Elon Musk is a fucking moron

Tuxan · Nov 2, 2024

Tesla on Full Self-Driving Mode Plows Through Deer Without Even Slowing Down

https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-self-driving-deer

Everybody said it needs Lidar but Elon? Naaah.

Atlantic · Nov 2, 2024

Tuxan said:
Tesla on Full Self-Driving Mode Plows Through Deer Without Even Slowing Down

https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-self-driving-deer

Everybody said it needs Lidar but Elon? Naaah.

More...

this "self-driving" is utter nonsense - and will always be.

if you don't want do drive the car - don't sit behind the steering wheel.

end of the story.

gwb-trading · Nov 2, 2024

ph1l · Nov 3, 2024

The Father of His Compound?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/business/elon-musk-children-compound.html

Elon Musk Wants Big Families. He Bought a Secret Compound for His.
As the billionaire warns of population collapse and the moral obligation to have children, he’s navigating his own complicated family.

By Kirsten Grind Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel

For this article, the reporters visited Austin, Texas, and interviewed more than two dozen people.

Published Oct. 29, 2024Updated Oct. 31, 2024

Leer en español
On a quiet, leafy street of multimillion-dollar properties, one stands out: a 14,400-square-foot mansion that looks like a villa plucked from the hills of Tuscany and transplanted to Austin, Texas.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary
Listen · 27:40 min
This is where Elon Musk, 53, the world’s richest man and perhaps the most important campaign backer of former President Donald J. Trump, has been trying to establish the cornerstone of an unusual family compound, according to four people familiar with his plans.

Mr. Musk has told people close to him in recent months that he envisions his children (of which there are at least 11) and two of their three mothers occupying adjoining properties. That way, his younger children could be a part of one another’s lives, and Mr. Musk could schedule time among them.

Directly behind the villa is a six-bedroom mansion that Mr. Musk helped purchase, according to two of the people and public records. The total cost of both properties was about $35 million. When in Austin, he often stays at a third mansion about a 10-minute walk away, the people said.

Three mansions, three mothers, 11 children and one secretive, multibillionaire father who obsesses about declining birthrates when he isn’t overseeing one of his six companies: It is an unconventional family situation, and one that Mr. Musk seems to want to make even bigger.

A proponent of in vitro fertilization, Mr. Musk believes strongly in increasing the world’s population. He has even offered his own sperm to friends and acquaintances, including the former independent vice-presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan, according to two people familiar with his offer. Ms. Shanahan turned him down.

Mr. Musk has tried to keep his own growing family a secret. The compound, and his efforts to fill it with his children, which have not been previously reported, isn’t just a personal matter for him; it is rooted in the existential anxieties that underpin his business empire.

He was an early investor in his electric car company, Tesla, out of concerns about reliance on fossil fuels. He founded his rocket company, SpaceX, now a significant government contractor, so that he could colonize Mars for humans in case Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Over the last two years, he has become increasingly fixated on what he sees as another threat: declining birthrates. He believes a global population collapse is coming that will wipe out humanity. His apocalyptic vision is unlikely, according to demographers, but on X, the social media company he owns, he has been encouraging followers to have as many children as possible.

“It should be considered a national emergency to have kids,” Mr. Musk posted in June.

For the moment, Mr. Musk is temporarily encamped in Pennsylvania, immersed in the presidential campaign and spending tens of millions of dollars to finance Mr. Trump’s get-out-the-vote operations. A Trump victory could make Mr. Musk perhaps the most powerful private citizen in the country, and Mr. Trump has already said he would appoint the billionaire to oversee an “efficiency commission” to scrutinize the workings of the entire federal government.

But it is in Texas where Mr. Musk has moved much of his business operations and is trying to establish his family compound. The compound is off to a bumpy start.

One of the mothers, Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, Mr. Musk’s brain technology start-up, has moved into one of the homes with her children. But Claire Boucher, the musician better known as Grimes, who is the mother to three of his children, is in a protracted legal fight with Mr. Musk and has so far steered clear.

