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Home » What’s Elon Musk up to?

What’s Elon Musk up to?

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, this:

And this:

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What’s Elon Musk up to? — 45 Comments

  1. The reaction not only by the hard left, but also by the entire Democratic Party, to the purchase of Twitter by Musk (not a conservative, but interested in freedom of expression) provides definitive proof of the hostility prevailing amongst the most powerful entities in our sadly-decaying republic to the most fundamental of our liberties. The fact that Musk is also expecting that his employees actually put in some work (rather than simply taking advantage of all the free food and the various other “perks”) is also revelatory of something which has gone totally wrong in our culture. The idiotic t-shirts, of course, speak for themselves.

  2. I’m going to withhold judgment on Musk/Twitter for a bit.
    I still have no use for “social” media but do believe the public square should welcome the plethora of ideas. Bad ones need sunlight as much as good ones.

  4. Some commenters are saying that because Musk fired such a high percentage of Twitter’s workforce he has doomed Twitter to fail.

    But perhaps it is the case that Musk is aware of Pareto Distributions, and of “Price’s law” i.e that the square root of the number of people operating in a productive domain produce half of the output.*

    So that, for instance, in a company consisting of 10 workers, 3 of them produce half of the output, in a company with 100 workers, 30 of them produce half of the output, and in a company with 10,000 workers, 100 of those workers are responsible for producing half of the productive work.

    Thus, given this reality, identifying the relatively small number of truly productive workers and those who want to buckle down and actually work, while cutting a lot of “deadwood”–unproductive workers, is not really a threat to the existence of Twitter.

    * See Jordon Peterson explaining at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZMBdRfbk6A

  6. What has Musk said or done so far that reveals a provable bias, or that his claims for a Free Speech area are spurious? He’s obviously not a Conservative, but being branded as one by the Progressive Left tells you whose ox is being gored.

  8. Skip…”Wish I knew, wondering in the meantime can he buy YouTube?”

    I think it’s more likely that instead of buying YT, he will add YT-like capabilities to Twitter.

    What Musk has done by buying Twitter is to acquire a ‘real option’ which allows him to move the platform capabilities and customer base in any of several directions. Analogous to Bezos building an Amazon platform which was initially used for selling books, but could be adapted relatively easily to selling many other different sorts of products.

  9. Re: Elon Musk & free speech

    One indication that he’s not fully committed to free speech is his response to questions concerning the return of Alex Jones. Musk seems to believe the judges that declared Jones made bank off the pain of the Sandy Hook parents, and that makes Jones persona non grata, free speech be damned.

    It’s worth noting that Sandy Hook has nothing to do with the official reason Twitter banned the man, and that neither of the judges in Jones’s court cases allowed a jury to deliberate over whether or not Jones did those parents wrong.

    Maybe Musk is more cynical than I think and he’s covering for political considerations, maybe he’s working off the mass media’s slanted coverage because he’s been busy with his many, many projects, or maybe he’s well informed on the topic and that’s the conclusion he’s reached.

  10. Musk is making enemies. The fake anti-fascists (who don’t really exist) have vowed revenge.

  11. I think EVs are a stupid idea, but Musk, a mega-billionaire from his role in PayPal and other Silicon Valley endeavors, is a righteous man who puts out his own billions out in defense of freedom of speech.
    He is energetic as all get-out. I can’t help but like him.

    Elon goes thru wives like a lawnmower thru grass, and his latest companion, Grimes by name, is decidedly odd. Their infant son they named “X Æ A-12”, which she pronounces “X A.I. Archangel,” or “X” for short.

  14. Thoughts on Elon ~

    Elon will make an alternative phone if twitter is blocked on apple and google. = Bypass the towers and make a satellite phone connected to Starlink.

    Elon’s future. = OMG !!! Elon’s “Hawaiian Birth Certificate” has been found. Elon for POTUS!

  15. I owned Tesla stock for a couple months roughly 2 years ago. It dawned on me that if he goes, its done and I got out.

    It wouldnt shock me if he were to die “mysteriously”. Moreso now.

