Elon Musk: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Tonight we're going to dive straight into our main story, this is our

last

show of the year so we thought we'd focus on someone who's had a pretty great 12 months, Elon Musk, a man who can take out almost any bad guy. in a movie there is a Lex Luther posing for the cover of Metropolis Maniacs monthly there why not, Mr. Bond, me and my childhood girlfriend hope you die. I just bought your media company. I'm about to undress you in parts. There are first racist spaces. sheriff and finally the least reinvention of Billy Zayn's character in Titanic, truly the man has range.

Elon has been in the news all year from test launching the most powerful rocket ever built to this

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when he had to recall two million cars due to safety concerns, even challenging Mark. Zuckerberg to a cage fight to which Zuckerberg responded send me the location and I can suggest you both the inner volcano and then of course there is Twitter. He calls it X now, but the rest of us still call it Twitter. He officially acquired it 12 months ago. and since then there has been one fiasco after another, most recently when he tweeted his agreement with this anti-Semitic publication calling the great replacement theory the real truth that caused many big advertisers to flee and then, in the middle of denying any anti-Semitism. -semitic intention Elon decided to make fun of the sponsors who had left don't advertise they don't want them to advertise no what do you mean if someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising blackmail me with money go yourself but see yourself that's clear, I hope it's wow, it's hard to say what's more embarrassing there, the fact that the richest man in the world is playing the card you're not breaking up with me, I'm breaking up with you or that he's doing it in confused silence while wearing a jacket from the Ralph Lauren's midlife crisis collection, he's clearly going for the bad boy, but he ended up looking more like the red chip from Rescue Rangers now that the clip actually circulated, but for my money, this exchange a few seconds later is even better, no In fact.

What is this advertising boycott going to do? It's going to kill the company and you think I do, but the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we will document it in great detail, but there are those advertisers, I imagine. they're going to say they're going to say we didn't kill the company oh yeah they're going to say tell the earth let's see how the earth responds to that yeah tell the earth and honestly I hope they Do it. I hope he tries to tell every living creature on the planet, including those weird deep-sea fish, how advertiser boycotts are going to kill Twitter so one of them can open their objectively horrible jaws and say Yeah, man, because you said That's weird about juice.

We live in a black void and even we understand the order of operations here and look, I could talk for hours about what Elon has done to Twitter, many in the media do because it's where they spend most of their work days. , but the truth is that it is not the most important thing that Elon is in charge of is possibly not even the most important social media site that we all know. The only social media app that matters these days is the Venmo comments section, which is where the real drama is what Musk has definitely had on Twitter.

What he has changed is the amount of people who perceive him because for a long time he was seen as a unique genius who would save humanity and was described as a real-life Iron Man. It's a comparison that even welcomed Cameo as himself in Iron Man 2. While I never liked those comparisons as far as I'm concerned, the only real-life Iron Man is Troy Herby, who spent his entire life designing armor that could withstand a grizzly bear attack and was kind enough to film the tests. ready Troy I'm ready here he comes yes, that's the hero we deserve that's my Iron Man still for a long time Elon's public image was that of a famous maverick inventor who eliminated bureaucracy, revolutionized space travel and made electric cars They were great and he does a lot of things besides Twitter, he is the director of five other companies, Tesla SpaceX, the boring company neuralink and xai, and thanks to his rollercoaster fortunes, he can claim the double distinction of being the richest person in the world and the first person. ever losing $200 billion, which is hard to even understand, is like listening to someone win a marathon after accidentally running 200 miles in the wrong direction and hearing Elon say that he's been doing this at least in part to benefit the humanity, he said recently. of Tesla, I have done more for the environment than any human on earth, which shows a pretty strong messianic streak.

In fact, Samman, the CEO of Open AI, who worked and clashed with Musa, said that Elon desperately wants the world to be saved, but only if he can be the one to save it, which is a pretty big asterisk, it's like Jesus says in the Book of Matthew, love your neighbor, but most importantly me, and if you don't, find your own heaven, Jay Grizzle, and I know there are people who love Elon and people who hate him for complete and there will be parts of this article that will irritate both groups; There are also people who would understandably prefer to just ignore it, but as you'll see, we may have passed the point where that's an option for any of us, so

tonight

let's look at Elon Musk and start with how he earned his reputation. business genius.

I'm going to skip the early years, growing up in South Africa and then immigrating to the US via Canada during college. Years, you can read any number of books about it or just ask your next date Umble who showed up in a fedora and threw the SN cut t-shirt ready to spend the whole night talking about it. Elon first made his fortune by creating a company called zip 2 with his brother before helping run PayPal alongside Peter Teal and if I could have been a fly on that wall, I would have flown right into a hot light bulb.

