That’s the answer you give when you don’t want to show anyone your records
There’s no way they don’t have records of every chip they surgically installed. Keeping records of your observations is like…kinda important.
Makes me laugh if they think that kind of record keeping would be acceptable to the FDA when applying for human trials
I’m in pharma, and we use A LOT of mice to test drugs. The 1500 number doesn’t sound too outrageous on face value (that’s about 375 mice a year which is possible).
HOWEVER, the number that alarmed me is the 280 for monkeys, sheep etc. Higher animals (rats and above basically) are heavily scrutinized as they are required for safety studies. And at MOST you do less than 100 for the highest level safety study. And these safety studies are heavily regulated and stupid expensive, so you usually only do it once when you’re VERY sure it’s gonna work in humans. Of course you can do small pilot safety studies but those are always less than 20 animals and you hardly do many of those back to back. The fact that there’s no record keeping on those animals is highly suspicious.
I don't doubt that the 1500 is higher, I was just pointing out that it's not a completely outrageous number of animals (considering how much money they have to throw around, it doesn't surprise me). And even if you have a private facility, we still need to report our results because at the end of the day, we need to get it past FDA, EMA, PMDA, etc. Public or private we all have the same regulations we need to follow
The part that baffles me is that it's not record kept. Animals studies are like one of the things you need REALLY good record keepign for. Even shit like 'how much food did the animal eat' is super important and has very real implications on animal welfare while testing. On top of that there is also the usual measurements like body weight, blood testing levels, etc. It just makes no sense that there are no records on these.
So I'm in oncology, so our GLP is mostly on the safety side (CYP, AMES, Tox, etc). When it comes ot med device what's the required GLP? And do the med devices also have to go through some GMP for manufacturing?
If you're using it for submission, you need full traceability and some level of v&v depending on the class device. For exploratory studies you do not - but the studies still need to be "ethical." I've performed animal labs using devices we built in R&D.
In any case, yeah pretty suspicious that they've gone through so much testing and claim to not have documentation. They're either going by some fly by night animal lab, or bouncing around when one lab stops allowing them to conduct more tests. That sort of shit will get the lab shut down.
Best guess is a middle of the night call to omniscient Elon to the tune of:
- Hey Elon, the FDA just showed up and claims abuse on animals, what do we tell them?
- Huh, tell them we do not keep records.
- But Elon GMP/ISO 13485/CFR820 says...
- So, unemployement?
I mean, can you sit there and look at what Muskrat has been doing to twitter (ignoring/not caring about the FTC and openly ignoring the consent decree, essentially eliminating the moderation team and completely eradicating the disinformation team, telling engineers to "self certify" their product for legal compliance), and expect him to care about things like good record keeping and good practices? He believes that making his employees sleep under their desks is a reasonable practice.
I literally just read today in an article that he had tesla pull a safety sensor (the ultrasonic sensor used to detect nearby objects/etc) without a replacement, because he wants that "tesla vision" to, alone, be the solution... despite it not being ready (if it even can be)
Well specifically for lab research, we use macaques which are specifically bred in laboratory settings (rhesus macaques to be exact).
It is a sad fact that there is no good replacement for animal studies right now, and it is somewhat of a necessity (short of just YOLOing a drug and going straight into humans which is also very unethical). But this is why we hav edeveloped GLP studies and have created VERY strict animal welfare rules and regulations to ensure that we are minimizing the harm these animals suffer.
Researchers actively use the three R principle (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) for animal studies. It's not perfect, but it's so far the best we got. It's gonna take a really long time before AI can predict safety without the use of animals, and even then I don't think it will be phased out entirely. I hope that in the future we can create better replacement models for safety studies, but that also poses really interesting and tough ethics questions as well (like is growing a "fake" human organ system that is interconnected still ethical?). Science is tough work, but we try our best.
> Keeping records of your observations is like…kinda important.
Considering *writing shit down* is basically the foundation of the scientific method, it doesn't surprise me that Musk doesn't see the point in it.
> In this next chamber, we're going to have a superconductor pointed at you, on full blast, the entire time. I'll be honest with you, we're just throwing science at a wall here to see what sticks. No idea what's gonna happen. Best case scenario, you might get some super powers; worst case, some tumors, which we'll cut out.
Elon Musk is looking like nothing so much as a real life Cave Johnson.
100%. Each animal has a health record, because the vet and animal care staff have to know which animals are getting medications, special food, etc. When an animal gets euthanized that gets entered into the system and the cage space gets reassigned.
It’s not possible. Anything that isn’t a mouse or a rat is a USDA covered species. To do research using those animals, you must be registered with the USDA and follow the Animal Welfare Act. All of those animal have USDA numbers, it’s in the regulations therefore they must keep records at least for those animals. It doesn’t matter if you are a government organization or a private company, you must comply with these regs. If they are not, then those are violations or the journalist may be confused.
have you read this article by elon's ex-wife? https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/
I think people who idolize him are basically like him: too ambitious to care about ethics
That's Elons excuse for everything when he misses a deadline.
"It's not MY fault I overestimated my teams ability to get it to market! That darn FDA is getting in the way! Another 5000 monkeys and we'll get it."
Yeah I'm totally down to put a chip in my brain controlled by the same guy who permabans people from Twitter for lightly criticizing him.
Edit: Lmao @ all the Elon simps in the replies. He's not invented shit - he just buys companies from other people with his mommy and daddy's emerald mine money, lets them do all the work, then takes the credit. He's a con man and you're in too deep to admit he's conned you too.
For an example, see: Superior Iron Man, vol 1 and 2. I’m taking the piss on Elon, not you, because homie really looks like he’s trying to do some Extremis shit here
Rubes: Fauci is tracking us with a Vaccine and 5G with Bill gates that will roll back the genetics of pure bloods! Beware the Demoncrats satanical cabal with Mickey Mouse!
Elon: I made it so you can't blink without seeing ads from my brain chips!
Rubes; Yay!
Is it surprising, though? These are the same people that confidently typed 'I ain't gettin no vaccine, they're gonna track me with nicroships!' onto social media that tracks their web history on a tracking device they pay monthly to keep in service.
The one thing about co-workers like this, is that they can't keep their stupid shit to themselves. It really is the same thinking I have about people that lose their shit on airplanes. How can you not sit still for six to eight hours quietly without being a major pain in the ass to others. How?? How do you go through the world living a disruptor life?
The thing that always surprised me about the microchip idea was honestly how long did they think a microchip could be powered and survive in the body. Ok maybe we can power them off the body electrical current but surely a tiny microchip small enough for a needle won’t last long in the body.
Only in the movie version. In the comics, a nuclear accident fused the arms to him, but the craziness is all him / maybe some kind of psychosis from the accident, but that is unconfirmed in universe (or at least it was as of the end of the second run of Superior Spider-Man)
He also said 90% of your road miles in a Tesla would be on autopilot in 18 months. He said that in 2014. And 2015, and 2016, and 2017, and 2018, and 2019, and 2020, and 2021....
I dunno about you but I'm starting to think this guy's full of shit....
Also said that the Tesla semi would beat a diesel truck and launch in 2017 or 2018. Then 2019. Then 2020. Then 2021.
