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Comment by kylecordes | Hacker News Reader

It appeared to many observers that Musk was mocking the Russian propaganda, he then made the mockery explicit later.

I don't understand the thesis that Musk is somehow pro-Russia. Generally his ventures are against Russia interests:

SpaceX, launched in the aftermath of Russia being uninterested in selling a leftover rocket to Musk, now dominates the launch industry to the detriment of Russia, among other things halting the cash flow from NASA to Russia to carry astronauts to ISS.

Tesla and former-SolarCity, reducing use of oil, while Russia is a major oil producer.

Starlink provides communications capability to the country Russia is attacking.

However, a likely macroeconomic slump in (electric and other) vehicle demand and Musk’s erratic way of running Twitter are real problems. I think these get the blame for stock issues, rather than the bizarre Russian thing.

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Elon doesn't exactly tweet like a rational logical being at the moment. It seemed to me he was praising the tweet because it mentioned him and said he was going to be president of the US (or something like that) so he thought it was cool. Then he just snuck back in and denounced it later when he remembered he has a security clearance.

He's already taken calls with Putin and randomly decided to announce Ukraine should negotiate peace with Russia, then lost interest and dropped it.

(Note, the way Elon "talks" in tweets would be sarcastic if it was someone younger, but remember he's middle aged and still calls things epic unironically.)

Someone who's dependant on us goverment contracts defense/nasa really shouldn't be interacting with high ranking russian officals.. even if it's for the lulz

espcially since the us has sanctions targeted at medvedev by name, it's no joke

To be fair that's one of the good(?) parts of Twitter.

I'm not sure if he's personally sanctioned but the former president of Iran also strangely likes trolling American politicians and commenting on sports. Sometimes gets replies from their social media interns.

https://twitter.com/Ahmadinejad1956/status/10372992643161661...

https://twitter.com/Ahmadinejad1956/status/10521783680729456...

Actually I'm surprised Iranians are allowed to have Twitter accounts, does that not count as "doing business"…?

I thought Ahmadinejad1956 was a parody account

One must do more than just denounce, they must denounce with precisely the correct language and tone.

Providing support to Ukraine (via starlink) is not enough. Proper denunciation speech is paramount.

(I am being sarcastic.)

I don't have a security clearance but one day in the middle of the night I accidentally ended up at the Belarus/Polish border due to a faulty bit of navigation software (Thanks, TomTom). I'm pretty sure that that had absolutely no effect whatsoever (I had no visum anyway and it's not like you just waltz across that border, nor did I want to) but at the same time if I would have a security clearance I'm fairly sure that there would have been some effect. When you are operating at that level you should be a lot more careful about who you are buddies with and where you visit lest someone decides that maybe it is time that you lost that clearance.

Reasonably politely pushing back on these has got my post not only downvoted to oblivion (after upvotes) but then flagged (!!) while of course the guy who was abusive in return, no problems.

I know you have written eloquently about HN in the past, but I think that site is gone. And I remember because I've been on it for over a decade. I joined an early stage start up on it.

Sadly, they give no means for deleting your account. But thought I'd flag to you anyway.

Anyway, I will be abandoning this account, but it's maybe something for other HN old timers to think about.

I had similar experiences suggesting covid had natural origins. I'm not sure the culture that HN possesses is the same as the one it alleges it desires.

Anyway, last post from this account. I am sure this one will equally be nuked... :)

>(Note, the way Elon "talks" in tweets would be sarcastic if it was someone younger, but remember he's middle aged and still calls things epic unironically.)

the way he tweets is pretty much distilled 2012-ish reddit

He thinks he's being funny, and his opponents and critics have no humor.

Maybe Elon doesn't think his stock dropping from $300 to $113 in less than six months is funny. Or maybe he doesn't have a sense of humor either...

He mocked the Twitter staff he fired. Sorry but a CEO of Twitter a social network. Elon not having emotional intelligence is the most absurd joke. Only problem is that it is reality now.

It all feels very Trumpian; once he’s outside his comfort zone (very visible with the software engineering and politics in particular, in Musk’s case) he tends to just take his lead from whoever flatters him most, and promote/repeat this complete nonsense.

This is actually quite odd behaviour. Most high-profile people, confronted with something they don’t understand, will keep quiet; looking stupid is too much of a risk for these people. If the former PM of Russia drunkenly tweets about you, _you do not engage_, no matter how nice he is about you.

Considering how many Russians don't think so high about most of the presidents of the USA are we sure Medvedev is _nice_ to Elon?

How does Musk posting that sort of stuff, which is difficult to get across in text at the best of times, benefit anyone, including Musk?

It's a pattern of pointless provocative nonsense by Musk, befitting a teenager, not the CEO of multiple multi-billion dollar companies.

I guess he's free to do what he wants, but people are free to read whatever they want into it as well. Dismissing it as humour is not a given.

I agree - Musk's behaviour is harmful to his personal reputation, his businesses, his investors, and sometimes beyond. Also utterly unbecoming a CEO of companies which routinely have human life at risk, serve critical national security interests, etc.

(Yet I would not bet against him making a success of Twitter, as he has Tesla and SpaceX.)

Maybe what’s wrong isn’t his behavior, but how you expect a CEO to act?

I’d expect a CEO to act like an adult.

At this point I'll settle for 'like a responsible teenager'.

Provocative nonsense has worked for Musk up till now. He got billions of dollars worth of free media coverage from his antics.

And after all of it, here we are still talking about Elon, Tesla, and Twitter.

Musk’s provocative nonsense was a major reason why I didn’t consider leasing a Tesla earlier this year when I was in the market for an EV. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way.

What EV did you choose instead? They are all so terrible by comparison when it comes to range and charging infra that it’s hard to go elsewhere. I don’t like Tesla because of the lack of CarPlay, etc and the tight attachment to their central servers but can’t find a reasonable alternative yet.

>They are all so terrible by comparison when it comes to range and charging infra

Come again? There are at least ten non-Tesla EVs that have a rated range of 300+ miles, and DC fast charging is everywhere. Look on PlugShare and filter out Tesla connectors.

Tesla is not the only game in town. And I say that as someone who recently bought a Model S Plaid.

I can attest to this. My wife and I took a road trip from Seattle to the redwoods in California and back this summer in the aforementioned Kia, and I didn't have any issue with charging infrastructure at any point along the trip.

Ten models or ten cars? And are they actually capable of hitting that?

I see people say this but I’m suspecting they don’t actually enjoy large road trips so don’t comprehend how terrible the difference is between 250 and 350 usable miles is.

What EVs can do LA to Salt Lake City with one full charging stop?

> Ten models or ten cars?

I don’t understand what you are asking.

>What EVs can do LA to Salt Lake City with one full charging stop?

I said that there are at least ten non-Tesla EVs that have a rated range over 300 miles.

LA to Salt Lake City is ~690 miles, half of which is 345 miles.

Few EV owners actually get their car’s rated range, and you’d have to be nuts to intentionally pull into a charging station with zero battery. Your scenario really calls for a car that has a rated range of ~400 miles, which, AFAIK, is currently limited to the Model S and the Lucid Air.

The longest range configuration of a Model S has a 405 mile rated range, though you’re not going to get that on a long road trip. The Lucid Air’s rated range is 516 miles. No idea how that bears out in reality, though I suspect it’s similarly less-efficient at interstate highway speeds. (Actual speeds, not speed limits.) I’ll be test driving one soon.

Kia Niro EV. It’s been totally fine, especially since I don’t have to commit to it for more than 3 years.

> And after all of it, here we are still talking about Elon, Tesla, and Twitter.

If he got paid for us talking about him, that'd be great. But he doesn't, not even on Twitter where advertising revenues were better before all the fuss. (There are people who get paid mostly from being famous, it's just they tend to operate well below "world's richest man" level, sell content or consumer goods considerably more mass market than the Model 3 and tend not see their net worth crash at the time their celebrity status goes mainstream)

Cause and effect is actually the reverse: the media started thinking his antics were interesting enough to cover because he'd already been very effective at promising spaceships and cars and organising people to deliver enough of his promises to earn him the status of maverick genius (and a lot of money). Nobody cares about your 420 jokes if you don't own a rocket company. He did the hype-man who delivers stuff well enough to more-or-less get away with dumb stuff that didn't exactly win the sort of headlines that sold Teslas (there is such thing as good free publicity; but they involve hyping his achievements and multiplanetary plans, not defending himself from libel actions). Then at some point he probably started reading his fans' takes on how his real genius was getting attention and so losing a board seat over a joke was actually 5D chess rather than a mistake to learn from, and now he's busy spending his fortune on being talked about...

