Are you okay, Elon?
November 16, 2017 7:24 AM   Subscribe

Jalopnik excerpts Elon Musk's Rolling Stone profile. (full profile)
posted by Literaryhero (91 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
So I read the excerpts first, and they did seem creepy.
Then I read the full profile, and it didn't seem that bad.
Is that because I willingly accept any seemingly rational article?
posted by MtDewd at 7:40 AM on November 16, 2017


This was dark in ways I was not expecting. Hope Elon gets his head right so he can keep singlehandedly attempting to avert climate apocalypse.
posted by potrzebie at 7:40 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Sure, he's a Captain Of Industry now, but once upon a time he was just another horny undergrad:

“I was going to do physics and engineering at Waterloo, but then I visited the campus … and, you may not want to print this,” he says with a laugh, “but there didn’t seem to be any girls there! So, I visited Queen’s, and there were girls there. I didn’t want to spend my undergraduate time with a bunch of dudes.”

I, too, went to Queen's (our time there may have briefly overlapped) and can confirm that there were, in fact, girls there.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:43 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


Welp, I think that covers the supervillain backstory.
posted by clawsoon at 7:43 AM on November 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


Elon Musk's company Tesla has a real problem with gender discrimination.
Another woman asked about a general staff meeting that had recently taken place with Musk. “He was supposed to talk about it . . . the anti-discrimination and anti-harassment efforts, and he beautifully sidestepped the whole thing,” she said. “He didn’t say, ‘Harassment is wrong, discrimination is wrong.’ He brought a bunch of people onstage and said, ‘If you try hard, you will succeed.’ ” She continued, “How much harder do we have to try to get to where everyone else is up there? So my question is: Is this a priority to Elon? Because if Elon doesn’t care it won’t happen.”
posted by Nelson at 7:47 AM on November 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


And racism!
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:51 AM on November 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


Wow epic:

When, at a photo shoot, he was asked to wear a black turtleneck, the trademark garb of Jobs, he bristled. "If I was dying and I had a turtleneck on," he tells me, "with my last dying breath, I would take the turtleneck off and try to throw it as far away from my body as possible."
posted by potrzebie at 7:53 AM on November 16, 2017 [40 favorites]


I’m not a fan of Elon Musk, but making fun of people for having feelings is shitty. There’s nothing wrong with being lonely and wanting a girlfriend, but there is something very wrong about running a company that is okay with discriminatory hiring and promotions. I wonder why Jalopnik chose to focus on the first rather than the second.
posted by betweenthebars at 7:56 AM on November 16, 2017 [54 favorites]


“In order to understand the essential truth of things,” he theorizes, “I think you can find it in The Onion and occasionally on Reddit.”

Afterward, he asks excitedly, “Have you ever seen Rick and Morty?”


is Tommy Wiseau actually just Elon Musk in elaborate make-up, please discuss because like what
posted by runt at 7:56 AM on November 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


Yeah is this supposed to be funny? It honestly made me like him a little more.
posted by breakin' the law at 7:58 AM on November 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


Y'know, I'm having seconds thoughts about spending the rest of my life with him. In a terrarium on mars.

Also, now I have Smooth Criminal stuck in my head.
posted by adept256 at 8:01 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


And the thing is I don't think even he graduated from Queen's, and Advancement looooves trotting him out as alumni. (You'd have to have graduated to be that, wouldn't you?)
posted by Kitteh at 8:01 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Like, I understand why the guy thinks his companies don't have race/gender problems. He's not promoting or encouraging that kind of thing personally, and he's the guy in charge. I used to think that way, too. The problem is that aloof "benevolence" by both not encouraging bad behavior but not also actively discouraging it by treating it as a systemic issue rather than an interpersonal issue is no better for the victims than going full asshat because what you're actually doing is enabling harassment despite not intentionally encouraging it.
posted by wierdo at 8:09 AM on November 16, 2017 [14 favorites]


2016: Well this guy is a wealthy white male so let's regard his behavior as part of an innocuous and indeed adorable foible.

2017: Ok. We need to start from the assumption that this guy is a space Nazi who needs children's blood to survive.
posted by selfnoise at 8:11 AM on November 16, 2017 [67 favorites]


Lady Dynamite S2 is worth a watch for "Muskvision" alone.
posted by Artw at 8:11 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


I mean, fuck all billionaires, but if I had to rank Responses of Billionaires Who Believe In Climate Change, it'd be something like:

Lawful Good: Bloomberg - Spends $100+ million to rid the world of coal
Chaotic Good: Musk - Convert the grid to solar, convert transport to EV, but also maybe we should move to Mars and also maybe *shrug it's just a sim*?
Neutral Evil: Thiel - Let's speed this up so I can retire to my NZ compound and live forever on the blood of children
posted by gwint at 8:12 AM on November 16, 2017 [46 favorites]


betweenthebars: “I’m not a fan of Elon Musk, but making fun of people for having feelings is shitty. There’s nothing wrong with being lonely and wanting a girlfriend, but there is something very wrong about running a company that is okay with discriminatory hiring and promotions. I wonder why Jalopnik chose to focus on the first rather than the second.”

