biography of elon musk wikipedia

South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.

Who Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur and businessman who founded X.com in 1999 (which later became PayPal), SpaceX in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. Musk became a multimillionaire in his late 20s when he sold his start-up company, Zip2, to a division of Compaq Computers.

In January 2021, Musk reportedly surpassed Jeff Bezos as the wealthiest man in the world.

Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. As a child, Musk was so lost in his daydreams about inventions that his parents and doctors ordered a test to check his hearing.

At about the time of his parents’ divorce, when he was 10, Musk developed an interest in computers. He taught himself how to program, and when he was 12 he sold his first software: a game he created called Blastar.

In grade school, Musk was short, introverted and bookish. He was bullied until he was 15 and went through a growth spurt and learned how to defend himself with karate and wrestling.

Musk’s mother, Maye Musk , is a Canadian model and the oldest woman to star in a Covergirl campaign. When Musk was growing up, she worked five jobs at one point to support her family.

Musk’s father, Errol Musk, is a wealthy South African engineer.

Musk spent his early childhood with his brother Kimbal and sister Tosca in South Africa. His parents divorced when he was 10.

At age 17, in 1989, Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University and avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Musk obtained his Canadian citizenship that year, in part because he felt it would be easier to obtain American citizenship via that path.

In 1992, Musk left Canada to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed for a second bachelor’s degree in physics.

After leaving Penn, Musk headed to Stanford University in California to pursue a PhD in energy physics. However, his move was timed perfectly with the Internet boom, and he dropped out of Stanford after just two days to become a part of it, launching his first company, Zip2 Corporation in 1995. Musk became a U.S. citizen in 2002.

Zip2 Corporation

Musk launched his first company, Zip2 Corporation, in 1995 with his brother, Kimbal Musk. An online city guide, Zip2 was soon providing content for the new websites of both The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune . In 1999, a division of Compaq Computer Corporation bought Zip2 for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options.

In 1999, Elon and Kimbal Musk used the money from their sale of Zip2 to found X.com, an online financial services/payments company. An X.com acquisition the following year led to the creation of PayPal as it is known today.

In October 2002, Musk earned his first billion when PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before the sale, Musk owned 11 percent of PayPal stock.

Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, in 2002 with the intention of building spacecraft for commercial space travel. By 2008, SpaceX was well established, and NASA awarded the company the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station—with plans for astronaut transport in the future—in a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions.

Falcon 9 Rockets

On May 22, 2012, Musk and SpaceX made history when the company launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space with an unmanned capsule. The vehicle was sent to the International Space Station with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed there, marking the first time a private company had sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station. Of the launch, Musk was quoted as saying, "I feel very lucky. ... For us, it's like winning the Super Bowl."

In December 2013, a Falcon 9 successfully carried a satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit, a distance at which the satellite would lock into an orbital path that matched the Earth's rotation. In February 2015, SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 fitted with the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, aiming to observe the extreme emissions from the sun that affect power grids and communications systems on Earth.

In March 2017, SpaceX saw the successful test flight and landing of a Falcon 9 rocket made from reusable parts, a development that opened the door for more affordable space travel.

A setback came in November 2017, when an explosion occurred during a test of the company's new Block 5 Merlin engine. SpaceX reported that no one was hurt, and that the issue would not hamper its planned rollout of a future generation of Falcon 9 rockets.

The company enjoyed another milestone moment in February 2018 with the successful test launch of the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. Armed with additional Falcon 9 boosters, the Falcon Heavy was designed to carry immense payloads into orbit and potentially serve as a vessel for deep space missions. For the test launch, the Falcon Heavy was given a payload of Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster, equipped with cameras to "provide some epic views" for the vehicle's planned orbit around the sun.

In July 2018, Space X enjoyed the successful landing of a new Block 5 Falcon rocket, which touched down on a drone ship less than 9 minutes after liftoff.

BFR Mission to Mars

In September 2017, Musk presented an updated design plan for his BFR (an acronym for either "Big F---ing Rocket" or "Big Falcon Rocket"), a 31-engine behemoth topped by a spaceship capable of carrying at least 100 people. He revealed that SpaceX was aiming to launch the first cargo missions to Mars with the vehicle in 2022, as part of his overarching goal of colonizing the Red Planet.

In March 2018, the entrepreneur told an audience at the annual South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, that he hoped to have the BFR ready for short flights early the following year, while delivering a knowing nod at his previous problems with meeting deadlines.

The following month, it was announced that SpaceX would construct a facility at the Port of Los Angeles to build and house the BFR. The port property presented an ideal location for SpaceX, as its mammoth rocket will only be movable by barge or ship when completed.

Starlink Internet Satellites

In late March 2018, SpaceX received permission from the U.S. government to launch a fleet of satellites into low orbit for the purpose of providing Internet service. The satellite network, named Starlink, would ideally make broadband service more accessible in rural areas, while also boosting competition in heavily populated markets that are typically dominated by one or two providers.

SpaceX launched the first batch of 60 satellites in May 2019, and followed with another payload of 60 satellites that November. While this represented significant progress for the Starlink venture, the appearance of these bright orbiters in the night sky, with the potential of thousands more to come, worried astronomers who felt that a proliferation of satellites would increase the difficulty of studying distant objects in space.

Tesla Motors

Musk is the co-founder, CEO and product architect at Tesla Motors, a company formed in 2003 that is dedicated to producing affordable, mass-market electric cars as well as battery products and solar roofs. Musk oversees all product development, engineering and design of the company's products.

Five years after its formation, in March 2008, Tesla unveiled the Roadster, a sports car capable of accelerating from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, as well as traveling nearly 250 miles between charges of its lithium ion battery.

With a stake in the company taken by Daimler and a strategic partnership with Toyota, Tesla Motors launched its initial public offering in June 2010, raising $226 million.

In August 2008, Tesla announced plans for its Model S, the company's first electric sedan that was reportedly meant to take on the BMW 5 series. In 2012, the Model S finally entered production at a starting price of $58,570. Capable of covering 265 miles between charges, it was honored as the 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend magazine .

In April 2017, Tesla announced that it surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker. The news was an obvious boon to Tesla, which was looking to ramp up production and release its Model 3 sedan later that year.

In September 2019, using what Musk described as a "Plaid powertrain," a Model S set a speed record for four-door sedan at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey County, California.

The Model 3 was officially launched in early 2019 following extensive production delays. The car was initially priced at $35,000, a much more accessible price point than the $69,500 and up for its Model S and X electric sedans.

After initially aiming to produce 5,000 new Model 3 cars per week by December 2017, Musk pushed that goal back to March 2018, and then to June with the start of the new year. The announced delay didn't surprise industry experts, who were well aware of the company's production problems, though some questioned how long investors would remain patient with the process. It also didn't prevent Musk from garnering a radical new compensation package as CEO, in which he would be paid after reaching milestones of growing valuation based on $50 billion increments.

By April 2018, with Tesla expected to fall short of first-quarter production forecasts, news surfaced that Musk had pushed aside the head of engineering to personally oversee efforts in that division. In a Twitter exchange with a reporter, Musk said it was important to "divide and conquer" to meet production goals and was "back to sleeping at factory."

After signaling that the company would reorganize its management structure, Musk in June announced that Tesla was laying off 9 percent of its workforce, though its production department would remain intact. In an email to employees, Musk explained his decision to eliminate some "duplication of roles" to cut costs, admitting it was time to take serious steps toward turning a profit.

The restructuring appeared to pay dividends, as it was announced that Tesla had met its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June 2018, while churning out another 2,000 Model S sedans and Model X SUVs. "We did it!" Musk wrote in a celebratory email to the company. "What an incredible job by an amazing team."

The following February, Musk announced that the company was finally rolling out its standard Model 3. Musk also said that Tesla was shifting to all-online sales, and offering customers the chance to return their cars within seven days or 1,000 miles for a full refund.

In November 2017, Musk made another splash with the unveiling of the new Tesla Semi and Roadster at the company's design studio. The semi-truck, which was expected to enter into production in 2019 before being delayed, boasts 500 miles of range as well as a battery and motors built to last 1 million miles.

Model Y and Roadster

In March 2019, Musk unveiled Tesla’s long-awaited Model Y. The compact crossover, which began arriving for customers in March 2020, has a driving range of 300 miles and a 0 to 60 mph time of 3.5 seconds.

The Roadster, also set to be released in 2020, will become the fastest production car ever made, with a 0 to 60 time of 1.9 seconds.

In August 2016, in Musk’s continuing effort to promote and advance sustainable energy and products for a wider consumer base, a $2.6 billion dollar deal was solidified to combine his electric car and solar energy companies. His Tesla Motors Inc. announced an all-stock deal purchase of SolarCity Corp., a company Musk had helped his cousins start in 2006. He is a majority shareholder in each entity.

“Solar and storage are at their best when they're combined. As one company, Tesla (storage) and SolarCity (solar) can create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed,” read a statement on Tesla’s website about the deal.

The Boring Company

In January 2017, Musk launched The Boring Company, a company devoted to boring and building tunnels in order to reduce street traffic. He began with a test dig on the SpaceX property in Los Angeles.

In late October of that year, Musk posted the first photo of his company's progress to his Instagram page. He said the 500-foot tunnel, which would generally run parallel to Interstate 405, would reach a length of two miles in approximately four months.

In May 2019 the company, now known as TBC, landed a $48.7 million contract from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to build an underground Loop system to shuttle people around the Las Vegas Convention Center.

In October 2022, Musk officially bought Twitter and became the social media company's CEO after months of back and forth.

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Musk’s Tweet and SEC Investigation

On August 7, 2018, Musk dropped a bombshell via a tweet: "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." The announcement opened the door for legal action against the company and its founder, as the SEC began inquiring about whether Musk had indeed secured the funding as claimed. Several investors filed lawsuits on the grounds that Musk was looking to manipulate stock prices and ambush short sellers with his tweet.

Musk’s tweet initially sent Tesla stock spiking, before it closed the day up 11 percent. The CEO followed up with a letter on the company blog, calling the move to go private "the best path forward." He promised to retain his stake in the company, and added that he would create a special fund to help all current investors remain on board.

Six days later, Musk sought to clarify his position with a statement in which he pointed to discussions with the managing director of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund as the source of his "funding secured" declaration. He later tweeted that he was working on a proposal to take Tesla private with Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake as financial advisers.

The saga took a bizarre turn that day when rapper Azealia Banks wrote on Instagram that, as a guest at Musk's home at the time, she learned that he was under the influence of LSD when he fired off his headline-grabbing tweet. Banks said she overheard Musk making phone calls to drum up the funding he promised was already in place.

The news quickly turned serious again when it was reported that Tesla's outside directors had retained two law firms to deal with the SEC inquiry and the CEO's plans to take the company private.

On August 24, one day after meeting with the board, Musk announced that he had reversed course and would not be taking the company private. Among his reasons, he cited the preference of most directors to keep Tesla public, as well as the difficulty of retaining some of the large shareholders who were prohibited from investing in a private company. Others suggested that Musk was also influenced by the poor optics of an electric car company being funded by Saudi Arabia, a country heavily involved in the oil industry.

On September 29, 2018, it was announced that Musk would pay a $20 million fine and step down as chairman of Tesla's board for three years as part of an agreement with the SEC.

Inventions and Innovations

In August 2013, Musk released a concept for a new form of transportation called the "Hyperloop," an invention that would foster commuting between major cities while severely cutting travel time. Ideally resistant to weather and powered by renewable energy, the Hyperloop would propel riders in pods through a network of low-pressure tubes at speeds reaching more than 700 mph. Musk noted that the Hyperloop could take from seven to 10 years to be built and ready for use.

Although he introduced the Hyperloop with claims that it would be safer than a plane or train, with an estimated cost of $6 billion — approximately one-tenth of the cost for the rail system planned by the state of California — Musk's concept has drawn skepticism. Nevertheless, the entrepreneur has sought to encourage the development of this idea.

After he announced a competition for teams to submit their designs for a Hyperloop pod prototype, the first Hyperloop Pod Competition was held at the SpaceX facility in January 2017. A speed record of 284 mph was set by a German student engineering team at competition No. 3 in 2018, with the same team pushing the record to 287 mph the next year.

AI and Neuralink

Musk has pursued an interest in artificial intelligence, becoming co-chair of the nonprofit OpenAI. The research company launched in late 2015 with the stated mission of advancing digital intelligence to benefit humanity.

In 2017, it was also reported that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software. He expanded on the company's progress during a July 2019 discussion, revealing that its devices will consist of a microscopic chip that connects via Bluetooth to a smartphone.

High-Speed Train

In late November 2017, after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked for proposals to build and operate a high-speed rail line that would transport passengers from O'Hare Airport to downtown Chicago in 20 minutes or less, Musk tweeted that he was all-in on the competition with The Boring Company. He said that the concept of the Chicago loop would be different from his Hyperloop, its relatively short route not requiring the need for drawing a vacuum to eliminate air friction.

In summer 2018 Musk announced he would cover the estimated $1 billion needed to dig the 17-mile tunnel from the airport to downtown Chicago. However, in late 2019 he tweeted that TBC would focus on completing the commercial tunnel in Las Vegas before turning to other projects, suggesting that plans for Chicago would remain in limbo for the immediate future.

Flamethrower

Musk also reportedly found a market for The Boring Company's flamethrowers. After announcing they were going on sale for $500 apiece in late January 2018, he claimed to have sold 10,000 of them within a day.

Relationship with Donald Trump

In December 2016, Musk was named to President Trump’s Strategy and Policy Forum; the following January, he joined Trump's Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. Following Trump’s election, Musk found himself on common ground with the new president and his advisers as the president announced plans to pursue massive infrastructure developments.

While sometimes at odds with the president's controversial measures, such as a proposed ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Musk defended his involvement with the new administration. "My goals," he tweeted in early 2017, "are to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy and to help make humanity a multi-planet civilization, a consequence of which will be the creating of hundreds of thousands of jobs and a more inspiring future for all."

On June 1, following Trump's announcement that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, Musk stepped down from his advisory roles.

Personal Life

Wives and children.

Musk has been married twice. He wed Justine Wilson in 2000, and the couple had six children together. In 2002, their first son died at 10 weeks old from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Musk and Wilson had five additional sons together: twins Griffin and Xavier (born in 2004) and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian (born in 2006).

After a contentious divorce from Wilson, Musk met actress Talulah Riley. The couple married in 2010. They split in 2012 but married each other again in 2013. Their relationship ultimately ended in divorce in 2016.

Girlfriends

Musk reportedly began dating actress Amber Heard in 2016 after finalizing his divorce with Riley and Heard finalized her divorce from Johnny Depp . Their busy schedules caused the couple to break up in August 2017; they got back together in January 2018 and split again one month later.

In May 2018, Musk began dating musician Grimes (born Claire Boucher). That month, Grimes announced that she had changed her name to “ c ,” the symbol for the speed of light, reportedly on the encouragement of Musk. Fans criticized the feminist performer for dating a billionaire whose company has been described as a “predator zone” among accusations of sexual harassment.

The couple discussed their love for one another in a March 2019 feature in the Wall Street Journal Magazine , with Grimes saying “Look, I love him, he’s great...I mean, he’s a super-interesting goddamn person.” Musk, for his part, told the Journal, “I love c’s wild fae artistic creativity and hyper-intense work ethic.”

Grimes gave birth to their son on May 4, 2020, with Musk announcing that they had named the boy "X Æ A-12." Later in the month, after it was reported that the State of California wouldn't accept a name with a number, the couple said they were changing their son's name to "X Æ A-Xii."

Musk and Grimes welcomed their second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk, in December 2021. The child was delivered via a surrogate.

Nonprofit Work

The boundless potential of space exploration and the preservation of the future of the human race have become the cornerstones of Musk's abiding interests, and toward these, he has founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to space exploration and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources.

In October 2019 Musk pledged to donate $1 million to the #TeamTrees campaign, which aims to plant 20 million trees around the world by 2020. He even changed his Twitter name to Treelon for the occasion.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Elon Musk
• Birth Year: 1971
• Birth date: June 28, 1971
• Birth City: Pretoria
• Birth Country: South Africa
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: South African entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for founding Tesla Motors and SpaceX, which launched a landmark commercial spacecraft in 2012.
• Space Exploration
• Internet/Computing
• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• University of Pennsylania
• Queen's University, Ontario
• Stanford University
• Nacionalities
• South African
• Interesting Facts
• Elon Musk left Stanford after two days to take advantage of the Internet boom.
• In April 2017, Musk's Tesla Motors surpassed General Motors to become the most valuable U.S. car maker.

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Elon Musk Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/business-leaders/elon-musk
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: October 31, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• I'm very pro-environment, but let's figure out how to do it better and not jump through a dozen hoops to achieve what is obvious in the first place.
• Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

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South Africa–born businessman (born 1971) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Summarize this article for a 10 year old

Elon Reeve Musk ( / ˈ iː l ɒ n / EE -lon ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX ; angel investor , CEO, product architect, and former chairman of Tesla, Inc. ; owner, executive chairman, and CTO of X Corp. ; founder of the Boring Company and xAI ; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI ; and president of the Musk Foundation . He is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$190   billion as of March   2024 [ update ] , according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index , and $195   billion according to Forbes , primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. [5] [6]

A member of the wealthy South African Musk family , Elon was born in Pretoria and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother. Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University at Kingston in Canada. Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania , and received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University , but dropped out after two days and, with his brother Kimbal , co-founded online city guide software company Zip2 . The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999, and that same year Musk co-founded X.com , a direct bank . X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal .

In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5   billion, and that same year, with $100   million of the money he made, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, he became an early investor in electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008. In 2006, Musk helped create SolarCity , a solar-energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy . In 2013, he proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year, Musk co-founded Neuralink—a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces —and the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44   billion. He subsequently merged the company into newly created X Corp. and rebranded the service as X the following year. In March 2023, he founded xAI, an artificial intelligence company.

Musk has expressed views that have made him a polarizing figure. [7] He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including COVID-19 misinformation and antisemitic conspiracy theories . [7] [8] [9] [10] His ownership of Twitter has been similarly controversial, being marked by the laying off of a large number of employees, an increase in hate speech and misinformation and disinformation on the website, as well as changes to Twitter Blue verification . In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued him, alleging that he had falsely announced that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. To settle the case, Musk stepped down as the chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine.

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Eight things we learned from the Elon Musk biography

Widespread access to world’s richest man allowed biographer Walter Isaacson to detail a number of illuminating anecdotes

A new biography of Elon Musk was published on Tuesday and contains colourful details of the life of the world’s richest man.

Musk afforded widespread access to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, the author of the bestselling biography of the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and the book contains a series of illuminating anecdotes about Musk. Here are eight things we learned from the book.

1. Musk’s difficult relationship with his father

Musk, 52, was born and raised in South Africa and endured a fraught relationship with his father, Errol, an engineer. Isaacson writes that Errol “bedevils Elon”.

Musk’s brother, Kimbal, says the worst memory of his life was watching Errol berate Musk after he was hospitalised after a fight at school (the book says Musk was still getting corrective surgery for the injuries decades later). “My father just lost it,” says Kimbal.

Musk and Kimbal, who are estranged from their father, describe Errol as a “volatile fabulist”. Interviewed by Isaacson, Errol admits he encouraged a “physical and emotional toughness” in his sons.

Grimes, the artist who is mother to three of his 10 children, says PTSD from Musk’s childhood shaped an aversion to contentment: “I just don’t think he knows how to savor success and smell the flowers.” Musk tells Isaacson he agrees: “Adversity shaped me. My pain threshold became very high.”

2. Elon Musk has an issue with the ‘woke mind virus’

Shortly before taking over Twitter, or X as it is now called, Musk told Isaacson that the “woke mind virus” – a derogatory term for progressive politics and culture – would prevent extraplanetary settlement (one of Musk’s fixations).

“Unless the woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit, and anti-human in general, is stopped, civilization will never become multiplanetary,” said Musk.

3. Musk gave Twitter executives short shrift

Musk fired Twitter’s executive team as soon as he completed the takeover of Twitter in October last year and it had been coming. When Musk bought a significant stake in Twitter months before, he agreed to meet the CEO, Parag Agrawal. After the meeting, Musk said: “What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon and Parag is not that.”

They soon fell out. Agrawal texted Musk to say his tweet asking if Twitter was “dying” was not helpful. Musk, on a break in Hawaii, replied: “What did you get done this week?” He added: “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”

This was during discussions about Musk joining the board. Agrawal’s reply underlined the power imbalance, and Twitter’s fear of Musk. He texted: “Can we talk?” Musk soon lodged an official bid for Twitter, which he tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out of, but the die was cast for Agrawal and his colleagues.

4. Sam Bankman-Fried tried to get in on the Twitter takeover

The founder and CEO of the fallen cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, offered via his banker to put $5bn (£4.1bn) into the Twitter takeover, the book claims. Bankman-Fried also wanted to discuss putting Twitter on a blockchain – the technological underpinning for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

A subsequent call between Musk and Bankman-Fried in May 2022 went badly, Isaacson wrote. “My bullshit detector went off like red alert on a Geiger counter,” Musk is quoted as saying.

Bankman-Fried’s offer to invest or to roll over $100m of Twitter stock that he claimed he had invested, came to nothing.

5. Musk tried to recruit Rudy Giuliani as an adviser

In his early tycoon career, Musk pondered recruiting the then mayor of New York as a political fixer to help him turn his PayPal business into a bank in 2001. Musk sought a meeting with Giuliani, then coming to the end of his tenure in office, because he wanted to turn PayPal – an online payments company – into a “social network that would disrupt the whole banking industry”.

