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Neil deGrasse Tyson Picked A Really Bad Time To Defend Elon Musk, And He’s Being Mocked For It

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Most of Elon Musk’s loudest fans on Twitter have about 47 followers (half of which are bots) and a Paris Hilton-approved bored ape NFT as their profile photo. But here comes notorious buzzkill Neil deGrasse Tyson, with his 14.7 million followers, to defend the world’s richest person… scratch that… the world’s second richest person.

“While casting shade on @elonmusk for what he’s done, is doing, or will do, try to pause & remember that he made electric cars a normal thing in society and he commercialized space — for cargo, satellites, & people,” deGrasse Tyson tweeted, days after Twitter blocked journalists for doing their job. “Count him among those who are inventing civilization’s future.” Leaving aside the fact that Musk has made Twitter five times worse since acquiring the social media platform (and it was already plenty terrible), what might humanity’s future on Mars look like if the SpaceX founder has his way?

Al Jazeera has some predictions:

For starters, workers’ rights would likely be nonexistent. Musk has already blissfully violated earthly labour laws, threatened workers wishing to pursue unionization, spied on employees, and been bombarded with allegations that his behavior encourages sexual harassment and racism in the workplace… Taxes would also likely be nonexistent – at least for multi-gazillionaires like him who have traditionally been loath to contribute even the tiniest fraction of their wealth to US government taxes ostensibly collected on behalf of the public good.

But hey, maybe we could put a Cinnabon up there.

deGrasse Tyson’s defense of Musk is going over about as well as the time he made a “Blues Live Matter” joke about Avatar. “So you’re okay with racism, sexual assault, apartheid, anti semitism, and thievery… For someone whose space aspirations have been over financed and under delivering while systemically trying to lessen the very diversity you supposedly represent?” @Blackamazon tweeted, while @swarmferal2 replied, “Paving the way for commodifying the cosmos… Sagan is rolling in his grave.”

Here’s more.