Elon Musk may have to sell billions in Tesla stock to rescue X

gedaliyah@lemmy.worldmod to News@lemmy.world – 741 points – Elon Musk may have to sell billions in Tesla stock to rescue X
fortune.com

Musk’s repeated outbursts against advertisers have dried up the main source of revenue for the loss-making company formerly known as Twitter. A recent decision to sue them for heeding his own advice to not buy ads on the platform hasn’t helped. At some point, he will have to provide a fresh infusion of cash to salvage his $44 billion takeover.

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I believe the appropriate thing to say to Elon here is, "go fuck yourself."

Let me be very clear 👌go fuck yourself 👌

👎 𝓰ℴ 𝒻𝓾𝒸𝓴 𝔂ℴ𝓾𝓇𝓼ℯ𝓵𝒻, 𝓮𝓁𝓸𝓃 🖕

Let me say it in Italian American

gestures wildly with hands with each word

"Why dont yos go fuck yoself, motha-fucka!"

I nominate Steven Ogg for the task.

Too slow, gotta use Smokin' Joe

Aaaand it's stuck in my head again

You can thank @Nougat@fedia.io and @juliebean@lemm.ee for talking about hycybh the other day and getting me interested. My household is so grateful for the new songs lol.

Fruit Salad absolutely rocks. It is a musical masterpiece. More and more layers get piled on until it finally finishes, as though to say, "I could do more, but you couldn't handle it."

Free market capitalism will say to let it fail.

Big if true.

BIG

*if true

if (mode(FREE_MARKET_CAPITALISM) == TRUE) {
    big();
}

You don't need " == True" except if it's the name of a variable that's not boolean, in which case it wouldn't make sense to name it "True".

-1

Some languages have nullable booleans where evaluating them directly may lead to errors. An example is PowerQuery M, which is designed for data queries and transformations, where "no value" may be distinct from "false".

The syntax of the example most definitely isn't M, but I'm just saying, such languages exist.

You do realize this is a joke, right? That this is not a programming community, so a little clarity of said joke may be beneficial?

Sometimes it’s better to go with the flow, and not overthink things. 😊

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Oh that's okay they'll make an exception for him. He's too rich.

Free market only matters when adhering to it fucks consumers.

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I have to give Musk credit. At least he help narrow my car buying decision to know at least one brand that I'll never buy.

There are many reasons to avoid Tesla, regardless of Musk. The complete lack of independent repair was my deal breaker, but you'll find your own. Their competition is looking pretty good these days, too.

He also removed an option for home battery storage solutions for me.

I was talking with a solar company about a solar install with battery storage last year, and they only offered the Powerwall as an option. I literally laughed at them and said there was no way I was tying an enormously expensive piece of home infrastructure to Tesla, because they couldn’t guarantee it’d keep working if Tesla decided to shift direction.

I have rejected every one of the endless stream of door to door solar panel sellers primarily because not ONE would leave me substantial documentation of any kind to decide if I wanted to talk to them - the only thing they wanted was a full "consultation." My view is that if you can't give me something that illustrates genearlly what you are about to pitch to me, then you probably just want the chance to apply some shady sales tactics.

Were these door to door guys? Did you go with them? Do you have any opinions on the door to door guys? 🙂

No, this was part of a group buy program in my area, which was designed to reduce prices. I ended up turning them down because it was still more expensive than it seemed like it should be, and they were going with an older single inverter system instead of a newer and more efficient micro inverter system.

I’ve heard the door to door guys tend to massively upcharge. I haven’t had any come through here, though, so I don’t have any direct experience.

Thanks! (Sorry for the late reply.) Any particular resources you'd recommend for research? Everything I find googling is either immediately clearly an advertisement, or becomes clearly an advertisement as I continue reading.

Let that sink in.

What an unfunny dipshit. He actually thought that was clever.

It is clever, he told everyone up front that he was there to sink the company.

I thought that actually was the joke of this stunt, and he was being sarcastic. Was that not it?

I think it was originally supposed to be "let that sink in" so they let it in.

But, yeah unless there's some kind of 5D chess that I'm not seeing, he is sinking it.

Maybe since he's full MAGA now, he's merely decided he's tired of winning.

It might’ve been funny if he was remotely likable. Turns out that humor depends highly on not being an asshole.

