Sunday, July 16, 2023

"Elon Musk says Twitter's cash flow still negative as ad revenue drops 50%"

 From Reuters, July 14:

Twitter's cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load, Elon Musk said on Saturday, falling short of his expectation in March that Twitter could reach cash flow positive by June.

"Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else," Musk said in a tweet replying to suggestions on recapitalization....

....MUCH MORE

I don't know whether he is going to be able to pull it off but for some reason I think of the "Man in the Arena" speech. Via the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University:

Theodore Roosevelt delivered the speech entitled “Citizenship in a Republic” at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910. The speech is popularly known as “The Man in the Arena.” His statements at the Sorbonne were part of a larger trip to Europe that also included visits to Vienna, Budapest, and Oslo. On May 5, 1910, he gave his Nobel Prize speech. This trip came in the midst of Roosevelt's frustration with the Taft administration and followed his African safari with Kermit. After completing his tour of Europe, Roosevelt would make a triumphant return to the U.S. 

*****

....It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position, should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their—your—chances of useful service are at an end.

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievement of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.....

....MUCH MORE

The speech was wildly popular.

On Valentine's Day 1884 Theodore Roosevelt's wife and mother both died and his diary entry for the day was:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQn4aNv06aA2s-2BrSCb52Gj32DixX0hDP7nldujEKIscZF3YUL3yPbtXbFAMiwwOqgQRkTpsvPY1G-dsxhXQO2SuEt-5AChhOYQ_hVxze_HOUHAXIRN0H9ojSqo2uwgSglioVEVwxj9pI/s1600/Theodore-Roosevelt's-diary-the-day-his-wife-and-mother-died,-1884.jpg

He traveled to Dakota Territory to "reflect and reenergize" and would later say:

"I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota."
 —Theodore Roosevelt
That's why there is a Roosevelt Center at a small school in North Dakota.