When recording artist Prince got into a contract dispute with his record label, Warner Brothers, he literally changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and was thereafter referred to as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.
Which brings us to The Platform Currently Known As Facebook, which will soon be a name to forget, with a nod to those readers among you for whom that ship sailed long ago, name change or not.
Elon Musk is now worth $230 billion—as much as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, and he has even surpassed Jeff Bezos. But, hey, a billion here, a billion there, why quibble? What was not mentioned in the CNBC piece is Elon Musk’s secret? Taxpayer money. His two companies that helped him to achieve that status – Tesla and SpaceX – “together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support (subsidies),” according to the LA Times.
Considering that it’s lawmakers who decide who gets what, many of them have coincidentally done quite well picking stocks, even though we know that insider trading is illegal – at least for the rest of us. Still, congress is required to disclose their stock transactions. According to NPR, the “STOCK Act is a law that was passed and signed in 2012, (that) requires more disclosures by federal lawmakers when they trade, they purchase, they sell stocks. It also criminalizes trading on inside information.”
As a writer, we love words. New words enter the patois constantly, and always good to keep up, what, eh? Some we appreciate; some leave us utterly gobsmacked. You needed to turn that noun into a verb? Seriously??? Sometimes they make sense. Ofttimes, we roll our eyes at the absurdity. Those are the ones that we know in our heart of hearts will lead us right down the rabbit hole
We thought we’d share a few that have entered the vocabulary, for better or for worse:
Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger and Oculus – all Facebook-owned properties – all went offline Monday, and odd that the outage came the day/morning after the “60 Minutes” interview with former Facebook employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen.
“The documents, first reported in a series of (Wall Street) Journal stories, revealed that the company’s executives understood the negative impacts of Instagram among younger users and that Facebook’s algorithm enabled the spread of misinformation, among other things,” CNBC reported.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Haugen said, among other things, that Facebook is “tearing our societies apart and is causing ethnic violence around the world.”