Elon Musk to FIGHT Mark Zuckerberg (video)

E! News, 6/22/23; Alex Hern (respected British newspaper The Guardian, 6/22/23); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Sheldon S., CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Dear Diary, I will kick the living h*ll out of that li'l punk *ss b*tch anytime anywhere...

Who you call a "b*tch"?

In the red corner, the world’s richest manly man (human), and in the blue corner, the world’s richest and most effeminate millennial:

Twitter's Elon Musk (Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX) and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) have agreed to FIGHT in a cage match, after Musk jokingly suggested the bout in response to efforts by Meta to launch a Twitter competitor.

“I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb,” Musk tweeted on Wednesday in response to a post about Meta’s rumored Threads app.

The app, previously known inside Instagram as Project 92 and Barcelona, has been pitched to celebrities and influencers as a “stable place to build and grow” their audiences.

How did Elon Musk get so rich? Same as Bill Gates: selling us all out to the surveillance state.

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I'll smoke that punk like weed. Ask Joe Rogan

“At least it will be ‘sane,’” Musk added. “Was worried there for a moment.” When a follower warned that the Twitter boss should watch his words around Zuckerberg, Musk responded: “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”

What could have been one of many half-thought-out tweets dashed off by Musk -- whose itchy posting finger has already brought him a libel suit from a British diver he labelled a “pedo[phile]” and an SEC demand for a lawyer to vet his missives after he falsely claimed to have “funding secured” to take Tesla private -- became rather more significant when Zuckerberg responded.

In a post on his verified Instagram account, Meta Chief Executive Officer Zuck shared a screenshot of Musk’s challenge with the caption: “Send Me Location.”

The danger for Musk is that Zuckerberg is, apparently, quite good at fighting. [He's been practicing to impress his Asian gal-pal, Priscilla, and/or to overcome his worldwide reputation as a wuss and dweeb.]

Both men seem to have limitless reserves of energy [and money], but where Musk applies that to running five separate companies at the same time, Zuckerberg prefers to get really, really serious about hobbies.

In the past he has spent periods learning Mandarin (Chinese), touring America (in what was widely seen as a dry run for an abortive presidential campaign), and only eating meat he killed with a bow and arrow [like Republican rocker Ted Nugent].

Recently, though, his hobby has been Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), and when he made his competitive debut last month, he won two out of three bouts.

Amber, Johnny's nemesis, agrees with Grimes.

“Zuck’s been training,” said Elena Cresci, a former Guardian journalist and professional Muay Thai (Thai martial arts style kick boxing) champion, “whereas Elon Musk has been tweeting that he doesn’t train beyond throwing his kids up in the air. So on paper it’s [wuss] Zuck. He’s been having a good time doing his little BJJ competitions.’’

One wrinkle is the combatants’ sizes. At an estimated 1.87 meters (6ft 1in) and about 85kg (13stone 5lb), Musk is several weight classes above Zuckerberg, who measures a mere 1.71 meters (5ft 7ins) and less than 70kg (11stone).

All else being equal, that would put Musk at an advantage, even after taking account of the 12-year age gap between the two.

Musk is MUCH bigger [3==D~] than Zuck.

“Elon Musk is just a lot bigger than [the Zucker], so he could just lie on top of him and hope for the best,” Cresci said. That’s not far off Musk’s actual fight plan.

“I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus,’ where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing,” he tweeted.

The ultimate question for the fight, if it does occur, is whether Musk takes it seriously or treats the whole thing as a joke.

I went from Grimes to Amber Depp and back.

“I’ve coached a couple of white-collar fights, and how it usually goes is when it’s their first fight, they get overexcited and gas themselves out in the first round,” Cresci said. “But these are two men with a lot of money at their disposal, so they can pay for as much training as they want.

Look at YouTubers like Logan Paul, who are actually decent boxers now because they can afford to train with the best.”

Stats: Musk vs. Zuck: tale of the tape

ELON MUSK

Age: 51. Net worth: $236 billion. Place of birth: Pretoria, South Africa. Education: University of Pennsylvania (BA, BS). Children: at least 10. Monthly active users: 330 million (Twitter). Congressional hearings: one (national security in space launches). Money lost last year on flights of fancy: $30 billion on buying Twitter and running it into the ground.

MARK ZUCKERBERG

Age: 39. Net worth: $99.9 billion. Place of birth: White Plains, New York. Education: Harvard University (unfinished). [See movie Social Network for details.] Children: 3. Monthly active users: 2.9 billion (Facebook). Congressional hearings: two (Cambridge Analytica and Libra cryptocurrency). Money lost last year on flights of fancy: $13.7 billion on the metaverse. More

Virgin Galactic space ship blows up (video)

Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; (The Guardian) UPDATED
(AP) Branson screws up, Virgin Galactic spaceship goes down. Justin Bieber not on board.
(CNN/YFN) Confirmation: Virgin space plane pilot has died unlike crewless Antares cargo ship.
 

