Oh, Elon...
November 29, 2023 7:05 PM Subscribe

In his ongoing attempt to to destroy Xitter, Mr Musk suggests former advertisers indulge in auto-copulation. (slyt)
posted by Marky (341 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite

i hate him so much.
posted by slater at 7:16 PM on November 29, 2023 [49 favorites]

Go easy on the dude; Kissinger dying means he just lost a Horcrux and he’s probably feeling very vulnerable right now (do not actually go easy on him, he’s an active detriment to the entire species and the best thing I can say about him is that after he co-founded OpenAI, he left and then he alienated Altman. Meaning he is permanently out of the decision-making loop in the unlikely event they ever produce anything legitimately dangerous).
posted by Ryvar at 7:17 PM on November 29, 2023 [36 favorites]

Wow, he really is just incapable of acknowledging that he might be wrong.

Thank God that he can’t run for President (of the USA).
posted by oddman at 7:17 PM on November 29, 2023 [14 favorites]

Twitter is a Nazi bar nowadays, so hopefully this will finally drive a stake through what’s left of it and spare us all.

…also, of course Musk thinks of himself as simply entitled to money.
posted by aramaic at 7:18 PM on November 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

Looking for the appropriate Don Draper meme atm
posted by credulous at 7:20 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Well, this is how I found out Henry Kissinger died.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:21 PM on November 29, 2023 [84 favorites]

“Boycotted for which ideology, motherfucker?”
posted by Artw at 7:26 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

There's also some Cybertruck event scheduled tomorrow and the pictures being posted look really quite bad.

Kinda hard to top his comments tonight, though I imagine he'll try. I assume his Nazi echo chamber will be egging him on.
posted by ryanrs at 7:31 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

Maybe...

Musk: I bet I can destroy Twitter.

Bezos: No way. It's computer crack to a billion people!

Musk: I can do it.

So he is.
posted by Marky at 7:34 PM on November 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

Is this a Brewster's Millions situation?
posted by MengerSponge at 7:43 PM on November 29, 2023 [29 favorites]

There's also some Cybertruck event scheduled tomorrow and the pictures being posted look really quite bad.

Even the props in the low budget Reagan era sci-fi movie I imagine every time I hear 'Cybertruck'* look way better than this. Wow.

* Mercifully, 1-2 times a year lately, tops.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:45 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

thinking a lot lately about that take from a little while ago about how Elon Musk desperately wants to be Lowtax, but not in the same way that most of Twitter desperately wants Elon Musk to be Lowtax
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:49 PM on November 29, 2023 [34 favorites]

I'm just so tired.
posted by alex_skazat at 7:52 PM on November 29, 2023 [20 favorites]

...of laughing at his Twitter and Space X and Tesla misfortunes?

The real test will be the inevitable big Tesla correction. I doubt he'd go full Lowtax before then.
posted by ryanrs at 7:58 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Umm…okay. Well…I guess…

Has anyone asked Earth for its opinion?

As someone who has had to interview people for much of his career, I feel so terrible for that poor man trying to have some kind of substantive discussion - on stage in front of an audience of all things. It’s like the journalist’s version of that dream where you get to school and you can’t find your homework and there’s a test you didn’t know about and then suddenly you’re naked somehow and everyone is laughing at you.

On the other hand, he knew who he was going to be talking to when he signed on to this.
posted by Naberius at 8:05 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

"See how earth responds"

I think he thinks he's on Mars
posted by clavdivs at 8:08 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

I got passed by a Cybertruck with no license place while bicycling to work last month, and I'd seen pictures of them but yeah they're ugly. But also they're fucking enormous. Ugh.
posted by aubilenon at 8:16 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

As I sometimes do, I'd like to quote myself:

Let me see if I've got this right. A billionaire heir to Apartheid money who has ties to despotic dictators and who parrots the rhetoric of a movement that is in the process of dismantling American democracy, has, with the backing of Saudi billionaires, bought the largest propaganda outlet in the world.

I find this vaguely unsettling.

posted by MrVisible at 9:43 PM on October 30, 2022

I often wish I was either more optimistic or right less often.
posted by MrVisible at 8:17 PM on November 29, 2023 [43 favorites]

i assure you no card-carrying redneck wants anything to do with cybertruck
posted by glonous keming at 8:18 PM on November 29, 2023 [19 favorites]

In SFO I saw a Tesla with a Gadsden flag and a JFK Jr. bumper sticker. I also saw a Tesla with a BLM sticker, which is kinda like a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. But if I see a Cybertruck with a Let's Go Brandon sticker, I will ... add it to the list.
posted by credulous at 8:23 PM on November 29, 2023 [23 favorites]

This is who capitalism has rewarded above all others, and if that’s not an indicator that something is deeply flawed, maybe you just don’t want to see it.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:25 PM on November 29, 2023 [53 favorites]

Twitter is a Nazi bar nowadays

Dunno. Netanyahu and the NYTimes seem pretty relaxed about hanging out with a Nazi/enabler. Everyone should just pop a Valium or something. /s
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:31 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

apparently it's ketamine and weed
posted by ryanrs at 8:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Netanyahu and the NYTimes seem pretty relaxed about hanging out with a Nazi/enabler.

Consistent behavior on both their parts.

apparently it's ketamine and weed

Pretty sure he’d be as much of an asshole utterly straight.
posted by Artw at 8:41 PM on November 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

Don't read the comments on the Youtube link unless you want to be in the splash zone of hundreds of notice-me-senpais all trying to fellate Elon at the same time.
posted by tclark at 8:47 PM on November 29, 2023 [15 favorites]

This Sunday is the Family Fun-day at the local Smash-n-Trash with S-S-S-Cyber-truuuuck! That's right, folks, it's Cybertruck vs. the Mercedes Masher, a heavily modified cabover tractor fueled by the highest-octane fuel known to man, PURE AANNGGEERR! Also appearing, Son of the Daughter of the Bride of the Third Cousin of Bigfoot, powered by a 96-liter titanium engine with a truly uncountable number of tires! With a special appearance by the Mighty Mini so small, it's driven by a Robotronic Fisher-Price Action Figure's Action Figure! It's Action all the way down this Sunday-Sunday-Sunday! Be there or Be Square! Sector 96 Entertainment is not responsible for any fatalities that may occur. Enter at your own risk. May cause blindness (loud thump). May cause anxiety (Wilhelm). Apply only as directed (oooohh-aaaaahhh).
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 8:48 PM on November 29, 2023 [28 favorites]

Elon: I should in retrospect not have replied to that one person and should have written in greater length what i meant. But those clarifications were ignored by the media and essentially I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me and arguably to those who are antisemitic. And for that I’m quite sorry, that was not my intention.

ARGUABLY.
posted by credulous at 8:50 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

that poor man trying to have some kind of substantive discussion - on stage in front of an audience of all things. It’s like the journalist’s version of that dream where you get to school and you can’t find your homework and there’s a test you didn’t know about and then suddenly you’re naked somehow and everyone is laughing at you.

On the other hand, he knew who he was going to be talking to when he signed on to this.

I think the same journalist did an incriminating SBF interview at the same event last year, so yeah.
posted by brendano at 8:52 PM on November 29, 2023

Is this Elon's White House Correspondents' Dinner moment? Because we know how that turned out.
posted by swift at 8:54 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Am I the only one grateful to Elon for destroying Twitter?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:54 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

I liked the guy that let us see all the rich people private jet usage via twitter.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 8:57 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

METHADRINE DREAMS ON A KETAMINE WEED STREAM.
posted by clavdivs at 9:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have to add that everytime I see the word cybertruck, this comes to mind.
posted by y2karl at 9:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm amused that he seems to think "blackmail" involves you compelling other people to not give you money.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:04 PM on November 29, 2023 [28 favorites]

His counter-threat is that he'll do everything he can so that history will remember [undisclosed list of advertisers] as the ones who destroyed twitter, which was otherwise a perfectly healthy tech company, in a not-paying-its-bills, described-by-its-users-as-a-hellsite, owner-thinks-its-technology-is-trash-and-needs-to-be-rewritten-from-scratch kind of way.
posted by aubilenon at 9:14 PM on November 29, 2023 [19 favorites]

He is clearly not right in the video but I don't know enough about drugs or mental illness to figure out what is going on with him. Is he on something? What?

And was this before or after he tweeted Pizzagate memes?

He's had quite a day.
posted by LarryC at 9:15 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

Am I the only one grateful to Elon for destroying Twitter?

In that a lot of people weren’t sensible enough to leave it when he bought it, yes.
posted by Artw at 9:15 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I apologize for my premature dismissal of the CyberTruck, if it has a Punisher logo etched into the hood it may do well
posted by credulous at 9:17 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

Literally the only saving grace is that he can't run for president.

I just keep waiting for something to take him down, but the something will probably be...just him.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:24 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'm amused that he seems to think "blackmail" involves you compelling other people to not give you money.

TIL at least one hugely rich pluto-scat thinks that blackmail means "somebody chose not to spend money on my product."
posted by Joey Michaels at 9:25 PM on November 29, 2023 [17 favorites]

"I'm gonna take my ball and go home. THEN they'll be sorry."

As if there aren't a million other balls/places to advertise. Why does IBM care if "earth" blames them for Twitter going out of business? Does anybody believe IBM has a moral obligation to keep Twitter in business? Does Elon think people believe that?
posted by OnceUponATime at 9:32 PM on November 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

"You're right Radar, he has a lot to learn about anatomy."
posted by gtrwolf at 10:02 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

There's also some Cybertruck event scheduled tomorrow and the pictures being posted look really quite bad.

[ ] Vehicle?
[X] VCR Tape Rewinder?
posted by JHarris at 10:09 PM on November 29, 2023 [42 favorites]

Having spent the majority of my tech career in Silicon Valley, I can honestly say, I hope he falls into the abyss, and drags the entire tech-bro culture with him.
posted by Chuffy at 10:11 PM on November 29, 2023 [34 favorites]

as he should
posted by ryanrs at 10:14 PM on November 29, 2023 [34 favorites]

Am I the only one grateful to Elon for destroying Twitter?

That it is going down is inarguably a great thing. So much energy he directed towards the Fediverse, which for all its faults is the first legitimately interesting thing to appear on the internet in like twenty-five years, because it isn't owned by anyone and doesn't seek to make a terrible person a billion dollars. It's too early to say if it'll last, and a lot of people seem to want to declare it prematurely dead, but it feels like the days of email and Usenet again. There's bad things about that too, but it's something people are doing for each other, instead of for profit, and that's cause for capital-H Hope.

Musk doesn't deserve credit for that, though, any more than diseases deserve credit for their cures.
posted by JHarris at 10:18 PM on November 29, 2023 [18 favorites]

as he should

I get what you're saying, and sure. But I've had experiences of extreme psychological distress--flesh melting from your face level of anxiety stuff--and can't help but empathize. I kind of see some of the worst places I've been in his pressured speech, flushed face, and dissociative affect. Yes, my dude, I have had tremendous manic episodes. Wish I could have had them as a billionaire.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:21 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

And just to defend Tesla for a bit....

We had three LEAF's. They were awesome. They had 105 mile range. Teslas had 230 mile range, and supercharger infrastructure. They were the most useful EVs you could buy at the time. And my S is the best car I have ever owned, (until you need repairs, but). The enshitification of Tesla's has been in the past 6 years or so. Ms. Windo wanted a model 3. It has way more range, but no dashboard, only the iPad screen. She has to pay for the Nav, supercharging, etc. Petty rent-seeking BS. There are no phone numbers to call for local service, just the app. Etc. The 3 can now make long trips, that my S has more issues with. And if you are paying attention, the auto-drive is pretty awesome. But

Elon grew the "evil nazi Spock" episode beard, and has shown how stupid he is with twitter and his rockets blowing up. Maybe he will run out of money. If I want a big ass EV truck, I'm going Rivian or even that Ford looks pretty solid in their ads. The Cybertruck? No, just, no...

EDIT: No, when you are a billionaire you don't get help. You sail along thing all those other people are wrong...
posted by Windopaene at 10:29 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

I found this kinda disturbing. I haven't seen him talk in awhile (been avoiding it), but he seems reeeeeeeaaallly off here. Like something is wrong. Beyond bad politics and billionaire-brain. The guy seems fucked up; there's this kind of seething devouring thing going on. It looks like he's suffering.

It's possible to feel sorry for him while recognizing that the hellpit he's in is entirely of his own construction, and there's a ladder he could use to leave it at any time if he could only acknowledge it is, indeed, a hellpit.

He says his favorite book is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is as a relatable a geek signifier as anything. Sadly he's very vulnerable to peer pressure, and has chosen some of the worst people to look up to. Unless he can break himself out of that, he'll continue twisting in that gyre. He lives on a little planet made out of money, and the things in its orbit that he sees pass by his horizon at night would make Great Cthulhu hug his teddy bear in fear.
posted by JHarris at 10:31 PM on November 29, 2023 [20 favorites]

What Musk needs is a vicious, destructive, very public downfall to keep other people from enabling him. Business leaders, banks, VCs, journalists, and politicians all need to see him as radioactive.
posted by ryanrs at 10:32 PM on November 29, 2023 [19 favorites]

But I've had experiences of extreme psychological distress--flesh melting from your face level of anxiety stuff--and can't help but empathize.

Yes, but that should be tempered with the reality that a lot of this is his own damn fault. Musk is, in the truest sense of the word, a con man - he has used his connections and charisma to get people to buy into his bullshit while he keeps all the plates spinning.

But now, that's not working anymore. People aren't buying his lies (especially when they keep getting outed) and the plates are beginning to fall. I suspect that part of what drove his meltdown today is that he has realized in a real way that tomorrow's Cybertruck (a product that he has already admitted was a mistake in a public forum) launch is going to be a blip at best, and more likely a disaster, which likely will have ramifications on Tesla's valuation (and his control.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:35 PM on November 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

Literally the only saving grace is that he can't run for president.

Knock wood and all that but I don't think he'd make it past the first press conference even if he could run.

Trump was a shock to the system in the degree to which he disproved the idea that it took a degree of composure and competence to compete on the national political stage, but he got past that by being a mix of shameless and weirdly, horribly charismatic.

One thing Musk has consistently displayed is an inability to command a live appearance in any skillful way. At best a live event is more or less designed to function around him—his talky bits are kept on script and the energy that moves things along and directs crowd attention is being managed external to him by competent others, etc.—but when he gets under the spotlight and is left to his own devices under any kind of scrutiny the guy just folds. He's got lead feet when he's on the spot in person. Remember when he managed to be booed offstage by people who were still going to Chapelle shows in 2022? Fuckin' deer in headlights zero game guy. This feels like of the same species of moment: even getting into a situation on purpose, with prep time, he can't find his ass with two hands. There's a reason the guy likes to be more or less write-only on twitter; can't hear the boos there, can't feel the empty silences.
posted by cortex at 10:43 PM on November 29, 2023 [34 favorites]

which is kinda like a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.

Don’t look back. You can never look back.

(The boy’s a bummer.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:43 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

On Twitter's destruction, it's also possible to mourn the good things there were about it. A flotilla of great bots. Black Twitter. A place where worthy causes could be promoted. A visible forum where corporations could be shamed for their actions, and once in a great while might actually do something to correct them.
posted by JHarris at 10:44 PM on November 29, 2023 [32 favorites]

Many of the youtube comments (I know, I know) seem to read this as Musk standing up to corporations on behalf of individual free speech, which is certainly ... a way that someone might choose to interpret the situation.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:55 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

He is clearly not right in the video but I don't know enough about drugs or mental illness to figure out what is going on with him. Is he on something? What? in the video but I don't know enough about drugs or mental illness to figure out what is going on with him. Is he on something? What?

You are so right, mr_roboto!

He sounds like he has a severe sinus infection and he is so swollen around his eyes they look slitted.

The way he was jerking his head back and forth as he talked made me so uneasy I could barely finish watching.

I hope someone in his coterie of hangers on has the guts to mount an intervention, or knows what might happen to him.
posted by jamjam at 11:13 PM on November 29, 2023

Musk only listens to a small group of the dumbest people on the internet, who consider him to be their king.
posted by ryanrs at 11:20 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

> And was this before or after he tweeted Pizzagate memes?

After.
Tue: wrote "Does seem at least a little suspicious" about Pizzagate, in a since-deleted tweet. Also something about Meek.
Wed: he told advertisers "go fuck yourself".

