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Guns
We talked last week about gun violence. Saturday night, half an hour after I finished dinner, multiple people fired into a large crowd a block from where I’d been enjoying sushi. A fight between three men turned deadly as two started firing, and others in the crowd joined in. Three bystanders were killed, and more than a dozen hit by bullets. The first shooter was killed by the second.
We’ve had more than one mass shooting per day in the US this year. Like many things, when it happens in close proximity to you, it feels more real. Philadelphia has had two extremely violent years during the pandemic, as the city was forced to close many community and preventative programs that had helped keep guns out of the hands of the same young men who are now murdering each other at record rates.
Also, Philadelphia has no control over is its gun laws, because the Republican legislature passed a law in 1994 forbidding cities in Pennsylvania from passing any gun restrictions more stringent than the state’s. This is one reason, facing record violence, city mayors around the country find themselves powerless to do anything meaningful about it. Other than hiring more cops, which does nothing to stop violence.
South Street, where the shooting happened, has teams of police on literally every corner in its crowded nightlife district. In my years in the city I saw the police presence increase despite violent crime reaching historic lows - I actually lived on South Street for awhile, on the block where the shooting occurred. Multiple officers within line of sight didn’t stop two men from shooting at each other, or three young men from shooting freely into a crowd, and the police didn’t apprehend anyone at the scene - they have since arrested the remaining living shooters due to an abundance of witnesses and security footage.
I write this because I don’t know what else I can do - I can’t understand what makes a person feel so angry, or so hopeless, that they’d escalate a fistfight into a gunfight in a crowded street. Or that, hearing gunshots, other people would pull their own guns and start firing indiscriminately into a crowd of strangers. That the politicians who could do something about this would insist there is nothing that can be done, that we have to accept wanton, senseless violence to protect the rights of the average person to purchase a firearm that, for a couple hundred dollars, can kill or seriously injure a dozen people in less than a minute.
Sheryl Sandberg
Facebook’s chief girlboss has announced her resignation, marking the end of her 14 year tenure as COO of one of the world’s worst companies. Sandberg’s PR team - and some obsequious members of the tech press - have described her role at Facebook as a moderating voice, a humanizing counterweight to Zuckerberg’s cold robotism. But it’s worth looking at what Sandberg has personally done to the Internet - it’s not good:
Under her leadership, Google offered two related advertising products, AdWords and AdSense. AdWords was an automated system that had businesses compete for a slot at the top of the Google results page by naming the price they would pay each time a search user clicked on their ad.
[…]
Both systems used software to place ads automatically, and were also designed to work not only inside Google but also across the entire web. All independent bloggers and website owners had to do to start generating ad revenue was to create an account and insert a snippet of code onto their sites.
That’s right, before she came to Facebook, Sandberg was in charge of polluting Google’s search results - and every independent website trying to monetize their visitors - with ads. She did such a good job Google captured most of the digital search and display advertising market, and was generating tens of billions of dollars a year by the time she left.
Contrary to Sandberg’s version of events - she met Zuck at a party and was ‘charmed’ by his vision of a fun social platform where people could share cat pictures - the successful Google exec was brought in to juice Facebook’s ad business, and juice it she did:
Over the next decade, Facebook collected an enormous trove of personal data through its site and through tracking software that other websites embedded to integrate their services with it.
It’s easy to forget that in the early days, Facebook not only hoovered up everyone’s personal data across any site it touched, it also sold or made that data available for free to its advertisers, or, more infamously, ‘research’ firms like Cambridge Analytica. After repeated scandals - and perhaps when Sandberg realized it would be more profitable to do so - Facebook locked down its harvesting, keeping all the valuable data it mined for itself, promising advertisers unheard-of levels of microtargeting, all inside its black box ad platform.
With Sandberg at the helm, Facebook acquired Instagram, WhatsApp, and any number of smaller ad networks and social tools, crushing competition to keep Facebook as the dominant global social platform. Then it shut them down, or rolled them up into its own products, and filled them with ads and aggressively harvested user data to better tune its algorithms. The model has been so successful that Amazon and Apple are following suit, finding new ways to shove targeted ads in our faces. Sandberg’s true legacy, rather than her condescending Lean In campaign, is the absolute wasteland of the modern Internet - where every search, article you read, or item you click on is added to your digital footprint, so an advertiser can pay a few pennies to slam their ads into your occipital lobe.
