Ever Given: ever stuck

Currently people claim that it will take two days to clear the canal from the ill fated container behemoth. I think the ship will still be in the news in April. I know nothing about ships, even less about the Suez Canal in specific. But the the thing has not moved in two days. News of it moving again was already floating around the Internets. But the thing itself appears to be firmly lodged in place. And, if you ask me, it will be for quiet some time. At 15km/h the ship will have travelled not at its top speed. But the thing is freaking huge. Its gross tonnage is 220 thousand. In comparison the 15 ships that got trapped in the Suez canal during the 1967 war had together a tonnage of just 129 thousand. The Ever Given is 400 meters long. The Suez canal is around 200 meters wide. Turning a ship around will not work. If you still try then the thing will get stuck. While moving forward. The Ever Given has lodged its nose deeply into Asia while its as has pushed heavily into Asia. Those 8 tug boats are cute. They can move a ship of a large size if it floats in water. If it sits in sand there is no way. The Ever Given sails with a full load of containers. Every ship that can get a hold of enough tin cans currently does. Containers are the limit. Crazy times in shipping. Even before this mishap. The tugs all they could. All the time. What didn’t move was the ship. So what is next?

You can try to dig out the ship. Did I mention that it is a big ship? It sits in the middle of the desert. Humans can move lots of earth. But not on short notice.

You can try to offload containers to reduce its weight. Good idea. Just how many do you need to offload? And how? Got a crane? Just getting that one in place will take a couple of days. You need to negotiate and organize that job.

So if you have a ship waiting on an end of the Suez Canal right now let me tell you: Have it go around Africa. Those extra 7 days will save you time in the end. March, 24th, 2020. I have been wrong before.

Off course SLV was a pump and dump

economy media
Silver was already a thing before.

But it never was propagated via WSB. Instead the WSJ and NYtimes put that shit right on their front pages. For days.

Now that the SEC is looking into it they quickly would very much to forget that they were much involved in the SLV pump and dump scheme:

writes the WSJ on February 12th

Just to be clear: That Silver talk was on the pages of the newspapers, but not on reddit. Nowhere to be seen.

I forgot who said that malice should be ruled out as long as stupidity and ineptness can be used as a reasonable explanation. Which is, I am afraid to say, the case with both the NY Times and WSJ. They are well written. But so much of what they write is nonsense. Amazing that people still fall for it. And buy silver. Following the detour laid out by the papers for them …

Datenlage

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Seit nem Jahr haben wir mit Corona zu tun. Millionen haben sich angesteckt. Weit mehr als ein halbes Lakh sind bis jetzt daran gestorben.

Aber was wissen wir über die Ansteckungswege? In Talkshows sitzen Menschen und reden Unsinn. Es gibt keine belastbaren Erhebungen darüber wie viel des Infektionsgeschehens aus dem ÖNV, dem Fliessband, der Privatfeier oder der Grundschule entspringt. In diese Lücke grätschen natürlich sofort Populisten aller Schattierungen. Behauptungen die leicht im Publikum durch Anekdoten “belegbar” sind werden so zu Ursachen für Handeln. Mit dem Virus hat das dann nur noch indirekt zu tun.

Die App, wieviele Informationen hat sie uns geliefert? Wie viele Super Spreader Events liessen sich identifizieren? Was können wir sonst noch lernen?

Das wir vor einem Jahr im Dunkel tappten war schlecht. Das wir es immer noch tun ist leider sehr schlecht. Und langsam dann auch wirklich ärgerlich. Eine wirklich aufgeklärte, entwickelte und sachliche Gesellschaft kann wesentlich besser reagieren und dastehen als wir es gerade in Deutschland tun.

Aber Die Bild, Frau Will und Herr Plasberg schmieden weiterhin das Meinungsbild. Dabei sind Sie ebenso informationslos wie ihre Gäste und Lesen.

Und alle reden und schreiben sie so als ob sie eine Ahnung haben würden.

Sie haben es nicht. Keiner hat sie. Leider.

überfordert

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Lehrer sind es. Politiker sind es, geben es aber nicht zu. Journalisten sind es, schreiben aber weiter einfach drauf los damit sie es nicht merken. Menschen im allgemeinen in Deutschland im Februar 2021 scheinen alle überfordert.

Ausser denen die in die Arbeit gehen. Dafür sorgen das alles noch funktioniert. Die können es sich nicht leisten überfordert zu sein. Die machen einfach weiter, als wäre nichts gewesen.

Ist sowieso das Beste. Seit 200 Jahren.

Bald wieder auf dem Lidl und Aldi Parkplatz: Der Fendt 724 Vario

deutschland economy politics

10% mehr Traktoren wurden 2020 verkauft. In Deutschland allein mehr als 1000 von Fendt’s 724 Model. Des PS stärksten der beliebten 700 Reihe. Mit um die 200,000 Euro sind die zwar nicht ganz billig. aber so ist das eben. Und völlig ohne Scham werden sie dann auch zum nächsten Bauernprotest gefahren.

Der arme Bauer kriegt vom Kapitalisten Discounter kein Geld für seine Milch. Gefördert wird er zwar. Von vorne bis hinten. Aber es reicht eben noch nich: Fendt ist ja bei weitem NICHT die billigste Traktoren Marke.

Wenn Harzer mit neuen Mercedes und BMW Mittelklasse Modellen vor den Kuhställen unserer Agrarschaffenden auftauchen würden um billigere Milch einzufordern wäre das nicht auch komisch?

