Feldman's Faves: October 16, 2023

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

Last week was difficult for me (and many of you) and so I chose to skip last week’s review. Many of us are continuing to struggle as events unfold in Israel and in Gaza. This is not the forum to discuss what’s happening there but please know that my door is open to anyone that does want to engage on this subject.

On a much happier and inspiring note, yesterday when I was feeling not so great I went to pick up my daughter at the Subway Station. While I was waiting I saw a man (who works for UberEats) chat with a homeless women as he was walking in to the restaurant to pick up his order. When he came out, he brought this woman a full meal. This was done at 8 pm last night, when it was dark and when he thought nobody was watching. His car was parked in front of mine and so when he came to his car I honked at him. He thought he did something wrong but when I opened my window to tell him that I just saw him do something really nice and kind he came to me and started to cry. He said he was feeling awful about the world and that he wanted to show the world (really himself) that kindness and good people still exist. This was a small but extremely meaningful gesture bringing some light into a moment of despair.

ALSO……I went to the Taylor Swift Concert (movie) this weekend dressed in my Travis Kelce jersey with my Swiftie daughter and it was truly amazing. I may have skewed the average age of room slightly (or perhaps materially)….If you are like most people and have ZERO chance of going to the actual live show, this movie is totally worth seeing (and way less expensive).

Finally, I wanted to remind people that Ayesha and Zach are almost done their first rotation of their Articles and I strongly suggest you find a way to work with each of them if you haven’t done so already.

This week’s theme is all about Elon Musk.

ELON MUSK By: Walter Isaacson – Love him or hate him, Elon cannot be ignored. Walter Isaacson is the master at writing biographies of the world’s true disrupters – from DaVinci, to Franklin, to Jobs to Doudna and now to Elon Musk. Elon Musk has led the revolution in electronic payments, electric cars and commercial space travel and it seems like he is only just beginning with his interest in AI and of course his acquisition of Twitter (now X) – the jury is still out on if he will succeed on the latter. He also believes it is his duty to populate the earth with smart people, which accounts for his ten children (so far – he should call the Duggars…). He is not a nice guy and he knows he lacks an empathy gene, which he attributes to his Asperger’s and his upbringing (his father might be the world’s most despicable human alive today). The question Isaacson poses but frankly leaves unanswered is whether it is OK/necessary to be a complete a-hole in order to disrupt the world and move humanity forward. When Elon gets into “demon mode” or goes on a “surge” amazing things happen that frankly nobody else on this planet can achieve. So I guess those not in his direct orbit benefit tremendously and those close to him are simply the cost of doing business. I don’t know. He is interesting and this book is worth a read for sure. As one reviewer notes (albeit a little harshly and in my view unfairly to Isaacson), “Who or what is to blame for Elon Musk? Famed biographer of intellectually muscular men Walter Isaacson’s dull, insight-free doorstop of a book casts a wide but porous net in search of an answer. Throughout the tome, Musk’s confidantes, co-workers, ex-wives and girlfriends present a DSM-5’s worth of psychiatric and other theories for the “demon moods” that darken the lives of his subordinates, and increasingly the rest of us, among them bipolar disorder, OCD, and the form of autism formerly known as Asperger’s. But the idea that any of these conditions are what makes Musk an “asshole” (another frequently used descriptor of him in the book), while also making him successful in his many pursuits, is an insult to all those affected by them who manage to change the world without leaving a trail of wounded people, failing social networks and general despair behind them. The answer, then, must lie elsewhere

The prologue to the book contains what in Hollywood writers’ rooms and lesser MFA programmes is called “the inciting incident”. On a playground in 1980s South Africa, Musk was beaten so severely by a pack of bullies that his nose required corrective surgery even decades later. According to Isaacson, his father sided with the bullies. These are acts of violence and betrayal that do have lifelong consequences, as Musk himself has said (and as my own often-punched nose can attest to). What’s both fascinating and depressing is how Musk has internalised these acts of bullying. Twitter (now known as X) was a slime pit of racist and misogynistic savagery even before Musk bought it, but he has given the bullies all but carte blanche and is now planning to remove the block feature, so that users who are being metaphorically punched in the nose will not be able to lift their arms in defence.