    I hope I’m wrong.

  16. Making a market in EVs does not require Musk to accept the assertion of AGW or human caused Climate Change. He saw an opportunity and exploited it.

    There was an interesting take on Musk’s early actions at Twitter that I read the other day. The argument was that by so dramatically reducing the staff at Twitter Musk is lowering his overhead costs which, given the same or similar income, will move Twitter from an annual loss to a profit. That means Musk understands Price’s Law and assessed it applied (or over applied) to the Twitter workforce that he acquired.

    Time will tell.

  17. More than a bit nutty, fearless, entrepreneurial, principled…and a former Democrat.

    Quite a combination….

    A genuine, if unusual, biped muskox….

  20. I’m not a Musk fanboi but I do like the cut of his jib, his puckish nature.

    It’s sad that almost 250 years after the American Revolution, we’re still debating about free speech. I’d say that Lenny Bruce is turning in his grave but wherever he is, he’s probably poking fun at the absurdity.

  21. Speaking of “rebuilding trust”, heeere we go!
    “European officials say US profiting from Ukraine war, call Inflation Reduction Act ‘very worrying’;
    “Senior European officials say US ‘selling more gas and at higher prices,’ and ‘selling more weapons’ amid Ukraine war”—
    https://www.foxnews.com/world/european-officials-says-us-profiting-ukraine-war-call-inflation-reduction-act-very-worrying
    Key grafs:
    ‘…”Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us,” the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell emphasized to Politico.
    ‘U.S. officials have deflected blame to Russia. “The rise in gas prices in Europe is caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s energy war against Europe, period,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told Politico….’

    “…our friends…”
    Sheesh…(and they talk about European “sophistication”!…)

    Anyway, wouldn’t take it personally if I were them….
    Just another “Biden” betrayal.
    (OTOH, couldn’t happen to a nicer continent…)

    File under: Curiouser and curiouser…

  22. While Musk is at it, seems he’s gonna have to redefine “Free Press”…

    “Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried funded half a dozen media companies – including ProPublica to the tune of $5 million – with at least one, The Intercept, warning staff it now has a significant hole in its budget”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11470259/Disgraced-FTX-founder-Sam-Bankman-Fried-funded-half-dozen-media-companies.html
    Key grafs:
    “- FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried used his company’s philanthropic arm to fund multiple liberal media outlets including ProPublica and The Intercept;
    “- On Friday The Intercept issued a statement to staff saying it had been left with a ‘significant hole’ in its budget after the FTX collapse;
    “- In the letter, the company went on to ask other donors to come forward
    “- Another outlet funded by Bankman-Fried, Semafor, earlier reported that he was a stakeholder in Elon Musk’s Twitter
    “- The Tesla and Twitter owner slammed the claims as false and hit back by questioning the ethics surrounding SBF’s funding of Semafor….”

    All “Hit” operations par excellence for “Biden”.
    (Wonder if the Intercept will ask Greenwald to help bail his former “baby” out….)

  24. …Nonetheless, the “Biden” Oppo Govt., US has not YET managed to stamp out all resistance:
    ‘ Feds give tens of millions to fight COVID ‘disinformation,’ populism;
    ‘ Ex-State official says defunding “domestic censorship operations” will remove “critical Jenga piece that is underlying the entire economy of the censorship industry.” ‘
    https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/national-science-foundation-gives-tens-millions-fight-covid

    + Bonus
    “…41% of small businesses can’t pay rent this month, report warns>—
    https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/report-41-small-businesses-cant-pay-rent-month

  25. Some commenters are saying that because Musk fired such a high percentage of Twitter’s workforce he has doomed Twitter to fail.

    But perhaps it is the case that Musk is aware of Pareto Distributions, and of “Price’s law” i.e that the square root of the number of people operating in a productive domain produce half of the output.

    –Snow on Pine

    Musk is taking a beating in the MSM for the layoffs. However, when I read about current hi-tech I can’t believe the headcount numbers I see. Thousands of engineers and multi-thousands of managers. That’s not the hi-tech world I remember and I wonder what the double-hockey-sticks all those employees are doing.