It's hard not to see the two things as at least somewhat related, is the thing. The connection has been drawn before – by none other than his first wife, Justine, in the context of the infamous story about his former assistant, Mary Beth Brown:
Apparently (according, I believe, to Ashlee Vance, who wrote the book on Elon), MB asked for a raise. E told her that if she was truly critical to SpaceX, it should not be able to operate in her absence (or something to that effect). He suggested a 3-week experiment to test this hypothesis/her worth. This reminds me of something similar he once said to me, many years ago, after I came back from a week's visit with my family in Canada -- that his life had operated quite smoothly in my absence. He was letting me know that I was an incompetent house manager. (He was not wrong.) So of the different stories I have heard behind MB's departure from SpaceX, this is the one that resonates with me. (Although you would *never* use the word 'incompetent' in association with MB!)
Justine Musk seems like she reads this more charitably – I'll say a lot more charitably – than I would. Telling a wife that you got along without her very well – as a way of saying that she's an incompetent house manager – is... well. It's bad enough when an employer does these things. It's worse when a spouse does them.

Being lonely doesn't make you a terrible person, and wanting to be with someone doesn't make you a creep. But I can understand why some people, particularly women, read the quotes in this piece and start hearing alarm bells. His willful desire for codependence, his apparent extreme reliance on a partner, is a sign that he's extraordinarily demanding of those who are close to him - and that sign seems to be confirmed in these anecdotes which indicate that he apparently expects his partner to be everything from a "house manager" to a social buffer to a source of affection and ego-boosting.

It might not be wonderful to go into somebody else's personal life in public, but detaching this from the person of Elon Musk, all of these add up to a long, long string of warning signs. He does not sound like a fun person to date.
posted by koeselitz at 8:48 AM on November 16, 2017 [31 favorites]


if I had to rank Responses of Billionaires Who Believe In Climate Change

Billionaires Who Believe in Climate Change: Lawful Evil (bc capitalism)
Climate activists who do that shit for free: Chaotic Good
Koch Brothers: so I think we need to start talking about the spectrum of evil you can be on because our current rule-of-law based spectrum is too flat to describe the depth of their evil
posted by runt at 8:50 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


The tears run silently down his face. “I can’t remember the last time I cried.” He turns to Teller to confirm this. “You’ve never seen me cry.”

“No,” Teller says. “I’ve never seen you cry.”


whoa, Teller doesn't usually speak
posted by prize bull octorok at 8:51 AM on November 16, 2017 [42 favorites]


Total fanboi, the guy has made "electric cars" a prestige item. Powered an entire island with solar. Not just launched at a bargain but *landed* rocketships! We are going to Mars!

And Puerto Rico!
posted by sammyo at 9:03 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Musk: The details of my life are quite inconsequential.

Strauss: Oh no, please, please, let's hear about your childhood.

Musk: Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.

Strauss: You know, we have to stop.
posted by Naberius at 9:05 AM on November 16, 2017 [59 favorites]


Elon Musk's company Tesla has a real problem with gender discrimination.

Confirmatory anecdote, but a good friend of mine applied there and was pursued rather vigorously by the hiring manager. She refused to take the offer because of the boy's club environment and the fact that they were seriously lowballing her on salary.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:12 AM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


On racism comment earlier: Not to be a Tesla apologist, but reading the full statement from Tesla, and Elon's earlier email on the subject does paint a different picture than a lot of articles have suggested, if you are curious about the other side of things.

If anything Elon comes across as well meaning but perhaps a bit overly idealistic about people with the whole "come on guys, just don't be jerks to each other, apologize and move on." thing. Not necessarily saying I agree fully with either side, but it's an interesting read, in any case.
posted by Greasy Eyed Gristle Man at 9:26 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


You know what's fun, is reading the full profile and inserting "Tony Stark" mentally for every mention of Elon Musk. I feel like I'm reading Toasterverse.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 9:42 AM on November 16, 2017 [11 favorites]


If anything Elon comes across as well meaning but perhaps a bit overly idealistic about people with the whole "come on guys, just don't be jerks to each other, apologize and move on." thing.

This is a grown-ass man who is fully capable of bamboozling the press and running questionable investment deals with companies headed up by relatives, and you think he's some sweet 24-year-old naif who doesn't understand power dynamics in an office?
posted by praemunire at 9:47 AM on November 16, 2017 [34 favorites]


inserting "Tony Stark" mentally for every mention of Elon Musk

Tony Stark is an engineer. Elon Musk writes checks. It's a valuable skill, knowing when and to whom and for what to write a check, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's the insinuation that Musk is a scientific genius.
posted by praemunire at 9:48 AM on November 16, 2017 [19 favorites]


Yeah, Elon is kinda of an asshole whose businesses may or not exist in 10 years (Tesla might get all the press, but the Tesla needs to deliver and order of manitude more cars before they even reach “rounding error” territory of GM, Toyota, or VW).

However, like so many other things, it’s the fans. HackerNews had a post of the inherent racism/sexism in Musk’s businesses, and the consesous was that if all women/PoC had to suffer for Elon to recognize his dream, then so be it. All people (but not White tech bros of course) are expendable when it comes to his progress.
posted by sideshow at 9:49 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh ooops, I'm so sorry, Elon, I just got to this part:
One of the misunderstandings that rankles Musk most is being pigeonholed and narrowcast, whether as the real-life Tony Stark or the second coming of Steve Jobs.

And you're right, praemunire, of course, it was just a flippant silly comment and not really appropriate.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 9:49 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hatred (sic jealousy) against Musk must be the most misplaced hatred ever.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:51 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


And the thing is I don't think even he graduated from Queen's, and Advancement looooves trotting him out as alumni. (You'd have to have graduated to be that, wouldn't you?)

Back in another life, I went to film school. Kevin Smith went to the same film school. Briefly. A few weeks into the program, he decided it was complete bullshit, quit, got his money back, and used that money to make Clerks.

