MIT CS degree, retired money manager, author of Bad Boyfriends, Avoidant, https://t.co/6tRWnH4RvZ series, mostly harmless purveyor of lightly-used memes.
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Jan 2, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
While I do not specialize in social media law, I have been an Internetizen since about 1980, so I have worthwhile opinions on the topic. Much reasoning on censorship is motivated by wanting to stamp out what the Party perceives to be Wrongthink, disallowing dialogue. 1/n
The Internet world began as an interconnection of disparate nets (hence the name.) Financed by DARPA, the first TCP/IP network bridged the differing software standards of IBM, Unix, TOPS-10/Multics, and other proprietary nets. Talk between academics and private R&D got easier 2/n
May 11, 2019 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
1/ A short review for newbies: the 2018 $tsla narrative was a rapid ramp to 500K Mod3s per year and explosive profit growth that would pay off the waiting suppliers and build out more capacity on the way to driving ICE cars out of the market.
2/ $tsla accounting categorized enough costs of production into capex and overhead (goodwill repairs, lemons kept as “loaners” or inventory and stored in numerous dusty lots) to make profit *margins* on cars sold look healthy, above 20%.
Apr 22, 2019 • 56 tweets • 9 min read
I sympathize with this guy. He’s as nervous as I would be under this much pressure. He’s mentioning some of my old work colleagues. We were thinking about specialized NN processors in 1985. I’ll jot a few notes in a tweetstream...
“Neural Network Complier”: sic. Yes, this is how you do it. There’s nothing wrong with this presentation, just full of genuine geek detail which I understand. If you are looking for unique features that give an advantage, nothing so far.
Mar 23, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1: IANAL and this case is in an area of law where I haven’t studied precedents. So the Musk responses sound superficially reasonable (“I never agreed to preclear everything, none of my tweets/all hands letters/closed conference calls were material.”) $tsla
2/ Normally we’d view the settlement doc like a contract. Musk alleges he understood it to mean he could judge himself what was material (and as he said on 60 Minutes, might get it wrong!) But...
Mar 6, 2019 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Short treatise on $tsla price hysteresis: Functionally overpriced products sell to status niche valuing rarity, via fashion signalling (“I can afford to blow money for show.”)
2/ A price drop to increase sales must be large enough to generate news to reach buyers who weren’t able/interested at previous price point. Sales spike briefly as marginal buyers are attracted by news, then decay back to equilibrium level.
Feb 20, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1/ News from the Future! Chair Robyn Denholm announces she will step down from $tsla, new chairman will be 23-yo MBA from Leavey (Santa Clara U) who will take a leave of absence from Starbucks.
2/ But seriously. If there was any doubt $tsla has violated terms of SEC settlement, it’s gone now. Failure to return to court to ask for permanent bar of Elon Musk’s participation in publicly traded companies will signal that “too big to discipline” is SEC policy....
Feb 14, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1/ I got sucked into $tslaq around 7/18/18. I had installed $100K of solar panels after doing a lot of research and looked into the solar roof tile scam, which seemed sus from when I had first heard about them (the Desperate Housewives demo.)
2/ I wasn’t a big Twitter fan but I started to read $tsla and saw more and more fraud and delusional thinking. I retired from managing OPM 15 years ago, but I saw the resemblance to the dotcom era. History may not repeat itself, but it does come back as crude parody.
Jan 30, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/ He’s right. A life form is a temporary bubble of organization / lower entropy created by taking in lower entropy and expelling higher-entropy waste. When it dies that organization dissolves (perhaps eaten by another life form!). $tsla
2/ A corporation is an organism that ideally creates valuable goods and services out of raw material, IP, and labor. Accounting is an attempt to measure how successful the organism is at doing that. Profit is a measure of success, broadly considered...
Jan 26, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/ I follow the inventory, the forensic accounting efforts, the Azealia Banks / Hollywood drug abuser angle, the murderous overuse of AP, etc, but most of my value-add here is literary. $tsla Delenda Est has a certain cadence, but it’s Elon that has to go.
