Elon Musk (and his consortium of much smaller investors) now owns Twitter. We need to take seriously the possibility that this will end up being one of the funniest things that’s ever happened.That’s because as of this moment, it looks like Musk dug a big hole in the forest, carefully filled it with punji sticks and crocodiles, and then jumped in.

This was made immediately clear by Musk’s “Dear Twitter Advertisers” tweet as the deal closed:

The statement starts off, promisingly, with a blatant lie: “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important for the future of civilization to have a common digital town square.” Musk apparently believes that no one will remember that until three weeks ago, he was desperately trying not to buy Twitter. The only reason he did is because he was about to lose Twitter’s lawsuit to force him to buy it. This may be the greatest “you can’t fire me because I quit” moment in history.

The significance of the rest of his statement is more subtle. To understand it, you have to start with the basics.

Twitter currently makes 90 percent of its revenue from advertising. (The rest is largely from data licensing.) This means that you, the Twitter user, are not Twitter’s customers. You are its product. Its customers are corporate advertisers and, as every businessperson knows, the customer is always right. Grocery stores care about the people shopping for Cheetos, not about the feelings of the Cheetos themselves.

Musk Blames 'Activist Groups' for 'Massive Drop in Revenue' at Social...

LABASH: If you buy what he is selling, you must be high!

The Twidiot-in-chief…

Platform Sued for Mass Layoffs…

Fired by email…

The Twidiot-in-chief

If you buy what Elon Musk is selling, you must be high

Matt Labash

 

Editor’s note: There are no true answers, only more questions. Ask yours at askmattlabash@gmail.com

Dear Matt,
Now that free-speech champion Elon Musk has taken the reins at Twitter, will you finally join? And if you do, will you rent a blue check from their new ego validation system?
Thanks,
Freedom of Screech

Hmmm, let me think about that for all of a half a second. Okay, I’m done. Yeah, no. I’d rather eat a bowl of live puppies with dead-kitten sprinkles than join the “new and improved” Twitter. I probably shouldn’t say that, of course. Everyone’s favorite publicity-tapeworm of a billionaire – the man who puts the “ass” in Asperger’s – will likely acquire Substack and ruin my life one day. Much as he is ruining the lives of the 50 percent or so of the Twitter workforce he’s sacking in yet another of his impulsive man-baby tantrums. Perhaps only someone as capricious and unbalanced as Elon Musk could make me almost feel sorry for Twitter executives, who have now been helping befoul the public square since 2006. Which, to put a time frame around it that Musk might better relate to, was roughly four illegitimate children ago. (Admittedly kind of impressive, fertility-wise  – Herschel Walker numbers!)  Here’s hoping he pays more careful attention to his new baby than he seemingly has to his old ones.

But I’ve resisted joining The Borg since the beginning – despite the pressure of media peers who basically live on Twitter  – not for any ideological reasons. Just because undergoing a hive-mind lobotomy has never been high on my to-do list. I don’t need to be more online to ignore what the Village Kvetchers are kvetching about on any given day. I can already do that in meatspace.  (Note to Kanye: my use of Yiddish is not an anti-Semitic swipe – don’t get excited.) Not to brag, but here I am nearly a decade ago, beating the snot out of Twitter for 8,000 words or so, long before blowing snot-rockets at Twitter was cool. I did so in a magazine. (Remember those?) And what was then considered a “conservative” publication, but which would now be considered the house organ of anti-MAGA heresy and RINO cuckery, at least by the droogs who are capable of sounding out the large, three-syllable words we sometimes employed.

I understand, of course, why wingers celebrate Musk as a cross between Patrick Henry and Jesus H. Bonaparte after a battle-scarred half-decade or so of cancel-culture wars. (Sorry, lib denialists – cancel culture was/is real, even if whining about getting cancelled, even if you haven’t been, turns out to be a good career move for wingers: “Please, please cancel me, so I can go talk about it on Fox,” which, in an average time slot, does higher ratings than MSNBC and CNN combined.)

Sure, Musk loves free speech, insofar as it allows him to say whatever he wants at all times without bearing any responsibility for his recklessness. Why, just this week, he tweeted out  – in response to a Hillary Clinton tweet about the Paul Pelosi-getting-attacked-by-a-hammer-wielding-madman story – that “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.”  Yeah, really tiny, it turns out. Since the Paul Pelosi-was-actually-beaten-up-by-his-gay-prostitute angle turned out to be utter bullshit. And the story that Trump – sorry, I mean Musk – linked to perpetuating that bullshit was a site that also had once reported that Hillary Clinton had died, and that her body double was sent to debate Trump in 2016. Which to normies, might be considered a tell, credibility-wise.  (The tweet was later deleted, presumably by Musk, as opposed to the internal disinformation police that he is now handing pink slips.)