In 2001, Musk and an investor, Michael Moritz, went to New York to see if they could hire Giuliani to guide them through the process of turning PayPal into a bank. It didn’t go well.

“It was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says in the book. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets”.

“‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”

6. Musk is concerned about a dwindling human population

One of Musk’s reasons for founding a new artificial intelligence company , xAI, is addressing the threat of population collapse. In one face-to-face conversation with Isaacson, the multi-billionaire said human intelligence was in danger of being surmounted by digital intelligence.

“The amount of human intelligence, he noted, was levelling off because people were not having enough children. Meanwhile, the amount of computer intelligence was going up exponentially, like Moore’s law on steroids. At some point, biological brainpower would be dwarfed by digital brainpower.”

This conversation was conducted at the Austin, Texas house of Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk’s Neuralink business who is the mother of two of his children. Zilis told Isaacson she agreed to have children with Musk via IVF after listening to his arguments about having children as a “kind of social duty”. She said: “He really wants smart people to have kids, so he encouraged me to.”

7. Musk is very concerned about AI

Musk tells Isaacson that human consciousness is under threat from the prospect of super-intelligent, and uncontrollable, AI systems.

He says: “What can be done to make AI safe? I keep wrestling with that. What actions can we take to minimize AI danger and assure that human consciousness survives?”

8. Musk’s complicated role in the Ukraine conflict

Musk’s satellite communications unit, Starlink, has a key role in Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion. When a Russian cyber-attack crippled Ukraine’s satellite comms network an hour before the invasion, Musk stepped in following an appeal for help from Ukrainian officials and the country’s deputy prime minister.

However, the book alleges that Musk told his engineers to “turn off” Starlink coverage that would have facilitated an attack by drone submarines on Russia’s navy at the Sevastopol base in Crimea.

However, Isaacson has subsequently clarified this excerpt after Musk used his X platform to state that there was no Starlink coverage in that area and he refused a Ukrainian request to activate it. Musk posted: “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is published by Simon & Schuster. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

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Most viewed.

Elon Musk: The Complete Biography of an Extraordinary Innovator

• by history tools
• March 26, 2024

Elon Musk is one of the most famous entrepreneurs and business leaders of the 21st century. As the co-founder of PayPal, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, and driving force behind many other companies, Musk has had an outsized influence on technology, space exploration, and solving some of humanity‘s biggest challenges.

Let‘s take a closer look at Musk’s remarkable life story, complex persona, monumental successes and occasional setbacks, and what makes him such a polarizing character.

Childhood and Early Life in South Africa

Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, one of South Africa’s wealthiest and most segregated cities during apartheid. His mother Maye was a famous dietitian and model who grew up in Canada, while his father Errol was a wealthy white South African electromechanical engineer.

As a child, Musk was an avid reader and self-taught computer programmer. At age 12 he created and sold a video game called Blastar to a computer magazine for $500. But his relationship with his father was difficult – his parents divorced when he was 9 years old. Musk chose to live mostly with his father, which he would later regret considering they became estranged.

Discovering His Calling

After spending two years in the South African military, Musk moved to Canada at age 19. He studied at Queen‘s University in Ontario for two years, avoiding mandatory service in the South African military, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania.

At Penn, Musk pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Physics as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. Most notably, he rekindled an early passion by taking extra classes at the Stanford School of Engineering. It was a harbinger of innovations to come.

Founding Zip2 and PayPal

In 1995 Musk dropped out of Stanford’s PhD program to found his first startup Zip2 Corporation with his brother Kimbal. Zip2 provided online city guides to newspapers like the New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

Compaq bought Zip2 in 1999 for $307 million, earning Musk $22 million. He soon co-founded X.com, one of the first online banks providing services like checking accounts and money transfers.

X.com merged with its rival Confinity in 2000 to become PayPal, with Musk serving as the new CEO. Despite internal struggles at the new company, PayPal went on to revolutionize online payments. In 2002 eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk received $175 million.

“If something‘s important enough you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure.”

Making History with SpaceX

Flush with cash from the PayPal sale, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) in 2002 with an audacious long-term goal: make humanity multi-planetary by establishing a human colony on Mars.

SpaceX develops rockets, spacecraft and satellites aimed at revolutionizing space transportation to eventually make it affordable for private citizens to travel into orbit and to other planets. It almost went bankrupt in 2008, but Musk kept it afloat with personal funds.

In 2012 SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spaceship to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. And in 2020 SpaceX sent astronauts to the ISS for the first time, effectively resurrecting American manned spaceflight.

Tesla Accelerates Ahead with Musk at the Helm

Also in 2004 Musk made the series A investment round in Tesla Motors and joined Tesla’s board of directors as chairman. Founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, Tesla aimed to prove electric cars could be better than gasoline-powered cars.

The original Roadster sports car impressed critics, but by 2007 Tesla was also on the verge of bankruptcy. Musk invested heavily in Tesla and took over leadership of the company, serving as CEO and product architect.

Under his guidance, Tesla went public in 2010 to raise funds and the Model S sedan was named Motor Trend‘s 2013 Car of the Year. By 2023 Tesla had become the world‘s most valuable automaker, dominating the rapidly growing EV market.

Expanding His Entrepreneurial Portfolio

In addition to SpaceX and Tesla, Musk has founded or co-founded a number of new companies over the last two decades. These include:

• The Boring Company (2016) – Develops tunnels aimed at eliminating street traffic to reduce transportation time
• Neuralink (2016) – Develops implantable brain-machine interfaces to connect human brains with computers
• OpenAI (2015) – Non-profit AI research company working to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits humanity
• Starlink (2019) – SpaceX project to provide global satellite Internet access coverage

Not all of these companies have proven successful so far. But Musk continues to think big while attracting top talent to bring innovative new technologies to reality.

Taking Over Twitter for $44 Billion

In January 2022, Musk started acquiring shares of social media company Twitter. By March he had accumulated a 9.2% stake to become Twitter‘s largest shareholder. This set in motion a tumultuous year that eventually led to his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion on October 27, 2022.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk laid off roughly half the company‘s 7,500 employees and radically changed the platform‘s operations. Many users have quit the platform over concerns about misinformation as Musk grants "amnesty" to suspended accounts. The long-term implications of his takeover remain uncertain.

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”

Marriages, Relationships and Family

In 2000, Musk married Canadian author Justine Wilson. Their first son died unexpectedly from SIDS at 10 weeks old. They share custody of 5 sons – a set of twins and a set of triplets – born through IVF. Musk and Wilson separated in 2008.

From 2010 to 2012, Musk was married to English actress Talulah Riley. After divorcing, they remarried in 2013 before finalizing their divorce again in 2016. Musk also had an on-and-off relationship with musician Grimes which began in 2018. They had 2 children – a son born in 2020 and daughter born in 2021 via surrogate.

In 2022 it was revealed that Musk secretly had twins in 2021 with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his company Neuralink. He now has 10 children from 3 relationships. But his 18-year-old transgender daughter has disowned him, changing her name in opposition to Musk‘s "public transphobia."

Losing and Regaining Title of World‘s Richest Person

Thanks mostly to his shares in Tesla Motors, Musk experienced an astronomical rise in his personal net worth. He became the richest person in the world for the first time in January 2021 when he surpassed Jeff Bezos.

But his net worth dropped in 2022 and early 2023 as Tesla‘s share price declined. On January 6, 2023 Musk lost the title of world‘s richest person to Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH.

What‘s more, with an estimated $183 billion loss between November 2021 and January 2023, Musk holds the record for the largest loss of personal fortune in history according to Guinness World Records. Despite these setbacks, Musk’s supporters are betting he’ll reclaim the top spot someday.

What Makes Musk Such a Polarizing Figure

Musk has earned both ardent fans and vocal critics. So what makes him such a polarizing public figure?

Reasons supporters are drawn to Musk include:

• Daring vision for future innovations
• Willingness to take risks
• Commitment to tackling climate change with sustainable energy
• Power to make things happen that others consider impossible
• Relatable sense of humor on social media

However some people are strongly critical of Musk for:

• Poor treatment of employees by demanding unrealistic hours and goals
• Controversial public stances on issues like pandemic lockdowns
• Spreading misinformation and making questionable promises on Twitter
• Brash communication style and vindictiveness towards naysayers
• Concerns about concentration of power held by billionaires

But there‘s no questioning the outsized impact Musk already made on multiple industries. Even his detractors admit they‘re curious to see what he’ll achieve next.

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Early Life and Education

Notable accomplishments, personal eccentricities, the bottom line.

• Business Leaders
• Entrepreneurs

Who Is Elon Musk?

Nathan Laine / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time. Musk has achieved global fame as the chief executive officer (CEO) of electric automobile maker Tesla ( TSLA ) and the private space company SpaceX. Musk was an early investor in several tech companies, and in October 2022, he completed a deal to take X (formerly Twitter) private.

His success and personal style have given rise to comparisons to other colorful tycoons from U.S. history, including Steve Jobs , Howard Hughes, and Henry Ford . He was named the richest person in the world in 2021, surpassing Amazon ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos. Musk is the richest person in the world as of Feb. 15, 2024.

Let’s look briefly at the life of the man who has scaled the pinnacle of the business world.

Key Takeaways

• Elon Musk is the charismatic CEO of electric car maker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX.
• Following a contested process, Musk completed a deal to buy the company behind X in October 2022, becoming the owner of the social media company.
• Born and raised in South Africa, Musk spent time in Canada before moving to the United States.
• Educated at the University of Pennsylvania in physics, Musk started getting his feet wet as a serial tech entrepreneur with early successes like Zip2 and X.com, which merged with a company that became PayPal.
• Musk has behaved eccentrically from time to time.

Bailey Mariner / Investopedia

Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, the oldest of three children. His father was a South African engineer, and his mother was a Canadian model and nutritionist. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk lived primarily with his father. He would later dub his father “a terrible human being...almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done.”

“I had a terrible upbringing. I had a lot of adversity growing up. One thing I worry about with my kids is they don’t face enough adversity,” Musk would later say.

Bullied as a Child

Musk attended the private, English-speaking Waterkloof House Preparatory School—he started a year early—and later graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. A self-described bookworm, he made few friends in those places.

“They got my best (expletive) friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that (expletive) hurt,” Musk said. “For some reason, they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years, there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the (expletive) out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.”

Early Accomplishments

Technology became an escape for Musk. At 10, he became acquainted with programming using a Commodore VIC-20, an early and relatively inexpensive home computer. Before long, Musk had become proficient enough to create Blastar—a video game in the style of Space Invaders. He sold the BASIC code for the game to a PC magazine for $500.

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. Their parents nixed the plan.

Musk’s College Years

At 17, Musk moved to Canada. He would later obtain Canadian citizenship through his mother.

After emigrating to Canada, Musk enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It was there that he met Justine Wilson, an aspiring writer. They would marry and have six sons together, a first son, twins, and then triplets, before divorcing in 2008.

Entering the U.S.

After two years at Queen’s University, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He took on two majors, but his time there wasn’t all work and no play. With a fellow student, he bought a 10-bedroom fraternity house, which they used as an ad hoc nightclub.

Musk graduated with a bachelor of science degree in physics, in addition to a bachelor of arts in economics from the  Wharton School . The two majors foreshadowed Musk’s career, but it was physics that left the deepest impression.

“(Physics is) a good framework for thinking,” he would say later. “Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.”

Musk was 24 years old when he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford University. But, with the Internet exploding and Silicon Valley booming, Musk had entrepreneurial visions dancing in his head. He left the Ph.D. program after just two days.

In 1995, with $15,000 and his younger brother Kimbal at his side, Musk started Zip2, a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.

In 1999, Zip2 was acquired by Compaq Computer Corp. for $341 million. Musk used his Zip2 buyout money to create X.com, a fintech venture before that term was in wide circulation.

X.com merged with a money transfer firm called Confinity, and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Peter Thiel ousted Musk as PayPal CEO before eBay ( EBAY ) bought the payments company for $1.5 billion, but Musk still profited from the buyout via his 11.7% PayPal stake.

“My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180 million,” Musk said in a 2018 interview. “$100 (million) of that went into SpaceX, $70 (million) into Tesla, and $10 (million) into SolarCity. And I literally had to borrow money for rent.”

In 2017, Musk purchased the X.com domain name back from PayPal, citing its sentimental value.

Musk became involved with the electric cars venture as an early investor in 2004, ultimately contributing about $6.3 million, to begin with, and joined the team, including engineer Martin Eberhard, to help run a company then known as Tesla Motors. Following a series of disagreements, Eberhard was ousted in 2007, and an interim CEO was hired until Musk assumed control as CEO and product architect. Under his watch, Tesla has become the world’s most valuable automaker.

In addition to producing electric vehicles, Tesla maintains a robust presence in the solar energy space, thanks to its acquisition of SolarCity. The company currently produces two rechargeable solar batteries. The smaller Powerwall was developed for home backup power and off-the-grid use, while the larger Powerpack is intended for commercial or electric utility grid use.

Musk used most of the proceeds from his PayPal stake to found Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket's developer commonly known as SpaceX. By his own account, Musk spent $100 million to found SpaceX in 2002 .

Under Musk’s leadership, SpaceX landed several high-profile contracts with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force to design space launch rockets. Musk has publicized plans to send an astronaut to Mars by 2025 in a collaborative effort with NASA.

The company was founded in March 2006 as Twitter by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. Originally a private company, it went public in November 2013. It raised $1.8 billion through its initial public offering (IPO) .

Musk joined the site in June 2009. A frequent poster on the messaging network, Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in X in April 2022. The company responded by offering Musk a seat on the board, which he accepted before declining days later. Musk then sent a bear hug letter to the board proposing to buy the company at $54.20 per share.

The company’s board adopted a poison pill provision to discourage Musk from accumulating an even larger stake, but they ultimately accepted Musk’s offer after he disclosed $46.5 billion in committed financing for the deal in a securities filing.

In July 2022, Musk attempted to cancel the deal , arguing that X had failed to provide certain information regarding fake accounts. The company sued Musk to require him to complete the deal.

After months of legal wrangling, the billionaire’s plan to buy the social media platform came to fruition, and Musk took control of the company on Oct. 28, 2022. The company was renamed X the following year.

During his May 8, 2021, appearance on the TV show Saturday Night Live , Musk revealed that he has Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. “I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL . Or at least the first to admit it,” he said. How does the neurodevelopment condition manifest itself? “I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I’m told makes for great comedy,” Musk explained.

On Sept. 7, 2018, Musk smoked cannabis during a filmed interview for a podcast.

Just a month earlier, Musk posted an infamous tweet claiming he was considering taking Tesla private and had secured the needed funding. Musk subsequently settled a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint alleging he knowingly misled investors with the tweet by paying a $20 million fine along with the same penalty for Tesla and agreeing to let Tesla’s lawyers approve tweets with material corporate information before posting.

In March 2022, Musk filed a court motion to overturn the consent decree stemming from that case. In April 2022 during a live TED Talk, Musk called the SEC regulators on the case “bastards.”

Is Elon Musk Married?

Elon Musk has been divorced three times—twice from his second wife, Talulah Riley. From 2018 to 2022, he was in a relationship with Canadian singer/songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, professionally known as Grimes, with whom he had a son in 2020, a daughter in 2022, and a third child revealed in 2023. They remain best friends. He also has six boys from his first marriage to Justine Musk. He also shares twins with Shivon Zilis. Musk has a total of 11 children.

How Rich Is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk’s net worth was estimated at $205 billion as of Feb. 15, 2024, making him the wealthiest person on the planet.

Was Elon Musk Born Rich?

No, Elon Musk was born into a middle-class family. In 1995, when he founded X.com, he reportedly had more than $100,000 in student debt and struggled to pay rent.

What Does Elon Musk Do at Tesla?

Elon Musk is officially listed as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla on the company’s website. In a 2021 securities filing, the company disclosed an additional Musk title as “Technoking of Tesla.”

What Companies Does Elon Musk Own?

Elon Musk is a large stakeholder in several companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co., Neuralink, and X Corp.

Musk’s early interests in philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy novels are reflected in his idealism and concern with human progress—and in his business career. He works in fields he has identified as crucial to humanity’s future, notably the transition to renewable energy sources, space exploration, and the Internet.

Musk has defied critics, disrupted industries, and made the most money anyone ever has from PayPal, Tesla Motors, SolarCity, and SpaceX—game changers all, despite the inevitable missteps.

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Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity. The Only Problem: People.

Walter Isaacson’s biography of the billionaire entrepreneur depicts a mercurial “man-child” with grandiose ambitions and an ego to match.

Credit... Illustration by Jan Robert Dünnweller; Photo reference by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

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By Jennifer Szalai

• Published Sept. 9, 2023 Updated Sept. 11, 2023
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ELON MUSK , by Walter Isaacson

At various moments in “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the world’s richest person , the author tries to make sense of the billionaire entrepreneur he has shadowed for two years — sitting in on meetings, getting a peek at emails and texts, engaging in “scores of interviews and late-night conversations.” Musk is a mercurial “man-child,” Isaacson writes, who was bullied relentlessly as a kid in South Africa until he grew big enough to beat up his bullies. Musk talks about having Asperger’s, which makes him “bad at picking up social cues.” As the people closest to him will attest, he lacks empathy — something that Isaacson describes as a “gene” that’s “hard-wired.”

Yet even as Musk struggles to relate to the actual humans around him, his plans for humanity are grand. “A fully reusable rocket is the difference between being a single-planet civilization and being a multiplanet one”: Musk would “maniacally” repeat this message to his staff at SpaceX, his spacecraft and satellite company, where every decision is motivated by his determination to get earthlings to Mars. He pushes employees at his companies — he now runs six, including X, the platform formerly known as Twitter — to slash costs and meet brutal deadlines because he needs to pour resources into the moonshot of colonizing space “before civilization crumbles.” Disaster could come from climate change, from declining birthrates, from artificial intelligence. Isaacson describes Musk stalking the factory floor of Tesla, his electric car company, issuing orders on the fly. “If I don’t make decisions,” Musk explained, “we die.”

By “we,” Musk presumably meant Tesla in that instance. But Musk likes to speak of his business interests in superhero terms, so it’s sometimes hard to be sure. Isaacson, whose previous biographical subjects include Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs, is a patient chronicler of obsession; in the case of Musk, he can occasionally seem too patient — a hazard for any biographer who is given extraordinary access. At one point, Isaacson asks why Musk is so offended by anything he deems politically correct, and Musk, as usual, has to dial it up to 11. “Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit and anti-human in general, is stopped,” he declares, “civilization will never become multiplanetary.” There are a number of curious assertions in that sentence, but it would have been nice if Isaacson had pushed him to answer a basic question: What on earth does any of it even mean?

Isaacson has ably conveyed that Musk doesn’t truly like pushback. Some of his lieutenants insist that he will eventually listen to reason, but Isaacson sees firsthand Musk’s habit of deriding as a saboteur or an idiot anyone who resists him. The musician Grimes, the mother of three of Musk’s children (the existence of the third, Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, has been kept private until now), calls his roiling anger “demon mode” — a mind-set that “causes a lot of chaos.” She also insists that it allows him to get stuff done.

It’s a convenient assessment, one that Isaacson seems mostly to accept. “As Shakespeare teaches us,” he writes, “all heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex.” Well, yes — but couldn’t this describe anyone? What is there to say specifically about Musk himself?

For that we can turn to Isaacson’s reporting, of which there is plenty. (Another thoroughly reported biography, by Ashlee Vance , was published in 2015 — four years before SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites and seven years before Musk acquired Twitter.) Isaacson even managed to get Errol, Elon’s intermittently estranged father, to talk — though mostly what Errol offers are rambling bigoted comments (while insisting he isn’t racist) and self-aggrandizing tales (at least one of which turns out to be “provably false”).

Errol has two children with his stepdaughter. As for Elon, he has 10 children with three women, one of whom — Shivon Zilis, who bore his twins in 2021 — is an executive at one of his companies. (Another child, Musk’s first, born in 2002, died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome when he was 10 weeks old.)

“He really wants smart people to have kids,” Zilis said of Musk, who offered to be her sperm donor so that, Isaacson adds, “the kids would be genetically his.” At the time, Grimes and Musk were expecting their second child, a girl. Musk didn’t tell Grimes that he had just had twins with one of his employees.

But the details of such domestic intrigues are, in the book and in Musk’s life, largely beside the point. He is mostly preoccupied with his businesses, where he expects his staff to abide by “the algorithm,” his workplace creed, which commands them to “question every requirement” from a department, including “the legal department” and “the safety department”; and to “delete any part or process” they can. “Comradery is dangerous,” is one of the corollaries. So is this: “The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.”

Still, Musk has accrued enough power to dictate his own rules. In one of the book’s biggest scoops, Isaacson describes Musk secretly instructing his engineers to “turn off” Starlink satellite internet coverage to prevent Ukraine from launching a surprise drone attack on Russian forces in Crimea. ( Isaacson has since posted on X that contrary to what he writes in the book, Musk didn’t shut down coverage but denied a request to extend the network’s range.) Musk decided that he was saving humanity from a nuclear war. When Ukraine’s vice prime minister texted him to say that Starlink service was “a matter of life and death,” Musk instructed him to “seek peace while you have the upper hand.”

Counseling the Ukrainians to “seek peace” sounds especially rich coming from someone who is “energized,” Isaacson says, by “dire threats.” But then the overall sense you get from this biography is that for all of Musk’s talk about the world-changing magic of “the algorithm,” he ultimately does what he wants. He will order his companies to scrimp fanatically on some things while insisting that they spend lavishly on others. At Tesla, Musk’s obsession with the minutiae of automotive design inflated costs and drained the company of cash. At SpaceX, instead of spending $1,500 for the kind of latch used by NASA, an engineer figured out how to modify a $30 latch intended for a bathroom stall. When Musk acquired Twitter last year, he eliminated 75 percent of the staff.