The wreckage from Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (Reuters/TheGuardian.com)

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Happy Halloween from space, Branson!

Virgin Galactic said plane designed for commercial space travel was undertaking test flight in California when an "in-flight anomaly" occurred.
 
A Virgin Galactic spacecraft crashed after an explosion during a test flight over [California's] Mojave desert today, killing one of the pilots, seriously injuring another, and leaving debris scattered over a wide area.

 Video still of SpaceShipTwo wreckage (AP)

[This comes on the eve of the first rain California has seen in months, with L.A. news outlets predicting a "100% chance of rain" tonight and snow in Yosemite and on the heels of a NASA failure with the loss of an Int'l Space Station delivery rocket earlier this week.]
 

The plane, SpaceShipTwo, was undertaking a test flight as part of Sir Richard Branson’s plans for commercial space travel when a “serious anomaly” occurred, the company said.

 

Space plane (vimana) uses foolish fuel (SCPR)

Witnesses reported the spacecraft broke apart soon after it was detached from the launch plane that carries it to 45,000 ft. Rescuers found one of the pilots dead on the ground. The other, who appeared to have deployed an emergency parachute, was airlifted to a hospital with serious injuries.

 

Virgin Galactic said that SpaceShipTwo was powered by a fuel mix that had not previously been used in flight, although it had been tested extensively on the ground. The company was unable to say whether the change to the fuel mix offered an explanation for the accident, which happened just before 11am local time. More [This is not the first time.]

• Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crash leaves 1 dead
• Virgin Galactic's Spaceline picture coming into focus
• Justin Bieber books Spaceflight with Virgin Galactic 
• Virgin Galactic Plans Space Hotels, Day Trips to the Moon 
• Antares operator used destruct system to blow up rocket
• Desert Exposure June 2014 Tumbleweeds Virgin Galactic hires a top PR firm -- maybe a tad too late to manage bad news...It also used the unfortunate phrase, "The Internet would completely blow up." 
• Scaled Composites accident - Mojave Desert, California In particular the claim (made by Virgin Galactic) that nitrous oxide is "stable and...Three seconds into the test, there was an explosion which resulted in three..." 
• Virgin Galactic hires PR firm to prep for commercial flights 
• Do you have what it takes to go into space? (Probably) 
• Virgin Galactic is going to be social media on rocket fuel

Blow for Virgin space program as prototype rockets go up in smoke

Ed Pilkington in New York and James Randerson (The Guardian, July 28, 2007)

I'm a billionaire, not a rocket scientist!

Propulsion system for hybrid craft blows up. Three workers killed and three wounded in blast. Richard Branson's plans to run the first commercial space flight service were thrown into disarray [in 2007] after an explosion during a test of the rocket's propulsion system left three workers dead and three seriously wounded with shrapnel injuries and burns. Witnesses at the world's first commercial spaceport at Mojave in California, said the explosion was accompanied by a blast that sounded like a 500 lb. bomb. The accident happened...during tests of the propulsion system used in the new SpaceShipTwo [what happened to one?] -- the prototype for Virgin Galactic's eight-seater private rockets. The system is hybrid, using both solid fuels and liquid oxidizers, a combination chosen paradoxically because it is safer than solid fuels alone. Two workers were killed at the scene while the third died later in hospital. The billionaire entrepreneur [had to that dated] invested at least $200 million (£99m) in the groundbreaking work of Scaled Composites, the company leading the mission... More

• Branson's ambitious space-travel project plagued by problems and delays
• The 10 greatest changes of the past 1,000 years

Flipside: A Tourist's Guide to the Afterlife

CC Liu, Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Rich Martini (FlipsideTheFilm.com); Rinpoche Zasep

(barnesandnoble.com)

This is the companion video to a talk at Mystic Journey Bookstore in Venice, California. Hypnotherapist Scott De Tamble briefly explains what "between life therapy" is, as taught to him by Michael Newton. He offers to do a between life session with someone in the audience, who became upset while listening to an account of an American Indian past life memory that included a massacre. De Tamble offered to help her get to the root of her emotional memory. 

The woman had read Flipside: A Tourist's Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife but had never before met the author. After the session she said she had other visual memories regarding this past life. The session was conducted in front of a public audience on July 14, 2012. Sound quality suffers because no filming session was planned, and the bookstore was open throughout.

But the evidence for rebirth is not limited to hypnosis. There is a growing body of scientific evidence, in spite of it being a filtered and forbidden topic of study. Wisdom Quarterly frequently speaks of the amazing work of Dr. Ian Stevenson. The evidence in Buddhist texts goes even further.

