• @[email protected]
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    32 years ago

    Could be? Those are rookie numbers!!! Dear Leader has almost bankrupted Truth Social already!!! You gotta get them even lower!!!

  • @[email protected]
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    302 years ago

    I really hope the original owners re-buy Twitter for a fraction of what they sold it for lol

  • darq
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    472 years ago

    When you have a net worth measured in the billions of dollars, it’s genuinely impressive to be able to lose money. With that kind of sum behind your name, you could just do nothing and out-earn most people on the planet with just interest alone. To actually be able to lose money? Now that takes work!

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Since Elon is just flushing money down the toilet do you think he might do me a solid and slice me off like 50k? Brah, that’s like if I dropped a penny on you from my last paycheck, right? I ain’t even getting greedy.

      Like he could do that for 800,000 people and it would just be buying twitter, right?

      • @[email protected]
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        142 years ago

        With $40 billion you could give a random person $1 million today. Then give another person $1 million the next day. And so on, for 100 years.

        And you’d still have a private jet, a bunch of mansions, a fleet of luxury cars, and a bunch of yachts.

        It’s completely bizarre that a billionaire that’s so desperate to be popular doesn’t just give money to people. They don’t want to give up the power that wealth gives them and so try to trick people into liking them.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years ago

          I’m assuming he could still be accruing wealth if he did that.

          Assuming he made at least 5% or so per year on investment income, that would be 2 billion, and if you assume a 20% tax rate on that, it would be 1.6 billion, still more than 365 million it would take to give away one million every day.

          And so if he could live on less than ~1.2 billion per year, he’d still be gaining wealth…

  • @[email protected]
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    112 years ago

    At this point I’m starting to think he wanted to topple Twitter. Nobody is this careless.

    • Bernie EcclestonedOP
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      42 years ago

      My guess is he launched Tesla in China and wanted a WeChat clone, and as he has bought pretty much every company rather than founded them, he just thought it was rinse repeat.

      • IHeartBadCode
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        92 years ago

        Twitter as WeChat is exactly what I’m guessing Musk is attempting. I wouldn’t be surprised if he started linking Teslas and the Supercharger Network to Twitter.

        He has mentioned that the three would have some interconnectivity via his xAI platform. Along with StarLink providing the networking to the platform.

        What all it means and how it all works has yet to be seen. Pretty hard to work on new ideas when your company is hemorrhaging money faster than an executive at a top dollar strip club.

        • Bernie EcclestonedOP
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          52 years ago

          Yeah, good points. Maybe all his companies are like this, it’s just the first one that’s been so public and shown his true colours.

          Him calling that diver a pedo was when I realised what a moron he is.

          • paper_clip
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            62 years ago

            Maybe all his companies are like this, it’s just the first one that’s been so public and shown his true colours.

            I’m not going to look for it now, but there was a Twitter thread from last year that kind of talks about this.

            Basically, SpaceX and Tesla are companies that grew up with Elon as an early investor, and have learned early on how to contain him. They institutionally have firewalls in place to keep him from wrecking the real work they’re doing, like dedicated Musk-handlers that slow walk his bad ideas until he changes his mind a few days later.

            Twitter basically had none of those institutional firewalls, and could not container him with company culture.

  • Talaraine
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    112 years ago

    I swear this is playing out like Brewster’s Millions more and more each day

  • @[email protected]
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    392 years ago

    No tears shed here. The people who built Twitter got a nice payout when they absolutely robbed Elon Musk in that deal. Anyone who chose to stay on the Elon train after his first weeks at the helm gets no sympathy from me.

    • mog77a
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      182 years ago

      Facts.

      Elon tried so hard to back down from that deal. I’m not sure why it took actually signing that deal to realize he had been hosed.

      If I was an executive at twitter, I would have absolutely done everything possible to get Elon to pay that $44 billion.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        Elon: Fuck you Twitter!

        Twitter: Fuck yourself, Elon!

        Elon: Oh yeah? Maybe I’ll just BUY you.

        Twitter: Ha! No you can’t….

        Elon: No? Watch this!

        Twitter: Gotcha, dipshit.

        Elon: What? Wait no!

        Twitter: Ahem… judge?

        Judge: They got you, dipshit.

        Elon: (unbans Trump) Nyah-Nyah!

        Twitter: Ahahahaha (all the way to the bank)

        Elon: Everyone see this? This is the ADL’s fault!

