Same ‘rapid unplanned disassembly’, different day…
Second SpaceX launch in a row blew up tonight, here’s a video from inside a commercial airline.
If you’re wondering why they are allowed to fly in this area, the FAA had grounded flights but the leadership involved got DOGE’d.— Kevin Beaumont (@GossiTheDog.cyberplace.social.ap.brid.gy) March 7, 2025 at 12:09 AM
people are calling it the Cybertruck of investments
— O.K. Computermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) March 6, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Embarrassed Tesla owners are attaching the logos of other cars to make it look like they aren't driving Teslas.
www.dmarge.com/cars/tesla-o…— Mark Lemley (@marklemley.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 8:19 PM
guy in the 1920s putting a "i bought this before he went crazy" sticker on his Model T
The TL is bleak but Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, donated her Tesla to @npr
— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Tesla is falling apart, Musk is desperately trying to raid the government for enough SpaceX contracts to make up for what will be a massive continuing hit to his wealth and now the economy is very loudly falling apart while the entire business community withdraws it's support.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) February 28, 2025 at 11:55 AM
"Few weeks ago, some of us were putting our VINs on Carvana just to see the price. I think My FS Cyberbeast was like 80k. Just got an email update from Carvana today… Dropped 35k in one week? lol"
I think that "lol" is pronounced ??????— vantazach (@vantazach.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Overwhelmingly the biggest saving that Musk has delivered to the American people is that they can now buy Tesla stock much more cheaply.
— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Elon Musk's only profitable company, Tesla, has created a cumulative grand total net income of $34 billion in its more than 20 years of existence.
That's less than the total amount of US federal subsidies his empire has collectively received.
The economics of Elon Musk are as bad as the politics.— O.K. Computermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) February 26, 2025 at 10:44 AM
As Elon goes, so goes Tesla stock pic.twitter.com/7PAVNIAcf9
— Paul Leigh-Some Rascal on the Internet ?????????? (@Pleightx) February 26, 2025
Musk is looting the government and stealing our money to prop up his failing businesses. Hail to the thief
Tesla can survive or the American Republic can. Not both. fortune.com/2025/02/27/t…
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 10:54 PM
Anyone got an Arte Johnson ‘very innnteresting‘ gif?
Your continuing reminder that it sure is kind of interesting how Elon's public/private statements ("We make some mistakes, we're trying to fix them." v. "USAID needs to die, I am the law.") and his general weakening coincide with that moment where they accidently fired the people who watch the nukes
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Double Dog Dare
sab
I grew up in Florida just north of the Space Coast. We used to watch astronauts take off on tv and then run outside to see the rockets overhead, and watch various stages drop off.
It was exciting. Also too we never saw rockets blow up. But that was NASA not SpaceX.
All of your rockets blowing up on launch seems to be a damper on the Mars mission. Hope they get their act together enough that Musk and Bezos will be willing to climb aboard before takeoff.
prostratedragon
@sab: Just barely enough.
West of the Rockies
Muskrat claims to snork up ketamine for depression. Hopefully, he feels compelled to quadruple his intake. He needs to go down like one of his Ex-Space rockets
I loved this post, AL! I wish we’d start hearing from Tesla insiders about how Musk is losing it.
sab
@prostratedragon: Agreed on the hope of balancing that fine line between possible success and actual success.
Instant kablooey, or a years long mission that they realize midway will inevitably fail.
I am fine with either result
ETA That seems to be what they have launched our government back home on.
Baud
I think Tesla so far has only lost the big bump it got when Trump won. But it was overvalued to begin with. We’ll see what happens from here, but anything that hurts Elon is a good thing.
sab
@West of the Rockies: I am sorry for Tesla car drivers. Not in the least for the cybertrucks (what were you thinking when you bought that thing?) But a lot for the EV hopefuls who paid a fortune for fuel economy and now realize they drive a rolling death trap they cannot unload.
At least that guy in Canada might get insurance when Canadian vandals (never knew I would hear that phrase) vandalized his car.
