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Yep…I think some here and in the Tesla community have actually been a bit ahead of Elon in understanding just how ugly of a fight it will be to fulfill Tesla’s mission. He‘s getting there methinks.
*in no way do I minimize the crap he’s already experienced with both Tesla and SpaceX….but I do think there’s a part of him that can miss the worst of human nature.
I agree. He’s been slow to grasp the ugly truth that is people.
The flip side to that is that if he felt about people the way I do, for instance, he’d not have been compelled to try and save us from ourselves. He needed to believe the best about people to do the hard and right thing. I admire his unwavering ability to see the best in people even while they’re stabbing him in the back and kicking sand in his face. The amount of goodness and positivity he has to possess to do that is remarkable.
Our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses.
What alternate universe am I living in that TSLA is down more than 6% compared to the NASDAQ, and like everyone here already knows, is printing cash with no debt and massive YOY growth? Mind blowing stuff. Down 38% in the last month! I’m hoping Shanghai going to 24hrs/day and Berlin adding a second line turns this ship around on Monday. The recovery should be steep when it happens….
As investors in and supporters of Tesla, we should remember that Elon Musk has giftedness and autism and these make him different than most people. I say that simply in a factual sense. We are a diverse species and he is an outlier individual who is not remotely neurotypical.
Both of these are spectrums with a wide gamut of common associated psychological characteristics and behavioral tendencies, with varying degrees of intensity between individuals. Elon is on the extreme end of the giftedness spectrum (IQ probably in the 160-180 range) and the mild-to-moderate end of the autism spectrum with a psychological profile formerly diagnosed as Asperger’s Syndrome before being absorbed into the broader Autism Spectrum Disorder bucket. I’ll just call it Asperger’s because that’s what Elon called it and it is a kind of high-functioning Autism.
Over 1 century of modern scientific study of giftedness has shown that it’s about much more than just intellectual aptitude or musical or kinesthetic talent. It’s in fact mostly a condition of unusual overexcitability relative to most of the population, and it’s most intense in profoundly gifted individuals.
Per Wikipedia, Asperger’s:
is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.[7] It was said[14] to differ from other forms of ASD by relatively unimpaired language and intelligence.[15] The syndrome was named after the Austrian pediatricianHans Asperger, who, in 1944, described children in his care who struggled to form friendships, did not understand others' gestures or feelings, engaged in one-sided conversations about their favourite interests, and were clumsy.
…
Autistic characteristics tend to become less obvious in adulthood,[23] but social and communication difficulties usually persist.[24]
It is characterized by qualitative impairment in social interaction, by stereotyped and restricted patterns of behavior, activities, and interests, and by no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or general delay in language.[54]Intense preoccupation with a narrow subject, one-sided verbosity, restricted prosody, and physical clumsiness are typical of the condition, but are not required for diagnosis.
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A lack of demonstrated empathy, affects aspects of communal living for persons with Asperger syndrome.[56] Individuals with Asperger syndrome experience difficulties in basic elements of social interaction, which may include a failure to develop friendships or to seek shared enjoyments or achievements with others (e.g., showing others objects of interest); a lack of social or emotional reciprocity (social "games" give-and-take mechanic); and impaired nonverbal behaviors in areas such as eye contact, facial expression, posture, and gesture.[17]
People with Asperger syndrome may not be as withdrawn around others, compared with those with other forms of autism; they approach others, even if awkwardly. For example, a person with Asperger syndrome may engage in a one-sided, long-winded speech about a favorite topic, while misunderstanding or not recognizing the listener's feelings or reactions, such as a wish to change the topic of talk or end the interaction.[39]This social awkwardness has been called "active but odd".[17] Such failures to react appropriately to social interaction may appear as disregard for other people's feelings and may come across as rude or insensitive.
…
People with an Asperger profile might not be recognized for their empathetic qualities, due to variation in the ways empathy is felt and expressed. Some people feel deep empathy, but do not outwardly communicate these sentiments through facial expressions or language. Some people come to empathy through intellectual processes, using logic and reasoning to arrive at the feelings. It is also important to keep in mind that many people with Asperger profiles have been bullied or excluded by peers in the past and might therefore be guarded around people, which could appear as lack of empathy. People with Asperger profiles can be and are extremely caring individuals; in fact, it is particularly common for those with the profile to feel and exhibit deep concern for human welfare, animal rights, environmental protection, and other global and humanitarian causes.”
