Bird Statue Fetches $100,000 as Musk Auctions Twitter HQ Items

An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Bird Statue Fetches $100,000 as Musk Auctions Twitter HQ Items

An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
An image of Elon Musk is seen on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos in this picture illustration taken April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

A Twitter bird statue fetched $100,000 on Wednesday as Elon Musk auctioned off furniture, decorations, kitchen equipment and more from the tech firm's downtown San Francisco headquarters, AFP reported.

An online auction of "surplus corporate office assets of Twitter" that lasted slightly more than 24 hours also featured a 10-foot neon light in the shape of Twitter's bird logo, which brought in a winning bid of $40,000, Heritage Global Partners auction service confirmed.

Among the 631 lots were espresso machines, ergonomically correct desks, televisions, bicycle-powered charging stations, pizza ovens and a decorative planter shaped like an "@" sign.

Musk in December said that severe cost cuts at Twitter had repaired the company's dire finances as he set out to find a new CEO for his troubled social media platform.

The mercurial billionaire told a live chat forum at the time that without the changes, including firing over half of Twitter's employees, the company would have bled $3 billion dollars a year.

Musk said he had been "cutting costs like crazy" at the platform he bought for $44 billion.

Just weeks into his ownership of Twitter, Musk fired about half of its 7,500-strong workforce, sparking concern that the company was insufficiently staffed to carry out content moderation and spooking governments and advertisers.

Musk said his strategy is to massively reduce costs while building up revenue, and that a new $8 subscription service called Twitter Blue would help with that goal.

Musk-led Twitter has been riven by chaos, with mass layoffs, the return of banned accounts and the suspension of journalists critical of the South African-born billionaire.

Musk's takeover also saw a surge in racist or hateful tweets, drawing in scrutiny from regulators and chasing away big advertisers, Twitter's main source of revenue.



Ancient Egyptian Coffin Given New Life in Britain

Staff at Swansea University welcome back the artifact. Photo: Swansea University
Staff at Swansea University welcome back the artifact. Photo: Swansea University
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Ancient Egyptian Coffin Given New Life in Britain

Staff at Swansea University welcome back the artifact. Photo: Swansea University
Staff at Swansea University welcome back the artifact. Photo: Swansea University

An ancient Egyptian coffin was given a new life after it has been returned to Swansea University's Egypt Center in Wales.

The artifact, believed to date from about 650 BC, is now back at the university after thousands of hours of conservation work at Cardiff University, where it was painstakingly cleaned, reconstructed and consolidated to prevent it from deteriorating further, according to BBC.

The coffin, originally made for a man called Ankhpakhered in the Greek city of Thebes, was transported back under the watchful eye of the center’s curator Dr. Ken Griffin.

Staff described the finished project as “beyond our wildest dreams.”

“The coffin was gifted to us by Aberystwyth University in 1997 but details about its history are sketchy,” Griffin said.

He added: “It actually ended up being used as a storage box at one time, with other Egyptian objects placed in it for safekeeping.”

The university’s Phil Parkes explained that the wooden coffin was covered in textile and then had a thin layer of decorated plaster over the top.

He said: “Much of that textile had become detached over time and was just hanging loose.”

Parkes added that the separate wooden head was detached and there were a couple of large pieces of wood missing, the side of the base had fallen off and it was in a very sorry condition overall.