Somehow this message isn’t crossing international boundaries with the alacrity or the urgency it needs to: Elon Musk is now a global threat, and his actions will cause mass violence in the near term.
Elon seems to be deteriorating mentally as well. His is different than Trump's, but it's no less dangerous. And we got here with him because people wanted to see him as a savior, as the next Steve Jobs, or someone even better or greater than him. But Jobs, for all his manifold faults, genuinely changed the world in impressive ways that we clearly needed, and the world would be a darker place without Apple. Elon has never achieved anything worthy, something that can be said "We needed him and his companies to exist."
Imagine where we'd be if NASA had done a public campaign after Columbia to not only win back support but also get the government to properly fund it again; a campaign of when being attacked for "You lied to Congress to get the Shuttle done," the response would've been "Yes, and we did it because we were fighting for our very existence! We had to say what YOU wanted to hear, or you would've shut us down! We've had to live on scraps because you forgot spaceflight is not meant to turn a commercial profit! It's not meant to have an ROI! If you'd given us what we needed, we would've designed it better and Challenged and Columbia would never have happened! Congress bears blame for this too!"
Imagine if Obama had said commercialized spaceflight is a boondoggle, and it's only meant to be the purview of NASA and her fellow government agencies worldwide. Oh, how different it would be, and Elon's "savior" image would never have taken hold.
Who ever opposed funding NASA, I mean in the context of citizens. I have never heard a disparaging word about NASA. I think that most Americans would be surprised that they struggled to obtain and maintain funding. As for Musk there were early signs he was not a Steve Jobs, that his behavior reeked of opportunism. I felt like he just flew way under the radar, not enough people cared about what he was doing. It seemed like a California thing that he had any traction or popularity.
Well, it wasn't the citizenry as a whole that did...except for the libertarians who always said "private companies can do things cheaper and safer than NASA," which they especially pushed after Columbia. But it was Congress who really opposed the agency, giving them scraps.
I worked for NASA for a dozen years in my early career before moving on. It was great to be there, so much so that I date myself by saying I refused a job offer from Steve Jobs at Apple because of the nice NASA R&D sandbox to play in. (But I kept AAPL shares, so it still turned out OK.)
I once commuted with astrophysicist Dr. Jill Tarter of Project SETI, whose project Congress once dissed as searching for green aliens. (Jody Foster played her in "Contact".)
But the budget of NASA is only between 0.5 and 1 percent of the federal budget, famously less than the amount Americans spend on pizza. As for privatization, NASA has always contracted out much to the likes of Lockheed, Rockwell, etc. just as they do today for SpaceX.
Lastly, NASA has turned somewhat from space to "Mission to Planet Earth", as seen by their work on climate change:
At any rate, Musk's SpaceX *depends upon* NASA for contacts, for now, even though he hopes that Trump will try to help him disintermediate NASA going forward.
I've always thought the freakiest part is the dozen kids, by wives, girlfriends and surrogates... Cavalierly doing them all developmental damage by casually separating them from their mothers, whether at birth or later on, Grimes' babies withheld from her for months. Trauma to child eitherway. Also, how many revolving nannies to produce the 'toddlers come to NY eve at Mar A Lago" spectacle? There is a team making possible the photo op. His grandiosity regarding the 'power of his seed' is staggering. As though nurture plays no part at all.
Seems to me Elon's shaping experiences were abandonment, Narcissistic parents, existing to gratify them/ not as your own person, resulting in zero relational skills, and no meta for what actually produces happy children.
I'm in the north of England, about 20 miles from Rotherham, and I checked my own local paper this evening, which covers a district of ca. 360,000 people. In the Crime section, I scouted every headline for abuse of women or children; seven reports in all. All of those male abusers were white with an Anglo-Saxon name. In fact, out of almost 50 crime reports, only one had a person of colour in it; he was in a burglary gang with three local white lads.
My district has a decent influx of immigrants too, so I would expect crime reports about black, brown and Eastern Europeans to be in the headlines from time to time. The largest grooming gang to be jailed (April 2023) operated in the Walsall and Wolverhampton areas, and they're all white, including 7 women of the 21 found guilty. One to post to Leon's Xitter account...
