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The everything store…where everything is for sale:
If you thought the influencer ecosystem is shady, meet the Amazon reviewer ecosystem.
Those who had their reviews deleted included Justin Fryer, the number one-ranked reviewer on Amazon.co.uk, who in August alone reviewed £15,000 worth of products, from smartphones to electric scooters to gym equipment, giving his five-star approval on average once every four hours.
https://www.ft.com/content/bb03ba1c-add3-4440-9bf2-2a65566aef4a
While at it, there’s more straightforward ways to influence marketplace positioning as well - like bribing Amazon employees!
Six people have been indicted by a grand jury in Washington state on charges they bribed Amazon employees to manipulate third-party seller listings on the e-commerce site, including listings for defective or dangerous products, authorities said.
Threads that teach!
I love Twitter for the lovely, deep threads that pop-up all over the place every day. This is one such great thread that takes you through how institutional failure looks like and how it ends up causing massive destruction all around! Now think about what other critical infrastructure around the world is in a similar state?
Earn.. and Give…give it all:
Not too often you read about such people - the founder of private equity giant General Atlantic, a billionaire, wanted to die broke, and he’s now pretty much achieved it (giving away all his wealth that is - some $8 Billion of it!). Respect!🙏
From the Dept. of Who’s Surprised!
(The brilliant gif is from an older Bloomberg article. I find myself using it all-too often these days - a sign-of-the-times, is what I tell myself)
Wikipedia, but for driving traffic IRL:
Who’d have thunk!
Pays to Play:
A small company in the UK making tabletop fantasy games is the darling of the stock market!
The stock has gained almost 1,600% over the past five years and shareholders who reinvested dividends have enjoyed a 2,140% return, by far the best performance on the FTSE All-Share Index. In percentage terms only two Nasdaq 100 constituents — Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Nvidia Corp. — have done better in the same period
In Isht you can’t make up:
One of the biggest IPOs in the US in 2019 is a company that makes a key ingredient that is driving heroin production in Mexico. Yea.
Totally useless/useful stat:
Apparently about 80,000 American drivers have accidents serious enough to warrant calling their insurers. Every day. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Insurers in the US are now beginning to adopt mobile claim submissions and approvals.
Read this with the case of this Tesla owner who’s been charged with sleeping with autopilot cruising at 90mph - we need full autonomous cars, not semi-autonomous, or anything that requires any human supervision, while also offering an illusion of autonomy.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/18/21445168/tesla-driver-sleeping-police-charged-canada-autopilot
My new obsession…AI generated videos:
Yea, weird I know. But then fascinating to think of where we are headed seeing these examples:
AI-generated tennis matches, where Federer plays…himself.
Take a trip down San Francisco, circa 1906. In color and upscaled to 4K! When algorithms predict and ‘fill’ gaps in our memory or history, how “real” is it is a real question that we soon have to contend with.
And while at it, be very concerned by the growing, easy availability of deepfake tech! Good read on the worrying trend.
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The Theranos Test:
If there’s one good thing that’s come out of the Theranos (and Wirecard) saga, it’s that we can now use the dipsh*t test more liberally - assume any outlandish claims as fraud and put the onus on proving validity and viability on the claimant as early in their hype cycle as possible! Two excellent examples:
A company with a 20-second Coronavirus test - https://www.ft.com/content/e7a279df-3239-4e00-be29-f38d98f4d730
Current electric vehicle darling - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/14/nikola-details-false-and-misleading-information-of-short-sellers-fraud-claims.html
Weird flex, but OK:
JPMorgan CEO apparently believes his junior staff are slacking off on Fridays and Mondays while working remotely.
Work output was particularly affected on Mondays and Fridays, according to findings discussed by Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon in a private meeting with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts.
There’s always a market:
Netflix still has some two million subscribers to their DVD subscription services.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/netflix-dvds
And finally, I received this in my family Whatsapp group. And it should probably go into yours as well.
Stay safe, and happy reading! And if you liked the newsletter, please do share on your social networks. My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.