Elon Reeve Musk

Elon Reeve Musk [Image source.]
Musk's net worth (2012-2021), estimated by Forbes magazine.
Name	Elon Reeve Musk
Born	1971-06-28
Birthplace	Pretoria, South Africa
Spouses	Justine Wilson (Justine Musk; m. 2000; div. 2008) Talulah Jane Riley-Milburn (m. 2010; div. 2012)
Partner	Claire Elise Boucher, known professionally as Grimes
Parents	Father: Errol Musk, South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer Mother: Maye Musk, née Haldeman; born April 19, 1948
Siblings	Brother(s): Kimbal Reeve Musk, born 1972-09-20 Sister(s): Tosca Musk, born 1974-07-20
Children	7
Relatives	Cousin: Lyndon Rive, born 1977-01-22 Maternal grandfather: Joshua Haldeman, American-born Canadian
Nationality	Canada (1971-present) South Africa (1971-present) United States (2002-present)
Education	University of Pretoria Queen's University University of Pennsylvania (B.S. and B.A., 1997)
Political party
Occupation	Entrepreneur Business magnate
Companies	SpaceX: Founder, CEO and Chief Engineer Tesla, Inc.: CEO and product architect The Boring Company: Founder X.com, now part of PayPal Neuralink: Co-founder OpenAI: : Co-founder ; Co-founder
Description
Known for
Controversies
Wealth	$US274.4 billion [Forbes, 2021-10-27)
Source of wealth	Tesla, Inc. (80.8%) SpaceX (14%) Other (5.2%) Source: BusinessInsider, 2021-01-07)
Religion
Influenced by
Influencer of
Associations
Affiliations
Website

Background

Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971) is an entrepreneur and business magnate. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. A centibillionaire, Musk is one of the richest people in the world.

Elon Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada aged 17 to attend Queen's University. He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with brother Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk co-founded online bank X.com that same year, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The company was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO and CTO. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008. In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain-computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.

Elon Musk has been the subject of criticism due to unorthodox or unscientific stances and highly publicized controversies. In 2018, he was sued for defamation by a British caver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue; a California jury ruled in favor of Musk. In the same year, he was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. He settled with the SEC, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and accepting limitations on his Twitter usage. Musk has spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and has received criticism from experts for his other views on such matters as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and public transport.

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Donations and Non-profits

Musk Foundation

Elon Musk is chairman of the Musk Foundation, which states its purpose is to provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas as well as other goals. Since 2002, the foundation has made over 350 contributions. Around half were to scientific research or education nonprofits. Notable beneficiaries include the Wikimedia Foundation, his alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, and Kimball's Big Green. Vox described the foundation as "entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque", noting that its website was only 33 words in plain-text. The foundation has been criticized for the relatively small amount of wealth donated. From 2002 to 2018, it gave out $25 million directly to non-profits, nearly half of which went to Musk's OpenAI, which was at the time a non-profit organization.

X Prize Foundation

Elon Musk is also a trustee of the X Prize Foundation. In January 2021, he promised to donate $100 million as a prize to whomever developed the best carbon capture technology.

Additional Reading

[WashingtonPost.com, 2021-01-01] World's richest men added billions to their fortunes last year as others struggled. Billionaires have added about $1 trillion to their total net worth since the pandemic began.  [Source]

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Bloomberg Billionaires Index, 2021-10-18. 

As the year (2022) comes to a close, I cannot stop thinking about ... a court document. Plaintiffs in Twitter, Inc. v. Elon R. Musk et al. filed Exhibit H  [pp. 82-115 of 151 pp; local copy: complete file  |  local copy: Appendix H only (34 pp)] just before sunrise on 2022-09-29 in Delaware's Court of Chancery. If you've seen excerpts, you probably know it by its street name: Elon Musk's texts.

Exhibit H is remarkable insomuch as it is a spreadsheet containing the private messages between the (then) richest man (Elon Musk) in the world and his friends, associates, and hangers-on while they discuss buying one of the world's most influential communications platforms, Twitter - just for kicks. Leafing through Exhibit H, you will feel like you should never have seen these communications, and yet there they are, on display for the hordes of the internet, courtesy of the legal system.

