I'm reminded of during the Iraq occupation how Dick Cheney scolded the media for not saying how great things were going and said how much he liked Fox's coverage. And how not long after it was no longer possible to deny that things had gone terribly wrong and things weren't actually so rosy.
If I was a SpaceX investor I'd be considering litigation. Saying the core product has to be rebuilt right after it gets bought by SpaceX?! Maybe the SpaceX investors would have liked some diligence about that before purchase but looks like someone had a conflict of interest about that.
By completing the SpaceX–xAI deal while both companies remain privately held, and now closed, Musk can effectively set relative valuations, negotiate terms within a founder‑controlled ecosystem, close, and then inform investors, without the procedural drag and disclosure obligations that attend a public‑company merger. That flexibility can reduce near‑term execution friction. It does not, however, eliminate fiduciary exposure; rather, it may defer scrutiny to the IPO phase, when investors and regulators will examine how and why the combination occurred, how it was priced, and how related‑party dynamics were managed.
Somehow he's flipping $1T SpaceX + $250B xAI (which is now apparently a pile of trash, according to Elon) into a $1.75T IPO because all of the insider investors think they can get away with it, and they are probably right
Wow, so many failures of the legal system. While the incompetent/malicious/lazy investigators that used the facial recognition and only that are obviously at major fault, I'd actually put larger blame on the judge that signed the arrest warrant. They are supposed to be a check on such incompetent/malicious/lazy-ness not just a rubber stamp. Unfortunately there's really no recourse against incompetent/malicious/lazy judges.
Of course this would have been bad enough if this had happened where she lived but the holding for 5 months adds a whole 'nother level of insight into brokeness of the legal system. I'd be interested in hearing more about why that happened. Was it just a matter of that happens sometimes if you have a public defender?
Texas is an interesting example because they allowed true unregulated rates for residential consumers. Consumers liked getting lower rates until that winter storm a few years ago had bills for some in the $thousands. Then they didn't like the free market so much.
It did suck, but even when we factor that spike into the equation (including the outages), Texans end up paying for less for electricity in aggregate. Texas has also beefed up winter hardening requirements since then.
Agreed, it's a big sovereignty issue. Once a solar panel is installed it keeps working for 20+ years. It doesn't get cut off if there's a political problem that interrupts supply.
I wonder if the current war will significantly accelerate the roll out of non-fossil energy. If the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for a few more weeks there's going to be significant pain, not just for energy but things like fertilizer etc. Once you deploy a solar panel it works for 20+ years, conflict doesn't cut you off from energy.
The $130B is only part of the economic costs of the tariffs. Many companies and people changed their buying behavior, either paying more to a domestic company or maybe a company in a country with a lower tariff rate or changed their behavior to not require an item all together. We've also heard about small companies that have gone out of business.
I'm not an economist but I assume economists are writing papers about this kind of thing to estimate the effects.
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