Maye Musk was born in Regina 74 years ago. She moved to South Africa, then returned to Canada where she was a research officer for the University of Toronto, and now lives in Los Angeles. She’s been a successful model for the past 50 years and a nutritionist and speaker for the past 20. Elon, the world’s richest man, is one of her three children, including Kimbal and Tosca.
Earlier this month, before he bought Twitter, Elon spoke at the TedTalk gathering in Vancouver, where it’s now held every April. Much is being speculated about him. Here’s what’s speculated by him.
He also couldn’t help slag some of his future employees at Twitter. Just one day after signing the 75-page agreement to buy the company, which explicitly forbids him from disparaging the company or its staff, he did.
Speaking of billionaires behaving badly……
1. A fruitcake who’s afraid of fruit. On Wednesday, the New York Supreme Court released Donald Trump’s testimony that he ordered the Secret Service to violently quash demonstrators outside his Fifth Avenue apartment in 2015 because he was afraid he would be killed by tomatoes. I’d never heard of the source of this story, but Richard Rosenthal dug out the actual transcript, and the tomatoes enter at page 172. Crazy reading, of course.
2. Are you a groomer? As always, Canadians are bambis when it comes to polarising politics. In America, Republicans now regularly claim that Democrats are sex offenders who ‘groom’ their young victims. But Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat from suburban Detroit, finally had enough after being accused of grooming and sexualising kindergarteners. “We will not let hate win.”
For more entitlement nonsense, here’s former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly at the airport gate at Kennedy after his flight was delayed.
3. Is knowing that you’re going to die a luxury? This 10-minute documentary on love and aging and dying is all the more poignant because it happened on an answering machine.
4. It’s still the same old story, the fight for wetlands or condos. The Silver Creek Wetlands near Collingwood will be replaced by condos. Even though it’s South Georgian Bay’s last intact coastal wetland and designated “provincially significant,” the Ford government has quietly enacted municipal zoning orders (MZOs) to push development forward indiscriminately, often overriding municipal authorities.
Last week, a petition arose and already has 16,000 signatures. If you like its attitude, please join me in signing and supporting.
5. How to survive a tactical nuclear bomb. Last week’s blog said that nuclear weapons may not be as dangerous as you think. This week, we learn what to do when the bomb comes for you.
6. Common passwords are bad passwords. If you use one of the 200 Most Common Passwords, the time it takes a hacker to break into your life ranges from 0.1 seconds to 17 minutes. Here they are, listed by country. In Canada, the three most common are: “123456”, “password”, and “123456789.” If you recognize your passwords in these lists, best to change.
7. How to invisibilize a tree. Just follow Howard Lee’s example, and be careful next time you walk in the woods.
8. Law and disorder. On Wednesday, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights reported that the Minneapolis Police (whose racism killed George Floyd in May of 2020) set up fake social media accounts to covertly surveil Black people, organizations, and politicians not suspected of any crimes. In one case, an MPD officer used a covert Minneapolis Police account to pose as a Black community member to send a message to a local branch of the NAACP criticizing the group.
Meanwhile, in a different part of the legal forest, here are the latest “energy weapons” from Axon Inc, whose CEO, Rick Smith, claims: “We are going to make the bullet obsolete.”
9. A decade-old obit worth reading. Canadian Emily St. John Mandel sits atop the literary world with her latest novel, Sea of Tranquility. Her agent died over a decade ago. Here’s Emily’s tribute to Emilie Jacobson, the kind of advocate we’d all like on our side. As Mandel wrote: “I always thought of her as an emissary from a bygone world, among the last of her kind.”
10. One world. One oboe. Here are two pieces to brighten your weekend. The new American dream in music, and some Bach, lovingly played in Berlin.
Forbidden words: the words you must not use this week are “residents”, “clients”, and “service-users.” Especially when referring to the people who used to be called “inmates” and “prisoners” in Britain’s penitentiaries.
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Join us next spring for an extraordinary visit to Israel.
In 2018, we took a group of friends to Israel. It was our first trip there, and aside from having some of the best meals of our lives, we were awestruck by this tiny land, its mighty culture – and challenges.
So from next March 9th to the 20th, 2023 we’ll be touring Israel again and we’d love it if you could come along. In fact, journalist Susan Ormiston, the foreign correspondent who’s reported from 30 countries, will be our “Chief Guest”, and will speak from her first-hand coverage of events in the Middle East.
Here are the details and the application for our trip, which has already started to fill up.
We hope you can join us — next year in Jerusalem.
For more information on this and other RamsayTravels adventures, click here. And, please also forward to your like-spirited friends.