Nah, the problem is there's just nothing humorous about it. Not even Robin Williams could've made that bit work, and everybody loves him. (RIP)

I actually don't care for Robin Williams. I don't actively dislike his stuff, I just find his humor off-putting. Good Morning Vietnam was OK.

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That’s because it is almost exclusively tied up in his various corporate holdings that include everything from rocket builder SpaceX and brain chip company Neuralink to his latest startup, xAI.

None of these investments are easily fungible. Only Tesla is a publicly traded company. So the easiest solution at his fingertips is to liquidate a portion of his remaining 12% stake.

Let it fucking burn.

He'll probably just get tesla shareholders to gift him the money. They've shown they'll sign off on pretty much anything he asks for.

Musk: How about a multiple billion dollar pay package?
Sane people: You've already had it.
Musk: I've had one, yes. What about a second multiple billion dollar pay package?

The thing y’all keep forgetting is that it’s mostly in stock. He has HUGE incentive to keep Tesla going successfully, because of the immediate impact of the stock price on his wealth

Even if I didn't know that, after 10 seconds of thinking it would be clear that a company that made about $46bn in the last four years can't just pay out more than that in actual money, they don't have the cash reserves.

For him, he can borrow against the stocks, so it's about as good as money, maybe not 100%, but still a sizeable amount.

I think it's dumb to agree to goals and compensation / rewards after the goals have already been met. I can't go to my employer and retroactively demand more pay for previously agreed work, even if it turned out better than he or the customer expected.

I think Tesla stock holders were mislead and / or stupid, there's no dividend so the only way to profit is to sell at one point, and Tesla's position in the market is only getting weaker by the year. Outside of their car business, they have nothing of interest, though some people will never tire to emphasized that Tesla is a tech company - just what that concrete tech is that other companies or customers will want is still somewhat of a mystery. Same if it justifies current market evaluation.

I wouldn't bet against Tesla stocks - I know the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.

Given Musk's recent behavior alienating his potential core customers, he is a liability rather than an asset. The cybertruck damaged the brand, the semi which was delayed by 3 years does not fit the needs ICE trucks do, rental and other companies are phasing out Teslas because of their fast depreciation- but robotaxis will fix it, right?

How anyone has a positive outlook on their performance with him as the CEO is almost beyond me, but if you assume there's a personality cult, it makes sense.

That's because he installed his family and sycophants into the board at Tesla. They were literally put there to vote for whatever he wants. The shareholders approved the board appointees, and now they're completely fucked unless someone calls for a full replacement of the board of executives at Tesla.

It's his company, for better (unlikely) or worse (very likely).

Edit, for reference.

His brother is literally one of the board members.

Stop buying Teslas! Many other great or better EV choices out there.

Are there? Last I'd heard other options either didn't have infrastructure to charge vehicles on long trips and / or took too long to charge.

I really haven't looked into this so please just take this as a genuine question, and if you do have suggestions on other EVs I'd be curious what they are even though I'm not really in the market for one right now.

I've no complaints about the 2020 Ioniq. Road trips we've taken have all had more than adequate chargers, but contextually this is Vancouver Island/Lower Mainland/Gulf islands and they government definitely had a hard-on to put in as much as they could a few years ago, so finally ownership density is starting to catch up a tad now, but new chargers seem to appear all the time.

Nothing beats just being able to charge at home though.

Last I'd heard other options either didn't have infrastructure to charge vehicles on long trips

Literally isn't an issue going forward. Other EVs can use Tesla chargers.

"Going forward" is actually "not quite yet" for most non-Te sla manufacturers, unfortunately.

You can still use Tesla superchargers with other cars, you just need an adapter.

Most major brands are going use the Tesla plug from 2025 onward in North America.

A lot of the stations have the MagicDock adapters now too, so you don't even need to bring one.

We have been waiting for our free MachE adapter now for ...checks email... 5 months. Apparently we'll have it by September 2024.

I knew they did a trial run of it somewhere in like Norway or Scandinavia or something but didn't know it went anywhere. Good to know that there are better options

Rivians seem to be (a) popular, and (b) getting much better reviews than the Cybertruck. So if you're truck hunting, that's a good option.

Didn't the industry recently standardize on the Tesla connector, though? Wouldn't that mean you could charge at any Tesla station?

These aren't Tesla specific.

