Twitter likely to take idiots offer to buy them for $43 billion

[Shadowy Man]

He likely realized that the same people who couldn’t afford to quit also can’t afford to sue.

 

[marc]

Is it just me, or is it looking like Zap Brannigan took control of Twitter?

 

[crazyfingers]

And this high handed nonsense demonstrates Musk is not a man of his word. Might make it hard from here to hire badly needed expert engineers.

The more he breaks his word, the less people will believe what he says including advertisers, FTC regulators, the EU regulators, creditors, landlords.

Only right-wing cultists will believe him.

Seems he has stopped paying the company's rent to its landlord.

Musk Shakes Up Twitter’s Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs (Published 2022)

Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures.

www.nytimes.com

He loaded Twitter up with debt to a tune of about 25% of it's sale price if I recall correctly. I wonder when his creditors will be calling... I wonder who he owes on that debt.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

More Twitter melt down problems for Musk.

....
Although the company had previously committed to pay out two months pay and one month's severance pay to laid off employees, Musk has been mulling rescinding that pledge, even though he knows it would embroil the company in costly labor lawsuits.
"Mr. Musk’s team is now reconsidering whether it should pay some of those months... or just face lawsuits from disgruntled former employees," the Times reports. "Many former employees still have not received any paperwork formalizing their separation from Twitter."
In addition to all this, the Times reports that Musk has even stopped paying rent for Twitter's office space.
.....

Elon Musk mulls axing severance pay for laid off workers and has stopped paying rent at Twitter offices: NYT

A new report from the New York Times claims that Twitter CEO Elon Musk is making a number of cost-cutting moves at the social media company and may not even pay out severance packages to workers whom he laid off earlier this year.Although the company had previously committed to pay out two...

www.rawstory.com

What's the point in labor lawsuits? It's unlikely there will be any value by the time such a suit was won.

Well, potentially, there could be some rich and powerful lawyer opposed to Musk and knowing he could win who could take on employees as clients in a class-action suit. After all would be said and done the lawyer could make a pretty penny and get a decent reputation, but of course the employees wouldn't get much.

 

[lpetrich]

I see Elon Musk as a promoter, a bullshitter. Part of that is getting subsidies for his businesses.

Elon Musk Furious That the Government Isn't Giving Him More Free Money - "Publicly, Elon Musk hates government subsidies. In reality, his companies have received billions of dollars from the government."

After the Federal Communications Commission blocked an $885.5 million broadband funding grant to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, the Musk company is appealing the decision and calling it "grossly unfair."

...
For the better part of a decade, news of large-figure subsidies have cropped up around the SpaceX and Telsa CEO's companies. In 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported that Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity had been granted a cumulative $4.9 billion from various federal agencies.

An analysis from Grid News published in April of this year found that Tesla has sold off $6 billion in regulatory tax credits — a maneuver which, per the Trefis financial data firm, could have resulted in the company appearing more profitable than it actually is.

In public, though, Musk has taken a decidedly anti-subsidy stance. Curious!

 

[Metaphor]

I see Elon Musk as a promoter, a bullshitter. Part of that is getting subsidies for his businesses.

Elon Musk Furious That the Government Isn't Giving Him More Free Money - "Publicly, Elon Musk hates government subsidies. In reality, his companies have received billions of dollars from the government."

After the Federal Communications Commission blocked an $885.5 million broadband funding grant to SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, the Musk company is appealing the decision and calling it "grossly unfair."

...
For the better part of a decade, news of large-figure subsidies have cropped up around the SpaceX and Telsa CEO's companies. In 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported that Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity had been granted a cumulative $4.9 billion from various federal agencies.

An analysis from Grid News published in April of this year found that Tesla has sold off $6 billion in regulatory tax credits — a maneuver which, per the Trefis financial data firm, could have resulted in the company appearing more profitable than it actually is.

In public, though, Musk has taken a decidedly anti-subsidy stance. Curious!

There's nothing curious about it, any more than somebody who thinks taxes should be higher doesn't voluntarily pay more taxes than they are required to.

If a business qualifies for some kind of tax break, it is the duty of that business to its shareholders to take that tax break, because other qualifying businesses will surely take the same tax breaks.

