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

[8enotto]

Looks like Musk is taking a page from the Trump playbook of not paying your debts...

From: Business Insider
...Twitter has stopped paying rent for any of its offices...and Musk has instructed employees to no longer pay Twitter's vendors.... Musk's team is now weighing the possibility of not paying the severance at all...Twitter has also recently listed office supplies for auction in another cost-cutting attempt.

Could this be any more of a dumpster fire?

These ace ideas have the side effect of suppliers and vendors not sending anything more to them. When supplies not sold at auction are used up do remaining employees have to bring thier own stuff to do the job?

I have worked at a couple places during long, slow shutdowns and when supplies ran out we improvised or just stopped doing a task. Nobody cared enough to supply the sinking ship out of our pockets. Then each jumped ship as they found something with a future.

Nobody believed the promises of a "loyalty bonus" to anyone willing to ride it out to recovery. Not even the floor supervisors.

 

[Robin]

I also don't get why people get muddled between criticising someone and disliking them. Have they never criticised someone they like?

They say that Sir Oswald Mosely had great personal charm and that many people who opposed him couldn't help liking him when they met him in person.

On the other hand there were many who admired Gandhi but found him a bit hard to take in person.

I get the feeling that Musk falls in the latter camp that even if you admired him you wouldn't like him but then again I don't know.

But the point is, criticising someone's conduct and dislikIng someone are two completely different things.

 

[Robin]

The rule I don't get is the one where if you're not a full-throated supporter of someone, you perforce are against them and everything they stand for, and there's no nuance or middle ground.

That too.

 

[arthwollipot]

On the other hand there were many who admired Gandhi but found him a bit hard to take in person.

Well, he was a pretty difficult man to deal with in person. He walked everywhere barefoot, so his feet were extremely tough, but he also had a bit of a weird diet which both made him very frail, and gave him terribly bad breath.

He was a super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

 

[mgidm86]

Looks like Musk is taking a page from the Trump playbook of not paying your debts...

From: Business Insider
...Twitter has stopped paying rent for any of its offices...and Musk has instructed employees to no longer pay Twitter's vendors.... Musk's team is now weighing the possibility of not paying the severance at all...Twitter has also recently listed office supplies for auction in another cost-cutting attempt.

Could this be any more of a dumpster fire?

That is insane. The resulting lawsuits will be cheaper?

I just can't believe this guy is real. Sounds like Twitter is screwed. A normal person would have just jumped off a bridge by now.

ETA:
I want to add that this seems par for the course for Elmo. My friend who worked at Tesla was promised bonuses when he was hired. One at 6 months, one at a year, plus raises.

He got none of it. He and his entire department got screwed repeatedly.

Now he works for a company founded by ex Tesla employees, I don't know the name. He is WAY happier. I was really worried about him before but it was hard to tell my friend to quit the highest paying job (by far) he'd ever had.

 

[tyr_13]

All of Ukraine's phone codes have been removed from Twitter. It isn't even a drop-down option any more. Anyone there with two factor will not be able to get on and it won't be an option to reco er accounts.

 

[Aridas]

Elon Musk is no longer the World's richest man. This is entirely due to the drop in the Tesla share price but the article speculates that part of the cause of the drop is Musk's distraction with Twitter.

Musk doing things like taking talents away from Tesla to try to prop up Twitter and disgusting Tesla's main customer bases might have more to do with it than just Musk's "distraction."

Ids it really possible for one man to be CEO of three companies and do an effective job at more than one of them?

It's plausible, but very difficult, I'd say. It's not happening here, though, which is probably what matters more.

 

[jeremyp]

It's true that reusable doesn't necessarily mean cheap. The Space Shuttle was partly reusable, but extremely expensive to operate. But there's a key metric we can use to compare the two without even looking at their balance sheets, and that's turnaround time. And turnaround time is directly connected to costs, since it's all the stuff that you need to do to get the thing ready for relaunch that drives up the cost. If you can do that quickly, that means there's less stuff you need to do, and thus less cost.

