After literally years of being told that by technologists about software, books, etc etc I can’t think of almost any market which has ever been saturated in the way that people claim every market is saturated.
Freaking *Starbucks* is not.
Starbucks of the industry-leading commercial real estate team which will give serious consideration to putting two Starbucks on the same street corner to avoid losing potential Starbucks customers who were at that street corner wanting Starbucks but not enough to turn for it!
Tagging the above tweet as being in no way sarcastic; they factually are one of the best real estate operations in the US (Walgreens and McDonalds also very good at this even within their categories) and they absolutely will take two corners.
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There is one contractor during this home remodel who I greatly enjoy because of his continued imprecations about the general state of contracting, other subs on project, etc.
“Got something to show you Mr. McKenzie. *gestures at floor* Do you understand how a laser level works?”
Me: “I think I get the theory.”
Contractor: “I think I do, too. Of course back in my day we did this with a bubble level of maybe a piece of string and a weight. But I was concerned that perhaps the people who put this floor in might not understand how to use traditional wisdom.”
Contractor: “So I brought a laser over here. Now, by my mark, and I brought here another piece of high tech gadgetry called a measuring tape, this floor is 3 and an eighth inches off.”
Me: “Ah I see.”
Contractor: “Three and an eighth! Who does that?!”
SBF has a new interview out, conducted from prison. It is... unbelievable, at points.
Highlights include:
* Strong direct statement of his innocence.
* Accusing prosecution and judge of policitized process, analogising to experience of President Trump, apparent maneuvering to secure clemancy.
* Implied rationale for prosecution: his donations to Republicans.
* Expressions of frustration that S&C/John Ray III didn't collaboratively receive balance sheets and other business records from him and rather set about reconstructing them, which he claims delayed recovery and cost creditors substantial amounts of money in e.g. legal fees.
Me: Ah a nice relaxing Monday where I can finally get some work done.
DOGE: Have you ever heard of checks?!
Me: %{*]% it.
Me: I don’t do partisan politics.
Twitter the Sumerian bird demon: Got it.
Me: Which is why I work in a painfully boring infrastructural field.
Twitter: Oh sure.
Me: That no one hates each other over.
Twitter: Yeah.
Me: So just writing the truth won’t summon a mob.
*curse starts*
Why does the government send a lot of checks? Principally because it is the easiest payment method in the U.S. to coordinate over multi-year timescales without needing to constantly re-coordinate updates with the payee on how they get their money these days.
Friendly neighborhood Dangerous Professional advice:
If you are ever at a meeting taking notes, and someone at the meeting expresses umbrage that notes are being taken of the meeting, and this is routine notetaking for this genre of meeting, …
… you should absolutely want to keep physical control of those notes, and you should prioritize that over social pressure you may perceive, and you should update very aggressively against the umbrage-taker as being likely up to no good.
You should also, immediately after the meeting, document the fact that you were taking notes at a meeting and asked to stop, and that you felt in that moment this ask was extraordinary.
Since the printing press, it was injurious to reputations to have something untrue said at scale.
We should have adopted more care about this after it became habit in society to Google someone's name and Google started weighting institutions highly.
And now we're standing on the precipice of another revolution in user behavior caused by a technological substrate almost unimaginable earlier: there will be a presumptively authoritative answerer of almost every question, in almost every pocket, and many places besides.
It behooves us as individuals to care what that alien mind thinks about us, because it is going to be consulted actively and passively even more than Google is.
And it behooves us, as society, to exercise some care in what we put into the training set.
Lutnik, to Senate: “Cantor Fitzgerald is not conducting continuous diligence on Tether’s financial statements, but I believe my [much stronger endorsement] statements were accurate when made."
Was wondering when walk-back would happen.
Lutnik, who was the CEO of Cantor prior to more recent adventures, previously attempted to dispel long-time doubts about Tether's... everything by vouching for them.
At the time, the open ended nature of the vouching struck me as out of the ordinary.