You bet your ass the school loved trotting him out as a successful alumnus any chance they got. They brought him out to speak once while I was there. (The results were not pretty. Nobody came out looking good. Not the school. Not Smith. Not even the audience.)
posted by Naberius at 9:52 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


Really, what I get from this isn't so much an indictment of Musk himself, but of Silicon Valley, and the whole obsession with these Great Figures. I can't help but read this and think how much it must screw you up when everything you say is treated like gold. Hyperloop! Brilliant, outstanding, you are saving the world, sir! Crying, you're right, I haven't seen you cry in so long, sir!

I'm reminded of a Mike Judge interview about Silicon Valley, where he talks about how these tech giants are treated like divine geniuses. Judge remembers someone saying "I only see him for about 10 minutes a month, but it's the most amazing 10 minutes!" or something along those lines. Look, Musk is a businessman. He's doing alright for himself now, but people want him to be so much more than he actually is. This obsession with this idea of him saving us all through benevolent capitalism is very tiresome.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 9:54 AM on November 16, 2017 [18 favorites]


Elon mentioning Rick and Morty is the most “chef kisses fingers.gif” part of the whole article. There is a complete overlap between the “you need to be smart to understand Rick and Morty” group and Elon Musk super fans.
posted by sideshow at 9:54 AM on November 16, 2017 [17 favorites]


Elon Musk's company Tesla has a real problem
with debt load.
posted by marycatherine at 9:56 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I like the things Elon Musk's companies make.

I do not like the ways Elon Musk's companies treat people whom Elon perceives are against him.
posted by zippy at 9:57 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Naberius, I would like to subscribe to your Fake Interviews of the Famous newsletter
posted by gwint at 9:58 AM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


And the thing is I don't think even he graduated from Queen's, and Advancement looooves trotting him out as alumni. (You'd have to have graduated to be that, wouldn't you?)

He used his time at Queen's to get into Wharton. Queen's is a decent school and somewhat connected, but it's connected to Canada businesses. To go to Silicon Valley, Musk needed a US visa and the connections of an Ivy League school in the States. He could get into Canada a little more easily than the US, so I suspect a brief stop was always his plan.
posted by bonehead at 10:10 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hatred (sic jealousy) against Musk

...in case you were wondering why people have disdain for Musk fanboys...

It's kind of amazing how much the past five years or so have revealed to me how many people who think they're Smart and Independent and Free are really just looking for the biggest possible boss to be a hype man for.
posted by praemunire at 10:19 AM on November 16, 2017 [36 favorites]


Naberius, I would like to subscribe to your Fake Interviews of the Famous newsletter

they say the Devil's greatest trick was fooling mankind into subscribing to Mike Myers film properties
posted by Shepherd at 10:21 AM on November 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


This is a grown-ass man who is fully capable of bamboozling the press and running questionable investment deals with companies headed up by relatives, and you think he's some sweet 24-year-old naif who doesn't understand power dynamics in an office?

Perhaps I'm showing my naivete then! To be honest, while I work in the tech sector, I can't say I've followed him closely at all, or understood the whole hero worship thing at all. My opinion of his companies has been limited too: "Rockets and Electric Cars and Solar Panels: Awesome! Paypal: ...meh", and my opinion of him has always been that he seems like a fairly idealistic guy, who has the money to pursue his goals, and seems good at managing getting technical things done, while not always being the greatest at dealing with the realities of the human side of running a business. Or perhaps, that he is so obsessed with the technical side, and the financial side of things (fueling the technology), that he's just not paying enough attention to the power dynamics / office politics side of things, which seems unusual for a CEO.

It seems like he's so busy pursuing his vision, going all-in, full-steam-ahead, and he expects that the people he works with have the same goals, and so maybe, deep down he's saying to himself things like "You know, I have a sleeping bag in the office, so I don't get what's wrong with 80 hour work weeks if it gets things done". If anything, it reminds me of the obsessed artist type, only with a shit-load of cash to pursue his vision and to pull people into it.

The more I write it out / think things through, the more I realize it sounds like I'm trying to give him & his companies a pass on bad behavior, so please understand that I'm not. Just, from the bits that I've read, he seems like an alright person who is narrow-mindedly pursuing his goals while not necessarily making the best decisions, but maybe I'm just too idealistic about people's intentions and have been bamboozled myself!

(That said, it sounds like people have some legitimate gripes from some of the other comments, so I'm fully willing to be disabused of my notions!)
posted by Greasy Eyed Gristle Man at 10:23 AM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I see what you're saying, GEGM, but the thing is, though: he's not some idealist scientist holed up in his lab working on his lifelong dream who has no idea that power politics are being played out around him. He is, first and foremost, a businessman, who has (for better or for worse--to my mind, largely for worse, but there is genuinely room for debate) brought the methods of late capitalism to certain dreams and aspirations of better people. This is just not a dude innocent of the evils of human nature. He's out there exploiting them regularly.

(Also, sorry, Star Stuff, I shouldn't be holding you to account for what is only annoying because it's a journalistic cliche that reveals just how ineffectual and suborned the tech press can be...)
posted by praemunire at 10:29 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I am so confused. We used to like Elon and now we don't like Elon. We used to like Vin Diesel but now we don't. I'm afraid to open the US politics thread to find out how firmly we now dislike Al Franken. Please don't turn on Gal Godot.

In short, Metafilter is a land of contrasts.
posted by Ber at 10:43 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


“You punch the bully in the nose. Bullies are looking for targets that won’t fight back. If you make yourself a hard target and punch the bully in the nose, he’s going to beat the shit out of you, but he’s actually not going to hit you again.”
From Elon's lips to the Democrats' ears...
posted by notsnot at 10:46 AM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


We used to like Vin Diesel but now we don't.