Image
Shivon Zilis, here in a 2015 photo, has moved with her children into one of the homes on Elon Musk’s compound in Austin, Texas. Credit...Stephen Lam
The third mother is Mr. Musk’s first wife, Justine Musk, with whom he has five living children, all in their late teens or older. There is room in the Austin compound if they were to visit, though he is estranged from at least one of those children.

In choosing Senator JD Vance as his running mate, Mr. Trump brought declining birthrates to the forefront of this year’s presidential election. Mr. Vance, who has raised alarms about the issue, made headlines for scolding “childless cat ladies.” Mr. Musk’s push for procreation also aligns globally with world leaders like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and has made him something of a hero among pronatalists, who believe people should have as many children as possible.

In a biography published in 2015, Mr. Musk worried that educated people weren’t having enough children. “I’m not saying like only smart people should have kids. I’m just saying that smart people should have kids as well,” he said. “I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid. You’re like, ‘Wow, that’s probably not good.’”

His views seem to echo those of his father, Errol Musk. The elder Mr. Musk, who is 78 and has seven children with three women, praised his son’s “good genes” and desire to have many children.

“You breed horses,” Errol Musk said in an interview in September. “People are the same. If you have a good father and a good mother, you’ll have exceptional children. If you have no children, I feel very sorry for you.”

In a book published in 2023, Elon Musk told his biographer that he and his father, who lives in South Africa, are sometimes estranged, partly because Errol Musk had two children with his own former stepdaughter. But the elder Mr. Musk said that he and his son were in frequent contact and that he had recently traveled to Texas to visit him and his children.

“I haven’t met one or two of them because they’re still secret,” the elder Mr. Musk said.

Mr. Musk, his attorney and the head of his family office did not return requests for comment. Representatives for Ms. Boucher did not return requests for comment. Ms. Zilis and Ms. Shanahan also did not return requests for comment.

In an interview published Wednesday evening, Mr. Musk told The New York Post, “I don’t own, nor am I building a compound in Austin.” Mr. Musk, who said he hadn’t read The New York Times story, also denied offering his sperm to friends and acquaintances, including Nicole Shanahan, the former running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

All Musk’s Children
Image

Mr. Musk and Claire Boucher, the musician better known as Grimes, at the Met Gala in 2018. The two are in custody disputes over their three children. Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times
Mr. Musk and his first wife, Justine Musk, had their first child, a boy named Nevada, in 2002, two years after they married. The child died unexpectedly in infancy.

“Elon made it clear that he did not want to talk about Nevada’s death,” Justine Musk wrote in a 2010 essay. “I didn’t understand this, just as he didn’t understand why I grieved openly.” Ms. Musk wrote that she coped by “making my first visit to an I.V.F. clinic less than two months later.”

The couple had five children using I.V.F. before they divorced in 2008: twins, Griffin and Vivian, who are now 20, followed by triplets, Saxon, Damian and Kai, now in their late teens. Mr. Musk has said that I.V.F. is a more efficient way of having children because it allows parents to control parts of the process, according to a person who understands his thinking.

By 2016, as the head of Tesla and SpaceX, Mr. Musk had amassed a net worth of more than $11 billion, according to Forbes. That year, he warned for the first time on Twitter, the social network now known as X, that the world could be headed for population collapse.

“Consequences of population implosion greatly underestimated,” he wrote in response to an article about falling birthrates. In private, he had warned of the issue to his friends and family for years.

He twice married and divorced the actress Talulah Riley, whose desire to focus on her career instead of having children was a factor in their breakup, according to three people familiar with her thinking. Representatives for Ms. Riley didn’t return requests for comment.

In 2020, Mr. Musk and Ms. Boucher, whom he started dating two years earlier, had their first child, a son they named X Æ A-Xii, or X for short.

He started becoming even more vocal about the declining population. “Population collapse is 2nd biggest danger to civilization after AI,” he tweeted in July 2020, a couple of months after X’s birth.

Over the next few years, Mr. Musk had more children with Ms. Boucher as well as with Ms. Zilis. The arrangement created tensions that sometimes flared on social media.

In 2021, without Ms. Boucher’s knowledge, Mr. Musk donated sperm to Ms. Zilis, who became pregnant with twins through I.V.F., according to three people familiar with the couple. That same year, the billionaire and Ms. Boucher were expecting a second child also conceived via I.V.F. but carried by a surrogate.

The two women, who had been friends and ran in similar social circles, had unknowingly been at the same Austin hospital around the same time, according to an authorized biography of Mr. Musk by Walter Isaacson. Ms. Zilis had twins in late 2021, weeks before Ms. Boucher’s child, a girl, was born. Ms. Boucher found out that Mr. Musk had fathered Ms. Zilis’s children a month after they were born, according to two people close to the situation.

Further complicating matters, Mr. Musk took a name that he and Ms. Boucher had chosen for their daughter — Valkyrie — and gave it to one of Ms. Zilis’s twins, according to two people familiar with the naming. Ms. Boucher was so offended that she wrote a song about the episode, which she posted to Twitter.

“A girl cursed with my daughter’s name,” Ms. Boucher wrote in a now-deleted tweet, “will now carry her mother’s shame.” (In the end, Ms. Zilis changed her daughter’s name, while Ms. Boucher chose a different name for her child.)

By then, Ms. Boucher was living in Austin and co-parenting her children with Mr. Musk. Ms. Zilis was also living in the city, according to three people close to her.

Both women, at times, have treated Mr. Musk as their romantic partner, and backed his beliefs about a population crisis and having children to save humanity.

“I’ve spent most of my adult life working on what I figured would most contribute to a better future within the aperture of my skill set, but having kids makes it non-negotiably and viscerally obligatory to fight for that goal,” Ms. Zilis posted on X in March.

Fear of a Depopulated Planet
Image

Mr. Musk has aligned himself with world leaders who share his concerns about declining birthrates in developed countries, like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy.Credit...Graham Dickie/The New York Times
Over the last three years, Mr. Musk has ratcheted up his alarm over the declining birthrate across the United States and elsewhere. In 2021, his foundation gave $10 million to the University of Texas to study fertility and population trends. He has posted at least 67 times on the subject since 2021, 33 of them in the last year.

“I’m doing my best to encourage more people to become parents and ideally have three or more kids, so humanity can grow,” he posted in February.

Mr. Musk has been celebrated by supporters of the growing pronatalist movement. While pronatalists on the Christian right believe children should be conceived through traditional marriages between a man and a woman, Silicon Valley adherents accept a wide array of family structures as well as reproductive technology like I.V.F.

Simone and Malcolm Collins, who founded the Pronatalist Foundation in 2021, have come to the movement from worry about demographic collapse and applaud what Ms. Collins called Silicon Valley’s “thinking about the future in a clearer way.” A married couple with four children, they said they were working for the betterment of humankind.

“Our worldview value is based around the goal of an eventual pluralistic intergalactic human civilization,” Mr. Collins said.

Few demographers believe the planet will face a catastrophic demographic event in the next few decades. The United Nations said in July that the global population, which is now eight billion, is expected to grow by two billion over the next 60 years, and then gradually fall by about 700 million people.

Nonetheless, a number of developed countries like Japan, Italy and Germany have been struggling to increase population as they face the economic consequences of a declining birthrate, like a shrinking work force and the costs of caring for the elderly.

“There is an awful morality to those who deliberately have no kids: they are effectively demanding that other people’s kids take care of them in their old age,” Mr. Musk posted on X in 2023, in response to a video of dual-income couples bragging about having no children.

These trends have alarmed other global tech figures. The Skype co-founder and Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Collinses’ foundation and is himself a father of five. The founder of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, claimed in July that he had fathered more than 100 biological children through sperm donation. Mr. Durov, who is under arrest in France over charges of allowing criminal activity on Telegram, has said he plans to “open source” his DNA.

Mr. Musk, too, has offered to share his DNA. At a dinner party held at the home of a well-known Silicon Valley executive last year, Mr. Musk offered to provide his sperm to a married couple he had met socially only a handful of times, according to two people who were present for the interaction.

The couple had mentioned at the dinner that they were having trouble conceiving a child. Mr. Musk told them he was happy to assist, and boasted about his many children, according to the people present.

In the winter of 2022, Mr. Musk made a similar suggestion to Ms. Shanahan around the time that Ms. Shanahan told people she had sex with Mr. Musk. (Ms. Shanahan has denied that she had an affair with Mr. Musk.)

The former running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ms. Shanahan has a daughter with her former husband, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin. She declined Mr. Musk’s offer.

The Compound
Image

Mr. Musk has moved much of his business operations to Texas and is now trying to establish his family compound in Austin. Credit...Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times

Initially, Mr. Musk had hoped to build a compound for his families on hundreds of acres that he and his companies owned outside Austin, near Tesla’s headquarters, according to four people familiar with the plans. But that idea appeared to fall apart after the Justice Department began investigating whether Tesla’s resources had been used on a secret effort to build a glass house for Mr. Musk’s personal use, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In August 2023, Mr. Musk said he was “not building a house of any kind,” in a post on X.

By that time, Mr. Musk had begun touring Austin for homes that could fit his growing families but was having trouble with at least one of the mothers of his children.

He had been living with Ms. Boucher in a 6,900-square-foot house on a small cul-de-sac, according to three people familiar with the couple, when the pair welcomed a third child, a son born via surrogate.

Mr. Musk wanted to buy property next to the one he lived in with Ms. Boucher so that he could create a private compound and incorporate more of his children.

But Ms. Boucher, who once described her relationship with Mr. Musk as “very fluid,” moved out in the summer of 2023. She eventually left Austin amid a custody battle with Mr. Musk, according to three people familiar with her move.

Still Mr. Musk continued his home purchase spree. He offered some homeowners 20 to 70 percent above the value of their houses, according to those homeowners. Some were required to sign nondisclosure agreements just to see the offer, according to three people familiar with the agreements.

It’s unclear which members of Mr. Musk’s families will live in those homes. Some of his oldest children aren’t close to their father, including his daughter Vivian, who is transgender. In an interview, Mr. Musk said Vivian was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” Vivian, for her part, accused Mr. Musk of pretending to care about his children. “You are not a family man,” she wrote on Threads in August. She declined to comment.

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Neighbors don’t understand why Mr. Musk chose to buy in their area. “With that much money, he’s probably got lots of whims and he’ll do something else soon,” said one neighbor.Credit...Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times
Only Ms. Zilis is currently living in Austin, where she is sometimes seen at events around the city, three people familiar with her said. In June, Mr. Musk confirmed to The New York Post that he had a third child with Ms. Zilis after Bloomberg reported on the child’s existence.

When Mr. Musk is in town, neighbors, including some who haven’t met him, say they can tell when someone is home because of the extra security stationed out front. Sometimes, they see a pet groomer pick up a small dog.

The neighbors say they don’t know why Mr. Musk chose the neighborhood when he clearly values privacy. The area is densely populated and the community is not gated.

“I just keep thinking with that much money, he’s probably got lots of whims and he’ll do something else soon,” said Jim Lewis, a retired rancher who lives near the house where Mr. Musk stays.

In September, the pop star Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president, signing her Instagram post “Childless Cat Lady.” Mr. Musk posted on X, “Fine Taylor…you win…I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”

People close to Mr. Musk believe he was only half joking.
More...

Mercor · Nov 3, 2024

Tuxan said:
Tesla on Full Self-Driving Mode Plows Through Deer Without Even Slowing Down

https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-self-driving-deer

Everybody said it needs Lidar but Elon? Naaah.

More...

Likely over the long run less deer will be hit by auto drive cars then human driven cars

In the United States, approximately 2.1 million deer-vehicle collisions occur each year.

gwb-trading · Nov 3, 2024

Mercor said:
Likely over the long run less deer will be hit by auto drive cars then human driven cars

In the United States, approximately 2.1 million deer-vehicle collisions occur each year.
More...

While I agree that in the long term less deer will be hit by auto drive cars than human driven cars. The problem in this situation is that the Tesla in FSD mode did not even attempt to brake; most human drivers would attempt to brake even if they still hit the deer — reducing the impact speed and chances of human injury.

Due to Musk’s stupidity; Tesla’s lack the necessary electronic components to allow FSD to operate effectively and safely. Tesla’s FSD has no future in their current automobiles — it will never get regulatory approval.

ElCubano · Nov 3, 2024

Atlantic said:
this "self-driving" is utter nonsense - and will always be.

if you don't want do drive the car - don't sit behind the steering wheel.

end of the story.

