> The fallout between Slim and Musk was further exacerbated by a controversial tweet from Musk, which implied connections between Slim and organized crime.
Instant flashback when Elon called Thai cave diver a "pedo guy" when they declined his help. Elon needs to take rejections way less personally.
> Elon needs to take rejections way less personally.
That's putting it mildly. For someone with that much power and influence to have some petty vengeful tendencies is extremely dangerous. It's like the "off with your head" tyrants of old.
This is a weird take. The "pedo guy" guy told Elon to stick the submarine up his ass. Elon tried to help. They built a sub just to help, and the guy told him to stick the submarine up his ass. Not "thanks, but we're good", "stuck the submarine up your ass". Elon's sin was to reflect the guy's toxic attitude back at him. Optimal behavior? Hardly. But being an asshole back to an asshole is hardly a red flag.
> It's like the "off with your head" tyrants of old.
Or it's like a normal person making a normal mistake.
> This is a weird take. The "pedo guy" guy told Elon to stick the submarine up his ass.
The weird thing here is that Elon waltzed in with a 'solution' that was ostensibly flawed to anyone but those with the most superficial understanding of what was required, and blithely presented it to actual experts who were putting their lives at risk, and then expected to be praised. What would be normal, would have been to graciously take the reality check he was given and adjust his priors. This is what actually intelligent people do: they learn; they grow up. And maybe one day, Elon will make it to adulthood, but his early fortunes have insulated him from any need for introspection.
Something getting attention without Elon is simply unacceptable. The news was obsessed with the cave story there was no way he wasn't going to jump into that story.
I don't think he's purely about attention, but he craves a particular kind of attention. The kind that the gifted schoolboy gets when they put their hand up in class to a tricky question posed to the class. This might have been his only validation in childhood, or at least the one that was most rewarding, and now his whole life is based around being the clever guy in the front of the class. Most gifted children course-correct some kind of humility in their adult years, either voluntarily or by being humbled by reality, but Elon is yet to meet the moment of his awakening. Being told he's wrong in front of the whole class is the most mortifying thing he's experienced, but he has enough money, enough sycophants surrounding him, and enough momentum is his business ventures (so far) to keep making the same mistakes without any reflection.
> I don't think he's purely about attention, but he craves a particular kind of attention. The kind that the gifted schoolboy gets when they put their hand up in class to a tricky question posed to the class.
> Which I felt was a little dramatic. And I thought: Wow, this is a man in his 40s who thinks that he’s the center of the universe. So it always has that element of drama.
> I think he’s greatly informed by video games. Someone described him to me as Ready Player One, and everybody else is an N.P.C. — a nonplayer character. He always has to be the hero or the person who matters the most. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he has engineered it — getting the founder role when he’s not actually the founder or rewriting history or using public relations to make himself the founder.
> He understands the hero’s journey kind of thing rather well. Also the stakes have to be very high, and if it doesn’t work, we’re doomed. He tends to overstate problems. Most companies have problems, but: Everything is a disaster here, and I’m here to fix it. Or: Everything sucks, and everybody previously is criminal or evil or “pedophiles.” A word he likes to use a lot.
> In one tweet, he called Yoel Roth, who was head of trust and safety at Twitter, “evil.” And said that I was “filled with seething hate” — which is really dramatic and ridiculous. I’m not seething with hate.
> Or it's like a normal person making a normal mistake.
Except that like the kings of old, Elon is not a normal person, and therefore his "mistakes" are not normal either, because they have repercussions.
The whole point is that with great power comes great responsibility. And when you have someone who can't handle that power responsibly without lashing out the way Elon does in a highly immature manner, then you do wind up with a modern version of the "off with your head" tyrant. Sure, he may not cut off your head, but he can cut off your livelihood.
> But being an asshole back to an asshole is hardly a red flag.
Being an asshole is almost always a red flag. It's like teaching someone to not eat grilled babies by eating grilled babies yourself to show them how bad it looks.
Speaking of weird takes. The rescuers first response wasn't "stick it up your ass", it was that they had a workable solution, the team to execute it and the last thing necessary was an even bigger media circus. Elon pouted and whined that he wasn't being taken seriously, and -then- that quote came out. That quote from, by the way, someone who was actually in the middle of coordinating the rescue, being harangued by reporters as to why they weren't indulging Musk's spur-of-the-moment idea that wasn't even remotely feasible (Musk hadn't even considered the cave geometry).
I find it borderline offensive that you equate someone under stress saying "stick it up his ass" as "toxic attitude" that is on the same level as going to the media and saying "I have evidence that this person is a pedophile" (Oh, not to mention the fact that Musk then fucking HIRED a PI to try to gather evidence for when he was called on his bullshit).
"Stick it up your ass" and "I have evidence that you are a pedophile" are not "reflections of the same".
"Stick it up your ass" won't ruin anybody's life. Being falsely accused of pedophilia can, has, and does ruin lives.
I think it takes a clear bias to even conflate the two in some attempt to defend Musk and make the cave diver the bad guy.
> "He can stick his submarine where it hurts," Unsworth replied. [1]
There are plenty of places that a submarine can go where it will hurt, such as ear canals. You are assuming in bad faith that Unsworth told him to place it in a specific area.
> Elon needs to take rejections way less personally.
True, but Elon needs to worry most about the fact that when all the MAGA voters who aren't independently wealthy fully realize the current administration is throwing all the poors under the bus and not just the brown ones he is the useful idiot that is going to take the public fall to try to create some distance between the political fallout and the GOP.
Its pretty obvious to anyone with any political acumen that they are allowing him to be the public facing figurehead for all of this "efficiency" specifically to allow him to fill that role when the time comes.
That said, he'll be fully deserving of everything that happens IMO. I ain't saying any of this to try to warn him, I don't think his ego would allow him to believe it in any case.
I'm absolutely opposed to Musk and happy to see anyone trying to diminish his power... But, Slim having some connections to organized crime (cartels) seems much less far fetched than other Musk outbursts.
So let's be clear, Musk, when a deal seems possible, "Cartels? None of my business, not my problem, let's make a deal."
Musk, when it falls through, "Oh, he's just in bed with the cartels. I wouldn't want to do business with him."
He and Trump have a lot alike in that regard. "Best people, smartest people" when they're new and still in favor. "Who?" "Stupid person, who hired him?" when not.
I loathe Elon and he has influence so can we keep the criticism accurate please?
The leaders of the cave rescue didn't simply "decline his help." One of them specifically described his help as useless and a publicity stunt. He stated on CNN that Elon could “stick his submarine where it hurts”.
His help WAS going to be useless (mostly because Musk's design completely failed to account for the cave geometry) and of course it was a publicity stunt. There's a team of international cave rescuers and medical professionals on scene, but what do they know? Musk literally announced his "plan" to the media before anyone on scene. That's the definition of a publicity stunt.
Oh, and if you just called me a pedophile to the world, WHILE I've been up for 30 hours straight coordinating a cave diving rescue, and the media keeps asking me "Why not Musk's submarine?", you know what, I'd probably say something a lot less polite than "he can stick it up his ass".
Good!!! I just finished porting my number off of T-Mobile since I canceled my service with them mid-Superbowl when I learned they were collaborating with StarLink; I don't want to support a man advocating for my erasure because he's mad at his daughter for disowning him. I made it explicitly clear why I was cancelling, citing Elon and StarLink
by name.
Glad to see others participating in the "free" market and "voting with our wallets" before that ends up being the only way we can vote. Even more glad Slim is costing him billions compared to my pennies.