I wrote about the texts back in 2022-09, arguing that they demonstrated "just how unimpressive, unimaginative, and sycophantic the powerful men in Elon Musk's contacts appear to be." I still believe that. But now, armed with three months of hindsight, I've begun to think of Exhibit H as a skeleton key for the final, halcyon days of the tech boom - unlocking an understanding of the cultural brain worms and low-interest-rate hubris that defined the industry in 2022. What we see in Exhibit H is only a tiny snapshot of a very important inbox, but it's enough to make this one of the most revealing documents in a year (2022) that's been absolutely overflowing with tech disclosures - from Peiter Zatko's  leaks, to FTX's balance sheet, to the "Twitter Files" championed by Elon Musk himself.

Beyond the obvious tabloid intrigue, what's most striking is how Elon Musk's texts shed light on two of 2022's biggest tech meltdowns. If you came out of a lengthy coma in mid-2022-12, puzzled by headlines about collapsing crypto exchanges and once-beloved entrepreneurs behaving like villains, you could read a copy of Exhibit H and understand everything with surprising clarity. The texts are, of course, a guide to the events that ultimately led Elon Musk to purchase Twitter - a decision that has tanked his net worth, saddled his new asset with debt, and led to the quick erosion of his reputation as a savvy businessman. But also lurking in Elon Musk's inbox is Sam Bankman-Fried - the founder of the now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX - who was arrested in the Bahamas when federal prosecutors charged him with defrauding investors and customers.

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• [theDeepDive.ca, 2022-10-03] Twitter v. Elon Musk: The Incredible (and Sometimes Ridiculous) Highlights of the Text Messages. From "staying off" to "buying" Twitter - then pulling out of the proposed buyout - the controversial billionaire has made a full, eventful circle with the social media giant.

Redacted copies of the court exhibits in the ongoing court battle between Twitter and Elon Musk shone a proverbial light on the conversations that happened related to the 's buyout deal of the social media platform. The tech firm is suing the Tesla CEO at the Delaware Court of Chancery (a court of equity in the American state of Delaware) for breaking the buyout agreement, when Musk unilaterally withdrew from the deal.

The messages disclosed by Elon Musk's team are part of the documents requested by the prosecution, the supplication of which seems to be not enough for Twitter's team. The latter claims that the defendants produced a minuscule slice of the whole population of documents requested based on agreed upon search terms. For instance, Twitter's counsel cited that Elon Musk's team "identified a review population of 50,435 documents" for his and his adviser (Jared Birchall)'s, custodial records. However, the defendants are said to have only produced 1,660 documents, "yielding a responsiveness rate of about 3%." But for Elon Musk's camp, it's the other way around. They claim that Twitter appears to be "withholding obviously relevant and responsive documents," also basing their observation on the mismatch between search term yields and actual documents produced.

"Twitter has produced only 4,144 documents hitting on the term "mDAU" (mDAU: monetizable daily active users), even though, according to Twitter's hit count, 17,527 documents hit on that term," said Musk's lawyers in an email. Nevertheless, the redacted messages are enlightening as it is, painting a picture of how the conversations-and thought process-went on behind the public's eye.

• [HackerNoon.com, 2022-11-30] Inside Musk's Social Circle: Yes-men, Media Personalities, and (a lot of) right-wing VCs. Twitter v. Elon Musk Court Filing by Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP on 2022-07-12 is part of HackerNoon's "legal PDF series". This is Exhibit H with texts between Elon Musk and his social circle with regard to the Twitter deal.

• COMMENT (Persagen.com, 2023-01-02): the articles above provide excellent commentary on local copy: Appendix H from Twitter, Inc. v. Elon R. Musk et al.. Supplementing those annotations, the following items provide a quick listing of most of the key people, more--or-less as they are mentioned in Appendix H.

• Alex Stillings, Executive IT Support, SpaceX.

• Antonio Gracias, Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer of Valor Equity Partners.

• "TJ" : Elon Musk's ex-wife Talulah Riley. Source (BusinessInsider.nl, 2022-10-06) Elon Musk's ex-wife is reportedly the mysterious phone contact "TJ" who texted him about fighting "woke-ism" at Twitter, and called the banning of a conservative satire site "crazy".