He then invested that personal fortune in space for a company. that would create and launch its own rockets and spaceships and that's a pretty brave move to go from an online payment system to literal rocket science, although, as some point out, SpaceX wasn't exactly starting from square one, in What SpaceX has been very successful at is taking basically off-the-shelf technology that was developed by NASA 50 years ago and simplifying it that way, it's kind of the Henry Ford of space because Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, he just figured out how to make it. . The car you know is commercially viable, yes, like Henry Ford.

Elon Musk managed to build on technology that others had invented. Actually, that's not the only way he's like Henry Ford, which you'd know if you ever Googled any of his names in the word anti. -Semitism, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here, the point is that Musk took a big risk by starting a rocket company that almost didn't work out, his first three attempts to launch one failed and then he made a really bold bet when he had that third one. . consecutive failure, did you think he needed to pack this? I never, why not, never give up. 8

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s later, Musk bet the company on another flight that we took off and this time everything worked perfectly if that fourth launch had.

If it had worked, that would have been it. We would not have had the resources to set up a fifth. You couldn't have continued at that time. Yes, death would have been. I think it's inevitable. It's really impressive, although I will say there is less of it. weird ways of saying we would have gone out of business then death is inevitable, wording matters, that's why people say we just had a baby instead of Lisa, life outside your HOA, same meaning, feeling different and that Trend continued through the subsequent Spacex effort, something that like this The former NASA chief points out is not something they could ever get away with if we were losing rockets at the rate Elon Musk is losing his big money.

Starship would have been out of business. Congress would have shut us down if we lost. one Starship let alone six or however many there have been, we can't do that right, the US government can't waste billions of dollars just blowing things up in the vague hope that it will somehow become a success, unless of course those things are Iraq or Afghanistan, so SpaceX started with a big gamble, flirted with disaster and then became a massive success and that patent persisted with Tesla, that company was funded in part by pre-selling cars to future owners only to suffer repeated production delays and spiraling costs (just look at Musk at a meeting of those early buyers where he told them the price had gone up on cars they had already bought, we trust you and now you're just turning around and changing the price on us. not tell us and then we found out the other way around and now we are a little hurt because they didn't tell us that we can't sell cars because you know, less than what it cost us to produce, if anything, more behind, more than that.

It could be an accident, there's a lot of comments after everything is fine, there seemed to be a bit of anger from some people in the room, um, who felt that we had done a kind of bait and switch, uh, and I want say, that's it. It's kind of true that there was a bit of bait and switch, I mean, that's it, I mean, what happened was very difficult, yeah, you could see how you could consider harassing customers with one price and changing it to another. a bait and switch, there is actually a great economics book on the subject titled words mean what words mean and yet Tesla is now a huge success with factories on three continents delivering over a million vehicles a year, while SpaceX is currently valued at around 150 billion making it one of the most valuable private companies in the world although it is worth noting that its boldness sometimes comes with a tendency to over-promise and show off products long before they are available. ready like in 2019 when mus decided to demonstrate how indestructible his new Cyber ​​truck was by having his chief designer throw a steel ball at his window Bron, could you try to break this glass?

Please, yes, sure, yes, oh well, maybe that was a little difficult, yes, it's not great, but it's also lovely. I'll be honest, there's something I like. I like the Cyber ​​truck, I mean I don't want to own one or drive near one, it's basically a polished £7,000 refrigerator that moves at 60 million an hour and being driven odds are a real piece, but there's something appealing In one Man. He's so passionate about his idea that he's willing to ignore questions about aesthetics, performance, durability, practicality, safety, and who on Earth really wants to spend up to $100,000 to drive every kid's first attempt at drawing a car and building it anyway. , and that's not the only embarrassing product launch.

Two years ago he unveiled a Tesla robot by showing a prototype that was just a dancer in a robot suit and it was exactly as silly as it sounds. I love it, apparently all you have to do to launch a robotics company is invest in spandex. monkey and a dancer, so with that in mind, look at my new creation, the robot race is on Elo, the race is on, look at it, go well, okay, enough robot, enough, enough, you can turn off Rob now , thank you for your service, look, embarrassing moment. As an aside, there are a lot of things I like about Elon companies.

