The 2019 Icelandic Businessman of the year, celebrated disability advocacy and the first non-Björk Icelander to gain a scrap of international relevance, Halli Thorleifsson, managed to accomplish the impossible this week: Getting Space Karen Elon Musk to admit that he was wrong.


Now, for those of you without a Twitter account and/or who live under a rock, Thorleifsson made headlines earlier this week after he resorted to tweeting at Musk in a last-ditch attempt to decipher whether he had survived another round of layoffs.



“Dear @elonmusk  9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees,” wrote Thorleifsson, who had worked for the social media giant since selling them his creative agency, Ueno, for an undisclosed sum in 2021.


“However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails,” he continued, speculating that “maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?”


The answer to both Thorleifsson’s inquiries? A resounding “yes,” a sentiment Musk conveyed in the absolutely asshole-ish manner fit for an Emerald mine owner’s son-turned-pro Dogecoin peddler.



Alongside the several mishaps that stemmed from what some have dubbed the worst real-time exit interview to ever occur, Musk calling his former employee “the worst” and confusing design software Figma with the long-running internet ball joke setup of Ligma, the Twitter overlord took several personal shots at Thorleifsson, slamming both his work ethic and muscular dystrophy.


“The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm,” Musk wrote, a message historians may describe as the tweet that launched 1,000 ADA lawsuits. “Can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.”



Despite this proclamation of disrespecting a disabled employee, Musk evidently had a major change of heart, recanting his statement only a few hours later. "I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation,” Musk wrote in a post shared with his more than 130 million followers.


“It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful,” he continued before noting that Thorleifsson “is considering remaining at Twitter."





While it is possible that Musk underwent the heart enlargement surgery depicted in the medical documentary that is How the Grinch Stole Christmas, some have speculated there may have been another motivator at play … more specifically, tens of millions of motivators.


Though the terms of Twitter’s Ueno purchase were unclear, some have speculated that Musk would have to foot a hefty payout if he were to go through with axing Thorleifsson, a fee that would only grow with the inevitably series of disability lawsuits flying towards Twitter HQ.


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