    • @[email protected]
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      232 years ago

      Anyone who chose to stay on the Elon train after his first weeks at the helm gets no sympathy from me.

      Except for the green card holders whose residency in the US was literally held hostage by Elon.

      • @[email protected]
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        122 years ago

        Pretty sure they were held hostage by the US government policy of getting deported if they lose their job.

        Xitter was just a vessel on which that was presented.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 years ago

        A lot of people say this, but there seems to be almost zero effort being put into resolving many of the systemic issues with the US visa system.

        As a British person in tech, I’d love to work in the US for a year or two, but I have zero intention of dealing with the shitshow that is visa slavery in big tech, and how the visa system is lop-sided to deal with 2-3 countries and a handful of companies over others. In the UK, it’s much simpler to offer visas to Americans, and even mid-sized companies can sponsor visas.

    • @[email protected]
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      72 years ago

      The only people there that get sympathy from me are the people trapped there on work visas if they want to legally remain in the USA.

      The rest are either shit workers that can’t make the cut elsewhere, or bought into the Elon hype and are a lost cause.

  • @[email protected]
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    2232 years ago

    It astounds and amazes me that there was a time Elon could have feasibly been considered a smart, level-headed entrepreneur. The whole submarine thing with the trapped kids really was the beginning of his unraveling. I for one thank Elon Musk for proving once and for all to even the most shameless corpo-apologists that having a ton of money doesn’t magically make you smart or cool. The dude’s an idiot, and I love watching him self-destruct.

    • @[email protected]
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      1102 years ago

      At one point they even had him cameo in iron man, and had him name dropped on star trek as a pioneer of human discovery. People used to jerk off to this dude’s PR image like he was a real life Tony Stark.

      • @[email protected]
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        262 years ago

        They put him on Rick and Morty in the most cringe inducing fashions and it was like watching a cartoon suck off a guy.

      • phillaholic
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        422 years ago

        If he stayed off Twitter he’d have a pretty impressive CV. Mainstream electric cars, actually usable Satellite Internet, Major Solar Panels etc. Even weird shit like Hyperloop would just be random neat things.

        • @[email protected]
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          572 years ago

          Same with JK Rowling, Kanye West, Notch, etc. It’s literally so fucking easy for people like this to remain loved by everyone. Just keep your fucking mouth shut. Give nice polite interviews about your job, stay out of politics, let a boring publicity agent manage your social media for you, and enjoy your billions of dollars in peace.

          Why is it so hard?

          • @[email protected]
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            92 years ago

            Why should they care about being loved by people they don’t care about? It’s normal to have the desire to express your political opinion.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 years ago

            I would have a think tank. I would pay a hundred or so smart people obscene amounts of money to tell me my ideas are daft and come up with really great ideas for me.

            The mind boggles as to why someone like musk doesn’t do this. It would be like achieving global eternal financial domination on easy mode. A world hack if you will. It would cost a mere fraction of his wealth.

            Imagine if every descision you made was well informed and well reasoned instead of just shit.

      • Uranium3006
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        252 years ago

        He’s mentioned in star trek discovery as if he took us to mars. Those lines aged so poorly

        • @[email protected]
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          142 years ago

          Putting aside that that whole show is pretty rough and I’ve mentally decanonized it, the guy who said it is technically a mega space nazi from the space nazi dimension so I choose to believe he just thought that Musk being an aspiring space nazi was as cool in our universe as it was in his.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 years ago

          I prefer to pretend that they’re talking about another person named Musk, one of his many kids perhaps…

          • El Barto
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            82 years ago

            Or the story is happening in the other better timeline.

    • @[email protected]
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      282 years ago

      When he called the submarine expert a pedo was when I started to go, “Is this guy being for real?”

    • @[email protected]
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      52 years ago

      and I love watching him self-destruct.

      I guarantee he’d rather be in his position than yours.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        Yeah, can lose all this wealth and still be fucking wealthy in a way that literally dozens of people only know.

  • @[email protected]
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    732 years ago

    Didn’t Elon have the opportunity to end world hunger for 8 billion dollars a couple years ago?

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      Almost. He said that if anyone could present a plan on how to end world hunger for $6B, he’d sell Tesla stock to pay for it.

