April mailbag brings May takes

The Twitter takeover, my fake job, and a world without Pearl Harbor

Contrary to rumors, there will be no Boring Company takeover of Slow Boring — we are committed to diversity and competition in the boring space.

Benjamin Howard: With Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter in the news, what do you think is the most important corporate takeover in US history?

That question is probably too hard, because what I think is underrated are influential early-stage acquisitions that you don’t necessarily think of as being a huge deal at the time. When Instagram was purchased for $1 billion, the conventional wisdom was that Facebook was massively overpaying in a clear sign of a tech stock bubble (I was at Slate at the time, and arguing that this was a perfectly reasonable buy was a Slatepitch) while in retrospect it was a very shrewd and influential business move.

Google buying YouTube seems like a really big deal to me since if YouTube were an independent company, I think it would be a company that we talk about a lot.

City of Trees: Last Saturday, Milan and some of …