Which brings us to a more credible source, Søren Kierkegaard, who said: “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”  Just because we can say something doesn’t mean that we should.  And this is not at all to diminish freedom of speech. I’m of the belief that it’s our most important right –  in fact, I’m pretty close to an absolutist on the subject. That’s not just on a high-principle level but a pragmatic one, too: as someone who gets paid to traffic in human folly, I’m all for a-holes publicly demonstrating their a-holery, Elon included.  And if we weren’t allowed to make fools of ourselves in public, most of us media-types would be unemployed. (Note to youngsters: that’s called “self-deprecation,” an art form that died around the time good judgment did. Around the time, come to think of it, that Twitter was invented.)

But whether we are permitted to say anything we want (I hold that we should be) is a different argument than whether it’s wise to, and whether if we do, we shouldn’t reap the consequences of doing so.  If you come into my comments section, for instance, calling someone a “kike” or the n-word, you have the absolute right to do that. Nobody’s going to arrest you, and I will not call for the Substack police to prosecute or dox you. But I will throw your ass out of here so fast that your head will spin, and you can go practice your free speech at human skid-mark Nick Fuentes’s site, or wherever.  In other words, I will check you, much as Twitter frequently did with extreme prejudice, even if their prejudice often seemed literal, since right-wingers tended to rack up more bans than abusive lefties ever did.  A more useful question than “should standards be applied?” – which Twitter has every right to do – is “were those standards applied equally?”  Probably not, since harassment, abusive language, and mob pile-ons have pretty much been an everyday feature of the platform, well before Musk took the helm. Hate-speech, however you define that, has always been there. There will presumably just be more of it to hate now.

Don’t believe me? I highly encourage anyone to avail themselves of “advanced Twitter search” – you don’t have to be a member to do so, I’m not – where you can plug in your epithet of choice along with date parameters, and you can pretty much see that Elon Musk’s Twitter isn’t “becoming” a sewer. Twitter has always been one. It’s just that partisans are paying closer attention than they ever have for the reason partisans always pay closer attention: for partisan advantage.And neither should free-speech absolutists harbor any doubts that Musk himself isn’t milking partisan advantage until it moos. Much as he sucked up to liberals, selling them overpriced, glitchy electric cars while collecting the government subsidies (for Tesla and the rest of his companies) that helped make him the richest man in the world, he’s playing conservatives by posing as a free-speech absolutist. Which is exactly that: a pose.

As CNBC reported, Musk’s commitment to being a free-thought leader extends about as far as his tweeting thumbs. In his spare time, when he’s not snowing people into thinking he’s the second coming of the First Amendment, he’s busy making laid-off employees sign non-disparagement agreements, asking reporters to show story drafts to his company for pre-approval before publishing,  and even compelling “customers to sign agreements containing non-disclosure clauses as a prerequisite to have their vehicles repaired.”

So yeah, he’s a real free-speech champion, so long as you don’t say anything he doesn’t like.

As for your question as to whether, in the unlikely event that I did join Twitter, would I pay for a blue check to verify myself as a person of D-list prominence in the eyes of others? (A fee that’s now down to eight dollars a month, after Stephen King complained about Musk’s original $20-per-month trial balloon.) Fat chance. Not needing to validate myself to others is worth the sanity points I gain by staying off of Twitter.

Twitter’s content moderation has sometimes been heavy-handed — especially when it froze my account because David Duke got mad at me. But this is not because Twitter is run by a woke mob. It’s because Twitter needs to keep advertisers happy — and their top priority is a certain kind of environment for their ads.

This can take specific forms. Delta probably has it written into its contract that its ads won’t run near any tweets about plane crashes. But more generally, advertisers don’t want anything controversial that gets people out of the buying mood, or worse, mad at the brands themselves. Proctor & Gamble can’t allow its ads for Charmin, targeted at the Upscale Panera Mom micro-demographic, to appear below frothing diatribes about annihilating all Muslims.

Twitter is also, speaking just in financial terms, a crummy business. It’s only been profitable for two years of its existence, 2018 and 2019. In 2020 it lost over $1 billion, rebounding to lose a mere $222 million in 2021.

To make matters worse, Musk’s deal to buy Twitter involved taking out $12.5 billion in loans. This means that Twitter will have to come up with an additional $1 billion a year to service this debt.

Thus if Twitter simply continues on its current path, it will lose huge amounts of money indefinitely. But if advertisers get nervous about Musk’s management and flee the platform, it could see losses every year in the multiple billions of dollars.

It’s true that Musk has said, “I don’t care about the economics at all.” But even as the richest man on earth, he has to care about them. He has a current estimated net worth of $220 billion, but that’s not $220 billion in cash sitting in a bank vault — it’s mostly tied up in his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.

Thus to cover big Twitter losses, he would have to sell off more of his stock every year. This would be painful in monetary terms but more so in terms of power: Eventually he would get into a situation in which he could lose control of the companies, Tesla in particular. Moreover, Tesla is publicly traded, and while it’s fallen 45 percent since its high a year ago, it remains way overvalued by normal metrics. Right now its price-earnings ratio is 70. The historical average for the S&P 500 is about 15. The price-earnings ratio for both Ford and GM right now is 6.