SpaceX has made real achievements like reusable rocket technology and making access to space easier and more affordable, and Tesla has pushed automakers to get serious about electric cars in a way that would have seemed impossible ago. 20 years, but As one of Elon's critics points out, that progress has costs that are often overlooked. Is Elon Musk a net benefit to society? I would say it is. I think the EV race is a great thing. Space exploration is really hopeful and simply inspires the The problem is in the word network and that is that once we decide that an individual or a company is a net good for society, we do not want to hold him or the company responsible for anything , even if you think Elon is a net asset, he isn't.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about what he's doing down the road and let's start with his employees, many of whom have called working for Elon a nightmare and not just on Twitter, where he fired most of the staff and ordered the rest to leave. works extremely hard, it has been like this in all companies, this first SpaceX employee will attest that it was not unusual to receive a phone call from him at 3: in the morning, on your cell phone, you better have it on next to your bed to respond, he just started yelling at me, telling me I'm stupid and I don't know what I'm talking about and I've seen him do it to other very smart people, so Ihe will definitely find your weakness in your personality in your character in your spirit and uh I wouldn't say exploit it but you will definitely break well that sounds unpleasant not only that your boss calls you to abuse you but because there are only two . reasons why someone should call you at 3: in the morning and it's because a loved one has an emergency and needs your help or your house is on fire and even then that could have been a text message and the damage is not just emotional Workers in their factories complain of immense pressure and unrealistic deadlines.

A report a few years ago about its Tesla factory in Fremont, California, found that employees complained that style and speed trumped safety and that workers had been cut by machinery crushed by forklifts burned in electrical explosions and sprayed with molten metal, one worker even claimed she was told Elon didn't want signs or anything yellow like caution tape in the factory, which isn't good because caution tape is important, it lets people know something might be dangerous and unstable like a skull and crossbones in a bottle or this jacket in a middle-aged M now Tesla denies this, but its claims about its factories may be difficult to verify, even as regulators try to get involved in Musk's companies, it is You can strongly resist them, for example, your Nevada Giga Factory was at one point denied entry. to Osan state inspectors for almost 3 months, which is ridiculous, the word gigafactory alone should be enough to justify an immediate inspection, but it's not just the workers who must be willing to put themselves at risk, sometimes they are its own customers for whom it has long been developing autonomous vehicle technology. and has at times consciously exaggerated its capabilities, the two software available are called Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, but despite their names, neither system can drive a car on its own, but in this 2016 ad it appears to be doing precisely that.

Amplified by the introductory text that Elon personally requested that says the car drives itself, but that was extremely misleading, it was driving a pre-planned route, it was just driving itself the same way your nana goes up and down stairs alone and Tesla will note that they tell drivers that they should keep their hands on the wheel and take control if something goes wrong and I hope that drivers do that because they've been inviting them to try out full autonomous driving in beta mode, basically having drivers find bugs in new software even on complicated city streets and with predictable results we go to turn left and they honk at me but now it just turns right we are supposed to go left.

Ogen is not a professional test driver nor is he one. He is a Tesla employee, however, he is one of the more than 50,000 customers that Tesla has allowed access to FSD beta. We just ran a red light. We just ran a red light, which is pretty alarming, especially when you see people pushing a stroller too close. that car because even if Tesla drivers volunteered to participate in this high-risk experiment, the people around them surely didn't, no one got an alert on their phone saying "Hey Tesla, please agree to participate." in the beta test that is currently approaching." If you rush, time is a factor and Musk has taken a pretty brazen attitude towards self-driving vehicle crash deaths in 2016, when concerns first arose.

He told reporters that if they wrote stories that discouraged people from using autonomous driving systems or had regulators approve them, then they would be killing people by essentially arguing that any deaths today will be more than offset by the lives saved later and just This week, when the Washington Post noted that they counted around 40 fatal or serious accidents involving Tesla's driver assistance software, Tesla responded by saying we believe it is morally indefensible not to make these systems available to a broader set of consumers, given the incontrovertible data that shows they are saving lives and preventing injuries, but instead of producing that data, he promised that in the near future there will be more detailed information publicly available, which I'm sorry, just isn't how the data behaves and that comes from the number one data on television.

Anyone who collects incontrovertible data would give you a more specific date than the near future because data, as we all know, is also calendar and look, I know myself and look. History is littered with business titans who were shitty or broken people, from Thomas Edison to Henry Ford to Steve Jobs. The difference is that they generally didn't open their brains to allow the entire world to constantly look inward, but Elon does and the glimpses we get can be terrifying and that brings us back to Twitter. Musk has been a heavy user for four years posting classic tweets like I put art in a fart 69 days after 420 20 again haha ​​and technically alcohol is a solution which technically it isn't.