I do wonder though, when I see so many famous people on Joe Rogan, for example, if the world isn't pass that somehow. Remember Neil Young as the absolutely solitary voice trying to pressure Spotify? It doesn't matter if you think Rogan should be boycotted; there are people that clearly should be doing it, to be honest with their own values, but aren't.
Since Trump started his term, Rogan has fallen from the top podcast in the charts to number two with a 32% drop in downloads over the past month. I guess its something?
By US standards, Musk is pretty good. And I doubt there'll be any economic consequences for him no matter what ideologies he holds. The literal next line on Wikipedia is "The United States Postal Service honored Ford with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 12¢ postage stamp".
Lots of people wish for the failures of profitable businesses. The sooner the better for us to be off oil the better for the planet. The slave trade employed many people and was extremely profitable. There's no reason to care about Starlink being successful.
Why not? The entire point of market economics is to make that not a problem and leave room for other potentially better companies to take the place of worse ones. He obviously is a negative influence for the business as a whole even if he stayed out of politics, just the fact that he tries to pull so much money/value out of those businesses for personal gain has a negative effect on how efficient and beneficial to consumers those businesses can be.
"T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) introduced the next big thing in wireless — T-Mobile Starlink — to tens of millions of football fans. Now in public beta, this breakthrough service, developed in partnership with Starlink [...]"
I have yet to meet a person who regrets having successfully weaned themselves off the news-cycle dopamine treadmill. If anything, I find that they tend to be better informed and more thoughtful than they were when they wasted cycles on the carnival.
While I encourage everyone to opt out of the sensationalized news cycle and prioritize their own mental health, people who aren't paying attention aren't better informed, because the news is actively being censored by their billionaire owners, so it takes a lot of effort to be fully informed, and no, remembering a few things they heard off of Joe Rogan doesn't make them well informed.
Ea-nāṣir sold me poor-quality copper. I need high-quality copper. Therefore, I will buy loads of copper from Ea-nāṣir, and sift through it until I find high-quality copper.
The copper market sold me copper,
some of which was low quality, some of which was high quality. But instead of continuing to shop at the whole market and developing any sense of what is quality, I've decided to go exclusively to Joe's Best Copper. He tells me his stuff is the best. I don't go to anyone else now so I have no way of comparing it to anything else. Anyway, there's no possible way he could be lying to me, I'm way too smart for than.
Well that's a bit of conceptual selection bias, isn't it? Good for their mental health, but you cannot regret something if you don't know what you're missing.
There must have been 1930s Europeans who checked out of all those news about Hitler, after all. Must have been much better for their peace of mind, until one day suddenly it wasn't.
The rise of Hitler was noticed and minimized by even the most plugged-in governments and leaders. The UK was led by a chap who thought he could mollify him by just giving him parts of Central Europe. You can call Chamberlain many names but "uninformed" isn't one.
I like the description earlier in the thread of "the carnival". You can leave at any time and your life and dopamine will be the better for it.
lol. Because I’m sure all the news was posting anything critical about the nazi party at all. Look at now the vast majority of the mainstream news handled Covid. Absolutely zero intellectual curiosity or actual honest insight and 100% pure grade-a government propaganda. Not even a shred of actual investigation or thought. They were nothing more than a mouthpiece for whatever nonsense the government spewed out.
What are you even talking about? Trying to rule that trans people don't exist and kick them out of every space possible is one of the biggest efforts of Trump's first month.
elon lost a contract. At this point most people consider that a good thing, since he is trying to sow chaos in the US government for little to no benefit to the US or anywhere else except his wallet. And he is enabling the little dictator.
That doesn't mean you support the person who pulled the contract.
You can scream MDS all you want. Most people are done with the meme garbage.
It’s not question-begging. DC is a place where, when democrats win, a million Democrat-supporting civil servants work hard to advance the agenda. And when republicans win, some outright rebel, while most just drag their feet and wait for a democrat to come back into office. Harris and Trump got 60-40 in Little Bangladesh in Queens New York, but it was 90-6 in DC. That’s not democracy. It needs to be fixed.
Unfortunately, this is true of a vast range of our institutions—they have abandoned their traditional institutional principles and become progressive advocacy organizations. For example, the ABA is peddling sovereign-citizen level legal conspiracy theories these days: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/initiativ...
I looked through the SFFA amicus briefs. Though the winning side was legally correct and also supported by a supermajority of the public, I noticed that every major legal organization and every large law firm was on the losing side that most Americans oppose. We find ourselves in a position where our institutions must be rebuilt from the ground up to regain the public trust.
not sure why you read "irrational ragequit" into it. Calmly telling the CSA, who may or may not be in the Philippines, what to note down as cancellation reason: Other - Elon Musk, gets stuffed into a database and then bubbles up in internal reports on a pie chart of reasons so if enough other people also cite that reason, it becomes seen.
> T-Mobile since I canceled my service with them mid-Superbowl when I learned they were collaborating with StarLink
That implies spur of the moment, emotional response.
You are watching the Super Bowl one minute, you see a commercial for T-Mobile, then immediately call to cancel your service in anger? If it happened at all - you must port before cancelling, or lose the number
They're gonna come for me anyway. Better than my communications going through his network. Maybe if enough people cite his behavior when cancelling T-Mobile will back off working with him, and he'll lose even more money.
Looks like Elon's tweet may have been retaliatory, in response to Slim's decision not to continue business with Starlink (but build out more land-based networks), rather than prompting Slim's decision (though it no doubt solidified it).
I'm amazed at how the other space companies have failed to offer competition to starlink just the same as the auto industry can't seem to compete with tesla and make a good and profitable EV. They've had a decade to figure it out, so where are they?
Everyone has become cynical and no one is willing to invest in the future and build new things.
I drive a VW ID.4. It's profitable for VW (modulo some boondoggles early on in production), and it's the best car I've ever driven, even solid for road trips.
If I wanted, I could have gotten a Hyundai or a Chevy equally well. Tesla just isn't the only or even best game in town, and hasn't been for years.
I also own an ID4, I'm actually on my second lease (had a 2021, now a 2024). I originally had some skepticism from friends since I went non-Tesla, but I love the car. I also appreciate that it's not tied to Musk (and has Android Auto).
> If I wanted, I could have gotten a Hyundai or a Chevy equally well. Tesla just isn't the only or even best game in town, and hasn't been for years
I'm yet to find an EV with the same range, acceleration and price point as the model 3 LR. Many seem to beat it on two but not three points. The Polstar is close. The ID.4 has less range, double the time 0-100 and (prices not confirmed yet in Australia but) expected to be $10-20k more expensive.
TBH, this is something that scares me about Teslas. Most people can’t handle a car that accelerates that fast. Granted, I know they have safety features that prevent you from running over people… but safeguards fail, this is just a game we shouldn’t be playing at all.
On the track? Go crazy. Long stretches of road by yourself? It’s your life, just don’t crash and don’t get caught. Around other people, though?
My biggest dislike in Teslas. I won't entertain buying one until they decide that an iPad is not in fact an appropriate way to handle user interface in a car...
My friend’s Tesla drives itself with no hands on the steering wheel from door to door. It is a totally different product category than a regular EV from VW, come on.
Launch support. Starlink launches are effectively subsidized by SpaceX launch missions (private and government, so US taxpayers helped a lot here). To compete and develop a similar LEO network you need to be able to launch a lot of satellites, and if you don't own the launch system and piggyback your satellites on launches supporting other customers it's a major expense.
Elon Musk is responsible for making EVs a real alternative with a meaningful market share but if you compromise moral values and ethics each time money, success, or progress comes up you'll create a horrible world
> The fallout between Slim and Musk was further exacerbated by a controversial tweet from Musk, which implied connections between Slim and organized crime.
