43850
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: The Interview - Elon Musk
URL: (Language warning)
| Priceless |
43852
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Interview - Elon Musk
URL: https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/elon-musk-nyt-interview-18524602.php
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The end of Elon Musk SFGATE columnist Drew Magary consumed Musk's entire erratic interview so you don't have to Elon Musk speaks onstage during the New York Times Dealbook Summit 2023 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Nov. 29, 2023, in New York City. By Drew MagaryNov 30, 2023 Secretly, I’d prefer it if the richest men on Earth were special. I know that there are genuinely exceptional people out there, because I’ve watched Steph Curry play basketball. So it’s only fair of me to want our most successful businesspeople to be people of comparable, if not greater, talent. That’s how I thought of the Waltons and Gateses of the world when I was a middle schooler. And in a just world (ha!), I would have been not only right to think it, but happy to KNOW it. If these men really were great, then the socioeconomic system that elevated them would also be great. And fair. Which brings me to Elon Musk. At one point in his career, Musk was the heir apparent to the late Steve Jobs. He ran multiple tech corporations at once and seemingly did so with élan, and with genuine interest in improving the lives of his customers. He launched the first reusable space rockets. He had nascent plans to reinvent modern public transit with a “Hyperloop” that could shoot you from LA in San Francisco in 36 tidy minutes. He made Tesla’s patents available to all, and described his reason for doing so with simple brilliance: “If we’re all in a ship together, and there’s some holes in the ship and we’re sort of bailing water out … and we have a great design for a bucket … even if we’re bailing out way better than everybody else, we should probably still share the bucket design. Because we’re all going to sink.” That Elon Musk was the naive person’s idea of what a billionaire should be. But we’re all a little bit wiser now, whereas Musk is no longer as articulate, nor as magnanimous, as he once was. He delivered final proof of that yesterday at the New York Times’ DealBook summit, in which he had the following bizarre exchange with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. The videopic.twitter.com/cPWVO1MQCD https://t.co/d1kE5ICJ7k — Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) November 29, 2023 A bit of background is required here. A little over a year ago, Musk — already the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and founder of the Boring Company — bought Twitter after making an obscene offer for it seemingly on a lark. Then he tried to back out of the deal by inventing whatever reasons he could find in his desk, and then bought it anyway when he realized that the die was cast. After that, he rebranded Twitter as X, laid off so many staffers that quality control on the platform became all but nonexistent, turned its verification system into a subscription service for thirsty MAGA losers, and watched his new company’s revenues drop by 50% and its American user base drop by nearly 20%. A smarter billionaire might have cut his losses with X and turned his focus back to minting ugly Cybertrucks. But Musk has put all of his energy, to the great detriment of his other assets, into reshaping X in his own image instead, replete with antisemitic tropes out of the Illinois Nazi playbook and a tacit effort to revive the long-debunked Pizzagate conspiracy. This is because — and I’m not exaggerating — Musk truly believes that he who controls X also controls the world. His exchange with Sorkin yesterday, the entirety of which you can watch on the New York Times’ YouTube channel, all but proves it. It also proves that he’s a real tit. After many big-name companies withdrew their advertising from X in the wake of Musk’s continued hate speech, he used his exchange with Sorkin to respond to those companies thusly: “Don’t advertise,” he said to the audience. “If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f—k yourself. Go. F—k. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey Bob [Iger, CEO of Disney]! If you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel. Don’t advertise.” Here is where Sorkin had to give Musk a bit of pragmatic business advice. I, like Sorkin, am a journalist and lemme tell you: You’re in BIG trouble if one of US understands how to make a profit better than you do. “I understand that,” Sorkin told Musk with the utmost professionalism. “But there’s a reality too, right? I mean [X CEO] Linda Yaccarino is right here and she’s got to sell advertising!” Musk, who appeared both high and made of plywood, responded with a reality of his own: “Actually, what this advertising boycott is going to do is, it’s going to kill the company. And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.” Here Musk looked out to the audience, expecting vehement agreement, perhaps even applause. He was greeted with dead silence instead. Sorkin, still residing in the correct reality, told Musk, “But those advertisers, I imagine they’re going to say, ‘WE didn’t kill the company.’” And here is where Musk revealed his delusion to all. “Oh yeah?” he shot back. “Tell it to Earth.” |
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43851
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: The Interview - Elon Musk
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My synonym would be *expensive*... (...expensive, in the sense that the true cost hasn't even come into form enough to be describable...though its process of doing so, and watching him navigate it, will be fascinating to monitor...) |
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