Elon Musk's drug use causing turmoil for Tesla, SpaceX execs: WSJ

fossilesque@mander.xyz to News@lemmy.world – 486 points –
Elon Musk's drug use causing turmoil for Tesla, SpaceX execs: WSJ
finance.yahoo.com
115

They don't mention it causing turmoil at Xitter, presumably because they are already at maximum turmoil capacity

Perhaps they contacted Twitter for a comment on Elon's drug use and got a statement that read: đź’©

I still can't believe that's a real thing he did, it's straight out of a comedy skit.
I loved when the writers would try to get in contact and would point out the reply in their articles. Seems they got tired of it after a while unfortunately.

You know, I thought they already were at capacity before Elmo agreed publicly with fascists.

Xhitter employee #1: Oh dude, I think the boss is tripping balls!

Xhitter employee #2: Maybe today won't be a total loss. Should I ask him to share that shit with us?

I’m usually ready to laugh at this asshole, but if he has a drug problem, then I pity him.

Important note: pity and sympathy are similar, but not the same thing.

Normalize pitying your enemies instead of hating them.

I used to work with this mean miserable guy and there were so many times a lot of us would try to cheer him up. Share food, invite to after work drinks, movies, concerts, just include him. He never took anyone up on it, ever. After a friend of mine left that job and confronted him about his shitty attitude and self alienation, he just said, “I don’t want your pity.”

Ironically, after I heard that I stopped sympathizing and did just pity the guy.

Maybe he just didn't want to hang out with you guys and had a perfectly fine life outside of work. Crazy, I know.

I sincerely hope he does, but I think it’s pretty sad that someone conflates kindnesses with pity.

I often don't want to hang out with coworkers. I just politely decline if asked affirmatively. There's no reason to decline and say, "I don't want your pity" since I assume they're just to be inclusive and friendly. I know a lot of people on here have a hard work/life separation, but you do have to exist with your coworkers for some portion of your life. Might as well make interactions with them pleasant.

I can do both. I pity the sad man who is addicted to drugs, but also he’s a fascist campaigning for human suffering and I hate that about him.

Empathy is to understand another's emotional state. Sympathy is to effectively mirror it.

Buuuut, much like "literally" now means "figuratively" and "decimate" has lost all meaning after being mistaken for "devastate"... Carry on. The species is circling the drain anyhow.

Misuse of decimate gets me every 10th time

Does decimate actually mean to place a decimal?

It meant to kill every tenth soldier as punishment for bad performance.

drug use? it would explain a few things...

No. I interacted with him on two occasions during the PayPal days. They were pitching PayPal as a payment mechanism for a bunch of our verticals. Even back then he was weird, awkward, and cringe. I think there is video of him back then taking possession of a McLaren and you can see how cringe he was.

EDIT: Found it.. On rewatch, it doesn't really show how insufferable he was in person. It's funny to see how x.com gets recycled though.

I don't understand people buying such high-end toys and not bothering to pay for some training.

Seriously. Racing school was fun and only $1,500! Yeah that was serious money for me, but I thought it was a good investment/ birthday present. For him though.... That's like a quarter.

Uninsured is also just strange. Even if I bought a junked supercar, rebuilt the thing myself, and didn't care if I wrecked it, I'd still insure the thing.

I feel like Elon is the type of guy who views having insurance as weak. Like someone or something having an even minute amount of authority over him is unthinkable.

For him though.... That's like a quarter.

Today, yes, but back then he was just another dot com millionaire. Remember, that footage was before PayPal, so he probably had about 300M, tops. A million was still only a fraction of his wealth, but it was still a noticeable fraction.

Even so, I seriously doubt the $1500 he could have spent to learn to drive the thing properly would have been a serious expense.

Lol i love how he called it X .com way back then and they renamed it to paypal.

That's not just a McLaren, that's probably the most famous McLaren of all time.

I was thinking he wrecked his F1 but I think that was Rowan Atkinson..

According to another comment Musk wrecked his McLaren but so did Atkinson (twice!).

It's like crazy high-performance sports cars are hard to drive.

I won a competition to drive a Ferrari F458 on a track. It was dope but it took me several tries to even pull away cleanly (this is after an hour long lesson about the track and 30min hands on with the car).

One of the Ferrari guys took it and warmed it up for me after which it behaved much better but it’s a long story to say that I can see an inexperienced driver screwing up badly in a super car especially when cold.

And the McLaren F1 is an older more raw car than the F458.

If I were into cars and had the money, I think it would be part of the joy of getting my new toy to pay up for a few days of track time with a good trainer.

