Elon Musk’s pinned tweet is from Could. It’s a chart from The Wall Avenue Journal exhibiting that the US fertility charge has been under the “alternative degree” because the Seventies. “USA start charge has been under min sustainable ranges for ~50 years,” was Musk’s contribution to the tweet. He’s been speaking about inhabitants decline for years, really. He’s even talked about it as one of many biggest points going through humanity, and his resolution is easy: have extra children, everyone!
Say this for Musk: dude practices what he preaches. Insider reported this week that Musk had twins final November with Shivon Zilis, a star within the AI world, a longtime colleague of Musk’s at OpenAI and Tesla, and a present govt at Neuralink. The twins got here to be within the information this week due to an April submitting in Texas to alter their final identify to Musk. They have been born in late November, just a few weeks earlier than Musk and Grimes had their second child. (In case you’re counting, that’s now 9 recognized children within the Musk clan.)
Musk hasn’t technically confirmed the story, however… he kinda confirmed the story? “Doing my greatest to assist the underpopulation disaster,” he tweeted on Thursday morning. “A collapsing start charge is the largest hazard civilization faces by far.” He additionally tweeted about wanting to construct “a extremely configurable Robovan for folks & cargo,” and now I’ve a lot of questions and theories about what a self-driving Tesla minivan may be like. However we’ll save these for an additional day.
There’s been a whole lot of discuss concerning the Musk household over the past couple of weeks. Musk’s daughter Vivian modified her final identify to Wilson earlier this yr, saying “I not reside with or want to be associated to my organic father in any means, form or type.” The publication of that change — and the rationale for it — coincided with a uncommon quiet interval from Musk on Twitter. (To be clear, there’s no proof these two issues are associated, however the timing is unquestionably notable.)
There’s clearly nothing flawed with having a number of children, and we’re not right here to litigate Musk’s romantic preparations. However you simply can’t hear about all this with out additionally eager about Musk’s different conduct inside his corporations — which fits past simply secretly having children with certainly one of your workers. We’ve coated this extensively right here at This Week in Elon, however there are the allegations that SpaceX paid $250,000 to stop a flight attendant from talking up after Musk uncovered himself and propositioned her for intercourse (which he has loudly denied). And there are additionally the long-standing stories of cultures of sexual harassment inside each SpaceX and Tesla. These aren’t remoted incidents or easy misunderstandings. That is simply how Musk operates — and the way his corporations function by extension.
In an open letter to SpaceX management final month, a gaggle of workers requested for, amongst different issues, “protected avenues for reporting” and to “uphold clear repercussions for all unacceptable conduct, whether or not from the CEO or an worker beginning their first day.” The message from inside Musk’s corporations has been each loud and clear: there have to be guidelines, and people guidelines have to be enforced equally and forcefully irrespective of your job title. There’s nonetheless precisely zero proof that Musk performs by the foundations, acknowledges these guidelines, and even permits guidelines to exist within the first place. Musk does as Musk needs — on a regular basis, in all places. And if you happen to communicate out? You get fired, as a lot of the letter writers did.
Anyway, in different information… Musk spent the week speaking about his love for socks, stealing memes concerning the Fourth of July and 7-Eleven, taking just a few of his children to see the pope and marking the second with a photograph that looks like everyone was photoshopped into, and making the case that attending to Mars could possibly be a uniting drive in the identical means that attending to the Moon as soon as was. He’s even back to pumping Dogecoin, although it seems not even Musk can save the crashing costs of crypto.
The Washington Submit reported that Musk’s Twitter acquisition could also be falling aside however didn’t present any motive why aside from “Elon continues to be mad about bots.” In the meantime, Twitter continues to exit of its option to say it does not have a bot downside. As ever, you must assume the deal continues to be occurring till confirmed in any other case and that Musk goes to attempt every part he can to get a lower cost.
We additionally acquired a few small hints this week about how a Musk-owned Twitter would possibly work. When Alex Berenson introduced he’d been reinstated to Twitter, Musk asked what Berenson meant by the phrase “the pressures that the federal government could have positioned on Twitter to droop my account.” He additionally responded to a year-old Glenn Greenwald thread about social media censorship and free speech by calling it “troubling …” Musk has made himself out to be one thing of a free speech absolutist and takes problem with the concept of social platforms stifling anybody’s voices.
Which makes it bizarre, actually, that he appeared to haven’t any ideas about what occurred in India this week. The Indian authorities has been tightening its guidelines for on-line speech and demanded Twitter take away sure accounts and posts for violating its new legal guidelines. Twitter complied simply earlier than the government-imposed deadline but additionally sued the Indian authorities within the hopes of getting judicial safety from such orders sooner or later.
We’ve been saying for some time that Musk’s complete “I really like free speech it doesn’t matter what but additionally comply with the foundations of governments” factor was by no means going to really work in the actual world. He doesn’t even personal Twitter but, and right here we’re! Whereas he’s commiserating with individuals who really feel canceled over their unhealthy tweets, free speech and authorities oversight are coming into direct battle in one of many world’s largest nations, and Musk says nothing. Which is roughly what we’ve come to count on in the case of these onerous selections.
The factor with Musk is that, in his thoughts, the ends all the time justify the means. All the time. He has these huge objectives — make fuel automobiles out of date, get to Mars, repair visitors, perceive the human mind, on and on — and has confirmed he doesn’t significantly care what it takes to perform them. Generally which means telling your workers to be okay with grueling stints at work; generally it means yelling at them to return again to the workplace or stop; and generally it means forcing them to tolerate a sexist, discriminatory work tradition within the identify of getting the job performed quicker. He runs his corporations seemingly by the seat of his pants as a result of he simply doesn’t care about it — solely the top outcomes matter.
And, as ever, the one factor Musk appears to know for positive is that he can all the time simply tweet via the short-term stuff. With each scandal, it turns into somewhat extra apparent why he sees Twitter as so beneficial: it’s an unparalleled narrative-control machine with which he can inform 100 million folks at a time that every part’s a lie or a joke or not as huge a deal as you assume or irrelevant as a result of all we should always care about is Mars. Twitter is, to borrow a phrase from Apple, Musk’s actuality distortion discipline. And for that, $44 billion is a discount.