Category Archives: Elon Musk

May 11, 2021 -- During the latest episode of Saturday Night Live, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he was the first person with Aspergers Syndrome to host the variety sketch show.

Or at least the first person to admit it, he said during the opening monologue.

This may have been the first time that Musk has publicly said he has Aspergers, according to The Associated Press. At least one former SNL host, Dan Aykroyd, has also talked about having Aspergers, the AP noted.

Musk said it was an honor to be a host and emphasized that he meant it.

Sometimes after I say something, I have to say, I mean that, Musk explained, humorously noting that he often doesnt have a varied tone of voice.

Musk made pointed jokes about himself during the monologue and acknowledged that he often feels misunderstood.

I know I sometimes say or post strange things, but thats just how my brain works, he said. To anyone Ive offended, I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars and Im sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?

Leading up to the episode, SNL faced criticism for inviting Musk to be a host. Critics said the show was celebrating a billionaire who spread misinformation online by downplaying the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the early months of the pandemic, Musk posted on social media about the pandemic response and said the coronavirus panic is dumb, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In November, he contracted the virus and said it was a moderate case.

During one of the sketches, which featured a cowboy standoff, Musk joked that his character thought masks were dumb during a bank robbery.

OK, for a while, I thought masks were dumb, he said. But now, I think masks make sense.

Musk also brought his mother Maye on stage, and they recalled a time that Musk created a video game about space when he was 12. They joked that her Mothers Day gift would be Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that Musk referenced several times throughout the episode.

Musk also appeared on Weekend Update as a Dogecoin expert and in sketches about Mars, post-quarantine parties and a murder trial with Mario characters, where he played a misunderstood Wario. For the first time, SNL was live-streamed internationally on YouTube in more than 100 countries.

WebMD Health News Brief

Saturday Night Live: S46 E18, May 8, Elon Musk.

Saturday Night Live: Elon Musk Monologue.

The Associated Press: Elon Musk shows humility and hubris as SNL host.

The Hollywood Reporter: Elon Musk Says in SNL Monologue That Hes the First Host With Aspergers Syndrome.

Saturday Night Live: Cowboy Standoff.

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On SNL, Elon Musk Says He Has Asperger's Syndrome - WebMD

Fed governor Lael Brainard, in a statement released with the report, referred to an elevated appetite for risk, citing the meme stock episode presumably a reference to the GameStop debacle as an example.

It isnt only equity markets where prices are near the top of their historical distribution, with Brainard saying corporate bond markets were also seeing elevated risk appetite and that the spreads of lower-quality speculative-grade bonds relative to Treasury yields were among the tightest the Fed had seen historically.

She said the failure of Archegos Capital Management the family office that blew up earlier this year, showering billions of losses on some of the worlds largest banks highlighted the potential for non-bank institutions like hedge funds and other leveraged investors to generate large losses within the financial system.

The Archegos event illustrates the limited visibility into hedge fund exposures and serves as a reminder that available measures of hedge fund leverage may not be capturing important risks.

The potential for material distress at hedge funds to affect broader financial conditions underscores the importance of more granular, higher-frequency disclosures, she said.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis regulation of banks was tightened substantially. A side-effect was to drive a significant amount of activity, particularly higher-risk activity, into the shadows of the financial system inhabited by less-regulated and less-visible entities like hedge funds, private equity and other non-bank institutions.

If markets are in bubble territory because of ultra-low rates, then any meaningful increase in inflation and consequent rise in real interest rates could burst them and, given how stretched valuations in most financial markets are and the levels of speculative activity in cryptocurrencies and meme stocks, cause chaos in financial markets.

As part of its information-gathering, the Fed conducts surveys of market participants and other parties, asking them for their view on risks to financial stability.

In the previous survey, conducted last September/October, the biggest perceived risk was political uncertainty, followed by corporate and small business defaults, insufficient fiscal stimulus and a resurgence of the pandemic. Stretched asset valuations came in at number five.

In the lead-up to the US elections and with the pandemic still raging, that ordering of risks was understandable.

The latest survey has vaccine-resistant strains of the virus at the top of the list of risks, followed by a sharp rise in interest rates, a surge in inflation, US-China tensions and risky asset valuations.

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A lot can change in six months and it isnt surprising that the combination of a spike in interest rates and inflation and their implications for riskier assets were elevated within the list of risks to financial stability.

If markets are in bubble territory because of ultra-low rates, then any meaningful increase in inflation and consequent rise in real interest rates could burst them and, given how stretched valuations in most financial markets are and the levels of speculative activity in cryptocurrencies and meme stocks, cause chaos in financial markets.

Low interest rates have also driven a surge in high-yield and unrated corporate debt (junk bonds). Last year the market for that high-yield debt in the US grew 25 per cent, or more than 3.5 times its historical average annual growth rate.