It's a joke and his biographer will tell you that he is addicted to the app to a really problematic point. One day he was traveling with a friend. Antonio thank you and Musk had continued tweeting late at night making these ridiculous tweets, sometimes very damaging, and then the friend said. Let me take your phone and I'll put it in the safe here in the hotel room. A friend enters the code and says that way you can't use it late at night at 3:00 in the morning. Musk calls hotel security. to get him to open the safe and start tweeting, he was addicted to tweeting.

Look, I'm sure that when the average security guard is called to a billionaire's hotel room at 3:00 a.m. m., they have a list of things to look forward to and it begins. and ends with a dead body, so it must have been a pleasant surprise when he walked into the room with an empty trash can. He found Elon Musk dialing random numbers in his hotel safe just because he thought "I put art in a fart" and the whole world. He just had to know it and look at it. Elon's tweets were never as cool, not like mine, of course, which are certified Banger after Banger, after Banger, after Banger.

I don't miss it, but in recent years they have taken a turn towards the nasty and conspiratorial, moving deeper and deeper into the realm of right-wing trolls and many point to one moment in particular as the tipping point here pandemic lockdowns California is 40 millions of residents are on lockdown at the moment the government ordered Musk to close his Tesla factories in California I mean, he was angry that his factories were ultimately forced to close, yes that's what he wanted them to be there and he wanted them to work, he thought it was an existential crisis if Tesla didn't succeed, really that for the world, for all of us and then it became strange free America now people their freedom in California has been half empty this whole time people support his freedom Musk told his employees that he intended to defy orders and go to work CEO Elon Musk tweeted I will be online with everyone otherwise if anyone gets arrested I ask that it just be me okay whatever really leads me to the conclusion is how different Musk is from the rest of us because there's Rich and he's aloof and then I asked the police not to arrest anyone else, so We should be rich and aloof and, look, let's admit that many of our brains broke down a bit during the pandemic.

I think we can all agree that it would be really cool if the entire pandemic chapter in the history textbook of the future just said strange times. We had to be there, we tried our best, but Elon didn't channel his anxiety in one of the normal ways, like spraying groceries with disinfectant, getting really into baking sourdough bread, or tracking down and buying one-of-a-kind rat erotica, you know. , normal things we do. Instead, his brain snapped in the direction of the right-wing extremists who were loudly opposing the lockdowns, and once he started siding with them on those complaints, he found himself sympathizing with their broader concerns about a mental virus. woke up and they were being mocked and shadowbanned and Twitter generally disrespects him and since he was also the richest man in the world, he could fix all this by just buying it all, which is what he did then and I don't have time to going over every bad decision he made on Twitter, although he very quickly removed about 80% of the staff, dissolved trust and the Security Council blew up the verification system, exercised the same censorship he claimed to have against Rea, reactivated the accounts of several white supremacists, posted the Twitter archives in which he basically mixed up the email of several irresponsible left-leaning tech idiots struggling with the impossible job of moderating content for a huge elite conspiracy to sign his right changed the name to X put a gigantic an increase in nasty rhetoric from Musk himself, including pushing for a transphobic documentary that he says all parents should see. this is interestingly in response to a tweet saying black people kill each other, white people commit suicide, and promoting this office meme falsely implying there had been a cover-up over pizzagate.

I didn't think it was possible, but it really makes me miss the man who once posted, send me. your memes and this image of a turtle on wheels with the message that science has gone too far and although Elon will argue, there has been an increase in hate speech on the platform or pandering to white nationalists, you know Who disagrees with him? that white nationalists simply listen to Nick Fenes telling Richard Spencer everything Elon has done for his movement. It's only been a year since Musk acquired Twitter, which really isn't that long, and the changes didn't even start rolling out until less than a year. ago and yet the change has been dramatic, how much the window has noticeably moved on issues like white identity, seemingly suddenly becoming dominant;

It wasn't for a long time, it seemed like Charlie Kirk said a thing or two about it

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year and then this year now everyone is white nationalist now everyone is white identitarian you open one of the social platforms it's so hot it's so fast it changes the public opinion practically overnight and really in our favor wow, that's all horrible, but using the term white identitarian just doesn't fool anyone, that's what writing the word racist on a job application makes it seem who went to college and the fact that Elon seems to be increasingly radicalized is a big problem because we have put a lot of power in his hands and a lot more than you imagine, remember when I said that no one is making the big changes that he includes the government and over the years that means many things this country depends on have been outsourced to Musk every day.

