Well, It's Official: Musk Has Lost the Key Geek-Support Demographic

"SBA Thanks You For All The Fish" (santabarbarianlsx)
05/13/2020 at 12:16 • Filed to: None

But, at least we’ve proven he has the thinnest skin in the universe.

One does not trade quips with Jeopardy’s GOAT.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

For your trouble? A pic of a sweet Taycan, the thinking man’s EV.

DISCUSSION (49)

DucST3-Red-1Liter-Standing-By > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 12:22

thinking rich man’s EV!

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 12:41

What I find fascinating is the Trump/Musk dynamic. Trump has said not a word about Musk. Not a word. Not one, ever, not even now. Why is that? Because, I think, Trump is intimidated by him.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 12:44

Meh, Gates has always been a Porsche guy.

He’s the reason any 959s made it to our shores under show and display.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 12:45

And there is another interesting dynamic: you have Musk, hero of tree huggers everywhere, pushing back aggressively against the lockdown. I do not see this shifting Elon’s standing among his base. And this makes Part Two of my other comment: in this case, Elon is winding up an ally to Trump and Trump won’t jump in and say so. Ergo, I claim, that Trump is intimidated by Musk. Sort of like a boxer would be intimidated by another boxer with skills and who psyches out a potential competitor.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 12:48

ER, that’s not actually the case though. There’s a whole history going back to the start of the administration.

I think they are wary of EACH OTHER, given how nutty their more extreme supporters are. They’d both be more vocal critics of each other if they saw some gain in it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/elon-musk-donald-trump-advisory-council-a7474416.html

https://fortune.com/2017/06/01/elon-musk-trump-paris-agreement/

https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/01/news/elon-musk-resigns-trump-adviser/index.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-agrees-trump-screwed-him-after-joining-white-house-council-2018-11

fintail > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 12:49

It’s funny how people behave when they’ve spent virtually all of their lives in a coddled isolated bubble.

The local techdork set certainly won’t abandon Musk over anything - a lot of these wannabe bros have weird libertarian tendencies, and a mouthy untouchable twat is like a hero to them.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI
05/13/2020 at 12:50

I was actually referring to Ken Jennings. The pic of Bill was just a bonus image.

Gates and Allen did do us a solid on the import rule though.

ranwhenparked > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 12:54

I think its more of Trump recognizes that Musk most likely does not support him politically, but their interests often align. If he were to openly praise Musk, it would risk triggering a public rejection. For his part, Musk probably sees things in a similar fashion - eg, he supports some of Trump’s initiatives or sees some allied interests, but doesn’t really support the guy or his administration, generally.

He doesn’t want to come out and support him, but he doesn’t want to completely alienate him either, he wants to know that if he needs to call the White House to chime in on something affecting his company or industry, he stands a good chance of his call getting put through.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 12:55

The “pro-lockdown” Bay Area people, who somehow seem to think they have the best government in the universe, probably see Musk’s positions as “troubling”. But, they’ve all bought all the Teslas they are going to buy anyway.

I guess I view it as two crazy guys standing on street corners on Lexington Ave in NYC. They might yell conflicting stuff across the traffic in the general direction of the other. But neither will take the trouble to cross the street to engage directly. “You got your corner, I got mine...”

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 12:57

But they’re not. Trump is utterly transparent and he is choosing neither to bully nor to praise Musk. Trump is president, Musk is not. Trump only bullies people he knows he can bully.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 12:59

I see it more like the guys in “Tin Men” who sort of act like they would square off, but don’t really want to. Wouldn’t it be great if the president were as engaged in actually running the country as Musk is in running his enterprises?

LongbowMkII > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 13:08

To be fair democrats are insanely easy to bully

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 13:10

I dunno. You need to read the history of Space-X’s first launches before you go there. The actual rocket scientists were praying like hell Musk stayed away. There’s gotta be huge swathes of the Tesla organization that wish Musk would take Paternity Leave for 6 months. The head of Tesla Europe just left. I’m sure things are going great.

Gwynne Shotwell is to Space-X what Steve Mnuchin is to the US Treasury.

Both have the respect of the “head wacko” who leaves them the fuck alone.

I personally think it would have been better for a “doomed to failure” Impeachment exercise that consumed Oct-Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb not to have been undertaken. It was purely a “for show” exercise when everybody knew it was pointless. Turns out the administration had other things to focus on.

Of course, when we became aware of the threat and he wanted to cut off flights? The first reaction from the House Leadership was to introduce an emergency bill to PREVENT a ban on flights. He’s clearly nutty but I’m not sure the opposition has really helped matters much.

Of course, we can fix it all in November. here’s our guy now...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > LongbowMkII
05/13/2020 at 13:10

TRIGGERED! And it is fair to say so. And President Trump is keenly adroit at doing it.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 13:11

I’m jumping between this and a Zoom meeting right now, but to be honest, as I typed that last reply, I was thinking it might be a problematic statement.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 13:24

I’ll close with this: You are correct that Trump hasn’t ridden Musk much lately. We just differ on the reason. I think Trump realizes there’s no upside to go after “a folk hero” (to a big swath of wackos, who are pro-government, pro-green-new-deal, pro-subsidies until they disagree with government policies) on some topics. So, I think it’s a conscious decision to ignore each other. Musk has not exactly been the most vocal critic of Trump either.

