
@Urza:
That gets waved if you’re a super rich person that the DoD or IC needs something from. Case in point Steve Jobs. Jobs repeatedly talked about doing acid and how it changed his mind and made him creative. While say smoking pot in the past is often glossed over as a big nothing burger LSD is one of those things that is a total deal breaker. But they needed Jobs for domestic and foreign work so they cleared him anyways.
Could also point to Peter Thiel. Known thrower of drug fueled gay parties. Yet he built an internal and foreign intelligence gathering company named Palantir from Lord of the Rings.
This stuff happens all the time with people in tech or finance.
Elmo’s undoing is going to be fucking with Pentagon operations via Star Link or SpaceX.
WaterGirl
@eclare:
Susan Collins clearly did not think this one through.Correction: Susan Collins never thinks any her positions through. Either that, our she is a total liar.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Hyperloop was a shiny object to distract people from high-speed rail. He doesn’t want any practical alternatives to driving, and CA high-speed rail threatened to be just that. So he came up with Hyperloop as an amazing-sounding alternative. Of course it would fail, but only after distracting attention from something that would work, hopefully for long enough to kill the project. It’s the same thing he’s doing with The Boring Company, except that is supposed to stop people from working on public transit.
LiminalOwl
@Gin & Tonic: Wow, thank you. You just sent me down a rabbit hole that I will be exploring more.
(Hi, all. W ill be reading more, but typing less, for a few days. At home and unable to work after shoulder-repair surgery.)
karensky
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks for the Hightower quote!
M31
@Adam L Silverman: I think they mean the graphic that is like a “Little Golden Book” with a bunny on the cover and the title is “Christ not this asshole again” or the like
evergreen, these past few decades
edited to add: oops was about an hour behind the times, as usual
suzanne
@Bill Arnold:
So just a building with glass walls.
I know I am being pedantic, but it’s for a reason: Musk gets talked about and written about like he’s some genius who’s doing shit that’s never been done. Writing about his dumb house like it’s some innovative breakthrough and not just a standard rich-douche-with-bad-taste glass box underscores that.
It’s not. He’s not.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: I approve!
Villago Delenda Est
@WaterGirl: I go for option two.
Geminid
@Jay: That’s possible. And cynicism is certainly the safest default analysis when it comes to someone like Musk. On the other hand, Musk is sort of a multi-polar guy, and Erdogan definitely is.
Musk is also interested in historical figures, and Ataturk was a very transformational one. But I think you must know Musk much better than me or Bora Bingol, who might be just a rube from Istanbul.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Yep. Musk often tries to pretend that the libertarian fantasy of mighty individuals living free of government is reality. Previously he tried to flout SEC regulations, only to get slapped down. Having to obey financial regulations is probably why he couldn’t back out of his offer to buy Twitter.
He had a sweet thing going with Tesla, but will probably run it into the ground just as he is doing with X.
Somewhat related, Trump’s legal problems accelerated because he treated the presidency as a personal bauble that he had acquired and could do with as he wished.
Hubris. Gets them every time.
eversor
@Roger Moore:
He bet everything on a fleet of self driving electric cars. Electric cars are already hurting public tranist. A lot of people took public tranist for environmental issues, EVs remove that motive. Also with remote work and less traffic Uber is pretty good and most of the vechiles are EVs or Hybrids now.
Geminid
@eversor: A little off-topic: I saw my first Rivian pickup truck yesterday, at a small country store.
eversor
@Geminid:
I’ve yet to see one of those in the wild.
eclare
@eversor:
I saw one about six months ago here in Memphis. Good looking truck.
Geminid
@eversor: This one was brand spanking new. The driver slowly crossed a speed bump like he was balancing a glass of water on his head.
Jay
@eversor:
Here, people take Public Transit for the convenience, cost and ease, not because it’s “green”.
I can hop Skytrain to downtown or the airport, in half the time or more than driving, for less than it costs to charge an EV, let alone pay for gas and parking. Plus, I can have coffee, a snack and surf my phone while doing so, or read a book.
Skytrain, bus, bus used to take me to work everyday, 15 minutes more than driving, no hassal, a fraction of the cost, plus, I had my “bus buddies”, people who took the same route out and back, on the same schedules. Rather than white knuckling the #1 and the Port Mann, we would chat, bs and tell jokes.
Even though I have a car, I havn’t driven here in over 3 years.
Dan B
@Geminid: We’ve been seeing Rivians weekly for months, including the new Amazon delivery vans – one this very afternoon. And we’re in SE Seattle which us majority minority and the poorest part of the city.
prostratedragon
@zhena gogolia: Ah, another Bunny fan. Was just reminded of Bunny yesterday, for some news-related reason or other.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Seems more than remotely likely…..
Dan B
@Jay: Skytrain is awesome. The views from high above the city are amazing. Seattle’s powers that be didn’t get it so we have a subway except in the dull neighborhoods.
Ruckus
@wjca:
Exactly the same in the navy.
I am imagining that it’s the same in every branch. OK not so much imagining, pretty much thinking YEP.
H.E.Wolf
@karensky: “@H.E.Wolf: Thanks for the Hightower quote!”
