You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself.
Since we’re into poetry this week, I thought I’d just open this bad boy with a little epigraph. While I’m basically always here for
poet chat, the rest of you fine and sane people are probably wondering why Elon Musk is posting poetry to his Twitter!
Well, by his own account, Musk is having a rough time. “This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career,” he
told The New York Times in an interview published exactly 12 hours after I recorded the
Vergecast “This Week in Elon” segment last week.
Anyway, there’s a tick-tock of the morning of
The Tweet in there, a review of weed (generally), board concern about Ambien use (specifically), and the possibility that Tesla will be getting a number two in that article. It’s a lot!
Arianna Huffington took it upon herself to tell Musk to get some sleep. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
Musk wasn’t into it. I actually can’t believe I’m about to go to bat for Arianna Huffington but, ladies and gentlemen and everyone else:
she’s right!
The thing that would help more than emo-tweeting poetry, probably, is a strong number two. And Musk has hired strong second-in-commands before: Gwynne Shotwell comes
immediately to mind. (SpaceX, incidentally, is
minding its own business.) Look, the move here — if I am a board member, which
unfortunately I am not — is to demand Musk hire the number two as quickly as he can. Then Musk can take like, a month off and get some rest and come back charged up and ready to inspire his workforce with a bunch of energy and new ideas. The
Times article indicates this is what the board wants, but Musk, in the article, shoots the idea down.
It’s readily apparent that Musk
is having a tough time, partly because of tweeting. (Tweeting is like a specific form of poetry except there’s an audience and it’s usually all riled up.) He tweeted that he was considering taking Tesla private and then
basically all hell broke loose.