Thread: MyPillow CEO and right-wing fixture Mike Lindell explained his White House visit with right-wing radio host Eric Metaxas (who tweeted hashtag martial law in support of Lindell).

The interview had deranged conspiracy theories, justifications of violence, and more.

2018 was almost the year we won the #RightToRepair.

Instead, 2018 turned out to be the year we lost #R2R: 20 bills defeated in 20 state houses, and it was mostly @apple's fault.

1/

Apple has a problem. As CEO Tim Cook warned his investors at the conclusion of his company's repair-killing lobbying spree, Apple's profits depend on people throwing away their devices, not fixing them.

By monopolizing repairs, Apple doesn't just get to gouge you on parts and service - the real action is in pronouncing your device DOA, beyond repair. Then you have to buy another one.

3/

Other companies lobbied hard against R2R: John Deere, GM, and other monopolists backed Apple's play. But Apple wrote the playbook, coming up with risible bullshit like claims that blocking independent repair is essential to protecting

Apple's anti-repair FUD got picked up and amplified by Big Car in 2020, when they spent millions fighting an automotive R2R ballot initiative in Massachusetts, claiming that letting independent mechanics at your car would lead to your actual MURDER.

Piper Alpha was an originally designed as an oil producing rig in the North Sea approximately 120 miles North East of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was a fixed leg platform in water depth of 475 Feet of water. The installation sat close to 275 Feet above water to the top of the derrick.

2) It started production in December 1976 for OPCAL joint venture. OPCAL being Occidental Petroleum Caledonia, Texaco Britain, Thomson PLC, and Texas Petroleum LTD. Occidental was the majority stakeholder at 36.5%

3) Occidental being majority stakeholder took control of technical and operational duties with running and operating the rig. When oil production started in 1976 it started with a flow of 250,000 BBL/day and eventually increasing this amount to 300,000 BBL/day.

4) 300,000 BBL/day would account for approximately 10% of the UK’s oil production at the time, so needless to say it was one of the most important rigs in the area. Any gas that was flowing would be flared or consumed by gas turbine generators

5) Around 1980 there was a decision to convert the rig to also process gas along with the oil. This was a major conversion, and if it would have been scoped in from the beginning, most likely construction of the rig would have been more accommodating for gas.

Young, early stage founder asked for any hiring thoughts - figured worth sharing with the twitter-verse if they can be helpful.

1a) Make people do the work they are going to do for you during the interview process.

1b) People talking about work and experience is basically useless, except to evaluate whether this job "makes sense" for someone at this stage of their life - do the dots connect or not? If you can convince people to do a contract project for a month first, even better.

2) Optimize for IQ/horsepower. Talent overruns experience in like 3-6 months and never looks back. If you love someone, but they are missing a skill, you're better off getting them to learn it than hiring someone more skilled but with less upside.

3) Optimize for low drama and ease to work with, in all ways. You want people who just want to get shit done and enjoy themselves, not people who want to bring their personal drama into the workplace.

4) People who went to the best state school in the state they are from, and were overqualified for that school, tend to be undervalued and have a great low ego/high execution/high IQ ratio. They have ivy league brains with middle class values.

There is a lot of bad advice floating around online when it comes to real estate investing.

Time for a stiff drink and some stuff you might not want to hear.

A thread 👇

Most real estate influencers spend 99% of their time trying to sound smart.

They purposely make things too complicated.

When you do this for a while you can tell if a property is worth buying with a napkin and 30 seconds.

The problem with being a big real estate PE firm:

You need to do good deals year after year and deploy 10s or 100s of millions in capital.

It’s a hamster wheel making others wealthy.

The advantage of being you:

One building like this can change your life.

Buying real estate that doesn’t cashflow well because values have risen 10% / yr for 10 yrs while wages have risen 3% / yr for 10 yrs is very risky.

I don’t care how long your interest rate is “fixed” for.

Markets are cyclical. Trends change. Bankruptcy is real.

If you don’t know anyone with money and you have less than $250k of your own cash real estate isn’t the best way to make money.

Even a $500k property (like the one pictured above) requires $150k down and another $100k in cash reserves.