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whilewewereyetsinners · 2 years

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Colossal says it hopes to use advanced genetic sequencing to resurrect two extinct mammals — not just the giant, ice age mammoth, but also a mid-sized marsupial known as the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, that died out less than a century ago. On its website, the company vows: “Combining the science of genetics with the business of discovery, we endeavor to jumpstart nature’s ancestral heartbeat.”

In-Q-Tel, its new investor, is registered as a nonprofit venture capital firm funded by the CIA. On its surface, the group funds technology startups with the potential to safeguard national security. In addition to its long-standing pursuit of intelligence and weapons technologies, the CIA outfit has lately displayed an increased interest in biotechnology and particularly DNA sequencing.

“Why the interest in a company like Colossal, which was founded with a mission to “de-extinct” the wooly mammoth and other species?” reads an In-Q-Tel blog post published on September 22. “Strategically, it’s less about the mammoths and more about the capability.”

“Biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy are critical for humanity to further develop. It is important for all facets of our government to develop them and have an understanding of what is possible,” Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm wrote in an email to The Intercept. (A spokesperson for Lamm stressed that while Thiel provided Church with $100,000 in funding to launch the woolly mammoth project that became Colossal, he is not a stakeholder like Robbins, Hilton, Winklevoss Capital, and In-Q-Tel.)

Colossal uses CRISPR gene editing, a method of genetic engineering based on a naturally occurring type of DNA sequence. […] The eponymous gene editing technique was developed to function the same way, allowing users to snip unwanted genes and program a more ideal version of the genetic code.

The embrace of this technology, according to In-Q-Tel’s blog post, will help allow U.S. government agencies to read, write, and edit genetic material, and, importantly, to steer global biological phenomena that impact “nation-to-nation competition” while enabling the United States “to help set the ethical, as well as the technological, standards” for its use.

Okay, am I the only one that finds the idea of US government agencies having the authority to use this technology completely terrifying?

I remember when CRISPR technology was first developed bioethicists were like yeah, you shouldn’t do that, and everyone else was like shut up and think of the children! We can eradicate birth defects with this!! And have they eradicated birth defects with this? Don’t be silly, of course not! No, we’re going to build supersoldiers or morally-vacant human robots or something, that’s way more important!

#cia #aside from the usual just because you can doesn’t mean you should that all scientists should be forced to dwell on daily #the CIA has done so much horrifying human experimentation that they’re the last people who should be allowed to have their hands on this #and why on earth are they allowed to have a venture capital firm?? Our government is beyond evil #bioethics #or the lack thereof

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joeygoldy · 6 months

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Useful Tips for Becoming a Successful Agriculture Investor

Agriculture investment refers to the allocation of financial resources, capital, or assets into various aspects of the agricultural sector with the expectation of generating a return on investment (ROI). This could mean investing monies in agriculture land for sale such as coconut land for sale in Sri Lanka, or other types of investments. It involves deploying funds in activities and projects related to agriculture for the purpose of profit, income generation, or long-term wealth creation. Agriculture investment can take many forms, including:

Farmland Acquisition: Purchasing agricultural land for the cultivation of crops or the raising of livestock. This can involve both large-scale and small-scale farming operations.

Infrastructure Development: Investing in the construction and improvement of infrastructure such as irrigation systems, roads, storage facilities, and processing plants to enhance agricultural productivity and efficiency.

Technological Advancements: Funding the development and adoption of agricultural technologies, such as precision agriculture, automation, and biotechnology, to improve crop yields and reduce operational costs.

Agribusiness Ventures: Investing in agribusinesses, such as food processing, distribution, and marketing, that are part of the agricultural value chain.

Research and Development: Supporting research initiatives related to agriculture to develop new crop varieties, pest-resistant strains, and sustainable farming practices.

Input Supply: Investing in the production and distribution of agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and machinery.

Commodity Trading: Speculating on the future prices of agricultural commodities, such as grains, oilseeds, and livestock, through commodity markets or futures contracts.

Sustainable Agriculture: Funding practices and projects aimed at sustainable and environmentally responsible farming methods, which can include organic farming, agroforestry, and conservation efforts.

Rural Development: Supporting initiatives that improve the overall economic and social well-being of rural communities, often through investments in education, healthcare, and infrastructure.

Venture Capital and Start-ups: Investing in start-ups and companies focused on innovations in agriculture, such as vertical farming, aquaculture, or agricultural technology (AgTech).

Agriculture investment is important for food security, economic development, and job creation in many regions. However, it also comes with risks related to weather conditions, commodity price fluctuations, and market dynamics. Investors often conduct thorough research and risk assessments before committing their resources to agricultural ventures. Additionally, they may need to consider factors like government policies, environmental regulations, and social impacts on their investment decisions in the agricultural sector.

How to become a successful agriculture investor

Becoming a successful agriculture investor requires a combination of financial acumen, agricultural knowledge, and a strategic approach to investment. Here are some steps to help you become a successful agriculture investor:

Educate Yourself: Gain a strong understanding of the agricultural sector, including the different sub-sectors (crops, livestock, agribusiness, etc.). Stay updated on industry trends, market conditions, and emerging technologies.

Set Clear Investment Goals: Define your investment objectives, whether it is long-term wealth creation, income generation, or diversification of your investment portfolio.

Risk Assessment: Understand and assess the risks associated with agriculture investments, such as weather-related risks, market volatility, and regulatory changes, whether you are looking at land for sale or any other type of investment.

Develop a Diversified Portfolio: Diversify your investments across different agricultural sectors and geographic regions to spread risk.

Market Research: Conduct thorough market research to identify promising investment opportunities and potential demand for agricultural products.

Build a Network: Establish connections with farmers, agricultural experts, government agencies, and industry stakeholders who can provide insights and opportunities.