Lets hope Slim wipes the "business floor" with Musk with his initiative.
I was being sarcastic. It is, after all, very much unlikely Mr. Slim would send a bunch of sicários to torment Elon Musk.
If, indeed, Musk were right (he isn’t) it’d be amusing, simply for the unlikely event he was, for the first time, right on one of his many drug-induced late night tweets.
no need to wish for it, but it's not a hard thing to imagine. if the Trump admin starts to go after cartels in a way that starts to affect them, do we honestly think they will not retaliate?
The cartels aren't destroying our reputation internationally, randomly threatening our allies, sending us into a recession, preventing scientific or medical advances, illegally firing government employees, attacking LGBT rights, or looting and pillaging our government. If they assassinate Elon, Trump, and Vance, then I'd cheer them on.
Right now in my day-to-day, I'm much more materially threatened by the current administration's stated objective being rolling back my civil rights than by anything the cartels could do, much as I loathe them.
And anyway if you think either Elon or Trump actually care about the cartels, I've got a bridge to sell you
Your posts are always out there but this one seems completely divorced from reality. On what basis? He didn't pass any laws, he's attacking "DEI" whatever that is...
So Musk amplified an unsubstantiated tweet making accusations of “his main partner in 25 countries”, which not only made him “lose 7 billion dollars” but also “an investment of 22 billion dollars”? And this is the guy people are trying to convince us is some kind of business genius?
People forget that Elon impulse bought twitter and tried to reverse the deal through the bogus bot angle [1]. The only way in which the acquisition has been a success is as a way to force his political agenda.
Do people forget that? It was highly publicised and he even admitted he only went through with it because he thought he’d be forced to. The political angle is clearly something he hadn’t realised at the time.
If you mean people on HN, maybe not. If you mean people in general, then a lot of people don't know it at all let alone forgetting it. The vast majority of people do not pay attention to what CEOs do, if they even know who they are. The vast majority of people don't want to be tuned in like that and are using social media to deliberately check out. It's one of the reasons they are so susceptible to the algos
Thank you. I got this Nate Silver article in my inbox on how Musk is some sorta special genius because he was born to wealth and won the PayPal lottery, and thought I was going insane.
And factually inaccurate. Musk in no way founded or co-founded PayPal. The trademarks were registered, the MVP was running, when the company building it merged with Musk's failing online banking plan.
He was then made CEO by virtue of being the biggest shareholder. For four months.
Four months later, the Board fired him in his absence on the morning he left for his honeymoon.
How badly do you have to fuck up to not be asked to resign but fired, and fired two days after your wedding, leaving for your honeymoon? Well, Musk tried by insisting the Java app that was up and running was trashcanned and PayPal was rewritten in Classic ASP, because Musk understood that and not Java - that'll do it, apparently.
It doesn’t really matter since the USA will invade Mexico in the next year as part of a new anti-terrorisim initiative initially aimed at drug cartels. As that escalates many things will get carved out for corporate interests.
I’m not saying I support this. But this is the reality.
Musk really seems to have lost his mind and any kind of filter. He hears about something and tweets it without any thought. Pretty much the same approach he is using with DOGE. Look at something for five minutes max and if you don’t like it understand it, cancel it.
My theory is that anybody who engages a lot on X for a while gets their perception of reality totally distorted. If US leadership keeps passing off the whole world I think the real winner of “America first” will be China and Russia.
>I think the real winner of “America first” will be China and Russia.
Indeed.
>An hour later, Slim announced that he would transfer his projects for the next 5 years with Starlink, an investment of 22 billion dollars, to companies in China and Europe.
Brings to mind a meme that's quickly become a favorite of mine since Jan 20th. It's a picture of a "gigachad" Xi Jinping with the caption "Do nothing. Win."
The problem is that when someone gets to that level of wealth there's really nobody left to say "no". Likely nobody in his circle has the guts to tell him what he needs to hear. This in addition to the alleged drug issues and his excessive time on X (which is also kind of a drug) is how we got here.
Perhaps you've seen this, or maybe not. It's worth mentioning that you're not the only one to make that connection -- Jaron Lanier called it "Twitter Poisoning":
I certainly see similar situations where people I knew seem terrified of trans related topics, one couple I knew are on a sort of anti porn crusade.
I ask them all and they have ZERO personal run ins with what they fear and tweet / post about… but it doesn’t end and when the topics come up they can’t imagine that you’re not deep in the middle of their social media memes and conversations and so on.
It’s a wild situation, there’s nothing in their life that supports their ideas and fears but they’re all in.
Or maybe, just maybe, someone who obsesses over hardcore work and tries to manage 20 different companies, while also trying to be perpetually online, is probably sleep deprived and/or is on medications to keep up with everything.
That kind of lifestyle would do that to you long term.
I think he's trying to generate engagement on X through controversy.
The recent change to search, which now shows posts from people you've blocked (with no options to turn it off) suggests this too.
The problem with this strategy is that you have to keep escalating otherwise it gets boring fast, and it attracts people no one wants to advertise to. My feed is full of racebaiters and anti-woke culture crap despite telling the algorithm I’m not interesting. I’m not sure there's much else left.
That’s why I stopped: just being there is giving him money and if you interact with anyone else you’re incentivizing them giving him money, too. I signed up in 2006 but that was a sunk cost I couldn’t stomach growing.
There are circles of people that I like still on the platform. Plus, lots of great discussion on AI and entrepreneurship, both of which BlueSky takes a hostile attitude towards.
In addition, I take the general zeitgeist of X to be something like the Freudian id of the MAGA coalition, which is a useful thing to be tuned into, given that they run the country currently.
If enough people leave Xitter then those people "who only use twitter" will either leave as well, or it indicates that they're just fine being on a "racebaiting" platform. I really don't get why people are staying there other than it means they're just fine with Musk's antics and the rage farming.
He's Tweeting >500 times a day. There is almost no hour of the day he does not Tweet now. He is either paying someone to Tweet or he's literally no longer sleeping.
It's typically not that people lose the need for sleep as they older, but that aging negatively impacts the ability to sleep, which leads to individuals suffering from both age-related decline along with the impacts of their sleep's impaired restoration.
There's plenty of evidence now based on his aberrant behavior in public that he has a serious drug problem.
Look at the video of him on the stage at the event where he told all the x advertisers "fine, don't advertise, go fuck yourself".
If you are wealthy enough you can certainly find enough licensed medical professionals to provide you with basically whatever substance you want, and in unlimited quantities. Exact same sort of thing that ended in the death of Michael Jackson.
There seems to have been a clear decline. It's doubtful that he would have gotten to his current level of wealth if he was mentally in the space he's in now back 10 or 15 years ago.
Exactly. It's the same way that having a deformed jaw, hydrocephalus, and leg braces equates to being absolute ruler over an empire colonizing half the world.
He’s doing all that despite his mental health issues. Not because of it. He’s just an embarrassment that needs to sort his shit out. Actually use his wealth to do something useful instead of hoarding more wealth and having more kids.
Wouldn't shadow president imply that he's acting within the shadows and out of sight? This is definitely not an apt description of what's going on. Co-president is much more apropos.
Sibling commenter has provided a list of links, but there are plenty of reasons to dislike Musk. I personally think he is not someone we should be putting on a pedestal for others to look up to. Just because someone has made money does not make them a good person. Al Capone and Pablo Escobar made a lot of money as intentionally extreme examples. He does however fit hand-and-glove with this administration for those very same reasons
> ... Carlos Slim canceled all business collaborations with Starlink in Latin America, which made Musk lose 7 billion US dollars.
