Reminder that professional ethics are a collection of maximally evil people
What?
I mean…what?
Is that some dark enlightenment talking point?
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Me doing what I want benefits trillions of imaginary future people
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You getting in my way harms trillions of imaginary future people
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Anybody who stops me from doing whatever I want right this minute is evil
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A few things brought up in that book.
- ‘Fuck them kids. Give me the money instead Bill.’
Still, Musk gave 11.5 million shares of his Tesla stake to an undisclosed charity last year, shares worth about $1.9 billion at the time they were donated. The donation would make him the second-largest charitable donor in 2022, according to a ranking of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which was compiled before Musk’s donation. The Chronicle’s ranking lists Gates as No. 1 with $5.1 billion in donations, followed by Michael Bloomberg at $1.7 billion.
“Most philanthropy was “bulls—,” Musk told Gates, estimating only 20 cents of each dollar made a difference that way. Gates could “do more good for climate change by investing in Tesla,” Musk said, according to Isaacson.
Musk then questioned Gates on why he had placed a bet against Tesla’s stock, known as a “short,” in hopes the share price would drop. Musk despised people who bet against his company, seeing them as mortal enemies. At that time, Gates had lost $1.5 billion betting against the stock. Gates said he apologized and said he shorted the stock because he thought he could make money doing so.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/11/tech/elon-musk-bill-gates-isaacson-book/index.html
- ‘It was so difficult growing up white and rich in South Africa in the 80’s.’
And Isaacson’s truth is, above all, selective. Given Musk’s recent coziness with white nationalists and peddlers of junk race science and his ongoing tirade against the Anti-Defamation League, whom he blames (rather than himself) for chasing advertisers from Twitter, it seems startling that nothing in those opening pages touches on his experiences with apartheid. Much of that horrendous violence unfolding in 1980s South Africa was precipitated by a brutally racist government; we discover only that it taught Musk to survive adversity. “My pain threshold is very high,” he tells Isaacson.
We do learn that Musk’s Canadian grandfather was involved in a fringe political party with antisemitic views and relocated his family to South Africa because he liked the government better — he is described as harboring “quirky conservative views” — and that Musk’s father is now outspokenly racist. But in a book that goes to great lengths to dissect the transmission of habits and ideas from father and son, Elon is allowed to stay mum.
- ‘I forgot to tell my baby mama that I knocked up somebody… with in-vitro fertilization.’
Musk believes a declining birth rate is a threat to civilization and, with his trademark tirelessness, is doing his visionary edgelord best to ward off that threat. Shivon Zilis, a thirty-five-year-old venture capitalist and executive at Musk’s company Neuralink, was pregnant with twins, conceived with Musk by in-vitro fertilization, and was experiencing complications. “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to,” Zilis said. In a nearby room, a woman serving as a surrogate for Musk and his thirty-three-year-old ex-wife, Claire Boucher, a musician better known as Grimes, was suffering from pregnancy complications, too, and Grimes was staying with her.
“I really wanted him to have a daughter so bad,” Grimes said. At the time, Musk had had seven sons, including, with Grimes, a child named X. Grimes did not know that Zilis, a friend of hers, was down the hall, or that Zilis was pregnant by Musk. Zilis’s twins were born seven weeks premature; the surrogate delivered safely a few weeks later. In mid-December, Grimes’s new baby came home and met her brother X. An hour later, Musk took X to New York and dandled him on his knee while being photographed for Time.
- ‘She seen how I was like and wanted to have my kids.’
In Elon Musk by journalist Walter Isaacson, which comes out Tuesday, Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, who welcomed twins with the 52-year-old billionaire in November 2021, said Musk “encouraged” her to have children.
“He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to do this,” Zilis said in the book. Although Zillis initially planned on using an anonymous sperm donor, Musk later suggested that he could be the donor, which she agreed to.
“I can’t possibly think of genes I would prefer for my children,” Zilis said in the book.
- ‘I like healers.’
Among other tidbits about their dynamic, Isaacson said Musk flew to Australia in April 2017 to visit Heard while she was filming Aquaman, and that she once commissioned a costume to “roleplay” a character Musk said she reminded him of: Mercy, from the video game Overwatch .
- ‘My brother thinks i’m brilliant. A brilliant dumbass.’
Musk later deleted his tweet about the attack, though he did not apologize publicly for posting it. According to Isaacson’s book, aptly titled Elon Musk, the tech mogul “said privately that [the tweet] was one of his dumbest mistakes.”
Musk’s brother, Kimbal, was allegedly not impressed by the incident and called Elon “an idiot,” according to Isaacson. The book further claims Kimbal then “stopped following Elon on Twitter because it was too nerve-wracking," according to the LA Times.
“Stop falling for weird s—," Kimbal allegedly told Elon, according to the book.
- ‘I got my moral compass from my father.’
The author said such a harsh management style is driven by a genuine urgency for humans to go to Mars and become multi-planetary, the core mission of SpaceX. He believes Musk’s adventurous spirit and lack of empathy are largely a result of his traumatic childhood memories, especially of his father, Errol Musk.