If you watch the TED interview from 42:36 when invited to speak about his Asperger’s, in a rare moment of emotion displayed (not surprisingly since he is an Aspie) in his voice and facial expression, he said:
I think everyone’s experience is gonna be somewhat different, but I guess for me social cues were not intuitive, so I was just very bookish and I didn’t understand these—I guess others could sort of intuitively understand what was meant by something. I would just tend to take things very literally as just like the words as spoken were exactly what they meant. That turned out to be wrong. [Laughs] They are not simply saying exactly what they mean; there’s all sorts of other things that are meant. It took me a while to figure that out. So, you know, I was bullied quite a lot. I did not have a sort of happy childhood, to be frank. It was quite, quite, quite rough. But I read a lot of books. I read lots and lots of books. And…gradually I sort of understood more from the books that I was reading and watched a lot of movies…It took me a while to understand things that most people intuitively understand
His Asperger’s and giftedness gives him on the plus side:
Intense drive for social justice and humanitarian causes
Extreme self-discipline
Obsession with factual truth and absorbing information, especially about physics and how machines work
The ability to think logically with cognitive ease, applying abstract reasoning and the scientific method for essentially all of his thinking with an almost incredible ability to avoid the influence of irrational cognitive bias traps
Incredible focus on his special interests
The cognitive power to make things happen
A childhood and adolescence primarily spent devouring nonfiction books and “typing strange symbols into a computer by [himself] all night”
Savant-level skill at designing and leading organizations with social engineering principles
Obsessive desire to optimize everything even when it requires rocking the boat and causing social discomfort
Lack of caring about social hierarchy and humility that leads to working on an IKEA desk in the middle of the Fremont factory and sleeping on the floor and openly mocking how wrong his own past decisions were
Imagination and creativity
Stand up comedy abilities
These characteristics are indispensable for achieving the type of success he’s had as a leader. I think also they’re indispensable in attracting other autistic gifted people to join the team, and having a critical mass of such individuals is a big reason on why the culture at his companies is so uniquely focused on dropping ego, challenging authority, demanding evidence, avoiding irrationality, treating everyone fairly, and working like dogs for audacious humanitarian objectives.
On the downside it gives him:
Severe difficulty reading the room without active analysis and conscious cognitive effort
Severe difficulty judiciously filtering the words he says or considering their social consequences
Impulsivity
Depressive tendencies and a life-altering experience of existential dread during adolescence that most people don’t experience until at a more mature age and can either rationalize it away with some illogical explanation or ignore the questions successfully by focusing on daily life
Difficulty expressing empathy
Tendency to go off on verbose, socially inappropriate, tangential monologues
Rudeness, often unintentionally
Odd speech patterns, body language, verbal tics and abrupt transitions that can make listeners distracted from the message being communicated or even make listeners misinterpret the meaning altogether
A strong tendency to speak his mind when he thinks injustice is occurring and take action on controversial issues even when it’s upsetting people
You may notice some connections between these characteristics of his disability and the mistakes he’s has made and the social misunderstandings he’s had over the years. I think it’s pretty clear he’s trying his best to figure it out despite lifelong struggles with bullying and negative social interactions. Elon Musk is a human and the bad will come with the good. This is why he has good leaders around him like Gwynn Shotwell who compensate for his weaknesses with their own strengths. I will take him any day over his typical CEO counterparts who are charming charismatic sociopaths who care more about playing politics to gain money, status and power than they care about pushing humanity forward.
I think that we as a forum and we as a human race could stand to cut Elon some slack when it results in inconveniences for us. I was disappointed to perceive a lack of compassion on this board in recent months, but then I thought maybe it’s partly due to lack of awareness of where Elon is coming from and the challenges he faces on a daily basis from a disability he didn’t ask to have. It’s fine to criticize mistakes and spread suggestions for alternative behavior on social media that may percolate to him, but the anger and character attacks seem to be inappropriate. Let’s spend more time appreciating the positives like the fact that he has been working himself to the bone for love of humanity for the last 30 years and succeeding with an unparalleled track record. I can’t wait to wait the epic Tesla production ramp and Starship orbital flights this year. And maybe FSD.
While I love the advantages he brings on technical matters, I shutter at him trying his hand at a social media company. His ego and self centeredness makes him a much bigger threat than most people realize. How can someone this socially challenged even remotely think he can make the right decisions for Twitter. He (and Tesla) have been wronged by many on the left (lack of recognition of Tesla's accomplishments are a big thing). But I fear he will try to use Twitter for revenge rather than really trying to make it better. Oh and who can persuade him that he is wrong?
