Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[Longhornsnus 200]

8 minutes ago, NoName said:

if you think Jack fucking Dorsey is an "interesting business mind" you haven't read jack shit about him or how he does business.

of course you, of all people, think Jack Dorsey is some brilliant business mind.

go read Hatching Twitter if you think he is anywhere close to some brilliant person, much less a brilliant business mind. you have what a ton of people actually think of him very clearly outlined in it. the fact that Noah, Biz and Evan don't talk to him at all anymore kind of says it all.

fuck off.

I said interesting business mind, not brilliant. Show us on the doll where JD touched you, NoName.

Also, 

"Local police told The San Francisco Standard that it was a misunderstanding:

At approximately 12:39 P.M. officers assigned to Tenderloin Station responded to the area of 10th and Market Street regarding a report of a possible unpermitted street closure.

Through their investigation officers were able to determine that no crime was committed, and this incident was not a police matter. “Police on the scene said someone with Twitter had a work order to take the sign down but didn’t communicate it with security and the property owner of the building,” the Standard added." https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/24/23140317/twitter-sign-sf-hq-removal-demolition-police

Again, 8/10 on the dunk.

[DickSolomon 25]

5 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

You’re making my point. He never had to buy the fucking thing. If his goals for this company are what you have described he could have done all that as a startup or under the auspices of one of his existing companies for a lot less than one billion dollars much less 44. He bought it and it is worth a fraction of what he bought it for, because he vastly overpaid for it, because he and has made seemingly the worst decision at possible every step of the way since he acquired it. 
 

Hey I want to corner the ketchup market. I’m going to call it ‘T’. Let me get started by buying Coca Cola 

The most embarrassing part is that the look and feel of twitter already had an open source, freeware clone in Mastodon. Even dumbshit sites like Truth Social didn't try and reinvent the wheel, they used the freeware tools everyone else uses. He went the most expensive, round-about way possible to achieve this X website.

[SydneyCarton 47809]

7 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

You’re making my point. He never had to buy the fucking thing. If his goals for this company are what you have described he could have done all that as a startup or under the auspices of one of his existing companies for a lot less than one billion dollars much less 44. He bought it and it is worth a fraction of what he bought it for, because he vastly overpaid for it, because he and has made seemingly the worst decision at possible every step of the way since he acquired it. 
 

Hey I want to corner the ketchup market. I’m going to call it ‘T’. Let me get started by buying Coca Cola 

Well, one important fact. It's often forgotten these days under the steaming avalanche of mistakes that Elon showers upon us seemingly daily, but the only reason he BOUGHT the company is because he shitposted on Twitter about it, and couldn't legally back out. Twitter attornies had him so fucked that he had zero choice but to purchase the company. He didn't even want to buy it in the end. 

[Pig Bellmont 8679]

1 minute ago, Sawbonz said:

Hey I want to corner the ketchup market. I’m going to call it ‘T’. Let me get started by buying Coca Cola 

At least those are both food products sold in grocery stores. It’s more like “hey, I want to revolutionize the way regular people pay their non-discretionary budget items. Let me start by buying Staples”

[DickSolomon 25]

2 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

I said interesting business mind, not brilliant. Show us on the doll where JD touched you, NoName.

Not me, but quite a number of my friends lost a shitload of money investing with Block, which turned out to be literal fraud.

[Pato del Muerto 52321]

4 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Well, one important fact. It's often forgotten these days under the steaming avalanche of mistakes that Elon showers upon us seemingly daily, but the only reason he BOUGHT the company is because he shitposted on Twitter about it, and couldn't legally back out. Twitter attornies had him so fucked that he had zero choice but to purchase the company. He didn't even want to buy it in the end. 

Is that like using a pop culture reference as a response to a internetting site evaluation on a hokey AMA only to have a court affirm the value later on based on said response?

[Sawbonz 27374]

7 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Well, one important fact. It's often forgotten these days under the steaming avalanche of mistakes that Elon showers upon us seemingly daily, but the only reason he BOUGHT the company is because he shitposted on Twitter about it, and couldn't legally back out. Twitter attornies had him so fucked that he had zero choice but to purchase the company. He didn't even want to buy it in the end. 

Did shitposting he would buy it cause that or did he make a binding qualified offer that was accepted?

 

[NoName 16271]

10 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

I said interesting business mind, not brilliant. Show us on the doll where JD touched you, NoName.

Also, 

"Local police told The San Francisco Standard that it was a misunderstanding:

At approximately 12:39 P.M. officers assigned to Tenderloin Station responded to the area of 10th and Market Street regarding a report of a possible unpermitted street closure.

