Friday, July 08, 2022
Oh, Elon
Tech titan Elon Musk says he is backing out of his $44 billion agreement to purchase social media platform Twitter.Nobody listens to Atrios.
— dave karpf (@davekarpf) July 8, 2022Taylor is twitter's board chair, Agrawal the CEO.
I Have Been Made Whole
Won't bore you with my specific complaints, but very generally air travel doesn't have to be this way and it is because our regulators let them get away with it, even though they have authority to not let them get away with it.
Nothing
Whatever today's announcement is might not have looked so bad had it come out (with the twerking video) the day Dobbs dropped.
Nobody there does any work. I'm convinced.
Do Not Bother Important People
The courts imposed and our mainstream press rarely sympathized with the fact that women seeking medical treatment were screamed at and harassed for decades. I actually think that it is difficult to find legal balances about various kinds of protesting, but certainly "protesting the most powerful people in the country" deserves more deference - and respect! - than harassing people seeking medical treatment.
Apparently people barely interrupted Bart Kavanaugh's dindin, and now we will have weeks about the Intolerant Left as women are dying because Bart's a deeply fucked up guy.
"Officials Ultimately Decided Against The Move"
"Political capital."reaction by the Biden admin, per @shiramstein https://t.co/8WkuksSaun pic.twitter.com/agk1xOnVdG
— Rachel Cohen (@rmc031) July 8, 2022
Hey I am dumb and I don't have all the answers, but they had months to come up with some!
Does Anyone Actually Show Up To Work
For various reasons, largely obvious, a lot of the worst people managed to step on everyone else to get to the top in politics and the well-meaning people who want to do the real work get thwarted at every step.
If your political instincts are, "don't piss anyone powerful off, and make sure to leave open post-White House career opportunities," nothing good will happen. It is not a healthy operation. I know I can be a bit negative but, you know, what have they done lately? About anything? How could this have happened?
More than a week after the abortion decision, top Biden aides are still wrangling over releasing new actions in response, despite the draft decision leaking six weeks earlier.They had plenty of warning, and they just... did... nothing.White House counsel Dana Remus had assured senior aides the Supreme Court wouldn’t rule on abortion that day. A White House press aide assigned to the issue was walking to get coffee when the alert hit. Several Democratic leaders privately mocked how the President stood in the foyer of the White House, squinting through his remarks from a teleprompter as demonstrators poured into the streets, making only vague promises of action because he and aides hadn’t decided on more.
Cashing Out
We all gotta eat, but I worry there is a pretty big wave of that going on right now, from the people we have entrusted to be our Fighters.
Eventually the people who don't cash out feel like suckers, and join in.
Not everyone has cashing out opportunities, of course. The worst powerful people do!
Thursday, July 07, 2022
I Suppose He Shouldn't Have Waived That Due Diligence And Signed A Binding Merger Agreement
Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is in serious jeopardy, three people familiar with the matter say, as Musk’s camp concluded that Twitter’s figures on spam accounts are not verifiable.This is all an elaborate but transparent bullshit excuse Musk came up with, though to be fair he knows there are lots of twitter bots because he pays for half of them. Still journalists don't actually have to pretend to take it seriously.Musk’s team has stopped engaging in certain discussions around funding for the $44 billion deal, including with a party named as a likely backer, one of the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing discussions.
Talks with investors have cooled in recent weeks as Musk’s camp has raised doubts about the recent data “fire hose” — a trove of data sold to corporate customers — they received from Twitter. Musk’s team’s doubts about the spam figures signal they believe they do not have enough information to evaluate Twitter’s prospects as a business, the people said.
What's This All About Then
I wonder if we will ever know the real reason the Tory establishment (newspaper billionaires) finally fully turned against Boris. It might not be incredibly scandalous, but it wasn't really the current scandal either.
Right Wing "Populism"
The amazing thing is that they seem to be unable to do it even though it is the easiest thing in the world. Moderately charismatic figure, enough bread and circus, a little bit of competence.
Evil, racist, and corrupt but also just "nice" enough to 65% of the population.
Reasons in the UK and US differ a bit. Reasons why the leading conservatives aren't competent. Why they are unable to be "nice" to a decent majority of the population while shitting on the rest. But same general issue.