Do you think Elon Musk is an alien? Guess what the ‘Meme Lord’ said

Do you think Elon Musk is an alien? Guess what the ‘Meme Lord’ said

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is quite active on Twitter, is often known to share his thoughts about Mars, electric vehicles, and cryptocurrency.

However, he is not just restricted to some of these 21st century’s biggest revolutions, he can also talk about other things too, like “He is an alien”.

Recently, a Twitter page called ‘Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley’ asked Elon Musk whether he is an alien.

The Twitter handle shared a short video of Elon Musk from a conference in which someone had asked Musk about the existence of aliens.

To which, Musk responded by saying," Aliens exist in Physics and Philosophy".

He then added, “Aliens could be among us…some people think I am an alien”.

After a pause, Musk said “Not True”.

The ‘Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley’ captioned Musk’s video as, “Is Elon Musk an alien?”

And, guess what! Musk wrote, “Of Course”.

Of course — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 29, 2021

Though Musk did not reply to the question of which planet he is from–Mars or Uranus.

The Meme Lord has spoken pic.twitter.com/iojZDrBXga — Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) August 29, 2021

However, this is not the first time he replied this way to such queries. Earlier in April, Musk gave the same response when a Twitter user had asked him: “Are you an alien?”

Are u an alien — shbz (@shbzz) April 5, 2021

“Obviously,” he replied.

Obv — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2021

In February, when Cred founder Kunal Shah asked Musk about tricks to efficiently manage an organisation. At that time also, Musk said that he was an alien.

Elon musk may end up running 4+ 500 billion companies simultaneously at a relatively young age.

What I want to really understand: how does he do it? How does he manage context switching? How does he design his Org?

So many questions. — Kunal Shah (@kunalb11) February 11, 2021

@elonmusk : answer if you see this, dark lord. — Kunal Shah (@kunalb11) February 11, 2021

I’m an alien — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 12, 2021

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Elon Musk’s satellites beam internet into Chilean boy’s life

After half an hour’s windswept journey on foot and by boat through a craggy forested estuary to the school he attends in remote southern Chile, Diego Guerrero can access the internet.

His school is located in the hamlet of Sotomo, about 1,000km (620 miles) south of the capital Santiago in the region of Los Lagos and inhabited by just 20 families.

A rain-drenched scattering of brightly painted wood and tin houses, Sotomo stands out against a mist-swathed row of rocky outcrops jutting out into the Pacific Ocean. It can be accessed only by boat.

For decades, its inhabitants have survived by catching mussels and fish to sell at market, a five-hour round-trip away by boat.

Now, it is one of two places in Chile to be chosen for a pilot project run by billionaire Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, to receive free internet for a year.

Starlink, a division of SpaceX, aims to roll out 12,000 satellites as part of a low-Earth orbiting network to provide low-latency broadband internet services around the world, with a particular focus on remote areas that terrestrial internet infrastructure struggles to reach.

Since October, it has been offering a “Better Than Nothing Beta” programme to subscribers in the United States, while also running pilot trials in other countries.

The plan is key to generating the funds that SpaceX needs to fund Musk’s dream of developing a new rocket capable of flying paying customers to the moon and eventually trying to colonise Mars.

For Diego, aged 7, stable internet is a dream enough.

“I really like the internet because we can do homework,” he said. “It’s faster so we can do more of it.”

Starlink did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.

SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said in a July statement about the Chilean pilot: “Starlink was designed for remote communities like those in Caleta Sierra and Sotomo. High-speed connectivity can have a transformational impact on these communities.”

Broadening Horizons

Diego’s favourite subject at school is maths. He wants to be a sailor and loves to go out on his father Carlos’s fishing boat.

Carlos, 40, has more ambitious plans for his son and hopes the window onto the world the new internet connection will give him will broaden his horizons.

He takes Diego to school daily by boat, often battling wind and rain to get him there.

“I didn’t have the option of going to school so you do it whatever the conditions, good or bad weather or pandemic, even if it’s difficult,” he said.

“If he has a good education, he has that option and is eager to do it, then you have all the hopes of any father, that maybe one day all the children from Sotomo can go on to professional jobs.”

Using tablets provided by the education ministry, the school’s seven pupils can now tap into online learning material, watch films, do virtual museum visits and try out video calls to children in other schools.

Their sole teacher at Sotomo’s John F Kennedy School, Javier de la Barra, said he also is looking forward to using it for professional development.

The signal is received via a satellite dish installed on the school’s roof, which transmits through a WiFi device to most of its facilities and outdoor patio. Eventually, the plan is to extend it to the rest of the hamlet.

It only works from noon to midnight, because of a constrained supply of diesel for the generator that supplies power to Sotomo.

Nonetheless, said de la Barra, it is a significant advance on the patchy mobile internet signal that residents currently can get on their phones by leaning out of windows or paddling out into the bay.

The Starlink antenna was installed in July and inaugurated earlier this month in a ceremony attended by Transport and Telecommunications Minister Gloria Hutt. A second antenna will be installed in Caleta Sierra, a small fishing port close to the arid northern deserts.

She said she hoped Starlink would prove key in bridging Chile and the wider region’s digital divide – an issue laid bare with the advent of coronavirus lockdowns that left people without access to good internet struggling to work or study.

Chile has among the highest internet penetration rates on the continent, with 21 million mobile internet connections among its population of 19 million as of March 2021, according to government figures.

But as the families in Sotomo can attest, having mobile internet does not mean you can always get a signal.

“I love living here,” said Carlos Guerrero. “It’s tranquil, my family is without stress, but we do lack connectivity, roads, electricity and drinking water.

“What would be great is if all these services could be extended around our community, not just to a small part, so everyone could enjoy them.”

See Colbert’s spoof of Elon Musk’s space billboards

Stephen Colbert has a few ideas about how Elon Musk should take advertising into space.

In the wake of the news that the SpaceX founder has been toying with the idea of “space billboards”—see “Elon Musk Plans to Put Billboards in Space and People Want to Shoot Them at the Sun,” from The Wrap via Yahoo News—Colbert first condemned the scheme during his Tuesday-night “Late Show” monologue … and then got on board with it. (See the video below.)

He deployed what he calls “the best damn graphics team in late night” to dummy up some space billboards “for my new lollipop company: Suck It, Elon.” Cue a low-effort visual of a space billboard with that brand name on it, followed by other billboards for a CBS show (“Bob Hearts Abishola”) and Charmin (“Enjoy the go!”).

Bonus: Colbert also shared a “think outside the box” approach to space advertising that puts (spoiler) the alien from “Alien” to good (?) use.