• Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    11 months ago

    Normal people used to like Elon. Then he made a cave submarine and was made to look foolish and the mask slipped.

    • Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz
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      11 months ago

      I started off with immense respect for Tesla succeeding in delivering a mainstream electric car, and SpaceX delivering on successful commercial space flight. Finally, I thought. A rich billionaire who might actually be doing good.

      Then the paedo cave thing happened. Ok. Guy can’t take criticism. That comment as uncalled for.

      Now? Holy shit. The guy is a full on racist, anti trans, misogynist, white supremacist, conspiracy peddling whack a doodle.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    A member of my extended family loves Tesla and SpaceX and thinks Musk is a genius. It’s frustrating because he’s a very smart, generous, and chill family member…but then there’s his Musk fan boy thing. I do my best to ignore it and focus on his good traits.

    • Nobody@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s easy to forget that Musk was seen as an “IRL” iron man not that long ago. He was buying tech companies, taking credit for their accomplishments, and making seemingly credible promises of colonizing Mars in the near future.

      It all went to shit with Twitter. Musk exposed himself as a guy born with the silverest of silver spoons who failed upward all his life on the backs of the work of his betters who he never paid properly. That’s where all the extra money came from.

      • CanadianCorhen@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        ehh, he exposed himself earlier. I was a huge fan until the whole “accusing the diver of being a pedo because of how he looked”, and from there Musk went downhill, quickly.

        • Sho@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Glad someone else remembers this, all because ppl didn’t like his “personal mini sub for every one of the trapped children” idea…meanwhile the guy he insulted literally saved every single one of them one by one.

          • aiccount@monyet.cc
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            11 months ago

            There actually were brave men who saved the kids for real, none of which were involved in any way with the childish Musk name calling BS. Those men’s names are John Volanthen, Richard Stanton, Jason Mallinson, Chris Jewell, Richard Harris, and Craig Challen and they are heros and they don’t deserve to have their bravery credited to anyone else no matter how childish some random billionaire is.

        • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Yeah that was the first time I had to do a second glance at one of his comments. The scuba thing really sent him down a dark path lol

        • somethingsnappy@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          A huge fan of government sunsidies, or false promises? He did manage to hire engineers to save him in some cases

      • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Reminds me of Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs was a toxic jerk who was very good at taking credit for the genius of Wozniak and others. Jobs had some brains and talent, but he was mostly just a whip cracker and ruthless self promoter. His pedestal has always annoyed me. Musk is similar and probably worse.

        • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          One of the many truths we’ve really learned over the past few years is that it’s easier to con someone than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. In fact, it’s easier to keep conning them, over and over, than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. That’s what Musk does. That’s what Trump does. They also benefit from the tendency of people to believe there’s a close association between material success and ability, or success and intelligence, or success and moral standing. It’s a modernized version of the divine right of kings.

          I don’t think the analogy to Jobs is great though. I never knew Jobs, but I know several people who knew him and worked with him. The consensus opinion among them seems to be that Jobs had a dysfunction like a lot of people in the industry do. He had poor control over a relatively short temper. He was also aware of it and worked to overcome it, but like we know about people with cognitive dysfunctions, it’s not something you can just will your way out of. We depend on our brains to tell us when something is going wrong, and so when the brain is the thing that’s going wrong, it can be pretty bad at that job.

          What Jobs did have was an intuitive grasp of the relationship between a person and technology. He saw that there was more to it than a beige box that people worked or played on. He saw a way of creating an impression of a personal connection between a person and a personalizable but inanimate object in a way that few people have achieved before or since. Yes, Jobs could be a whole bag of dicks, but from all accounts that’s when he was at his least effective.

          But at the end of the day, before Jobs was hired back as CEO to rescue Apple, things had gone to shit because they had started to think of themselves as just a computer manufacturer. There was no vision for an iMac, an iPod, or an iPhone. He got it wrong sometimes, too. The Lisa was as big a disaster as the Edsel. Ping was a disaster. The original Maps was a disaster. The job of the CEO - Jobs’ job if you will - is to provide vision and direction, and to get it right.

          That wasn’t what Woz was good at. He is intelligent and a creative thinker. He is a tinkerer and a hacker. He can be a bit of a tech bro, but he has a genuine love for technology and understanding. I hope he fully recovers from his recent minor stroke and that they can take measures to prevent any sequelae.