Yes, people of colour do get in the news for physical and sexual abuse, but I've been checking my local paper regularly over the last decade (following my own rape threats for refusing to be an Islamophobe) and I've seen nothing to contradict the chances of a rapist being a white guy or a gang of them.
And there will be no British civil war. We're not split down the middle like the U.S., plus a nation that can queue patiently for hours won't bear arms so easily. Weird Leon has to convince more than 80% of the country to do so, because only 17% thought positively of him before this latest invasion tirade. They're mainly fat men over 50 who'll keel over with a coronary if they get too excited.
Read an article today that there have been several meetings at Mar A Lago regarding making Canada the 52nd state. Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank has been pushing it hard. He claims the citizens would be all in. I don't see it, think it would be a hard sell for them to give up their healthcare and join our messed up system.
Turn the Bukele solution upward? Won’t happen of course, these people are possessed by demons who have been fomenting evil for millennia. They sense the hour of their end is upon them and are trying to burn it all down before it is taken from them. Kill one man and they just transfer to another.
You may think that’s ridiculous, but it is in fact one of the essential elements of the Bible explanation for why our world is so troubled.
The clearest single passage on this is Luke 4:5-7. That was not an idle boast Satan was making. The offer was disingenuous, as Jesus would have immediately lost his Father’s protection had he accepted, and would have been killed within seconds. But of course he showed us how to handle such temptations.
It feels like he is trying to accelerate collapse, and he might be. Some of these hope-to-be transhumanist billionaires are inspired by Nick Land/Curtis Yarvin/etc.
It's also infuriating to have a white guy from apartheid South Africa who arrived on our shores a short time ago always preaching to us about American democracy and freedom of speech and whatnot.
So I took a plunge in the Joe Rogan world by watching his interview with Musk which was 11/2 or 11/4. It was notable that in exit interviews at some AZ University that in asking students who they voted for their answers pejoratively were Tramp. In the follow up (rare these days) the mostly young men stated because they had seen him on Joe Rogan and what he said sounded reasonable. Here within the first 10 minutes of the interview Musk averred that his entire mission with X was the protection of free speech which was under attack by the democrats (without specificity) he then stated that the 2nd amendment which he supported in full was created to protect the 1st amendment. I was of two thoughts 1) who is this immigrant dude with absolutely zero knowledge or education in American History, Political Science stating with authority this falsehood and 2) aha this is where these ignorant (meaning lacking of knowledge) individuals are so incredibly aggressive about their rights to bare arms. The only thing that was discussed during this very long podcast that I had any reason to believe that either of the parties had any knowledge of was drug use and abuse. It was mesmerizing how these two individuals-with zero expertise in any field of discussion felt as if they were qualified to even have the discussion. It was galling. I am in total agreement with you Seth, we are so f**ked. I say about my work world that I live in the land of 1/2 way thinking. When I watched this podcast I realized that these people live in a world of 1/8th thinking. Who is so desperate not to have to think? Also notable was does Musk have a stutter or did he have a stutter, he was a hard listen. Guess now I will be looking toward the most remote place on Earth with zero resources to exploit, sketchy internet and what, high elevation?
Musk will not step away from the co-presidency any time soon. He has leveraged and funded the return of Trump, who will use threats and intimidation against those who oppose him. We have reaped the whirlwind, and must endure this Axis of Evil. I realize that it sounds like a description of two comic book villains, but here we are. Only time and hubris may save us.
Musk has left the real world and is living inside some malevolent mythical quest video game. Insanity happens. But when it happens to the worlds richest and most maniacal man, we're f*cked.
Most of us knew there was no one way trump has the mental capacity to govern even he wanted to. It’s been obvious since last fall exactly who was going to run things: musk. I imagine Peter Thiel isn’t happy his Vance plan has petered (pun intended) out.
Sharing something I just ran across re Elon. Fits with his craziness and in regards to Germany in this Substack report. As a boomer, I remember Werner von Braun.
