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Merged Musk buys Twitter!/ Elon Musk puts Twitter deal on hold....

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jimbob said:
That's all very well, but if you're in business and competing with other businesses - it's not the same.


The Roman army was very effective in the first Century AD. Maybe we should issue our troops with Roman equipment?
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As a small business owner that has used every free platform out there for both internal and external communications, we expect them to eventually no longer serve our needs. We move on. No biggie.
 
Aridas said:
It was a bad joke. To explain the joke a little - "Let the fact that I'm the boss now sink in." Ha. Ha. Ha.

To be a bit fair, I do like double use wordplay humor. His execution was eye-rolling, though.
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The joke was not worth the effort it took to carry a sink into the building.

It definitely wasn't worth 44 billion dollars.
 
arthwollipot said:
I thought it was some kind of "everything including the kitchen sink" reference.
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Susheel said:
Same here...
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I thought this immediately too, that he was basically joking about all the people he was about to fire - which very much tracks with the way Elon thinks and his idea of what is funny - but then it occurred to me that it's a bathroom sink and not a kitchen sink. And then I realized I was spending too much time thinking about it so I lost interest.
 
arthwollipot said:
I thought it was some kind of "everything including the kitchen sink" reference.
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Susheel said:
Same here...
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Checkmite said:
I thought this immediately too, that he was basically joking about all the people he was about to fire - which very much tracks with the way Elon thinks and his idea of what is funny - but then it occurred to me that it's a bathroom sink and not a kitchen sink. And then I realized I was spending too much time thinking about it so I lost interest.
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Well, most damningly of all for me is that I knew exactly what it was when I saw it, which means I am too online for my own good.
 
Trebuchet said:
To give him his due, he DID try to back out of the deal after he realized he screwed up. But since he couldn't, and can't admit he screwed up, he's all in.
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Talking of "dues", when he signed the contract to buy Twitter, he waived due diligence. That's some kind of genius, huh?

He's not stupid. He's sometimes extremely foolish, but not stupid. Brilliant, in fact. And like many brilliant people, weirdly foolish.
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The only thing he's brilliant at is persuading people that he is brilliant and that they should therefore give him their money.

Musk has essentially single-handedly transformed space flight. His company has done more orbital launches than any single nation this year. He's taking people into space, where my former employer Boeing has failed over and over. His other company has made electric cars something to be aspired to, instead of just a joke. Every other car-maker is trying to emulate his.
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No.

He hasn't single handedly done anything. He didn't even single handedly finance SpaceX. SpaceX has had to seek external investment every year since it was founded, usually to the tune of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. I question the idea that SpaceX is a sustainable business.

The idea of an electric car that people wanted to buy was due to the founders of SpaceX - the real founders, not Elon Musk.

Elon Musk is a grifter, perhaps even a brilliant grifter. It was certainly brilliance to sell that insolvent solar panel business to Tesla to save his cousins from financial ruin. It was certainly brilliance to sell cars in tunnels to Las Vegas as the future of mass transit. And it was genius to buy Twitter whilst waiving due diligence... oh, wait, that wasn't genius: it was profound stupidity.
 
A lot of the people in this country are so enamored with the idea of meritocracy that they have to invent 18-dimensional chess explanations for how the rich guy is actually a secret genius. We saw it a thousand times with Trump.

The alternative is that the American dream is a lie, and that would be intolerable.
 
The sink was a stupid pun. I am now finally boss of Twitter... let that sink in! On its face there's no problem with making a silly pun. But, it was in very poor* taste given that he laid off 3700 people a day or two later. I imagine, Elon's never had his life turned upside down from losing a job before.


*Or pour taste... cause its a sink and water.. hahah get it?? I'm funnier than Elon! /s
 
jeremyp said:
The main reason why people can't get bank accounts is that the banks lose money on them. How would Twitter be able to avoid that?
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No, it's the other way around. Banks rarely lose money, at least on consumer services. But many millions of people don't have bank accounts because they can't afford the minimum deposit to open one and the minimum balances to avoid fat fees.

I can't imagine how Elon Musk would run a bank, or get the government approvals he would need. Maybe he could buy a bank that would partner with Twitter. But -- if it's not digressing too far -- I note that one of the ideas for reinvigorating the USPS has long been the notion that it could offer simple, low-cost savings and checking accounts to the "unbanked." There are Post Offices everywhere, and postal employees are generally trusted.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/385033-the-poor-need-bank-accounts-and-usps-has-the-answer/
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/could-postal-banking-save-the-post-office-5112852
 
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lobosrul5 said:
The sink was a stupid pun. I am now finally boss of Twitter... let that sink in! On its face there's no problem with making a silly pun. But, it was in very poor* taste given that he laid off 3700 people a day or two later. I imagine, Elon's never had his life turned upside down from losing a job before.


*Or pour taste... cause its a sink and water.. hahah get it?? I'm funnier than Elon! /s
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As a child of privilege, I'd say Musk has never experienced difficulties before, especially not those associated with being let go from a job.
 
Bob001 said:
No, it's the other way around. Banks rarely lose money, at least on consumer services. But many millions of people don't have bank accounts because they can't afford the minimum deposit to open one and the minimum balances to avoid fat fees.
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You know why banks rarely lose money? It's because they know how to stop people from becoming their customers if the bank will not make money off them. Amongst the measures they use are having minimum deposits and fees on small balances.

I can't imagine how Elon Musk would run a bank, or get the government approvals he would need. Maybe he could buy a bank that would partner with Twitter. But -- if it's not digressing too far -- I note that one of the ideas for reinvigorating the USPS has long been the notion that it could offer simple, low-cost savings and checking accounts to the "unbanked." There are Post Offices everywhere, and postal employees are generally trusted.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/385033-the-poor-need-bank-accounts-and-usps-has-the-answer/
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/could-postal-banking-save-the-post-office-5112852
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I'm not saying Musk couldn't provide banking services through Twitter, I'm just sceptical he could do it for unbanked people and make money. Or he could, but he'd have to charge them for the privilege.
 
jeremyp said:
You know why banks rarely lose money? It's because they know how to stop people from becoming their customers if the bank will not make money off them. Amongst the measures they use are having minimum deposits and fees on small balances.


I'm not saying Musk couldn't provide banking services through Twitter, I'm just sceptical he could do it for unbanked people and make money. Or he could, but he'd have to charge them for the privilege.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking <-- that is how banks make most of their money. Low balance and monthly fees are just a little bonus.
 
I Am The Scum said:
A lot of the people in this country are so enamored with the idea of meritocracy that they have to invent 18-dimensional chess explanations for how the rich guy is actually a secret genius. We saw it a thousand times with Trump.

The alternative is that the American dream is a lie, and that would be intolerable.
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Enamored with the idea of meritocracy is entirely plausible. That the American Dream is a lie is not even remotely the only alternative, though.
 
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Elon is tinkering with things today, and that means that 2-factor authentication is offline. Specifically, you will still need 2FA to log in on a new device, but it just won't send the code. So... if you log out, that's it.
 
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