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