Musk Buying Twitter Part II

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sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
19,626
44,846
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
But, if he really is a free speech absolutist who intends to launch an experiment on a large scale;
He's not. Musk had a team comb all internal and external Twitter posts by employees that ever posted anything critical of him and fired all of those employees. He's a selective absolutist...

And for a guy who is demanding hard core 24/7 he seems to have a lot of time to sit around tweeting.
 

karam

Lifer
Feb 2, 2019
2,341
9,012
Basel, Switzerland
Except there are labor laws and this isn’t 1903.
As you said you’re a freelancer, there are real parallels between freelancers and highly-skilled, motivated, ambitious people. One such parallel is the fact that they have far more mobility and options, and carrot works far better than the stick as @cshubhra put it.

By the way @cshubhra I always like your posts, especially when it’s about business.
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,763
13,789
Humansville Missouri
With amazing speed, so far this year Elon Musk has lost over 100 billion dollars.


Sort of reminds me of an old country song, but most of life does.


One of life’s affordable pleasures is I can take a $30 Lee and and an $18 tin of Capstan, and none of them there billionaires could smoke anything better on the smoking lounge of their space plane.:)

Watching the news today is as good entertainment as watching Red Foley’s Ozark Jamboree, and teaches about the same moral lessons, you know?
 
Jan 28, 2018
12,954
134,633
66
Sarasota, FL
i don’t tweet, I’m not 100% sure what Twitter does or what value it would bring to my life. My observation from afar is this was well less than a financial investment for Musk but more am so driven deal. And perhaps he feels the need to level the playing field in the political arena. Who knows, Musk is obviously very complex and impossible to determine his true agenda.
 

sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
19,626
44,846
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
And, the expenses keep mounting. Musk has sold a reported 23+ billion dollars worth of Tesla stock to pay off debt associated with his Twitter deal, much to the consternation of Tesla stockholders, who are watching their share values drop with every stock dump. They want him back at Tesla to stabilize the situation.

To save money, Musk has stopped paying his rent on Twitter offices over the past month, has been thinking of reneging on the severance packages he agreed to with several thousands of former employees, and has instructed disbursement not to pay their bills to sub contractors and other companies that provide service to Twitter. Go ahead, take on Google. Good luck.

An army of attorneys are going to make one hell of a payday out of all of this.

Maybe he should rebrand the company and call it Twatter. The he could be the Chief...
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,763
13,789
Humansville Missouri
i don’t tweet, I’m not 100% sure what Twitter does or what value it would bring to my life. My observation from afar is this was well less than a financial investment for Musk but more am so driven deal. And perhaps he feels the need to level the playing field in the political arena. Who knows, Musk is obviously very complex and impossible to determine his true agenda.

Somebody owns this forum the same way Elon owns Twitter.

Twitter at least was, the premier social media platform in the world, and this one is considerably smaller, devoted to pipe smokers. But on Twitter you can become famous with your friends, posting witty sayings and links and even short videos.

Like this forum, Twitter’s revenue comes from advertisers. Using it requires only a sign up. Twitter earns so much money from those advertisers, who use it to sell products and services. A television or radio station or newspaper is about the same business model.

Elon Musk earlier this year was the richest man on earth and one of the richest men that has ever lived.

He has so much money he dated Amber Heard for a couple of years, and she’s not said a bad word about him. He owns a space plane. His Tesla company had a market value of one trillion dollars.

If had even a few billion of his billions, there would be a sucker rod steel fence going up right now a half mile South of Bug Tussle and ponds building that the Pharos might envy.

But Elon Musk wanted to own Twitter, and he impulsively offered 44 billion dollars for it. They sued him and forced him to buy Twitter for 44 billion.

Musk used borrowed money, to buy Twitter. He then proceeded to fire half the staff, and about half those he didn’t fire quit.