One small problem. To get the number of sexual abuse instances annually in Britain from the number of people who report such abuse, you wouldn't multiply by average life expectancy. You would multiply by the average age of British residents (at least) or of those surveyed (better). The average age of British residents is about 41 years, so your number of sexual abuse instances per year is off by just about a factor of 2.
That Musk has gone cuckoo is not debatable -- others like Kara Swisher and his exes have known this for a while now. Prof. Abramson may posit he was always this way and just kept up a veneer of sanity...
However (and I will reveal a bias as a Tesla driver), be careful in conflating Musk and the cars, the company TSLA etc. He is basically a project manager there, but the engineering is fine if you don't buy the first year of a model, a good rule for gas cars, too. No problems with my 2018 Model 3 (just needing windshield wiper fluid and tires) in 6 years of driving. Also, the supervised driver-assist has improved greatly over time (I use it in San Francisco), so citing articles from Niedermeyer & J.D. Powers from >2 years ago is not helpful. Ditto for dissing "recalls", >90% of which are just software updates, not dealer visits.
Anyway, although Musk's degree may be honorary, he's hired the best, both for rocketry and cars. Although Seth has many talents, being a "car guy" may not be one of them. Also, to even more folk than retired techies like me, ideas like using Starlink in rural areas instead of digging trenches for optical fiber is a no-brainer, so it's sad to see red states pushing that pork.
Notwithstanding, Musk's social outlook, like Trump's, is vile.
I've long absorbed Abramson's outrage about both, still maintaining my sanity as a blue-state progressive. But conflating products with the dolt-in-charge can be a disservice, undermining Seth's other well-taken points.
Elon seems to be deteriorating mentally as well. His is different than Trump's, but it's no less dangerous. And we got here with him because people wanted to see him as a savior, as the next Steve Jobs, or someone even better or greater than him. But Jobs, for all his manifold faults, genuinely changed the world in impressive ways that we clearly needed, and the world would be a darker place without Apple. Elon has never achieved anything worthy, something that can be said "We needed him and his companies to exist."
Imagine where we'd be if NASA had done a public campaign after Columbia to not only win back support but also get the government to properly fund it again; a campaign of when being attacked for "You lied to Congress to get the Shuttle done," the response would've been "Yes, and we did it because we were fighting for our very existence! We had to say what YOU wanted to hear, or you would've shut us down! We've had to live on scraps because you forgot spaceflight is not meant to turn a commercial profit! It's not meant to have an ROI! If you'd given us what we needed, we would've designed it better and Challenged and Columbia would never have happened! Congress bears blame for this too!"
Imagine if Obama had said commercialized spaceflight is a boondoggle, and it's only meant to be the purview of NASA and her fellow government agencies worldwide. Oh, how different it would be, and Elon's "savior" image would never have taken hold.
Who ever opposed funding NASA, I mean in the context of citizens. I have never heard a disparaging word about NASA. I think that most Americans would be surprised that they struggled to obtain and maintain funding. As for Musk there were early signs he was not a Steve Jobs, that his behavior reeked of opportunism. I felt like he just flew way under the radar, not enough people cared about what he was doing. It seemed like a California thing that he had any traction or popularity.
Well, it wasn't the citizenry as a whole that did...except for the libertarians who always said "private companies can do things cheaper and safer than NASA," which they especially pushed after Columbia. But it was Congress who really opposed the agency, giving them scraps.
I worked for NASA for a dozen years in my early career before moving on. It was great to be there, so much so that I date myself by saying I refused a job offer from Steve Jobs at Apple because of the nice NASA R&D sandbox to play in. (But I kept AAPL shares, so it still turned out OK.)
I once commuted with astrophysicist Dr. Jill Tarter of Project SETI, whose project Congress once dissed as searching for green aliens. (Jody Foster played her in "Contact".)
But the budget of NASA is only between 0.5 and 1 percent of the federal budget, famously less than the amount Americans spend on pizza. As for privatization, NASA has always contracted out much to the likes of Lockheed, Rockwell, etc. just as they do today for SpaceX.