Since Musk’s acquisition, hate speech on the platform has proliferated while ad sales have plunged . Reading this book, one begins to wonder if the old bird-site will be Musk’s Waterloo. “He thought of it as a technology company,” Isaacson writes, “when in fact it was an advertising medium based on human emotions and relationships.” Isaacson believes that Musk wanted to buy Twitter because he had been so bullied as a kid and “now he could own the playground.” It’s an awkward metaphor, but that’s also what makes it perfect. Owning a playground won’t stop you from getting bullied. If you think about it, owning a playground won’t get you much of anything at all.

ELON MUSK | By Walter Isaacson | Illustrated | 670 pp. | Simon & Schuster | $35

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

The World of Elon Musk

The billionaire’s portfolio includes the world’s most valuable automaker, an innovative rocket company and plenty of drama..

SpaceX: President Biden wants companies that use American airspace for rocket launches to start paying taxes into a federal fund  that finances the work of air traffic controllers.

Tesla: The maker of electric vehicles appeared to be losing command of the market it effectively created after reporting a stunning drop in quarterly sales , raising fresh questions about Elon Musk’s leadership of the company.

Business With China : Tesla and China built a symbiotic relationship that made Elon Musk ultrarich. Now, his reliance on the country may give Beijing leverage .  

A Testy Interview:  In the wake of a rough interview with Elon Musk that touched upon Donald Trump, his reported drug use and hate speech on X,  the former television anchor Don Lemon said that his deal for a new talk show on X was called off  just days before it was scheduled to air.

The Musk Foundation: After making billions in tax-deductible donations to his charity, Musk has failed recently to donate the minimum required to justify a tax break  — and what he did give often supported his interests.

OpenAI: Musk, who helped found the A.I. start-up in 2015, has filed a lawsuit  accusing the company and its chief executive  of breaching a contract  by putting profits and commercial interests ahead of the public good.

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Elon Reeve "Ted Faro" [2] [3] "Chief Twit" [4] "Space Karen" [5] "The Boer" Musk (1971–) is a centibillionaire who is one of the richest people in the world — sometimes the richest, depending on swings in Tesla 's stock price. [6] [7] [note 1] Musk has expressed a wide range of erratically-shifting and sometimes contradictory beliefs. To name a few among these: he has endorsed antisemitic and/or racist ideas, [8] [9] [10] [11] conspiracy theories, [12] [13] [14] [note 2] and occasional pro-Russia/China positions (or even direct actions), [33] [34] [35] but has often taken the exact opposite position before on any given issue. Despite this, he has also fostered something of a cult of personality . [36] [37] [38] But he is best known for his S3XY electric vehicles [39] and for his "plans" to colonise Mars . [40] [41] [42] By 2023, Musk had been recognized by the Guinness World Records for the "largest loss of personal fortune in history" (US$182 billion loss) due to a crash in Tesla's stock price. [43]

Musk is notable for massively promoting several firms that have pushed cutting-edge innovation forward in the fields of green technology, cars in space, artificial intelligence , hyperloop , and space travel, and several charities including the Tesla Museum. Some undefined people regard him as one of the world's most influential people and as a major player in alternative-energy technology and in future spaceflight. Musk, however, also oversees questionable labor practices [46] [47] and has a strange view of modern capitalism .

• 1 Youth and skeletons in the family closet
• 2.1 The Boring Company: Burn it all down
• 2.2.1 Coins for Cars
• 2.3.1 Trashing Twitter's verification system
• 2.3.2 Shitposters vs. advertisers
• 2.3.3 Musk vs. Twitter employees
• 2.3.4 Musk, content moderation dictator
• 2.3.5 Musk, sucking up to authoritarians
• 2.3.6 Free speech absolutism
• 2.3.7 Musk, just another right-wing edgelord troll
• 2.3.8 Climate change misinformation/disinformation
• 2.3.9 The future
• 3.1.1 Musk's addictive personality
• 3.2 Companies, by proxy
• 4.1 "Marx was a capitalist"
• 4.3 Boring boneheads
• 4.5.1 Transphobia
• 4.5.2 Antisemitism
• 4.5.3 White genocide
• 4.6 "Pedo guy" lawsuit
• 6 Donald Trump
• 8 External links
• 10 References

Youth and skeletons in the family closet [ edit ]

Musk was born wealthy, as are so many billionaires. His father co-owned an emerald mine in Zambia, and Musk lived a lavish lifestyle in his youth because of this. To avoid a mandatory stint in the South African military, which would have required him to uphold the apartheid regime that he has at times claimed that he despised and other times not mentioned it as a rationale for leaving South Africa. [55] :43 He left South Africa to attend college in Canada and the United States ; while certainly a display of privilege , it was also a very real move to avoid upholding white supremacy at the point of a gun but not at the point of a krugerrand. [56] [57]

Business ventures [ edit ]

• Zip2: started in 1995 (apparently "with investments from The New York Times Company , Knight-Ridder, MDV, Softbank and the Hearst Corporation"), a company that produced city guides for newspapers, sold in 1999 to Compaq for $307 million. [64]
• PayPal: long story short - in 1999 Musk (using his Zip2 cash) and a few other men founded X.com, an online bank, which subsequently merged with its competitor Confinity in March of 2000. Confinity had already developed an early version of PayPal and released it in 1999. Musk was able to become CEO of the newly merged company but because the board found him to be a total shitgibbon [note 5] they fired him in October 2000 while he was flying to Australia for his honeymoon; he was replaced by Peter Thiel . In subsequent litigation over his firing, he was able to negotiate that he be listed as one of the founders of PayPal (which is what Confinity was renamed in 2001), despite that, as noted, he didn't find himself listed as an official founder. Additionally, because he kept his stock holdings (about 11% of the total, making him the largest shareholder), when eBay bought PayPal in 2002, he made about $180 million in the deal.
• Tesla Motors: founded in 2003 by Musk [71] Martin Eberhard (who was shoved out by Musk) [72] a company that designs and manufactures semi-automated electric cars.
• SolarCity: started in 2006, a company that manufactures and installs rooftop solar panels. Acquired by Tesla in 2016; its successor is Tesla Energy.
• Hyperloop , announced in 2013, an idiotic and impossible rapid transit method that is basically a maglev train inside a vacuum tube. Musk wants this to compete with conventional high-speed rail .
• OpenAI: started in 2015, a nonprofit intended to generate a general artificial intelligence (and avoid Roko's Basilisk ). He left OpenAI in 2018. [73]
• Neuralink: started in 2016, a company intended to produce software and devices that can interface with the human brain. As of 2022, Neuralink is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General for violations of the Animal Welfare Act. [74] Musk has advocated both bad management practices (by telling employees to work faster by imagining a bomb strapped to their heads), and bad science practices (employees have alleged that "Neuralink launches tests in quick succession before fixing issues in earlier tests or drawing complete conclusions.") [74]
• Thud: started in 2018, a company intended to produce comedic/ satirical articles similar to The Onion , which Musk had attempted to purchase after it wrote satirical articles about him. After Musk pulled the rug out after 6 months, Thud made a muffled sound on the ground and did not come back up. [75]
• pravduh.com: started in 2018, a website intended to let people vote on the reliability of media sources, created after Musk received much negative media coverage in the same year. [76] This turned out to be a minor temper tantrum, as there's no evidence the site ever had any content. [77] Not to be confused with Pravda.ru , which actually has content of the bovine fecal variety.

The Boring Company: Burn it all down [ edit ]

The Boring Company (TBC), started in 2016, a company intended to reduce the cost of boring tunnels. This could come in handy if the Hyperloop manages to defy reality itself. In 2018, it was awarded a contract to provide an express train service from the O'Hare International Airport to downtown Chicago, scheduled to open in 2021. [78] [note 8] By September of the same year, however, nothing has been done, and the future of the project remains in doubt. [79] [note 9] So far, the Boring Company is not very exciting.

As of 2023, 5 TBC projects were cancelled or moribund (Baltimore- Washington Loop, Chicago , Illinois , Los Angeles and San Jose, California , and Sydney area, Australia ). Only one had been completed (Las Vegas, Nevada ).

In 2018, attempting to make Boring exciting again, Boring began manufacturing flamethrowers, selling 20,000 flamethrowers by subscription. At the time, California was experiencing its worst wildfire season up to that point, so Musk was seriously pissing off government officials and private citizens. [81] Both UK and California government officials warned Musk that it was generally illegal to own flamethrowers in both jurisdictions. [81]

Tesla Motors [ edit ]

Tesla Motors is a car company figure-headed by Elon Musk. It is famous for being the only company with a commercially available car floating in space. It makes "eco-friendly" electric cars, which made the news for catching fire with toxic smoke and hard-to-extinguish flames. [84] [85] As it turns out though, while Teslas caught fire, they did so at a much lower rate than the cars relying on tiny controlled explosions of extremely flammable hydrocarbons. [86] However, putting out lithium battery fires is far more difficult than putting out internal combustion car fires, sometimes requiring over 20,000 gallons of water. [87] Tesla also makes cars that can drive themselves, but they seem to have a habit of crashing while doing so. [88]

Following the introduction of the "Autopilot" (advanced driver assistance) feature on Teslas in June 2022, there have been 17 fatalities, 736 crashes involving Teslas with the feature enabled. [89] This number of Tesla crashes is far more than all other vehicles with driver assistance combined. [89] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration senior safety adviser Missy Cummings has said that the number of fatalities per crash for Teslas has also been a concern. [89] Musk's "decisions — such as widely expanding the availability of the features and stripping the vehicles of radar sensors — appear to have contributed to the reported uptick in incidents". [89]

Coins for Cars [ edit ]

In late 2020, Tesla hinted that they would begin accepting Bitcoin for cars, which sent the already overpriced Bitcoin even higher. In early 2021, Tesla bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, [90] and then in March made the actual announcement they'd sell cars in Bitcoin. Bitcoin skyrocketed even further, making Tesla's Bitcoins even more valuable. Then Tesla began selling off their Bitcoins, [91] whereas Musk loudly insists didn't happen, [92] just before refusing to accept Bitcoin for their cars in May 2021. [93] [94] Strategic business misstep or pump-and-dump scheme? You decide.

But there's another explanation that doesn't involve insider trading or market manipulation. During those two months, numerous problems with Bitcoin purchases became apparent, at least for the consumer. To purchase a Tesla, you have to place a deposit of $2500 or equivalent value in Bitcoin. If you cancelled before the car was made you got a refund, but if the deposit was made in Bitcoin, Tesla got to choose whether to pay you Bitcoins or cash. I.e., if Bitcoin went down, you got Bitcoin, but if it went up, you got cash. The US also has "lemon laws" for defective cars, colloquially known as "lemons", where you can be compensated if the manufacturer gives you a lemon. But if you paid for your car in Bitcoin, you guessed it, Tesla could compensate you in whichever currency was worth less. [95] Purchasing itself was a hassle; when given a quote, you had 30 minutes to complete the purchase or you would have to get a new quote. [96] This was needed because of Bitcoin's notoriously volatile price, as otherwise the purchaser could change their mind as Bitcoin fluctuated. Most charitably, this whole debacle was such a miserable experience for everyone involved, and not the image that Musk wants for Tesla.

Twitter [ edit ]

Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion on October 28, 2022, [97] after first engaging in the deal, then backing out, then going to court, and then reversing course and forking over the cash. It might be an elaborate ploy to make money out of Twitter (somehow) or serve other interests, but even as a libertarian it is hard to believe he cares about 'anything goes' free speech . In any case the whole process has been fraught with his typical attention seeking derp behaviour, highly manipulative tactics, and weird and douchey tweets/comments including personal attacks on well known figures. He claims there will still be moderation, so we're not sure what that means for "protecting free speech". Predictably, his adoring fans have eaten up everything he has done so far, praising every move he has made as "genius" and believing that Musk actually cares about anyone but himself.

As for how the site is post-acquisition, it's gone about as well as you'd expect. [98] In a short time, he's fired the CEO, CFO and CLO, [99] and this happened. Not great, to say the least.

Trashing Twitter's verification system [ edit ]

Musk, who previously tweeted that "comedy is now legal on Twitter" after purchasing the company (in reference to—before he bought the company—the Babylon Bee getting suspended from Twitter for transphobia ), [105] used his "free speech absolutist" principles to permaban the impersonation accounts off the platform. [106] Consequently, an especially popular permaban speedrun during this period, particularly among comedians and Internet personalities, was for people with already verified accounts to rename themselves as Elon Musk and start trolling the "Chief Twit". [104] [107]

In late March 2023, Musk once again announced that beginning April 1 2023, Twitter will start removing "legacy verified checkmarks" in favor of a system where users and organizations pay for "verified" checkmarks ($8-$11 a month for users and $12,000 a year for organizations), though purportedly there was exemptions for the top 10,000 organizations by follower count. Predictably, most people balked, feeling that there was no value in a system where "verified" only means that one has given Musk money. [108] [109] [110] As April 1st passed, it was clear that whether or not the check was removed was haphazard and entirely on Musk's whims; while many people's verified check marks stayed, in a sign of his continued hostility to American media (and his tendency to break promises), the one notable verified checkmark he took away was from the Twitter account of the New York Times . [111]

Evidently, the checkmark purge had been set back about three weeks. On April 20, 2023, the remaining nonpaying verified users began losing their checkmarks... for the most part. [112] Things went just swell after that. Imposter accounts immediately flooded the site, including imposters for government agencies who immediately began shitposting misinformation. [113] [114] [115] IRS accounts lost verification, opening the door to potential scams . [116] The attempt to monetize legacy verified users didn't work very well. Twitter only saw a net increase of 28 paid subscriptions among them in the first day (or about 400, according to a separate claim). [117] [118] [119] Two days in, the net signups had risen to about 700 (about $5,600 in profit). [117] That's out of around 300,000 legacy verified users. [120] Some of those new subscriptions (at least three) were personally paid for by Musk himself. [112] [117] Bizarrely (considering Twitter's trouble with advertisers), Musk also started demanding that any business not spending $1000 a month on Twitter needed to subscribe in order to run advertisements on the platform. [121] Let us know how that ultimatum works out for you.

What makes this particularly hilarious is that the verification system arose out of a legal dispute circa Twitter's inception, where the company agreed that they are liable for any damages caused by impersonation. In June 2009, MLB manager Tony La Russa sued Twitter over a parody account impersonating him. That account mocked the then-manager of the St. Louis Cardinals with tweets like: “Lost 2 out of 3, but we made it out of Chicago without one drunk driving incident or dead pitcher.” [130] While the lawsuit was settled out of court, it nevertheless was the catalyst that caused Twitter to roll out the Verified Accounts feature as it was originally implemented for more than a decade.

Shitposters vs. advertisers [ edit ]

Two days after the acquisition, Hillary Clinton tweeted a condemnation of a recent assault of Nancy Pelosi 's husband. As the alleged suspect was reportedly fueled by conspiracy theories and misinformation, Clinton also accused the "Republican Party and its mouthpieces" of regularly spreading "hate and deranged conspiracy theories", linked the assault to the misinformation, and demanded accountability. Musk responded back with a tweet containing a "news article"... an article that happened to be a completely deranged, hateful conspiracy theory about Pelosi's husband from a well known fake news site, [132] [133] essentially proving Clinton's point. According to his biography by Walter Isaacson, Musk was ridiculed for the exchange by his brother and privately regretted it. [134] In January 2023, he apologized for it. [135]

Although a re-evaluation of contracts is not unusual whenever leadership changes, Musk's buyout caused quite a bit more concerns than you typically see during an acquisition. Before the buyout, Musk had built up a following among the generally right-wing "shitpost" crowd due to Musk's "free speech absolutist" philosophy and, starting in the early 2020s, increasing amounts of tweets dabbling with fringe right-wing memes, including a tweet with the " red pill " meme and the use of " woke " as a snarl word . [136] [137] Some of these shitposters (some who have had their accounts suspended on Twitter and elsewhere for things like transphobia , COVID-19 misinformation, the Big Lie of Donald Trump , and racist and homophobic slurs) therefore cheered when Musk bought Twitter. [138]

Advertisers, however, make up 90% of Twitter's revenue, and advertisers have long considered "brand safety" to be of utmost importance. Many companies do not want to see their advertisements placed next to any inappropriate content, which includes fake news, extremism, and hate. [139] When even the "Chief Twit" CEO is tweeting out hateful misinformation from a fake news site, it is no surprise that many advertisers paused their spending on Twitter shortly after the buyout in order to evaluate what direction Musk will take with Twitter's content moderation policy. [140]

Musk's initial reaction to the advertiser pause, of course, was to deflect. First, he blamed "activists" for the revenue drop (claiming "they're trying to destroy free speech in America"), [143] and then he threatened to "thermonuclear name & shame" advertisers who were "boycotting". [144] Then he used his "free speech" principles to block a prominent marketing executive [note 10] who questioned how brand safety can be maintained when Musk "just laid off 75% of the moderation team." [146]

Musk, however, equally pissed off the shitposters by insisting that "Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies" and actually agreeing to talk with civil rights leaders. [147] [note 11] Pissing off the shitposters further, Musk also defended and stood by Twitter's head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth, [149] who was a previous target of the MAGA crowd when fact-checking labels started to be added to Donald Trump 's tweets, and old tweets made from Roth resurfaced that called Trump a " racist tangerine". [150]

Musk vs. Twitter employees [ edit ]

Musk, however, wasn't done pissing people off: the next step he undertook was to try to piss off Twitter's employees. On November 10 2022, Musk sent his first email to all Twitter employees as CEO. In the email, Musk warned that the "road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed" and painted a bleak picture of Twitter's future. In the process, he nixed Twitter's previous generous work-from-home policy instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic . [151] (Of course, the letter failed to mention that a significant portion of Twitter's financial woes at the time were Musk-inflicted damage, caused by Musk massively overpaying for Twitter and adding $13 billion in corporate debt, meaning Twitter was on the hook to pay $1 billion in interest payments annually.) [152] [153]

Multiple Twitter executives (including the aforementioned Roth) that made it past Musk's initial firings expressed confidence in the genius of Musk's plans by handing in their resignation papers that week. [153] [154] Later that week, Musk fired multiple employees for the cardinal sin of responding to Musk's super-genius public tweets explaining how, when it came to his tweets about the technical details of Twitter, Musk had absolutely no clue what he was talking about. [155]

The result was predictable, given Musk's callous and disrespectful attitude towards his employees: a reported mass exodus, to the point where Twitter had to shut its doors on Friday November 18 in order to protect its systems and data. [160] Initial reports estimated the exodus to include at least 1200 full-time employees, [note 12] including 96% of the "core services" team and several entire departments. [161] The team dedicated to countering child sexual abuse on the platform was cut in half, leaving behind an "overwhelmed skeleton crew". [162] [163] [164] One former Twitter executive commented that with so many employees leaving, Twitter "will struggle just to keep the lights on". [160] "#RIPTwitter" became the #1 trending topic on US Twitter in reaction to this news. [165] [166]

On December 13 2022, reports emerged that Twitter was not paying any rent for the offices Musk was requiring employees to work from, and was discussing denying severance payments to the thousands of people who had been laid off since the takeover. [167] Twitter was later sued by its landlord for allegedly failing to pay its rent. [168] Twitter employees were evicted from the company's office in Singapore — noted as its headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region — for unpaid rents as well. Reportedly, this fate was set to hit about a dozen Twitter offices for the same reason. [169] [170] Around the same time, the company began auctioning off supplies from its offices such as coffee machines, chairs, statues, and sculptures. [171] [172]

In early February 2023, around the time a major global outage occurred on the platform, [note 13] Twitter also managed to piss off developers of third party clients, maintainers of non-nefarious bots, celebrities that use tools for social media management, social media researchers, and more by announcing that third party access to the Twitter API that made this third party ecosystem possible would no longer be free for anyone. [174] [175] Meanwhile, in a sign of Musk's continuing god complex , a report emerged around that time that Musk fired an engineer simply for suggesting that his declining engagement numbers on the platform were simply because public interest in his shitshow was waning. [173] This revelation also resulted in Musk ordering a change to Twitter's "ranked timeline" that ensured that Musk's tweets were heavily promoted, whether you liked it or not. [176]

Musk, content moderation dictator [ edit ]

Musk, however, was also still pissing off some shitposters at that time due to announcing what effectively was a shadowban system ("Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized") on November 18, and refusing to reinstate Alex Jones 's Twitter account. [188]

On December 12 2022, Musk's Twitter dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, an advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organizations formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, and other problems on the platform. [191] In addition, on this same day, reports emerged that the once cordial relationship between Yoel Roth and Musk had developed into a feud after Roth left the company. This culminated in Musk releasing internal documents concerning Roth managing Donald Trump 's ban, and (using a tired tactic of his) calling Roth a pedophile . Musk's baseless pedophile claim resulted in an escalation of threats against Roth, forcing him to flee his home. [192]

Reports emerged that Musk used his "free speech absolutism" to ban activists who documented extremism and violence among the alt-right , under the guise of them being " antifa ". Reportedly the bans were enacted at the request of the notoriously whiny anti-left agitator Andy Ngo . [193] In addition, again unsurprisingly, some users claimed to be banned from Twitter simply for being even remotely critical of Musk in a tweet. [194] A Twitter bot account that tracked the location of Musk's private jet (using public information), which made headlines in January 2022 when the operator refused a $5000 payment from Musk to delete the account, [195] was, in the name of "free speech absolutism", banned from Twitter on December 14 2022. [196]

In early April 2023, Musk released the source code of Twitter's recommendation engine. Among the findings, Musk has his own special category in the engine (perhaps explaining why users report seeing his messages so prominently), and certain topics like " Ukraine " seemed to be suppressed. Separately, in further signs of the "free speech absolutism" of Musk's Twitter, others noted that if one uses certain words like " transgender ", " gay ", " lesbian ", or " bisexual " in a Tweet, the message wouldn't preview when shared via direct message (which implies these are now flagged as inflammatory or sensitive terms). [211] Shortly thereafter, Twitter revoked its policy banning targeted deadnaming and misgendering of transgender people — a move by Musk that had been anticipated since November 2022. [212] [213]

In May 2023, reports emerged of widely-circulated animal abuse content suggested prominently by Twitter's internal search engine. This included a particularly notorious video, which appeared as a suggestion if a user searched for " cat ". [219] Between that and reports of widely-viewed child abuse content (again, after gutting the team dedicating to fighting child exploitation, along with other moderation crews), priorities are clearly in the right place. [220] [221] It is unknown why companies are hesitant to place advertisements for their products next to this sort of content.

