People in my social media timelines seemed only superficially worried. Instead, their posts contained an underlying sense of excitement about real life finally catching up with the science fiction aesthetics of Blade Runner and Akira. julian.digital/2020/09/25/is-…
Sometimes founders are able to re-create the fantasy narratives of their pitch decks. Sometimes you end up with Theranos.
And even when you do end up with Theranos. Perhaps VCs should buy the movie rights to the startups they invest in as a hedge against their biggest failures?
It’s the absence of religiosity that has kept Europe from creating its own Google or Facebook. The US is able to create larger companies because it’s able to believe in larger and more ambitious narratives.
This is one of the best essays I read recently. Every paragraph has one valuable thought
Silicon Valley is not just creating new fantasy worlds, it is building tools that allow others to create their own fantasy worlds. Enter social media. — Silicon Valley is Hollywood gone meta
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By the standards of protests in the US, for example 2020, these are extremely peaceful and orderly protests. I even see people mocking how nerdy and bookish the protestors sound. Height of violence was breaking a glass to get to a door handle, as one does when leaving keys inside
But US authorities have been whipping themselves into a fever and a frenzy: “terrorists, Muslims, Hamas, monsters, inhumans”, they shout, cheering each other on in a kind of collective madness or witch-hunt
You see the poor policemen, always minorities, themselves the target of police brutality, arrive with their minds bubbling up in these notions, convinced they are fighting animals or worse, because they heard this from the politicians
US intelligence sources again blame Ukraine for the counteroffensive’s failure but this time they say Ukrainians were not willing to accept the necessary casualties washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
Officials envisioned “Kyiv accepting the casualties” “but Ukraine chose to stem the losses on the battlefield”
The article is overkill blaming Ukraine for several choices of different kinds but this one stands out for falseness and callousness
Everyone whose opinion I respect thinks the US does not want Ukraine to win the war. It’s a troubling conclusion but hard to avoid
And some of those people tell me there are ongoing, top secret exchanges between the US and Russia to begin shaping a peace agreement…
Even those with no privileged access might look at the facts and notice the military support is carefully designed to match Russia’s buildup but not more
Hope people realise the significance of the diplomatic game between the EU and China over the past few weeks
EU threatened to impose export restrictions on 8 companies registered in China and Hong Kong accused of circumventing EU sanctions. China desperately wanted to avoid this not only because of the restrictions but because a sanctions spiral could follow
In his interview with me Chinese ambassador to EU went so far as to offer to deal with those companies on its own, stopping the circumvention. It was a stunning move I thought newstatesman.com/world/asia/chi…
But:
“Export control analysts told Newsweek they did not know of any examples since the start of the war where a company based in the U.S. or in an allied nation knowingly sold critical technology directly to Russia for the express purpose of helping Moscow's war effort.”
The formulation seems to exclude US companies that sold components to Russia with the express purpose of … making money