Didn’t the industry recently standardize on the Tesla connector

Most of the industry announced that they will standardize on NACS. I believe they expect to actually do it over 2025-2026. That’s not far off but it’s not now.

I just got back from a 1,200 mile road trip and the Tesla Superchargers were plentiful, fast, easy. The first was at a mall, where the car was done charging by the time we found the food court.

I suppose I can’t really comment on other brands, except the one time I tried, I didn’t have the right adapter.

Rivians seem like great technology and styling, however they’re on their first pair of high end vehicles. They’ve announced more reasonably priced models that could be built in higher quantity but they’re not selling them yet. I suppose that does compare with Tesla only selling “Foundation Series” trim level but the difference is those are intended to have a lower cost trim

Not many, unfortunately. Hopefully there will be.

2 4 1 deal, how to trash 2 companies at once. Good job space karen!

Maybe if he was smart, he'd just give up on the social network and sell it off to someone else. But he's not smart, so he'll keep sinking money into it until cooler heads in the company prevail. The era of social media dominance, I'm sorry to say, is over.

Don't be sorry, that's amazing and awesome! Social media was internets biggest mistake. It going down is great. It dragging the shit clown Musk with it is an absolute cherry on that cake

Could he sell all of it? And then completely fuck off? br, tesla (car) owner

Who would buy it now, though? It can't have much value left. (Edit: Twitter. Not talking about Tesla, that's a whole different arc.)

Judging by the used car online sites, it has about as much value left as any other car with similar age and kilometers. If I had to buy a car right now, I'd probably take a hard look at the alternatives. But they'd have to actually be better, I usually make car purchase decisions based on the qualities of the car.

Although Musk is certainly trying to make such principles difficult.

Good thing my car is new enough that I don't have to make this choice for several years. Perhaps the competition will have caught up by the time I need to get a new one.

Competition has exceeded tesla. I recently got BYD Seal, and it is better than the equivalent priced tesla

I'm glad it worked for you. Things will have to change a bit globally that I would consider a BYD.

Oh right, perhaps already I don't make purchase decisions purely based on the qualities of the car :)

I figures it was a simple calculus, especially since BYD is the OEM that supplies parts for many of the other brands, especially the batteries.

I'd rather benefit from that status than support a egotist like Musk. Besides anywhere outside America the Teslas are made in China, just like the BYDs 😆

I’d rather benefit from that status than support a egotist like Musk

Have you looked at what your money would support, buying from BYD? If part of your decision is who profits, both choices are horrible and you could argue Musk I less horrible. This is one of the reasons I try to keep that out of my decisions.

I'm in the very very early stages of ecar research. Mind helping me and share what features or data make the BYD Seal better than a Tesla?

The price of used Teslas has nothing to do with the value of Tesla stock.

Intel's stock dropped from $50 to $20 over the last year, but their processors still cost the same.

Yeah. I'm more worried about repairability etc.

It's still a car company with factories in multiple countries and pretty much the best battery tech and the best charging network. If they get bought by an established car company, they keep building the model 3 and Y cars while fixing the production issues there's still a lot of value there. You just need someone in charge that doesn't spend their days shit posting.

I .. uh.. was talking about Twitter..

Oh yeah, Twitter probably has a negative value with all the debt Musk loaded onto it to buy the company (it's crazy that that's legal).

"A recent decision to sue them for heeding his own advice to not buy ads on the platform hasn’t helped."

Gotta love it. He told advertisers to fuck off, they fucked off, now he's even more mad at them.

Why is this news...

Some rich guy might do something that doesn't really change anything for anyone.

Because it will affect Tesla's share price (negatively), just like it did last time, and Fortune's job is to report on things that affect share prices.

There is also a public interest element, because Musk is currently the richest man on earth - which affords him massively undue power and influence - but he won't be if he manages to crash the Tesla stock price with a massive sell-off.

Tesla is exceedingly overvalued right now which makes it a very volatile stock. We already saw the price crater the last time he sold stock to keep Twitter afloat, and it only really recovered when he pinkie swore not to do it again.

Tesla is exceedingly overvalued right now

Always has been

Oh, I'm not implying that it was ever valued correctly. I'm saying that it's gone from "overvalued" to "exceedingly overvalued".

Not to mention that if he sells enough Tesla shares he could lose majority control of it. If that happens and enough shareholders band together they could force all the Elon sycophants off of the board of directors, then the new board could force him out as CEO.