This is why Musk hit the ground running with a groveling attempt to propitiate advertisers. He absolutely must keep them happy. As he put it, “Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”

And that’s where the hilarity begins. Musk has engaged in endless paeans to the glory of free speech and the need to end Twitter’s invidious censorship. This clearly isn’t a subject he’s thought deeply about, since he said back in May that Twitter should delete “tweets that are wrong and bad.” Still, his vague pronouncements have given him a legion of right-wing acolytes who feel they’ve been ill-treated by Twitter.

But they are not Musk’s constituency now. Advertisers are. Even if Musk had some genuine commitment to free speech (which he absolutely does not), it would be essentially impossible for him not to continue significant content moderation.

That’s why, after a brief nod to his wish for Twitter to be a place “where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner,” he quickly pivoted to telling advertisers that “Twitter obviously cannot be a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all.”

This could have been the mission statement of pre-Musk Twitter. But now there’s one big difference: When the content moderation of Twitter remains largely the same, the sense of betrayal among Musk’s super-fans will explode with the force of a supernova. And they will scream at Musk about it nonstop — on Twitter.

Another mogul might have the fortitude to ignore this. But Musk does not, judging by past performance. You can also judge this by current performance: On his first full day on the job, Musk is personally “digging in” to the complaints of Catturd ™.

And while Musk has announced a new “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” he will feel constantly compelled to either explain why he’s standing by his underlings’ moderation decisions, or reverse them. Then he will inevitably be drawn into personally making more and more content calls, perhaps giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to individual tweets.

It will be hell on earth for him. No matter what decisions he makes, he will infuriate large swaths of Twitter. The left will see its suspicions about him confirmed. The right will see him as a horrendous sellout, just another lying Big Tech swine. Joe Rogan will shake his head sadly about what happened to Elon. Eventually what used to give Musk the greatest pleasure, opening up Twitter on his phone, will be a source of excruciating pain.

And that’s just the beginning. Musk has important business interests around the world, and the potential riptides are endless. What happens when Kim Kardashian starts tweeting about how Taiwan is an independent country? Will the government of China quietly suggest to Musk that he do something about this, or will they make things hard for Tesla’s Shanghai plant and block the import of Teslas? What do other Tesla shareholders do if he defies China, and they find out his little bird app adventure is losing them money? What happens when a SpaceX rocket explodes, but Musk has been too busy adjudicating which Nazi furries are going to be suspended for a month?

This future is obviously not foreordained. Possibly Musk will do what no human has ever been able to do before and invent 1) content moderation that everyone likes at an enormous scale, and 2) a way to make huge amounts of money off Twitter. Maybe Tesla will become so profitable that he can use it to subsidize Twitter until 2090. But the most likely outcome is that he’s just asked the monkey’s paw to grant him his greatest wish. Now look as the paw crooks its gnarled finger, and Musk’s love for Twitter ends up obliterating the Twitter experience for one specific user: Elon Musk.

tweeting fury at woke ‘activists’ for pressuring advertisers to drop Twitter – as 50% of staff await ‘You’re Fired’ email  

Elon Musk has slammed activist groups for ‘pressuring’ advertisers claiming that they are behind Twitter’s ‘massive drop in revenue’. The billionaire complained that the activists are trying to ‘destroy free speech in America’, as he locked up Twitter headquarters as he initiated plans to cull half of the workforce. Musk blasted it as ‘extremely messed up’, before claiming that he and his new team did ‘everything they could’ to ‘appease the activists’. He also claimed that ‘nothing had changed with content moderation’ – despite many claiming they have seen a rise in the number of issues with many calling the social media a ‘hellscape’. It comes after a Twitter shareholder backed Musk’s bloodbath, which will see 3,700 employees fired worldwide. Nick Flor, a shareholder of the social media giant, claimed that their profit this year was a negative 270 million and praised the richest man in the world for the massive layoffs after his dramatic $44billion takeover. He implied in a series of tweets that by trimming the fat off the workforce, that Elon Musk is ‘retooling for business.’ Flor claims that the company was ‘grossly mismanaged’ before it was taken over by the billionaire and was ‘mainly used as a political weapon for the Democrat party.

‘Hot Take’: Elon Musk vs AOC debate on ‘free speech’ took a new turn. Read here

 Livemint

• This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday: AOC tells Elon Musk. Here’s why

Since after new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s declaration that a blue tick or verified status would cost $8 per month, US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and the Tesla CEO has been on war of tweets. In an early tweet AOC hit out at the SpaceX CEO’s advocacy of ‘free speech’ with the charges levied for a verified account on Twitter.

In her tweet, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote, “Lmao at a billionaire earnestly trying to sell people on the idea that ‘free speech’ is actually an USD 8/mo subscription plan.” To this Musk had replied, “Feedback appreciated, Now pay $8″.

The savage encounter did not end there.

Later AOC took a screengrab of her profile notifications and claimed that her Twitter profile had been ‘bricked’ since she ‘upset’ Elon Musk.

“Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like? This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

This is what my app has looked like ever since my tweet upset you yesterday. What’s good? Doesn’t seem very free speechy to me 🤔 pic.twitter.com/e3hcZ7T9up

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 3, 2022

Avengers actor Mark Ruffalo entered the conversation at tis point. He retweeted AOC’s tweet and asked Elon Musk to’ leave Twitter’ and ‘continue running Tesla and SpaceX’. “You are destroying your credibility. It’s just not a good look,” Ruffalo wrote.

However, the microblogging platform’s new owner Elon Musk has now secured an opportunity to get back at all his critics on the social media platform.

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Elon Musk has been currently facing backlash owing to his latest decision to charge Twitter users $8 per month to get a verified account. However, Musk is making sure he responds to every troll and critic with an epic response.

Musk did not drop the opportunity this time either. He instantly replied, “Hot take: not everything AOC says is accurate” .

Hot take: not everything AOC says is 💯 accurate

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022

To this Mark Ruffalo replied, “Maybe so. That’s why having robust filters for dis/misinformation & credible verified users has been a popular feature for people & advertisers alike. We need those safeguards to make sure it’s accurate information, or the app loses credibility, as do you. And people leave.”

Twitter’s chargeable blue tick verification service is expected to roll out in India in “less than a month”, the microblogging platform’s new owner, billionaire Elon Musk has said.

Musk, the CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc, completed his USD 44-billion takeover of Twitter in October-end, placing the world’s richest man at the helm of one of the most influential social media apps in the world.

He also fired the social media company’s four top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal and legal executive Vijaya Gadde.

Twitter then proceeded to fire majority of its over 200 employees in India as part of mass layoffs across the globe, ordered by Musk who is looking to make the blockbuster acquisition work.

WASHINGTON — Between launching four astronauts and 54 satellites into orbit, unveiling an electric freight truck and closing in on taking over Twitter this month, Elon Musk made time to offer unsolicited peace plans for Taiwan and Ukraine, antagonizing those countries’ leaders and irking Washington, too.

Musk, the richest man in the world, then irritated some Pentagon officials by announcing he didn’t want to keep paying for his private satellite service in Ukraine, before later walking back the threat.

As Musk, 51, inserts himself into volatile geopolitical issues, many Washington policymakers worry from the sidelines as he bypasses them.

A two-decade partnership between Musk and the federal government helped the United States return to global dominance in space and shift to electric cars, and made the tech geek an internationally famous CEO. But many in Washington, even as they praise his work in areas of national security, now see Musk as too powerful and too reckless.

Citing Musk’s public ridicule of those who snub him — the billionaire has called President Biden a “damp sock puppet” and said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) reminds him of “my friend’s angry mom” — many of the two dozen top government officials interviewed for this article would only speak about Musk on the condition of anonymity. But nearly all described him as being as erratic and arrogant as he is brilliant.

“Elon, The Everywhere” is what one White House official called him. “He believes he is such a gift to mankind that he doesn’t need any guardrails, that he knows best.”

“He sees himself as above the presidency,” said Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian who hosted podcasts on Musk.

Musk declined to comment for this story, but he says he weighs in on important problems and described his mission as “enhancing the future of humanity.” He said his Ukraine plan could avert possible nuclear war, and that his Taiwan proposal could ease dangerous regional tensions.

But Musk’s freelance diplomacy is angering allies at the same time he bids $44 billion to take over a media platform with hundreds of millions of users.

“The bottom line is that people hang on his every word because he has delivered so many times,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). “I hope he shows some respect for that responsibility.”

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called Musk’s plan for Ukraine an “affront” to its people, and even suggested federal subsidies that help electric carmakers might be better spent.

Musk’s relationship with Washington started out strong. “I love you!” Musk blurted out when a NASA official called to tell him in 2008 that he got a $1.6 billion contract at a time when he was heavily in debt. Washington then poured billions more into Musk’s company as it developed its rockets and space capsule. SpaceX delivered, rebuilding the flagging U.S. space program.

His bipartisan efforts once helped him win over Washington. He dined with President Barack Obama and joined President Donald Trump’s economic councils. He donated to candidates of both parties. Now, he bashes Biden and says he plans to vote for a Republican president in 2024.

These days, the eccentric entrepreneur rarely visits Washington and is increasingly critical of the federal government. He does talk to foreign presidents and prime ministers, according to people who work directly with him. Musk sells his state-of-the-art rockets and aerospace technology to South Korea, Turkey and a growing list of other countries. He has Tesla factories in Germany and China. He also owns and controls more than 3,000 satellites circling the Earth — far more than any nation, including the United States.

In May, Brazilian officials said Musk met with Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president who is described in Latin America as a right-wing ultranationalist. Musk said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin 18 months ago, but denied a report that he talked to Putin just before offering his Ukrainian peace plan that was widely condemned as pro-Russian.