(I guess you could still chalk that up as a win if you figure he always cared more about being noticed every day than stuff like going to Mars, but I don't think that's the case)

I'm not sure it's worked in his favour.

Whenever I think about Tesla I wonder why a company that had such a head start with electric cars doesn't basically own like half of the car industry now. He had a massive stock price which could have enabled huge growth.

There's a strong argument to be made that Musk has bungled it.

I've never been on twitter and _will_ never be on twitter because I have zero interest in 140 character posts (now 280).

OTOH, I get the feeling people are being overly judgemental due to text being hard and 280 character text being even harder.

"EPIC THREAD" is 269 characters short of the limit... so yeah, 280 might not be enough to make nuanced arguments, but he was not even trying (and he is not known for making nuanced arguments, just for being a tantrum-prone narcissist)

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/elon-musk-sparks-criticism-wi...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-pu...

https://www.businessinsider.com/musk-spotted-pro-putin-russi...

And of course, the one you're responding to: "Musk praised a truly insane Russian propaganda tweet, predicting the fall of the west"

> I don't understand the thesis that Musk is somehow pro-Russia.

There's a bit of a conspiracy theory going around that Musk was trying to get out of buying Twitter by publicly aligning with Russia/sabotaging Ukraine a bit. The idea would be being enough of a thorn in the US' backside that they might let him walk away from the deal.

It's a funny one in that Musk has done enough bizarre stunts by now that I don't see this as completely implausible on his part, but given that the US government isn't a dictatorship and has separation of powers I don't think such a deal would be possible even if some part of the US government wanted to take it.

4-5 hours later, possibly around the time his ambien was wearing off:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/elon-musks-strange-s...

“It was just a prank, bro.”

That’s the intellectual level we strive for?

> It appeared to many observers that Musk was mocking the Russian propaganda, he then made the mockery explicit later.

Saying "EPIC THREAD" is just his style of praising something, not mocking it. He had to add extra tweets to mock it five hours later because of the backslash.

I think it’s because giving any “territory” to Russia justified see the pretense of ending war isn’t believable.

If you don’t believe it condemns more people to be colonial subjects and the be redeployed to destroy Ukraine, I can see the confusion.

A lot of tycoons aren’t commenting about the war at all if the fear how the judgement will affect business.

I don't think he even cares about Ukraine one way or another. He's just trolling the U.S. gov to "own the libs" as part of his "engagement strategy" for Twitter, as ridiculous as that is. Yes, alienate the entire user base for the company you're completely leveraged on (Tesla), in exchange for people who make on average less per year than your average Tesla costs.

I suspect it's both. Dude stays up late reading Twitter, gets a bit maudlin because he's alone and does the stoner "just thinking about the big questions maaan" thing.

Then he eventually sleeps, gets a bunch of "we're getting hammered by the public" emails when he wakes up and says "ah, but it's all engagement you see. This is my business genius."

Ignoring that the reason that sounds right to him is because it excuses him from the idea that he's ever done anything wrong.

> If you don’t believe it condemns more people to be colonial subjects

Assuming they live long enough. Look at what's left of the cities that Russia has withdrawn from.

This take does not track with reality. Musk pushed Russia propaganda about Ukrane and repeatedly defended his position.

Examples?

For a time it was considered propaganda to push for peace. It was truly bizarro.

Then a few weeks later regime approved voices said we should consider peace and it was no longer considered propaganda.

He pushed for Ukrainian territory to be formally ceded to Russia after they occupied it by force and violence. His "peace plan" was then enthusiastically praised by Kremlin propaganda.

It seems his push for peace is always one sided in that all his ridiculous plans end with Russia being rewarded for aggression and Ukraine losing territory.

I'll note that a request for examples was made several posts back and no one seems willing to post them, only describe their interpretation of them.

For some reasons many westerns believe that Russia will nuke the world before losing Crimea. I disagree but don’t see Musk being unique in believing this. Also and unfortunately, I do not see Ukraine taking back Crimea any time soon.

Except that isn’t what he said.

He said the people in those regions should be able to decide which country they want to be part of and that the result should be enforced/respected by both sides.

