Instant flashback when Elon called Thai cave diver a "pedo guy" when they declined his help. 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.
He also then got away with it in court because he claimed he wasn't making an accusation, just using a generic insult.
Consider for example Steve Jobs: despite his wealth, he resisted his doctors' recommendations for medical intervention for nine months in favor of alternative medicine.
taking things personally is the hallmark of the trump administration. see the press conference with Zelenskyy yesterday.
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.
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.
I completely forgot this feeling and now I want it back
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Midterms!!
The House is close enough that the ordinary midterm power shifts could suffice to change it. And that would at least enable a certain amount of investigation-cum-harassment. But it's less likely to change both houses, and unless that happens with a substantial margin, it'll be hard to pass significant legislation to change anything.
Hopefully, today, you realized what midterms will do to unseat him. The mockery of what US stands for has been going on since Jan/20 and people have been watching.
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.
More credible than a random guy in Thailand being “a pedo” because he disagreed with Musk.
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.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-12/elon-musk-faces-defam...
>Mr Musk called Mr Unsworth a "pedo" in a July 15 post on his Twitter account after Mr Unsworth, in an interview with CNN, dismissed Mr Musk's attempts to help rescue the boys as a "PR stunt".
Hate on Musk (or anyone). Be accurate is the message here.
Musk calling a hero a pedo with no evidence in response after (correctly?) being accused of having a garbage solution that couldn't work and he could stick it on international tv is appalling.
Added: I wonder if it was the pro or anti musk faction that flagged the call fo accuracy ad provided references. Even more amusing if both.
Is there source that confirms the sequence either way?
Added: Checking, the guardian story I linked has the pedo guy tweet after musk’s submarine was described as a publicity stunt on cnn.
is a better article for sequence, although the twitter dates are not helpful - the embedded in a tweet interview clip has the date of the tweet and not the date of the interview. That was tweeted after the Musk pedo tweet.
The quote was:
He can “stick his submarine where it hurts,” Unsworth said during the interview in Thailand.
It doesn't justify the "Pedo Guy" accusation though, Musk was clearly being a attention seeking nuisance and getting in the way of an ongoing rescue effort.
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".
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.
Edit: small correction.
> Shares in electric car maker Tesla have slumped more than 9% after EU and UK sales fell by almost half in January.
So look like Musk may have gotten a good deal with the couple hundred million he spent to help get Trump elected.
~ 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".
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 [...]"
Mainstream acceptance was slow up until the last 10 years or so.
I doubt he'll succeed in his efforts. I don't think he cares as much as the people he's targeting care.
Might just be me though.
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.
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.
If you check the news once a week or once a minute you'll still notice them.
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.
Nor was I aware that the ABA was part of the government. It's this sort of high quality analysis that keeps me coming back to HN.
> 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
See https://expansion.mx/tecnologia/2025/02/26/america-movil-cor... (Spanish)
Everyone has become cynical and no one is willing to invest in the future and build new things.
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 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.
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...
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?
Personally speaking I have an indicator stalk, I like the minimal cockpit and my panels fit fine.
Actual range is matched by Hyundai/Kia EVs, and pricing is quite good as well (especially used). Also these vehicles support V2L, charge faster, and
Don't get me wrong - Tesla has some amazing tech, but they blew their lead in the past few years on that useless Cybertruck instead of iterating their most popular models.
"Fun", is my reasoning, the same reason (I assume) why most people buy fast cars.
> Also these vehicles support V2L, charge faster
V2L doesn't interest me. My understanding is in North America charging is an issue, but in Australia mine charges at 250KW.
> Don't get me wrong - Tesla has some amazing tech, but they blew their lead in the past few years on that useless Cybertruck instead of iterating their most popular models.
Completely agree RE the cybetruvk - a small "model 2" would be a market changer, cybertruck is weird Elon wank. But every other electric I've driven so far I find inferior, I'm not sure they've lost their lead yet.
I'd give them a ton of credit for their initial success though. Starting a car company is clearly very difficult.
... Wait, where are you getting that? BYD saw substantial percentage year on year growth for Jan 2025, but from a very low base. Growth seems to largely be accruing to VW AG, BMW, and, oddly, Toyota (for all that reviewers panned the bZ4X, _consumers_ seem to like it).
> In January, according to the ACEA data, Tesla clocked the largest — by far — decrease in sales of any auto manufacturer in Europe. The largest increase, at 36.8%, was for SAIC Motor, a Chinese automaker whose brands include MG.
> In January, SAIC Motor sold more than twice as many vehicles in Europe as Tesla did, according to the ACEA data.
So if SAIC only made BEVs, then it would indeed be one of the bigger sellers of electric cars. However, SAIC makes lots of things. SAIC/MG is not in the top ten BEV brands for Jan 2025.
(This seems to have been a common mistake made in reporting, and people often do think of MG as a BEV brand, but it actually sells a lot of hybrids, too.)
Are you also disagreeing that car sales are shifting mostly to cheap Chinese vehicles not European or American brands? To me it still looks like if people are moving away from Tesla for political reasons, they apparently align with the CCP. Which doesn’t make sense to me since China is a dictatorship.
MG is basically just noise in the broader market. Like, a whole 2.3%!
One piece of context that you may be missing is that hybrids are the single biggest chunk of the European market, about 40% (I gather they’re way smaller in the US), so MG’s 2.3% isn’t hugely impressive.
Revenue estimated in the 7-8bn range last year. That's pretty tiny for a telecom, especially one with global scope; it's about the size, say, of France's fourth largest telecom. Profitability would be almost impossible to estimate (to what extent should rocket development costs be laid upon it, say?) but realistically you wouldn't expect it to be profitable.
Like, it is not necessarily a business you'd want to be in.
But it is still not a business you would want to be in, because it is enabled by super cheap rockets, which no one else has.
This talking point is 5 years old. As of 2022, legacy auto has matched Tesla in enough respects to be worthy competitors. Sure Tesla's electronics are a bit better, but in terms of being a good car, other manufacturers have Tesla beat.
The markets have been so warped by the power of existing monopolies that most investors are only interested in trying to find the next golden goose (as we can see in the crypto, AI, metaverse and countless other bubbles).
"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.
This was an investment worth twice that, and you think it is not of "real impact"? Care to expand on your thinking?
Lets hope Slim wipes the "business floor" with Musk with his initiative.
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.
And anyway if you think either Elon or Trump actually care about the cartels, I've got a bridge to sell you
[1] https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-...
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
https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-and-spiky-intelligenc...
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.
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-ric...
Carlos Slim is literally a bit player authorized reseller. There are no major investments this guy has made in Starlink.
>>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’m not saying I support this. But this is the reality.
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.
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.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/352/212/95b...
They're not doing nothing - they're just not being idiots.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...
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.
That kind of lifestyle would do that to you long term.
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.
I'm sincerely curious, why do you still have a twitter account?
Why even keep using the platform?
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.
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.
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)
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
https://ir.tesla.com/corporate/elon-musk
> Elon is Technoking of Tesla
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?
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.
So it really hardly matters, unless you get a lot of details.
Honestly this sounds like a cartoonish understanding of a country
Can you say the same about the US ?
Where does Elon get his psychodelics ?
Did Silk Road use AWS ?
https://expansion.mx/tecnologia/2025/02/26/america-movil-cor...
> "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.
