Hi everybody, and welcome to Earth 2,020 years after some monk made up a date he figured was when a very popular religious figure was born! I hope you like it here: we have amazing pocket computers and really great television and excellent sushi and also if you’re a billionaire and you do something another billionaire doesn’t like, such as buying an electric car from some company not owned by the first billionaire, we have global data networks you can use to be petulant about it. when it was revealed he bought a Porsche Taycan.

Here’s the Tweet in question:

Bill Gates, the man who brought the world such unmitigated triumphs as and the Zune, revealed in an interview that he just bought a Porsche Taycan EV:

We also learn a few other details: Bill Gates pronounces Porsche without the preferred trailing “uh,” thinks his Taycan is “very very cool” and acknowledges that range and recharge times are still an obstacle to mainstream EV ownership.

Unlike the twitter account’s take on Gates’ statement—that what he said would dissuade people from buying EVs—I think Gates was just being realistic and honest.

Yes, EVs have improved dramatically in both range and recharge time in recent years, but a long trip still requires far more planning and effort than in a combustion car. But I don’t think anything he said could be taken as a suggestion to avoid EVs.

And, of course, Musk’s comment wasn’t about that; Elon was responding to the statement that Gates is a “smart guy” which I don’t think is even debatable, really, Elon’s ego, seemingly bruised from both Gates choosing the Porsche over any Tesla and the suggestion that there may exist smart guys who are not Elon Musk, just had to let everyone know that, hey, Bill’s not so great.

I wonder what Elon was expecting out of conversations with Gates that wouldn’t have underwhelmed him, anyway? Rapid strings of hexadecimal 8088 code?

Not really a classy reaction from Elon, tbh.