On June 1 2023, the Daily Wire reported that they had been in talks with Twitter to set up a paid advertiser campaign to promote a transphobic "documentary" by Matt Walsh called What is a Woman? . Twitter staff, however, backed out after reviewing the film, and warned the Daily Wire that although they could still post the video, the film would be flagged as "hateful content" under Twitter's policies. This, naturally, infuriated Twitter's right-wing trolls. At this point, Musk decided to throw his safety employees under the bus, and (after a small bit of hesitation) worked to ensure that the hateful content promoted by the Daily Wire would not be labeled as hateful content on Twitter. Musk later shared the video on his feed with the comment "every parent should watch this" (while also promoting a number of anti-trans talking points elsewhere). This incident resulted in yet even more staff resignations, among them Ella Irwin (VP of trust and safety, who had just taken the post when previous head Yoel Roth left in November 2022), Maie Aiyed (Twitter brand safety partnerships program director), and AJ Brown (head of brand safety and ad quality). [222] [223]

On June 21 2023, Elon Musk use his increasingly doublespeak -y "free speech absolutism" principles, as well as his increasing transphobia , to declare that "cis" and "cisgender" were now considered slurs on Twitter and that users who engaged in "harassment" with these words would face consequences. [224] He did this again in Late October. [225]

Not coincidentally, also on Monday July 10 2023, Musk's shithole got praised by the fucking Taliban of all things for its "pro-free speech policies" while calling out Threads as " intolerant " for not putting up with extremist pollution. [239]

In December 2023 Elon Musk lost a court case related to California's content moderation policy. This is one case of Musk putting Twitter into two court cases, one with the state of California, and the other related to a Media Matters Lawsuit. [240] [241]

Musk, sucking up to authoritarians [ edit ]

According to a report by the non-profit news organization Rest of the World in April 2023, since Musk took over Twitter, Twitter's compliance with government demands for censorship or surveillance rose to over 80%, from around 50%. [242] [243] [244]

In late January, Musk continued to demonstrate how his "free speech absolutist" claim was bullshit (particularly perhaps when it came to appeasing authoritarian demands) when Twitter censored links to a BBC documentary critical of Narendra Modi (a documentary which in particular highlighted Modi's troubling connections to the 2002 Gujarat riots. ) [245]

Free speech absolutism [ edit ]

Following the 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli retaliation in Gaza, an explosion of antisemitic posts on X/Twitter went unchecked. Musk, thinking that he could solve the problem, must have thought he could just go to Israel, meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu , make a statement ("We need to do everything possible to stop the hate."), and that would be the end of it. [258] It would seem very unlikely given that Musk refuses to do anything about Twitter antisemitism since the Trust and Safety team at X likely remains eviscerated from the time it was dissolved in December 2022, [259] and since Musk boosted the previously-thought-to-be-moribund Pizzagate conspiracy theory one day after meeting with Netanyahu. [258]

Despite Musk's claims of free speech absolutism, he has consistently capitulated to right-wing authoritarians (India's Narendra Modi and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan) [260] [261] but not when it involves censoring far-right anti- democratic ideas [262] or his own critics. [263]

Musk, just another right-wing edgelord troll [ edit ]

Due to Musk firing Twitter's communications team, as of March 2023 (under a new policy change instituted by Musk), any mail sent to these accounts will be automatically replied to with a "poop emoji". Which ironically happens to also be a great description of Twitter under Musk's leadership. [277]

Climate change misinformation/disinformation [ edit ]

Since taking Twitter over, Musk's priorities have shifted to shitposting transphobic jokes and hanging out with his conspiracy theory -loving sycophants on the platform. While Musk is not a climate change denier (at least at this time), this shift in focus has resulted in a considerably diminished focus on his previous stance championing the fight against climate change.

Besides allowing vicious attacks on climate scientists on Twitter [283] (to the point with many climate scientists, fed up with the racism, sexism, and climate-denying trolls and bots on the platform, have simply left) [284] and prioritizing results from climate change deniers on Twitter, [285] Musk has himself posted climate change misinformation: [286]

In fact, land use change (LUC) impacts the balance of the Earth's carbon cycle by altering the land's carbon carrying capacity, for example where rainforest is replaced by farmland. According to the annual Global Carbon Budget study [287] , 11% of the annual net increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration is currently a direct result of LUC, while cumulatively LUC is responsible for one third of anthropogenic CO 2 emissions since 1750. While the impact of fossil fuel combustion is undoubtedly greater, it is straight up climate denial to state that LUC has "no meaningful impact".

LUC also significantly impacts the atmospheric concentration of the other key greenhouse gases, methane [288] [289] [290] and nitrous oxide [291] [292] [293] .

LUC additionally affects climate conditions by changing biophysical properties such as albedo, evapotranspiration and surface roughness [294] [295] . Although these effects are generally more localised than changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, localised climate change is still relevant when considering climate change impacts.

If human civilisation had acted more quickly to transition away from fossil fuels, we could afford to ignore the effect of LUC on climate in the short to medium term. However, as decades of inaction has brought us to the point of climate crisis, addressing the impact of LUC will be necessary if we are to meet goals such as the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C [296] and the European Union's ambition of net zero emissions by 2050 [297] .

Aside from the issue of LUC, modern agriculture and forestry systems are also highly dependent on petroleum-based fertilizers, energy-intensive machinery for planting and harvesting, and transportation networks that are still largely powered by fossil fuels. The IPCC groups these factors alongside the effect of LUC itself under the heading Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU), which they say was responsible for 22% of net global CO 2 -eq GHG emissions in the year 2019. [298]

Musk has also downplayed the threat of climate change to various degrees on several occasions. In an August 2022 tweet, for instance, Musk seemed to put more prominence in depopulation conspiracy theories than climate change. ("Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.") [299] On May 5 2023, in response to a tweet from Mike Cernovich calling "global warming" "the largest scam in human history.", Musk replied that "global warming risk is overblown in the short term, but significant in the long term." [300]

The future [ edit ]

Musk's Twitter problems were so significant, they affected his primary company Tesla as well. Between April 4 2022 (the date Musk first disclosed he took a 9% stake in Twitter) and December 15 2022, Musk's primary company, Tesla, lost a staggering $705 billion in market capitalization. The Twitter purchase was not the only reason for the decline, however it was clear that Twitter played a significant factor. Many investors were not happy with Musk seemingly abandoning Tesla in order to badly mismanage Twitter. Investors also were not happy at Musk using Tesla stock as a "piggy bank" to help finance propping up his favorite shitposting platform. [303] Many analysts also noted that Tesla's previously sky-high stock price relied, in part, on Musk's reputation as a genius futurist . Musk's mismanagement misadventures at Twitter cracked that facade, and thus damaged the Tesla brand and helped damage Tesla's stock price. As an added headache, Musk's increasingly hyper-partisan conspiracy theory and political oriented tweets added additional Tesla brand damage. Particularly considering that the left-leaning people that Musk is obsessively attacking were always the ones most likely to buy a Tesla, while conservatives are the least likely to do so. [304]

Perhaps with this in mind, on December 18 2022, Musk posted a Twitter poll asking whether or not he should continue as CEO of Twitter, claiming he would abide by the results. The poll closed on Monday, with the result (57.5%) clearly showing most voters in favor of him leaving the CEO position. [305] After initially appearing to want to move the goalposts and change the rules for the poll, [306] on Tuesday December 20 2022, Musk gave in... sort of. Musk tweeted that he would "resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!", while still maintaining that he would run the "software & servers teams". [307] Of course, this was seen by many as mere "window dressing", and that he would retain significant influence over the company regardless of whether he was CEO or not. [308]

Even with the above, what the future holds for the platform is uncertain, but more than likely it will become even more of a lawless wasteland than it was before. If it manages to still exist, that is.

Sociopathy [ edit ]

For someone who has ostensibly created some ventures that could be called good for society (pioneering electric vehicle manufacture, installing rooftop solar, more questionably others), Musk and Tesla have exhibit repeated and disturbing signs of narcissistic sociopathy [328] [329] (superficial charm, lying, intentionally causing harm to others).

Musk believes in the theory that all of existence is a simulated reality and has dedicated millions of dollars towards proving an unfalsifiable hypothesis true, [330] rather than using that money to do something beneficial. Presumably, he believes in this theory because he believes it could absolve him of any accountability regarding his actions. Musk's apparent belief that reality is a simulation would appear to be a rationalization for Musk doing whatever the fuck he wants. When one is the richest person on the planet one can do a very good job of creating a walled garden to keep out things that one doesn't want to confront by just throwing money at them.

Adjacent to Musk's sociopathy, is his support for longtermism — the idea that interplanetary colonization or creating virtual realities of trillions of virtual people in space is more important than dealing with current world problems or even foreseeable extinction level events , including climate change . Musk has shown support for longtermerist ideas, including William MacAskill's book What We Owe the Future , [331] calling the book "a close match for my philosophy." [332]

Musk, himself [ edit ]

Musk either thinks that he is a big gorilla, or he knows that is a manospherian , declaring to his first wife at their wedding in 2000, "I am the alpha in this relationship." He later treated her like a slightly privileged employee, later telling her often, "If you were my employee, I would fire you." [334] In 2020, Musk tweeted a call to "Take the Red pill 🌹". [335] The term "red pill" was popularized by the manosphere and absorbed into the larger alt-right . It is possible however that Musk was referring to the original use in the film series The Matrix , which would agree with his simulated reality belief. Years after The Matrix was released, the filmmakers revealed in 2016 that films were actually a reflection of their transsexuality . [336] Although the red rose in Musk's tweet is a symbol of social democracy , Musk is known to be strongly against this ideology.

On March 6, 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when vaccines were not available, Musk said, "The coronavirus panic is dumb". [337] By March 17, state and local officials were ordering lockdowns to prevent further spread of COVID and the overburdening hospitals that did eventuate. On March 19, Musk stated, "Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in the US too by the end of April". [338] Contrary to what the boy genius predicted, daily case counts have yet to drop to zero as of December 2021, and the daily peak was 218,000 in January 2021 before vaccines were widely available. [339] By April, Musk was complaining about lockdowns. [340] In May 2020, Musk opened his Fremont, California Tesla factory in defiance of Alameda County health orders. As a result, he personally caused 450 COVID cases. [341]

Tesla engineer : "You mean, program the robot? Or design that tool?" Musk : "Did you fucking do this?" Engineer : "I’m not sure what you’re referring to? (apologetically) Musk : "You’re a fucking idiot! Get the fuck out and don’t come back!" [343]

After resigning, a Tesla employee returned to work just to say goodbye to colleagues. Musk shoved and threatened the employee by saying "I will nuke you." [344]

Regarding alleged rampant racism against African Americans at a Tesla factory, for which Tesla is being sued by the State of California , Musk advised that victims of racism should get a "thick skin". [345]

On a private jet, Musk allegedly offered a flight attendant a horse in exchange for sex after he had exposed his erect penis and touched her. The attendant refused and was awarded $250,000 in an out of court settlement. [346]

Musk told the UN he would donate much of his fortune to end world hunger if they told him exactly how they would spend it, and then, when they gave him precisely what he wanted, a detailed program explaining exactly what they would use his money for, he refused . [347] Of course, he reneged on his part of the deal.

Musk has thought of himself as a utilitarian . He once stated that the "Goal of government should be to maximize the happiness of the people." [348] He has promoted the effective altruism movement, [349] and he used Roko's basilisk as a pickup line on someone who was his partner. [350]

Musk's addictive personality [ edit ]

Companies, by proxy [ edit ].

Tesla has repeatedly rolled out new and potentially-dangerous (a not fully-functional 'auto pilot', [358] [359] 'Insane' mode [360] ) or on-its-face features (driver-accessible video games [361] ) that are tested on existing car owners rather than going through extensive in-house testing. [328] Tesla has 3 times the number of driver deaths compared to other vehicles in its car class (BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes). [358]

In 2021, Tesla was sued by six women who worked at Tesla factories, alleging that there was "rampant sexual harassment" and "nightmarish conditions" at the factories. [362] The lawsuit alleged that the abuse is effectively encouraged by Musk's lewd tweets. [362] A woman who was an engineer at SpaceX has also said that she suffered sexual harassment there and that there was rampant misogyny . [363]

A former contract worker at Tesla was awarded $137 million in a discrimination suit against Tesla that had alleged racist epithets, discrimination and a hostile work environment. [364]

Being a whistleblower seems to be grounds for immediate termination at Tesla despite it being illegal for Tesla to do so. [365] [366] [367]

As part of Musk's shambolic 2022 takeover of Twitter , the entire Twitter office in Ghana was terminated except for one employee; this had been its only office in the entire continent of Africa. The employees were not mentioned by name and were not offered severance pay, [368] thus they were being treated like objects and not like people.

Elon and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Tweets [ edit ]

Despite being a rock star of scientific progress and innovation, a busy professional with a million things to do and a good understanding of the essential importance of good communication, Musk still finds time to tweet stupid shit every now and then. He apparently loves Tweeting so much, he bought 9.2% of Twitter, making him the single largest shareholder of the company. [370] You might also notice Twitter has 11 board members, and 9.2% is more than 1/11th of the company, enough to permanently make yourself a board member without any voting necessary. Which is exactly what happened. [371]

After taking over Twitter, Musk's tweets took a huge turn for the worse. Increasingly, Musk started directly promoting conspiracy theories on his feed (such as all but endorsing the Great Replacement Theory in late 2023) [372] As CEO of Twitter, Musk went out of the way to amplify the voices of noxious trolls like the conspiracy nutjob Alex Jones or the manosphere grifter Andrew Tate . [373] [374] Musk simultaneously used his "free speech absolutism" to block (or even sue) organizations and individuals that were critical of him. [375] [376]

Musk's behavior on Twitter after he bought it was so extreme, it actually effected the reputation of the businesses he ran. In 2024, market intelligence firm Caliber reported that Tesla's "consideration" score in the United States (eg whether people would consider buying a Tesla car) fell from 70% in November 2021 to a low of 31% in February 2024, a decline that Caliber attributed in large part due to Musk's polarizing persona. [377]

"Marx was a capitalist" [ edit ]

Taylor Harris: What would you proclaim yourself as? Anything specifically? Musk: A socialist Musk: Marx was a capitalist . He even wrote a book about it . Musk: And I don’t trust that Engels guy. He could have made up most of 2nd & 3rd volumes. Nobody actually knows. [379]

Musk makes the common mistake of mixing up Marxist socialism with modern welfare social democracy. While he may be somewhat right in his interpretation of Marxist socialism as "the greatest good for all", modern welfare social democracy concerns itself with reducing poverty and misery and funding a large range of basic social services without abandoning capitalism. In either case, he describes socialism in a way that neither makes sense in Marxist socialism nor modern welfare social-democracy "the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive, pretending to do good, while actually causing harm". This is a gross misrepresentation of Marxist socialism and doesn't remotely resemble modern welfare social democracy. And it's simply asinine to claim Marx was a capitalist simply because he wrote a book titled Capital . Was Hitler a strugglist , given the title of his own book?

Unions [ edit ]

Musk: If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks [a leftist writer] [380] Cory Doctorow: Iain Banks was an ardent trade unionist, @Elonmusk [381] Musk: Iain certainly wasn’t pro-union in the Culture books. At all. And wouldn’t be in the case of Tesla. Banks was about freedom through & through. Maybe for a single buyer (monopsony) vs single seller (monopoly), I would be too, but that’s a special case. Doctorow: Banks consistently endorsed the freedom of workers to form collective bargaining units. The existence of a thought experiments in which this was obviated by eg FTL [faster-than light travel] is by no means an indication that a marginal improvement in EV tech would have turned him into a strikebreaker Musk: I endorse freedom to form a union too, as well as freedom not to do so if they feel Tesla is a good company. UAW has major conflicts of interest & failed our car plant already when they abandoned us in 2010. Tesla can only hire 5% of applicants, so must be doing something right. David Slack: Unions don’t exist only at “bad” companies, Mr. Musk. They exist to provide workers with a voice to negotiate with management, insuring that conditions do not become intolerable or unsafe, that good companies do not become bad ones. Good companies should welcome unions. Musk: You think all companies are bad and all unions good? That’s a very bigoted position.

Typical DARVO strawman tactic, taking someone's statement that unions help keep companies from drifting into becoming bad ones, and twisting it to claim they're saying all companies are bad.

In 2023, Musk stated: "I disagree with the idea of unions … I think the unions naturally try to create negativity in a company." [382] [383]

In a 2018 post to Twitter, Musk threatened to pull the stock options of any workers who unionized at Tesla. [384]

Boring boneheads [ edit ]

After his flagship company, Tesla, posted a massive loss it could be imagined that analysts would want to know why. Musk was busy telling everyone that things were fine when he said:

"Boring bonehead questions are not cool. Next," ... "We're going to go to YouTube. Sorry, these questions are so dry. They're killing me." [385]

This briefly bummed out the investors and Tesla stock dropped 5% (about $3 billion). [386]

Tesla [ edit ]

In 2019, Musk tweeted that the company may go private.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured. [387]

For whatever reason he did this (who knows?), he broke the law as it was of a speculative nature. While the company wasn't destined to go private, the market took the tweet seriously, and some investors lost millions in the speculation game. Investors initiated a lawsuit, which is still in the courts. [388] Somehow Musk survived this colossally stupid move. Though in fairness, Tesla is currently worth about 10x what it was when Musk made that tweet; had he gone through with the deal it would've been the greatest business deal in modern history.

However, clearly, this wasn't enough. In 2020, while he was busy denying the serious nature of COVID-19, he also made a casual claim that his company was "over-valued". [389]

Tesla stock price is too high imo [390]

This led to a huge drop in market value with himself losing billions in value. It is unlikely any of this will stop Musk from making stupid, pointless, destructive comments in the future about the value or future of the company.

Tesla claims in its annual reports to shareholders that it's ethical and that it does "not knowingly accept products or services from suppliers that include forced labor or human trafficking in any form." [391] [392] However, some materials that go into Teslas come from Xinjiang, China , where forced labor is rampant, and where there is a ban on imports of parts into the US (due to the Uyghur genocide ). [392] It would seem to be either willful ignorance or just plain hypocrisy . [392]

Bigotry [ edit ]

Transphobia [ edit ].

Musk, despite his brainchild Tesla being well-known for its inclusiveness of LGBTQ+ people, [393] has also made quite a few attacks on the use of pronouns for non-binary individuals. After facing much backlash after infamously tweeting "pronouns suck", [394] Musk went on to make the following even-more damning follow-up tweet a few months later:

In 2022, Musk's transgender daughter cut ties with him, saying " I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form ". She has legally changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson. [399] In response, Musk blamed "full-on communism" in universities , [400] [401] showing the typical right-wing ignorance of what communism actually is.

In April 2023, as if to demonstrate why his own child would want to distance themselves from him, Musk continued his anti-trans campaign by removing the Twitter policy against deadnaming . [213] In June 2023, he promoted Matt Walsh 's anti-trans "What is a Woman?" schlockumentary . [402] [403] [404] Further, he agreed with a post by Jordan Peterson suggesting that transgender-affirming therapists should be imprisoned. [405] Musk also announced that he will personally "be actively lobbying to criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent". [406] [407] He further agreed that "LGB" should be separated from "TQ+" ; [406] a potentially peculiar statement since the Q (either "Queer" or "Questioning") is part of the LGB; in fact it encompasses all three of those. Further, Musk himself doesn't proclaim any sort of non-heterosexual identity and thus has little grounds to decide on such topics.

Antisemitism [ edit ]

It doesn't help matters that antisemitic tweets greatly increased after Musk took over Twitter, [410] which one must assume Musk is perfectly fine with since he eviserated the Trust and Safety team at Twitter. [411] Within a few days that Musk claimed a free speech absolutist defense ("I mean, uh, freedom of speech. I’m allowed to say what I want.") for saying bigoted shit like this, he also censored remarks critical of Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Twitter in deference to autocratic rule in Turkey . [412]

In mid-November 2023, Musk agreed with a post from a Twitter account (with a long history of posting extremist, conspiracy tinged, bigoted content [413] [414] [415] ) that accused Jewish communities of pushing "dialectical hatred against whites" and spoke of an antisemitic, Great Replacement / white genocide -like conspiracy theory that falsely asserted that Jews wanted to use "hordes of minorities" to displace the white population. [note 20] [416] Musk's reply to this post was "You have said the actual truth." [10] This Tweet coincided with a report from Media Matters for America (MMFA) detailing how advertisements for major brands were being placed within Twitter threads that praised Adolf Hitler and Nazis . [417] Musk's antisemitic tweet combined with the MMFA report resulted in backlash from both the White House and the EU , alarm from Jewish leaders and organizations, and departures of yet even more advertisers from the Twitter platform. [418] [419] This was not the first time that brands suspended advertising on Twitter due to ads appearing next to pro-Nazi content; a similar incident occurred in mid-August 2023. [420]

Typically for a racist-type conspiracy theory, why the Jews would want to replace people who mostly look like them with people of don't...is always left unstated. If there were any truth to it, perhaps it would be a reaction to how Europeans have treated them historically, and how white antisemites today are attacking them?