Through their investigation officers were able to determine that no crime was committed, and this incident was not a police matter. “Police on the scene said someone with Twitter had a work order to take the sign down but didn’t communicate it with security and the property owner of the building,” the Standard added." https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/24/23140317/twitter-sign-sf-hq-removal-demolition-police

Again, 8/10 on the dunk.

he is neither interesting nor brilliant if that makes it more clear for you. you liking someone who is pretty generally accepted to be a huge asshole is not shocking.

also totally ignoring that no one has even tried the concept because there is no market for the concept - of course.

if it was all a misunderstanding, why haven't they taken it down today then? i'll wait on the response.

[NoName 16271]

9 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Well, one important fact. It's often forgotten these days under the steaming avalanche of mistakes that Elon showers upon us seemingly daily, but the only reason he BOUGHT the company is because he shitposted on Twitter about it, and couldn't legally back out. Twitter attornies had him so fucked that he had zero choice but to purchase the company. He didn't even want to buy it in the end. 

the absolute best part of all of this is that he could have found something during due diligence that let him renegotiate the price or back out...but in what is absolutely the dumbest financial decision of all time, he waived due diligence on his $44 billion dollar purchase.

[DickSolomon 25]

1 minute ago, Sawbonz said:

Did shitposting he would buy it cause that or did he make a binding qualified offer that was accepted?

 

IIRC the deal was him posting publicly about buying twitter started drastically affecting twitter's, tesla's and spaceX's stock, and he'd been doing shit like that for a while which was getting him in trouble with the SEC. Meanwhile, his public posts about a $44 billion evaluation had caused Twitter's c-level board to, due to fiduciary obligation, take the evaluation seriously and start acting on it as though it was a legit bid. In order to avoid getting in trouble with the SEC on yet another extreme cause of stock manipulation, he had to act like his postings were legitimate interest, and it kind of went from there until he actually submitted a for-real bid that locked him into his current course.

[NoName 16271]

8 minutes ago, DickSolomon said:

Not me, but quite a number of my friends lost a shitload of money investing with Block, which turned out to be literal fraud.