Financial Planning: Create a budget and financial plan that outlines your investment capital, expected returns, and cash flow requirements.

Select the Right Investment Type: Choose the type of agriculture investment that aligns with your goals, whether it is farmland, agribusiness ventures, or agricultural technology.

Due Diligence: Conduct comprehensive due diligence on potential investments, including assessing the quality of farmland, the financial health of agribusinesses, and the technology's potential for scalability and profitability.

Sustainable Practices: Consider investments in sustainable and environmentally responsible agriculture practices, as they are gaining importance in the industry.

Risk Management: Implement risk management strategies, such as insurance, to protect your investments from unforeseen events like natural disasters or crop failures.

Continuous Learning: Stay informed about changes in the agricultural industry and adapt your investment strategy accordingly.

Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Understand and comply with local, national, and international regulations and tax laws that may impact your agriculture investments.

Monitor and Adjust: Regularly review the performance of your investments and be prepared to make adjustments or exit underperforming ones.

Long-Term Perspective: Agriculture investments often require a long-term perspective, so be patient and avoid making impulsive decisions based on short-term market fluctuations.

Seek Professional Advice: Consult with financial advisors, agricultural experts, and legal professionals to ensure that your investments are structured and managed effectively.

Successful agriculture investment often involves a mix of financial expertise, industry knowledge, and a willingness to adapt to changing conditions. It is important to approach agriculture investment with a well-thought-out strategy, and to be prepared for both opportunities and challenges in this sector.

#Agriculture investment refers to the allocation of financial resources #capital #or assets into various aspects of the agricultural sector with the expectation of generating a return on investment (ROI). This could mean #or other types of investments. It involves deploying funds in activities and projects related to agriculture for the purpose of profit #income generation #or long-term wealth creation. Agriculture investment can take many forms #including:#●#Farmland Acquisition: Purchasing agricultural land for the cultivation of crops or the raising of livestock. This can involve both large-sc #Infrastructure Development: Investing in the construction and improvement of infrastructure such as irrigation systems #roads #storage facilities #and processing plants to enhance agricultural productivity and efficiency.#Technological Advancements: Funding the development and adoption of agricultural technologies #such as precision agriculture #automation #and biotechnology #to improve crop yields and reduce operational costs.#Agribusiness Ventures: Investing in agribusinesses #such as food processing #distribution #and marketing #that are part of the agricultural value chain.#Research and Development: Supporting research initiatives related to agriculture to develop new crop varieties #pest-resistant strains #and sustainable farming practices.#Input Supply: Investing in the production and distribution of agricultural inputs like seeds #fertilisers #pesticides #and machinery.

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txttletale · 5 months

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are there any critiques of AI art or maybe AI in general that you would agree with?

AI art makes it a lot easier to make bad art on a mass production scale which absolutely floods art platforms (sucks). LLMs make it a lot easier to make content slop on a mass production scale which absolutely floods search results (sucks and with much worse consequences). both will be integrated into production pipelines in ways that put people out of jobs or justify lower pay for existing jobs. most AI-produced stuff is bad. the loudest and most emphatic boosters of this shit are soulless venture capital guys with an obvious and profound disdain for the concept of art or creative expression. the current wave of hype around it means that machine learning is being incorporated into workflows and places where it provides no benefit and in fact makes services and production meaningfully worse. it is genuinely terrifying to see people looking to chatGPT for personal and professional advice. the process of training AIs and labelling datasets involves profound exploitation of workers in the global south. the ability of AI tech to automate biases while erasing accountability is chilling. seems unwise to put a lot of our technological basket in a completely opaque black box basket (mixing my metaphors ab it with that one). bing ai wont let me generate 'tesla CEO meat mistake' because it hates fun

#ask #ai art

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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No, Uber's (still) not profitable

Going to Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

Bezzle (n): 1. "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it" (JK Gabraith) 2. Uber.

Uber was, is, and always will be a bezzle. There are just intrinsic limitations to the profits available to operating a taxi fleet, even if you can misclassify your employees as contractors and steal their wages, even as you force them to bear the cost of buying and maintaining your taxis.

The magic of early Uber – when taxi rides were incredibly cheap, and there were always cars available, and drivers made generous livings behind the wheel – wasn't magic at all. It was just predatory pricing.

Uber lost $0.41 on every dollar they brought in, lighting $33b of its investors' cash on fire. Most of that money came from the Saudi royals, funneled through Softbank, who brought you such bezzles as WeWork – a boring real-estate company masquerading as a high-growth tech company, just as Uber was a boring taxi company masquerading as a tech company.

Predatory pricing used to be illegal, but Chicago School economists convinced judges to stop enforcing the law on the grounds that predatory pricing was impossible because no rational actor would choose to lose money. They (willfully) ignored the obvious possibility that a VC fund could invest in a money-losing business and use predatory pricing to convince retail investors that a pile of shit of sufficient size must have a pony under it somewhere.

This venture predation let investors – like Prince Bone Saw – cash out to suckers, leaving behind a money-losing business that had to invent ever-sweatier accounting tricks and implausible narratives to keep the suckers on the line while they blew town. A bezzle, in other words:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber is a true bezzle innovator, coming up with all kinds of fairy tales and sci-fi gimmicks to explain how they would convert their money-loser into a profitable business. They spent $2.5b on self-driving cars, producing a vehicle whose mean distance between fatal crashes was half a mile. Then they paid another company $400 million to take this self-licking ice-cream cone off their hands:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Amazingly, self-driving cars were among the more plausible of Uber's plans. They pissed away hundreds of millions on California's Proposition 22 to institutionalize worker misclassification, only to have the rule struck down because they couldn't be bothered to draft it properly. Then they did it again in Massachusetts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/15/simple-as-abc/#a-big-ask

Remember when Uber was going to plug the holes in its balance sheet with flying cars? Flying cars! Maybe they were just trying to soften us up for their IPO, where they advised investors that the only way they'd ever be profitable is if they could replace every train, bus and tram ride in the world:

https://48hills.org/2019/05/ubers-plans-include-attacking-public-transit/

Honestly, the only way that seems remotely plausible is when it's put next to flying cars for comparison. I guess we can be grateful that they never promised us jetpacks, or, you know, teleportation. Just imagine the market opportunity they could have ascribed to astral projection!