2/ His ejection from EBay by Thiel and other sane people left him with $$$ to insert himself elsewhere, and Subsidy Truffle Hound’s genius at PT Barnum-ing himself into milking gov’t subsidies enabled $tsla expansion while everyone found it convenient to look the other way.
Jan 22, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/ A little bird asked me to expand on possible impairment of the VIE/PPE/$scty leases. IANAL and the agreements likely vary and I haven’t read them, but I’ve seen several attempts to analyze them that miss the point.
2/ Three parties: consumer, $tsla, and investors via VIEs etc. The investors primarily wanted tax credits. Tesla collects the rent from consumers (directly? may have a servicing entity.) Consumers pay their electric utility the net power used.
Jan 19, 2019 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Theories floated: someone(s) forcing rationalization at $tsla to present a plan for long-term profitability. Actors: A&M, Larry Ellison, various bankers, Butswinkas. Actions: RIFs at Tesla and SpaceX, dropped lease Port of LA SpaceX (for unfunded Mars - BFR missions)...
2/ Supercharging global price hike (to be replaced by localized prices posted by app), end of referrals / paid microinfluencer campaigns, Musk letter disclosing lower Q4 profits and suggesting Q1-19 losses, toned-down $tsla pumps in general.
Jan 7, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
1/ He’s doing it again, in China! First crowd pictures I’ve seen, gives you an idea of how much was invested in the groundbreaking. Pattern: use $tsla image to descend on unsophisticated polity, offer local pols trade of PR for PR. @danahull@wolfejosh@lorakolodny
2/ Gigafactory 1: Reno, NV, USA. Gather subsidies and tax concessions, mostly successful because partner Panasonic lets $tsla pretend it’s all Tesla’s achievement. Over $1 billion in subsidies and tax abatements predicted by 2030.
Dec 19, 2018 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Boring Co Demo: from a desire to have his own tunnel to avoid the 405 to half-baked concept to lame-ass execution, but as usual he has to keep up the hype. As with $tsla, he bamboozles local pols to give him permission and they get PR while he uses them to draw investment.
2/ If he wanted elevated Hyperloop lines crisscrossing LA, it might make more sense than the overly-costly subway system LA is building. But the cost of subways is not in tunnel drilling, but in cities like LA and NYC, the cost of *lawyers*.
Nov 23, 2018 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
1/ The cult of Elon is a subdivision of the ecowarrior movement that is pushing to eliminate all fossil fuels (and nukes) by 2030. That would mean keeping poor people poor while the connected grow fat on subsidies for their $tsla EVs and Powerwalls.
2/ Where the Progressive-Greens are influential (California, Germany) the cost of energy has doubled (or more) from what a free market mix would have provided, reliable paid-for nuclear is being shut down, and the costliest forms installed earlier are decaying.
Oct 7, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1) Accounting basics: assets are written down to closer to liquidation value when impaired. Collateral for a loan to an A-credit company can be casually assumed to be available for repossession, but the chaos at $tsla should make any lender unwilling to continue.
2) When the possibility of repossession and liquidation looms, the lender must imagine what it actually costs to repossess and liquidate, and what net value would remain. Broken used cars with no backing company, spare parts, or warranty won’t sell for much.
Oct 5, 2018 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1) Back from long holiday. Some $tsla thoughts: First, Musk is trapped in a cage of his own making. Only a narcissist with a drug habit could have built this tower of lies and adolescent dreams then thrown it all away. He needs help.
2) But my sympathy is limited, He has demonstrated his reckless disregard for others, in overriding safety concerns to market “Autopilot,” in attacking anyone who dissents, in corruptly enriching himself through relentless hype and fraudulent claims.
Aug 12, 2018 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1) Sunday $TSLA take. Like @ThomasWictor, have no insider knowledge, but this situation is rare example where no insider knows: SEC, NASDAQ, BoD, Musk are on different pages. The goal of SEC/NASD regs is to avoid precisely this situation.
2) Fantasy market based on years of ZIRP now coming to an end, corruption and #FakeNews clickbait, reporters turning company PR releases into cheerleading stories. Elon is a symptom. NASDAQ should have halted pending clarification, SEC should act. Looks like old VSE now.
