Zamujasa posted:

no matter who loses the coming twitter/musk war, we win

golden bubble posted:

Guess I might as well post this for anyone who wants to know more about who Abe was

facialimpediment posted:

what a fuckin idiot

https://twitter.com/evanmcmurry/status/1545522626478620675

Someone's gonna be paying billions of dollars and the only winner will be the lawyers

Kazinsal posted:

Kojima would have let him finish an extremely long-winded speech first.

Hyrax Attack! posted:

I don’t know much law but could he just pay the $1 billion penalty and be done with it? Seems worth it to avoid a long lawsuit.

Musk's legal team? posted:

Hyrax Attack! posted:

I don’t know much law but could he just pay the $1 billion penalty and be done with it? Seems worth it to avoid a long lawsuit.

Vox Nihili posted:

Here's a quick explanation: https://www.grid.news/story/technology/2022/05/13/why-elon-musk-cant-just-walk-away-from-the-twitter-deal/

G: And so, you know, I think that you and I have spoken previously, and that billion dollar walkaway fee is kind of the one that’s being tossed about right now, but as you said, it’s more complex than that. Could you lay out why it is more complicated, because certainly I think that’s, that’s a big talking point right now. And I want to make sure that our audience understands that it’s not just as easy as, you know, paying a billion and walking away.

BQ: Sure. So in the merger contract, the merger contract — the parties negotiate for certain remedies, right. And so one of the remedies — and this is in the event of a contractual dispute, or a termination of some sort— they contract for remedies. In the context of law — this is, this might be too much in the weeds for your audience — but in the context of law, when you sign a contract and then the contract is breached, you can go to court and get a cash remedy equal to whatever your expectation was, with respect to that contract. “I did this deal thinking I was going to make $50, you breached the contract, I want to get by my expected profit, that $50 from this contract,” and the judge will award that expected value from the contract. It’s really hard to do that in the context of a merger. So what parties do is they agree, essentially, to liquidated damages. In the event of a breach, well, we’re not going to allow one party or the other party to go to court and ask for their expectation in the transaction. We’re going to give them something else. And the parties negotiate. And in this case, they negotiated for a liquidated damages provision — a termination fee, in the event of a termination by Musk, of a billion dollars. Now that’s not the only remedy available. It’s one — it’s a limitation on monetary remedies.

So Twitter can’t go to the court and say, “Court, your Honor, we were expecting $50 billion worth of value for our shareholders, we want that.” All they can get is a billion dollars in cash. In the alternative, the company has the opportunity to ask for what’s called “specific performance.” In the event that the contract can be completed — they’ve met all the closing conditions, and the debt financing is in place ready to go — the parties have agreed to permit the company to ask a court for an order for specific performance — an order from the court instructing Musk to complete the deal, right? And that’s — whether they get liquidated damages or specific performance is at the option of the company, not at the option of Musk.

G: Yeah, and I think that’s really important because what that means, you know, from my understanding — and please correct me if I’m wrong — but at a high level that Twitter can take Musk to court to complete this deal, if Musk has the funding on hand, which is still the case right now. And I think as important is thinking about, you know, obviously Musk has said he really wants to tackle spambots and you know, other bots on Twitter. So he has been well aware of this. And this would not be — seemingly be a case where there has been a, a material change in the value of the company based on whatever realizations, you know, maybe he came to — from this Reuters article, this is something that would have been a part of a regular due diligence for a company.

And so my understanding and feel free to again, correct me if I’m mistaken here, is that if he tries to break off any sort of contract based on this, that doesn’t really hold water, and Twitter could really push for him to complete it, particularly given all the news about the, you know, fundraising that he is doing to try and lessen his monetary vulnerability, let’s say.

BQ: Yeah, so you want to think about this in the context of a kind of a typical private equity deal, which this is not. But in a typical private equity deal, you know, the seller is dealing with, you know, a highly leveraged buyer. And, you know, in the event the buyer is unable to come up with the debt financing to make the deal happen, the buyer just doesn’t have the pockets to make it work, right? So, if the buyer were just to collapse on the financing, you know, the seller could go and like, try to get a court order for the buyer to complete the deal (specific performance) but it would really be to no avail, if there’s no debt financing to support the deal. That’s not this situation here. Because the debt financing is in place. And that’s not really what’s at issue or what the concern is. I think the real concern is that the equity supplier, Musk, might just want to say, “Hey, I don’t want to put up that much money, I think I paid too much, I want to pay less.” And that’s not really an argument that’s going to cut a lot of water, you know — having buyer’s remorse. And so it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to survive much of a challenge.

MrMojok posted:

It’s Always DNS, but it’s hilarious to see the tinfoil hat chud brigade screaming about how the Rogers outage was Deep State plot to curtail are freedoms at the same time as they made Leon Musk bend the knee

golden bubble posted:

Guess I might as well post this for anyone who wants to know more about who Abe was


Shinzo Abe first came to prominence by promoting a weird right wing conspiracy that the mainstream media and even most members of the LDP (Japanese conservative party) thought was absolute bullshit, but turned out to be 100% correct. The theory, which was actually completely right, was that North Korean agents had kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals in the late 70s and early 80s, including a 13 year old girl. Like there were literally North Korean submarines kidnapping random people in Japan for no reason.

His first real presence on the world stage was convincing then-prime minister Koizumi Junichiro to walk out of economic negotiations with North Korea unless they returned the kidnapped citizens, and then when North Korea let them leave to see family, he convinced the prime minister to not cave into North Korean demands and go back on their promise to return them back to Korea, because they are Japanese citizens. This makes the far right love hime because he is super tough on North Korea, and gets him into positions where he could be on committees at the Education Ministry where he helped select which history textbooks could be used in schools. That's why Japanese school history books in the 90s were super hosed. Abe doesn't believe comfort women were real, war crimes committed by Japan were both Cool and Good, and everything great that happened in Korea is actually Japanese, and he was a head of the Education Ministry choosing the school history books.

