Cybermatron

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181 Following
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Academic, technology and data protection law. She/her. šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ Kraut abroad. Maintaining her sanity behind her avatar since 2009.

Occasionally blogs at https://cybermatron.blogspot.com/

Dieses Social-Media-Verbot für Jugendliche erinnert mich an eine Chemiefabrik, der nicht verboten wird, ihre Abwasser in den See zu leiten, sondern stattdessen den Jugendlichen verboten wird, im See zu schwimmen.
@wendynather I'm really liking people framing this (and social media) as "cognitive pollution". Don't know who said it first, but we don't pass laws to stop kids from eating paint with lead in it - we ban lead in paint.

@davidallengreen I still think that in a system with proportional representation, where PMs must learn how to achieve compromise across party lines, we’d see a little less of this nonsense.

And for all this being an efficient refuse disposal system, it is also an enormous waste of talent and experience given that with every new PM there tends to come a reshuffle, meaning that Ministers who only just learned how to do their job are put back on the musical chairs for another round

Okay I'm a teacher so let me explain this to you in as simple a way as I can.

Let's say you're hungry for a sandwich. So you go to the local deli. You walk in the door, and your credit card is immediately charged $1,000. In return, the deli guy hands you a sandwich ticket - good for one sandwich. You don't get a say in this. You are required to buy this sandwich by law. What's more, there were no signs outside the deli, you received no text message, nobody called you. There was absolutely no warning that by simply walking through the door you would be forced to buy this sandwich.

The deli owner gives you a ticket and tells you your sandwich will be out soon. You don't care. You didn't want this sandwich. But you're not allowed to say no. Besides, you already bought the sandwich. So you take a seat at a nearby table and wait for your sandwich to be delivered.

You sit and watch as every person who walks through the deli door that day is automatically made to buy one of the expensive sandwiches, handed a ticket, and told to wait. Hundreds of people. The deli is starting to get crowded. Because of the demand on the sandwich, you watch as the deli owner starts raising the price of the sandwich throughout the day. It goes up to $1,150 per sandwich. Then $1,500, then $1,900. Before long, the price has skyrocketed to well over $2,500 per sandwich. And you still don't even have your sandwich. The deli owner informs you with pride that this is the single most expensive debut of a sandwich ever.

Finally, after several hours, the deli begins to close. You ask for your sandwich and the deli owner informs you that you won't actually receive it until tomorrow. Today was for BUYING the sandwich, he says. Not selling it. The selling part happens tomorrow. Again, you have no choice in this. This is just how it works. It's the law. Oh well, you think, at least once you have this really expensive sandwich, maybe you can recoup some of your $1,000 by selling it at the current price, which is valued now at almost $3,000.

So you go home, hungry, but with a sound financial plan to try to recoup your money. The next day, you're first in line at the deli. You have your ticket in hand. But before the store opens, the deli owner lets in all the employees. You notice some of them are carrying sandwich tickets of their own. Some of them have a lot of tickets. Some of them are hauling in tickets by the wheelbarrow. You try to get in, but you're not allowed yet. Again, it's the law. Inside, you can see the employees of the deli trading in their sandwich tickets for sandwiches. And because there are so many sandwiches going out the door, the price of the sandwich starts dropping again.

After the first hour, the price has dropped to $1,500. Then back to $1,000, and then, to your horror, you see it dip to $750. Then $450. Then $100. Finally, the last employee turns in their ticket and leaves. And the price of the sandwich has settled all the way down to $50.

THEN, the deli owner opens the doors and lets the general public in. You turn in your ticket, which you paid $1,000 for, and receive your sandwich, valued now at $50. Don't feel bad, the deli owner says. You came here for a sandwich. You're getting a sandwich valued well above market value. Why, that sandwich from any other deli would only be worth $20, he says. You should feel good about this! You basically made $30 today!

You look at the gigantic stack of money in the corner, from all those thousands of enforced buys yesterday. There must be trillions of dollars there. Yes, the deli owner says with pride. I am the world's first trillionaire. And I did it all just selling sandwiches. Doesn't that make you feel great? What's wrong? Can't you just be happy for me? I worked hard for this money.

Congratulations, now you understand how Elon's SpaceX IPO made him a trillionaire, and who that money came from. It came from you. On July 1, SpaceX will get two things that no other major IPO in history has ever been granted. First, they will be automatically added to the NASDAQ 100. And because of that, every single person with a retirement account, or student savings account, or mutual fund, will be forced - not asked, not suggested - required by law, to buy SpaceX stock. And you'll do it at SpaceX current July 1 prices. This will skyrocket the value of SpaceX stock through the roof. This isn't theory. This is basic supply and demand. The chair of the NASDAQ 100 said this will happen. Then, the second half of the trade will happen. Two weeks later, every employee of SpaceX who have been up to now paid in SpaceX stock, will be allowed to sell up to a fifth of their shares. They will do that at July 15th prices. This will flood the market with stock. And again, this isn't theory. This will drive the value of SpaceX stock down. Basic supply and demand Economics 101. The more supply there is, the lower the value. Then, and ONLY then will you, the general public, be allowed to liquidate any mutual funds or IRA accounts, that were forced, by law, to buy SpaceX. And you will do that at August 1 prices.

Elon isn't becoming a trillionaire from selling rocket ships. No more than that deli owner got rich from selling sandwiches. Elon is becoming a trillionaire because he rigged the game. He is forcing you, yes you specifically, by law, to purchase shares of a company that he, and every single other person from the CFO on down admit, in writing, in their IPO prospectus, that they are going to immediately devalue as soon as they can. It's a classic pump and dump con. And you're the mark.

@SteveClough I will marry the next woman, who does the tour of the Scottish Parliament with me, and who is as excited as I am when she learns about the way in which the crescent-shape architecture of the chamber is designed to encourage discussion and cooperation rather than performative shouting matches across the aisle.

We particularly encourage applications from constitutional law nerds.

I’ve lived in this country for just over 30 years and the FPTP electoral system that is allegedly preferable because it ā€œprovides political stabilityā€ has just gifted us my 10th Prime Minister.

During the same time, Germany, which uses proportional representation, has had five Chancellors. Maybe it’s time for a rethink.

@ChrisMayLA6 I could avoid derailing my career through childcare by not having children. As an only child myself, I could not avoid the gap that opened up because I had to take two yearā€˜s unpaid leave to move back to Germany to care for my mother in her final days.

The uni loved the savings it could make when it temporarily replaced me with a much cheaper early career teaching fellow. It has not allowed me to forget that my research profile was severely damaged by that period.

@ChrisMayLA6 I have looked around, and while a lot of my female colleagues have similar stories to tell, I’ve not been able to find a male colleague who has been in the same bind. I’m sure they exist, but apparently not in the kind of elite institution that I work for.

The waste of female talent and potential is staggering and only seems to get worse as times get tougher. Late stage capitalism is eating its own children. But mostly the girls.

@ChrisMayLA6 The skills I acquired as my mum’s carer and legal guardian as well as those I learned in the job I took during those two years to pay the bills were instrumental when I later took on a big leadership role at the Uni, which involved helping to steer my department through a period of extreme upheaval. But because academia is blind to anything outside its own walls, this was never acknowledged, and my time away is classed solely as a ā€œcareer disruptionā€œ.
@ChrisMayLA6 Two very different motivations that are nevertheless conflated and thus hidden in one statistic, and that create (or are even designed to create) the appearance that both the left and the right are worried about the same thing.