Elon Concentrates on Cars… and His Enemies
Plus: Candy is poison, Trump backs off Tariffs, HR missteps in AI newsrooms, and was I shadowbanned from X?
Last year, I posted a joke on X about the top story on the front page of the July 8, 2024, edition of The New York Times: Elon Musk’s successful SpaceX launch that killed nine birds. (The stories about the Congressional Democrats pushing Biden out of the race and the French election results be damned. How many birds did we kill just printing today’s paper?!) Musk loved it, and as a result, I got tons of engagement! After that viral tweet, my Twitter X engagement took a nosedive.
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories—I prefer my paranoia well-reasoned and thoroughly fact-checked—but this new New York Times exposé about other Musk critics getting the algorithmic cold shoulder got me to a wonderin’: What happened to me, who wasn’t directly critical of Elon? I probably just got more boring, BUT I WILL NEVER KNOW. This kind of thing gets in your head.
Welcome to the Gist List — a news roundup that you probably didn’t find on X, but is otherwise filled with interesting things you should know, and my thoughts leading up to today’s podcast episode.
Here’s what’s on my mind:
🛻 Musk pledges to spend more time with Tesla.
🪆 Russia: What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.
💁🏻♀️ Business Insider’s founder has an HR misstep in his AI newsroom.
😔 The diminishing returns of deactivating your Facebook account.
💰 Trump’s big economic experiment is a bust.
🍬 Give me Red Dye 3 or give me death.
The Gist List
Musk to Refocus on Tesla After Its Worst Quarter in Years (Bloomberg)
When Elon Musk says “I’m stepping back to spend more time with my family,” that still means he has dozens of children and baby-mommas to occupy his time. But when he says, “I’m going to spend more time with my cars,” well, that moves the market. And that’s what’s happening as Tesla had its worst quarter in years. The car manufacturer’s sales were not expected to be great today, but they fell short of even those low expectations. His departure will cut short his 130-day special government employee status.
On the bright side, this is probably not only good for citizens who are likely happy to see less Musk in government, it’s also welcome news to Tesla owners, investors and everyone except for fans of non-insane truck design.
Russia's Conditions for Peace: Retain All the Territory It Has Taken (ISW)
Russia is coming to the table with a lofty proposal for peace: They want to keep all the territory they have taken, and according to the Moscow Times, they are offering what can be construed as bribes to the Trump Administration to solidify a deal without a ceasefire because apparently "peace" now means "what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable". According to ISW:
Independent Russian outlet the Moscow Times reported on April 21 that five current Russian government officials, including two diplomats and three sources close to the Kremlin who are employees of three major state-owned companies, stated that the Kremlin is looking for incentives to "hold...Trump's attention.”
Business Insider Founder Creates AI Team for His New Newsroom, Hits on Executive, Then Writes About It on Substack (Regenerator)
Fashionably late to the virtual party, Business Insider founder Henry Blodget used AI to craft his own “native AI newsroom” and generated headshots for each of them. Upon gazing upon Tess Ellery, his top exec’s countenance, and high on adrenaline from the magic of AI, he had, as he calls it, a “human response.” Not knowing whether the same rules applied to AI colleagues and IRL ones, he rizzed her up about her appearance.
His comments section and 404 Media took a dig at him. Was he creeping on the bots? Does Tess feel the same power dynamic disparity of a human woman getting a compliment from your boss at work? Is this an entire PR stunt? Blodget, who could not be reached for comment, was later found to be offering to buy Amazon Alexa a drink.
Effect of Deactivating Facebook and Instagram on Users' Emotional State (NBER)
A new paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research that studied the happiness of social media users who deactivated their social media right before the election found a “0.060 standard deviation improvement in an index of happiness, depression, and anxiety.”
So what's a 0.06 standard deviation? Over the course of a 162-game baseball season, it's not quite .8 of a game, which actually could be the difference between making the playoffs or not. But if you don’t make the playoffs, what are you gonna do? Spend your time scrolling through all the champagne-soaked baseball clubhouses of your rivals on Instagram and reducing your own happiness index.
Trump Softens Tariff Tone Amid Empty Shelves Warning, Market Slump (Axios)
For all Trump’s bluster, he’s still sensitive to the bond and stock market. In other words, the laws of gravity apply. This week, Walmart, Target and Home Depot gave the President a firm talking-to and let him know that tariffs could not only disrupt supply chains, but also raise the prices on products sitting on already picked-over shelves. He has also backtracked on his ire towards Jerome Powell.
It just goes to show that if the economy is tanking, he’ll reverse course and pull the plug on his worst instincts. Of course, after we all take a deep breath and things start going back to normal (or as normal as they can be under Trump), he’ll probably go back to picking a fight with Lesotho.
RFK Roundup: Life is Beautiful and Sugar is Poison (NYT, Politico, USA Today)
RFK Jr. is making the rounds with his big three pet projects: Sugar, vaccines, and autism. (Beef tallow is notably absent.)
The New York Times reported that he declared “sugar is poison” and announced a ban on food dyes. While some critics appreciate his efforts to improve the food supply, his cuts to certain research grants and staff reductions at the FDA might hinder his plans.
He also wants to reverse the CDC’s guidance on the Covid-19 vaccine for children. Children are incredibly unlikely to die from Covid, and according to Politico, “… such a move is unlikely to generate major controversy among the broader public, reasoning that parents have already largely stopped vaccinating their kids against the disease.”
Continuing on his quest to discover the cause of autism, he floated the idea of compensating families of people “injured” by autism.
ICYMI: TJ Miller on Funny You Should Mention
Comedian TJ Miller joins me in this episode of Funny You Should Mention. You might know him from Silicon Valley, Deadpool, or that time he had a choice between brain surgery with a 10% fatality rate vs. almost surely dying by 35. It's the funniest conversation ever, with the phrase "10% fatality rate" hanging in the air. Also, why T.J. insists that comedy should feel like jazz played on a flaming trampoline, and how to let a crowd set the course while always steering the ship.
There’s more where that came from. Listen to The Gist, and upgrade to Pesca Plus for the ad-free version.
Have a story you want us to talk about or an opinion you want to share? Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com or share your thoughts in the comments. We might give you a shoutout in our next newsletter or on the air.
The whole idea that kids don't get sick from COVID is just wrong: From Dykstra J. Pediatrics 2024: "As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spread throughout the United States, children initially were generally less likely to experience severe illness, hospitalization, and death compared with adults.1–3 Yet COVID-19 quickly became the seventh leading cause of death for 1- to 17-year-olds from 2020 to 2022 and killed an estimated 1086 children.4 To date, studies using death certificate and hospital discharge data have described the underlying conditions that increased the risk of mortality and morbidity from COVID-19 among children" Given that the risks from the vaccine are far less than the risk from the disease recommending vaccination is reasonable.