It’s my understanding that Xitter has crashed globally. While heartwarming, I’m hoping it lasts indefinitely.
Elon has claimed that it is a cyberattack. Anonymous (or Dark Storm?) has claimed responsibility. I take no stand on the truth values of either of those statements.
Yeah, that is weird since Elmo’s life seems to usually be trying to recreate the Culture novels.
Elmo probably thinks “female” is one of those undesirable traits that he’s going to eugenically engineer out of the human genome. Given how little he seems to understand the sci-fi books and movies he builds his worldview around (the Cybertruck is the car Blade Runner would drive!) he probably read about the axolotl tanks in the Dune sequels and thought it was a good idea.
It’s a bad look, either way.
Major sites can handle DDOS spikes, security, etc or contract such services. His excuse amounts to an admission he runs a podunk operation that can’t handle the heat. Or there was no ‘attack’, and he runs a podunk operation that can’t keep itself working.
Or both. But it’s very strange – didn’t Elmo demand to review samples of everyone’s code to ensure they were brilliant enough to continue working for him? What could have gone wrong? 
He should have taken a page out of Donnie boy’s book. “Nobody knew running a multi-billion dollar organization by getting rid of most of the workforce could be so hard”
That’s an interesting idea. It could be an even better analogy to the Reichstag Fire than most scenarios would be:
- Twitter goes down normally, as one does. (This is fortuitous just like it was fortuitous that the Nazis found someone who wanted to see the Reichstag burn. According to some theories that is.)
- Then, since Twitter is already down, may as well change the homepage to look like it was caused by Anonymous. (Just like the Reichstag Fire was propagandized as being part of a vast conspiracy.)
- Step 3: Profit! Errr, crack down on everyone who doesn’t bargle Donnie’s galls.
Musk wants to eliminate social security, medicare and other programs. Bloomberg:
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow on Monday. “So that’s like the big one to eliminate.”
I assume Musk misspoke and he wants to cut social security, medicare, and other mandatory spending programs. Still, wow.
So much hay gets made because those programs are called “entitlements”, and having a “sense of entitlement” is bad.
Polestar is offering $20,000 off to Tesla drivers.
https://insideevs.com/news/751665/tesla-polestar-3-lease-deal/
@Sage_Rat
Here is Krugman’s snappy take:
As the economy stumbles and the stock market tanks, consumer confidence lags, and even some Trump voters are losing faith, what I find particularly revealing is how the Trump cabal are responding. They aren’t rethinking their policies; they aren’t even making major efforts to justify their policies to an increasingly skeptical public. Instead, they’ve instantly descended into a pit of insane conspiracy theories. …
What about those Tesla protests? According to Musk, they aren’t a response to his Nazi salutes and the chainsaw DOGE has been taking to crucial public services. In his mind they’re a conspiracy organized by five people, three of whom happen to be Jewish and two of whom happen to be dead:
Then again, why should we be surprised? An excellent recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times, using data from the World Values Survey, shows that at this point the U.S. Right’s values are in fact very similar to those of authoritarian regimes like Russia and Turkey, and not at all like those of Western democracies, or for that matter its own values a generation ago:
Word. The really frustrating thing (for me) is when I’m cruising Facebook and I come across posts from people who are on the right side (wanting to keep these programs) insisting that they aren’t entitlements because they think they’re being accused of claiming that the world owes them a living.
Dunning-Kreuger can afflict the good guys, too.
The deal started on Feb. 21 and runs through Feb. 28.
Thanks for the timely tip.
Polestar has some really nice-looking cars.
It’s the EV spin-off of Volvo.
Regarding this:
Little Nemo nails it. Much of Musk’s fortune is based on investor relations more than company profitability. Now the fact that Tesla and SpaceX and are both viable (unlike, say, Twitter) is itself an accomplishment. But viability doesn’t create that sort of fortune.
I stand by my claims regarding Musk’s organizational genius. Here’s a dissenting view. Gifted:
Over the past six weeks, the value of Tesla’s shares has plunged about 40 percent, wiping out virtually all they had gained after the 2024 election. This reversal reveals Mr. Musk’s soft underbelly: His fortune depends heavily on the inflated expectations of his rabid following. As those expectations deflate, so will his power, demonstrating that financial markets are an underappreciated guardrail against both Mr. Musk’s and President Trump’s agendas.
It is tempting to compare Mr. Musk to the true business titans of the past quarter-century such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But those individuals created genuinely huge businesses that eclipse anything Mr. Musk has built, by any possible metric. While Mr. Musk has built a car company from the ground up — no easy feat — his wealth is largely thanks to a financial cult, one in which legions of dazzled investor-followers have enabled him to start an ever-growing number of disparate initiatives and provided immunity from critics who question his operational decision making, his corporate governance, his obscene pay packages and now his migration into the political sphere.
The high-wire act goes something like this: Dream up a business so ambitious that any setback is trivial and every accomplishment heroic. Identify yourself as the manic genius behind this ambitious business in order to personally capitalize on outsize returns from excited investors. Enlist social media to cement your iconic status, keeping your believers so enthusiastic that their fervor beats back any skeptics who dare to bet against your ventures, even as you pitch more and more fantastical ideas. At this point you hit the flywheel: Other investors, searching for outsize returns, flock to the shares of your other companies, pushing their valuations ever higher, thus fortifying your wealth and burnishing your reputation as a business mastermind.
IOW Musk Inc is a bubble within a bubblicious stock market.
Yeah, we should really appreciate financial markets more for saving us from the problems that they create.
Musk Ink sounds like an industrial dye extracted from the glands of a weasel.
Which somehow reminds me of those old movie scenes of the jolly pudgy German fellow with the gigantic handlebar moustache about to blow about 4" of foam off a very large (2 quart/liter?) stein of beer. Ending up with it all over his magnificent 'stache and probably the lady in the gown at the adjacent table.
But ink comes from squids. Musk ink comes from the elusive squid-weasel hybrid, the squeasel.
I’m assuming this is AI generated. If so, it is the best use of it I have ever seen.