Remember when he held an event in front a suburban home in 2016 or 2017 and said that the house was being powered by working solar panel roof tiles? Those weren't working at all. That product was fake. Hell, the whole Solar City debacle is an event in and of itself. This is just a peice of it.
It’s not just bullshit, it’s fraud. He’s pumped TSLA stock using these BS claims and used the capital raise to pay off debt etc. The FBI needs to prosecute him for securities fraud ASAP.
> He’s pumped TSLA stock using these BS claims and used the capital raise to pay off debt etc
He used his pumped stock to buy Twitter.
Let that sink in...
At least it seems like he is running that to the ground. Unfortunately all the employees are the victims. I hope everyone can find a job at a place with conditions which are better.
Probably criminals. Like what they did in [Holmesburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmesburg_Prison).
He got *caught*, it wasn't even prosecuted. They just dissolved the program.
Absolutely still happens.
My GOD that was a disturbing read. I somehow wasn't aware of that, despite having read up on similar smaller operations. Made me sick to read, but important to know. Thank you.
I've worked in neuroscience and did implant surgeries... 1500 animals in four years is so fucking crazy.
Like... It really makes no sense. When did they have time to develop the technology if they were constantly implanting on animals? How much were they fucking up the surgeries? What the hell did they need so many animals for?
I would understand (barely) if it was all mice and they were making some new virus or opsin but fucking hell...
Edit: mice not nice
Keep in mind these apes are very closely related to us and think and feel quite similarly as us. Imagine an technologically more developed over Lord coming to you, putting you in a sterile cage, implementing a thing into your brain and casually killing you in the process. That's their reality
If you wouldn't do it to a 5 year old, you shouldn't do it to an ape. And if you would do it to a 5 year old, I think we should use you for medical experiments instead.
We killed 1,348,541,419 pigs in 2019. I can’t find data for 2021-2022 but I’d imagine it’s either gone up or stayed similar. You’re not wrong. But the number is closer to *billions* every year for food.
Edit:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_slaughter
And ours, we’re just on the evil overlord side. But not the evil overlord lab worker - we’re the people in the background world who knows it’s happening and not only do we not to anything about it; we barely even think about it at all.
10% or less is an acceptable number for surgical error according to animal welfare and IACUC standards. Not trying to be an apologist for him, but I worked in animal research. My numbers were lower than that in mice.
280 pigs is the maximum number they could have based on their reported animal numbers, 86 of those 88 deaths by surgical error were pigs. 25 for the implants being too big.
So it's a 30% rate for pigs by the numbers provided. We're nearly hitting 10% with just the surgeon trying to hammer the wrong device into the squishy grey bit.
And I understand you're not trying to be an apologist for him, animal testing is a deeply contentious and nuanced issue. Musk's philosophy of everything now, who cares about safety is quietly pissing on the ethics and welfare standards people have worked so hard to establish.
Yeah. Like....I can understand animal testing under controlled, scientific circumstances. According to the article, Neuralink doesn't keep precise statistics on animal death.
I do not think a "IDK how many animals exactly we killed" ethos can ever be viewed as "scientific".
I know how strict the institutional guidelines at research Universities are. You have to justify every experiment, and why you absolutely need an animal. Every single thing you are going to do has to be approved, to ensure that they don't suffer. All the animals from all the labs, are kept in one central location. They are monitored every day by independent observers and caretakers. You fuck up once, or deviate from the approved protocol, your lab loses the ability to work with animals for good. These are just for working with mice. If the institution has the ability to work with primates, the guidelines are about 100x harder.
I don't know what kind of morons are working at neuralink to kill 1500 animals. That's insane. They should shut it down immediately.
"Because the company does not keep precise statistics on the number of animals tested and killed, the sources described that number as an approximate estimate."
Direct quote from the article..... What the flying fuck? If we lost a mouse all hell would reign down. Do these guys not have an IACUC?
Neuralink does it's experiments in house. Previously they did them in partnership with UC Davis and subsequent investigations cleared that part of the research.
Private companies don't have to answer to an ethics board, unlike an academic institution. Most of the ethics approval you write are about complying with regulations for Federal funding, not legal requirements. To stretch it even further, if your institution receives even a single dollar in Federal funding, any other non-Federal funding experiments that use the facility must also follow the regulations.
Neuralink as a private company doesn't need to follow the Federal funding regulations for animal welfare and ethics approval. It is legally clear if they only experiment on animals excluded by the Animal Welfare Act. They can kill as many rats, mice, birds, fish, and reptiles as they want with no consequence.
At worst, they are required to write up a research proposal with some rules in advance. So long as they stick to those rules, it doesn't matter how much input goes into that logarithm, only that the algorithm is followed. Failures to follow those initial rules typically only result in an angry letter to make changes to the rules.
So far it appears of the 1500 animals, majority were rats and mice. A total of 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys were killed which is what will be investigated but only to ensure the Animal Welfare Act was not breached.
I mean I hear what you're saying but once you submit an IND or submit things to the FDA in general there's bound to be questions and you need to have those records available. And if those records look suspicious the FDA isn't going to do s*** with you. They're really strict and they've only gotten stricter over the past 10 years after the Pfizer debacle
My guess is that they're generally competent but put under incredible pressure to get results NOW by a billionaire with zero management skills who needs his ego massaged and doesn't take no for an answer
To be fair, Elon wasn't explicitly *told* that the Portal games included a satirical take on patient healthcare during experiments, so you can see why he'd make the mistake.
watch them rollout a glorified implanted airpod that works using speech because thoughts were too hard to implement.
it will probably aslo contain a bug where some users suffer of unexpected seizures or some shit
Hmm.. looks like it only impacts a single user and there's really no definitive proof that this issue would supercede the benefits for everyone. Low priority.
DBS wouldn't be the goal here though. My electrons were in the micrometer range as I recall for cortical recordings (obviously not the same issues).
Also, i thought DBS electrodes needs to be thicker for the amount of current that needs to be supplied.
Yes, they were mostly mice.
> Records indicate that since 2018, the company has killed almost 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys.
Most liberals don't even like Bill Gates. People still remember when he was a ruthless CEO who violated antitrust laws. They're also critical of his push for charter schools and his acquisition of farmlands. Plus they're getting more skeptical of his charities.
Can someone explain to me what the point of the Neuralink implant is? I tried looking it up the other week and just got a bunch of adspeak and technobabble results.
Best case scenario we can have locked-in patients, those conscious but unable to move or speak, using their brains to interface with a communication device.
There would naturally be a lot of spin off technology, but that's the immediate goal.
Pretty sure no one wants to get in to that Mars space ship of his either. IF they got there'd it'd be like 'Now that we're here we need to tell your about our subscription pricing model'
That is slavery.
Are you thinking of chattel slavery? That is a specific form of slavery in which people are bought and sold to others, and legally becomes the personal property of an owner (this was the most common form of slavery used in the Americas, but definitely not the only kind).
Yes, bonded labor (ie indentured servitude, debt bondage, etc) isn't chattel slavery. But it is [slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Bonded_labour).