• Joe Lonsdale  [8VC.com biography]: wealthy venture capitalist; founder of Palantir Technologies,   Addepar,   OpenGov,   Affinity,   Epirus,   Resilience Bio, and 8VC - and the homelessness-criminalizing   Cicero Institute [see also Eureka! ontology entry "Politics - Corruption - Political corruption - Industrial complexes - Poverty industrial complex - Cicero Institute"]. ... Joe Lonsdale tweets that the far-right, extremely transphobic Florida governor Ron DeSantis called him (Joe Lonsdale). ...

• "Jack Jack" : Jack Dorsey. Source (TechCrunch.com, 2022-09-29): Here are some of the cringiest revelations in the Elon Musk text dump.

• Egon Durban : co-CEO, Silver Lake investment firm; Twitter board member.

• Parag Agrawal, former TwitterCEO, fired by Elon Musk

• Jared Birchall, CEO of Elon Musk's Neuralink, and head of Elon Musk's family office.

• Martha Twitter NomGov : probably Twitter board member Martha Lane Fox? (BBC.com, 2016-04-08) Martha Lane Fox to join Twitter board.  |  (Diligent.com, 2019-04-02) The Role of the Nom/Gov Committee. ... Nominating (Nom) and governance (Gov) committees play an important role in selecting candidates for board appointments. ...  |  (theOrg.com, 2022-08-27) Martha Lane Fox ... is a Director at Twitter, where she chairs Nomgov, ...

• Bret Taylor, chairman of Twitter, Inc.'s board of directors prior to its acquisition by Elon Musk; co-CEO of Salesforce (alongside Marc Benioff, until 2023-01).

• Sam BF: cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

• Will MacAskill : William MacAskill, Scottish philosopher and author, as well as one of the originators of the effective altruism movement. William MacAskill is an Associate Professor in Philosophy, and Research Fellow, at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research.

• Mathias Döpfner - a German businessman and journalist, is the CEO and 22% owner of media group Axel Springer SE, and president of the Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV).

• Kenneth C. Griffin - an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and investor - is the founder, chief executive officer, co-chief in.estment officer, and 80% owner of Citadel LLC, a multinational hedge fund. Kenneth C. Griffin also owns Citadel Securities, one of the largest market makers in the U.S. In 2022 Ken Griffin had an estimated net worth of $27.2 billion USD, and was ranked 53rd on the Forbes 400 list of richest people in the United States.

• "Dr Jabour" : apparently radiologist Bradley A. Jabour.

• Far-right podcaster, notoriously transphobic Joe Rogan.

• "Kyle" : apparently Kyle Mann, editor in chief of The Babylon Bee. The Babylon Bee is a transphobic   conservative Christian news satire website that publishes satirical articles on topics including religion, politics, current events, and public figures. The Babylon Bee has been referred to as a Christian, evangelical, or conservative version of The Onion.

• Ira Ehrenpreis, Founder and Managing Partner of venture capital firm DBL Partners.

• Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Rick & Morty.

• Gayle King, a media personality, co-host for CBS Mornings, and editor for O, The Oprah Magazine.

• Elon Musk's brother Kimbal Musk, who currently sits on the boards of Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX.

• Michael Kives - an investor in many of Elon Musk's companies - is the founder and CEO of K5 Global Technologies, a consulting and investment firm.j/p>

• Steve Davis is the president of Elon Musk's The Boring Company.

• Marc Merrill. co-founder, Riot Games, Inc..

• Jason Calacanis, an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.

• Adeo Ressi - an American entrepreneur and investor - is the founder and CEO of TheFunded, and The Founder Institute. Adeo Ressi has been a fixture in the Silicon Valley since creating TheFunded in 2007. Adeo Ressi has also sat on the board of the X Prize Foundation.

• Omead Afshar : SpaceX employee. In 2022-11 SpaceX announced COO Gwynne Shotwell and vice president Mark Juncosa would oversee Starbase, SpaceX's Texas launch facility - along with Omead Afshar, who at the time oversaw operations for Tesla, Inc. in Texas. ... Source (Wikipedia, 2023-01-02): SpaceX: Leadership changes.

• Brian Kingston : CEO of Brookfield Asset Management's real estate business.

• Larry Ellison, American business magnate and investor who is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the American computer technology company Oracle Corporation. As of 2022-11 Larry Ellison was listed by Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the seventh-wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated fortune of $91 billion.

