In Case You've Wondered

My blog is where my wandering thoughts are interspersed with stuff I made up. So, if while reading you find yourself confused about the context, don't feel alone. I get confused, too.

If you're here for the stories, I started another blog: scratchingforchange.blogspot.com

One other thing: sometimes I write words you refuse to use in front of children, or polite company, unless you have a flat tire, or hit your thumb with a hammer.

I don't use them to offend; I use them to embellish.

jescordwaineratgmail.com

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Wheeling and Dealing

Years ago, a local refinery was up for sale. One buyer offered a price, and the owners jumped on the offer, but one stipulation was demanded before the final deal: The buyer wanted a tour of the facility.

The tour was set, the buyer's specialists looked the refinery over, and found on large refining unit included as part of the facility had been mothballed for years. For those that are unfamiliar with petrochemical processing, restarting a unit isn't just the matter of flipping a switch. Many times the long period of not being used leads to expenses that can't justify making the effort, which was the situation. The unit was eventually demolished to allow space for a new one.

The offer was lowered accordingly, and the refinery was sold. After working in the facility, my opinion was it must have been a good deal, because much of the facility was old, needing some repairs, and would be exposed to newer regulations that demanded upgrades.

The new owner eventually sold the refinery, and it was sold again since then. The current owner appears to be in it for the long haul, since many upgrades were completed, and new units constructed. The long term employees are probably still not happy, since the original sale affected their pensions in a negative way. 

What inspired this post is the current haggling between Musk, and Twitter. Musk wants Twitter to prove less than 5% of their accounts are fake, and the deal is hinging on this demand, if not others. The original offer was $44 a share, but considering how things are going, that was the hook, and Twitter swallowed the bait. Twitter is not currently valued at $44 a share, and trading around the $37 mark. With the lack of a firm deal, those that wanted to make some big bucks might sell, and Musk will have leverage to lower his offer. 

Time will tell how this works out, but Musk is in the driver's seat. Unless someone else comes along to buy Twitter, he has the leverage, looking at the operation will give him knowledge of the cards, and Twitter can only go all in.

7 comments:

  1. Agreed. Musk wants to kick a dent in the universe, and so far he's doing a good job.

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  2. I don’t expect any great wins out of that. Half of North America is on the crazy train and that only runs one way.

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  3. I also don’t get it: even with shitlibs firmly in charge of the govt… they are about to lose two of their most important cultural wins: the Twitter safe space and enforced censorship… and abortion.

    How do you lose when your own people are running the show?

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    1. because "their people" are fake. elon is hedging b/c he proved half of biden's 22 MILLION followers are fake bots. that's just one quick check. its probably worse than that. i read that 5 percent of twits made 90% of the tweets, and then every"body" retweets them. if those 5 percent are fake bots to begin with, 90 percent of tweets are fake/lies. sounds about right to me.

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  4. I don't know how it's accomplished, but it's apparent fake accounts can be found. If I had to guess, somewhere around 40% of Twitter is bots and spammers.

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  5. I'd like to think that Elon never meant to buy Twitter.
    Just expose them.
    And make a bunch of money of them when they failed to fulfill their end of the deal.

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    Replies
    1. That would be something to see. Destroy Twitter, watch it crash, and be involved with a social media site that isn't controlled by the government.

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