Spreads on those loans, and on leveraged loans, were very narrow relative to historical levels. A graphic in the Fed report shows that the excess bond premium the component of corporate bond yields not explained by risk-free rates or default risks is negative and among the lowest recorded for decades, which the Fed says (in its understated way) indicates a high risk appetite.

Federal Reserve board member Lael Brainard referred to an elevated appetite for risk in markets today.Credit:Bloomberg

So, equity market valuations are, by historical standards, stretched. There is increased speculative activity in meme stocks and cryptocurrencies. Increased initial public offerings, (especially listings of special purpose acquisition vehicles) also point to increased appetites for risk, as do spreads in corporate debt markets.

Leverage in banks is low but leverage in hedge funds is high and issuance of collateralised loan obligations the corporate debt equivalent of the collateralised debt obligations that nearly blew up the global financial system in 2008 is at record levels so far this year.

If you were grading risk factors for the global financial system now the pandemic would probably still remain at the top of the list but the longer negligible interest rates drive rising equity markets and tightening spreads on higher-risk corporate debt the greater the risk that any external shock creates a self-fuelling scramble by investors to dump their exposures.

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A surge in inflation expectations and interest rates is the obvious risk (albeit not the only one) of a shock that could trigger market implosions and another bout of severe market turbulence, financial instability and another crisis if the stretched valuations and high levels of riskier corporate indebtedness arent unwound before any threat emerges.

It is hard to see how that could happen unless the world experiences the rare combination of very strong economic without any material accompanying inflation.

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Risky business: The Fed, and Elon Musk, sound the alarm bells on financial markets - Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday Night Live will be live from New York and streaming to 100 countries around the world for the first time ever, NBC announced. Elon Musk is hosting the show for the first time (in case you have not read anything else on The Verge dot com today), and Miley Cyrus will be the musical guest.

SNL is a global phenomenon and this livestream marks the first time audiences around the world will experience the show simultaneously along with the US, Frances Berwick of NBCU said in a statement. Its incredibly exciting to create this worldwide event with host Elon Musk and musical guest Miley Cyrus. We thank our international partners and YouTube for helping us make it happen.

Musk tweeted a link to the international feed:

The show gets underway at the usual 11:30PM ET. Musks girlfriend, the singer Grimes, posted to her Instagram that she would be making an appearance as well.

The Verge will be watching.

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Saturday Night Live with Elon Musk will be live-streamed ...

Elon Musk did well for himself on 'SNL' Saturday night, but his appearance did NOT do well for Dogecoin ... because its value plunged during the show.

Fans of Dogecoin were banking on Musk's on-air explanation of the cryptocurrency to drive the price to $1. That would have been a huge jump because just before the show it was hovering around 70 cents.

The opposite happened ... its value plummeted to 47 cents at the beginning of the show, and then partially recovered by bouncing back to 55 cents at around 2 AM ET.

At the time of this post, Dogecoin is down more than 37%.

The trading platform Robinhood seemed to panic, saying, "Were currently experiencing issues with crypto trading. We're working to resolve this as soon as possible."

Musk talked about Dogecoin on the "Weekend Update" segment, playing a dude named Lloyd Ostertag who tried to explain to Michael Che and Colin Jost what exactly Dogecoin is, finally coming to the conclusion that didn't do it any favors.

Elon's been a fan of Dogecoin for a while now. We got him out in February when he gave some words of wisdom about investing and caution.

Maybe less explanation is more.

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Dogecoin Value Tanks During Elon Musk's 'SNL' Hosting Gig - TMZ

Dogecoin retreated from a record earlier Saturday, declining during Elon Musks appearance on Saturday Night Live, where the billionaire jokingly called the digital asset a hustle.

The fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market value reached a record above 73 cents on Saturday before dropping as low as 51.4 cents during the show. It was down 23% over the past 24 hours to around 55.6 cents as of 12:56 p.m. in Hong Kong, according to pricing from CoinGecko.

Musk, who said hes the first person with Aspergers to host the show, was asked repeatedly during the Weekend Update segment to explain what Dogecoin is. After reciting multiple facts about the cryptocurrency in the character of a financial expert, he was asked if Dogecoin was a hustle. He responded, yea, its a hustle.

Musk, 49, is the worlds second-richest person with a net worth of $183.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He had helped drive the coin to new heights on Friday and Saturday after tweeting a picture of himself and a Shiba Inu on the set of the iconic NBC show.

In the Weekend Update segment, Musk was in character as a financial adviser trying to explain the concept of cryptocurrency. After being asked repeatedly what Dogecoin is, he agreed with one of the anchors that its a hustle.