Lastly, NASA has turned somewhat from space to "Mission to Planet Earth", as seen by their work on climate change:
https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/
At any rate, Musk's SpaceX *depends upon* NASA for contacts, for now, even though he hopes that Trump will try to help him disintermediate NASA going forward.
I've always thought the freakiest part is the dozen kids, by wives, girlfriends and surrogates... Cavalierly doing them all developmental damage by casually separating them from their mothers, whether at birth or later on, Grimes' babies withheld from her for months. Trauma to child eitherway. Also, how many revolving nannies to produce the 'toddlers come to NY eve at Mar A Lago" spectacle? There is a team making possible the photo op. His grandiosity regarding the 'power of his seed' is staggering. As though nurture plays no part at all.
Seems to me Elon's shaping experiences were abandonment, Narcissistic parents, existing to gratify them/ not as your own person, resulting in zero relational skills, and no meta for what actually produces happy children.
That last paragraph makes him sound just like fat lad. Peas in a pod.
I have to go lie down now.
Thank you for producing some great statistics in this brilliant report, Seth.
A Jess Phillips update: a Devon man has been charged with making threats against her, covering a period from April 2024 to January 2025. The link is to a local Devon newspaper rather than any mainstream rag but it gives a name: https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/devon-man-charged-making-threats-9841186
I'm in the north of England, about 20 miles from Rotherham, and I checked my own local paper this evening, which covers a district of ca. 360,000 people. In the Crime section, I scouted every headline for abuse of women or children; seven reports in all. All of those male abusers were white with an Anglo-Saxon name. In fact, out of almost 50 crime reports, only one had a person of colour in it; he was in a burglary gang with three local white lads.
My district has a decent influx of immigrants too, so I would expect crime reports about black, brown and Eastern Europeans to be in the headlines from time to time. The largest grooming gang to be jailed (April 2023) operated in the Walsall and Wolverhampton areas, and they're all white, including 7 women of the 21 found guilty. One to post to Leon's Xitter account...
Yes, people of colour do get in the news for physical and sexual abuse, but I've been checking my local paper regularly over the last decade (following my own rape threats for refusing to be an Islamophobe) and I've seen nothing to contradict the chances of a rapist being a white guy or a gang of them.
And there will be no British civil war. We're not split down the middle like the U.S., plus a nation that can queue patiently for hours won't bear arms so easily. Weird Leon has to convince more than 80% of the country to do so, because only 17% thought positively of him before this latest invasion tirade. They're mainly fat men over 50 who'll keel over with a coronary if they get too excited.
And, of course, they're already aiming at Canada. Nowhere is safe from this group of misfits and war-mongers.
The question remains: what can be done?
Read an article today that there have been several meetings at Mar A Lago regarding making Canada the 52nd state. Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank has been pushing it hard. He claims the citizens would be all in. I don't see it, think it would be a hard sell for them to give up their healthcare and join our messed up system.
If anything, it seems to me, they'd be watching closely and want nothing to do with 'US!'
Turn the Bukele solution upward? Won’t happen of course, these people are possessed by demons who have been fomenting evil for millennia. They sense the hour of their end is upon them and are trying to burn it all down before it is taken from them. Kill one man and they just transfer to another.
You may think that’s ridiculous, but it is in fact one of the essential elements of the Bible explanation for why our world is so troubled.
The clearest single passage on this is Luke 4:5-7. That was not an idle boast Satan was making. The offer was disingenuous, as Jesus would have immediately lost his Father’s protection had he accepted, and would have been killed within seconds. But of course he showed us how to handle such temptations.
Bukele solution? Do tell...
It’s the solution they like. Unless it back fires…
It feels like he is trying to accelerate collapse, and he might be. Some of these hope-to-be transhumanist billionaires are inspired by Nick Land/Curtis Yarvin/etc.
It's also infuriating to have a white guy from apartheid South Africa who arrived on our shores a short time ago always preaching to us about American democracy and freedom of speech and whatnot.
Thanks for this report.