White genocide [ edit ]

After decades of mostly ignoring his natal country, Musk claimed that "They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa " in 2023, based on a single political rally by the country's third-largest party, the Marxist-Leninist Economic Freedom Fighters, in which an apartheid-era song was sung that included the lyrics "shoot to kill", "kill the Boer" and "kill the farmer". [421]

"Pedo guy" lawsuit [ edit ]

Musk's most ghastly batshit-insanity is the accusation of a child-rescuing hero of being a pedophile. While several young soccer players were stuck in a cave, Musk flew to Thailand and tried to offer help however he could. [425] Regardless of whether or not his mission to help out was nothing but a PR stunt, it seemed his help was rather useless and was getting in the way. [426] A semi-professional spelunker, Vern Unsworth helped bring the trapped children to safety. [427] He was critical of some of Musk's efforts to help including criticism of the feasibility of Musk's proposed amazing-cave-submarine-child-rescue-awesome-mobile. [428] Unsworth risked his life to reach the boys, comfort the scared children and rescue them. [429] As thanks for this he was accused of being a pedophile by Musk. [430] Musk's petty hissy-fit in the form of a vague accusation of pedophilia didn't go away even after Musk deleted the tweet and gave a half-hearted retraction. [431] A week later, Musk sprayed a full out pedophile on social media...twice. [432] [433]

In September 2018, Unsworth filed suit for defamation, with Musk somehow winning, [434] despite none of his accusations having a shred of truth to them — the Private Investigator hired by Musk having scammed him. [435] The court was mostly hung up if Musk was just casually slinging the term or actually trying to defame Unsworth.

During the trial, he essentially defended his right to be a Twitter troll. [436]

Natalism [ edit ]

There is perhaps more under the surface here. Musk is more especially concerned that people with high IQ scores aren't having enough children. [445] [441] (He is himself "confident" in his own intelligence, and expresses a fear that the future will look like Idiocracy . [437] ) His concern, then, perhaps isn't quite that too few children are coming into the world, but that too few children with high-IQ parents are. This view of his has sometimes been derided as "hipster eugenics ", [446] or "low-key eugenic", [437] and it isn't hard to see why.

Donald Trump [ edit ]

Musk was very critical of Donald Trump until Trump became President. Musk then changed his mind and joined Trump initiatives including a council of business advisors and a project to promote manufacturing in the US. [467] [note 21] Musk's attacks on the media seemed in accord with Trump's complaints about fake news and were supported by Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. [468] He also supported Trump's campaign to shift global tariffs on car imports and exports to be more favorable to American car exports. [469] He left Trump's presidential council in June of 2017, citing Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. [470]

See also [ edit ]

• Nikola Tesla – from whom the name came. Although ironically, Musk identifies more with Nikola Tesla's nemesis, Thomas Edison, than with Tesla himself – despite buying the company named after him. [471] [note 22]
• Henry Ford – The past version of Elon Musk, with all of the anti-semitism and racism as well!
• Engineers and woo – discussion of a highly-adjacent sort of arrogance

External links [ edit ]

• Elon Musk Today — Bullshit Musk has said

Notes [ edit ]

• ↑ Because much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla and SpaceX stock, both of which are difficult to assess the "true" value of, his "real" wealth is actually difficult to determine, although similar comments could apply to the worth of Bezos or of just about any other multibillionaire.
• Pizzagate: The Hill ; [15] The Washington Post ; [16] Forbes ; [17] Rolling Stone ; [18] [19] Independent ; [20] CNN . [21]
• QAnon in general: Wired ; [22] Musk on Twitter [23] [24]
• Boosting QAnon figures and tropes: New York Daily News ; [25] Forbes ; [26] Euronews ; [27] Newsweek ; [28] [29] Haaretz ; [30] Daily Dot ; [31] Media Matters for America [32]
• ↑ Alright, that's sorta funny.
• ↑ Musk, it would seem named one of his children after his grandfather, calling sproggen "X AE A-XII", though Musk will tell you some other bullshit. [58]
• ↑ Seriously though, there were a bunch of issues. First off, he insisted on keeping the site named "X", even though consumer surveys consistently showed that people thought it was a pornographic website. Also, he insisted that the company use Microsoft framework even though the rest of the board preferred Unix. Lastly, he's kind of a jerk and they got tired of his shit.
• ↑ If you're into space exploration, the videos of the rocket stages landing are pure nerdgasm.
• ↑ Which itself was a petty, douche move by Musk. When Martin Eberhard was forced out of Tesla by Musk, the subsequent settlement stipulated that when the roadsters finally came out, Eberhard would get the first one off the line. Musk instead tried to keep it for himself, and rather than hand it over, he had it shot into space; he wound up giving Eberhard the third one, which had to be rebuilt after engineers had crashed it. See Debunking Musk, Pt 2 for more details and sources.
• ↑ At present, the Chicago Transit Authority's Blue Line connects O'Hare to downtown. Each train can carry upwards of 600 people and travel at a maximum speed of 50 mph. Musk's express service trains can only carry up to 16 passengers but can reach up to 150 mph. Furthermore, it takes around 45 minutes on the Blue but only 12 on the Express Line.
• ↑ There is, however, an alternative proposal that requires only mature technologies, namely the Chicago Crossrail. [80]
• ↑ Lou Paskalis, CEO of MMA Global, and a former senior vice president with Bank of America as an Enterprise Media Executive, among many other media leadership roles [145]
• ↑ Not that Musk impressed civil rights leaders much — the NAACP and other civil rights groups ended up calling for companies to boycott advertising on Twitter "until actions are taken to make (Twitter) a safe space". [148]
• ↑ Out of 3700, which in itself was down from 7500 full-time employees at the end of October 2022, before Musk's initial mass layoffs
• ↑ Reportedly this outage was caused by an employee who had deleted data for an internal service. The team that originally managed this service had left the company in November. [173]
• ↑ Musk made this challenge despite Musk being 13 years older than Zuckerberg and reportedly out of shape. In addition, Zuckerberg reportedly was actively training in Brazilian jujitsu.
• ↑ Rate limits were only 300 posts a day for new unverified accounts, 600 posts for all other unverified accounts, and 6000 for "verified" (read: paid for) accounts. This limit was later increased to 500, 1000, and 10,000. These numbers are much smaller than it may first seem, since quickly scrolling past a post counts as a view, and each reply to a post likewise counts. [228]
• ↑ Per the New York Times , ad revenue in May 2023 was down 59 percent from a year earlier.) [232]
• ↑ Compare the sentiment to that expressed by Elon Musk's grandfather . Even pop-pop's wording — "hordes of Coloured people" — is strikingly similar.
• ↑ This is one of the few times when Trump is right . Promoting manufacturing in the U.S. instead of outsourcing American jobs puts America first.
• ↑ Also interesting is that he did not name the company "Tesla". It was incorporated in July 2003 as "Tesla Motors"; Musk did not become involved with the company until February of 2004. This is a recurring theme with Musk, rewriting history to give himself credit for things he didn't actually do.

References [ edit ]

