Musk failed to get the necessary permits to change Twitter’s building signage to X, and the police shut it down just in time for “er” to remain.
Taylor Lorenz (@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social)
The awesome Taylor Lorenz reports this on Mastadon. Highly recommend to follow her if you like these updates about what's going on.
That man is repeatedly showing the world how stupid he actually is and how little he actually understands about running a company. He has never been in a situation like this where he wasn't surrounded by a bunch of people playing babysitter and doing all the leg work to try to actually get his shit ideas to work. IIRC I saw somewhere this morning that he hadn't even figured out what to call tweets and retweets, he really hadn't thought any further than changing the logo and repeating the same lame idea he had 30 years ago.
ABAM (All Billionaires Are Morons)
Or all billionaires are scum who have written the laws and ensured that the fine for this is no more than an annoyance and removing the sign without a permit was a worthwhile risk and the right call to make.
Yeets and Re-Yeets
Yeets and re-Yeets actually make sense for outgoing messages.
I think we need to read between the lines here.
I honestly think he's intentionally driving Twitter into the ground. Thing is he can't just fire everyone and shut down the servers or he won't get the tax write-off. He's burying Twitter in a way that maintains tax status. So in a way that's smart, but also stupid he spent what he did only out of spite.
What he's doing to Twitter is like a jumbo jet pilot that commits suicide by crashing the plane (that's actually happened). Why do you need to take all those innocent people with you. Just go jump off a building, same end without killing a bunch of innocents.
Really his destruction of the platform is about control, he has some kind of personal beef with Twitter so he used his power and money to kill the whole thing. He's taking his bat and ball and going home.
ABAM (All Billionaires Are Morons)
Bill Gates is actually a very smart, and nowadays even pleasant, man.
He has not always been pleasant. Don't fall for the post-retirement PR spin
You do realise it was Bill Gates who made the creators of the Oxford Astra Zeneca Vaccine make it paid and keep the methods of producing it hidden? Their original plan was to make the methods of production public, so that Governments could set up their own labs to produce more of it and save lives. There were many deaths that could have been prevented if it wasn't for this terrible human being.
This is actually hilarious. It didn't occur to me that rebranding should also concern stuff like "tweets", mostly because I've never used twitter, but I'm really looking forward to what he will come up with for those terms.
“X's”
He has pretty much always been almost a caricature of a horrible boss.
The miniseries on Twitter's collapse is going to be epic.
Non-binary black lady for the best effect
But why though? Why the insistence on portraying people in documentaries or biographies as someone completely different? Why not do a biography on a black dude or black lady who can be played by such instead of trying to change the race of historical figures for fun?
It could have been a Silicon Valley whole season worth of material.
I hope someone to graffiti “Los” in front of that “er”
Best part is that the LEDs for “twit” now shine really bright at night.
but seriously, "L0Ser" on the X building would be funny
To anyone interested about what's really like to deal with this man, I highly recommend giving this a read: https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd
There are multiple stories like that from several people.
Apparently there were people at Tesla who were effectively employed to get fired when he was in one of his moods.
And if you read enough of the stories it all comes down to basically a single PA who kept him away from important things. And that person stopped working for him shortly before the public realized what an asshole he is.
And after learning that, I can't stop wondering who they work for now... And I want to see a show based on their biography.
Man, I was strangely impressed with Tumblr these days until I scrolled two.posts down and it froze me out because I wasn't signed in
Ugh, I hate that. Twitter is worse, but those unclosable popups are a good way to make sure I never create an account on a site. I have no problem with the suggestion, but make it optional.
Really? It didn’t do that to me. I clicked continue reading and went pretty far down the comments.
I’ve never even been to tumbler before so I certainly wasn’t signed in :)
I've seen this story several times now, and it's probably true. Unfortunately there's nothing else but the anecdotal story and I wish we had more corroboration from other former employees.
"Again, I cannot stress enough how much of the company culture was oriented around managing this one guy." I can't decide between wanting to have a work environment like this for once for the laughs, or not wanting to act in front of him as if he's a person to be respected. But I guess the collegial cohesion is great in this one, if you only have to tiptoe around a single person and everyone makes fun of it.