Uhhh.. what? Can anyone explain that line? Where did this 7B come from? Did Musk lose it or did SpaceX? This makes it sound like it was forefit like Musk just gave Slim $7B for free. What is actually going on there?
SpaceX is a private company. Tesla is public, but the board is not independent, still trying to give Musk a pay package of $50 B.
CEO answer to the board, but a board can be controlled by the founder in one way or another. For example, Zuck control shares with more votes and Bezos have vote rights over his ex-wife shares. The CEO can also fill the board with loyalists, as Jobs did on his return.
Tesla would in principle be so much better off without the connection to Musk and all the bad publicity that results, even without him constantly siphoning value from the company. However, if they were able to somehow get rid of him now, there'd be the potential retribution from the US government to worry about.
In what world Elon is the founder of Tesla? He's just a CEO and about 20% shareholder who stuffed the board with his cronies in ways that should interest legislature so that laws can be written to prevent something like that from happening again.
He sued the original founders into granting him the title. Although it really shouldn't be that big a deal he's labeled as founder. When you're the CEO you can just generate titles anyways so he could be called the The Excellent Supreme Leader Always (TESLA) and it'd be allowed.
In layman terms he's not a founder of Tesla but titles aren't required to fit a layman's definition.
Near the end of the article, the cause is described:
>>Elon Musk shared a post on his social network stating that Slim could have ties to criminal groups, and five minutes later, Carlos Slim canceled all business collaborations with Starlink in Latin America, which made Musk lose 7 billion US dollars.
> Elon Musk shared a post on his social network stating that Slim could have ties to criminal groups, and five minutes later, Carlos Slim canceled all business collaborations with Starlink in Latin America, which made Musk lose 7 billion US dollars.
I get some animal farm vibe reading this. I'm looking at the US gov and I'm looking a the cartels, and I can't figure out which one is which.
The way this US gov is operating, they pretty much operate likes cartels "we are the boss, you stfu and you do as we say, or else".
> "It is better to put our towers, plants and optical fiber to link them," said the business magnate in his press conference held on February 10.
> Two days later, Daniel Hajj, CEO of América Móvil, confirmed the decision in a conference call with analysts, where he announced an investment of 22 billion dollars over the next three years to expand its infrastructure. With this move, the possibility of a collaboration with SpaceX was ruled out.
It's like mush lives in a glass house and just hangs out online all day chunking rocks. I don't know Carlos Slim so maybe this is or maybe it isn't the pot calling the kettle black. Unless someone has evidence that can paint Carlos Slim with the same brush as the one mush uses on himself then I tend to believe that Slim's friends are a lot less shady than mush's.
> The fallout between Slim and Musk was further exacerbated by a controversial tweet from Musk, which implied connections between Slim and organized crime.
Instant flashback when Elon called Thai cave diver a "pedo guy" when they declined his help. Elon needs to take rejections way less personally.
> Elon needs to take rejections way less personally.
That's putting it mildly. For someone with that much power and influence to have some petty vengeful tendencies is extremely dangerous. It's like the "off with your head" tyrants of old.
I wonder if he had done more than insulted or fired people. With his wealth, he could inflict more damage to his enemies.
Imagine if the US had a President and Commander in Chief with that kind of disposition!
wait is not that just real life
This is a weird take. The "pedo guy" guy told Elon to stick the submarine up his ass. Elon tried to help. They built a sub just to help, and the guy told him to stick the submarine up his ass. Not "thanks, but we're good", "stuck the submarine up your ass". Elon's sin was to reflect the guy's toxic attitude back at him. Optimal behavior? Hardly. But being an asshole back to an asshole is hardly a red flag.
> It's like the "off with your head" tyrants of old.
Or it's like a normal person making a normal mistake.
> This is a weird take. The "pedo guy" guy told Elon to stick the submarine up his ass.
The weird thing here is that Elon waltzed in with a 'solution' that was ostensibly flawed to anyone but those with the most superficial understanding of what was required, and blithely presented it to actual experts who were putting their lives at risk, and then expected to be praised. What would be normal, would have been to graciously take the reality check he was given and adjust his priors. This is what actually intelligent people do: they learn; they grow up. And maybe one day, Elon will make it to adulthood, but his early fortunes have insulated him from any need for introspection.
Something getting attention without Elon is simply unacceptable. The news was obsessed with the cave story there was no way he wasn't going to jump into that story.
I don't think he's purely about attention, but he craves a particular kind of attention. The kind that the gifted schoolboy gets when they put their hand up in class to a tricky question posed to the class. This might have been his only validation in childhood, or at least the one that was most rewarding, and now his whole life is based around being the clever guy in the front of the class. Most gifted children course-correct some kind of humility in their adult years, either voluntarily or by being humbled by reality, but Elon is yet to meet the moment of his awakening. Being told he's wrong in front of the whole class is the most mortifying thing he's experienced, but he has enough money, enough sycophants surrounding him, and enough momentum is his business ventures (so far) to keep making the same mistakes without any reflection.
> I don't think he's purely about attention, but he craves a particular kind of attention. The kind that the gifted schoolboy gets when they put their hand up in class to a tricky question posed to the class.
This is a pretty interesting interview with a journalist who appears to have spent a fair bit of time with Musk: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas.... It made this relevant observation:
> Which I felt was a little dramatic. And I thought: Wow, this is a man in his 40s who thinks that he’s the center of the universe. So it always has that element of drama.
> I think he’s greatly informed by video games. Someone described him to me as Ready Player One, and everybody else is an N.P.C. — a nonplayer character. He always has to be the hero or the person who matters the most. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he has engineered it — getting the founder role when he’s not actually the founder or rewriting history or using public relations to make himself the founder.
> He understands the hero’s journey kind of thing rather well. Also the stakes have to be very high, and if it doesn’t work, we’re doomed. He tends to overstate problems. Most companies have problems, but: Everything is a disaster here, and I’m here to fix it. Or: Everything sucks, and everybody previously is criminal or evil or “pedophiles.” A word he likes to use a lot.
> In one tweet, he called Yoel Roth, who was head of trust and safety at Twitter, “evil.” And said that I was “filled with seething hate” — which is really dramatic and ridiculous. I’m not seething with hate.
> The kind that the gifted schoolboy gets when they put their hand up in class to a tricky question posed to the class.
I completely forgot this feeling and now I want it back
> Or it's like a normal person making a normal mistake.
Except that like the kings of old, Elon is not a normal person, and therefore his "mistakes" are not normal either, because they have repercussions.
The whole point is that with great power comes great responsibility. And when you have someone who can't handle that power responsibly without lashing out the way Elon does in a highly immature manner, then you do wind up with a modern version of the "off with your head" tyrant. Sure, he may not cut off your head, but he can cut off your livelihood.
> But being an asshole back to an asshole is hardly a red flag.
Being an asshole is almost always a red flag. It's like teaching someone to not eat grilled babies by eating grilled babies yourself to show them how bad it looks.
Speaking of weird takes. The rescuers first response wasn't "stick it up your ass", it was that they had a workable solution, the team to execute it and the last thing necessary was an even bigger media circus. Elon pouted and whined that he wasn't being taken seriously, and -then- that quote came out. That quote from, by the way, someone who was actually in the middle of coordinating the rescue, being harangued by reporters as to why they weren't indulging Musk's spur-of-the-moment idea that wasn't even remotely feasible (Musk hadn't even considered the cave geometry).
I find it borderline offensive that you equate someone under stress saying "stick it up his ass" as "toxic attitude" that is on the same level as going to the media and saying "I have evidence that this person is a pedophile" (Oh, not to mention the fact that Musk then fucking HIRED a PI to try to gather evidence for when he was called on his bullshit).
