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Oh, Elon

Is Elon Musk crazy? Or just misunderstood?

Why choose?

As he tweets about a trip around the moon, Musk is getting sued back on Earth by the cave rescue diver he called a pedophile. (Confoundingly, Musk had apologized to Vernon Unsworth, the diver, then backtracked in emails to BuzzFeed News where he doubled down on his insults — all facts cited in Unsworth’s suits.)

The Department of Justice has weighed in, too, investigating Tesla and Musk over his tweeted plans to take the company private, plans he abandoned after weeks of uncertainty and pushback from investors. Tesla has acknowledged the probe, which follows weeks of scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And then there was Musk toking up on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

I’ve tracked Musk’s misadventures in Silicon Valley and beyond since the late ’90s, when he got squeezed out of top management at Zip2, his first Internet startup. I found his next venture, an online bank called X.com, intriguing, since I’d been writing about money on the web at Red Herring, a magazine about business and technology. (I still have my X.com debit card, a memento of those go-go days.) He merged that with another startup to form what became PayPal — and got squeezed out of that, too.

He cried all the way to the bank both times, rolling most of his Zip2 fortune into PayPal and his PayPal fortune into Tesla and SpaceX. Intriguingly, when it came to Tesla, where he was the first outside investor but not a founder, he did the squeezing — firing founder Martin Eberhard and installing two CEOs before taking over himself.

I think that history is telling. Musk has learned from his early mistakes. A docile, conflicted board, convinced of Musk’s greatness, has tolerated his oddities. A few extremely loyal executives, like JB Straubel at Tesla and Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, have stuck by him. Those without a high Musk tolerance are soon gone; he’s not aiming for a repeat of the executive coup that ousted him at PayPal.

Here’s Musk to biographer Ashlee Vance, reflecting on his time at Zip2, the first time he’d had to manage other people: “The first obvious assumption would be that other people will behave like you. But that’s not true. Even if they would like to behave like you, they don’t necessarily have all of the assumptions or information that you have in your mind.”

Most people don’t behave like Musk. (They have more self-control, less self-regard, more self-awareness.) By now, he’s figured that out. Here’s the thing: I don’t think he cares. His head is in space, and his gaze is toward the stars.

It might take the long arm of the law to bring him back to Earth.

— Owen Thomas (othomas@sfchronicle.com)

Quote of the week

“Benioff now owns Time Magazine. Bezos owns the Washington Post. If anyone has a reasonably priced blog on Medium for sale, please reach out to me.” — Box CEO Aaron Levie, tweeting about Salesforce chief Marc Benioff’s media purchase

Coming up

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Read More

Speaking of Salesforce, it’s time for Dreamforce, the company’s annual festival of cloud computing. It kicks off Tuesday with a keynote from Benioff. (Ramona the Love Terrier went once. She barked at a clearly suspect Salesforce mascot with a giant head.)

What I’m listening to

“Masters of Scale,” hosted by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Recent guests include Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom and former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

What I’m reading

Silicon Valley underpays women in stock options, too, Melia Russell reports. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s full interview with NYU professor Jay Rosen. (Recode)

Is Apple sexist? The new iPhones are too big for some women’s hands. (People)

Tech Chronicle is a thrice-weekly newsletter from Owen Thomas, The Chronicle’s business editor, and the rest of the tech team. Follow along on Twitter: @techchronicle and Instagram: @techchronicle