Problematic Autistic: Elon Musk

Just recently, Elon Musk was on Saturday Night Live and he revealed that he is autistic. Actually, he said he had Asperger’s syndrome. He claimed he was the first person with AS to host SNL, which the entire world knows is not true. He had been trying to develop a brain implant to try to cure autism and other neurodivergencies. He had even been sued by the developer of the Tesla electric car.

Bio

Elon Musk is 49 years old and he lives in Austin, Texas. He was born in South Africa on June 28, 1971. He often daydreamed and his parents had his hearing checked. His parents divorced when he was 10. Since then, he developed an interest in computers and taught himself how to program. He sold his first Game when he was 12 and called it Blastar. He sold it for $500. When he was in school, Musk was short and introverted. He was bullied until he was 15 and learned how to defend himself with karate and wrestling.

When he was 17, he moved to Canada to enroll in Queen’s University and to avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Musk became a Canadian citizen that year because he thought it would be easier to obtain US citizenship.

In 1992, Musk left Canada in order to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor of arts in economics and Science in physics. He was accepted to a PhD in energy physics at Stanford University but he opted to defer his seat in order to start his first business, a software company called Zip2. He became an American citizen in 2002.

He is the current CEO and chairman of Tesla and owns Space X. . Musk co-founded Tesla, is a lead designer and founder at SpaceX, is CEO of Neuralink, and launched the Boring Company. It is no secret that he has a lot of accomplishments.

How Musk Treats His Employee

COVID 19

When the COVID-19 outbreak started, Tesla Motors did not slow down. They built over 144,000 cars in 3 months. They intended to keep this momentum going. This type of momentum will break the employees, the people actually building the cars. These are the people making Musk the 2nd richest person in the world.

Tesla workers and advocates say that the company is risking the health and safety of the workers in pursuit of their precious numbers. Tesla is pressuring Chinese workers and American workers as well. Starting in August of 2020 the workers were working 60 hours per week, 6 days a week. 10-hour shifts. In addition to the long hours, Tesla continues to have significant worker turnover. With new people in and out of the factories, the risk of being infected with COVID-19 is greater.

One worker said, “Something’s gotta give, and soon.”

Musk is a COVID-19 skeptic. The reality of this pandemic and depression means workers are both economically vulnerable and less able to push back through organizing tactics.

The Tesla factory in Alameda County closed due to the health department’s orders. At this time, Musk questioned the virus’ mortality rate before defying the government and reopening this factory in May. If any attempt was made to push back with a legal or political method, Musk responded with a lawsuit.

Since this has happened, production has increased. Workers are being pushed past their limits. Working these long hours can cause heart disease, hypertension, anxiety, lack of sleep unhealthy habits. Musk is risking his workers’ lives.

Unions

A California judge ruled that Musk and other Tesla executives have been illegally sabotaging employees from forming a Union. They were cited in 12 company actions that violated US labor laws. This includes allowing security guards to harass workers who were passing out union pamphlets in the parking lot, banning employees from wearing pro-union shirts and buttons, interrogating union organizers, and firing them.

There is no financial penalty for practicing unfair labor practices. The only place that would hurt this company is in the wallet. If they violate the judge’s order, the National Labor Relations Board will have to petition a federal appeals court to enforce this order.

Disabled Employees and the Purchase of Twitter

A former engineer is suing Twitter due to Musk ending remote work. This was one of his first actions since purchasing the microblogging site.

Dmitry Bordodaenko filed a class action suit in San Francisco Federal Court on November 16, 2022. This suit stated that Twitter violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the California Fair Housing and Employment Act. This was after he was promised that he could continue to work remotely before Musk bought Twitter.

Bordodaenko is a cancer survivor and he is at extra risk for COVID. He is not working from the home office until the pandemic is over. He included this in the lawsuit. People should not have to risk their lives for their job, End of story.

He also was not given any information on how to request an accommodation exception. Days after Musk’s remote work request on Nov 15, he received an email from Twitter human resources.

“Hi, we regret to inform you that your employment is terminated effective immediately. your recent behavior has violated company policy,” the email read.

After he bought Twitter, the company started with 7,500 employees and it is down to 3,000 employees as of November 17, 2022. Employees who have stayed have been working over 80 hours per week and sleeping in their offices. Musk encouraged them to be “extremely hardcore” going forward.

“One of the promises was that the employees would be able to continue working remotely for at least a year after Musk’s acquisition of the company,” the attorneys wrote in the complaint. “This promise was made repeatedly to employees by managers, the CEO, and other staff.”

After Musk took over at the end of October 2022, Borodaenko said that the promise changed and that he was wrongfully terminated shortly after.

During a Nov 10, 2022 meeting Musk said, “Let me be crystal clear if people do not return to the office when they are able to return to the office – they cannot remain with the company.”

After this, remote work was used as an incentive for “exceptional work” with a manager’s approval.

Brain Implant

Elon Musk developed Neuralink. It was supposed to be a brain implant to make connecting a brain to a computer to be as simplistic as LASIK surgery to “cure brain ailments and someday help humans compete with artificial intelligence.” Their goal is to have a computer chip, the size of a large coin, implanted into the human brain by a robot surgeon.