The Police actually stopped a rich guy from doing something illegal?
He didn't pay for a permit to do so. The police are there to protect capital, but under clearly-defined rules. Anyone who isn't a fuckwit knows to pay the city its fees before doing something like this.
When JPMorgan Chase buys out a smaller bank, they apply for the permit in triplicate and pay all the fees, then make a donation to the Fraternal Order of Police. The cops then show up to attack protestors.
God damn, that's depressing to think about.
Can we now start pronouncing X as 'errrr' when referring to the company? It would be good not to taint the good name of the letter entirely.
And it does say 'er' on the side of not-his-building.
I call it Xitter, using the Chinese pronunciation of Xi.
Brb gotta take a xit
I like the idea of calling it "ten".
I like the idea of never referring to it again
Oh man can you imagine how great this would be if they got hit with a 3 day eviction notice for damaging the property?
That would be so fucking funny
I am genuinely baffled at how anyone still thinks Musk is even remotely competent. There's absolutely no way he's running all of these companies by himself.
This has to be false. If only 'er' remained, the 'Twitt' would have been removed. But the twit is still in charge.
Honestly, this is a comedy that needs to be seen to be believed.
Not that it isn't fun to laugh at what a boondoggle Twitter X is, but why do you need a permit to change a sign on a building?
Need to make sure a qualified contractor does the work, that the sidewalk is roped off, and that other construction on the same road isn't happening. Pretty typical stuff.
Normal procedure to make sure it's within legal standards.
yes that is what a permit is
Presumably because he (the company) doesn't actually own the building. So any modifications have to be approved by the building owner.
Same way you can't really paint the wall of your rented accommodation. It's not your property.
On public roads and sidewalks, you need permits and to have submitted a plan showing how much of the footpath/road will be blocked and for how long. You need to show where your bollards and rope or whatnot will be and any necessary signage (like 'pedesdrians keep left's) that sort of thing.
Once you get the approval, you can jam up the area with a cherry picker/crane until you're finished and everything is packed away.
So anyway, what I'm getting at, is this is the signage company not getting the permits - which they would have charged Twitter/X for and not an Elon oversight - UNLESS Elon decided to park that crane out there himself and to get whoever to pull down the signage.
local laws
I think I read that they had permission from the city but the landlord themselves didn't approve it.
I wonder why the landlord who has been stiffed repeatedly wouldn’t sign off. Hmm…
Is this the landlord and city that Musk is currently having his asshole drilled into for illegally (without permit and using unlicensed workers for commercial work) modifying a bunch of shit? I remember he asked some dude to add a toilet near his office. Not like to hire a plumber or get estimates or ideas and shit. Just like, “hey. Put a toilet here.” That was my favorite story and where I really went like “oooook duuuuude” uncontrollably out loud. I’ve had a fuckton of “trade” jobs like HVAC, electrical work (mostly related to the HVAC), did some industrial scale backup power generator installs/maintenance, did some plumbing stuff. Kinda touched all over and all around in the world of building and adding on shit. So when I heard about him modifying electrical circuits without a permit… ok. I can see that if you get the right dude who knows what to do but isn’t legally certified. Of course you shouldn’t do that, especially with a business and a place you don’t own, but I get it. Adding a fucking bathroom though is absolutely bonkers to ask a regular dude (not even a guy who considers himself “handy”) to do. Like I think with all the shit I’ve done over 15 years or so, yeah, I could add a bathroom somewhere. But it would probably suck ass. And I’m not an engineer nor have I dabbled at all. And adding a giant, heavy object filled with water, ventilation to suck your shit smells out, a sink, lighting and all that stuff is gonna obviously require some demolition and then doing the whole thing. It’s an insane job to ask of someone who isn’t presenting themselves as a professional in that field. If it was replacing a toilet or sink, ok, again, not correct but I get that. Building a full whole new shitter is insane. It just shows his complete detachment from reality too because I don’t think most “normal” people would even think to ask anyone BUT contractors/plumbers whatever to do such a job. Definitely not a personal assistant.
