In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The other day I noted that Elon seems to be making things up as he goes along with Twitter, and recent developments aren't changing my mind. This story goes into considerable detail about how last week's layoff process went down. Earlier, I quoted Musk on how if you think a policy would make a great Dilbert strip, it might be a bad policy, but the problem there is that Dilbert is supposed to be funny, and this saga is turning out to be anything but. Friday’s layoffs had been brutal for all involved, including those involved in planning them — many of whom themselves lost their jobs. While the process varied by team, some managers were asked to submit to Musk’s team two sentences about all of their direct reports: one sentence explaining what the employee did, and one sentence justifying their continued employment at Twitter. Wait a moment. "Those involved in planning them"? The new boss takes over and gives the company one week to lay off half its workforc...

I gave myself a day to let the results of the midterms sink in, and as of now, my takeaway is that I just don't understand the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth on the Republican side. The bottom line is that what had been predicted for months, the Republican takeover of the House, appears all but certain. In fact, I briefly saw Fox News at the end of Bret Baier's hour yesterday, and Fox announced that the Republican takeover had been "called" (whatever that means), but nobody as far as I can tell has repeated it, even at Fox. Nevertheless, the House Republicans are setting up for leadership elections, while the House Democrats aren't. This was going to be the key event of the cycle: with a Republican majority, the House can stop Democrat legislative initiatives, while Republican-controlled committees will have subpoena authority to pursue investigations into issues like COVID and the Biden family finances. The possibility of Republican control of th...

I couldn't help but notice this morning's news: Elon Musk is dipping into his electric car company to pay for his share of the $44 billion Twitter purchase, according to reports. He sold another $3.95 billion of Tesla shares Nov. 4-8, the Associated Press reported from regulatory filings, following up the $7 billion he sold in August as he tried to exit the Twitter deal on allegations of fraudulent account figures. He's now sold more than $19 billion of Tesla shares since April, when he started the Twitter deal. Forbes reported this was the first time Musk's personal wealth, which is tied up in Tesla, has dipped below $200 billion since May 24. It also happened Oct. 1, 2021. Tesla shares closed at a 52-week low Tuesday at $191.30. As I've looked at the Twitter takeover, on one hand from a considerable distance but on the other from a career in tech, I can't escape the feeling he's making things up as he goes along, which doesn't bode well....

As I noted the other day, the news late last week and over the weekend was that Elon was going to fire half of Twitter's work force. I was skeptical, if for no other reason than the managers he tasked with drawing up the lists of whom to fire had an incentive to sabotage the process by firing the people who actually made the company run, insofar as it did. But in any case, a project that big planned in the space of a week wasn't going to turn out well. As of yesterday, Twitter has asked dozens of employees that were laid off after Elon Musk took office to return. This is just days after nearly half of the company’s workforce across countries were asked to go, as per multiple media reports. According to sources cited by Bloomberg , a few of those who are being asked to return were “laid off by mistake” while others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features the new boss Elon Musk envisions. Once again, l...

The German theoretical physicist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder has a blog as well, where she often posts text versions of her YouTube presentations. I follow several physics YouTubers, in part because I have a suspicion that there are theoretical physics classes in Purgatory. However, Dr Hossenfelder also posts opinions on general topics, sometimes quirky ones. In a recent post, she talks about a school of thought she calls "longtermism", which it seems to me is in opposition to the current neo-Malthusian strain among globalists. In doing so, she gives an insight into Elon Musk's thinking, although I can't completely disagree with anyone who asks, "Why would you want to have that?" Have you ever put away a bag of chips because they say it isn’t healthy? That makes sense. Have you ever put away a bag of chips because you want to increase your chances of having more children so we can populate the entire galaxy in a billion years? That makes. . . That ...

There's been quite a bit of comment over Elon Musk laying off what's been estimated as half of Twitter's workforce. A typical version, from a Twitter internal e-mail, goes like this: "By 9 am PST on Friday, November 4, everyone will receive an individual e-mail with the subject line: Your Role at Twitter. (...) If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter e-mail. If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal e-mail." The 7,000 or so employees of the social media platform bought by Elon Musk received this e-mail on Thursday, November 3, just a few hours before the company launched a vast layoff process. The method illustrates the expeditious, even brutal style of the unstoppable entrepreneur and boss of Tesla and SpaceX, who acquired the company a week earlier. Offhand, I've never tried to tally up the number of times I was laid off, or in some cases fired, over my ...

Yesterday I pointed out that even if we rely on consensus mainstream reporting on the Paul Pelosi attack, supplemented by court documents, there continue to be puzzling questions about precisely what happened at the front door of the Pelosi home after police arrived and why security there was so lax that a disorganized psychotic could enter the home without tripping an alarm, as well as how the Capitol Police could have missed the incident on their live camera feed. This comes after nearly everyone discarded theories that David DePape was Paul's gay lover or was in the home for other questionable purposes -- although it must be acknowledged that SFPD Chief Scott's initial statements were so poorly written that they left room for misinterpretation until other sources like court filings became available. The problem is that the media consensus stubbornly continues a lack of transparency over even the current revised version of the story. NBC News pulled a report Frida...