Jay
@sab:
Probably not. US “insurance” isn’t like Canadian Insurance
West of the Rockies
@sab:
A few years ago Musk appeared to be an odd, interesting visionary who produced cool rockets and EV’s that could help reduce climate change. He traded it all in to be a dancing dipshit with a chainsaw.
Sure, I feel for people who bought Teslas five or more years ago because they wanted an EV for environmental purposes.
sab
@Jay: Ours isn’t so good.
Betty Cracker
I’m neither an aviation expert nor a rocket scientist, but it seems unsafe to launch experimental rockets that tend to blow up and rain molten shrapnel down on areas where civilian aircraft are flying.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
You’ll never be rich with that attitude.
Baud
Via Reddit
Elizabelle
I wish Elon had died of a ketamine OD a few years ago, and that Matthew Perry was still alive.
This Saturday’s protests at Tesla gonna be lit.
TBone
Those of us who have been reading Atrios at Eschaton all this time have been aware that Elno is just a charade of a used car salesman for years. He is merely a liar who thinks he’s slick, as are all Nazis.
Elizabelle
Speaking of top of the line [1952] technology: I have had chills looking at photos of the USS United States ocean liner being towed from Philly to Mobile, where she will spend a few months being prepared for her next life as an underwater reef/diving site. She and her valiant tugboat captain arrived early; high seas and a storm on the way.
I am not on Twitter. Can you see this photo (total series of four)?
A ghost ship.
prostratedragon
A crusader’s song from the time of Enrico Dandolo.
TBone
Jesse Wells has another song out. About Elno and about as uplifting as a Spacex rocket
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DG1IL_BBMOk/?l=1&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
sab
@Betty Cracker: Aren’t you the sweet summer child. Apparently we have moved into a whole new ballgame on government, and my 50 year old law degree does nothing to help me understand our current government.
I think it is all about the billionaire contributions. And death threats by Putin to Trump (which they both know can be done even on US soil.)
ETA Trump reaped the whirlwind with his associations over the years. We voters did too, because we did nor pay attention.
Betty Cracker
@sab: Speaking of sweet summer children, just read this at CNBC:
Who wants to tell him?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Eh, he knows. They’re just trying out new talking points for the cult.
sab
@Betty Cracker: Well, I was planning to save my few remaining Social Security checks by buying nothing this year but food and utilities. And paying property taxes.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: bwahahahaha! I thought Henry Ford was one of their Supremacist role models.
https://www.si.edu/object/american-axis-henry-ford-charles-lindbergh-and-rise-third-reich-max-wallace:siris_sil_1094433
The Techy Life says
https://thetechy.life/how-did-henry-ford-make-cars-affordable/
Baud
Via reddit
Elizabelle
@sab:
That “we” is doing a lot of work. Please stop with that. A lot of us tried desperately to avoid this, and in no way deserve the whirlwind.
Unfortunately, you cannot fix stupid, and social media makes it easier to attract and motivate that audience.
TBone
@TBone: somebody mixed up the PERFECT morning mood music for this post!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FpPn5O17teA
sab
@Elizabelle: 2000 was a fluke ( S Ct.) Also 2016 ( electoral college.) 2024 was not a fluke. More than half did vote for Trump. I didn’t, but we did so this is who we are as Americans.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all.
Speaking of Musk, who here still has a Twitter account? Full disclosure: I still do because it’s about the only way to “interact” with MS Republican officials who apparently use only “conservative”-friendly social media (Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, with some on Trump’s Truth Social).
Got hit with this this morning:
This occurred immediately after I posted a screenshot of a retweet by the statewide pro-Trump network, SupertalkMS, of a hard right organization “America’s Roundtable” which I characterized as Russian propaganda.
Remember, kids: Free speech is only for “conservatives” so they can yell racist epithets without consequences.
NotMax
Things so bad Musk has taken up residence in public housing on Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C.
//
p.a.
tRump to elmo: “Idiot! Have businesses fail serially, not concurrently! MAGAts don’t have the brain power to connect past events to the present.”