      The U.N. publicly presented a plan on how they’d use that $6B, but it fell way short of that goal. Which isn’t surprising, since they never claimed they could solve world hunger permanently for $6B. Musk’s challenge was rhetorical because the bar was impossibly high. He was really just trying to make the point that he does not have the money to truly end world hunger.

      The U.N.'s plan for that $6B would “feed 42 million people for one year, and avert the risk of famine”. That’s nothing to sneeze at, obviously, but it’s not a permanent solution.

      Friendly reminder, for context, that the U.S. military budget is $842B. For one year.

      • @[email protected]
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        112 years ago

        As much as I dislike Musk, I think your argument is a bit of a straw man. He responded to something or someone saying it was possible for $6bn. They stopped responding after Musk said “open books for accounting” or something. The UN shouldn’t have responded at all since it wasn’t feasible

        • @[email protected]
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          72 years ago

          I still think it’s interesting information, and feeding 42 million people for a year is a better deal than funneling that money to people like musk or the DoD.

  • @[email protected]
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    542 years ago

    Imagine having so much wealth that he can walk away from his utter failure at Xitter and remain completely unaffected. For him, this is like some side-hustle vanity project a bored trophy wife runs.

    • @[email protected]
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      132 years ago

      Losing 40b is a pretty big deal even for Musk to be fair. It’d be more like a bored housewife remortgaging the house to pay for their vanity project.

      • ThePuy
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        I mean not really, he knows he’ll always have a roof over his head, food on his table, doctors when he’s ill, it is a rather big deal but that doesn’t really affect his daily life in any significant way.

        He’ll still be able to afford anything he may ever want, what he really lost is financial power and social respect.

        In short I think it’s more like a bored housewife getting thrown out from the homeowners association.

        • @[email protected]
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          82 years ago

          He’ll still be able to afford anything he may ever want, what he really lost is financial power and social respect.

          That’s like the worst for a person like Musk.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 years ago

      Put another rich guy in charge of spacex first please! I don’t want to be stuck on this rock forever 🥲

      • Zeragamba
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        122 years ago

        luckily, he has minimal influence over SpaceX, and only really provide high level direction. Same with Tesla.

        Twitter, though… the turnaround time on his whims is staggering

        • gregorum
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          72 years ago

          Considering the fuckupery at Tesla (especially as of late), this may not entirely be true. It seems that he has slightly more influence at Tesla than he does at SpaceX, which has been doing a pretty great job.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 years ago

        Glenn Shotwell runs SpaceX and is a competent adult. Nothing to worry about on that front, thankfully.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          Ah ok i thought it was musk boy. Tbh I don’t look too much into who the ceo of a company is. Mostly just what they do which i why i love spacex. I take it all my downvotes are the musk haters lol. I’m neutral on that whole thing with him. Can’t say anything about the whole twitter situation as i have never used it.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        I don’t want to be stuck on this rock forever

        I have some sad news…

        • you’re stuck on this rock forever
        • anyone alive today who sets foot on mars will likely regret it before they die
        • robots will conduct all worth while exploration and discovery this millennium
        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          This guy must be from the future. Oh wise one tell us all your secrets.

          Ever heard of having some hope my guy? Hate to break it to you but I hope humanity leaves this rock and isn’t stuck here forever. If humanity stays on this planet forever we will 100% go extinct either by war, virus, or the most obvious asteroid impacts or the guaranteed one the sun expanding over a few billion years. If we want to live till the end of time and space itself we HAVE to leave.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 years ago

            The tech we will rely on for interplanetary travel is pretty much settled science, it just takes time and money to implement.

            Hoping for unexpected breakthroughs isn’t going to help much.

    • Dojan
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      322 years ago

      Him buying twitter was just some sort of narcissistic flex on his daughter.

      • @[email protected]
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        222 years ago

        Worse. Killing a main means of communication across the world where people can group up to fight our corrupt govts, PTBs and ultra rich, is much worse. I honestly feel it’s that. What’s 44b to quell the spreading of the revolution that will bring him and his ilk down? Nothing in comparison. And it was all set up for him by his army of RWNJs. If it weren’t so horrid it would’ve been a beautiful thing.

      • idunnololz
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        132 years ago

        I don’t think he ever intended to buy it. He was forced to buy it due to his own stupid actions.

  • macisr
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    22 years ago

    And now that it’s more like a shitty and smaller version of reddit (i don’t see real people posting there anymore), i don’t see how it can recover.