Still probably overvalued. https://t.co/nmLZjHgjo8
— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) March 31, 2024
… the more he expose!
For entertainment purposes only… Ed Zitron, at his blog Where’s Your Ed At, on “The Descent of Elon Musk”:
… Musk is, on paper, the most successful man in the world. He’s a social media star, a multi-billionaire with his own social network, and he owns a 20.5 percent stake in the world’s most valuable car company by market cap. He knows — or can easily get in touch with — almost anybody in the world, and has the means to start or incubate any venture under the sun.
Yet with the world at his fingertips, Musk seems joyless, marinating in misery, surrounded by an air of existential bleakness…
Lemon’s interview is fascinating for many reasons, chief of which is that Elon Musk sounds really, really stupid. The supposed real-life Tony Stark is ineloquent, stumbling through his answers with the verbal agility of somebody that just woke up, his dialogue a buffet of “uhs” and “ums,” with even his answers to softball questions feeling like he’s making the answers up in real time. Within five minutes, he effectively admitted to not watching Don Lemon’s show, claiming Don (and CNN) were “center-left,” yet not appearing to have a clear answer as to why.
Elon Musk, a man with unimaginable money and power, has the elegance and eloquence of a nervous teenager. His delivery is stilted, convoluted yet specious, echoing a lack of research or real understanding of anything he’s talking about beyond what he might have glanced at in between posting stolen memes and begging people to use his website. He seemed uncomfortable, and professionally-speaking, these aren’t the actions of an introverted or shy personality, but somebody who hasn’t had to answer a real question in decades. It’s remarkable that we’ve never seen an interview like this with a tech founder, let alone Elon Musk, made more-so by how much even the lightest brush with criticism aggravated and frustrated him…
Fundamentally, he seems miserable. He looks tired, not the kind of tired you get from doing something you love, but from the exhaustion one gets when you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel…
The Broke Mind Virus
Over the last few months, Musk’s character arc has shifted from fucking around to finding out. In late January, a Delaware judge ruled that the $50+ billion compensation package given to Musk by Tesla’s board was “an unfathomable sum” that was unfair to shareholders, arguing that the board of directors was beholden to Elon, with the Wall Street Journal reporting a few days later that directors felt “pressured” to do drugs with a man who controls numerous government contracts and the backbone of America’s electric vehicle infrastructure…Musk is out of tricks to buoy Tesla’s already-bloated valuation as the markets and media grow increasingly incredulous when faced with his bloviating, partly due to the raw numbers turning against him and partly because he’s really, really annoying.
Twitter has become a public referendum on Musk, both as a person and an executive. As its owner, Musk has destroyed somewhere between 71% and 90% of its value in just over a year, and NBC reported last week that Twitter’s global daily active users had fallen 15% year-over-year, and 18% year-over-year in America, its largest market, with growth flat or declining every single month since 2022. While Musk claimed that bots were rife on the platform before he acquired it, the problem is now unquestionably worse, with spammy and scammy ads flooding the platform, and seemingly every post getting a response from either a cryptocurrency or pornography bot…
Even if you can somehow put aside his disgusting personality, Elon Musk is also a woefully ineffective executive. Twitter has gone from the world’s town square to the red light district of social media, with every popular post flooded with “verified” users making nonsense posts in the hope that they’ll get a cut from Twitter’s “creator program” that indiscriminately and arbitrarily pays money to users, including rigging the system to pay Mr. Beast $250,000 for posting one video. It’s not hyperbole to say that almost every post I make on the platform gets someone saying “nudes in bio” or attempting to recruit me into some sort of cryptocurrency grift, and by choosing to no longer verify accounts based on anything other than them having eight dollars, Musk has created a hotbed for scams, with some of them leading to dark and dangerous places…
The Blue Albatross
Though it’s unlikely that Musk ever goes broke, his current situation is deeply, deeply unstable. Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire collapsed — other than the fact that he was a giant fraudster — in part because he leveraged funds that he could never sell, and Musk’s reliance on Tesla’s eternal growth engine as a means of funding his expensive lifestyle is deeply rickety…Elon Musk’s fortune was built on the Elon Musk brand, a brand that was built off of the vagueness of his legend and his assumed intelligence. That legend is collapsing under the weight of Musk’s need for attention and inability to retreat at exactly the time where Tesla needs a stable, reliable and consistent executive.
