No, I mean I as a relatively junior employee literally got a daily email with nationwide same store sales (dollar amounts , aggregated region, and corporate, franchise, etc) vs prior day, week, month, year and if it was ever down on even day 1 or 2 of a promo like “LTO spicy chicken funbox” or whatever you can guarantee the CEO would be calling and trying to upend and reverse the 3+ months of work you put into that product, campaign, etc because a single day of sales was down. No matter if it might have been down because of a cold front or literal noise in the data rather than a bad product. Everyone’s head was on a swivel and I can’t think of many more stressful environments
I personally witnessed this, at more than one of the top 5 qsr chains
Combining this with a SPAC a startup would be able to have a six month runway as a public company before having to disclose finances. I imagine that would be attractive to some firms.
Weird, why wouldnt this fantastic startup want to report on their performance in a standardized and accountable manner for six months after collecting public money to pay out insiders and “sponsors”?
Surely they wouldnt mind bragging about their fantastic GAAP P&L in their filing docs. Maybe its the pesky quiet period theyre trying to avoid, so they can be even more transparent about finances and equity holders.
> even if Chamath only created them to exit his sh*t investments. There are very few other ways for retail investors to invest in potential 100-1000X companies
"I have this exciting bag-holding opportunity for you."
Or even start with monthly. The problem with quarterly reporting is the internal efforts to "game" the quarter. The more aggressive disclosures are, the less of a shell game people can play to "make the report come out right."
Moving it to bi-yearly does the opposite. CEOs can now do the same amount of gaming with half the effort. Or twice the gaming with the same effort.
The central government in Bejing doesn't care even a little bit about some property dispute in Henan but there's a local apparatchik who cares or who could be made to care with the right consideration.
I feel like that's breaking down in the west. I've seen more and more news articles describing someone as a "well-connected lawyer." The idea that the most important things that a lawyer possesses is connections to people in power is becoming normalized.
When I was young I remember people describing Alan Dershowitz as "the greatest legal mind in America." The idea was that he got his clients what they wanted through fiendishly good logic and argument. Of course we now know that he just knew who to send poorly-written emails to.
I'm of the opinion that most legal judgements and arguments (especially at the highest levels like SCOTUS or circuit courts) are just post-facto rationalization of the outcome they want. Any superior logic and argument is just a reflection that such minds tend to be more cunning at access the inner workings of power if they weren't already born there.
Mid-century I think judges were more committed to "fair and honest application of the law." This actually led conservatives to rage against judges who would "become liberal" on the bench. The quintessential example of this was Chief Justice Earl Warren (appointed by Dwight Eisenhower) but there were may other cases like Justice Souter (appointed by George HW Bush).
So conservative groups started developing lists of "ideologically reliable" judges who the Republicans were supposed to appoint. Reagan and HW Bush would negotiate with these groups that they would appoint a judge from the list followed by a more "normal" judge, splitting their appointees between hardliners and institutional jurists.
Clearance Thomas was one of HW Bush's "hardliner" appointments opposite Souter. In the Clinton era, Thomas was frustrated at the pay SC justices received and threatened to resign to make his fortune in private practice. To prevent this conservative activists started showing him with gifts. His main benefactor was mega-landlord Harlan Crow.[1]
This more than anything started the eara of "justice for pay" in America, where the purpose of getting on the bench was to be ideologically reliable, partisan, and to make a fortune off of the people coming before the bench.
Watching their demo video was the perfect encapsulation of "this was not made for users" I have ever seen. First of all the idea of hanging out in a digital world with Mark Zuckerberg is so bleak. I can't imagine a worse hang.
But other than that, it was all about working in a digital office, being advertised to, etc. They had this scene where one of Zuck's definitely-real friends is excited about "this new street art" on the digital wall that jumps off the wall and they interact with it. Imagine having popup ads that jump up at you when you're walking (gliding?) down the street!
I think the next big war will involve a kessler syndrome, not because people start firing off anti-satellite weapons (since there's a strong component of MAD in doing that) but because the belligerents will have their own multi-thousand satellite constellations in orbit and they will quit coordinating with one another on collision avoidance.
Starlink is redeploying to 300 miles. Many consider Kessler to be impossible at 300 miles. Any unpowered satellite at a 300 mile orbit will deorbit within a couple of months. But a collision means fragments which deorbit faster because they have a higher surface/weight ratio, and because orbit disturbances lower that time considerably. Any single disturbance that raises aphelion lowers perihelion.
Would collisions cause debris to be ejected into a higher orbit? Although I guess as long as the debris does not pick up any significant speed boost, its orbit would be elliptical and would just collide with Earth (burn up on re-entry)?
which has a chart of apogee/perigee of debris. There seem to be examples of debris with _perigee_ above the collision altitude but the vast majority stayed beyond.
I'm not sure every satellite would be exploding in the traditional sense with hot gases expanding.
There would be disentigration when satellite pieces rip through other satellites.
How many satellites carry compressed gas for orbit adjustments?
Maybe there is some compressed gas pushing against liquid fuel and oxidizers, but I don't think the fuel and oxidizers would explode. Shooting tanks of gasoline with regular bullets do not cause explosions like movies would have you believe. Well, maybe pure oxidizers might, would there be enough heat generated by the tank being punctured?
Summers and Mandelson are the most fascinating characters in all this. These guys never held elected office, and were toxic enough that even giving them appointments was politically difficult.
Yet they absolutely controlled the parties they were a part of, wielding enormous power for decades. They were loathed by the base of the parties and demonstrably hurt the parties politically. Their policies were politically toxic.
They maintained their control through an air of super-competence: they were the faultless mandarins willing to say the unsalable and serve bitter medicine; they were selfless servants of the country.
That whole facade was torn apart not just because they were shown to be sex-pests if not outright abusers. But because they were shown to be inarticulate, incompetent, petty, and self-interested.
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