I have been in trouble with one of my friends. He is the type that makes recommendations on something for you to watch, maybe a series, movie or a music video - whatever it is - and wants you to report back on how you found it. He is relentless. He will hound you. If you pick up the phone and he starts saying, “bro, I just finished…” Stop him right there or you’re getting homework. This time it’s Boardwalk Empire. He insists that it is good and I’m stuck on episode 3. I’m really struggling.
I don’t spend a lot of time keeping up with pop culture and he is my window. It is through him that I find what often becomes my favourite shows, The Wire, Breaking Bad and more recently, Squid Game. I wouldn’t have seen any of these without him.
That was a long winded way of me trying to tell you something. I am that friend too. I recommend books mostly. More than that, I recommend developing the habit of reading. I recommend it to everyone. I’m very annoying about it too at times. My friends try to be polite. They nod along as I go on about the benefits this, that and the other, all the while thinking, “stop talking and bump up the volume.” They do not tell me directly - they go through the corners. So, today is the first time I recommend reading to you dear reader. It won’t be the last time. Read often and read widely.
Love Me Like Princess Mako ❤️
This week Princess Mako of the Japanese royal family gave up her royal status to marry her high school sweetheart. Japanese custom dictates that a female imperial family member will forfeit their status should they wish to marry a commoner. I mentioned female members specifically because this does not apply to their male counterparts. Princes can marry whomever they like without fear of being disowned. I know umjolo wemaJapan is upsetting at face value. You can write a book about how problematic this is, but let’s put that off for another time. You may, if you wish, explore this some more here. I just wanted to acknowledge her stance, really. This is what she said of her lover, “He is irreplaceable.” 🥺… I want to be irreplaceable too.
Offline Again
Another week, another internet outage in Eswaitni. Sometimes it’s innocent and due to overwhelming circumstances that our ISPs are just not equipped to cope with. This week was such a case. A clued up colleague of mine tried to explain to me how SPTC service terminates in this one place and that place experienced a power outage after a forced stage 4 load shedding by Eskom. Something like that. I was nodding along as he was explaining but I don’t have a clue what he meant. All I know is that I couldn’t update my Fantasy Premier League team on Wednesday.
Since June, there have been times where internet services were suspended deliberately by the powers that be. It’s unfortunate that here in Eswatini we deal with high data prices and enduring service interruptions simultaneously. We haven’t seized the opportunities that come with the digital age and we do not appear to be catching up. I was listening to the Tim Ferris podcast and there is a lot of progress regarding the next age of the internet, Web3, while we haven’t even arrived for the current age.
“Web3 applications, sometimes referred to as DApps (Decentralised Applications), are built on decentralized peer-to-peer networks Instead of being run by some company, these networks are built, operated, and maintained by their users. They’re self-organizing and lack a central point of failure. Additionally, they’re open-source meaning anyone’s help to build upon this shared infrastructure. Products and services that are “web3 compatible” have the ability to interact with smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.” - Defi Pulse
If you’ve seen HBO’s Silicon Valley, you’ll be familiar with the concept of a decentralised internet. Richard Hendricks and the gang were approaching the problem via a compression algorithm and Web3 is smart contracts and block chain based. It’s okay if these terms make equally no sense to you. Just make sure your child learns computer programming.
Meme Stocks
At the turn of the new year, the GameStop saga gripped audiences all over the world. Retail investors squeezed hedge funds out of their short positions on the GME stock. There’s a lot of jargon in that sentence. It is a pretentious way of saying big corporates held a negative opinion on the prospects of the company GameStop and individuals like you and I were not having it and bought up the stock 1600% so that these big corporates lost fortunes. And fortunes they lost! It got so bad that brokers suspended trading. You would launch your stock picking app of choice and be surprised to find the “buy” button had disappeared. It looked like sabotage against the small investor at the time, but these stock broking companies later claimed to have suffered “liquidity challenges.” The regulator has finally come out in October (10 months after the frenzy) to say, “all is fair… continue.” In their own words, see full report.
There is another stock that has been rising relentlessly since mid-October - the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC). This stock went up 845% in two days after it was linked with the polarising Donald Trump. Trading of this stock was halted several times, just like earlier in the year with GameStop. Trump came out to say he will be launching a “Truth Social,” his way of standing up to Twitter and Facebook for banning him for inciting the Capitol riot. It’s been a long year guys.
Facebook Changes its Name
Speaking of Facebook, Zuckerberg informed the world that he was changing the company name to, wait for it, Metaverse! WHAT? Metav… boy. That’s a mad one. Anyway, he made the point that the name “Facebook” was not reflective of all the work that they do. It does not even represent the entire family of apps. This rebrand is a statement that Facebook is a technology company, not just a social media company. The timing is interesting though. When I say interesting, I mean suspicious. You will recall that Facebook is in the press for the wrong reasons after a former employee blew the whistle on Facebook’s lack of urgency towards curbing misinformation and hate speech. She leaked all many of records. She caught the Snowden bug. The so called “Facebook Papers” are damning. They paint a different Facebook to the one we hear about from Mark. Something had to be done. Say hi to Meta. Meta is Facebook wearing makeup.
More News
On Tuesday, Youtube, Tik Tok and Snap testified before U.S. Senate on their efforts to foster the safety of our children online.
S&P 500 and Nasdaq hit record highs. Hopefully, this translates to more wealth for all of us.
A mystery plane crashed in Mhlambanyatsi on Tuesday.
What I’m Reading
I was reading Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. I wrote a full length article here.
If anything else happened this week, I missed it. Till next Sunday 👋🏾.
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