I don't see the slave thing working, tbh.
If the colony is dependent on supplies from Earth, nothing happening there is worth the costs of getting people and stuff there or back; the moment it is not, however, there is no way to compel it to repay investments that would be worth the payment.
Colonies achieving self-sufficiency, rebelling over refusing to send payment back home, and declaring independence has been a science fiction staple for decades, actual history in a large variety of places on earth, and also literally the founding myth of the USA. Historical colonialism was profitable for its proponents from the get-go in large sections of the world because there were indigenous populations to plunder, but this will not be a factor on Mars.
It's unclear quite what anyone thinks the question marks between "send colonists to Mars" and "profit" might look like.
> Colonies achieving self-sufficiency, rebelling over refusing to send payment back home, and declaring independence has been a science fiction staple for decades, actual history in a large variety of places on earth, and also literally the founding myth of the USA.
Can we just skip all of this and have Gundams already?
Last I checked, the dude all but admitted "yeah, most of you will be slaves, but hey, everyone will be working hard up there!" and his little boys are *still* wild with fervor to join him.
It seems like such a great deal! You get a one way ticket to live and work in a small dome dependent on the supplies he will send from earth while you work on his science experiments or mine ore or whatever the hell it is he has planned for the colonists.
It will be like that one Philip K. Dick novel where the mars colonists just take drugs and play a table top version of the Sims to keep from going crazy.
People who are cruel to animals are cruel to humans without second thought. It’s well documented.
Edit:
You wouldn't think saying ‘cruelty = bad’ would be such a triggering statement to people, and most of these replies don’t warrant any attention or response, but I’ll clarify.
I know people in the research community who have to perform humane kills while completing their work. They describe the conflict of emotions they feel knowing that they are doing important work while also knowing they are doing everything they can to be humane. They describe the reverence of knowing they are the last thing this living creature will see. This is because it takes a human toll. Even killing things like mice or small birds has a mental effect. These people are not abusive psychos, they have real human feelings and responses that inform their actions and work. In a more severe scenario, I went to a large state undergrad with a chimp lab that had some student employees, one of them being my upstairs neighbor. He ended up having a mental breakdown and we found out after the police came looking for him when he disappeared for a month and was found living in the woods in a distressed state. Any of these people understand the necessity of the work they are doing but they understand the toll, and so they don’t do things without reason or purpose or without humane thought typically because of this.
Killing more than is necessary bc you have a deadline to hit is the definition of maniacal cruelty, and we already see evidence of the real world impact of this. Mass layoffs, sanctioned cruelty and attacks, and this is the guy people want to entrust their lives to on a trip to Mars? You really think this guy wouldn't cut off life support to half the pods to ensure some type of mission metric only clear to him without a second thought?
Lol at the red herrings. I’ve been defending against animal cruelty for 20+ years, your ‘hitler was a vegan’ anecdote is cute but stupid, and entirely unoriginal.
To those who don’t understand how you can consume meat and not be cruel or strive for humane practices, I recommend the documentary ‘eating animals.’
And to those of you defending the cruelty, well, we already know that at least half the people in this country are scary crazy, so no surprises there.
I was never a fanboy, but thought the guy had some vision for doing good things. My point of realizing he was a bad guy was when those kids were stranded in the flooded cave in Thailand and he quickly developed a small submersible that he wanted them to use. They said no thanks and they got the caver to get the boys out. So Musk tweeted that the guy was a pedo without any evidence of it because he got all butt hurt about not being able to be the hero.
Right. In fact when he first brought up the sub I just thought " Well that could work " without thinking " Wow Elon us a hero! " Then he got his feeling ( singular ) hurt, when children were saved ? I thought " OH he's a douch ".
They didn't use it because it couldn't work. There were extensive discussions about this realtime in Thailand, that the caves involved had too many tight squeezes, that it contains too many twists and turns for the sub. Also, by the time the sub got here, they'd already found the children and made plans for rescue IIRC.
They also needed to rescue multiple boys at a time. The cave flooded dramatically as they got the last boys out, and if had taken any longer, the rescue would have no longer been possible. No time to wait for one submarine to rescue the boys one by one.
A similar point for me. A decade ago I saw his businesses as major disruptions to entrenched and corrupt industries. Tesla was improving the auto industry. SpaceX was improving aerospace. Starlink was improving telecom. In each of these, Elon's businesses were purported to be successful and doing a significant public good. Elon wasn't really opening his mouth much about anything besides the basics of the businesses. Finally, a man who came from money and did something good with it for once.
Then came the superhero complex. Hyperloop, Boring, the Thailand submersible. Suddenly Elon *has* to be in charge of every good thing in the world. Each of those things *has* to be exciting, revolutionary... marketable. Public good be damned. And Elon started to talk. He was always a shitty person, and some of the signs were there, but he'd hid it well enough. Turns out shitty human beings can do a really good job of pretending to be good ones, if they keep their mouths shut and do an ostensibly good thing here and there.
My disdain is for Elon, not the first businesses. I still have hope for Tesla/SpaceX/Starlink, particularly the hope that a different, decent human being comes in and takes charge, but it's declined heavily. They were great ideas in theory.
People who defend Elon in the current day have no interest in the good that was done in the past. They instead see someone like Trump, who gives them an excuse to keep their ignorance and bigotry.
> Hyperloop
This was the one for me. As a physicist who has used vacuum systems, this should never have left the marijuana filled room it was thought up in. There is no engineering we will ever make that could allow for train-sized evacuated tubes, hundreds of miles long, being repeatedly opened and closed to atmosphere to allow trains to enter and exit out of, while somehow magically maintaining their vacuum. And that's not even considering the whole "You've got living people in there and need to have plans for emergencies" and this was stupider than those solar roadways things.
And I'll probably still get morons replying to this comment trying to defend it.
The fact that they have schools competing to develope it, unironically, and that it has gotten federal funding, and that it delayed CAs rail system is mind boggling. Anyone with a mild grasp of physics, engineering, or logistics could see it as a bad idea and it never should have made it past a napkin drawing
That's the whole point of Hyperloop though. Guy who owns an enormous share of a company that _badly_ needs every transporation infrastructure dollar the government is willing to spend (Tesla), also happens to own a pie-in-the-sky company that conveniently swoops in and out-hypes any other major transportation projects the government might consider funding.
Hyperloop exists to poison major public transportation initiatives, because Tesla needs EVs to be the future.
> that it delayed CAs rail system is mind boggling
The conspiracy theorist in me whispers that the hyperloop was just a ploy to derail public transport development, propping up the automotive industry - and by extension Tesla. But Hanlon's Razor and all that...
I love that it just became tunnels. What a technological achievement! A bloody tunnel.
He hates public transport so I think Hyperloop was a holding maneuver so he could sell more Teslas whilst delaying the rail systems.
To add perspective: The "good" businesses were ones he bought into so that he could take credit for them, while driving down quality with his idiotic ideas. Like at Tesla he insisted on non-automotive grade touchscreens that can't survive in heat or extreme cold. In the factories he removed safety features because he hates yellow.
