Adventures of the Longest Muskrat

[Büge]

Most of Musk's supposed wealth is in... Tesla stock, which he can't sell much of for fear of tanking its price, especially since it's wildly overvalued compared to other auto stocks

lol

[nosimpleway]

still wildly overvalued, too

[Mongrel]

And he's now blaming the fact that the company is incorporated in Delaware as the reason this all happened.

He keeps getting fucked by the Delaware Chancery Court's high level of competence, and it's a beautiful thing.

[Thad]

Somebody posted this Elon Muskrat graphic on Ars and it is my 8-month-old's new favorite thing

[Crick]

Apparently he's funding Gina Carano's lawsuit to make Disney hire her back?

This seems like "political theater" with lawsuits, nothing too serious, which is why I find it so strange.

Like, this more than anything makes me lean towards the idea he's just whacked out of his mind almost constantly and is operating with a drug-fueled slippery grip on reality.

[Büge]

I've read that he had a special team of paid sycophants in his orbit that insulate him from the consequences of his idiotic whims, but I feel like his budget hasn't had room for that lately.

[Mongrel]

Apparently he's funding Gina Carano's lawsuit to make Disney hire her back?

This seems like "political theater" with lawsuits, nothing too serious, which is why I find it so strange.

Like, this more than anything makes me lean towards the idea he's just whacked out of his mind almost constantly and is operating with a drug-fueled slippery grip on reality.

I forget who mentioned it most recently (Friday, I think?), but it's absolutely correct that while drugs can do a lot of things to you, they're not going to make you into a racist hatemongering asshole if you weren't already so predisposed.

[Büge]

in ketaminos veritas

[Crick]

I forget who mentioned it most recently (Friday, I think?), but it's absolutely correct that while drugs can do a lot of things to you, they're not going to make you into a racist hatemongering asshole if you weren't already so predisposed.

That's a very good point. I don't want to make it seem like I'm saying he's not a racist, supremacist maniac down to the bone, I just think voluntarily funding a pretty flimsy lawsuit against one of the most litigious entities in human history on behalf of the worst actress in a Star War seems beyond the dumb stuff he usually does.

Like the one "hyperloop" tunnel is dumb, but I get how it happened.

This feels more like the actions of a doped-up terminally online weirdo who happens to have infinite money.

[Mongrel]

The Gina Carano stuff is legitimately very funny as an own-goal though, like, you, as a terribly mediocre actor at best, were set up as character in a Star Wars spinoff with more of the same to come! You were locked in for free six-figure money for over a decade! All you had to do was keep your big stupid mouth shut!

I think in part that also comes back to people being awful in spite of any excuses. A lot of the people getting fired for supposedly having right wing views are easy to fire because they are also awful people that everyone hates working with.

Compare with Chris Pratt, who is mostly pretty good about keeping his mouth shut about his terrible views, and who people seem to like working with. He's still horrible, but he's also still very employed!

[Crick]

I can't imagine trying to legally pry my way back onto a collaborative creative endeavor. Would create an absolutely awful experience. For EVERYONE.

Would be doubly funny if Disney hired her back and then killed off her character within a scene or two.

[Mongrel]

In my experience victory in a wrongful dismissal suit doesn't actually mean a forced rehiring, it just means they buy you out with some sort of package fat enough to satisfy the lawyers.

It might be different for actors, but they're still unionized, and even someone like Carano is still covered by the terms of the collective agreement, so it's probably not all THAT different. Since this is a suit and not a grievance, we can safely assume that the collective agreement for TV actors doesn't cover self-inflicted gunshots to the foot.

[Friday]

I hate that in this timeline I am forced to root for/side with the Mouse over and over again

and yeah I will never accept Roseanne style "sorry, I was high" as apologies/explanations for incredibly shitty, racist or otherwise fuckshit meatbrain behavior

[Mongrel]

"We're better than Ron DeSantis" is a bar so low, they had to make it out of tantalum carbide.

[Cait]

The linked article briefly mentions it, but there was a point a bit back where he said he'd fund legal action for anyone* who gets fired for posting on Twitter, and this is him nominally putting up on that.

[Büge]

[Upthorn]

Last month, Elon Musk's insane "aesthetics at all cost" design paradigm killed Angela Chao, a billionaire dry-goods shipping mogul (and Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law)

Summarized from nypost:

• Leaving a Chinese New Year celebration, Angela was trying to make a three point turn, when she failed to shift out of reverse, and backed into a pond.
  
  • Blue Sky user Naomi Kritzer notes that shifting in a model X is done via touch-screen, e.g. the failure to switch into drive could easily have been the touchscreen misreading her input
• Once in the pond, the vehicle lost power,
  
  • making it impossible to open the windows
  • and disabling the standard door handles
• In a panicked state, Angela Chao failed to locate any of the emergency manual door releases
  
  • (via blue sky user Andrew) The front ones are completely unmarked.
  • (via blue sky user Warren Terra) And the rear ones require disassembling the door panel to access
• Receiving a panicked phone call, the other gathering attendees ran out to help and were unable to get any doors or windows open
• Sheriff deputies were unable to break any windows to gain access to her
• More than an hour and 20 minutes had passed by the time a rescue team was able to tow the vehicle out of the water and open the doors to retrieve Angela Chao

[Büge]

[Yoji]

I knew those emergency door release "solutions" were a death trap waiting to happen, but that's fucking grim. And that seems like a rather high-profile fatality, which makes me wonder what kind of impact it might have.

[Mongrel]

Hahahaha, Todd's face.