          That was longer than I intended. The short version is that Jobs was more like Miranda Priestly from the Devil Wears Prada and Musk is more like Michael Scott would be if he had a couple of hundred billion dollars but lacked the moral framework that made his character likable.

          • Boozilla@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I’m not saying Jobs deserves zero credit. Woz himself respected the man, so who am I to disagree. As you pointed out, he had some visionary traits. I just think he’s highly overrated, and his contributions, while significant, could have been provided by many others. He just wasn’t the magic unicorn he was lauded as, IMO.

            Comparing Musk to a billionaire Michael Scott is gold. And I agree with the point that Jobs was smart and Musk is a dumbass.

          • elephantium@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            divine right of kings.

            Now if only there was a shred of regard for rajadharma to go along with it… :(

          • uid0gid0@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

            Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Jobs’ biggest sin in terms of the public was charging too much for Apple products. Musk has done a lot worse.

    • SpaceBar@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You can appreciate what the actual talent at Tesla and SpaceX have accomplished while still seeing Musk as a horrible person. It’s just too bad supporting either company puts money in his pocket.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yeah musk has very little to do with the accomplishments of Tesla or SpaceX. He provides the money. It’s the incredibly skilled workers of said companies that are making things happen. We can absolutely champion removing musk from every position he holds while pushing forward the ideas that space exploration and EVs are good things.

        At the same time, we should push for:

        1. space exploration to be about the search for knowledge and for making a better life for all of humanity based on the resources available in space, instead of building off-planet bunkers for billionaires once their climate change profits run out of steam

        2. EVs to be efficient, affordable to everyone, and generally more environmentally friendly than any fossil fuel vehicle. This will require significant research into battery technology and production processes. Time for car manufacturers to start spending all those profits they have. The strikes are a good start

        3. X/Twitter to fail. No bailouts, no buyouts. Let elon lose the 40 Billion he spent on it. For those that supposedly champion capitalism, this should be a win win in demonstrating what the market does when you are no longer competitive.

        • Flambo@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          For those that supposedly champion capitalism, this should be a win win in demonstrating what the market does when you are no longer competitive.

          Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately it’s quite traditional only to tolerate markets as long as we’re happy with their behavior. The moment a market starts worrying or upsetting us is never “oh man, maybe this ‘markets’ thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”, it’s “obviously some regulation or policy is ruining this market, or it would never do this thing i don’t like”.

          So we’re stuck with the lose-lose-lose of:

          • keeping markets, their volatility, and all the shit that comes with that

          • giving up the fringe benefit of markets redistributing wealth when they collapse

          • denying anyone a chance to see clearly what it means to trust markets to manage our economy for us.

    • ButtDrugs@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Spacex is tough… Musk can choke on a bag of dicks but spacex is doing some cool stuff that I’m excited about, but I’ve always been a space and rocket nerd.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        See that’s my problem with all this. SpaceX and Tesla aren’t successful because of Elon Musk. they are successful in spite of Elon Musk.

        Elon Musk just puts money in big things. Elon Musk only cares about Elon Musk. Not even money. Elon Musk cares more about Elon Musk than money.

        First competitor to Public sector contracts for space flight? Elon Musk can see Elon Musks name on it. First mass produced electric car on the road and in garages? Elon Musk gets to see Elon Musk associated with it. Twitter? Elon Musk gets to be famous even more for tanking a $44b social media company with little to no effort.

        • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Elon Musk gets to be famous even more for tanking a $44b social media company with little to no effort.

          I disagree. Elon put a lot of effort into tanking Twitter. All he had to do to keep it from tanking (as bad as it did) was make no effort.

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      I have a coworker like this. He’s always been a big fan of Joe Rogan, which was simply a harmless hobby five years ago, but now means that he gets sucked into some very dangerous ideas. He’s a great guy to work with though.

      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I had an old coworker try and convince me I didn’t need high blood pressure meds because of Rogan. “You just need to exercise and take vitamins”. Yea. I’m going to listen to a podcaster more than my personal doctor that has examined me sixteen million times.

        They aren’t wrong that these things can help. But there are other people just prone to things and need extra assistance.

    • cor315@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      There are so many people that just don’t keep up with the news or are in a bubble so they don’t see any other perspectives. And I get that. It’s really hard to escape the bubble.

      • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Assuming they regularly use the English-language internet, I feel like it’s less they don’t keep up with it and more they’re willfully blind to it. They would have to either go out of their way to avoid it or assume every article that casts him in a bad light is from jealous competitors in industries he’s iNnOvAtInG in.

        I don’t give a shit about Musk at all and have never actually seeked out news about him yet it’s basically impossible to not see headlines about his latest bullshit antic if you’re just casually on the English speaking internet, so I really doubt there are that many people who are just “out of the loop” unless they’re not a native English speaker or rarely use the internet at all.

  • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I feel like 80 percent of the internet revolves around bullying other people while somehow insisting you have the moral high ground.

    EDIT:

    The responses are proving my point.

    He’s not calling out Elon. He’s calling anyone who likes Elon a massive loser. Dude’s an asshole.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      I think there’s a difference between bullying and calling out asshole behaviour.

      Elon Musk is fair game because he’s a total twat to everyone around him. If he was nice to everyone it would be a different matter.

      He could be nice to everyone, it’s totally possible, he’d still be rich as hell his asshole behaviour did not make him rich, it isn’t an excuse and it isn’t a requirement.

      • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        He isn’t calling out Elon Musk. He’s calling anyone who likes Elon a loser.

        That’s asshole behavior, and I’m willing to bet that he justifies it by claiming that everyone he’s targeting is morally inferior and deserves to be ridiculed.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I was going to say maybe he’d be less rich cuz a big problem with asshole behavior is greed and not paying a living wage and hoarding BUT then in not being an asshole he’d also be using up less money irresponsibly to hurt and annoy others.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          11 months ago

          He was rich anyway though. If he actually gets starship to work (and he will because basically the hard part has been solved it now just needs scaling) he will be the richest human alive he doesn’t need to be an asshole to do that.

          However I do think that Tesla is a bit of a boondoggle at this point, there are better electric cars out there now. But they change the industry they forced the industry to develop electric vehicles because they otherwise wouldn’t have done.

    • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Devil doesn’t need an advocate. And victims don’t need to be gaslit.

      I’m sure it feels that way from a certain perspective when victims finally get a platform to speak about oppressors who have been the real world bullies without being questioned because they have too much leverage. They should be able to handle it. If not maybe they should change if they don’t like it when crunching people results in getting told how they be.

      • hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        The author, a successful comedy writer, calls everyone who likes Elon “the biggest loser you’ve ever met”.

        Explain to me how he is a victim and the random people he’s insulting are oppressors.

            • 20hzservers@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              I mean if you like that asshole (Elon) then you might also be an asshole. Not talking about you liking Elon idk one way or another on that but the logic doesn’t seem very flawed to me. The people you hold in high regard are a reflection of who you are.

                • 20hzservers@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  But? It is from a moral high ground Elon is lame as fuck I hope you atleast agree on that. So if you Stan that man don’t act all victimized when you get criticism for it. :)

    • Torvum@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, kinda the entire state of discourse and why anyone not terminally online hates talking about anything in proximity of political or controversial. The only people you see blow up in attention are those so derogatory, shameless, and degenerate who are well passed caring about social consideration and manners in debate or conversation. It’s literally just about the concept of ratio and “I have more invisible people giving me gratification than you”. Social media gave birth to the concept that anyone can be important for long enough to get high on the feeling, and it’s fucking dismal for a functional society.

      I fear you’re going to see gen alpha kids, who are consuming this at a rate far greater than any previous generation, will become just braindead. I’ve already seen it where a lot of 11-13 year old kids I know still act like they’re 6 and parrot memetic shit that has no meaning beyond just being something repeated to them during their parental granted 6 hours of screentime.

    • GreenM@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Picking up on weaker or those who won’t seriously fight back is these guys characteristic they are proud of.

  • BB69@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Exploding EVs is a lie that big oil and legacy auto has successfully managed to push to match the Elon bad crowd and it’s a disgrace.

    • set_secret@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      you’re actually correct. and the down votes kind of prove how effective it’s been on people who lack any sort of critical thinking skills.

      I absolutely despise Elon, but this exploding dangerous ev bullshit is exactly what we don’t need in order to transition away from fossil fuel.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Literally the only bad things I hear about EVs other than Tesla is the brake fluid drying out from never being used because of regen braking, or batteries being expensive to replace and kinda necessary when buying used, or stock tires being cheap.