• Mike Pop?

• Michael Grimes, an investment banker.

• David Sacks : David O. Sacks South African American entrepreneur, author, and investor in internet technology firms. David O. Sacks is general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Previously, David O. Sacks was the founding COO and product leader of PayPal (acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion), and founder/CEO of Yammer (acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion). In 2016, David O. Sacks led the turnaround of Zenefits as interim CEO. In 2017, David O. Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures, an early-stage venture fund. David O. Sacks' angel investments include Facebook,   Uber,   SpaceX,   Palantir Technologies, and Airbnb. David O. Sacks is a co-host of the podcast All In.

• James Murdoch - a British-American businessman, and the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch - was the chief executive officer (CEO) of 21st Century Fox from 2015 to 2019.

• Kathryn Murdoch: James Murdoch married Kathryn Hufschmid in 2000.

• Tim Urban? On 2014-05-21 Tim Urban posted "The Fermi Paradox", a post that became extremely popular. A 2016 Ted Talk by Tim Urban on procrastination - based on concepts from the Wait But Whywebsite / blog - had garnered over 50 million views by 2022-12. A post on the blog about Elon Musk and Neuralink was produced with involvement from Elon Musk, himself.

• Marc Benioff, an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. Marc Benioff is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce - an enterprise cloud computing company. In 2018-09 Marc Benioff acquired Time magazine.

• Reid Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Reid Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. Reid Hoffman is currently a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, and a co-founder of Inflection AI. On the Forbes 2021 list of the world's billionaires, Reid Hoffman was ranked #1580 with a net worth of $2.4 billion USD.

• Satya : Satya Nadella, executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft - succeeding Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft, in 2014. Elon Musk spoke with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella after announcing he (Elon Musk) would buy Twitter, texts show.

• Viv Hantusch : Vivien Hantusch - a student in Germany who studies product design - flew in from Düsseldorf to California to attend the interview with Elon Musk. Viv Hantusch, who is a fan of Tesla, did a podcast with Elon Musk.

• Steve Jurvetson is an American businessman and venture capitalist. Formerly a partner of the firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Steve Jurvetson was an early investor in Hotmail,   Upside Foods  (formerly: Memphis Meats), Mythic, and Nervana Systems. Steve Jurvetson is currently a board member of SpaceX, and he served on Tesla's board from 2006-2020, among others. Steve Jurvetson later co-founded the firm Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

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The Twitter account tracking Elon Musk's private jet has been suspended, a month after Elon Musk had promised not to ban the profile in the name of "free speech." Jack Sweeney - who ran the jet tracker - had told Business Insider on Sunday (2022-12-11) that his account had already been "shadowbanned," meaning its visibility had been restricted. As of Wednesday (2022-12-14), the @ElonJet account was fully removed.

Since Elon Musk - a self-described "free speech absolutist," except, apparently, when it comes to jokes at his expense - took over Twitter, multiple accounts have been banned for a variety of reasons. Several comedians and actors were suspended from Twitter for mocking the Tesla founder (Elon Musk), while a few prominent liberal accounts were blocked (and ultimately reinstated) for no apparent reason. But other forms of free speech have abounded under Elon Musk. In the 12 hours alone following his chaotic Twitter takeover, use of the N-word increased almost 500 percent, according to the National Contagion Research Institute.

A report released Tuesday (2022-12-13) by Media Matters for America and GLAAD found that anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, particularly use of the word "groomer"  [LGBT grooming conspiracy theory] has shot up since Elon Musk took the reins in 2022-10. Nine well-known anti-LGBTQ accounts saw a 1,200 percent increase in retweets of posts using the "groomer" slur. Meanwhile, mentions of a prominent pro-LGBTQ account in tweets using the "groomer" slur rose more than 225,000 percent. And Elon Musk has restored accounts previously suspended for propagating violence, including former President Donald Trump and neo-Nazi   Andrew Anglin.

Twitter has also dropped its COVID-19 misinformation regulations, and on Monday night (2022-12-12) dissolved its Trust and Safety Council - the independent advisory group formed in 2016 to address issues on Twitter including hate speech, violence, and abuse. It would seem Twitter is becoming less of a free speech haven and more of a "free-for-all hellscape" ... which Elon Musk also promised would not happen.

