The “colonial survivalist” apocalyptic marketing of the Tesla Cybertruck has only deepened embarrassment for anyone pulled into Elon Musk’s widespread fraud.
One of the new Tesla Cybertrucks – whose recent arrival in Phnom Penh has caused a sensation – marked a milestone yesterday by being involved in its first Cambodian crash.
[…]
According to the incident report, a man was seen driving a Tesla Cybertruck, traveling along Route 616 in the south-west direction at speed.
When he arrived at the scene, he turned left towards Route 113.
He turned and hit a curb, causing the car to crash into a tree.
It hit a curb. The end.
They could have saved so much money and shame by buying a far superior product from literally any other car manufacturer.
Yet the “extreme” survival bruhaha meant to generate attention leaves this as yet another Cybertruck disabled by the most trivial and common road obstacles.
Still, some Tesla shareholders seem nervous about the company’s approach. At that meeting last year, Musk was asked how he thinks about the “unfortunate mishaps” that have plagued other companies that are working on autonomous cars.
“Those are real consequences of developing this technology, and I’m just wondering where your mind is on that,” asked one shareholder who did not give his name.
Musk replied that Tesla is trying to be careful with the rollout of Full Self-Driving mode. “Human driving is not perfect,” he said, noting that roughly 40,000 people are killed every year on U.S. roadways. “What matters is, like, are we making that number smaller? And as long as we’re making that number smaller, we’re doing the right thing,” Musk said.
The answer is obvious.
FSD crime scene typical of Tesla after it sped into and killed an innocent motorcyclist. Other car companies have far better engineered software and hardware, with more cars on the road and more miles yet report zero deaths compared to the many dozens of Tesla tragedies like this one. Source: NPR, January 15, 2025. “Safety advocates fear Tesla will face less accountability for car crashes…”
Tesla has been making the fatality numbers far, far worse. They have been pushing a manslaughter machine into crash after crash, like no other OEM on the road.
Source: IIHS
Worse than even domestic terrorism.
Key Observations: Data clearly shows that both serious incidents (orange line) and fatal incidents (pink line) are increasing at a steeper rate than the fleet size growth (blue line). This is particularly evident from 2021 onwards, where: Fleet size (blue) shows a linear growth of about 1x per year. Serious incidents (orange) show an exponential growth curve, reaching nearly 5x by 2024. Fatal incidents (pink) also show a steeper-than-linear growth, though not as dramatic as serious incidents. The divergence between the blue line (fleet growth) and the incident lines (orange and pink) indicates that incidents are indeed accelerating faster than the production/deployment of new vehicles. Source: Tesladeaths.com and NHTSA
Back in April 2022 I pointed out on this blog that Elon Musk was failing at the most basic transparency requirements while simultaneously demanding everyone else be required to have transparency:
…lawsuit alleges that by March 14, Musk’s stake in Twitter had reached a 5% threshold that required him to publicly disclose his holdings under U.S. securities law by March 24. Musk didn’t make the required disclosure until April 4.
In other words, he’s the kind of guy who wants to play poker by hiding his cards yet making everyone else put theirs face up on the table. Cheating? Of course. Lying? Of course. That’s what makes this funny-money snake-oil salesman so dangerous.
…having it be unclear who’s making what changes to who, to where, having [stocks] sort of mysteriously be promoted and demoted with no insight into what’s going on … I think this can be quite dangerous.
Right. It’s dangerous to manipulate stocks without transparency, he says, while he was constantly manipulating stocks without transparency. And that’s not to mention after the Russians paid him to take over Twitter for them he made it go private, to make it as unclear as possible why hate speech suddenly started getting promoted so heavily.
Well, it looks like the SEC wasn’t unaware of this pattern and has formally just announced their lawsuit.
According to the SEC’s complaint, after Musk failed to timely file a beneficial ownership report by March 24, 2022, he purchased more than $500 million worth of Twitter common stock between March 25, 2022 and April 1, 2022. As alleged, because Musk failed to timely file a beneficial ownership report with the SEC, he was able to make these purchases of Twitter common stock at artificially low prices from the unsuspecting public, who had not yet priced in the undisclosed material information of Musk’s beneficial ownership of more than five percent of Twitter common stock and investment purpose. According to the SEC’s complaint, Musk underpaid by at least $150 million for his purchases of Twitter common stock in this period. The complaint further alleges that, due to Musk’s failure to timely file a beneficial ownership report with the SEC, investors that sold Twitter common stock between March 25, 2022 and April 1, 2022 did so at artificially low prices, thereby suffering substantial economic harm.
Substantial harm is probably an understatement for what this grandson of the architects of South African apartheid has done with his family’s blood-money by laundering it and generating massive undisclosed gains using the American technology industry.
The recent Greenland affair represents a masterclass in how authoritarian regimes exploit democratic institutions to undermine the post-1945 international order. Analysis of Russian media narratives reveals how Trump’s seemingly absurd Greenland statements align perfectly with Moscow’s strategic messaging, designed to normalize territorial acquisition through raw economic power rather than democratic process.
Television host Vladimir Solovyov gave a thumbs-up to Trump’s statements and said that “Finland, Warsaw, the Baltics, Moldova, and Tallinn should come back home.” He remarked: “Do you think I’m joking? No! They should all rejoin the Russian Empire, followed by Alaska.” During the same talk show, military analyst Mikhail Khodaryonok said, “After Trump’s statement, in my opinion, we can now consider special military operations as the norm for resolving arguments between countries. The silence of European leaders clearly confirms this.”
In 2022, a report by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service accused Russia of forging a letter that claimed to be from Greenland’s foreign minister to Republican Senator Tom Cotton in 2019.
The letter stated: “Our government is going to overcome all legal and political barriers… and to organize the referendum on independence of Greenland from Denmark as fast as possible.” Cotton has since bragged about being the one to suggest buying Greenland to Trump.
“It is highly likely that the letter was fabricated and shared on the Internet by Russian influence agents, who wanted to create confusion and a possible conflict between Denmark, the USA and Greenland,” the Danish intelligence report stated.
One is inevitably reminded of the British East India Company’s methodical territorial acquisitions in the 18th century, as well as their understudy America’s methodical territorial acquisitions in the 19th century, although those at least maintained a veneer of defense and legal legitimacy.
After America staged a coup to invade and seize Hawaii, James Dole is pictured grabbing a pineapple by the prickly bits: “I swear I just was examining this large hot and juicy warm fruit for quality”
The Kremlin’s media apparatus has now shifted into what we might call their ‘triumph phase’, openly discussing the dismantling of post-war international norms with an enthusiasm reminiscent of the 1930s revisionists. Their vision represents nothing less than a return to 19th-century great power politics, complete with spheres of influence and territorial bartering.
Russia could proceed with a sham referendum, à la Crimea, to make a claim on Greenland, Gurulyov suggested. “If Trump Jr. was able to buy someone for a bowl of slop and they’re ready to join America, why don’t we show up with a few Xerox boxes filled to the brim and close this issue once and for all?” he said.
“If all else fails, we can make a deal with Trump and split Greenland in two parts,” Gurulyov added. “Clearly, Denmark will never set foot there again.”
Senator Cotton’s role, not to mention Mussolini’s sons, in this affair bears striking parallels to the useful intermediaries of previous colonial enterprises – though one imagines even Lord North would have blanched at such transparent manipulation. The emergence of an Arkansas senator as the champion of neo-colonial adventurism in Greenland would be merely ironic were it not such a devastatingly effective advancement of Moscow’s broader strategic objectives – a masterclass in what we might term “managed colonial nostalgia.”
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