Slight shame that the contractors didn't start from the end. It could have been funnier if they had taken off the "er" instead.
My thoughts the same, though it should have been the "ter" to properly describe Musk.
Then again, having "twit" misspelled might have been even more on-point. Maybe they can just add the X and become Twit-X
Mf can't stop taking Ls
To er is to be Musk
er
er
er
This is comical beyond belief lmao
"it is my building!" -- Elon, probably
Also “Permits are for dummies”.
That is hilarious 🤣
That's gonna mess with Elon's baseball stats. Now he has an er.
Definitely an unforced er.
"er" is right !
Nah, it's completely inaccurate because the "twit" is missing!
You can’t make this stuff up, this is hilarious and beyond apropos
At this point it sounds like intentional.
It seems like this gets even more amusing about twice a day. Anyone wanna guess what might happen next?
I would only be very minorly surprised if Musk is arrested in the middle of a small town in Louisiana, covered in his own shit and clumsily trying to hump a crocodile. And yes, I know that crocs aren't native to Louisiana.
You need to have permits to change signs on your own building?
It's the heavy machinery required to do it that's the problem. This is also not Elon Musk's building, but a building Twitter rents. The building management company were the ones who called the police.
Ah that explains. Didn’t know he was renting the building.
The way I heard it elsewhere (Google should help), Twitter/Elon actually had the necessary and correct permits (for using heavy machinery on the street/sidewalk and redirecting traffic around it).
Unfortunately, that detail was not correctly communicated to building security, who called the police believing there was no permit.
By the time the misunderstanding could be cleared up, the workers & heavy machinery had... "vacated premises" already, leaving the work in its half-finished state.
Surprised he actually got told no.
No that's not a joke, I'm genuinely surprised they stopped him because I fully expected him to get away with it.
What a fucking joke lmao
Thanks for the heads up on Taylor. I am now following her!
Taken out of context, that sounds creepy AF.
Serious question: why do you need to get a permit to change a sign on your own building?
The "amazimg" Lorenz, is maybe (like U) an amazing loser.
Yeah, if I have to choose who is worse between Musk and Taylor Lorenz, 100% Taylor Lorenz takes the cake.
Why?
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I do recall Lorenz being caught in a lie and trying to cover it with stealth-edits. She has definitely had her (and her publisher's) agenda take precedent over facts back when she was covering the Depp/Heard trial.
However, while I do try to verify her reporting from other sources, I would not classify her anywhere near the imploding egomaniac billionaire. She's way better than any billionaire, because there's no way anyone can amass that amount of resources and not be selfish, problematic, and too far removed from ordinary people to relate to them.
/edited for grammar
I know a lot of people don't like it. But the people who have changed the world have always been far from ordinary.He prefers to sensationalize rather than advertise.
Being born rich is almost certainly a requirement to start with. There must be a lot of non famous brilliant people without a public voice like the clowns, Musk and Trump and Zuck and all the others.
I'm sure Musk is personally responsibly those things. I also heard he failed to clean bathrooms in this building.
I'm getting not liking him, but this blind brainless hate it's ridiculous.
Yes, Musk is responsible because it was his decision to change the name.
A bad CEO/Company owner trickles down to everything under them in the company. They pass major decisions or budgets (or lack thereof) that work their way down to everything if not immediately then over time. Toilets not getting cleaned probably comes down to people either not getting paid or being fired to avoid having to pay them, resulting in either no custodial staff or insufficient staff. There's no way to defend him about this.
I genuinely don't get why people hate-follow these guys. If I don't like someone I block them and move on. The last thing I want to do is talk about them all day every day with my friends and pat eachother on the back for being so smart ourselves.
Well, if he decides on Sunday night that the logo will be changed on Monday morning and he's not taking no for an answer, that leaves pretty little time and wiggle room for his employees to actually get permissions and stuff in time.
10 cars were broken into and 5 people were robbed while the police attended this matter. What a great deployment!
Seems like a good place to remind people that the police do not prevent break-ins, robberies, or muggings. They just show up after-the-fact and do little to nothing to get people's stuff back.