Though Musk needs Washington less now that he is global powerhouse, Washington continues to depend on him. The U.S. military uses his rockets and satellite communications services for its drones, ships and aircraft. NASA currently has no way to get American astronauts to the International Space Station without his space capsule. And, at a time when climate change is a top White House priority, he has more electric cars on U.S. roads than any other manufacturer.

Several top government officials said they are working on decreasing their reliance on Musk, including partnering with and nurturing competitors with government contracts and subsidies. “There’s not just SpaceX. There are other entities that we can certainly partner with when it comes to providing Ukraine what they need on the battlefield,” Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters last week.

A key concern if Musk buys Twitter is his web of overseas holdings and foreign investors, including his massive Tesla factory in China, and possible leverage others could have over Musk if he controls a platform where some users have spread misinformation and ratcheted up political divisiveness. As a U.S. defense contractor, Musk has been vetted, but several top officials said they wanted a more thorough review, including any expansion plans in Russia and China. Warren and others have called his Twitter purchase a “danger to democracy.”

Washington has dealt before with powerful tycoons who dominated railroads, oil or a key economic sector, said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “But what’s a bit different here is Musk’s ability to project his political agenda and the fact that now that we have technology and media that allows individuals to essentially become their own network or channel,” Haass said.

Because Musk has business investments in China, and, according to Russian and other news reports, said last year at a Kremlin-sponsored event for students that he was planning one in Russia, several top U.S. government officials wonder if Musk’s business interests affect his views on foreign affairs.

The economic turmoil since the Ukraine war began has dented the fortunes of many people including Musk, whose personal wealth dropped by tens of billions, to about $210 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.

Two people who know him well said Musk is impulsive and that makes him say things that harm his own interests — a tendency that makes it difficult for government officials to count on Musk. Musk himself has said he has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and no one should expect him to be a “chill, normal dude.”

“He shoots himself in the foot all the time. He should not be getting into politics,” said one person who has worked with him for years.

“I have been as shocked as anyone these last few months at some of the things he has waded into,” said Lori Garver, former deputy administrator at NASA. She worries about the consequences. SpaceX restored U.S. leadership in space, but his politically charged comments attract critics who are starting to ask, “Why is taxpayer money going to this billionaire?”

“It’s disappointing,” she said.

Musk set his sights on D.C. 20 years ago. A South African who moved to Silicon Valley, Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002 — the year he used his payment from the sale of PayPal, the electronic payment firm he helped found, to start SpaceX. It was a big risk, and he needed high-dollar government contracts to survive. In early 2003, Musk announced he would have a “significant presence” in the nation’s capital so that he could build a “close working relationship with the federal government.”

He invested in Tesla around the same time and soon took over running it, tapping into financial subsidies and tax credits Washington was offering to wean the country off gasoline. California alone gave Tesla $3.2 billion in subsidies, according to figures provided by the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

A review of public disclosure forms show that for brief periods of time, Musk hired dozens of lobbyists, many of them former staff members of powerful members of Congress. Rohan Patel, who worked on energy and transportation in the Obama White House, runs Tesla’s regulatory and legislative affairs in Washington.

SpaceX has spent more than $22 million to lobby Washington over the years, according to OpenSecrets, a research group tracking money in politics. Musk, himself, proved a savvy political operator. He flew into Washington 40 times between 2008 and 2013, according to flight records obtained by Musk biographer Ashlee Vance. He knocked on doors and invited officials to breakfast.

When backroom persuasion didn’t get results, he learned that publicity helps.

On a sunny Wednesday in June 2014, Musk parked his new “space taxi” a few blocks from Capitol Hill. He had hauled the capsule designed to carry seven astronauts into orbit across the country from his California factory and invited TV cameras, along with government officials, to check it out.

“Great job, Elon!” yelled Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican member of Congress, as he climbed out of the sleek spacecraft. Democrats applauded, too, that day. Musk was beaming. He was about to get richer.

The United States then relied on Russia to carry American astronauts to the International Space Station, paying Moscow tens of millions of dollars for each seat. Musk promised he would put an end to that and rebuild the American space program. Obama was in the White House and wanted to let private companies like SpaceX try. Weeks after Musk brought his space taxi to D.C., NASA awarded him a $2.6 billion contract.

Musk also pursued Pentagon contracts and found public confrontation helped. In a sparsely attended Capitol Hill hearing in 2014, he made headlines by slamming the joint venture between aerospace giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing that supplied rockets to the Air Force. He called it a “monopoly” and said it was vastly overcharging taxpayers.

“Elon was saying, ‘Give me a chance,’ ” said Scott Pace, a former NASA official who spoke at that hearing.

The Pentagon did, and Musk delivered. His game-changing, partly reusable Falcon rockets were considerably less expensive.

Now, just eight years later, Musk is the goliath of the space industry. And Musk’s success has shifted the dynamic with Washington.

Democrats are more vocal on the need to rein in Musk.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) calls Musk “my good friend,” and Musk spoke at his August fundraiser. In June, Musk, who recently moved from California to Texas, announced he voted for Mayra Flores in a congressional primary – and said it was the first time he voted for a Republican. He also bashed Democrats as too extreme and too controlled by unions and publicly predicted a “massive red wave” in November.