This would be able to connect the brain to a smartphone VIA Bluetooth. This chip was supposed to “fix” autism and schizophrenia. “Neuralink, I think at first, will solve a lot of brain-related diseases,” said Musk. “Could be anything from, like autism, schizophrenia, memory loss- like, everyone experiences memory loss at certain points in age. Parents can’t remember their kids’ names, and that kind of thing.”

Musk says that this device will record and stimulate brain activity. He expected that it would be ready before 2020.

A neuroscientist, Randy Bruno, who implants similar devices in mice says this is very unlikely. Dr. Bruno thinks a Neuralink control system for bionic parts in paralyzed patients could be possible. (I cannot speak for people who are paralyzed. I am not sure about their feelings on this.)

He also said,”If you talk to any neurosurgeon, they will tell you that that they would only undertake brain surgery of any kind if it was absolutely essential.” An actual brain surgeon said that no neurosurgeon would perform unnecessary brain surgery.

Bruno says, “The deficit is brain-wide. It’s not like adding information into the brain via some interface or monitoring what many neurons are going to do, alone, can cure a disease.”

Autism is not a disease.

Bruno does not believe that Neuralink can do much for schizophrenia or memory loss either. “Its not like there’s a small number of neurons sitting in this part of my cortex and if only we could route information around them or bypass them or turn them off, you’re going to fix the problem. Many brain diseases have a very specific genetic defect or multiple genetic defects. And there’s a very biological basis for the problem.”

Saturday Night Live

The autistic community and the world is talking about Saturday Night Live with Elon Musk. Musk stole Mother’s Day from autistic moms, myself included. We wanted to enjoy Mother’s Day but we had to process this announcement. Many autistics, including myself, had a feeling that he is autistic. He had the guff to say that he was the first “person with aspergers” to be on SNL. This is a bald-faced lie. Dan Ackroyd appeared on SNL 18 years ago. He has been openly autistic for a long time.

There were many problems with his appearance. The first one is obvious. He used Aspergers syndrome to separate himself from the rest of the autistic community. He isn’t better than the rest of the autistic community because he is an “aspie.” This shows he will not let go of the Aspergers label, even when the history of Hans Asperger is deeply seeded in hate, eugenics, ableism, and antisemitism. This is the essence of aspie supremacy.

Aspergers is also a functioning label. According to the National Centre for Mental Health in the UK, “These labels were typically added as descriptors suggesting the level of support an autistic person would need, but the reality is that they shed no light on the needs of an autistic person; the word ‘functioning’ is a misnomer.”

“High functioning is not how an autistic person experiences being autistic, it’s how society experiences the autistic person.”

During a segment of the show, he gestured the white power symbol which the Anti-Defamation League declared a hate symbol in 2019. For those who don’t know, fun fact. The white power symbol is also an asshole in American Sign Language.

There were people who disagree and call it a prank. This prank was targeting progressives into believing that everyday gestures including this one were secret symbols of white supremacy. The ADL maintains that the issue is that white supremacists later joined the trolling campaign, leading the organization to classify the symbol as a hate symbol.

The community isn’t denying that he is autistic. The autistic community is embarrassed to have such a member who disregards human rights as part of our community. He does not represent the community as a whole.

Rise of Antisemitism After Musk Acquires Twitter

Twitter has always had an antisemitism problem. It has hashtags such as #holohaux and #KillTheJews on the site. Even personally, I have been told that my purpose in life was to be a lamp covering when trying to re-educate these antisemites.

Musk started his reign with a series of antisemitic tweets. One was a photo of a Wehrmacht soldier. The photo, arranged as a meme and captioned.” Three unread messages,” shows a Nazi soldier carrying a carrier pigeon cage strapped to his back during the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. In a related message, he wrote, “How times have changed.”

He offered no explanation of these tweets.

How times have changed pic.twitter.com/gCxUkZ4kZC
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

According to the Anti-Defamation League, after Musk takes over, antisemitism on the site spiked, For a while, Jewish groups thought Musk was listening about antisemitic content until the Kanye West situation happened. After losing a lot of endorsements due to antisemitic rants, the ADL met with Musk.

Three days after this meeting, there was a “prolific surge” of antisemitic content. Terms associated with Jew were tweeted over 5,000 times per hour. “Most engaged tweets are overtly antisemitic.”

West’s and many other bigots’ Twitter accounts have been reinstated for “free speech.”

Due to this, the ADL is calling upon all advertisers to suspend their relationship with Twitter while offering harsh criticism of Musk’s leadership. “At this point in time, we are calling on advertisers to pause their spend globally until it becomes clear whether Twitter remains committed to being a safe place for advertisers as well as society overall.”

“We met with Elon Musk earlier this week to express our profound concerns about some of his plans and the spike in toxic content after his acquisition. Since the last time, hate and disinformation has been proliferated, and he has taken actions that make us fear that the worst is yet to come.”

The ADL Vice President Yael Eisenstat said that she did not want Twitter to be “a hate amplifier.”

Kanye back on Twitter doing more antisemitism while my shul is shut down due to anti-Jewish terrorism. Love this for us. Thanks, Elon.
— Tacob Jaber (@jacobtaber) November 4, 2022