(Univ. of Virginia) Scientific evidence with Dr. Ian Stevenson, M.D.

PLEASE COME AGAIN: The Reincarnation of Zasep Tulku Rinpoche

 

Wheel of Rebirth (Hanciong/flickr.com)

(ITM WORLD VIDEOS) Tibetan Buddhism on Rebirth: What happens when we die? Let's ask someone who has traveled the Bardo (Tibetan, the "between") and returned to talk about it.

Rinpoche Zasep is a Vajrayana Buddhist lama born in Tibet in 1948. He currently lives in British Columbia. At an early age he was recognized as a tulku, an incarnation (the 13th) of Lama Konchog Tenzin of Zuru Monastery. In 1959, during the genocidal Chinese invasion, he escaped from Tibet and continued his education for 16 years in India under the tutelage of many greatest teachers.

Science: Space-Time Cloaking (Nat Geo)

Richard A. Lovett (National Geographic News, July 11, 2011)

Fiber optics can easily bend light around objects, but an event cloak bends time, too

It's no illusion: Science has found a way to make not just objects but entire events disappear, experts say.

Magic? Material would adjust speed of light [once imagined to be constant] to hide actions, physicists say. According to new research by British physicists, it's theoretically possible to create a material that can hide an entire bank heist from human eyes and surveillance cameras. "The concepts are basically quite simple," said Paul Kinsler, a physicist at Imperial College London, who created the idea with colleagues Martin McCall and Alberto Favaro. Unlike invisibility cloaks -- some of which have been made to work at very small scales -- the event cloak would do more than bend light around an object. More

• "Acoustic 'Invisibility' cloaks possible, study says"
• Russian gets Nobel for discovery of graphene
  
• Science of the Impossible (Dr. Kaku)
  

Weird Science: Cosmos, aliens, clowns

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte is set to become the seventh space tourist (a clown in space, if you will)...On the menu for the latest edition of Weird Science: Cosmic cannibals, a presidential alien abduction, and clowns in space. The Andromeda galaxy, our nearest neighbor in space, turns out to have a nasty appetite.

Using a telescope scan, astronomers have found evidence of Andromeda's galactic meals. From the AP: "What we're seeing right now are the signs of cannibalism," said study lead author Alan McConnachie of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia. "We're finding things that have been destroyed...partly digested remains." Earth's galaxy, the Milky Way, is next on Andromeda's snack list. John Dubinksi, co-author of the project, says the two galaxies are headed toward each other at a rate of 75 miles per second. But not to worry: We won't be dinner for another few billion years.

Back on Earth, a U.S.-Australian research team has discovered the coldest, driest, calmest place on the planet. The spot, known only as "Ridge A," is located on the Antarctic Plateau. From LiveScience: "It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all," said study leader Will Saunders.

I hear Venus is beautiful this time of year: Reuters is reporting that Miyuki Hatoyama, Japan's next first lady, claims she was abducted by aliens and taken to Venus. The new prime minister's wife wrote a book last year called Very Strange Things I've Encountered, in which she describes her close encounter: More>>

Tourist Returns from Space

Back from space holding the "all is well" mudra

Thirty million dollars later, American tourist in space returns home safely from 10 days in the Akasha Deva Loka ("sky being sphere"), in Buddhist terms, otherwise referred to as the International Space Station. Fortunately, he had sponsors for whom he conducted some experiments. He is one of only to men, both on this trip, to follow his father (a former astronaut) into space 35 years after the elder did some of the same photographing and mapping of the earth's surface. Texan Richard Garriott, 47, says he is "glad to be home" back on earth. Two Russian cosmonauts brought him down, landing in Kazakhstan.

• Space tourist comes home
  The game designer paid $30 million to fulfill a dream of following his father into space.

Akasha Deva Loka: International Space Station in low orbit

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MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Space tourist Richard Garriott's orbital vacation ended Friday as a Soyuz capsule carrying him and two cosmonauts landed safely in north-central Kazakhstan. Space tourist Richard Garriott returned to Earth on Friday after a 10-day visit to the International Space Station.

Garriott, who made millions of dollars in the video game industry, spent the past 10 days aboard the International Space Station, for which he paid the Russian government an estimated $30 million. Garriott said the flight was a fulfillment of his dream to follow in the footsteps of his father, former NASA astronaut Owen Garriott. The elder Garriott flew on the second U.S. Skylab mission in 1973, a forerunner of the International Space Station.

"What a great ride that was," said Garriott in comments reported by The Associated Press. "This is obviously a pinnacle experience." Garriott has said he hoped to make his spaceflight a commercial success by conducting protein crystal growth experiments for a biotech company co-founded by his father. Garriott was also paid to wear a watch to test its performance in microgravity. Garriott was the sixth private citizen to buy a ticket to the space station from the Russian government.

• News (People's Daily, China)