Goblin Sandwiches

I'm not mad. Don’t tell the Delaware Chancery Judge I was mad.

“I’m not mad,” insisted Elon Musk. “Don’t tell the Delaware Chancery Judge I was mad. Actually I’m laughing. Actually I’m accelerating X, the everything app, which is a real thing I didn’t just make up. Actually I’m immanentizing the AI robot skateboard factory. Actually I’m neural interface hyper vacuum tunnel Mars colony. I am very intelligent.”

[Waylon Jennings VO] Welp, looks like ol’ Elon’s got his ass stuck in the hunny jar ag’in. Let’s see what folks have to say about it.

“I’m tired of this and I have a new retirement plan,” wrote Matt Levine very early this morning, taking care of the South African billionaire baby before he had to take care of his actual babies:

Every time this newsletter starts with “Programming note: Money Stuff will be off tomorrow,” Musk does something outrageous, and Twitter’s stock swings up or down. So I’m going to buy a bunch of Twitter straddles and then take a vacation, while Twitter is still public and that trick can still work. I’ll make a fortune.

Well deserved, imo. Liz Lopatto focused on the risks Musk faces if the Twitter lawsuit goes to trial, besides just the near certainty of losing:

He’s a well-known proponent of Signal, a privacy-focused messaging app that allows users’ messages to auto-delete. That’s sort of a problem when you’re meant to preserve your messages for, let’s say, a lawsuit. It’s unclear how many relevant messages may have been destroyed, but Twitter has asked the judge in this case to censure Musk for those lost messages.

Casey Newton pointed out that “...discovery in the lawsuit had begun to blow back on him and his friends. On its face [this] might not be enough to get a man to spend $44 billion to take back control of the product and the narrative. But I wouldn’t bet my life on it.” And the discovery texts “might have shown that Mr Musk is more chaos than theory, despite what he claims,” wrote Chris Stokel-Walker. Sure, his rich idiot friends might be mad that they look like rich idiots, but it’s hard to imagine Musk caring about that. Casey also reported that employee morale at Twitter is so bad people are nostalgic for ex-CEO and woo-woo absentee cryptobeard Jack Dorsey, and linked to a Business Insider report that Twitter lost 700 employees in September. Is that a lot?

Kevin Roose skipped to the end and made six predictions about what will happen when Musk takes over Twitter, but they’re all actually just one prediction which is: it will suck. And Bloomberg’s Olivia Raimonde and Paula Seligson predict that the banks that agreed to finance this fiasco are about to lose a lot of money on the deal. Silver linings I guess!

Anyway, Goblin Sandwiches:

WARNING: use tested quality donuts only. Here’s some context from the goblin sandwich scholars at the blog of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. Are goblin sandwiches good? You’ll be surp— ha ha jk, the answer is no they’re not good. You won’t be surprised.

Who is Perla? 

The New York Times’s Edgar Sandoval, Miriam Jordan, Patricia Mazzei and J. David Goodman figured out that Florida Governor Rand Nosiest’s immigrant-stealer Perla is probably “Perla Huerta… a former combat medic and counterintelligence agent.”

People Try Things:

Tom and Gisele try divorce. Ashleigh Young tries nootropics. Just blokes being lads innit: “Briton attempted Mont Blanc climb wearing tracksuit.” Alex Shephard tries actually reading some Nobel lit contenders. And in her “Year of Stress and Constipation,” Cara Schacter tried:

…Miralax, Restoralax, magnesium citrate (liquid and powder), senna (tea and pills), psyllium (powder and pills), Benefiber, Citrucel, digestive enzymes, Swedish bitters, probiotics, prebiotics, flax seeds (milled and whole), chia seeds, prunes, figs (soaked and dried), Squatty Potty, Dulcolax (pill and suppository), allicin, glycerin, berberine, neem, ginger, fleet enemas, artichoke extract, dandelion, cascara sagrada, pumpkin purée, licorice root, slippery elm, beans, colonic massage, sea moss, apple pectin, aloe vera (juice and gel), kiwi, acupuncture, perianal splinting, beta-glucans, alfalfa, red clover, going off Wellbutrin, going on Adderall, apple cider vinegar, prayer.

Today’s Song: Wet Leg (covering Ashnikko), “Daisy”

~ I can't wait for everyone to see what we've been up to @semafor. We're launching soon, with incredible ~

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