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Regardless of the American dream, access to cheap goods was very much the basis of Trump’s 2024 election pitch.
TBone
– Josey Wales
Nukular Biskits
@Matt McIrvin:
Bingo.
For example: CNN: Trump pledged to bring down food prices on Day One. Instead, eggs are getting more expensive
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
The Dollar Tree of liberty.
/
TBone
@NotMax: I read that he has a private cabana at the Mar-A-Lardass harem hotel.
Can hear Barry Manilow sing Cope A Cabana.
TBone
@TBone: teh Leopards hungry too
prostratedragon
Some times the name “dumbell chart” really fits:
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
He plans to use bigotry and jingoism to effectuate a bait and switch.
Jeffg166
As a child in the 50s I watched one rocket after another launched by NASA blow up. By the late 50s they stopped blowing up. I don’t understand how SpaceX is unable to launch rockets when all the information on how to do so is readily available.
Betty Cracker
@Nukular Biskits: I went back and forth on deleting my account for a while but finally nuked it. Ironic that your account got flagged for “inauthentic behavior” when the hard-right kleptocrat who owns the platform openly manipulates the algorithm and moderation policies for his own gain.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Can you eat schadenfreude? At the rate things are going it may be the only sustenance we can afford. I was wondering when Tesla shareholders would send Elon a 5 things email. Also just want to point out to them that they could revoke his remote work privileges and make him show up in person at the Tesla office 5 days a week.
Baud
@Jeffg166:
I believe it’s a different, bigger design.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: ironic or ketamine-
inducedenhanced hubris causing ever more diabolical bumbling…Jeffg166
@Baud:
I understand it is a different design but the idea of how to make it work hasn’t changed. I would think they could write a program that would give them an idea whether the designs would work or not.
p.a.
We are DEVO! D! E! V! O!
Blanket generalities, but…
White America, New Deal to Reagan: Hey, they have something going better than me. How can I get it too? Can the government help?
White America, Reagan to T1: Hey they have something going better than me. Why should they have that? How can I use government to take it away from them?
White America, T1 on: If you look like me, you can fuck everyone and anyone any way you want.
Baud
@Jeffg166:
I’m not an engineer, but I don’t think it’s necessarily that easy. Things don’t always scale up without introducing new variables.
Princess
Anne Laurie has been doing these late night Eln osts for years now and I know there was a period when some people were wondering why she was giving the guy so much attention, but looks like she had her finger on the pulse of what would matter all along.
Princess
@Elizabelle: Two thirds of eligible voters looked at Harris and the Democrats and said nah. You can’t wish that away. Germany had 85% turnout in their last election. The US something like 64%.
Baud
Wise words for Europe, and the rest of us.
WereBear
@sab: Likewise! Best elementary school I ever attended, met the children of scientists, and I got three happy years there.
Nukular Biskits
@Betty Cracker:
Ironic? No.
Intentional? <dons tinfoil hat> Yes.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
NotMax
@Baud
Believe it or not, the Soviets/Russians use big matches to ignite their rockets.
WereBear
@West of the Rockies: But I NEVER fell for Musk’s schtick. I could believe he was some kind of math savant, doing engineering at a high level, but then I discovered NONE of this was his.
If only we had some kind of widely view media that could have a chryon of stated facts.
Over and over, debunking the idiocy, so people could just stare at it and let thinking seep in.
What a radical concept.
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.:
I think we need to divide this into halves:
White America, New Deal to Civil Rights Act: Thank God we don’t have to share too much of this help with Black people!
White America, Civil Rights Act to Reagan: Shit, we DO have to share it with Black people? We need to figure out a fix for that!
Matt McIrvin
@WereBear: Dude was an heir who made a series of really good investment decisions early in his career, and bought his way into “visionary founder” status for a couple of very clever tech firms that happened to appeal to the formative futurism of GenX nerds. With the Twitter acquisition you definitely see what Elon Unchained does without anyone keeping him under control, which is a kind of speedrun parody of Neutron Jack Welch without even the quasi-rational performance metrics, and he’s brought exactly the same slash-and-burn style to the United States government.