More...

Exactly

Tuxan · Nov 3, 2024

Mercor said:
Likely over the long run less deer will be hit by auto drive cars then human driven cars

In the United States, approximately 2.1 million deer-vehicle collisions occur each year.
More...

That's not the point, the system failed entirely to detect a solid object in the path of the car. It then failed to detect an impact. Perhaps Teslas self drive just needs to be switched off for Halloween.

Musk was told endlessly, the system cannot work well enough with only cameras but he insisted to save money. It was a truly stupid engineering error. After endless claiming they will fix it, they now need to go back to additional sensors that need to be tested, again*, and retrofitted

*thats years and big money.

vanzandt · Nov 3, 2024

Mercor said:
Likely over the long run less deer will be hit by auto drive cars then human driven cars

.
More...

I was driving behind this old redneck pos pick-up back in the day going down a 2 lane 55MPH country road and two deer ran out in front of his truck. He nailed one of them. I slowed down as I went around him, he had stopped, and asked him if he was ok.

He goes: "Yeah did you see that?! I almost got the other one too!" As in, "I'm stocking the freezer tonight." I kid u not.

gwb-trading · Nov 4, 2024

OK... let's see what Musk's lawyers have to say.

Oh, Musk's "random" million-dollar vote bribe recipients are actually paid shills. And wait... there's even more. None of them have collected a million dollars.

A fine gambit, Mr. Musk -- you just changed a civil trial into a criminal case for fraud.

Musk PAC tells Philadelphia judge the $1 million sweepstakes winners are not chosen by chance
https://apnews.com/article/musk-mil...ania-krasner-4f683c48eb7dcc57f183e54ef16e7320

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A lawyer for Elon Musk ‘s political action committee told a judge in Philadelphia on Monday that so-called “winners” of his $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes in swing states are not chosen by chance but are instead chosen to be paid “spokespeople” for the group.

GOP lawyer Chris Gober also said that the recipients Monday and Tuesday will come from Arizona and Michigan, respectively, and therefore will not affect the Pennsylvania election. He said the recipients are chosen based on their personal stories and sign a contract with the political organization, America PAC.

“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” Gober said Monday. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”

Musk did not attend the hearing, held on the day before the presidential election. He has committed more than $70 million to the super PAC to help Trump and other Republicans win in November.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner took the witness stand Monday and called the sweepstakes a scam as he asked the judge to shut it down. Common Pleas Court Judge Angelo Foglietta planned to rule after a short lunch break.

“This was all a political marketing masquerading as a lottery,” Krasner testified. “That’s what it is. A grift.”

Lawyers for Musk and the PAC said they do not plan to extend the lottery beyond Tuesday. Krasner said the first three winners, starting on Oct. 19, came from Pennsylvania in the days leading up to the state’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline.

Other winners came from the battleground states of Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan. It’s not clear if anyone has yet received the money. The PAC pledged they would get it by Nov. 30, according to an exhibit shown in court.

More than 1 million people from the seven states have registered for the sweepstakes by signing a petition saying they support the right to free speech and to bear arms, the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Krasner questioned how the PAC might use their data, which it will have on hand well past the election.

“They were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”

Krasner’s lawyer, John Summers, said Musk is “the heartbeat of America PAC,” and the person announcing the winners and presenting the checks.

“He was the one who presented the checks, albeit large cardboard checks. We don’t really know if there are any real checks,” Summers said.

Foglietta was presiding over the case at Philadelphia City Hall after Musk and the PAC lost an effort to move it to federal court.

Krasner has said he could still consider criminal charges, as he’s tasked with protecting both lotteries and the integrity of elections. In the lawsuit, he said the defendants are “indisputably violating” Pennsylvania’s lottery laws.

Pennsylvania remains a key battleground state with 19 electoral votes and both Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris have repeatedly visited the state, including stops planned Monday in the final hours of the campaign.

Krasner — who noted that he has long driven a Tesla — said he could also seek civil damages for the Pennsylvania registrants. Musk owns Tesla along with the social media platform X, where America PAC has published posts on the sweepstakes, and the rocket ship maker SpaceX.