Octopus Overlords

He has 155 million followers on Twitter/X (we’ll call it Twitter from now on for simplicity’s sake), which is more than anyone else. Only a very few people – Barack Obama (132 million), Justin Bieber (111 million) – can have any idea of what that is like.

However, unlike Obama, who follows 550,000 accounts on Twitter, Musk follows only 415. That anyone can copy (or at least they could, before the platform recently changed its code so you can now only see a small handful of users’ followers rather than the full list). So that’s what I did, spending this past summer following the exact same accounts Musk follows and no one else, to see what the world looks like from inside his personal Twitter bubble. I wanted to be a fly on the wall in the room with the people who are shaping the thoughts of one of the most influential, and unpredictable, individuals on the planet. I should add that I’ve never followed anyone else on Twitter before – I’ve never even had a Twitter account – so it was all new to me. What can I say? It’s pretty mind-blowing.

Still, it’s worth saying what Musk’s Twitterverse is not. It’s not Trumpy. There are very few Trump enthusiasts here and Musk himself – who says he voted for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 – for a while seemed to favour Ron DeSantis, whose campaign he helped to launch with a disastrous interview on Twitter Spaces that was memorable only for the catastrophic failure of the tech. There is little or no climate scepticism. Tesla describes itself as a clean energy company, and Musk does not seem to doubt that radical action on global warming/heating/boiling is needed. ... when lockdown pushback tips over into outright vaccine denialism, Musk sometimes tries to set the record straight in his inimitable deadpan style: “To be frank, we’re lucky to have modern medicine.”

The facility was finally closed in 1991 when the United States Air Force ended its use of the airfield, having designated the field as Laughlin Air Force Auxiliary Landing Field #1 in 1962, using it as part of the pilot training school at Laughlin AFB.

Alefroth wrote: ↑Fri Sep 29, 2023 11:48 pm Fort Bliss. A misnomer if there ever was one.

Elon Musk

@elonmusk
Just for the record, my boots are 20 years old and my hat is ten years old.

And I have an arsenal of weapons, most of which I bought in California before they changed the law to make it impossible to do so.

I’ve hip-fired a 50 cal while walking. Might have the video somewhere.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2023 8:00 am Google say that's around El Paso. I've never been to El Paso. Eagle Pass is a bit of drive from there south east from there. San Antonio is much closer. That's where we always flew in to and then drove for three hours to get to our hotel. I know there military bases there, as multiple family have moved in and out there one reason or another.

Holman wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2023 3:08 pm Musk has been openly attacking Soros and cheering an end to US funding for Ukraine. Now he's pretending to be a border cowboy and posting pictures of himself firing weapons, claiming that he doesn't "start fights" but he "ends them."

This guy is unraveling fast. I would have assumed that being the wealthiest person on earth would be more... comforting.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 12:31 pm ...Yet many of these guys are clearly assholes. It's got to be a conscious decision to tell the world you're an asshole. To what end? I have no idea.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 12:31 pm It's so easy to be viewed as a decent person when you can own your own PR firm.

Yet many of these guys are clearly assholes. It's got to be a conscious decision to tell the world you're an asshole. To what end? I have no idea.

Holman wrote: ↑Mon Oct 02, 2023 5:48 pm The more likely explanation is that he's just genuinely a racist asshole and that owning the playground makes him feel free to play how he wants.

On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright.

Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the 3,000-word anonymous article said, would amount to a “declaration of war against the Globalist American Empire.” The sender of the texts was offering Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, a playbook for the takeover and transformation of Twitter. As the anniversary of Musk's purchase approaches, the identity of the sender remains unknown.

The three texts were sent on April 4, 2022. In the nearly 18 months since then, many of the decisions Musk made after he bought Twitter appear to have closely followed that road map, up to and including his ongoing attacks against the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization founded by Jewish Americans to counter discrimination.

The text messages described a series of actions Musk should take after he gained full control of the social media platform: “Step 1: Blame the platform for its users; Step 2: Coordinated pressure campaign; Step 3: Exodus of the Bluechecks; Step 4: Deplatforming.”

Elon Musk was once lauded as a sort of green Tony Stark – the genius inventor who leads a double life as superhero Iron Man – for single-handedly tackling the climate crisis one Tesla at a time, helping to forge a clean energy future and pushing for new taxes to drive down fossil fuel use.

But the climate credentials of the world’s richest person have become clouded by his embrace of rightwing politicians, some of whom dismiss global heating, as well as by his management of X, formerly known as Twitter, during which many climate scientists have fled the platform amid a proliferation of misinformation about the climate crisis.

Those contradictions run deeply through his work and life. The man who sometimes seems to think of himself as a spartan-living, green thinker is actually one of the elite 1% of the world’s population who, according to a new Oxfam report, produce as much carbon pollution as the poorest two-thirds of humanity, comprising 5 billion people. Where does the reality lie?

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 12:50 am spartan-living, green thinker

Answers at the link.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 10:14 am

Kraken wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 12:50 am spartan-living, green thinker

Who doesn't want people tracking the movement of his children via the constant movements of his private jet...

Answers at the link.

you turned in to click bait so slowly I never noticed.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 10:14 am Who doesn't want people tracking the movement of his children via the constant movements of his private jet...

Elon Musk has decried a wave of “insane” strikes focused on Tesla workshops in Sweden, as workers target the US electric car manufacturer in a strike calling for collective bargaining rights.

In what has been portrayed as the largest fight in decades to save Sweden’s union model from global labour practices, the powerful trade union IF Metall has been leading a strike across eight Tesla workplaces in Sweden for five weeks.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 6:18 pm Will call girls refuse to service them?

Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Fri Nov 24, 2023 4:37 pm I think colonization of Mars is Musk's version of building museums, galleries, and concert halls. If he is successful in that, it'll be more important and bigger monument than museums, galleries, or concert halls.