"Stick it up your ass" and "I have evidence that you are a pedophile" are not "reflections of the same".
"Stick it up your ass" won't ruin anybody's life. Being falsely accused of pedophilia can, has, and does ruin lives.
I think it takes a clear bias to even conflate the two in some attempt to defend Musk and make the cave diver the bad guy.
> stick the submarine up his ass
This isn't accurate.
> "He can stick his submarine where it hurts," Unsworth replied. [1]
There are plenty of places that a submarine can go where it will hurt, such as ear canals. You are assuming in bad faith that Unsworth told him to place it in a specific area.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629348178/elon-musk-and-briti...
> Elon needs to take rejections way less personally.
True, but Elon needs to worry most about the fact that when all the MAGA voters who aren't independently wealthy fully realize the current administration is throwing all the poors under the bus and not just the brown ones he is the useful idiot that is going to take the public fall to try to create some distance between the political fallout and the GOP.
Its pretty obvious to anyone with any political acumen that they are allowing him to be the public facing figurehead for all of this "efficiency" specifically to allow him to fill that role when the time comes.
That said, he'll be fully deserving of everything that happens IMO. I ain't saying any of this to try to warn him, I don't think his ego would allow him to believe it in any case.
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I'm absolutely opposed to Musk and happy to see anyone trying to diminish his power... But, Slim having some connections to organized crime (cartels) seems much less far fetched than other Musk outbursts.
> I'm absolutely opposed to Musk and happy to see anyone trying to diminish his power
Midterms!!
Why?
I don’t really know - but the power of the Mexican Cartels suggests they have connections into the Mexican oligarchy.
More credible than a random guy in Thailand being “a pedo” because he disagreed with Musk.
Why ? What do you know ?
It didn't seem to bother Musk beforehand...
So let's be clear, Musk, when a deal seems possible, "Cartels? None of my business, not my problem, let's make a deal."
Musk, when it falls through, "Oh, he's just in bed with the cartels. I wouldn't want to do business with him."
He and Trump have a lot alike in that regard. "Best people, smartest people" when they're new and still in favor. "Who?" "Stupid person, who hired him?" when not.
Musk, who has personal calls with Putin. But you were saying ?
I loathe Elon and he has influence so can we keep the criticism accurate please?
The leaders of the cave rescue didn't simply "decline his help." One of them specifically described his help as useless and a publicity stunt. He stated on CNN that Elon could “stick his submarine where it hurts”.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...
> One of them specifically described his help as useless and a publicity stunt. He stated on CNN that Elon could “stick his submarine where it hurts”.
That appears to have occurred in an interview held some hours after Musk referred to him as "Pedo guy".
Which makes some sense, the interview and questions were only "newsworthy" after the reaction to the Musk tweet.
His help WAS going to be useless (mostly because Musk's design completely failed to account for the cave geometry) and of course it was a publicity stunt. There's a team of international cave rescuers and medical professionals on scene, but what do they know? Musk literally announced his "plan" to the media before anyone on scene. That's the definition of a publicity stunt.
Oh, and if you just called me a pedophile to the world, WHILE I've been up for 30 hours straight coordinating a cave diving rescue, and the media keeps asking me "Why not Musk's submarine?", you know what, I'd probably say something a lot less polite than "he can stick it up his ass".
you're missing some more context
Good!!! I just finished porting my number off of T-Mobile since I canceled my service with them mid-Superbowl when I learned they were collaborating with StarLink; I don't want to support a man advocating for my erasure because he's mad at his daughter for disowning him. I made it explicitly clear why I was cancelling, citing Elon and StarLink by name.
Glad to see others participating in the "free" market and "voting with our wallets" before that ends up being the only way we can vote. Even more glad Slim is costing him billions compared to my pennies.
It would be amazing if Elon became recognized as the toxic figure that he is, and that had real economic impact on his companies.
I do wonder though, when I see so many famous people on Joe Rogan, for example, if the world isn't pass that somehow. Remember Neil Young as the absolutely solitary voice trying to pressure Spotify? It doesn't matter if you think Rogan should be boycotted; there are people that clearly should be doing it, to be honest with their own values, but aren't.
Edit: small correction.
Since Trump started his term, Rogan has fallen from the top podcast in the charts to number two with a 32% drop in downloads over the past month. I guess its something?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgd9v3r69qo
> Shares in electric car maker Tesla have slumped more than 9% after EU and UK sales fell by almost half in January.
Well, there's a lot in the news today about the FAA cancelling a 2.4 billion dollar contract with Verizon and awarding it to Starlink.
So look like Musk may have gotten a good deal with the couple hundred million he spent to help get Trump elected.
> In 1938, Ford was awarded Nazi Germany's Grand Cross of the German Eagle, a medal given to foreigners sympathetic to Nazism
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Honors_and_recognit...
By US standards, Musk is pretty good. And I doubt there'll be any economic consequences for him no matter what ideologies he holds. The literal next line on Wikipedia is "The United States Postal Service honored Ford with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) 12¢ postage stamp".
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Lots of people wish for the failures of profitable businesses. The sooner the better for us to be off oil the better for the planet. The slave trade employed many people and was extremely profitable. There's no reason to care about Starlink being successful.
Why not? The entire point of market economics is to make that not a problem and leave room for other potentially better companies to take the place of worse ones. He obviously is a negative influence for the business as a whole even if he stayed out of politics, just the fact that he tries to pull so much money/value out of those businesses for personal gain has a negative effect on how efficient and beneficial to consumers those businesses can be.
Yes, I do. More important than tech and jobs is that we keep too much power from accumulating in any one persons hands.
Curious about what this is about. I don't pay very close attention to the news cycle.
I assume they are referring to this partnership:
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/t-mobile-starlink-beta...
"T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) introduced the next big thing in wireless — T-Mobile Starlink — to tens of millions of football fans. Now in public beta, this breakthrough service, developed in partnership with Starlink [...]"
I got that part. It was the "wants to eliminate my people" part I'm missing. Is Musk talking genocide?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_erasure
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I have yet to meet a person who regrets having successfully weaned themselves off the news-cycle dopamine treadmill. If anything, I find that they tend to be better informed and more thoughtful than they were when they wasted cycles on the carnival.
Might just be me though.
While I encourage everyone to opt out of the sensationalized news cycle and prioritize their own mental health, people who aren't paying attention aren't better informed, because the news is actively being censored by their billionaire owners, so it takes a lot of effort to be fully informed, and no, remembering a few things they heard off of Joe Rogan doesn't make them well informed.
Ea-nāṣir sold me poor-quality copper. I need high-quality copper. Therefore, I will buy loads of copper from Ea-nāṣir, and sift through it until I find high-quality copper.
The copper market sold me copper, some of which was low quality, some of which was high quality. But instead of continuing to shop at the whole market and developing any sense of what is quality, I've decided to go exclusively to Joe's Best Copper. He tells me his stuff is the best. I don't go to anyone else now so I have no way of comparing it to anything else. Anyway, there's no possible way he could be lying to me, I'm way too smart for than.
Well that's a bit of conceptual selection bias, isn't it? Good for their mental health, but you cannot regret something if you don't know what you're missing.
There must have been 1930s Europeans who checked out of all those news about Hitler, after all. Must have been much better for their peace of mind, until one day suddenly it wasn't.
The rise of Hitler was noticed and minimized by even the most plugged-in governments and leaders. The UK was led by a chap who thought he could mollify him by just giving him parts of Central Europe. You can call Chamberlain many names but "uninformed" isn't one.
