Twitter and the privatisation of the memes of production
For a long time, I’ve viewed the internet data-driven economy as analogous to the communistic Gosplan system under the Soviet Union. I recently applied that thinking in a Twitter thread to Elon’s restructuring of Twitter. I compared his move to charge $8 for verification to a perestroika moment for the social media platform. I’d like to […]
Ignore Francafrique at your own peril
The French enjoy speaking about their country’s supposed decline. Complaints about the impoverished areas of Saint-Denis, poor job prospects, or the calamitous state of the RER metro line are typical. But France’s decline is most visible a few thousand kilometers to the south – in the slow downfall of Francafrique. The Sahel has been rocked […]
Why you’re doing your due diligence wrong; and some steps on how to do it right
By Dario Garcia Giner We used to live in a world underpinned by cheap trust where the need to do due diligence was rare. Your cousin visited Nigeria, he drank some beers with the right locals, and the two joined in business to make some money. Business used to be almost exclusively about the right signet […]
Spotlight on the bureaucratic state’s productivity problem
Productivity has been faltering in the UK since at least 2008. We know this because the UK’s Productivity Commission says so. That’s not to say the UK is alone here. Productivity rates have been falling all over the western world. It’s just the situation in the UK is particularly bad, for reasons not properly understood […]
Spotlight on: The EU as a revived medieval empire
When Boris Johnson cheekily suggested this week that Emmanuel Macron’s European Political Community proposal would allow for the creation of a modern Roman Empire he missed one crucial thing. We have already rebuilt a Roman Empire in Europe – it’s just not the Roman Empire you’re thinking of. It is instead the Holy Roman Empire […]
Spotlight on how crypto genius failed
Decentralised finance, a.k.a DeFi, has been hurting The Blind Spot’s head ever since we first heard about pancake swaps earlier this year. Try as we might we couldn’t wrap our heads around it. What the hell was it? What was its point? How did it work? Why did everyone seem to know what was going […]
Spotlight on mass-market satellite access
When a snapshot of a mirrored monolith was posted by state biologists conducting a survey on local bighorn sheep in November 2020, it ignited what would soon become one of the most intensive open-source pursuits for topological intelligence the world has ever seen. Within hours, thousands of amateur sleuths were dissecting the image (which was […]
Why it’s time to start worrying about petchems
A spotlight on strange petchem effects That Russian sanctions on the back of the Ukraine war are disrupting commodity markets is old news. We all know energy and commodity prices are the key drivers of 40-year busting inflation prints and other supply-side disruptions. What is still to be appropriately acknowledged, however, is the degree to […]
Spotlight on the emergence of noble gas spot markets
The second of our deep-dives into the noble gas market, this time focusing on market structure issues and the potential for the emergence of a viable spot market.
A market that fell under the spell of the moon
Why Luna is a lesson for all of finance.
