TheGayAuthority

Hiiiiiieeeeee, I'm your authority on all things gay! I'm a chemistry educator, gamer, and Twitch Affiliate. Hope to catch you in a stream!

[Snark @snark_talks]

A TEST OF YOUR REFLEXES! #ffxiv #ffxivmemes #zenos

[SIREN @ladylawga]

Most of the FFXIV players I know are in their 30s/40s....where's the collab w Fiber One....1 A Day.....JOINT SUPPLEMENTS good god man at least a salad place 😭 I can't survive off of butterfingers and fried chicken and mountain dew I'M OLD!!!!!!!!!

[TheGayAuthority @Gay_Authority]

I'm sorry, WHO headed up this Twitch mobile update? It's much more cumbersome to see my followed channels now and decided who to watch at a glance. @twitch why y'all can't leave well enough alone?

[𝖙𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖓𝖟 🩸 @treeeenzz]

kelly performing shoes in 2024 might be the best moment of my life i fear

[TheGayAuthority @Gay_Authority]

@TubbyZach

[Ellman Lab @ellman_lab]

Lighting the CHEMenorah on the 7th night of Hanukkah

[John Bull @garius]

FURTHER READING:

Probably the most readable (and least hagiographic) account of all the above I've read over the years is "The Founders" by Jimmy Soni.

Available as both a book and audiobook, and if this kind of stuff fascinates you it's well worth your time.

[John Bull @garius]

Anyway, hope that's useful context. None of what's going on is surprising if you lived through it or have studied it. You just have to get past the hagiography Silicon Valley creates around it's "great men"

If this was useful you can buy me a coffee here: https://t.co/llxMjG8l6C

[John Bull @garius]

I think it's a TERRIBLE idea. The world's moved on. He's doing the tech equivalent of drunk-DMing his highschool girlfriend to tell her she's still hot.

But you can see the origins now. He thinks this is the genius idea that got away. And that this time nobody can coup him.

[John Bull @garius]

Hopefully you can see the roots of this whole X pivot thing now. Musk has decided that the way to save Twitter and regain his genius status is to fall back on his unrealised vision from 1999.

Build "the world's financial nexus" as he described it then.

[John Bull @garius]

With Elon out of the country, he can't work his in person magic. He insists over the phone that the financial superstore is the big win. All this is in service of that.

It doesn't work. Malloy, Moritz and Hurd side with Thiel and Levkin. Elon is out as CEO before he can fly back

[John Bull @garius]

Over the phone, Thiel and Levkin reveal the PayPal V2 and financial issues to Malloy, Moritz and Hurd, who had no idea about them. They're sympathetic to Elon as founder and visionary, but horrified this was all done without board approval and at the mass-resignation letter.

[John Bull @garius]

Thiel and Levkin are board members. The other four are Musk, Malloy (repping another major investor), Moritz and Hurd (Chair).

As Elon is in the air, Thiel asks Hurd to summon an emergency board meeting by phone.

[John Bull @garius]

Thiel, Levchin, Botha and Sacks now cross the rubicon. They decide to coup Elon. They quietly gather the signatures of a lot of the Confinity loyalists on a mass-quit threat.

On 19th Sep 2000, as Elon is taking off for Europe on his honeymoon, they make their move.

[John Bull @garius]

Meanwhile, Thiel finds out via X's financial wizard, Roelof Botha, that the financial superstore side stuff is WORSE than Musk has let on. X is offering credit on almost no identity checks.

Combined with the V2 fiasco, Thiel and others realise X is on the verge of failing.

[John Bull @garius]

This obsession with X as a brand causes enormous concern as it CONTINUALLY goes down terribly with consumers.

Vivien Go on focus group testing:

"Again and again, the theme of 'Oh God, I wouldn't trust this website. It's an adult website' and 'I just wouldn't trust that"

[John Bull @garius]

Elon also orders the killing off the PayPal brand. He orders https://t.co/6qnOsQvcpY routed to https://t.co/xt8wYNF4fB. Logos phased out. Decrees it should now be referred to as X-PayPal and described as part of the X family of financial services. He's not letting the dream go.

[John Bull @garius]

Months of dev time, with X burning $12m a month, is lost to Musk's obsession with PayPal V2. A complete rework on Microsoft. It's BEYOND a bad plan. Microsoft servers and MSSQL CANNOT scale enough at the time. But Elon decrees it. He even decrees a launch with no rollback option.

[John Bull @garius]

The firms merge. Harris and Thiel insist the new firm (X) focus on email payments, ideally on Confinity's PayPal platform.

Elon INSISTS financial superstore is the future. When Thiel and Harris fall out over strategy, Elon persuades Thiel to help coup Harris out. Elon is now CEO