If I had a net worth of around $20 billion USD, I imagine I would probably spend my time doing literal piles of drugs on a superyacht packed to the gunwales with nude celebrities while executing swift loops of the Bahamas instead of, say, defending myself to randoms on Twitter – but for this reason (and maybe a handful of others), I am not Elon Musk.
Musk is a huge fan of the blue website, using it to answer weirdly specific questions from Tesla owners, preach about the evils of unions, and demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge about what socialism is. He also uses it to hit out at his critics, especially when they appear to be making fun of his submarine.
Elon Musk: … and this dial here controls the mood lighting, for when I’m having sex with Grimes in the submarine
Reporter: How will that help free the trapped children?
Elon Musk: What children?— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) July 9, 2018
Musk’s team spent a number of days developing a submarine to assist in the rescue of the Thai soccer team trapped in the Tham Luang cave complex, but it was ultimately not used after Narongsak Osottanakorn, a former governor of Chiangrai province and head of the rescue operation, deemed that it was “not appropriate” for the mission. All twelve boys and their 25-year-old coach were removed from the cave last night in the third rescue operation.
Musk didn’t take too kindly to the media reports on this development, and challenged the categorisation of Narongsak Osottanakorn as the head of the operation, describing him as “not the subject matter expert“. He posted an email exchange with dive co-leader Dick Stanton, who explicitly asked him to keep working on the submarine:
The former Thai provincial governor (described inaccurately as “rescue chief”) is not the subject matter expert. That would be Dick Stanton, who co-led the dive rescue team. This is our direct correspondence: pic.twitter.com/dmC9l3jiZR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2018
Musk further said that the submarine would absolutely fit through the 38cm chokepoint, and that he would be happy to demonstrate that “at any time” by making it complete the entire journey through the cave system.
In the same thread, he took the time to object to the people rudely calling him – the man who is estimated to be worth $20 billion USD – a billionaire, because they’re doing it in a mean way:
Ironically, the “billionaire” label, when used by media, is almost always meant to devalue & denigrate the subject. I wasn’t called that until my companies got to a certain size, but reality is that I still do the same science & engineering as before. Just the scale has changed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2018
Elon, I urge you: get off the internet and go do acid on a jet ski or whatever. You’re so rich dude, you can do literally anything else.
