The internet’s favorite kind of main character popped up this week: a CEO going off script. Andi Owen, CEO of furniture conglomerate MillerKnoll, went viral Tuesday with a one-minute, 20-second clip telling employees to stop worrying about whether or not they’d get bonuses and “leave pity city.”

People online were quick to tell Owen to take a trip to get-a-grip-ville, pointing out that this kind of comment feels callow coming from a high-paid exec during a time of economic instability.

Reading the room, MillerKnoll said the clip was taken out of context and the comment was meant to push employees to focus on hitting the company’s $26 million sales goal. Owen reportedly sent an apology email to staff saying, “I feel terrible that my rallying cry seemed insensitive.”

The cool CEO facade is cracking

Over the last few years, pandemic bumps and economic turbulence have forced CEOs who once spent most of their days wearing fun sneakers and delivering good news to become the big bad boss. And when being the bearer of bad news gets handled less than delicately, it tends to go viral: whether it’s a CEO laying off staff via mass Zoom meetings or posting a crying selfie about letting employees go.

If there doesn’t seem to be much empathy for C Suite blunders these days, it might be because executive pay has eclipsed worker pay over the past few decades. A July report from the AFL-CIO, the largest US federation of trade unions, found that, on average, S&P 500 CEOs made about $18.3 million, or roughly 324x the median salary of workers, in 2021.

Bottom line: Owen’s attempt to fire up employees to sell fancy chairs left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Especially since it came from someone who, according to Fortune, took home $3.9 million last fiscal year in incentive-based compensation on top of her $1.1 million salary.—MM

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SCOTUS puts off ruling on abortion pills. The Supreme Court extended until Friday its pause on a lower court ruling restricting access to mifepristone, leaving the pill available nationwide for now. Mifepristone’s status is up for grabs after a federal judge in Texas suspended the FDA’s two-decade-old approval of the medicine, and another federal judge issued a conflicting ruling the same day ensuring access to the medicine in some states. The case is considered the most important abortion dispute since Roe v. Wade.

Price drops cut into Tesla’s profits. One day after cutting prices on its cars for the sixth time this year, Tesla reported that all those discounts made a big dent in its Q1 profits, which were down 24% compared to the same period last year. But with competition in the electric vehicle market heating up, the company said it was sticking with its plan to sell more cars for less. It expects to move 1.8 million cars this year, up from 1.3 million in 2022.

You can be a part of your own $700+ million legal settlement. No judgment if you’re still using Facebook now, but if you were using the social network any time between May 2007 and December 2022, you can submit a claim here for your share of a $725 million privacy settlement. You have until August to request your piece of the deal that resolves a class action over Facebook giving 87 million users’ data to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that worked with political campaigns. Meta agreed to the settlement last year without admitting wrongdoing.

The franchise that spawned five movies and countless Edward Cullen cosplays is coming back from the dead for a television reboot. The unnamed Twilight series is in early development at Lionsgate, whose stock rose 6% on the news yesterday.

For now, we know almost as little about the series as Bella knew about vampires when she moved to Forks. Stephenie Meyer is expected to be involved, and an executive producer of the Twilight movies, which grossed $3.3 billion worldwide, is already on-board, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Besides that:

• The show’s writer is currently deciding whether to remake the books and movies or use the source material to create a new story within the Twilightverse.
• There’s no timeline for production, let alone a network or platform committed yet.
• No cast details have been released, so we can’t say whether Kristen Stewart and co. will reprise their roles from the films (don’t count on it).

Zoom out: Your entire middle-school bookshelf is coming to the small screen. The Twilight series will compete for ratings glory against two familiar foes with equally devoted fans: a 10-year Harry Potter series on HBO Max and Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+. The latter finished filming and will premiere next year.—ML

Last Wednesday, the FBI arrested Josiah Garcia, a Tennessee Air National Guardsman who applied to be an assassin on RentAHitman.com. Rookie mistake: The website is a parody site that’s been used to catch potential killers for years. So, it turns out the only assassination Garcia was signing up for was that of his character.

• In one of many follow-up emails to his application, Garcia allegedly wrote, “I enjoy doing what I do, so if I can find a job that is similar to it, (such as this one) put me in coach!”
• He also peppered in his nickname, Reaper, which was allegedly given to him for his excellent marksmanship.

The site wasn’t originally intended to catch potential killers. Bob Innes, the Northern Californian who runs RentAHitman.com, bought the domain in 2005 for $9.20 with a plan to start a website traffic analysis company. The business didn’t pan out, but he held onto the domain, hoping that one day someone would buy it, according to The Guardian.

It wasn’t until 2010 that he got a request serious enough to turn over to authorities from a woman hellbent on hiring an assassin to kill three of her relatives. In the years since, Innes has put a handful of others in the possession of law enforcement. He estimates he’s saved nearly 150 people’s lives by handing over the inquiries that appear serious to authorities.

The future is grim for Josiah “Reaper” Garcia. He faces up to 10 years in prison for using the nickname “Reaper” interstate facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.—CC

Stat: The future of news might be hiding wherever you get your podcasts: 87% of Americans who hear news on podcasts expect it to be accurate, according to a new Pew Research survey. Given that confidence in newspapers and TV news has slipped, that’s a big win for podcasts. But it’s not necessarily a victory for the podcasts of traditional news outlets—only one in five podcast listeners say they tune into pods connected to news organizations. But we, of course, recommend anyone looking for the best news podcast check out Morning Brew Daily.

Quote: “Maybe 4/20, maybe not.”

Elon Musk might soon have one more reason to love 4/20. The aspiring Martian, who you may recall added ~$150 million to the price tag for his acquisition of Twitter just to make a 4/20 joke, is hoping that SpaceX will be able to launch its massive Starship rocket today for the first time ever. The company had to cancel a planned launch earlier in the week due to a frozen valve, but Musk tweeted that the team is “working around the clock” in an effort to get the ship off the ground today.

Read: My high-flying life as a corporate spy who lied his way to the top. (Narratively)

4/20 film fest: The best stoner movies and the best movies for stoners.

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Brew Mini: Catch some Zzzs (well, actually a lot of Zs) in today’s Mini. Play it here.

Three headlines and a lie

Three of these headlines are real and one is faker than an Instagram DM about a brand collab. Can you spot the odd one out?

1. Sorry we dissolved your son in acid, mafia bosses tell parents
2. Black bear breaks into vehicle, guzzles 69 cans of pop
3. Cocaine worth nearly $440 million found floating in the sea off Italy
4. Man sues brewery for using his photo on can of beer called ‘Bald Guy Brew’

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