“It has left deep scars on him, the way his father treated him when he was bullied on the schoolyard, when his face was pounded into the concrete steps, and his father took the side of the person who beat him up instead of Elon,” Isaacson said. “He says to me, ‘Yeah, I don’t have as much empathy. I’m not like you. I don’t want the person in front of me just to love me. I got to get this mission done.”
- ‘I really am a talented fighter.’
Kimbal Musk once “tore off a hunk of flesh” from Elon Musk’s hand while the brothers wrestled on the floor in Zip2’s office, Walter Isaacson wrote in “Elon Musk,” his new biography of the tech mogul.
Kimbal Musk bit his brother because he thought Elon Musk was about to punch him in the face, the book said. Elon Musk had to go to the emergency room to get stitches and a tetanus jab as a result, the book says.
The brothers often had “rolling-on-the-office-floor fights” while they worked together at Zip2, their company that provided city guides to newspapers, Isaacson wrote. Because Zip2 didn’t have private offices, other staff had to watch the two fight, per the book.
“When we had intense stress, we just didn’t notice anyone else,” Kimbal Musk told Isaacson.
- ‘What do you mean? All of my engineers and artists love the big shiny metal triangle. I’m 100% sure the public will love the design’
Some Tesla engineers weren’t fans of Elon Musk’s plans for the Cybertruck, the automaker’s design chief Franz von Holzhausen told Walter Isaacson, whose biography on Musk comes out this week.
“A majority of the people in this studio hated it,” von Holzhausen said of the futuristic design, according to the book. “They were like, ‘You can’t be serious.’ They didn’t want to have anything to do with it. It was just too weird.”
Some Tesla engineers even took to covertly designing another version of the electric pickup after they saw a mock-up of the futuristic truck on display at SpaceX’s showroom in Los Angeles during the summer of 2019, Isaacson, who shadowed Musk for three years, wrote.
It’s unclear what happened to the alternative version of the vehicle. Musk, von Holzhausen, and a spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.
But Musk was “less patient,” Isaacson reported, and did not want to hear concerns related to the Cybertruck.
“I don’t do focus groups,” the CEO said, according to Isaacson.
Rather than focus on adjusting the design, Musk told von Holzhausen that he wanted a driveable version of the vehicle that he could demo at a Tesla event in November, which von Holzhausen said “forced the team to come together, work twenty-four-seven,” Isaacson wrote.
- ‘I’m a bit iffy on the jews. Except for one of them and I’m sure that he would like me back.’
On a lighter note, the book also reveals that two of Musk’s favorite movies are Mel Brooks productions: Spaceballs and Young Frankenstein.
Elsewhere in the book, Isaacson recalls the wedding of Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood superagent, where Musk was seated at the same dinner table as Larry David, the Curb Your Enthusiasm creator who officiated the wedding.
“Do you just want to murder kids in schools?” David asked Musk.
“No, no,” Musk responded. “I’m anti-kid murder.”
I’m sure his stockholders are gonna love this book
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I have no idea how to react to this post. I went with crying because I want off this planet with this guy having as much money and power as there is no smack the head emoji reaction.
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Oh there’s a ton more that’s coming from this book. I had to limit it to 10 but if I had to include a number 11, I would have included this also
In a section about the pair’s son X Æ A-Xii, whom they call “X,” Isaacson reveals that Musk, 52, snapped a photo of Grimes, 35, as she was having a C-section and sent it around to their friends and family, including the musician’s father and brothers.
“He was just clueless about why I’d be upset,” Grimes told Isaacson.
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According to legend Henry Ford’s son Edsel (who Henry had recently made President of the car company), worried about losing market share to rapidly adapting competitors, took the initiative to have the company’s engineers design a restyled version of the Model T while his parents were on vacation in Europe. When the elder Ford returned he was timidly shown the prototype. Without saying a word, Henry picked up a sledgehammer and smashed the car to pieces.
I can easily imagine Elon being equally petulant, probably moreso.
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Heck, Musk smashed his own version on stage in front of everyone!
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I’ll give him credit for having some forethought about that guy
Apparently he was a fairly competent DM (to the surprise of everyone here)
I really don’t have the words for this
Elon Musk’s new biography sheds light on how he found out that his estranged father, Errol Musk, had fathered a second child with his former stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout.
According to Eon Musk [by Walter Isaacson], which hits shelves Tuesday, on Father’s Day in 2022, Errol told the 52-year-old billionaire the news in an email.
"The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce,” said Errol, who has seven children, per the book. “If I could have another child I would. I can’t see any reason not to.”
It’s difficult to learn from your mistakes if you can’t remember them
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420_69 Channing, Student
“Mom says he is my dad.”
I just about died laughing.
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I’m still trying to figure out how he managed to make the Pontiac Aztek uglier.
(In all honesty, despite the 20 years of mockery, I think that age has been quite kind to the design of the Aztek. I’m not sure the Cybertruck will have as merciful a fate.)
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Put in place before “Mr Free Speech” took over, but he hasn’t lifted it.
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Is Elon a Bond villain?
When Elon Musk was a kid, he learned hypnosis and convinced his younger sister that she was a dog and persuaded her to eat raw bacon.
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Current Billionaire displayed signs as a child of being a malevolent manipulative sociopath.
/shocked_not_shocked.
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He wishes…
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