71–80 of 102 posts
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> If I pay someone $100,000 for a stick they found on the side of the road, it doesn't make that stick worth $100k. So why did you pay $100,000?
This line of thinking is so basic. Say I bought a lotto ticket for $5. Does that mean it's worth $5?
When you bought that $5 lotto ticket, it was worth $5. After the lotto is drawn, it's either worth approximately nothing or potentially a lot more than $5.
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Wait, more job cuts? Sounds like slow walk into death to me, they seem to be barely keeping up and/or delivering any new features?
Does Twitter need "new features"?
The "Elon is saving free speech, so this is worth it" argument for this incredible destruction of value is what cracks me up. The internet had/has no problem hosting repugnant viewpoints. Plenty of web hosting providers are available for you to share your most vile, hateful thoughts. We're watching a very powerful person discover in real time that free speech isn't something that generates value on its own.
Saying Elon is "free speech" at all is a joke. He could have lined up certain principles and been fine. It's not like the last CEO and ownership group was really killing it. There was a lot of unfairness. Elon just made it much worse. He has even suspended accounts that have merely said something negative about him. On a few popular threads critical of Elon, likes keep disappearing and reach gets limited.
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I'm not an accountant, but doesn't he need to realize investment losses in order to write them off? Capital expenses can be depreciated for tax write-offs, but I wasn't aware that corporate investments could be marked to market for write-offs.
I dont know either but I cant fathom why he paid that much for the company only to play Nero.
(Yes, it's very possible to be both smart and overconfident.)
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Elon Musk could have let everyone work from home and save money on rent but he had to demand rto. Oh uh. Hope he fails soon, so others can learn.
Took Elon 17 years to get Tesla profitable... why do you think he'd give up in a year? The largest problem with businesses these days is the "we must make profit next quarter" mindset and the "I hope he fails" is either that - or a pocket dislike of free speech. Each option is questionable in it's own right. I hope Elon succeeds. Not because I agree with everything he says or does but because I value free speech. “I…
I also just want to elucidate this quote a bit in case you didn't know.
Voltaire did not actually write these exact words. The line is a summary of his views on freedom of speech and thought, and it was penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 biography of Voltaire titled "The Friends of Voltaire." Hall wrote this phrase to encapsulate Voltaire's beliefs on the subject.
Given that Voltaire himself did not say these exact words, there is no specific context in which he was addressing someone or some particular statement he disagreed with.
Voltaire was a man of the Enlightenment, which prioritized reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. He would likely have opposed the deliberate spread of falsehoods and deceit. However, he would also probably have advocated for the right of people to express even flawed arguments, as challenging such arguments through reason and debate is foundational to Enlightenment values.
But when it comes to personal attacks, slander, deceit, and hate speech, he would have not been so tolerant, because the subtext is when he speaks of "speech" he means engaging in an enlightened conversation using reason, evidence, and logical argumentation. It's okay to have flawed logic, evidence or reasoning, but he was fighting the powers at be of his time, and those were using deceit, irrational and illogical fallacies, appeals to emotions, forced censorship and the like to push falsehoods. The values of the enlightenment were about working towards accurate truth seeking.
$19B ?! I think they forgot the comma here. And even that would be generous. All advertisers are gone - it seems like most advertising is some absolute crap. No way it brings any real money. Linda Yaccarino was recently caught lying (or rather, presenting the state of affairs in Elon's way) - suggesting and even naming some big brands that are supposedly back, while they are not (or spend 0.1% of their previous spend…
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A stick that someone paid $100k for is absolutely a stick worth $100k - what people are willing to pay for things is how we assign them value. Twitter's stock was trading at ~$45/share before any rumors of acquisition - so somewhere around $35B - they'd made roughly $1B in net income in the year prior to the buyout. This meme about them "not making money" is so silly. Aside from a one-time settlement in 2020, Twitter…
>twitters stock was trading for $45 a charge before any rumor of acquisition What is this, alternate reality land? It was trading for $16 (albeit this was a low point) a share when Musk started his pump and dump scheme, which rocketed the value to 45 a share, which is the point that Musk decided he doesn’t want it and also began proceedings to dump stock. There were ATH in the $45 range, but TWTR was on a clear downw…
I don't have quick access to share prices older than Jan 1st 2019 - but from that date through the date of Elon's first share purchase on Jan 31st, 2022 - Twitter's average price was was $44/share.
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A stick that someone paid $100k for is absolutely a stick worth $100k - what people are willing to pay for things is how we assign them value. Twitter's stock was trading at ~$45/share before any rumors of acquisition - so somewhere around $35B - they'd made roughly $1B in net income in the year prior to the buyout. This meme about them "not making money" is so silly. Aside from a one-time settlement in 2020, Twitter…
You could make that argument except this is a stick someone said he’d pay $100k for to get attention, then the courts forced him follow through. Slightly different.
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Took Elon 17 years to get Tesla profitable... why do you think he'd give up in a year? The largest problem with businesses these days is the "we must make profit next quarter" mindset and the "I hope he fails" is either that - or a pocket dislike of free speech. Each option is questionable in it's own right. I hope Elon succeeds. Not because I agree with everything he says or does but because I value free speech. “I…
You don't truly believe Twitter has become any better at free speech than it was before do you? Cause that's foolish. There's tons of bans and blocks, and there's still bias in the algorithms for promoting tweets. The only change is that what gets censored is now more aligned with Musk's own interests. That's all.
One of the biggest scandals of our time is "disinformation" that the government doesn't approve of being silenced by Government working with Private Industry to get around bans on government censorship of speech. Used for dissent around COVID "misinformation" or "election integrity".
I didn't claim X is perfect but it's a lot better than twitter that banned, say, the post for putting up The Laptop Story - that's long since been proven 100% true and was suppressed by... drum roll! the FBI literally lying about "russia".
The only thing that's changed is there's a top place for information that isn't controlled by the government - right or wrong.
I understand that's scary but scary freedom is better than the safety of slavery.