The Space Shuttle never really achieved the turnaround times they were aiming for. Falcon 9, on the other hand, has achieved some pretty quick turnarounds. So that's a very strong indicator that they don't need to spend a lot to get a Falcon 9 to launch again, which means that they've almost certainly not losing big money on each launch.



I find that very, very unlikely. Again, rapid turnaround points to low operating costs.

Non reusable rockets don’t have turn around times at all. Non reusable rockets don’t have to carry fuel for coming down or fuel to take the fuel for coming down up. The case for reusable rockets is not as clear cut as you seem to think. We don’t know if it works for SpaceX because they don’t tell us.

 

[jeremyp]

Starship has flown. There were some issues with the landing, but it definitely flew.

No it hasn’t. What has flown is merely technology demonstrators. They were empty shells with nothing in them but fuel tanks and some engines. Nothing that has flown so far was capable of reaching orbit, much less coming back.

 

[jeremyp]

I think you lose. Lobos didn't say he was a majority owner now. He only wagered he wouldn't be so on 1/1/24.

You only win if he is majority shareholder on that date.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

The use of the word “by” says the that the bet is that Musk will transition from being majority shareholder to not being the majority shareholder. Can’t happen because he is not the majority shareholder.

It may be that on 1/1/24 he is no longer the largest shareholder. That would be an interesting bet.

 

[jeremyp]

A lot of people disliked Musk from the beginning, for whatever reasons. Now that he's tripped up they are wasting no time putting the boot in. This doesn't mean their initial dislike was justified.

The same traits that make a person stand out in one way do so in others. But Musks's main illness is simple - afluenza.

I have seen it so many times. Somebody starts a business with altruistic goals, but that soon changes as the focus on money corrupts their outlook. Then the power and influence it gives them goes to their head, and they imagine they are smarter so their opinions must have more weight. In Musk's case it's worse because he is smarter. But smart people can be idiots too (and frequently are).

We saw the shift in Musk during Covid lockdowns. Suddenly he was a denier for the simple fact that it was affecting his business. Once he went down that path it was obvious where he would end up - along with all the others who value their wealth over human lives. It's ironic that Musk invested in Tesla because he was smart enough and empathic enough to risk everything on making the World a better place for everyone, yet now he can't see what an idiot he is being. But that's what money does to people.

It's not the only influence though. All those people who tried to tear Musk down in the beginning are partly responsible for what he has become. He fought the naysayers and proved them wrong, but as someone who has built up their own business against the odds I bet the personal strain must have been enormous. He may even be suffering from a form of PTSD (I have seen that in a few business owners too).

I would argue that Musk has never been altruistic. He’s always had “affluenza”. Even in the early days of zip2 he treated his employees like dog ****. And no, I do not accept that me knowing he was always a con man is in any sense responsible for what he has become. If anything, it is the people who heaped unadulterated praise and worship on him who are responsible for what he has become. Until recently, he lived in a bubble where there were no naysayers.

 

[The Don]

The use of the word “by” says the that the bet is that Musk will transition from being majority shareholder to not being the majority shareholder. Can’t happen because he is not the majority shareholder.

It may be that on 1/1/24 he is no longer the largest shareholder. That would be an interesting bet.

It depends on how badly the Tesla share price tanks. If Musk can turn Twitter around (a huge "if" and very unlikely IMO) it's possible he could try to take Tesla private with the proceeds ......

 

[jeremyp]

It depends on how badly the Tesla share price tanks. If Musk can turn Twitter around (a huge "if" and very unlikely IMO) it's possible he could try to take Tesla private with the proceeds ......

Even now, Tesla's market cap is $500 billion. If it goes down to the point where the proceeds from a theoretically successful Twitter (valued at $44 billion by Musk's bid) could be used to finance a buyout, Musk's Tesla collateralised loans will long since have been nuked and Musk himself will have been forced out of Tesla.

 

[Darat]

I didn't say they were all winners. But enough have been. It's hard to pull that kind of thing off even once.

...snip...

Yep luck doesn't strike that often but being struck with wealth at birth sure does help.