I do find it hilarious that it took Musk this long to figure out how ugly the business environment is in CA for big manufacturing. If he takes the show to The Reddest Red State of All (Texas) it will be a crushing admission that California is trading on former glory— which is my thesis. CA was paradise 100 years ago, Today? It’s paradise for those of us in a certain socio-economic standing. But you’d have to be nuts to try to build a real business there.

One last thought, after watching the final “Bernie-Biden debate”? It finally struck me there that “Hey, Bernie could well have more in common with Trump than he does with the orthodox positions of Biden’s dems...” It’s been perceived as nutty that Bernie Bros might cross the party line to vote for Trump, but based on actual positions? Bernie’s closer to Trump than Biden. It’s weird.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 13:30

Gotcha, I was reading it as both of them shunning the Church of Tesla® Ways

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI
05/13/2020 at 13:45

Yeah, I think we talked about the Bill Boughta P-Car thing at the time. He always drove German from the time his mom bought him the SLOW Benz diesel he drove into the ground. So, not a surprise that he bought the Taycan.

I’m guessing here, but knowing how thin Musk’s record is as an actual Computer Science and Software Engineer (“self taught BASIC programmer”) I’d think Gates (who created the whole industry) probably has a lot of contempt for Musk. He’s just been more reserved on Twitter about it then Musk has been in calling Bill dull .

Bill is a lotta things, but “underwhelming ” isn’t one of them.

Kinja'd!!!

MrSnrub > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 13:47

It’s just class interest. Trump and Elon are both rich, so they’re natural allies

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > MrSnrub
05/13/2020 at 13:50

Then why not Trump and Bezos?

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > ranwhenparked
05/13/2020 at 13:52

I’ve been claiming, and getting pushback from people, that Trump sees Musk as someone he cannot bully, so he does not. To me, it looks very plain.

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 13:58

Jesus, what an asshole.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI
05/13/2020 at 14:16

You know, “his business should be his business” but he’s the one choosing to live his life so publicly... and all this “oh, I can’t believe how deeply Grimes is into science and tech and futurism... we’re soulmates!” stuff. wow. Grimes makes great money, but she comes across as not-all-that-intellectual..

So, you get weird, very public stuff like the bizarre-baby-name that they’ve “collaborated as soulmates” on developing. Except that they can’t even agree long enough to use the same phonetic pronunciation... and she’s already announced that it incorporates “their favorite airplane”... the epic fast “SR-17".

Of course, Musk being the ever-annoying-dickhead, can’t resist a public “correcting his beloved” that she doesn’t even understand their kid’s name. ugh.

I mean Liz Taylor and Richard Burton had a series of fucked up relationships, but at least they weren’t making public, crazy, announcements every hour about it.

Sigh. I just feel bad for the kid.

DC3 LS, Fuck Hyundai, now and forever > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 14:44

I’m sure he’ll make up for it with anti-lockdown people. It’s absolutely insane he’s being arrested for this. He got approval from a local government (I don’t recall which one off the top of my head) to reopen the factory at reduced capacity, additonal safety measures in place for the virus, and wasn’t forcing anyone to come back in to work.

I didn’t really give damn about Musk one way or the other before, but I think he’s nearly 100% in the right on this one.

DipodomysDeserti > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 14:52

Are we that soft that calling someone a knucklehead counts as putting them on blast?

One of the things I hate most about this virus is that’s it’s making me have to kind of side with Elon Musk.

DipodomysDeserti > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 14:58

No one who actually knows anything about trees thinks Elon Musk is the hero of anything, especially those of us whose trees happen to be Palo Verdes and Mesquites. We’ve seen what min ing can do to our ecosystems.

DipodomysDeserti > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 15:02

And they should largely be ignored.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > DipodomysDeserti
05/13/2020 at 15:04

It seems to me that in most cases, the tree huggers know the least about actual trees. When I said “tree huggers,” I was overly vague when what I really meant was “smug L iberals.”

DipodomysDeserti > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 15:04

Bezos would like nothing more than this lockdown to be extended indefinitely.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > DipodomysDeserti
05/13/2020 at 15:04

ha. Nah, you’d have to know the history of the incredibly smart Twitter exchanges Ken’s had with various pundits over the years to appreciate how lame the “knucklehead” response is. That’s the point. If you want to duel with Jennings on Twitter? You better bring your “A” game.

Or, just have the discipline not to respond at all. Which Musk clearly doesn’t have.

Anyway, here’s Pure Ken...

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jenniferabidor/jeopardy-contestants-tweets

https://parade.com/674636/m-b-roberts/jeopardy-champ-and-author-ken-jennings-shares-hilarious-tweets-and-other-laughable-stuff-in-planet-funny/

Ken tweets as @KenJennings for our enjoyment — and don’t worry, dumb dummies, everything he says is way accessible. Here are some of his best :

5. Before the Internet, I guess I just assumed all my friends knew how to spell “definitely.”

4. Protip: if you’re ever stranded somewhere and don’t have AAA, text stuff like “yeah 9/11” and “Allah akbar” TO ANY NUMBER for a free pickup!