I like the description earlier in the thread of "the carnival". You can leave at any time and your life and dopamine will be the better for it.
The thing is the Nazi's didn't come out of nowhere.
If you check the news once a week or once a minute you'll still notice them.
lol. Because I’m sure all the news was posting anything critical about the nazi party at all. Look at now the vast majority of the mainstream news handled Covid. Absolutely zero intellectual curiosity or actual honest insight and 100% pure grade-a government propaganda. Not even a shred of actual investigation or thought. They were nothing more than a mouthpiece for whatever nonsense the government spewed out.
Nope. It’s the best decision you’ll ever make. It’s pure propaganda that has absolutely no positive impact at all.
> a man advocating for my erasure
What do you mean?
Maybe OP is trans
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What are you even talking about? Trying to rule that trans people don't exist and kick them out of every space possible is one of the biggest efforts of Trump's first month.
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Politics, I know, but: I guess he just missed the part where Slim is dismantling his country for profit. Oh yeah and literally a Nazi.
>dismantling his country for profit
Wow, that certainly sounds familiar.
Profoundly inverted sense of morality. Don’t know what can be done about it.
These seem like more reasons to celebrate the end of a partnership between two oligarchs. May it cost them both money in the end.
elon lost a contract. At this point most people consider that a good thing, since he is trying to sow chaos in the US government for little to no benefit to the US or anywhere else except his wallet. And he is enabling the little dictator.
That doesn't mean you support the person who pulled the contract.
You can scream MDS all you want. Most people are done with the meme garbage.
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Top shelf question-begging there, counselor.
It’s not question-begging. DC is a place where, when democrats win, a million Democrat-supporting civil servants work hard to advance the agenda. And when republicans win, some outright rebel, while most just drag their feet and wait for a democrat to come back into office. Harris and Trump got 60-40 in Little Bangladesh in Queens New York, but it was 90-6 in DC. That’s not democracy. It needs to be fixed.
Unfortunately, this is true of a vast range of our institutions—they have abandoned their traditional institutional principles and become progressive advocacy organizations. For example, the ABA is peddling sovereign-citizen level legal conspiracy theories these days: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/initiativ...
I looked through the SFFA amicus briefs. Though the winning side was legally correct and also supported by a supermajority of the public, I noticed that every major legal organization and every large law firm was on the losing side that most Americans oppose. We find ourselves in a position where our institutions must be rebuilt from the ground up to regain the public trust.
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not sure why you read "irrational ragequit" into it. Calmly telling the CSA, who may or may not be in the Philippines, what to note down as cancellation reason: Other - Elon Musk, gets stuffed into a database and then bubbles up in internal reports on a pie chart of reasons so if enough other people also cite that reason, it becomes seen.
This is why, OP said mid-superBowl:
> T-Mobile since I canceled my service with them mid-Superbowl when I learned they were collaborating with StarLink
That implies spur of the moment, emotional response.
You are watching the Super Bowl one minute, you see a commercial for T-Mobile, then immediately call to cancel your service in anger? If it happened at all - you must port before cancelling, or lose the number
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They're gonna come for me anyway. Better than my communications going through his network. Maybe if enough people cite his behavior when cancelling T-Mobile will back off working with him, and he'll lose even more money.
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Looks like Elon's tweet may have been retaliatory, in response to Slim's decision not to continue business with Starlink (but build out more land-based networks), rather than prompting Slim's decision (though it no doubt solidified it).
See https://expansion.mx/tecnologia/2025/02/26/america-movil-cor... (Spanish)
Terrestrial networks have their issues, but they don't have to continuously launch. Curious to know which is better for the environment.
Seems like accusing someone of ties to organized crime is a bit of a reverse Pascal's Wager.
I'm amazed at how the other space companies have failed to offer competition to starlink just the same as the auto industry can't seem to compete with tesla and make a good and profitable EV. They've had a decade to figure it out, so where are they?
Everyone has become cynical and no one is willing to invest in the future and build new things.
China is https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/12/15/chinas-satellite-megapro...
I drive a VW ID.4. It's profitable for VW (modulo some boondoggles early on in production), and it's the best car I've ever driven, even solid for road trips.
If I wanted, I could have gotten a Hyundai or a Chevy equally well. Tesla just isn't the only or even best game in town, and hasn't been for years.
I also own an ID4, I'm actually on my second lease (had a 2021, now a 2024). I originally had some skepticism from friends since I went non-Tesla, but I love the car. I also appreciate that it's not tied to Musk (and has Android Auto).
The ID4 software is so bad VW is basically buying rivian. I don't factor politics into car purchases, just value for money.
> If I wanted, I could have gotten a Hyundai or a Chevy equally well. Tesla just isn't the only or even best game in town, and hasn't been for years
I'm yet to find an EV with the same range, acceleration and price point as the model 3 LR. Many seem to beat it on two but not three points. The Polstar is close. The ID.4 has less range, double the time 0-100 and (prices not confirmed yet in Australia but) expected to be $10-20k more expensive.
I'd bet that you could pick three points about any EV where the model 3 LR is only able to beat the alternative on two of the three.
For example The ID.4 has body work that lines up and paint that is the same color.
You don't need 0-60 in under 6 seconds.
I say this as a driver of a Polestar. It's just silly.
In fact it's mostly dangerous. I won't pay for the upgrade to the "performance" package because 4.5 seconds is already crazy enough.
Also consider we non-Tesla owners get luxuries like an actual dashboard, turn stalk... and body panels that fit together properly.
TBH, this is something that scares me about Teslas. Most people can’t handle a car that accelerates that fast. Granted, I know they have safety features that prevent you from running over people… but safeguards fail, this is just a game we shouldn’t be playing at all.
On the track? Go crazy. Long stretches of road by yourself? It’s your life, just don’t crash and don’t get caught. Around other people, though?
> an actual dashboard
My biggest dislike in Teslas. I won't entertain buying one until they decide that an iPad is not in fact an appropriate way to handle user interface in a car...
In a thread about cynicism, a poster wonders why don't more cars come with dangerous features
My friend’s Tesla drives itself with no hands on the steering wheel from door to door. It is a totally different product category than a regular EV from VW, come on.
Tesla itself hasn't figured out how to make a profitable EV
Tesla has some of the best (positive) margins in the business. Are you saying they're making profitable EVs accidentally and without figuring it out?
Take a look at the sales trends of different brands EVs. Tesla does not look like the long term winner at the moment.
I'd give them a ton of credit for their initial success though. Starting a car company is clearly very difficult.
Launch support. Starlink launches are effectively subsidized by SpaceX launch missions (private and government, so US taxpayers helped a lot here). To compete and develop a similar LEO network you need to be able to launch a lot of satellites, and if you don't own the launch system and piggyback your satellites on launches supporting other customers it's a major expense.
Two industries filled with old companies with entrenched management wanting to keep the status quo, not wanting to take risks and innovate.
Elon Musk is responsible for making EVs a real alternative with a meaningful market share but if you compromise moral values and ethics each time money, success, or progress comes up you'll create a horrible world
The timing seems weird. Did Elon know the deal was about to fall through and tweeted out of sour grapes?
If he knew, why didn’t he tweet something that did not make him seem like an impulsive fool?
because he is an impulsive fool? a leopard can't change its spots.
not only that but he historically never really took much of a hit for his idiotic impulsive life choices
That assumes it's a possibility for him
It would be very on character. seems to be SOP for these stooges
It's unlikely the rift will have any real impact:
"In 2025, Quilty forecast that it [Starlink] will count 7.8 million people around the world as customers and generate $11.8 billion in sales."