Texas idioms are in a class by themselves. :) Molly Ivins once said of a TX state legislator: “If his IQ were any lower, they’d have to water him twice a day.”
Betty
@WaterGirl: Do it, Susan. We dare you!
Ruckus
@Dan B:
Here in SoCal I’ve seen one Rivian.
wjca
Show of hands. Who thinks McCarthy could tell the difference between a legitimate plan for victory and a piece of total bull which just said “Victory Plan” on the label.
I’m seeing a distinct lack of hands….
scav
If they truly suited up professionally, many serving members of Congress would be wearing clown suits. If not stripes.
The Lodger
@Geminid: I see about one a week here in Portland.
Timill
@wjca: Hmm…
McC: What’s the Victory Plan?
Z: (looking around): Can you keep a secret?
McC: Yes
Z: So can I.
Jeffro
more than a little OT but OMG, Nikki Haley on President Biden: “…the most pro-union President we’ve ever had…”
We don’t even HAVE an ad budget for 2024, do we? We sure won’t need one. LOLOL
KEEP TALKIN’, GOP CANDIDATES, PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU
Baud
@Jeffro:
“And even worse, Joe Biden is all in on restoring abortion rights across the nation!”
Hoppie
@WaterGirl:
Not sure this is a typo?
Ken
You sure it wasn’t a Cybertruck? I understand they have problems with rough terrain like that.
Sister Golden Bear
@Bill Arnold:
You might say it’s a Glass Onion house.
Sister Golden Bear
@Adam L Silverman:
Me: Hey France, whatcha doin’?
France: Maintenance de routine. Pas grave.
Me: But, it … kinda looks like…
France: Maintenance de routine!
Jay
@Ken:
Rivan’s stand out quite a bit,
and it was a speed bump, not a curb///
eversor
@Jay:
I didn’t say everyone. I’m in the DC area and the METRO isn’t always more convienient. If you are already downtown than yes. But get outside a bit more and it’s not. When I worked at a place that was a sub 20 min drive from where I live taking the METRO + BUS to get there was an hour. That’s leaving out the walking parts which easily put it at an hour 20 mins and with no delays on the METRO or BUS. A late metro causing you to miss a bus could easily spike the trip to around two hours. When I worked in Georgetown which is under a 10 min drive the walk to the METRO to the metro itself may have been about 8 mins, if everything is going, but both walks from the stations were 15 mins. While that’s not a big deal, it’s not convient. Likewise to go to the college I get my IT certs at the drive is 25 or so. Bus plus METRO is well over an hour.
A lot of people do like public transit because it’s green. They sell it on that here. But with EVs you see more and more of the middle class opting out of public transit (no gas so cheap as well) which makes public transit a bit less supported and more of a poor/working class thing than before. That’s not good.
StringOnAStick
@Geminid: There’s several Rivian’s in our 140,000 person town. Lots of Tesla’s but because this is a winter sports town that AWD Kia EV is quite popular. The ski area has a bunch of charging stations.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Elon is a very wealthy asshole who thinks he can have anything he wants. He wants a glass house and no pissant building inspector is going to get in his way – HE’S ELON.
Now.
All that said, I’d bet that the building inspector can’t be bought on this one. What inspector is going to sign their name to a building that can easily fall down on anyone within range of all that glass?
At least unless he can guarantee that elon will be inside at the time.
prostratedragon
Night of great black&white movies on TCM. If I had to pick just one, Night of the Hunter at 9Eastern, but all are excellent, starting with Angel Face now.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
The American public want to know how McCarthy can continue to demean himself and the office every single day.
He has a very low opinion of himself. Which of course is well deserved.
lowtechcyclist
@eversor:
Well yeah, they designed the Metro system for the DC area of the 1960s, have a system that worked for downtown DC and for commuting to and from what are now the inner ‘burbs. No notion that people might be driving between burbs at busy times of day, it wasn’t like that then.
To fix that and bring the system up to date, you’d need a shitload of money to make it a real network, first buying the rights-of-way and then building the rails and buying the cars. Tens of billions at least.
It’s still good for what it does, but no, it doesn’t and won’t do everything a DC-area rail system in the 2020s or 2030s should. But there’s no way the DC area could have grown the way it has without Metro.
Hoppie
@Ruckus: Makes him a Narcissabitionist ? Enquiring minds, people are saying….
brantl
@Suzanne: Dumber fucks than the dumb fucks that wrote it originally.
artem1s
@trollhattan:
Adams gave us another meme that perfectly describes Elon and the rest of these ‘edgelord’ assholes. B Ark passengers.
Hoppie
@lowtechcyclist:
A: He should be told that’s why there are busses, and RSN the Purple Line.
B: I was very Balto-Wash 1970 thru the early eighties. People can google “Wedges and Corridors” to see that DC area Metro was designed as a commuter rail system. I could still (eventually) ride Dupont Circle to Union Station (after suffering MANY years of construction) but still am nostalgic for 85 cent taxi fares… rounded easily to a dollar!
Cliosfanboy
@Suzanne:
what, you never saw “13 Ghosts”?
karen marie
@Adam L Silverman: Excellent!
