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Standing on the rear seam of his with child boondoggle , his face overcloud in shadow , the billionaire who built a rabid fanbase through seemingly inhuman effort of engineering and willpower cut a greatly reduce bod : Elon Musk was preside over the first customer obstetrical delivery of a Tesla truck that , like most thing Musk touched , was drastically over budget and far beyond its original shipping timeline . Plus , just a couple day earlier Musk had essentially sealed the dismal destiny of another of his companies bypublicly telling advertising partners to “ go nookie [ themselves ] . ”
To say he was looking diminished is putting it gently .
The Cybertruck launching , like most of Tesla ’s delivery case , was not a substantive amour . My more patient colleagues have done a much good job actuallyrecounting what take place there than I ever could . Suffice it to say that Musk touted his gaudy unsullied steel monster ’s abilities for a while before explaining to a handful of the sycophantic first novel Cybertruck owners ( including one Alexis Ohanian ) the extremely non - obvious way to open their doors and then repeating a vague and perplexing affirmation about how wild it ’s going to be to see these driving around before bid it a day .
I mention the left over choice to stand on the truck bed in semi - darkness despite have a stage lighting setup very clearly plan for him not to do that , but I neglected to observe the moment when a sheepish Franz von Holzhausen was drug out to weakly toss a baseball game at the Cybertruck ’s windows , in a moment that seemed like unintended satire of when hesmashed the windows of the original prototype at a reveal result in 2019 . The only takeaway from this watered down reenactment was that if von Holzhausen had replicated the 2019 mishap dependably , with blade ball and a proper flip , I ’m pretty much positive he would ’ve smashed the windows again .
No longer the surefooted , if controversial , forecaster and freehanded swing solutions applied scientist , Musk has instead become a mad - eyed , ramble and spout pleader of far - correct hokum and vacillating conviction . Even his seemingly existential objection to OpenAI ’s fast - step development of AI terminate up being little more than petty jealousy , as evidenced by the harried introduction of Grok , his own , far more puerile and cloudy - minded combining weight .
Undoubtedly , Musk continues to gain from horde of devoted fanboys — many of whom I ’m sure will be let me know how astonishing he still is and how refuse I still am — but it ’s hard to deny any longer that his influence is on the wane , and the crowning moment of his stunned idea made chassis in the form of the Cybertruck seems like a meaningful bookend on his earned run average of power .
