Afternoon Tea 10.14.21 - Finished Symphony

Amazon copied best-selling products, Facebook’s attempt to stop leaks was immediately leaked, a magpie harasses a fat bear, a gun-worshipping cult bought land in Tennessee, the world of finance changes gradually then suddenly, and a team of music & data people finished Beethoven’s Unfinished Symphony. It’s Thursday, October 14th 2021, and this is your Tea. Today’s vibe will be spookily familiar with anyone who is finishing up their FrontMan or Playstation Controller guard costume.

Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands (Reuters) If this happened in the USA, we wouldn’t give it a second thought. But this might actually piss off the wrong country’s regulators, such that they could kick Amazon to the curb. ZuckBook learned the hard way to not tangle with India, Bezos might be next on the chopping block.

Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist of '“Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” (The Intercept) & Facebook told staff it would seal off some internal message boards to prevent leaking. The change was immediately leaked. (Business Insider) & Facebook Banned Me for Life Because I Help People use It Less (Slate) Facebook is starting to resemble the Trump White House. These leaks are both massively critical for us to understand how the company is ducking regulatory questions, and also quietly hilarious.

The Cutting Edge (Ritholtz Wealth Management) & Gradually, Then Suddenly (Ritholtz Wealth Management) The world of investing has changed so much, even in the last 20 years, your great Uncle probably wouldn’t recognize it from the era of paper newsletters and the Telex. Same thing is happening to cars right before our eyes.

The Problem With a Bitcoin Futures ETF (ETF Trends) While whether one should invest in BTC at all is beyond the scope of this newsletter, if you’re going to buy the stuff, buy the stuff. Don’t buy some weird Futures ETF that just loses money because you don’t have the stones to own the digital commodity itself.

AR-15 Worshipping MAGA group purchases 130-acre holy retreat in Tennessee (The Independent) A cult that worships & blesses its AR-15s just bought a whole bunch of land to emulate the “Moonies.” This clearly will be just fine, and there won’t be any Waco or Ruby Ridge-flavored problems at all.

“Hacker X” - the American who built a pro-Trump fake news empire - unmasks himself (Ars Technica) A story about a man who moved fast and contributed to breaking democracy.

People are using Discord for work, whether Discord likes it or not (Protocol) Whenever a company begs its users to not use its software for something, and they laugh and keep using the software for that, a corporate pivot is in order.

Thousands in China Are Using a Special Remote to Repel ‘Dancing Grannies’ (VICE World News) Infrared remote controls are being used to turn off the studio monitor speaker systems these Chinese Grannies are blasting their dance music with.

Otis had no idea he was dealing with a bird within a bird.

The Math of the Amazing Sandpile (Nautilus) Fascinating discussion of the physics of sand dunes and why the stuff does what it does at the beach when your kids are playing around with it.

How a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony (The Conversation)

Poem of the Tea:

Thursday afternoon, so close to Friday, so close to payday, so close to a photon of rest.

Yours,