 

[Gospel]

Wonder how all those liberals in California who purchased a Tesla feel about their investment. It's almost as if Elon forgets he's CEO of other companies too.

 

[Worldtraveller]

The free speech "absolutist" banned the account tracking his plane..and the private account of the same individual.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

More Twitter melt down problems for Musk.

....
Although the company had previously committed to pay out two months pay and one month's severance pay to laid off employees, Musk has been mulling rescinding that pledge, even though he knows it would embroil the company in costly labor lawsuits.
"Mr. Musk’s team is now reconsidering whether it should pay some of those months... or just face lawsuits from disgruntled former employees," the Times reports. "Many former employees still have not received any paperwork formalizing their separation from Twitter."
In addition to all this, the Times reports that Musk has even stopped paying rent for Twitter's office space.
.....

Elon Musk mulls axing severance pay for laid off workers and has stopped paying rent at Twitter offices: NYT

A new report from the New York Times claims that Twitter CEO Elon Musk is making a number of cost-cutting moves at the social media company and may not even pay out severance packages to workers whom he laid off earlier this year.Although the company had previously committed to pay out two...

www.rawstory.com

What's the point in labor lawsuits? It's unlikely there will be any value by the time such a suit was won.

Well, potentially, there could be some rich and powerful lawyer opposed to Musk and knowing he could win who could take on employees as clients in a class-action suit. After all would be said and done the lawyer could make a pretty penny and get a decent reputation, but of course the employees wouldn't get much.

Yeah, I've got to imagine there are a lot of lawyers and organizations ready to ask people to hold their beer for that lawsuit. Musk needed to do the "pay" to get around the mass layoff. And now he doesn't want to even pay it. Man, he must be strapped for cash at Twitter. And he can only burn the Tesla stock value so much more.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And this high handed nonsense demonstrates Musk is not a man of his word. Might make it hard from here to hire badly needed expert engineers.

The more he breaks his word, the less people will believe what he says including advertisers, FTC regulators, the EU regulators, creditors, landlords.

Only right-wing cultists will believe him.

Seems he has stopped paying the company's rent to its landlord.

Musk Shakes Up Twitter’s Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs (Published 2022)

Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures.

www.nytimes.com

He loaded Twitter up with debt to a tune of about 25% of it's sale price if I recall correctly. I wonder when his debters will be calling... I wonder who he owes on that debt.

The bank. The funny thing is, he got loans in writing before the major interest rate hikes... so Musk's Twitter debt is never getting cheaper than it is now... and it isn't cheap right now. This is the problem with these private equity purchases that load a company with debt and effectively suffocate it... with the debt (see Toys R Us, a profitable company that went bankrupt). Now imagine doing that to a company that wasn't really profitable. And imagine how Musk has sold people on many ideas that didn't work out, but they were pipe dreams, so it only cost millions.

Well, this company does exist... and it can crash and burn and he has no idea what he is doing. And it'd cost a great deal of money or risk Musk never being able to get a loan again.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Wonder how all those liberals in California who purchased a Tesla feel about their investment. It's almost as if Elon forgets he's CEO of other companies too.

Musk's genius seems to be to be able to fool some engineers just long enough to completely squeeze their usefulness for him.

 

[lpetrich]

Elon Musk's record is a mixed bag.

• Tesla Motors - we can credit him for promoting electric cars and for wangling subsidies for them.
• SolarCity, now Tesla Energy - he may be credited for offering the PowerWall battery as a home product
• SpaceX - we can credit him for pushing for making rocket stages reusable
• Hyperloop - a vactrain, a vehicle that runs in an evacuated tunnel
• The Boring Company - supposedly some innovations in tunneling

I think that we can credit EM for getting the financing for developing reusable rocket stages, in particular, first stages that use their engines to do soft landings.

I am TOTALLY skeptical about the Hyperloop. A vactrain requires a tunnel that is evacuated along its entire length. Vactrains are far from new. Here is a proposal for them from half a century ago: The Very High Speed Transit System | RAND - I've yet to see anything from EM comparable to that long-ago report.