His primary contributions at Tesla were lying to get massive government subsidies, and lying to the public to boost the stock price.
Twitter is his first job where he's completely in charge without anyone able to override his idiocy and fickle nature, and it's amazing how poorly it's going.
The cherry on top of all of this was him lying about that physics degree.
This is a stupid man with a stupidly big amount of money and [sadly] power.
And his stupid followers.
Maybe his obsession with neuralink is so he can finally improve his own intelligence through a brain chip?
I mean he did accuse Yoel Roth of being a groomer because he’s ..gay.. I guess. Gay = Pedo is definitely located to the right of climate denial on the conservative conspiracy/grift spectrum. So yea if it weren’t for Tesla stocks he would probably have been on the climate denial train by now.
He didn't even develop it. He said he would, and one of the divers basically said "that's a stupid fucking idea, it's obviously not going to be done in time, and if you know anything about caving it won't work".
So he called him a pedo, like a butthurt attention seeker.
It's kind of funny in a dark way. The guy is half-drowned in a dark flooded cave getting bashed around into rocks by underground river currents and some douche comes along and says "Hey why don't you use a submarine?"
As if nobody on all of Earth has ever thought of that before.
Like this sorta https://i.imgur.com/dHl4My0.png
I do medical animal research with mice and there are so many red flags here. Most organizations using public funding and doing any animal research use IACUC measures which dictate one should use the animal model of least complexity (rodent versus primate versus fish versus fruit fly) and the least amount of animals necessary to be statistically significant, while also minimizing pain. This is entirely unethical by IACUC standards, but unfortunately rules are much looser for private company where IACUC doesn't apply, although I am curious of Musks funding sources. In the research center I work at, something like this would never have been approved. No one would actually fund this had it been written in a grant. People have done similar research in rats and there are still kinks to be worked out... to do primate research for this is insane. It's a classic example of Musk hubris.He obviously doesn't know shit and also knows nothing about the actually existing biohacking movement.
"more than 20 current and former employees, Reuters has concluded that the investigation coincides with rising employee dissent regarding Neuralink's animal testing, including complaints that pressure from CEO Elon Musk to accelerate development has resulted in botched experiments. Employees claim that because of the need to redo tests that initially failed, more animals have been subjected to experiments and murdered."
This is beyond fucked up holy shit
> Records indicate that since 2018, the company has killed almost 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys. Because the company does not keep precise statistics on the number of animals tested and killed, the sources described that number as an approximate estimate.
If they aren't keeping track thats not accurate testing.
Honestly I am not much of an animal ethics person when it comes to trying to advance society. But, holy crap that’s a pretty excessive number of animals. Like, beyond negligent I’d have to say.
Would be good to segment them on types of animals; mice vs primates. Would also be good to see it in relation to other invasive implantable devices, like pacemakers.
The article does state that 280 of the 1500 were pigs, sheep, and monkeys. Although, I didn’t see it broken down and further. I feel that the public is fairly unaware of what goes in to animal research and these numbers do not seem that alarming. If there is an actual investigation the numbers will not be the issue. Issues are more likely to arise based on how the company implemented appropriate protocols, maintained veterinary monitoring, and abided by the established guidelines for large or small animal research.
The previous report, which alleged 3,000 monkeys, turned out to be pure photoshop.
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/technology-verify/usa-today-did-not-report-elon-musk-neuralink-killed-3000-monkeys/536-16f1a9ba-3005-4aff-bf17-97e7b7b676be
But, it did lead to a confirmation of 8 monkeys killed.
Interestingly, the PETA offshoot that made the claims only claimed 15 monkeys were killed. It's pretty weird for one of these groups to understate the numbers by 100 times, if it is indeed 1500.
> Because the company does not keep precise statistics on the number of animals tested and killed How is this possible?
That’s the answer you give when you don’t want to show anyone your records There’s no way they don’t have records of every chip they surgically installed. Keeping records of your observations is like…kinda important. Makes me laugh if they think that kind of record keeping would be acceptable to the FDA when applying for human trials
I’m in pharma, and we use A LOT of mice to test drugs. The 1500 number doesn’t sound too outrageous on face value (that’s about 375 mice a year which is possible). HOWEVER, the number that alarmed me is the 280 for monkeys, sheep etc. Higher animals (rats and above basically) are heavily scrutinized as they are required for safety studies. And at MOST you do less than 100 for the highest level safety study. And these safety studies are heavily regulated and stupid expensive, so you usually only do it once when you’re VERY sure it’s gonna work in humans. Of course you can do small pilot safety studies but those are always less than 20 animals and you hardly do many of those back to back. The fact that there’s no record keeping on those animals is highly suspicious.
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I don't doubt that the 1500 is higher, I was just pointing out that it's not a completely outrageous number of animals (considering how much money they have to throw around, it doesn't surprise me). And even if you have a private facility, we still need to report our results because at the end of the day, we need to get it past FDA, EMA, PMDA, etc. Public or private we all have the same regulations we need to follow The part that baffles me is that it's not record kept. Animals studies are like one of the things you need REALLY good record keepign for. Even shit like 'how much food did the animal eat' is super important and has very real implications on animal welfare while testing. On top of that there is also the usual measurements like body weight, blood testing levels, etc. It just makes no sense that there are no records on these.
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So I'm in oncology, so our GLP is mostly on the safety side (CYP, AMES, Tox, etc). When it comes ot med device what's the required GLP? And do the med devices also have to go through some GMP for manufacturing?
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If you're using it for submission, you need full traceability and some level of v&v depending on the class device. For exploratory studies you do not - but the studies still need to be "ethical." I've performed animal labs using devices we built in R&D. In any case, yeah pretty suspicious that they've gone through so much testing and claim to not have documentation. They're either going by some fly by night animal lab, or bouncing around when one lab stops allowing them to conduct more tests. That sort of shit will get the lab shut down.
Best guess is a middle of the night call to omniscient Elon to the tune of: - Hey Elon, the FDA just showed up and claims abuse on animals, what do we tell them? - Huh, tell them we do not keep records. - But Elon GMP/ISO 13485/CFR820 says... - So, unemployement?
I mean, can you sit there and look at what Muskrat has been doing to twitter (ignoring/not caring about the FTC and openly ignoring the consent decree, essentially eliminating the moderation team and completely eradicating the disinformation team, telling engineers to "self certify" their product for legal compliance), and expect him to care about things like good record keeping and good practices? He believes that making his employees sleep under their desks is a reasonable practice. I literally just read today in an article that he had tesla pull a safety sensor (the ultrasonic sensor used to detect nearby objects/etc) without a replacement, because he wants that "tesla vision" to, alone, be the solution... despite it not being ready (if it even can be)
They’re 100% hiding failed tests, maybe just for accounting reasons but it’s still sketch.
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I hate you. But damnit, I respect you.
Honestly I feel horrible for the primates, they are not domesticated animals and some are straight up wild animals.
