Apparently, billionaire and potential Twitter owner Elon Musk had two children — twins — with Shivon Zillis, one of his “top executives.” From Business Insider:
Elon Musk quietly had twins last November with one of his top executives, court documents obtained by @thisisinsider show.https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 6, 2022
And this fact didn’t sit well with the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz who tweeted, “this man cannot stop procreating”:
This man cannot stop procreating https://t.co/0ZXkRjaop6
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) July 6, 2022
But why is this even an issue? Musk, after the story broke, tweeted that he’s “doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis” and a “collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far”:
Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis.
A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022
He added, “mark my words, they are sadly true”:
Mark my words, they are sadly true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2022
Anyway, Musk is in the news for the kids but there’s also new reporting out today that his purchase of Twitter is in jeopardy:
NEW – Elon's deal to buy Twitter is in serious jeopardy. His team now believes they won't be able to confirm Twitter's numbers on how many spam bots are on the site, something Elon has said he needs to know before moving forward. W/ @faizsays https://t.co/5gPgL3W6R1
— Gerrit De Vynck (@GerritD) July 7, 2022
From the Washington Post:
Talks with investors have cooled in recent weeks as Musk’s camp has raised doubts about the recent data “fire hose” — a trove of data sold to corporate customers — they received from Twitter. Musk’s team’s doubts about the spam figures signal they believe they do not have enough information to evaluate Twitter’s prospects as a business, the people said.
“Ugh”:
— GayPatriot+ (@GayPatriotPlus) July 7, 2022
And here’s more from the Business Insider article. It’s behind a paywall but they kindly tweeted all the relevant details in this long thread:
In April, Musk, 51, and Zilis, 36, filed a petition to change the twins’ names in order to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name.
The order was approved by a judge in Austin, Texas, this May. https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
The twins were born weeks before Musk and Claire Boucher, the musician who performs as Grimes, had their second child via surrogate in December.
Musk and Zilis did not respond to requests for comment.https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of about $220 billion.
He’s at the helm of four companies: Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, where Zilis works.https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
Zilis is a rising star in Musk’s empire.
She met Musk through her work with OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence research-and-deployment nonprofit Musk cofounded in 2015. She serves as the youngest member of OpenAI’s board of directors.https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
In 2017, Zilis moved to Tesla, where she was a project director. Today, she holds the title of director of operations and special projects for Neuralink, where Musk is co-CEO. She’s recently been floated as one of the people Musk could tap to run Twitter. https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
Zilis lived in San Francisco before buying a home in a gated community in Austin in August, about three months before the twins were born.https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
Musk has said his primary residence is a $50,000 modular house in Boca Chica, near SpaceX’s launch facility in South Texas, but in the court documents Musk and Zilis listed the same address — the multimillion-dollar home — in Austin. https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
Since the beginning of 2022, Musk has tweeted more than a dozen times about population issues. On May 24, he posted a graphic from @WSJ showing a “fertility slump” in the United States. https://t.co/MgGsglBi6y pic.twitter.com/l23Hhi0bNl
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
Part of Musk’s concern about declining birth rates appears to stem from the idea that there won’t be enough humans to populate Mars.
Subscribe to @thisisinsider for more. ⬇️ https://t.co/nSZIOdqNac
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) July 7, 2022
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