#Hindenberg

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The Hindenburg over Manhattan, minutes before it exploded, May 6, 1937.

Photo: Associated Press via N-TV

[cissa-calls]

AGATHA IS RUMORED TO HAVE SUCCUBUS POWERS????

It’s a line listed in one of the articles Billy combs through, but never explicitly mentioned aloud. I’m curious if this holds any weight, or if it’s meant to reflect as an unreliable resource and exemplify the hostile internet landscape that turns any woman with a suggestion of supernatural power into a vessel for being sexualized.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The long bezzle

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

When it comes to the modern world of enshittified, terrible businesses, no addition to your vocabulary is more essential than "bezzle," JK Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/09/accounting-gimmicks/#unter

The bezzle is contained by two forces.

First, Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop."

Second, Keynes's: "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

On the one hand, extremely badly run businesses that strip all the value out of the firm, making things progressively worse for its suppliers, workers and customers will eventually fail (Stein's Law).

On the other hand, as the private equity sector has repeatedly demonstrated, there are all kinds of accounting tricks, subsidies and frauds that can animate a decaying, zombie firm long after its best-before date (Keynes's irrational markets):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

One company that has done an admirable job of balancing on a knife edge between Stein and Keynes is Verizon, a monopoly telecoms firm that has proven that a business can remain large, its products relied upon by millions, its stock actively traded and its market cap buoyant, despite manifest, repeated incompetence and waste on an unimaginable scale.

This week, Verizon shut down Bluejeans, an also-ran videoconferencing service the company bought for $400 million in 2020 as a panic-buy to keep up with Zoom. As they lit that $400 mil on fire, Verizon praised its own vision, calling Bluejeans "an award-winning product that connects our customers around the world, but we have made this decision due to the changing market landscape":

https://9to5google.com/2023/08/08/verizon-bluejeans-shutting-down/

Writing for Techdirt, Karl Bode runs down a partial list of all the unbelievably terrible business decisions Verizon has made without losing investor confidence or going under, in a kind of tribute to Keynes's maxim:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/10/verizon-fails-again-shutters-attempted-zoom-alternative-bluejeans-after-paying-400-million-for-it/

Remember Go90, the "dud" streaming service launched in 2015 and shuttered in 2018? You probably don't, and neither (apparently) do Verizon's shareholders, who lost $1.2 billion on this folly:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/07/02/verizons-sad-attempt-to-woo-millennials-falls-flat-face/

Then there was Verizon's bid to rescue Redbox with a new joint-venture streaming service, Redbox Instant, launched 2012, killed in 2014, $450,000,000 later:

https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/verizon-redbox-to-pull-plug-on-video-streaming-service-1201321484/

Then there was Sugarstring, a tech "news" website where journalists were prohibited from saying nice things about Net Neutrality or surveillance – born 2014, died 2014:

https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/2/7324063/verizon-kills-off-sugarstring

An app store, started in 2010, killed in 2012:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/5/3605618/verizon-apps-store-closing-january-2013

Vcast, 2005-2012, yet another failed streaming service (pray that someday you find someone who loves you as much as Verizon's C-suite loves doomed streaming services):

https://venturebeat.com/media/verizon-vcast-shutting-down/

And the granddaddy of them all, Oath, Verizon's 2017, $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo/AOL, whose name refers to the fact that the company's mismanagement provoked involuntary, protracted swearing from all who witnessed the $4.6 billion write-down the company took a year later:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/12/if-youre-surprised-verizons-aol-yahoo-face-plant-you-dont-know-verizon/

Verizon isn't just bad at being a phone company that does non-phone-company things – it's incredibly bad at being a phone company, too. As Bode points out, Verizon's only real competency is in capturing its regulators at the FCC:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/05/02/new-verizon-video-blatantly-lies-about-whats-happening-to-net-neutrality/

And sucking up massive public subsidies from rubes in the state houses of New York:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/03/14/new-york-city-sues-verizon-fiber-optic-bait-switch/

New Jersey:

https://www.techdirt.com/2014/04/25/verizon-knows-youre-sucker-takes-taxpayer-subsidies-broadband-doesnt-deliver-lobbies-to-drop-requirements/

and Pennsylvania:

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/06/15/verizon-gets-wrist-slap-years-neglecting-broadband-networks-new-jersey-pennsylvania/

Despite all this, and vast unfunded liabilities – like remediating the population-destroying lead in their cables – they remain solvent:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/verizon-sued-by-investors-over-lead-cables-environmental-statements-2023-08-02/

Verizon has remained irrational longer than any short seller could remain solvent.

Short-sellers – who bet against companies and get paid when their stock prices go down – get a bad rap: billionaire shorts were the villains of the Gamestop squeeze, accused of running negative PR campaigns against beloved businesses to drive them under and pay their bets off:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/30/meme-stocks/#stockstonks

But shorts can do the lord's work. Writing for Bloomberg, Kathy Burton tells the story of Nate Anderson, whose Hindenburg Research has cost some of the world's wealthiest people over $99 billion by publishing investigative reports on their balance-sheet shell-games just this year:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-06/how-much-did-hindenburg-make-from-shorting-adani-dorsey-icahn

Anderson started off trying to earn a living as a SEC whistleblower, identifying financial shenanigans and collecting the bounties on offer, but that didn't pan out. So he turned his forensic research skills to preparing mediagenic, viral reports on the scams underpinning the financial boasts of giant companies…after taking a short position in them.

This year, Anderson's targets have included Carl Icahn, whose company lost $17b in market cap after Anderson accused it of overvaluing its assets. He went after the world's fourth-richest man, Gautam Adani, accusing him of "accounting fraud and stock manipulation," wiping out 34% of his net worth. He took on Jack Dorsey, whose payment processor Square renamed itself Block and went all in on the cryptocurrency bezzle, lopping 16% off its share price.

Burton points out that Anderson's upside for these massive bloodletting was comparatively modest. A perfectly timed exit from the $17b Icahn report would have netted $56m. What's more, Anderson faces legal threats and worse – one short seller was attacked by a man wearing brass-knuckles, an attack attributed to her short activism.

Shorts are lauded as one of capitalism's self-correcting mechanisms, and Hindenberg certainly has taken some big, successful swings at some of the great bezzles of our time. But as Verizon shows, shorts alone can't discipline a market where profits and investor confidence are totally decoupled from competence or providing a decent product or service.

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/10/smartest-guys-in-the-room/#can-you-hear-me-now

[queermentaldisaster]

"All is Found," an OC drabble.

So cw for implied child neglect, and character death.

Characters in order of appearance: Koroleva Makarov, Linda Hindenberg, Gospozha Makarov.

All Russian in this is Google Translated, translations at the end.

Song and title from "All is Found" by Evan Rachel Wood.

Tags: @eiraeths @forestshadow-wolf

Drabble under the cut.

Koroleva clung to her mother's shirt, trying to block out the sounds of her father screaming. She felt her mother lay her down in her bed, and she immediately let out a small cry, reaching back for her mother. The older woman gently shushed her, covering her with a blanket and tucking her in. "Тише, моя маленькая принцесса. Все нормально. Мама здесь." She reassured, as she leaned down and pressed a kiss to Koroleva's head.

She grabbed her mother's hand as it was offered to her. "колыбельная?" She asked, her voice cracking.

Her mother smiled softly, and began singing, stroking her hair as she did so. "Там, где северный ветер встречается с морем, есть река, полная воспоминаний~"

Koroleva leaned into her mother's touch, listening closely. "Спи, моя дорогая, в целости и сохранности, ибо в этой реке можно найти все~ В ее водах глубоко и правдиво лежат ответы и путь для тебя~"

She looked up, seeing those brown eyes, so full of warmth and love. "��ыряйте глубоко в ее звук, но не слишком далеко, иначе вы утонете~ Да, она будет петь тем, кто услышит, и в ее песне струится вся магия~ Но сможете ли вы выдержать то, чего боитесь больше всего~? Сможешь ли ты принять то, что знает река~?"

