Yes Friends, have you noticed how it's so much warmer suddenly? Bet it's taken you by surprise!!!
But there's one notable exception among us, isn't there! Yes, step forward local man Martin Rivers - at least if you believe today's local Onion News! Because, once more, Martin's face is "all over" that esteemed organ's page 94, yet again !!!!
Well, at least he's consistent - that's what my wife Lois and I say, here in semi-productive Liphook, Hampshire, to put it mildly!!!!
It's a crazy day, no doubt about that! But manfully, and womanfully (!), we manage to achieve very little today, which was always the objective!
One of Elon's classmates from his high school days in Pretoria, South Africa, Rudolph Pienaar gives us some insights to start tonight's programme.
Over the following decades, one of Elon's many surprising career moves was, in 2022, to buy Twitter, which he did on a whim, before getting cold feet, but then finally going for it anyway.
Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, one of the early investors in Musk's Tesla car business, has been one of Elon's friends for the past 11 or 12 years,.
Rudolph recalls how DOGE went through, willy-nilly, just killing programs, right left and centre, ending up destroying much of the American scientific community.
Unlike with Martin, this gradual, but semi-meteoric rise in temperature this week has really 'knocked us sideways', after a lovely, action-packed few days up in Ipswich, Suffolk, staying with my 'baby sister' Jill (68!). And with us looking to have a quiet day today to recharge our batteries, it's been a week that's seen the temperature make a relentless rise from a high of 55F (13C) on Monday to a high of 81F (27C) on Friday.
What's gone wrong with our weather, all of a sudden !!!!
What madness!!! And if you visit us today, you'll see Lois in a summer dress, and me 'poncing about' in shirtsleeves and reading Lois's copy of "The Week" magazine, instead of shivering under my trademark two layers of thick pullovers !!!! And with our bedroom windows both slightly open for this afternoon's statutory nap-time, would you believe, all in all today is total madness!!!!
Phew - what a scorcher!!! With Yours Truly 'poncing about' in my
shirtsleeves, reading Lois's copy of "The Week" magazine,
and even throwing the bedroom windows open a few inches
for 'statutory nap time' - what utter utter utter madness!!!!!
And on this crazy day, by the time evening falls, it seems only natural to get back into bed to watch the follow-up programme to last week's "The Elon Musk Show" series tonight - that man 'does craziness in spades' (!), Lois and I always say!!!
Rudolph Pienaar, one of Elon's classmates from his
high school days in Pretoria, South Africa
The two boys used to play video games in Elon's bedroom, which was where his computer was. In those days, Rudolph recalls, everybody was playing text-based adventure games, like Dungeons and Dragons, in which each player has a group of characters who go and explore a dungeon.
What was interesting, Rudolph recalls, was that Elon named all his characters after himself. So his Warrior would be 'Elon the Strongest', his Wizard would be 'Elon the Most Intelligent', his thief would be 'Elon the Most Agile', and his Archer would be 'Elon the Most Accurate'. This struck Rudolph at the time as just being very odd.
Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, one of the early investors in Musk's Tesla car business, has been one of Elon's friends for the past 11 or 12 years,.
Elon, seen here with Ross Gerber, one of the early investors in Tesla
Gerber initially tried to challenge Elon on his takeover of Twitter, which seemed like a crazy move for the business - launching itself into social media. And Gerber said to Elon, "Elon, what are you doing? Is our mission tweeting? We shouldn't be doing that, and I fear you'll be wading into an area which will cause a lot of damage to your brand."
On TED, however, Elon said, "My strong, intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted, and broadly inclusive, is extremely important for the future of civilisation", and he claimed that he didn't care about the economics of it at all.
And this proved to be a light bulb moment for Elon's business friend and partner, Ross Gerber.
Don't imagine, however, that Elon's eccentricities are just the madcap extravagances of a tech-crazy schoolboy who never grew up.
Fast forward to 2024, when Donald Trump, after winning the presidential election, tasks Elon with leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with the aim of 'taking a chainsaw to government bureaucracy'.
And Elon's old Pretoria schoolfriend Rudolph, now a scientist in the US, judges Elon's work in DOGE to have been an unmitigated disaster for science in the country.
Worst of all, the US State Department subsequently killed 83% of the foreign aid programmes at USAID, something which Rudolph finds particularly shocking.
Worst of all, says Rudolph, Elon casually joked about the decision on his own social media platform Twitter / X:
And Rudolph comments, "When you callously impact people's lives and don't even care, to me that's almost a definition of evil".
Fascinating stuff, but it sends a chill through Lois and me, no doubt about that.
What a bastard!!!!!
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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