He's apparently boosted Pizzagate theories five time in two weeks. Photoshopped NY Post headlines play a role.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:29 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

God I wish 'pizzagate' just meant people fighting about pineapple again instead of being somehow both a thousand times dumber and a thousand times more poisonous
posted by rifflesby at 11:35 PM on November 29, 2023 [25 favorites]

Looking at Musk's stupid little grin in that video immediately made me think of the pathetically deluded uber-nerd Roddy Ho from the Slow Horses books.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Dumber even than Trump, but thinks he's smarter. Can we skip to the part where he loses all his money and we never hear from him again please world?
posted by Dysk at 12:15 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

He looks halfway down a K hole
posted by nikodym at 12:41 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Dude is unwell. Take his money away, help him get better. Earth will judge that favorably
posted by eustatic at 12:48 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Oh yeah, the nazi-lover. Guy needs a swift kick to the center of his being, recalibrate his shit. There's nothing good on the horizon the way this is going: cf: Howard Hughes wearing kleenex boxes on his feet and hiding out in Las Vegas.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:36 AM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

Am I the only one grateful to Elon for destroying Twitter?

Q: How do you know if a Metafilter user hates Twitter?
A: Don't worry, they'll tell you.

Every single Twitter thread here for years has had people like you that don't add anything to the conversation but drop nasty one liners. Nevermind that people here have patiently explained the many things that were good about Twitter again and again - the importance to journalism, scientific communities, music, art, local governments that were able to quickly disseminate needed information, huge swaths of the IT industry, mutual aid networks that used it to organize, and many others that I don't remember off the top of my head.
posted by Candleman at 1:50 AM on November 30, 2023 [79 favorites]

He says his favorite book is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Yes they do, Elon, they just don't understand it.
posted by flabdablet at 1:51 AM on November 30, 2023 [14 favorites]

Every single Twitter thread here for years has had people like you that don't add anything to the conversation but drop nasty one liners.

This is more a metafilter thing than a twitter thing - same thing happens with Facebook, mastodon, Apple, any popular media (would I need a TV to understand this/your favourite band sucks, etc), and so on and so on.
posted by Dysk at 2:03 AM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

It is kind of unfortunate that the Venn diagram of popular media and media funded by billionaires primarily to propagandize the desirability and/or inevitability of the status quo is almost indistinguishable from a circle.
posted by flabdablet at 2:21 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

It is kind of unfortunate that the Venn diagram of popular media and media funded by billionaires primarily to propagandize the desirability and/or inevitability of the status quo is almost indistinguishable from a circle.

That would be an Euler diagram, a Venn diagram is two overlapping circles even if there is no or total overlap in categories!
posted by Dysk at 2:37 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Nevermind that people here have patiently explained the many things that were good about Twitter again and again - the importance to journalism, scientific communities, music, art, local governments that were able to quickly disseminate needed information, huge swaths of the IT industry, mutual aid networks that used it to organize, and many others that I don't remember off the top of my head.

Those are all things that were good about the Internet. Twitter, like the rest of big-corp social media, took them and spoiled them.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 2:39 AM on November 30, 2023 [24 favorites]

Q: How do you know if a Metafilter user hates Twitter?
A: Don't worry, they'll tell you.

First: Metafilter contains multitudes. One person saying something disparaging in a thread doesn't mean everyone agrees with it.

There are some here who hate Twitter. I disliked it, then grew to kind of like it, now I hate what it's become. And what happened to it reminded me of my dislike, that it became a centralized place, yes like an internet town square, but that came at the expense of the web itself being that town square. Except Twitter's version wasn't in fact public at all, but owned, a private square that pretended to be public, like a coffee shop or a department store. Just waiting to be sold to someone.

And then there was how it piggybacked off of SMS and RSS until they were unnecessary and inconvenient to its growth, then they were discarded. Now, even if Musk left tomorrow, I wouldn't go back. I have a Bluesky account and post there once in a while, but I won't use it to the extent that I used Twitter. I don't even use Mastodon as much as that.

I also see that, like with Google and Facebook and basically every other for-profit run internet company, ruin is inevitable, if it's not in days then in weeks, months, years. A friend says that it's the whole original-sin, fall-of-man thing. I don't buy that, but I'd also admit that email and Usenet got harmed greatly by spam, and IRC was full of edgy techbros.
posted by JHarris at 2:51 AM on November 30, 2023 [23 favorites]

That would be an Euler diagram

Most. Metafilter. Comment. Ever.
posted by flabdablet at 3:26 AM on November 30, 2023 [37 favorites]

He says his favorite book is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

He also names his rockets after Culture ships. The Culture is definitionally a society that deliberately chooses to reduce suffering and coercion at every possible turn. It is anarcho-socialist, not just post-scarcity but aggressively anti-scarcity. It has been default-trans/default-bisexual since Player of Games (published in 1988). It treats all sapient life as worthy of respect; it holds reading minds (Neuralink, anyone?) as the only crime greater than outright killing the victim in question.

Somewhat more controversial but extremely anti-Musk is that the Culture has effectively removed all human governance from the middle layers of society: pure democracy at the civilizational level (“do we have a major intergalactic war with a rampaging theocracy? Yea/nay”), and also at the village level. Every layer in between is handled by passionately pro-social-justice machine administrators and I’ve always thought this was both the most insightful choice Iain Banks ever made in his fantasy civ - because that is always where the corruption and sociopaths slither in, with human governments - and also the least likely to actually happen.

Finally and most importantly it contains the scene about two thirds of the way into Player of Games where the protagonist tours the Empire of Azad’s capital incognito. Over the course of just ten pages Iain Banks writes the single most thorough evisceration of modern conservativism that I have ever read or can even conceive of, and by some distance. He rips the ugly, blackened heart out of Reaganite/Thatcherite politics and holds it aloft with all of the insecurity, willful ignorance, dominance obsession and hate laid bare for all to see. Everything we have seen from the right since those two administrations - particularly and especially Trump/MAGA - is spelled out right fucking there.

And so I don’t know how anyone can read those ten pages, let alone the ten novels and walk away still a conservative of any stripe. The Culture novels and Metafilter have for decades been the anchors that keep me steered clear of the evangelical fundamentalist ideology I was raised in, no matter how much The Algorithm attempts to soft-peddle me with onramps to the Internet hate pipeline (if you are an over-40 straight white cis-male programmer, gamer, anime fan and recently divorced it is literally non-fucking-stop). Christ’s parables usually feature a wicked rich man who matches Trump so precisely that evangelicals embracing MAGA splits the pins on tragedy and comedy. In a similar vein I don’t know how you can claim to be a fan of the Culture and be the kind of person Musk is.
posted by Ryvar at 3:30 AM on November 30, 2023 [98 favorites]

Lots of Black Twitter users have remained, doing what Black culture producers have always done in the U.S. and elsewhere - carving small spaces out of deeply racist institutions to share information, joy and resistance strategies in the face of overwhelming opposition.

It's been going on for centuries, and those folks who've chosen to remain are a clear part of that history.
posted by mediareport at 3:32 AM on November 30, 2023 [37 favorites]

I just want to reiterate that he thinks "Earth" will "respond" to companies not advertising on Twitter, which he calls "blackmail[ing] me with money".
posted by signal at 4:27 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

That’s not what blackmail means, Otto.
posted by whatevernot at 4:30 AM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

There's a reason the guy likes to be more or less write-only on twitter; can't hear the boos there, can't feel the empty silences.

Hell, the guy can't even twitter well, the boos and empty silences are there with dislikes and snarky mocking of the stuff he posts and likes. Even if he doesn't see it personally it gets picked up by other media and accounts, he has to know it's happening. He can't command his "live" twitter appearances any better than his off-script meat space ones, he trips on his own dick on twitter all the time.

It's been postulated, not entirely unreasonably, that part of the reason he bought the damn thing in the first place is that he wanted to be one of the witty edge-lordy boundary pushing Main Characters who piles up the likes and the retweets and the wild reactions, another Ben Shapiro or Catturd or a right wing Patton Oswalt. He's not smart or funny enough to do that, and he got frustrated, and he's such a spoiled narcissistic asshole that he thought that if he owned the place he could force everyone to make him the Twitter Star he thinks he deserves to be.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:46 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

This is who capitalism has rewarded above all others, and if that’s not an indicator that something is deeply flawed, maybe you just don’t want to see it.

Capitalism basically rewards people with capital (hence the name). Elon got his from a) being born rich and b) being in the right place at the right time.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:21 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Comment and response removed for insensitive content. Please avoid implying that being neurodivergent is a negative thing.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 5:22 AM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

The way I see it, German Nazis gave us Volkswagen, and Thiel and Israel and other Musk fans gave us Tesla.

And Ford gave us Ford.
posted by Mitheral at 5:26 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

What mediareport points out is one of the reasons I stayed for a very long time, well past the time where I was "comfortable" there, and one of the reasons I hated to leave. I'd extend it to BIPOC folks, ditto folks from some other minoritized groups. My ghost of a feed had shrunk to institutional accounts, people who Chose And Stuck With One Social Media Dammit, and the people who are always forced to walk uphill.

The news about the latest *waves hand* whatever that was reminds me of the article I read linked here some time ago. It used as sources people close to Musk who said, clearly and forthrightly, that his handlers are there to mediate between him and reality, with which he simply has no experience. I wonder if he has a lower grade of handler these days.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:30 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

My prediction is that analysts are either going to say that Cybertruck launch was a failure because the prices are too high, and thus it will not sell. Or they will say that it was a failure because the prices are too low and it's going to destroy their margins, profitability, etc.

Regardless over medium terms (2-3 years) they are going to sell a shit-ton of them. If the pricing is aggressive from the get go the Big-3 are going to be in huge trouble as they can't make EVs at any reasonable cost today, and this would start putting huge pressure on their combustion engine truck prices as well. If Cybertruck pricing is going to be more moderate (i.e., higher), then Big-3 and analysts can hide for a little longer.

Regardless, the days are numbered for combustion engine vehicles (cars & light trucks). For that we do have largely Elon to thank for. He is bat-shit crazy, and will likely live end of his days in a Vegas hotel growing his fingernails, but at the same time his impact will have been real. Maybe even positive, if X doesn't help Fascist takeover of US Government or start WW III. Distasteful for sure.
posted by zeikka at 5:32 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Maybe even positive, if X doesn't help Fascist takeover of US Government or start WW III

He already does this. Musk helps and actively supports both Putin and Trump using his companies, including X. Trump wants to install himself as fascist dictator; Putin is destroying Ukraine and doing what he can to make WWIII reality.
posted by UN at 5:49 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

I have a bunch of spare Bluesky invites, BTW. Or if you want an invite to a Mastodon instance with a science fiction and writing focus I can hook you up there.
posted by Artw at 5:50 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

For that we do have largely Elon to thank for.

He bought into an already-existing company. He didn't found it, wasn't particularly involved in running it for the first five years, and yet somehow it was all Apartheid Clyde himself! I guess we can thank Sergey Brin and Larry Page for streaming video existing as well, huh? I mean, they bought YouTube, so...
posted by Dysk at 5:51 AM on November 30, 2023 [21 favorites]

Just stop using Xitter. There was a whole period of human life on Earth before Twitter/X even existed, and people got by just fine! I do not understand the drama around simply stopping the use of a goddamned social media platform!

Yes, I understand Twitter has had crucial roles in humanitarian aid during conflicts and disaster relief, etc. But those are outlier examples. And Twitter as we once knew it is dead. It's over. Let it go.

(easy for me to say because I never used Twitter... but I never used TikTok or Instagram either and I am a living, breathing, functioning human being who doesn't feel even a little left out!)
posted by SoberHighland at 5:56 AM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

"I have a bunch of spare Bluesky invites, BTW."

Bluesky users are trying very hard to not be Twitter, the ethos there vis-a-vis provocateurs (especially bad faith "discourse") is very much "block, don't engage." They are also trying to rebuild a lot of the valuable twitter communities.

That said, I've got some invites for mefites, too. Ask via mefi-mail.
posted by oddman at 6:04 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

He bought into an already-existing company. He didn't found it, wasn't particularly involved in running it for the first five years ...

An existing company with an idea. Elon led the A round 7 months after the founding of the company with $6.5M investment (out of $7.5M total). He was quite involved from the get go in the company operations, not only fundraising side (he also lead & co-lead B- and C-rounds).

It's ok to dislike him, but it's dishonest to say that the company would be anywhere without his involvement from the early days. Maybe in this parallel universe there would be another, better EV-company run by a nice person that would have forced the EV adoption to finally happen. Hard to tell, but his contributions to Tesla and SpaceX are real.
posted by zeikka at 6:04 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Big-3 are going to be in huge trouble as they can't make EVs at any reasonable cost today

They can make them at reasonable cost just fine. MSRP before tax credits on Mach-E's is well under 50, F-150 Lightnings 50-60, Bolts under 30.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:04 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Say what you like about the F-150 Lightning, you can see one and think “yep, that makes sense as a vehicle” or “whoever got this must have deep pockets but I don’t automatically assume they are a Nazi or an idiot”.
posted by Artw at 6:07 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Hard to tell, but his contributions to Tesla and SpaceX are real.

Sure, and Brin and Page contributed to YouTube. "Contributed to" is a very different thing to responsible for, as in "we have this individual to thank" - he was involved, sure, but so were many others (even before we get into the Elon handlers that exist at his companies, to keep him away from the controls).
posted by Dysk at 6:08 AM on November 30, 2023 [11 favorites]

They can make them at reasonable cost just fine. MSRP before tax credits on Mach-E's is well under 50, F-150 Lightnings 50-60, Bolts under 30.

No, they can't.. Ford is in a tight spot, they can't make F-150 Lightings profitably, and they have hard time scaling their manufacturing.

They are going to be losing money on each unit at least for the next 4 years, and things may get worse if Cybertruck is priced aggressively. If they are forced to bring down Lightning's retail price they won't be able to make them fast enough, and simultaneously that will bring down prices for the combustion models and further hurt them.
posted by zeikka at 6:17 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

If one wants to hear about how advertising effects what one gets to consume in media with a FAR more reasonable voice is Jim. The Ad Attacker! from The Attack Ads! podcast

Readers of the blue would like his The Powell Movement series.
posted by rough ashlar at 6:21 AM on November 30, 2023

Say what you like about the F-150 Lightning, you can see one and think “yep, that makes sense as a vehicle” or “whoever got this must have deep pockets but I don’t automatically assume they are a Nazi or an idiot”.

I think their Nazi founder died in 1947.
posted by zeikka at 6:21 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

To expand on that, Ford is projecting a $4.5 bil loss in 2023 on about 65,000 units sold.

Telsa's worst year ever was in 2018 where they lost about $1.0 bil on volumes of 250,000 units sold.

If it was easy to do, and any engineering team could do it, literally any of the other 20 established auto manufacturers could have come up with their own version of the Model 3 years ago, and be making huge profits today. Tesla's profits per vehicle are unrivalled.
posted by xdvesper at 6:25 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Elon's accidentally accurate self-assessment: everyone would much rather masturbate than deal with him.
posted by audi alteram partem at 6:32 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

"If it was easy to do, and any engineering team could do it, literally any of the other 20 established auto manufacturers could have come up with their own version of the Model 3 years ago"

Exactly. There is going to be a bloodbath in the automaker world. I actually think that Ford and GM are in relatively good shape as at least they recognize the challenge. Most European car manufacturers have been just sticking their heads into sand, and then trying to get German government to provide them air cover by watering down the EV-transition. Toyota is totally lost, and is still in denial.

Koreans and Japanese are ahead of the rest, but it's unlikely that US will allow Chinese cars (compare w/ Huawei & 5G).
posted by zeikka at 6:33 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's ok to dislike him, but it's dishonest to say that the company would be anywhere without his involvement from the early days. Maybe in this parallel universe there would be another, better EV-company run by a nice person that would have forced the EV adoption to finally happen. Hard to tell, but his contributions to Tesla and SpaceX are real.

It's also ok not to apologize for him or come to his defense.

So what if he's made some sort of contribution? There might have been a time when Having Done A Thing was enough to make up for being highly problematic, but like, we're moving past that. Doing a Thing and not getting credit for it has always been the default state in the world. There have been lots of way better people who have made far more significant contributions to the world. No grave offense is being committed by not acknowledging Elon's business acumen when talking about what a horrible person he is.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:38 AM on November 30, 2023 [37 favorites]

More BlueSky invitations on offer here. I'm going to be careful who I give them to, but Me-fi mail me if you're interested.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:44 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I just want to reiterate that he thinks "Earth" will "respond" to companies not advertising on Twitter, which he calls "blackmail[ing] me with money".

Like a lot of people in similar situations, I do some work (very occasionally these days) for a company that has struggled since the pandemic. I’d reckon the place’s business is at 30% of where it was five years ago.

I trust everyone will soon rise up and punish those who, uh, are not buying our product any more.

That’s not what blackmail means, Otto.

It’s odd to see a dedicated cheerleader of capitalism who hates capitalism this much.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:46 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

No grave offense is being committed by not acknowledging Elon's business acumen when talking about what a horrible person he is.

It's not a grave offense, but it is dishonest. To learn from history one needs to know history.
posted by zeikka at 6:51 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

It's not a grave offense, but it is dishonest. To learn from history one needs to know history.

