He who laughs last…
Is it too early to celebrate?
BREAKING:
Elon Musk being investigated by SEC for Securities Fraud, per new legal filing in SEC vs Musk: pic.twitter.com/i0Y7YpVuGO
— Gabe Hoffman (@GabeHoff) March 13, 2024
x
Credit and predictions per BGrahamDisciple on Threads: pic.twitter.com/ai8gxNXQI1
— Gabe Hoffman (@GabeHoff) March 13, 2024
These assholes always always always bring it upon themselves.
Open thread. Open season on Musk!
Baud
Will probably reconsider not donating to Trump.
Jeffro
I sincerely hope there’s a plan for the feds to rush in and take whatever they need in order to keep this clown from causing major damage to our country.
Grab his devices, put knowledgeable people in place to keep Starlink running for Ukraine and others, etc.
The shit (hopefully!) going on behind the scenes must be intense.
trollhattan
@Jeffro: I’d leave him the tunnels thing and give everything else to competent non-sociopathic people.
But I’d have to be Gawd, so that’s not happening. SpaceX is awfully intertwined with NASA and DoD now.
SiubhanDuinne
If I play tiny violin for Lone Skum, will I have enough tiny violin left over to play tiny violin for Lauren Boebert downstairs?
🎻🧐
Parfigliano
@trollhattan: To connected to jail.
Martin
Musk will sue that the SEC is unconstitutional.
Baud
@Martin:
Already before the Supreme Court.
scav
Is there any America left if rich men and former presidents are not only expected to obey the law but prosecuted when they don’t?!
I’m going to buy stocks in fainting couches and pearls as well as the standing order for popcorn.
Martin
Related, SpaceX got a launch license from the FAA, may launch Starship tomorrow. Probably won’t blow up.
trollhattan
@Martin:
Have they refurbed the launchpad so it no longer blows chunks miles at the neighbors?
Guess we’ll find that out, too.
Martin
@Baud: No, that case is only that the SEC tribunals are unconstitutional – that defendants of security fraud are entitled to a court trial. Musk would argue the SEC is itself unconstitutional – that the US has no standing to regulate securities at all.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne: May I suggest tiny banjos for Boebert? Then everybody gets serenaded!
Timill
@trollhattan: Fixed last time for launch #2. That shouldn’t be a problem.
At this point I’m expecting Super Heavy to work mostly OK, and something to go wrong on Starship.
Martin
@trollhattan: Yeah, that was solved before the 2nd flight. Works fine. That was an example I offered up of how Musk classifies things into ‘hard’ and ‘easy’, with civil engineering being ‘easy’, meaning he doesn’t need to listen to actual civil engineers tell him that concrete will not just spall but actually explode due to retained moisture turning to steam. It’s why he does so much dumb shit – because he has this hierarchy of difficulty in his head that belies the actual system of expertise that we rely on. Social media is similarly ‘easy’. Automotive design is hard, but manufacturing is easy, so he gets experts to design a capable car and then fucks up the process of making it.
CaseyL
I think this is the latest filing in an ongoing SEC suit against Musk – I can’t find anything on any news sites about it. The SEC brought suit against Musk over the Twitter sale months ago.
This is not a new lawsuit, is what I’m saying; it’s the ongoing grind of an existing lawsuit.
Baud
@CaseyL:
Thanks. I recall a prior investigation, but wasn’t sure if this was new.
Martin
@Timill: I think they’re at the ‘solved problems’ phase of this, so I think it’ll go to plan. It’ll look to a lot of people like a failure because Starship plops into the ocean, but that’s intended. It looks like a failure because it’s a different process to how NASA typically works.
Also note that NASA’s preferred way of operating and Boeing’s are very compatable. Note where Boeing is right now. There are a lot of benefits to design/build/test.
bbleh
Maybe it’s simply that, thanks to the Internet and social media, information is both more quickly available and more quickly transmitted, but I’m starting to get kinda tired of the never-ending, volume-at-11 Clash Of The Titans. Congressional Republicans and Robert Hur vs. Joe Biden. Jack Smith vs. Donald Trump. SEC vs. Elon Musk. “Uncommitted” vs. Joe Biden. Donald Trump vs. Fani Willis vs. Donald Trump. And all of it with incessant, high-volume media coverage. It’s like I’m trapped in some endless MCU marathon with a bunch of preadolescents on meth. And we’re just getting into spring! What’s it gonna be like by summer?
I dunno, maybe it’s time for some videos of butterflies, or a college of puppies working on the perpetual mystery of Ball.
Martin
@CaseyL: It goes further back than that when Musk said on Twitter he was going to take Tesla private. He’s been in SEC crosshairs since at least 2018.