Musk's companies control more of the Internet's power grid, transportation system, objects in orbit, the nation's security infrastructure, and its energy supply, to take just one example. SpaceX has now put more than 4,500 Starlink satellites into orbit, meaning Musk's company now accounts for more than half of all. active satellites and that puts the US government in a bind. Just watch a National Security Council spokesperson try to explain why he wouldn't act on Elon's push for that big replacement. Tweet theory: There is innovation in the private sector It would be foolish to move away from I am not aware of any specific efforts to address our concerns about his rhetoric, but that does not mean that we accept or agree with or tolerate in any way that anti-Semitic rhetoric that he pushed , yes, we are now at the point where the government is explicitly saying that we have chosen to look the other way on antisemitism or, as it is more commonly known, a daddy's house.

Also, and the problem is not just the optics of having someone as erratic as Elon in charge of half of the world's satellites. His views can change the shape of world events when Russia invaded Ukraine. One of his first actions was S his access to the Internet is now Musk. To their credit, they agreed to give Ukraine access to their Starlink network and donated hardware that allows them to access the Internet via satellite, and they were very grateful. HeLieutenant Taras Baret is a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military and told us that Starling is crucial to commanding troops on the battlefield.

Elon. Additionally, we have been very grateful to Space 6 and Elon Musk. We all thought none of our offenses would be that successful. It is true that the Ukrainian military was grateful to SpaceX and Elon Musk, which is one of those headlines that even a few years ago. ago it would have sounded impossible like Panera Bread's lemonade being linked to the second death and Henry Kissinger finally dead and by the way, I'm pretty sure it was the lemonade that got him, but as time went on, Elon toyed with the idea of withdrawing service looking complaining that the cost was too high even as he seemed increasingly friendly to Russia, at one point he said that Russia should be allowed to annex Ukrainian lands and tweeted a proposed peace plan that would essentially give him to Russia everything they wanted, perhaps most notably rejecting the Ukrainian request to activate Starlink. in Crimea, allowing them to launch an attack on Russian ships, apparently because a Russian official warned him that it could lead to a nuclear response.

Now I guess that must be true, right? What are Russian officials going to do? Lying to an easily flattered CEO to get exactly what they want I don't see it and look Elon still insists he's pro-Ukraine and that's fine, but we US ​​officials are now in the awkward position of having to give in to him in politics. A Pentagon spokesman even said he let a reporter interview an official. only if Musk gave permission saying we'll talk to you if Elon wants us to, which isn't great, you know, before I respond on behalf of the most powerful military on Earth, let me run this up the chain and make sure it's good with the admiral. dank memes 420 Elon Musk could not have humiliated the Pentagon more if he had opened his own building next door called hexagon the Pentagon that now the Pentagon has signed a contract with Starling to take over certain services and depend less on Musk's whim but even the Elon's own biographer has expressed concern about how important he has become, so how does Elon feel about having so much global power?

You know, he tells me how I'm in the middle of this, but, frankly, he loves it, he loves the drama, he loves being. The epic hero I think he is a little dangerous because he loves waiting too much, he loves drama. Sorry, I'm really not that comfortable with one of the most powerful people on Earth being summed up in the same way you described Andy. Cohen on New Year's Eve, look, the fact is whether we like it or not and the answer is absolutely not, a lot of very important things in the future will depend on how Elon feels, which is a scary thing to say about anyone, but especially this guy, so what can be done here?

Well, it's simple actually, we just created a robust infrastructure economy that can resist easy monopolization by private companies headed by overconfident billionaires and we did it about 15 years ago. Two problems with that: a time machine doesn't exist and two, the only person with the resources and ambition to build one is the last one. that you'd want to do that because he'll probably use it to go back in time and high-five Baby Hitler and look, I'll be honest, my feelings towards Elon changed a little while writing this article. I'm probably more impressed now by what he's doing but more concerned about the fact that he's the one who's been doing it because he cultivates an image that he's simply too Visionary, too original to follow other people's rules and dismisses the harm that cause like the cost of innovation and saving Humanity, but the truth is that way of thinking is not even remotely original, we have seen it so many times before, the least surprising thing on earth is a middle-aged billionaire CEO with points of view selfish libertarians, increasingly racist politics, and a messiah complex and it's about time you face the kind of accountability that should come with that and not just from the echo chamber you bought online, but from everyone whose lives are involved.

They are very affected by him and I know that Elon might not be happy. With this piece, he might even permanently delete my Twitter account, which is fine by me after all, when this absolute treasure disappears, Elon will be the one who will have to explain why to Earth and might say he's saving humanity. , What have I done? I have revolutionized industries and I don't admit anything yet, but I can remind you that I have already taken the first step towards building a robot empire Bow down and worship your metal gods bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce