New York Post- Elon Musk accused of exposing himself to private flight attendant, report claims
Socially Awkward
After yesterday’s tell us something we already know drop by Veritas, this is more like it.
[Alex Martinez, Lead Client Partner for Twitter]: “Right now, we don’t make profit. So, I’m going to say ideology, which is what led us into not being profitable.”
Martinez on free speech: “The rest of us who have been here believe in something that’s good for the planet and not to give people free speech.”
Martinez on censorship: “People don’t know how to make a rational decision if you don’t put out — correct things that are supposed to be out in the public, right?”
Martinez on Musk: “Elon Musk as a person is whatever. I don’t, like, he’s a loony toon. He has, he has Asperger’s.”
Martinez on Musk: “He has Asperger’s… So, he’s special. We all know that. And That’s fine. So here, no wonder he’s going to say some f***ing crazy sh*t because he’s special.”
Happy job hunting.
Social Disease
Exposing Twitter as a cesspool of censorious communists is like secretly filming a highway billboard. But they did it anyway.
A senior engineer at Twitter has admitted the social media giant has a strong left-wing bias and they routinely censor conservatives.
Siru Murugesan was recorded saying the company culture is extremely far left where workers are ‘commie as f**k’ and they ‘hate, hate, hate’ Elon Musk’s $44billion takeover.
In a shockingly frank conversation, filmed over several encounters, he said the firm ‘does not believe in free speech’ and even started to turn him left-wing when he joined.
Veritas video here.
20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.
My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.
Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.
This deal cannot move forward until he does.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
Welcome To Opposite World
Help yourself to a refreshment. Enjoy the show.
Uh Oh, Joe
The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection. https://t.co/ye4XiNNc2v
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 14, 2022
Memo To The Human Resources Department
The Trash is hereby notified that the taking-of-itself-out shall begin immediately.
JUST IN – Elon Musk says he would reverse Trump's suspension from Twitter, adds that the ban was "morally wrong" and "flat out stupid."
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 10, 2022
Tomorrow’s News Today
Elon Musk didn’t kill himself.
“George, please slide into my DMs”
Savor the Great Musk Panic
Matt Taibbi: On drinking the delicious tears of blue-check hypocrites, who’ve suddenly discovered the perils of a privatized speech landscape.
The Walls of Jericho
Good podcast.
Fox News- Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is a ‘Berlin Wall’ moment: Tech Titan David Sacks
Fool Me Once
— Katewerk (@katewerk) April 26, 2022
Free at Last
Looks like it’s a done deal. Open thread on Musk buying twitter.
Social Disease
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH JACK DORSEY IS A VOICE OF SANITY.
Get Woke
Netflix Inc. tumbled 39 per cent on Wednesday, extending a selloff that has set it on course for a US$60 billion wipeout in market value, after it reported a sharp decline in its subscriber base.
Netflix traded as low as $212.51 in New York, extending its plunge this year to 64 per cent — making the worst performing stock in the broad S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 indexes. Netflix has a 0.7 per cent weighting on the Nasdaq 100 and 0.3 per cent on the S&P 500. The shares are on pace for their biggest drop since October 2004 and are now worth less than $100 billion in market value.
The streaming service shocked Wall Street by losing 200,000 customers in the first quarter, the first time it has shed subscribers since 2011. It also projected it will shrink by another 2 million customers in the second quarter.
I had already planned to unsub when I get home from this road trip. What isn’t gratuitously gory/violent on Netflix seems just uninteresting. And trimming costs is a good idea anyway.
More at Zerohedge: But while the market was clearly surprised (and disappointed) with the NFLX results, few were more “shocked” than the Wall Street penguins analysts covering the company. Considering that 31 analysts had NFLX at a Buy one day before earnings (with just 3 sells), with an average price target of $500 (vs the closing price of $348.61 before the earnings announcement)…
You’ll Pry My Cash From My Cold Dead Hands
Crypto Stablecoin Collapses After $182M Hack
Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost
Punch Back Twice As Hard
@GovRonDeSantis – In addition to congressional reapportionment, this week’s special session will include termination of [Disney] legacy special districts and removal of exemptions from the big tech accountability law.
When You Lose Andrew Coyne
You really are off into the farthest corners of la la land.
Globe and Mail- What a tangled Web the Trudeau government is weaving
It was such a lovely idea, the internet. A borderless, bodiless refuge for free expression, beyond the censor’s reach; a place of infinite capacity and zero cost, where anyone who wanted to express themselves could, in whatever medium, at whatever scale; where a book or a song or a film could be distributed with equal ease, to one person or billions; where artists had the world for an audience, and audiences could choose from among all the world’s creators. Who wouldn’t want such a thing?
Governments, that’s who. The Trudeau government, in particular, seems to see the internet not as an opportunity, a chance to stand down the immense regulatory army that has hitherto stood watch over the Canadian media, but as a challenge.
Things Just Got Interesting
Financial Post- Elon Musk launches $41.39 billion hostile takeover of Twitter
The world’s richest man will offer US$54.20 per share in cash, representing a 54 per cent premium over the Jan 28. closing price and a value of about US$43 billion. The social media company’s shares soared 18 per cent.
In a letter to Twitter’s board, Musk said he believes Twitter “will neither thrive nor serve [its free speech] societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
The takeover is unlikely to be a drawn out process. “If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” said Musk.
How the process might play out.
Related- Rumble shames Globe and Mail over pressure to censor Russian content
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
On Monday, former Republican and ex-congressman Joe Walsh fabricated a Tucker Carlson quote on Twitter. It immediately caught the attention of Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans who hope to see the Fox News host canceled.
Walsh attributed the following statement to Carlson: “What if these bodies of tortured, dead civilians were staged? What if they’re fake? What if the Ukrainian military killed them and then blamed Russia? I’m not saying any of this is true, I’m just asking the questions. Why can’t we ask these questions?”
The quote repeating Russia’s propaganda and denial of war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine, instantly went viral. On Reddit, a screenshot of Walsh’s post has nearly 60,000 upvotes with thousands of comments decrying what users believe are Carlson’s traitorous views. But Twitter is where the fake quote found currency among powerful and influential figures close to the Democratic Party.