TBone
Joisey scam gone wild per The Inky
Reporters Samantha Melamed and Ryan Briggs dig into the case.
Hmmmm, sounds so familiar…
WereBear
@Princess: For ONCE, non-voting people are getting punished for leaving it all to the Democrats.
If pain is the only way you learn, because it forces all the disparate gears in your head that don’t touch, TOUCH.
That’s why it takes so much pain. I think they live with cognitive dissonance to such a degree they literally can’t go near anything that trips their doubts, which will send them to hell.
Which is why they can do well in a secular work situation, and yet be an absolute fool about anything important.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I am an engineer and worked with a bunch of ’em– one thing I learned is that designs scale just great– until they don’t.
geg6
@TBone:
I didn’t need Atrios to tell me that. He gave me bad vibes the first time I ever saw him speak, years and years ago. I have excellent instincts about people and I sure was right about this one.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I know he hasn’t had to worry about this because until very recently having Elon Musk Superjeenius as the head of the company was a plus for shareholders but…most of those fancy executive contracts have moral turpitude clauses. So… let’s see what we have here…siring multiple children out of wedlock, well publicized drug addiction, breaking multiple laws while trying to undermine the US government. Seems, uh, like there might be a case there. Sure it’ll be in court for years but they could probably claw back a ton of money from the guy. A little more of this and he becomes more a liability than asset and their incentive structure leans towards firing him for cause. He’ll never be destitute but he won’t be anything like the world’s richest man anymore.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: I get MAGA not understanding economics, while Musk & the Orange Menace are striving for “Most DSM diagnoses.”
But we’ve been told out Titans of Industry must be geniuses. They have all this money.
I saw this coming, But I have the advantage of not enough money to ignore reality for even one minute.
Shalimar
@Jeffg166: SpaceX has computer modeling for everything they do, and they also are collecting massive amounts of data on each launch so they can analyze why they go wrong. My understanding from reading about their early years of why they have explosions is that losing rockets in real-world tests is the cheapest way to gather data and they don’t have to worry about negative PR getting their funding cut like NASA would if they were running these directly.
Gvg
@Jeffg166: I am younger, but I grew up as the child of a former NASA engineer in Florida. It was understood that a reason for picking Florida for launches was that the debris if something went wrong would be over an ocean not land and lots of people. But still connected to mainland and supply chains so an advantage over Hawaii. There were also Russian “fishing” boats watching cape Canaveral all the time.
Betty Cracker
@Nukular Biskits: It’s definitely intentional, no tinfoil hat required to pick that signal up, IMO. The irony is the accusation of “inauthentic behavior” from the very people who rigged the whole damned platform. It’s like an accusation of partisanship from Fox News.
No judgment from me on anyone who chooses to stay for reasons of their own. Baseball Twitter kept me there longer than it should have, in retrospect.
I do question the motives and judgment of various pundits/pols who scold liberals for leaving because it cedes the field to conservatives. That presupposes a level playing field, whereas the kleptocrat who owns it tilted the field at a 90-degree angle.
WereBear
@TBone: I’ve been watching Youtube videos from realtors in states where house value is cratering.
People who depend on work, even highly remunerative work, can be highly successful, but not bomb-proof from fast-rising expenses. Red states lag behind in protective legislation, standards for professionals, and the amenities which draw everyone. They have empty pockets without welfare from blue states.
This, in states which lure retirees with, “We don’t have an income tax.” That’s right, and no services, either. Great move, person entering their senior years.
This is where the low level of professionalism turns around and bites them. This is where a lot of disgraced professionals flee to. And if you have retired here, you have no network to help.
RIght now, popular retirement red states are going to blow up. They voted for their own Game of Thrones.
WereBear
@TBone: I SAW those ads and didn’t believe it.
