> Over the span of a few hours one day in April 2020, a guy called Cuddles and eight of his pals from the freewheeling world of London’s commodities markets rode oil’s crash to a $660 million profit. Now regulators are scrutinizing their once-in-a-lifetime trade.
Someone made the observation that the problems started when things changed from social networking (family/friend) to social media. From actually keeping up with people to 'keeping up' with content.
Turns out most people don’t have a friends and family group that can generate exciting content at a rate that most people want. The platforms oblige this with “reshares” and “you may also like” content, and eventually everyone’s like “who gives a s*t about aunt Millie’s cupcake recipe, check out this dude trying to skateboard off of the Eiffel Tower!”
I'm sure I could (indeed, I do) get pertinent updates from actual friends and family with <10 minutes of checking messages, voicemails, and emails per day. I wouldn't mind increasing that to 15 minutes if it meant I got a few less relevant but still interesting updates about their lives.
But that's way, way under the daily minutes spent by most people on TikTok. And if I wanted/my addiction demanded another hit of that "Oh, neat!" buzz when I'd just put my phone down 10 minutes ago, there's little chance that anyone in my small circle would have posted a single thing in the interval.
I don't spend nearly enough time in my group chats to justify Facebook's valuation. And there are no ads (yet, I'm sure they're working on it) in those chats.
Yes. Social sites had a card blanche to publish anything without consequences because it was user-generated content.
Social sites used that power to publish their own stuff under the same protection.
That has broken the system. Social media sites are 100% responsible for all the misinformation, scams, and hate that they publish or promote. And they should be legally accountable for it.
"We are not accountable because the users are the ones posting the media"... but we post and promote whatever we want is a terrible way for the world to work.
How do people learn to drive manuals in 2025? It used to be that you used your buddy's/parent's beater in the back of the mall parking lot.
But no one has one anymore. I tried to learn in the 90s for about an hour, and never managed to get the car moving forward rather than bouncing. At this point, I don't have much desire to try again, but I wouldn't know how to try if I wanted to.
Twenty years ago, I supervised a beginner in an office parking lot that was generally empty on Saturdays. But you're right, we haven't had a car with a manual transmission in a dozen years now.
> You don't adjust rates just because you want them to be lower, there's second order effects.
You can… in Turkey (Türkiye); from 2021:
> Erdogan is openly averse to high interest rates, claiming high rates cause inflation, which stands in opposition to mainstream economic theory.
> He has pressured the central bank to keep rates low to fuel borrowing and growth. Critics say the independence of the central bank has been severely damaged through political pressure.
> Erdogan’s decree on Saturday appoints Sahap Kavcioglu as the new central bank head. Kavcioglu is a banking professor and a columnist in a pro-government newspaper where he has argued for low interest rates.
> The first woman to lead the bank, Erkan began raising interest rates when she was appointed in June last year, launching a 180-degree pivot away from years of low rates under Erdogan that had sent inflation soaring and foreign investors fleeing.
Another appointee follows the Trump Orbit Character Arc. It's really pretty consistent, from Jeff Sessions to Mark Mikey and about 5 secretaries of defense.
Trump apparently believes appointees are there to do what Trump communicates he wants done, and to take the blame if those things don't work out.
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/oil-negative-price-1.553899...
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