Why did Elon Musk just say Trump wants to bring two stranded astronauts home?

For reasons that were not immediately clear, SpaceX founder Elon Musk took to his social media site X on Tuesday evening to make a perplexing space-based pronouncement.

"The POTUS has asked SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so," Musk wrote. "Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long."

Now generally, at Ars Technica, it is not our policy to write stories strictly based on things Elon Musk says on X. However, this statement was so declarative, and so consternation-inducing for NASA, it bears a bit of explication.

lmao bullshit, Ars loves to sneed about everything Elon does; it's basically TMZ but only covering Elon.

Foremost, NASA has gone to great lengths to stress that the two astronauts referenced here—Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—are not stranded on the International Space Station.

The astronauts are clearly stranded as has been covered extensively over the last year by even leftie organisations:

NPR also released an article insisting that the astronauts aren't stranded - https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5278636/iss-astronaut-rescue-spacex-trump:

Ars comments are of course mad:

Why wouldn't the US government want to bring two stranded astronauts home? Why is this the top comment? What are you mad about?

They were meant to be there for eight days. The eighteen month stay was planned.

And yet they're still stranded there, curious. Why don't they just fly back home? They must want to be there.

The bottom two comments - note the guy who's had an account for 17 years.

WANTED THE UPMARSEYS BEFORE Y'ALL REALIZED WILL EDIT WITH MORE INFO + DRAMA

This is what a burger would see before the app shutdown

Visiting TikTok in the US now leads to the following:

(website)

(app)

The ban relies on your tiktok account's region. Using a VPN won't do anything unless you're signed out.

Rising posts are a great place to find nice dramamines, it's currently full of ban screenshots but there's also gems like this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/rant/comments/1i4od06/the_fact_people_are_more_enraged_about_tik_tok/

VARIOUS DRAMAMINES:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Tiktokhelp/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTok/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Tiktokhelp/comments/1i4pk5g/how_to_get_around_the_ban/ (links to a groomercord that supposedly teaches how to "get around the ban", not joining cuz r4 but ik some of y'all are secret groomercordians)

https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTok/comments/1i4nh5y/does_anyone_else_think_this_is_all_propaganda/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTok/comments/1i4fjd6/just_my_thoughts/ (doesn't talk bad about reddit for some reason )

Apple has removed TikTok from the U.S. App Store ‼️ pic.twitter.com/YFpa2g1BJ6

— Apple Hub (@theapplehub) January 19, 2025

BREAKING: TikTok has officially shut down in the US pic.twitter.com/vbxbiMwyJq

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 19, 2025

🚨#BREAKING: TikTok has officially been banned and shut down in the United States.

📌#UnitedStates | #USA

Just moments ago, TikTok released a message to its users announcing that it has been officially banned and shut down in the United States. Upon opening the app, all 170+… pic.twitter.com/IJliuF5IVb

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) January 19, 2025

TikTok has officially shut down in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/jbgayWYUFo

— Dexerto (@Dexerto) January 19, 2025

Nature is healing pic.twitter.com/OMNTbObkZr

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) January 19, 2025

TikTok has officially been banned in the U.S.😳‼️ pic.twitter.com/BsBfZJBHHa

— RapTV (@Rap) January 19, 2025

BRAND NEW UNTAPPED DRAMAMINES:

Breaking : CapCut has been shut down in the US TONIGHT after TikTok Banned pic.twitter.com/hNBg9jnKqU

— Raphousetv (RHTV) (@raphousetv2) January 19, 2025

TikTok has officially been removed from the App Store in the U.S.🇺🇸😳💔 pic.twitter.com/fCK0inALrd

— Raphousetv (RHTV) (@raphousetv2) January 19, 2025

🚨#BREAKING: Here are the following apps shut down in the United States tonight:
• TikTok
• CapCut
• Lemon8
• Gauth
• Hypic

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) January 19, 2025

https://t.co/CBXYNeC12Y

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) January 19, 2025

well tiktok is gone now 💔💔 pic.twitter.com/5676UcpKAy

— 🕐HOURLY🕑 shitpost (@hourly_shitpost) January 19, 2025

VARIOUS THINGS THAT I FOUND THAT I FIND FUNNY:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1i4ph8x/the_last_video_i_got_to_watch/

They finally soyjakked the America is Fascist for banning TikTok girl pic.twitter.com/XAMxcwrF9F

— Spinachbrah 🥗 (@basedspinach) January 18, 2025

First Tik Tok now calculator app… this day can’t get any worse pic.twitter.com/MpURFLcOfA

— greg (@greg16676935420) January 19, 2025

MrBeast, Kai Cenat, and Soulja Boy failed to save TikTok. pic.twitter.com/d608wXy2wf

— DramaAlert (@DramaAlert) January 19, 2025

Unsurprisingly, all the bot nsfw tiktok subreddits are not talking about the ban.