But I guess I'm not surprised Mr. "I know more about manufacturing than literally anybody else" would be pretentious enough to just wing it and fuck it up gloriously.

The schools are worth the cost. It cost me $1500 for a 3 day course way back in '98. Same racing school is now $2050. I can say I gained a lot more control of my car after that.

That sounds reasonable and fun. Compared to the cost of a McLaren F1, it's peanuts.

The number of lies that came out of that Muppets mouth during that cringy piece was remarkable. My fav had to be 'just three years ago i was sleeping on the floor on the YMCA hostel'. what an absolute fucking donkey of a human.

Calling him that is an insult to Muppets everywhere. You gotta know Gonzo would make a way better CEO.

I think I read somewhere he's hopped up on ket every day (but someone correct me if wrong)

You don't get hopped up on Ketamine, that's for the comedown.

You get stimmed up on amphetamines, and then take the edge off with downers.

The way he's slurring his words, I'd guess benzodiazapines (Xanax, Valium, etc.)

But I'm sure he's taking Ketamine as well, and probably mixing up quite a few daily cocktails with who knows what else.

His dumbass is probably doing a bunch of RC's to top it all off.

That sounds brain melting. Like I’m all for amphetamines, they don’t work recreationally on me, but I know a lot of people who realized they had adhd when partying and trying Adderall left them thinking clearly. But benzos, nah I’ll take panic over benzos, those fuckers scare the shit out of me. Benzos will ruin your life if you let them.

I LOVE KETAMINE SO FUCKING MUCH. I LOVE IT SO MUCH I PUT IT ALL ON MY MUSK.

His whole life story explains everything already. The drugs are just the icing on the cake.

It's interesting to look back at his AMA on reddit in 2015. Every response was so to the point and on topic, even friendly. Clearly something changed since then.

I am guessing he had good publicists, probably decided he could do the job better and got rid of them just before the pedo thing.

Pretty much. After fucking up PayPal and getting kicked out for being an insufferable POS, he hired a PR firm who constructed the real life Tony Stark image for him on the public. Writing and getting press around his person. They also unfortunately had to tell him to not say or do certain stuff that would damage his image, there's nothing a narcissist hates more than being told no. They also allowed him to position Tesla as the futuristic libertarian ideal and the overpriced manufacturers they are now, and SpaceX as the renaissance of US space exploration. In my opinion not entirely undeserved perceptions but immensely amplified by a marketing machinery. Then he had a meltdown, fired every single PR, marketing person from every single one of his companies. Declared himself the only marketing that his companies needed. He essentially bought into the crap that his own PR wrote for him.

In his recent "interview" with Alex Jones, Musk called all PR firms "propagandists.". So that tracks.

I can tell you that nothing has changed about him. I personally know people who worked with him at that time, and he was just as much an arrogant and insufferable egoist as he is now. Legendary screaming matches and him talking completely out of his ass about absolutely everything were the norm and expected in every meeting.

Do any research on his tenure at Zip2/PayPal or any relationship he's ever had, and you'll see Musk has always been a petulant child, he just had a lot of people around him to try and hide it, but it seems like he's scared basically all of them away.

his political situation was completely different

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What about his toxicity and narcissism? Are they also cause for turmoil everywhere he goes?

No no, now that he has a drug problem, we're supposed to pretend he's not a narcissist, never said anything racist or sexist, and is just a misunderstood entrepreneur.

Those were already handled by dedicated people in most places.

Execs: mental break down isn't sexy, let's say he has a drug problem so people can rally for him.

Here's an archive link to the original WSJ report.

In 2018, for example, he took multiple tabs of acid at a party he hosted in Los Angeles. The next year he partied on magic mushrooms at an event in Mexico. In 2021, he took ketamine recreationally with his brother, Kimbal Musk, in Miami at a house party during Art Basel. He has taken illegal drugs with current SpaceX and former Tesla board member Steve Jurvetson.

That seems, uh, well-documented.

Also, Kimbal? Ok.

Taking party drugs at a party is honestly fine with me. Taking party drugs at work is something an asshole would do.

Yeah I’m all for lsd use, shame it didn’t give him the drive to try to be a better person that it gave me

He seems pretty public about it. I’m wondering how many of these celeb parties have a “no phones” policy.

Drug use? ..... Or he was always just an idiot.

Just because you're naturally stupid, it doesn't always mean you're on drugs.

There’s a high chance of both being the correct answer.

Most of my friends use the same drugs, but none of them are cunts like Musk.