• ↑ The two sides of Elon Musk: Liar or optimist? Troll or marketing genius? Icarus or Daedalus? A trial in Delaware highlighted the contradictions at the Tesla chief’s core. by Will Oremus (July 16, 2021) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Honestly, Elon musk is our Ted Faro in real world r/FuckTedFaro (2022) Reddit .
• ↑ Ted Faro (7/22/2023) Horizon Wiki .
• ↑ Elon Musk Twitter (archived from October 28, 2022).
• ↑ "A scientist’s viral tweet called Elon Musk ‘Space Karen’ — as a way to defend science" by Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post, 2020 November 17
• ↑ Aimee Picchi (January 8, 2021). "Elon Musk tops Jeff Bezos as the world's richest person" . CBS News .
• ↑ Chloe Taylor (March 2, 2023). "Elon Musk loses crown as world’s richest person—just 48 hours after regaining it" . Fortune .
• ↑ Jessica Guynn (November 17, 2023). "Has Elon Musk gone too far? Outrage grows over antisemitic 'actually truth' post" . USA Today .
• ↑ David Goldman (November 17, 2023). "Elon Musk agrees with antisemitic X post that claims Jews 'push hatred' against White people " . CNN .
• ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Elon Musk expresses support for antisemitic post on X, calling it "the actual truth"" by Aimee Picchi, CBS News, 2023 November 16
• ↑ Adam Kovac (September 6, 2023; periodically updated). "Elon Musk has made some disturbing comments about Jews. Here's a list" . The Forward .
• ↑ Clare Duffy (December 11, 2023). "Elon Musk’s X is encouraging users to follow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after reinstating his account" . CNN .
• ↑ 13.0 13.1 Elon Musk posted misleading tweets about the Texas mall gunman's long history of neo-Nazi views being a potential 'psyop' by David Klepper & Associated Press (May 10, 2023 at 12:25 PM PDT) Fortune .
• ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Twitter Deletes Fact-Check Of Musk Connecting Bronny James’ Cardiac Arrest To Covid Vaccine" by Antonio Pequeno IV, Forbes, 2023 July 25
• ↑ Elon Musk deletes ‘Pizzagate’ meme following widespread backlash by Dominick Mastrangelo (11/28/23 4:22 PM ET) The Hill .
• ↑ Elon Musk boosts Pizzagate conspiracy theory that led to D.C. gunfire: The far-right theory motivated a gunman to fire multiple rounds inside the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Northwest Washington in 2016. Musk boosted the theory to his 164 million followers anyway. by Drew Harwell (November 28, 2023) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Elon Musk Endorses Debunked 'Pizzagate' Conspiracy Theory—And Deletes Post by Brian Bushard (Nov 28, 2023,12:53pm EST) Forbes .
• ↑ Elon Musk Is Now Dipping His Toe Into Pizzagate: The owner of X can't stop engaging with vile conspiracy theories, even as advertisers flee the platform by Nikki McCann Ramirez (November 20, 2023) Rolling Stone .
• ↑ Elon Musk Takes Flirtation With Pizzagate to the Next Level: The Twitter owner descends even deeper into the internet's most vile fever swamps by sharing a “Pizzagate is real” meme, which he later deleted by Nikki McCann Ramirez (November 20, 2023) Rolling Stone .
• ↑ Elon Musk amplifies Pizzagate conspiracy theory; It comes after Elon Musk came under fire for promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory on X by Martha McHardy (21 November 2023 11:07) Independent .
• ↑ Elon Musk is now boosting the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory by Clare Duffy (November 21, 20230 CNN .
• ↑ Elon Musk Is Giving QAnon Believers Hope Just in Time for the 2024 Elections: Musk's recent use of the term “Q*Anon” is his most explicit endorsement of the movement to date. Conspiracists have since spent days dissecting its meaning and cheering on his apparent support. by David Gilbert (Nov 28, 2023 10:38 AM) Wired .
• ↑ AROUND THE WORLD CITIZENS OF EVERY COUNTRY ARE EAGERLY AWAITING THE RELEASE OF OUR MESSIAH, Q STAR / IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON SAM ALTMAN / LET THE Q STAR ERA BEGIN by @growing_daniel (November 23, 2023) Twitter (archived from nitter.com). Followed by Musk's reply to @growing_daniel of simply "!"
• ↑ Q*Anon by Elon Musk (Nov 23, 2023 · 1:04 AM UTC) Twitter (archived from nitter.net).
• ↑ Elon Musk tweets support for QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley by Brian Niemietz (March 11, 2023 at 3:11 a.m.) New York Daily News .
• ↑ Twitter Suspends, Then Unsuspends, Popular Right-Wing User Who Tweeted Image Of Child Sexual Abuse by Conor Murray (Jul 27, 2023,04:47pm EDT) Forbes .
• ↑ How Elon Musk has repeatedly amplified false claims and boosted disinformation accounts on Twitter by Sophia Khatsenkova ( 27/04/2023 - 07:00) Euronews .
• ↑ Elon Musk Confuses Twitter With Rabbit Emoji, Some Say It's a Nod to QAnon by Shannon Power (Dec 13, 2022 at 5:20 AM EST ) Newsweek .
• ↑ QAnon Followers Are Reading Into Elon Musk's White Rabbit Tweet by Anders Anglesey (Dec 13, 2022 at 8:32 AM EST) Newsweek .
• ↑ Elon Musk Boosts Antisemitic Blood Libel on Twitter: The Twitter CEO responded to an antisemitic conspiracy theory post, giving it legitimacy and views by Ben Samuels (Jun 7, 2023) Haaretz .
• ↑ Elon Musk’s response to wildly antisemitic Mel Gibson tweet prompts outpouring of hate speech: It may be the worst tweet he'd ever replied to. by David Covucci (Jun 7, 2023) Daily Dot .
• ↑ Elon Musk has boosted a QAnon influencer at least two dozen times since he took over Twitter and reinstated the account by Alex Kaplan (03/20/23 4:22 PM EDT) Media Matters for America .
• ↑ Shubhangi Dua (July 7, 2023). "Elon Musk pledges Tesla to China’s 'core socialist values' to avert EV price war" . Interesting Engineering .
• ↑ (October 4, 2022). "Kremlin welcomes Elon Musk proposal for Ukraine settlement denounced by Kyiv" . Reuters .
• ↑ Oliver Darcy (September 12, 2023). "An explosive Elon Musk biography is just hitting shelves. But the book's acclaimed author is already walking back a major claim" . CNN Business .
• ↑ The Elon Musk personality cult lives strong Felix Salmon (Jan 7, 2023) Axios .
• ↑ The Cult of Personality of Elon Musk by Quincy de Vries (2022 winning submission) The Orwell Society .
• ↑ The cult of Elon Musk: Why do some of us worship billionaires? Billionaires like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are no different than other billionaires... except they have cults by April 29, 2022 4:02PM EDT) Salon .
• ↑ Does Tesla models spell S3XY CARS? Cyber Backpack (archived from January 29, 2023).
• ↑ Emperor Elon Musk? SpaceX founder clarifies if he’ll lead humans on Mars The South African 13 March 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk Reveals His Love Of Anime And The Desire To Build A Mecha Forbes 16 October 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk on Twitter [ a   w ] 7 September 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk breaks Guinness World Record for ‘largest loss of personal fortune in history’ by Giulia Carbonaro (Updated: 13/01/2023) Euronews .
• ↑ Elon Musk drops first SoundCloud track, 'RIP Harambe.' Yes, you read that right Mashable UK 31 March 2019
• ↑ Robin Valentine (September 20, 2023). "Elon Musk demanded a cameo in Cyberpunk 2077 while wielding a 200-year-old gun: 'I was armed but not dangerous'" . PC Gamer .
• ↑ Tesla and Elon Musk's Tweet Violated Labor Laws Protecting Unions, Judge Rules Time 29 September 2019
• ↑ Tesla workers speak out: 'Anything pro-union is shut down really fast' The Guardian 10 September 2018
• ↑ "Elon Musk promoted coronavirus misinformation for months. Then his own infection kept him out of SpaceX's astronaut launch." by Morgan McFall Johnsen, Business Insider , 2020 November 25
• ↑ Elon Musk calls British diver in Thai cave rescue 'pedo' in baseless attack The Guardian 16 July 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk Shares Fake Voltaire Quote Actually From Neo-Nazi by Matt Novak (May 27, 2023,02:51pm EDT) Forbes .
• ↑ National Review , Retrieved on September 13, 2023.
• ↑ Virginia Chamlee (September 11, 2023). "Elon Musk Privately Said That Spreading a Paul Pelosi Attack Conspiracy Was Among His 'Dumbest Mistakes': Book" . People .
• ↑ Andrew Higgins (January 22, 2024). "Elon Musk, on Rehabilitation Tour, Calls Himself 'Aspirationally Jewish'" . The New York Times .
• ↑ Accelerating Starship development to build the Martian Technocracy by Elon Musk (1:20 PM - 23 Jun 2019) Twitter (archived from June 25, 2019).
• ↑ Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance (2015) Ecco. ISBN 0062301233.
• ↑ Elon Musk's family once owned an emerald mine in Zambia
• ↑ A teenage Elon Musk once casually sold his father's emeralds to Tiffany & Co. in New York, while his dad was sleeping
• ↑ The meaning behind Elon Musk and Grimes’ children’s names, X AE A-XII and Y: The former couple have explained what the names mean and how to pronounce them by Kate Ng (31 July 2023 15:43 BST) The Independent .
• ↑ American Needs No Part Of the Price System: An observation of our social trends indicates breakers and a smashup ahead. Only Technocracy is preparing. by Joshua Haldeman (July 1940) Technocracy Digest , pages 6-7. (archived from 2013-06-19 12:46:56).
• ↑ 60.0 60.1 60.2 60.3 60.4 Elon Musk’s Anti-Semitic, Apartheid-Loving Grandfather: The billionaire has described his grandfather as a risk-taking adventurer. A closer read of history reveals something much darker. by Joshua Benton (September 20, 2023) The Atlantic .
• ↑ Joshua N Haldeman, DC: The Canadian Years, 1926-1950 (1995) J. Can. Chiropr. Asso. 39(3):172-186.
• ↑ Technocracy Springs to Life With Big Splurge of Publicity by John C. Rogers (March 18, 1942) Buffalo Evening News , page 37.
• ↑ "Elon Musk" . Xprize Foundation .
• ↑ Dorothy Cucci (December 2, 2022). "Peter Thiel thinks Elon Musk is a 'fraud,' and 6 other unexpected details about the billionaires' love-hate relationship" . Business Insider .
• ↑ Anthony Ha (August 6, 2008). "Private rocket company SpaceX gets $20M from The Founders Fund" . VentureBeat .
• ↑ NASA Names Astronauts For First Commercial Flights BBC News 3 August 2018
• ↑ Was the SpaceX launch really a ‘success’? by Jackie wattles (4:58 PM EDT, Fri April 21, 2023) CNN .
• ↑ ‘Rapid unscheduled disassembly’: SpaceX Starship explodes after test flight launch by Natalie Dreier (April 20, 2023 at 12:25 pm PDT) KIRO .
• ↑ SpaceX Starship megarocket launches on 2nd-ever test flight, explodes in 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' by Josh Dinner (November 18, 2023) Space .
• ↑ Does it matter if founders run tech companies? The San Francisco Chronicle 26 September 2018
• ↑ Tesla's Founder Sues Tesla's CEO Wired 11 June 2009
• ↑ "OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT: What all it does, how it started and more" . The Times of India. January 25, 2023.  
• ↑ 74.0 74.1 Exclusive: Musk’s Neuralink faces federal probe, employee backlash over animal tests by Rachael Levy (December 5, 20225:46 PM PST) Reuters .
• ↑ Elon Musk wanted The Onion; he got Thud by Jacob Kastrenakes (Jul 2, 2019, 8:30am EDT) The Verge .
• ↑ Problem solved, was able to buy http://Pravduh.com! Game on by Elon Musk (11:27 AM - 25 May 2018) Twitter (archived from August 17, 2021).
• ↑ http://Pravduh.com Archive.org .
• ↑ The Latest: Musk Says O’Hare Express Line Could Open in 2021 Associated Press News 14 June 2018
• ↑ Rahm Emanuel wanted to expand O’Hare airport and partner with Elon Musk on high-speed rail. Now what? Chicago Tribune 4 September 2018
• ↑ Chicago Crossrail High Speed Rail Alliance .
• ↑ 81.0 81.1 Elon Musk sells all 20,000 Boring Company 'flamethrowers': Stunt generates $10m for billionaire’s personal hobby despite warnings from Home Office and US politicians by Samuel Gibbs (1 Feb 2018 05.58 EST) The Guardian .
• ↑ Twitter king Dril on Musk’s chaotic reign: The ‘patron saint of the internet’ tells The Post he’ll never pay for verification but will learn to code if Musk offers him a job by Taylor Lorenz (November 23, 2022 at 5:00 a.m. EST) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Tesla drivers run Autopilot where it’s not intended — with deadly consequences: At least eight fatal or serious Tesla crashes occurred on roads where Autopilot should not have been enabled in the first place, a Post analysis finds, in spite of federal officials calling for restrictions by Trisha Thadani et al. (December 10, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Tesla Under Fire After Explosive Crash: In the wake of an explosive crash involving a Model S, the question arises as to whether Tesla’s battery technology is inherently safe. by Paul A. Eisenstein (Feb. 18, 2017) NBC News .
• ↑ Tesla on fire: UK director Michael Morris' car bursts into flames (17 th June 2018, 02:54 PDT) BBC .
• ↑ Teslas catch fire at 1/10th the rate of regular cars by Mark Kane (Apr 18, 2021 at 7:46am ET) Inside EVs .
• ↑ Due to Those Batteries, Tesla Car Fires Require Outlandish Volumes of Water to Extinguish by Joe Kukura (22 June 2021) SFist .
• ↑ Tesla driver says car was in autopilot when it crashed at 60mph: Driver of Model S, which failed to stop at a red light and collided with a firetruck in Utah, told investigators she was using the semi-autonomous system by Sam Levin (14 May 2018 19.24 EDT) The Guardian .
• ↑ 89.0 89.1 89.2 89.3 17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot: Tesla’s driver-assistance system, known as Autopilot, has been involved in far more crashes than previously reported by Faiz Siddiqui & Jeremy B. Merrill (June 10, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Tesla's bitcoin investment reportedly made more profit this year than car sales in the whole of 2020 by Theo Golden (Feb 20, 2021, 1:02 PM PST) Business Insider .
• ↑ Elon Musk's Tesla Sold Bitcoin in Q1 for Proceeds of $272M: Elon Musk's electric vehicle company purchased $1.5 billion in BTC in February. by Nate DiCamillo (Apr 26, 2021 at 1:23 p.m. PDT; Updated May 8, 2023 at 8:18 p.m. PDT) CoinDesk .
• ↑ Elon Musk clarifies that ‘Tesla has not sold any Bitcoin’ by Jessica Bursztynsky (May 17 20215:48 AM EDT) CNBC .
• ↑ Tesla Backtracked on Accepting Bitcoin, but There Are Car Dealers That Take It by Clifford Atiyeh (May 16, 2021) Car and Driver .
• ↑ Tesla will no longer accept Bitcoin over climate concerns, says Musk (13 th May 2021, 01:56 PDT) BBC .
• ↑ You’re a Lemon if You Buy a Tesla With Bitcoin by JP Koning (Mar 29, 2021 at 4:59 a.m. PDT; Updated May 8, 2023 at 8:17 p.m. PDT) Coindesk .
• ↑ Elon Musk Completes $44 Billion Deal to Own Twitter by Kate Conger and Lauren Hirsch (28 October 2022) The New York Times .
• ↑ "Racist tweets quickly surface after Musk closes Twitter deal", The Washington Post 28 October 2022.
• ↑ "Elon Musk closes deal to acquire Twitter, fires top executives: Source", ABC News 28 October 2022.
• ↑ "Why Twitter Verifies Users: The History Behind the Blue Checkmark" by Craig Kanalley, Huffington Post, 2013 March 12
• ↑ "Mario flipped off Twitter for nearly two hours with the blessing of Musk’s ‘verification’" by Sean Hollister, The Verge, 2022 November 9
• ↑ "Fake Twitter accounts flock to blue check mark chaos" by Taylor Hatmaker, Techcrunch, 2022 November 9
• ↑ "Twitter chaos over blue-tick 'Tony Blair' and 'George Bush' Iraq posts" by Xander Elliards, The National, 2022 November 10
• ↑ 104.0 104.1 "Twitter Bans Accounts Mocking 'Free Speech Absolutist' Elon Musk" by Billy Perrigo, Time, 2022 November 7
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s Twitter is a safe space for bros who think they’re funny" by Monica Hesse, Washington Post, 2022 November 7
• ↑ "Musk threatens to boot Twitter account impersonators" by Frank Bajak, AP News, 2022 November 7
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s response to fake verified Elon Twitter accounts: a new permanent ban policy for impersonation" by Richard Lawler, The Verge, 2022 November 6
• ↑ "It looks like Elon Musk played himself with Twitter Blue" by Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC, 2023 March 31
• ↑ "Twitter’s $1,000 checkmark will be free for the 10,000 most-followed companies"
• ↑ "Twitter celebs balk at paying Elon Musk for blue check mark" by Matt O'Brien, AP News, 2023 March 27
• ↑ "What’s happening with Twitter blue check marks?" by Matt O'Brien, AP News, 2023 April 3
• ↑ 112.0 112.1 Sara Fischer and Ina Fried (April 21, 2023). "Musk takes away blue checks, Twitter shrugs" . Axios .
• ↑ Lauren Sforza (April 21, 2023). "Blue check chaos: Twitter policy spurs confusion and scramble to prove authenticity" . The Hill .
• ↑ Nicole Carpenter (April 21, 2023). "Twitter's de-verification debacle, explained" . Polygon .
• ↑ "Confusion as Musk’s Twitter yanks blue checks from agencies" by Matt O'Brien and Kathleen Foody, Associated Press, 2023 April 21
• ↑ Daysia Tolentino (April 21, 2023). "Fake accounts pop up on Twitter following legacy blue check removals" . NBC News .
• ↑ 117.0 117.1 117.2 Ariana Baio (April 22, 2023). "Only 28 legacy verified users signed up for Twitter Blue hours after Elon Musk took away their checkmarks" . The Independent .
• ↑ Chance Townsend (April 22, 2023). "Twitter Blue nets 28 signups so far since legacy checkmark purge" . Mashable .
• ↑ Kari Paul (April 22, 2023). "Fake accounts, chaos and few sign-ups: the first day of Twitter Blue was messy" . The Guardian .
• ↑ Barbara Ortutay (April 21, 2023). "Twitter begins removing blue checks from users who don't pay" . The Associated Press .
• ↑ "Twitter Demands Advertisers Pay for a Blue Check or Spend $1,000 a Month" by Thomas Germain, Gizmodo, 2023 April 21
• ↑ "Dril and other Twitter power users begin campaign to 'Block the Blue' paid checkmarks" by Matt Binder, Mashable, 2023 April 21
• ↑ "Twitter users #BlockTheBlue as ‘verified’ accounts take on new meaning" by Kelsey Ables, Washington Post, 2023 April 22
• ↑ Matt Novak (April 22, 2023). "Elon Musk Made The Twitter Checkmark A Digital Dunce Cap" . Forbes .
• ↑ William Hughes (April 22, 2023). "Celebrities, including dril, now working to remove their apparently mandatory Twitter checkmarks" . The A.V. Club .
• ↑ Mike Pearl (April 22, 2023). "Twitter gives dril a spite checkmark" . Mashable .
• ↑ Althea Legaspi (April 22, 2023). "Twitter Users With a Million Followers Are Getting 'Paid' Blue Checks, Like It or Not" . Rolling Stone .
• ↑ Zoe Kleinman (April 23, 2023). "Twitter restores blue tick to high profile accounts" . BBC News .
• ↑ Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert (April 22, 2023). "Twitter is adding verified check marks to the accounts of dead celebrities, making them look like paid Twitter Blue subscribers" . Business Insider .
• ↑ Tony La Russa Twitter lawsuit settled. The Hollywood Reporter .
• ↑ "Elon Musk curses out advertisers who left X over antisemitic content" by Sheila Dang, Reuters, 2023 November 30
• ↑ "Musk responds to Clinton after she links GOP 'hate and deranged conspiracy theories' to Paul Pelosi attack" by Katie Balevic, Business Insider, 2022 October 30
• ↑ "Musk tweets at Hillary Clinton suggesting conspiracy surrounding Paul Pelosi attack" by Zach Schonfeld, The Hill, 2022 October 30
• ↑ Jyoti Mann (January 29, 2023). "Elon Musk apologizes for tweeting a baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi" . Business Insider .
• ↑ "Elon Musk is playing Twitter footsie with the fringe right" by Russell Brandom, The Verge, 2020 May 18
• ↑ "Elon Musk says he's wading into politics to stop the 'woke mind virus' from destroying civilization"
• ↑ "As Elon Musk Buys Twitter, the Right Is Celebrating" by Nik Popli, Time, 2022 October 28
• ↑ "Brand Safety: The Ultimate Guide" , Bannerflow
• ↑ "General Mills latest to halt Twitter ads as Musk takeover sparks brand exodus" by Kari Paul, Guardian, 2022 November 3
• ↑ "How Much Did Twitter's Verification Chaos Cost Insulin Maker Eli Lilly and Twitter Itself?" by Kyle Barr, Gizmodo, 2022 November 14
• ↑ "A fake tweet sparked panic at Eli Lilly and may have cost Twitter millions" by Drew Harwell, Washington Post, 2022 November 14
• ↑ "Elon Musk says Twitter has had ‘massive’ revenue drop as advertisers pause spending" by Annie Palmer and Lora Kolodny, CNBC, 2022 November 4
• ↑ "Thank you. A thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues." , Elon Musk, Twitter, @elonmusk, 2022 November 4, archived on 2022 November 5
• ↑ Lou Paskalis , LinkedIn page
• ↑ "Elon Musk Blocks Top Marketer Who Questioned Twitter’s Retreat From Content Moderation" by Loree Seitz, The Wrap, 2022 November 4
• ↑ "Right-Wingers Are Already Turning on Elon Musk" by Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone, 2022 November 2
• ↑ "Advertisers continue to flee Twitter as civil rights groups call for a boycott" by K. Bell, Engadget, 2022 November 4
• ↑ "Elon Musk's Actions on Twitter Are Already Angering Conservatives" by Giulia Carbonaro, Newsweek, 2022 November 4
• ↑ "Trump is attacking a Twitter employee over the company's decision to fact-check him because the employee criticized Trump in past tweets" by Aaron Holmes, Business Insider, 2020 May 28
• ↑ "The email Elon Musk just sent to Twitter employees is a masterclass in how not to communicate" by Chris Stokel-Walker, FastCompany, 2022 November 10
• ↑ [ https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-email-ends-remote-work-twitter-staff-office-2022-11 "Read the 2:30 a.m. email Elon Musk sent to staff, his first, announcing the end of remote working at Twitter Kate Duffy and Kali Hays 10 hours ago"] by Kate Duffy and Kali Hays, Business Insider, 2022 November 10
• ↑ 153.0 153.1 "‘Economic Picture Ahead Is Dire,’ Elon Musk Tells Twitter Employees" by Kate Conger, Ryan Mac, and Mike Isaac, New York Times, 2022 November 10
• ↑ "Twitter’s content moderation head quits as departures alarm the FTC" by Joseph Menn, Cat Zakrzewski, Faiz Siddiqui, Nitasha Tiku, and Drew Harwell, Washington Post, 2022 November 10
• ↑ "Twitter fired employees who publicly called out Elon Musk" by M. Moon, Engadget, 2022 November 15
• ↑ "Musk's "hardcore" marching orders" by Scott Rosenberg, Axios, 2022 November 16
• ↑ "Musk issues ultimatum to staff: Commit to 'hardcore' Twitter or take severance" by Faiz Siddiqui and Jeremy B. Merrill, Washington Post, 2022 November 16
• ↑ Vittoria Elliott and Chris Stokel-Walker(January 6, 2023). "Twitter Promised Them Severance. They Got Nothing" . Wired .
• ↑ Emma Roth (January 16, 2023). "Laid-off Twitter workers must drop class-action severance lawsuit, judge says" . The Verge .
• ↑ 160.0 160.1 "Inside Twitter as ‘mass exodus’ of staffers throws platform’s future into uncertainty" by Oliver Darcy, CNN, November 17
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave" By Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and Kellen Browning, New York Times, 2022 November 18
• ↑ Job cuts by Elon Musk decimated Twitter team tackling child sexual abuse By Olivia Solon and Jillian Deutsch, Bloomberg News (via The Los Angeles Times), 2022 November 29
• ↑ Alexandra S. Levine and Thomas Brewster (November 18, 2022). "Elon Musk Inherited Twitter's Child Abuse Nightmare — Experts Say He's Making It Worse" . Forbes .
• ↑ David Ingram, Lora Kolodny, and Brandy Zadrozny (December 13, 2022). "Elon Musk says he can stop child exploitation on Twitter. So far, he’s axed jobs and pushed out watchdogs." NBC News .
• ↑ Twitter: United States Trends, archived on 2022 November 18
• ↑ "Resignations Roil Twitter as Elon Musk Tries Persuading Some Workers to Stay" by Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac, and David McCabe, New York Times, 2022 November 17
• ↑ "Musk Shakes Up Twitter’s Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs" by Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac, and Kate conger, New York Times, 2022 December 13
• ↑ Fung, Brian (January 3, 2023). "Twitter sued by landlord for allegedly failing to pay rent" . CNN .  
• ↑ Cao, Sissi (January 12, 2023). "Twitter Employees Were Evicted From Their Singapore Office Over Unpaid Rent" . Observer .  
• ↑ Ladden-Hall, Dan (January 12, 2023). "Twitter Offices Closing Down After Not Paying Rent: Report" . The Daily Beast .  
• ↑ Soni, Mallika (January 18, 2023). "Elon Musk can't pay rent? Twitter is auctioning its coffee machines" . The Hindustan Times .  
• ↑ Rachel Treisman (January 18, 2023). "Twitter auctioned off office supplies, including a pizza oven and neon bird sign" . NPR.
• ↑ 173.0 173.1 "Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count" by Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton, Platformer, 2023 February 9
• ↑ "Twitter is shutting down its free API, here's what's going to break" by Karissa Bell, Engadget, 2023 February 8
• ↑ "Twitter’s API changes could spell harassment for fan accounts" by Allegra Rosenberg, Polygon, 2023 February 8
• ↑ "Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first" by Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton, Verge, 2023 February 14
• ↑ Kate Conger, Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac (February 26, 2023). "In Latest Round of Job Cuts, Twitter Is Said to Lay Off at Least 200 Employees" . The New York Times . (Archived) .
• ↑ "‘Sometimes Things Break’: Twitter Outages Are on the Rise" by Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac, and Kate Conger, New York Times, 2023 Feburary 28
• ↑ "Twitter's latest meltdown proves Elon Musk is still doing it wrong" by Lance Ulanoff, Techradar, 2023 March 6
• ↑ "Twitter acqui-hires creative agency Ueno to help design new products" by Sarah Perez, TechCrunch, 2021 January 6
• ↑ "Elon Musk shares rare regrets for brutally mocking a disabled former Twitter employee: ‘I would like to apologize’" by Verne Kopytoff, Fortune, 2023 March 7
• ↑ "Musk Apologizes After Mocking Disabled Twitter Employee He Publicly Fired" by Noah Kirsch, Daily Beast, 2023 March 7
• ↑ Elon Musk text exhibits (Twitter v. Musk) by Elon Musk (2022-02-31 15;23:49 CDT) Document Cloud .
• ↑ "People banned from Twitter won’t have accounts restored for weeks, Elon Musk says" by Associated Press, posted in MarketWatch, 2022 November 2
• ↑ "These Are The Banned Twitter Accounts That Elon Musk Has Reinstated, Is Considering Reinstating, And Those He Refuses To Reinstate" by Ryan Schocket, Buzzfeed Staff, 2022 November 19
• ↑ "You can ignore Andrew Tate" by Rebecca Jennings, Vox, 2022 August 24
• ↑ "Elon Musk restores Donald Trump's Twitter account" by Clare Duffy and Paul LeBlanc, CNN, 2022 November 19
• ↑ "Right Wingers Fume After Musk Announces Shadowbanning Policy" by Nikki Mccann Ramirez, Rolling Stone, 2022 November 18
• ↑ "Twitter says it’s no longer enforcing COVID-19 misleading information policy" by Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch, 2022 November 29
• ↑ "Musk fires back after criticism of gender pronouns tweet about Fauci" by Zach Schonfeld, The Hill, 2022 December 12
• ↑ "Musk's Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council" , Associated Press, 2022 December 12, reported on NPR
• ↑ "Former top Twitter official forced to leave home due to threats amid ‘Twitter Files’ release" by Donie O'Sullivan, CNN, 2022 December 12
• ↑ "Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk" by Robert Mackey and Micah Lee, Intercept, 2022 November 29
• ↑ "Some Twitter users who criticized Elon Musk say they've been suspended or told they violated rules due to 'hateful conduct'" by Jyoti Mann, Business Insider, 2022 November 28
• ↑ "Teen wants $50,000 to stop tracking Elon Musk’s private jet" by Igor Bonifacic, Engadget, 2022 January 30
• ↑ "Twitter Suspends Account Tracking Elon Musk's Private Jet" by Derek Saul, Forbes, 2022 December 14
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s Twitter bans CNN, NYT, WaPo journalists without explanation" by Oliver Darcy, CNN, 2022 December 15
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s Twitter Suspends Rival Mastodon Account" by Charisma Madarang, Rolling Stone, 2022 December 15
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s Twitter bans links to other social media sites, including Facebook and emerging rivals" by Briang Fung, CNN, 2022 December 18
• ↑ "Twitter bans promotion of accounts on other social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and Truth Social" by Julianne McShane, Jason Abbruzzese and Ezra Kaplan, NBC News, 2022 December 18
• ↑ "Twitter Takes Aim at Posts That Link to Its Rival Substack" by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, New York Times, 2023 April 7
• ↑ "He Reported on a Twitter Hack. Musk’s Free Speech Haven Kicked Him Out" by CT Jones, Rolling Stone, 2023 April 19
• ↑ "CBS News Resumes Twitter Posting After Hiatus Over ‘Security Concerns’" by Todd Spangler, Variety, 2022 November 20
• ↑ "CBS News Suspends Twitter Posting ‘In Light of the Uncertainty’ About Musk-Owned Social Platform" by Todd Spangler, Variety, 2022 November 18
• ↑ "In less than a month, Elon Musk has driven away half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers" by Sharon Kann and Angelo Carusone, Media Matters, 2022 November 22
• ↑ "Twitter layoffs continue under Elon Musk" by Clare Duffy, CNN, 2022 December 23
• ↑ "Twitter’s Efforts to Court Advertisers Turns Them Off" by Sahil Patel and Erin Woo, The Information, 2023 January 11
• ↑ "More than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers stopped spending on platform, data show" by Clare Duffy, CNN, 2023 February 13
• ↑ Shirin Ghaffary (March 24, 2023). "Why advertisers aren't coming back to Twitter" . Vox .
• ↑ Eleanor Hawkins and Sara Fischer (April 18, 2023). "Musk tries media blitz to win back Twitter advertisers" . Axios .
• ↑ "At Elon Musk's Twitter, speech is anything but free" by Ina Fried, Axios, 2023 April 3
• ↑ Evan Urquhart (November 1, 2022). "One of the Biggest Red Flags of Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover" . Slate .
• ↑ 213.0 213.1 Barbara Ortutay (April 18, 2023). "Twitter removes policy against deadnaming transgender people" . The Associated Press .
• ↑ "New Zealand radio threatens to quit Twitter over ‘government’ tag" , Al Jazeera, 2023 April 17
• ↑ "These Are All the Media Outlets Disputing Twitter's New Labels" by Armani Syed, Time, 2023 April 18
• ↑ "Sweden public radio exits Twitter, says audience already has" , AP News, 2023 April 18
• ↑ "Musk, media reach boiling point over Twitter changes" by Rebecca Klar, Hill, 2023 April 18
• ↑ Patrick Hipes (April 22, 2023). "Twitter Removes 'Government-Funded Media' Labels From NPR, PBS, Others After Backlash" . Deadline .
• ↑ Ben Collins (May 12, 2023). "Cat and dog torture videos litter Twitter, adding to concerns about moderation . NBC News .
• ↑ Michael H. Keller and Kate Conger (February 6, 2023). "Musk Pledged to Cleanse Twitter of Child Abuse Content. It’s Been Rough Going." The New York Times . (Archived.)
• ↑ Ben Goggin, Lora Kolodny, and David Ingram (January 6, 2023). "On Musk's Twitter, users looking to sell and trade child sex abuse material are still easily found" . NBC News .
• ↑ "Right-wing Musk fans win Twitter CEO's loyalty. Staff loses." by Matt Binder, Mashable, 2023 June 2
• ↑ "Elon Musk's Twitter loses second trust and safety chief" , BBC, 2023 June 2
• ↑ "Elon Musk Declares ‘Cisgender’ a Slur on Free Speech Twitter" by Jody Serrano, Gizmodo, 2023 June 21
• ↑ The word “cis” is a heterosexual slur. Shame on anyone who uses it. by Elon Musk (7:41 PM · Oct 30, 2023) Twitter (archived from 30 Oct 2023 21:29:23 UTC).
• ↑ "A ‘Cage Match’ Between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg May Be No Joke" by Ryan Mac and Mike Isaac, New York Times, 2023 July 1
• ↑ 227.0 227.1 "No One Believes Elon Musk’s Explanation For Breaking Twitter" by Paul Tassi, Forbes, 2023 July 2
• ↑ 228.0 228.1 "Twitter crisis explained: what are rate limits and when will they end?" by Christian Guyton, TechRadar, 2023 July 3
• ↑ "Confusion at Twitter continues over Elon Musk's tweet limits" by Shiona McCallum and Liv McMahon, BBC, 2023 July 3
• ↑ "TweetDeck suffers as Musk enforces read limits on Twitte" by Ivan Mehta, Techcrunch, 2023 July 3
• ↑ "Musk's Twitter rate limits could undermine new CEO, ad experts say" by Jody Gordy, Reuters, 2023 July 3
• ↑ "Musk Says Twitter Is Limiting Number of Posts Users Can Read" by Eduardo Medina and Ryan Mac, New York Times, 2023 July 1
• ↑ "What does Twitter 'rate limit exceeded' mean for users?" , Reuters, 2023 July 4
• ↑ "Spill Becomes Latest Trendy Twitter Alternative After Elon Musk Enrages Users Again" by Jeremy Fuster, The Wrap, 2023 July 3
• ↑ "Donald Trump Handed Big Win After Elon Musk Misstep" by Ewan Palmer, Newsweek, 2023 July 3
• ↑ "Threads, Meta's Twitter clone, is arriving very soon" by Caitlin Welsh, Mashable, 2023 July 4
• ↑ "Musk Melts Down as Threads Nears 100M Users: ‘Zuck is a Cuck’" by Erik Uebelacker, Daily Beast, 2023 July 9
• ↑ "Elon Musk goes low against Zuckerberg as Twitter-Threads spat intensifies" by Martin Pengelly, Guardian, 2023 July 10
• ↑ "Twitter Beats Out Threads for Coveted Taliban Leader Endorsement" by Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone, 2023 July 10
• ↑ Elon Musk's X fails to block California's content moderation law. Reuters , 28 December 2023.
• ↑ Musk’s X sues liberal advocacy group Media Matters over its report on ads next to hate groups’ posts Associated Press , 21 November 2023.
• ↑ "New data exposes Elon Musk’s free speech charade" by Zeeshan Aleem, 2023 April 28
• ↑ Brandom, Russell (27 April 2023). "Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk" . Rest of World .  
• ↑ Hamilton, Katherine (27 April 2023). "Twitter Has Complied With Almost Every Government Request For Censorship Since Musk Took Over, Report Finds" . Forbes .  
• ↑ "Elon Musk Caves to Pressure from India to Remove BBC Doc Critical of Modi" by Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim, Intercept, 2023 January 24
• ↑ "Turkey Election: Elon Musk Accused of Censoring Erdogan Critics on Twitter" by Fatma Khaled, Newsweek, 2023 May 13