I've recently thought of a way of reducing the threat of leaks. Put doors along the length of the tunnel. It's the airlock concept, but with the doors open far enough ahead of the train, the train can travel at full speed.

An alternative to tunnels is elevated tubes. That would be cheaper, but it would still be more expensive than the existing kind of railroad track, and it would have big NIMBY problems.

As to his urban tunnels with cars carried by sleds, that seems totally impractical. A car would be lowered from the street with a sort of car elevator, it would drive into a wheeled sled and this car-carrying sled would enter a tunnel. At its destination, a sled would stop in front of a lowered elevator, the car would drive onto it, and the elevator would carry the car up to street level.

Why cars? Why not try to carry more people per vehicle? One will need bigger vehicles, but one gets more horizontal-area efficiency. I've just reinvented buses. Why not keep the buses in the tunnels full-time and have people go up and down in stairs and escalators and elevators? One can skip the sleds. Why not simplify the steering and put the buses on tracks? One gets trains. I've just reinvented subway trains.

As to The Boring Company, I've seen nothing on how they would do tunneling must different from how it is usually done.

 

[ZiprHead]

Musk's Twitter Disbands Its Trust and Safety Advisory Group

Elon Musk's Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
The council had been scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives Monday night. But Twitter informed the group via email that it was disbanding it shortly before the meeting was to take place, according to multiple members.
The council members, who provided images of the email from Twitter to The Associated Press, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation. The email said Twitter was “reevaluating how best to bring external insights” and the council is “not the best structure to do this.”

Elmo takes Twitter another step towards the toilet.

 

[ZiprHead]

Twitter has reportedly stopped paying rent on its offices and is considering not paying severance packages to laid-off workers

Twitter has reportedly taken increasingly extreme measures to cut costs under Elon Musk's leadership as the company gears up for potential lawsuits.

www.businessinsider.com

In Elon Musk's quest to make Twitter a more profitable company, he is reportedly implementing increasingly extreme cost-cutting measures.

According to the New York Times, Twitter has stopped paying rent for any of its offices, including its San Francisco headquarters, and Musk has instructed employees to no longer pay Twitter's vendors. The Times, citing a recent New Hampshire lawsuit, found that Twitter has also refused to pay nearly $200,000 in private plane flights taken in late October.

 

[TomC]

Musk's Twitter Disbands Its Trust and Safety Advisory Group

Elon Musk's Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, the advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights and other organizations that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
The council had been scheduled to meet with Twitter representatives Monday night. But Twitter informed the group via email that it was disbanding it shortly before the meeting was to take place, according to multiple members.
The council members, who provided images of the email from Twitter to The Associated Press, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retaliation. The email said Twitter was “reevaluating how best to bring external insights” and the council is “not the best structure to do this.”

Elmo takes Twitter another step towards the toilet.

I've never even considered getting a Twitter account. I despise social media.

But now I'm considering trying to get one.

Whether I stomp off in disgust or get permabanned, it'll be amusing.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Elon Musk's record is a mixed bag.

• Tesla Motors - we can credit him for promoting electric cars and for wangling subsidies for them.
• SolarCity, now Tesla Energy - he may be credited for offering the PowerWall battery as a home product
• SpaceX - we can credit him for pushing for making rocket stages reusable
• Hyperloop - a vactrain, a vehicle that runs in an evacuated tunnel
• The Boring Company - supposedly some innovations in tunneling

I think that we can credit EM for getting the financing for developing reusable rocket stages, in particular, first stages that use their engines to do soft landings.

Yes, but the question is going to be detecting when the things aren't useable again... before it explodes.

I am TOTALLY skeptical about the Hyperloop. A vactrain requires a tunnel that is evacuated along its entire length. Vactrains are far from new. Here is a proposal for them from half a century ago: The Very High Speed Transit System | RAND - I've yet to see anything from EM comparable to that long-ago report.


I've recently thought of a way of reducing the threat of leaks. Put doors along the length of the tunnel. It's the airlock concept, but with the doors open far enough ahead of the train, the train can travel at full speed.

An alternative to tunnels is elevated tubes. That would be cheaper, but it would still be more expensive than the existing kind of railroad track, and it would have big NIMBY problems.

