It appears the Elon Musk mystique — no matter mixture of wealth, rigorously cultivated attraction and A-plus legal professionals which have helped him emerge unscathed from numerous scandals — is beginning to unravel.
Right here’s the deal: Federal regulators simply introduced that Musk’s non-public area tourism firm, SpaceX, will now not obtain practically $900 million in subsidies that it was awarded final yr as a result of the corporate “did not exhibit that [it] may ship” the web service it promised.
Let’s rewind for a minute.
- Again in December, the Federal Communications Fee auctioned off $9 billion in subsidies to web service suppliers as a part of a plan to convey high-speed web to rural areas that want it.
- The truth that SpaceX acquired one of many largest tranches of that subsidy program was controversial as a result of the Starlink community was mainly model new and unproven.
- Starlink’s system is wildly completely different from conventional high-speed web, which depends on underground fiber optic cables. Starlink, nonetheless, depends on 1000's of satellites working in tandem to beam web entry to the bottom.
- The FCC was primarily betting that Starlink could be camera-ready quickly sufficient.
The wager appears to have backfired, because the FCC is yanking the subsidies again, saying that the Starlink service is “nonetheless creating expertise” and that its speeds have been declining, my colleague Jackie Wattles stories.
SpaceX didn’t reply to a request to remark, as is usually the case at corporations run by Musk.
BIG PICTURE
A part of Elon Musk’s entire idiosyncratic-visionary-mega-billionaire persona (whether or not you imagine in it or not) is that he runs a number of corporations with lofty ambitions — like colonizing Mars, in SpaceX’s case.
Even when you discover his antics — the overpromising, the troll-y tweets, the reckless company raiding, naming one among his youngsters X Æ A-12 — off-putting, you continue to kinda have to understand the audacity.
But it surely now looks as if Musk’s dangerous habits would possibly lastly be catching as much as him.
In current days, Musk offered practically $7 billion price of Tesla shares simply in case he loses his authorized battle with Twitter and is compelled to purchase the corporate, which he now not desires. On the identical time, California officers have filed a criticism alleging that Tesla lied in commercials about its Autopilot and Full Self Driving expertise (which, regardless of their names, usually are not totally autonomous).
In June, when a number of SpaceX workers signed a letter criticizing Musk’s habits, the corporate fired at the very least 5 of the individuals concerned. A month later, an enormous SpaceX rocket prototype exploded on launch. Musk’s response to that on Twitter?
“Yeah, truly not good.”
Lets say the identical for Musk proper about now.
NUMBER OF THE DAY: 8.5%
The inflation headline of the day was a bit rosier than anticipated, because the annual shopper value index studying for July got here in at 8.5% — a lot slower than June’s 9.1%, however nonetheless traditionally excessive.
So, that’s excellent news and we must always all take a second to savor it. Extra excellent news: General costs didn’t rise in any respect between June and July. The final month costs didn’t rise was November 2020.
It’s not all excellent news, although. Costs didn’t rise for one cause, and one cause solely: Vitality prices, that are notoriously unstable, have tumbled. In the event you strip these out, costs rose in virtually each different class.
Backside line: July’s report signifies the Fed’s charge hikes is probably not having their desired impact. Excessive power costs seemingly introduced themselves down as demand started to dry up.
THE ITALIAN JOB
Think about being within the room when somebody at Domino’s, probably the most aggressively mediocre pizza purveyor on the planet, pitched the thought of moving into the Italian market.
See what we’ll do is, we’ll take our objectively inferior American pies and we’ll promote them to the very individuals who invented pizza and for whom meals isn't solely a supply of nationwide delight but in addition, like, the elemental underpinning of Italian cultural identification…
That’s loopy, the boss replies. So loopy it simply would possibly work…
Spoiler alert: It didn’t.
After seven years making an attempt to make it in Italy, Domino’s has formally shut all of its areas, in keeping with Italian media.
Domino’s had huge plans when made the plunge into the Italian market in 2015, signing a 10-year franchising cope with a Milan-based firm known as ePizza. Collectively, they deliberate to introduce a large-scale pizza supply service to the nation, which didn’t actually exist on the time.
It wasn’t a direct catastrophe. By the beginning of 2020, ePizza was managing 23 shops in Italy and 6 extra by a sub-franchise accomplice.
But it surely seems Italians most popular, um, Italian pizza to the American sort, with its distinctively American toppings, like pineapple.
Who may have guessed? (Other than, like, everybody?)
Though some might attribute Domino’s failure to its brazen try to infiltrate pizza’s homeland, ePizza blamed its demise on competitors from meals supply apps.
EPizza filed for chapter in April, after it struggled to make sufficient gross sales throughout two years of pandemic restrictions amid “unprecedented competitors” from native eating places.
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