• ↑ "Wikipedia Founder Crushes Elon Musk for Caving to Twitter Censorship in Turkey: ‘Treat Freedom of Expression as a Principle Rather Than a Slogan’" by Mason Bissada, The Wrap, 2023 May 13
• ↑ "Turkey’s Ban on Wikipedia Is Unconstitutional, Court Says" by Mihir Zaveri, New York Times, 2019 December 26
• ↑ "Twitter held in contempt, fined $350K over Trump data delay" by Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica, 2023 August 9
• ↑ "How Jack Smith Structured the Trump Election Indictment to Reduce Risks" by Charlie Savage, New York Times, 2023 August 4
• ↑ ""Special treatment": Judge suggests Musk trying to "cozy up" to Trump by trying to tip him off" by Gabriella Ferrigine, Salon, 2023 August 16
• ↑ 252.0 252.1 252.2 "Twitter under fire for reinstating account that posted child sex abuse" by Joseph Menn and Drew harwell, Washington Post, 2023 July 28
• ↑ The reason for suspension should be shown, along with ability to appeal quickly and easily. There are so many layers of software (20+ million lines) that this is much harder than it should be. I’m told that this account was suspended for posting child exploitation pictures associated with the criminal conviction of an Australian man in the Philippines. https://cnn.com/2022/11/10/asi… by Elon Musk (5:02 PM · Jul 26, 202) Twitter (archived from July 27, 2023).
• ↑ Only people on our CSE team have seen those pictures. For now, we will delete those posts and reinstate the account. by Elon Musk (5:05 PM · Jul 26, 2023) Twitter (archived from July 26, 2023).
• ↑ Australian who sexually abused children in the Philippines given 129-year jail term by Kathleen Magramo (1:36 AM EST, November 10, 2022) CNN .
• ↑ Twitter under fire for reinstating account that posted child sex abuse: It’s only the latest incident of banned imagery making its way onto the site since Musk bought it by Joseph Menn & Drew Harwell (Updated July 28, 2023 at 10:31 a.m. EDT|Published July 27, 2023 at 5:46 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post .
• ↑ "Cross-Platform Dynamics of Self-Generated CSAM" by David Thiel, Renée DiResta and Alex Stamos, Stanford Internet Observatory, 2023 June 7
• ↑ 258.0 258.1 Elon Musk boosts Pizzagate conspiracy theory that led to D.C. gunfire: The far-right theory motivated a gunman to fire multiple rounds inside the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Northwest Washington in 2016. Musk boosted the theory to his 164 million followers anyway. by Drew Harwell (November 28, 2023) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Twitter abruptly dissolves safety council moments before meeting: The firm’s turmoil appears to deepen since Elon Musk’s takeover with Yoel Roth forced to flee home amid personal attacks (Mon 12 Dec 2022 21.56 EST) The Guardian .
• ↑ How India tamed Twitter and set a global standard for online censorship by Karishma Mehrotra & Joseph Menn (November 8, 2023 at 10:00 p.m. EST) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk: The company has not refused a single request since Musk took ownership, according to self-reported data. by Russell Brandom (27 April 2023) Rest of World .
• ↑ Amid probe into Musk, Brazil's top court says 'every company is subject to the constitution' (April 8, 20241:08 PM PDT) Reuters .
• ↑ Musk tried to ‘punish’ critics, judge rules, in tossing a lawsuit: In a win for hate-speech researchers, a federal judge in California dismisses X’s lawsuit under the state’s anti-SLAPP law by Will Oremus & Taylor Telford (March 25, 2024) The Washington Post .
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s Pepe The Frog Tweet Decried By ADL As His Overnight Tweetstorm Also Highlights Guns, Revolutionary War Imagery & Fabricated CNN Headline" by Tom Tapp, Deadline, 2022 November 28
• ↑ "Elon Musk quietly deletes meme featuring prominent white nationalist Capitol rioter" by Mikael Thalen, Daily Dot, 2022 November 28
• ↑ "Image of CNN report about Elon Musk came from parody site" by Sophia Tulp, AP, 2022 April 8
• ↑ "The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …" , @elonmusk, Twitter, 2022 November 28
• ↑ "Elon Musk blasts San Francisco’s ‘far left’ views on Twitter as advertisers flee" by Joshua Bote, SFGate, 2022 November 23
• ↑ "Elon Musk says he’s ‘not right wing’ but ‘woke mind virus pushing civilisation toward suicide’" by Lydia Chantler-Hicks, Evening Standard, 2022 November 25
• ↑ "Elon Musk Wonders: Does the Company that Fought the FBI in Court to Prevent Giving it the Text Messages of Terrorists Hate Free Speech Because It Stopped Giving Me Money?" by Jason Koebler, Vice, 2022 November 28
• ↑ "Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests" by Joseph Menn, Washington Post, 2022 November 27
• ↑ "On Twitter, Elon Musk finds comfort in his right-wing 'filter bubble'" by Damien Leloup , Léa Sanchez and Olivier Clairouin, Le Monde, 2022 November 28
• ↑ "Twitter insiders: We can't protect users from trolling under Musk" by Marianna Spring, BBC, 2023 March 6
• ↑ "How Elon Musk's tweets unleashed a wave of hate" by Marianna Spring, BBC, 2023 March 21
• ↑ "Why Did Elon Musk Change the Twitter Logo to the Dogecoin Cryptocurrency Meme?" by Todd Spangler, Variety, 2023 April 3
• ↑ Keith Johnson v. Elon Musk, United States District Court Southern District of New York, Case No 1:22-cv-5037
• ↑ "Got a question for Twitter's press team? The answer will be a poop emoji" by Rachel Tresiman, NPR, 2023 March 20
• ↑ "Elon Musk, Climate Hero?" by Dana Goodyear, New Yorker, 2015 May 7
• ↑ "Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow" by Neil Strauss, Rolling Stone, 2017 November 15
• ↑ "John Oliver Taunts Coal Baron Enraged by Giant Talking Squirrel With Giant Singing Squirrels" by Marissa Matrinelli, Slate, 2019 November 11
• ↑ "Elon Musk Says Denial of Climate Change is 'Fraud'" by Jess Vilvestre, Futurism, 2016 October 13
• ↑ "Elon Musk steps down from Trump advisory councils over Paris climate decision" by Sean O'Kane, The Verge, 2017 June 1
• ↑ Climate crisis deniers target scientists for vicious abuse on Musk’s Twitter: Abusive, often violent tweets denying the climate emergency have become a barrage since Elon Musk acquired the platform, say UK experts by Anna Fazackerley (14 May 2023 02.00 EDT) The Guardian .
• ↑ "Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges" , Al Jazeera, 2023 May 24
• ↑ Climate misinformation ‘rocket boosters’ on Musk’s Twitter by David Klepper (January 19, 2023) AP .
• ↑ Important to note that what happens on Earth’s surface (eg farming) has no meaningful impact on climate change. Overwhelmingly, the risk of climate change is due to moving billions of tons of carbon from deep underground into the atmosphere. Over time, if we keep doing this, the chemical makeup of our atmosphere will change enough to induce meaningful climate change. by Elon Musk (2:28 AM · Jun 25, 2023) Twitter (archived from June 25, 2023).
• ↑ Global Carbon Budget 2022 by Pierre Friedlingstein et al. (2022) Earth Syst Sci Data 14(11): 4811–4900. doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4811-2022.
• ↑ Methane emission from rice fields as affected by land use change by Moniruzzaman Khan Eusufzai et al. (2010) Agr Ecosyst Environ 139(4): 742-748. doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2010.11.003.
• ↑ Soil methane oxidation and land-use change – from process to mitigation by Kevin R. Tate (2015) Soil Biol Biochem 80: 260-272. doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2014.10.010.
• ↑ Impact of land use change on soil methane fluxes and diffusivity in Pampean plains, Argentina by María De Bernardi et al. (2022) Agr Ecosyst Environ 329: 107866. doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.107866.
• ↑ Reviews and syntheses: Soil N 2 O and NO emissions from land use and land-use change in the tropics and subtropics: a meta-analysis by J. van Lent et al. (2015) Biogeosciences 12(23): 7299-7313. doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-7299-2015.
• ↑ Impact of land use change on greenhouse gases emissions in peatland: a review by Ryusuke Hatano (2019) Int Agrophys 33(2): 167–173. doi.org/10.31545/intagr/109238.
• ↑ From research to policy: optimizing the design of a national monitoring system to mitigate soil nitrous oxide emissions by Stephen M Ogle et al. (2020) Curr Opin Env Sust 47: 28-36. doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2020.06.003.
• ↑ Local biophysical effects of land use and land cover change: towards an assessment tool for policy makers by Gregory Duveiller et al. (2020) Land Use Policy 91: 104382. doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104382.
• ↑ Modelling the influence of land-use changes on biophysical and biochemical interactions at regional and global scales by N. Devaraju et al. (2015) Plant Cell Environ 38: 1931-1946. doi.org/10.1111/pce.12488.
• ↑ UNFCCC - Introduction to Land Use
• ↑ European Environment Agency - Greenhouse gas emissions from land use, land use change and forestry in Europe
• ↑ IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report
• ↑ "Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming." by Elon Musk, @elonmusk, 2022 August 26, archived on 2022 August 26
• ↑ "Global warming risk is overblown in the short term, but significant in the long term" by Elon Musk, @elonmusk, Twitter, 2023 May 5, archived on 2023 May 5
• ↑ "Elon Musk slams Biden’s Build Back Better bill and its electric car incentives" by Oliver Milman, Guardian, 2021 December 8
• ↑ "Elon Musk Is the Newest Acolyte of the Right’s Critical Energy Theory Nonsense" by Kate Aronoff, New Republic, 2022 May 23
• ↑ "Elon Musk Has Now Sold $22.9 Billion In Tesla Shares Since Buying Twitter—And Dragged Down Tesla's Market Cap By $700 Billion In The Process" by Derek Saul, Forbes, 2022 December 15
• ↑ "How Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Is Ruining His Own Myth — And Tesla’s Stock" by Alan Ohnsman, Forbes, 2022 November 23
• ↑ "Elon Musk polled Twitter on whether he should step down as CEO. Most voters said yes" by Ashley Kapoot and Lora Kolodny, CNBC, 2022 December 19
• ↑ "After Twitter users voted to oust Elon Musk as CEO, he wants to change how polls work" by Clare Duffy, CNN, 2022 December 20
• ↑ "Is This the End of Elon Musk’s Twitter Odyssey?" by Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 2022 December 21
• ↑ "Does Elon Musk's resignation from Twitter mean he'll give up control? Experts weigh in" by Max Zahn, ABC News, 2022 December 22
• ↑ "Elon Musk Appoints Linda Yaccarino Twitter’s New Chief" by Tiffany Hsu, Sapna Maheshwari, Benjamin Mullin and Ryan Mac, New York Times, 2023 May 12
• ↑ "Elon Musk says he's found "a new CEO" for Twitter. It's said to be NBCU's Linda Yaccarino." by Aimee Picchi, CBS News, 2023 May 12
• ↑ "Who is Linda Yaccarino, Elon Musk’s pick for new Twitter CEO?" by Shirin Ghaffary, Vox, 2023 May 12
• ↑ "Elon Musk names Linda Yaccarino new Twitter CEO" , BBC News, 2023 May 12
• ↑ "Elon Musk Is the Only One Happy About New Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino" by Prem Thakker, New Republic, 2023 May 12
• ↑ World Economic Forum, People, Linda Yaccarino
• ↑ "Twitter’s new CEO is an NBCUniversal executive with deep ad industry ties" by Wyatte Grantham-Philips and Barbara Ortutay, AP News, 2023 May 12
• ↑ "Some of Elon Musk's fans are furious newly appointed Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino chairs a World Economic Forum committee" by Aaron McDade, Business Insider, 2023 May 12
• ↑ "Twitter Conspiracy Bozos Are Freaking Out Over Elon's WEF-Friendly CEO Pick" by Thomas Germain, Gizmodo, 2023 May 13
• ↑ "#RipTwitter Trends as Right-Wingers Disapprove of Elon Musk’s New CEO Hire: ‘The Death of the Platform’" by Mason Bissada, The Wrap, 2023 May 13
• ↑ [ https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/fewer-people-using-elon-musks-x-struggles-keep-users-rcna144115 " Fewer people are using Elon Musk’s X as the platform struggles to attract and keep users, according to analysts"] by David Ingram, NBC News, 2024 March 22
• ↑ "European Union investigating Musk’s X over possible breaches of social media law" by Kelvin Chan, Associated Press, 2023 December 18
• ↑ "Bigots use AI to make Nazi memes on 4chan. Verified users post them on X." by Will Oremus, Washington Post, 2023 December 14
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s X sued this nonprofit after it exposed hate speech, and its new research shows little has changed" by Jonathan Vanian, CNBC, 2023 September 13
• ↑ "Elon Musk’s X ad revenue reportedly fell $1.5B this year amid boycotts" by Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica, 2023 December 13
• ↑ "Twitter Users Report an Increase in Crypto Scam Ads" by Emily Price, PCMag, 2024 January 6
• ↑ "Twitter’s Scammy Advertisers Are Getting Wrecked by Community Notes" by Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 2024 January 12
• ↑ Elon Musk Twitter (archived from November 16, 2021).
• ↑ Tesla Inc. v. Martin Tripp Case No. 3:18-CV-00296-LRH-CBC (2/21/2020) United States District Court, District of Nevada .
• ↑ 328.0 328.1 Sociopathic Tendencies Got Musked .
• ↑ Is Elon Musk a psychopath? by Common Sense Skeptic (Apr 6, 2021) YouTube .
• ↑ Elon Musk And Friends Are Spending Millions To Break Out Of The Matrix by Janet Burns (Oct 13, 2016,02:00pm EDT) Forbes .
• ↑ Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic: Whatever we may "owe the future," it isn't a bizarre and dangerous ideology fueled by eugenics and capitalism by Émile P. Torres August 20, 2022 12:00PM (EDT) Salon .
• ↑ The Heavy Price of Longtermism: Longtermists focus on ensuring humanity’s existence into the far future. But not without sacrifices in the present. by Alexander Zaitchik (October 24, 2022) The New Republic .
• ↑ Person of the Year: Elon Musk by Molly Ball et al. (Dec. 13, 2021) Time .
• ↑ "I Was a Starter Wife": Inside America's Messiest Divorce by Justine Musk (September 10, 2010) Marie Claire .
• ↑ Take the red pill 🌹 by Elon Musk (17 May 2020) Twitter (archived from May 17, 2020).
• ↑ Lilly Wachowski Acknowledges Re-Examination of The Matrix With Lens Focused on Transness by Jessica Lachenal (Apr 5 th , 2016, 5:04 pm) The Mary Sue .
• ↑ The coronavirus panic is dumb by Elon Musk (12:42 - 6. March 2020) Twitter (archived from March 23, 2020).
• ↑ Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April by Elon Musk (4.38 - 19 Mar 2020) Twitter (archived from March 22, 2020).
• ↑ COVID Data Tracker Centers for Disease Control .
• ↑ FREE AMERICA NOW by Elon Musk (23:14 - 28. Apr. 2020) Twitter (archived from April 30, 2020).
• ↑ Hundreds of covid cases reported at Tesla plant following Musk’s defiant reopening, county data shows by Faiz Siddiqui (March 12, 2021 at 7:24 p.m. PST) The Washington Post .
• ↑ "Elon Musk is using Bronny James' cardiac arrest to baselessly spout anti-vaccine talking points" by Rebecca Cohen and Hilary Brueck, Bsuiness Insider, 2023 July 25
• ↑ Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla’s Production Hell: Unfettered genius. Unpredictable rages. Here's what it was like to work at Tesla as Model 3 manufacturing ramped up and the company's leader melted down.
• ↑ ‘I will nuke you’: Elon Musk was accused of shoving and threatening a former Tesla employee by Graham Rapier (Apr. 6, 2019, 8:32 AM) Business Insider .
• ↑ Is the world's richest person the world's worst boss? What it's like working for Elon Musk by Russ Mitchell (Nov. 15, 2022) Los Angeles Times via SFGate .
• ↑ A sexual misconduct claim against Elon Musk involved him offering to buy a SpaceX flight attendant a horse in exchange for an erotic massage by Cheryl Teh (May 19, 2022) Business Insider .
• ↑ Johnny Wood, How Billionaire Elon Musk's Fortune Could End World Hunger . weforum.org, 19 November 2021.
• ↑ Goal of government should be to maximize the happiness of the people. Giving each person money allows them to decide what meets their needs, rather than the blunt tool of legislation, which creates self-serving special interests. by Elon Musk (07:53 - 24. Jun 2020) Twitter (archived from July 28, 2020).
• ↑ Is Elon Musk on Board With ‘Effective Altruism? by Nicholas G. Evans (April 21, 2023) The Chronicle of Philanthropy .
• ↑ "Elon Musk Shares Grimes’ New Song That Has a 'Roko's Basilisk' A.I. Message." by Mike Brown (29 November 2018) Inverse .
• ↑ "Memo to work martyrs: Long hours make you less productive" by Bob Sullivan, CNBC, 2015 January 26
• ↑ "Elon Musk's productivity hack is taking 2 or 3 days off a year, working 7 days a week, and getting 6 hours of sleep a night" by Nidhi Pandurangi, Business Insider, 2023 May 17
• ↑ "Elon Musk warns Tesla workers they'll be sleeping on the production line to build its new mass-market EV" by Tom Carter, Business Insider, 2024 January 25
• ↑ "Elon made exactly 100 posts on here since yesterday including replies that began at 12:18 AM ET on Saturday and continued until 5:08 AM ET on Sunday. They seemed to be pretty much uninterrupted for 29 hours straight and pretty much every major far-right account was engaged with." by Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski), Twitter, 2024 February 4, archived on 2024 February 6
• ↑ "A Tesla board member once locked Elon Musk's phone in a safe to keep him off Twitter. The billionaire forced hotel security to open it, biographer says." by Grace Kay and Kali Hays, Business Insider, 2023 July 6
• ↑ 356.0 356.1 "Former Tesla director Larry Ellison invited Elon Musk to Hawaii to 'dry out' from drugs, report says" by Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert and Lloyd Lee, Business Insider, 2024 February 4
• ↑ "Tesla Board Members Asked Elon Musk To Go To Rehab: Report" by Bradley Brownell, Jalopnik, 2024 February 5
• ↑ 358.0 358.1 Tesla Deaths (2021).
• ↑ Backseat Tesla Driver Unapologetic After Arrest for Reckless Driving: Soon after he was released, Param Sharma took to his Instagram page and uploaded a video that shows a driverless Tesla on The Embarcadero in San Francisco — with him in the backseat by Sergio Quintana (Published May 13, 2021; Updated on May 14, 2021 at 7:20 am) NBC Bay Area .
• ↑ Tesla tempted drivers with ‘insane’ mode and now is tracking them to judge safety. Experts say it’s ludicrous. Tesla’s system for rating drivers’ safety came under criticism as the company prepared to roll out its Full Self-Driving software to more owners. by Faiz Siddiqui (October 10, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Tesla halts use of video games in moving cars amid safety probe: The move comes after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe into the ‘Passenger Play’ feature this week. by Faiz Siddiqui (December 23, 2021) The Washington Post .
• ↑ 362.0 362.1 Six Tesla workers file additional lawsuits alleging sexual harassment by Faiz Siddiqui (December 14, 2021 at 3:07 p.m. EST) The Washington Post .
• ↑ At SpaceX, we're told we can change the world. I couldn't, however, stop getting sexually harassed. by Ashley Kosak (2021) Lioness .
• ↑ Jury orders Tesla to pay more than $130 million in discrimination suit, which alleged racist epithets and hostile work environment by Faiz Siddiqui (October 5, 2021 at 1:47 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Tesla Whistleblower Meissner Associates .
• ↑ Since 2017, > 30 @tesla employees have been victim of whistleblower retaliation $TSLA Employees blew the whistle on fraud, safety , harassment, sexual assault & more. Most disturbing, many were terminated immediately after contacting Musk or ethics hotline. … by Luis Carruthers (4:43 PM · Jul 23, 2019) Twitter (archived from 26 Dec 2021 02:49:10 UTC).
• ↑ Tesla called her a criminal. Her fight could be a milestone for employees’ rights by Russ Mitchell (Dec. 8, 2020 5 AM PT) Los Angeles Times .
• ↑ Layoffs could weaken Twitter in its biggest global growth markets by Diksha Madhok (7:58 AM EST, Wed November 9, 2022) CNN .
• ↑ Wore Marquis de Sade outfit for a party last night. Was v popular with women who'd read 50 Shades :) by Elon Musk (1:31 - 18 jun. 2012) Twitter (archived from June 17, 2018).
• ↑ Elon Musk becomes Twitter’s largest shareholder , NY Times, April 2022
• ↑ Elon Musk to Join Twitter’s Board of Directors After Becoming Largest Shareholder: Tesla chief executive has built up a 9.2% stake in social-media company by Sarah E. Needleman & Will Feuer (April 5, 2022 7:13 pm ET) Wall Street Journal .
• ↑ "Elon Musk All but Endorses the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory" by Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 2024 January 5
• ↑ "Elon Musk is going down a conspiratorial rabbit hole and taking X with him" by Oliver Darcy, CNN, 2023 December 2023
• ↑ "Elon Musk provides yet another platform for far-right attacks" by Philip Bump, Washington Post, 2023 November 21
• ↑ "Judge dismisses ‘vapid’ Elon Musk lawsuit against group that cataloged racist content on X" by Nick Robins-Early, Guardian, 2024 March 5
• ↑ "Would-be Tesla buyers snub company as Musk's reputation dips" by Hyunjoo Jin and Nick Carey, Reuters, 2024 April 1
• ↑ By the way, I am actually a socialist. Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive, pretending to do good, while actually causing harm. True socialism seeks greatest good for all. by Elon Musk (8:47 AM - 16 Jun 2018) Twitter (archived from July 14, 2018).
• ↑ What would you proclaim yourself as? Anything specifically? by Taylor Harris as @AntVenom (3:33 PM - 15 Jun 2018). Twitter (archived from June 18, 2018). Includes Musk's replies from the same day.
• ↑ If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks by Elon Musk (3:55 PM - 16 Jun 2018) Twitter (archived from June 16, 2018).
• ↑ Iain Banks was an ardent trade unionist, @Elonmusk by Cory Doctorow (17 Jun 2018) Twitter (archived from June 17, 2018). Also includes the subsequent tweets.
• ↑ Tesla's clash with Swedish workers risks spilling over into a regional fight by Anna Cooban (December 5, 2023) CNN Business .
• ↑ UAW launches bid to organize Tesla and 'entire non-union auto sector' in US by David Shepardson (November 29, 2023) Reuters .
• ↑ "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare." - @elonmusk. 6:44 AM on May 21, 2018.
• ↑ Elon Musk: No 'bonehead' analyst questions please BBC News 3 May 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk Rejects ‘Boring, Bonehead Questions,’ and Tesla’s Stock Slides The New York Times 3 May 2018
• ↑ Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured. by Elon Musk (9:48 AM - 7 Aug 2018) Twitter (archived from August 8, 2018).
• ↑ A federal judge just ruled that Tesla must face a shareholder lawsuit over Elon Musk's tweet saying he was considering taking the company private Business Insider 15 April 2020
• ↑ Tesla Shares Tumble As Musk Says Stock Is Overvalued Barron's 1 May 2020
• ↑ Tesla stock price is too high imo by Elon Musk (8:11 AM - 1 May 2020) Twitter (archived from May 1, 2020).
• ↑ Tesla Modern Slavery Transparency Statement Tesla .
• ↑ 392.0 392.1 392.2 EV makers’ use of Chinese suppliers raises concerns about forced labor: U.S. law barring parts and products from the Xinjiang region poses a challenge for Tesla and other auto companies by Evan Halper (Sept. 18 at 5:00 p.m.) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Eamon Barrett, Elon Musk flaunts Tesla's perfect score on LGBTQ equality index, saying his company respects 'personal choices' . (Jun 2, 2022). Fortune .
• ↑ Elon Musk's transphobia on Twitter is not a joke . Observer. 28 July 2020.
• ↑ 395.0 395.1 Elon Musk should apologize for 'insensitive' comments mocking gender pronouns, says a group that ranked Tesla as a top LGBTQ-friendly workplace . Business Insider. 18 December, 2020.
• ↑ when you put he/him in ur bio by Elon Musk (10:11 PM - 13 Dec 2020) Twitter (archived from December 14, 2020).
• ↑ The Eternal Anglo - I LOVE TO OPPRESS.jpg Know Your Meme .
• ↑ Eternal Anglo (February 16, 2017) Urban Dictionary .
• ↑ Daniel Arkin and Diana Dasrath, Elon Musk's daughter granted name and gender change (June 23, 2022) NBC News
• ↑ Roula Khalaf, Elon Musk: "Aren't you entertained?" . (October 7, 2022). The Financial Times . (Archived on November 20, 2022)
• ↑ Andrea Blanco, Elon Musk discusses estranged relationship with daughter: "Can't win them all" . (October 11, 2022). The Independent .
• ↑ Daysia Tolentino and David Ingram (June 2, 2023). "Musk’s response to an anti-trans video sparks 24 hours of chaos at Twitter" . NBC News .
• ↑ Robert Carnevale (June 2, 2023). "Elon Musk Promoted the Matt Walsh Transgenderism Doc 'What Is a Woman' After Twitter Originally Restricted It" . The Wrap .
• ↑ Prem Thakker (June 2, 2023). "Elon Musk Personally Elevates Transphobic Video Originally Flagged as Hate Speech" . The New Republic .
• ↑ Prem Thakker (June 2, 2023). "Elon Musk Calls to Imprison Therapists Helping Trans Kids" . The New Republic .
• ↑ 406.0 406.1 Rebecca Hernandez (June 3, 2023). "Elon Musk Announces Plans to Lobby Against Gender-Affirming Care" . The Star Observer .
• ↑ Paul Squire and Aaron McDade (June 2, 2023). "Elon Musk spent the last 24 hours spreading increasingly unhinged anti-trans content" . Business Insider .
• ↑ 408.0 408.1 Soros reminds me of Magneto by Elon Musk (2:02 AM · May 16, 2023) Twitter (archived from May 16, 2023).
• ↑ Musk says George Soros ‘hates humanity,’ compares him to Jewish supervillain: The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League condemned Elon Musk’s comparison of Soros to Magneto — a Marvel villain who opposes humanity by Avi Selk & Herb Scribner (May 16, 2023) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Antisemitic tweets soared on Twitter after Musk took over, study finds by Cristiano Lima & David DiMolfetta (March 20, 2023 at 9:02 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post .
• ↑ Musk's Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council (December 12, 20229:59 PM ET) Associated Press via NPR .
• ↑ Israeli government blasts Musk attack on Soros for ‘reeking of antisemitism’ by Avi Selk (May 17, 2023) The Washington Post .
• ↑ @breakingbaht Twitter (archived on 2023 April 30).
• ↑ @breakingbaht Twitter (archived on 2023 May 5).
• ↑ @breakingbaht Twitter (archived on 2023 May 22).
• ↑ Okay. Jewish communties [ sic have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is.] by "The Artist Formerly Known as Eric" (@breakingbaht) (2023 November 15) Twitter (archived on 2023 November 15).
• ↑ "As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content" by Eric Hananoki, Media Matters, 2023 November 16
• ↑ "Elon Musk faces growing backlash over his endorsement of antisemitic X post" by Aimee Picchi, CBS News, 2023 November 17
• ↑ "Antisemites are saying Elon Musk is on their side after his latest tweets about Jews" by David Ingram, NBC News, 2023 November 16
• ↑ "Two brands suspend advertising on X after their ads appeared next to pro-Nazi content" by Claire Duffy and Brian Fung, CNN, 2023 August 17
• ↑ Elon Musk raises the specter of ‘white genocide’ by Ishaan Tharoor (August 1, 2023 at 7:29 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post .
• ↑ "White people are the only ones who are supposed to hate their own race in order to be considered good people Whiteness is the only culture identified by those outside it and not those who are part of it And white culture is the only one where hatred of it is considered a virtue" by Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec), Twitter, archived on 2023 November 16
• ↑ "Everyone is allowed to be proud of their race, except for white people, because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that our history was somehow “worse” than that of other races. That false narrative needs to die - and if we really want to do the comparing game, white people have also done A LOT of good for the world." by Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar), Twitter, 2023 November 16
• ↑ "Twitter CEO Says Platform Is Fighting Antisemitism a Day After Owner Elon Musk Endorsed It" by Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 2023 November 16
• ↑ Elon Musk Thinks a Mini-Submarine Could Help in Thai Cave Rescue The New York Times 7 July 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk and the Thai cave rescue: a tale of good intentions and bad tweets Vox 18 July 2018
• ↑ HERO'S LAWSUIT Who is Vernon Unsworth? Thailand cave diver dubbed ‘paedo guy’ by Elon Musk The Sun 7 December 2019
• ↑ Exclusive interview with Thai cave rescue hero Vernon Unsworth: ‘If the Brits hadn’t been called in, it would have been too late’ The Times 15 July 2018
• ↑ Cave diver criticizes Musk’s kid-sub rescue plan. Musk suggests he’s a pedophile Los Angeles Times 15 July 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk Has Finally Apologized to the Thai Cave Diver He Called a ‘Pedo’ Fortune 18 July 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk attacks British cave diver for a third time, calling him a ‘child rapist’ by Ryan Browne (5 September 2018) CNBC .
• ↑ Elon Musk 'Set Out to Destroy Me,' Says Cave Diver After Losing 'Pedo Guy' Defamation Lawsuit Against Tesla Boss Newsweek 18 December 2019
• ↑ Elon Musk claims his investigator tricked him about diver he called a 'pedo' The Guardian 9 October 2019
• ↑ Elon Musk defends his right to be a Twitter troll at 'pedo guy' trial Billionaires gonna troll. by Rachel Kraus (December 4, 2019) Mashable .
• ↑ 437.0 437.1 437.2 437.3 Sarah Jones (July 7, 2022). "Is Elon Musk Trying to Populate Mars Himself?" . Intelligencer ( New York ).
• ↑ Kenzie Bryant (September 11, 2023). "All Is Well Again in House Elon Musk" . Vanity Fair .
• ↑ Elon Musk (September 18, 2023). "A major part of the fall of Rome was low birth rates" . Twitter .
• ↑ (December 16, 2023). "Elon Musk urges people in developed countries to have more children" . Euronews (with Agence France-Presse ).
• ↑ 441.0 441.1 Abigail Adams (September 11, 2023). "Elon Musk 'Wants Smart People to Have Kids,' Executive He Welcomed Twins with Says in New Book" . People .
• ↑ Elon Musk (February 13, 2024). "Ehrlich was instrumental in causing a massive genocide of the next generation of humans" . Twitter .
• ↑ 443.0 443.1 Virginia Heffernan (October 26, 2022). "The Real Reason Elon Musk Wants You to Have More Babies" . WIRED .
• ↑ Josh Marcus (July 4, 2023). "Elon Musk supports eliminating voting rights for people without children" . The Independent .
• ↑ Cheryl Teh (March 7, 2023). "Elon Musk says it's 'super concerning' that smart youths aren't having as much sex as those with average IQs, referencing data from a study published 23 years ago" . Business Insider .
• ↑ Pete Shanks (September 21, 2023). "Natalism and Hipster Eugenics" . Center for Genetics and Society .
• ↑ Steve Mollman (December 16, 2023). "Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk say human population not nearly big enough: 'If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time a thousand Mozarts'" . Fortune .
• ↑ Thomas Germain (January 10, 2024). "Elon Musk Seems to Endorse Tweet Saying Students at Black Colleges Have Low IQs" . Gizmodo .
• ↑ Andréa Becker (October 16, 2023). "Elon Musk's Feud With Grimes Is a Warning" . Slate .
• ↑ Charisma Madarang (April 18, 2023). "Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson Discuss the Urge to Impregnate Women" . Rolling Stone .
• ↑ Samantha Riedel (April 14, 2023). "Elon Musk Suggests Doctors Who Treat Trans Youth Should 'Go to Prison for Life'" . Them .
• ↑ Noor Al-Sibai (March 18, 2023). "Oh, Great, Elon Musk Has Entered the Trans Kids 'Debate' Chat" . Neoscope ( Futurism .).
• ↑ Joey Nolfi (August 10, 2023). "Grimes had 'long conversation' with Elon Musk about trans issues: 'He's unhappy with woke people'" . Entertainment Weekly .
• ↑ Steven Levy (August 8, 2023). "Grimes on Living Forever, Dying on Mars, and Giving Elon Musk Ideas for His Best (Worst) Tweets" . WIRED .
• ↑ Jacqueline Mroz (October 21, 2022). "A New Procedure Could Expand Reproductive Choices for Transgender Women" . The New York Times .
• ↑ "The World’s Population May Peak in Your Lifetime. What Happens Next?" by Dean Spears, New York Times, 2023 September 26
• ↑ "You can’t even pay people to have more kids" by Anna North, Vox, 2023 November 27
• ↑ Kim T. The impact of working hours on pregnancy intention in childbearing-age women in Korea, the country with the world's lowest fertility rate. PLoS One. 2023 Jul 19;18(7):e0288697. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288697. PMID: 37467184; PMCID: PMC10355408.
• ↑ [Ahn J, Lee SH, Park MY, Oh SH, Lee W. The Association Between Long Working Hours and Infertility . Saf Health Work. 2021 Dec;12(4):517-521. doi: 10.1016/j.shaw.2021.07.005. Epub 2021 Jul 14. PMID: 34900371; PMCID: PMC8640650.]
• ↑ "A Japanese Company Bans Late-Night Work. A Baby Boom Soon Follows" by Kanoko Matsuyama, Bloomberg, 2023 July 12
• ↑ "Lack of paid family leave, support at work partly to blame for 30-year low in fertility rates: Experts" by Kaelyn Forde, ABC News, 2019 January 12
• ↑ "Early Remote Work Impacts on Family Formation" by Lyman Stone and Adam Ozimek, Economic Innovation Group, 2023 March 7
• ↑ "Elon Musk Says Remote Work Is 'Morally Wrong,' Calls It 'Messed Up'" by Madeline Garfinkle, Entrepreneur, 2023 May 17
• ↑ Here's why Elon Musk is changing his tune on Trump Business Insider 29 January 2017
• ↑ Elon Musk melts down, blames scumbag tesla critics for electing trump Vanity Fair 23 May 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk's and Donald Trump's Twitter Tariff Tiff Wired 12 March 2018
• ↑ Elon Musk leaving Trump advisory councils following Paris agreement withdrawal TechCrunch 1 June 2017
• ↑ Elon Musk interview reveals whether he prefers Nikola Tesla to Thomas Edison Big Think 4 February 2019
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Elon Musk's 11 Children: All About His Kids and Their Mothers