Baud
@bbleh:
I’ve mostly deplugged for that reason. There’s so much fake hype and trying to win the day. Politics reminds me of Wall Street in that sense.
scav
@CaseyL: The section above the yellow is clearly talking about a two year investigation. I assumed the burst of mild excitement is more about the details of what is being investigated than anything else. Plus getting on record that Musk (like others we needn’t mention) keeps lying about the case despite being told the facts.
Jay
Apartheid Clyde is currently:
and about 10,000 other horrible, evil things each day,
plus snorting ketamine like it’s Studio 54 cocaine.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
Fine suggestion, thanks!
🪕 <—- enlarged to highlight details
HumboldtBlue
I’m just getting online, any update on Betty?
sab
In my little city Teslas used to be very very rare. I remember having seen maybe 4 of them ever. Now they are pretty common. I see 4 or 5 of them every day on my morning commute from Akron to a west Cleveland suburb. Also around town.
Why are they so common? Less expensive? Different people buying them? New source for buying them I haven’t heard about?
trollhattan
@sab:
My work parking lot has a dozen, easily. Engineers love them. Or pickups, pick one.
Some drives in the Bay Area they seem to be a quarter of the cars on the road. IOW utterly common in NorCal where, coincidentally, they are built and Elmo could not flee fast enough, because we are mean.
CaseyL
@Baud:
@bbleh:
If you don’t already read/follow her, I recommend checking out law blogger Teri Kanefield. She’s gotten as fed up with lefty outrage-clickbait as she is with the RW variety.
She has a website and is also on Mastodon (and, possibly, Bluesky, but I’m not sure).
Dan B
@sab: EV sales is the only growth area for automobiles in the US. They’re very inexpensive to operate and maintenance is mostly rotating tires. Here in minority majority SE Seattle I see four or five EX’s in the one mile drive to the grocery store.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nice! “Dueling Banjos” two octaves up now playing in my head.
SeattleDem
@sab: about half of all cars manufactured in the US in 2022 were Teslas and about 10% of all vehicles sold in the US were Teslas. Part of the reason they are so popular is that they are a known quantity with a purchase price about $5000 below the median new car price. Despite the stories about them, very few actually explode. My experience is that gas would have to be at 25 cents per gallon for my Ford Ranger to be comparable in fuel costs. Add in the fact that there are practically no maintenance costs, and it seems silly to buy anything else.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Starlink was my very first thought.
Hoping Musk comes to regret taking Putin’s side and sabotaging soldiers fighting for their lives and the sovereignty of their country.
grumbles
@sab:
Prices have dropped substantially.
First, because DudeBro needed to make his numbers to fluff the stock.
But they’re still dropping on the used market, because the first price drop hurt car rental shops. Those are super sensitive to the resale value of rental cars, so when all those Teslas were devalued, the rental shops started dumping them too because they were suddenly losing money on them.
And thats happening while the public image of the car is going from “the future!” to “crappily constructed toys for assholes”, and D00dBro’s public image is going from superhero capitalist to racist crank with an ego big enough for its own space colony.
So, yeah. I expect this is probably a reasonable time to stop holding, for those who do.
WaterGirl
@Martin: Unscheduled something something?
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: Are there legal filings in investigations? To me this seems different from the vague “investigating” that was going on before.
But I am not an SEC expert.
trollhattan
@SeattleDem: I have this scenario rattling in my head where the area tweakers who steal catalytic converters keep jacking up Teslas at two in the morning and still can’t figure out where to saw.
brendancalling
@trollhattan: please do not slur the noble and joyful banjo.
BeautifulPlumage
Ha Ha Ha
Don Lemon asked him about his drug use in Don’s new internet show so X dropped their contract with the show.
BeautifulPlumage
The owner of the company I work for has several of them. The one his daughter is driving keeps dying on her but Tesla service hasn’t been able to help.
Dan B
@BeautifulPlumage: Free speech! Absolute free speech!!
Jay
@sab:
Tesla cars have a common design style. When a Tesla passes you or you pass a Tesla, even with a fleeting glimpse, you know it’s a Tesla.
Most other manufacturers base their EV models on an existing ICE/Hybrid model, as a result, they don’t stand out so much, (other than the BMW mini SUV).
Here, according to ICBC, just over 30% of cars are EV’s, but less than 10% are Tesla’s.
Tesla’s here are also not an entry level EV, unless bought used. They are considered to be a “douchemobile”, like a F-350, a form of virtue signaling, and it’s not the “I want to save the planet” signal.
wjca
Why am I thinking that accreditation may be challenging for this college?
sab
@Jay: I was afraid that they had become a douchemobile (not that I care about Teslas, owner aside, because they seem to be so dangerous. ) Apparently Teslas, like Trump and the Muskrat, thrive on publicity good or bad.
Jay
@wjca:
Not really, even though some puppies are not “good boys”, the rest are “good girls”.