The hyperloop also suffers from the issue of capacity. Musk seems to be quite stupid when it comes to the concept of capacity.

As to The Boring Company, I've seen nothing on how they would do tunneling must different from how it is usually done.

When I read about what that actually entailed, I was shocked. His plan was to force people just to use small tunnels. What a fucking idiot! He bought an old TBM (tunnel boring machine) and just started digging. He apparently thought that people didn't own rights below their homes. And even then, if he managed to make the precast tunnel segments cheaper, capacity of the smaller tunnel would be that of a smaller tunnel. And cars are terribly inefficient at moving large amounts of people.

 

[lpetrich]

The hyperloop also suffers from the issue of capacity. Musk seems to be quite stupid when it comes to the concept of capacity.

How is that? From how long the proposed vactrains are to be? One would likely need a vactrain as long as a typical airliner or passenger train.

As to The Boring Company, I've seen nothing on how they would do tunneling must different from how it is usually done.

When I read about what that actually entailed, I was shocked. His plan was to force people just to use small tunnels. What a fucking idiot! He bought an old TBM (tunnel boring machine) and just started digging. He apparently thought that people didn't own rights below their homes. And even then, if he managed to make the precast tunnel segments cheaper, capacity of the smaller tunnel would be that of a smaller tunnel. And cars are terribly inefficient at moving large amounts of people.

One could get around that problem by using very narrow railcars, with only 2 seats per row and doors along the railcar lengths.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Twitter has reportedly stopped paying rent on its offices and is considering not paying severance packages to laid-off workers

Twitter has reportedly taken increasingly extreme measures to cut costs under Elon Musk's leadership as the company gears up for potential lawsuits.

www.businessinsider.com

In Elon Musk's quest to make Twitter a more profitable company, he is reportedly implementing increasingly extreme cost-cutting measures.

According to the New York Times, Twitter has stopped paying rent for any of its offices, including its San Francisco headquarters, and Musk has instructed employees to no longer pay Twitter's vendors. The Times, citing a recent New Hampshire lawsuit, found that Twitter has also refused to pay nearly $200,000 in private plane flights taken in late October.

Doing business on the Trump model it seems.

 

[Jayjay]

Elon Musk's record is a mixed bag.

• Tesla Motors - we can credit him for promoting electric cars and for wangling subsidies for them.
• SolarCity, now Tesla Energy - he may be credited for offering the PowerWall battery as a home product
• SpaceX - we can credit him for pushing for making rocket stages reusable
• Hyperloop - a vactrain, a vehicle that runs in an evacuated tunnel
• The Boring Company - supposedly some innovations in tunneling

I think that we can credit EM for getting the financing for developing reusable rocket stages, in particular, first stages that use their engines to do soft landings.

I am TOTALLY skeptical about the Hyperloop. A vactrain requires a tunnel that is evacuated along its entire length. Vactrains are far from new. Here is a proposal for them from half a century ago: The Very High Speed Transit System | RAND - I've yet to see anything from EM comparable to that long-ago report.

I've recently thought of a way of reducing the threat of leaks. Put doors along the length of the tunnel. It's the airlock concept, but with the doors open far enough ahead of the train, the train can travel at full speed.

Right, hyperloop is a complete scam. But I don't think Musk is even putting any money on that, even though his name is somehow connected to the project. Other hucksters are running it, like Virgin Hyperloop.

It'll never get off the ground, but I think the idea there is to fool universities and startups into giving in free research and IP that could be used elsewhere. And to leech on government grants for research projects.

As to The Boring Company, I've seen nothing on how they would do tunneling must different from how it is usually done.

Wasn't their only successful product so far a flame thrower?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

One could make the case that when Musk offered three months salaries to those who quit rather than continue employment, that was a broken contract. Not with Twitter, but Elon Musk. They could get their 3 months severence, court costs and punitive awards. And this high handed nonsense demonstrates Musk is not a man of his word. Might make it hard from here to hire badly neded expert engineers.

Insert sound of falling Acme anvils.

But he was speaking as the CEO, I don't see that the corporate veil has been pierced. And I can see little point in suing Twitter.