It is currently and likely will continue to be the biggest revenue driver for SpaceX, Mexico or not.
>generate $11.8 billion in sales.
This was an investment worth twice that, and you think it is not of "real impact"? Care to expand on your thinking?
There's no way the numbers in the article are real.
See Ukraine
I wonder what Elon thinks
> The fallout between Slim and Musk was further exacerbated by a controversial tweet from Musk, which implied connections between Slim and organized crime.
Lets hope Slim wipes the "business floor" with Musk with his initiative.
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It's crazy to me how acceptable (or just prevalent) it's become to openly wish for murder online, even on this site.
I was being sarcastic. It is, after all, very much unlikely Mr. Slim would send a bunch of sicários to torment Elon Musk.
If, indeed, Musk were right (he isn’t) it’d be amusing, simply for the unlikely event he was, for the first time, right on one of his many drug-induced late night tweets.
no need to wish for it, but it's not a hard thing to imagine. if the Trump admin starts to go after cartels in a way that starts to affect them, do we honestly think they will not retaliate?
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As long as you target medias' current cartoon villain, nothing's over the top these days.
It’s crazy to me that people are rooting for the Mexican cartels over Elon.
It’s entirely possible to root for them to gnaw on each other for a while.
Or you could root for Elon and Trump to be successful in taking out the cartels. Truly one of the greatest evils facing america today.
The cartels aren't destroying our reputation internationally, randomly threatening our allies, sending us into a recession, preventing scientific or medical advances, illegally firing government employees, attacking LGBT rights, or looting and pillaging our government. If they assassinate Elon, Trump, and Vance, then I'd cheer them on.
Right now in my day-to-day, I'm much more materially threatened by the current administration's stated objective being rolling back my civil rights than by anything the cartels could do, much as I loathe them.
And anyway if you think either Elon or Trump actually care about the cartels, I've got a bridge to sell you
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Your posts are always out there but this one seems completely divorced from reality. On what basis? He didn't pass any laws, he's attacking "DEI" whatever that is...
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Why? Only one of them is intent on actively destroying the US Gov't.
So Musk amplified an unsubstantiated tweet making accusations of “his main partner in 25 countries”, which not only made him “lose 7 billion dollars” but also “an investment of 22 billion dollars”? And this is the guy people are trying to convince us is some kind of business genius?
People forget that Elon impulse bought twitter and tried to reverse the deal through the bogus bot angle [1]. The only way in which the acquisition has been a success is as a way to force his political agenda.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-...
Do people forget that? It was highly publicised and he even admitted he only went through with it because he thought he’d be forced to. The political angle is clearly something he hadn’t realised at the time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43077177
> Do people forget that?
If you mean people on HN, maybe not. If you mean people in general, then a lot of people don't know it at all let alone forgetting it. The vast majority of people do not pay attention to what CEOs do, if they even know who they are. The vast majority of people don't want to be tuned in like that and are using social media to deliberately check out. It's one of the reasons they are so susceptible to the algos
Thank you. I got this Nate Silver article in my inbox on how Musk is some sorta special genius because he was born to wealth and won the PayPal lottery, and thought I was going insane.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-and-spiky-intelligenc...
And factually inaccurate. Musk in no way founded or co-founded PayPal. The trademarks were registered, the MVP was running, when the company building it merged with Musk's failing online banking plan.
He was then made CEO by virtue of being the biggest shareholder. For four months.
Four months later, the Board fired him in his absence on the morning he left for his honeymoon.
How badly do you have to fuck up to not be asked to resign but fired, and fired two days after your wedding, leaving for your honeymoon? Well, Musk tried by insisting the Java app that was up and running was trashcanned and PayPal was rewritten in Classic ASP, because Musk understood that and not Java - that'll do it, apparently.
Will this be questioned by the FAFO offices?
The numbers in the article make no sense and it's surprising people accept it uncritically
It doesn’t really matter since the USA will invade Mexico in the next year as part of a new anti-terrorisim initiative initially aimed at drug cartels. As that escalates many things will get carved out for corporate interests.
I’m not saying I support this. But this is the reality.
Musk really seems to have lost his mind and any kind of filter. He hears about something and tweets it without any thought. Pretty much the same approach he is using with DOGE. Look at something for five minutes max and if you don’t like it understand it, cancel it.
My theory is that anybody who engages a lot on X for a while gets their perception of reality totally distorted. If US leadership keeps passing off the whole world I think the real winner of “America first” will be China and Russia.
>I think the real winner of “America first” will be China and Russia.
Indeed.
>An hour later, Slim announced that he would transfer his projects for the next 5 years with Starlink, an investment of 22 billion dollars, to companies in China and Europe.
Brings to mind a meme that's quickly become a favorite of mine since Jan 20th. It's a picture of a "gigachad" Xi Jinping with the caption "Do nothing. Win."
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/352/212/95b...
The problem is that when someone gets to that level of wealth there's really nobody left to say "no". Likely nobody in his circle has the guts to tell him what he needs to hear. This in addition to the alleged drug issues and his excessive time on X (which is also kind of a drug) is how we got here.
Perhaps you've seen this, or maybe not. It's worth mentioning that you're not the only one to make that connection -- Jaron Lanier called it "Twitter Poisoning":
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...
That was interesting.
I certainly see similar situations where people I knew seem terrified of trans related topics, one couple I knew are on a sort of anti porn crusade.
I ask them all and they have ZERO personal run ins with what they fear and tweet / post about… but it doesn’t end and when the topics come up they can’t imagine that you’re not deep in the middle of their social media memes and conversations and so on.
It’s a wild situation, there’s nothing in their life that supports their ideas and fears but they’re all in.
Definitely seems like a drug problem to me. He seems strung out of his mind if this article's sourcing is correct: https://www.wired.com/story/katie-stephen-miller-elon-musk-t...
Yeah I don’t think he was just always like this and hiding it. The drugs have cooked his brain.
How did you draw the connection between being babysat and drugs?
Or maybe, just maybe, someone who obsesses over hardcore work and tries to manage 20 different companies, while also trying to be perpetually online, is probably sleep deprived and/or is on medications to keep up with everything.
That kind of lifestyle would do that to you long term.
That would be a cause but he's been like this for over two years. Wouldn't there be a point where he reflects on the past and analyzes his behavior?
When you’re in it, you can’t reflect unless you’re no longer in it.
I think he's trying to generate engagement on X through controversy. The recent change to search, which now shows posts from people you've blocked (with no options to turn it off) suggests this too.
The problem with this strategy is that you have to keep escalating otherwise it gets boring fast, and it attracts people no one wants to advertise to. My feed is full of racebaiters and anti-woke culture crap despite telling the algorithm I’m not interesting. I’m not sure there's much else left.
That’s why I stopped: just being there is giving him money and if you interact with anyone else you’re incentivizing them giving him money, too. I signed up in 2006 but that was a sunk cost I couldn’t stomach growing.
> My feed is full of racebaiters and anti-woke culture crap despite telling the algorithm I’m not interesting. I’m not sure there's much else left.
I'm sincerely curious, why do you still have a twitter account?
I read the timelines of people who only use twitter. Local journalists and people who talk about about specific issues.
> My feed is full of racebaiters and anti-woke culture crap despite telling the algorithm I’m not interesting. I’m not sure there's much else left.
Why even keep using the platform?
There are circles of people that I like still on the platform. Plus, lots of great discussion on AI and entrepreneurship, both of which BlueSky takes a hostile attitude towards.
In addition, I take the general zeitgeist of X to be something like the Freudian id of the MAGA coalition, which is a useful thing to be tuned into, given that they run the country currently.