As a result of this, Abe is super popular to the far right faction of the LDP, and his place at the Koizumi cabinet makes him popular to his sub-faction, leading to him being elected president of the party and then to the prime minister position. His first time as Japanese PM is mostly notable for the largest LDP defeat since 1990, and that time he got into a diplomatic slap fight with a Japanese-American member of Congress because the latter made some comment about the Japanese empire which led to a months long back and forth.

Abe resigns as prime minister in 2007, then like a goddamn phoenix made out of bad opinions he surges back in 2012, following the collapse of the DPJ (center-left part), becoming the first prime minister ever to resign and then come back. He spends the next 8 years absolutely destroying Japan's relationship with South Korea, reinterprets Japan's constitution to allow for collective self-defense and what he calls "Proactive Pacifism" via some legally dubious means and all the while, he manages to piss off Bush jr., Obama, and Biden. Yes, even W. Bush hated him, and Biden is very vocal about how much he loathes Abe. He didn't piss off Trump, but Abe hated Trump so much he forced the Imperial Family to entertain Trump rather than meet Trump in person, ever.

Next, Abe gets the Olympics, and it's thought he was going to use the popularity boost from that as a way to get support for his proposed constitutional amendment which would completely end Japanese pacifism and turn the Self-Defense Forces into a normal military, a goal of his and his war criminal grandfather*. Then he fucks up COVID response, resigns again, gets popular again, and was starting his comeback tour for round 3 baby when he gets shot with a gun made from two pipes, some duct tape, a few batteries, and scrap wood.



* granddad was an administrator of Manchukuo and a suspected "Class A" war criminal who got lucky that the US War Crimes tribunal for Japan was such a shitshow that they gave up after the first round of trials. Granddad was allowed back into politics because some prominent Americans said he "wasn't so bad" and he is "harsh on communism." Granddad became a Japanese prime minister and immediately tried to give the Japanese police unlimited power, create a secret police again, and turn Self-Defense Forces into a normal military. This backfired so hard that Abe's granddad was banished from politics forever.

Handsome Ralph posted:

Thanks for this. I was aware of the SDF to normal military stuff and South Korea hating his guts as well as the textbook stuff, but everything else was news to me.

Any good articles on how he tanked relationships with W, Obama, and Biden?

Marshal Prolapse posted:

Actually he generally had good relations and was extremely supportive of US policy and the security alliance and alignment on many other matter. Look I’m not defending his family or his garbage dump relations with the ROK, but in generally Abe was pretty good, at least from points of foreign policy and some other areas such as trade, China, DPRK, and to an extent Russia.

W may not have liked him, but that’s probably because Kozumi and W really hit it off and had an excellent relationships.

Interestingly enough the people of Taiwan are actually taking it really hard, messages from all the major political parties across the spectrum, the people at large. Abe and Japanese PMs have been extremely Pro-Taiwan.

PookBear posted:

right wing authoritarian had foreign policy goals that aligned with the US

shame on an IGA posted:

I'm just gonna assume it was a BGP fuckup

Marshal Prolapse posted:

Hey it works out sometimes. I wouldn’t consider the LDP or Abe authoritarian, right wing, yes, but not authoritarian though.

I’m not trying to do a love letter to Abe, but he was generally a plus, while with Korea he was a putz.

PookBear posted:

he was pro war criminals lol eat my poo poo and cum

Kazinsal posted:

Somehow they started announcing some bogons then rolled it back and suddenly were announcing nothing. Someone hosed something up pretty bad.

Last I checked they had at one point managed to get about 50 of their prefixes announced out of the 300 or so they own but then had to roll that back as well. I’m wondering if they had a core router die when they were attempting to salvage things.

Spoggerific posted:

https://twitter.com/ampol_moment/status/1545268047514066946

Surely people remember this moment as well, right?

Jimmy Smuts posted:

That's literally very close to something I did as a toddler; it's one of my first memories.
edit: why did he have his suit unbuttoned?

Nuclear Tourist posted:

Looks like something from Cyberpunk 2077

Nuclear Tourist posted:

Looks like something from Cyberpunk 2077

https://twitter.com/Jake_Hanrahan/status/1545421586257297410?t=Ga0YUVMzyWQRNRerC5Gejw&s=19

A.o.D. posted:

Nothing is a clearer indication that you're an actual fascist, and quite possibly some flavor of National Socialist than advancing a "both sides" narrative when what you really want to say is 6MWE.

https://twitter.com/RepWeinstein/status/1545446189310640131

The only both sides narrative of the holocaust worth advancing is how the Western Front and Eastern Front met in the middle to exterminate some Nazis.

quote:

Fowler Arthur was previously on the state Board of Education but has never participated in the public education system as a student or a parent. She was homeschooled and did not attend college.

Terrifying Effigies posted:

Sri Lanka's effectively had a non-functional government for the past few months - the country is out of money, food, and fuel, their prime minister resigned back in May when protesters burnt down a bunch of politicians' homes, and the president has been trying to use his remaining supporters and military loyalists to crack down on the population even though they're grossly outnumbered at this point.

A.o.D. posted:

Let me guess, they thought that organic agriculture means monoculture planting, but without pesticides or infection resistance.

CRUSTY MINGE posted:

I want my,
I want my,
I want my DDT.