Yes, and it is (at least) equally dishonest to put it all down to (one of) the money guys. The work was done by teams of engineers, the cars were built by assembly line workers, the idea itself isn't even his. He brought money to the table. That is not enough to make him that did a thing. He was one person on a huge team.

It is common to understand history as a series of stories if Great People doing great things. This is largely a fiction.
posted by Dysk at 6:58 AM on November 30, 2023 [43 favorites]

I only made it halfway through the video. It seems like after doubling down on "GFY", part of his brain was sayng "whoa, dude, don't kill any more Golden geese", and another part was saying "no, they eat this stuff up. I'm just being Elon! I can spin away from real danger here".

I couldn't watch further.

And speaking as a closet fan of REAL trucks (eg Toyota Hilux, Landrover Defender 110), there's absolutely zero that appeals to me about the Cybertruck. Looks like a joke, with a joke name to match.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:06 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

He says his favorite book is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is as a relatable a geek signifier as anything. Sadly he's very vulnerable to peer pressure, and has chosen some of the worst people to look up to.

He says it is his favorite book because it is a nerd signifier; there's no real indication he's read it (all the x.ai promotional materials get the HHGTG references wrong.) He names the barges after Culture ships because those are "lol random spaceship names!" not for any specific awareness of the material. When someone asks if he's watching Evangelion he replies "NERV". It's chum, in the same way his bedside pic when he was starting to try to appeal to conservatives had a QVC-grade flintlock and revolutionary war books (and a cosplay anime gun.)

This is who he is. This is who he has always been. Being a geek doesn't mean anything about your character. There's lots of white supremacists who love TNG. There's literal nazi furries. He's the richest person in the world and he is free to do whatever he wants and he chooses to spend his time posting racist video game memes.
posted by theclaw at 7:08 AM on November 30, 2023 [46 favorites]

Does anyone know who is going to inherit all his money when he dies? Honest question.
posted by Dr. Curare at 7:10 AM on November 30, 2023

Whichever of his kids he doesn't hate (Vivian is clearly out). Probably X since that's his favorite.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:14 AM on November 30, 2023

The way I see it, German Nazis gave us Volkswagen, and Thiel and Israel and other Musk fans gave us Tesla.

The German Nazis also gave us significant advancements in rocketry.

I'm not sure what this says about engineering as a discipline, but it's not pretty.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:15 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's not a grave offense, but it is dishonest. To learn from history one needs to know history.

But why does Elon Musk's legacy need to be defended to this level of detail? Why does it matter so much that it's worth calling out when some rando gets it wrong on the internet? To say it's history implies that it's important to get right because it matters, but it seems like the only thing that matters is preserving Elon Musk's legacy.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:25 AM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

No, they can't.. Ford is in a tight spot,

Scotty on youtube points out Ford is being sued by dealers over 'being forced' to support the electric cars. (Scotty is not a fan of electrics) And the guy who calls himself Lucky Lopez is claiming the Manheim auction prices for used electrics is claiming 20-50% in non-Teslas. Tesla he's pointing out how Elon dropped the price and 'screwed' resale value. $38K last year, 6 months $33K now $20K. "the build quality is crap" statement. A Y - $129K. Last year $101k 6 months $81K. Today at auction $68K Trade in value $62K.

On a different new Ford a youtuber claimed part of the reason he was dumping his new King Ranch was how the software and cameras conspired to keep him from driving in his wheat field. So - no Ford isn't having a good time.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:31 AM on November 30, 2023

Whenever I come across fresh bullshit from Elon, I remember back to 2018, when he sent a submarine to go rescue the Thai football team who was trapped in the cave, was rebuffed by the folks handling the already-in-progress rescue, and then turned around to call the actual rescuer "pedo guy" on Twitter.

Because it really helps me to understand this dude to recognize that he really, really wanted to be Batman, and inherited enough money to make that dream a reality, except that it turns out that the world really does prefer public institutions to billionaire vigilantes, and so he soured and realized that he could get more acclaim (from a specific group, at least) by becoming The Joker instead.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:13 AM on November 30, 2023 [57 favorites]

"It is common to understand history as a series of stories if Great People doing great things. This is largely a fiction."

Agreed.

"the idea itself isn't even his."

Correct, William Morrison o Iowa built one in 1890-1891.

"The work was done by teams of engineers, the cars were built by assembly line workers"

Of course, but by all accounts he has been very involved in both the engineering aspects and in the manufacturing/ scaling aspects of the company. He has never been hands-off type of manager, and claiming that he just sat before a well laid table does not seem to be true by any accounts.

"He was one person on a huge team."

He is one person of huge team now. Very small team at the beginning.

"Why does it matter so much that it's worth calling out when some rando gets it wrong on the internet?"

I have no idea why or if it matters. I guess accuracy should matter for something. I am not saying that anyone should like him; it is clear that he is a shitty person in many (if not all) aspects of his life. However, a significant part of Tesla's success (or at least history) is attributable to him (among other people) and not to some Mr. Rogers like character that we wished had built the company. It just didn't happen that way.

It is a fair question to ask whether he is a net positive or negative to the world/ universe/ humanity/ environment/ enlightenment/ whatever, but to claim that only his most reprehensible actions had significance is not true.
posted by zeikka at 8:33 AM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

I don't know enough about drugs or mental illness to figure out what is going on with him

I am incredibly sheltered so it took me a long time to appreciate it, but when you realize a not-insignificant portion of the population are walking around zonked out of their brains a lot of the time but have privilege or resources that enable them to live a 'normal' life, it explains a lot of WTF moments.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:39 AM on November 30, 2023 [16 favorites]

"Why does it matter so much that it's worth calling out when some rando gets it wrong on the internet?"

I have no idea why or if it matters. I guess accuracy should matter for something.

Accuracy only seems to matter enough for a correction when it's a famous rich white dude being criticized. Double so if he's a white supremacist. That's personally why I find the defense of Musk (every time, omg why EVERY TIME) so tiresome and sometimes disturbing.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:52 AM on November 30, 2023 [30 favorites]

It is a fair question to ask whether he is a net positive or negative to the world/ universe/ humanity/ environment/ enlightenment/ whatever, but to claim that only his most reprehensible actions had significance is not true.

I keep returning to William Shockley (an ACTUAL physicist, not just a fast-talking 'visionary' financier) as another notable example of someone whose contribution to humanity (leading the team that developed the transistor) is weighed against his own despicable personal attitudes and actions (promotion of eugenics and racism). Tesla the company will certainly in the future be recognized as having had a key role in hastening the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, much like Ford Motor Co.'s methods of mass production made affordable automobiles available to huge segments of the population. But much like the execrable Henry Ford and the detestable Shockley, Musk's disgusting and destructive personal views and behaviour must not be hand-waved away when assessing his own historical impact. No statues for this fuckmonster.

Side note on Shockley after he left Bell Labs to form his own company:

Shockley recruited brilliant employees to his company, but alienated them by undermining them relentlessly. "He may have been the worst manager in the history of electronics", according to his biographer Joel Shurkin. Shockley was autocratic, domineering, erratic, hard-to-please, and increasingly paranoid. In one well-known incident, he demanded lie detector tests to find the "culprit" after a company secretary suffered a minor cut. In late 1957, eight of Shockley's best researchers, who would come to be known as the "traitorous eight", resigned after Shockley decided not to continue research into silicon-based semiconductors. They went on to form Fairchild Semiconductor, a loss from which Shockley Semiconductor never recovered and which led to its purchase by another company three years later. Over the course of the next 20 years, more than 65 new enterprises would end up having employee connections back to Fairchild.

Sound like anyone we know?
posted by hangashore at 9:18 AM on November 30, 2023 [18 favorites]

Of course, but by all accounts he has been very involved in both the engineering aspects and in the manufacturing/ scaling aspects of the company. He has never been hands-off type of manager, and claiming that he just sat before a well laid table does not seem to be true by any accounts.

Those accounts come from employees of somebody with no formal training in rocket science or automotive engineering but who is a pretty well-known narcissistic ego monster so I suppose you can evaluate for yourself whether those claims have much merit.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:21 AM on November 30, 2023 [34 favorites]

If nothing else, one thing that people like Elon Musk contribute to society is an antidote for Impostor Syndrome.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:22 AM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

Regardless over medium terms (2-3 years) they are going to sell a shit-ton of them. If the pricing is aggressive from the get go the Big-3 are going to be in huge trouble as they can't make EVs at any reasonable cost today, and this would start putting huge pressure on their combustion engine truck prices as well. If Cybertruck pricing is going to be more moderate (i.e., higher), then Big-3 and analysts can hide for a little longer.

Pull the other one - it has bells on it.

The Cybertruck is a truck that fundamentally does not understand the assignment, as viral videos like the one showing it struggling to climb a hill offroad have illustrated. We've seen Musk brag about the Cybertruck's 0-60 times, which is a statistic that is fundamentally meaningless for a truck because things like cargo and tow capacity are much more important - and it's telling that there's been little reporting on those. Not to mention that if Tesla was sure that these were going to sell, they wouldn't be no resale clauses in their contracts. (Also, I live in Northern Truck Country, and between winters where it can hit - 20 and the amount of salt used to make the roads drivable, I'm morbidly curious to see how a Cybertruck will fare here.)

Of course, but by all accounts he has been very involved in both the engineering aspects and in the manufacturing/ scaling aspects of the company.

So involved that he's made the companies he runs hazardous to work for, with reports of stimulant usage and IV treatments at SpaceX, Tesla employees getting into literal fistfights over Cybertruck deadlines, and literally making his businesses deathtraps because he cannot grasp the reason Safety Yellow/Orange exists. And has been pointed out, it's well documented that both SpaceX and Tesla have "Elon Management Systems" to keep him distracted from the work being done (and the lack of such at Twitter has been a large part of the problem there.) Not to mention stories of things like Mr. Musk's Wild Colo Decom demonstrating what that "hands-on" experience means.

The fact is that the destruction of Twitter has illustrated Musk's "business acumen" quite well, and has understandably called his management of his other companies into question.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:28 AM on November 30, 2023 [43 favorites]

He has so much money and so much ego that he'd rather lose billions of dollars than lose a little face or whatever not being an asshole would mean to him.
posted by pracowity at 9:30 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

There's also some Cybertruck event scheduled tomorrow and the pictures being posted look really quite bad.

[ ] Vehicle?
[X] VCR Tape Rewinder?

It's funny you mention this, because the CARI Institute has labeled this ascetic "cassette futurism". Check out the Aston Martin Bulldog; it's basically a car version of the Cybertruck.

This was a style popular in the mid 70s to late 80s, when Musk was an adolescent. Just like how Snow Crash's Metaverse was popular when Zuckerberg was a teen, these "innovators" are just building the pop sci-fi stuff that was cool when they were young.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:31 AM on November 30, 2023 [18 favorites]

That Aston Martin Bulldog is some hot shit.
posted by Windopaene at 9:35 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

I do not understand the drama around simply stopping the use of a goddamned social media platform!

I started using Twitter in 2009 because it was the only way I could connect to people who used the same programming language I used. A TON of vibrant communities for that language, both local and international, emerged out of that Twitter scene. It was crucial to my early professional development - and in the 14 years since, I still haven't received any mentorship or camaraderie that has come close to that.

Along the way, I started following a ton of wonderful artists, and found political commentators who would actually acknowledge the existence of my weird interests (ranked-choice voting, universal basic income).

I quit earlier this year. It is over. I have let it go. But it IS painful, especially because it feels like the Trumpification of yet another part of my life. I am the primary caregiver to a small child and a chronically-ill spouse. I don't have time or energy to fix this.

And that's just me, as a mildly weird white cishet man. There are MANY communities that have spent many years developing there. They will reform somewhere else, I'm sure - but they have been badly fragmented by all this, and people are grieving for that connection now.
posted by McBearclaw at 9:36 AM on November 30, 2023 [39 favorites]

The Cybertruck is a truck that fundamentally does not understand the assignment

Let me tell you - in Denver, the assignment is "be big as fuck, demonstrate wealth", so it'll fit right in with all the pristine F150s here.
posted by McBearclaw at 9:38 AM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

The cybertruck looks like what I imagine the "Robo-car" Robocop was originally going to drive around in (until it got laughed off the set by the crew) looked like.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:38 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Let me tell you - in Denver, the assignment is "be big as fuck, demonstrate wealth", so it'll fit right in with all the pristine F150s here.

Except that it won't, because those F150s are engaged in a very specific form of performative display that the Cybertruck is not. It's like wearing Night Elf cosplay to a furry convention - yes, it's a costume, but it's fundamentally missing the point.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:43 AM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

Two comments removed. Both connecting Nazis to Israel for no apparent reason and using redneck as a derogatory term go against our content policy.
posted by loup (staff) at 9:45 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

if Tesla was sure that these were going to sell, they wouldn't be no resale clauses in their contracts.

I thought the reason for that was they expected supply to be lower than demand, and wanted to prevent an inflated secondary scalper market like there is for taylor swift tickets or was for raspberry pi computers. That doesn't even necessarily mean they're expecting it to be wildly successful, just that they don't expect to be able to make very many.
posted by aubilenon at 9:57 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

DeLorean:Crybertruck::Smaug:Themberchaud
posted by MonsieurPEB at 10:05 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Facts matter because when you're wrong about the facts people dismiss everything else you have to say, even if the underlying thought is a good one. Also, ignoring facts is how the right wing has gotten so divorced from reality as to represent an existential threat to society rather than just a painful abscess on humanity's backside.

Shitty people can do good things. It's ok to acknowledge that reality. It doesn't mean the person making that acknowledgement is feting them or even defending them. Alternate realities where some less problematic person did the same things are certainly possible, but they aren't the one we live in.

Anyway, on the actual subject of the post, Musk is clearly out to lunch in more ways than one. He's making a shit argument and trying to redefine words to make it sound less shit, not realizing that even if the words meant what he wants them to mean his argument is still shit. It's the bullshit math that claims copyright infringement costs exactly $x times the number of unauthorized copies, but even worse. No, friend, not everyone would actually buy what you're selling even if they couldn't get it for free. No, Elon, someone choosing not to buy your product is not blackmail.
posted by wierdo at 10:20 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

I literally do not know of any good things Musk has done.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:23 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

He does seem unwell. He also seems to be trying to pre-excuse why X/Twitter is going to file for bankruptcy.
posted by Mid at 10:26 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

"The Cybertruck is the Dumbest Thing I've Ever Seen" - Ryan Cooper, The American Prospect
posted by Navelgazer at 10:29 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

To say that we can thank Apartheid Clyde for EVs or Tesla is to say the money and the bosses are the only people who matter, are the only people who can ever be responsible for any achievement. It's such an odious view, as well as being wrong on its face.

You can argue that we have Tesla to thank for EVs (though that argument gets much harder to make outside the US in general) but you cannot in good faith argue that we have Elon Musk to thank, except insofar as he was one small part of Tesla.

It makes sense to say that NASA put a man on the moon. It doesn't make sense to say that Neil Armstrong did it, or that Kennedy did it, or Gene Kranz.

The Great Man understanding of history is easy and seductive, but utterly wrong.
posted by Dysk at 10:32 AM on November 30, 2023 [34 favorites]

Also: the bosses may own the profits from my work. Don't hand them the responsibility and glory and ownership of my work though, or of anyone else who does things for a wage. The things they do are not things their bosses did.
posted by Dysk at 10:38 AM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Someone should tell Elon that if he really wants everyone to like him and think he's cool, he should just retire. In every sense.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:40 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Without going into spoilers, the most important line in the 2022 movie Glass Onion is:

"Miles Bron is an idiot."
posted by AlSweigart at 10:44 AM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

glonous keming rednecks haven't been the primary marker for trucks for decades. It's all about suburban and exurban MAGA types these days and they would absolutely buy a cybertruck both because they'd think it looks cool, they'd think it would piss off a liberal, and they'd think it was big because it is.

I am certain that if he puts them into production Musk can sell cybertrucks like hotcakes to his new right wing purchasing base.
posted by sotonohito at 10:50 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

That's certainly possible, but it seems like customers are really going to have to be financially committed to owning the libs to buy one of these things.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:58 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

if Tesla was sure that these were going to sell, they wouldn't be no resale clauses in their contracts

I laughed so hard when I first heard Musk was banning his fanboys from reselling their terribly made cybertrucks for a year without Tesla's written permission and threatening to sue them if they flouted his rule. Couple that with Tesla's notoriously bad customer service and you had a recipe for complete disaster.

Hilariously, it only took a couple of days after news of the "you paid us $50K but it's not really yours" no-resale provision hit the press that it quietly disappeared from the cybertruck terms. Ol' Elon - always good for a laugh.

Regardless over medium terms (2-3 years) they are going to sell a shit-ton of them.

Cybertrucks? Really? "A shit-ton"? How are you defining that? The quarter of a million a year Elon predicted for 2025? Cause I'd sure take that bet. It's gonna flop, I'd guess.
posted by mediareport at 11:00 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

> The cybertruck looks like what I imagine the "Robo-car" Robocop was originally going to drive around in (until it got laughed off the set by the crew) looked like.