It’s a stupid opinion, but he didn’t say what you said he did.

He specifically said Crimea needs to be ceded to Russia.

That's poor game theory.

Russia is a Mongol horde. Suing for peace against tribal border raiders (cooperate) is a rational strategy. If they know you'll always cooperate, then their best strategy is to always come back and attack (defect). Each time you achieve peace you lose land.

So, rational strategies are bad. You want to adopt an irrational strategy where you appear to be a crazy person willing to hurt themselves to get revenge - now attackers won't risk themselves in the first place.

This is why societies develop an "honor culture" and why NATO has that mutual defense clause.

Only if you're correct about them being a Mongol horde and not a rational actor, but their actions were predictable and were in fact predicted by professors years ago who understand the geopolitcal landscape and history of NATO.

No, they're rational actors in this scenario.

In real life Putin changed strategies in a way that made his country worse (turned into a Mongol horde) but personally improved him (gave him more power over the country).

You can ignore anything he says; it's not meant for you and he doesn't care if you hear it or believe it. It's like when Russians say that Ukraine is run by Jewish Nazis. It's not intended to be truthful, which is why they don't care they've caused /more/ countries on their border to join NATO.

By "professors" you presumably mean Meerscheimer, who's basically like a cynical politics poster who thinks everything is about "making hard choices" and so is in favor of anything that sounds like it's "making hard choices" even if it's wrong.

Well, yeah. That is why you don’t prevent wars with sanctions.

"Pushing for peace" doesn't mean anything. It could mean to push for an unconditional surrender of Ukraine, or for an unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops, or anything in between. The fact that you use this phrase along with the term "regime" tells me that you're a either a Russian propagandist or a someone who has been misled by Russian propaganda.

It means that you're working to find a peaceful solution. It's no different from people who opposed the Afghanistan and Vietnam wars and pushed for peace.

People who oppose war were discredited by the regime then and they are being discreted today. News at 11.

Yes, because they don't oppose war, they oppose a Ukranian victory. And by doing that they basically discredit themselves.

>It appeared to many observers that Musk was mocking the Russian propaganda, he then made the mockery explicit later.

"I think the President and a small group of people know exactly what he meant."

I would agree on this one, but his pro-Putin / anti-American policy towards Ukraine is the context here. Plus he loves to troll the U.S. Gov (particularly the Dems) who literally made his life as a billionaire possible by funding him with billion to create Tesla when he was still basically "poor". He would be nothing without liberals who created the electric car incentive programs and EV loan programs, yet he trashes them left and right.

That was a reasonable strategy a while ago - if conservatives hate electric cars for tribal reasons, you've got to make an electric car they're allowed to like.

At this point it just seems like he doesn't have any friends though.

> but his pro-Putin / anti-American policy towards Ukraine

What an absurd characterization. Don’t you have something better to do than wake up and post lies on the internet?

He said they should negotiate an end to the war, that’s not “pro-putin”.

It really bothers me when people like yourself post these blatantly false statements, and I can’t say I’m surprised this post is still up/not flagged.

He specifically proposed terms friendly to Russia

> He said they should negotiate an end to the war, that’s not “pro-putin”.

People are trying to end this war and the next one. Anyone who believes Putin will back down after success in Ukraine isn't paying attention. Furthermore, the people who should be particularly quiet about what to do in Ukraine are those who swore that Russia would not invade in the first place, because they don't have a clue what makes Putin tick. The people who saw this war coming from a mile away are the ones who deserve attention now, and that's not Musk.

> People are trying to end this war and the next one. Anyone who believes Putin will back down after success in Ukraine isn't paying attention. Furthermore, the people who should be particularly quiet about what to do in Ukraine are those who swore that Russia would not invade in the first place, because they don't have a clue what makes Putin tick. The people who saw this war coming from a mile away are the ones who deserve attention now, and that's not Musk.

You don't understand, this time Russia and Putin will actually do what they agree to in a negotiation. Its not like Russia already agreed to never threaten Ukraines sovereignty already and decided they didn't like that agreement so they threw it out the window /s.

Usual measure when you go verbally over the top: "It wasn't all meant that way, I was misunderstood," "It was meant ironically, and you didn't get it." In both cases, it's the "stupid" audience, but not the author. I disagree.

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