African Musk: Not a Fragrance

[Stavros]

I see that the shit-eating Trump Monkey Elon Musk has finalized his purchase of 'Twitter' at four times its value. He has done it, wait for this: 'for humanity', a claim that would be preposterous were it not in common with his other grandiloquent statements, such as his justification for spending billions of dollars on getting people to inhabit Planet Mars: if humans are to survive, they must become a multi-planet species. (not a direct quote, I haven't checked).

What absolute tosh. Not so much Total Recall as Total Bunk. Humans are based on Planet Earth for a simple reason: life here is possible. You can breathe the air, drink the water, grow food. In the tv series on Musk one of his employees or former employees at Tesla claims a series of nuclear blasts on Mars will release the riches of the planet sub-surface, which along with the claim a million -or is it a billion people (white people, presumably)- will live there is beyond lunacy. Would it even be legal?

Brian Cox, an English physicist/cosmologist produced a programme that imagined what it would be like to be on the range rover on Mars, yet both he and Musk need only head down to the Atacama Desert in Chile if they want to know what life on Mars will be like, only they can at least breathe the air. Why won't they do it?

House people on Mars, but not the homeless of Los Angeles. What a waste of money!

I don't know what will happen to Twitter, and I don't much care, only that it be liable for prosecution- or is Twitter to be above the law? 'Absolute free speech' we are told, is what Musk wants, and there are plenty of Twitter accounts that glorify the Nazi's and the Holocaust -all of which is illegal in Germany and successfully erased from social media platforms, according to the BBC news today. Does Musk think Nazi's should be free to air their views? Maybe he wants to give Putin 'a chance' to 'set the record straight', much as some would like his Dad Errol to be more transparent about the family wealth which Elon claims he had no access to. Just as even more want to know how much tax-payer's money subsidized the 'self-made' Billionaire.

Spray it on, if you like the smell. To me, it stinks.

[rodinuk]

Twitter - concerns yes of course but the rest of your piece ffs get a grip.... watch this:

[filghy2]

So what's the premise here - mankind won't be able to manage a shift away from fossil fuels to keep this planet habitable but we will be able to manage a mass migration to Mars and work out how to survive there?

[Stavros]

Twitter - concerns yes of course but the rest of your piece ffs get a grip.... watch this:

Ok it was a bit over the top, but I enjoyed writing it. When a man walks into the billion-dollar company he has just bought carrying a sink, it's because he thinks he is both funny and clever, and he is neither. It makes him look like a fool who has been parted from his money, but as someone pointed out in The Guardian today, when a man reaches the level of wealth Musk has, but is not lauded as the Greatest Genius in the World, he must do what he can to shape the public view of him -that he is indispensable to mankind, a visionary, above all, important.

An engineer once told me that once you master the basics, space travel is impressive, but not as impressive as the Mardi Gras Pipeline network in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It is perhaps ironic that the issues of survivability in space are also met in the deep ocean, on a planet we live on, which contains multiple inputs to the ocean ecology and more general environment that makes life here possible, desirable and welcome.

It is of no interest to Musk because I don't think he is that interested in the Planet he lives on, but I accept he likes things. And things that make money. And that is about it, really. And who is going to give up life on Earth for a distant planet from which they can never return? Some weirdos, mostly white people -does Musk really think the goat and camel herders from the Sahel to the Empty Quarter, or the illiterate peasants of Central America are going to go and live on Mars? Come on, let us for once have a sane debate about what matters, because of space exploration we can say, Nice to have, not need to have.

[rodinuk]

I suspect you're part of the British pysche that likes to knock people down whereas I'm part of those who prefer to build them up.

What is it you want? Would you prefer it if Musk had never lived at all? Do you not want people who have at least some vision in trying to find solutions for the future? It's not about what's impressive it's that he can deliver - reusable rocketry saving billions for example.

I would think he would have no trouble finding people to live on Mars especially if life deteriotates here. Tell me why there couldn't be an Earthbound space transport back to Earth? They're not marooned there afaik. Are engineers and scientists, adventurers, pioneers just weirdos to you?

I hate to break it to you but Musk probably isn't considering camel herders and illiterate peasants as townsfolk on Mars.

