just found out elon musk had to publicly clarify his whole south african heritage thing because people kept assuming he was afrikaner. apparently he's actually british/english descent, which is kind of a wild distinction to have to make lol.

the interesting part? he compared himself to j.r.r. tolkien who was also born in south africa. both had english/british parents but grew up there. musk is apparently a huge tolkien fan too - even used his works when courting his ex grimes or something.

so yeah, elon musk's ethnicity and background turned out to be more about his british roots than the afrikaner identity people assumed. kind of random that he had to tweet about it but i guess when people get your ancestry wrong it does matter for context. the tolkien parallel is actually pretty cool though.