Drugs are invoked a lot to explain and justify human behavior to some external factor. It's like when people say Nazis were on meth as an explaination for their actions, while not applying the same logic to basically every other military using amphetamines.

He's really working hard to follow closely in the footsteps of his idol, Hitler.

Criticizing Musk is what all the cool kids are doing. Everyone that likes to follow the latest fad seems to want a piece of the action.

How could someone who doesn’t actually do anything using drugs cause turmoil?

Just listen to what he says, nod your head and go back to your job.

Ok then, I guess….. maybe don’t work for the company if you don’t like it? I dunno….

Do I "nod my head and go back to work" or do I "quit my job". It seems you've jumped into a subject that you don't quite comprehend and are firing off answers from the hip.

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Musk denied the report, saying he is subjected to random drug testing by NASA.

But too late, it's been mentioned in a headline so now everyone just believes it. Obviously it's true because it's something bad about Elon Musk.

Or are anti-drug laws bad right now too? I've lost track which is more important to believe bad things about.

So, the guy smoked weed on camera and you're denying he's used drugs? He's also talked openly about his ketamine prescription, which you absolutely should know he got a prescription for AFTER he certainly tested positive for it. You don't have to simp this hard. He's already proud of you, and I bet your dad is too.

I'm not denying anything. I'm pointing out that everybody's leaping to a conclusion because it suits the "Musk bad!" mob narrative without even bothering to read the article where some doubt is cast on it.

Bill Clinton smoked weed once. Does that mean he's stoned right now?

You don’t have to simp this hard.

And here's the other common symptom of the "Musk bad!" mob mentality, the assumption that anyone who says anything not bad must be in some kind of "Musk good!" group.

Or maybe we're arriving at a conclusion based on existing, known evidence and you're desperate to simp for the guy.

Bill Clinton smoked weed once. Does that mean he’s stoned right now?

See, this is the kind of shitty argument we expect from people that worship Musk. Nobody said musk is high RIGHT NOW. Do you think Clinton stopped smoking weed after that one time? Like, how dumb can a person be?

must be in some kind of “Musk good!” group.

No, I called you a simp. Specifically a simp with daddy issues.

Lemmy is a worse shit hole echo chamber than reddit and I don't like musk and your assessment is spot on.

Indeed. I don't like Musk either, but there are plenty of real reasons to not like him. No need to make up all kinds of wild nonsense and immediately believe every negative thing people say about him simply because it's negative.

Dude has lied about way more important shit than that, so why should anybody believe him?

Do you understand exactly how easy a drug test is to beat unless you have a fucking junk scanner?

He smoked pot live on camera. If he were actually getting random drug tests he would have failed instantly and had his clearance revoked. Because you can tell a clearance investigator that you murder hookers on the weekend after raw dogging them and nobody cares. But if you have ever even LOOKED AT the devil's lettuce, you are a security threat.

The reality is that "random drug testing" for clearance purposes mostly boils down to if you piss off someone AND don't have a supervisor who will tell their supervisors that you can't come to the piss truck today because you are super awesome and that this is hurting national security.

I would expect that they started doing the drug tests because he smoked pot live on camera. I recall there was rather a kerfuffle about it at the time.

Anyone with a clearance (which would be required if you were the money mark for a rocket company because you were pissy that russia wouldn't sell you an ICBM...) is eligible for random drug tests. That technically applies to random bureaucrats who do data entry. The Emerald Apartheid is not special in that regard.

Different orgs have different criteria for what triggers a "random drug test". None are actually random and it is always funny when someone figures out what kind of paperwork puts your name in the pool to go piss in front of somebody.

And, once you make it past the peon stage (or are someone's kid), you have enough connections that you will never take one again.

To put it in context: I have a friend who gets "randomly selected" any time he lets one of his managers know he had a layover in DEN on a trip. And I know people who openly smoke "really skunky tobacco" on their lunch break who will never get called in.

I've worked in lots of places with random drug testing that were full of drug users. For almost everything but weed, drugs are out of your system within hours or days. Being subject to random testing doesn't mean he isn't using drugs.

It would not surprise me at all to find out that Elon Musk paid to develop a brain-dead clone of himself, simply to provide samples for drug tests while he smokes up all the freaking time

He has a prescription for ket, but people never abuse their prescriptions.

And no this isn't about being anti drug it's the harm and potential for more harm that it is causing others. That's when personal freedoms generally go out the window. Liberals are pretty consistent with that despite you trying to pretend it's arbitrary.

It also serves as a potential explanation for his truly insane behavior