Speaking of Sandberg’s performative feminism, it’s worth noting she tried to pressure a UK tabloid to shelve an article about her abusive ex boyfriend, friend of the blog Bobby Kotick. And, prior to her resignation, she was under investigation for using company resources to help plan her wedding. She claims she is ‘burned out’ from the years at Facebook, and now plans to take her $1.6 billion net worth and do what most rich people do - play at philanthropy. It’s unlikely her departure from Facebook will have any impact on the many ongoing lawsuits, or the company’s generally scummy behavior, but at least we won’t have to read any more articles about how her presence in the C-suite made Zuck more human, or whatever.
Russia
Much has been written about US and EU sanctions against Russia, the hunt for oligarch jets and yachts, and the country flirting with defaulting on debt payments. But! Paradoxically, because the Russian invasion - and other factors - have sent gas prices into the stratosphere, Russia is making a lot of money in commodities from the same countries who decry its invasion:
Even with some countries halting or phasing out energy purchases, Russia's oil-and-gas revenue will be about $285 billion this year, according to estimates from Bloomberg Economics based on Economy Ministry projections. That would exceed the 2021 figure by more than one-fifth. Throw in other commodities, and it more than makes up for the $300 billion in foreign reserves frozen as part of the sanctions.
Europe has been heavily dependent on Russian gas exports for years, and has found it difficult to fully wean itself off, even as it issues new sanctions. Meanwhile, Russia is rapidly cutting deals with other countries who are happy to buy up its excess fossil fuels:
The US has already banned Russian oil, but Europe is only slowly weaning itself off this dependency. That’s giving Moscow time to find other markets — such as commodity guzzling behemoths China and India — to limit any to damage to export revenue, and its financial war chest.
Russia is run by the same oligarchs currently being forced to hide their yachts and sell their soccer teams. Putin has made his allies very rich, and they profit from all the resources harvested in the country. So while Russian oil and gas companies will see record profits this year, the economy is still set to shrink and conditions for the Russian people will get worse. It’s difficult to discern what percentage of the populace supports Putin’s invasion, because the country has shut down nearly all independent media, but they’re going to be the ones to suffer regardless. As long as Putin stays in power, Russia’s elite will continue to make billions, and the countries who’ve spent the last few months calling them war criminals will keep signing the checks.
Babysitters
We talk a lot around here about inflation. Sometimes it’s real, sometimes it’s not, and often it benefits the worst people in society like oil company and coffee chain CEOs. However! Sometimes, inflation is good:
Before the pandemic, Dani Gantcher earned about $15 an hour babysitting in her hometown of Scarsdale, N.Y. Parents sometimes asked her to wash dishes or stay late.
Now, the 18-year-old is raking in $25 to $30 an hour. Moms and dads are asking a lot less from her. And they treat her like a VIP.
Damn right, Dani. Get paid girl! We can talk some other time about how, despite having some of the highest child care costs in the developed world, US child-care workers earn poverty wages. Today we’re here to celebrate these industrious teenagers who are being paid better and - most importantly! - treated with respect:
In Easton, Mass., 19-year-old Emma Sharkansky is making up to $30 an hour—up from $12 a few years ago. Parents are ecstatic to see her.
“It used to be you walked in and were all shy and saying thank you so much and feeling grateful to get a little spending money,” the soon-to-be college sophomore says. “Now, I’m walking in and they’re thanking me more than I could possibly thank them.”
Yes! I love it. Many of us had babysitters when we were children, and while we may imagine we were little angels, we were most likely needy little brats. High-school age teenagers have few job options that don’t involve standing at a counter in a uniform, and we should pay babysitters like the skilled specialists they are.
I am sure that as the COVID-19 waves fade babysitter costs will return to earth, and that is sad, because this experience will be valuable when these kids enter the job market. Remember, any teens reading this - you’re worth a lot more than your employer is willing to pay you, and there’s always room to negotiate. Even if all you’re doing is putting on a movie and eating popcorn on the couch.
Short Cons
FTC - “Since the start of 2021, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams – that’s about one out of every four dollars reported lost, more than any other payment method.”
Vox - “Specifically, Neumann wants to put carbon credits on the blockchain. But making carbon credits easier to buy and sell does nothing to solve the real problem with carbon credits and offsets, which is that they’re broken.”
The Guardian - “But that will come to an end in weeks, as Congress has failed to include an extension of the waivers, which have allowed schools to offer school lunches as well as summer lunch handouts, enabling an estimated 10 million more students to get a free meal.”
ProPublica - “A ProPublica investigation into the company’s operations in Nevada, including a review of more than 3,000 pages of internal emails obtained through public records requests, shows the Chicago laboratory’s testing was unreliable from the start.”
Tips, thoughts, or babysitter unions to scammerdarkly@gmail.com