just a reminder for anyone who doesn't remember how bad it actually was

https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
 

• Spoiler

  • Block Inc., formerly known as Square Inc., is a $44 billion market cap company that claims to have developed a “frictionless” and “magical” financial technology with a mission to empower the “unbanked” and the “underbanked”.
  • Our 2-year investigation has concluded that Block has systematically taken advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping. The “magic” behind Block’s business has not been disruptive innovation, but rather the company’s willingness to facilitate fraud against consumers and the government, avoid regulation, dress up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and mislead investors with inflated metrics.
  • Our research involved dozens of interviews with former employees, partners, and industry experts, extensive review of regulatory and litigation records, and FOIA and public records requests.
  • Most analysts are excited about the post-pandemic surge of Block’s Cash App platform, with expectations that its 51 million monthly transacting active users and low customer acquisition costs will drive high margin growth and serve as a future platform to offer new products.
  • Our research indicates, however, that Block has wildly overstated its genuine user counts and has understated its customer acquisition costs. Former employees estimated that 40%-75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual.
  • Core to the issue is that Block has embraced one traditionally very “underbanked” segment of the population: criminals. The company’s “Wild West” approach to compliance made it easy for bad actors to mass-create accounts for identity fraud and other scams, then extract stolen funds quickly.
  • Even when users were caught engaging in fraud or other prohibited activity, Block blacklisted the account without banning the user. A former customer service rep shared screenshots showing how blacklisted accounts were regularly associated with dozens or hundreds of other active accounts suspected of fraud. This phenomenon of allowing blacklisted users was so common that rappers bragged about it in hip hop songs.
  • Block obfuscates how many individuals are on the Cash App platform by reporting misleading “transacting active” metrics filled with fake and duplicate accounts. Block can and should clarify to investors an estimate on how many unique people actually use Cash App.
  • CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly touted how Cash App is mentioned in hundreds of hip hop songs as evidence of its mainstream appeal. A review of those songs show that the artists are not generally rapping about Cash App’s smooth user interface—many describe using it to scam, traffic drugs or even pay for murder. [See our compilation video on this here]
  • “I paid them hitters through Cash App”— Block paid to promote a video for a song called “Cash App” which described paying contract killers through the app. The song’s artist was later arrested for attempted murder.
  • Cash App was also cited “by far” as the top app used in reported U.S. sex trafficking, according to a leading non-profit organization. Multiple Department of Justice complaints outline how Cash App has been used to facilitate sex trafficking, including sex trafficking of minors.
  • There is even a gang named after Cash App: In 2021, Baltimore authorities charged members of the “Cash App” gang with distribution of fentanyl in a West Baltimore neighborhood, according to news reports and criminal records.
  • Beyond facilitating payments for criminal activity, the platform has been overrun with scam accounts and fake users, according to numerous interviews with former employees.
  • Examples of obvious distortions abound: “Jack Dorsey” has multiple fake accounts, including some that appear aimed at scamming Cash App users.  “Elon Musk” and “Donald Trump” have dozens.
  • To test this, we turned our accounts into “Donald Trump” and “Elon Musk” and were easily able to send and receive money. We ordered a Cash Card under our obviously fake Donald Trump account, checking to see if Cash App’s compliance would take issue—the card promptly arrived in the mail.
  • Former employees described how Cash App suppressed internal concerns and ignored user pleas for help as criminal activity and fraud ran rampant on its platform. This appeared to be an effort to grow Cash App’s user base by strategically disregarding Anti Money Laundering (AML) rules.
  • The COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdowns posed an existential threat to Block’s key driver of gross profit at the time, merchant services.
  • In this environment, amid Cash App’s anti-compliance free-for-all, the app facilitated a massive wave of government COVID-relief payments. CEO Jack Dorsey Tweeted that users could get government payments through Cash App “immediately” with “no bank account needed” due to its frictionless technology.
  • Within weeks of Cash App accounts receiving their first government payments, states were seeking to claw back suspected fraudulent payments—Washington State wanted more than $200 million back from payment processors while Arizona sought to recover $500 million, former employees told us.
  • Once again, the signs were hard to miss. Rapper “Nuke Bizzle”, made a popular music video about committing COVID fraud. Several weeks later, he was arrested and eventually convicted for committing COVID fraud. The only payment provider mentioned in the indictment was Cash App, which was used to facilitate the fraudulent payments.
  • We filed public records requests to learn more about Block’s role in facilitating pandemic relief fraud and received answers from several states.
  • Massachusetts sought to claw back over 69,000 unemployment payments from Cash App accounts just four months into the pandemic. Suspect transactions at Cash App’s partner bank were disproportionate, exceeding major banks like JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, despite the latter banks having 4x-5x as many deposit accounts.
  • In Ohio, Cash App’s partner bank had 8x the suspect pandemic-related unemployment payments as the bank that processed the most unemployment claims in the state, even though the latter bank processed 2x the claims as Cash App’s, according to data we obtained via a public records request.
  • The data shows that compared to its Ohio competitor, Cash App’s partner bank had nearly 10x the number of applicants who applied for benefits through a bank account used by another claimant – a clear red flag of fraud.
  • Block had obvious compliance lapses that made fraud easy, such as permitting single accounts to receive unemployment payments on behalf of multiple individuals from various states and ineffective address verification.
  • In an apparent effort to preserve its growth engine, Cash App ignored internal employee concerns, along with warnings from the Secret Service, the U.S. Department of Labor OIG, FinCEN, and State Regulators which all specifically flagged the issue of multiple COVID relief payments going to the same account as an obvious sign of fraud.
  • Block reported a pandemic surge in user counts and revenue, ignoring the contribution of widespread fraudulent accounts and payments. The new business provided a sharp one-time increase to Block’s stock, which rose 639% in 18 months during the pandemic.
  • As Block’s stock soared on the back of its facilitation of fraud, co-founders Jack Dorsey and James McKelvey collectively sold over $1 billion of stock during the pandemic. Other executives, including CFO Amrita Ahuja and the lead manager for Cash App Brian Grassadonia, also dumped millions of dollars in stock.
  • With its influx of pandemic Cash App users, our research shows Block has quietly fueled its profitability by avoiding a key banking regulation meant to protect merchants. “Interchange fees” are fees charged to merchants for accepting use of various payment cards.
  • Congress passed a law that legally caps “interchange fees” charged by large banks that have over $10 billion in assets. Despite having $31 billion in assets, Block avoids these regulations by routing payments through a small bank and gouging merchants with elevated fees.
  • Block includes only a single vague reference in its filings acknowledging it earns revenue from “interchange fees”. It has never revealed the full economics of this category, yet roughly one-third of Cash App’s revenue came from this opaque source, according to a 2022 Credit Suisse research report.
  • Competitor PayPal has disclosed it is under investigation by both the SEC and the CFPB over its similar use of a small bank to avoid “interchange fee” caps. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request we filed with the SEC indicates that Block may be part of a similar investigation.
  • Block’s $29 billion deal to acquire ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) service Afterpay closed in January 2022. Afterpay has been celebrated by Block as a major financial innovation, allowing users to buy things like a pair of shoes or a t-shirt and pay over time, only incurring massive fees if subsequent payments are late.
  • Afterpay was designed in a way that avoided responsible lending rules in its native Australia, extending a form of credit to users without income verification or credit checks. The service doesn’t technically charge “interest”, but late fees can reach APR equivalents as high as 289%.
  • The acquisition is flopping. In 2022, the year Afterpay was acquired, the pro forma combined entity lost $357 million, accelerating from pro forma 2021 losses of $184 million.
  • Fitch Ratings reported that Afterpay delinquencies through March 2022 had more than doubled to 4.1%, from 1.7% in June 2021 (just prior to the announced acquisition). Total processing volume declined -4.8% from the previous year.
  • Block regularly hypes other mundane or predatory sources of revenue as technological breakthroughs. Roughly 31% of Cash App’s revenue comes from “instant deposit” which Block says it pioneered and works as if by “magic”. Every other major competitor we checked provides a similar service at comparable or better rates.
  • On a purely fundamental basis, even before factoring in the findings of our investigation, we see downside of between 65% to 75% in Block shares. Block reported a 1% year over year revenue decline and a GAAP loss of $540.7 million in 2022. Analysts have future expectations of GAAP unprofitability and the company has warned it may not be profitable.
  • Despite this, Block is valued like a profitable growth company at (i) an EV/EBITDA multiple of 60x; (ii) a forward 2023 “adjusted” earnings multiple of 41x; and (iii) a price to tangible book ratio of 13.1x, all wildly out of line with fintech peers.
  • Despite its current rich multiples, Block is also facing threats from key competitors like Zelle, Venmo/Paypal and fast-growing payment solutions from smartphone powerhouses like Apple and Google. Apple has grown Apple Pay activations from 20% in 2017 to over 70% in 2022 and now leads in digital wallet market share.
  • In sum, we think Block has misled investors on key metrics, and embraced predatory offerings and compliance worst-practices in order to fuel growth and profit from facilitation of fraud against consumers and the government.
  • We also believe Jack Dorsey has built an empire—and amassed a $5 billion personal fortune—professing to care deeply about the demographics he is taking advantage of. With Dorsey and top executives already having sold over $1 billion in equity on Block’s meteoric pandemic run higher, they have ensured they will be fine, regardless of the outcome for everyone else.