Narrative capitalism has its limits. Once Uber went public, it had to produce financial disclosures that showed the line going up, lest the bezzle come to an end. These balance-sheet tricks were as varied as they were transparent, but the financial press kept falling for them, serving as dutiful stenographers for a string of triumphant press-releases announcing Uber's long-delayed entry into the league of companies that don't lose more money every single day.

One person Uber has never fooled is Hubert Horan, a transportation analyst with decades of experience who's had Uber's number since the very start, and who has done yeoman service puncturing every one of these financial "disclosures," methodically sifting through the pile of shit to prove that there is no pony hiding in it.

In 2021, Horan showed how Uber had burned through nearly all of its cash reserves, signaling an end to its subsidy for drivers and rides, which would also inevitably end the bezzle:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more

In mid, 2022, Horan showed how the "profit" Uber trumpeted came from selling off failed companies it had acquired to other dying rideshare companies, which paid in their own grossly inflated stock:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/05/a-lousy-taxi/#a-giant-asterisk

At the end of 2022, Horan showed how Uber invented a made-up, nonstandard metric, called "EBITDA profitability," which allowed them to lose billions and still declare themselves to be profitable, a lie that would have been obvious if they'd reported their earnings using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Like clockwork, Uber has just announced – once again – that it is profitable, and once again, the press has credulously repeated the claim. So once again, Horan has published one of his magisterial debunkings on Naked Capitalism:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-thirty-three-uber-isnt-really-profitable-yet-but-is-getting-closer-the-antitrust-case-against-uber.html

Uber's $394m gains this quarter come from paper gains to untradable shares in its loss-making rivals – Didi, Grab, Aurora – who swapped stock with Uber in exchange for Uber's own loss-making overseas divisions. Yes, it's that stupid: Uber holds shares in dying companies that no one wants to buy. It declared those shares to have gained value, and on that basis, reported a profit.

Truly, any big number multiplied by an imaginary number can be turned into an even bigger number.

Now, Uber also reported "margin improvements" – that is, it says that it loses less on every journey. But it didn't explain how it made those improvements. But we know how the company did it: they made rides more expensive and cut the pay to their drivers. A 2.9m ride in Manhattan is now $50 – if you get a bargain! The base price is more like $70:

https://www.wired.com/story/uber-ceo-will-always-say-his-company-sucks/

The number of Uber drivers on the road has a direct relationship to the pay Uber offers those drivers. But that pay has been steeply declining, and with it, the availability of Ubers. A couple weeks ago, I found myself at the Burbank train station unable to get an Uber at all, with the app timing out repeatedly and announcing "no drivers available."

Normally, you can get a yellow taxi at the station, but years of Uber's predatory pricing has caused a drawdown of the local taxi-fleet, so there were no taxis available at the cab-rank or by dispatch. It took me an hour to get a cab home. Uber's bezzle destroyed local taxis and local transit – and replaced them with worse taxis that cost more.

Uber won't say why its margins are improving, but it can't be coming from scale. Before the pandemic, Uber had far more rides, and worse margins. Uber has diseconomies of scale: when you lose money on every ride, adding more rides increases your losses, not your profits.

Meanwhile, Lyft – Uber's also-ran competitor – saw its margins worsen over the same period. Lyft has always been worse at lying about it finances than Uber, but it is in essentially the exact same business (right down to the drivers and cars – many drivers have both apps on their phones). So Lyft's financials offer a good peek at Uber's true earnings picture.

Lyft is actually slightly better off than Uber overall. It spent less money on expensive props for its long con – flying cars, robotaxis, scooters, overseas clones – and abandoned them before Uber did. Lyft also fired 24% of its staff at the end of 2022, which should have improved its margins by cutting its costs.

Uber pays its drivers less. Like Lyft, Uber practices algorithmic wage discrimination, Veena Dubal's term describing the illegal practice of offering workers different payouts for the same work. Uber's algorithm seeks out "pickers" who are choosy about which rides they take, and converts them to "ants" (who take every ride offered) by paying them more for the same job, until they drop all their other gigs, whereupon the algorithm cuts their pay back to the rates paid to ants:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

All told, wage theft and wage cuts by Uber transferred $1b/quarter from labor to Uber's shareholders. Historically, Uber linked fares to driver pay – think of surge pricing, where Uber charged riders more for peak times and passed some of that premium onto drivers. But now Uber trumpets a custom pricing algorithm that is the inverse of its driver payment system, calculating riders' willingness to pay and repricing every ride based on how desperate they think you are.

This pricing is a per se antitrust violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, America's original antitrust law. That's important because Sherman 2 is one of the few antitrust laws that we never stopped enforcing, unlike the laws banning predator pricing:

https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/sites/ilr.law.uiowa.edu/files/2023-02/Woodcock.pdf

Uber claims an 11% margin improvement. 6-7% of that comes from algorithmic price discrimination and service cutbacks, letting it take 29% of every dollar the driver earns (up from 22%). Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi himself says that this is as high as the take can get – over 30%, and drivers will delete the app.

Uber's food delivery service – a baling wire-and-spit Frankenstein's monster of several food apps it bought and glued together – is a loser even by the standards of the sector, which is unprofitable as a whole and experiencing an unbroken slide of declining demand.