Accreditation should be easy.
TheOtherHank
@bbleh: It’s no college of puppies, but here’s a video of my (now quite old, but then young and spry) dog chasing her tail: Mica and the no good very bad tail
Jay
@sab:
many of the new cars are somewhat dangerous, mostly caused by the reliance on screens for basic tasks and the complexity of the screen based features.
we, as drivers, are supposed to keep our eyes on the road at all times, but when you have to navigate a center mounted touch screen display to adjust the heat, change radio stations, check a map, have some automated driving features, etc,………
mrmoshpotato
Too bad! So sad! Fuck ’em!
Pete Downunder
@Jay: I’ve had a Tesla Model 3 for about 5 years now. I really like the acceleration, low cost of operation and interior room but I hate the touch screen. From a human factors perspective it is horribly dangerous. The simplest things, air con, radio station etc require taking eyes off the road to find where to put your finger. I will buy another EV, but not one that depends on a touch screen.
Martin
@sab: Social acceptance. That arrives in different places at different times. EVs used to be weird and risky, now they’re just cars.
Jay
@Pete Downunder:
we have shops here, that at a reasonable price, given the work involved, will convert an old ICE car or light truck, into an EV. They use mostly Tesla parts from the wreckers, (Tesla’s here have a horrible accident record, too fast, too quiet, too much acceleration, crappy traffic and road conditions).
So, you get dash gauges, manual windows, manual heater and AC controls, a CD Player you can plug your IPhone or IPod into, a back up camera, no software updates, fast charging, etc, dependent on what you bring to them as an ICE car.
A guy in my building has a 1975 Datsun 510, converted into an EV. At one time, it was raced, back in the day, so the suspension and handling easily handles the increased acceleration and higher speeds. It has the regenerative braking features of an EV, plus 12″ hydraulic disks on each corner. It’s quite the hot rod.
Because he already had the car, (but blown motor and tranny), the conversion only cost him $35K for what is essentially a new car.
wjca
I suspect that the requirement to use the touch screen for anything and everything in cars is a passing fad. As you say, it’s actively dangerous to require it for some things. Figure in a few years it will be retained only for the handful of things where it actually makes sense. And for other stuff we’ll be back to switches and dials that you can use by touch, without having to look.
bbleh
@wjca: don’t be silly! We’ll be wearing FULL-VR GOGGLES, that will enable us to scan 360 DEGREES without anything in the way, and will display ALL necessary data in our visual field so there’s NEVER any need for us to shift our attention from operating the vehicle and everything will proceed smoothly and w1t50ut 3rr0r qr9vHQW^$$1**![smash]
SeattleDem
The touch screen control dependency is definitely my least favorite part of the Tesla. I’ve switched to mostly using voice control, with standard phrases like “defroster on” or “turn wipers higher”. That helps, especially on the freeway. I do like the large map screen. It beats the hell out of trying to read my iPhone map while driving.
Quadrillipede
@bbleh: FWIW, I’ve started taking the last hour or two before bed to switch off political input and watch informational / educational videos on YouTube as a mental cleanse before sleeping. I’m happy with the improvement in sleep quality I think I’m getting from it…
Quadrillipede
+1 Teri is doing phenomenal work IMHO.
Quadrillipede
Oh, and I realize I have neglected to point and laugh at mElon. Let’s address that:
Ha ha! 👉 🍉
Uncle Cosmo
Not a fan of Lone Skum, but I’m rooting for Starship/Heavy tomorrow. SpaceX is doing good work developing reusable orbital rockets – getting 33 Raptors to function properly on the Heavy was real progress. If they can access wind or solar to pull O2 and CO2 out of the atmosphere and run the Sabatier process to make methane, orbital flights might even end up not only routine but carbon-neutral to boot.
Uncle Cosmo
Yes. We found that out on the most recent launch. Try to keep up.
Villago Delenda Est
LOCK HIM UP!
rekoob
@Jay: The Datsun 510/Bluebird/1600 would make a fantastic EV (especially a station wagon)! Not ready to convert my Honda S2000, but it’s tempting.
A Westfield XI (Lotus Eleven replica) would be fun, too. How many Spridget underpinnings are still around?
Jay
@rekoob:
with the current price of cars/trucks, new,
if you can afford it, (not low dealer financing at 1% for the first 6 months)
and can afford the time,
reworking an older vehicle often makes great sense.
Buddy has a reno company. Reworking his fleet to all electric.
1940’s, 50’s and 60’s 5 tons, with clear coated “patina”.
He say’s it’s the best advertising tool he has ever used.
Ramalama
Turtle Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law died, trapped in a Tesla.
Car deaths happen all the time for a variety of reasons, but I am unwilling to suspend my utter dislike of Elmo and my experiences as a passenger in a Tesla to give them much credit.