So sieht er natürlich aus. Das Bild oben ist ja nur ein Favorit 12S. Letztes Jahrhundert. Wie man sich einen Traktor vorstellte. Als sie auch noch auf die Strasse passten.

company size

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Amazon employs 1.3 million people. Using the 57% US workforce participation rate that is very close to all jobs in America’s 4th largest city Houston Texas.

Walmart is bigger, scaling its 2.2 million employees gets you to the size of LA. Walmart is also the company with the largest revenue: 524 billion dollars, or $1600 per person in the US. (I lived in the US for 23 years and have been to a Walmart once, saw one from the outside maybe 3 or 4 times) The GDP of Sweden is 542 billion US. 10 million Swedes create around 3% more value than Walmart has in total sales.

Tesla market cap is 777 billion right now. 90% more than Walmart.

Apples market cap is 2.27 trillion dollars. If the Steve Jobs would return from the dead and distribute all of Apple evenly to all people in the US then everybody would get 7000 US dollars. And since returning from the dead is a rather special and unique thing he might as well pull that one off too.

VW + Microsoft

M$ technology

What could possibly go wrong?

illegal – illshemgal

unkategorisch

Robinhood, Schwab and other entities that normal people have their stock portfolio (euphemism) with get billions of dollars annually from market makers like Citadel or Virtu for bringing them our business.

They pay for our trades. And we don’t pay Schwab & Co. How make those market makers make money then?

Specially if you consider that it would be illegal if they would not give our trades the best price.

How does it even work?

It probably does not. We probably get skimmed when we trade. In the maelstrom of high speed trading this might be rather tedious to fully investigate. It is fractions of % anyway. Somehow I personally feel that the SEC is not actually eager to rock the boat that much these days.

If you are not paying you are the product.

Clubhouse?

technology

First time I heard about Clubhouse was when Ramelow mentioned that he plays Candycrush while being in a BLK Corona Schalte. Basically a glorified zoom call where Merkel tries to get the Ministerpräsidenten on board for the next anti Covid measures. A year ago Ramelow was already in den news since he didn’t get elected. Instead some hapless dude from the FDP felt it would be OK if he would form a government by getting tolerated by the right wing populist AfD.

Back to Clubhouse. Invite only. IOS only. 500 people per room only. No ability to record audio. Except via the analog loophole I would think. It is audio based, and audio still gets into our brains
via pressure waives. Which can be recorded since more than 150 years.

Do I care about CH? No. Do I like to join? Fuck no.

But Elon spoke there? Really. They even had 2 overflow rooms. A total audience of 1500 random people on the Internet? Well. OK, the people are not entirely random. Right now it is Silicon Valley heavy, then there is the press. Those who also stare at twitter and other news outlets. But Musk on CH is similar to Lee Iacocca using a CB radio.

Still not sure what CH differentiates from CB in the first place.

I wonder what the endgame is for something like Clubhouse. I don’t see it. If you talk, and a couple of hundred people can listen, what is it that is worth saying? Multi level marketing promotions and religious gatherings aside there is not anything in our culture that would benefit from the unique features of Clubhouse.

If you have something to communicate to a small(ish) audience, then you might as well record a youtube video. Where people can find it. Where you can have links, calls to action etc. And a picture along your words. You can prepare the message you have to all you like. Doing it live is not making it better in most cases.

Once the influencers all want to (and can) talk on Clubhouse there will be simply not enough people that care enough to listen. Sure many people have they mom who would chime up. But what if you happened to sired multiple influences? Sophies Choice all over again.

Think a Sahara filled with lots and lots of Stylites.

There are earnings calls and similar communications where Clubhouse could be used. Maybe if Clubhouse would have unique benefits over a phone number one can call, then it could be used here. There still would be the chicken and egg to get over though. If your simple and working call-in method gets you a more reliable audience, why should you venture into Clubhouse? Having a phone that you can dial into something is a given. Clubhouse membership not.

I personally can not imagine how Clubhouse could scale. One would need a large number of people who can talk in a way that it is worth listening live to. Yes, in theory, everybody could talk. But in reality there are only weird areas and clubs where this would make sense. The bottom feeders of the Internet will like it. Racists, Flatearthers and the like. But you can’t make money with those. Chat Roulette had content problems too.

Once CH wants to go wider, what kind of thing do they want to be associated with? I am tempted to hide the telegram icon on my phone. Not that I would use it in disgusting ways, but others don’t know that.

Clubhouse might look like a real world real estate based gathering place. After the ‘party’ is over and before those responsible for cleaning up arrived and did what they do. Not a very inviting place.

I will write in six months again here how CH is doing. My guess it will be a hot mess.

In two years somebody might bought it and/or less relevant than SNAP. Another communication concept based on a restriction. Or it will have quibied. Much as there are dog and human years, there are Internet and Media years: Andreesen and Horowitz are only 16 years younger than Katzenberg and Whitman.

bubble the bitcoin

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End of last year I called Bitcoin a bubble. Still think it is one. Just a larger on right now. The WSJ rightly points out the multiple dollar transaction cost. The tardiness of the network they do not address.

Bitcoin came into being since it was supposed to take on credit cards as the default payment system of the Internet. Of course technically / conceptually it is impossible that it could. It is one big bottleneck.

But such simple facts don’t deter people to fall for a narrative. Both in 2011 and in 2021. Looking up when exactly the whole thing started I learned that both the EFF and Wikileaks were among the first organizations to accept Bitcoin. In 2011 when its price was both $1 and $32. 2009 somebody bought 2 Pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. It is not known if Papa John still has those which would be worth 47 million US$. A Fiat Currency.