But some Republican lawmakers are skeptical Musk’s new coziness with the GOP will last. “He’s another bullshit artist” is how former president Donald Trump described Musk at a July rally in Alaska.

A rare area of bipartisan agreement is that for certain vital issues, especially national security, the United States should not depend on any one person or company, and the federal government is making moves to lessen dependence on Musk.

NASA has funded Boeing’s Starliner capsule to compete with SpaceX to transport astronauts. (Blue Origin, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, is also a competitor for NASA contracts.) NASA officials said Starliner’s delays and higher cost show why SpaceX is so dominant. “But still, we need a second option,” said one influential member of Congress.

The Federal Communications Commission in August decided it would not give SpaceX’s Starlink – which is now operating in 40 countries – a $900 million subsidy to bring broadband to rural areas even though that money had been provisionally granted in the waning days of the Trump administration. The FCC said the $600 satellite dish a home would need to purchase from SpaceX was a factor. A top SpaceX official called the rejection “unreasonable” and “grossly unfair.”

Congress also has been encouraging Ford and other automakers to build electric cars. A new condition on a federal $7,500 rebate is that the price of the new car cannot top $55,000. Most Tesla models cost more.

But Musk will be eligible for many subsidies and incentives, including for his electric charging stations. He just announced his Superchargers are now in 46 countries.

Musk hates “a false narrative out there that he is a grifter who survived off government handouts,” said Eric Berger, author of “Liftoff,” a history of SpaceX. “He sees the government as a double-edge sword,” Berger said. It can help but its bureaucracy slows him down. “He is really frustrated by the dizzying array of federal agencies that he has to deal with – and the bigger he gets the more there is.”

“Those bastards” is how Musk refers to officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC fined Musk and Tesla $20 million each after Musk tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, after finding that was not true. The SEC is also now investigating Musk in connection with his bid for Twitter, including whether he complied with disclosure laws. Musk’s lawyer told a judge that the SEC was trying to “muzzle and harass” the businessman because he is an “outspoken critic of the government.”

Musk believes Tesla’s driver assistance system will save many lives and has said he is irritated by the publicity around the federal safety investigation into his Autopilot system. But government officials say it’s worth looking into whether the self-driving system was a factor in crashes, including some that were fatal.

Few want a head-on confrontation with Musk.

Biden got into one after Musk was not invited to a White House conference on electric vehicles in August 2021. Musk tweeted that the snub was the “next level of insanity,” and that Biden was controlled by unions. Musk also has been drawing attention to any Biden misstep, including when he mistakenly read instructions meant only for him on his teleprompter.

Apart from not wanting to get on his bad side, many in Washington admire his accomplishments and want to work with him. At the Pentagon, there are many who see Musk as a secret weapon. His Starlink satellite systems mean Ukraine soldiers have real-time information about military targets, and other countries are looking at how it can help their defense efforts.

In April, the White House said Musk was invited to a discussion about electric cars and charging stations and did make an appearance by teleconferencing.

“We used to be on the same page. Now, we are not always. It’s great when we are,” said one member of Congress. “One thing is clear: Musk believes he knows best, and he will do whatever he wants – and that can be good and it can be bad.”

Meanwhile, Musk is also working on an ever-growing number of ventures, from building robots that can cook dinner to plans for colonizing Mars.

Lepore, the historian, said Musk’s power is not like anything the country has seen before. “We should be worried, not because it’s inevitable that his influence would be malignant, but it’s inevitable that it would be a huge influence.”

Elon Musk has responded to Stephen King’s horrified reaction at his reported plan to charge all verified users for their blue checkmark — and in the process, confirmed the surprising and controversial idea is in the works.

On Monday, King went viral with his reaction to a report that Musk wanted to charge verified users a whopping $20 per month to keep their checkmark status. “$20 a month to keep my blue check?” King tweeted to his 6.9 million followers. “Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” When a reader told King he could afford the fee, the bestselling author replied, “It ain’t the money, it’s the principle of the thing.”

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FiveThirtyEight political guru Nate Silver similarly wrote to his 3.5 million followers: “I’m probably the perfect target for this, use Twitter a ton, can afford $20/mo, not particularly anti-Elon, but my reaction is that I’ve generated a ton of valuable free content for Twitter over the years and they can go fuck themselves.”

Early Tuesday, Musk responded to the uproar, replying directly to King: “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot entirely rely on advertisers. How about $8?”

Musk then suggested that additional clarity on the matter is still to come: “I will explain the rational in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat bots & trolls.”

Critics have pointed out that verified accounts are not simply a free perk for a certain level of user, but rather a utility that makes the wild-west social media platform/hellscape more credible. Blue checks help everyday readers (as well as journalists) determine whether a comment being made by a purported public figure is actually from that person instead of a fan or impersonator. It is, in other words, a way of preventing the spread of fake news. TechCrunch dubbed Musk’s idea a potential “misinformation nightmare.”

