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.
The awesome Taylor Lorenz reports this on Mastadon. Highly recommend to follow her if you like these updates about what's going on.
https://mastodon.social/@taylorlorenz/110772232427309403Open linkView original on lemmy.today1242
Comments162
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.
This guy gets it.
I think "all billionaires are scum" is perhaps too harsh, but it's far closer to the truth than the views of society at large.
You cannot become a billionaire without being a scummy person.
Rowling became a billionaire by writing popular books and selling the movie rights. She's a scummy person, obviously, but she didn't become rich by being one.
Yeah you definitely can become a billionaire without being a scummy person, just not trough business. You need to be an artist or athlete.
Definitely not going to be a CEO without being a piece of shit. You need that lack of ethics to make it that high.
You can literally start your own company and assign yourself CEO. It's probably all of a filing fee away. It's easy to become a C-suite.
You could inherit it
Which means you're born into a weird sociopathic upbringing. Very fee born into wealth see any issues with it and even then, it tends to be short lived. One of the Johnson and Johnson heirs put out a documentary, but not much after that.
As you say, she's a scummy person, so you have no way of knowing that she only became a billionaire because of the books.
Most of the Harry Potter stories are stolen/copies of either existing young adult novels or existing mythology. There's very little original material or concepts. All writers borrow from other writers, but Rowling is just barely better than a plagiarist.
Google says her net worth is £820 million. Not a billoonarrr.
Too harsh? Can you name one that isn't?
You don't become a billionaire without exploiting so many people and then hording those riches to yourself. You've already been corrupted by that point.
You could exploit other billionaires, but that seems like the one thing you can go to jail for.
A horde would come after their hoard of riches
I think for most people, they become an asshole on the way to becoming a billionaire. You don't make that kind of money without exploitation and plundering. The only exception I could think of would be if they inherited the money. And even so, if you inherit that kind of money and don't give out a good chunk of it, you're still scum imo.
Obviously Tweet -> Xeet 💩
Using the sino-X, pronounced “Sh”
...pronounced Faaht.
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.
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
"Nowadays even pleasant" clearly implies he wasn't always pleasant though.
It's easy to act pleasant when you no longer have anything to gain from being awful
You say that, but look at the cadre of billionaires who no longer have anything to gain from being awful… but still are.
Old habits die hard?
That is a good point. I think most of them are just plain awful people who enjoy causing negatively influencing the world, while others are only awful when it benefits them.
He is the best billionaire. That may not be a high bar, but it's something. If Elon Musk decided to retire and cure Malaria like Bill did (or maybe even just get back to space exploration or autonomous driving as he was doing before his Twitter craze, hopefully without fucking other people over?) I wouldn't mind him as much
Most of Bill’s philanthropy was due completely to Melinda.
I’m watching with interest what new things he does now that he’s on his own.
I'll take a horrible billionaire investing in malaria research over a manchild billionaire obsessed with naming everything X.
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”
I'm not kidding
He has pretty much always been almost a caricature of a horrible boss.
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
The miniseries on Twitter's collapse is going to be epic.
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?
Holy shit man. That joke was strapped into a car, stuck on a rocket, and blasted so far over your head it's circling the sun.
Ah, thank you I needed that laugh. Sometimes things make me snort or chuckle or "ha", but that was a proper full laugh, thank you.
That's awesome, glad to help!
"Joke"
Yes, they made a joke. And you didn't get it.
Yeah, the joke is that it would trigger the snowflake right wingers
And it did
He's an African actually, look it up.
To upset you, personally.
People don't generally do that. If you're referring to Hamilton, it was not a documentary or a biography. And historically white people did that all the time in plays/movies for entertainment, so why get all angry about it now that it's not white people?
I mean, if we're talking Hamilton it's even further, being pretty clearly a commentary on the whole "founding fathers freeing everyone while most of them owning human beings they refused freedom to" thing.
I brought up Hamilton because it's particularly not a documentary
Netflix's Cleopatra comes to mind.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_race_controversy Her race is actually heavily debated by historians, so that's not a very clear cut example.
