this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
1451 points (98.5% liked)

News

27164 readers
5018 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I did not see this published outside of India. But not sure why. It’s all based on Xitter.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Musk may well be going mad and I certainly hope he is. I hope his lack of recognition and watching his empire crumble is eating him up inside.

But Seth Abramson is not a reliable narrator let alone "biographer" whatever that means. He has a very long and storied history of embellishing facts, or placing too much weight on rumours and extrapolating way too much from them.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I saw this kind of take a lot when he first started appearing in my feeds, and I just sort of accepted it since I didn't read anything by him anyway.

Now that I've read more, I think his books are well-researched and meticulously cited using primary sources from well-known publications. He's a professor with degrees from Dartmouth and Harvard and I mention that because the original image I was given was he was some influencer or "citizen journalist" who just liked being incendiary, and that's not the case at all.

So are there some examples of his embellishing to share? I don't understand this particular take on him. He's very critical of Trump and has said he's directly connected to the Kremlin (and shown it in the most detailed, and cited, ways), but I don't think he's someone to ignore for that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I followed Abramson from 2016 for 3+ years and I was disillusioned because as time went on, his narrative didn't line up with reality. Yes Trump was and is a horrible piece of shit and much came out to confirm how much a piece of shit he was, e.g. Muller report, rape, fraud trials. But nothing like Abramson was saying. I believe that is because he was treating every rumor as fact and then expounding / extrapolating on it to heap another rumor (as fact) on top. Nobody should be doing this let alone a scholar who should know better - veracity matters.

And to repeat - I truly hope Musk is having a miserable shitty life. I really hope he goes nuts and checks into a funny farm or uses razor blades to test if he is living in a simulation as he has wondered occasionally. I just don't trust his "biographer" when he claims anything given his past record on such things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

Ah so was this like mostly a tweeted thing? Because his books and the long form articles aren’t like that. I wasn’t around for the first wave of tweets and such.

Still, “russia worked to get trump elected” used to be thought of as outlandish rumor, and now it’s reported as fact and everyone yawns.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

TBH, I rather more hope he goes dead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

I'm quite content with that outcome too. I'm just not holding out hope because of something Seth says.