“Musk and his buddies view this plan as a way to get people to actually give Twitter money,” TechCrunch noted. “But by monetizing a symbol that currently has value, they will ultimately remove all of that existing value.”

According to The Verge, Musk’s plan is to convert the $4.99 optional premium service Twitter Blue — which allows users to edit their tweets — into a mandatory program for those wanting to retain their verified status. Users would have 90 days to subscribe to the new program or will lose their blue checkmark. Musk reportedly told employees assigned to the program overall they would need to implement the new rules by Nov. 7, or they would be fired. No new program has yet to be officially announced, however.

EXCLUSIVE: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been in hot water in recent weeks after running a poll on Russia’s peace proposals, backing Kanye West and continuing his war with Twitter

 

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been branded “psychopathic” due to having “no empathy” by a leading psychologist.

Musk has become a decisive figure in recent months after revealing his peace proposal following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while also restarting his bid to buy social media site Twitter.

And he also took to the social media site to claim he supports notorious rapper Kanye “Ye” West, despite his recent barrage of antisemitic comments.

READ MORE: Will Daily Star’s 60p Tesco lettuce or PM Liz Truss last longer? Watch live feed

And psychologist and director of Head Honchos, Desiree Silverstone has analysed his recent behaviour.

“People who have this kind of attachment usually do this back and forth dance.

“You see it in friendships and romantic relationships – I want you, I don’t want you.

“People who grow up with trauma often create a false sense of self which is usually about control and power.

“Just like Trump displays, It’s difficult for them to live with vulnerability – It’s like a person without skin.”

Earlier this year, the father of the world’s richest man Errol, 79, dropped a brutal bomb about his boy live on air after he called into an Australian radio show.

Speaking on Kyle and Jackie O’s show on station KIIS FM, Errol spoke about how the family had been successful before Elon.

In an interview that lasted 20 minutes, the Tesla owner was dashed by his father – who even went as far as to say he preferred his brother Kimbal.

And it appears that his lack of control over his own family is something Elon is using as a “defence mechanism”, the expert added.

“When one grows up with trauma, the right side of the brain becomes very active and developed,” she said.

“These people view the world as threatening and they are hyper vigilant.

“The way the media portrays his treatment of his employees also shows that he doesn’t seem to have a great deal of empathy.

“That can be sociopathic or psychopathic.

“No empathy, very manipulative (and a) grandiose sense of self but can achieve great things because of it.

 

The Silicon Valley ‘Echo-Chamber Culture’ Has Created A Generation of Sociopaths

By Roberta Johnson

An “Echo-Chamber” is an airtight social bubble in which only controlled ideologies are allowed to exist. All outside ideologies are banished and attacked and the desired way of thinking is amplified by the bosses in charge.

Silicon Valley’s political Echo-Chamber is not an accident. It is not an anomaly. It was created by big money campaign financiers, their Senators, the media publishers they control and the hiring directives for the companies they own.

Only those with the right kind of politics are hired by the HR offices for these companies. Freaky haired, sexually confused, ANTIFA-loving, frat house positive, potentially homosexual Millennial kids are favored.

You must stay on their buses to and from work.

You must go to their social events.

You must use, and be monitored by their social media servers.

You must eat their free food in the office.

You must read their media outlets.

You must be watched over by corporate, mercenary-like, digital corporate security departments who monitor everything you write, look at, attend and do for ‘subversive thinking’.

You must date and breed from within their dating sites.

You must go to their “Mindfulness Training’s”; “Tech Conferences”; “Home Salons”; “Draper Universities”; “Mission Control” and “OneTaste” and NXVIUM” sex cults and other ideological programming

If this social control and Stasi-like manipulation of the social experience for every Millennial in Silicon Valley sounds evil…IT IS!

It all has nothing to do with “helping the world” or “saving the planet” or anything benign. That is just the candy coating that is used to suck the poor Millennial useful fools into the game.

The entire Echo-Chamber of “Silicon Valley’ was created by Billionaires John Doerr, Tim Draper, Steve Jurvetson, Tom Perkins, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Vinod Khosla, Steve Westly, and the other Yale/Stanford/Harvard frat boy scum, in order to profiteer on the backs of American taxpayers.

First of all, there is no such thing as “Silicon Valley”. There is no valley. Yosemite is a valley. There is no valley in the area. It is flat.

Nobody has put a marking on a USGS federal map that officially designates a boundary for anything that is legally the city, county or thing called “Silicon Valley. Elitist billionaire VC Tim Draper is trying to do this but his effort seems doomed.

Silicon Valley is pure hype and marketing PR generated by these sociopath billionaires in order to pump up their self-aggrandizing images. They control the media and arrange to have anything bad, in the news, about themselves DELETED!

By tricking hundreds of thousands of starry-eyed hipster Millennial’s into latching on to the cult-like trappings of this culture, these billionaires get an army of blissfully ignorant political operatives.