    It’s an extreme and perhaps unfair example, but the original Apple Macintosh team was composed of less than 20 people including Steve Jobs. That’s hardware, software, manuals, marketing, design of EVERYTHING.

    There were giants in those days and that effort is now legendary.

    And it’s not just a matter of some engineers being more productive than others as noted above. Some are actually “negative producers” — their work is so sub-standard that others must spend time replacing the negative work.

  26. As seen in a YouTube video uploaded by a new hire, the Twitter “workplace” seemed more like a country club setting or permanent vacation—free gourmet meals, specialty coffee and wine on tap, yoga, game and meditation rooms, and lounge chairs on the roof so you could catch some “rays,” you know, the kind of place you could just wander around in and enjoy yourself—all day long—than it did a place to do actual “work.”

  27. It seems to me hi-tech is much less competitive now in the 21st C than in the 20th C.

    The FAANG group (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) has divided up tech into separate fiefdoms. These companies are building their separate worlds with little fear of competition. Hence, they expand into bloated staffs across the board, free to concern themselves with the Woke agenda rather than beating their competition.

  28. Regarding Musk’s offspring, the Lockheed A-12 spy plane built for the CIA was nicknamed “Archangel.” It was the single-seat predecessor to the better-known two-seat Lockheed SR-71 built for the Air Force.

    While we’re on the subject of giants, I’d put the people who worked at the Skunk Works from the 1930s-1970s in that category, with Clarence “Kelly” Johnson at the lead.

  30. I believe that “Price’s Law” is correct.

    In the Federal think tank I did research at for several decades it became obvious that a few people were churning out a continuous stream of work, while many other people were not producing anywhere near the volume–or quality–of work that those few high performers were, that some people were just coasting along, and a few notable people were actively trying to find ways to avoid work.

  31. “One indication that he’s not fully committed to free speech is his response to questions concerning the return of Alex Jones. Musk seems to believe the judges that declared Jones made bank off the pain of the Sandy Hook parents, and that makes Jones persona non grata, free speech be damned.”

    Musk seems to have one big obsession or blind spot, and that is child welfare. He seems to have no tolerance for anything that he sees harming kids. That includes child abuse, pedophilia, and the transgender movement. It will be interesting to see if it ultimately includes the public school system and mandated experimental artificial mRNA gene therapy products.

    That is likely over time to find him well accepted on the libertarian right. We, for the most part, agree with him on this subject. Many of us are “breeders” (not as prolific as he…) who put child welfare, and esp the welfare of our own children, and for many of us, grandchildren (etc) at a very high priority.

  32. “ Musk is making enemies. The fake anti-fascists (who don’t really exist) have vowed revenge.”

    In the last two years, AntiFA has trained and uparmed. They no longer just match because they are all wearing black. They now have matching helmets and ballistic shields. Interestingly, instead of the AntiFA emblem they displayed two years ago, they have dropped pretenses, and now display on their black shields, matching the yellow/gold Hammer and Sickle logos of the Chinese Communists.

    AntiFA was a Soviet backed group founded almost 90 years ago to fight in the streets with Hitler’s Brown Shirts for control over German socialism. With the fall of the Soviet Union, they switched their loyalty to the remaining major Communist party – the CCP. It seems backwards, but what they mean by “fascist” is whomever opposes them, or opposes the CCP. You would think that you would have to espouse fascist views first to be called such. But no, since the left controls language, “fascist” now just means anyone opposing them, or the CCP.

    Lest you thing this unique – I think that we are seeing something similar in Ukraine with their “Nazis”. The key there is that the Nazi party was founded, at least in part, in the same fight for control of German socialism 90 years ago, in opposition to the communism, as exemplified by the Soviet Union. In Germany, in the early 1930s, Nazi Brown Shirts physically fought Soviet backed AntiFA, dressed all in black to identify them. By calling themselves Nazis, they are essentially saying that they are anti-Russian and anti-Russian Federation. It likely says little about their views on whether a tightly state controlled socialism, or a corporate socialism under looser government control is preferable, but rather that they oppose Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union. (And, indeed, current Chinese communism seems much closer to Nazi corporate socialism, than the Leninist communism of the 1930s).