Looks like a secondhand post, not loading here, here's the original post.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:02 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

October 19th Business Insider report on Tesla Q3 earnings call:

Elon Musk says 'we dug our own grave' with the Cybertruck as he warns Tesla faces enormous production challenges

Yeah, I don't think anyone's gonna be selling "a shit-ton" of Cybertrucks, ever.
posted by mediareport at 11:12 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

EVs certainly existed before Elon, but nobody else was willing to dump enough money into the project for a long enough time to actually make them a mass market thing. More recently, while I seriously doubt he came up with the idea, Tesla has thus far been the only automaker willing to dump the time and money into making it possible to make large castings that drastically reduce the cost of the end product relative to traditional manufacturing.

In space flight, he was the only one willing to dump money into reusability rather than just making a slightly cheaper rocket. Then, when that finally happened realized that it would now be possible to make satellite-based Internet service that didn't suck, and then went and dumped all the money SpaceX was saving from not having to build so many first stages into making that happen, which has already been life changing for a million people or more who can now get Internet access good enough to participate in the modern Internet who couldn't before, no longer being stuck with speeds I thought were slow for the Internet of 20 years ago.

Even today there are zero other companies or countries reusing any part of an orbital class rocket, and the one that used to quit doing it because they couldn't do it cost effectively. It's apparently such a hard problem that it takes one incredibly stubborn motherfucker calling the shots to make it happen, otherwise it gets slow rolled or given up on entirely.

That in no way takes anything away from the countless managers, engineers, technicians, assembly line workers, support staff, and probably at least a hundred other job descriptions I'm leaving out whose ideas and efforts were central in making these visions a reality.

The fact is that basically everything humans do today rests on a Jenga tower made up of an unthinkably vast number of moving parts themselves made up of people and machines. All are necessary to make everything go. At various stages some parts are replaceable and some aren't and that state changes over time.
posted by wierdo at 11:13 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Cybertrucks? Really? "A shit-ton"? How are you defining that?

Strictly speaking, one Cybertruck would be a shit-ton.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:19 AM on November 30, 2023 [19 favorites]

In space flight, he was the only one willing to dump money into reusability rather than just making a slightly cheaper rocket.

The reusable rockets are awesome, no doubt, and will probably be his best legacy. I had such high hopes for Tesla's rooftop solar shingles, too, but those have turned out to be not so great. Solar Reviews has a good detailed discussion here:

Is the Tesla Solar Roof worth it?

We’re going to cut to the chase - for most homeowners, the Tesla Solar Roof isn’t a worthwhile investment. Installing traditional solar panels is going to be cheaper, no matter how you slice it. Even if you also need a new roof, Tesla’s roofing material and removal costs are so high that unless you were already planning on getting a premium roof installed, it’s going to be more expensive than it needs to be...

Setting cost aside, we’re still not so sure the Solar Roof is the right way to go solar. Despite being introduced in 2016, Tesla didn’t start installing Solar Roofs until 2018, and it’s still unknown how many have actually been installed. From the numbers we’ve seen floating around, it doesn’t seem like the Solar Roof is a profitable product for Tesla, so we wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to stop selling it together.

Because there aren’t a ton of Solar Roofs out there (from what we know), we also can’t be sure how Tesla handles repairs and servicing of this product...People have reported waiting weeks to hear back from their Tesla advisors if there is an issue with their system. In mid-2020, Tesla started canceling Solar Roof preorders after homeowners had paid their deposits - claiming the sites weren’t within their service territory. And not long after, Tesla changed the prices of Solar Roof installations for homeowners who already signed contracts. If you can’t even trust that they’ll honor their contract - what can you trust them about?

The bottom line is even if the Tesla Solar Roof can seem like a competitive option for those looking to switch to solar in theory, in reality, it raises some pretty big red flags.
posted by mediareport at 11:24 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

It's all about suburban and exurban MAGA types these days and they would absolutely buy a cybertruck both because they'd think it looks cool, they'd think it would piss off a liberal, and they'd think it was big because it is.

Except that they wouldn't, because the modern truck market is built around a certain performative fantasy - it's not about just "looking cool", but about feeling like a "working man", even if the only thing the truck is hauling is their ass. The Cybertruck very much does not fit into that performative fantasy (and things like the Cybertruck failing at hill undercut it even further.)

More recently, while I seriously doubt he came up with the idea, Tesla has thus far been the only automaker willing to dump the time and money into making it possible to make large castings that drastically reduce the cost of the end product relative to traditional manufacturing.

So, unibody casting isn't used in car manufacturing because it turns out that making the body one whole piece means that it's very hard to repair because it's one whole piece that can't be easily swapped - which is why damage that could be repaired on a traditional vehicle will get a Tesla totaled. It's even more problematic with trucks, as the reason they're built on ladder frames is to allow for reconfiguration. Not to mention that if unibody construction is supposedly "cheaper", the Tesla price premium sure does hide it.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:28 AM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

In a similar vein I don’t know how you can claim to be a fan of the Culture and be the kind of person Musk is.

Paul Ryan loved Rage Against the Machine, too. There are a lot of people out there who are fans of things they misunderstand completely -- and are all the bigger fans because of it. Look no further than the Tyler Durden fans out there.
posted by tclark at 11:41 AM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

> zeikka: "Hard to tell, but his contributions to Tesla and SpaceX are real."

I have an acquaintance who worked at SpaceX for just under a year before decamping to a start-up founded by and largely staffed with ex-SpaceX workers (in sort of a Traitorous 8 style, I think). In her opinion -- and apparently the opinion of a big chunk of the workforce of this startup -- any success SpaceX has achieved was largely in spite of, rather than because of, Elon.
posted by mhum at 11:46 AM on November 30, 2023 [20 favorites]

> Paul Ryan loved Rage Against the Machine, too.

I remember thinking that was the problem with a slogan as vague as "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" as I watched kids who were probably going to be bank presidents someday mosh to it at my university campus pub.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:52 AM on November 30, 2023 [11 favorites]

I think the best way to look at Elon's "positive" contributions is as a venture capitalist. He spots something he likes (Tesla, rocket ships) and throws money at it. That's where his recklessness has paid off, because typical VCs were looking for safer investment but Musk will toss around millions merely for the sake of his ego.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:00 PM on November 30, 2023 [11 favorites]

In space flight, he was the only one willing to dump money into reusability rather than just making a slightly cheaper rocket.

Reusability was also the goal of John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, founded two years before SpaceX, though obviously it didn't succeed. Carmack put a few million of his own money into it.
posted by jedicus at 12:04 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Accuracy only seems to matter enough for a correction when it's a famous rich white dude being criticized. Double so if he's a white supremacist. That's personally why I find the defense of Musk (every time, omg why EVERY TIME) so tiresome and sometimes disturbing.

This thread seems to be about one man. So in this thread we should not care about accuracy. Will future threads marked whether it is one where accurate and respectful discussion is expected or not?

I think similar standards would be good across the board whether talking about Musk or Pizzagate, or the overlap of the two.
posted by zeikka at 12:26 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

I remember thinking that was the problem with a slogan as vague as "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" as I watched kids who were probably going to be bank presidents someday mosh to it at my university campus pub.

Yeah, that song is basically the MAGA national anthem. It's a hard thing to put on a bunch of 18 year olds or however old RATM was when they wrote that, but the unintended consequences of that song as your first single were pretty high.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:32 PM on November 30, 2023

The event is now live. Elon is one awkward public speaker, it is just uncomfortable to watch.
posted by zeikka at 12:34 PM on November 30, 2023

Yeah, that song is basically the MAGA national anthem. It's a hard thing to put on a bunch of 18 year olds or however old RATM was when they wrote that, but the unintended consequences of that song as your first single were pretty high.

I'm not sure holding minorities to any extent responsible for their expressions of anger being co-opted by racists is particularly charitable regardless of their age, especially when that co-option relies on ignoring well over half the lyrics of the song.
posted by Dysk at 12:37 PM on November 30, 2023 [19 favorites]

NoxAeternum Huh, that hill video is really weird, I hadn't run across it before. WTF was going wrong? Electric motors produe huge amounts of torque per unit volume, much more than an IC engine does.

It should have climed that hill like it wasn't even there, and yet it didn't. How did Tesla fuck things up so badly with the cybertruck it can be outperformed by a Chevy Volt? Or any other small EV?

Weird.

I still think if it ever actually gets into production it'll sell quite a few in the suburbs, but you are probably correct. The "right" brand of truck really matters to most of those people, not to mention the standard truck aesthetics.
posted by sotonohito at 12:37 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

On topic, is Musk really just trying to sink Twitter at this point? Seriously, there just plain aren't enough right wing supplement makers and My Pillows and gold scammers to make up for all the ad money he's driving away.

Is he actually so delusional he thinks enough people will pay for a Twitter subscription to make up for the lost ad revenue?

Or is it just that he's such an obnoxious little dick he's willing to crater Twitter and lose all of that $40 billion he spent on it because "you can't tell me what to do?"
posted by sotonohito at 12:41 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

Huh, that hill video is really weird, I hadn't run across it before. WTF was going wrong? Electric motors produe huge amounts of torque per unit volume, much more than an IC engine does.

sotonohito : I'm not a car guy, but what I've read points to it being a limited slip differential issue.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:43 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

The audience at the event sounds like just a bunch of fanboys. Musk sounds like he’s not very comfortable. What a joke…
posted by njohnson23 at 12:43 PM on November 30, 2023

Electric motors produe huge amounts of torque per unit volume, much more than an IC engine does.

Electric motors also have to find a way to get rid of all their waste heat, which is 100% of their power when crawling up a hill at close to stall torque. IC's heat generation stays pretty much the same regardless (and a lot of it goes out the tail pipe). My educated guess is that the Cybertruck is geared / radiatored for impressive acceleration, and not so much for hill climbing.

I wonder if its real-world towing performance will suffer in the same way...

[edit] or maybe what Navelgazer said.
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:43 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Musk sounds like he’s not very comfortable.

He has always been very odd presenter, so nothing new there.
posted by zeikka at 12:45 PM on November 30, 2023

I would like to hear Mona Lisa Vito's opinion on the limited slip differential issue.
posted by snwod at 1:06 PM on November 30, 2023 [20 favorites]

Well as anyone who's eva tried to climb a hill in a Cybatruck knows, you step on the gas, one tire spins, the otha tire does nuthin'.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:10 PM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

Wow, for some reason I assumed the cybertruck would have independent wheel motors (it just seems like an inevitable evolution for EV platforms). I learned from the hill climbing video that this is very clearly not the case.

Also, does any manufacturer use LSDs anymore? I thought they pretty much all had gone to whatever marketing name they've chosen for having the computer put the brakes on the wheels that are spinning out.
posted by tigrrrlily at 1:10 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Huh, that hill video is really weird, I hadn't run across it before. WTF was going wrong? Electric motors produe huge amounts of torque per unit volume, much more than an IC engine does.

There's a response video of a F150 Lightning going up the same hill happily.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:13 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

My (new this year) Mazda MX-5 (Miata for US folk) has a limited-slip diff. But it’s also almost the exact opposite of a Cybertruck.
posted by parm at 1:15 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

In his ongoing attempt to to destroy Xitter

In Portuguese, when a word starts with x the x is pronounced "sh".
posted by Night_owl at 1:19 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Also, does any manufacturer use LSDs anymore? I thought they pretty much all had gone to whatever marketing name they've chosen for having the computer put the brakes on the wheels that are spinning out.

Not only do they do, but there are aftermarket LSDs for Tesla motors as well.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:19 PM on November 30, 2023

Also, we have pricing!

The company also provided updated details about the pricing, range, and features for the truck, much of which has changed significantly from the originally announced numbers. The rear-wheel drive version of the electric truck will start at $60,990 — up from the original price of $39,900 in 2019 — and will get 250 miles of range on a full charge. The all-wheel drive version will start at $79,990 and get 340 miles. And a “Cyberbeast” trim will run you $99,990 and get around 320 miles of range.

I think those translate to "go truck yourself".
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:25 PM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

IMO the most plausible explanations for his racist outbursts is substance use.

It's very likely that he has some pretty entrenched racist beliefs. He goes home after a long day of flogging serfs etc and imbibes his intoxicant of choice (my guess would be GHB but really could be anything). He gets fucked up, filters come off, and we get a taste of the real Elon on twitter.

Wakes up the next day to the mess and instead of apologizing, he doubles down because that's just what he does.

I bet it's as simple as that. I don't think he's purposefully trying to destroy twitter or anything like that.
posted by sid at 1:36 PM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

He likes Ambien and red wine, and ketamine, according to a Google search.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:42 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

>In his ongoing attempt to to destroy Xitter

In Portuguese, when a word starts with x the x is pronounced "sh".

Same in Mayan. Well, technically all Xs.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:56 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's very likely that he has some pretty entrenched racist beliefs.

As most of us do no matter how hard we try, but he is from a culture (South African) that is very overt about that kind of thing. It's not surprising he has trouble keeping a lid on it.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:58 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

According to Ars Technica:

Musk made a point of the fact that in a crash with another vehicle, the Cybertruck—which weighs 6,603–6,843 lbs (2,995–3,104 kg)—will destroy the other vehicle.

Psychopathy is a selling point now?
posted by Dysk at 2:07 PM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

I do not understand the drama around simply stopping the use of a goddamned social media platform! ... easy for me to say because I never used Twitter ... and I am a living, breathing, functioning human being who doesn't feel even a little left out!)

such strong "let them eat cake" energy here.

(s)
I could have used this cogent take in 2018/2019 when I was mourning the loss of the amazing fucking community I had on Google Plus. reclassifying my mourning as mere drama/lack of humanity would have been helpful to me!
(/s)
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:28 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Psychopathy is a selling point now?

Kinda for a long time, but especially since circa 2010.
posted by tclark at 2:45 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point he makes reference to what this thing would do to protestors…you know, in the event that you ever felt threatened by them nudge nudge wink wink.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:00 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Musk made a point of the fact that in a crash with another vehicle, the Cybertruck—which weighs 6,603–6,843 lbs (2,995–3,104 kg)—will destroy the other vehicle.

A Hummer EV weighs 9,000 pounds. An ambulance, about 10,000.

Something like a dump truck or a cement truck weighs 25,000 or more, and that's empty. A fully-loaded log truck might weigh 80,000.

And I am fairly confident that locomotives exist.
posted by box at 3:05 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sure, and the Saturn V is an even heavier vehicle still that exists, but like locomotives, doesn't tend to share space with pedestrians or other vehicles much. Dump trucks and cement trucks need a different category of license in my jurisdiction, with significantly stricter testing requirements. Ambulances are exclusively driven by professionals, and are big and heavy for a useful reason. Hummers are also a crime against your fellow humans (especially pedestrians), but their manufacturer doesn't brag about how they'll destroy the other party in a crash. I think that last bit is a lot more significant than the kerb weight (which is not to say that the kerb weight isn't a problem).
posted by Dysk at 3:15 PM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

Take comfort in the fact that without crumple zones it'll probably kill its own driver and passengers, too.
posted by praemunire at 3:18 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'd rather see vehicle manufacturers (forced to) focus on making things less deadly all round.
posted by Dysk at 3:19 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Something like a dump truck or a cement truck weighs 25,000 or more, and that's empty. A fully-loaded log truck might weigh 80,000.

Yeah but they aren't enriched and strengthened with the power of cyber
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:20 PM on November 30, 2023 [17 favorites]

I was excited by the initial announcement for the Cybertruck. It was going to be a very capable vehicle at an affordable price. I was fine with the aesthetic because the idea behind it, pressing a single piece of steel would reduce the cost, made it seem like making it look more conventional would have resulted in a more expensive vehicle. Now that the initial pricing and specs have been revealed we see that the range has gone down a lot and the price has gone up a lot so it isn't the same value it was before. At this point if I were interested in an electric truck something like the Ford Lightning would be a better choice, but my family somehow thinks that only bad people drive big trucks (we live in a large urban area so it's more or less true), so a truck isn't on the cards any more at all. Holding out hope for the VW ID.Buzz now.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:31 PM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

The 'other vehicle' to be 'destroyed' would likely be a PRIUS (remember to sneer-snarl as you spit that name out), the mere sight of which is guaranteed to inspire absolute seething hatred among the coal-rolling road warriors that this misbegotten cross between a Dalek and a Panzer is designed to appeal to.
posted by hangashore at 3:35 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

I haven't seen Musk speak for quite a while and it's clear to me he's not OK. I hope he can get some help for whatever ails him and it wouldn't be a bad thing for that help to involve him retreating from public life.
posted by dg at 3:35 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

It seems like the truck could do considerable damage ... to Tesla. Assuming it doesn't sell well, all the rolling to manufacture the thing will mostly go to waste and the cost to convert it to another chassis will be considerable. How much of a hit can they take?
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 3:43 PM on November 30, 2023

Listen especially from about 2:30 or 2:31, where he’s attempting to respond to the question “What will happen if you lose all your advertisers?”