And as things begin to fall apart, Musk will become more deranged, more bigoted, more cruel and more chaotic. Twitter has maybe a year left before it fully buckles under the weight of his terrible decision-making, and outside of a miracle growth-spurt, Musk’s reign at Tesla is coming to a close.
Though much of what I’ve written here is deeply depressing, I do want to leave you with some good news:
Elon Musk is absolutely miserable, and there’s little good news in his future.
War for Ukraine Day 767: Russia Bombarded Ukraine Again Overnight
HumboldtBlue
What’s your name?
Splitting Image
This is actually a lot likelier than Zitron thinks. Even if all of the companies under Musk’s umbrella oust him to save their own skins, he’ll be left with enough billions to live happily on for as many thousand years as cloning technology can keep a sensible person alive.
Musk isn’t sensible though. He’ll start a dozen new companies that will all fail because he is a moron. He might kill himself with drugs before he goes broke, but if he lives long enough, he’ll spend his seventies in worse shape than the other scumbag, who was saved from bankruptcy by a TV job at NBC.
Ruckus
I wonder how many people no longer use whatever we are calling elon’s social media platform?
I used to be on twitter as much as here on BJ. Since elon bought it, I’ve tapered off to zero. If I remember correctly that taper took about a week. I checked today and it won’t even open for me any longer. And I’m not about to ask to be allowed back on, as it seems like such a waste of time, energy, and electrons. And I’m retired so time is something I have in bushels, and BTW I’m not contemplating buying one of his cars either.
piratedan
I’m waiting for him to take his ball and go home after he’s broken all of his other toys.
In all truthiness, I’m surprised that the DoD hasn’t insisted on removing him as a defense contractor as of yet.. I know that the 46 Admin has a number of concerns ongoing, with getting Ukraine funding done, trying to extract Bibi from the ass of the universe gracefully, plus dealing with all of the homegrown fascism before wanting to be taking a flyer on pulling EM’s teeth.
I guess it’s the corollary to that old saw, how do you make an asshole? just add power. This one could be Pirate’s theorem, how do you fuck up a good business? just add Conservatism.
Chet Murthy
@piratedan:
That’s very good, I’ll have to remember this! Thank you!
rikyrah
He will soon be a business school case study.
Just watch.😒😒
eclare
@Ruckus:
I still use Twitter (I will never refer to it as X). I choose who I follow carefully, around a dozen people, from Joe to the blogfather to Paul Bronks with his silly animal videos. Since I don’t let the evil algorithm choose for me, I don’t see all the racist Nazi crap that is out there, so for me it works like it always has.
Its destruction really saddens me, it was so useful for so many.
Dangerman
I hear rumors of a superbloom on the Carrizo Plains.
It’s amazing if so. Make it a bucket list item if you are CA person. There is a road (improved deer path?) from 166 to 58. Call ahead to the Rangers Office at Soda Lake for any surprises with all this rain. You don’t want to break down on the Carrizo if there is no superbloom. If there is a superbloom, still be careful, but you won’t be alone.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
For my particular use case, the death knell for Twitter was losing Tweetdeck – first its conversion into the new, less useful form, and then its sequestration behind the subscription wall. Tweetdeck allowed me to manage two accounts, where I communicated with people in two sequestered aspects of my life (one as my true self, one under an identity I assumed while playing EVE Online, a game where exposing your true identity was a dangerous, terrible idea). It also stuck with chronological feeds, rather than the algorithm-based force-feeding that you got with vanilla Twitter (though not to the absurd degree of Facebook), and it didn’t push ads.
Twitter, for me, was more of a personal communications tool than a publicity-generating thing. I didn’t give a damn how many people followed me, so long as I could keep in touch with groups of people I knew, and the old Twitter system made that relatively easy.