Most of the users that were kicked off for insulting the other users were let back on, and Musk is flaming the advertisers that paid Twitter money to advertise. He’s devoting most of his time to Twitter, so that his Tesla company has lost a half a trillion dollars in market share, upsetting Tesla investors considerably. His concerned bankers are demanding more security, and he’s selling half price Tesla stock by the billions to pay margin calls.

Elon Musk’s mother is still alive, the oldest supermodel on earth still on the catwalks.

She needs to go home, pick up a stove poker, and give her son two choices. Either straighten up, or else.

It’s all greatly entertaining to watch, and we all are watching it, to the benefit of the television, radio, and newspapers.

Real life is more fascinating than fiction.

No way, you can make this up.
 

avail

Can't Leave
Oct 13, 2015
351
2,915
Michigan
i don’t tweet, I’m not 100% sure what Twitter does or what value it would bring to my life. My observation from afar is this was well less than a financial investment for Musk but more am so driven deal. And perhaps he feels the need to level the playing field in the political arena. Who knows, Musk is obviously very complex and impossible to determine his true agenda.
And according to some he is doing it all wrong, doggonit...LOL
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,763
13,789
Humansville Missouri
And according to some he is doing it all wrong, doggonit...LOL

I’d never earn the first billion, because I’d quit about ten million in.:)

Even after this debacle, today Elon Musk is worth over 150 billion.

It’s a story old as time, of the temporary nature of wealth and fame.

I know how it will end, the same for Elon Musk, as us all.

Our trophies at last, we’ll lay down.

 

beargreasediet

Starting to Get Obsessed
Nov 23, 2021
294
2,455
Too close to Seattle.
If FB and instagram were shaping culture for the proletariat, it seems Twitter was performing the same task for the bourgeoisie - none of it by serendipitous happenstance. Anybody studying marketing today can tell you that, it’s modern day MK magic.

The Musk orchestrated implosion along with the “revelations” of partnership with governmental actors seems right on cue, none of this is happening in a vacuum. Musk is simply playing his part. Ain’t none of this is good but detached, pipe smoking observer seems the best part to play.
 

Zeno Marx

Starting to Get Obsessed
Oct 10, 2022
238
1,264
I remember watching a video clip of him in a Tesla factory. He was on an assembly line, dancing like a nut. He looked like he was well aware of how awkward and ridiculous he looked, but that wasn't the point. It was an act of dominance, as he wasn't happy just looking the fool alone. He had pulled one of the workers into it. The worker looked embarrassed and awkward, but they had no option other than to dance along with Musk. That was the point. Musk takes pleasure in making people look the fool and puppeteering them...because he knows he can. He gets off on sadistic power.

Anyone remember the 60 Minutes piece on him when he was just Tesla? He looked unhinged and not a nice person in that interview. He looked like he treated his family awfully as well. If I remember correctly, it was when Tesla was either filing for bankruptcy or was rumored to file bankruptcy. He's one of these privileged and blessed loons who runs roughshod over everyone and everything that crosses his path and who gets confused with genius. It's no surprise he is not paying his rent, refusing to honor contracts, abuses his employees, and gladly uses the court system to avoid responsibilities. Sound like anyone else we know? Two peas in a pod.
 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
Is he miles smarter than anyone around him, or is his gift that he has mastered mind gaming so that he makes everyone think so? A lot of people who rise into the stratosphere of business or politics make wretched mistakes all the time but have learned to weave the fantasy in others that these mistakes are the product of their brilliance. I think it is a combination of hypnotism and group psychology. Tesla cars weren't doing too well until Elon started doing his genius dance, and the masses swooned. Part of the drill is to make smart people feel ignorant and ashamed, just through sheer nastiness. Then you strut around like you are always correct. This usually works.

Some of these people don't get it just right, so everyone knows they're just nasty. There is quite a list of those people, too.
 