!burgers !chuds !coomers !fartneighbors !g*mers !humans !pantspoopers !pinggrouplovers !pings !transphobes !wincels

Enter BetHe will! - 10 bets

Enter BetHe will not! - 45 bets

Enter BetJoe Exotic and/or Trump and/or Aevann will die before the deadline of this bet. - 5 bets

Option 3 supersedes option 2.

!bets !goomble !goomblers !goombling !project2025 !tigerfrickers

Closed.

The downward spiral keeps going, yet another CT sub has fallen. 😭 Cumboys and cumgirls are the most persecuted people on reddit. Nick leaves, and now reddit kicks us off again. Dark times.

Many NSFW subs recently got banned for being "unmoderated" actually like /r/drugs. reddit sucks butt.

/r/redscarepod is next in line for the rope, betting on it.

Edit: NVM it's back up

NEW: Man gets sent to the hospital after trying to run through 1000 strips of duct tape.

Australian social media personality Lil Golo was rushed to the hospital after knocking himself out.

Lil Golo is known for his “unique” stunts like the one below but is now considering… pic.twitter.com/TjhUVCdQ2n

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 9, 2025

!r-slurs

!strayans

I said ignore

This is actually pretty strange. Maybe he's just some turbo neet addicted to the janny life. I'm not sure how he'd be making money from this. But it's creepy how these jannies weasel their way into more and more control.

I saw him on the front page earlier here

https://old.reddit.com/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1ie3wnc/severance_2x03_who_is_alive_episode_discussion/

Just a discussion thread, nbd. But I found a bunch of posts about him.

Sardines discussed him 2 weeks ago (removed of course)

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1i495u2/head_moderator_for_rtheboys_uloretitv_flagrantly/

That's a flagrant repost But he mops hard on any post that calls him out.

Not sure the rDrama rules here , but there is a private social media account with the same reddit username

sardines?

This redditor explains what he's doing

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheseFrickingAccounts/comments/1i19jjc/this_moderator_is_using_their_own_subreddit_as_a/

OR they have some sort of mental illness that drives them to see their fake internet points go up.

I'm leaning toward that, but I'll make a poll at the bottom.

Anotha one

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheseFrickingAccounts/comments/1i1dnd3/uloretitv_the_top_mod_of_rtheboys_reposts_their/

Couple more posts

https://old.reddit.com/r/exposingbadmods/comments/1hwd21b/loretitv/

janny making redditors seethe? Or cringe janny?

https://old.reddit.com/r/HOTDBlacks/comments/1hwz9h3/pathetic/

https://old.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/1e48xav/hardest_album_in_the_riverlands/

Redditors, I mean dramneurodivergents, discuss:

!chuds tired of winning yet?

!builtfor BAC

!Meowr !r-slurs !neurodivergents !autism

My name is Talia, and I'm searching for a life partner to start a loving family 💗
-I'm a sex worker with a high 6 fig income and 7 fig NW
-28 and freezing eggs soon! My dream is to be a SAHM for the early years of parenthood

Interested, or just curious? Take the survey below! pic.twitter.com/XjeMqIyVlB

— Talia 🌿 SF (@TaliaGraceSable) February 1, 2025

https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/dkuryfl/run

We NEED as many dramatards as possible filling this out. If you're a lonely virgin then THIS IS YOUR FRICKING CHANCE !personalarmy !incels @lankyhands

Does that guy has a black bf or something ? I never seen a white man being so hostile against black women to protect black men

https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/1ik40gv/genz_are_pretty_pro_2a/

Your turn

It all started when some nazi chud made this racist post:

Thankfully he was swiftly banned by the 24/7 online shemale jannies:

But G*mers not having it, so they did the only thing they could think of, spam the entire forum with the same message like toddlers:

🚨🚨BIG SCOOP: Musk’s DOGE Teen Was Fired By Cybersecurity Firm for Leaking Company Secrets

Edward Coristine posted online that he had retained access to the firm’s servers. Now he has access to sensitive government information.https://t.co/I4Fimayk6V

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) February 7, 2025

I am more willing to chalk this one up to youthful indiscretion since I think he must have been a high school underclassman in 2022

Babies are 6 MONTHS OLD TODAY! We are tired and proud!