So I took a plunge in the Joe Rogan world by watching his interview with Musk which was 11/2 or 11/4. It was notable that in exit interviews at some AZ University that in asking students who they voted for their answers pejoratively were Tramp. In the follow up (rare these days) the mostly young men stated because they had seen him on Joe Rogan and what he said sounded reasonable. Here within the first 10 minutes of the interview Musk averred that his entire mission with X was the protection of free speech which was under attack by the democrats (without specificity) he then stated that the 2nd amendment which he supported in full was created to protect the 1st amendment. I was of two thoughts 1) who is this immigrant dude with absolutely zero knowledge or education in American History, Political Science stating with authority this falsehood and 2) aha this is where these ignorant (meaning lacking of knowledge) individuals are so incredibly aggressive about their rights to bare arms. The only thing that was discussed during this very long podcast that I had any reason to believe that either of the parties had any knowledge of was drug use and abuse. It was mesmerizing how these two individuals-with zero expertise in any field of discussion felt as if they were qualified to even have the discussion. It was galling. I am in total agreement with you Seth, we are so f**ked. I say about my work world that I live in the land of 1/2 way thinking. When I watched this podcast I realized that these people live in a world of 1/8th thinking. Who is so desperate not to have to think? Also notable was does Musk have a stutter or did he have a stutter, he was a hard listen. Guess now I will be looking toward the most remote place on Earth with zero resources to exploit, sketchy internet and what, high elevation?
The rope such as these are given... hangs us all.
Musk will not step away from the co-presidency any time soon. He has leveraged and funded the return of Trump, who will use threats and intimidation against those who oppose him. We have reaped the whirlwind, and must endure this Axis of Evil. I realize that it sounds like a description of two comic book villains, but here we are. Only time and hubris may save us.
Musk has left the real world and is living inside some malevolent mythical quest video game. Insanity happens. But when it happens to the worlds richest and most maniacal man, we're f*cked.
Most of us knew there was no one way trump has the mental capacity to govern even he wanted to. It’s been obvious since last fall exactly who was going to run things: musk. I imagine Peter Thiel isn’t happy his Vance plan has petered (pun intended) out.
Sharing something I just ran across re Elon. Fits with his craziness and in regards to Germany in this Substack report. As a boomer, I remember Werner von Braun.
https://www.mind-war.com/p/the-elon-how-a-nazi-rocket-scientist
Good eye!
So what do we do about this?
One small problem. To get the number of sexual abuse instances annually in Britain from the number of people who report such abuse, you wouldn't multiply by average life expectancy. You would multiply by the average age of British residents (at least) or of those surveyed (better). The average age of British residents is about 41 years, so your number of sexual abuse instances per year is off by just about a factor of 2.
Excellent, as always.
That Musk has gone cuckoo is not debatable -- others like Kara Swisher and his exes have known this for a while now. Prof. Abramson may posit he was always this way and just kept up a veneer of sanity...
However (and I will reveal a bias as a Tesla driver), be careful in conflating Musk and the cars, the company TSLA etc. He is basically a project manager there, but the engineering is fine if you don't buy the first year of a model, a good rule for gas cars, too. No problems with my 2018 Model 3 (just needing windshield wiper fluid and tires) in 6 years of driving. Also, the supervised driver-assist has improved greatly over time (I use it in San Francisco), so citing articles from Niedermeyer & J.D. Powers from >2 years ago is not helpful. Ditto for dissing "recalls", >90% of which are just software updates, not dealer visits.
Anyway, although Musk's degree may be honorary, he's hired the best, both for rocketry and cars. Although Seth has many talents, being a "car guy" may not be one of them. Also, to even more folk than retired techies like me, ideas like using Starlink in rural areas instead of digging trenches for optical fiber is a no-brainer, so it's sad to see red states pushing that pork.
Notwithstanding, Musk's social outlook, like Trump's, is vile.
I've long absorbed Abramson's outrage about both, still maintaining my sanity as a blue-state progressive. But conflating products with the dolt-in-charge can be a disservice, undermining Seth's other well-taken points.