Wait, what? What did Vin Diesel do?
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:53 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


So we're shaming people for talking about their abusive childhoods now?

Isn't that, you know, despicable?
posted by MrVisible at 11:09 AM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


~We used to like Vin Diesel but now we don't.
~Wait, what? What did Vin Diesel do?


Chrysler commercials.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:10 AM on November 16, 2017


We used to like Elon and now we don't like Elon.

I still like him, in spite of articles like this one which I already knew from other sources has the title "Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow", which can only be a Futurama reference and suggests that the whole thing is probably full of sarcasm, which seems to be confirmed when it talks about the kids of all the universe looking forward to the Musk Day celebrations each year, but then you wonder: What if the writer is, in his own way, as crazy as Elon Musk? Are both, neither, or just one of them putting us on here? "The Onion and Reddit"? They're both in on it, surely, but what exactly is the joke? Supposing that the answer is "2017", I guess it will be over before I figure it out.

Anyway, you've got to like someone who says such imaginatively demented things as "climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI."
posted by sfenders at 11:15 AM on November 16, 2017


I'm afraid to open the US politics thread to find out how firmly we now dislike Al Franken.

Wow. So, you have any other supernatural powers, or just that one?
posted by officer_fred at 11:27 AM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


What if the writer is, in his own way, as crazy as Elon Musk?
The writer is 'ex' pick up artist Neil Strauss, so you're probably onto something there.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 11:43 AM on November 16, 2017 [13 favorites]


i can't believe it doesn't tell us who he mains in overwatch
posted by poffin boffin at 11:53 AM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


I am undecided on Musk. Very pro Vin Diesel though.
posted by Grandysaur at 12:00 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Musk's got a good track record (PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla's initial launch), but he's made some very questionable bold proclamations lately, and it's becoming blindingly obvious that Tesla is not particularly well-run at the moment.

His recent behavior has been weird and concerning. He's massively overcommitted and underdelivered on Tesla's plans for the past several years. His estimates on his company's ability to develop self-driving technology are naively optimistic (to say nothing of their ability to actually build and deliver cars, or ensure levels that aren't the worst in the industry). When the company failed to meet these unrealistic expectations, he threw his employees under the bus.

His other proclamations are similarly out of touch. The cost estimates for Hyperloop and The Boring Company are beyond fanciful, and the math behind the entire concept barely checks out. The assumptions require major hand-waving advances in technology, and it's unclear how the system can operate safely at anything approaching a meaningful capacity. Many of the Hyperloop-adjacent businesses are outright scams.

Then there's the simulation stuff...

The big problem, however, is that the public appears to take him seriously about anything that he says. Government officials appear to be taken by it too -- he has yet to be publicly called-out for his ridiculous claims to have "Verbal governmental approval" to build one of his projects (verbal government approval isn't a thing). It's not hard to see why there's been such a backlash -- the public's chosen ambassador of technology has no clue what he's talking about.
posted by schmod at 12:40 PM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


The Great Man fetishism gets tiring.

GM did the EV1 program while Elon was in short-pants. It was 20 years too soon for the confluence of technological, social and environmental pressures that made EVs inevitable, but it was visionary in a way that Tesla isn't. GM was twenty years ahead of the curve, while Elon is a few years behind it.

But I guess nobody wants to think of a faceless corporation or government agency as visionary. It's more emotionally satisfying to cling to heroes, even if they are just emotionally stunted, precocious (, racist, sexist, anti-labour) billionaires who happen to be rich at the right time.

I mean, it's pretty cool that he helped to power up a part of Puerto Rico. In my neck of the woods, the government-owned utility would never let it come to that. A billionaire boy wonder is no substitute for a functioning society. Honestly, in my idea of a functioning society there would be no billionaires in the first place.
posted by klanawa at 12:58 PM on November 16, 2017 [28 favorites]


Tesla is not unlike bitcoin as far as investment "safety" goes. Unlike the ICOs, Musk started up with huge federal tax credits under the Energy Independence Act of '07 and sold a ton of paper to Toyota. He's been burning through that goodwill ever since. I'd be surprised if many Americans even knew where most Tesla models are assembled or how many delivered are actually leased guaranteed buy-backs. Those who read EDGAR know.

How far until it crashes is how "the public" rides any good thing.
posted by marycatherine at 1:12 PM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Who is Elon Musk's father? Did Elon Musk's father mold Elon Musk to be the person he is today? What about the role of genetics? Is Elon Musk for real? Does Elon Musk ever procrastinate? Was Elon Musk bald? What makes Elon Musk so good at email?"
posted by demonic winged headgear at 1:35 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


The big problem, however, is that the public appears to take him seriously about anything that he says.

Well ignore the public. Check out the opinion of the biggest nest of muskians, /r/spacex, no one there believes any of his proposed dates and points out that he's always overly optimistic. But an enthusiastic group during a launch. And it does look like BFR will launch soon! Not GM but I see Teslas frequently. Lot's of folks concerned about AI, very few come off rational in a sound bite. I personally think the tunnel thing is secret research for Mars. But shhh. I expect the guy is a bit of an ass, but *** ROCKET SHIPS ***
posted by sammyo at 2:11 PM on November 16, 2017


There’s nothing wrong with being lonely and wanting a girlfriend, but there is something very wrong about running a company that is okay with discriminatory hiring and promotions. I wonder why Jalopnik chose to focus on the first rather than the second.

Seriously?

