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Comment by dbreunig | Hacker News Reader

Elon did what he's done for the past decade. Can't help but play to a crowd and let the lawyers figure it out later. This is a cocktail of calling a rescue diver a pedophile, mocking all skills that aren't coders, and unnecessary cruelty when laying off workers.

If Haraldur intended to bait him, it was a near-flawless execution. I'm sure there are countless labor, disability, and health info privacy lawyers lining up in Halli's DMs.

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Watching Elon makes me think about the things for which a large portion of the public made fun of Jack Dorsey. Regular meditation, month-long meditation retreats and emphasis on regular exercise or alternative measures are probably needed to keep operating at that level. I know I get in a much worse mental state without physical exercise and journaling or meditation.

The main reason why Elon is like this is that he's on the psychopathy spectrum. Meditation could perhaps improve his ability to keep the mask on, but it wouldn't change who he is.

> Meditation could perhaps improve his ability to keep the mask on

Wasn't there a recent study that suggested that mindfulness meditation is correlated with an increase in narcissism, not a reduction?

There are other kinds of meditation, including some that are focused on cultivating empathy and concern for others. That might help, idk.

>he's on the psychopathy spectrum

Can't say if he's on the psychopathy spectrum or not, but he has admitted to be on the autistic spectrum, and I think that alone must be enough of a hinderance to running a social medial company.

He's not on the autism spectrum, that's just another one of his lies.

I think he self identifies as Asperger’s (sic). A lot of people in neuro-diversity movement are fine with people self identifying (though they prefer people stop using the Asperger’s in favor of Autism). Elon Musk can self identify on the autism spectrum if he wants, and there is no reason to doubt his own experience as being on the spectrum.

However being autistic is not an excuse for this kind of behavior. Many autistic people have sensory issues and will appear rude when they suddenly withdraw from a conversation, or have an unexplainable tantrum. However neither of these is what we are witnessing in Elon’s behavior. His is simply rude and disregarding of other people. That can be an indication of psychopathy (but doesn’t have to be). If this was a tantrum we wouldn’t be able to understand him this easily, and this is engagement—which is the opposite of withdrawal—so we can rule out over stimulation.

I think the most likely explanation here he is simply a bad person regardless of autism or other neuro-divergency.

One of the only Joe Rogan episodes I listened to was the re-do of the Twitter interview. Jack Dorsey let Vijaya Gadde do all the talking, and it was obvious why: she might have been the only person at Twitter with a clear picture of every controversial moderation decision, and a reasonable explanation for the company's decision in each. I can't imagine Elon staying mostly quiet for 2+ hours in any context, but especially as someone walked through the thought processes that led to each of his most stressful days as a CEO.

Elon not only called rescue diver a pedo, but also tried to give buzzfeed off the record info that diver had childbride in thailand.

I'm bit afraid what he is going to do now.

I suspect this too, Haraldur seems like a smart dude who's been stewing about Elon's mismanagement and assholerly for a while

Here's the kicker; Twitter would be liable for paying him $100m if he got fired https://www.bosshunting.com.au/hustle/elon-musk-firing-halli... (allegedly)

And the reason is that he took the $100m in salary so he can pay as high tax as possible: "In early 2021, Haraldur sold Ueno to Twitter. In an agreement between him and Twitter, most of the purchase price was paid as salary to maximize the tax he would pay for the sale in Iceland. He chose to pay for tax out of respect to Iceland for the disability benefits he received. Per the agreement, he paid the second highest tax of an individual in Iceland in 2021."

And Haraldur knew that if Elon refused to pay him then Icelandic laws would mean they could freeze operations and seize assets of Twitter there. It's a shame Elon isn't able to utilise such intelligent and talented people!

Realistically, how much would this hurt Twitter? Looking at Elon now, he might just go with it.

Considering he tried to sell potted plants to employees, I’d say $100m would hurt like hell https://www.indy100.com/amp/elon-musk-sells-office-plants-tw...

> If Haraldur intended to bait him

Reading Icelandic names like Haraldur evokes strong subconscious aura of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Curious if someone would write a novel (or a parody or a game) about Middle Earth's modern high tech corporate culture.

Tolkien lifted a bunch of names straight out of the Icelandic sagas and Edda.

> If Haraldur intended to bait him, it was a near-flawless execution. I'm sure there are countless labor, disability, and health info privacy lawyers lining up in Halli's DMs.

Considering there were entire articles by news outlets like the BBC just queued up and ready to go. My sense is this was premeditated. Elon is such an easy target.

> Elon is such an easy target.

A richly deserving target, too.

> considering there were entire articles by news outlets like the BBC just queued up and ready to go. My sense is this was premeditated.

Excessively conspiratorial imo, it isn't difficult to slap together an article about a series of tweets and the BBC article wasn't posted until about 8 hours after the first tweet and 3.5 hours after the last tweet from Elon in the original thread.

http://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.bbc.c...

https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1632843191773716481

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1632916854657396736

Exactly. I have no idea how an HN user can see this site, which is filled with rapid-response prose to emerging events, and imagine that it's impossible for a professional journalist to quickly write a 600-word summary of a Twitter discussion.

> Considering there were entire articles by news outlets like the BBC just queued up and ready to go.

Are you implying that journalists conspired with this guy to bait Elon into responding in a terrible manner and they pre-wrote articles about it?

Journalists use Twitter, too. They can write and publish articles quickly. There’s no conspiracy here. News articles appearing several hours after a story unfolds entirely within public Tweets is both common and normal.

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