   

[Longhornsnus 200]

4 minutes ago, NoName said:

he is neither interesting nor brilliant if that makes it more clear for you. you liking someone who is pretty generally accepted to be a huge asshole is not shocking.

also totally ignoring that no one has even tried the concept because there is no market for the concept - of course.

if it was all a misunderstanding, why haven't they taken it down today then? i'll wait on the response.

Do you understand the definition of interesting? Provocateurs can be interesting.

Nobody has tried the concept therefore there is no PMF? I'm not sure I 100% agree with your police work, Lou. You often come across as having only a superficial knowledge of topics, especially as they relate to business and double especially as they relate to the tech industry, so I'm not sure why you think you have definitive input on anything, but it's clear you aren't into have conversations and discussions, thus I don't attempt to respond to you.

And to your last point, I have zero idea why. I suppose it could be because of your conspiracy theory reasons that have been debunked by objective reporting like the one I linked, but at the end of the day I don't really care. I'm not in the dunk contest to feel better because I'm sad someone bought my favorite social media site and changed it, as if I were entitled to it like it was a public good.

[SydneyCarton 47809]

19 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Is that like using a pop culture reference as a response to a internetting site evaluation on a hokey AMA only to have a court affirm the value later on based on said response?

I'd actually forgotton about that shit. 

14 minutes ago, NoName said:

the absolute best part of all of this is that he could have found something during due diligence that let him renegotiate the price or back out...but in what is absolutely the dumbest financial decision of all time, he waived due diligence on his $44 billion dollar purchase.

 

13 minutes ago, DickSolomon said:

IIRC the deal was him posting publicly about buying twitter started drastically affecting twitter's, tesla's and spaceX's stock, and he'd been doing shit like that for a while which was getting him in trouble with the SEC. Meanwhile, his public posts about a $44 billion evaluation had caused Twitter's c-level board to, due to fiduciary obligation, take the evaluation seriously and start acting on it as though it was a legit bid. In order to avoid getting in trouble with the SEC on yet another extreme cause of stock manipulation, he had to act like his postings were legitimate interest, and it kind of went from there until he actually submitted a for-real bid that locked him into his current course.

16 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Did shitposting he would buy it cause that or did he make a binding qualified offer that was accepted?

 

 

Answered by other posters above your post, but I was specifically thinking of the chain of events of him offering, then him waiving due diligence which didn't allow him to renegotiate, and then when he attempted to back out he cited presence of Bots, but his earlier shitposting saying he was buying it to fix the bot problem ruled out him vacating the deal on those grounds. So shitpoting start to finish more or less. 

[SydneyCarton 47809]

I'm shocked that a known troll, banned like a dozen times, finds "provocateurs" interesting. 

[Longhornsnus 200]

2 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I'm shocked that a known troll, banned like a dozen times, finds "provocateurs" interesting. 

Equally shocked am I that the most mediocre man on this fair site is boring.

[Celery Man 20874]

The version of this where.... "yeah this is totally a failure for Elon Musk but it doesn't mean he's a dumbass because gambling $44bn to buy and tear down every single Applebees in order to create the Whole Foods of Wal-Marts for him is like spending $200 on a pair of shoes for you" is really just the best argument that people shouldn't be allowed to have that kind of wealth.

[NoName 16271]

1 minute ago, Longhornsnus said:

Do you understand the definition of interesting? Provocateurs can be interesting.

Nobody has tried the concept therefore there is no PMF? I'm not sure I 100% agree with your police work, Lou. You often come across as having only a superficial knowledge of topics, especially as they relate to business and double especially as they relate to the tech industry, so I'm not sure why you think you have definitive input on anything, but it's clear you aren't into have conversations and discussions, thus I don't attempt to respond to you.

And to your last point, I have zero idea why. I suppose it could be because of your conspiracy theory reasons that have been debunked by objective reporting like the one I linked, but at the end of the day I don't really care. I'm not in the dunk contest to feel better because I'm sad someone bought my favorite social media site and changed it, as if I were entitled to it like it was a public good.

i don't find asshole human beings generally interesting. typically that is the case for most people. jack dorsey isn't a provocateur, he's just an asshole. a rich one, but an asshole. again, read literally anything about the man and how he has handled himself over the last decade. unless it's a puff piece, he is pretty generally portrayed as a rich asshole. there is a reason for that.

also, no one actually likes provocateurs. people don't like assholes. people don't like elon because he constantly does the most assholeish thing possible at every opportunity. he's shitty to employees and shitty to customers. he's generally an asshole and guess what? folks don't like assholes.

-

Weixin has been around since ~2011. who has tried it in the United States that you know of and remember. once again, i'll wait. i'm sure if it is such a great idea that someone has tried and had minimal success in the United States, right?

thinking that the rest of the world needs this concept, when it has been successful in ONE place, and has not been successful anywhere else kind of says it all to me. there isn't a market for it. if there was then either Weixin would have entered it, or someone else would have tried. but they haven't. hmmm why would the chinese government have interest in a 1 stop shop that includes your banking information, where you spend money, who you talk to via IM, who you talk to via VOIP, your social media network, your photo posting, what you search for,  where you go and that censors certain topics?

i'm fine to have a conversation, but you constantly post wild shit, "just ask questions", make dumb connections between things, defend shit, have used AI to write a response for you, get negged to oblivion and come back. you have defended Elon more times in this thread than anyone else combined and most of the time your rationale is "he's the richest man in the world!" or something about how smart he is. you make bad points, pretty consistently in this thread. when you make bad points in this thread, i am going to neg you. as are others, obviously.

-

there is no conspiracy as to why he hasn't finished changing the name on the building...there is no permit, you can't just do shit a number of stories up on busy streets, and it hasn't been approved by Twitter's leaseholders. that's why. this is all happening because it's one of the worst rollouts of a rebranding in recent tech history, there is no plan and there never was a plan.

[Longhornsnus 200]

1 minute ago, Celery Man said:

The version of this where.... "yeah this is totally a failure for Elon Musk but it doesn't mean he's a dumbass because gambling $44bn to buy and tear down every single Applebees in order to create the Whole Foods of Wal-Marts for him is like spending $200 on a pair of shoes for you" is really just the best argument that people shouldn't be allowed to have that kind of wealth.

Now this is an argument that is interesting.

The problem is, as I've stated in the past, there is no possibility to *NOT* have billionaires within the framework of our flavor of American Capitalism (shareholder capitalism) that you can own (create/buy/manage) and grow businesses that can get as big as they need to be to support our GDP/population much less *checking notes on the latest nVidia stock price* one of the five, trillion dollar companies.

We'd need a bloody revolution and complete tear down of our social/economic order and machinations.

[Longhornsnus 200]

1 minute ago, longhornmatt said:

Yeah, but as we’re all painfully aware here, they can also be uninteresting.

[SydneyCarton 47809]

2 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

Equally shocked am I that the most mediocre man on this fair site is boring.

If you believe this site is Fair, and lets assume this site is great because of its cross-section of people, what does it say that this site has rejected you time and time again? But yes, I'm the mediocre one here. 

 

 

[Longhornsnus 200]

4 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

If you believe this site is Fair, and lets assume this site is great because of its cross-section of people, what does it say that this site has rejected you time and time again? But yes, I'm the mediocre one here. 

 

 

I mean fair as in beautiful, not impartial. It's a turn of phrase, you illiterate swine.

[SydneyCarton 47809]

4 hours ago, Longhornsnus said:

I mean fair as in beautiful, not impartial. It's a turn of phrase, you illiterate swine.

Yes, I'm an illiterate swine. I know what a turn of phrase is, but the thing about a turn of phrase is that it has to make fucking contextual sense, you twit. But lets follow your line of thought to completion. This Beautiful website, that hates you, is also wildly partial, and repeatedly rejects you while showing no such distaste for people who you find to be mediocre. I can definitely see why you'd find it beauiful. I'd suggest you also like spiking yourself in the balls repeateddly for fun, but, well, we can all see what you do with your free time at a Beautiful website that perpetually rejects you. Listen man, Self Harm is a real mental issue and you should seek help. 

 

Edited July 26, 2023 by SydneyCarton

[Longhornsnus 200]

Just now, SydneyCarton said:

Yes, I'm an illiterate swine. I know what a turn of phrase it, but the thing about a turn of phrase is that it has to make fucking contextual sense, you twit. But lets follow your line of thought to completion. This Beatiful website, that hates you, is also wildly partial, and repeatedly rejects you while showing no such distaste for people who you find to be mediocre. I can definitely see why you'd find it beauiful. I'd suggest you also like spiking yourself in the balls repeateddly for fun, but, well, we can all see what you do with your free time at a Beautiful website that perpetually rejects you. Listen man, Self Harm is a real mental issue and you should seek help. 

 

I can't read your writing, it's like listening to the ramblings of a pan handler. Are you saying anything? What do you need? Get to the point.

[Helobious 9477]

 

[SydneyCarton 47809]

1 minute ago, Longhornsnus said:

I can't read your writing, it's like listening to the ramblings of a pan handler. Are you saying anything? What do you need? Get to the point.

I'm an illiterate swine, but you can't read my writing. The point I'm making isn't for you, obviously. 

We all look forward to your next handle iteration. Also, panhandler is one word. 

[Longhornsnus 200]

Just now, SydneyCarton said:

I'm an illiterate swine, but you can't read my writing. The point I'm making isn't for you, obviously. 

We all look forward to your next handle iteration. Also, panhandler is one word. 

Do you have any requests for the next handle? 

[atomheartbevo 89362]

1 hour ago, Longhornsnus said:

He's trying to make a financially fledgling social media company into Tencent/WeChat. Will it fail? Probably, because Elon is screwing it up.

Nobody outside of some incel fanboy (who probably has little money) will look at everything Musk is screwing up right now and think they’d like to trust him with their financial transactions and banking.

And as others have pointed out, there is a clear playbook for rebranding, yet Musk decided to look like a fucking idiot and make it up as he goes.  Plenty of companies do rebrand but nobody would throw away twitter’s level of public recognition.  

And keep in mind this is after Musk had recent problems with paying his bills to Oracle and Google.  And it’s after he broke the recommendations, to the point people began ignoring them (recommended tweets were great for additional user engagement, which was good for advertisers) but now a lot of us get the recommendation emails and go “why bother with Twitter?” Because nothing interests us in those recommendations.  And it was after he implemented the rate limits (which are bad for advertising and engagement but great if you want to reduce server costs). And it’s after he allowed the racists and Nazi types back (and let them buy Blue subs). 

There is nothing in the past few months that would make anybody want to bank with him   His fuckery with things like the rate limits to save costs or little things getting broken here and there because he wanted to change something, in a banking situation, would cause financial problems for many people if payments didn’t make it through or deposits didn’t work for a few hours or whatever.

And speaking of, I had an account with a smaller bank who rebranded/merged with another a few years ago, and it was seamless.  They sent out plenty of notices when things would be changing over, and the order in which it would happen, and when it would be done, and they did it.  One day I logged into Bank X, the next day it was Bank Y.  And there were no old logos or colors hanging around.  Hell, even the branches changed their physical branding, etc, on the proper day, but they had plenty of physical notices such as signs saying that it was happening.

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[SimonBolivar 10897]

5 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

Do you have any requests for the next handle? 

Maybe some of that homemade stuff from West Virginia that'll make you blind where you can't find the website anymore?

[Longhornsnus 200]

Just now, SimonBolivar said:

Maybe some of that homemade stuff from West Virginia that'll make you blind where you can't find the website anymore?

I think that's too many characters for a handle.

[C-Man 26991]

5 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

These guys aren't going to sue him

 

"Smart"water

[Brisketexan 104462]

51 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Hey I want to corner the ketchup market. I’m going to call it ‘T’. Let me get started by buying Coca Cola 

FANTASTIC encapsulation.

42 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Well, one important fact. It's often forgotten these days under the steaming avalanche of mistakes that Elon showers upon us seemingly daily, but the only reason he BOUGHT the company is because he shitposted on Twitter about it, and couldn't legally back out. Twitter attornies had him so fucked that he had zero choice but to purchase the company. He didn't even want to buy it in the end. 

And never forget this, it's the foundation.  Purchasing Twitter wasn't some brilliant, long-planned 4D-chess move.  He let his mouth overload his ass because he was trying to be a strutting rooster, and he got caught in his bullshit.

