OVER THE WEEKEND, the excitable technology mogul Elon Musk deployed the excitable journalist Matt Taibbi to reveal what the two of them billed as the corporate secrets of Twitter, now that Musk has bought the fabled short-form blogging company and vowed to undo the alleged anti-free-speech malfeasance of its previous management. The secrets turned out to be that Twitter’s content moderators sometimes had discussions about the pros and cons of moderating various content, and also that when Joe Biden’s presidential campaign complained about particular tweets—including, it turned out, tweets containing nude images of the wayward Biden offspring Hunter Biden—those tweets got taken down. (Donald Trump’s campaign, Taibbi noted in passing, also routinely asked for tweets to be removed, but Musk’s screenshotted documents didn’t cover any of those cases.) This was, Musk declared, a violation of the First Amendment.
The stock price of Musk’s Tesla Inc. (TSLA on the Nasdaq) likewise didn’t get much of anywhere. Since we last checked in a week ago, a share of Tesla—valued at more than $300 in the bygone days of springtime before Musk set out to buy his way into being Twitter’s full-time Main Character—went from $180.83 to $179.82, a loss of $1.01.
That $1.01 would have been enough to purchase any of the following:
• A one-ounce stainless steel ladle.
• A pack of two globe-shaped 40-watt incandescent light bulbs (candelabra base).
• A disposable size-10 surgical scalpel.
• A pack of 200 oval wooden beads, 10 mm by 8 mm, in assorted colors.
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