Of Course He Is

Have you heard the one about the conservative influencer who got impregnated by Elon Musk, who largely ignored the kid?

Well, she had a change of heart and apologized for her previous anti-trans statements, so the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is trying to take her child away from her.

He really is a vile and petty man.

Ashley St. Clair is having a very bad month.

The conservative influencer built her brand on anti-trans rhetoric and owning the libs. Now she’s locked in a custody battle with Elon Musk, the father of her one-year-old son Romulus. Musk, who according to St. Clair’s court filings has seen the child just a handful of times since his birth, announced on X Monday that he would be “filing for full custody today, given her statements implying she might transition a one-year-old boy.”

St. Clair said no such thing. What she actually said, in response to a user asking her to address her past transphobia, was this: “I feel immense guilt for my role. And even more guilt that things I have said in the past may have caused my son’s sister more pain.”

………

Elon Musk is seeking full custody of a child he’s allegedly seen three times, based on the false claim that the child’s mother wants to “transition” a one-year-old.

This is the same Elon Musk who refused to publicly acknowledge he was Romulus’s father after the child was born in September 2024. St. Clair kept the pregnancy and birth secret for five months, only going public in February 2025 because tabloids were about to break the story anyway. According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk offered her $15 million plus $100,000 per month in child support if she would sign an NDA and never reveal his paternity. She turned it down, telling Musk’s fixer Jared Birchall, “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret.”

Musk responded by slashing her support. When St. Clair’s attorney accused him of “financially retaliating against his own child,” Musk posted on X that he’d given her $2.5 million and was sending $500,000 a year, adding that he didn’t “know for sure” if the child was even his. St. Clair fired back that Musk had “refused” to take a paternity test, writing, “Elon, we asked you to confirm paternity through a test before our child (who you named) was even born.”

So to recap: Musk named the kid, wouldn’t acknowledge him publicly, tried to buy St. Clair’s silence, cut her support when she wouldn’t comply, pretended he wasn’t sure the baby was his, and is now seeking full custody because she apologized to trans people.

He runs a platform that generated child sexual abuse material using the mother’s image, then punished her for complaining about it. He’s the world’s richest man, and he’s using his wealth and his platform to destroy a woman whose crime is expressing empathy for his estranged daughter.

This is the guy who thinks he should be making decisions about a toddler’s welfare.

This asshole should have been drowned at birth.

Parents of the Corn

Grauniad* writer Jenny Kleeman did an interview with "Pronatalist" advocates Malcolm and Simone Collins, and came away profoundly unsettled, and not just because their philosophy is clearly motivated by eugenics and racism.  

It appears that their parenting is a toxic mix of narcissism, indifference, and neglect.

First a brief primer, pronatalism is the belief that people should have as many children as is physically possible, because the world is facing a population collapse as a result of declining birthrates, which will result in an economic collapse, and grandma and grandpa will starve in their apartment.

It's a big thing with a lot of the Silly Con Valley tech bros, most notably Elon Musk. (11 kids and counting)

There are a few problems this philosophy:

• The world's population is not falling, it is increasing, and the fertility rate is still well above replacement levels.
• The unspoken bit by folks like the Collinses is that they are worried about inferior people, meaning non white people, are outbreeding folks like them.
• The best historical data point for the effects of a population reduction is the Black Death, where the death of 50% of the population resulted in a skyrocketing standard of living, reduced inequality, and increases in productivity.

Truth be told, they do not have that many kids, the 4th one is on the way, and they all have been IVF, because Simone Collins cannot get pregnant the normal way because of eating disorders.

Here a few highlights (lowlights?) of their profile in The Guardian:

• Malcolm Collins smacked his two year old across the face for kicking a table leg at a restaurant, and then said that it was OK, because tigers do it.
• They gave their kids Pads as a way to keep them occupied. (Babysitting)
  
• Not heating the house in the winter because it is a, "Pointless indulgence."
• A f%$#-ton of guns, including an AR-15 hanging on the wall.
• They have named their kids, Octavian George, Torsten Savage, Titan Invictus, and the expected girl on the way will be named Industry Americus.
• They have money to burn, "They bought this house and the one next door for $575,000; they allow their neighbours to live in the second house rent free, in exchange for childcare." (Malcomb is literally a trust fund baby)
  
• Believe that genetics is more important than parenting in the development of your kids.
• Genetically screen the embryos before IVF implantation to select for optimum genetics.  Actual quote, "We are the Underground Railroad of ‘Gattaca’ babies and people who want to do genetic stuff with their kids." (They do not realize that the genetic manipulators were the bad guys in the movie)
  
• Believe that, "Pronatalist parenting is intrinsically low-effort parenting." 

As an aside the female half of the Silly Con Valley Duggars is running as a Republican for the State House in Pennsylvania, because she will have so much free time, I guess.

It's not like she is planning on having 7 children.

