(BM is a long way from a few dozen artist weirdos at Baker Beach in "don't call it Frisco.")

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Tech nerds are smart. But they can't seem to get their heads around politics. - Vox

Showing up means dealing with annoying people, many of whom are on your side. It means unpleasant compromises and second- or third-best solutions. But there's no way a new world can be born out of the old one without the midwifery of public policy. Musk may be several orders of magnitude smarter than most politicians, but politics is nonetheless the eye of the needle through which his enterprises must pass on their way to the promised land.

Burning Man founder Larry Harvey has countered criticism of the lack of racial diversity at the festival by saying that part of the reason there are so few black attendees (known as burners) is that "I don't think black folks like to camp as much as white folks".

In an interview with the Guardian, Harvey vowed that "we're not going to set racial quotas", defended the presence of rich Silicon Valley executives at the festival, and said he will personally go undercover this week to investigate the luxurious camps of ultra-wealthy tech bosses said by the New York Times to boast chefs, air conditioning and servants.

According to the most recent Black Rock city census, complied yearly by a team of academic demographers and anthropologists to determine the makeup of the festival, 87% of burners identified as white; 6% identified as Hispanic, 6% as Asian, and 2% as Native Americans (figures rounded) - on the latter of whose ancestral lands the event occurs. The smallest demographic of burners - 1.3% - identified as black. According to the census, which also measures income, this means that the temporary city is home to twice as many people who earn $300,000 a year as it is to black people.

At Burning Man's Airport, There Are Propeller People and Jet People