Elon & Twitter

[StateoftheArt]

That was a phenomenal response and I wish Elon would learn something from Dr. Fauci.

If he would, this thread could go away and we could be talking about more fun things like FSD, Tesla service, panel gaps and missing fasteners. Or maybe the next exciting Tesla product.

Here's the full quote from the audio:
David Axelrod: So speaking of Musk, what did you think about that tweet this morning?
Dr. Fauci: You know, I'm getting asked by all these people right now today, 'come on the show', and 'how do you respond to Elon Musk?'
Dr. Fauci: I don't respond to him. I don't pay any attention to him because that's merely a distraction. And if you get drawn into that, and I have to be honest, that cesspool of interaction, it's ...
Dr. Fauci: There's no value added to that, David. It doesn't help anything.

Just do what we say and this will all go away. How many times have you all said this in the last several years?

Nope, not this time bud. Cat is out of the bag.

 

[spacerfc]

So Tom Fitton is an editor of Judicial Watch, which, in addition to advertising on Breitbart, is also a big fan of the argument that climate change is a hoax. They are not just dabblers in that, according to his wiki entry, they are actually suing some scientists in an attempt to get emails which they hope will show that said client scientists know climate change is a hoax but just haven't let all of us in on the gag.

So, what does everyone think about Elon responding to, of all people, this guy:

1. Elon doesn't really know who he is.
2. Elon doesn't care who he is, he just posted a nice swipe at Biden so that's good enough.
3. Elon knows who he is, but battling the WMV is more important than a guy who is against everything not one, but two companies Elon also owns are trying to address.
4. Oh, and 4, Elon didn't even bother actually reading whether it was Fitton, or Fruiton, or Figgen, its not how Elon rolls after a blunt or three.
5. What is really going on is the whole "accelerate the change to sustainable energy" is the actual joke, those of us who believed in it are suckers, and the real problem is the Babylon Bee got banned for the meanest swipe at an arguably, barely public figure one could think of, that only someone who is into making fun of trans people would find funny.

I vote for either 1 or 4. I may be too optimistic and its really 2, 3, or (ugh) 5.

It's #2, except you're wording it as a negative instead of a positive trait. What he's actually doing is "playing the ball, not the man", i.e. he would agree with any idea or action that sounds right to him, regardless of where it came from. He gave a thumb up to Biden for pardoning marijuana possession convictions for example, so it's not at all about swiping at Biden the person.

 

[Krugerrand]

I've explained, repeatedly, that I also believe it's negatively affecting the mission of Tesla, but apparently you refuse to acknowledge what I've written and prefer to continue painting a caricature to fit your narrative.

I do not believe you. It’s as simple as that.

 

[mach-edriver]

Of all the idiotic causes to elevate, this business of pronouns is the worst.

Here's the extent of my personal connection to the issue:

This year I began teaching Sunday School. The professional who had the gig dropped out the week before classes began so I volunteered. I have kids 5-9years old in my class and and older woman, a retired grade school teacher, had offered to help out. Her health is not 100% so I asked leadership if they could get a high school student looking for community credits to help when I wanted the little ones to get special attention, stories and crafts and such.

"Stacy" is a high school junior. I've known her and her family for years but we're passing acquaintances in the congregation. I was told when Stacy signed up that Stacy is LGBTQ and prefers "they."

For me its unnatural using it, for now at least, but it costs me nothing to make her comfortable. She is WONDERFUL and my granddaughter (who's in the class) loves singing with her.

I remember how I chafed at "ms." when it appeared decades ago and of course now it's standard conversational English. And it was less than 20 years ago that California (CALIFORNIA!) voted down gay marriage, yet today probably 80% of Americans support it.

The point being is that pronouns like they/them are a trivial issue but they've been weaponized by charlatans like Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and various and sundry other hate-mongers. At other junctures in our history they'd have been defending the status quo, whether regarding race or gender, against change.

One would think that Musk's personal exposure to the issue would give him pause to reflect but sadly he is an impulsive, willful figure not given to self-reflection or for that matter reflection of any sort. That cocksure bravado is sadly very appealing to many Americans who worship it in their political leaders and in their entertainers, and obviously Musk enjoys that adulation too.

Its regrettable that he sees Twitter as a cudgel rather than a marketplace of ideas but it's his toy and he can destroy it as he sees fit, at least till the banks come knocking at the door.

 

[JRP3]

I do not believe you. It’s as simple as that.

Exactly, you prefer your story to the truth.

 

[JSML]

Of all the idiotic causes to elevate, this business of pronouns is the worst.