Elmo destroyed all of that. I occasionally browse, but I haven’t posted on Twitter in either aspect for several years now. I have better uses for eight dollars a month, and nothing Elmo offers justifies that expense for me.
He claims vox populi, vox Dei, but it’s more vox pecuniae, vox diaboli.
Layer8Problem
Having a nice little thunderstorm here in DC. I never mind being awakened by those.
Ruckus
@eclare:
If I was to call it anything I’d call it X, just so everyone would know I was discussing the shit show that is elon buying the previous owners out and improving it so much that for me it is far worse than just useless. It doesn’t work at all for me. Oh wait, being that useless means I don’t have to check it for anything, because it gives me literally absolutely nothing.
MattF
And no one has even mentioned the Cybertruck…
Ishiyama
Twitter? I never even met her!
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Dangerman: Also a good location for astrophotography.
SilentZ
Joining up here after I’m pretty much done with X after so many years….
Elon Musk is what you get when you throw $200 billion into a dumpster and set it on fire.
TBone
Good news to start the week, may have been missed (it is news to me):
https://apnews.com/article/biden-threatened-species-protections-9f5a2c12e51a857ae32b85997b54dcc7
Dangerman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: i believe it. It has to be uber dark out there.
Dangerman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: I believe it. It must be really dark out there.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I bailed on Twitter a while ago. I am only aware of it from posts on this blog. There is nothing on Twitter that I cannot find elsewhere.
I also don’t find Musk or stories about him interesting. That includes negative stories or sad stories about how miserable he might be.
I AM interested to see if his other companies survive or fail. He may screw up the ones doing useful things. I understand that he is making Tesla chargers available to other EVs, for example.
NotMax
@MattF
Part and parcel with the cyberschmuck
NotMax
@Brachiator
Join the club. We are legion.
Jay
@Brachiator:
Not really. Other MFGR’s have just adopted the same tech, so that charging is becoming universal. Any charger, any time.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
But if the story were about him being trapped in a Space X shuttle plummeting slowly into a decaying orbit because he insisted on using his latest child’s name for the Abort Burn password but then, like, just forgot how to spell it?
NotMax
Moving adroitly along, did someone say monkey?
:)
(Better audio but the tight shot misses much of the action on stage.)
Quadrillipede
I spent about 2 hours yesterday watching Cody Johnston/Some More News ripping Musk to shreds, and that was based only on events as of early 2023, so I’m sure he’s much worse off now.
The SMN thesis seems to be that Elom is a very lonely, very sad man who lacks the emotional intelligence or maturity to better himself in any non-material way, and thus he has no satisfactory way to relieve his desperate thirst for meaningful human interaction and approval. Cautionary tale for the ages — I might start calling him Ketamine Midas…
p.a.
I bailed on pre-Elmo twitter when twitter bailed on me, during covid. I made a rude response to a Ted Cruz tweet-lie about covid. I suggested CO was also not really dangerous and he should test for himself with a running car. I was suspended 2 weeks. Nothing happened to Cruz. I never went back. I read tweets posted here and elsewhere, but that’s it. Only miss LGF’s Charles Johnson. Has he left twitter yet?
Betty Cracker
Saw my first Cybertruck in the wild this weekend in a grocery store parking lot. It looks even dumber in person than in photos online. Lots of folks around here drive pickups for agricultural work or hauling. I hope they mock Cybertruck guy relentlessly for paying so much for a non-functional “truck.”
hueyplong
@Tony Jay: That one would pique my interest.
hueyplong
Nah, changed my mind. I’m holding out for the obituary.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I wonder if it gets hotter than your normal car in Florida sun.
OzarkHillbilly
Speaking of poohr poohr wittle ewon:
Missouri AG sues Media Matters as Republicans take on critics of Musk’s X
There there ewon, daddy andy’s gonna take care of those mean Media Matters buwwies who keep tewwing the twuth about you.