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Bernard Arnault is a French business magnate, investor, and art collector. Bernard Arnault is the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton SE, the world's largest luxury goods company. Bernard Arnault and his family have an estimated net worth of $188.6 billion USD as of 2022-12 according to Forbes, making Bernard Arnault the richest person in the world. ...

In 2022-10 Bernard Arnault stated that LVMH sold its private jet after a Twitter user began to track its flights, and stated he (Bernard Arnault) began renting private aircraft for his personal and business flights instead. The aircraft was a Bombardier Global 7500, which was registered F-GVMA. Source (2022-12-14): Wikipedia.

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If there's one tweet that will tell you everything you need to know about Elon Musk, it's this one from early this morning (2022-12-11):

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci -- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

In five words, Elon Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for public-health officials, and send up a flare to far-right shitposters and trolls. The tweet is a cruel and senseless play on pronouns that also invokes right-wing fury toward Anthony Fauci - the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden - for what they believe is a government overreach in public-health policy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and an obfuscation of the coronavirus' origins. (Anthony Fauci, for his part, has said he would cooperate with any possible investigations and has nothing to hide.)

Beyond its stark cruelty, this tweet is incredibly thirsty. As right-wing troll memes go, it is Dad-level, 4chan-Clark Griswold stuff - which is to say it's desperate engagement bait in the hopes of attracting kudos from the only influencers who give Elon Musk the time of day anymore: right-wing shock jocks. But that is the proper company for the billionaire, because whether or not he wants to admit it, Elon Musk is actively aiding the far right's political project.

Currently, Elon Musk's politics are a subject of debate in the press. On Saturday (2022-12-10), The New York Times'  Jeremy W. Peters   attempted to offer a nuanced portrait of the Twitter owner's ideologies, arguing that Elon Musk "continues to defy easy political categorization." But Jeremy Peters' laundry list of and "woke" scolding - such as Elon Musk's 2022-11 recommendation to his millions of followers to vote Republican - undermines the very thesis of The New York Times article. The nuance Jeremy Peters is looking for does not exist: Elon Musk's actions and associations make a clear case that Elon Musk is a right-wing reactionary.

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In five words, Musk manages to mock transgender and nonbinary people, signal his disdain for public-health officials, and send up a flare to far-right shitposters and trolls.  [Source]

Elon Musk joined Dave Chappelle on stage Sunday (2022-12-11) in San Francisco, home of Twitter's headquarters where the world's richest person recently (Elon Musk) laid off many of its employees. It went about as well as you'd expect. The crowd at the Chase Center loudly booed Elon Musk - who had spent much of the weekend wading into the culture wars, making transphobic statements and seemingly echoing QAnon tropes. Video of the incident at Sunday (2022-12-11)'s Dave Chappelle show captured by people in attendance shows the controversial Twitter owner taking the stage and yelling Chappelle's famous Rick James impression: "I'm rich, bitch." Afterward, Elon Musk got loudly booed for several minutes. The reaction prompted Dave Chappelle - who has also been criticized for jokes Chappelle has made aimed at transgender people - to tell Elon Musk that it "sounds like some of those people you fired are in the audience." At one point, when Elon Musk attempted to speak, Dave Chappelle interrupted, saying, "Don't say nothing. You hear that sound, Elon? That's the sound of pending civil unrest." After more jeers, Dave Chappelle ended his show with a reprimand and a prayer. "Booing is not the best thing you can do," Dave Chappelle said. "I wish everybody in this auditorium the joy of feeling free and may your pursuit of happiness set you free. Amen."

Elon Musk on Monday (2022-12-12) appeared to nod to the incident in response to a user tweeting at him about "a crowd full of boos." Elon Musk claimed that it "was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that's a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter)." According to several people who tweeted videos of the incident, Dave Chappelle gave Elon Musk several opportunities to address the crowd, but Elon Musk stood on stage without much reaction. After Elon Musk's $44 billion USD Twitter takeover, the billionaire owner enacted a number of cost-cutting measures. Elon Musk has laid off around half of the company's staff, resulting in a group of former employees suing, alleging the mass layoffs involved multiple labor rights violations. The remaining staff had to agree to "extremely hardcore" work that appears to have left some people sleeping at Twitter's headquarters. San Francisco is investigating reports that Elon Musk converted several areas of the office building into makeshift bedrooms.

