Fascinating—if unfortunate—to see the world's 2 most powerful men basically functioning as walking test cases for classic outcomes when a child is not given appropriate attention/affection and also zero boundaries for socially-appropriate behavior.

The "treadmills" were used to measure the effects of bacteria on shrimp metabolism. Understanding how bacteria affects metabolism, at least to me, sounds like a perfectly valid thing to research. Most people, if they knew the context around that would probably agree, but people are extremely lazy with this stuff, and are really susceptible to stupid catchphrases, so people thought it was a huge waste of money.

ETA:

https://www.npr.org/2011/08/23/139852035/shrimp-on-a-treadmi...

Frankly, something DOGE has shown me is how lazy Musk is. I know he's the CEO of like twenty companies, but if what he's doing with DOGE is any indication, he has absolutely no attention to detail and is completely averse to actually learning or understanding what he's talking about. Like, every effort in DOGE is coming off as decidedly half-assed.

It makes me glad I don't own a Tesla, because I would be terrified to see what kind of corners they cut, and how much of it would end up being completely half-baked and not ready to actually be used. I'm not completely convinced that NASA contracting out to SpaceX is a good idea anymore either.