Put it all together and you get a picture of the kind of taxi company Uber really is: one that charges more than traditional cabs, pays drivers less, and has fewer cars on the road at times of peak demand, especially in the neighborhoods that traditional taxis had always underserved. In other words, Uber has broken every one of its promises.

We replaced the "evil taxi cartel" with an "evil taxi monopolist." And it's still losing money.

Even if Lyft goes under – as seems inevitable – Uber can't attain real profitability by scooping up its passengers and drivers. When you're losing money on every ride, you just can't make it up in volume.

Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA_BREA_TAR_PITS,_LOS_ANGELES.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter

Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA_BREA_TAR_PITS,_LOS_ANGELES.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #bezzles #hubert horan #uber #rideshare #accounting tricks #financial engineering #late-stage capitalism #narrative capitalism #lyft #transit #uber eats #venture predation #algorithmic wage discrimination

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rubra-wav · 2 months

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Vox x reader drabble

A/N Idk, man. I just wanted to write sumn softer with him, and this came out. Couldn't figure out a name for it

Cw: SFW, Gn!reader, use of the petname dollface/doll, bully him bully him bully him

You sat in Vox's lap as he worked, head on his chest, listening to the oddly comforting sound of his internal mechanisms whirring away under ear.

It had been rather tiring of a day for you to say the least, and although the demon had been rather surprised you had dare ventured into his observation room, he hadn't exactly been against you taking up the current position you held against him so long as you didn't distract him until he finished up.

The arm that had wrapped around your waist to pull you to sit in the space between his thighs had taken up residence on your hip, gently rubbed circles against it absentmindedly while his other hand typed rather loudly.

As you had been pulled against him, you'd practically melted into his embrace. The observation room was very cold so as to not cause all the technology (including Vox himself) to overheat, and he was much warmer than said room.

Your tired eyes cracked open, and you looked up at him through your lashes as you pressed your chin against his chest upon hearing Vox let out an irritated his.

His red eyes narrowed at the monitor before him, brows angrily furrowed as he grit his teeth. He could feel your gaze on him as his lip curled and somewhat pushed himself to calm down a bit.

"You okay?" You asked.

Vox sighed, eyes somewhat softening as he forced himself to look away from the screen displaying numbers in front of him. The ghost of a smile spread across his face as the light from his monitor illuminated your sleepy expression.

The demon would never be able to quite admit the way just seeing and feeling you pressing against him, looking up at him with somewhat messy hair and eyes, which shone with adoration made him feel.

He was sure you were aware anyway, as embarrassing as that was.

"I'm just peachy, dollface. Stocks are down slightly from last year, is all." He said, bringing the hand on his keyboard to rest on the top of your head, running his fingers through it to smoothe out the wayward strands.

You hummed at the contact, it petering off into a slight snicker as you considered his words. "You're loaded already. Would losing some really be that bad?" You watched his smile fade as his expression soured again, his hand in your hair coming to a stop.

"Yes. Yes, it would be." He said pointedly. You laughed at the way he said it and moved around to sit facing towards him, knees on the soft leather of the seat in between his legs as you leaned up towards his glowering expression.

Vox's cheeks tinted light blue as your face stopped just before your nose pressed against his monitor, your hands resting on his shoulders casually. "I know you're capitalism king, but you really ought to stop being so greedy, baby~" you cooed at him, grinning as his sour expression became irritatedly flustered at your tone.

"You know damn well what stock prices falling could mean. What if there's a crash or somethi- oh-!" he stopped short as your lips made contact with his monitor once on his cheek, then again and again and again - peppering him with kisses.

"Doll- (Name)!" He exclaimed, glitching slightly as you felt his display heat up under your at your sudden onslaught of affection. You chuckled as you felt his hands grip onto your hips as if he were trying to steady himself.

When you finally stopped kissing him, you leaned back with a somewhat smug look on your face as you looked at his pouting and flustered expression.

"It's not funny." He grumbled.

"Yeah, it is actually." You said. His pout only deepened, prompting you to tilt your head at him, laughter quieting to slight giggles.

Vox admired the way your eyelids drooped again, you looking at him with a mischievous smirk in a way only you were allowed to.

He sighed deeply, urging his heart to stop racing in his chest and tried to sound disappointed in you. "And would you look at that? You distracted me from my work. I ought to tell you to shoo." He said with a raised brow, expression now calm.

You raised your eyebrows right back at him, smiling as you already knew the answer to the question. "But are you gonna?"

You two engaged in a silent staring contest for a good 5 seconds before Vox grumbled a 'no' under his breath as he turned away from you bitterly.

You burrowed your face into his neck with a muffled proclamation of 'thought so', snuggling into him all the more and him begrudgingly reciprocating.

I'm probably gonna post this, then notice a ton of spelling or grammar errors tomorrow, but who cares~~ (morning me will)

Masterlist

#vox #hazbin hotel #vox headcanons #vox x reader #hazbin hotel vox #vox fluff

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seat-safety-switch · 1 year

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When you’re standing on the outside, it may seem bizarre to you that rocket scientists aren’t paid more. They are literally rocket scientists, after all, the only people in the world who are not allowed to say “it’s not rocket science” at work. And yet they are often paid somewhat less than a regular old hard-hatted engineer, involved in expensive (and fragile) projects to construct overpriced pedestrian bridges for overpriced private universities. Why is that?

One reason is that the rocket scientists don’t pose much of a threat to management. There’s more of them than there are jobs available building rockets. If they quit, then the bosses will just hire slightly dumber rocket scientists, and pay them even less. Rockets will still go up, and they’ll go where they want to, because of the well-documented history and best practices of the industry. They can keep coasting on this for a little while, maybe even decades, with a barely-perceptible drop in quality. Maybe it’s already happened. Maybe tomorrow is when we find out what the first part of a rocket that has been quality-faded into oblivion is. Hope you don’t live under the flight path.