Elon Musk is the father of 11 children, including a pair of twins and a set of triplets with his ex-wife Justine Wilson and two boys and a girl with ex-girlfriend Grimes

Elon Musk 's family keeps on growing.

Within two decades, the Tesla founder has become a father of 11 children with three women. His first child was born in 2002 and his most recent in 2023.

The first six children he shares with his ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson . After first meeting as students at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, the SpaceX CEO wed Wilson in 2000 — but after seven years of marriage and five kids, the couple officially divorced in 2008.

"Custody of our five children is split evenly," Musk said in a 2010 Business Insider op-ed. "Almost all of my non-work waking hours are spent with my boys, and they are the love of my life."

Two years later, the entrepreneur married and divorced actress Talulah Riley twice — the first lasting from 2010 to 2012, and the second from 2013 to 2016. They never had children together.

In 2018, Musk and singer-songwriter Grimes (whose real name is Claire Boucher) were linked — and had their first child together in 2020.

Despite splitting up in September 2021 after three years, Grimes revealed in a March 2022 Vanity Fair interview that the couple had reconciled and welcomed another child via surrogate in December 2021. At the time, she also revealed that the couple wants more babies — telling the outlet, "we've always wanted at least three or four" — but the day the article was released, she tweeted that they had broken up again.

A few weeks prior to the arrival of their second child together, the CEO secretly fathered twins with Shivon Zilis in November 2021, according to court documents published by Insider. The twins were born in Austin, Texas.

In September 2023, a biography about Musk revealed that he and Grimes had secretly welcomed a third child. They named their second son Techno Mechanicus , who also goes by “Tau."

During an interview with The Wall Street Journal ’s CEO Council, Musk spoke about his children's futures. He shared that he has no plans to "automatically" give his children shares of his companies "if they have no interest or inclination or ability to manage" his empire.

Learn more about Musk's family, below.

Nevada Alexander

Musk had his first son, Nevada Alexander, with his first wife, Justine Wilson in 2002. Sadly, at 10 weeks old, he passed away from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

"Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing," Wilson wrote in a 2010 essay for Marie Claire . "By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead."

She continued, "He spent three days on life support in a hospital in Orange County before we made the decision to take him off it. I held him in my arms when he died."

Vivian Jenna Wilson and Griffin

In her Marie Claire essay, Wilson details their journey to expanding their family further.

"I buried my feelings ... coping with Nevada's death by making my first visit to an IVF clinic less than two months later. Elon and I planned to get pregnant again as swiftly as possible. Within the next five years, I gave birth to twins, then triplets," she wrote .

One of Musk's now 18-year-old twins has filed to legally change her name and gender and said she no longer wishes to be related to her father, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

The April 18 petition seeks the legal change of her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson (the maiden name of her mother, Justine Wilson); recognition of her gender as female; and the issuance of a new birth certificate to reflect the changes.

"Gender Identity and the fact that I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form," Vivian wrote in the petition explaining her request for the changes.

In an October 2022 interview with Financial Times , Musk said he believes Vivian doesn't want to be associated with him because of the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists. "It's full-on communism . . . and a general sentiment that if you're rich, you're evil," said the Tesla CEO. "It [the relationship] may change, but I have very good relationships with all the others [children]. Can't win them all."

Kai, Saxon and Damian

Wilson gave birth to triplets named Kai, Saxon, and Damian in 2006, two years after having twins. She revealed in a 2017 TedTalk that they were also conceived via IVF, but she and Musk have not discussed the children themselves publicly.

Musk does not often discuss his own family, but he does have strong opinions on increasing the birth rate — stating that there are "not enough people" in the world at Wall Street Journal 's annual CEO Council in December 2021.

"I think one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate and the rapidly declining birthrate," he said. "Please look at the numbers – if people don't have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words."

In a 2023 biography on the tech mogul, titled  Elon Musk ,  author Walter Isaacson wrote about Damian , who became a vegetarian at age 8 to "decrease my carbon footprint."

Isaacson also mentioned that Damian became a classical music prodigy who excelled in math and physics. Musk's mom, Maye, even once told her son, "I think Damian is brighter than you."

For more on Elon Musk, listen below to our daily podcast on PEOPLE Every Day.

Grimes and Musk welcomed their first child on May 4, 2020 after the singer announced her pregnancy with a picture of her baby bump back in January 2020. Their son X Æ A-12, whose name was later changed to X Æ A-Xii , was in part named after the CIA's Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance plane.

Though nicknamed "X," Grimes broke down his pronunciation in her Instagram comment section. "It's just X, like the letter X," she wrote. "Then A.I.," she added. "Like how you said the letter A then I."

But Musk explained the pronunciation differently, saying on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that "X" is spoken "like the letter" while "the 'Æ' is pronounced like 'ash.'"

While proudly stating that "A-12 was [his] contribution," he said it was Grimes who " mostly came up with the name ." She even gave a thorough description of the meaning behind it on her Twitter .

The boy later made headlines when he joined his dad for a tense meeting at Twitter at the age of 2.

According to The Washington Post , Musk brought X Æ A-Xii to Twitter's offices while meeting with Trust and Safety Office Yoel Roth in October 2022. The child was reportedly running around the building as Musk discussed Twitter's future. X Æ A-Xii also made himself comfortable in the conference room, which the newspaper reported "was strewn with toys."

In April 2023, X Æ A-Xii tagged along with his dad to the MMA Global Possible Conference in Miami. The little boy was seen playing with Musk on stage, which the audience found heartwarming.

Four months later, Grimes opened up about her son's love of spacecraft . "X knows a lot about rockets. It's crazy," she explained. "He knows more about rockets than me."

She even admitted that she was worried about his "obsession with space" after SpaceX's Starship rocket exploded after takeoff in April.

"When X saw Starship blow up, he had, like, a three-day PTSD meltdown," the mom of two said. "Every hour, he was waking up and going, 'Starship ...' and I had to rub his back."

Strider and Azure

Walter Isaacson/Twitter

Musk secretly welcomed twins, son Strider and daughter Azure, with Shivon Zilis in November 2021, according to court documents published by Insider on July 6 . The twins were born in Austin, Texas — just weeks before he and Grimes welcomed a baby girl via a surrogate.

The papers reveal that in April, Musk and Zilis — who is the project director at his Neuralink company — asked a Texan county court to change their babies' names so they would "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name."

The parents revealed the babies' names and sexes in September 2023, when they were 16 months old.

Exa Dark Sideræl

Grimes revealed a year later in a Vanity Fair interview that she welcomed a baby girl via surrogate in December 2021, three months after the couple's public breakup. Named Exa Dark Sideræl, the singer-songwriter explained that her name has double meaning.

Exa refers to a supercomputing term, exaFLOPS, while Dark represents "the unknown." She explained to the outlet, "People fear it but truly it's the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe."

The third part of Y's full name, Sideræl, is pronounced "sigh-deer-ee-el," according to Vanity Fair. Grimes described the word as "a more elven" spelling of sidereal, which she defined as "the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time."

The second meaning of Sideræl is a nod to Grimes' favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel, who "chooses to abdicate the ring."

In March 2023, Grimes shared a rare photo of her daughter on Twitter — and revealed that the little girl is going by a new name.

"Normally we [don't] post her for her privacy, but she's fairly unrecognizable here since shes channeling Goku," the mom-of-two wrote in the comments, referring to a Dragon Ball character. The photo showed Musk's youngest in a red onesie with super blonde spiked hair.

In a separate comment, Grimes said: "She's Y now, or "Why?" or just "?" (But the government won't recognize that). curiosity, the eternal question, .. and such."

In August, Grimes described her younger child as "a little engineer," and said, "she likes industrial shipping. She's very strange."

Techno Mechanicus

Journalist Walter Isaacson's biography about Musk revealed the birth of the Tesla founder's third child with Grimes. The couple secretly welcomed a second son, Techno Mechanicus , who also goes by “Tau."

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