He starts with an audible tripart shaky inhale and then he launches in and produces… this:

"I mean if the company fails because of an adver-ka-advertise-uh boycott it will fail because of an advitadvertise boycott. And that will be what bankrud da company and thad’s what ort-evbud on orth will know-"

Here he breaks off as if he’s reached an endstop but really one suspects it’s because he just can’t access language for a millisecond. He cranes his head in the direction of the interviewer and yanks the corners of his mouth down severely, clearly aiming for the expression he’s been making for the previous 2 minutes 20-whatever seconds, the one he always makes that practically begs the listener to punch him in the face. He looks from the audience to the interviewer every time he says some “shocking” thing and he has this face on his face, like, “Did you just hear that? Am I a hilarious iconoclast, or what, do you love me, do you desperately want me to put my 78th baby into you right now?“ He tries to make the same insufferable face here but he is suddenly not able to achieve it because…

Something is way way wrong. He was pretty messed up before, but having fun in his usual way, talking like a two-year-old to doting parents while also trying to OWN and mugging for the fans in the audience. All de rigueur. But then right around 2:30 he has some kind of a failure of neurology. Either he’s seizing or he’s stroking out or mr_roboto is right and he’s manic but his manic hyperlogia has just glitched, or, and this is what I think it is, he is very very fucked up on something and he did a bump of whatever it was before he came out on stage and now the shit has kicked in.

I know this that he’s experiencing and I bet most everybody here does, too. It is deeply familiar. It is how one behaves when one is fucked up on something or experiencing momentary aphasia from some other cause but is nevertheless trying very hard to soldier on and behave as normal. Usually when this happens you can dimly sense the wrongness but you’re powerless to stop it. If you’re surrounded by friends and well-wishers during your hellish performance, you usually get rescued and bustled off to bed or the hospital. But if one has only adversaries and sycophants witnessing the travail, woe betide him. His feedback signal has been terminally distorted by all the fanboys har-harring in the audience all his life and for the previous two minutes and40-whatever seconds, so he’s thinking, “Oh, I’m getting away with everything as usual. I stumbled there, but it’s not bad and they get me. Of course they do! I’m hilarious! They’re loving it! I’ll give them even more!”

This is what happens to our really rich folk eventually, if they lack whatever internal regulator stops the ones that stop before they Icarus themselves. It’s Michael Jackson all over again. It's not good for them! I know they're a small class, but shouldn't we get some kind of healthcare strategy in place for this phenomenon? It's difficult to watch.
posted by Don Pepino at 4:05 PM on November 30, 2023 [20 favorites]

you cannot in good faith argue that we have Elon Musk to thank, except insofar as he was one small part of Tesla.

I've worked under numerous chiefs in a global automaker in the end-to-end process of conceptualizing, designing, engineering then mass manufacturing cars (which takes about 4 years, and I've done several of them) and I have to say that all strategy and direction flows directly from the person in the top seat.

I can tell you that talented people can only work on what their boss tells them they are allowed to work on.

There have been some chiefs who have less dictatorial approach to leadership, who actually recognize there are some extremely smart and talented people with genuinely good ideas in the lower ranks.... and take the time to understand, accept, then champion and embrace those ideas.

Elon Musk is definitely NOT one of those leaders. That idea is so absurd as to be laughable.

He's a stubborn idiot. He deserves credit for every single bad decision at Twitter. He deserves credit for every single good decision at Tesla. Can you imagine him taking strategic and tactical advice from a subordinate and then changing his mind and doing what the subordinate said instead?

My experience most of the time is that the talented people lower in the chain have radical ideas**, and it's the leaders who say, no, you can't do that, it would cost too much, it would be too risky, the board wouldn't agree to it, the EBIT return is too low, we don't want to anger our dealers / supply chain, no no no no.

Elon Musk is the kind of guy generating those radical ideas, and people subordinate to him are gasping in horror and saying no, it can't be done, it's never been done, and he just says go do it or you're fired. Sometimes it works (Tesla) and sometimes it fails (Twitter) but the point is, you never get anywhere without taking risks. Maybe the risk on Tesla or Space-X only had a 10% chance of succeeding - in a counter-factual history, we'll never know that. But without someone willing to take that risk, it would never have been done - everyone's just happy that it was done using his effort and his money (and that of his investors) so we can copy it later.

** not even radical new ideas, but just emulating genuine innovations on Teslas have that make them so much cheaper to manufacture: the hub and spoke wiring system that reduces wiring length from 3km to 1.5km, a much more advanced cooling system that eliminates half the parts, half the weight, half the tubes, structural battery, giga-casting to simplify and save on manufacturing assembly, etc etc etc. The Tesla Model Y is the top selling car in the world right now, because with great profit margins they can immediately scale up production. Every other manufacturer is being forced to sell at a loss, so there is no ability to scale up production.

Why aren't ANY of the competitors able to copy Tesla innovations from several years ago - never mind attempting to leapfrog them? The whole entrenched system is saying they can't do it, from the top down. No no no no no. (there are always a dozen reasons why our system will cost double of what Tesla pays and there's nothing we can do about it). There are undoubtedly engineers in other companies as smart as the ones in Tesla. There just hasn't been a leader willing to take the risk of trying something new. Toyota is the first one that has said they are implementing their own giga casting, projected to begin in 2026.

And that's not even counting all the ideas we have that would make a genuinely better, safer, and more functional vehicle than the Cybertruck. There are many good ideas that you can take from the Cybertruck - like moving the cabin forward so you get a crew cab + full size bed in a more efficient package. All other trucks right now either have a crew cab with reduced bed, or a single cab with full sized bed. The jury is still out on some other attributes (stainless steel flat panel body to avoid the weight and cost of a ladder frame? Ehh... have to wait and see).
posted by xdvesper at 4:16 PM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

It seems like the truck could do considerable damage

My reaction upon viewing this design is, that cybertruck is going to hurt people. Not sure why nobody else comments on this, but those protruding upper corners, fore & aft, are going to be lethal in minor and near-collisions. There's reasons, based on decades of design evolution, that F-150s (and all modern PUs), although square, have rounded corners. Imagine being struck or pinned up against a wall or a lamp-standard by one of those stainless-steel corners when the cybertruck driver gets a little too close, backing up or going around a tight curve in the city with limited visibility.
posted by Rash at 4:24 PM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

MetaFilter: METHADRINE DREAMS ON A KETAMINE WEED STREAM.
posted by potent_cyprus at 5:05 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Why aren't ANY of the competitors able to copy Tesla innovations from several years ago - never mind attempting to leapfrog them?

Because they're not nearly the innovations you think they are. Take unibody casting - as I pointed out earlier, casting the body as one piece means that the body is now one structural unit, which means that if said unit is compromised in any way, the vehicle is a write-off because the cost of replacing the body easily outweighs the value of the car. And trucks are put on ladder frames for a reason - this allows the truck to be reconfigured for various uses. More interesting to me is the "skateboard" concept that Rivian is working on (and which has been floating around the industry for decades) where the drivetrain and base frame are a single module that can be mated to other bodies.

There's a reason the video of the Cybertruck failing to go up a hill that any other truck could climb easily went viral - it's an illustration of why you need to remember what the actual goal is, because it doesn't matter how "innovative" a truck is if it fails at being a truck.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:05 PM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

Elon Musk is the kind of guy generating those radical ideas

Nothing discourages self-reflection like wild success.

And Elon, even though he was quite rich, was not exactly a wild success as he moved into Tesla and SpaceX. He'd been unceremoniously booted from PayPal after trying to implement unrealistic and radical ideas. Partly in Tesla, and absolutely in SpaceX, Elon was at a period of his life where he was chastened enough by the humiliation of his PayPal experience to engage the strengths of executives who at first were given very long leashes, and then when the Cult of Elon started ramping up, were both influential internally and in industry as to effectively know how to bubble-wrap him. Gwynne Shotwell steered SpaceX like a genius, and Elon got the credit.

By the 2018 "pedo" comment, it was clear that Elon had started believing the hype, and had enough money that nobody (short of the Department of Defense during the Starlink / Ukraine fiasco) could shut him down.

No, Elon circa 2006 was someone who was canny enough to see where the puck was headed, and two huge industries dominated by dinosaurs, so he got in on the ground floor of Tesla and SpaceX (and was smart enough to hire Shotwell and not get in her way (too much)).

Elon circa 2023 has been so completely warped by a cult of his own making that he's flailing, hemorrhaging billions over a fit of pique, and still has people acting like he's the same Elon he was in 2006. Nah, dude. That Elon's gone, probably for good.
posted by tclark at 5:12 PM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

I have 5 bluesky invites. No need to contact me, here they are:

bsky-social-6dz5n-kiofu
bsky-social-xog3e-egvrj
bsky-social-ic5kh-tzl7b
bsky-social-ew5ws-cfgpz
bsky-social-uaalw-wj52j
posted by signal at 5:24 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, please don't call billionaires "Elon", "Zuck", etc.
It humanizes them.
posted by signal at 5:26 PM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]

Because they're not nearly the innovations you think they are.

It doesn't matter whether you or I think they're an innovation or not. We were wrong. All of us were wrong, collectively, all the manufacturers with 50-100 years of experience, thinking we knew best what made a car good.

The market - the customers - are the ones that decide whether the product is good, whether they will buy it, and how much they are willing to pay for it.

This is one of those scenarios where you can gather all the experts in the room to try and come to a consensus and it turns out they've been living in a reality disconnected from what the customers really want.

Tesla's 2022 profit margin was about 14.0%, best in the world.

Toyota's was about 8.0%

Ford's was about 3.5%

Volkswagen's was about 6.5%

The tradeoff about cost and quality vs ease of repair has been done many times, I wrote a spiel about our experiences with front end module design in 2006-2008 in another thread which was this exact same debate. Better quality, better safety, lower cost, but more expensive to repair, more cars written off. FEMs are now standard in the automotive world.
posted by xdvesper at 5:28 PM on November 30, 2023

On topic, is Musk really just trying to sink Twitter at this point?

If he sells Twitter at a loss, he fails.
Iff the site rebounds under new management (by any metric), his failings will be even more apparent.

On the other hand, If the site dies... well, he's laying the groundwork to blame it on advertisers and Linda Yaccarino.
It's not his failure -- he's merely the victim of outside forces.

The Rebooting goes into more detail on the narrative Musk is trying to sell.
posted by cheshyre at 5:41 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

You cannot possibly convince me that Elon had any idea more technically complicated than "make battery car cheap and good." His statement that he knows more about manufacturing than any human on the planet is practically proof positive of that. Any success Tesla has had is because of his one actual skill: convincing a bunch of people stupider than him to invest money in whatever the fuck he's doing.
posted by Room 101 at 5:50 PM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

[Cocaine] is a hell of a drug.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:55 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Tesla's 2022 profit margin was about 14.0%, best in the world.

Isn't the elephant in the room here that much of Tesla's profitability is smoke with cooked books and/or under paying abused employees?
posted by bcd at 5:56 PM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

Senpai ain't gonna notice no proles, no matter how much they simp for him.
posted by aramaic at 5:57 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Isn't the elephant in the room here that much of Tesla's profitability is smoke with cooked books and/or under paying abused employees?

That's part of it, but the bigger part is that Tesla uses the same strategy as Apple - it's easy to have high profit margins when you price out low-margin buyers. Back when the Cybertruck was first announced, you had the RWD model priced at $40k (actual price: $61k), and the AWD model at $70k (actual price: $80k, with a performance "Cyberbeast" trim at $100k).
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:30 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

You cannot possibly convince me that Elon had any idea more technically complicated than "make battery car cheap and good."

The only question is why someone would try to argue with you.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:43 PM on November 30, 2023

Wow, he looks *really* unhealthy. I mean TV can do that to you but there's something not good going on there.
posted by loquacious at 6:47 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

As most of us do no matter how hard we try, but he is from a culture (South African) that is very overt about that kind of thing. It's not surprising he has trouble keeping a lid on it.

Look, Elon Musk is not a guy who is struggling to overcome a racist upbringing who sometimes lets a few slurs fly when he gets hammered or whatever you're imagining. He consistently throws in with Nazis. His best bud in Silicon Valley is Peter Thiel, a fabulously wealthy man (and definitely not a murderer) who has never understood why being rich and white and male doesn't make him in charge of everybody else and is doing his damnedest to erase democracy and civil rights and everything else standing between him and being a genuine medieval aristocrat. His Tesla factory was famously segregated, with black workers in a separate part of the factory referred to as "the plantation". As soon as he took over Twitter the platform suddenly unbanned hundreds of white supremacist accounts that had been banned for threats of violence. He loves Trump and tried to use his platform to help launch the Presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis, a politician who has nothing to run on except a long, sustained campaign of using the power of the state to hurt marginalized people.

He's not having "racist outbursts". He's expressing, over and over and over again, consistently, at every opportunity, a right-wing, white supremacist ideology, and he's spending his time on Twitter chatting with literal neo-Nazis and their fascist fellow travelers. To pretend he's anything but the fascist he is, publicly, proudly, and consistently, is silly wishful thinking.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:24 PM on November 30, 2023 [59 favorites]

And why anyone would argue with you I have no idea either.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:32 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

My read on Musk is that he is (or at started out as) actually quite a competent investor and CEO, for the narrow definition of competence which prevails in those fields - i.e. he can make the numbers go up consistently. The problem, from his perspective, is that our culture doesn't valorize those fields per se - they're financially rewarding but most everyone who does those jobs isn't a household name (and probably doesn't want to be). If you're someone who does that job but who also wants to be known and adored, you have to pretend to be something else, something more. You have to be a brilliant investor, a corporate statesman with Great Ideas, a "creative", etc. So that's what Musk did - he presented himself as a brilliant inventor and engineer, which he never was and isn't now.

And at some point the image and the acclaim which comes with it became more important to him, psychologically, than the nuts and bolts job that he was good at. And so he ceased to pay the latter enough attention and started to fail at it, which made it more difficult to sustain the image, which makes him frantically devote more time to shoring up the image, which leaves less time still for the nuts and bolts, etc., in a sort of downward spiral. Maybe he'll ride it all the way down, maybe he'll get off, re-think things, and have a second act in the same way, that, say, Steve Jobs did.

In a similar vein I don’t know how you can claim to be a fan of the Culture and be the kind of person Musk is.

Because another way to read those books (a dumber way, but a way I saw a lot of in high school and college) is "the solution to all problems is to get more cool technology faster, and especially AI". I have no doubt there are a whole lot of Culture enthusiasts among the AI accelerationist crowd.
posted by AdamCSnider at 7:59 PM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

We don't need this cybertruck. We need Hyundai's Heritage Grandeur concept car.
That's what Cyberpunk looks like.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:38 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

The weirdest part of this for me is the constant looking out to the audience as if he expects thunderous applause for whatever dumb sentence that he finds coming out of his mouth.

The specific one that takes the cake is "What this advertising boycott is going to do, it's going to kill the company", followed by a pregnant pause as he looks out to the audience, smiling. Only after that pregnant pause did he go on to the whole "the world will know the advertisers killed the company" shtick.

It's as if he thought (1) People would immediately understand "It's going to kill the company" not as "My company is gonna die soon" but as "I am pleased that this advertising boycott will kill the company, because then the whole world will see what jerks those advertisers really are, and how righteous my actions and views are, which is the important thing here", and (2) People would care if Twitter died.

To be clear, I mean "care" in the sense of "Poor martyred Twitter", not in the "FUCK YEAH IT'S DEAD" sense.
posted by Flunkie at 8:47 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

The weirdest part of this for me is the constant looking out to the audience as if he expects thunderous applause for whatever dumb sentence that he finds coming out of his mouth.

That's what he's used to from his usual band of sycophants. He thinks that's normal.
posted by ryanrs at 9:04 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I so, so loved Twitter, man. My feed was a thing of beauty. Then Elon and his alt-right crew reinstated all the nazis and dezi operators, all with the cover story of 'free speech absolutism", sigh. Peter Zeihan just quit Twitter over this issue.

As for Elon's Cybertruck, as mentioned above it's looking like the vaunted "30X-series steel" idea was as cockamamie as it sounded 4 years ago.

I plunked down my $100 deposit 4 years ago since while $70K for a recreational vehicle was (& is) a stretch for me, if it can give me 20 years of fun travel all over the American West it'll be a worthwhile expense . . . back in 2020 I went down to LA to view the truck first-hand and it looked nice enough.

Sandy Munro is certainly chuffed about the Cybertruck and I do think Teslas are the best BEVs available today, but just not feeling it with today's $80K price tag on a ~200-mile electric truck. Might as well save $30k and get a Model Y LR or P.

