• Anthony Fauci just declared that we are out of the “pandemic phase” of Covid-19. When will we be out of the Anthony Fauci phase?
• That burst of wind you felt was the anguished cries in Silicon Valley as the board of Twitter announced it would accept Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company for some $44 billion. That second burst of wind you felt was a gigantic sigh of relief from the company’s board and its shareholders. Twitter is a very high-profile company, but it is not a profitable one, and Musk has paid a premium of nearly 40 percent over the firm’s share price before he disclosed his interest in it: As lifeboats go, that’s a pretty swank one for investors in the troubled company. Musk, who has had more than a few feuds on Twitter — and feuds with Twitter — may have begun the takeover as a hectobillionaire’s lark, but he appears to be sincere in his commitment to work toward a genuine culture of free speech and transparency at Twitter, suggesting that the firm should make some of its algorithms and content-moderation practices public. When it comes to free speech, culture matters: The First Amendment on its own is not enough to ensure an authentically open public square. And Twitter has long been a partisan political actor, as exemplified by its efforts in the closing days of the 2020 campaign to suppress the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s shenanigans. Our optimism is limited: The best version of Twitter may not be very good. But we are happy to see Elon Musk put some of his money where his mouth is.
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