This incident at the Chase Center capped off a weekend (2022-12-{10,11}) in which Elon Musk - who has a history of erratic behavior and incendiary remarks - waded fully into the culture wars. Elon Musk tweeted that Anthony Fauci - the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases - should be prosecuted, writing that his (Elon Musk's) pronouns are "Prosecute/Fauci." Elon Musk has been vocal against Anthony Fauci's response to the COVID-19 pandemic - including lockdowns that have affected his Tesla plants. Elon Musk also repeated a trope of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement by falsely suggesting that Twitter's former trust and safety executive Yoel Roth's doctoral dissertation made him an advocate for child sexualization. Those tweets subjected Roel Roth to online abuse and abusive behavior. Elon Musk continued his culture war campaign on Monday (2022-12-12), once again warning about the thread of what he calls "the woke mind virus."

"Dave, what should I say?" This is how Elon Musk waded into live comedy at Dave Chappelle's show in San Francisco Sunday night (2022-12-11), after forcing his material upon every Twitter user for weeks. Elon Musk - so used to encouraging cry-laughing emojis from his adoring fans online - learned that Twitter is sometimes not real life. Elon Musk's performance was doomed from the beginning, given how Dave Chappelle introduced him. "Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world," Dave Chappelle said, almost inviting boos from the 18,000-seater stadium. Elon Musk paced back-and-forth across the stage while Dave Chappelle attempted to redeem the moment. ... When Elon Musk asked Dave Chappelle what he should say, Chappelle seemed aware things were beyond rescuing. "Don't say nothing. It'll only spoil the moment," Dave Chappelle said. "Do you hear that sound, Elon? That's the sound of pending civil unrest." ...

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A California judge has approved a request by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's adult daughter to change her name and gender on her birth certificate. Vivian Jenna Wilson filed the petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court the day after turning 18 in 2022-04. Vivian Jenna Wilson listed gender identity and an apparent dislike of her father (Elon Musk), as the reason for the change. "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form," Vivian Jenna WilsonVivian Wilson will now legally use the last name of her mother, Canadian author Justine Wilson  [Justine Musk] - who was married to Elon Musk from 2000 to 2008. ...

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Justine Musk has stated that she kept the last name "Musk" for the sake of their children. In 2022, one of their twins (Vivian Jenna Wilson) officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity, and took "Wilson" as her surname because she no longer wished to be associated with Elon Musk. Source (2022-12-12): Wikipedia.

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Agent provocateur   Elon Musk has declared Canada's government illegitimate. His evidence? Pictures of lots of angry truckers rolling into Ottawa [Freedom Convoy 2022]. On Sunday [2022-01-30] the world's richest human [2022-02-04:  $239.6 billion USD] told his 63 million Twitter followers, "It would appear that the so-called 'fringe minority' is actually the government" And: "If the government had the mandate of the people, there would be a significant counter-protest. There is not, therefore they do not."

Elon Musk, the world's richest person, recently bragged about receiving an historic $11 billion tax bill this year, but the tax obligation is only due to large, complicated stock sales over the past months, which Musk will almost certainly end up profiting from. Earlier this month [2021-12], Musk boasted on Twitter that he will owe the most taxes of any individual in a single year (though Musk is also among the richest people in history). But when the conditions surrounding Elon Musk's tax bill are detailed, his true intentions become clearer.

In 2012, as part of his compensation as CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk received the option to make future stock purchases at their 2012 value, regardless of their market value at the time of purchase. This allowed Musk, who doesn't receive a traditional salary from Tesla, to purchase millions of shares in 2021-11, setting off a cascade of similar transactions over the next weeks. Early in 2021-11, Musk bought those shares for $13.4 million, despite being valued at $2.3 billion.

The option to buy these shares at this price is set to expire next year [2022]. And the Build Back Better Act, if it were eventually passed, could levy further taxes on the transaction if Elon Musk were to put it off until 2022, making the trade strategically timed. Since then, Musk has made other similar transactions, which are taxed as income. At that tax bracket, they are subject to a 40.8 percent tax rate. These transactions are what make up the bulk of his $11 billion tax bill, according to tax experts.