This article: 11/15/17, 5:15 PM
Jalopnik, 11/15/17, 10:25 AM: Tesla Acknowledges Alleged Racist Behavior At Company While Defending Elon Musk
Jalopnik, 11/13/17: Elon Musk's Alleged Response To Tesla Racism Complaints: 'Be Thick-Skinned And Accept Apology': Report (UPDATE)
Jalopnik, 10/17/17: Tesla Workers Allegedly Faced Racial Discrimination And Harassment By Coworkers And Superiors: Lawsuit
Jalopnik, 2/28/17: Tesla Is Being Sued By a Woman Engineer For Harassment and Discrimination
posted by ejs at 2:15 PM on November 16, 2017 [8 favorites]


I still think he's a Philip K. Dick character, one of those creepy, omnipresent 50's men-of-action industrialist genius eccentric types Dick writes in almost every book. So he might secretly be a transdimensional monster or possibly a genuine messiah who accidentally crossed over from the ideal world of infinite potential into the real world of inescapable laws of cause and effect (futilely but doggedly working to exhaust that potential by burning through every one of an infinite number of possibilities one at a time, creating what we experience as the flow of time--but now I'm rambling) due to a clerical error...
posted by saulgoodman at 3:18 PM on November 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


musk citing rick and morty is life imitating art imitating life imitating art imititating life.

it's 2017 and i think i'm starting to lose the thread.
posted by wibari at 3:29 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Which bits are the weird bits I should be laughing at? Can someone point them out.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:23 PM on November 16, 2017


Until I see some reason to believe he isn't doing exactly what he says he's doing, I'm going to believe him. Thus far, he's shown no interest in making money except as a means to further his previously stated goals, so I don't see why people expect that to change or even criticize him for it.

Funny thing is, Bezos does it with Amazon and nobody gives him shit. And boy did he lose a lot of money before the cash flow finally grew large enough to pay for all the seemingly ridiculous stuff he was doing.

It sounds like the present Tesla issues are actually battery pack related, which is both good and bad. It's good in that the problem isn't with something everyone else is already doing perfectly well like building a basic car body. Nobody else has succeeded at building packs at the volume Tesla is trying to reach yet, either, so it isn't the end of the world as long as they work it out soon.

If you want to criticize Elon for something other than his frankly blind attitude to the personnel issues at his companies, it should probably be about the allocation of pack building capacity away from the cars. They probably should have waited to launch the powerwall or something. That said, I can see why he would make that choice, as dumb as it is in business terms.
posted by wierdo at 4:25 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thus far, he's shown no interest in making money except as a means to further his previously stated goals

A $20.8 billion net worth is kind of a lot for someone who isn’t interested in money.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:46 PM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


/r/spacex is very well moderated by reddit standards and has a healthy skepticism of "Elon time". It's Falcon Heavy that may launch in December - BFR is still on the drawing board.

/r/teslamotors isn't terrible, but there's a lot more hype and fanboys vs. naysayers maybe because it's a consumer product that people actually own or want to own and the technical discussion is less involved than rocketry and orbital mechanics.

I think the biggest risk to Tesla is that they have taken actual money from customers for a full self-driving capability that they don't have and may not ever be able to deliver. The Model 3 rampup is only a risk if they actually go bankrupt before production gets going. All of the in-between "oh no it's delayed another month" stuff won't matter in the long run. Nobody buying a Model X today cares that it came out years behind schedule.

Elon's personal life and the way he runs companies as intense sweatshops make me uncomfortable about whether our economic structure makes it possible to do truly great, transformative things in technology without burning out a legion of 20- or 30-somethings who devote their lives to "the mission".
posted by allegedly at 4:51 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think the Rick and Morty backlash is about the most tedious snooty backlash of the year. It screams of an attempt to shoe-horn socially awkward intellectuals (actual no-kidding nerds and geeks) into some sort of villain category for no damn good reason. The second most tedious snooty backlash of the year is the Elon Musk hate.

The dude's companies do interesting things and manage to make a profit because he has a decent weather-eye for technology, and can figure out if something can be done or not, and profitable or not, with suitable engineering resources applied. Yes, he needs to move his ass on racism and sexism in his workplaces, no question, and it needs more attention than Hyperloop right now. That is not debatable, and a real knock on his resumé and character.

His work otherwise is a litany of fun and useful stuff aimed at generally making everyone's life better, and is a genuine benefit to society and civilization as a whole. His roofing tile project alone - man, something as boring and staid as roofing tiles, fragile and transient and a source of unending expense and worry for homeowners? Now a source of secondary income if you live in a hot clime, a big reduction in utilities bills in cold climes, can take a big branch landing on it without so much as budging and is guaranteed to last 30 years without maintenance? It's also cheaper than tile or slate, without needing the maintenance of tile or slate?

I get it, tall poppy syndrome and a general distaste for anything sniffing of aristocracy, but he's a loooooong shot from the real Billionaire Aristocracy generally making our lives unlivable. It's OK to be interested in who he is and how he thinks, he's responsible for some interesting stuff, and can be inspirational and fallible all at once.

This entire screed could also be written about Warren Buffet. Or George Westinghouse.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:00 PM on November 16, 2017 [16 favorites]


In my opinion, the products aren't all that amazing either. It's great (truly) that Tesla is pushing forward electric car technology, ahead of what the established automakers can or will do. But anyone who tells me that a car whose sole interface to important functions is a single touchscreen attached to the middle of the dashboard is operating in a different universe from me. When we have self-driving cars, remove the steering wheel and give us a touch screen. But back here in 2017, people still need to safely manipulate the air conditioning and radio while they're driving, and a touch screen is a terrible way to do that. I personally think that this reveals fundamentally poor judgement in product design, and makes me not want to buy the cars. Not to mention, every time I've been in a Model S, I've felt like the fit and finish is more like a mid-range Ford than its competitors in a similar price range.

I want electric cars to succeed, and I could afford a Model S or Model 3, but I'm staying far away and waiting for other automakers to take the core technology and build it into a car that's actually great in other ways too.
posted by primethyme at 5:07 PM on November 16, 2017 [3 favorites]


Hatred (sic jealousy) against Musk must be the most misplaced hatred ever.

Perhaps a bit behind hatred of lgbt people, women, blacks, Jews, and a couple of dozen more categories, but OK.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:16 PM on November 16, 2017 [12 favorites]


It's great (truly) that Tesla is pushing forward electric car technology, ahead of what the established automakers can or will do.

The cars are about the least interesting part of Tesla. They're re-working transportation and home energy infrastructure, and the cars are a convenient excuse to deploy Supercharger stations everywhere along the most traveled routes, install Powerwalls in the home of every Tesla driver, along with the solar roof products due soon and already in limited release. Glass-Ion batteries are about to hit, self-driving tech is about to be vetted as "So Much Less Lethal Than Human Drivers It's Not Even Funny" and then we're really off to the races... made possible by Tesla infrastructure.

This is why Boring Company and Hyperloop are interesting - like Space-X and Tesla, they are infrastructure companies posing as magic carpet conveyance companies. They also have a secondary agenda, like Space-X and Tesla, and I haven't been able to suss what that is just yet.

It's not correlating your web browsing with your purchasing habits to show you better ads and sell you out to authoritarian regimes as a deviant and/or malcontent, so Musk's new companies are ahead of the game there.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:58 PM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was at a networking event last night talking to a woman who said she was “a cousin of Elon’s.” No last name just a blatant name drop. I annoyed myself then and am still annoying myself because I responded with an open-mouthed “wow!”
posted by bendy at 7:13 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Musk gets celebrity worship and billionaire worship, two modern vices I find really annoying. Including at metafilter, this thread notwithstanding.

If you ignore the damage the celebrity causes he's certainly better than the average billionaire, but this is a guy who was spending $200,000 a month back in 2010 when he was famously "nearly bankrupt" (in reality insolvent; he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.) He runs multiple for profit companies aggressively and cultivates the heroic CEO narrative possibly better than anyone.

but he's a loooooong shot from the real Billionaire Aristocracy generally making our lives unlivable.

This makes sense only if you don't really care about inequality on its own. By which I mean, if you think the problem with the super rich is that the wrong people have the money. He accumulates money, donates six figures to both political parties, lives like a rich person, and generally has all the attributes of Real Billionaire Aristocrat.

This is why Boring Company and Hyperloop are interesting - like Space-X and Tesla, they are infrastructure companies posing as magic carpet conveyance companies. They also have a secondary agenda, like Space-X and Tesla, and I haven't been able to suss what that is just yet.

The simple explanation for the Hyperloop is it was convenient for an auto executive to talk up an unrealistic project with low-balled costs while the California high speed rail funding arguments were going on.

In general pontificating to a credulous press on topics that get copy, without having to demonstrate expertise, helps the Musk brand. He doesn't need to spend much on traditional advertising.

I know to many supporters all this sounds like I probably sound like I "hate" Musk but I really don't care much about him. His business practices are a mix of good and harm, like pretty much everyone, but they aren't especially noxious. I do have a reaction to the inordinate amount of praise--from the hilarious Quora questions posted above, to the Star Trek shout-out, to the normally inequality-hostile Metafilter adopting him as a house celebrity--just invite a reaction. I haven't bothered complaining before I don't think but seems a good thread for it.
posted by mark k at 8:01 PM on November 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Glass-Ion batteries are about to hit

The known laws of physics do not completely rule out the possibility that Tesla Motors have secretly developed a solid-state battery chemistry that is even now about to hit mass production. Would you rate it as more, or less likely than 10 thousand people living on Mars 20 years from now?
posted by sfenders at 8:19 PM on November 16, 2017


This makes sense only if you don't really care about inequality on its own.

Nope. Not buying. You're scapegoating so hard, here, and entirely because of his "celebrity" - get back to me when he's an inch as destructive to the fabric of Democracy as the Koch brothers or even Peter Thiel. Like it or not, there is a gradient.

The known laws of physics do not completely rule out the possibility that Tesla Motors have secretly developed a solid-state battery chemistry that is even now about to hit mass production.

Tryin' hard here not to roll my eyes... I mean, they're literally co-invented by the dude who invented Li-Ion in the first place, so yeah, unicorns and shit.

Would you rate it as more, or less likely than 10 thousand people living on Mars 20 years from now?

And, sigh. There it is. Yes, you're very clever in exposing my slack-jawed credulity and general neck-beardedness. You should feel pretty good about yourself. I never saw it coming.

I actually predict a 20 thousand strong colony on a memetic archipelago of thought-stability in the intra-consciousness. Mars is for sissies.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:29 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


His work otherwise is a litany of fun and useful stuff aimed at generally making everyone's life better, and is a genuine benefit to society and civilization as a whole.

Actually, it's aimed at providing MVP while enriching him maximally. Possibly this ends up turning out well for mankind--capitalism, even late capitalism, doesn't always fail to get the job done--but it's amazing to me how throwing a few tech/sustainability buzzwords into your mix stuns the critical sense a person would be able to apply to a financier making similar claims about doing God's work.