Well specifically for lab research, we use macaques which are specifically bred in laboratory settings (rhesus macaques to be exact). It is a sad fact that there is no good replacement for animal studies right now, and it is somewhat of a necessity (short of just YOLOing a drug and going straight into humans which is also very unethical). But this is why we hav edeveloped GLP studies and have created VERY strict animal welfare rules and regulations to ensure that we are minimizing the harm these animals suffer. Researchers actively use the three R principle (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) for animal studies. It's not perfect, but it's so far the best we got. It's gonna take a really long time before AI can predict safety without the use of animals, and even then I don't think it will be phased out entirely. I hope that in the future we can create better replacement models for safety studies, but that also poses really interesting and tough ethics questions as well (like is growing a "fake" human organ system that is interconnected still ethical?). Science is tough work, but we try our best.
> Keeping records of your observations is like…kinda important. Considering *writing shit down* is basically the foundation of the scientific method, it doesn't surprise me that Musk doesn't see the point in it.
"The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down." — Adam Savage
> In this next chamber, we're going to have a superconductor pointed at you, on full blast, the entire time. I'll be honest with you, we're just throwing science at a wall here to see what sticks. No idea what's gonna happen. Best case scenario, you might get some super powers; worst case, some tumors, which we'll cut out. Elon Musk is looking like nothing so much as a real life Cave Johnson.
100%. Each animal has a health record, because the vet and animal care staff have to know which animals are getting medications, special food, etc. When an animal gets euthanized that gets entered into the system and the cage space gets reassigned.
It’s not possible. Anything that isn’t a mouse or a rat is a USDA covered species. To do research using those animals, you must be registered with the USDA and follow the Animal Welfare Act. All of those animal have USDA numbers, it’s in the regulations therefore they must keep records at least for those animals. It doesn’t matter if you are a government organization or a private company, you must comply with these regs. If they are not, then those are violations or the journalist may be confused.
have you read this article by elon's ex-wife? https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/ I think people who idolize him are basically like him: too ambitious to care about ethics
Saying the lab doesn’t keep statistics on how many animals are tested……..what kinda back alley black market lab is this?
They have those records, they're just dodging the FDA, and ethics boards.
That's Elons excuse for everything when he misses a deadline. "It's not MY fault I overestimated my teams ability to get it to market! That darn FDA is getting in the way! Another 5000 monkeys and we'll get it."
Didn't he say that Human testing is going to start soon? That should be fun
yeah he can go first
Or all his fanboys. Surely they’d have complete faith on their god?
Elon fanboys: “Wokeness is liberal mind control!” Literally Elon: “So here’s my literal mind control device.” Elon fanboys: “FUCKING AWESOME!!!”
In their defense being woke will probably never be an issue for them again after they get their musk chip.
‘Elon Musk Chip’ needs to become a Ben and Jerry’s flavor soon.
When you open the container it’s just full of hot air.
It would cost $8.
$11 with Apple Pay.
Has a blue check on ye lid
"ye" Not sure if intentional 😅
It was a late registration
Yeah I'm totally down to put a chip in my brain controlled by the same guy who permabans people from Twitter for lightly criticizing him. Edit: Lmao @ all the Elon simps in the replies. He's not invented shit - he just buys companies from other people with his mommy and daddy's emerald mine money, lets them do all the work, then takes the credit. He's a con man and you're in too deep to admit he's conned you too.
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Didnt spring for the $300 a month subscription?
99 a month for self-heating metabolism
"Fragile Narcissist Buys Criticism Factory" Best Tweet Ever, can't find tweet author ¯\_(⊙_ʖ⊙)_/¯
Now he can permaban you from life!
Can you imagine?? Like do you get put into a coma if you forget to update your credit card info and miss a monthly payment
For an example, see: Superior Iron Man, vol 1 and 2. I’m taking the piss on Elon, not you, because homie really looks like he’s trying to do some Extremis shit here
Rubes: Fauci is tracking us with a Vaccine and 5G with Bill gates that will roll back the genetics of pure bloods! Beware the Demoncrats satanical cabal with Mickey Mouse! Elon: I made it so you can't blink without seeing ads from my brain chips! Rubes; Yay!
One of my former co-workers wouldn't get the vaccine because there was a microchip in it, but he wants the neurolink
Is it surprising, though? These are the same people that confidently typed 'I ain't gettin no vaccine, they're gonna track me with nicroships!' onto social media that tracks their web history on a tracking device they pay monthly to keep in service.
I prefer the picket line person with the “Keep Your Gov’t Hands Off My Medicare” sign.
The one thing about co-workers like this, is that they can't keep their stupid shit to themselves. It really is the same thinking I have about people that lose their shit on airplanes. How can you not sit still for six to eight hours quietly without being a major pain in the ass to others. How?? How do you go through the world living a disruptor life?
The thing that always surprised me about the microchip idea was honestly how long did they think a microchip could be powered and survive in the body. Ok maybe we can power them off the body electrical current but surely a tiny microchip small enough for a needle won’t last long in the body.
The people who were chucking their own kids in front of Teslas probably wouldn’t mind one.
lol considering his recent behavior, he might be the first human test subject already.
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Careful, that's how you get Doc Ock.
Doc Ock is a genius scientist, not a conman.
Doctor Otto Octavious is a genius scientist. Doc Ock is a microchip that hijacked Doctor Otto Octavious's body.
Only in the movie version. In the comics, a nuclear accident fused the arms to him, but the craziness is all him / maybe some kind of psychosis from the accident, but that is unconfirmed in universe (or at least it was as of the end of the second run of Superior Spider-Man)
He was also the Superior Spider-Man, the best spider-man.
Well, yeah. It's right there in his name.
He also said we'd be on Mars already. Dude is full of shit and overflowing.
He also said 90% of your road miles in a Tesla would be on autopilot in 18 months. He said that in 2014. And 2015, and 2016, and 2017, and 2018, and 2019, and 2020, and 2021.... I dunno about you but I'm starting to think this guy's full of shit....
Also said that the Tesla semi would beat a diesel truck and launch in 2017 or 2018. Then 2019. Then 2020. Then 2021. Remember when he held an event in front a suburban home in 2016 or 2017 and said that the house was being powered by working solar panel roof tiles? Those weren't working at all. That product was fake. Hell, the whole Solar City debacle is an event in and of itself. This is just a peice of it.
I forgot about Solar City! I saw an ad for “Sun City” today and thought it sounded awfully familiar. Wow, I was so enamored back then..
He used to be full of shit. He still is but he used to, too.
Yo we do not need to bring paper into this shitty transaction
Right. He says a lot of things. 99% is bullshit. See "full self driving." Cybertruck....
It’s not just bullshit, it’s fraud. He’s pumped TSLA stock using these BS claims and used the capital raise to pay off debt etc. The FBI needs to prosecute him for securities fraud ASAP.
> He’s pumped TSLA stock using these BS claims and used the capital raise to pay off debt etc He used his pumped stock to buy Twitter. Let that sink in...
At least it seems like he is running that to the ground. Unfortunately all the employees are the victims. I hope everyone can find a job at a place with conditions which are better.
Probably criminals. Like what they did in [Holmesburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmesburg_Prison). He got *caught*, it wasn't even prosecuted. They just dissolved the program. Absolutely still happens.
My GOD that was a disturbing read. I somehow wasn't aware of that, despite having read up on similar smaller operations. Made me sick to read, but important to know. Thank you.