!animalposters !cats

Algeria 🇩🇿 General Saïd Chanegriha visited Bharat Forge / KSSL
Can see multiple units of MArG 155/39 cal indicating delivery to Armenia 🇦🇲 is not done.
BFL ATAGS & UUVs also checked out by the 🇩🇿 gen.
JFI, 🇩🇿 & Morocco 🇲🇦, which is betting on Tata WhAP & HMVs, are arch rivals. pic.twitter.com/BBZPKYzYrT

— Adithya Krishna Menon (@AdithyaKM_) February 9, 2025

Indian gear on both sides I hope I get to see this

And I hope they fight forever

Imagine hating on us when we're literally just minding our own business and browsing the web 🙃

— Firefox 🔥 (@firefox) January 28, 2025

Apparently Brave got a little cheeky in Google Playstore (I don't see this in Tim Apple's store) and Mozzila is coping hard.

Firef*x claps back after Brave browser's Play Store shenanigans

https://old.reddit.com/r/firef*x/comments/1ic4w56/i_guess_this_is_a_response_for_braves_forget_the/

Pretty lame response. "We are just minding our business and fading into obscurity". They should have use this opportunity to promote some benefit of using Firef*x over brave.

Why would they give their competitor free advertising

where is the competition? the true privacy browser is firef*x

*conditions apply. Please turn off data collection, sponsored links, non-privacy-preserving website advertising preferences, weather on New Tab page, pocket sponsored posts, default browser agent, Normandy, as well as suggestion improvements for search and web browsing. Be sure to not enable AI, and set default search engine to something that isn't Google.

**kindly please ignore that even if you turn off data collection, we will still relentlessly reach out to incoming.telemetry.mozzarella.org and location.services.mozzarella.com.

Firef*x really be doing anything but enable hdr support on YouTube.

I don't get the drooling love some people have for Brave. I personally don't think I would ever trust the browser for anything other than just another option when the ones I like don't work due to the history of crypto schemes and ad/affiliate link hijacking.

Same reason I doubt I will ever trust something made by Lenovo. They screwed up in such a bad way in the past with that whole root cert thing on their OEM images that even a decade+ on I still associate them with it and never consider their products as an option if I can find anything else to do the job.

It is essentially a cult. The crypto crowd loves to overhype stuff as they are used to do it in their pyramid schemes.

Some other people also believe brave to be some kind of anti woke browser. It's just ideology.

Firef*x is objectively the best browser in the world

in a newly-bought Macbook, install Firef*x and Chrome, then compare. despite having the M4 processor and generous amounts of unified memory, Chrome lags while Firef*x is buttery smooth

i feel sorry for people who's using Chrome, they don't even know they got used to terrible experience that they think it's normal. it's like not knowing what's above 60 Hz refresh rate or not having experienced OLED

Firef*x for everything. Safari if I want to stream 4K on Netflix. Chrome if my work will be primarily on Google Docs or Gmail. Brave if it's winter and I want to use my computer as a space heater

I use Firef*x on my computer and brave on my phone. I haven't noticed brave heating up my phone though. What's going on with Brave that everyone hates them so much?

personally, i don't like that you can't disable or hide the features that are bundled with the browser - vpn, crypto, and ai. as for the company behind Brave, i dislike their marketing because they have no business hating on other browsers if they're just a Chrome reskin themselves.

as for the heating part, well, that's my experience on Mac because it's so unoptimized. Chrome is slow as it is, but when you bundle it with other bloat, it takes a toll on your machine. there's also a long-running joke that Brave mines crypto, that's why it gets hot

Brave on my old M1 laptop literally has better battery life than Safari. You can turn all the shit off. Neighbor what world are Mozzilatards living in? Oh yeah, one where Furryfox has a 69% market share and they're not a fat slob in a boring butt IT job for some middling company.

Don't be a lameass Furryfox user, be brave! The browser that puts you first | Brave

!braveshills

Born in , South Ayrshire, Scotland

🇺🇸 The female Black Hawk helicopter pilot from the crash in Washington, Captain Rebecca Lobach, was not named until her social media was cleaned … so it seems.

She was Biden’s aide. pic.twitter.com/gP16Tmr2py

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) February 2, 2025

He’s completely missing the point. But people who lack empathy usually do miss the point so this isn’t shocking https://t.co/BRRGwD6qLk

— △⃒⃘Youtube: Nu Mindframe△⃒⃘♒️ (@nu_mindframe) February 1, 2025

frick my shitnıgger r*pelife https://t.co/bTnEyzlyGc

— Kalos Groyper (@realKalos) February 9, 2025