@Adam L Silverman: Size matters
Suzanne
@Ruckus: It won’t get as far as a building inspector. Something has to hold the building up. Until there are glass columns (there are glass mullions, but those are not gravity-load-bearing) and glass foundations, the primary structural frame has to be something else. There also has to be a way to get electricity, water, hot and cool air, internet, security cameras, etc. etc etc.
Again, I harp on this because this fuzzy-ass language — “a glass structure with residential features” or whatever the fuck — serves this myth of Elmo as some superhuman genius. Like he’s too special to live in a fucken house, like everyone else. Like he’s figured out how to have his glass house defy the laws of physics.
Also, architects lie in renderings. (I don’t personally render, but my projects get the same treatment.) It’s amazing how many beautiful renders I see that look much more prosaic when actually built, because we minimize all the stuff that actually makes the building work to make the render look nice.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Kinda OT, but you might like the Corning Glass Museum in Corning, NY (probably 5-ish hours driving from you.)
wjca
No question, there’s a lot of that. But for me, if I’m working in (or otherwise going to) an urban area, the critical bit is parking. If I’m driving, I could spend 15 minutes searching for a place to park, and then another 10 walking back to my destination. Not to mention the probable cost, if I’m going to be there any length of time.
Tehanu
@Roger Moore:
This, and as soon as possible!
@WaterGirl: Thanks, I’m still chuckling.
Re public transit: I live about a mile from a subway stop, Wilshire & Western in L.A. Instead of driving to my office (30 miles each way) I could theoretically walk 10 blocks up the hill to Wilshire, another 12 blocks to Western, catch the train, change at Union Station to the Gold Line, get off at the Irwindale station, and walk another mile and a half to my office while carrying a purse and laptop (and the damn thing weighs a ton btw). But I’m 75 and that is really not going to happen. So I drive. I only WISH I could take the train.
Tony G
Time to deport Elon’s ass back to South Africa. It’s not apartheid there anymore.
glc
@Baud: Ok, now I’m laughing like a madman while staring on my computer, within hearing of others.
“Thanks, Baud.”
We may not need any more tags after that one.
I was thinking of starting a go-fund-me to send Musk to Mars, but my wife says there probably is one already. If it falls short, low earth orbit would do. Need to research this and work out the details.
unctuous
@Suzanne: Yeah but a big glass house in fuckin’ hot as hell Texas.
It’s part dumbfuckery, part conspicuous consumption, and 100% arrogance.
RaflW
@trollhattan: Adams satirized all dudes like Musk — via the inimitable Zaphod Beeblebrox. He didn’t to know (or even know of) Elon in particular to do it.
unctuous
@Suzanne: The muskies may think their idol can defy gravity but when the Texas summer sun hits all that glass the structure will most surely follow the laws of thermodynamics.
Just add thousands of tons of cooling capacity and turn up the AC, I suppose.
It’s only money and the environment being wasted so no prob. Until the next Texas power failure.
And to think there’s still people would let this moron rocket them to Mars. I say, let him.
Subsole
@Geminid:
He probably admires them for what they did to the Armenians.
Another Scott
@Suzanne:
This sounds like the place Jay is talking about.
I could be wrong though. Corrections welcome.
Cheers,
Scott.
Spider-Dan
@suzanne: I think you’re giving Elmo more credit than even he is claiming. Nowhere does the article claim that he designed it, or that he’s the one building it. He’s just another rich guy who said “I want a house made entirely out of glass!” like any other obscenely rich idiot, and he doesn’t care if it’s a dumb (or even illegal) idea.
The nature of your replies seems to presume that the public will see a glass house as some sort of engineering miracle that proves he’s The Real Life Tony Stark, but I think most would just see it as weirdo shit. A billionaire screaming “Build me a glass house!” does not even imply intelligence. I’m sure you can build a house out of all sorts of stupid shit when money is no object and you don’t care how it functions.
Shalimar
@Spider-Dan: There is the story about him meeting architects last year to discuss plans on a more recent house. Based on Elon’s history, he isn’t the type of person to just say “build me a glass house.” He is going to have detailed meetings, contribute all his ideas for what he wants, and then think in his mind he did 90% of the work while the architects go design the thing. There is no way this glass house plan existed to the point where they had a name for the project without him being heavily involved.
Geminid
@Subsole: That’s possible. For many, Kemal Ataturk stands for all things Turkish, and Turks are often thought of as an exceptionally bloodthirsty people very unlike Western Europeans.
And a lot of people may not know that in 1915, when Envir Pasha and other Ottoman leaders carried out the Armenian genocide, Mustapha Kemal was fighting the British in Palestine, hundreds of miles to the southwest. Musk could have made that mistake.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: Way late to the thread – and it may be wrong of me to say this anyway – but I just love watching you Hulk out over architectural absurdities. : )
Suzanne
@Another Scott: It’s literally described as a “steel and glass house”. It’s a steel structure (the steel holds the building up) and the glass is just windows.
The equivalent is saying that you’re a skin person or a flesh person. But you have bones! The bones hold you up!
Kayla Rudbek
@scav: or they would have more logos on their shirts than a professional bike racer or race car driver