The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is on track to become the world’s third-richest person. But after a slew of controversial comments, he’s no longer the internet’s sweetheart.
Tesla stock jumped by 13% after it was selected to join the S&P 500 index, and that was good news for a certain Mr Musk, who owns 20% of the company’s shares – in one fell swoop his estimated fortune rose by $15bn, bringing it to the tidy sum of $117.5bn (according to The Guardian).
In the company of the stratospherically rich, this pulls him ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, still leaves him eating the dust of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and trailing far behind Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (whose immense fortune is estimated to be worth $185bn).
Will all that money make Musk happy? Well… probably, yes. But as his money, and influence, grows, will the rest of us be happy too? That’s more debatable.
Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2020
Just earlier this week, Musk irresponsibly cast doubt on the veracity of Covid tests to his 40.1 million Twitter followers – probably not the best idea given that the US currently tops all other nations for having the highest number of deaths attributed to Covid-19. Which is why I’m hanging the following tweet on my wall.
Rapid antigen tests trade sensitivity for speed. They return a result in <30 minutes, but can only detect COVID-19 when you're absolutely riddled with it. What's bogus is that Space Karen didn't read up on the test before complaining to his millions of followers. pic.twitter.com/a1Snfpm03h
— Emma Bell PhD (@emmabell42) November 14, 2020
So it was satisfying to see him swiftly taken down a peg or two when he was dubbed “Space Karen” by Twitter user Emma Bell, who also explained the intricacies of the test which Musk had disputed.
However, in better news for Musk and hopefully for humanity in general, SpaceX launched a NASA mission to the International Space Station. It was an awesome demonstration of what the company is capable of – we just wish its CEO spent more time on that, or counting his billions of dollars, and less on Twitter with his brain in the backseat.
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