3. If honey bottles come in the shape of a bear, ranch dressing bottles should come in the shape of a fat Midwestern dad named Alan.

2. The spelling bee would be better if the kids had to say “to the” between each letter in their word.

1. I asked my wife what women really want and she said attentive lovers. Or maybe it was “a tent of lovers.” I wasn’t really listening.

DipodomysDeserti > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 15:05

Trump has come out in support of Musk.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/497464-musk-finds-trump-in-his-corner

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 15:07

OH, the Washington Post went HARD after Trump for the first two years. Seven “Trump is the Devil” articles above the jump each and every day. Trump knows who owns The Post.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > DipodomysDeserti
05/13/2020 at 15:08

I’d forgotten how much coal gets burned in the furnaces making silica for the wafers. it’s really bad.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 15:09

I ignore the WP. And yes, I knew that, but I'd forgotten. So, of course.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > DipodomysDeserti
05/13/2020 at 15:09

Yeah, I was just talking to somebody yesterday about that... “has ANY social good come out of Facebook and Twitter?”

They were all worked up for some triviality they’d seen on somebody’s FB page.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > DipodomysDeserti
05/13/2020 at 15:11

Yeah, whenever I hear “follow the science”, my brain hears “we have to keep this crisis going until January”...

Because the statistics say 40,000 people will die for every 1% increase in unemployment. The carnage from the economic destruction will completely overwhelm the already-bad mortality figures. Families, kids.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 15:16

Are you a Californian? I keep running into people who despise California’s politics, but don’t want to get snowed on, so they stick around. Isn’t being based in California part of the Tesla product appeal? The media have been making claims for years now that Texas is getting less red. Anything to that?

I watched the Hill segment you posted and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it because I didn’t like how Biden looked and it gave me kind of a sinking feeling that I don’t like the current POTUS, who himself, it bears pointing out, can barely string together a complete sentence nor express a cogent thought, and this is the best our political system can conjure up as an alternative? We are so screwed.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 15:17

I can see being “the paper of record for the loyal opposition” but the sheer quantity of stuff they ran on the front page? Day after day? And, of course, most of it was eventually debunked to some degree, but the course has been set.

If The Other Party loses running Biden? Only themselves to blame. I can’t imagine a fatter political target to run against in the last 100 years.

DipodomysDeserti > fintail
05/13/2020 at 15:19

It’s funny how people behave when they’ve spent virtually all of their lives in a coddled isolated bubble.

Being from Seattle, I trust you have ample experience with these types of people.

DipodomysDeserti > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 15:23

I don’t what these people think is going to happen in November. Our digital voting is nonexistent, and if you thought Russia could screw with our election before, just wait to see what happens if we all mail in ballots.

SBA Thanks You For All The Fish > DipodomysDeserti
05/13/2020 at 15:43

Heh. What could go wrong? I mean we’ll just post an app... easy-peasy.

Oh. Wait.

https://observer.com/2020/02/iowa-caucus-app-failure-democrats/

fintail > DipodomysDeserti
05/13/2020 at 15:48

Between the trust fund hipsters who couldn’t hack it in Williamsburg so they moved out here , and the Californicators who often seem to still be on a parental dole well into “adult”hood, you can’t imagine. Add in the local luckyboomers who made it in a much less expensive less competitive environment and now act like they are all pure genius, it’s a shitstorm.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
05/13/2020 at 16:04

By fatter target, to you mean President Trump? If so, we might say the same about Hillary. Then again, Mr. Comey didn’t do much to aid Hillary in the closing days of the election.

What you say of WP, well, as I said, I disregard that publication because of its bias. And again, I’d forgotten that it was a Bezos property. Thank you for reminding me of that.

MrSnrub > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 21:27

Bezos is one of those rare exceptions since Amazon is doing well with everyone ordering from them right now. W hoever is running those grocery delivery services is probably another exception

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > MrSnrub
05/13/2020 at 22:53

SBA, above, reminds us that Bezos owns Washington Post and WP went after Trump hard early in his presidency.

MrSnrub > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/13/2020 at 23:48

I don’t think Bezos interferes directly with the Post much.

wafflesnfalafel > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
05/14/2020 at 00:19

You bring up a good point. Agree that the trumpster considers Musk a powerful and much more successful rival from a business stand point . It’s actually pretty interesting to compare the two - one attracts generally super competent talent , the other has a history of doing the opposite. Honestly, it looks like both have learned a bit from each other. Not sure if Musk has ever been a hero to tree huggers... tech bros for sure though. And I still get a kick out of Teslas just spakin’ really fast ICE cars.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > MrSnrub
05/14/2020 at 00:43

Probably not, but he owns it.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > wafflesnfalafel
05/14/2020 at 00:46

I should not have said "tree hugger" because that is a label and vague. I should've said, "smug Liberals." I see Musk as the more accomplished man, though not right in the head.