Remember kids, these are the kind of things that got Elon his money
I don’t like Elon Musk, his buyout of Twitter was horibble and I don’t agree with many stuff he says, that begin said
story about Musk’s father once owning an emerald mine evolved into a larger rumor that had no evidence to support its central claim. Source
I have a filter on Sync to not see Musk content, yet somehow he keeps leaking in.
On Lemmy, it’s like a party game to see where you can get Musk into a thread.
Indeed, not a whole emerald mine, the same source:
We located reporting from as far back as 2009 and 2014 that said when Elon Musk (“Elon” hereafter) was a child in South Africa in the 1980s, his father (“Errol” hereafter) at some point owned “a stake in an emerald mine” near Lake Tanganyika in Zambia, not South Africa.
According to the article, the “rumor” started in 2014 when Elon went on an interview tour and SAID that his dad had an emerald mine to multiple publications. He told an elaborate story to one about riding in his dad’s plane full of emeralds and ak-47s
The research couldn’t find financial proof of any claimed debt, since Elon won’t provide any. But “hand shake” deals about illegal emerald smuggling tends not to have a paper trail.
Then, a year after this article came out, Elon tweeted “I’ll give a million doge to anyone who can prove it existed” and his dad replied that it existed and that Elon had been there.
Errol also went on an interview tour (after this article was posted) and told multiple publications that he did own a share of an emerald mining business. But Elon wasn’t lying because it technically wasn’t in a hole, but an outcropping!
Since changing his mind on the subject, Elon had since only admitted that his start up was supported by selling his own PC for 2k, a 5k gift from his “bro” and 8k from some other guy. But later a SmAaLL LoAn (as they like to say) of 200k from his dad and others. But that was later, you guys.
I don’t get why people focus on the emerald mine aspect. Turning 200k into billions would be impressive regardless of where the initial cash came from, if he wasn’t just some lucky schmuck who’s shitty website got bought out in the Dotcom bubble.
Edit: Yikes, goes to show that Lemmy users can’t finish reading a comment lol
So they do xray everyday ? If yes , then fuck rich people to death.
This is pretty far down the list as far as reasons to not buy diamonds. They’re not rare. They’re not special. It’s a rock with limited industrial use.
For added context, they’re still cutting the hands and feet off of dependents (including children) of miners to ensure they work hard.
You might be thinking that getting an x-ray every day is bad for the miners, but this is a ye-olde look through machine. Yes it’s bad for the miners, but the guy looking at it is putting his face and uppee body right in the beam here. And I’m guessing he does hundreds of these a day.
Then again, old timey x-ray machines were pretty soft, so (edit) AND the miner is getting big dose of alpha and beta radiation too. And at least the technician isn’t breathing coal dust, so it’s probably a toss up who gets cancers first.
Both people in this picture are being abused by the company. The difference is that the company also lets the white guy abuse the black guy, and for that reason, the white guy feels superior.
This is one of those things you see in fascist governments. As long as people are able to abuse someone, they’ll accept a much worse station as well as a lot of abuse themselves.
@Tar_alcaran … if the miners even lived long enough to get cancer.
Diamond miners during Apartheid were working in unsafe conditions for ridiculously low wages, often coerced into being there, and at relatively high risk of tuberculosis.
X-ray tubes, old and new, use high energy electrons that impact a metal to create the beam. Alpha and beta emission is from radioactive decay which is an entirely different phenomenon. But yes bathing your body in X-rays is bad for you
Sorry, I had a brainfart there. You’re completely right.
The tube itself emits xrays, but soft xrays have a very high chance of being absorbed by Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen. And since that’s mostly what makes up a human, that’s kinda bad.
Also he’s digging up diamonds, which is in rocks full of radioactive materials. Diamond mine tailings are famously radioactive (and interesting) due all the thorium and radium in them.
Galton introduced fingerprinting in South Africa as an experiment after Indians introduced it to him. Managing miners using fingerprints was one of those moments capitalism and colonialism converged on science and technology and shaped the global sector we now call identification.
For more, read The Biometric State by Keith Breckinridge.