Elon Musk won't have to reach too far into his bank account to pay these taxes; Musk also sold millions of stock shares in order to help cover the tax liability and has thus far sold about $16 billion worth of stock that could go towards covering taxes, though it's unclear to what extent. On top of these sales, Musk is set to receive even more in compensation from the company this year depending on its end-of-year performance.

The hundred-billionaire's tax bill, thus, is a product of a maneuver to further pad Elon Musk's towering $280 billion net worth. It is only about 3.9 percent of Musk's net worth, which may increase due to further stock transactions. It is also only a fraction of the record $36 billion Elon Musk made in one day in 2021-10.

Unless Elon Musk continues to make further large stock transactions in the coming years, it's also likely to be an outlier for him. Though media   outlets   are   gushing about the tax bill and publishing unqualified headlines on the matter, Musk typically makes these moves to avoid paying taxes, which would explain why Musk's bragging about this year's tax bill.

Leaked tax documents obtained by ProPublica earlier this year [2021] found that Elon Musk paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, Musk's "true" federal income tax rate was a mere 3.3 percent - lower than the average middle-income family's tax rate each year.

At least 132 employees at the SpaceX rocket factory near Los Angeles have tested positive for COVID-19 [COVID-19 pandemic], making it the site of the largest recent countywide workplace outbreak tracked by local health officials. According to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Monday [2021-12-20], the Elon Musk-led company currently accounts for nearly 30% of workplace COVID-19 cases in the county. The list includes 37 companies who have three or more confirmed cases each, with a total of 452 cases. The SpaceX corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, California employs nearly 6,000 people.

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This is the second time one of Elon Musk's companies has been at the center of a large COVID-19 workplace infection story. Musk is the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla. In 2021-03, The Washington Post  reported approximately 450 of roughly 10,000 workers at Tesla's  Fremont, California, factory tested positive for COVID-19 over seven months in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. About 125 of those cases were reported in 2020-12.

Elon Musk railed against COVID-19 related lockdowns that affected the Spacex plant, calling them "fascist" and "not democratic," and defied county orders to halt production, saying, "I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me."

In 2021-04, SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract with NASA to build a moon lander  [lunar lander] for astronauts. In 2021-09, the aerospace company  [SpaceX] launched the first all-civilian crew to orbit earth.

Elon Musk said Monday [2021-12-06] at the Wall Street Journal's CEO summit that he doesn't think the United States needs the Biden administration's infrastructure bill [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] - or any government subsidies, for that matter. "Just delete them all," he said. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said during the interview that he's concerned about the federal deficit. "We've spent so much money.. the federal budget deficit is insane," he said. "I would say... can the whole bill. Don't pass it, that's my recommendation," Musk said.

Elon Musk pointed out that Tesla has been selling its electric cars for more than a year in the United States without the $7,500 federal tax credit, without taking a demand hit. Most other automakers, save for General Motors, are still eligible for the credit.

The Build Back Better Plan portion of Biden's infrastructure plan currently includes a provision to extend that credit and add another subsidy for electric vehicles made by union workforces, though it still needs to make it through the United States Senate. Elon Musk has derided the union-focused credit in recent months and called Biden a "puppet" of the United Auto Workers.

Elon Musk also said he doesn't believe the U.S. government should be giving out subsidies to expand charging infrastructure - though that provision is in the infrastructure bill that Biden already signed into law [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act]. "Do we need support for gas stations? We don't. So there's no need for this," Musk said.

Tesla currently operates more than 3,000 charging stations with around 30,000 connectors worldwide, but plans to open that network to other electric vehicles sometime in the near future.

Elon Musk's companies have benefitted from many different federal subsidies and state subsidies over the years, and the U.S. government is a major SpaceX customer (though SpaceX won much of that business by dramatically undercutting the prices of established players). Tesla has also found tremendous success in China after receiving lots of help from the central government there. Musk said Monday [2021-12-06] that Tesla "did not anticipate any subsidies" when the company was in its early years.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk made headlines by tweeting, as he often does, and in one of the tweets, proposed selling 10 percent of his stock in Tesla. At the time, Musk said, "I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes." Now, SEC filings (here  |  here) reveal the exec has exercised his options on over two million shares of the automaker and sold 934,091 of them (via CNBC). At the company's current valuation, the shares he sold are worth about $1.1 billion.

So did he do it because someone on Twitter voted one way or the other? In this case, no, because as analyst Matt Levine   points out, the documents reveal the plan for this sale has been established since 2021-09-14.

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Tesla CEO and wealthiest person in the world Elon Musk tweeted out a poll Saturday [2021-11-06], asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10 percent of his stock in the automaker, ostensibly to pay more tax. "Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock," he tweeted. He said in a subsequent tweet that he'd abide by the results of the poll "whichever way it goes." By Sunday morning, "yes" replies were leading, with 57 percent of more than 3.1 million votes.

Musk had been a vocal critic of a proposal to tax unrealized gains on publicly traded assets for some of the wealthiest Americans. Under the proposal by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), if assets increased in value, even if the person didn't sell the assets, the person would have to pay taxes on the unrealized gain. It would basically end the tax loophole that lets billionaires defer capital gains taxes indefinitely, while still being able to borrow against that wealth. "Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you," Musk tweeted in October 2021, in response to a tweet expressing concerns about the proposal.

Ron Wyden responded to Musk's idea, tweeting on Saturday: "Whether or not the world's wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn't depend on the results of a Twitter poll, It's time for the Billionaires Income Tax.."

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The surge in Tesla, Inc.'s (TSLA.O) stock market value beyond $1 trillion on Monday [2021-10-25] is a double bonanza for Chief Executive Elon Musk, the electric car maker's largest shareholder. The stock rallied 12.7% on news that Tesla landed its biggest-ever order from rental car company The Hertz Corporation [Hertz will order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022].

With Tesla's stock at a record high close of $1,024.86, Musk's 23% stake in the newly minted trillion-dollar company is now worth about $230 billion, according to Refinitiv. That stake includes options worth over $50 billion that have vested under Musk's 2018 compensation package. In addition, Musk is a major shareholder and CEO of rocket maker SpaceX, a private company worth $100 billion as of an October secondary share sale, according to a CNBC report.

Elon Musk receives no salary at Tesla: his pay package provides 12 options tranches that vest when Tesla's market capitalization and financial growth hit a series of rising milestones. The options let Musk buy Tesla shares at $70 each, a discount of more than 90% from their current price.

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"... Also in 2016, the Musk Foundation made its largest disbursement to date, giving $37.8m to Vanguard Charitable. Vanguard Charitable is a donor-advised fund - a tax-efficient giving vehicle that holds money on behalf of multiple clients and distributes it over time. This type of structure makes it difficult for the public to tell which client is making which awards, a benefit for the publicity-shy. While secrecy was not Elon Musk's motivation for using donor-advised funds, he does believe that true philanthropy is done for the most part anonymously, a spokesperson for the foundation told the Guardian.

"There are some hints that Vanguard Charitable could be returning to grassroots giving. Last summer, Musk tweeted that he would help address the public health crisis in Flint, Michigan. Vanguard Charitable said that it has donated more than $1m worth of water filtration equipment and laptops to causes in the city. But, if Musk continues to use Vanguard Charitable, it would make his already secretive foundation even less transparent in future years. ..."

... In just the first four months of this year, Vox.com reports, Musk has donated $150 million to philanthropic causes. That sounds like a lot of money. Vox calls it a "philanthropic spending spree." There's another way to think about it, however. One could interpret it as marking Elon Musk as one of the world's outstanding cheapskates. That's because, as a proportion of Musk's total net worth, which was estimated by Bloomberg's Billionaires Index as $187 billion on Sunday [2021-04-25], $150 million is about eight-hundredths of a percent, or comparatively less than pennies.

... For another metric, consider that if Musk continued giving away his fortune at this rate, say $600 million a year, it would take him 311 years to give it all away. It's possible that Vox underestimated Musk's philanthropy, since there's no system in the U.S. for publicly tracking all charitable donations. Musk may have given away more money but anonymously. ...

... The Musk Foundation, which appears to be his one public instrument for philanthropy, reports its income and outflow every year, but its latest public report only covers the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019. (The foundation reported contributions and grants of about $10 million over that period, ending with $207.8 million in assets.) ...

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