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.

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.

IIRC I saw somewhere this morning that he hadn’t even figured out what to call tweets and retweets

Obviously Tweet -> Xeet 💩

Yeets and Re-Yeets

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.

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.

He has pretty much always been almost a caricature of a horrible boss.

Best part is that the LEDs for “twit” now shine really bright at night.

but seriously, "L0Ser" on the X building would be funny

It could have been a Silicon Valley whole season worth of material.

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

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.

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.

I call it Xitter, using the Chinese pronunciation of Xi.

I like the idea of calling it "ten".

They haven't been paying their rent anyways, so I'm not sure why they bothered to change the sign.

Guessing less about the sign itself and more about the heavy equipment/traffic obstruction involved in getting it down.

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.

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 wonder why the landlord who has been stiffed repeatedly wouldn’t sign off. Hmm…

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

Also “Permits are for dummies”.

Definitely an unforced er.

er

Nah, it's completely inaccurate because the "twit" is missing!

At this point it sounds like intentional.

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.

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.

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.

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.