Mouse

Social Security just screwed up my best friend's life by removing her from disability for not working. I don't get it either, but right now there is no time to decipher the governments logic. She disabled and unable to work and losing disability means she can't pay her bills.

@BillAckman @X It’s totally not my money so I think yes, you should fight it. Having said that, you are going to need to make it painful so no one pulls this again

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

@JackMurphyRGR @emzanotti Is that both of them safe then?

Good news for once. F-15 WSO recovered alive. Was escaping and evading. Massive fire fight on tgt. Iranians were actively looking for him in the area.

@shipwreckedcrew CJ Roberts is the right Chief Justice for a now bygone era. A newer, more assertive chief justice is now needed to run things and Roberts isn’t that man

CJ Roberts need only look to the end of the bench to see what might be in store for his seat if he doesn’t consider retirement as well. 70 Yrs old and 21 years on the Court.

@CityP64031924 @laurenboebert @JustJenRX Polis’s political career is effectively over. Being chummy with a guy with nothing to lose is smart

@laurenboebert @JustJenRX Talking with him is one thing, but posing for a selfie is another. The optics are horrible. Every Dem politician is corrupt, who loves to target patriots, especially Pres. Trump. Not one is sane. The Dems are not the Dems of the past. Look at what they did during Covid, J6, etc.

Would you look at that… While a gold star mom with cancer rots in prison for exposing MASSIVE election fraud…. It’s @laurenboebert chumming it up with the very scumbag who’s keeping Tina Peters in prison. That scumbag is none other than DEMOCRAT Governor Jared Polis.

@LorieMedinaTX @KurtSchlichter @JohnCornyn Like Ken Paxton being made AG (unlikely but it would really entertaining)

@KurtSchlichter @JohnCornyn Cornyn isn’t going to win. The only way he could win is if there’s some funny business happening with the polling machines.

Texas Sen. @JohnCornyn should be super ticked off at this guy. Why? Because if Cornyn gets reelected, he’s not going to run again, meaning he has six years without accountability. Tillis has shown us exactly what that means. Would you want another Tillis in office for six years?

@shipwreckedcrew The LAPD could conquer and hold Greenland. It’s pretty sad

The Denmark "detail" only highlights how stupid those Euro allies are. Everything about Greenland was a bullying tactic. They brought it on over decades of failing to meet their commitments. Denmark can't defend Greenland against a real enemy that might seek to occupy parts of it -- they would invoke the Nato Treaty for the U.S.'s help. Trump simply drove that point home in expressing his interest in acquiring Greenland - territory that Denmark cannot defend or exploit because its a tiny little remnant of a country still stuck in the idea of 18th Century Western European supremacy.

@infantrydort Directly is the key word. He made it’s clear to the others that their careers were effectively over and pushed them out

Obama did not purge 197 generals and admirals. He removed less than 20 directly if I recall. His methods to shape the military were far more surreptitious than direct career confrontation.

@AbakpaJob Let’s get on that tomorrow

can we please start a support group for procrastinators?

@LangmanVince They didn’t used to. It wasn’t until about 8-10 years ago that NASA revealed that the images in the 70’s were sent back as uncompressed data and were insanely high resolution. Like better than what we had in 2015

The one on the left was from Apollo 17 in 1972. The one on the right is from Artemis II in 2026. How is it possible that the one taken over 50 years ago looks better?

@ok6ixx @xbradtc I remember for my knee surgery they wrote L and R on the top and bottom of my feet.

@EODHappyCaptain Oven with a dusting of flower usually produces consistent results

What is the best way to make bacon? In a pan? In the oven?

@nicksortor I wouldn't hold my breath. She's to be resentenced by the same judge, and I'm guessing he's not happy about being humiliated by the appeals court so he will find a reason to make it longer

🚨 HUGE NEWS: Following IMMENSE pressure from President Trump and patriots across the country, an appeals court in Colorado has THROWN OUT Tina Peters’ sentence Per the court, the 9-year sentence VIOLATED her 1st Amendment rights. This is a HUGE step towards freeing Tina Peters She will now be resentenced to a much lower term — possibly even time served — which would secure her immediate release. KEEP FIGHTING! 🇺🇸

@AlBuffalo2nite Iranians can triangulate radio waves too

Serious question on the downed American pilots in southern Iran: How is it that we can’t find ejected U.S. personnel? They don’t have a beacon on them? I mean, we have technology here called Apple beacons that can find your phone or watch anywhere… but you can’t find a whole human? This is ridiculous. #AStoneGroove #CSAR #Iran

@Sargon_of_Akkad Ukraine blew up the pipeline. Just because we gave the rebreathers, the explosives, the intel, the boat, got them and all that other stuff into the country and covered it up afterwards... That does not mean we had anything to do with it!

America blew up the Nordstream pipeline, and now has closed the Strait of Hormuz. Hard not to see this as a deliberate strategy of denying energy to Europe, whilst America can produce its own. Callous.

@PalisFLD @ManMilk2 Poison Ivy. The Eco-terrorist Batman Villain

@ManMilk2 who is the bitch on the top right and why is she being compared to sexy Yoda????

Captcha is about you training machines on object recognition. And on top of that, you/website pays captcha to train their systems!

Pet peeve: Proving you're human (to a robot) by "checking the boxes with bicycles" (or another item). Technically, none of the boxes has bicycles (plural). Some of them have parts of a single bicycle, but not multiple bicycles, which is the question. But if you answer correctly, as a human, the robot will decide you aren't human. So you have to answer the question incorrectly. More problems when the verification asks about boxes containing "bridges" (again, plural) or "motorcycles." And I find myself wondering, "Does it think an overpass is or is not a bridge?" "Does it think a scooter is a motorcycle?" Another issue: I frequently fail to pass ID verification tests by answering factually. If people who are real can't prove they're real by answering questions accurately-- then isn't there something wrong? How can there be so many successful fraudsters when I can't even get access to my own stuff? How do they find it so easy to get in? Lastly: Everything requires verification with a code. But when they send the code, it always says: "Do not share this code with anyone." But that's the whole reason you had to get the code: To share it with someone asking for on the phone, or to type it in a security site to advance. If you don't "share" it, you won't be able to get any of your business done or access what you need to access. 🤷‍♀️

If you want an obscure reason to vote for Trump and republicans, know his head of the patent office just pimp slapped Nintendo and rescinded several of the most ridiculously broad patents the Biden admin awarded them. This competition has been needed for years now

@MaryBowdenMD Pretty sure the problem was they were giving cokes and jello to diabetics, which is obviously not a good idea

Hospitals treated patients like prisoners during the pandemic, and 25% of Medicare patients suffer a preventable injury while in the hospital. But we’re going to call the soda police on any hospital that gives a patient a Coke. Give me a break!!!!!!

@ThomasN01244203 I don't know, how is Ukraine's constantly shrinking territory going?

@MattcomX Delusional. How's Kupyansk doing, dickhead?

Putin was taking it in the shorts in Ukraine until he started firing generals and replaced them with competent and proven leaders. Now he's winning. Being a general is much different from being a combat officer; generals are very much desk jobs with no real direct input

@officer_Lew And good on the woman in the white sweatshirt for calming him down. Helped make sure it didn't get worse

WATCH🚨: Viral video from a Walmart parking lot in Lawrence, Indiana: A Black man gets into a physical fight with police officers during an arrest attempt. Officers say it started after they spotted his car illegally parked in a fire lane. The suspect reportedly resisted, leading to punches thrown on both sides before he was taken into custody.