The biggest revelation here involves Musk allegedly telling engineers to “turn off” the coverage of his Starlink satellite systems in Crimea just as Ukrainian drone subs were approaching the Russian fleet in Sevastopol. In response to reporting of this episode in the book, Musk took to X to say: “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” Isaacson himself went on to “clarify” his own book and to claim that the Starlink coverage never extended to Crimea in the first place. “Musk did not enable it,” he wrote, “because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.” But in echoing Musk’s statements, Isaacson became a propagator of Russian messaging about Ukraine’s actions leading to a wider war (“Seek peace while you have the upper hand” General Musk bullied the Ukrainians) – a supposition that has been disproven countless times and that marks those who believe in it as useful idiots for the Kremlin.

This wasn’t the first time I held Isaacson’s judgment in low regard. Vaccine sceptic Joe Rogan is “knowledgeable”. Musk’s humour – he took the “w” out of the Twitter sign in San Francisco because “tit” is so inherently funny – has “many levels”. Linda Yaccarino, Musk’s almost comically bumbling CEO of X is “wickedly smart”. The amount of time devoted to the points of view of Musk and his acolytes can’t help but distort the narrative in his favour, especially because Musk is the ultimate unreliable narrator. “Elon didn’t just exaggerate, he made it up,” a former colleague tells us.

Highest on the list of things Musk won’t shut up about is Mars. “We need to get to Mars before I die.” “We got to give this a shot, or we’re stuck on earth forever.” The messianic part of the Muskiverse is his attempt to put 140m miles between himself and his father as he tries to turn humanity into a “multiplanetary civilization” even though we are having a hard enough time making it as a uniplanetary one. But Musk also knows what’s keeping us from reaching the lifeless faraway planet, and he’s not afraid of telling us: “Unless the woke-mind virus … is stopped, civilisation will never become interplanetary.” There is a far more interesting book shadowing this one about the way our society has ceded its prerogatives to the Musks of the world. There’s a lot to be said for Musk’s tenacity, for example his ability to break through Nasa’s cost-plus bureaucracy. But is it worth it when your saviour turns out to be the world’s loudest crank?

So who or what is responsible for Elon Musk? “Growing up in South Africa, fighting was normal,” Musk says, and there’s a whiff of desperate masculinity floating through the book, as rank as a Pretoria boys’ locker room. It is not a coincidence that the back jacket features a fully erect penis (some may argue it is actually one of Musk’s rockets, but I remain unconvinced).

When his parents divorced, a young Musk chose to live with a father he describes as having subjected him to “mental torture”, over his imperfect but loving mother. He will keep coming back to that darkness, and is likely to submerge himself into it all the more as the realities of mortality enfold him. When you are as messed up as our hero, there is a lot of psychological work to be done to stop the downward spiral, work more boring than building a rocket. Work even more boring than this book.

It is no wonder that Musk has renamed Twitter “X” after his favourite letter. X is also a crossing out, the opposite of a tick, and that is what Musk has been steadily doing to his legacy. Isaacson’s book constantly tries to build dramatic tension between the species-saving visionary and the beaten bullied boy. But we know the ending to Musk’s story before we even open it. In the end, the bullies win.” Musk is one of a kind, which I think is probably best. BTW, one of the most interesting tidbits I learned from reading this book is about Musk’s love of “bathroom humour” and that if you use voice command in a Tesla to say “open poophole” the charger in the car will open. Just saying…. Here is a great review from the NYT Book Review-https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/09/books/review/elon-musk-walter-isaacson.html

THE NEXT BIG IDEA – ELON MUSK: Walter Isaacson on the World’s Most Polarizing Person – For those of you who don’t have the time or interest to read the book, this interview with Walter Issacson is a pretty good summary. Here is an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “Two years ago, Walter Isaacson, the legendary biographer who has written books about Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci, began shadowing Elon Musk. "I started off with a guy who was one of the most popular people on the planet," Isaacson says, "and ended up with a guy who's the most controversial." Today on the show, Isaacson unpacks those controversies.” https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-next-big-idea/id1482067226?i=1000627843131

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation. And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon