Dispatch 004
Right now, certainly no angle of the Elon Musk/Donald Trump relationship is being under-discussed. Though there's one take I'm not seeing a lot of, and it's surprising, because it seems highly likely: Trump and Musk are only going to be able to coexist for so long. In part because they both relish being the "main character" of the situation and in part because no one can coexist with Trump beyond a set period of time.
At some point, this love fest ends and the relationship sours. It's not even really a question of 'why' just 'when'. Trump got the ultimate thing he needed from Musk. He has a few more subplots. But at some point, as it was with Steve Bannon back in the day, the question becomes: who is in charge here? "Do you feel in charge?"
That's today's column for members of The Inner Ring...
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
🗳️ Threads ‘For You’ Feeds Election Fail – It seems like every new real-time event increasingly highlights the glaring problems with the service. But the bigger problem is that it's not a technical issue, it's a choice that Meta has made in building Threads in the image of Instagram rather than Twitter. But shocker: images (and video) are different than text. I'm sure Threads will respond that they're not trying to fully recreate Twitter, but that's also clearly what a lot of their users actually want in times like these. Maybe they don't want those users, but the users they may think they want won't care about Threads if it's not relevant in the zeitgeist as Xitter remains – and perhaps more so now than ever, as much as it pains me to admit. Also, Meta's own employees clearly realize this problem too. Regardless, seeing out-of-date and irrelevant posts that conveyed information or sentiment in real-time, a day or two later is just stupid. [TechCrunch]
⚖️ The Mystery Behind Clint Eastwood’s ‘Juror #2’ Release Is Solved – In the face of some other recent older-audience-skewing flops, it feels like Warner Bros is playing their release of Juror #2 correctly, holding a small theatrical run so it can qualify for awards but keeping the main release for Max. While the reviews are solid, it's just not one of those movies that is going to blow the doors off of movie theaters. And that's okay! Provided everyone involved realizes that and acts accordingly. The only real hold up was probably the fact that Eastwood is 94 years old and so, sadly, any of these films could be his last. But given this is the 7th (!) movie he's directed in the past decade, it seems like he's not slowing down – and he makes 86-year-old also super-active Ridley Scott seem like a child. [THR]
𝕏 Trump-Musk Partnership Puts New Spin on Value of X – Did Elon Musk plan this all along with the purchase of Twitter? I mean clearly. Including trying to get out of the deal. Lol. But he did recognize the zeitgeist-y value Twitter had which extends far beyond its actual value. And he figured out a way to put that to work when the stakes were the highest. Is that worth $44B? I mean if you want to directly tie it to the boost in value of his companies this week then sure. But Tesla's value has also ebbed and flowed quite a bit over the past couple of years on concerns about Musk being distracted by that very same service. Next question: where does Xitter go from here? At some point, it has to work as an actual business again, right? Or maybe not. Maybe it's now in the Truth Social/Trump Media camp. Maybe they can reverse merge to take Xitter public again and become the ultimate meme stock with a presidential twist? Crazier things have happened... [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Wrote...
I wrote this post back in July as a paid post for members of The Inner Ring. Post-election, I think it holds up well, so I'm opening it up...
M.G. Siegler
I Link...
- Regarding those election prediction market numbers, almost $450M will be paid out through Polymarket ($287M) and Kalshi ($159M – the one that you can use in the US). Kalshi said 28k bet on Harris to win, while 40k bet on Trump (Polymarket didn't give out those numbers). [Reuters]
- The French "Whale" who won $40M+ on Polymarket said he simply went with the "neighbor method" polls rather than the straightforward ones – i.e. asking people who they think their neighbors are voting for revealed a much higher preference for Trump. [WSJ 🔒]
- Some believe Trump won't kill Biden's CHIPs act, just alter it. Seems a bit premature to know what he'll do here beyond boost tariffs which could, in a way, yield a similar outcome. But Intel also needs the money. [CNBC]
- Unsurprisingly, TSMC and GlobalFoundries are rushing to get their packages signed and binding. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- The most surprising revelation from Paramount's documents of would-be suitors is how noncommittal basically all of them were – including, notably, Warner Bros Discovery and Comcast. They both were interested... to an extent and up to a certain price... This should have been an easier deal for Skydance to land, it seems – no one else really wanted it! [Bloomberg 🔒]
- OpenAI acquired the killer chat.com domain from a co-founder of HubSpot. The likely price? $15.5M. Yes, it already redirects to ChatGPT. [Verge]
- I've gotten way too many of these "gift subscriptions" trying to get you to install the Substack app. Feels awfully spammy. [TechCrunch]
- The 10 year anniversary re-release of Interstellar is set for IMAX in early December – sadly, just in selected cites. Still one of the best IMAX movies of all time. With Christopher Nolan well ahead of the curve here. [THR]
I Quote...
“Don’t tax our people. Make money instead. Put tariffs on China and make $400 billion.”
-- Howard Lutnick, the CEO of investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, and heads Donald Trump’s transition team. He is likely to play a significant role in the administration and so such a comment points to where this is all likely headed. No surprise on the tariffs, though we'll see where taxes end up...