Koroleva began drifting off, as the song came to a close. "Там, где северный ветер встречается с морем, есть мать, полная воспоминаний~ Приходи, моя дорогая, домой направляется~ Когда всё потеряно, тогда всё найдётся~"

Everything went black and blank as she heard the faint sound of the door opening.

Koroleva shot awake to the sound of her baby sister bawling. She pushed herself out of bed, hurrying to the kitchen and coming back with a bottle of formula. She lifted her sister out of the bassinet, her small body barely able to handle holding the little one. She hung her head, wishing her mama was here.

Translations: (1: Hush, my little princess. It's okay. Mama's here.) (2: lullaby?) (3: Where the north wind meets the sea, there's a river full of memory~) (4: Sleep, my darling, safe and sound, for in this river all is found~ In her waters, deep and true lie the answers and a path for you~) (5: Dive down deep into her sound but not too far or you'll be drowned~ Yes, she will sing to those who'll hear, and in her song, all magic flows~ But can you brave what you most fear~? Can you face what the river knows~?) (6: Where the north wind meets the sea there's a mother full of memory~ Come, my darling, homeward bound~ When all is lost, then all is found~)

[giantkillerjack]

Me researching the history of racism in movies PRAYING that the Algorithms That Be don't misinterpret me searching "anti-Black media" as an aspirational choice.

Brb deleting my browser history so Google doesn't think I'm a tradwife...

[bidokja]

still not over the fact that our ship consisting of a pro-gamer and the most mid man in existence won to spirk. spirk. the fandom slash grandpas. on the fandom webbed site.

[cadykeus-clay]

there is truly nothing funnier to me than the all work no play ghost hunting episode

[minicy]

[ID. The Hindenberg over Manhattan on May 6th, 1937. It is a smooth, long blimp. It has four tailfins; the top and bottom fins have bold Nazi flags on them. The image is black and white and taken from a plane slightly above the ship. End ID.]

it was pretty convenient for american history textbooks that the hindenburg burned swastika side first so they could use pictures of that without doing some very awkward explaining about why there was a nazi airship docking in new jersey

[nina-floret]

[cassnottiel]

Season 6 starts with the worst jumpscare imaginable. High hopes by panic at the disco

[proheromidoriyashouto]

why did they do this to a baby

[26lettersandmanyjourneys]

4/5 ⭐️

A very interesting read about a religios/cultural phenomenon that I had never heard about before

[menjeet]

The deeper impact of the Adani meltdown

A critical aspect of the fallout of the Adani group or any similar large business is how its lenders are going to deal with the aftershock and this is something I haven’t seen addressed anywhere. Post covid all big and small lenders are aggressively liquidating assets of borrowers whose loans have turned NPAs. I know this because I proof read ads of possession and sale notices published by banks…

[davidbrussat]

Video: Industrial Trust Bldg.

A train zooms through Providence, with the Industrial Trust building in the background. (YouTube) Here is a video produced, apparently seven years ago, by Matthew Bird, a videographer who hails from the Rhode Island School of Design. For those of us who love the Industrial Trust, including many who roll our eyes when it is referred to as the Superman Building (it is not), it is a fascinating look…

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Don't forget to vote for von Hindenberg this election! Thälmann can't win, and if you vote for him you're basically handing your vote to Hitler. Von Hindenberg has his issues, don't get me wrong, but if Hitler wins he'll be so much worse. Besides, it's not like von Hindenberg is just going to collaborate with the Nazis to keep the left out of power or anything. When push comes to shove, I'm sure he'll make the right choice and collaborate with us instead.