‘I despise them' – Bob Geldof brands Elon Musk a ‘sociopathic loser' in blistering tirade against UK and US leaders
©Evening Standard
Today at 21:30
Bob Geldof has branded Elon Musk a 'sociopathic loser' and condemned political leaders in the UK and US for what he described as a betrayal of the world's 'most vulnerable'.
The outspoken singer delivered a fiery address at London's Shaftesbury Theatre following a performance of Just For One Day, the musical inspired by the 1985 Live Aid concerts he co-founded.
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Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
‘Maybe Elon Musk is quite gullible. He seems to fall for a lot of conspiracy theories'
Taking us from the Renaissance Florence of Leonardo da Vinci via the songwriting chemistry of Lennon and McCartney to the Florida launch pad of Elon Musk's SpaceX , Helen Lewis's new book, The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers, sets out to unravel the mystery of what we mean when we call someone a genius and asks whether the modern idea of genius as a class of special people is distorting our view of the world. There's a sense throughout the book that these people are modern versions of saints, that they're performing something sacred in our increasingly secular world. It is a really compelling argument, made by historian Darrin McMahon in his Divine Fury: A History of Genius, that during the Enlightenment, when people became more rationalist, less religious, we still craved this sense of the divine. The idea that miracles happen in the world. Where you might once have thought that a miracle was attributable to the Virgin Mary, now the miracle is: how did Van Gogh's paintings happen? How did someone have this moment of inspiration where they came up with this scientific breakthrough? There is this deep hunger within all of us for the world not to be mundane, for there to be things that are still extraordinary within it. Even the phrase 'gifted', which people sometimes use about children and young people. Gifted by whom and for what purpose? READ MORE In classical times, you were possessed by 'a genius'. The muse of poetry or whatever spoke through you. I think that was a much more healthy way to think about it. The argument in the book really is about this category of special people and what that does to us and to them. It's much healthier to say I've done something extraordinary rather than I'm an extraordinary person and everything I do is probably going to be brilliant. That's the bit that tends to lead people astray. You look in the book at the story of how Shakespeare became the figure that he is now. Part of that is these enablers who made sure the folios weren't destroyed and forgotten. And then there's a fascinating process of mythmaking, which is about Englishness and Britishness in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It's a classic story for your purposes, isn't it? Because there is something extraordinary going on in those plays, but then there's a whole other process that involves lots of people. That's the bit I wanted to try to unpick. There's a bad version of this book that is falsely egalitarian and implies that there is no such thing as extraordinary achievement. You're hard-pressed to look at the plays of Shakespeare and think that. So, yeah, I'm not trying to argue that great achievement doesn't exist, but I think which achievements we choose to praise and flag up often has a political dimension to it too, which is worth exploring. Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers Then there's another element added to the mix, which is the idea of the artist as mad, bad and dangerous to know. The outsider who burns brightly and sputters out early. I find that really interesting because it isn't at all the idea of the artist that you have before then, If you take someone like a Rembrandt, he was painting portraits of rich Dutch people. There was no sense that in order to market himself, he needed to be wasting away in a cupboard somewhere. It's only when you get to the Romantics that we get so into the idea that great art has this terrible cost to people. Susan Sontag wrote about tuberculosis being part of that story. Tuberculosis, which spiked as people moved into cities, has a lot of symptoms that are quite similar to all the things that people used to say about Romantic poets. And that's hard to separate out from the rise of capitalism. The idea that artists don't rely on patronage any more. They now compete in the marketplace. My brutal conclusion about a lot of the way that we talk about genius is that it's really a kind of a branding exercise. The idea that the life itself is the work of art. One of the things that's really interesting is the hunger for people who achieve things to have had interesting biographies and the slight sense of disappointment when they don't, as if we feel like we've been cheated. The book is also very much about science and also about pseudoscience – when science gets too big for its boots. Someone like Francis Galton, who used to be very famous but has been airbrushed out of history by embarrassed institutions. He was an incredible 19th-century polymath, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin from the same very talented family. He came to be interested in the idea of genius. He was grappling with the new ideas of evolution and natural selection and selective breeding. And that gets him to eugenics, which is the idea that you can 'improve a population' by only letting the smart people have babies. From that, you get this scientific discipline of eugenics that has absolutely no human empathy behind it. And it was really widely accepted. I used to work for the New Statesman magazine, which was founded by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, who were Fabian socialists. But part of the paternalism of their socialism was they were interested in the eugenics movement. I wrote in my last book, Difficult Women, about Marie Stopes, the great contraceptive pioneer, who was also madly interested, until the [19]30s, it was a respectable scientific endeavour. Because people hadn't yet had the vivid proof about what happened when this ideology was put into practice. The book is a very odd book. It pings about from Renaissance Florence to eugenics to The Beatles. When you put them all together, you begin to realise that we have these very deep ideas about human worth and that we're always fighting over them. [ Difficult Women book review: Whirlwind tour of feminism Opens in new window ] One of the other themes is that just because somebody is good at something, it doesn't mean they're necessarily good at anything else. But that seems to be a common fallacy. Yes, the book ends with Elon Musk, who I think is a great demonstration of this. It's hard for people on the left to acknowledge that he did have great success in business because of personal qualities. He's not purely a lucky idiot who wandered into his success with Tesla and SpaceX. However, the last six months have shown that he isn't good at everything. If I may say something controversial, maybe he also is quite gullible. He seems to fall for a lot of conspiracy theories. What it comes back to is humility. Just because you've had great success in one area, you should still be humble about all the other areas. Humility doesn't seem to come with most of these characters. There's a really interesting question about whether or not there are certain personality traits that make you more predisposed to either be a genius or get called a genius. A certain level of narcissism, because you're okay with people looking at you and bigging you up and you accept the attention and you thrive in it. You can take two people of absolutely equal achievements and the bigger narcissist will probably get called a genius more. You quote someone saying that in this world there are actors and there are movie stars. I think that there are these people who have those magnetic qualities to them. But yeah, it's really hard to separate it out, isn't it? You can't be a genius on your own. It's not an intrinsic quality to you. It's something that gets conferred on you by other people. There's a right-wing, left-wing element to this. On the one hand an emphasis on collaboration and community. And on the other, on the primacy of individual agency and the individual casting off the bonds of the little people all around him. Because of copyright, because of the patent system, because of people wanting to make money, it becomes winner takes all. Alexander Graham Bell becomes the inventor of the telephone, even though it was much more collaborative than that. You're a writer with t he Atlantic magazine and often cover politics. Some of these themes feed into what's happening right now, such as the assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). I have my own reservations about some aspects of DEI, but the crudeness of that assault uses language about excellence being damped down by it. Is there a resurgence of the genius myth happening right now? Definitely. One of the things I argue in the book is that every age has its own different template of genius, which tells you a lot about that society. Our current one is the tech superman, these brilliant start-up founders who have an insight that no one else does. And you are right, they are often guys who think that they're just special people. But to go back to Elon Musk, both Tesla and SpaceX had significant public investment. SpaceX, at its lowest point, got a Nasa contract that assured its future. So, yeah, the dynamism of the private sector contributed enormously to its success, but taxpayers' money was ultimately also part of the story of what allowed it to thrive. It's really tempting for people to believe that they made it all on their own, whereas what you usually need is talent, plus luck, plus society that lets you achieve stuff. [ Elon Musk sees humanity's purpose as a facilitator of superintelligent AI. That should worry us Opens in new window ] As you point out, there are millions of people who never got that opportunity. Like you, I have reservations about some of the way that that DEI has ended up being implemented. Things like the implicit bias test don't really seem to predict very well who is actually racist in real life. But go back and look at someone as brilliant a scientist as George Washington Carver, who was black and therefore never got to go to school. Or the fact that Jewish people were excluded from lots of the Ivy Leagues. The exclusion of women from the professions for a huge amount of history. The number of bright working-class kids who never got the opportunities they deserved. So for all that we are now in this period of backlash, I think you have to say that the small efforts that we've made towards allowing more people to realise their potential come against this background of a huge amount through human history of wasted talent. I'm thinking about all the children who died in war or starved to death. There's a quote from Stephen Jay Gould about people who got very into preserving bits of Einstein's brain. He said he was less interested in the exact form of Einstein's brain than in the people who were just as brilliant but who died working in sweatshops or cotton fields. The Genius Myth is published by Penguin This is an edited extract from an episode of the Inside Politics with Hugh Linehan podcast Is there any such thing as a political genius? With Helen Lewis Listen | 39:17
Irish Independent
2 days ago
- Irish Independent
Elon Musk plays down latest Space X launch explosion
©UK Independent Today at 21:30 Elon Musk shared a three-word reaction after his SpaceX rocket exploded into a massive fireball while being tested on Wednesday night in Texas. The SpaceX owner seemed to joke about the failed test, writing, 'Just a scratch' on X after the Starship suffered a 'major anomaly' and shot up into flames, ruining yet another test for the space company.
The Irish Sun
5 days ago
- The Irish Sun
Your eyesight might be worse than you think if you can't complete this Elon Musk brainteaser in 15 seconds or less
HE'S been hitting the headlines for the past few weeks. But do you know what Elon Musk looks like enough to be able to spot the odd one out in this brainteaser? 2 Can you spot the 'Elon Mustache' in this tricky brainteaser? Credit: direct sight The new puzzle challenges players to look through the pictures of Elon to see if they can find 'Elon Mustache' - the only drawing of the Tesla boss with facial hair. You'll be even more impressed with yourself if you can find Elon Mustache in the 144 images in just 15 seconds. And if you can't, your eyesight might not be as good as you think. "With Elon Musk dominating headlines, this brainteaser offers players a topical test of their eyesight, to find the odd Elon out of nearly 150 regular cartoon images of him," a spokesperson for Read more Brainteaser stories 'This 'odd one out' game is a perfect blend of mental stimulation and a nod to testing our eyesight that so many of us are committed to. "It's a quick, engaging way to take a break, test your observational and visual skills and have fun along the way." If you're struggling to find the odd one out, try narrowing it down into quarters. And take a look at one before the other. Most read in Fabulous If you still can't find the mustachioed man, you can rule out the left half of the picture. Then, you can cross out the top section of the right half - it's somewhere in the bottom. Can you find the hidden bee amongst the flowers in this tricky brainteaser- The answer to the puzzle is circled at the bottom of the page if you're still finding it tough. Brainteasers are excellent for your noggin because they stimulate cognitive function, improve problem-solving skills and enhance overall mental agility. They also challenge different areas of the brain, including memory, logic and spatial reasoning. So what's the benefit exactly? Improved neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to adapt and form new neural connections. How can optical illusions and brainteasers help me? Engaging in activities like solving optical illusions and brainteasers can have many cognitive benefits as it can stimulate various brain regions. Some benefits include: Cognitive stimulation : Engaging in these activities challenges the brain, promoting mental agility and flexibility. Problem-solving skills : Regular practice enhances analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities. Memory improvement: These challenges often require memory recall and can contribute to better memory function. Creativity: They encourage thinking outside the box, fostering creativity and innovative thought processes. Focus and attention: Working on optical illusions and brainteasers requires concentration, contributing to improved focus. Stress relief: The enjoyable nature of these puzzles can act as a form of relaxation and stress relief. As well as this, activities like brainteasers, puzzles and riddles require you to think critically, which also sharpens your analytical and reasoning skills. If you want to continue to challenge your brain further, you can find a range of optical illusions on our website. 2 If you can't do it in 15 seconds or less, you might want to get your eyes checked Credit: direct sight
