FREE SPEECH
Tech executive Elon Musk has long had an outsized Twitter presence, with 83.7 million followers on the social media platform, and past tweets that spurred securities fraud charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission related to misleading tweets about Tesla. In a deal announced April 25, Musk will now become the owner of Twitter. The publicly traded company will become private, with Musk – currently the largest shareholder of Twitter – as the sole owner. The board agreed to sell Twitter for $54.20 per share, a total of about $44 billion, which is roughly a 38-percent premium over its current share price. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement. “Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.” Musk’s specific plans remain unknown, but in an April 19 tweet he seems to suggest inflaming a divided user base even more: “A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I think I’ve learned a lot of useless information from crosswords.” – David Steinberg, youngest crossword constructor ever for the New York Times at 14. Now 25, the Pacific Grove resident is still creating crosswords but longs for more (see Cover article).
GOOD WEEK / GREAT WEEK
GOOD:
It can be hard to feel hopeful amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, but one late Pacific Grove couple continues to make a difference in the lives of people who are suffering. In 2021, Saul and Helen Moskowitz left a $2.8 million bequest to the Jewish National Fund, a nonprofit currently working with various partners to resettle Ukrainian refugees in Israel. Those partners include organizations like the Lauder Employment Center in the Negev, which has already helped hundreds of Ukrainian Jews with job training and searching for job placements. The Moskowitzes, who both lived past age 100, were married for 67 years and had no children and retired to Pacific Grove. Saul was born in 1918 in St. Louis, himself the son of Jewish Ukrainian Russian immigrants. “He learned what it means to start over in a new land, and his and Helen’s gift will aid immigrants doing just that,” according to JNF.
GREAT:
It’s a great week for Monterey Peninsula College, which is hosting the first in a four-year series of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Talks, the result of a $4 million Department of Education grant designed to increase opportunities, success and transfer rates for underrepresented students. In addition to the series, money will be used this fall to offer statistics, calculus and pre-calc in both Spanish and English. Other uses include embedding tutors in challenging STEM courses to serve as mentors. The first STEM Talks speaker is Nicole Madfis, PhD, with a speech entitled “The Only One in the Room,” about the challenges and opportunities she faced as a minority woman seeking an education. The speech (which happens at noon on Friday, April 29) is open to the public in person or via Zoom. More details at bit.ly/MPCSTEM429.