A lot of shareholders have drunk the Elon kool-aid tho, look at the recent shareholder vote about Elon's ridiculous pay package.

There's a lot of true believers that treat it like a meme stock and don't look at the fundamentals.

It's going to go down eventually, but it might take longer than you'd expect based on the numbers.

100%. Tesla shareholders are an almost entirely irrational market. Turns out buying into a stock that over-priced does not self-select for a healthy ability to assess risks.

I understand the aversion to Musk coming out as a horrible human being, but Tesla is still pivotal to the EV industry. Or maybe we get a twisted view of reality in the US, but most EVs sold are still Teslas and teslas are arguably the cheapest, most compelling EVs available for sale.

  • Legacy manufacturers have always resisted the newer technology, and when they finally invested the money, took the first opportunity to step back away from them.
  • Rivian and Lucid have exciting technology and styling, and the opportunity to take the lead with compelling EV but are still too young. Neither have yet released a car that they can sell in volume. Remember all the stories of Tesla almost going bankrupt trying to scale up the model 3? They still need to get past that.
  • GM seemed to have a lot of promise but took a few years off from EVs, and really flubbed the new releases, so are returning their focus to ICE vehicles
  • Ford had a great strategy but too much dealer resistance and profiteering. No one is buying a car that starts off much more expensive than comparable models, has huge dealer markup, and salesmen steering yu away. They’re a good argument for Tesla’s approach of selling direct
  • does vw sell any EVs in the US? Technically I guess there are Porsche and Audi EVs, for the well off.
  • Toyota and Subaru compliance models aren’t even a blip

Is Hyundai/Kia our only hope if Tesla has problems? They’re coming in strong with relatively inexpensive and compelling models, but somehow always fly under the radar. For anyone understanding the importance of the technology shift from ICE to EV, we need Tesla

I think this is a culture difference. In Canada Hyundai and Kia are everywhere (at least around the GTA). Probably a third of the cars I regularly see on the street. Definitely not flying under the radar.

Potential Tesla stock price crash aside - if he sells enough stock, the company will be less associated with him and people on the left (you know, people who actually WANT EVs and not coal rollin' pickup trucks) would be more likely to buy Teslas again. Because to be fair, they do make some damn awesome powertrains (and attach an aerodynamic smart fridge to it unfortunately, but eh, you can't have everything all at once, now can you)

Profits stolen by Musk, that do not get reinvested into Tesla, are wasted for unnecessary and or harmful labour time and infrastructure (political advertising etc). Tesla workers produced those profits and now the products of their life-time gets wasted by decision makers like Musk Tesla workers have little power over.

It could result in people that work for Tesla losing their jobs.

Twitter used to be very widely used.

Tesla, at least in the US is by far the biggest EV manufacturer

They’re both a pretty big deal and he’s well on his way to wrecking one: we hope it’s not both

Let both burn

The problem with Tesla really is Elon.

If he sells his majority stake, I suspect it would be a lot better.

The biggest reason against buying them is him. They also make more than cars (their powerwalls seem alright).

If X fails though, I suspect all those bigots will flood over to here (Facebook and X seem to be distracting them for now).

Let them have their nazi prison. Just make it not profitable

Personally I'd be wary of putting a giant brick of lithium in my house, especially from a company with the questionable quality control of Tesla.

I agree partially, but in practice, the LFP batteries should be fine (I would never trust the PowerWall 2).

Unfortunately, been looking at other alternatives, and there don't seem to be many seamless home batteries that cut in instantly in the event of a power outage (like an online UPS) either.

The reality is though, I expect Tesla to lose this market anyway (they only just introduced the PowerWall 3 in AU.. Even cheap chinese manufacturers have been using LFP for a while)

The people who aren't buying Teslas because they hate Musk aren't gonna change their mind because he sold some stock. The company is tainted forever.

They won't a tiny amount.. But controlling share they might.

I can't afford a Tesla. However, my biggest concern is that musk will half arse firmware or sabotage the company somehow.

If he doesn't have controlling share, that's a win and I suspect quality control will likely improve too

I mean i am too poor and don't need a car but i could see myself buying a tesla once elon really is gone and the other two factors change for me.

The company is tainted forever.

...he didn't found the company, engineer the cars, systems, nor infrastructure: there's a lot of salvageable value in tesla if he goes away...