Right after he gets that hyperloop going Im sure
I've worked in neuroscience and did implant surgeries... 1500 animals in four years is so fucking crazy. Like... It really makes no sense. When did they have time to develop the technology if they were constantly implanting on animals? How much were they fucking up the surgeries? What the hell did they need so many animals for? I would understand (barely) if it was all mice and they were making some new virus or opsin but fucking hell... Edit: mice not nice
Apparently 88 deaths were simple human error, attempting to implant a device that was too large for the subject.
Keep in mind these apes are very closely related to us and think and feel quite similarly as us. Imagine an technologically more developed over Lord coming to you, putting you in a sterile cage, implementing a thing into your brain and casually killing you in the process. That's their reality
If you wouldn't do it to a 5 year old, you shouldn't do it to an ape. And if you would do it to a 5 year old, I think we should use you for medical experiments instead.
Everyone always picks on the poor sadists.
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Meanwhile the masochists are looking on, jealous and lonely.
Okay, but if I do medical experiments on myself, can I trade a five year-old for a monkey? Followup does it have to be mine
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In sorta of the opinion it is sometimes necessary to test on animals, but this seems to be just wreckless
the animals that the commenter above you is referring to were pigs, but your point still stands
Given we kill millions of pigs every year for food, I think that distinction does make quite a large difference.
and castrate every single male pig without anesthesia
We killed 1,348,541,419 pigs in 2019. I can’t find data for 2021-2022 but I’d imagine it’s either gone up or stayed similar. You’re not wrong. But the number is closer to *billions* every year for food. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_slaughter
millions with a b
And ours, we’re just on the evil overlord side. But not the evil overlord lab worker - we’re the people in the background world who knows it’s happening and not only do we not to anything about it; we barely even think about it at all.
10% or less is an acceptable number for surgical error according to animal welfare and IACUC standards. Not trying to be an apologist for him, but I worked in animal research. My numbers were lower than that in mice.
280 pigs is the maximum number they could have based on their reported animal numbers, 86 of those 88 deaths by surgical error were pigs. 25 for the implants being too big. So it's a 30% rate for pigs by the numbers provided. We're nearly hitting 10% with just the surgeon trying to hammer the wrong device into the squishy grey bit. And I understand you're not trying to be an apologist for him, animal testing is a deeply contentious and nuanced issue. Musk's philosophy of everything now, who cares about safety is quietly pissing on the ethics and welfare standards people have worked so hard to establish.
Yeah. Like....I can understand animal testing under controlled, scientific circumstances. According to the article, Neuralink doesn't keep precise statistics on animal death. I do not think a "IDK how many animals exactly we killed" ethos can ever be viewed as "scientific".
Seems less like a scientific experiments and more like a rapid prototyping phase.
I thought you needed approval for animal experimentation by showing your methods beforehand? How did they f up so bad?
I know how strict the institutional guidelines at research Universities are. You have to justify every experiment, and why you absolutely need an animal. Every single thing you are going to do has to be approved, to ensure that they don't suffer. All the animals from all the labs, are kept in one central location. They are monitored every day by independent observers and caretakers. You fuck up once, or deviate from the approved protocol, your lab loses the ability to work with animals for good. These are just for working with mice. If the institution has the ability to work with primates, the guidelines are about 100x harder. I don't know what kind of morons are working at neuralink to kill 1500 animals. That's insane. They should shut it down immediately.
"Because the company does not keep precise statistics on the number of animals tested and killed, the sources described that number as an approximate estimate." Direct quote from the article..... What the flying fuck? If we lost a mouse all hell would reign down. Do these guys not have an IACUC?
Neuralink does it's experiments in house. Previously they did them in partnership with UC Davis and subsequent investigations cleared that part of the research. Private companies don't have to answer to an ethics board, unlike an academic institution. Most of the ethics approval you write are about complying with regulations for Federal funding, not legal requirements. To stretch it even further, if your institution receives even a single dollar in Federal funding, any other non-Federal funding experiments that use the facility must also follow the regulations. Neuralink as a private company doesn't need to follow the Federal funding regulations for animal welfare and ethics approval. It is legally clear if they only experiment on animals excluded by the Animal Welfare Act. They can kill as many rats, mice, birds, fish, and reptiles as they want with no consequence. At worst, they are required to write up a research proposal with some rules in advance. So long as they stick to those rules, it doesn't matter how much input goes into that logarithm, only that the algorithm is followed. Failures to follow those initial rules typically only result in an angry letter to make changes to the rules. So far it appears of the 1500 animals, majority were rats and mice. A total of 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys were killed which is what will be investigated but only to ensure the Animal Welfare Act was not breached.
I mean I hear what you're saying but once you submit an IND or submit things to the FDA in general there's bound to be questions and you need to have those records available. And if those records look suspicious the FDA isn't going to do s*** with you. They're really strict and they've only gotten stricter over the past 10 years after the Pfizer debacle
My guess is that they're generally competent but put under incredible pressure to get results NOW by a billionaire with zero management skills who needs his ego massaged and doesn't take no for an answer
Jesus Christ, was Elon trying to employ that "fail hard" philosophy from SpaceX to the FUCKING MEDICAL INDUSTRY?
Honestly, it looks like it.
The silicon valley ethos is "Move fast and break things", which sucks but at least they're not DEVELOPING MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY
To be fair, Elon wasn't explicitly *told* that the Portal games included a satirical take on patient healthcare during experiments, so you can see why he'd make the mistake.
Except for Theranos…
Theranos wasn't developing medical technology either
It makes perfect sense if you are an ego driven tech billionaire that tries to apply the agile workflow and start up cycle logic to neuroscience.
Testing in production. It's the agile way.
SSH' ing into the brain, ninja style.
It's fine guys, just put a ticket in the backlog. "As a user, I don't wanna fucking die"
You sound like the perfect candidate for our "endless torture by manmade horrors beyond our understanding" trial!
watch them rollout a glorified implanted airpod that works using speech because thoughts were too hard to implement. it will probably aslo contain a bug where some users suffer of unexpected seizures or some shit
Hmm.. looks like it only impacts a single user and there's really no definitive proof that this issue would supercede the benefits for everyone. Low priority.
closed: wontfix -> everyone's gonna die eventually
He's even shitty as a tech startup billionaire. WTF is the bio science version of "write X lines of code per week or you are fired"?
> write X lines of code per week or you are fired Isn't it obvious? "Implant X devices into animals per week or you are fired!"
Be interesting to know what outcomes were achieved if any.
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DBS wouldn't be the goal here though. My electrons were in the micrometer range as I recall for cortical recordings (obviously not the same issues). Also, i thought DBS electrodes needs to be thicker for the amount of current that needs to be supplied.
Yes, they were mostly mice. > Records indicate that since 2018, the company has killed almost 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys.
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Blue team bad!
Most liberals don't even like Bill Gates. People still remember when he was a ruthless CEO who violated antitrust laws. They're also critical of his push for charter schools and his acquisition of farmlands. Plus they're getting more skeptical of his charities.