LiminalOwl
Stupid question: why is selling military technology to the enemies of the US not considered treason? (Or is it that Russia is not officially an enemy?)
Matt McIrvin
@LiminalOwl: It’s that, more or less. The bar for actions being considered treason is (deliberately) extremely high and most of the people you’d expect of being guilty of it were actually convicted of something else, such as espionage or sedition. The last person actually convicted of treason in the US was an American who broadcast Nazi propaganda from Germany during World War II.
LiminalOwl
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks, that makes sense. Though I wonder if EM will eventually, er, pass that bar.
(and good morning, all)
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
My taper took more like months to get to zero, but otherwise the same.
OzarkHillbilly
Head? Meet desk.
An attack of the vapours: Tennessee bill endorses chemtrails conspiracy theory
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’re going to need a bigger desk
https://www.wsmv.com/2024/03/29/vaccine-lettuce-bill-aiming-classify-food-containing-vaccine-drug-passes-tennessee/
I am speechless.
Kay
My youngest, a junior in college, rents a house off campus with two other young men. One of his roommate’s fathers is newly divorced and spends too much time at the boy’s house wanting to play video games, smoke weed with them and talk to the young women who come over – making all of them uncomfortable. He also takes my son’s parking space at the house “with his Tesla”. I guffawed when he got to the Tesla part.
Matt McIrvin
@LiminalOwl: I’d guess not–there basically has to be a declared war, and despite all the conflicts it’s been in, the US hasn’t had one of those since World War II.
Baud
@eclare:
Eh, if such a thing existed, it should be treated like a drug.
As president, I’d make it illegal for Olivia Rodriguez to keep asking me out.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The roomie needs to have a talk with his dad yesterday.
Baud
@Kay:
That’s funny and creepy.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: The MO AG continues to waste our tax money on useless lawsuits. I see they quoted a prof from my alma mater, Drury University.
eclare
@Baud:
And George Clooney keeps texting me! I text back, George, baby, you’re married, to no avail.
The law is the only way to stop him.
Baud
@eclare:
Why can’t rich, good looking celebrities just leave us in peace?
Matt McIrvin
(Maybe there doesn’t have to be a declaration of war on our part–I see from Wikipedia that Adam Gadahn was indicted for treason in 2006 for appearing in al Qaeda propaganda videos, but Gadahn was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan so there was no trial.)
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
The other two feel sorry for the son, who is embarrassed. I actually know his mother slightly, but since they are divorced I feel like I should leave her out of it.
Princess
Has anyone here read Neal Stephanson’s Seveneves? I gave up on it when I realized the characters were thinly-veiled Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, and Elon Musk. I thought of it again last night because of the post about the musical. The Elon character goes off in his own solo spaceship and it’s so obvious now that the real Elon would never have the balls to do that or the intelligence/skill to manage it. But it’s a sign of the origin of his reputation.
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: They have way too much time on their hands.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
I swear when I moved back to this state in 2004 it was not so batshit crazy.
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: @Baud: They leave me alone but I’m an asshole. Maybe you guys should give it a try?
Kay
It’s always amusing to me how the bros wil never admit they’re political conservatives. Musk feels like he has to play these elaborate games where he describes CNN as “center Left” and pretends he isn’t promoting Right wing politicians like Ron DeSantis when he obviously is. If these people thought it was legitimately cool to be Right wingers rest assured they would announce they are Right wingers – they’re very, very plugged into appearances. It’s all they care about.
I also find it comforting that they’re so tone deaf and out of touch politically. Elon Musk believed Ron DeSantis was going to be President based on Ron DeSantis being anti woke. They’re bad at politics.
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: The same here in Misery.
Baud
@Kay:
They were proud to be right wingers in the 80s and 90s. The current fashion is to be uncommitted to either party because they both suck.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: LGM just had a post about what Matt Taibbi is up to these days. Someone asked Taibbi why he was helping Republicans these days and gave some bizarre answer about how the Democrats had a terrifying transhumanist agenda based on turning humans into gods, and specifically cited some TED talk character who is an Israeli college professor–not even an American, let alone a Democrat, and few American liberals have ever heard of him. And even the supposed agenda sounds more like libertarian techbro stuff than liberalism.