The only real engineering he's done is likely the boring company (who the duck wants to drive in a claustrophobic one lane tunnel) and the submarine thing the cave divers said wouldn't work (so he called them pedos)

He didn’t engineer anything because he doesn’t know how. At most he drew some kindergarten levels drawings on a white board.

The reality is.. He is an engineer. Not all engineers have good ideas.

The difference is, he won't accept criticism

I do software development and have had a few crap ideas (I once thought I could make a optimised OpenGL library using Matricies). The difference between normal people and him, is that when I got told it was a crap idea, I deleted the project. When he gets a crap idea, he attacks the person giving feedback, so there is NO incentive to provide anything but good feedback

When you're surrounded by yes men you'll only increasingly become over confident in yourself

No, Elon isn’t an engineer. He doesn’t have an engineering degree from an ABET certified school, no FE or PE license, nor does he understand basic engineering or design principles.

You can lick his boots and lie all you want, but Elon is a rich bitch trust fund baby who takes credit for the ideas of others and you defend him. It’s honestly sad, coming from a mechanical engineer, that you as someone who works in software development, would call him an engineer.

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Having worked with Tesla I can tell you not all their problems would leave with Elon, but it would certainly be a great start.

From my understanding he overworks people. Is that correct?

If he sells it all, I'll buy a Tesla the next day. Until then, dinosaur bones for me. Unless an economical and very powerful aftermarket swap parts become readily available.

I wouldn’t. The board is filled with Elon sycophants. Tesla manufacturing remains subpar.

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Whats interesting is the NRA spent billions in TV propaganda running a news channel and that venture ended up bankrupting the whole organization. It looks like musk is falling in the same trap

Why do you think he strongarmed Teslas shareholders into that big pay day? He's known this was coming, y'all. Tesla's just paying for his misadventure.

He won't. He bought the company using leverage so he wouldn't have any personal financial investment in it.

My personal theory is that he bought it to destroy it to lash out at Grimes but, honestly, who the fuck even knows.

Maybe the Saudis and Qataris will chip in some more cash to help him out.

Is there any basis to that conspiracy theory besides some grudge about the arab spring against twitter and its agitators?

What conspiracy theory? The Saudis and Qataris have stakes in Twitter.

Qatar Holding, a sovereign wealth fund, is contributing $375m, while Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who had initially opposed the buyout, also confirmed he would retain his $1.9bn stake in Twitter, writing that Mr Musk would be an "excellent leader" for the site.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61337622

I don't understand how you can sue a company that doesn't want to advertise on your platform

From what I understand, they're trying to (mis)use a law to the effect that companies cant all get together and boycott a competitor in order to try to drive it out of the market. If my understanding is correct then, for example, if say Ford and GM and such happened to also run electric taxi businesses, and those taxi businesses bought cars off the open market where in theory they should buy whatever they think gives them what they need at the best price, even if from another car maker, then it wouldnt be legal for them to all go and say "we make electric cars, and Tesla does too, so lets not buy anything from Tesla, regardless of how cheap or good their products are, so they lose business" (Assuming that the Teslas in question would in fact be perfectly suitable for said taxi companies needs that is). They're trying to sue an advertising industry group, claiming that they've done this kind of thing. Except the members of the group in question arent really competitors to Twitter, and in any case, the quality of advertising is thought to diminish if the ads are next to objectionable and bigoted content, since its thought to hurt the advertised company's image, so if my understanding is correct, it should be simple enough for them to argue "We're not colluding to hurt your company, your product just isnt up to our standards so we arent buying it"

Notice he isn't going to put his SpaceX shares up for sale.

I don't know much about trading stock, but I do know SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. That means his buyers for those shares are super limited, so each potential buyer would likely be super wealthy and would have more say over the company than any one individual in the horde of public buyers that would buy up the Tesla stock. Plus, him needing to divest from Tesla might actually drive Tesla stock up a little (eventually), since he won't have as much control of the company as he did before. It seems he would still be the largest shareholder after the selloff, but this would close the gap between him and the next largest shareholder. He owns over 3x more Tesla stock than the next largest shareholder.

www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052616/top-4-tesla-shareholders-tsla.asp#:~:text=Tesla%20is%20the%20world's%20most,%2C%20Vanguard%2C%20and%20State%20Street

I’m noticing, but failing to see why that’s significant. Is something interesting going on with spaceX?