Cryptocurrencies are promising, but please invest with caution, Musk tweeted earlier on Friday, linking to a video that showed him talking about the merits of crypto, particularly Dogecoin. That follows months of Twitter posts from Musk about the likes of Bitcoin and Dogecoin, almost all favorable.

Musical guest Miley Cyrus wasnt taking the hosts obsession with the coin too seriously, according to a tweet she posted on Saturday.

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Dogecoin crashes as Elon Musk appears on Saturday Night Live - Economic Times

According to Elon Musk, excessive meetings are the blight of big companies. (File)

The entire world now admits that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a genius, and nobody minds taking a suggestion or two from him.

Gabriel Gruber, the owner of properati.com, a real estate portal, has shared with his followers on Twitter, seven things that Mr Musk has stressed on to increase productivity.

According to Musk, excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and "almost always" get worse over time. "Please get off all large meetings, unless you're certain they are providing value to the whole audience in which case keep them very short," he said.

One of the richest people on the planet believes you should do away with extra meetings unless you are dealing with an urgent matter. "Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved," Mr Gruber wrote, quoting Mr Musk.

You need to add value to a conversation or a meeting and, therefore, Mr Musk recommends dropping out of a call or a meeting the moment you realise you aren't adding anything new. "It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time."

Mr Musk, it seems, is not a fan of acronyms and hence he advises against using them for objects, software or processes at Tesla. "In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don't want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function at Tesla," Mr Gruber wrote.

The SpaceX CEO believes that communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the "chain of command". "Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere," Mr Musk warns, according to Mr Gruber.

Mr Musk sees poor communication between departments as a major source of issues, adding the way to address it to allow free flow of information between all levels. "If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super dumb things will happen," the Tesla CEO says.

Mr Musk advises that in general, one should always pick common sense as their guide. "If following a "company rule" is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change," Mr Gruber wrote.

The Tesla CEO, who actively responds to tweets, this time, had just one word for the seven recommendations Mr Gruber listed out. "Exactly," said Mr Musk, reacting to the thread.

Meanwhile, a lot of Twitter users than responded to Mr Musk's tweet and agreed to his recommendations.

What do you think about the seven recommendations of Mr Musk for more efficiency and productivity? Do let us know in the comments.

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Lose The Meetings, Ditch Acronyms: Elon Musk's 7 Rules To Increase Productivity - NDTV

SNLs Weekend Update co-anchor Michael Che seems to be taking the upcoming and controversial Saturday Night Live guest hosting appearance of worlds richest man Elon Musk in stride, suggesting to both Seth Meyers and Ellen DeGeneres that hes not among the cast members complaining.

Musk, whose mixed-message public comments about the Covid vaccine have drawn criticism as have his anti-union stances will guest host SNL this Saturday, a booking that wasnt exactly embraced by some cast members. When Musk posted a Twitter message about his upcoming appearance by asking Lets find out how live Saturday Night Live really is, cast member Bowen Yang responded, What the f*ck does this even mean?

SNLs Aidy Bryant then retweeted a message from Sen. Bernie Sanders calling out the moral obscenity of the fact that the 50 wealthiest people in America today own more wealth than the bottom half of our people.

SNLs Andrew Dismukes wrote on Instagram, Only CEO I wanna do sketch with is Cher-E Oteri.

But when an article in the New York Post alleged that SNL cast members wont be forced to appear alongside the Tesla billionaire, Che mocked the assertion on Instagram by referencing his Update co anchor: Does this rule mean I wont be forced to appear next to Colin anymore?!

On Mondays Late Night With Seth Meyers on NBC, Che was asked about Musks appearance by former SNLer Meyers. Yeah, you know, thats gonna be exciting, too, Che said, as if pressed. Hes the richest man in the world, how could you not be excited for that?

Later today, Che will guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and in a clip released prior to the episode, Che jokes, I was all on board with it till I found out did you know hes rich? Now Im like against it.

Joking aside, Che tells DeGeneres the show will be interesting, and that its cool that people care about whos on the show. Its been on for 46 years and people still care about whos being booked. I think thats kind of dope.

Watch the segments below. The Musk comments on Late Night arrive around the 3:33 mark, and on the Ellen show around the 7:47 mark.

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SNLs Michael Che Weighs In On Elon Musk Hosting Controversy - Deadline

Rule breakers are gonna break rules, so it makes perfect sense that Miley Cyrus and Elon Musk promise that they can't stop, won't stop shaking things up this weekend on Saturday Night Live.

While Miley is preparing to take the stage at Studio 8H for the sixth time, tomorrow night (May 8) will be the maiden voyage on the good ship SNL for SpaceX/Tesla founder Musk, whose comedic chops so far consist of blasting one of his electric roadsters into space with a David Bowie-esque "Starman" mannequin in the driver's seat listening to an endless loop of "Space Oddity."