“I don’t want to admit I’m a Republican now because I know they aren’t cool” is a pretty good succinct explanation for this kind of behavior.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m intrigued. Tell me more.
Matt McIrvin
I’d coincidentally quit Twitter about six months before Musk started ruining it. I’d found that being on there for any length of time was not good for my mental health–and this might have been in part because of the way I was using it, but I found that even people I liked and followed for unrelated reasons felt compelled to keep retweeting things that alarmed or enraged me. It was this sort of self-punishment by proxy. The same thing happens to some extent on Mastodon but not nearly to the same degree. I think Twitter amped it up by preferentially showing everyone things that boosted engagement.
satby
I’m so old I remember that the joke stories on April Fools Day were obviously fake. Now we can’t even tell, and sadly, most of the craziest shit is actually true.
Still AL, centering a post on the biggest fool of all no matter what day it is feels appropriate to me.
Jay
@Baud:
You will have to subscribe to my SubStack at $12.49 a month,….
lowtechcyclist
Wait, when did you become powerful? ;-)
Ken
And way too few brains in their heads.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Conservative bro reluctance to embrace their political identity seems to be a thing with low-profile middle-aged dudes too. It pains them to consider that they’re politically aligned with their boomer fathers/uncles, but tough shit — they are.
OldDave
@Betty Cracker: I was innocently driving on US 1 in Aventura (South Florida) when I saw this thing. Thought “look, twice the idiot – buys a Cybertruck, then applies a pro-Trump wrap”.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
As Kay has noted, Joe Rogan is the new Rush Limbaugh.
Jay
@OldDave:
keeps it from rusting,……..
Betty Cracker
@OldDave: IncEl Camino! (Appropriated from Reddit commenter.)
Matt McIrvin
@satby: The April Fool news pranks are really wearing on me this morning–I see so much nonsense pushed year round in apparent sincerity that these jokes just feel like intentional informational pollution.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
One really could create a status that wasn’t a declaration of war, but that recognized that a nation or other external* entity was acting in a manner actively hostile towards the U.S. and therefore was acting as an enemy towards us. Russia would certainly qualify, as would organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS.
*Need ‘external’ in there to prevent the obvious potential abuses. But I’d be good with labeling an internal group as an enemy if it took up arms against the United States or any of the several states.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: More generally, treason is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution and the intent is to make it extremely hard to convict, because treason charges were so widely abused by European monarchs to convict anyone they disliked.
Timill
@Jay:
No, really. If you have a Ford Mach-E or F150 Lightning, you can use a Supercharger now.
Nettoyeur
@Matt McIrvin: Taibbi made some money off his books, articles substack etc and is married to an MD. I bet he wants his taxes lowered. It’s always about the Benjamins.
ascap_scab
@Ruckus: I left Xitter entirely, and even deleted my account. I have a Post account, but after a decent start, my usage now is near zero.
Chris
You guys this is crazy but hear me out do you think it could be possible that being rich might have absolutely not a God damn thing to do with being good at anything? And that the modern form of capitalism might not, in fact, be that one exceptional system that’s managed to solve the age-old riddle of How To Make Sure Our Elites Actually Are Smart, Hardworking, And Good At What They Do that everything else we’ve tried in the last five thousand years has failed to solve?
Anne Laurie
But today, all members of the Right Wing are required to insist that they hate recreational sex and every form of mind-altering chemical (with the *possible* exception of booze, as long as it’s not Bud Light). We all know the joke about ‘Libertarians are Republicans who want to have sex & smoke dope’, but the showiest current Libertarian groups claim that sex is for procreation and drugs are for cucks. Right-wingers like Tucker Carlson are championing the whole 24/7 Grind Mindset for the ‘redpilled’… Musk and Taibbi are both basically lazy; they don’t mind claiming the occasional burst of Extreme Genius Effort, but they don’t wanna be sweaty tryhards, or even associated with such.