^*Grauniad was a satirical coined by Private Eye magazine. They applied this to The Guardian newspaper, because of its reputation for typographical errors. It has been said that The Guardian would misspell its own name.

I Hope That This Applies to Cops Too

What about other obligations to protect?I'm a bit late to this, I only became aware of Jennifer Crumbley's conviction of involuntary manslaaughter for her role in her son's mass shooting when I saw Leagle Eagle's video on the topic. (I follow him on YouTube)

One question that was not answered, and one that  immediately came to mind, was that if parents have a duty to protect, why don't police officers.

It is a clear Supreme Court precedent, coming from The Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, that the police have no obligation to protect the public.

Jennifer Crumbley does appear to be a horrible person, and a horrible person, but her career was not to, "Protect and Serve." 

I am not suggesting that she should not have been convicted, and that she should not go to jail.

What I AM suggesting is that police should be subject to at least as much legal scrutiny.

Another Failure as a Parent

Charlie shared a quote he saw on the internet.

He thought that it was brilliant, but he had no clue where it came from:

CB: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war two great super-armies developed. Us, the Russians and the French on one side, Germany and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea being that each army would act as the other's deterrent. That way, there could never be a war.

PB: Except, this is sort of a war, isn't it?

CB: That's right. There was one tiny flaw in the plan.

LG: O, what was that?

CB: It was bollocks.

I agreed that it was brilliant, and it seemed a bit fmailiar.

I asked it what it was from, and he looked down said, "Something called Blackadder?"

My kids have never seen any of the Blackadder series.

I have failed as a parent.

This has Gotta Hurt

The mother of British Prime Minister has signed a petition against her son's cuts of children's services:

Among the 10,000 names on a petition against planned cuts to children’s services by a local council is a name that will cause embarrassment to British Prime Minister David Cameron — his mum.

Mary Cameron, 81, told the Daily Mirror newspaper that she had signed a petition to save children’s centers earmarked for closure by Oxfordshire county council, which is run by her son’s Conservative Party.

“My name is on the petition but I don’t want to discuss this any further,” Mary Cameron, a former magistrate, said.

The petition says: “Our children’s centers are a lifeline to new parents who rely on locally accessible advice and support at a time when it is most needed. Cutting these essential services would leave families vulnerable and isolated and fail an entire generation of children.”

………

Mary Cameron has intervened in her son’s career before. In 2013, she was asked about her son’s support for gay marriage despite opposition from Tory grassroots supporters, and reportedly replied: “I know, but David just won’t be told.”

From his mother?  That's harsh.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

As a small child, I spent a fair amount of time unsupervised.

As a 20 year old, I took a year off while I changed schools and majors, and saw the (IMHO Ronald Reagan inspired) height of the missing child hysteria in 1981-82.^*

So, I am disgusted, but not surprised, that a mom was jailed for sending her 9 year old to play in the park alone, despite the fact that she was sent with a cell phone, and the mother was at work nearby:

Just in case you thought you could parent whatever way you see fit in 2014 America:

A North Augusta mother is in jail after witnesses say she left her nine-year-old daughter at a nearby park, for hours at a time.

Hours at a time? At a park? In the summer? Gosh! That certainly sounds normal and fun like a reason to throw a mom in jail—and place the child in state custody.

Here are the facts: Debra Harrell works at McDonald's in North Augusta, South Carolina. For most of the summer, her daughter had stayed there with her, playing on a laptop that Harrell had scrounged up the money to purchase. (McDonald's has free WiFi.) Sadly, the Harrell home was robbed and the laptop stolen, so the girl asked her mother if she could be dropped off at the park to play instead.

Harrell said yes. She gave her daughter a cell phone. The girl went to the park—a place so popular that at any given time there are about 40 kids frolicking—two days in a row. There were swings, a "splash pad," and shade. On her third day at the park, an adult asked the girl where her mother was. At work, the daughter replied.

The shocked adult called the cops. Authorities declared the girl "abandoned" and proceeded to arrest the mother.

Watch the news: It sounds like Debra Harrell committed a serious, unconscionable crime. The reporter looks ready to burst with contempt. But what are the facts? She let her daughter play at the park for several hours at a time—like we did as kids. She gave her a daughter a phone if she needed to call. Any "danger" was not only theoretical, it was exceedingly unlikely.

The danger is vanishingly small.

We are a nation who lives in terror of vanishingly small threats, child abduction, shark attacks, plane crashes, and non existent things, like vaccine related autism, while blithely ignoring greater threats, like driving, guns in the home, crossing the street, and anything that begins with the phrase, "Watch this."

Have I mentioned that we as a society are both paranoid and insane?

^*The people whipping up the hysteria claimed that there were something like 85,000 child abductions a year^†. They did this by counting every time a kid was delivered late from visitation, got lost in the mall for 5 minutes, etc.
^†Stranger child abduction number significantly less than 100 per year.