He's using Tesla, a publicly traded company, as a piggy bank and transfering wealth from it to the privately owned Twitter and SpaceX. This is stealing from Tesla shareholders but because they're fucking idiots they're just letting it happen instead of dumping their stock and suing.

Or maybe he'll just have to sell Twitter.

Or maybe Twitter's debtors can place a lien and sell it right out from under him.

Kinda curious about what if Twitter were nationalized...? Like, make it a service of the USPS or something? Force it to become accountable to its users?

The only issue with nationalizing it is that it will be probably even worse for moderation than under Elon. Private enterprises currently enjoy protection for moderation decisions. If it were nationalized any moderator action would run up against the First Amendment directly. Elon could ban Nazis (he doesn't but he could). A government controlled entity cannot.

Well they sure couldn't break it any worse than Elon did.

Do you want your taxes to be spent on Xitter development and support?

Arguably, it's used as national communications infrastructure so, yeah, I would want taxes to be used for developing and maintaining it. Same as any other national infrastructure.

First things first: let your taxes fix the healthcare system.
Mediocre and out of fashion Xitter doesn't really seem to be an important part of national wellbeing.

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Trump wins and then appoints Elon to head of Twitter. That sounds worse.

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Is this why he’s kissing trump’s ass? Does he think the orange sandwich has the ability to help him if orange shit stain becomes president?

Might try to convince the Trump cult to take it off his hands

Let's all buy it from him and just set it to redirect to joinmastodon.org

How close is this market manipulation?

The Venn Diagram is a circle. If billionaires were held accountable it'd be a problem for him. But it's not

Does anyone remember when musk said he’d buy twitter just so he could delete it?

I get challenged to provide a motive every single time I say this, but I've been convinced since just a few months after the purchase that the entire goal has absolutely been to destroy it. And with some of the moves he has made, I'm frankly surprised it took this long.

He continues to be hostile to most of the user base that made twitter popular, all the censorship/freezepeach stuff, how he destroyed verification, his bullying of advertisers, etc etc. I'm NOT a business genius but these seem like obvious glaringly awful business moves and they just keep coming.

My guess is he’s playing with his toy until he gets bored with it.

He's so close...sell everything, buy a private island. Retire in style, never be heard from again. Bliss for him and everyone.

Rich guys and private islands... I'm sure nothing bad has ever come of that.

Anything short of Elon Musk distancing himself as far from Tesla as possible is breaking his fidicuary duty.

That’s the part of owning a business, Elon. Making numerous mistakes costs money.

Or, or, hear me out: just close that cesspool right down to make the world a better place.

Alternatively, he could sell Twitter stock.

That would require him to take Twitter public again, for the record (that may well have been your meaning, but I'm clarifying because a lot of people aren't aware of this). The odds of a second Twitter IPO doing any kind of numbers is basically zero at this point. It's been a very public trainwreck for the last year. Might as well try to sell tickets on the Titanic after the iceberg hit.

Don't really know about the legislation wherever, but usually it's quite possible to trade part ownership in companies even if they're not publicly traded. That's what most companies in the world are like. I know I've owned unlisted stock.

Oh no think of all the journalists that will have to work instead of quoting twitter for 3 scrolls straight!

My privacy settings block Twitter embeds so reading low quality news is a nightmare. They should just quote it in the body of the article and hyperlink it instead.

What he is trying to do is to remove tweeter. He bought it so he could kill it.

Can we please, please stop with this nonsense.

  1. Why did he fight a lawsuit to get out buying it? How many levels of 4D chess are we on in this demented conspiracy theory where he wants to buy something, so he sends a bunch of very expensive lawyers to court for months to try to get him out of buying it?

  2. Why did he rename it to X? X is his baby. That's not hyperbole, the X brand is so important to him that the literally named one of his children X. He got kicked out of paypal for trying to make X happen. The man is absolutely obsessed with X. It is his white whale. You don't bequeath that legacy to something you're trying to kill.

Stop giving Musk credit by pretending there's some kind of genius plan behind everything he does. He's the richest man on earth, he does not need you to suck his dick for him. He can pay people for that.

He doesn't have a secret evil plan. He's just really, really stupid. He's a textbook example of how people who start with wealth and unearned confidence will frequently become even wealthier because we have a fucked up clown show of an economic system. That's all there is to it.

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