Is Elon Musk founder of Tesla? Let's answer this question together. But before we answer this one, we must answer whether @elonmusk is the founder of PayPal, for reasons that will soon become apparent. Two contentious topics, probably enough for a...🧵!
In '99, Paypal launched as a digital wallet by a company named Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Luke Nosek. Their main competitor was x.com, founded by one Elon Musk. They both soon realized that they could bleed to death or join forces.
In an acquisition in which x.com technically acquired confinity, but was more a merger of equals, x.com took ownership of PayPal, with Musk as CEO and largest single shareholder. 6 months later, in a board coup, Thiel took over as CEO.
Thiel renamed the combined company PayPal in 2001, took it public in 2002. Shortly after, PayPal was acquired by Ebay for $1.5b. Is Elon a founder of PayPal? Well, the legal vehicle that IPOed was literally the same company as x.com which Elon founded solo.
At the same time, Elon was not the originator of the PayPal product, and he only led the combined company for about 20% of its existence. Most people call Elon a founder of PayPal. Is Peter Thiel a founder of PayPal? Not the legal entity, but Confinity started the PayPal product.
Most people also call Thiel, Levchin and Nosek founders of PayPal. In my mind, all four had founder DNA in the end result and including the one team but not the other doesn't make much sense. They all seeded a culture that created the PayPal mafia.
After PayPal sold, Elon started SpaceX, but he was also talking to JB Straubel about turning the TZero prototype by AC Propulsion into a product. When he approached AC, they got introduced to another team that wanted to do the same.
That team, named Tesla, was comprised of Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpening, two entrepreneurs who had just sold an e-reader startup, and were looking to get into cars. Tesla didn't have so much as a logo at the time. Elon and JB agreed to join forces with Tarpening and Eberhard.
Musk funded Tesla and became Chairman, JB joined as CTO, Eberhard stayed on as CEO. After years of struggling to produce their Roadster, Elon booted Eberhard and eventually took over as CEO. The rest, as they say, is history. In this case the shoe is on the other foot.
Elon did not create the original legal entity. At the same time, had he demanded it, Eberhard and Tarpenning would have changed the company's name/entity. Is the name the reason he isn't a founder? It doesn't make much sense.
Courts also decided that Eberhard and Tarpening can't stop Musk and Straubel from being recognized as founders. tesla.com/blog/judge-str…
Essentially in this case Elon Musk and JB Straubel were responsible for the product that made Tesla a serious competitor and brought it all the way to today. JB's battery pack approach connecting many laptop cells is standard in any serious EV even today.
If JB is a founder, then so is Elon. And Eberhard and Tarpening also have their claim unchallenged. The only reasonable answer, however little some people are able to handle it, is that Tesla, like PayPal has four founders. And in each case one of them is @elonmusk.
If you liked this, you may like some of my other Tesla & Elon threads -
Allright everyone, let's do this. Send me all the various reasons that have been cited by the US government, or the broader regime, for the US operation on Venezuela. Ideally with quotes or video attached to your replies so we can put them all together.
The EU has sanctioned Jaques Baud, one of the most lucid and evidence based analysts of the war. Apparently, this means that as a Swiss citizen, he cannot even fly over EU territory, which means he cannot leave his country. This is just one of many consequences the penalty, imposed with no due process or any kind of court hearing, has for this former Swiss intelligence analyst and former NATO advisor.
His crime? Quoting the words of Ukranian officials verbatim. Read on.
This is the entirety of the accusations against Colonel Jaques Baud, as written by the EU: ""Jacques Baud, former colonel of the Swiss army and strategic analyst, is a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programs. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda and spreads conspiracy theories, for example by accusing Ukraine of having orchestrated its own invasion in order to join NATO. Therefore, Jacques Baud is responsible for actions or political measures attributable to the government of the Russian Federation that undermine or threaten the stability or security in a third country (Ukraine) through participation in the use of information manipulation and influence operations, implements them, or supports them.""
You will note that they accuse him of SPEECH CRIMES only. Now lets dig into the specifics a little because the insanity of the situation is off the charts.
Did you now that the PRINCIPLE trial out of the UK found that IVM was superior to the usual care in practically every subgroup it tested, but it sat on the results for ~600 days? When it finally published, it buried these results in page 346 of the appendix.
The main body of the paper they published is even more bizarre --
1. They claim that "clinically meaningful" meant 1.5 days improvement in median time to recovery. 2. They admit that ivermectin showed >2 days to recovery. 3. Their main conclusion is that ivermectin is unlikely to provide clinically meaningful improvement in recovery.
The secret sauce in their conclusion is that their target metric of HR 1.2 is based on 9 days of recovery needed (after randomization). Even though they had ran many hundreds of patients by the time they started the ivm arm they knew the days needed for recovery were >14.
Let's do a thread doing a close reading of Douglas Murray's article in the NY Post, in which he writes about his encounter with Dave Smith on Joe Rogan's podcast.
If you care about facts and truth and stuff, I promise this will be highly illuminating. 🧵
"Having not spoken to Joe since the wars in Ukraine and Israel started, I had become increasingly irked that the guests he has had on have been almost entirely anti-Ukraine and anti-Israel."
As many have demonstrated, this is false.
Since late 2023, at the very least these guests with strong pro-israel views have appeared at least once on the podcast.
Gad Saad
Mike Baker
Peter Zeihan
Douglas Murray
Coleman Hughes
Konstantin Kisin (3 times)
So, the Ukranian constitution gives the president the power to declare martial law, and explicitly says that parliamentary elections can be delayed until after martial law is lifted. For presidential elections it says they must happen every 5 years with no martial law exception.