Here's the extent of my personal connection to the issue:

This year I began teaching Sunday School. The professional who had the gig dropped out the week before classes began so I volunteered. I have kids 5-9years old in my class and and older woman, a retired grade school teacher, had offered to help out. Her health is not 100% so I asked leadership if they could get a high school student looking for community credits to help when I wanted the little ones to get special attention, stories and crafts and such.

"Stacy" is a high school junior. I've known her and her family for years but we're passing acquaintances in the congregation. I was told when Stacy signed up that Stacy is LGBTQ and prefers "they."

For me its unnatural using it, for now at least, but it costs me nothing to make her comfortable. She is WONDERFUL and my granddaughter (who's in the class) loves singing with her.

I remember how I chafed at "ms." when it appeared decades ago and of course now it's standard conversational English. And it was less than 20 years ago that California (CALIFORNIA!) voted down gay marriage, yet today probably 80% of Americans support it.

The point being is that pronouns like they/them are a trivial issue but they've been weaponized by charlatans like Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and various and sundry other hate-mongers. At other junctures in our history they'd have been defending the status quo, whether regarding race or gender, against change.

One would think that Musk's personal exposure to the issue would give him pause to reflect but sadly he is an impulsive, willful figure not given to self-reflection or for that matter reflection of any sort. That cocksure bravado is sadly very appealing to many Americans who worship it in their political leaders and in their entertainers, and obviously Musk enjoys that adulation too.

Its regrettable that he sees Twitter as a cudgel rather than a marketplace of ideas but it's his toy and he can destroy it as he sees fit, at least till the banks come knocking at the door.

Thanks for sharing this insight. I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the pronoun movement and this helps.

I've always been concerned that children are asked to choose at too early an age their pronouns. I remember ages 11 to 13 as a phase of self discovery for me and it would not have been good to be asked to choose and come out with a self image at that point. Can you shed some light on how you view this? Thanks in advance.

 

[Gigapress]

Not misleading, but like that wiki article, we can all find statistics to try to "prove" our position.

My point was simply that a lot of times, people like to quote some numbers and think they are geniuses because they have "statistics" to back it up. I think you were the one who posted a chart about Amazon and Tesla (correct me if I'm wrong) and Tesla did so great because you generated this nice chart saying look, Tesla didn't do that bad because Amazon and Meta did worst. I then replied maybe you should have compared it with Enphase instead (see how I can say wow, that chart was horrid...even compared to the Dow or S&P which anyone can buy).

That was a different account.

In your original reply to me, you first stated that only 2 brands had higher Q3 numbers vs. Q2. I posted Lucid and now, you dismiss them as being tiny.

The point was that of car brands selling in any significant numbers in California, every company had a reduction in overall sales except for Tesla. I had already dismissed Genesis as being generally irrelevant to the point. Lucid is even more irrelevant because A) we don’t know their data specific to California and B) their entire global sales in Q3 was about as much as Genesis sold in California. The sole purpose of bringing up that data was to demonstrate that Tesla sales in a market that skews heavily left politically grew substantially amidst a severe overall contraction in that same market. Quibbling over minor details does not change that fact.

Ford's EV division had great growth over Q2 and Q3, but now, you point out that oh, it's not a whole brand, but when it's Lucid, they're just too tiny so let's dismiss them now.

Congratulations to Ford for selling more Mach-Es.

The entire BEV segment in California grew in Q3, as it has been doing for years. This general BEV demand growth is one of the reasons I expect Tesla’s demand to continue rising despite Elon’s extracurricular activities. The Californian market is important evidence for how this might play out elsewhere, as it’s been ahead of the curve on EVs for basically the last three decades.

You see how with statistics or pretty much any numbers, people can make anything looks good and it's all silly talk to me. My own feeling is we'll see where this all ends up in 1 or 5 years.

What I see is a person with no understanding of science or statistics dismissing them outright due to not knowing how to distinguish between good analysis and junk, and instead opting for feelings as a guide as though that is likely to be more accurate.

Will Tesla still be as dominant and in 1 year, 5 years, will an investment in Tesla be better than say, other EV companies or is it better to just buy say the S&P or the Dow or Nasdaq? Clearly, the past year has been horrid for Tesla as an investor, but this could be a temporarily setback. I'm not short or long the stock.

Why are you posting in a TSLA investment forum if you don’t know much about the stock nor the company’s relative competitive positioning, if you dismiss statistical analysis without actually analyzing it, and if you don’t even have an investment position in TSLA?

I clearly don't know,

Clearly.

but am not going to spout or post statistics that it's clearly better. People just LOVE LOVE LOVE posting some statistic which supports their case, but someone else can post some other statistic that's against it. I'm sure we can find tons (like in China probably) of slower demand/production needed there if we wanted.

Maybe you’re sure of that because you’re operating on feelings instead of facts and not looking at the data. Can you find any major car market on the planet where Tesla has had declining sales (over a long enough time period to average out delivery timing lumpiness)? I’m pretty sure you can’t, because it doesn’t exist.

