This is a cool building. Besides all the most modern conveniences, far ahead of the technology of 1939, it has the usual boss’s corner office. What makes that office unique is that the entire room is an elevator. Complete with two working telephones and a working hot and cold sink!
Meet the Baťa Skyscraper in Zlín, Czechia. The office belonged to Jan Antonín Baťa and the room was built by Otis elevator company. Sadly, he never actually got to use the elevator office – but that’s a story for another time. Bonus points for the office still having paternoster elevators.
A shocking number of recent Forbes 30 under 30 list are under indictment or in prison for high-profile crimes. These weren’t just little offenses or mistakes, they amounted to fraud that totaled into the $18.5 billion dollar range.
Elizabeth Holmes – convicted of fraud linked to her blood testing company
Trevor Milton – convicted of fraud for his zero-emission truck
Caroline Ellison – pled guilty to 7 criminal charge (max sentence of 110 years) of fraud, money laundering and conspiracy charges relating to FTX in exchange of turning evidence on her partners.
Sam Bankman-Fried – charged with bribery, money laundering, unlawful political contributions, and other charges surrounding crypto-currency FTX.
Charlie Javice – her company Frank acquired by JP Morgan, who made her a managing director, found guilty of fraud.
This cohort of 30 under 30 seems to be the worst in history. Fraud and lying to make money or gain power is nothing new; but maybe this will help quell the rising voices that have claimed the younger generation and creators/disruptors are immune from this kind of behavior.
A lot of this surprises me because anyone doing any amount of due-diligence should have seen how fraudulent, and almost impossible, most of their claims were. I’m guessing that a decent number of investors knew this but also know investing in a rising star (even if a scam) and exiting at the right time can yield a heck of a cash cow. A good investor can make money even on a dead horse if they know how to work the system by getting in early to ride the hype and exit before the inevitable collapse.
It turns out that the market behavior and basic science are still the same as they ever were – despite all the hype and claims of ‘disruption’ we want to make.
It seems like there are some common threads between all these scandals. A number of these scammers seem to be partially or wholly delusional about their own products and abilities. Many got themselves clearly out of their depth – but became hype machines for ‘disruption’ that turned out to be same old basic fraud, market manipulation, and Ponzi schemes with new labels.
This is probably why we’re seeing movies like Glass Onion that have painted a less than rosy picture of influencer and disrupter culture. As we have to learn again and again, the world is based on truth. Reality is an objective, not relativistic, truth that doesn’t care about our political agendas, rhetoric, what we wish to be true, or lies. The truth comes out even against the most powerful governments and people in the world. Valery Legasov said it best in the wonderful Chernobyl miniseries:
When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is, still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid
Just like eating different kinds of foods, you should know what you’re eating so you know if your diet is balanced, healthy, or downright garbage. Media, and social media (which has the added benefit of being largely unhealthy to boot), is the same way.
I’ve written about this before, but the Media Bias Chart continues to improve. Go check out your favorite sources, or better yet, find better ones to start reading. It’s interesting how things have shifted, and continue to shift over time – so be sure to check up on your news sources every year or so.
This is not just a chart, but something that gives us some data to infer from and can be used as a tool. I find it interesting that the more left OR right the source, that the media source pretty universally drops in quality to near garbage. This reveals a lot about how left/right partisan takes on any issue results in very poor analysis or thought about a topic.
I also find this a useful tool for those that claim to be unbiased, open minded, or whatever. Where do you think YOUR opinions fall on this chart? Now, go read something on the chart that aligns with it and see how good of a news source it really is (how far down on the y axis is your opinion)? Now, go read something that is on the OTHER side of the line. Nothing far from center. Check in the ‘skews left’ or ‘skews right’ area and read it. If you find yourself calling a largely good news source with a moderate leaning a bunch of pinko Commies or a bool-licking Nazis, then I think you might have a very distorted view of the world. It might be worthwhile to check yourself.
It’s also a good time to go watch some news broadcasts from the 1950’s-1980’s to see how journalism was done years ago. I remember being taught that a good reporter answered the 5 W’s (Who, What, Where, hoW, and Why) by just reporting the facts. It’s impossible to be unbiased; but that was at least the goal. I’m not sure if that’s even the basic premise of journalism these days.
Today I find that any news item I was actually involved in (local news to more broad industry reporting on something I knew internally to the company/etc) breaks into 2 parts. The factual part is usually pretty accurate (the person hid on the roof of this garage from police, or this guy stole a $2000 bike, or that some information X was leaked from an internal company mistake). The commentary by experts and average readers is pretty bad. I find the news source usually finds an ‘expert’ that aligns with however they’d like to spin the news item based on the particular bias of the news source.
Even worse, the comment and speculation sections in the bottom of the news articles are the absolute worst. It’s full of horribly simplistic/incorrect analysis, wildly incorrect data, inflammatory posturing/language, and often conspiracy-theory laden stuff. Which is probably why any of the better news sources do not allow commenting on news articles (hint hint). I now don’t usually go to news sources that have comment sections – or I skip those sections all together. I only have so much of my life; and I’m not wasting it sifting through hours of anonymous incorrect opinions or bad or inflammatory thought/language just to get one nugget of truth.
Darmok is a pretty famous Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. In the episode, Picard is captured then trapped on a planet with an alien captain who speaks a metaphorical language. They must learn to communicate with each other before a deadly beast overwhelms them.
This isn’t quite as strange as you might think. There are records from civilizations that didn’t have a formal written language. Darius the Great (500 BC) was once given a strange box with several objects by the Scythian army encamped against him. They had no formal writing language; so they had to interpret the message.
PAX West is not just a fun gamer conference, there are also a lot of parties as well. You can find the more public ones on the PAX west parties website and Facebook group.
Finding the not-so-public ones requires being in the know and having some insider friends. 🙂
Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride is a documentary film by local timelapse photographer Vincent Woo. He secretly attached a camera to a BART train and rode through the arteries of the Bay Area while inserting interesting facts and tidbits.
Viewfinder is a new 3D puzzle game on PC and game consoles. It involves taking a picture with a film camera, then using the 2D picture to overlay the 3D world. The 2D picture then replaces/augments the 3D world with the 3D that was in the picture. It’s hard to describe, but very interested technique.
There’s also folks like Willlogs who are making their own versions in Unreal and describing how they think the mechanics work.
