this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
548 points (97.6% liked)

News

23296 readers
3537 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] vegeta 115 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Someone explain the joke pwease

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod 91 points 2 months ago (4 children)

It’s an electron microscope of a violin built with individual atoms, as in “I will play the smallest violin in sympathy”

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago

Electron microscope of the worlds smallest violin. A way of mocking other's problems by pretending to pretend to care.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (9 children)

Violins are traditional instruments of cinematic mourning, either as background melody or very famously used literally in Titanic where the orchestra kept playing right up until the ship went down (historically accurate).

Spongebob Squarepants later had a one-off gag where Mr. Krabs wanted to express insincere mourning, so he pulled out a finger-size violin and said something to the effect of "Oh boo hoo. Let me play you a sad song on the world's tiniest violin"

Of course, being Spongebob Squarepants, the gag was executed so flawlessly that it was immediately seamlessly integrated into internet culture.

[–] Crashumbc 7 points 2 months ago

I was doing the world's smallest violin thing in the early eighties as a kid...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

the violin player that stayed to play was named Wallace Hartley and he was awesome.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Hartley

his (emotionally broken, never remarried )fiance eventually received his recovered violin and it later sold for 1.8m.

he's now a sort of town hero from where he was from.

[–] raef 3 points 2 months ago

I think MASH put it in popular culture a long time earlier

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] Mcdolan 9 points 2 months ago

It appears to be the worlds tiniest violin.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Still grossly overvalued.

Remember, this motherfucker bankrupted THREE casinos!

There is no limit to how badly he can fuck up a business.

[–] TenderfootGungi 11 points 2 months ago

Its true value is negative.

[–] RagingSnarkasm 37 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil 28 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

People are treating the "dump" part of a "Pump and Dump" like it's some kind of a vindication, when suckers were already fully fleeced back at its $7B market cap peak.

It's a Mastodon instance with a few thousand users trading at $16/share. Absolutely insane that anyone was buying this garbage at any price.

[–] RagingSnarkasm 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely insane that anyone was buying this garbage at any price.

That bribery money wasn't going to launder itself.

[–] Crashumbc 6 points 2 months ago

Correct answer.

[–] grue 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It matters because Trump becomes free to sell his shares on September 19 (a week from today). I, for one, am hoping that the price goes to $0 and it gets delisted by then!

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 8 points 2 months ago

He's been able to borrow against them for some time. Someone is already holding the bag.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Brainwashed uninformed people trying to show off to their friends how they are the biggest trump supporters ever.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Putting aside any feeling you may have for or against Trump, WTF does TMTG do? From what I can tell, it runs Truth Social and is planning to launch a streaming service.

I did some quick googling and Truth Social appears to be a mastodon instance with a non-default backend that is free to use with 600k active monthly users.

Facebook alone (not including other META products) has 2.9 billion active monthly users.

What’s so valuable about it? Sure, they are probably running ads. But why would someone advertise on Truth Social over Facebook? Is the conversion rate somehow better on truth social?

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago (6 children)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] athairmor 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It’s not valued based on any normal metric. It’s pure meme, speculation, cult and money laundering.

I doubt many investors even look at conversion rates.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Smells very similar to NFT

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Non Flushable Turds?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

But why would someone advertise on Truth Social over Facebook?

Because I could sell star spangled shit on a shingle to that lot for a premium.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What’s so valuable about it?

Nothing.

It's a very unusual situation.

It's basically a proxy for a bet on whether Trump will get a second term. That's why it took a dump after the debate didn't go well.

Supporters want to say they have some TMTG shares, and are happy to pay absurd prices for shares without reference to the actual value.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And outside the cult, it's a bet that Truth Social would become a vector for bribing the president of the United States. If people are going to bribe Trump by pumping his share price, you can get a cut.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Oh come on just because we hate Trump doesn't mean we should kid ourselves, there's a lot of value to having access to 600k of the easiest to scam rubes on the planet.

[–] SassyRamen 3 points 2 months ago

Money + laundering of said money = most shit Dump has his name on

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

What’s so valuable about it?

It's not. And a lot of people in the industry have pointed out that the valuation is pretty wildly decoupled from potential.

The most compelling argument I've heard is that it's a lot of retail -- small -- investors who politically support Trump and have no idea what they're doing buying into a complicated vehicle because Trump's told them that he's gonna make them rich. I remember some article a while back talking about the high proportion of retail investors.

kagis for an example

https://www.ft.com/content/5fdd8a48-ce51-4e3b-b450-49fce86f37d9

Small investors power Trump Media’s market valuation above $13bn

Heavy trading in company behind Truth Social fuels talk of a new cycle of ‘meme stock mania’

Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform is riding a wave of enthusiasm from small investors as a second day of gains took the lossmaking social media group’s valuation above $13bn.

Trump Media & Technology Group topped the leaderboard of most-discussed stocks in WallStreetBets, Reddit’s popular stock trading forum, for several hours on Wednesday.

“Hate Trump but I knew his minions wouldn’t be able to help themselves the moment the ticker changed. Would’ve doubled down if I had any additional funds,” said WallStreetBets user FlapjackInProtest, who claimed he had turned $500 into $6,000 by trading TMTG options. Others reporting winning bets drew praise. WallStreetBets user optimal_burrito replied to someone who posted that buying Trump Media was their first winning trade with the message: “You’re gonna start winning so much you’ll get sick of it #DJT.”

Honestly, I think that there's some argument that the SEC should do something about people getting burned like this, though I'm sure that if they did, Trump would go into another one of his spiels on being oppressed.

Like, you may not like Trump supporters, but I remember reading some articles about people putting their life savings into this. I mean, it's not gonna be pretty.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Everybody be on guard. That uncle is about to hit you up for money after they put all of their non-Trump NFT money into DJT stock.

[–] barnaclebutt 5 points 2 months ago

When is he allowed to cash in on his scam? That's when the uncles will be leaving increasingly desperate phone messages that you will never check.

[–] MeekerThanBeaker 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] ripcord 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

One day Jerboa will support animated gifs...

[–] MeekerThanBeaker 3 points 2 months ago

That sucks. I use Sync.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

John Rekenthaler, vice president of research at Morningstar (MORN+0.470%), previously called DJT an “affinity stock” — one that trades on people’s feelings and perceptions of the former president, rather than its business performance. Rekenthaler warned that Trump Media stock would “go to zero or something close to it” if Trump were to lose the presidential election in November.

These new lows come just weeks before Trump will get the green light to offload his 114.75 million shares of Trump Media, or about 60% of the company’s outstanding stock. The Republican presidential hopeful stands to make upwards of $2 billion from the stock sale — although the value of those returns depends on the share price.

I think that it's going to go to "zero or something close to it" once Trump starts bailing out. I don't think that it's going to need to reach the election and have Trump lose.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Agreed. He doesn’t care about the shareholders. He will just dump and leave the suckers holding the bag.

I just wish the blackout period extended beyond the election. If he lost, his stake could be just a fraction of what it is today.

[–] Evilcoleslaw 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If he has to divulge his divestment it's going to go to 0 before he can sell it all. If he doesn't need to divulge it, it's still going to go close to zero because the market for that stock won't hold if 60% of it hits the market. If he's been able to borrow against it, he'll probably default and leave his lenders holding the bag.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

the market for that stock won't hold if 60% of it hits the market

There was also that legal fight that I haven't been following earlier from some other cofounders trying to get the ability to exit earlier.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/business/trump-media-ownership-fight.html

In their lawsuit, Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky claimed their right to 8 percent of Trump Media’s shares and the ability to sell them immediately. They alleged that Trump Media had unfairly barred their company, United Atlantic, from selling any shares for six months, just as the merger with Digital World was being completed. The timing of the action was punitive and “retaliatory,” Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky alleged.

If they haven't managed to get the ability to exit before Trump, I'm assuming that those guys are going to be jumping ship at the first opportunity as well.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Oh, Donnie, NO! Margie, are you going to buy more stock to prop this up for your big wet boy?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] OhStopYellingAtMe 10 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if that's because most of its value is predicated on him being able to gain an unfair advantage due to his potential position in office.

If so, then this is probably a more accurate indicator of his chances in the election than any pollsters.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

It's exactly this reason.

[–] LEDZeppelin 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Russian money will be coming in at any moment

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] edgemaster72 4 points 2 months ago

Line must go down

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Ha, fucking ha.

load more comments
view more: next ›