K.E. Powell

Can't Leave
Aug 20, 2022
493
1,781
37
West Virginia
Musk has always been a chud. Mso489 nailed it: it's performance craft. Americans are especially susceptible to the whole "businessman genius" grift. Hell, just don a black turtleneck and a pair of loafers, toss out some platitudes and insipid techno jargon, and people in this country will bend over backwards to give you their loyalty and their money. Just look at Theranos: Holmes did that whole grift so well that she even managed to con a former secretary of defense.

Musk has always been a shitsack and grifter. The whole Twitter debacle just makes it much more obvious.
 

CallMeSangy

Starting to Get Obsessed
May 12, 2022
131
362
Central Virginia
Musk has always been a chud. Mso489 nailed it: it's performance craft. Americans are especially susceptible to the whole "businessman genius" grift. Hell, just don a black turtleneck and a pair of loafers, toss out some platitudes and insipid techno jargon, and people in this country will bend over backwards to give you their loyalty and their money. Just look at Theranos: Holmes did that whole grift so well that she even managed to con a former secretary of defense.

Musk has always been a shitsack and grifter. The whole Twitter debacle just makes it much more obvious.
Well said.

I find good people will mostly only do good things. An ass on the other hand, well there's a smell that will follow them no matter where they go.
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,763
13,789
Humansville Missouri
Just think about how many Lee star pipes you could get with that kind of money!
The Lee Star Grades could be recreated.

Dunnegan still has a post office, and I could buy all of Spout Spring Hollow from the Widow Carlson and let her live out her days in her home, and reopen the old sawmill there as a pipe factory.

I’d find the best Amish woodworker in the community, and hire him to set up the factory.

It would be hard, to spend 4.4 million to do that, much less 44 billion.

But every Amish family around Spout Spring Hollow would be ordering new buggies, by the time I finished.:)

 

mawnansmiff

Lifer
Oct 14, 2015
7,385
7,295
Sunny Cornwall, UK.
"Even after this debacle, today Elon Musk is worth over 150 billion."

I'd wager if he sold every single thing that he owns bar the clothes he stands in, his worth would be nowhere near that figure.

His 'worth' is not far removed from that Bitcoin guy who apparently was worth billions in October and is now nigh on penniless, and he never sold anything, it just disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Value & worth have lost their true meaning in these times.

Regards,

Jay.
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,763
13,789
Humansville Missouri
"Even after this debacle, today Elon Musk is worth over 150 billion."

I'd wager if he sold every single thing that he owns bar the clothes he stands in, his worth would be nowhere near that figure.

His 'worth' is not far removed from that Bitcoin guy who apparently was worth billions in October and is now nigh on penniless, and he never sold anything, it just disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Value & worth have lost their true meaning in these times.

Regards,

Jay.
One day about 1990, my first wife and I visited her parents, and her father was doing papers in his home office.

He owned a dozen small banks at that time, and he showed me where the combined stated assets of them was over five hundred million dollars.

And, he said he could sell out that day, for at least fifty million, maybe more.

But, the taxes might reduce that to thirty five million, and the banks were growing, and if waited a few more years the banks would have assets of a billion dollars, and he could sell for a hundred million, and clear over seventy million.

He asked my advice, and I asked, could you sell a couple you liked the least, for say four or five million, and exchange that into four or five million million in mutual funds?

He thought a bit, and said if I sold a couple the other bankers would know those were my dogs, and not pay as much for them.

When I returned the care and maintenance of his daughter to him in 2000, he was worth over a hundred million and owned 15 banks, plus mortgage companies and insurance companies.

I read in the papers in 2008 how one of his bank presidents made millions in bad loans to housing contractors, and had induced little old ladies to invest in the failed subdivision.

Before long his net worth was below where he was when he discussed selling out to me in 1990.

He died in 2011, maybe from the worry and strain of it all.

He was a wonderful man, husband and father, but quitting winner is the hardest thing in the world, if your winnings are huge.

But when we were discussing it in 1990 the Dow was under 3,000.

If he’d exchanged all fifty million into mutual funds his family might have a half billion dollars today.

Unless they spent it, which folks often do.
 
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