I presume by others you mean Tesla and SpaceX?

SpaceX we know has been successful in developing the technology but all the accounts I've read is that it is constantly having to seek funding so still not commercially successful.

Tesla - well as we all know the luck there has been the total fantasy company valuation.

Seriously - are there any other successes?

 

[Darat]

Well, he was a pretty difficult man to deal with in person. He walked everywhere barefoot, so his feet were extremely tough, but he also had a bit of a weird diet which both made him very frail, and gave him terribly bad breath.

He was a super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

How many years have you waited to make that pun?

 

[Darat]

All of Ukraine's phone codes have been removed from Twitter. It isn't even a drop-down option any more. Anyone there with two factor will not be able to get on and it won't be an option to reco er accounts.

I am sure everyone will be able to contact customer services and have that sorted out....

 

[The Don]

Looks like Musk is taking a page from the Trump playbook of not paying your debts...

From: Business Insider
...Twitter has stopped paying rent for any of its offices...and Musk has instructed employees to no longer pay Twitter's vendors.... Musk's team is now weighing the possibility of not paying the severance at all...Twitter has also recently listed office supplies for auction in another cost-cutting attempt.

Could this be any more of a dumpster fire?

Sounds like Musk is getting advice on how to run a business from President Trump. If those suppliers and property companies have less financial muscle than Twitter then it's likely he'll get away with it IMO.

Likewise refusing to pay severance, especially in the US. In the EU where there are effective unions and proper employment laws then maybe ex-employees may be able to get a settlement (though whether Twitter ever pays is another matter entirely). In the US, it'll be individuals against Twitter, a very unequal struggle.

That said, I'm sure that Musk apologists would insist that this is "smart" - get away with everything you can get away with and leave the little guy to suffer. tbh it's capitalism in its purest form.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

A lot of people disliked Musk from the beginning, for whatever reasons. Now that he's tripped up they are wasting no time putting the boot in. This doesn't mean their initial dislike was justified.

The same traits that make a person stand out in one way do so in others. But Musks's main illness is simple - afluenza.

I have seen it so many times. Somebody starts a business with altruistic goals, but that soon changes as the focus on money corrupts their outlook. Then the power and influence it gives them goes to their head, and they imagine they are smarter so their opinions must have more weight. In Musk's case it's worse because he is smarter. But smart people can be idiots too (and frequently are).

We saw the shift in Musk during Covid lockdowns. Suddenly he was a denier for the simple fact that it was affecting his business. Once he went down that path it was obvious where he would end up - along with all the others who value their wealth over human lives. It's ironic that Musk invested in Tesla because he was smart enough and empathic enough to risk everything on making the World a better place for everyone, yet now he can't see what an idiot he is being. But that's what money does to people.

It's not the only influence though. All those people who tried to tear Musk down in the beginning are partly responsible for what he has become. He fought the naysayers and proved them wrong, but as someone who has built up their own business against the odds I bet the personal strain must have been enormous. He may even be suffering from a form of PTSD (I have seen that in a few business owners too).

Musk never had altruistic goals, that's the problem. Tesla was only ever an option for him to extract wealth he didn't earn.

 

[Ziggurat]

Non reusable rockets don’t have turn around times at all.

True. They have manufacturing times, and those are longer than three weeks for an orbital rocket.

Non reusable rockets don’t have to carry fuel for coming down or fuel to take the fuel for coming down up.

Fuel is a small part of launch costs.

The case for reusable rockets is not as clear cut as you seem to think.

It is if you can do it quickly, which means cheaply. SpaceX can do a turnaround faster than they can make a new rocket, by a large margin. That’s a damn good indicator that reusing is cheaper than building new.

We don’t know if it works for SpaceX because they don’t tell us.

That doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Fuel is a small part of launch costs.

Rather than focusing on the cost, I think the larger point is every pound of excess fuel carried is a pound less payload available.

But I’m not arguing against reusable rocket boosters - watching them land is by far one of the coolest things I’ve seen in my time on earth - much less watching them land in tandem!