Afternoon Tea 10.21.2020 - Subsequent Sus

Is nice, I like.

October 21, 2020

One of those days where if your feeds were set to “Top” instead of “Recent,” you missed quite a bit. The Pope supports same-sex civil unions, AOC & Ilhan Omar teach a masterclass in digital engagement while sussing out the imposter Among Them, and our favorite Dark Carnival Pokémon activated Sasha Baron Cohen’s trap card. It’s Wednesday, October 21st 2020, and this is the Tea.

Rudy Giuliani faces questions after compromising scene in new Borat film (The Guardian) If the killing blow to Trump’s campaign is delivered by Borat, I think we can safely say Sacha Baron Cohen 1. should be given a Pulitzer Prize, and 2. fulfilled the legacy of Andy Kaufman. Warning: the article contains spoilers for Borat Subsequent Movie Film. The Onion, remaining undefeated, posted this almost 3 weeks ago:

Over 400,000 People Watched AOC & Ilhan Omar Play Among Us on Twitch (TIME) I cannot overstate how gangster of a move this was. AOC & Ilhan not only used the game (Among Us) and platform (Twitch) of the moment, they used the visibility to bring in UK/Canadian streamers who educated almost half a million sub-25 year olds about the differences between UK/Canadian & American healthcare. (Editor’s Note: Ask your preteen what “sus” means if the email tag line doesn’t make sense.)

Trump may try to steal the election. We need to start preparing for that now (The Guardian) Occupy Elder outlines how to prepare for what lots in the regular media is still referring to academically.

Francis becomes 1st pope to endorse same-sex civil unions (AP) “Wash the feet of the poor” has always been my favorite flavor of Christianity.

NY Post story goes massive on social media despite crackdowns (Axios) Again, for all of the bloviating about Conservative bias and suppression on social media, the piece of sludge excreted by Rudy & the Post still had hyper-mega-combo exposure levels.

United States v. Google (Stratechery) This is long and dry, but it’s the only correct take on the anti-trust lawsuit against Google. To note, it doesn’t address a lot of the main monopoly powers Google has, it’s only being pursued by a handful of GOP AGs & Barr, and most importantly, even if Google loses, it’s not clear they’d be weakened in any way. This paragraph stuck with me today:

This isn’t the only duopoly: Google and Facebook jointly dominate digital advertising, Microsoft and Google jointly dominate productivity applications, Microsoft and Amazon jointly dominate the public cloud, and Amazon and Google jointly dominate shopping searches. And, while all of these companies compete, those competitive forces have set nearly all of these duopolies into fairly stable positions that justify cooperation of the sort documented between Apple and Google, even as any one company alone is able to use its rival as justification for avoiding antitrust scrutiny.

“Trumpcare” Does Not Exist. Nevertheless Facebook and Google Cash In on Misleading Ads for “Garbage” Health Insurance. (ProPublica) This is the bit that you could develop bipartisan/slam dunk cases to hit Google, Amazon & Facebook for. Taking money into their ad networks for things that don’t exist, because they’re just putting out ads for random nouns & keywords and charging businesses who don’t know any better for it. Ask any small business who spent $1,000 in ads to promote a product only to find out they called it the wrong thing.

The Case Against Big Tech’s Election Strategies (Foreign Policy) This argument will grow in relevance over time. All of the strategies proposed by social networks to stop US election misinfo, for example would be applied equally in Alabama and Alameda, CA. If that sounds stupid imagine how dumb it is when they do it to different countries in the same region that don’t even speak the same language.

Economist Found $16 Trillion When She Tallied Cost of Racial Bias (Bloomberg) The report Citi published on racial bias and economic impact is 104 pages long and looks to have caused a number of senior Citi employees to rethink their careers.

Sweet-Talking CEOs Are Starting to Outsmart the Robot Analysts (Bloomberg) My favorite “don’t underestimate humans” story of the month. CEOs are adapting to bots that crawl their public speeches for terms to glean stock tips. Quants looking at executives/salespeople:

Song of the Tea: How we communicate them may change, but what we communicate remains the same.

Every single second is goldenHold on to the moment…

Yours,T

P.S. The Trump Tweet complaining about the takedown of Babylon Bee led to this thing that is absolutely my jam.