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In general I’m just against bios being written about people while they are still alive. Someone was going to write one so I can understand Issacson going after that paycheck but it’s a stain on his reputation IMO

Such a missed opportunity...

@unroll.bsky.social please unroll

Yeah the review of the biography by Jill Lepore makes it clear that Isaacson is untrustworthy. Apparently the book hardly mentions apartheid even though Musk grew up in S. Africa, and describes his grandfather’s anti-Semitic politics (he blamed both world wars on the Jews) as “quirky.”

I just started listening to the audiobook (at 1.2 because for some reason he's reading ridic slowly) and literally said "that's BS" out loud two pages in..I can see the theme is cue the violins

I'm not reading it but I keep seeing people post passages from it that are apparently meant to make Musk look good but actually make him look like a spoiled idiot manchild.

I agree with the general argument, though I think the difficult childhood is not particularly hard to verify. His father's subsequent behavior pretty much confirms that he too is a sociopathic serial liar and abuser. But the rest of it? Yeah. Anything Musk says needs to be looked at skeptically.

Yeah I think unauthorized biographies of Musk are the only safe option. Isaacson is probably perpetuating any number of myths about this fucker and doing a real disservice to people he’s harmed.

I’ll be turning it into a substack post. Should be up tomorrow if my kids go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight.

Isaacson has his own notoriety.

i almost lost it at the opening anecdote. i was ready to give up on reviewing the book and just go investigative reporter on him. however, the majority of what comes after lines up pretty closely with other accounts. still too credulous but less of a fabulist vibe at least.

Whenever it's been suggested that I shouldn't judge Elon Musk's assholery too harshly because he was bullied or whatever, my response is: (1) even if true, so what? (2) other people's shittiness is no excuse for your own shittiness decades later, and (3) fuck Elon Musk

…

They want to write books about Great Men and/or Great Men Doing Great Things…because deep down inside they think that makes them Great by proximity. Lewis and Isaacson can’t comprehend how awful SBF & Musk are…because that would make *them* awful by proximity, and that’s unpossible.

his childhood was probably terrible. his father married his (elon’s fathers’) step daughter. his father also told a funny story about elon as a kid getting pushed down the stairs. whatever else, i have zero doubt he was abused. abuse turns some into narcissistic sociopaths.

Maybe they let in one or two poor kids and had a “most dangerous game” type deal?

Unbelievable…. until you learn that it was a Lawn Darts Camp.

also anybody who wants to hold him meaningfully responsible for being an unremarkable bigot and sociopath just hates innovation

I say this ever so tentatively, because I haven’t read the book yet, but it seems odd that being on the spectrum isn’t a consideration in any of this behavior.

Ja, no, hey... South African veld school in the 80s could be a little tough on spectrum kids like Musk, but it was mostly just a lot of fun?

Maybe it was like one of those places where Paris Hilton got sent as a teenager, which she talks about in her documentary "This Is Paris". She came from a rich family, but those kids definitely got abused with the excuse that the abuse was tough love

Maybe “one of the kids… of “the help” would die”?

Every wilderness survival camp has a local variation on this rumor (source: spent a couple of summers at one, have friends who went to others). It's usually bullshit but it is universal, because there's a thousand dumb ways to die in any wilderness worthy of the name.

Is there any mention of apartheid at all?

I say just read the book and post a review on Substack

this is more a testament to how insane South Africa is than the veracity of anything elon says, to be sure

Well, it wasn't specifically said the the kid who would die was one of the campers. They may have brought someone in for that specific role. As a reward.

It’s a jumble, but it seems like the most-likely scenario is: 1. he applied to stanford PhD program senior year of undergrad, got accepted. 2. didn’t actually finish undergrad. 3. Moved to Silicon Valley, had visa issues, told some creative lies about his resume.

If there’s anything better for twisting the truth into knots than access journalism, I haven’t seen it. Isaacson’s next tech titan book (aka his income) is utterly dependent upon providing a flattering portrait of Musk and he knows it. Why would he risk the money train?

www.snopes.com/fact-check/m...

I am afraid to imagine what would Isaacson's biography of George Santos look like.

fwiw ashlee vance went pretty thorough on this one if you read the endnotes of his 2015 musk bio. which was also more thorough overall than isaacson's imo.

Okay this one is actually quite funny. page 86, Isaacson relays the story of Musk, at a party, sitting down to a high-stakes poker game and going all-in on every hand and lose. "after losing many hands, he went all in and won. Then he said, 'Right, fine, I'm done.'" (...)

meanwhile I’m having minor waking nightmares of what it would be like to try to advise a pathological liar like Musk in research.

Depends on the context. Be warned, this article contains some distressing content. www.huffpost.com/entry/gay-so...

Listen to BtB podcast, @iwriteok.bsky.social did some episodes on Apartheid Baby spotify.link/EHJlEEim9Cb