This is environmental madness.

One of the funny moments during a SpaceX rocket launch was when Elon Musk and the SpaceX team were launching at Vandenberg in California.

An organization concerned about Seal procreation forced SpaceX to "kidnap" a Seal, strap it to a board, and put headphones on and play sonic… pic.twitter.com/wA5RcqNwLq

— SMX 🇺🇸 (@iam_smx) September 29, 2024

Elon Musk on the SEC: Regulatory Capture

NEW: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk for failing to appear for court-ordered testimony for his Twitter takeover.

The Swamp doesn't like it when they can't control what you say.

The SEC is investigating whether or not… pic.twitter.com/aNUfXAKdCQ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 20, 2024

One of my favorites pic.twitter.com/GbVzutErcC

— A Man Of Memes (@RickyDoggin) May 8, 2024

Joe Rogan and Elon Musk

Podcast with the great and powerful @elonmusk #ad Full episode is 2 hours and 41 minutes, first 2 hours is available here on https://t.co/AIkGSaxVMA pic.twitter.com/DQh0GGNyaO

— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) October 31, 2023

Why is the media trying to silence Elon Musk?

Okay, that was a fucking powerful statement by @elonmusk

I’m very impressed because he was committed to his words. RESPECTpic.twitter.com/JiYecgdLe8

— MAGS (@TAftermath2020) May 17, 2023

Asking the wrong question

 

The Morning Brief from Yahoo Finance is written today by Andy Serwer, who asks the question:

Question: How many people does it take to run a tech company? His focus is on what it takes to keep the lights on and servers running. In the case of Twitter, it's noticeable that the answer is much less than Twitter had when Elon Musk bought it. But the proof isn't to Andy's liking. There's a hint that he's not a fan of Musk: I’m not a huge fan of Elon’s management style — which seems in part to be about getting in touch with his inner 13-year-old boy  To give Andy credit, he questions the value of the employment bloat in general and even the vaunted engineers that create the features found in the big Internet organizations.  Many of these layoffs have likely been in marketing and staff functions, but I would argue that in some cases redundancy lies in line operations as well. It's an open secret that a fair amount of core technology work adds little or no value to customers, companies, or the economy.... I understand engineers and product managers need to experiment. It’s just that the process — an overly empowered tech culture where engineers are encouraged to “disrupt,” “pivot,” “move fast and break things,” and “fail fast” — has been taken too far. Maybe this modus operandi makes sense for the smartest 1% of technical workers, but not for tens of thousands who have been given the keys. But here's the problem, Andy's looking at these companies as if they were factories producing the necessary goods. He refers to firing half the workers at a dairy, leading to customer shortages. But that is an apple-to-oranges comparison. Twitter is not a dairy.   And then it gets personal. To me Musk and his radical job cutting smacks of twice baked-over Randism. Every generation produces business leaders like Musk, those with incredible ideas who also cloak power plays in the guise of economic revolution. But the problem with Twitter was never about the number of employees. It was about the product they delivered.   The problem with Twitter (and Facebook and Google) is that they don't deliver milk. They provide opinions, shape the culture and affect elections. Those thousands of employees hand megaphones to their partisan allies and send mobs to silence people who disagree. They inject partisan poison into the cultural bloodstream.   If those workers at Andy's dairy deliberately soured the milk, the number who work there is not the issue. They should all be fired and replaced with those who deliver good milk.   The problem with Twitter, Facebook, and Google is not the number of people who work there.  It's the people themselves who are in charge of the Public Square. They have abused their power by stifling speech.  They have deliberately censored the truth as well as dissent.  They created a public forum and then turned it into a partisan meeting.    The question is not about the number of people it takes to run a tech company. The more important question is, what should be done when people in a company deliberately produce a toxic product?  It's telling that before Musk, Twitter censored President Trump but provided links to child porn.  Twitter produced toxic waste.  A lot of work is required to restore trust in Twitter.  But with Musk and fewer employees, it's making the right changes.

What has become of us

 I’m going to skip over the recent reports that the CDC, DHS and other federal agencies have been directing social media platforms on not just what but whom they would like to be censored. A clear first amendment violation....

Needless to say this obliterates the idea that these are simply private companies doing what they want. This is fascism, textbook.

In my view, we desperately need one major social media platform to embrace free speech and allow for open debate, this is the only pathway to make that a reality. While I don’t trust Elon Musk I am left with no choice but to pray his prior claim of being a “free speech absolutist” was sincere and he can somehow navigate this minefield to make my dream a reality. It may sound like hyperbole but I think the fate of humanity may rest on his shoulders; without open dialogue the chasm between our warring camps will widen and things will almost certainly turn violent. Let’s give peace one last shot. Words will never hurt you but civil wars most certainly can.

Read the whole thing. 

FULL INTERVIEW: Elon Musk Sits Down With The Babylon Bee

Twitter's Chickens Come Home to Roost

 Matt Taibbi:

Elon Musk has reportedly attempted to purchase Twitter, and I have no idea whether his influence on the company would be positive or not.

I do know, however, what other media figures think Musk’s influence on Twitter will be. They think it will be bad — very bad, bad! How none of them see what a self-own this is is beyond me. After spending the last six years practically turgid with joy as other unaccountable billionaires tweaked the speech landscape in their favor, they’re suddenly howling over the mere rumor that a less censorious fat cat might get to sit in one of the big chairs. O the inhumanity!

A few of the more prominent Musk critics are claiming merely to be upset at the prospect of wealthy individuals controlling speech. As more than one person has pointed out, this is a bizarre thing to be worrying about all of the sudden, since it’s been the absolute reality in America for a while.

as someone who isn't a fan of Elon Musk, I still find it darkly funny that billionaire-owned media is suddenly having a moral panic about a billionaire possibly buying Twitter

Probably the funniest effort along those lines was this passage:

We need regulation… to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.

That was Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit, railing against Musk in the pages of… the Washington Post!