There is, of course, another approach, and that’s “being a dirtbag.” I myself have a lot of experience in this particular field, and I think it is one of those multi-skilled disciplines that can expand into rocket science if so required. The aforementioned best practices of this industry have been written down and documented so well, in fact, that just some asshole off the street like myself can check them out of the library (using an assumed name, of course,) read them, and know generally all that humanity has figured out over the last century about making rockets that don’t explode. Then, in the language of Silicon Valley influencers, I can “disrupt” the industry.

Of course, by “disrupt” I really mean grift. If management can’t really tell the difference between good rocket scientists and slightly less good ones, then it stands to reason that they’ll give completely bad ones the benefit of the doubt. I can get billions of dollars of venture capital for my space-flight startup, shoot a few Estes rockets into the ceiling of the cafeteria, and still pocket enough dough to be able to afford a base-model Honda Civic from the 1980s. It’s not brain surgery.

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probablyasocialecologist · 6 months

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The farmer in Bangladesh or the street vendor in Brazil doesn’t have nearly the impact of the venture capitalist in California or the petroleum oligarchs of Russia and the Middle East. The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%. The rich are bad for the Earth, and the richer they are the bigger their adverse impact (including the impact of money invested in banks, and stocks financing fossil fuels and other forms of climate destruction). In other words, we are not all the same size. Billionaires loom large over our politics and environment in ways that are hard to understand without taking on the shocking scale of their wealth. That impact, both through their climate emissions and their manipulations of politics and public life means they are not at all like the rest of humanity. They are behemoths, and they mostly use their outsize power in ugly ways – both in how much they consume and how much they influence the world’s climate response. Let me put it this way: if you made $10,000 a week – a princely sum by the standards of most people – you would have to work every week from the year of Jesus’s birth until this week to earn over a billion dollars. To earn as much as Elon Musk’s net worth at that rate – currently $180bn, according to Forbes – you’d have to work every week for more than a third of a million years – that is, since before Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa.

[...]

Billionaires are a menace to the rest of us: their sheer political size warps our public life. Disproportionately older, white and male, they function as unelected powers, a sort of freelance global aristocracy who are too often trying to reign over the rest of us. Some critics think that the supergiant tech corporations that have spawned so many modern billionaires operate in ways that resemble feudalism more than capitalism, and, certainly, plenty of billionaires operate like the lords of the Earth while campaigning to protect the economic inequality that made them so rich and makes so many others so poor. They use their power in arbitrary, reckless and often environmentally destructive ways.

#climate change #inequality #billionaires #rebecca solnit #compost the rich

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jcteamcapitals · 2 years

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The past 14 years, there has been a trend in the United States of women raising capital from VCs. Deal counts by state, industry, and stage are broken down, and a few female-founded enterprises and businesses are highlighted.

#venture capital investment #US Venture Capital startups #Venture Capital firms India #venture capital #meaning of venture capital #venture capitalism meaning #venture capital is concerned with #venture capital market size india #venture capital in india #venture capital firms in india #venture capitalists #venture capitalists in India #top venture capital firms in india #JC Team Capital

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levyfiles · 27 days

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is it just me or is this kinda not a good idea?

I think it's a gamble. And like anyone who cares about something deeply, watching it take a high-stakes gamble can be terrifying.

What I think people don't take into consideration is just how flooded their recent youtube videos have been with scammy sponsors and cheap fast-product get-rich-quick scheming vendors. Sure, their writers and producers made it fun by adding some really excellent characters to the mix, but I wouldn't touch a thing like Mistplay if you paid me as much as they paid Watcher for their video. However, the thing is, look around at all the youtubers you know who are up and coming. You can't make it on that platform without advertising trash to your audience.

With the vimeo OTT program, i believe there is a shared revenue and more incentive to promote more simple dedicated engagement; it's not ad sense clicks; it's just clicks. It's a soft start and there are going to be some kinks to work out but if they get to control their brand more and decide what gets made without needing some nu-venture, cash hungry sponsor to look at it, then I think they could change media online for the better.

Having said all that, the execution? Not their best. Watcher--listen, I love them so much--has had a consistent and terminal administrative problem and that means stuff falls through the cracks. From a communicative standpoint, when you're about to take your company in a controversial direction, you should know two things.

The backlash! You gotta get ahead of it. You need your PR team on the go a MONTH before launch

Always soft launch a big move. Get your feelers out for how people react especially if you don't have the kind of shark PR person who would know already that people don't respond well to paying for something they didn't used to pay for.

Watcher is still a baby company in so many forms and I will wholeheartedly support their move to do what they can to keep control of their creative content today and in the future. I'm not in their offices so I can't make as prescriptive a judgement as Twitter feels emboldened to about capitalism and greed or whoever they think their audience is however I can and will say that with any form of growth, the growing pains are going to show. i'll give them grace as they pivot and figure out how best to move forward especially with the volume of vitriol the internet loves to spew when they feel entitled to art forms that used to be free.

I'll say it again. At least we're no longer having garbage peddled at us regardless how much I crave Fabian Sax biblically.

#watcher #watcher tv #ryan bergara #shane madej #steven lim

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bu-blegh-ost · 5 months

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A short essay about how Caspian is mathematically not a mole (ep. 115 spoilers) (and for the whole series for that matter)

Okay, alright guys, I saw your concerns. I saw it all, and you are right to be worried that your favourite blue wet man's blue and equally wet best friend may turn out to be a traitor. And so am I, trust me. Which is why I went through every single bit of Caspian's past I could dig out to create an unltimate timeline of his entire goddamn life to see it it'd be plausible for him to become a mole at any point in time and ultimately prove his innocence! If that's something you're interested in reading, then buckle up!

"Jay, you come from a division of soliders that were purposely put to infiltrate pirate crews, especially the new and upcoming ones. This is totally seperate from the Black-Ops situation that you learned about in the Stronghold. And you, in this book, can tell that there is a plant on Lizzie's crew."

This, of course is something I need to point out first. Whoever Lizzie's mole might be, they are not a doppelganger. They are not a clone, or Black-Ops, just a solider of the Navy, a person that must have gotten into the Navy via regular recruitment, be trained by them and then put into a spy division. Jay ofc had this entire process sped up, due to her grandma's influence, but no one other than her, especially an Undersea citizen, who would probably have to put in extra effort to be trusted given their shaky political situation few years back, would get the same treatment. What I'm trying to say, Caspian would need time, at least few years of training to become a mole they'd trust to infiltrate a crew, and not just any crew might I add. More on that later. Let's go back to his most early years for now. This is a fragment of episode 84 in which Caspian talks to Gillion abt his early life:

C: We all have family. I consider my life up here, this crew to be my found family. But my previous…tribe with the water genasi in the Undersea, where I was growing up…sort of in a [illegible]... remember me telling you about the outskirts? We um…was very nomadic, quite a, quite a peaceful, tranquil life, but it was always, you know…mixed with this life of poverty and my family wasn’t very…wouldn’t really have much but the water around us, and each other, I suppose, so uh…You know...I mean my mother didn’t make it past old age, and uh…

G: I’m sorry…

C: When my sister left the tribe, my father sort of fell into a depression of sorts and he stopped moving around. And when we stayed in one place, I was 18 or so, maybe 16, it was a while ago, and then…that’s when I left as well. Ventured to the Oversea, and um…and it’s history, so that’s my family. Not sure what they’re up to these days, I mean…I know my sister went to the capital, where you were.

G: Pirating is a pretty lucrative business, maybe if…we managed to find them or run into them, we can give something back, put them in a better situation.

C: …Well um…I mean this was 10-15, 10 to 12 to 15 years ago, quite some, quite some time, so I don’t even know if my father is alive still, I mean I don’t really have the desire to go back to the undersea, Gill.

G: Wha-why not?

C: Because I like my life up here. This is where I’m happy.

So, before we go to what all of that entails, one more quick crazy thing to mention: so, Caspian's sister is an Elder of the Undersea. Like for sure. This is confirmed by this part from ep. 79:

The Triton who you remember as the Elder Odolaf, who looks like he is about to speak, but is cut off by the water genasi, who has been doing a lot of talking thus far, who is Elder Celeste. They stand up and there is a familiarity that you notice now in their face. It’s like you have met them before, but not in the way that you know them because they are the Elder, but in a way that it’s like, they look like somebody you know. And she has sort of these uh, white tied-up like dreads that are tied up in like a bun and they come across the face and then one side is shaved. And there are beads and piercings in her hair, her ears are a little bit more sea elf-like in the way that they are pointed and they kind of like gradient into pink. They all kind of wear the same sort of ornate robes, though hers is more, I guess faded and like cut a bit, look a bit more warriorous, or like tribal, but still very well-made and professional.

Tribal clothing, a water genasi, that looks like someone Gillion saw before in the face. The only water genasi Gillion met after leaving the Undersea is Caspian. Elder Celeste is Caspian's sister. Wild. Anyway, not what we're here for, but I needed to mention that.

The crazier thing is that Caspian left to Oversea when he was 16-18, and it has been 10-15 years since then. That means Caspian is currently 26 at possible youngest, and 33 at his oldest, which was surprising to me, I did not imagine Caspian as a man in his 30s! But that's straight up facts, so holy shit, you know?

Okay, so I'm going to list a lot of small facts that determine a lot of ages in quick succession. I hope it's not gonna be too scary to look at, I'll simplify it all at the end. [Deep inhale]

Right now Gillion is 22. So when Caspian left the Undersea, Gillion was 12-7. Jay is 21 and Ava was 2 years older, same age as Lizzie. So Lizzie is 23 now. When Caspian left the Undersea, she was 13-8. Chip is 19, so Lizzie is 4 years older. Hole in the Sea happened when Chip was 9, so Lizzie was 13. So Caspian left the Undersea around the same time Lizzie crashed on the uninhabited island with Chey after the Hole.

It's a lot, I know, I know. So let me clear this up a little.

Hole in the sea was 10 years ago. Chip was 9, Lizzie was 13. 10 years ago Caspian was in the age between 16 and 23, and he left the Undersea when he was 16 or 18. So roughly at the same time the Black Sea happened, Caspian came to the surface for the first time.

(also pls note that we are talking in estimates, casue in ep. 36 Lizzie says she was 11 when the hole happened, but in ep. 101 she says she was the same age as Ava which by the power of math would put her at 13. Either way, somewhere around that age)

After that, Lizzie spend some time on an uninhabited island with Chey, the Black Rose cook, who sacrificed herself for Liz, so she could survive and died shortly after. We do not know how much time passed, but I assume no longer than few months, and after that she was saved by Captain Shadowbeard where she met Caspian. They were a part of Shadowbeard's crew, Caspian saved her from the massacre where Shadowbeard was killed, and then Lizzie went on to create her own crew, Grandberry Pirates with Caspian never leaving her for a second since he met her. That means that the only time Caspian could have joined the Navy would be RIGHT after he came to the Oversea for the first time, roughly at the same time Lizzie was stranded on an island, and in that short period of time (between Lizzie's crash on the island and her being found by Shadowbeard) he would have to find the time to be trusted and accepted by Navy, get trained specifically for infiltration AND infiltrate not anyones BUT FUCKING SHADOWBEARD'S SHIP. Not a NEW crew. A crew of one of the most legendary pirates on the sea. Cause before Lizzie, Caspian was Sadowbeard's crew member, and since then he never stopped being a pirate, so if he was a solider, he would have had to be one before Shadowbeard. And remeber what Grizzly said in 115: "Jay, you come from a division of soliders that were purposely put to infiltrate pirate crews, especially the new and upcoming ones."

Shadowbeard was not new. Not upcoming. He was dangerous and Navy must have had the balls of steal to send a rookie solider, which Caspian would have been at that point in time, to infiltrate him. The numbers say it's impossible. Guys, the numbers! They don't add up!

Anyway, so basically Caspian could not be a mole. He is not a new pirate, he was not a member of a fresh crew, becaue his pirate journey did not start with Lizzy, it started with Shadowbeard. Grandberry Pirates is a new crew, but Caspian is not a newbie in it. You know who is? Rudith. I mean what kind of doctor lets a bunch of rowdy pirates have a secret base under a place where sick and vulnerable rest??? Like ANY other place would have been better and more respectful! Also you know what's interesting? Gillion could heal these people with lay on hands easily, and yet the only thing Rudith did for them was give them potions that didn't seem to help and look after them on purely non-medical level. Bro didn't do shit. Like, why would you even become a doctor without having access to healing magic? The answer, you are not. You are a Navy solider in disguise.

Okay, okay, I'm done, that's all. If you got this far, you are a hero, thank you for reading this insanely long ramble, but that's kind of the conclusions that I came to, of course, any counter-theories and discussion in general is very much welcome! I'd love to hear your opinions! Love you guys, bye~

#jrwi riptide #just roll with it #jrwi #gillion jrwi #gillion tidestrider #caspian jrwi #jrwi caspian #elizabeth lafayette #lizzie jrwi #riptide spoilers #spoilers #jrwi spoilers

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transmutationisms · 1 year

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…so can you expand on the psychological ramifications of stewy being in private equity? that has definitely been lost on me given that i barely understand what private equity is

ok this is an underrated funny aspect of the show imo, and also good insight into stewy and kendall. i'm trying to spare you a bunch of stupid business jargon but basically, maesbury capital (which stewy represents but sandy/sandi ultimately own) is a private equity fund, meaning it's a big pile of a bunch of rich people's money, and stewy's job is to take that money and invest in private companies. a PE fund can invest at a few different points: at the very beginning of a startup's life (venture or angel investing), at a point where the company is trying to grow or restructure (growth investing), or when a company is struggling financially, in which case the fund is usually planning to either dismantle it and sell it for scrap, restructure and go public, or sell it for cash to another company. PE firms like to present themselves as doing a lot of growth or venture investing, but in truth many/most are primarily engaging in this third category of investment strategies, because they're lucrative (and because many startups are stupid, and only good for generating investor payouts).

so, when kendall went and dismantled vaulter in season 2 because logan decided that selling most of it for scrap would be more profitable? that's basically a dramatisation of what stewy does routinely, except of course the exact financial instruments and strategies will differ because stewy represents a PE firm. like, if kendall's venture capitalist schemes tell us about his delusions of creating cool new products and services, stewy is sort of the opposite because his structural goal is usually to dismantle companies and liquidate them however is best for maesbury's backers. it's a total destruction of all use-value and a conversion of it into pure exchange-value in the form of capital (which goes into his pockets and maesbury's). stewy generates money by destroying utility, which is perverse if you think capitalism is supposed to create and sustain human life, but actually completely comprehensible if you understand that capitalism is an insatiable growth machine with inherently contradictory internal tendencies and no raison d'être beyond the endless accumulation of pure capital itself.

many viewers think stewy is insane because he is friends with kendall roy. this is true, but on a deeper level stewy is insane because his job is to participate in the inexorable tendency to more and more abstraction in the capitalist mode of production. it literally does not matter at all to someone like stewy whether people are fed or clothed or happy, or have any of their needs met. the point is solely to create money, to turn all social forms and values into numbers on a balance sheet. this is why, when kendall tries to threaten him on axos at the end of season 2, stewy is able to casually tell him that "it doesn't matter; it doesn't mean anything." he and sandy are convincing shareholders that their offer will be able to make them more money, "and that's all that this is." stewy speaks the language of business differently than logan, because stewy doesn't care about dick-swinging competitions or demonstrating dominance in logan's cringey old catholic military way. which makes stewy more rational in certain ways, but also more insane, in that he operates in a way totally detached from this type of social value system and solely motivated by cold hard numbers.

the irony is that, whilst being detached and disembodied in his business practices, stewy is also better than the roys at appreciating the material fruits of wealth. he eats; he dresses well; he enjoys the "several houses" he owns. kendall is always trying to come up with some grand moral bullshit masculinity reason that what he's doing is noble or whatever, and he's alienated from his body and afflicted with severe catholic martyr disease. stewy just bypasses all that shit, measures his success by his payouts, and enjoys wealth because he sees it as an end in itself and not a means to logan roy's respect.

this is also why kendall's line in 'living+' about "it's enough to make you lose your faith in capitalism" is so funny. kendall can't just accept that business is a bunch of meaningless bullshit confidence games played by coked-up assholes who like to win; he always has to try to convince himself he's making cool new tech shit, or saving the world from the spectre of death itself or some shit. it's like, insane that he made it to literally 40 years old, growing up in a media conglomerate of all things, and still thinks that what he's doing requires actual skill or creates actual social value—but of course, part of the reason he still thinks this is because he deified logan and was therefore incapable of ever seeing logan or waystar for what they really were. stewy would never say that line because he can't be disillusioned this way on account of he already knows the whole thing is bullshit. it's just that to him it doesn't matter, because being bullshit does not preclude it from paying well.

#some1 also asked about that kendall line and it seemed like it wanted to be bundled into this post lol i hope that answers yr q #blood sacrifice #typing this gave me flashbacks to when i did freelance transcription and i used to do this guy's podcast on angel investing #literal nightmare fodder. the hours-long homophobic baptist sermons were better

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silmarillion-ways-to-die · 10 months

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Nobody in Capitalism ever succeeded (got rich, the only measure of "success" in Capitalism) without the EXPRESS PERMISSION of a rich person.