God he's done so much good, sending Starlink equipment to Ukraine, allowing free supercharging in disaster areas to name just a couple. Actually changing an entire industry to save the planet!
My daughter hates him and I always defended him against the latest media blaze. Now I feel at times like an evangelist defending Trump. Hate the sin and not the sinner? At some point he will need to man up and admit something is wrong with his thinking on some things. I think this is where Asperger’s will hinder if not outright stop anything.
I gave you a like on your post and agree that personal attacks do little to help. These futile attempts will not change anything. But I don't think we should just stand aside and watch just not sure the right approach. Standing silent is not going to work nor will trying force.
There’s a recent trend of putting Tesla sites near SpaceX sites.
As our Brazilian member @jbcarioca has recently pointed out during the earlier Indonesia discussions, northern Brazil is the other best candidate for building significant launch capacity because it has great potential for equatorial launches, and Brazil has an established supply of aerospace engineers from Embraer and its suppliers. Also the area in question surrounding the Amazon River delta is conveniently in a time zone only two hours ahead of Texas which makes business a lot easier and would mess with Elon’s sleep schedule less.
SpaceX is not going to have a launch site in Brazil with Brazilian aerospace engineers. It's unlawful due to ITAR. The way permitted by ITAR is to have an agreement between the US and Brazil governing launches of US rockets from Brazilian territory, then SpaceX launches from Brazil would need to be licensed by the US FAA as if they were done from US territory, and lastly all workers coming into contact with the controlled missile technology would need to be US citizens or permanent residents.
The same with SpaceX launching from Indonesia. The only difference is that Indonesia does not yet have an agreement with the US governing launches of US rockets from Indonesia territory, while Brazil recently signed one.
On Saturday, Ediel Ruiz and his partner, Edith Parker, took a trip to California City to visit Parker's family following her graduation from USC. Ruiz said he received a notification on his phone that the car alarm to his Tesla Model 3 was going off. He went outside to see his car covered in...
Windshield looks broken, thus the flames coming through it from burning interior.
Not the cells, those vent out the bottom.
Pack HV stuff is all under rear seat, but would expect burn through where child seat wasn't first.
Could have been personal electronics crushed under the seat. Hopefully, they can root cause it.
I am so psyched about this legal team ... that will " do the right thing"
dealing with bully's the only way it should be done by hitting back and hard !!!!
I hope this means building cases against short sellers as well. Pass the info on to the SEC, and if the SEC does nothing, suing the SEC for dereliction. (I'm sure the attorneys here will tell me that is probably not possible).
Think about this question for a while and how absurdly silly it sounds.
Have you had to sit back for 30 years and think about the way you communicate with and understand other human beings? Elon has. That makes him qualified.
Elon is an engineer, he wouldn't be doing this if he didn't have real tangible plans in his mind of how to make the system run better. And I trust his engineering instincts.
That and the simple logic it can't possibly get much worse.
Mods - Can we just ban everyone for a week? Me included. Just a rambling monologue and bear pics next week.
Wonder if Leo got a margin call. That would explain the the high volume and today's relative weakness. His plea to Tesla for a share buyback was an indication to me he might be in trouble.
*considers (for a hot second) coming out of perpetual cocktail hour to go back to school to get a law degree because who doesn’t like a good ole fashion street fight*
Wild theory, and less than even odds of it panning out, but I can say I told ya so.
Twitter is up on the day and looks like Elon may have sold a little more to plug any more financing gaps. I think if he does announce that, that might actually be a positive.
Horrible tape to sell into, but who knows.
Edit: for the record, yes I know Elon said no more sales planned, but of course plans change. Not saying he's going back on his word or anything like that.
I'm legitimately quite surprised that a company which had at one point a $1T market cap doesn't already have a large and busy legal department. Elon could have saved himself a lot of trouble already, like with that bogus racial discrimination lawsuit, if he always had a large team of trained corporate attack lawyers ready to strike at a moment's notice.
Tesla has historically underspent on almost everything except engineering---Elon famously mentioned it was an error to have underspent on logistics (during delivery hell), then later same mention of underspending errors on service centers, and on charging locations, for example and promised to correct.
The CA lawsuit stuff shows they've also vastly underspent on HR and Legal and other internal support staff.
Short term this produced a superior actual hard product, but with weird support gaps... (because there simply was not enough $ to spend enough on everything they needed and stay solvent- so they picked engineering- smart move)
But now they're swimming in cash so it's time to fix some of this internal/systemic stuff they'd gotten by spending a lot less on in the past when you had to.
