This Week in Elon: Come back to the office, you’re fired

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It's odd for a man who splits his time between cities and at least four different companies to demand that employees return to the office. According to a report this morning, he wants to cut about 10 percent of his workforce because he doesn't want to do layoffs.

President Joe Biden gave Musk a lot of luck on his trip to the moon. Musk said thanks to the president. Thanks for paying for it.

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Musk said last night that he wants to have a working prototype of the robot by September 30th. I assume he doesn't mean in the " it's a person dancing in a suit" sense.

The real story in the Musk-iverse, and the real reason we are up and running again here at This Week in Elon, is the fact that you can follow us on social media. The story began on April 4th of this year, when a friendly neighborhood billionaire bought 9.2 percent of the company. First, Musk was just an investor, then he was going to join the company's board, and then he decided against it because he wanted to buy the social networking site. The board thought the better of the situation and decided to sell something, something fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

It is estimated that Musk will have to pay about $44 billion for the company. It is not easy when you have a lot of money. He sold $8.4 billion of his shares in the company to finance the project, and he talked Larry Ellison and some of his other rich friends into donating their own money. Musk declared the deal temporarily on hold and spent a lot of time complaining about the platform. There are a lot of people with six followers who are giving away millions of dollars.

Where does this leave the agreement now? It was almost exactly where it was eight weeks ago. Musk was reminded that they signed a contract with lawyers and that it was going to make him follow through. The Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period is a badly named procedural thing that means government antitrust regulators aren't planning to take any action on the deal.

Since April 4th, when the deal was announced, the price of that deal has gone up, as well as the price of its competitors. If Musk could start the process over, he would offer less than $54.20 a share. The richest man in the world will be fine. He promised to put up another $6 billion of his own money instead of borrowing it against his stock, which investors liked.

It's all... a lot. If we assume that the deal is going through and that it looks like the most likely outcome, the most interesting question in the next few months will be what the future looks like for the company. We have been writing about that for a long time, from Musk's deafening silence after the Buffalo shooting to his nonsensical thoughts about open source and free speech. Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, likes to say that Musk's answer to how to think about moderation is a baby idea. This stuff is going to be very complex.

Maybe not. It is not clear if there will be much left for Musk to own on the social networking site. Musk has spent a lot of time trashing the team he is taking over, both for their work and their policies. Anything that smells like a long-term bet is being shut down. People who are left seem to be tired. Jay Sullivan, the company's newly promoted head of product, called out the " chaos tax" of the Musk takeover, which is as good an explanation as I've ever heard.

The world around them is not different from the financial details of Musk's takeover. The economic situation looks bleak for the foreseeable future, regulators around the world continue to press on questions of content moderation, the Supreme Court suddenly seems to have opinions about social media, Russia and Ukraine are at war, and we are edging closer. Right now, there is uncertainty.

Musk has his share of personal chaos, though I'm reluctant to ever call it a potential problem for him because those don't seem to actually exist. There is a story from a couple of weeks ago that claimed that Musk offered to buy a horse for a flight attendant in exchange for sexual favors, and that he paid $250,000 to settle a sexual harassment allegation from a flight attendant. Musk promises that there will be blood and that he will hire a hardcore litigation department. You have to wonder if he made a list of defamation-lawsuit targets after watching the circus of the Depp-Heard trial.

Even though the SEC is investigating the way Musk filed investment paperwork, they will fine him $60 and we will all move on.

We're roughly caught up. We are going to spend the next few months looking into everything from Musk Land to what it means for the richest person in the world to own a social network. You can't deny that Musk is good at the social networking site, but will he be good for it? What do you think that looks like?

We need your assistance in this. Have a question, see a filing, or just roll your eyes at his latest post, tell us about it if you read it. If you send an email to elon@theverge.com, you will get in touch with the whole crew. We want to hear what you have to say.

The only rule we have here at This Week in Elon is that we always assume the most ridiculous thing is going to happen. We are going to be back here in a week when a bunch of Optimus robot are on the internet. Then talk to you again.