Not sure we're referring to the same "antics". You cannot deny that Elon has changed as a person ever since he got hooked on Twitter. A lot of his personality and how he acts these days is very much focused on trying to get the most likes. Pre-Twitter "fame", it's true that he disregarded what others thought, but he also wasn't so focused on maximizing his likes either. Twitter was like heroine for him, and he now lives for the dopamine rush of going viral by pandering to lowest common denominator. He's far more focused on seeking attention.

Is it really so hard for you to accept that he's just being like any person and sharing what he finds to be worth sharing?

He was always like this. He started SpaceX because he thought putting a dome on Mars within which plants would be grown would be inspiring. The only reason it wasn't on social media was because it wasn't really much of a thing at the time. He didn't care about the optics and tried to buy an ICBM from Russia for this purpose.

To me that sounds like the same person as he is on social media.

Yeah, or look at Tesla history. Any “normal” ceo would’ve just cashed out and doomed that project, but Elon… I remember that time when he asked Engineers to make sales calls. What normal CEO does that? Whatever people think of them at least it is interesting and fun to live during these times.

> To me that sounds like the same person as he is on social media.

So randomly claiming someone's a pedophile is somehow "the same" as wanting to put a dome on Mars because it's inspiring?

I honestly don't see how you can say that sounds like the same person.

> sharing what he finds to be worth sharing?

Are we honestly looking at the same tweets? Just looked and his pinned tweet is about Mexico and asylum seekers, does that sound "inspiring" to you? What about "My pronouns are Proscute/Fauci"?

He's fully lost the plot. He's no longer about grand inspiring endeavors, and is instead knee deep in social wars, posting shitty memes all day. What's the last inspiring thing he's done?

> 'He's fully lost the plot.'

His pinned tweet expresses concern about the border crisis, specifically the risk of undesirable people crossing the border.

He's expressing what he cares about, is the parent's point. Abrasive or animated expression of views, isn't losing the plot.

As for jokes about pronouns and other triggering issues, it can sometimes be defended when the joke is similar to the Gemini jokes. That is, poking fun at things that might deserve a bit of poking fun at, even ridicule in the case of Gemini.

> He's expressing what he cares about, is the parent's point

And my point is that he used to care about inspiring stuff, now he spends all his time caring about useless culture wars.

Again, as objectively as I can, it looks like he believes the country is having an existential crisis deserving of his attention.

"Useless" is your opinion, not an objective measure. "Culture wars" is a trope designed to broadly smear the target, disregarding specifics.

Do you want Musk to be an inspiration vending machine? Your insistence he tighten his inspiration schedule to meet your expectations, is odd.

Maybe he didn’t “change”. Maybe you just see more of him now, and see how he actually is, foot in mouth and all. People who got very rich very early often lack the “filter” - they don’t have to consider your opinion of them. In fact, considering it would probably be strongly counterproductive if they’re ambitious. Popular opinion is akin to a lawn mower - stick your head out too far above others and you’ll lose it. But that’s for you and I, that logic doesn’t really apply to centibillionaires.

Change likely wasn't the right word. Rather, Twitter "enables" him to be the worst version of himself, as you allude to. Point is, he's no longer focused on any big inspiring project and instead spends his days fighting stupid culture wars and posting shitty memes on X.

> If he cared what others think he wouldn’t have

Bought twitter and assigned an entire team to work overtime and figure out why his follower count is dropping? And banned the ‘Elon-jet’ account? And called cave diver that rescued children a pedo after Elon’s rescue - submarine failed?

Hear hear! Without Elon, inter alia, pointing out the Democrat plan with Jewish support to take over the US political system via illegal immigrant votes replacing good honest Americans, SpaceX wouldn't have happened. Put an extra set of quotes around "antics", it's time to shame these short-sighted people.