  34. Something to keep in mind here is that this wasn’t the first hostile takeover in our history. We’ve probably had some of it for much of the last two centuries. We have seen a lot of it over the last 40 or so years. The acquiring group sees how it can take over the target, and make it more profitable – sometimes through synergy, but very often by making it leaner – by shedding divisions, plants, people, etc. this is the sort of thing that Mitt Romney was good at, and part of how he made himself rich.

    Twitter became a prime target for this, by becoming so extremely bloated with employees, most of whom didn’t contribute to the bottom line at all. Lop off the drones, the women spending their time at work getting massages, drinking company supplied lattes, etc, whose jobs it was to censor anything that the Dem elites wanted censored, and one could turn a money loser into a profitable company, even after losing some advertisers. Besides, there is always My Pillow. My bet, and I think Musk’s, is that he can cut expenses more than he will lose advertising, and may indeed, eventually gain it back. He essentially sells eyeballs, and if AT&T, etc, don’t want his eyeballs, someone else probably will. Business is business, and the advertiser boycott game is periodically played against FNC, to little avail so far. Likely be the same with Twitter – if he can attract the eyeballs, someone will want them. Moreover, Twitter had alienated, with its extreme Wokeness and left wing bias and censorship, a significant portion of the public. Like FNC again, attracting them means acquiring a part of the market I’ll served by the competition.

    What I really thing has gone on is that Musk wanted Twitter for synergy, esp with StarLink. That seems to be one big thing that ties his various projects together – synergy with each other. He can throw up thousands of cheap mass produced satellites in LEO for StarLink because SpaceX figured out how to reuse most of their rockets, and now make something look normal that everyone had dreamed of for a half a century, and couldn’t figure out how to do. The Boring Company uses self driving Teslas, because they don’t use ICEs. And I fully expect the next big piece is for him to generate the electricity to power his Teslas from space, using technology launched by SpaceX. Etc. Apple and Google should be worried about his threat to make his own phones – he has something that they don’t – StarLink.

    So, how does an outsider decide who to fire at Twitter, to cut head count, so the company can survive in the rapidly deepening Bidenrecession? Just as he did. He had them self select into fat and critical workers.

  36. Musk may have paid too much for Twittter, given its inflated statistics and the current dump in tech values, but I doubt he will lose his shirt. Twitter is obviously bloated and by its hyper-activist-partisanship has burned half of its potential American customers.

    I think Musk has made a good financial bet. By reducing Twitter’s employees by 50% already (and who knows how much more later) and by opening its appeal to millions more Americans, Musk may well be able to turn Twitter around to a lean, mean, free and profitable enterprise.

    Musk is a complicated fellow. I would not mistake him for a conservative, though these days just about anyone who is not a left-wing looney is de facto conservative.

    I believe he is sincere about freedom of speech. However, I expect his efforts in that direction may be too long and winding a road for many.

  37. there is also a less known character the late ben bova’s daniel hamilton randolph, introduced in privateers, 1986, he was a rakish character, a space baron who operated from venezuela*, because the US had retreated from space in the 2010s, and he needed a base of operation, in this world, the Soviets had taken the commanding heights, and hence he became a modern pirate, like the title suggests

  38. What I really thing has gone on is that Musk wanted Twitter for synergy, esp with StarLink. That seems to be one big thing that ties his various projects together – synergy with each other.

    Bruce Hayden:

    Interesting! I agree Musk is playing big to a larger plan, but I can’t say what it is or its prospects.

    For instance, I don’t understand his Tesla cars. Does Musk truly believe the world is on the verge of a tectonic shift to electric vehicles powered by non-fossil fuels? Does he believe that if he builds the cars, the new power grid will come? Is Tesla a grift play on climate change subsidies? Is he building a luxury car for the wealthy? Or is it just an interesting engineering problem to him?

