Memes, grudges and moving to Mars: the week in Elon Musk | Luke Winkie

Two weeks ago, the Tesla chief was vowing to support Ukraine - now he believes that's some kind of woke cause celebre

Elon Musk has a net worth of $220bn - rounded off nicely by a bounty of government subsidies. Yet he has not taken cues from any of his billionaire peers. Jeff Bezos rarely ever shows his face on the internet, Bill Gates defers most of his public statements to his charity and Mark Zuckerberg doesn't even have a Twitter account. But Musk has never been able to overcome a need for attention that churns away at the core of his being. He has been offered an incredible pedestal by his wealth, and he is committed to use it as obnoxiously as possible.

By now we've become accustomed to his blend of churlish gamer patois and casual prejudice. In the past week on Twitter, Musk has challenged Vladimir Putin to one-on-one combat, derided the Ukrainian solidarity campaign as a movement for sheeple and alluded to the idea of moving to Mars by 2029.