Seems like an amazing move by Elon. Buy a sizable portion of the business to hold hostage, and then make the company an offer that they essentially can’t refuse because of fiduciary responsibility. If they reject Elon’s offer the stock price will sink like a rock. They pretty much have to take it.
> "overwhelm or confound with sudden surprise or wonder," 1580s, back-formation from Middle English amased "stunned, dazed, bewildered," (late 14c.), earlier "stupefied, irrational, foolish" (c. 1200), from Old English amasod, from a- (1), probably used here as an intensive prefix, + *mæs (see maze). Related: Amazed; amazing.
"amazing" never meant "this is of surprisingly high quality and good"
>Did pointedly ignoring common usage add anything here?
Yes, there are plenty of words going though the natural process of dilution. Providing some backpressure is, I think, useful to the language to preserve the richness of meaning. I'm responding directly to a discussion about the meaning of a word not interjecting into another conversation with a "well, actually..."
When you're writing a dictionary, words mean what people use them to mean. I'm not writing a dictionary.
Except that your 'well actually' still exists because you ignored the much more common usage when you made your point and didn't mention anything about your valiant effort to preserve etymological treasures until questioned?
If you read the Lord of the Rings, you'll see quite a few usages of the word "amaze" not at all in the sense of "dude, that's amazing". It is not like reading that is some archaic text exclusive to english scholars.
I think it is good to be reminded of the higher quality meaning of words that are falling into bland generic meanings. Words do change and there's nothing wrong with that, but some changes are better than others and the degeneration of specific strong meanings to generic common place ones isn't something that should be celebrated.
Celebrated or don't celebrate. Language evolves, meanings change, recognize it when it happens or you become the pedantic boring person at a meeting or party trying to explain, "No, 'begging the question' does mean what you think it does. It's a type of fallacy, not some segue into asking an obvious question.
Then you misunderstand my point entirely. It's no longer wrong to use "beg the question" in this way. It is now part of everyday vernacular. It is now one of at least two correct ways of using the phrase. Language is weird that way, it's not set in stone, so if the "wrong" thing gets used enough and hits critical mass, it becomes a correct usage.
Look at the Great Vowel Shift, or how creoles, pidgins and patois develop and evolve. Language isn't static, and in the case of "amazing" its current vernacular usage has changed to almost always have a positive connotation.
One was trying to decide whether to call the first version of something. Revision 0, revision 1, or version 1 followed by revision 1. The users that we were making the application for didn't care one bit what we called it, but the programmers sure had a lively discussion with a lot of eye rolling in the room.
Not if the argument is essentially about dictionary definitions. FWIW, if I had to imagine someone saying something is amazing without any context my understanding would tend towards the “old” meaning.
You say, in response to somebody using it to mean something else.
There is a strange circular logic to saying words mean something new because they are commonly used in a new way and at the same time telling somebody how they're using a word is wrong because it doesn't match this new meaning.
That's not how it works, the board would look at the long term value of the company, not the current price or what it will be in the next few weeks if Elon sold.
For instance Twitter stock was $60 last october, if they didn't ask for at least that it would be shortchanging shareholders and also imply a declining company.
We will never see those prices again. They occurred during overvalued and speculative market conditions and we will not return to that for several years, if ever.
You don't need an implication of decline when the market has already explicitly indicated it believes Twitter is declining as evidenced by the falling stock price.
'Knowing' you will put an offer to buy a company is insider information. The assumption here is he has been acting on this information recently and it was part of his plan.
Unless you think he just woke up today and said: You know what, I'm going to buy Twitter! Which, I mean.. given Elon maybe that's what happened. But if it was premeditated then he has clearly been acting on insider information.
If you have no intention to actually follow through and it's a false promise, that's a pump-and-dump. It's securities fraud, but it's not insider trading.
If you have an intention to actually buy and make a good faith effort and fail, that's just business.
Duh, but they are not acting on the insider information.
Elon is. He bought shares, then put in an offer which drives his existing shares up. Perhaps you can argue until he sells them he isn't acting.. perhaps.. but if he sells them today, are you still telling me he isn't acting on insider information?
From the SEC website: Who is an insider? An “insider” is an officer, director, 10% stockholder and anyone who possesses inside information because of his or her relationship with the Company or with an officer, director or principal stockholder of the Company.
A principal shareholder is a person that directly or indirectly owns or controls more than 10% of any class of voting shares or securities of a company. The principal shareholder has the authority to vote using those voting shares.
Elon has less than 10% share (9.2%), so he's not an insider. Probably he stayed under 10% because of this law.
Hopefully your correct and Twitter tanks and maybe we can finally be rid of this crap
I don't hate Twitter like I hate Facebook (mainly for ideological reasons and their propensity for exploitation) but god damn is their interface and entire product model annoying.
That is a great question and I wonder the same thing.
"I am going to dump 1/10th of the company that I very publicly acquired if they don't do what I want them to do" feels like manipulation since he's controlling the value of such a large amount of it.
But is it illegal to be willing to lose money if a threat isn't met?
Furthermore, would it be illegal for him to dump his shares, allow the trajectory to tank the price further, then rebuy when it bottoms, rinse and repeat?
It’s not illegal to say “I want to buy more shares at what I believe to be a generous price. If the board won’t sell me these shares, I don’t trust the judgement of the board and will subsequently sell my existing shares.”
How? The laws absolutely allow for hostile takeovers. If Twitter gets to determine what to censor because it's a corporation, well, they get to get bought like one too.
>All I can see in this thread is 1) masquerading as 2).
Indeed. One would have hoped that Hacker News would be immune from Reddit/Twitter-style "Anything I don't like is illegal/unconstitutional", but apparently not.
"Someone buying up shares of a company before he announces a hostile takeover is inside information and thus illegal!" Good grief.
