We would like to acknowledge a long list of conquering tribes that forcibly dispossessed this land's from its prior inhabitants. Except the original peoples (who dispossessed wildlife) as their descendants are all dead now so who cares.
This is possibly the most cringe thing I have ever seen in corporate America. It's like (nay is) a cult - it's creepy.
No one doubts past injustices occur. But feeling the necessity to add this preamble to a corporate presentation is just totally messed up.
And clothing - WTF?
Are we going to get to the point that before you can say anything of substance relevant to the issue at hand, you need to give a 10 minute speech on all the social justice ills of the world & disadvantages minority communities merely to avoid the appearance of being racist?
We might as well pay a mandatory ode to the great leader while we are at it. The worst thing about this is its obvious inauthenticity and insincerity. It's all for show. And acknowledging injustices in the distant past does absolutely nothing to help anyone in the present.
They could add, now that we have that out of the way, let's get down to talking about how we can be maximally rapacious capitalists, leverage our monopoly pricing power without restraint, and crank out >US$50bn FCF to make our rich privileged owners even richer... FFS
If you feel so strongly about the injustice, why don't you donate your corporate head office & the land it sits on back to the said dispossessed peoples?
Oh no, that's out of the question of course. Lip service is much cheaper.
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Been an unusual number of such events recently, as well as reports of unusual surges in hospitalizations and children suffering sudden abnormal fatal cardiac events.
It’s not proven, but reasonably probable that undiagnosed vaccine injuries are the underlying cause.
Zero Hedge recently published an article on usual surge in hospitalizations and child cardiac events. Other countries are reporting similar occurrences.
It is unfortunate no research or systematic analysis of vaccine injuries is being done/reported.
Marc Andreessen made an interesting observation in a podcast a while back - covid-induced remote schooling had resulted in parents overhearing what their kids were being taught (ie extremist hard-left CRT ideology), and were shocked. This may be contributing to election outcomes.
CRT is a fundamentally racist doctrine that teaches kids to judge people by their skin colour; feel victimized & resent "oppressor" races. It's exactly the type of thinking/ideology that has lead to recurring & devastating ethnic-based civil wars in Africa over the past century.
It also teaches kids exactly the wrong values they need to succeed in life: to feel powerless/oppressed and a victim; that all their problems in life are other peoples' fault (of a certain skin colour); that personal effort is futile because the system is rigged against them.
Yikes - it takes a fairly extraordinary degree of incompetence & epic failure of the business model for Zillow to expect to lose 5-7% on iBuying houses it bought to flip in a raging property bull market (1/2).
*AI cannot predict markets (& never will).
*iBuyers are competing with amateur property investors/flippers with skin in the game & who input unpriced labour (search, renovation, etc) & hence have lower costs. (2/3)
The iBuying biz model was always virtually guaranteed to blow up at some point due to asymmetry. In strong market you sell at small capped gain. In a down market, market goes no bid & you're stuck w inventory you can't sell. But they even managed to blow up in a bull market!
Rivian is set to IPO at a market capitalization roughly on par with BMW. Rivian has produced a total of *56* RT1 vehicles (not a typo; no missing k), and delivered only 42 (mostly to company employees).
BMW group produces about 2.5m vehicles a year. It also has a large captive financing company and is sitting on >10bn euro of excess net cash. It has cumulatively invested tens of billions of euro in EV tech & will have a fully electrified fleet in coming years.
Every major auto company is investing billions in EVs and will have highly competitive EV line ups with scaled manufacturing in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, billions of dollars are being raised for dozens of of EV startups, from the US to China.
It's a putative truism that coal is "dirty". Yet for modern HELE (high efficiency low emissions) coal power plants, which capture/remove particulates, sulfur and NOx, practically the only thing being emitted is CO2 and water (the same as when you exhale). (thread).
Old coal gen fleets with dated tech are indeed dirty, but these should and are being steadily phased out. Burning coal for home cooking/heating - often done in poorer countries - is also polluting but is typically phased out as economic development occurs (eg China at present).
Meanwhile, carbon dioxide is actually great for the environment. It makes plants/trees and the ecosystems they support thrive. It is merely a minor inconvenience for humanity as a few degrees of warming may raise sea levels require expensive sea walls in certain locations.
About 6mths ago I bought an Oculus Rift. I was blown away - for about 3-4 days. Since then it's sat unused collecting dust.
I'm skeptical on Zuck's meta ambitions (though happy to see him try).
I think there are too many inherent limitations to what VR can do. It's gimmicky.
VR can replicate a handful of experiences fantastically well. But limitations on movement; anything tactile; inability to replicate G-forces (motion sickness inducing for many), recoil etc, inherently limit what the technology can accomplish, even in a more mature state.
In terms of social interactions etc, VR is competing with actual reality, and that will be difficult. The handful of advantages (ability to create/select interesting environs; no commute) will not counterweigh the many disadvantages vs. real world interactions, IMO.