I guess now I'll just wait a couple of years until all the NACS-equipped offerings arrive in 2025+. My 2018 LEAF should last me that long at least, and the $6000 trade-in value on it now is something of an insult anyway.

Currently I can usually get some screaming deals from Hertz . . . vs the insurance/interest/depreciation hits on owning any new car, a weekly rental from them at that price is almost a free car.
posted by torokunai at 11:05 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

It’s mostly just renderings and vapor but the BEV pickup truck I’m exited about is Telo. I hope my 2003 Subaru lasts long enough for them to get to market and then a year or two more, because I’m not so excited that I’m going to buy the first model year of a new car company.
posted by aubilenon at 11:16 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's not good for them! I know they're a small class, but shouldn't we get some kind of healthcare strategy in place

Conrad Murray's probably not too busy
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:16 PM on November 30, 2023

Tesla's 2022 profit margin was about 14.0%, best in the world.

a large part of that is thanks to not having to split profits with an independent dealer network.
another part is not having much of its organization becoming deadweight and/or having accrued decades of legacy expenses.

Tesla as a startup managed to thread a very fine needle last decade, with the 3 being just good enough to be its breakout product, and the Y successfully doubling down on it.

~5 years ago I naturally assumed Tesla would remain a Fisker-level boutique sedan maker, with all the legacy makers eagerly following Nissan's lead and making great BEV alternatives.

Oddly enough, legacy makers stepping up their game like I expected just hasn't happened yet. Making BEVs is harder than it looks apparently.
posted by torokunai at 11:27 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Isn't the elephant in the room here that much of Tesla's profitability is smoke with cooked books and/or under paying abused employees?

Just address a couple of things about trust in the broader industry, rather than just Tesla - PWC audits Tesla's books, and as a public company Tesla has to file a 10-K with the SEC. Everyone would be surprised if a public company would knowingly file a fraudulent 10-K, and at the same time have PWC miss it.

If fraud on this scale happens, then basically that's like, Enron which resulted in the entire Sarbanes–Oxley Act in 2002, or with the GFC which resulted in the BASEL III Accords. Basically, an almost total overhaul of the compliance industry. The chance of that happening is slim.

To make it even harder to cheat, they're up against the highest scoring / most motivated people drawn to the ludicrous salaries at Goldman Sachs, Bain, etc who then spend their time analyzing data coming out of these mega corporations, then attending their investor calls and grilling them with uncomfortable questions. These are top 0.1% brains in the country that I had the misfortune of competing with at university before they all took consulting gigs...

And to make it even harder to cheat, this is a very physical industry we're talking about. The first thing all automotive firms do when a competitor releases a significant new vehicle is to pre-order it so they get it on launch day and then tear it down to the smallest screw and bolt. Everything is measured and weighed, and a total raw material cost is drawn up: every part is analyzed by industrial engineers who can estimate the most efficient manufacturing process that could build it. This is freely available to anyone who is willing to buy a copy and tear it down: Munro on YouTube is a famous channel that sometimes does Tesla teardowns. The short of it is: there's no way to hide in this industry - if you're efficient, everyone knows it. If you're not efficient, everyone knows it as well.

Specifically on employee pay: UAW workers earned $64 per hour, while workers at foreign automakers like Toyota or Hyundai earned about $55 per hour, workers at Tesla were estimated to earn $45-$50 per hour Generally it takes 30 labor hours in the assembly plant to manufacture a vehicle: Tesla's labor cost advantage amounts to maybe $300 per vehicle against Toyota, or $600 per hour against the UAW. At a $50,000 average transaction price this amounts about a 1% profit margin advantage - not insignificant, but doesn't begin to explain the full margin gap.

uses the same strategy as Apple - it's easy to have high profit margins when you price out low-margin buyers.

This isn't true - Ford's Average Transaction Price in Q3 2023 is $56,339. Tesla's Average Transaction Price in Q3 2023 is $50,931 which is lower than Fords - so it's Ford that is cherry picking the higher end of the market by exclusively selling trucks and SUVs, while Tesla is still selling on the low end with the compact sedans.

a large part of that is thanks to not having to split profits with an independent dealer network.

This isn't true either, from my perspective. There aren't any laws requiring this in Australia, or most of the rest of the word. Automakers HAVE tried to sell cars direct to public before in other countries (it was miserable), and have burned hundreds of millions of dollars failing to do it. Selling cars via an independent dealership is the most efficient way they've developed over the past 100 years.

Manufacturers are experts are manufacturing, not retailing. It's the same reason why a dairy farm with 100,000 cows doesn't just open up a specialist store in the NYC selling their brand of milk to "cut out the middlemen and improve their profits". They simply don't have that expertise, it would be a ridiculous idea to even think they could do it.

another part is not having much of its organization becoming deadweight and/or having accrued decades of legacy expenses.

Yes... but there's also the impact of legacy and institutional knowledge of manufacturing (which Tesla sucked at, and still sucks at, and is continually improving) and also the advantage of having billions in profit from ICE vehicles come in to fund R&D and startup costs for their EV lines, which in theory should allow them to take more risks and ramp up faster, so it should cancel out in theory...
posted by xdvesper at 2:25 AM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

This isn't true - Ford's Average Transaction Price in Q3 2023 is $56,339. Tesla's Average Transaction Price in Q3 2023 is $50,931 which is lower than Fords - so it's Ford that is cherry picking the higher end of the market by exclusively selling trucks and SUVs, while Tesla is still selling on the low end with the compact sedans.

Now you're being dishonest here, mixing 2022 and 2023 numbers while quietly eliding over the fact that what's driving that second number is that in the face of weakening EV adoption, Tesla has engaged in aggressive price cutting to maintain market share - price cutting that has cut into the profit margins you were using before to symbolize the superiority of their model. Which was my point: it's easy to have high profit margins when you can price out low-margin buyers - and when you can't anymore, margins are the first thing to go, which is part of that whole disasterous Q3 call where Musk admitted the Cybertruck was a mistake.

Also, the argument that it's Tesla that's targeted the lower end of the market is laughable given that the company has only reached having an offering that is below the average vehicle price after that aggressive price cutting - the company has historically priced itself at the higher end of the market.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:01 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Regarding repairability with large castings, it's true at the margins that it makes a car less repairable, but practically speaking it doesn't actually matter these days. Back in 1990, yeah, it would have made a difference. Today, the car is getting totaled anyway if it gets hit hard enough to damage the castings. It's not like they're casting the entire body, they're pretty deep inside.

Even seemingly minor crashes with modern cars cause enough damage to total the car thanks to having 14 airbags, seat belt pretensioners, a bunch of sensor modules, etc all requiring replacement after anything more than a walking speed parking lot incident.

My MIL's 2016 car is currently sitting in my parking spot after some very minor corner damage thanks to all the explosive safety equipment firing unnecessarily. Car drives fine, didn't even bend any suspension components or any of the crash structure, just cracked the bumper cover and broke a headlight lens, but it's been basically impossible to find someone willing to fix it.

The point being that repairability is already dead, so reducing the cost of the car by reducing the amount of assembly necessary makes no real difference anymore.
posted by wierdo at 4:09 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

My MIL's 2016 car is currently sitting in my parking spot after some very minor corner damage thanks to all the explosive safety equipment firing unnecessarily. Car drives fine, didn't even bend any suspension components or any of the crash structure, just cracked the bumper cover and broke a headlight lens, but it's been basically impossible to find someone willing to fix it.

And I had a front end collision earlier this year with our inherited 2017 RAV4 where the bumper was torn off with all the sensors, and I was able to have it repaired relatively easily. The plural of anecdote is not data, and the reporting is that Teslas are more likely to be totaled, in part because of their structural design.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:26 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

PWC audits Tesla's books

Having one of the Big Four (PWC, EY, KPMG, Deloitte) audit your books is not a guarantee that (a) your books are accurate, or (b) they are not doing a little cooking in the middle of the auditing.
posted by JohnFromGR at 4:31 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Indeed. All of the Big Four have consulting arms that will, for a hefty fee, help you work quite tidily around their audits.

For a heftier fee, I'm sure they'd even help you work tidily around each other's audits.

Just be sure to keep schtum about it or they'll have to get another Michael out of the warehouse, and that costs a lot.
posted by flabdablet at 4:53 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

We don't need this cybertruck. We need Hyundai's Heritage Grandeur concept car.
That's what Cyberpunk looks like.

We need the Ford 021C Concept Car.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 5:04 AM on December 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

Tesla's 2022 profit margin was about 14.0%, best in the world.

Toyota's was about 8.0%

Ford's was about 3.5%

Volkswagen's was about 6.5%

How much of this is regulatory skirting and union busting though?

Bypassing dealers is a big profit bump. A yet to unionize workforce is a temporary bit of profit margin. No legacy pension costs are a big profit bump.

Tesla's profit margin edge is probably temporary.
posted by srboisvert at 5:25 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

We're kinda getting away from how odious and unbalanced Elon has become with this thread, and that's a real shame, but of course I have to respond to this:

Selling cars via an independent dealership is the most efficient way they've developed over the past 100 years.

Ford Charts a New Path: Plans to Sidestep Dealerships through Online Car Sales

GM Expects To Save $2,000 Per EV With Digital Retailing Platform

Hyundai to Sell Vehicles on Amazon Starting in 2024

anyhoo, back to Elon's BS; one of the things that struck me about his latest meltdown/drama was that if he were running a healthy, hygienic online life he would not have even come across that typical alt-right/Q/neonazi tweet , let alone boost it as "the actual truth" to his followers.
posted by torokunai at 6:08 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Elon Musk is the kind of guy generating those radical ideas, and people subordinate to him are gasping in horror and saying no, it can't be done, it's never been done, and he just says go do it or you're fired. Sometimes it works (Tesla) and sometimes it fails (Twitter) but the point is, you never get anywhere without taking risks. Maybe the risk on Tesla or Space-X only had a 10% chance of succeeding - in a counter-factual history, we'll never know that. But without someone willing to take that risk, it would never have been done - everyone's just happy that it was done using his effort and his money (and that of his investors) so we can copy it later.

If you're going to defend Elon Musk by saying the ends (Tesla, SpaceX) justify the means (being an asshole fascist chaos monster boss) then please just come out and say it.

The world is already full of innovations that were achieved by means ranging from problematic to horrific. While I often have a difficult time coming to grips with this reality, I have learned that "stanning for the means"--insisting that problematic origins are actually good things and are beneficial--is not very productive at getting through the cognitive dissonance.

Elon Musk Did A Thing and now we have Tesla and SpaceX. But we don't have to defend his "genius" as being necessary and sufficient for everything Tesla and SpaceX does. He can be quietly consigned to the historical dustbin of first-movers-who-were-assholes. He's the wealthiest individual in the world--His legacy doesn't need to be defended so vigorously.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:12 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

We also don't owe Elon Musk anything despite whatever advances in electric vehicles or rocketry may be credited to him or his companies.

In order to be venerated, one needs to be venerable.

I know engineering has a very death-of-the-author-like approach to recognizing the achievements of individuals in spite of their personal behavior, but as it's been pointed out upthread, maybe that's a bad thing?

Maybe we need to drop this he's-a-terrible-person-but-he-gets-results indifference?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:23 AM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Given what's he's done to Twitter, and the reasons behind this demolition, I wouldn't piss on Elon if he were laying in the gutter afire, and I suspect many of the top-level Tesla quits over the years regard him similarly, for more personal and/or professional reasons.

I've driven 6,000 miles for 4 weeks in rental Teslas and found the experience to be overall pretty damn great (minus the ADAS phantom braking for heat-waves in the road ahead and occasionally thinking an upcoming turn lane / merge space is a great new direction to go in).

Being a LEAF driver for over 10 years now, I've never liked CCS-1 and see first-hand how dodgy Electrify America's network has become (EVgo is generally better but nothing like Tesla's network yet).

Back in 2018 I just wanted a base LEAF S without the fancy tech package since I don't trust Japanese software chops, I think that was a correct decision. Hopefully with the first round of NACS cars I'll have an alternative to getting a Tesla (a NACS-equipped e-Sprinter would be nice!)
posted by torokunai at 6:45 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think you're mistaking recognition of accomplishments he contributed to with excusing his appalling behavior that has been getting worse (or perhaps just more public) over time. I'd much rather it had been a genuinely decent person or at least a bog standard asshole who financed Tesla and insisted SpaceX focus on reusability, but that is sadly not the reality I inhabit.

This particular line of discussion started when someone upthread asked (paraphrasing) what Elon Musk had ever done and someone else replied, in effect, nothing. Would that it be true, but it is not.

Some people seem to think that acknowledging the (arguably) good things is somehow excusing the bad. It doesn't. The bad is bad, it doesn't offset the good and neither is it offset by the good.
posted by wierdo at 6:47 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I really don't know what's so great about SpaceX or Tesla. I am being serious. I've heard some references to reusability built into SpaceX stuff...but JPL and NASA aren't slouches with this either. Detail as to what exactly is so unique and needed about this man's achievements. It seems, from someone who doesn't follow him closely, that his contributions are small. Fronting money is something any rich asshole can do.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:52 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

(And I'm already sorry I asked. Reverting to my earlier omg why must he be praised, honestly. Gonna bounce, sorry! Too early more coffeeeee)
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:56 AM on December 1, 2023

Would that it be true, but it is not.

Lots of very deserving people never get credit for what they did do. Lots of assholes get credit for what they didn't do. History is almost always flawed. Sometimes we bother to correct prior injustices, but

Why is it so important that Elon Musk be credited for the things he did? Why does he of all people deserve such a quick "well, actually....." whenever someone gets something wrong about what he did or didn't do? Why do people have such a compulsion so set that particular record straight?

I'd much rather it had been a genuinely decent person or at least a bog standard asshole who financed Tesla and insisted SpaceX focus on reusability, but that is sadly not the reality I inhabit.

There are lots of things I wish were different about the world, but like if Ford wanted to de-emphasize the contributions of Henry Ford because of his hella-problematic beliefs, I'm not going to rise to defend his innovative use of the assembly line and praise his ambition to found the company.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:00 AM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Tesla has engaged in aggressive price cutting to maintain market share - price cutting that has cut into the profit margins you were using before to symbolize the superiority of their model. Which was my point:

I don't see how that makes any difference, my point remains just as strong as before - Tesla's margin in 2023 is 12.5% while Ford's margin is 4.0%, barely any different to 2022, while Tesla has the lower transaction price of the two. Yes Tesla had slightly higher transaction price in 2022, but that hardly tells the whole story either - as they ramp up production it can be a profit maximising move to increase volumes and reduce transaction price which can improve total profitability and hence total net margin.

My original point is that design efficiency (cost) is driving their margins, not transaction prices (which segment they choose to compete in).

If Tesla wanted to cripple the rest of the EV industry they could flood the market and lower the industry price further, forcing other automakers to consider pulling out of the market entirely - a typical move like Amazon / Walmart pulled off by deliberately running lower margins to dominate the industry in the long run.
posted by xdvesper at 7:00 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's not that nobody else could have, it's that nobody else bothered, despite it having been possible for a decade or two prior to Musk coming along and actually doing it because it was seen as risky and/or might gore a few cash cows.
posted by wierdo at 7:04 AM on December 1, 2023

The weirdest part of this for me is the constant looking out to the audience as if he expects thunderous applause for whatever dumb sentence that he finds coming out of his mouth.

Please clap
posted by Kitteh at 7:21 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

So uh I'm honestly surprised this hasn't come up yet but Tesla is profitable in large part due to carbon credits, which they've been selling for years.

More discussion at The Verge, from back in 2021.
posted by ZakDaddy at 7:28 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

I really don't know what's so great about SpaceX or Tesla. I am being serious. I've heard some references to reusability built into SpaceX stuff...but JPL and NASA aren't slouches with this either.

Cost per kg to low Earth orbit is dramatically lower on Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy than NASA launchers like Atlas or Delta or the projected costs of Vulcan. Cheaper than Ariane5 was, too. Getting hard numbers of cost per kg to orbit seems squiffy but we're not talking about a 5\% or 10\% reduction in cost, which would have been a huge deal in 2000. More like a 50-75\% reduction over other US launchers or Ariane. ISTR that some Russian and Chinese rockets are priced competitively with Falcon.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:50 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

The credits have basically built their billon-dollar factories for them but that’s not the driver of their cost-consciousness and/or corner-cutting methodology to achieve the profitability they enjoy.

Tesla’s approach is close to ‘you can have any color as long as it’s black’ …
posted by torokunai at 8:50 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

A number of things send me up a wall about people lauding Elon Musk, but perhaps the greatest is all the credit he gets for doing things that, if we had a fucking functional government, they'd have done long ago.
posted by JHarris at 9:24 AM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]

Is it so difficult to separate the childish racist narcissist's bizarre pronouncements that result in business moves that a consensus-driven board would never approve and yet manage to break through a profitability barrier for the childish racist narcissist's bizarre pronouncements that result in enabling right-wing takeovers of globally important social media venues? The key factor is that he's a childish racist narcissist. He's 100% a failson but has so much money and tries so much bullshit that sometimes something breaks through. This is not an endorsement, it's an observation. If he'd been born to the middle class, he'd have wound up a used car lot manager at best. He turns hundreds if not thousands of chances to excel into smouldering wreckage; those same chances a less privileged person might have succeeded with but never got their hands on. He's not to be lauded, he's to be regretted.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:27 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

Sometimes it works (Tesla) and sometimes it fails (Twitter) but the point is, you never get anywhere without taking risks.

This says a lot more about how decrepit and hide-bound corporate culture has gotten than anything positive about Elon Musk, that he could blunder into an industry and be successful, because he didn't hear much of what the old white people in the stiff suits had been telling each other for decades.
posted by JHarris at 9:33 AM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

He's not to be lauded, he's to be regretted.

Entirely this, and enough of these pronouncements in the vein of 'Sure, as a human being Musk is indefensible, but he's done some good things.' We wouldn't put a Hitler watercolour on our wall, and not because he was a mediocre artist.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 9:47 AM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

Why are we referring to ULA's rockets as "NASA" and SpaceX's NASA funded rockets as if they were some scrappy outsider?
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:56 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Because that was how I understood the terms used by the comment I was replying to.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 9:58 AM on December 1, 2023

I was mostly reacting to same, GCU.
posted by tigrrrlily at 10:00 AM on December 1, 2023

I am a Contact Unit of very little brain
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:16 AM on December 1, 2023

A number of things send me up a wall about people lauding Elon Musk, but perhaps the greatest is all the credit he gets for doing things that, if we had a fucking functional government, they'd have done long ago.

Um, be careful what you wish for. A camel is a horse designed by committee.
posted by Artful Codger at 10:57 AM on December 1, 2023

Say what you like about Elon, at least he got the rockets to blow up on time.
posted by flabdablet at 11:11 AM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Famous Corporate Taglines.
posted by mazola at 11:53 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

David Gerard:

twitter's business model was simple:

1. celebrities show their entire arses
2. normal people hurl rotten tomatoes at them
3. show ads to group 2.

it is not clear that a single person at twitter understood this

posted by Pope Guilty at 11:56 AM on December 1, 2023 [17 favorites]

More bluesky codes (apparently it gives you more when you use the first five):

bsky-social-5zjjp-cr5nv
bsky-social-xreks-yiovy
bsky-social-3loxo-qtawr
bsky-social-s6s7k-xaumi
bsky-social-xog3e-egvrj
posted by signal at 12:39 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am extremely skeptical about the conceit that our current Capitalist Climate Catastrophe can be solved by adding more private cars—electric or gas—and Musk did more than his fair share to fight against public transport.
So, fuck him and fuck Tesla, too.
posted by signal at 12:43 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

Musk is a fellow Gen-X type, a couple years younger than I. If I had to rationalize the design of the cybertruck, I could only speculate that like me, he has seen the third-best science fiction movie to be released on June 25, 1982, Megaforce. I guess someone had to have liked it.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:18 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

I liked Twitter for the breadth of thoughtful voices that I could learn from and follow, while other big social media sites showed me what they imagined were people just like me.

In some ways, Twitter was very good.

Even early on, when as I thought Elon's ideas about the future were cool (the early years of Tesla and SpaceX) everything I heard told me that he was terrible to work for. Somehow, I managed the cognitive dissonance that a person who seemed petty and small minded could be good for humanity.

Later, his disclosure in his biography that he started Hyperloop just to screw with California's high speed rail initiative made me realize he just does things for lolz and money.

That plus his ignoring Covid protocols during lockdown (to the harm of his Fremont factory employees) and proclaiming Covid would be over a month or two after it took hold in the US (before a vaccine, before we had masks, and contrary to the data), along with his causing so much grief to Twitter employees while removing nearly all moderation of racism and hate, freed me from the idea that he was good at anything.

He's made his fortune by latching on to other people's startups (Paypal, Tesla), taking government subsidies (SpaceX, Tesla), and making big bets, bets he could make only because he would never know poverty, and along the way has demonstrated his inability to listen to criticism, shutting himself off from both personal growth and reality.

SpaceX and Tesla I now realize do well not because of him, but because he is distracted; the more distracted he is, the less managing he does, allowing those companies to retain good talent and run themselves.

I doubt he will ever be able to ask for the help that he needs or apologize for the harm that he has caused and enabled, but I hope, as I would for anyone, that he one day manages to do so.
posted by zippy at 1:19 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Would advise against posting Bluesky codes openly - bots tend to nab them, and they end up being put to bad uses.
posted by Artw at 2:31 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

OMG, Megaforce. The guy riding the upside-down flying motorcycle at the end...I am 12 again.
posted by Mid at 2:39 PM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

That Megaforce clip needs to become some kind of Rickroll.
posted by mazola at 3:49 PM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

Just saw this tweet:

I just realized that all though the Elon meltdown video, he calls this "Twitter."

EVEN ******* DOESN'T CALL THIS PLACE "X."

posted by cheshyre at 3:54 PM on December 1, 2023 [12 favorites]

And Musk has released the saddest meme tweet ever.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:29 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Nah, if we're going to make an updated version of Rickroll, it should clearly be this.
posted by Flunkie at 4:33 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

So uh I'm honestly surprised this hasn't come up yet but Tesla is profitable in large part due to carbon credits, which they've been selling for years.

That's like saying "Tesla is profitable in large part because they have access to well educated American workers and rich American consumers" - yes, but all other automakers have exactly the same access to it, so that's not a point of differentiation between them. The carbon credits generated by a Model 3 is worth exactly the same as one generated by a Mustang Mach-E or a Kia EV6.

Automakers routinely sell all sorts of credits to each other, I used to be involved in the sale of other types of credits to other automakers a long time ago before these carbon credits were a thing.
posted by xdvesper at 4:39 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

be that as it may . . .

"Fiat Chrysler has been Tesla's largest carbon trading customer for the past three years. From 2019 to 2021, Fiat Chrysler spent US$2.4 billion on buying carbon credits from Tesla. In other words, Fiat Chrysler has accounted for nearly all of Tesla's recent revenue from carbon trading."

https://www.sinbon.com/solution/integrated-solutions/how-tesla-made-great-profits-from-regulatory-credits

This is not really a gotcha for Tesla that the slaggers make it out to be, more of a fortunate boon, a starting hand of a Black Lotus and some moxen in MtG terms if you will.

Tesla did earn these credits by scaling up Model 3/Y production, and like I said it's how it's built two more of its massive factories (Berlin & Austin) out to 500,000/yr production while not having to pack any debt onto its balance sheet.
posted by torokunai at 5:28 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Flunkie, that's the same video Mid posted, that you responded to
posted by Pronoiac at 5:29 PM on December 1, 2023

You’ve been MegaForced! :D
posted by mazola at 5:34 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Flunkie, that's the same video Mid posted, that you responded to

Whoops, sorry. Here's the one I meant.
posted by Flunkie at 5:42 PM on December 1, 2023 [14 favorites]

If I had to rationalize the design of the cybertruck, I could only speculate that like me, he has seen the third-best science fiction movie to be released on June 25, 1982, Megaforce. I guess someone had to have liked it.

Yeah, Cybertruck is pretty much the Tesla Homer.
posted by flabdablet at 10:30 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Strangely, that moniker doesn't really show up in online searches (yet). I'm disappointed.
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:15 AM on December 2, 2023

This is a ways up, but I figured I should get around to responding to it:

Um, be careful what you wish for. A camel is a horse designed by committee.

Not to interrogate a metaphor too closely, but camels are excellent animals. Horses don't last long in a desert environment. And I fail to see what your example has to do with having the government do things we currently rely on billionaires for, and which doesn't have to mean doing anything by committee.
posted by JHarris at 9:25 AM on December 2, 2023 [12 favorites]

And Musk has released the saddest meme tweet ever.

He aims for Mars but sometimes hits the Gulf of Mexico.

Not to interrogate a metaphor too closely, but camels are excellent animals. Horses don't last long in a desert environment.

They are, after all, the ships of desert. Now have you Mirandized that metaphor?
posted by y2karl at 11:01 AM on December 2, 2023

He aims for Mars but sometimes hits the Gulf of Mexico.

rockets to ur-anus
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:08 AM on December 2, 2023

I have Bluesky invites. Mefi-mail me.
posted by neuron at 12:35 PM on December 2, 2023

Not to interrogate a metaphor too closely, but camels are excellent animals. Horses don't last long in a desert environment. And I fail to see what your example has to do with having the government do things we currently rely on billionaires for, and which doesn't have to mean doing anything by committee.

The point being, sometimes we need visionaries, even if they're assholes, to push an idea forward. You think "the government" could have done what a Steve Jobs, and yes, even an Elon did, re personal computers and EVs, respectively? There are other and better examples, I'm sure.

An architect friend is pulling what's left of his hair out as he designs new car dealerships, because the fire-codes in our area haven't begun to come to grips with the realities of lithium-ion batteries. No, governments are not usually the best or fastest innovators.
posted by Artful Codger at 2:12 PM on December 2, 2023

He says, on the internet.
posted by torokunai at 3:24 PM on December 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

Do you really think 'the government' created the internet?
posted by Artful Codger at 3:29 PM on December 2, 2023

The point being, sometimes we need visionaries, even if they're assholes, to push an idea forward.

Visionaries aren't usually visionaries because of their vision. We all have visions. I have visions. The key ingredient of a visionary isn't vision, but MONEY, whether their own or what they can convince someone else to give them. That's what decides whose visions are the ones that get tried.

This means that visionaries practicaly always back things that make more money. The visions that have a chance are never feeding and housing the poor or universal health care, but shooting things into space or digging a big tunnel. The one thing Musk has done that's been worth anything has been selling electric cars, but that's more a confluence of an actual need and the meeting of that need, and him buying a company that was already working in that direction.

You think "the government" could have done what a Steve Jobs, and yes, even an Elon did, re personal computers and EVs, respectively?

On personal computers, well, yes. In the UK they did with the BBC Micro, and as an indirect result of that by a couple of removes we have ARM microprocessors today.

You've already scoffed above about the government's role in creating the internet, but the page you link doesn't disprove that idea? ARPANET was created by the government, then the basis of the modern internet arose from academia. There were companies involved, yes, but not too many visionaries, unless I guess you count Tim Berniers-Lee, which was the web, not the internet, but he had help, and worked for CERN when he did it, and CERN is "an intergovernmental organiation." If Berniers-Lee didn't work for an organization with resources like CERN would we even know what a website is today? If the org he worked for had been Compuserve, it'd probably have turned into a locked-off feature of their network, and would have nowhere near the reach it does now.

I can't actually name many single visionaries responsible for the internet. To my knowledge, its roots are in government, of which the military is a part, and universities. I mean if you have more decisive counter-evidence I want to hear it, this kind of thing is interesting to me. I will admit to being wrong if you can show it conclusively.
posted by JHarris at 4:38 PM on December 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

Visionaries exist in government without a profit motive if the work is interesting enough. Paul Baran might be the closest we have to a true internet visionary, and he did his work on Cold War command and control packet switching networks in the context of DoD-spinoff RAND corporation. We were just on here talking about “project states” a few weeks ago. There might be times when we wouldn’t want our government taking the lead on major initiatives but today is not one of them.
posted by migurski at 5:17 PM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Going by the history we actually lived, I for one am glad the Internet didn't remain a (primarily) government project. NSFnet was perpetually congested because they were institutionally incapable of moving quickly enough to keep ahead of the growing bandwidth usage. The privately run networks certainly had their moments back in the day, but successive rounds of irrational exuberance have put so much goddamned fiber in the ground (and under the sea) that we hardly even think of available bandwidth as a finite thing except at the edge.

Perhaps paradoxically, I wouldn't mind at all if government got in the "business" of running last mile fiber everywhere, though. A number of workable models have been proven out by various localities, usually involving running the fiber operation like a business in the sense of having a dedicated revenue stream in the form of subscription fees and a minimum of red tape in procurement compared to other parts of the government. The co-op model used by rural electric providers would also be an eminently reasonable option.
posted by wierdo at 6:23 PM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

... ok I'll play one more round.

The key ingredient of a visionary isn't vision, but MONEY

Nobody believes that. Most people we call visionary, in almost every field, use monetary success as just one way of keeping score (the others are fame, respect, etc). Investment helps, of course. But the achievements start with inspiration and then perspiration. 1%/99% according to Edison.

The visions that have a chance are never feeding and housing the poor or universal health care

Bzzzt! Wrong again. Or how about Gandhi?

On personal computers, well, yes. In the UK they did with the BBC Micro

Well...

After the [BBC] Literacy Project's call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the Proton,a successor of its Atom computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro...

Looks like outsourcing to me. Also, strictly speaking, the BBC is independent and arms-length funded, and they don't govern. therefore not government.

You've already scoffed above about the government's role in creating the internet, but the page you link doesn't disprove that idea?

No-one in government said "build us the internet and make it look like THIS". Govt identified an early need which begat Arpanet, and then that became an academic project that had some VERY visionary people contributing...

I can't actually name many single visionaries responsible for the internet.

You don't need to; the article lists them, and they'd all fit into your livingroom. At least the still-living ones. If you're feeling generous, you could also include some of the entrepreneurs (eg Zuckerberg or the Google founders) who helped make the Internet useable by non-nerds.

I won't deny the role of govt funding and govt support of academics, but that's not the same as government 'creating' it.

Anyway, this is spiralling away from the OP, and from the comment of yours that i initially responded to:

A number of things send me up a wall about people lauding Elon Musk, but perhaps the greatest is all the credit he gets for doing things that, if we had a fucking functional government, they'd have done long ago.

... still sounds ridiculous. But help us out: list the things Musk did that government coulda/shoulda done long ago.

(and we still all agree that he's a nutbar)
posted by Artful Codger at 8:07 PM on December 2, 2023

Yes, visionaries exist in government.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:53 PM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just so we're clear, neither Musk nor Shotwell, nor anyone at SpaceX invented the idea of landing boosters (or whole rockets). What he did, frankly, was accept (and iterate upon) failure in a way the US hasn't accepted failure since, oh, probably the Mercury program. Prior programs stopped after a single accident and, oh gosh, why might that be? Hmm....

You want Government to outdo private financiers?

Then stop being such fucking mewling cowards, as a society. Bunch of loser wimps trying to make sure there's no failure, rather than looking for success, and this is on purpose -- thank Grover Norquist and his pals for that.

Oh, wait, Musk loves Norquist. Hmm. Gotta wonder why, yeah?
posted by aramaic at 9:40 PM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

I often wish I was either more optimistic or right less often.

Had I a nickel for every time I thought that...

Please avoid implying that being neurodivergent is a negative thing.

Having ADHD is neurodivergent. I can testify that it is a very negative experience left untreated and that treatment in the form of low dose Ritalin or Adderall has long been unobtainable from low income clinics in Seattle because of their fears of culture war politics over prescribing microdose amphetamines to poor people. A psychologist at Country Doctor admitted as much to me years ago.
posted by y2karl at 10:38 PM on December 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

On visionaries, the thread is about Elon Musk, so that was the style of visionary I was presuming. I am relieved that you have a more nuanced view than I was espousing. I will bow to your knowledge on these things. I still am not sure that committees should be wholly reviled, nor that governments means committees by necessity, but you obviously know your stuff Artful Codger.
posted by JHarris at 11:22 PM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh:

... still sounds ridiculous. But help us out: list the things Musk did that government coulda/shoulda done long ago.

Space development (SpaceX, this one seems really obvious), electric vehicles (not in manufacturing directly but the federal government certainly could have incentivized electric vehicles a lot earlier and more strongly), public transportation ("oh, Musk's doing something that looks like public transportation so we don't have to."). All of these things though I thought were pretty obvious?
posted by JHarris at 11:28 PM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

When did it become the “weird nerds” meme in here?
posted by Artw at 11:45 PM on December 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

All of these things though I thought were pretty obvious

It's obvious that government has a role in incentivizing the things that we as a society desire or need, but no, there was no point at which government should be (or could have been) saying "build us a commercially-successful line of attractive EVs". That's the point of the horse/camel reference. The last time government got closely involved with the design of personal vehicles, the world got... Ladas and Trabants.

Public transit - been to Europe? Some governments have their shit together on this brief.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:59 AM on December 3, 2023

When did it become the “weird nerds” meme in here?

Metafilter:...
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:24 AM on December 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

... having the government do things we currently rely on billionaires for, and which doesn't have to mean doing anything by committee.
Have you actually seen a government?
posted by dg at 2:04 PM on December 3, 2023

I don't see why there's any reason a government COULDN'T build high quality EV's. But I do think that public money is best spent on public transit rather than doing what Ford et al have been doing for years.

