“...because rockets don’t talk back.”
As you enjoy your weekend, don’t miss this episode of The Vergecast covering exactly what Elon Musk has gotten himself into now that he owns Twitter.
A lot of right-wingers feel their enemies are being defeated by Elon Musk’s acquisition. What does that mean about social media mechanics? John Herrman suggests they may have produced the deal itself.
[Intelligencer]
...to “sort of” blaming Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve, for any SPAC-related excesses. Now that he isn’t drunk on zero interest rate policy, Chamath Palihapitiya has decided to pivot to being responsible.
Elon Musk has everything to lose and only retweets to gain
Elon Musk’s banks have started sending cash, The Wall Street Journal reports. We are getting even closer to closing!
Jessica Roy of the Los Angeles Times had her wallet stolen, and that was just the beginning of the Kafkaesque situation in which she found herself. Here’s just a sample:
Bank of America asked me to mail it a notarized affidavit, a copy of my driver’s license and a copy of my Social Security card so it could investigate the bad checks. I replied that it would be insane for a victim of identity theft to put those things in the mail. The person I spoke to said, “We would never require you to send any information like that.” I was holding the letter asking for just that on Bank of America letterhead.
Roy received that letter late, because it had first been mailed to the thieves, at an address she’d already reported as fake.
[Los Angeles Times]
The banks are signing documents! Musk promised he’d close on Friday in a conference call! The cash is going to be in escrow Thursday! I sure hope this is right!
The law that was supposed to prevent him from doing that is rarely enforced:
more than 2,600 federal officials invested in companies that stood to benefit from their agencies’ work from 2016 through 2021. The Journal reviewed annual financial disclosure reports filed for those years by about 12,000 senior executive-branch officials at 50 federal agencies, from career employees to political staff to presidential appointees.
It’s not just Amazon. Other tech companies’ stocks involved included Palantir Technologies, held by an ambassador, as well as Apple and Facebook, held by a Treasury Department official.