32 minutes ago, NoName said:

the absolute best part of all of this is that he could have found something during due diligence that let him renegotiate the price or back out...but in what is absolutely the dumbest financial decision of all time, he waived due diligence on his $44 billion dollar purchase.

And again, never forget this.  He waived the only thing that matters in a major purchase like this -- inspection to make sure you're not buying a pig in a poke.

6 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

The version of this where.... "yeah this is totally a failure for Elon Musk but it doesn't mean he's a dumbass because gambling $44bn to buy and tear down every single Applebees in order to create the Whole Foods of Wal-Marts for him is like spending $200 on a pair of shoes for you" is really just the best argument that people shouldn't be allowed to have that kind of wealth.

I'm actually finding Elon to be really, really helpful in backing my argument that money doesn't mean a person is super smart, and certainly doesn't mean they're super smart across the board.  One can be a billionaire and also be a clueless dumbass.

[Sawbonz 27374]

1 hour ago, Longhornsnus said:

Do you understand the definition of interesting

Now that Elon is using it so much I expect it will fade from the lexicon

 

also thanks to all for the help explanation on the shitposting. This dumbfuck owned so much twitter stock that just his talking shit on the internets could cause major changes in the stock’s  value; and since he uses his Tesla stock as his ATM, that stock’s value was impacted as well. What a world

Edited July 25, 2023 by Sawbonz

[MAUFRAIS 6571]

 
Pan Handle.  

Pan?

[conVINCEd 21468]

30 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

FANTASTIC encapsulation.

And never forget this, it's the foundation.  Purchasing Twitter wasn't some brilliant, long-planned 4D-chess move.  He let his mouth overload his ass because he was trying to be a strutting rooster, and he got caught in his bullshit.

And again, never forget this.  He waived the only thing that matters in a major purchase like this -- inspection to make sure you're not buying a pig in a poke.

I'm actually finding Elon to be really, really helpful in backing my argument that money doesn't mean a person is super smart, and certainly doesn't mean they're super smart across the board.  One can be a billionaire and also be a clueless dumbass.

It’s just the classic narcissistic behavior that being the smartest guy in the room about one specific thing makes you the smartest guy in the room about everything.  I’m not even going to make this political.  Phil Mickelson would be one of the best guys in the world to take short game lessons from.  When he opens his mouth about any subject other than golf he is a complete fucking moron.

[Beau Vine 53964]

59 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

I can't read your writing, it's like listening to the ramblings of a pan handler. Are you saying anything? What do you need? Get to the point.

I do love how this loser drops his polite, just-asking-questions persona and releases his true pure assholery when he gets close to -100.

It would be cool if @immamac would speed up that process when he returns with a new profile later this afternoon.

[Brisketexan 104462]

3 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

It’s just the classic narcissistic behavior that being the smartest guy in the room about one specific thing makes you the smartest guy in the room about everything.  I’m not even going to make this political.  Phil Mickelson would be one of the best guys in the world to take short game lessons from.  When he opens his mouth about any subject other than golf he is a complete fucking moron.

E.g., 90% of the doctors I've known (including multiple family members).  Some of whom are beyond brilliant - hell, I have an uncle who is a damned neurosurgeon.  But the whole family makes fun of him (and fortunately, he's a decent sport about it) because he gets the investment rule of "buy low, sell high" completely backwards.  Or my favorite, my BIL, a family practitioner (has practiced in Texas and Oklahoma) lecturing me on how discovery in lawsuits in Texas works.  He was entirely wrong, to the point that I didn't have any idea what mechanisms he was even talking about.  I responded, pretty gently, that actually, discovery as to the kind of things he was talking about would work this way (then gave details).  He flat-out says "no, you're wrong.  The way I said is the way it works."  I respond with, "well, BIL...I literally deal with that exact mechanism every single week at least once, it's my actual job," and he stood fast.  He was right, I was wrong.  About the thing that I'd done for a living for 20 years, and he'd never handled even once.

Bringing me home to the best compliment my grandfather ever said about me: "Old Brisket's gonna do okay.  He's smart enough to know how dumb he is."  I fucking hire experts all the damned time, in my professional and personal life.  Because I'm smart enough to know that, even though I'm pretty damned smart and experienced about some things....I'm far from a knowledgeable expert in EVERYTHING.  It's not weakness to admit that you don't know how to re-wire an electrical panel and run 4 new outlets to a room....it's strength and being comfortable in your own masculinity and status to say "yeah, I don't know enough about that, I'm gonna hire an electrician to handle it."  Fragile ego narcissists do it themselves...and then watch their house burn down....and then do nothing but blame the electrician they didn't even hire.