~ Jonathan Swift, demonstrating Horatian satire, characterized by its attempt to raise questions with gentle humor rather than attacking -- that is characteristic of the Juvelian school of satire

What Elon is pointing out, in his own, unconventional way, is that this is not a game, and bringing in 30 million low skilled minimum wage earners (3+M in 2023 alone) of unknowable backgrounds is not conducive to national security or solvency. But your politics make you blind to that fact. Maybe the problem isn’t Elon in this case, wdyt?

Horatian satire is used to point out flaws in argumentation, without making people feel attacked, the idea is to put a smile on their face.

I see now the idea is it is further evidence of Great Man theory to question Jewish involvement in this serious problem.

So yes, not antics in your book.

It makes me sad some subset of Congress decided this didn't need solving suddenly, for no apparent reason.

Without NASA money SpaceX wouldn't exist anymore

They’re number one in the world and keep successfully launching like it’s just a game. They deliver.

Results.

But what is the benefit of these result?

At the moment we put more debris into Earth's orbit, Star Link is nice but not a sustainable solution, same with many other satellites

In what way is it not sustainable?

Without constant replacement it's gone pretty fast.

Most things have maintenance costs. If Starlink makes enough money to fund the required satellite replacement rate, that's sustainable.

Sure, but that's true of a lot of business models, many of which have proven to be quite sustainable. Grocery stores, for instance.

Which makes it sustainable... if it goes away shortly after you stop replacing it, it's not putting debris up there.

Needing constant rocket launches to provide a service isn't sustainable, Star Link is disposable

If we're talking about economic sustainability, that's not how it works. Many things in your daily life are disposable (remember this point for the next paragraph) and yet are economically sustainable for the companies making them because they bring in more money than they cost.

If you're talking about environmental sustainability.. get over it. Rocketry, even as SpaceX's scale, is a tiny drop in the ocean of throwaway consumer culture.

Yes. But NASA money is available to others, too. Elon is not.

Elon is busy tweeting cringy memes so it's not him doing the hard work.

Do tell, who’s doing the hard work, and why do they only succeed at anything “impossible” if Elon is there?

The engineers who build the rockets, and they didn't succeed and anything impossible.

Building landing rockets was thought to be too expensive not impossible.

Why is Tesla's FSD still not working? Wasn't Musk around?

The Spaceship is also nothing impossible, let's wait for his Mars colony.

If it’s all so possible, how come SpaceX has no viable competition? I get it, you don’t like Elon, that’s understandable, but let’s please give adequate credit where credit is due. Pulling off just one of the things he did would be a monumental achievement for anyone. He’s done what at this point, 3-4? Does that really mean nothing to you just because you don’t like that he has the gall to use the First Amendment?

Did Pope Julius II pull of the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel?

I get it that Musk was necessary to get the money but money doesn't build rockets otherwise Bezos company would have succeeded too.

Seems like the actual engineers are the ones to praise.

Musks seems more like the type who has read a sci-fi book or seen a movie and has enough money to pay people to build what he has read or seen.

The problem is that he often underestimates the technical challenges. This sometimes works when the problem only needs an evolutionary step, like landing rockets, but fails when it comes to revolutionary discoveries.

The whole Twitter thing is only accelerating the destruction of his nimbus.

When he makes announcements and promises, I now always hear in my head: "Monorail, monorail"

It's something that has increasingly bewildered me: why do we as people get so biased when we don't like someone? So biased that we can't see anything good in them anymore, and we can't recognize (sometimes any of) their accomplishments?

Biden, Trump, Elon, etc., depending on what side you are, there's always someone to think of as an example.

BTW Musk is the guy who thinks that if one man with a plough can't produce enough food in his field, we need more men with more ploughs instead of just one man with a tractor.

Or how do you explain his desire for a growing population?

The concept of increasing productivity seems to be foreign to him in this context.

Yes, I suspect you are right, productivity is something foreign to Elon Musk. Definitely.

Also, anything elon does is by definition not antics, because he made SpaceX.

He founded it, that's not the same, that's like saying Sam Altman made ChatGPT.