Think about it. No one gets rich without the say-so of bankers, investors, venture capitalists, advertisers, suppliers, logistics, ISPs, Jeff Bezos, studio heads, or the government.

They say "anyone can make it" but then admit that "only the exceptional can make it." And "exceptional" means tremendous luck and rich friends and family. (The "hard work" part is bullshit. Poor people are the hardest-working people I've ever met.)

#anti capitalism #leftism #end stage capitalism #capitalist greed #capitalism #fuck capitalism

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campaignskyjacks · 7 months

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The more I think about piracy, the more I believe it is the most structurally sound work situation under capitalism.

Every pirate ship was a worker owned company. If you were part of the crew, you were a literal shareholder. You got paid at least one share out of whatever venture you were involved with, and you got to vote on what the ship would do and who would be captain. That's already a pretty ideal situation, but it gets better.

The Captain is paid a double share as the position was seen as difficult and important work. But that is only twice as much as your general crew. Compare that to today's CEO and it's laughable how much more reasonable it is. It goes even further than that though.

The Captain is likely actually working way more than the rest of the crew. Most pirate ships were heavily overstaffed. The general strategy was you would catch up to a prize, board their ship and have like 200 guys. Merchant ships were staffed by capitalists, so they favored lean staffing. They wanted to pay as little wage as possible to maximize profit on the cargo they were transporting. A ship that would be comfortably staffed by 40 was probably being run by 25 to 30. Pirate ships would have way more people, so if they caught up to you there would be absolutely no way you could fight them off.

All of that means pirates didn't actually have to work that hard¹. There were way more people than actual things to do on a pirate ship. Even considering the fact that there is alot to do to keep a ship running, it's diffused over so many people that you really have a lot of down time as a crew. People like the Capitain, the quartermaster, the navigator, the doctor, or the cook all got somewhere between 1.2-2 shares, but they are working so much more than the average buckaneer.

I know some of you must be thinking "well that sounds very nice but the job gets pretty ugly when you're raiding." And the answer there is sort of. Pirates most certainly engaged in some pretty unsavory work and as crew you would be on the front lines of a lot of that. However situations where crew were actually getting in fights and putting their lives in the line were not the norm. A lot of the time pirates were hitting merchant ships, which once again were really understaffed. These people aren't crazy these people are hired to do a job so they're not going to throw their lives away over a couple dozen barrels of coffee or spice. Most of the time a pirate ship would catch up with a merchant ship, raise black flags, and and the captains of each ship would negotiate a surrender. Most of the time pirates were not requesting all of the cargo because the ideal situation is being able to hit the same ship over and over. You want to skim enough cargo that whoever commissioned the merchant ship isn't going to gripe too much about cargo being lost and complain to the navy. That way your crew can have a steady stream of whatever goods coming through to keep your vessel afloat. So most pirate merchant relationships were pretty transactional. The pirates would show up the merchants would give up abortion of their goods and everybody would go on their way.

Which means most of the time your average crew didn't have to do shit!

Pirates also had benefits. Remember when I mentioned you were going to be paid out "at least" one share? Well, if you lost a limb or something in the line of duty you would be afforded bonus shares to compensate the loss. They had entire systems of calculating disability compensation based on what injuries could be expected and how they saw it affecting your life. So if something bad did happen, you'd have pay to cover it.

It gets even better than this. The name "buckaneer" comes from "barbacoa" which was a type of mobile grill that was popular aboard ships². The folks who sailed were so commonly associated with these grills that people created a nickname for the profession based on the grills they used all the time. You'd see a privateer or a pirate at Port Royal and go "oh look, it's one of those guys who barbecues all the time."

Also, they were fucking queer. You've probably already heard that the term "matey" was a form of piratical gay marriage. If you designated someone else on the crew as your mate, if you died your share would go to them. I have to acknowledge that there is a slight chance that this isn't a 100% gay practice, there are conceivably reasons that someone might identify another person as their mate that doesn't have to do with romance or sex. Not a lot of pirates were literate and not many of them kept records of day-to-day life that really survived for historians to document. We can guess but in most circumstances we don't know for sure. But come on, grow the fuck up. These seadogs were banging.

Piracy and the type of sailing adjacent to piracy was a way for a person to make a life for themselves very far away from most of European society. And because of the way gender roles existed at the time, it's pretty much only men hanging out with men. If you happen to have desires that are unpopular at that time which involve other men, this is a pretty good situation for you.

So yeah piracy is a worker owned endeavor with reasonable compensation for management, benefits, frequent barbecues, and plenty of downtime to have all the queer sex you want.

It's one one those things that only exists because of capitalism, but as a response and a rebuke to it. These were endeavors that were so much more reasonable and fair then the legitimate businesses operating at the time.

And yes there were horrors. There was fighting and killing, torture, and worse. That is what the capitalists and colonizers would like us to remember. These things did really happen. However part of that was an effort to preserve and defend this better life people had made for themselves. To keep it alive inspire of the corporations and nations who would exploit or destroy their way of life.

So yeah, there was a lot about piracy that was violent and fucked up. But the truly wild thing is that it probably made more sense for the people involved then whatever you do right now. The next time you get bummed about your job or place in the world remember that piracy makes more sense.

Then go eat some barbecue and have queer sex.

¹This means in OFMD when Izzy was being a little piss baby about the Stede's crew not working hard enough he was 1000% wrong that's how the vast majority of pirates live their lives.

²Worth mentioning that these grills were originally used by native people, so this cool thing was adopted/appropriated by sailors. It did not originate with them.

#skyjacks #campaign podcast #pirates #our flag means death #anti capitalism

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