Actually reading that article you linked it doesn't seem that debated and there isn't really any evidence of her being black.
You're right, based on that article. It doesn't matter, I'm just pointing out that it wasn't just a random choice to make her black. I'd argue they should have made her Iranian to be more accurate, but the claim is that people are randomly just changing skin colors in documentaries all willy nilly and so far the only example is a weak one.
Queen Cleopatra is a very recent example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_race_controversy Her race is actually heavily debated by historians, so that's not a very clear cut example.
From the article you linked it seems that historians by and large agree she was of Greek descent with a bit of Persian ancestry, and a bunch of laypeople are heavily debating them on it.
Well, it's not the biography of whoever is going to play him either, hence the only authentic choice would be him being played by himself.
Nobody seemed to mind when the History Channel docuseries FDR came out with a British actor without a mobility disability as FDR.
Why is it that the series produced by an black female actor starring a black female actor needs such stringent accuracy controls?
Never heard of it. How many alien conspiracies does it contain?
It could have been a Silicon Valley whole season worth of material.
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.
That's a great thought. Are there any insane people that recently haven't been as loud as usual? Which "important" person had lowered thier IM A GENIUS decibel level and no one noticed? That PA could be the reason.
It wouldn't surprise me if Zuckerberg hired them.
The memes about him have been a lot less derisive, and recently they are semi-positive towards him/meta, people were reasonable in the response to his green screen grilling video and there are jokes about them changing the Threads logo high up on lemmy, etc. And he registered an X logo as trademark to potentially counter Musk.
But honestly we might never know. I doubt they went to work for someone as self-destructive as Musk.
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 :)
"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
They haven't been paying their rent anyways, so I'm not sure why they bothered to change the sign.
I'm curious why they haven't been kicked out after not paying rent for so long. Why does the owner allow him to stay rent free?
There’s literally nobody who would replace them. The commercial real estate market in SF is in shamble. Offices go empty all the time at a discount.
Edit: to add, it’s better to let them squat and be able to sue them later for potential money than to have the offices empty.
Squatters rights lmao.
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
TwitterX is, but why do you need a permit to change a sign on a building?Guessing less about the sign itself and more about the heavy equipment/traffic obstruction involved in getting it down.
Also possibly becathe doesn't own the building and needs approval of the owner.
Owners don't issue permits, the government does.
But owners would probably call the police to stop the illegal work from being done to their building. They don't want the liability. This would be reasonable to be part of an approval process with the building owners as you'd likely need their signature with the city, not just twitters.
Agreed. But the owner of the building would presumably be able to control modifications of his own 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.
Standard 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.
To er is to be Musk
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
This is comical beyond belief lmao
That is hilarious 🤣
"it is my building!" -- Elon, probably
Also “Permits are for dummies”.
That's gonna mess with Elon's baseball stats. Now he has an er.
Definitely an unforced er.
er
er
er
You can’t make this stuff up, this is hilarious and beyond apropos
At this point it sounds like intentional.
"er" is right !
Nah, it's completely inaccurate because the "twit" is missing!
What a fucking joke lmao
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.
Companions like this very rarely own property. They rent space from the property management companies that bought the land and constructed the buildings.
Yup. If you own a building, you need to pay someone to maintain it. If you rent a building, you get all of that in the contract and it's one less thing to manage.
Also, you can relatively change buildings if you need more space, whereas if you own it, you need to sell it first.
Well, he wasn't renting the building earlier.
Forgot about that shit. The guy's such a scumbag. Hasn't paid rent since he moved in and then tried to renovate? He seriously needs to be knocked down a few billion pegs.
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.
Do you have a source on that?
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.
Serious question: why do you need to get a permit to change a sign on your own building?
Oh hi Taylor, ehrrm mrmanager
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The only thing you can count on a cop doing after a robbery is trying to convince the victim there's no point in filing a report.
Because they know they won't solve it, and if there's no report there officially isn't a case to count against them as unsolved.
There’s also the off chance they arrest you or shoot your dog
The dog shooting is mainly an ATF thing no?