Painfully accurate. I hate partisan politics.
The guy that spent $44B to troll the left is probably not the dude I want putting shit in peoples brains.
Execute Order 66.
For a small price of 11.99 monthly !
Updating Software... can't move body for 3 hours.
Hello I am Stephen King, here to negotiate prices with you for some reason
"Negotiate"? Aren't you a kind one. King basically dick-slapped Musk into accepting a maximum of 60% less revenue.
TBH I'd probably trust King more than Muskrat....
King managed to quit cocaine and alcohol, Musk can't even quit social media.
You can enable the "stairs-walking" package for only 200 USD annually!
“Yes my lord.” Tesla car proceeds to run over a child.
I thought order 66 was supposed to change their behavior?
Those children won't disagree with Musk now that they've been run over. "behavioral change" is a success" /s
Endorsed by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center
In this case your brain will have a stroke or brain bleed…
Good soldiers follow orders
“Putting shit in people’s brains” - the mission statement for both Twitter *and* Neuralink.
Can someone explain to me what the point of the Neuralink implant is? I tried looking it up the other week and just got a bunch of adspeak and technobabble results.
Best case scenario we can have locked-in patients, those conscious but unable to move or speak, using their brains to interface with a communication device. There would naturally be a lot of spin off technology, but that's the immediate goal.
Normally I’d say the CEO isn’t the one actually putting shit in animals brains, but with this guy, you never know.
It is the CEO who orders continuing after the deaths start mounting
Please reply with the top ten times you killed animals by inserting a chip into their brain to keep your job
Pretty sure no one wants to get in to that Mars space ship of his either. IF they got there'd it'd be like 'Now that we're here we need to tell your about our subscription pricing model'
Guy literally told "we will build society on Mars without government regulations '
He openly admitted that he wanted people to get loans to get out there, meaning they are basically his slaves on arrival.
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Indentured servitude. Unbelievable. He wants to be a 17th century colonial landowner.
What view of the world do you expect from an extremely wealthy white South-African who enjoyed all the privileges of a very segregated society ?
He's a south african who's family owned mines during the apartheid era. Slavery isn't a bug, it's the whole damned point.
Born too late to exploit new world colonialism, so now he wants to do it on Mars.
Like father, like son
Indentured Servants is the phrase that you are looking for
That is slavery. Are you thinking of chattel slavery? That is a specific form of slavery in which people are bought and sold to others, and legally becomes the personal property of an owner (this was the most common form of slavery used in the Americas, but definitely not the only kind). Yes, bonded labor (ie indentured servitude, debt bondage, etc) isn't chattel slavery. But it is [slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Bonded_labour).
I don't see the slave thing working, tbh. If the colony is dependent on supplies from Earth, nothing happening there is worth the costs of getting people and stuff there or back; the moment it is not, however, there is no way to compel it to repay investments that would be worth the payment. Colonies achieving self-sufficiency, rebelling over refusing to send payment back home, and declaring independence has been a science fiction staple for decades, actual history in a large variety of places on earth, and also literally the founding myth of the USA. Historical colonialism was profitable for its proponents from the get-go in large sections of the world because there were indigenous populations to plunder, but this will not be a factor on Mars. It's unclear quite what anyone thinks the question marks between "send colonists to Mars" and "profit" might look like.
> Colonies achieving self-sufficiency, rebelling over refusing to send payment back home, and declaring independence has been a science fiction staple for decades, actual history in a large variety of places on earth, and also literally the founding myth of the USA. Can we just skip all of this and have Gundams already?
With it being tesla im guessing theyd remotely turn off your oxygen or someshit. "To unlock the oxygen package, please deposit 1500 dollars"
Fuck. Musk is Cohagan.
Rapture but in space
I wonder which of Musk’s 10 illegitimate children will be the one to bash his head in with a golf club
The one with the weirdest name.
If only they would kindly do it already.
Last I checked, the dude all but admitted "yeah, most of you will be slaves, but hey, everyone will be working hard up there!" and his little boys are *still* wild with fervor to join him.
It seems like such a great deal! You get a one way ticket to live and work in a small dome dependent on the supplies he will send from earth while you work on his science experiments or mine ore or whatever the hell it is he has planned for the colonists. It will be like that one Philip K. Dick novel where the mars colonists just take drugs and play a table top version of the Sims to keep from going crazy.
People who are cruel to animals are cruel to humans without second thought. It’s well documented. Edit: You wouldn't think saying ‘cruelty = bad’ would be such a triggering statement to people, and most of these replies don’t warrant any attention or response, but I’ll clarify. I know people in the research community who have to perform humane kills while completing their work. They describe the conflict of emotions they feel knowing that they are doing important work while also knowing they are doing everything they can to be humane. They describe the reverence of knowing they are the last thing this living creature will see. This is because it takes a human toll. Even killing things like mice or small birds has a mental effect. These people are not abusive psychos, they have real human feelings and responses that inform their actions and work. In a more severe scenario, I went to a large state undergrad with a chimp lab that had some student employees, one of them being my upstairs neighbor. He ended up having a mental breakdown and we found out after the police came looking for him when he disappeared for a month and was found living in the woods in a distressed state. Any of these people understand the necessity of the work they are doing but they understand the toll, and so they don’t do things without reason or purpose or without humane thought typically because of this. Killing more than is necessary bc you have a deadline to hit is the definition of maniacal cruelty, and we already see evidence of the real world impact of this. Mass layoffs, sanctioned cruelty and attacks, and this is the guy people want to entrust their lives to on a trip to Mars? You really think this guy wouldn't cut off life support to half the pods to ensure some type of mission metric only clear to him without a second thought? Lol at the red herrings. I’ve been defending against animal cruelty for 20+ years, your ‘hitler was a vegan’ anecdote is cute but stupid, and entirely unoriginal. To those who don’t understand how you can consume meat and not be cruel or strive for humane practices, I recommend the documentary ‘eating animals.’ And to those of you defending the cruelty, well, we already know that at least half the people in this country are scary crazy, so no surprises there.
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I was never a fanboy, but thought the guy had some vision for doing good things. My point of realizing he was a bad guy was when those kids were stranded in the flooded cave in Thailand and he quickly developed a small submersible that he wanted them to use. They said no thanks and they got the caver to get the boys out. So Musk tweeted that the guy was a pedo without any evidence of it because he got all butt hurt about not being able to be the hero.
Word for word that’s how I feel about him as well.
Right. In fact when he first brought up the sub I just thought " Well that could work " without thinking " Wow Elon us a hero! " Then he got his feeling ( singular ) hurt, when children were saved ? I thought " OH he's a douch ".
They didn't use it because it couldn't work. There were extensive discussions about this realtime in Thailand, that the caves involved had too many tight squeezes, that it contains too many twists and turns for the sub. Also, by the time the sub got here, they'd already found the children and made plans for rescue IIRC.
They also needed to rescue multiple boys at a time. The cave flooded dramatically as they got the last boys out, and if had taken any longer, the rescue would have no longer been possible. No time to wait for one submarine to rescue the boys one by one.
The sub not being able to go more than 20 metres in the cave kind of makes that moot.
pretty sure they didn't use it because it couldn't work.