[Beau Vine 53964]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Bringing me home to the best compliment my grandfather ever said about me: "Old Brisket's gonna do okay.  He's smart enough to know how dumb he is."  I fucking hire experts all the damned time, in my professional and personal life.  Because I'm smart enough to know that, even though I'm pretty damned smart and experienced about some things....I'm far from a knowledgeable expert in EVERYTHING.  It's not weakness to admit that you don't know how to re-wire an electrical panel and run 4 new outlets to a room....it's strength and being comfortable in your own masculinity and status to say "yeah, I don't know enough about that, I'm gonna hire an electrician to handle it."  Fragile ego narcissists do it themselves...and then watch their house burn down....and then do nothing but blame the electrician they didn't even hire.

Was it Rumsfeld who got pilloried for the "Our biggest problem is that we don't know what we don't know" quote?

That was fucking brilliant, and everyone made fun of him.

[C-Man 26991]

59 minutes ago, Longhornsnus said:

I think that's too many characters for a handle.

[Pig Bellmont 8679]

39 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Was it Rumsfeld who got pilloried for the "Our biggest problem is that we don't know what we don't know" quote?

That was fucking brilliant, and everyone made fun of him.

Look up the exact quote again and tell me about his brilliant eloquence 

[Beau Vine 53964]

Just now, Pig Bellmont said:

Look up the exact quote again and tell me about his brilliant eloquence 

Yeesh.  The concept was brilliant, but it had the eloquence of a YGIFs baseball trivia thread post after sinking an eightball.

[ultimaton 2966]

44 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

I do love how this loser drops his polite, just-asking-questions persona and releases his true pure assholery when he gets close to -100.

It would be cool if @immamac would speed up that process when he returns with a new profile later this afternoon.

he could probably move a lot more tree fiddy subs if auto blocking each new crispy and grhorn sock was bundled in

[Brisketexan 104462]

2 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Yeesh.  The concept was brilliant, but it had the eloquence of a YGIFs baseball trivia thread post after sinking an eightball.

Yeah, I mean his generic statement about decisionmaking and information upon which decisions are based is pretty sound (if elementary...but then, elementary things do need to be stated from time to time):

Quote

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

That's a pretty tight encapsulation of evidence-based decisionmaking.  

I mean, Rummy may have botched the shit out of that decisionmaking, but his description is a sound one.

[Paper_jam 828]

Yeah, I can't stand Rummy but I think he was pretty much on point with that quip.

 

[sidis 9713]

20 minutes ago, ultimaton said:

he could probably move a lot more tree fiddy subs if auto blocking each new crispy and grhorn sock was bundled in

you, sir, should be nominated for business development for surly and made supreme ruler of the universe.

[atomheartbevo 89362]

15 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

If you try to break that down, it would kind of be like

• known knowns:  We know they have tanks in this area.  We know they only have 100 T-72s there. 
  • You know exactly what to plan for, and knowing a specific number means you can subtract them from the overall total available to other areas.
• known unknowns: We know they have tanks in this area. We don't know what kind or how many.  
  • You have a general ballpark of what to plan for, but you have to overestimate or risk your guys getting into trouble and it affects your planning for other areas.
• unknown unknowns: We don't know if they have tanks in this area.
  • You're flying blind.  

Probably not the best example, but he had a point.   That kind of thought process is probably not something Musk is familiar with.

[Francisco 2.0 32290]

He changed the new logo today.  Then changed it back, today.   

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/25/23807418/twitter-x-logo-design-change-elon-musk

 

 

Quote

After replacing Twitter’s little blue bird with an X logo, Elon Musk changed it again. On Tuesday afternoon, Musk replaced Twitter’s X logo with one that has slightly thicker lines — but then said he would reverse the change.

“I don’t like the thicker bars, so reverting,” Musk writes on Twitter. “The logo will evolve over time.” You can see how the two logos compare in the image embedded above.

 

Quote

The updated logo had already made its way to Twitter’s homepage, and Musk even changed his profile picture to match. Neither logo has made an appearance in Twitter’s mobile app, however.

While the updated logo is only slightly different, it looks closer to the design included in a follow-up tweetfrom Twitter user Sawyer Merritt, who Musk got the new logo from over the weekend.

 

Quote

On Sunday, Musk announced that he is rebranding Twitter to “X” and said if someone submitted a “good enough” logo that night, he would make it go live the next day. Musk later pinned a tweet from Merritt containing a video of the X logo, which appeared on the site shortly after.

The first version of the logo looks pretty similar to Monotype’s Special Alphabets 4 font and also matches up with a Unicode character. Musk said it would serve as an “interim” design, although it’s unclear when (or if) he’ll settle on a final design.

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by Francisco 2.0

[cactusflinthead 27593]

Meanwhile the Nazis are having a great time.

 

[Goredho 17301]

7 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Meanwhile the Nazis are having a great time.

 

A trip to a Nazi death camp in 1944 in a rail car would be better.

[RDCanecutter 26239]

That X jolts me like I've walked into a Klan rally.

[Francisco 2.0 32290]