SEEMS LIKE AN OBVIOUS VIOLATION: Males Need Not Apply: Assessing The Legality Of American University Business Law Review’s All-Female Issue.
Archive for 2021
May 21, 2021
May 20, 2021
AND IF THE ANSWER IS “NO,” SHOULDN’T REPUBLICANS BE MOVING TO DEFUND COLLEGES? CAN A REPUBLICAN BE A COLLEGE PRESIDENT?
IN THE BIDEN/DE BLASIO ERA, ANTISEMITIC MOBS RUN WILD: Unlawful assembly declared in Manhattan, pro-Palestinian caravan throws firework at Jews.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: The rich and powerful thrived as America suffered in the year of lockdowns.
SO USE IT, THEN: Don’t believe the spin: The GOP still has the upper hand.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Mostly Republican Ballots Fail to Scan in Pennsylvania County Election, Stoking Concerns.
MARK JUDGE: Private Spies, Anti-Trump Lies, and the Christine Blasey Ford Fraud. “With the rise of political spies and opposition researchers, plus the demise of gatekeepers like honest reporters and editors, there are no guardrails in the media anymore. Anyone can make any claim about anyone, and without any proof the story can make it into the media. There are no more reality checks.”
But don’t call it “fake news.” The fakers don’t like it when you do that.
OPEN THREAD: Stay with me, we’ll take the night.
JAMES LILEKS: “What do you do when everyone else is finding horrors in the past — slithery alabaster horrors sliding their tentacles through the loam of the human record, injecting poison into every stratum — and your discipline doesn’t seem to be loaded with evil? You’re eager to help! You want to be an ally! So you reexamine the past, interrogate it. That’s a commonly used word, and it’s amusing, as it makes you think of some hard-boiled precinct captain propping up a dead body in a chair under a single light and grilling him. Confess! You were there, we know it! The more you deny you had anything to do with it, the more we know you’re guilty! So what has to be tossed on the pyre this week? Furniture.”
Pull up a Barcelona Chair and read the whole thing.
NICE POLL NUMBERS, KID — DON’T GET COCKY: House Democrats face an uphill battle in 2022 even without redistricting.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Nelson uses Chinese Mars landing as a warning to Congress.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Teen Vogue is the perfect place for UMass professor to argue that ‘universities are right-wing institutions.’
NY TIMES CHATBOT TEACHES YOU HOW TO OVERCOME VACCINE SKEPTICS. It appears to be an earnest attempt to teach people how to teach others to come to believe the “right” things, though I can’t escape the feeling that helping people overcome skepticism of government policy is just a super awkward fit for a newspaper.
VITAMIN D UPDATE: Study finds new and effective treatment for vitamin D deficiency.
“WHEN I GOT INTRODUCED TO A DRUM MACHINE AND A SEQUENCER I REALIZED I COULD GET RID OF HALF THE BAND.” An interview with Juno Reactor’s Ben Watkins.
HOW WASHINGTON, DC carjacked an elderly couple.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study: Physical activity improves self-control, academic performance in children.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Feds Now Investigating Whether Andrew Cuomo Let Family Jump The Line For COVID Testing.
THEY JUST AREN’T VERY GOOD AT THEIR JOBS: Media Falsely Reports Arizona Election Auditors ‘Walked Back’ Deleted Election Databases Claim.
CAPITALISM: THE IRONIC IDEAL. Comedy gold: the economics of internet irony.
This is the new reality of the financial markets: fortunes are built and markets are moved purely on the basis of whether something is amusing. Making people laugh on the internet has become a credible marketing strategy for a certain kind of entrepreneur. Aspiring tycoons hand free stakes to meme-market influencers such as Musk in the hope they will tweet about it, like a fake-tan brand courting a Love Island Z-lister. It’s a form of mania, clearly, and it’s reminiscent of the frenzied buying which preceded previous stock-market crashes. At the height of the dotcom bubble, investors greedily acquired any stock with ‘.com’ in the name. This time, speculators are hoovering up anything with the potential to go viral online.
Something more fundamental has changed, too. Ordinary punters are influencing the public markets as never before. The internet has democratized investing, thanks to trading apps and cryptocurrencies. In the US, retail investors now account for more trading volume than mutual funds and hedge funds combined. Many of them are young thrill-seekers who want quick, large returns. And the pandemic has thrown gasoline on the fire: when most entertainment options aren’t available, and the Biden administration’s stimulus program is dishing out free money, market speculation becomes the best fun you can have. If you think our investments are mass delusion, ask the irony speculators, what do you think the stock market is? It’s a good question.
The new army of investors congregate on online forums such as Reddit, where they swap tips and screenshots showing extreme wins and losses. This motivates ever more reckless buying. They look for assets which are likely to get a lot of hype and go on huge bull runs. This is why comedy assets are so popular, because they attract attention. To the online retail investor, attention is the most valuable commodity. To that end, they will passionately advocate for their chosen investments, spamming forums and creating memes about the price going ‘to the moon’.
The holy grail in this hype cycle is a tweet from Musk. When it was announced he was hosting Saturday Night Live, dogecoin’s price doubled, as speculators prayed he would ‘pump’ the currency on national television. Instead he called it a ‘hustle’ and the price of dogecoin collapsed.
I hope Remy got out in time: