Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[crazy canuck]

I guess it depends on your diction.

I wouldn't have noticed it.

[Jacob]

I guess it depends on your diction.

I wouldn't have noticed it.

Hehehehe... heheh... you said "diction"... hehehe.

[grumbler]

Musk is kind of a d-bag, but I don't get why people have this cynical attitude that he is somehow secretly just lying about his motivations.

I think it is more about what people feel they have to believe about rich people then anything the actual evidence shows.

When it comes to Dogecoin, he's been pretty clear he's just fucking with people.  That's sometimes just the kind of guy he is.  I mean come on now - he named his company SpaceX (try saying it out loud).  His Tesla car models are the S, 3, X, Y (Mercedes had the rights to the name E-Class).

And in Teslas' radios, the volume goes to 11.  No shit.

The dogecoin stuff was obviously intended as a joke, though.  Look at the reasons he gave.  Clearly not serious.

[Jacob]

Fair enough. I'm not much of a Musk watcher to comment on whether it's obviously a joke or not. And I suppose the market manipulation for profit theory can be proven out fairly easily as well - did he make a killing based on the market's reactions to his comments?

[grumbler]

Fair enough. I'm not much of a Musk watcher to comment on whether it's obviously a joke or not. And I suppose the market manipulation for profit theory can be proven out fairly easily as well - did he make a killing based on the market's reactions to his comments?

It's right in the article:

speaking during an interview in February, Musk said all his dogecoin-related comments shouldn't be taken seriously

I just find it mind-bottling that people can seriously question whether he's serious when he has himself said he isn't serious.  Do those people think that SNL's weekend update is a real news show?

[Jacob]

Fair enough. I'm not much of a Musk watcher to comment on whether it's obviously a joke or not. And I suppose the market manipulation for profit theory can be proven out fairly easily as well - did he make a killing based on the market's reactions to his comments?

It's right in the article:

speaking during an interview in February, Musk said all his dogecoin-related comments shouldn't be taken seriously

I just find it mind-bottling that people can seriously question whether he's serious when he has himself said he isn't serious.  Do those people think that SNL's weekend update is a real news show?

I didn't read the article. But yeah, obviously if he said he was just kidding that's all the evidence we need

[crazy canuck]

I guess it depends on your diction.

I wouldn't have noticed it.

Hehehehe... heheh... you said "diction"... hehehe.

Glad someone noticed   

[HVC]

Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?

[The Minsky Moment]

It's not exactly a state secret that Tesla stock's valuation is high.

[The Larch]

Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?

Twitter must be telling him to sell.

[HVC]

It's not exactly a state secret that Tesla stock's valuation is high.

yes, but people are still buying at inflated rates. wondering if this will cause any tesla crashes.

Also, i want him to concentrate on his damn roof tiles.

[Josquius]

Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?

I guess he's just being smart. He wants to get his bazillions into usable form but knows he has to do it slowly.
He has a bunch of options coming due early next year which should top up his holdings.

[viper37]

Elon keeps selling Tesla Stock. So, bad things about to happen to the stock price/company?

Elon Musk is a few billion $ behind in his tax payments.

[The Larch]

A couple of not very flattering piece of news related to Musk have appeared today:

Horrific allegations of racism prompt California lawsuit against Tesla

The N-word and other racist slurs were hurled daily at Black workers at Tesla's California plant, delivered not just by fellow employees but also by managers and supervisors.

So says California's civil rights agency in a lawsuit filed against the electric-vehicle maker in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday on behalf of thousands of Black workers after a decade of complaints and a 32-month investigation.

Tesla segregated Black workers into separate areas that its employees referred to as "porch monkey stations," "the dark side," "the slave ship" and "the plantation," the lawsuit alleges.

Only Black workers had to scrub floors on their hands and knees, and they were relegated to the Fremont, Calif., factory's most difficult physical jobs, the suit states.

Graffiti — including "KKK," "Go back to Africa," the hangman's noose, the Confederate Flag and "F-- [N-word]" — were carved into restroom walls, workplace benches and lunch tables and were slow to be erased, the lawsuit says.

Tesla responded to the lawsuit, filed by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, with a blog post saying that the agency had investigated almost 50 discrimination complaints in the past without finding misconduct — an assertion the agency denied.

"A narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity is not factual proof," the blog post said, adding that the company provides "the best paying jobs in the automotive industry ... at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California."

The lawsuit comes in the wake of Tesla's billionaire chief executive, Elon Musk, moving the company's headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, where he is building a major new assembly plant.

The state's lawsuit suggests the relocation to a state known for looser enforcement is no coincidence, declaring it to be "another move to avoid accountability."

Not only were Tesla's Black workers subjected to "willful, malicious" harassment, but they were also denied promotions and paid less than other workers for the same jobs, the suit asserted. They were disciplined for infractions for which other workers were not penalized.

In an interview, DFEH Director Kevin Kish said the lawsuit is the largest ever brought by the state for racial discrimination in terms of the size of the affected workforce since the agency gained prosecutorial powers in 2013.

Before that, complaints were handled by an agency administrative law judge rather than in court. But as more employers have forced workers to sign arbitration agreements preventing them from taking complaints to court, "government has the only effective enforcement mechanism to remedy broad pervasive violations in a workplace," he said.

"We hear a lot about 'structural racism.' This case is very focused on segregation — the structural barriers to equality for Black employees," Kish said.

Most of the agency's complaints involve individual workers or small groups. And racial complaints are on the rise. In 2016, the agency investigated 744 cases. By 2020, that had grown to 1,548, Kish said.

The economic and political stakes of taking on Tesla are hard to exaggerate: The company has drawn praise for proving people will buy electric cars when most of the auto industry was saying that would be impossible.

"Extreme Suffering": 15 of 23 Monkeys with Elon Musk's Neuralink Brain Chips Reportedly Died
"Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects"

Out of a total of 23 monkeys implanted with Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chips at the University of California Davis between 2017 and 2020, at least 15 reportedly died.

Via Business Insider and the New York Post, the news comes from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an animal-rights group that viewed over 700 pages of documents, veterinary records, and necropsy reports through a public records request at the university.

Neuralink was founded in 2016 with a goal of helping people recover from traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, curing depression and other mental health disorders, and connecting humans to the internet for everything from music streaming to near-telepathic communication. The company has often touted its successes, such as a demonstration on a pig in 2020, and a 2021 video of a macaque playing Pong with its mind.

(...)

Musk previously said that he hoped to begin human trials in 2021, but that goal has been pushed back to 2022. Based on the PCRM's findings, the brain chips may be nowhere near ready.

"Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects," said the PCRM's research advocacy director Jeremy Beckham. "They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals."

Neuralink chips were implanted by drilling holes into the monkeys' skulls. One primate developed a bloody skin infection and had to be euthanized. Another was discovered missing fingers and toes, "possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma," and had to be put down. A third began uncontrollably vomiting shortly after surgery, and days later "appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue." An autopsy revealed the animal suffered from a brain hemorrhage.

The PCRM filed a complaint with the the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday, accusing UC Davis and Neuralink of nine violations of the Animal Welfare Act. "Many, if not all, of the monkeys experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments, which were performed in pursuit of developing what Neuralink and Elon Musk have publicly described as a 'brain-machine interface,'" the group wrote in the complaint.

"These highly invasive implants and their associated hardware, which are inserted in the brain after drilling holes in the animals' skulls, have produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research."

A spokesperson for UC Davis responded to the complaint, saying, "We strive to provide the best possible care to animals in our charge. Animal research is strictly regulated, and UC Davis follows all applicable laws and regulations including those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture."

The spokesperson added that the university stopped working with Neuralink in 2020. Neuralink has not issued a response.

[ulmont]

A couple of not very flattering piece of news related to Musk have appeared today:

I am shocked! shocked! that a white south african would be supporting an apartheid regime!