Welcome to Musk Watch, the place we study what Texas’ richest (and maybe most divisive) citizen is as much as this week.
When you have been in search of proof that Elon Musk stans will fork over their hard-earned money for anything bearing his name (or the identify of one in every of his myriad corporations), cease digging (pun meant). The Boring Firm is now selling burnt-hair scented perfume, and Musk says that the ewww de toilette is flying off the cabinets at what could be very doubtless a dystopian success middle in Williamson County. He claims that he offered $2 million of the stuff in 24 hours.
The product is not simply the most recent meme-generated ephemera for thirsty technocrats, becoming a member of 2018’s flamethrowers and 2020’s Tesla shorts, the latter a perceived dig at buyers who “shorted” the corporate’s inventory. When you already believed that Elon Musk is mostly a snake-oil salesman as an alternative of what his Twitter bio now reads — “Fragrance Salesman” — this merchandise ought to seal the deal, and never simply because it is pointless and slightly gnarly.
The Boring Firm was based as a Twitter joke about visitors. It is operations are very actual, within the sense that folks receives a commission cash to construct monstrous digging machines throughout Texas. However the firm has but to resolve visitors issues and has, in truth, caused some of its own out near Bastrop. It is unclear if the Boring Firm — like SpaceX and Starlink and, to an extent, Tesla — will ever attain its meant purpose, which, in case you imagine Musk, is to altruistically remedy an existential engineering puzzle. Now it is earning profits on a small container of moist rubbish, at $100 a pop.
Oh, and in case you’re nonetheless within the fragrance, you will have to attend. Boring will take your cash now, however will not ship you something till the primary quarter of 2023, which completely will not be delayed, proper? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Ukraine-Brained
Final week, I wrote about Musk’s entrance into international politics when he started masquerading as The Man Who Might Remedy Ukraine. He had solutions about Crimea and different annexed areas, waxed existential on the potential for nuclear warfare, and extra. However then on Friday, he stated that his Starlink web, which had appeared in Ukraine and had been a boon to the nation’s military in Russian-occupied territory, would not be funded indefinitely.
As if this weren’t disappointing sufficient, the famously small government-obsessed, bailout hating, pseudo-libertarian Musk was uncovered as, nicely, a grimy rotten communist, asking the Pentagon to pay for Starlink’s operation in Ukraine. When the tides turned, people on-line criticized Musk as each a hypocrite and a Russian sympathizer, particularly after his feedback about completely ceding Crimea to Putin.
After all, Musk reversed course and determined to pay for Starlink, albeit begrudgingly.
A (very) small a part of me needs to root for Musk. Earlier than you click on that little X on the tab, let me clarify. In a vacuum, all of Musk’s endeavors look like a part of some world-solving narrative for the billionaire. He lives on pals’ couches or in a tiny house, he would not take holidays, and so all of this cash he has is ostensibly used to fund endeavors that can make humanity higher. We’ll house, we’ll cut back our reliance on fossil fuels, we’ll punch visitors within the face all the time, we’ll finish nuclear warfare.
However when it boils right down to it — and particularly in moments like this one — it seems that Musk suffers from the identical factor many people do. He simply needs to be preferred, he is obsessed with the appearance of being funny, and, saddest of all, is hooked on his everlasting position because the web’s most important character. It is virtually like social media is bad for your brain. Hey, at the very least Musk is not in a protracted legal battle to purchase one of many bigger networks on the planet!