Fact is Tesla is cutting prices right now by $3750 because customers are delaying purchases.

That is conjecture, not established fact.

 

[NigelM]

I fear that every Tweet further down the crazy rabbit-hole is going to make it harder and harder for the genius ever to return.

Barely 2hrs after I wrote that post and Elon went full QAnon:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1602472202619654144

 

[ElectricIAC]

It’s regrettable that he sees Twitter as a cudgel

Just like the clowns who ran it before.

 

[Gigapress]

I wonder if this is because crime isn't reported as much for multitude of reasons. Like those smash and grabs in the Bay Area, less reported because it's less than $900 and they get let out right away anyways and people feel police might be not that helpful. I see some calls to 911 and cops don't show up for over an hour.

If the goal posts moved from 100 years ago, maybe it's not a fair comparison.

I don't have numbers neither, but one thing that's up is maybe mass shootings from a few decades ago? I've been on this planet/country for a while and certainly don't think we were getting mass shootings as high as it's now.

This trend of declining violence has been observed in nearly every developed country around the world, and it’s been ongoing for centuries with a brief disruption from about 1950-1990.

I seriously doubt that murders are commonly going unreported and undiscovered by law enforcement in the US, and that’s the statistic relevant to the claim that Elon was inciting violence towards Yoel Roth.

I also struggle to see the relevance of indiscriminate mass shootings to the point about Elon supposedly inciting violence towards a single person.

 

[spacerfc]

Barely 2hrs after I wrote that post and Elon went full QAnon:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1602472202619654144

You're kidding me right? "Follow the white rabbit" is a common English phrase, it is in no way exclusive to QAnon:

Alice in Wonderland Expressions

The book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is just over 150 years old. But this classic story gives us great characters and expressions. These have found their way into American English. Let’s figure how to use them!

learningenglish.voanews.com

Urban Dictionary: follow the white rabbit

Refers to a waistcoat-wearing, pocket-watch-wielding white rabbit, hurrying along and muttering, "Oh dear! I shall be late!" in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865), whom Alice follows down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. Awesome rock band Jefferson Airplane's 1967 song White Rabbit retold...

www.urbandictionary.com

 

[loquitur]

Of all the idiotic causes to elevate, this business of pronouns is the worst.

Here's the extent of my personal connection to the issue:

This year I began teaching Sunday School. The professional who had the gig dropped out the week before classes began so I volunteered. I have kids 5-9years old in my class and and older woman, a retired grade school teacher, had offered to help out. Her health is not 100% so I asked leadership if they could get a high school student looking for community credits to help when I wanted the little ones to get special attention, stories and crafts and such.

"Stacy" is a high school junior. I've known her and her family for years but we're passing acquaintances in the congregation. I was told when Stacy signed up that Stacy is LGBTQ and prefers "they."

For me its unnatural using it, for now at least, but it costs me nothing to make her comfortable. She is WONDERFUL and my granddaughter (who's in the class) loves singing with her.

I remember how I chafed at "ms." when it appeared decades ago and of course now it's standard conversational English. And it was less than 20 years ago that California (CALIFORNIA!) voted down gay marriage, yet today probably 80% of Americans support it.

The point being is that pronouns like they/them are a trivial issue but they've been weaponized by charlatans like Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and various and sundry other hate-mongers. At other junctures in our history they'd have been defending the status quo, whether regarding race or gender, against change.

One would think that Musk's personal exposure to the issue would give him pause to reflect but sadly he is an impulsive, willful figure not given to self-reflection or for that matter reflection of any sort. That cocksure bravado is sadly very appealing to many Americans who worship it in their political leaders and in their entertainers, and obviously Musk enjoys that adulation too.

Its regrettable that he sees Twitter as a cudgel rather than a marketplace of ideas but it's his toy and he can destroy it as he sees fit, at least till the banks come knocking at the door.

Most excellent post, demonstrating sensitivity, bravado, and practical understanding of very personal issues.
I have come to understand that Musk's "personal exposure to the issue" of "transsubstantiation" (for want of a better term)
is not just via his estranged adult child, but also as seen through the lens of his latest wife and mother of another of
his children. Amateur psychology time, but it's one for the "hmmmm" category.

Also enjoyed your wise observation that "Ms" was a bit left-field not that long ago. Although there are areas
of discourse where there is training to be creative about being pronoun-neutral (both science & legal writing),
if a younger generation wants to personalize it more to them, more power to that too, because language is
a dynamic construct.

 

[italian bread]

“I have a problem with any richest man in the world who comes to this country to casually slander a doctor who devoted his entire life to protecting our children from HIV and COVID and Zika and swine flu and Ebola while you’re off playing grab-ass with Trump and firing rockets into space to prove your penis works.”

“So the answer is, as long as he’s attacking and spreading lies about decent Americans who have been doing his best to protect the world since before this vomit casserole was born, I got no love for Elon, bro.”

 

[mach-edriver]

Thanks for sharing this insight. I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the pronoun movement and this helps.

I've always been concerned that children are asked to choose at too early an age their pronouns. I remember ages 11 to 13 as a phase of self discovery for me and it would not have been good to be asked to choose and come out with a self image at that point. Can you shed some light on how you view this? Thanks in advance.

I’m no expert on child development. My three boys are “straight.” Two are fathers, one has Down Syndrome.

I told my wife when they were kids that I hoped they wouldn’t be gay just because life would be tougher for them.

Life throws us curves but the gender issue is one I never faced so it’s hard to know how I would react. What I do know is that we learn more about child development all the time. Just as I gave the example of the use of “ms.” as being weird to me, I also remember that when I was kid children like my son would almost certainly be institutionalized. And “autism” wasn’t even recognized, though there were certainly kids who were just thought to be “off.” (I think that the supposed autism epidemic is just the result of it not being understood 50 years ago and therefore uncounted.)

Sorry for the meandering answer but I guess I’m just sorting this out for myself in writing this.

The one absolute is that I wouldn’t use an issue like this to humiliate parents or children without even third-hand knowledge of their personal situations, situations that are already difficult and frequently painful enough without being used for political purposes.

As opposed to you reading my uninformed opinions, for which I thank you for your interest, I’d commend the following brief testimony to you:

 

[SDRick]

Thanks for sharing this insight. I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the pronoun movement and this helps.

I've always been concerned that children are asked to choose at too early an age their pronouns. I remember ages 11 to 13 as a phase of self discovery for me and it would not have been good to be asked to choose and come out with a self image at that point. Can you shed some light on how you view this? Thanks in advance.

Reminds me a little of what Bill Maher recently said:

“I understand that being trans is different, it’s innate,” Maher said. “But kids do have phases. Kids are fluid about everything. If they know at age 8 what they wanted to be, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses.” He recalled, “I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God no one scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery.”

 

[spacerfc]

Just spent some time reading Elon's tweets from the past few days, I'm genuinely puzzled any neutral observer would think he's changed or losing it or having a meltdown etc. I could do without the whole Fauci thing, I'd rather he let Twitter Files speak for itself, but the rest? Killing bots, relaunching Twitter Blue, sleeping at twitter HQ, showing SV how to run a startup, confirms he never voted for Trump and admits Trump lost the election and would have lost it no matter what, consider buying substack, etc are all good and positive.

If you want to see what meltdown looks like see Alexander Vindman's tweets on Dec 11 and 12...

 

[Cherry Wine]

Maybe it is just me but it seems like communists have no understanding of the concept "slippery slope"?

You’re begging for a time out in my opinion.

 

[EfficientWatts]

Real feel good story there. The pronouns thing is completely psycho. 99 percent of the population and myself are not going tolerate this bs. It is quite simple…and this craziness is confusing the hell out of these kids. This idea is not their own creation. You people are complete psychopaths and need to be called out. The damage you are doing is unspeakable.

Sick.

I'm not going to debate the usage of other pronouns here, however your statement of 99 percent agreeing with you (or I assume some really large amount since I don't think you literally mean 99 percent, at least I hope so) is wrong.

How Americans feel about gender-neutral pronouns in 2022 | YouGov

A recent YouGov poll finds that the number of people who know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” instead of “he” or “she” is slowly increasing.

today.yougov.com

Kids shouldn't choose their 'preferred pronouns,' majority of Americans say in poll

New polling shows most Americans believe children should not be able to choose their own "preferred pronouns" and should instead stick with gendered pronouns that align with their biological sex. Fifty-nine percent of Americans who responded to a newHarvard-Harris poll conducted in late May say...

katv.com

Even with the latter poll, it is a pretty big majority (with regards to kids), but 99 percent-like it is not.

The difference here is that at least I can post stuff to refute and we can debate. However if Elon blasts something similarly out unless community notes gets attached the truth and nuance would be lost in all the noise.

 

[dm28997]

Just paid $8 for Twitter Blue. There are more bots here than on twitter now.
Funny that of all those saying they are leaving Twitter only 1.6% have left.
Love the attack dogs who don't realize they are exposing their own fragile nature.

 

[NigelM]

You're kidding me right? "Follow the white rabbit" is a common English phrase, it is in no way exclusive to QAnon:

On Twitter it’s commonly associated as an early QAnon sign. Sadly it also fits with a number of his other posts over the last few days.