Heard, Depp

OPEC Plus agrees to a bigger increase in oil supply. But prices keep rising.
The Amber Heard Verdict Was a Travesty. Others Will Follow. The confounding part isn’t that the jury sided with him over her; this is the country that elected Donald Trump, where the convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown is still a major pop star, and where a man in Indiana recently won a local Republican primary while in jail awaiting trial on charges of murdering his wife. The explosion of defiant, desperate feminist energy that was #MeToo has now been smothered by an even fiercer reaction. #MeToo was a movement of women telling their stories. Now that Heard has been destroyed for identifying as a survivor, other women will think twice. ........ After the verdict was announced, the official Twitter account of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted out a GIF of Depp as the pirate Jack Sparrow, looking dashing and determined. If there’s one thing they hate more than decadent Hollywood elites, it’s mouthy women. ........ Depp’s friend Marilyn Manson is already suing the actress Evan Rachel Wood, one of a number of women who have alleged sadistic abuse at his hands. He won’t be the last. ........ One of the statements in her Washington Post essay that was deemed defamatory was, “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” The trial that she lost proved her point.

When Elon Musk Dreams, His Employees Have Nightmares with Twitter’s stock falling well below his offer price, Mr. Musk appears to be reneging on a deal that has made even Wall Street grow skeptical. ........ The way that he has managed and marketed his businesses from Tesla’s early days reveals a dysfunction behind the automaker’s veneer of technofuturism and past stock market successes.

Often announcing new features without consultation with his team, he forces his employees to bridge the enormous gap between technological reality and his dreams. This disconnect fosters a negligent and sometimes cruel workplace, to disastrous effect.

......... His ability to repeatedly sell such science fiction fantasies to a credulous public is the foundation for a vast empire and fortune. ......... His presence brought no real manufacturing expertise to bear, just the overbearing pressure of a boss whose public shaming was punctuated by declarations like “I can be on my own private island with naked supermodels, drinking mai tais — but I’m not.” .......... the trauma of working for Mr. Musk. Surviving 10 years of the grind at Tesla is a rare achievement, and it is common for talent to be squeezed dry or pushed out before the end of the company’s four-year stock vesting period. .......... This grim environment is all the more pronounced for women and racial minorities. ......... Black workers were tasked with menial physical labor in parts of the factory nicknamed “the plantation,” where they were subjected to racist slurs and graffiti. Female workers have sued, alleging a pervasive culture of sexual harassment and groping by supervisors. Mr. Musk was indifferent, emailing workers who experienced abuse that “it is important to be thick-skinned.” .......... Mr. Musk’s interest lies in supervising entrepreneurial projects that result in flashy new components. In more prosaic areas of the business like manufacturing, service and sales, he tends to get involved only in order to put out the fires that regularly threaten the company’s immediate future .......... When the success of the company is tied to one man’s whims, you get bizarre phenomena like managers deciding whether or not to take issues to Mr. Musk based on the shade of blond of his wife’s hair that day (with platinum shades being correlated with better moods). ......... After the collapses of Theranos and WeWork — companies with similarly confident founders who insisted that they would achieve their soaring ambitions if given more time and money — Mr. Musk’s reliance on hype is especially jarring. ........ Tesla does make cars, and SpaceX does land rockets. But as a number of old promises like fully self-driving cars appear to be more aspirational and less plausible, the distinction between him and those fallen heroes is starting to lose its meaning. His long list of unfulfilled commitments — a fully solar-powered electric vehicle charging network, a fully automated manufacturing system, an autonomous minibus and even a rocket-powered flying car — wildly exceed his achievements. ......... Ultimately Mr. Musk’s goals for Twitter, as they are for Tesla, are not about making the right decisions for his companies or the people who make them possible. They are about playing to the crowd and burnishing the legend that keeps fresh bodies and minds moving through the businesses that chew them up and spit them out. Now if Twitter falls into his control, Mr. Musk will have seized the means of making the product he has always cared about most: his own myth making........ that he was going to vote Republican since Democrats who were “(mostly) the kindness party” are now the party of “division & hate.” That was preceded by a more paranoid one that posited that “political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months” and another saying that the “dirty tricks attacks will be next-level,” leaving out the pertinent fact that next-level is, in fact, a G.O.P. specialty.

Elon Musk, Chaos Monkey “The reality is great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress,” he tweeted. “Don’t think people want to hear about the last two.” ....... His ability to articulate the emotional challenges of high-level innovation is why it’s always been so interesting to interview Musk. ......... Musk, through Tesla, has single-handedly pushed the electric vehicle sector into the mainstream and, with SpaceX, has moved space tech into a new age with reusable rockets. .......... Many top entrepreneurs genuinely respect Musk’s tech chops. ....... Twitter has dropped by about 25 percent since he reached agreement on a deal ....... Tesla shares undergirding the acquisition have hit the skids amid the deal talks, falling to nearly $700 this week from about $1,000 when Twitter accepted Musk's offer.

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