What does all of this Echo-Chambering accomplish?

It puts trillions of dollars of your tax money in the private bank accounts of John Doerr, Tim Draper, Steve Jurvetson, Tom Perkins, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Vinod Khosla, Steve Westly, and the other Yale/Stanford/Harvard frat boy scum, at the expense of the public.

….and nobody is the wiser!

 

Elon Musk’s Many Sex Scandals Reveal His Deep Mental Illness And Sociopathy

Why does Tesla CEO Elon Musk keep getting himself into a mess?

Nathan Bomey, USA TODAY

Elon Musk’s judgment is under scrutiny amid controversies spawned by his carefree behavior and brash comments.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s latest controversy stems from a live video podcast interview late Thursday as he smoked what host Joe Rogan described as marijuana inside of tobacco.

The apparent weed puffing incident may not create legal problems for Musk. After all, it’s legal in California (though federal law still considers it a crime).

But the episode fueled an emerging narrative among his critics that Musk is, at best, unfocused or, at worst, losing control altogether.

Musk has acknowledged feeling extreme pressure and working long hours to get Tesla’s electric vehicle production on track. The company is under fire to speed manufacturing and turn a profit.

“Elon Musk is the face of Tesla 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I understand he’s under a lot of pressure, but you really should be leading by example,” said Dave Sullivan, an analyst at AutoPacific. “I don’t know of any other CEO that would do something like that. That’s not leadership behavior.”

More: Elon Musk apparently smoked marijuana in live podcast appearance with Joe Rogan

More: Elon Musk revives Thai cave diver ‘pedo’ incident, says it’s ‘strange’ rescuer hasn’t sued

Tesla did not respond to a request seeking comment for this story.

Musk’s controversies have unfolded in rapid succession. He

Apparently smoked pot in media appearance

“You ever had that?” Rogan asked Musk after lighting up.

“Yeah, I think I tried one once,” Musk replied.

Rogan found Musk’s response dubious. “You probably can’t because of stockholders, right?”

“I mean, it’s legal right?” Musk said.

AutoPacific analyst Sullivan said that’s not enough to justify Musk’s action.

“I understand it’s legal in California, but there’s a time and place. It’s not on TV,” he said.

Plus, “if you’re making decisions at all hours of the day, how is a shareholder supposed to believe that you’re sober when you’re making decisions that affect the company?”

Claimed support to take Tesla private

Musk stunned Wall Street in early August with a tweet that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share.

Though he maintained that he believed the funding was available to do the deal, he later said it was not a good idea after all.

Now the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating.

Accused cave diver of being a pedophile

After British diver Vern Unsworth, who assisted in the Thai cave rescue of 12 boys and their coach in July, called Musk’s offer to help a “PR stunt,” Musk baselessly tweeted that Unsworth was a “pedo guy.”

Musk later apologized. But in late August, he raised the issue again.

“You don’t think it’s strange he hasn’t sued me?” he said on Twitter.

Unsworth’s attorney told USA TODAY shortly afterward that his client planned to file a complaint against Musk.

Criticized “boring, bonehead questions”

In a company earnings call in May, Musk was clearly annoyed at Wall Street analysts who requested specific information about finances amid mounting losses.

“Boring, bonehead questions are not cool,” he responded before eventually dismissing analysts altogether.

He later said he should not have treated them like that.

Threatened to launch a website to rate journalists’ credibility

“Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication,” Musk said on Twitter in May.

He blasted journalists as “sanctimonious.”

Musk dismissed suggestions that he was veering into territory occupied by President Donald Trump, who has similarly blasted the news media for reporting he dislikes.

“Thought you’d say that,” he said in response to one reporter who made the comparison. “Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks ‘You’re just like Trump!’ Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no ones believes you anymore. You lost your credibility a long time ago.”

Elon Musk fired four Twitter executives ‘for cause’ as part of apparent attempt to avoid paying out MILLIONS in severance and stock options as it’s revealed he’s instituting rapid layoffs across the company to ‘avoid similar payouts to regular employees’ as Musk says Paul Pelosi loves to suck c*ock

Elon Musk has reportedly fired top Twitter executives ‘for cause’, meaning they will be ineligible for their promised payouts. The move is likely to be challenged in court. Four of Twitter’s top executives were fired by Musk immediately on his taking ownership on Thursday, and were expected to claim millions in severance. Parag Agrawal (top right), the CEO, who repeatedly clashed with Musk over the number of users Twitter has, was reportedly due $42 million, after being chief executive officer for just under a year. Twitter’s former top lawyer Vijaya Gadde (bottom left) was in line for a $12.5 million payout, Insider said. Ex-CFO Ned Segal (bottom right) – who was the man behind Donald Trump’s Twitter ban – was expected to receive $25.4 million after being fired by Musk on Thursday evening. The payout for the general counsel, Sean Edgett (top left), was unknown. It was also reported on Saturday that Musk will begin firing other members of staff – in part to avoid a November 1 distribution of stock grants to employees.