• @Clown_Tempura@lemmy.world
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    1702 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.

    • @Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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      862 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.

      • phillaholic
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        252 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.

      • Uranium3006
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        182 years ago

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

        • @100@lemm.ee
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          112 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.

        • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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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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            62 years ago

            Or the story is happening in the other better timeline.

    • @hypnotoad__@lemmy.world
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      432 years ago

      Please stop attacking my character based on terrible purchase decisions

      What a beautiful car

      Until I owned it

      • @Nerdulous@lemm.ee
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        202 years ago

        I’ll never forget my Sweet 3 series… Because I’m still paying for it’s repairs years later.

        • @Saneless@lemmy.world
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          122 years ago

          It’s a fascinating car and I’m always on awe any time one pulls up next to me

          With trim and doors and shit so poorly aligned, I can’t believe it left the factory

          • dditty
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            32 years ago

            Are you talking about the poor quality control on the Tesla Model 3? OP was talking about the BMW 3-Series, which typically have excellent fit and finish.

  • @spittingimage@lemmy.world
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    802 years ago

    When no-one was looking, Elon Musk lost forty billion. He lost 40 billion. That’s as many as four tens billions. And that’s terrible.

    • MelodiousFunk
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      242 years ago

      I never would have guessed that Musk is a billion times worse than Lex Luthor, but the math is right there. Terrible.

    • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      92 years ago

      He could have ended world hunger multiple times. But instead he bought a social media site so he could be popular with the Nazi crowd.

      On the bright side, whenever anyone fucks things up now, they can think “well at least at least I didn’t fuck things up as badly as Elon Musk.”

    • El Barto
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      22 years ago

      40,000 millions. Most people could live without working ever again with one million dollars (provided they managed them wisely.)

      • @StinkyRedMan@lemmy.world
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        62 years ago

        While one million is a pretty good amount of cash, you’re delusional if you thinks it’s a “never working again” amount of money. I had this talk pretty recently with a friend of mine, if he used it to finish paying his house (150k) at 24k a year it would not even last 40 years.

        • El Barto
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          2 years ago

          You’re assuming that everyone living today will live for more than 40 years. Ageist much? (I’m kidding.)

          No, I’m not delusional. I’m not saying “never work again and live in luxury.” I’ll gladly live in a studio apartment for a few years while I put some of that money work for me (instead of me working.) It’s doable.

          Edit: you can also move to a relatively safe country where 20K a year gives you the same standard of living as a middle-class westerner - minus the 9 to 5 grind.

        • mosiacmango
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          2 years ago

          At a 4% return, a million nets you around 4000k/month without affecting the principle. After taxes, youre likely walking away with 40k/yr.

          Plently of places in the US you can live for around 40k/yr. Not luxury, but if youre fine with rural to semi rural, you can do well on interest alone.

    • gregorum
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      2 years ago

      Terrible for him. Great for everyone else that that 40 billion is now in the hands of other people. 

      It’s also ironic, that he is single-handedly the greatest redistributor of his own wealth. 

  • @MaxHardwood@lemmy.ca
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    722 years ago

    I could be remembering wrong but Twitter was only worth $15B at best, and Elon bought it for $44B because he’s that smart.

    • El Barto
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      322 years ago

      I genuinely think he’s just a pawn in a bigger game in which some powers wanted twitter gone.

      • meseek #2982
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        132 years ago

        Brainless but sounds like a competent leader. Has all the qualities the Illuminati are looking for when appointing a new drone.

      • @tomatopathe@sh.itjust.works
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        2 years ago

        Why gone? I understood that the Saudi government just wanted to de-anonymize it (i.e be informed about the authors of any critical tweets).

        Like that guy who has been condemned to death for a critical tweet to his… 8 followers.

      • @mind@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Why would they?

        Elon hasn’t stopped people from posting anticapitalist statuses, or silenced journalists.

        Even if that’s the ultimate plan, it would be billions spent to momentarily interrupt one segment of social media and just lead people to alternatives like mastodon that are more resistant to corporate control and censorship.

        • Stern
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          82 years ago

          He hasn’t stopped a lot of folks, including all the shitty ones that would normally be banned. Hell, he unbanned them in many cases (i.e. Trump.) With Blue he gave them a way to be all the top responses in comments no matter how shitty their take is. Making the feed useless can be just as bad (if not worse) then censoring it.

    • @Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      -112 years ago

      How are you defining worth? It’s value was probably in the 20Bs and it’s market value was well in the 30Bs. By value I am saying a world where owners just dumped all their shares until they were no longer owners, by market value I mean what another entity might pay to buyout twitter.

  • @Tilgare@lemmy.world
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    512 years ago

    For that to be true, it would have needed to be worth $44B in the first place, which it absolutely was not. But there is no doubt that his mismanagement has tanked the value of the investment. He’s a narcissist so never see it that way, but the whole rest of the world knows that.

    • @Kage520@lemmy.world
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      122 years ago

      As a business? Probably not worth that valuation. As a propaganda machine to be able to influence a decent percentage of the population? I think it was.

      • @ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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        12 years ago

        Only because larger media outlets use it as “news”

        Twitter has always been one of the smaller “social media” giants

      • @niisyth@lemmy.ca
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        112 years ago

        AFAIK he had to be sued into buying it once he tried to weasel out of the deal. So it wasn’t for lack of trying definitely 😂😂😂

        • @blady_blah@lemmy.world
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          72 years ago

          There was a clause in the contract that said if he backed out he would have to pay $1 billion. Who knew that would actually have saved him way more to exercise that clause.

  • @CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    462 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.

    • @Globulart@lemmy.world
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      122 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.

    • @Trashcan@lemmy.world
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      142 years ago

      This is the quote:

      “I don’t see any scenario where they’re responsible for less than 10% of the value destruction, so around $4 billion.”

      In my head, he is comparing the minimum size of ADLs value reduction to be 10% or 4 billion. 10% of 44 billion is 4,4 billion. In this comment he is not saying anything about the current value except that 10% of 44 is around 4.

      How else can you read it?

      • @RekcuffuckeR@feddit.de
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        152 years ago

        He’s saying that 10% of the value reduction is 4 billion so the total value reduction is 40 billion (of the 44 billion he bought it for).

        But you’re right, he probably meant it like you read it and just failed to express himself properly.

      • @Sovereign_13@lemmy.world
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        82 years ago

        You can read it as “being responsible for 10% of the [total] value destruction, equal to $4B”.

        So if they’re responsible for 10% of the total value loss, and that’s equivalent to $4B, then 100% of the total value lost would be $40B.

        Otherwise you would say “they’re responsible for destroying 10% of the value”.

        • @Trashcan@lemmy.world
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          12 years ago

          Right. So it’s a Schroedinger’s quote…😑

          But thanks for pointing out what was obvious for others

  • darq
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    392 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!

    • @Daft_ish@lemmy.world
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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?

      • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        72 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.

        • @CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          22 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…

  • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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    352 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.

    • @justastranger@sh.itjust.works
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      172 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.

      • @EnderMB@lemmy.world
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        12 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.

    • mog77a
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      152 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.

      • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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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!