I don't think there's anything inherently bad or slow or incompetent about government, but they'd be starting from scratch in an industry where existing companies have over a decade of experience. The time spent playing catch up would be significant.
posted by sotonohito at 3:04 PM on December 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I saw the references to ketamine upthread, but I thought people were just speculating/joking.

But apparently, he really does take it?

I was just getting caught up on PJ Vogt's new podcast Search Engine, and they had an episode last July (around the time of the rate-limited tweets) called "What's going on with Elon Musk?"

They came up with three theories: 1) Too much money = no fucks given about anything 2) he takes ketamine, which makes the real world seem fake and distant 3) He kind of believes reality is a simulation (ie fake) anyway.

For theory number two, they cited this Wall Street Journal article, which begins with the words: "Elon Musk takes ketamine." Apparently he "microdoses ketamine for depression, and he also takes full doses of ketamine at parties."

His response was: “ketamine taken occasionally is a better option” than traditional medication for depression, citing the experience of “friends." He also railed against “zombifying people with SSRIs."

So, not exactly a denial.

And this has not only NOT led to his arrest, or even loss of his security clearance, but he is still CEO of all these companies?

And even though I am a sucker for every "Look at what this asshole did now" article social media wants to serve me about Elon, I somehow missed this story entirely when it was reported?

How is this just not a thing? We all just accepted this and moved on?

Anyway, yeah, I think ketamine would explain a lot about the interview in the main link here.
posted by OnceUponATime at 7:00 AM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

Why would he be arrested for having ketamine? Seems like a drug that's not hard to be prescribed these days.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:07 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Maybe his prescription says "take as needed at parties" but I doubt it?

Whatever, I'm not saying he should be arrested. I'm just saying most people would probably worry about legal consequences if their recreational drug use was covered in the Wall Street Journal.

But Musk is not even bothering to deny it. He seems unafraid of any consequences of any kind.
posted by OnceUponATime at 8:53 AM on December 4, 2023

That's the whole benefit to being absurdly rich, I thought. Being unafraid of consequences of any kind. He certainly displays that in this video.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:59 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Maybe his prescription says "take as needed at parties" but I doubt it?

No but some scripts are take as needed for some situations. Maybe he gets really depressed at parties? I would if I were him.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 9:04 AM on December 4, 2023 [5 favorites]

This is maybe off topic, but: everybody seems to be nodding knowingly at the ketamine speculation. And it does seem like ketamine is a hell of a drug! It's getting equal parts "miracle depression cure!" and "pub drug, wheeee!" Plus there's the weird controversy about the Florida child who experienced medical child abuse either at the hands of demonic Johns Hopkins bent on depriving the child of ketamine despite the protests of her angelic mother or at the hands of her ketamine-addicted mother bent on putting the child into ketamine comas all the time--and while she was at it using the child's condition as a plausible reason she needed to score lots and lots and lots of ketamine for prn use by whoever in the family needed some--until the child was saved by angelic Johns Hopkins.*

Is there substance-specific lore for ketamine, yet? You know, like:
meth makes you a toothless panickey sleepless tweaker;
bath salts = you're a face-eating zombie;
angel dust means you become a superstrength options-open violent crimer not limited to face-eating;
coke = you immediately snort up all your money and lose all your relationships;
crack same as meth but you keep your teeth;
opium = lots of peaceful drowsing, not a lot of accomplishment;
heroin you drowse in inappropriate places and eventually OD and die;
oxy et al. you spend money like with coke but OD and die like with heroin;
pot you become a communist who sits on the couch laughing at bad TV and eating processed foods.

Does ketamine have a bio, yet?

*For one-sided, who-knows-if-it's-reliable coverage of the angelic mother angle, see the Netflix documentary Taking Care of Maya and for one-sided, who-knows-if-it's-reliable coverage of the angelic doctors angle see season two of the podcast Nobody Should Believe Me.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:19 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

...Does ketamine have a bio, yet?

Erowid: Ketamine Vault

I can't say I'm not intrigued.
posted by y2karl at 12:19 PM on December 4, 2023

Also, what a different world this might be were Elon Musk into MDMA...
posted by y2karl at 12:28 PM on December 4, 2023

Ketamine? Like, from.the 90's? Was there some kid of oversupply?

Doing Ketamine like cave in survivors?
posted by eustatic at 1:15 PM on December 4, 2023

A round for the house then.
posted by y2karl at 3:15 PM on December 4, 2023

I think ketamine is very, very in right now. It’s a huge recreational drug for upper-middle-class young millennials and a therapy drug for older millennials and gen-xers. The current lore seems to be that it will give you a 20-minute-long ecstatic high with a “hangover” that consists of a feeling of egoless well-being that lasts for weeks. If so, count me in?
posted by mr_roboto at 11:32 PM on December 4, 2023 [2 favorites]

If it makes you behave like Elon Musk, count me out.
posted by OnceUponATime at 3:30 AM on December 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

The first time I really register hearing about it was in the book Disco Bloodbath ("A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland") loose memoir by "club kid" James St. James, who was heavy into it for a time. As I remember, as described there it was sort of a dreamy, twisty, mental labyrinth during which time went missing and you might end up sort of "coming to" in bizarre circumstances without remembering how you got there. That was then — NYC, early-mid '90s — and probably mega doses, so doesn't necessarily describe the current typical usage or effect, but he talks about it a lot there.
posted by taz at 3:34 AM on December 5, 2023

Because reality cannot fucking stop crossing the streams, we have Twitter's special boy trying to hop on the GTA VI hype...by saying that the reason he bounced off GTA V is because it makes you kill cops in the opening scene.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:47 AM on December 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Well, see, when you send the ego on a temporary sabbatical you’re left with your id and superego. And one of those doesn’t work on plutocrats.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:43 AM on December 6, 2023

And in union news, Tesla's Scandinavian strike woes continue to mount. The Swedish appellate courts overturned the trial court's ruling that the Swedish government has to provide Tesla with plates for new vehicles, meaning that the company has to get them though the Swedish post service - which is refusing to cross IG Metall's picket line by delivering them. Which means that Tesla cannot deliver new vehicles in Sweden.

In addition, Norway's largest union, Fellesforbundet, has issued an ultimatum - if Tesla doesn't get a CBA in place by December 20th, they will join the boycott, making it even harder for Tesla to operate in Sweden.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:23 PM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Borked, borked, borked.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:26 PM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh, and the IG Metall strike you can hang on Musk's neck, as he has explicitly ordered Tesla Sweden not to enter negotiations, instead choosing to use litigation to force the union's hand - which has not gone well.
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:33 PM on December 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sweden, Norway, and now Denmark
posted by trig at 6:11 PM on December 6, 2023

In a Zoom meeting, white supremacists Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer credited X owner Elon Musk for rolling out changes to the platform which amplified their ideas. In the video, posted to Rumble on Nov. 30, 2023, Fuentes said that, since Musk acquired Twitter (now X), the “window has shifted noticeably on issues like white identity.”
posted by Artw at 7:12 PM on December 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

Note that The Texas Republican Party just voted not to urge its members to avoid consorting with Nazis, a vote inspired by several of them meeting with Nick Fuentes.

The majority of the Texas Republican Party, and especially Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, were absolutely enraged that anyone would dare to suggest it might be a bad idea to go to meetings with Nazis.
posted by sotonohito at 7:45 PM on December 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Note that The Texas Republican Party just voted not to urge its members to avoid consorting with Nazis,

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
-Maya Angelou

I cannot be made any clearer, can it?
posted by From Bklyn at 1:05 AM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

And because Twitter's special boy only knows how to double down, he's publicly called for Iger's firing for pulling ads.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:34 PM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

The majority of the Texas Republican Party, and especially Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, were absolutely enraged that anyone would dare to suggest it might be a bad idea to go to meetings with Nazis.

At the risk of getting off topic…

Mike Johnson thought the cameras were off. They weren’t. - The man second in line to the presidency shared the details in a speech at a Christian nationalist gala Tuesday.

…not just Texas, it’s all of them, top to bottom.
posted by Artw at 12:42 PM on December 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

In the linked video, Musk EXPLICITLY requested that Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, not advertise on Twitter.

Disney has pulled all ads from Twitter and now Musk is demanding that Bob Iger be fired as CEO of Disney for pulling Disney's ads from Twitter.

There is something wrong with that man.
posted by sotonohito at 6:18 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Actually, Sweden Won’t Give in to Tesla’s License Plate Demands

A Swedish court decided that PostNord workers should not be forced to deliver license plates if they don’t want to.

posted by achrise at 6:40 AM on December 8, 2023 [5 favorites]

And because he doesn't know the First Rule Of Finding Oneself In A Hole (something you would think a scion of an emerald mine magnate would know), Musk has tweeted that he's considering a vote to reinstate purveyor of lies and all around ghoul Alex Jones.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:53 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

Re: the "What if the governments" question I recommend reading The Car that Could which covers the history of development and opposition to the GM EV1. GM was only working on it because the Cali government was requiring zero emissions vehicles. The book documents some of the legal battles between oil companies, car companies (including GM) and California over zero-emissions vehicles and brings receipts showing how industry opposition was a major factor in slow early development.
posted by caphector at 1:58 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

There is something wrong with that man.

Until Billionaire Personality Disorder does show up in the DSM, I guess I'm as qualified to diagnose it remotely as anyone else.
posted by flabdablet at 2:04 PM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]

because he doesn't know the First Rule Of Finding Oneself In A Hole (something you would think a scion of an emerald mine magnate would know)

Seems to me that the first instinct of an emerald miner who found themself in a hole would be to keep digging, in case there are more emeralds down there. So that checks.

Elon, though, has yet to understand the difference between an emerald mine and a coprolite quarry.
posted by flabdablet at 2:13 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

I saw the EV1 in person. One of my elementary school teacher's husbands was involved and they brought it by and drove it in circles around the parking lot for us to marvel at.

Its silence was cool but it did have a slightly janky EPCOT vibe. Sort of like the Olds Aurora meets Estes rocket on 3-2-1 Contact!.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:10 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

And in Fucking Fuck followup, Musk has reinstated Jones.
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:16 AM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Of course he has. Musk, like all conservatives, is operating on the principle that anything which they believes hurts liberals is good.
posted by sotonohito at 9:59 AM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Good lord.

Elon Musk Marks Race to Bottom With Alex Jones, Ramaswamy, Andrew Tate in Live Twitter Chat

The Tesla/X owner celebrates reinstating Jones with a panel that included former Trump adviser Mike Flynn and Rep. Matt Gaetz
posted by LostInUbe at 5:03 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Jones is a bad person given and I hope he comes to realize all the fucked up shit he has done: that he realizes it this weekend, that going into the bathroom late one night, not wanting to turn on the light which might blind him or at least feel like being bludgeoned by razor-blades, he stubs his little toe so badly he falls in janky segmented steps, hunched over, one hand down, a knee, the other knee, a shoulder, onto his back, the wounded-pinky foot in the air, held aloft by two hands in astonished agony. The pain in his pinky toe ebbs slightly as it starts to swell. He has probably broken it. This thought occurs to him at the same moment that he recognizes how cold the floor is. Shockingly cold. He leans his head back and feels it freeze his scalp. The sensation is so surprising, so unexpected that for a second everything, his whole life, feels suddenly alien and with that a moment of shocking perspective.

"Oh. I've fucked this all up."
posted by From Bklyn at 5:07 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

If gently pressing an ice pack against the back of their head was all it took to Christmas Carol a fascist then we'd have fully automated gay luxury space communism by now.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 5:46 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Pick a different vowel.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:32 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

Safety experts point out that the Cybertruck's design makes it a danger for both people around it as well as the passengers inside.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:44 AM on December 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Just listened to

Misinformation expert Joan Donovan on the broken safeguards protecting truth

....on Here and Now and, God, was it depressing. She said among other things that Musk bought Twitter to get fashy with it. tldr: The gazillionaires are buying up social media in order to control them and it'll take some nations of billions to push them back.She was not entirely pessimistic.
posted by y2karl at 11:08 AM on December 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

And Tesla's defense against the lawsuit by the CA DMV over fraudulent misrepresentation of their automated driving systems is to say "it's not fraud, it's free speech!"
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:50 PM on December 13, 2023

And in further Swedish strike news, apparently Elon thinks that you buy Scandinavian politicians by literally putting out an ad.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:17 AM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also in Twitter news, it seems that Musk is violating EU laws and regulations regarding hate speech and lying news.
posted by sotonohito at 8:27 AM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Reuters reports that Tesla has been covering up issues with failing components in their suspension and steering systems, blaming owners for defective components.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:40 AM on December 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

Swedish labour union to stop collecting Tesla waste

Sweden's Transport Workers' Union said on Wednesday it would stop collecting waste at Tesla's workshops in Sweden, joining a wave of action by labour groups aimed at pressuring the automaker into accepting collective bargaining rights for staff.

posted by achrise at 7:51 AM on December 21, 2023

And why should they collect Tesla's waste? Surely he can provide his own transport when he visits.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 9:24 AM on December 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sure would be a shame if something broke down on the infrastructure serving his business like a power line, water main or access road and the unionized workers refused to fix it.
posted by Mitheral at 10:15 AM on December 21, 2023

Here's a writeup from the Autopian on how Ford handled a similar suspension problem on the GT. TL;DR: much better.
posted by Mitheral at 10:24 AM on December 21, 2023

And in unsurprising news, Hyperloop is shutting down after achieving its goal of undermining high speed rail in California.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:19 PM on December 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

European labor law and Elon Musk are like oil and water. Tesla attempted to stop workers at the Gigafactory near Berlin from unionizing but, of course, failed. Workers have rights and of course they joined a union en masse. I'm not familiar with Swedish labor law but a brief glance at Sweden's government website tells me workers have a right to act for collective bargaining so I don't see Tesla coming out on top of this. Good luck hiring a candidate with "a proven track record of getting regulatory changes made in the Nordics" to dismantle unions there (maybe someone from Sweden can chime in here but this seems ridiculously ignorant?)
posted by UN at 10:18 PM on December 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

a writeup from the Autopian on how Ford handled a similar suspension problem on the GT

Having read that, I really don't understand why they had to jump straight to machined billets for the fast fix. Can anybody with industrial process experience enlighten me as to why they could not simply have removed the inserts at the bush housing ends of their molds, thereby eliminating the meeting of the hot fronts of softened metal inside it, then machined the extra metal out of the bush housings? If the design was essentially sound except for the cold shuts caused by forcing the metal to flow around inserts, why would that not have fixed it completely?
posted by flabdablet at 12:18 AM on December 22, 2023

Having read that, I really don't understand why they had to jump straight to machined billets for the fast fix.

Because they likely began the machining prior to figuring out what happened in the arm. Remember, the Ford GT is a high end performance car with a six figure price tag, so these are the sorts of owners who you don't fuck around with waiting several months on for a fix, with the added pressure of this car being a celebration of Ford's centennial.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:17 AM on December 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Actually, after re-reading the article, the answer is simpler - Ford engineers lost faith in the process being able to produce the parts to the quality they needed at a price point competitive with forging, so they opted to switch to forged arms, with machined arms as a stopgap as they got the new line tooled and running. It's also likely that situations like this are why the industry has been skeptical of casting as a whole as well.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:36 AM on December 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

One last bit:

If the design was essentially sound except for the cold shuts caused by forcing the metal to flow around inserts, why would that not have fixed it completely?

The issue isn't just "fixing" the design, but "is the design competitive with forging the piece." Because yes, casting without inclusions may have solved that particular issue - but by introducing a number of other issues, most notably that you're now making unfinished arms that require a machining step to complete which introduces its own costs and failure states to the process, as well as raising the material cost of the arm for no gain (since that material is literally getting carved out of the arm.) The whole thing that made this process attractive to Ford is that it promised the strength of forged parts at a cost closer to cast parts - and as you add all of those new elements in, the cost rises to a point where the engineers start saying "wait - if we're getting no cost benefit here, why aren't we going with forged parts?"
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:10 AM on December 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also an arm without the bushings would have had way more mass at the former bushing location. That mass would have cooled slower than the thinner pieces leading to them. Which presents all sorts of problems with the way additional material is pulled into the mold from the gates as the metal cools. Basically you need to have the part cool from the point farthest from where the metal is introduced at a fairly consistent rate towards the introduction point otherwise defects will form in the casting.
posted by Mitheral at 8:10 PM on December 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Youtubers dabbling in home shop metal casting may make it look like a simple process, but the more you look into it the more it turns into just a giant nightmare of a black art, with no clear-cut solutions and a lot of refining needed. In industry you can't just weld or bondo over the part of your casting that looks like it's been attacked by metal-eating termites.

(Well, *some* industries you can. Strip the main casting of a Harbor Freight floor-mounted tool with a wire wheel and...)
posted by tigrrrlily at 9:18 AM on December 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

i hate him so much.

As long as you have that hatred for them, they have power/control over you. It will slowly eat you up. The only way to stop hating is to forgive.
posted by mazola at 6:47 PM on December 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

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