If you want a sane debate try keeping it real.... that's what matters

[Stavros]

You make a fair point, as someone I used to know complained I always saw the negatives in things. To which I would say my hostility is based on what I perceive as a lack of honesty on Musk's part, and a misplaced perception of what matters most. I do understand the vision thing, the role that pioneers have played across a wide range of activities in science, medicine, the arts and often the pain and loss it caused, and I do understand the fascination with Space and how much we have learned about the Universe over the centuries. I probably feel cool or hostile to people who make themselves the focus of what they are doing.

Whatever Musk has achieved he did not achieve alone, certainly not in financial terms, and his stunts, like the sink, to me suggest a man with an ego that one either finds fun, or just plain silly- I take the latter view. I am not sure too what it is that he has created -even in the case of the more admirable Bill Gates, he did not make Microsoft on his own, but did start it from nothing, and it has had a more transformative impact on our lives than anything Musk has done, so far. And then I guess some will argue Microsoft got big by swallowing or destroying the opposition, but that's business. So to me, Musk in business is more like Trump than Gates and suffers because of it.

The engineering is indeed impressive, but as I argued above, it is not as impressive as the Mardi Gras Pipeline network. And in the long term we know we don't need rockets, except to carry weapons of human destruction, and to put satellites into orbit, and in time, we won't need deep water pipelines.

[Fitzcarraldo]

That didn't take long:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...l-pe-rcna54717

[filghy2]

That didn't take long:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...l-pe-rcna54717

Will his content moderation policy be applied to his own tweets?
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...il-free-speech

[filghy2]

I would think he would have no trouble finding people to live on Mars especially if life deteriotates here. Tell me why there couldn't be an Earthbound space transport back to Earth? They're not marooned there afaik. Are engineers and scientists, adventurers, pioneers just weirdos to you?

It still seems disingenuous to me. Elon Musk made his fortune selling EVs to people who cared enough about the planet to spend $$ on reducing carbon emissions. Without that, none of his other projects woud have been possible.

Now he supports a political movement that denies there is any problem and claims that we can't move away from fossil fuels because it will be too costly and disruptive. But never mind, he says, if the earth becomes uninhabitable I can sell you a ticket to another planet for even bigger $$.

Even if the technological challenges can be overcome, it's sure to be a very expensive option that will be feasible for only wealthy people. Moreover, it makes no sense from a societal viewpoint because shifting away from fossil fuels would be far less costly and disruptive than moving to another planet.

[broncofan]

He bought twitter because he wanted to promote the idea of "free speech" on a privately owned platform. The problem is that the platform is subject to market pressures and companies don't want to be associated with the kinds of ideas he thinks were unjustly deprived of dissemination. The following are groups of people who feel disenfranchised. It will be interesting to see whether he can actually invite all of them back without having all of twitter's sponsors leave or be subject to boycotts:

-anti-vaxxers. Musk himself said in early 2020 that he thought "coronavirus panic is dumb". Here we are millions of deaths later.
-People who promote dangerous views that get people killed (like injecting bleach) or ineffective treatments. They were booted bc they're nuts and have no place in a civilized conversation. He thinks the best ideas will win out if only you let cranks and nazis in on the conversation? The problem is that these people are more prolific than scientists and historians and more convincing to people who know nothing.
For people who believe there's no such thing as truth, popularity determines right and wrong. Some people think if you see someone inject himself with bleach and die bc he thinks it treats covid, that's good evidence it's a dumb idea and dangerous to disseminate.
-Nazis and racists. The people his biggest fans think he'll bring back to twitter include literal nazis and racists.
-People spreading misinformation to discourage others from voting. The people championing him feel disenfranchised bc they're not able to tell demographics they don't like (they often target black people and latinos) that the election is on the wrong day. Anyone can fall for their lies but given they're Republicans they're fairly certain most minorities don't want to vote for their asses.
-spreading election fraud theories intended to get people to literally wage war against their elected leaders because they believe the type of stuff that fascists promote and stupid people believe.

Is it a shock that this guy was spreading lies about a politician's husband who is 82 and was beaten with a hammer? It really isn't. This is the kind of stuff he is trying to normalize. The idea that Elon Musk is very intelligent is in a losing battle against the reality of Musk expressing himself.