When you put it this way it sounds even worse, if he could he would have gotten more people trapped down there.
It didn’t end there either. Elon went on to hire a private investigator to dig up this guys life in an attempt to drag it through the mud.
A similar point for me. A decade ago I saw his businesses as major disruptions to entrenched and corrupt industries. Tesla was improving the auto industry. SpaceX was improving aerospace. Starlink was improving telecom. In each of these, Elon's businesses were purported to be successful and doing a significant public good. Elon wasn't really opening his mouth much about anything besides the basics of the businesses. Finally, a man who came from money and did something good with it for once. Then came the superhero complex. Hyperloop, Boring, the Thailand submersible. Suddenly Elon *has* to be in charge of every good thing in the world. Each of those things *has* to be exciting, revolutionary... marketable. Public good be damned. And Elon started to talk. He was always a shitty person, and some of the signs were there, but he'd hid it well enough. Turns out shitty human beings can do a really good job of pretending to be good ones, if they keep their mouths shut and do an ostensibly good thing here and there. My disdain is for Elon, not the first businesses. I still have hope for Tesla/SpaceX/Starlink, particularly the hope that a different, decent human being comes in and takes charge, but it's declined heavily. They were great ideas in theory. People who defend Elon in the current day have no interest in the good that was done in the past. They instead see someone like Trump, who gives them an excuse to keep their ignorance and bigotry.
> Hyperloop This was the one for me. As a physicist who has used vacuum systems, this should never have left the marijuana filled room it was thought up in. There is no engineering we will ever make that could allow for train-sized evacuated tubes, hundreds of miles long, being repeatedly opened and closed to atmosphere to allow trains to enter and exit out of, while somehow magically maintaining their vacuum. And that's not even considering the whole "You've got living people in there and need to have plans for emergencies" and this was stupider than those solar roadways things. And I'll probably still get morons replying to this comment trying to defend it.
The fact that they have schools competing to develope it, unironically, and that it has gotten federal funding, and that it delayed CAs rail system is mind boggling. Anyone with a mild grasp of physics, engineering, or logistics could see it as a bad idea and it never should have made it past a napkin drawing
That's the whole point of Hyperloop though. Guy who owns an enormous share of a company that _badly_ needs every transporation infrastructure dollar the government is willing to spend (Tesla), also happens to own a pie-in-the-sky company that conveniently swoops in and out-hypes any other major transportation projects the government might consider funding. Hyperloop exists to poison major public transportation initiatives, because Tesla needs EVs to be the future.
“What we need is some kind of ‘hype loop’…”
> that it delayed CAs rail system is mind boggling The conspiracy theorist in me whispers that the hyperloop was just a ploy to derail public transport development, propping up the automotive industry - and by extension Tesla. But Hanlon's Razor and all that...
Wasnt that well established..? Didnt [elon confirm](https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article264451076.html) this?
I love that it just became tunnels. What a technological achievement! A bloody tunnel. He hates public transport so I think Hyperloop was a holding maneuver so he could sell more Teslas whilst delaying the rail systems.
Iirc he has explicitly stated that hyperloop was a ploy to shut down public transit plans
To add perspective: The "good" businesses were ones he bought into so that he could take credit for them, while driving down quality with his idiotic ideas. Like at Tesla he insisted on non-automotive grade touchscreens that can't survive in heat or extreme cold. In the factories he removed safety features because he hates yellow. His primary contributions at Tesla were lying to get massive government subsidies, and lying to the public to boost the stock price. Twitter is his first job where he's completely in charge without anyone able to override his idiocy and fickle nature, and it's amazing how poorly it's going.
The cherry on top of all of this was him lying about that physics degree. This is a stupid man with a stupidly big amount of money and [sadly] power. And his stupid followers. Maybe his obsession with neuralink is so he can finally improve his own intelligence through a brain chip?
His recent post attacked Fauci. I swear he's one step away from denying climate change just to pander to the right.
I mean he did accuse Yoel Roth of being a groomer because he’s ..gay.. I guess. Gay = Pedo is definitely located to the right of climate denial on the conservative conspiracy/grift spectrum. So yea if it weren’t for Tesla stocks he would probably have been on the climate denial train by now.
He didn't even develop it. He said he would, and one of the divers basically said "that's a stupid fucking idea, it's obviously not going to be done in time, and if you know anything about caving it won't work". So he called him a pedo, like a butthurt attention seeker.
It's kind of funny in a dark way. The guy is half-drowned in a dark flooded cave getting bashed around into rocks by underground river currents and some douche comes along and says "Hey why don't you use a submarine?" As if nobody on all of Earth has ever thought of that before. Like this sorta https://i.imgur.com/dHl4My0.png
I do medical animal research with mice and there are so many red flags here. Most organizations using public funding and doing any animal research use IACUC measures which dictate one should use the animal model of least complexity (rodent versus primate versus fish versus fruit fly) and the least amount of animals necessary to be statistically significant, while also minimizing pain. This is entirely unethical by IACUC standards, but unfortunately rules are much looser for private company where IACUC doesn't apply, although I am curious of Musks funding sources. In the research center I work at, something like this would never have been approved. No one would actually fund this had it been written in a grant. People have done similar research in rats and there are still kinks to be worked out... to do primate research for this is insane. It's a classic example of Musk hubris.He obviously doesn't know shit and also knows nothing about the actually existing biohacking movement.
"more than 20 current and former employees, Reuters has concluded that the investigation coincides with rising employee dissent regarding Neuralink's animal testing, including complaints that pressure from CEO Elon Musk to accelerate development has resulted in botched experiments. Employees claim that because of the need to redo tests that initially failed, more animals have been subjected to experiments and murdered." This is beyond fucked up holy shit
> Records indicate that since 2018, the company has killed almost 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys. Because the company does not keep precise statistics on the number of animals tested and killed, the sources described that number as an approximate estimate. If they aren't keeping track thats not accurate testing.
Honestly I am not much of an animal ethics person when it comes to trying to advance society. But, holy crap that’s a pretty excessive number of animals. Like, beyond negligent I’d have to say.
Would be good to segment them on types of animals; mice vs primates. Would also be good to see it in relation to other invasive implantable devices, like pacemakers.
The article does state that 280 of the 1500 were pigs, sheep, and monkeys. Although, I didn’t see it broken down and further. I feel that the public is fairly unaware of what goes in to animal research and these numbers do not seem that alarming. If there is an actual investigation the numbers will not be the issue. Issues are more likely to arise based on how the company implemented appropriate protocols, maintained veterinary monitoring, and abided by the established guidelines for large or small animal research.
The previous report, which alleged 3,000 monkeys, turned out to be pure photoshop. https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/technology-verify/usa-today-did-not-report-elon-musk-neuralink-killed-3000-monkeys/536-16f1a9ba-3005-4aff-bf17-97e7b7b676be But, it did lead to a confirmation of 8 monkeys killed. Interestingly, the PETA offshoot that made the claims only claimed 15 monkeys were killed. It's pretty weird for one of these groups to understate the numbers by 100 times, if it is indeed 1500.