Musk looked totally relaxed in the promo for this weekend's show, though, rocking a black bandana face covering to go with his all-black everything outfit and joking, "I'm a wild-card, so there's no telling what I might do." Cyrus, dressed in a Muppet-like fuzzy red dress jumped on board, adding, "Same here, rules: no thanks."

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Miley Cyrus and Elon Musk Promise To Be On 'Good-Ish' Behavior in 'SNL' Promo - Billboard

Here's a skit for Elon Musk on 'SNL' -- terrified Los Angelenos staring into the sky thinking aliens finally arrived to take them away ... only to discover it's just Elon's new space toys.

Yeah, people in L.A. were freaking out Wednesday night when they saw a string of lights moving across the sky in unison. The freakout was in full effect for those who happened to be looking up, and many turned to Twitter (naturally) for answers.

One person tweeted, "Did anyone else see a strand of moving lights above Los Angeles tonight?" ... followed by an alien emoji. If you're in L.A. and reading this, you've probably figured out there's no invasion. Yet.

What really happened is SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 of its satellites earlier this week. It was the second such launch in less than a week ... giving SpaceX well over 1,000 satellites up there.

The new ones had just deployed on Wednesday afternoon, and as astronomer Dr. James Davenport put it ... "They were still in low orbit, and they were still clustered together so we call this like the Starlink train."

He added, "You see like a little chain of satellites all close together reflecting sunlight back at us."

The launch itself also freaked out people all over the West Coast last week.

People in Washington and Oregon reacted to the lights and also figured aliens were invading!!!

Anyway, nothing to see here, folks -- well, not aliens at least. Not for now.

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Elon Musk's Starlink Satellites Have L.A. Thinking Alien Invasion - TMZ

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla, waves while arriving to a discussion at the Satellite 2020 Conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday, March 9, 2020.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Neuralink President Max Hodak announced on Saturday, via Twitter, that he is no longer with the health tech venture in which he was a co-founder with Elon Musk and seven other scientists and engineers. He said he has not been working there for a few weeks, but did not reveal the circumstances of his departure.

Fremont, California-based Neuralink is, "developing ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers," according to the company's self-description on LinkedIn.

Musk who is also the CEO of electric car makers Tesla and the aerospace defense contractor SpaceX has said, without showing evidence this is possible, that Neuralink's devices could enable "superhuman cognition," enable paralyzed people to operate smartphones or robotic limbs with their minds someday, and "solve" autism and schizophrenia.

Founded in 2016, with Musk investing tens of millions of his significant personal wealth, Neuralink is also developing surgical robotics to implant its devices, essentially sewing tiny wires about a quarter of the diameter of a human hair to connect the implants to the brain.

Skeptics abound.

After the August 2020 demo, MIT Technology Review deemed Neuralink "neuroscience theater," in a scathing teardown of the presentation.

Musk does not have a background in neuroscience or medical devices but, according to a project director at Neuralink quoted by The New York Times in 2019, has been "active in trying to help solve the engineering challenges that Neuralink faces."

Musk described the surgery to insert a Neuralink device as taking less than an hour.

Neuralink demo

In the medical news site StatNews, a neuro-ethicist and doctor named Anna Wexler wrote in an op-ed on April 7, 2021:

"In this new world of private neurotech development, company demos are live-streamed on YouTube and have the flavor of techno-optimism that involves proclamations about a future we have yet to see but one that we are assured will come to pass. Data are sparse; rhetoric about making the world a better place is heavy."

The next day, Musk wrote in a series of tweets, again without providing evidence:

"First @Neuralink product will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using thumbs

"Later versions will be able to shunt signals from Neuralinks in brain to Neuralinks in body motor/sensory neuron clusters, thus enabling, for example, paraplegics to walk again

The device is implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look & feel totally normal"

On Saturday, Hodak was not immediately available to comment.

For Musk, Saturday was a day undoubtedly requiring more focus on his aerospace venture, SpaceX. After 167 days in space, astronauts in a crewed, SpaceX and NASA mission began their return flight home, with a "splashdown" expected around 2:57 a.m.

One of Hodak's followers on Twitter asked him what's next and he replied, "Not Jurassic Park." The quip was a reference to a prior fantastical discussion on the micro-blogging platform in which Hodak mused: "We could probably build jurassic park if we wanted to. wouldn't be genetically authentic dinosaurs but. maybe 15 years of breeding + engineering to get super exotic novel species."

Neuralink is one of many medical tech companies working on a so-called "brain-machine interfaces."

Competitors include those developing implants and non-invasive devices like headsets. Among them are Kernel, Synchron, Neurable and even Facebook in the U.S., CereGate in Germany and Mindmaze in Switzerland.

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Neuralink cofounder Max Hodak leaves Elon Musk's brain ...