Afternoon Tea 1.15.25: Ban For Thee, Not for Me

Lobbying-as-a-Service, Unionizing JP Morgan , and Don't Fail the Greenland Test

Author

Tarik Najeddine
January 15, 2025

The vibe we go for here at Factual Dispatch.

It’s January, cold in the NE United States, the future is stupid and it’s Wednesday. Put the kettle on, grab a biscuit, and enjoy a spot of news and commentary that we here at Factual Dispatch call “Afternoon Tea.” We’ve got maxi-boring analysis of the new AI chip export controls the Biden administration locked in, JP Morgan employees considering unionizing over RTO, anti-tank mines showed up at an IKEA

The new 1st, 2nd, 3rd/Developing World.

2025 AI Diffusion Export Controls (SemiAnalysis) & America’s plan to control global AI (Henry Farrell) Biden’s newly-crafted plan to keep chips out of Chinese hands is lightspeed boring, but critical to understanding how the new weapons of war will be fought over in the board rooms of global supply chain companies. Defense contractors probably didn’t see this coming, so I bet you start seeing Raytheon and Lockheed Martin buying up NVIDIA chips at scale.

Biden Administration Quietly Carves Out TikTok Ban Exception For Gov’t (Ken Klippenstein) Of course they did. I’m not even surprised at this point.

The corporate lobbyist who will run the Trump White House (Popular Info) We will be ruled by people whose only goal is to put 3-10 years in and get a job in the private sector. Or, vice versa. Truly a heartwarming development.

JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate (Barrons) If the corporate fumbling of Return-to-Office is the galvanizing force that unionizes tech & finance, I will laugh for the rest of my light. The last bastions of capital-friendly workers being radicalized because the truly rich couldn’t let their wage slaves work from home three days a week is almost mythological in its “evil ignores lesson, ushers in its own demise” weight.

Polish general fired after missing anti-tank mines were found in IKEA (Politico.EU) In Poland, you can still get fired for “losing” anti-tank mines, if they show up at IKEA. So, let this be a lesson to you weapons traffickers, stick to luxury outlets in the future. Like Hermès or Tesla.

Round of applause to Duolingo’s social team again.

The “Annex Canada” Stuff Is A Test And You’re Failing (Idiot Box) This is CRITICAL for the next four years. Please, PLEASE do not be distracted by the Wizard at the center of the Emerald City. The goofy, diabolical, or confusing requests are just there to distract you from the bog-standard villain shit GOP-Trump’s administration is going to do:

But while he’s out there dancing and singing and keeping everyone in hysterics, the rest of the GOP is under the bleachers stealing your wallet and setting the benches on fire. None of the things I mentioned above ever got gained any traction during the first Trump term - but much of the standard GWB-style Republican agenda did. There were massive tax cuts for the wealthy. There was immense deregulation of the most destructive corporate industries. They appointed unapologetically right-wing Supreme Court justices to lifetime terms. They passed military spending increases of hundreds of billions of dollars. There is really no distinguishable difference between Trump’s White House and any of his conservative predecessors - this one just has more dumbshit clown stuff to keep you in your seats.

~The Idiot Box

He’s gonna say the weirdest shit the world has ever heard in the next 4 years. Keep your eye on the “Standard GOP playbook” and goalposts. That’s where the work will continue. Not around the clown show.

I Was Wrong about the Ethics Crisis (ACM Comms) Turns out the “ethics crisis” in tech was a bunch of manbabies whining that they didn’t have all the money and all the rights to use slurs on the internet. Guess who got what they wanted?

Cuomo dominates a mayoral field he hasn’t yet entered (Politico) Cuomo will beat Adams, and it’s not going to be close. Mamdani might have the most donors, but if Cuomo runs, he wins. He might even win if he pulls a Weiner during the race. But, I can’t mention a about the NY Mayoral race without re-reading The Onion’s commentary on the race, titled: De Blasio: ‘Well, Well, Well, Not So Easy To Find A Mayor That Doesn’t Suck Shit, Huh?’ 

Mayor Adams vowed to rein in NYPD overtime. It spiraled out of control instead. (Gothamist) & NYPD Union partners with Uber to give drunk cops rides home (NY Post) Democrats think Adams was elected as a rebuke of leftist politics & as a common sense mandate from centrists. This is false. Adams was elected on a platform of pro-cop policies. This is significantly different than being anti-crime or pro-union/worker, as his administration illustrates. In every possible Initiative and as many responses to a situation a possible, Adams’ solution is “throw cops at it.” Crime in the subway? Throw cops at it. People driving badly? Throw cops at it. Israel protests on private campuses? Throw cops at it. To note, none of these problems are solved by cops being thrown at them, but it does Spike Those OT Numbers. Which is what the PD union wants most of all. And boy did they get it. The “Free Ubers for Drunk Cops” program is just some great buttercream frosting on a cake of corruption.

RedNote user isn’t wrong.

DraftKings Users Can Now Buy Better Odds Via Subscription (Sportico) Parlays are proof that Americans can’t multiply fractions or percentages. Proving my point, here is the clutch bit of DraftKings’ “better” odds for those who get the subscription:

In return, they will receive what the company calls “stepped up” boosts for all parlays where the individual legs are -500 or narrower. For parlays with two legs, users will see profits increase by 10%, with the boost growing as the parlays get bigger. For parlays with 11 or more legs, the profit increases 100%, or double.

~Sportico

This is madness. 11+ legs of a bet mean that you have to predict 11+ events correctly in a row. Even if it was just flipping a coin and guessing heads or tails, the odds of you getting it right 11 times in a row is 1 in 2048 or something like 0.004%? If you are routinely hitting 11 leg parlays, I would like to sign up to your prediction newsletter immediately, and will pay any amount you charge.

Wherein I want to know how you advertise your events (DNA Lounge) I’ve been asking this question since the COVID quarantine ended. Before COVID, everyone maintained a perfunctory presence on FB, so event invites were there, with ticketing through some 3rd party. It wasn’t great (100 invitees for every 1 guest), but it worked. Now, how do you do it? IG doesn’t have events, TT is going away, LinkedIn is fuckin Narnia, and email is for dinosaurs. Seriously, how do you invite people of 2-3 eras to events these days? If you say WhatsApp or another “platform,” you’re wrong and will be forced to pay a fine.

Theme of 2025

Quote of the Week

It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension. He merely brings out the hidden tension that is already alive. Last Summer when we had our open housing marches in Chicago, many of our white liberal friends cried out in horror and dismay: “You are creating hatred and hostility in the white communities in which you are marching, You are only developing a white backlash.” I could never understand that logic. They failed to realize that the hatred and the hostilities were already latently or subconsciously present. Our marches merely brought them to the surface.
~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Poem of the Week

Shelley Puhak, Harbingers

Depressingly relevant beauty from Shelley Puhak at Litbowl 

Vibe of the Week

Gonna be posting the most viral TikTok sounds in newsletters until we get definitive info on the TT ban. This week, the K2 of ADHD breakcore piano beats, “anybody can find love (except you.)” by hkmori. Not for the faint of heart, but for those who it hits for, soothing like very little else.

Stay warm in the gray,
tnh