I'm legitimately quite surprised that a company which had at one point a $1T market cap doesn't already have a large and busy legal department. Elon could have saved himself a lot of trouble already, like with that bogus racial discrimination lawsuit, if he always had a large team of trained corporate attack lawyers ready to strike at a moment's notice.
Tesla has an active legal department. There are three ways to do this.
1. Tesla does it itself with attorneys on the payroll.
2. Tesla does it itself supplemented by attorneys employed by law firms, but assigned full time to Tesla and potentially on-site at Tesla facilities.
3. Tesla has law firms handle the cases with oversight from its own attorneys.
Musk is now focusing at least the litigation piece on #1, perhaps also #2.
#1 is not common, except perhaps in non-litigation circumstances (e.g., Exxon's corporate and leasing attorneys). Tesla would maybe not be unique in going this path for litigation, but it would be one of the rare exceptions. Normally, litigation is feast-or-famine, so companies tend to lay this off to law firms who can spread unused capacity over several clients and surge when needed.
#2 is increasingly being used by large corporations in the US, but generally not for litigation (that I know of).
There may be differences in how attorney privilege works with #1 versus #2 and #3. Not sure. Not an attorney.
Wild theory, and less than even odds of it panning out, but I can say I told ya so.
Twitter is up on the day and looks like Elon may have sold a little more to plug any more financing gaps. I think if he does announce that, that might actually be a positive.
Horrible tape to sell into, but who knows.
Edit: for the record, yes I know Elon said no more sales planned, but of course plans change. Not saying he's going back on his word or anything like that.
The volume was pretty high compared to other tech stocks. It could just be because of the ridiculous option volume or like someone pointed out above, Uncle Leo got margin called.
Elon Selling on a day the hit piece came out? I guess anything’s possible but I don’t see it.
SpaceX is not going to have a launch site in Brazil with Brazilian aerospace engineers. It's unlawful due to ITAR. The way permitted by ITAR is to have an agreement between the US and Brazil governing launches of US rockets from Brazilian territory, then SpaceX launches from Brazil would need to be licensed by the US FAA, and lastly all workers coming into contact with the controlled missile technology would need to be US citizens or permanent residents.
The same with SpaceX launching from Indonesia. The only difference is that Indonesia does not yet have an agreement with the US governing launches of US rockets from Indonesia territory, while Brazil recently signed one.
I’m not a lawyer or international trade regulation expert, but I have worked at Boeing for years and received plenty of mandatory ITAR training and I have personally touched military aerospace hardware and technical data.
My understanding is that ITAR does not prohibit export of so-called “defense articles” for foreigners but instead basically requires:
Registration with the US Department of State
Approval and subsequent grant of an export license at Dept of State discretion
Extensive access controls and documentation for compliance thereafter
Selling defense articles into foreign hands is one of the USA’s largest foreign trade sectors. US companies are even allowed to make facilities for defense articles on foreign soil with foreign employees, such as Boeing’s major presence working on military hardware and software in Australia by Australian employees for the Royal Air Force. This policy actually enhances overall security for the US, NATO and other countries with which we have good diplomatic relations because it enables us to help our allies and strengthen diplomatic relations and protect overall global trade.
You can get a summary here or read the whole thing in the Code of Federal Regulations here.
Any person who engages in the United States in the business of manufacturing or exporting or temporarily importing defense articles, or furnishing defense services, is required to register with the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls under § 122.2.
The article linked in is line with this idea. It defines a formal agreement with the Dept of State and the Brazilian government regarding how to handle export of certain US defense articles to Brazil.
Launching from Somalia, another equatorial option, is definitely prohibited because it’s on the list of countries that are ineligible for defense exports. Brazil and Indonesia are eligible, and if the Dept of State grants SpaceX a license they could be allowed to export rockets and technical data to either. “Exports”, in the broad sense used in ITAR lingo, could include letting Brazilian/Indonesian employees and contractors see and work on the rockets.
Brazil has major advantages for Tesla besides just the SpaceX synergy because it has the 3rd largest nickel reserves globally after Indonesia and Australia, and it’s nearby to the unrivaled South American lithium reserves in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. Like Berlin, Austin and Shanghai, it also has a fairly central location on its continent relative to the population distribution, which is ideal for logistics once Tesla begins seriously selling in South America. There has been way too much talk from management about lithium and nickel supply and shortening the distance atoms travel to dismiss Brazil as a future Tesla factory location.