I read the timelines of people who only use twitter. Local journalists and people who talk about about specific issues.
If enough people leave Xitter then those people "who only use twitter" will either leave as well, or it indicates that they're just fine being on a "racebaiting" platform. I really don't get why people are staying there other than it means they're just fine with Musk's antics and the rage farming.
He's Tweeting >500 times a day. There is almost no hour of the day he does not Tweet now. He is either paying someone to Tweet or he's literally no longer sleeping.
Here's a graph about third of the way down:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-and-spiky-intelligenc...
(Elon Musk's Tweets by time of day)
Anecdotal, but I've noticed some men lose the need for sleep as they get older.
It's typically not that people lose the need for sleep as they older, but that aging negatively impacts the ability to sleep, which leads to individuals suffering from both age-related decline along with the impacts of their sleep's impaired restoration.
Some people postulate his mental decline might be drug related.
There's plenty of evidence now based on his aberrant behavior in public that he has a serious drug problem.
Look at the video of him on the stage at the event where he told all the x advertisers "fine, don't advertise, go fuck yourself".
If you are wealthy enough you can certainly find enough licensed medical professionals to provide you with basically whatever substance you want, and in unlimited quantities. Exact same sort of thing that ended in the death of Michael Jackson.
The onset of some prescription stimulants is extremely euphoric and leads to immediate mania in some.
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The net worth increase was not because of him telling advertisers to fuck themselves.
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There seems to have been a clear decline. It's doubtful that he would have gotten to his current level of wealth if he was mentally in the space he's in now back 10 or 15 years ago.
Exactly. It's the same way that having a deformed jaw, hydrocephalus, and leg braces equates to being absolute ruler over an empire colonizing half the world.
Who is this meant to refer to?
Charles II of Spain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain)
He’s doing all that despite his mental health issues. Not because of it. He’s just an embarrassment that needs to sort his shit out. Actually use his wealth to do something useful instead of hoarding more wealth and having more kids.
Wouldn't shadow president imply that he's acting within the shadows and out of sight? This is definitely not an apt description of what's going on. Co-president is much more apropos.
I suspect the behavior and insecurity we see now in Musk won’t get you anywhere… near there.
Musk apologist are rampant on HN.
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> Where are they in this thread
mirror mirror on the wall...
Sibling commenter has provided a list of links, but there are plenty of reasons to dislike Musk. I personally think he is not someone we should be putting on a pedestal for others to look up to. Just because someone has made money does not make them a good person. Al Capone and Pablo Escobar made a lot of money as intentionally extreme examples. He does however fit hand-and-glove with this administration for those very same reasons
> Do we hate him because of DOGE?
Musk wants Ukraine to submit to Russia: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126714896/elon-musk-ukraine-...
He wants Taiwan to submit to China: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/08/elon-musk...
He thinks America is full of complacency and entitlement whereas China rocks: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-china-ro...
He has pledged his commitment to China's core socialist values: https://www.mediaite.com/news/elon-musk-signs-letter-pledgin...
And so on and so on. There's lots to choose from.
China and Russia used to think they had to beat America.
Then they hoped America would beat itself.
I bet they never expected America to turn into an ally.
How much time do you really think he's putting into running Tesla these days?
He's not running it. Tesla employees call him a "pigeon CEO" because "he comes in, shits all over us, and then leaves":
https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-t...
All Musk does these days is actively damage the brand and lose sales:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/25/tesla-sal...
> ... Carlos Slim canceled all business collaborations with Starlink in Latin America, which made Musk lose 7 billion US dollars.
Uhhh.. what? Can anyone explain that line? Where did this 7B come from? Did Musk lose it or did SpaceX? This makes it sound like it was forefit like Musk just gave Slim $7B for free. What is actually going on there?
What's the CEOs fiduciary duty again?
SpaceX is a private company. Tesla is public, but the board is not independent, still trying to give Musk a pay package of $50 B.
CEO answer to the board, but a board can be controlled by the founder in one way or another. For example, Zuck control shares with more votes and Bezos have vote rights over his ex-wife shares. The CEO can also fill the board with loyalists, as Jobs did on his return.
Tesla would in principle be so much better off without the connection to Musk and all the bad publicity that results, even without him constantly siphoning value from the company. However, if they were able to somehow get rid of him now, there'd be the potential retribution from the US government to worry about.
In what world Elon is the founder of Tesla? He's just a CEO and about 20% shareholder who stuffed the board with his cronies in ways that should interest legislature so that laws can be written to prevent something like that from happening again.
This world.
He sued the original founders into granting him the title. Although it really shouldn't be that big a deal he's labeled as founder. When you're the CEO you can just generate titles anyways so he could be called the The Excellent Supreme Leader Always (TESLA) and it'd be allowed.
In layman terms he's not a founder of Tesla but titles aren't required to fit a layman's definition.
I get a laugh out of HN comments maybe 5 times in a good year. You got me with this one!
To not deal with flaky people whose word is worthless and whose ethics are worth even less.
Near the end of the article, the cause is described:
>>Elon Musk shared a post on his social network stating that Slim could have ties to criminal groups, and five minutes later, Carlos Slim canceled all business collaborations with Starlink in Latin America, which made Musk lose 7 billion US dollars.
This Musk fellow seems like quite the loose cannon.
> Elon Musk shared a post on his social network stating that Slim could have ties to criminal groups, and five minutes later, Carlos Slim canceled all business collaborations with Starlink in Latin America, which made Musk lose 7 billion US dollars.
Is there a source for this?
> Is there a source for this?
For the claim that Slim had criminal ties? No, not really.
The immediate source was this tweet, which asserted, without any clear basis, that Slim has "significant ties to the drug cartels in Mexico": https://x.com/wallstreetmav/status/1882255277551972619
The linked NYT article in the reply-to was https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/world/americas/mexico-car... (archived: https://archive.ph/6Sn0Y), which doesn't mention Slim at all.
Here is Elon's quote of that tweet with the monocle emoji https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1882301283090190520
Probably not possible to be the richest person in Mexico without some incidental connection or accidental involvement with organised crime.
So it really hardly matters, unless you get a lot of details.
I don't doubt that's often the case, but there's still a big difference between a general statement and a specific claim.
Do you think anyone does serious business in Mexico and doesn't run into the cartels?
I get some animal farm vibe reading this. I'm looking at the US gov and I'm looking a the cartels, and I can't figure out which one is which. The way this US gov is operating, they pretty much operate likes cartels "we are the boss, you stfu and you do as we say, or else".
American car companies?
The cancellation of business with Starlink was announced in the Mexican media weeks ago. See this article in Spanish:
https://expansion.mx/tecnologia/2025/02/26/america-movil-cor...
That article is dated 26 Feb 2025, not weeks ago.
From the article:
> "It is better to put our towers, plants and optical fiber to link them," said the business magnate in his press conference held on February 10.
> Two days later, Daniel Hajj, CEO of América Móvil, confirmed the decision in a conference call with analysts, where he announced an investment of 22 billion dollars over the next three years to expand its infrastructure. With this move, the possibility of a collaboration with SpaceX was ruled out.
It's like mush lives in a glass house and just hangs out online all day chunking rocks. I don't know Carlos Slim so maybe this is or maybe it isn't the pot calling the kettle black. Unless someone has evidence that can paint Carlos Slim with the same brush as the one mush uses on himself then I tend to believe that Slim's friends are a lot less shady than mush's.
What's up with the ongoing Elon hate? It all started when he freed Twitter from extreme leftism and manipulation by the intelligence community.
I don't care about the Carlos Slim
He supports Donald Trump who is lying about widespread election fraud.
Did you drop your /s?