WHAT'S IT LIKE TO BE ELON MUSK? On almost every level it is impossible to imagine - he's just too much. Musk is the hands-on head of three mega-companies, one (Tesla) wildly successful, one (SpaceX) madly aspirational, one (Twitter/X) a shambles. He has plenty of other businesses on the side, including The Boring Company (which makes hi-tech tunnels), Neuralink (which makes brain-computer interfaces), and his current pet favourite XAI (mission: "To understand the true nature of the universe"). He is the on-again, off-again richest human being on the planet, his personal net worth sometimes fluctuating by more than $10bn a day as the highly volatile Tesla share price lurches up and down. He is the father of 11 children with three different women, which to his own mind at least seems to make him some kind of family man. He has 155 million followers on Twitter/X (we'll call it Twitter from now on for simplicity's sake), which is more than anyone else. Only a very few people - Barack Obama (132 million), Justin Bieber (111 million) - can have any idea of what that is like.
However, unlike Obama, who follows 550,000 accounts on Twitter, Musk follows only 415. That anyone can copy (or at least they could, before the platform recently changed its code so you can now only see a small handful of users' followers rather than the full list). So that's what I did, spending this past summer following the exact same accounts Musk follows and no one else, to see what the world looks like from inside his personal Twitter bubble. I wanted to be a fly on the wall in the room with the people who are shaping the thoughts of one of the most influential, and unpredictable, individuals on the planet. I've never even had a Twitter account - so it was all new to me. What can I say? It's pretty mind-blowing.
Denne historien er fra September 29, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra September 29, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Starlink's conquest of the Amazon leaves Brazil in a dilemma
The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from it into the caiman-inhabited waters below.
Dalai Lama's mountain town feels the strain of tourist boom
SUVs and saloon cars pass slowly along McLeod Ganj's narrow one-way Jogiwara Road, blaring horns at pedestrians and scooter riders and playing loud music.
'I am all the world' The brutal rule of a West Bank settler
Palestinians tell ofblacklisted Yakov's reign across the Jabal Salman valley and heisjust one of many violent bosses
Stormy waters New flashpoint emerges in South China Sea dispute
Hopes that tensions in the South China Sea might ease have been short lived.
'Justice delayed' Why trust in public inquiries to bring closure is fading
After the final report of the Grenfell fire inquiry was published, Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the blaze, said: \"We did not ask for this inquiry... It's delayed the justice my family deserves.\"
Celeriac soup with almond pangrattato
I'm not ashamed to say that as soon as September hits, my stick blender comes out. Just as I embrace salads when the clocks go forward in the UK, I wholeheartedly throw myself into soup season once the summer holidays end. Autumn is approaching in the northern hemisphere and I'm ready with my ladle. Celeriac is one of my favourite soup heroes, because it gives the creamiest, silkiest finish with little effort. You don't have to make the almond pangrattato, but it is a wonderful addition.
Are smoke signals telling me to make an oil change in the kitchen?
Should you that is, not can you) cook with extra-virgin olive oil? Antonio, Atlanta, Georgia, US
Going underground
A darkly humorous encounter between an American spy-cop and the members ofan eco-commune she is hired to infiltrate
All work and no play
Hard Graft, a powerfulnew London exhibition, focuses onworkers’ exploitation, from the ruined hands ofa washerwoman to mothers forced to sell their bodies
What the princess and the shaman tell us about hereditary privilege
It should have been an Instagram-perfect wedding image, but it turned out to be something more embarrassing.