His roofing tile project alone - man, something as boring and staid as roofing tiles, fragile and transient and a source of unending expense and worry for homeowners? Now a source of secondary income if you live in a hot clime, a big reduction in utilities bills in cold climes, can take a big branch landing on it without so much as budging and is guaranteed to last 30 years without maintenance? It's also cheaper than tile or slate, without needing the maintenance of tile or slate?

Now? Now? Last I checked, none have even been delivered yet. The demo was faked, for heaven's sake. Where does the intense naivete that causes one to repeat wholly untested ambitious promises as already-achieved fact and a suitable basis for worship come from? Frankly, I'd rather have tall-poppy syndrome.

Plus, let's not forget: collaborator.
posted by praemunire at 8:34 PM on November 16, 2017 [7 favorites]


Nope. Not buying. You're scapegoating so hard, here, and entirely because of his "celebrity" - get back to me when he's an inch as destructive to the fabric of Democracy as the Koch brothers or even Peter Thiel. Like it or not, there is a gradient.

The part where I said "better than average"? That's because I understand there's a gradient.

The part where I said there's a difference between caring about inequality and caring about whether the "right" people are rich? That's where ignoring that Musk earns 20,000 times more than the average worker puts you in the latter camp.
posted by mark k at 8:49 PM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


So, you're equally unhappy and critical of every athlete, actor and artist who've become successful as well? You must be a delight over on FanFare. Owait. It's not trendy to dislike Patton Oswalt or Steve Colbert for making big money along the way, I guess. Unless it's just the CEOs you have a problem with, without proposing a realistic remedy apart from "I don't like that guy, let's not develop any new tech."

Unexamined positions are not good ones to be in.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:21 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


A $20.8 billion net worth is kind of a lot for someone who isn’t interested in money.

About $18 billion of which is relatively illiquid (for him) Tesla stock plus his stake in SpaceX which is completely illiquid, being a private company. Regardless, the size of his holdings have nothing to do with whether he accumulates it for shits and giggles like Larry Ellison or because he wants to use it to do what he sees as good for the world. In either case, the figure would be the same.

As far as rich people being inherently bad because of their wealth, I simply can't agree. If a person is working to continue the current system that props up generational wealth or impeding democratic change to that system, they are a problem. The Walton kids are a great example of the problem, being almost to a one passive inheritors of Sam's effort. A person who has been disproportionately rewarded by a sick system, but does not perpetuate it, nor is even part of the real problem, which is generational wealth, is not the scapegoat you're looking for.

Maybe you should vent your spleen at those whose wealth only exists due to inheritance and continue to live like royalty despite doing little to nothing of value for society. Elon Musk and his engineers at SpaceX have already driven the cost of launching stuff in space down enough to save the US government alone enough money in the next decade or less to more than make up for his entire net worth. Unearned fortune this is not, though it is plain to see that more of the benefit ought to go to SpaceX employees, though for all I know they'll all be rich if it ever goes public. I've got no idea who, if anyone, gets options.
posted by wierdo at 9:30 PM on November 16, 2017 [4 favorites]


It's nice to see Musk's culpability for PayPal at least mentioned in the profile, it seems to have mostly dropped off his resume in recent years.
posted by fairmettle at 9:32 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


I mean, they're literally co-invented by the dude who invented Li-Ion in the first place

His new proposal is competing with a dozen other high-promise low-readiness breakthrough battery technologies of the kind that regularly generate a flurry of over-excited press reaction, each of which to me as a non-expert look about equally credible, all of which when you get down to reading the published research (if not before then) look to be at best many years away from commercial production.

If I was going to pick one as the imminent winner of the race, I'd want more to go on than the famous reputation of a great man. As would Elon Musk: “When somebody has like some great claim that they’ve got this awesome battery, you know what, send us a sample."
posted by sfenders at 9:46 PM on November 16, 2017


How about a learned scientist with a proven track record of bringing research to market and a woman physicist who's more than credible in her field collaborating, is that better than a Great Man for you? But, yes blind cynicism is clearly the path to take, how foolish of anyone to expect anything to come from science and engineering and those who are skilled in them.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:12 PM on November 16, 2017


get back to me when he's an inch as destructive to the fabric of Democracy as the Koch brothers or even Peter Thiel. Like it or not, there is a gradient.

He's a unionbuster. Given that the health of unions is pretty closely tied to the health of modern democracy because of their nature, I'd say that qualifies.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:12 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ctrl+F "Billionaire man-baby". Huh. I guess don't have anything else to add.
posted by Anoplura at 10:31 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


So, you're equally unhappy and critical of every athlete, actor and artist who've become successful as well? You must be a delight over on FanFare. Owait. It's not trendy to dislike Patton Oswalt or Steve Colbert for making big money along the way, I guess.

I don't spend a lot of time talking about celebrities on fanfare, as you might have guessed from my complaint about celebrity worship. I doubt I've said two words on Oswalt or Colbert. I'm sure I've criticized Jon Stewart for being overpraised and joined in the excessive praise of someone somewhere. (Probably Jon Oliver. I was a big Bugle fan.)

Given that I barely criticized Musk here I'd say I'm probably equally critical, on average.

Unless it's just the CEOs you have a problem with, without proposing a realistic remedy apart from "I don't like that guy, let's not develop any new tech."

The idea that criticizing the income, business PR, and social media reception of a billionaire CEO, or wanting them to be paid less and lionized less, would have the slightest impact on "tech," let alone stop development in its tracks, is . . . well, we clearly look at the world in different ways.

Unexamined positions are not good ones to be in.

Oh, absolutely. Unexamined positions are not good ones to be in.
posted by mark k at 10:53 PM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]


Sometimes I think growing up in a different time handicaps me. If Tesla is union busting I shudder to think what you'd call what the vast majority of the nonunion Fortune 500 does. Or even some of the ones that do have unions.

I've personally seen blatant evidence of illegal union related activities on the part of management, upon directions from the top in over a dozen generally well respected companies. Show me evidence of anything nearly that systemic and I'll gladly change my belief on the subject.

One big problem in companies everywhere, but most especially tech companies is ageism. I'm beginning to think it's a purposeful effort on the part of those who have been working at radically reworking capitalism into the Gilded Age redux we are currently experiencing. The lack of experienced older people leaves the company devoid of people who can counteract the business school indoctrination that has been nearly universal since the 80s.

Similarly, thanks to the efforts of the right wing during the 90s, discrimination is no longer treated as a societal issue as it was in the days of the EEOC, but as a problem within individual companies. Sadly, it is far more pervasive than that and while individual companies can improve, solving the problem is beyond their ken. Eventually turnover guarantees a loss of focus on the issue. Only with real oversight can the problem be kept at bay for more than a short while in a few places.
posted by wierdo at 11:42 PM on November 16, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sorry, I should have elaborated for clarity. The indoctrination I was referring to is the profit over everything attitude that pervades business these days and its inevitable shoving aside of considerations like fairness and treating employees well and how it imparts a reflexive anti-union attitude among students who aren't approaching the material critically.

It results in a set of default behaviors among corporations in areas where upper management is not focused that are problematic for individuals who are subject to harassment and discrimination (by sweeping it under the rug to protect the company, even by otherwise seemingly decent HR reps) and society as a whole by promoting an indifference to issues that cannot be quantified financially.

As I've said, in the end it's Elon's responsibility to make sure that shit doesn't go on at his companies, so by all means continue to apply pressure so that he gets it through his skull, but at the same time you shouldn't necessarily assume it's a conscious choice that has been made. Individuals absolutely should be as important in his thinking as decarbonizing transportation or going to Mars, but I also don't blame people for being stuck in their own heads until they've clearly refused to change despite being aware of the problem.
posted by wierdo at 11:53 PM on November 16, 2017


If Tesla is union busting I shudder to think what you'd call what the vast majority of the nonunion Fortune 500 does. Or even some of the ones that do have unions

Oh, I call that union busting, too. This is a horrible time for workers’ rights. It doesn’t become less horrible when everyone is doing it.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:35 AM on November 17, 2017 [7 favorites]


On top of everything else that's wrong with Musk, the company he heads up just released a car called the Roadster. A four seater, coupé car. Called the roadster.

Ffffff...
posted by Dysk at 5:35 AM on November 17, 2017 [3 favorites]


If Tesla is union busting I shudder to think what you'd call what the vast majority of the nonunion Fortune 500 does. Or even some of the ones that do have unions.

Your point? Just because other actors have done worse doesn't change the fact that Musk is vocally against a union at Tesla and has actively worked against one forming.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:14 AM on November 17, 2017 [6 favorites]


One woman is stepping up to do what Tesla won’t do in Puerto Rico.

But as it turned out, not only was Tesla imposing all-too-restrictive limits on who would qualify for their solar panels, the panels they were providing weren’t gifts at all: the enormous array Farooq had seen at San Juan’s Children’s Hospital was on loan for just one year. After that, Tesla—a company worth about $48 billion—will need to be paid.
posted by lucien at 9:05 AM on November 17, 2017 [5 favorites]


A four seater, coupé car. Called the roadster.

Agreed! It is clearly a gran tourismo targa, and the appellation GT Targa is actually much sexier than Roadster, which invokes little 60's British two-seaters tootling around back roads doing the slow-car-fast thing.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:48 PM on November 17, 2017 [1 favorite]


Actually, come to think of it, a little two seat cabrio with modern safety features and a 700 mile range at speeds of 55mph and below on the twisties, and a 0-60 time of "Someday!", with knife-like handling and acceleration when you really need it, but not too much, would be my kinda ride. Cars that can do slow fast are where we need to be as driving enthusiasts, and that includes letting the machine take over when we are about to do harm to ourselves or others.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:48 PM on November 17, 2017


You've basically described a 2017 Miata with a pre-1998 Miata engine swap. An electric conversion would be nice, but a ground up rebuild would be better since it would be designed for the extra weight of the batteries necessary to get decent (200+ mile) range and they could be installed so as to keep the weight distribution correct, where neither of those would be true for a conversion of the existing gas car.
posted by wierdo at 9:31 PM on November 18, 2017


If Tesla is union busting I shudder to think what you'd call what the vast majority of the nonunion Fortune 500 does. Or even some of the ones that do have unions.

An argument so lame there's a name for it.
posted by klanawa at 12:36 AM on November 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


We used to like Elon and now we don't like Elon.

You know, "like" is a word that lacks a whole lot of nuance, but I never did "like" Musk. So to respond to that sentiment with my own lack of nuance:

Fuck billionaires. Fuck capitalism in general, venture capitalists, libertarian techbros who exempt themselves from responsibility for the actions of their companies. Fuck public-private infrastructure partnerships that do nothing to improve existing infrastructure and essentially offset private profit with public risk. Fuck luxury cars, terraforming Mars, private space travel, and technotopian panacea "solutions" for social problems.

Fuck Elon fucking Musk.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:48 AM on November 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


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