Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is now the largest outside shareholder of Twitter after buying a 9.2% stake on March 14. Twitter stock spiked 27% after the investment was revealed yesterday, which means Musk has made more than $1 billion on paper in just a few weeks.

Doesn’t he already have enough going on?

Probably—but Musk is kind of obsessed with Twitter. He delights his 80+ million followers (and frustrates many more) with a constant barrage of corporate updates, NSFW memes, and social commentary about Berlin nightclubs.

But in addition to his typical tweets, Musk has also weighed in on Twitter’s business strategy. He’s asked his followers whether they think Twitter adheres to free speech principles, or if it should open-source its algorithm. Once, he expressed bewilderment that Twitter was using engineering resources on NFT integrations instead of combating crypto scammers.

That constant attention to Twitter’s product has experts thinking Musk’s investment isn’t just some play to pad his existing $273 billion fortune. It could be the start of a larger campaign to bring Twitter under his control, such as a possible buyout down the line.

What does it mean for Twitter?

That the company’s value jumped by more than a quarter the day Musk revealed his stake tells you that investors are hyped for some change. Because, for all its cultural relevance, Twitter’s always been a minor-league player from a financial perspective. Consider: New CEO Parag Agrawal has a goal to hit $7.5 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2023. Meanwhile, YouTube brought in $8.6 billion in Q4 2021 alone.

Bottom line: We don’t yet know what Musk has in store for Twitter. But if he were to try to insist on a more laissez faire approach to content moderation, he would run counter to social media’s growing crackdown on misinformation and hate speech—and put himself in an even bigger battle with regulators.

For now, though, Musk is happy to play the troll. Last night he posted a poll asking Twitter users if they wanted an edit button. The two options? “Yse” and “On.” —NF

It’s “now or never” to limit the effects of climate change. A big UN paper released yesterday said countries can still limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by frantically cutting greenhouse gas emissions and investing in carbon capture technology, but that window is closing fast. We’d have to hit peak emissions by 2025 and then send them down a Black Diamond after that to keep things under control.

As one social media company rises, another falls. Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the SPAC that merged with former President Trump’s social network Truth Social, fell 10% for its seventh straight day of losses. Two top Truth Social execs have resigned, downloads are down 95% from their peak, and rival Twitter just got Elon on board.

Busy day in the Senate. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s elevation to the Supreme Court now seems guaranteed after two more Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney, said they’d support her. She’ll likely be confirmed by the end of the week. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators agreed to a slimmed down $10 billion Covid package that would provide funding for vaccines, treatments, and more pandemic measures.

Howard Schultz’s first non-peppermint mocha order as interim CEO of Starbucks was to suspend the company’s three-year, $20 billion share buyback program less than six months after it was introduced. Schultz said that icing it will free up cash to reinvest in its stores and the employees who work there.

Share buybacks 101: It’s when a company purchases shares of its own stock as a means of rewarding existing shareholders. The practice has faced criticism from labor unions, the SEC, and even President Biden, who proposed stricter stock buyback regulations for company execs last week. Not that that’s slowed them down…

• Stock buybacks from S&P 500 companies are expected to pass $1 trillion this year, after hitting a record $882 billion in 2021, according to Goldman Sachs.
• In recent years, Starbucks spent $13.5 billion repurchasing shares.

Reading the coffee grounds: This is Schultz’s third time as head of the beans, but now he’s facing inflation pressures, stagnation in China (Starbucks’s biggest foreign market), and the most powerful unionization effort in the company’s history.—MM

Traditionally, office workers have had two primary productive stretches in their workday: before and after lunch. But a recent Microsoft study has found that since the shift to hybrid and remote work, a new period of productive working time has emerged: 9pm to 11pm.

According to the study, which tracked Microsoft employees’ computer usage, some employees worked as much at 10pm as they did at 8am. In fact, about 30% experienced this new “triple peak” working day.

While the phrase “triple peak day” has the makings of a bleak new verse to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” Microsoft tried to put a positive spin on it. It could reflect a workforce spread across several time zones, or indicate that employees have more flexibility to schedule their days, the company wrote.

However, it could also reflect a lack of work–life boundaries within remote teams. According to Microsoft’s research manager, people have 250% more meetings every day than they did pre-pandemic.—MK

Ask the audience: If you’ve been working remotely since the pandemic began, do you feel like your work–life balance has gotten better or worse?

Better
Worse
No different

Stat: The number of challenges filed to remove books at public schools and libraries quadrupled in 2021, reaching their highest level since the American Library Association began keeping records in 2000. The vast majority of the ~1,600 books cited contained LGBTQ or racial themes.

Quote: “We are facing challenges at every turn.”

In his annual shareholder letter, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon wrote that a nasty concoction of higher inflation and the war in Ukraine “may dramatically increase the risks ahead.” Dimon predicted that Russia’s invasion will influence geopolitics for decades; he also said he does not envy the Fed’s job of bringing down inflation without causing a recession.

Read: How TikTok heartthrob William White’s thirsty fandom turned toxic. (Input)

New Grammy Award just dropped: It’s a pretty specific category.

Tech Tip Tuesday: This guy’s TikTok channel is bursting with useful websites, software hacks, and more.

Who are the real experts? Why is it so hard to find them, and, once you do that, why are they so rarely the ones calling the shots? Bestselling author Michael Lewis dives in on his podcast, Against the Rules. Listen here.

Brew Mini: Have not thought about the basketball player mentioned in this puzzle in several years. See who it is here.

Centibillionaire survey

This weekend, Indian infrastructure mogul Gautam Adani became the 10th person in the world worth at least $100 billion. How many of the other nine can you name?

1. Elon Musk
2. Jeff Bezos
3. Bernard Arnault
4. Bill Gates
5. Warren Buffett
6. Larry Page
7. Sergey Brin
8. Steve Ballmer
9. Larry Ellison

It pays to start a giant tech company.