Chris
@Ruckus:
Apparently traffic’s down quite a bit.
It’s probably also reaching a lot less people in that there were always people who read Twitter without actually being on it. I’ve never had an account, but there used to be people like Paul Krugman whose Twitter feed I’d check every day. Now I can’t even do that, clicking on someone’s Twitter feed at least as an outsider won’t give me the last tweets, just the highest rated ones from the entire time they’ve been on Twitter, so I don’t even bother. I assume Musk did it so that people were incentivized to get an account, but I don’t think it’s working.
Oh, and I’d just keep calling it Twitter. No matter how many name changes Erik Prince and his successors have put it through, people still call Blackwater “Blackwater,” and I’d apply the same thing here.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
You know, even if we accept that “a terrifying transhumanist agenda based on turning humans into gods” is anywhere near the top of the list of our biggest political concerns right now, one look at Silicon Valley should show exactly who it is who’s likeliest to ride that god complex right off a cliff, and it ain’t anyone you could call “the left.”
CliosFanBoy
I’ll believe Twitster collapses only when it happens. I read too many essays when I took over that its collapse was imminent to have faith that it would collapse.
VOR
@Baud: YouTube’s algorithm is convinced I really want videos of Joe Rogan’s show. There must be a ton of channels on YouTube dedicated to repackaging it. YouTube keeps recommending them to me and I keep blocking the channel. It also seems to think I’d be interested in Jordan Peterson content.
Geminid
@Chris: Ragnarok Lobster:
fancycwabs
Why does the “Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund” have even a single share of Twitter/X in its portfolio?
Geminid
@fancycwabs: They may be one of the private equity outfits that bought into the deal to take Twitter private. My understanding is that Musk put the most in, maybe $26 billion, banks lent about $12 billion, and various private equity and sovereign wealth funds put up the rest.
Eyeroller
@Geminid: Fidelity is a mutual-fund company and one of the largest in the business. They do not lend money. But they do buy stocks for their funds, and I question why a “Blue Chip” fund in particular, even one focused on “growth,” would own any X/Twitter since I would hardly call it a “blue chip” stock. I used to invest with Fidelity but got out long ago.
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: I saw one drive past my parents’ local Publix. One of our group said his mom would see that and say, “sorry about your penis!” 😂😂
artem1s
@Princess:
I’ve read it and recognized the Hillary and Neil deGrasse Tyson similarities. But never for one instance did I think that character (who sacrifices himself to make sure the colony has adequate resources to survive) was related to Apartheid Clyde. I assumed he was more an amalgam of the Apollo and Gemini astronauts and NASA staff who were not only great pilots but also had PhDs in engineering and physics. Think Gene Kranz or John Aaron (steely-eyed missile man) who were instrumental in getting Apollo 13 home.
artem1s
@Chris:
It’s like hereditary monarchies. Once there is no incentive to adjust in order to survive to breeding age, the resulting offspring won’t necessarily benefit from the same traits that their parents and grandparents had to have in order to get rich in the first place. That’s why an inheritance tax needs to be the next tax reform for the Biden Administration. We have way too many trust fund babies in this country. They don’t need an education to earn a living wage. So they don’t care about public education or even what being taught at universities. They don’t have to. And they don’t have to worry if they blow $44B on a failed business. Who cares – money just appears magically in my account! It explains why someone like SBF doesn’t comprehend why Ponzi schemes are illegal and/or why crypto currencies aren’t the same as fiat currency.
Bill Arnold
@eclare:
From 2013:
Edible Vaccines (2013 Oct 22)
I will choose to assume that some biotech-literate person did a “well, actually” at a drinking bash with this legislator or one of their aids.
Nettoyeur
@Splitting Image: It has often been noted that Trump would be richer if he gad simply taken his nepo baby money and given it to a competent, reputable Wall Street fund mgr. Itvcould ve that Musk would have benn better off doing the same after the original Tesla runup. Quot while you are ahead…..