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1/ A short thread on Musk's Neuralink venture. The focus here is on the article written by Ashlee Vance (@valleyhack) at the Bloomberg site (@business) about last night's Neuralink presentation. Vance, you will recall, wrote the (to date) definitive biography of Elon Musk. $TSLA
2/ Link to the article at the end of this short thread. But let's just focus on the lede: 
3/ One by one: "early online bank": Musk's was one of several; his venture lost money while he was at the helm; all his garbage code had to be rewritten; and success came only when he was ousted from management. A non-narcissist would worship daily at a statute of Peter Thiel.
4/ "solar roof tiles". Had been produced by others before Musk had $TSLA pump them to effect his SolarCity bailout. Not a commercially viable project. The very opposite: an obviously absurd, complex, costly failure, introduced when still in pilot project stage to forward a fraud.
5/ "an electric car". Ashlee, we had those 100 years ago. More recently GM developed the EV1, many of whose essential elements $TSLA adopted. Nissan was making the LEAF, and various hybrids were using electric motors, well before Tesla rolled out its first car.
6/ "a tunnel-digging machine": Stop embarrassing yourself, Ashlee. Musk showed off a smallish, second-hand tunnel digging machine, and embarrassed himself with his demonstration.
7/ "a reuseable rocket": Again, not a new idea, and been done before. The question has always been: is it commercially viable, given the huge reconditioning costs? We still await the answer. SpaceX's endless need for new financing suggests the answer is No.
8/ "and even the occasional electric car riding a rocket". Too bad they had to strip the massive battery out of that car for the SpaceX capsule to be able to escape the surly bonds of Earth. How electric is an electric car with no battery?
9/ Now, Ashlee is impressed with Elon's "tubby brown-and-white rat." Ashlee, here's the thing about EVERY Musk idea. Once experts in the particular area study the new idea, they conclude Musk is simply full of it.
10/ Here's an idea, Ashlee. Instead of assuming your usual slack-jawed attitude of Musk adoration, practice some real journalism. Call this guy and write a follow up story.
11/ Here's the link to the Bloomberg article. Sadly, an utterly credulous embarrassment, written by a guy whose reputation is founded on a quasi-hagiographic biography. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