Betty
@Elizabelle: Great memories of that ship. I traveled to France on it for my Junior Year Abroad in 1968. In the dining room, our group of mostly all girls were paired with the Rhodes Scholars, all guys at the time, heading to England. It was an impressive class, including Bill Clinton and Robert Reich. There were a few shipboard romances. My understanding is that Bill spent the trip in his room taking care of a seasick roommate so I have no Bill stories to share.
Professor Bigfoot
This is where the phrase, “you can’t cheat an honest man” comes from.
Any honest interlocutor would look at those numbers and say “either you’re just a liar or a full on crook, and either way I’m out of here.”
WereBear
@Professor Bigfoot: It has a flipside, as well.
A “mark” has to tell the police he participated in something he knew was a con on someone. It makes the victim into a perpetrator.
Another Scott
@Jeffg166: The early rocket programs were pre-NASA. The Navy ran one of them (Vanguard).
There are stories that a lot of the first US rockets blew up because people were working too hard. You know, doing the 20 hour days, 120 hours a week stuff that the MotUs love so much. Turns out that the “document every step, inspect every step, follow every checklist, double-check every checklist, don’t take shortcuts, don’t overwork your people” stuff that NASA is famous for now was created from hard-earned real-life experience.
Whodathunkit??
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: I’ve been thinking a lot about work ethic. There’s more than one kind. Elon Musk’s work ethic is all about moving fast and breaking shit–you do 120-hour weeks of drugs and sleepless nights, and move faster than your competitors (or any people trying to stop you) so you can stay inside their OODA loop, but it almost doesn’t matter what you do. You can fire most of your workers, delete your databases, just destroy things. Dramatic, shocking moves to put everyone off balance are the norm.
There’s no respect for craft. That’s a different kind of work ethic entirely and it’s alien to him.
ron
@TBone: or followed and read Karl Bode. He has been stridently anti-musk and great at exposing all the various tech grifters and bottomlessly credulous tech “reporters” for a long, long time along with reporting on other topics.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: the lobberscotchers got bescumbered!
TBone
@ron: good eye
Matt McIrvin
@Nukular Biskits: I still have a dormant account there but I haven’t logged in for months and haven’t posted anything since before Musk took over. I was on an extended break because I felt like Twitter wasn’t good for my mental health, and further developments just made it not a good idea to go back.
It’s a similar situation with Facebook, but more recent. I left for the week-long boycott of Meta that started the day before Trump’s inauguration. I haven’t been back. But I miss the friends-only connection with family who are still posting. There’s always email. My mom tells me it’s getting more and more obnoxious on Facebook to the point that she’s looking for alternatives too.
Most of my social-media activity right now is on Mastodon… but I find myself doing nothing but political outrage-reposting and that makes me sad. I don’t even have anything to add to other people’s outrage, just “cosign this”. And it feels like talking about anything else interesting that crosses my mind is too frivolous (but whenever I do, people seem to latch onto it like a lifeboat).
Maybe that’s my role right now, talk about something, anything of benign interest to help people make it through the week.
arrieve
@Elizabelle:
Thank you for sharing this! I actually sailed on the United States, when we returned from Paris (where my Marine dad had been stationed) to the US. I was only 3 or 4 years old and have no memory of it, but my mom often talked about how much she had loved it.
NotMax
@arrieve
What Made the SS United States SO Fast?
arrieve
@NotMax: Oh very cool! Thank you.
KRK
@Betty:
That sounds like a memorable voyage. Would love to hear more about it if you feel like sharing.
cope
Just a thought about a fact that I remember from the beginning of the whole SpaceX Starship program: it is expected that that Starship second stage will eventually be able to carry up to 100 people in it at a time. That sure makes the metrics of these last two Starship explosions quite different if you imagine each had 100 souls aboard.
NotMax
@cope
“Elon insists on removing their souls to save weight.”
//
Ruckus
@NotMax:
He also doesn’t want them to have one when he doesn’t.
dnfree
@Jeffg166: Everything seems simple to the people who don’t have to do it….