      Only Tesla has headlines that make it to my screen about fires, exploding, steering wheels falling off, getting stuck in full throttle, spying on people at their homes and the workers passing around the videos and just being creepy, dying from rain, people accessing the someone else’s Tesla from their app or something, etc.

      But as they say ‘all press is good press’. Whenever someone talks about EVs it always seems to be Tesla.

      • navi@lemmy.tespia.org
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        11 months ago

        Musk (and Tesla) are extremely polarizing for headlines and drive clicks.

        Just shitty business.

      • Player2@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        Check out the Mozilla car privacy study published recently. While Tesla is at the top of the list for privacy violations, they all do it. The quality control issues are mostly real on Tesla vehicles, but it seems to be very exaggerated. It’s been a while since I saw anyone mention the EV Mustang’s roof literally flying off of their cars, which you have to admit is a pretty serious problem. And Teslas are definitely not catching fire left and right.

        Musk is a terrible person with some really bad takes. That said, I think it’s better to criticize him and his work for they actual and very real problems rather than exaggerations.

    • SpaceBar@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      You cannot defend anything SpaceX or Tesla on lemmy. It’s not even worth the effort.

    • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      A simpler explanation is that people despise Elon Musk and everything he touches. Couple this with a general anti-car sentiment in leftist spaces because they’re effectively an icon of American capitalism and it’s reasonable to assume people would mock Teslas as dangerous. Also, Teslas have catastrophically and very publicly failed in the past, which definitely contributes to that sentiment: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/tesla-car-battery-fire-needed-6000-gallons-water-to-extinguish-rcna68153

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        I never understood the anti-car thing for American leftists. I am probably as left as they come (barring gun stuff) and even I can’t see how we ditch cars anytime within my lifetime. What is the plan build every suburbia into a mini metropolis? Or just pay for the houses and raise suburbia to the ground. There is just too much suburban sprawl, you would need so many frigging busses to service that. And we’re not even talking about Rural america.

        • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It’s not a matter of “can we do this in our lifetimes” it’s “we shouldn’t have gotten to this point to begin with, how do we get out of it?” The answer is “not easily” but a component of it is moving away from traditional American car culture. It’s sort of like saying “I’m as leftist as anyone but I don’t see how we’d move away from capitalism as an institution - too much of America’s infrastructure is tied up in the private sector.” You gradually move away from things and figure out alternatives over time. A good place to start is the cities themselves - they’re clogged with vehicles and they don’t need to be. Invest in urban public transit infrastructure and then move outwards. Will there be places that always have cars, like in the most rural parts of the country? Probably. But you tackle the problem first in places it can be solved and accept compromises over time as needed.

          • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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            11 months ago

            The city closest to me has public transportation, most of the people in the city utilize it. All of those plates are mostly people in suburbs coming into work in the city… it’s ridiculously obvious because half the plates are out of state.

            They needed to move outwards like a decade ago, and no one has ever pitched a plan for it. We need those compromises now.

        • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Because your anecdotal experiences are not newsworthy and Priuses are also gas powered vehicles. It’s not exactly a surprise when things running off of combustible materials combust.

  • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Nah,they may just be gullible. My little cousin is a musk fan and I’ve been trying uh, encourage him to look a little deeper

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    11 months ago

    People on Twitter spend way to much time worrying about what others are doing

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      I agree, as I upvote your internet comment about some guy commenting about another guy.

  • buzz86us@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Well he is making $25k EV, so I guess he is doing more than the dopes in legacy auto companies

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      No that’s the people who are actually doing work at those companies. Elon is busy suing to say he founded a company that he bought, playing Elden Ring, and shitposting on Twitter about how much work he does

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        11 months ago

        His money is still facilitating the car be built… The way legacy auto is going I don’t think EV would be as big without Tesla

  • pascal@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    In my experience, people who worship Elon and people who hate him, are the most obnoxious people I found on social media.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      11 months ago

      Yep, and the later are overrepresented here and they think they are so cool and different from the pleb.

      • pascal@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        The fact that we were upvoted and downvoted in almost equal numbers kinda proves my point.

  • GreenM@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Dispite having mixed opinion on Musk i have to admire dude doesn’t give a crap about snoflakes, wokeness or stack prices. I guess you gotta be half crazy to become richest dude in capitalist world.