  39. tesla liked the technical challenge, I don’t think he intended it as the quintessential cog in the transportation equation,

  40. Look at what technologies Tesla has bought about. He’s building efficient battery technology, electronic motors, self guidance & AI.

    Think about an automated supply chain using self driving EV trucks, roboticised warehouses, self driving drones for warehouse to home delivery. With a platform for sales & payments (twitter) he could build a very strong competitor to Amazon. Going even further using the same technology to ship internationally via low orbit rockets, or even wilder – automated mining & factories on the Moon…..

    Obviously some of that is getting pretty wild, but we’re talking about a guy who openly states he wants to put people on Mars.

  41. Related:
    Greenwald on the Media/Infotech/DPOTUS “Free Speech Kills” Narrative(!)
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1596639229085646848?cxt=HHwWgIDUwey6s6gsAAAA
    H/T Jeff Carlson twitter roll

    Quite a thread on media-driven malfeasance (more correctly, systematic censorship and sabotage of the truth)—something that Musk’s acquisition of twitter and his new policies to reduce/eliminate censorship favoring the LEFT has thrown a wrench into.
    One example:
    “This demented media meltdown has dragged into the light one of the newest media scams: they invent fake credentials (“disinformation researcher,” “online safety expert”) and then bestow them on their friends to masquerade their politicized agenda as scientific and data-driven.”

  42. @ cb > “Elon will make an alternative phone if twitter is blocked on apple and google. = Bypass the towers and make a satellite phone connected to Starlink.”

    Already almost done – Elon didn’t mention that in his tweet.

    https://www.dealntech.com/tesla-pi-phone/

    Mehtab Ansari November 26, 2022 12:52 PM Mobiles

    The Tesla Pi Phone has been in the news lately. It is a new smartphone from the electric car company Tesla. It is also rumoured to be designed by Elon Musk himself.
    …
    A podcaster named Liz Wheeler tweeted regarding Twitter being removed from the App Store & Google Play store. She mentioned that Elon Musk should make his own phone if that happens. Since Elon has an excellent reputation, she believes people will abandon Google and Apple and move to Elon’s phone instead. She also speculates that making a smartphone won’t be too hard for someone who builds refuellable rockets.

    To this tweet, Elon replied he hopes it does not come to that, but if it does and there’s no other choice, he will make an alternative phone. This could very well be a hint towards the much anticipated Tesla phone, and there’s a chance it might come with his own software that’s neither Android nor iOS.

    However, there are no signs of Twitter being pulled from the stores right now, and it’s challenging to build a new OS in a short span because a new OS needs plenty of developer support.
    …
    There is no official information on the release date. And since this is Tesla’s first-ever smartphone, we cannot make any speculations based on past releases. However, as per various news outlets (Mashbable India), the Tesla Pi Phone will likely launch in December 2022. If not in December 2022, we can expect the launch in January 2023.
    …
    So, what makes the Tesla Pi Phone different from others? The Tesla Pi Phone may bring features to a smartphone we’ve never seen before. Here are some of the expected features:

    Ability to control Tesla cars with better integration than Android or iOS apps.
    Hardware that would enable crypto mining.
    Solar charging.
    Satellite internet.
    Astrophotography.

    While these features could come to the Tesla Pi Phone, there is no official information. These are just speculations and expectations of the community.

    You can watch the Tesla Phone concept video on the Adrstudiodesign youtube channel. We have also attached the video below.

    Also gives technical descriptions of the features, and a possible price of $800-$1200.

  44. I signed up for a Twitter account a couple of months ago, because pre-Musk Twitter would no longer allow people to read on the site without an account. I am a read-only user, and I find the ones I want to read by searching for them on my browser. I don’t have the app on either my laptop or my phone, but I am able to read it — and I could tweet if I chose to.

  45. @ Bruce Hayden, 08:00:

    “He seems to have no tolerance for anything that he sees harming kids.”

    No problem with that at all. Into the woodchipper those that commit harm go.

    Feet first.

    A man after my own heart.

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