The Whatever: Texodus edition
Quote of the week
Australian multi-millionaire property developer Tim Gurner (net worth AU$584 million):
I think the problem that we’ve had is that people decided they didn’t really want to work so much any more through COVID. And that has had a massive effect on productivity. You know, tradies have definitely pulled back on productivity. They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change. We need to see unemployment rise – unemployment has to jump 40 to 50 per cent, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. It’s a dynamic that has to change.
Texas
-
A group supporting indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton donates $3m to Dan Patrick, the Lt Governor presiding as judge over Paxton's trial — during the impeachment trial process. By a strange coincidence Texas Republicans acquit Paxton of all charges.
-
Texas paid a Bitcoin company $31.7m to stop wasting electricity during August.
Education
- Teachers can't afford to live in Aspen, Colorado, but the city has a new solution: 19 square meter sheds that teachers can live in. And to ensure affordability, the shacks are being built by unpaid student labor.
$8chan
-
Elon Musk's transgender daughter disowns him, so obviously he calls her a Communist and claims she was brainwashed into thinking he's evil by the elite LA private school he sent her to.
-
When Elon wants Twitter servers moved, they get moved — even if it means yanking the power suddenly and getting people with no ID to load them into a rented U-Haul van in exchange for cash.
-
Xitter hands over user data to Saudi Arabian authorities far more often than it hands it over to US or EU authorities. By an amazing coincidence, Elon's takeover of Twitter was funded with help from the Qatar Investment Authority and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.
-
Xitter does not consider antisemitic Holocaust denial messages to be a violation of its safety policies when they are posted in response to the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum. Meanwhile, Elon promises that the "block" feature will be removed, and claims that most of Xitter's revenue losses can be blamed on the Anti-Defamation League.
Surveillance capitalism
-
Google Chrome's new "Turn on ad privacy" feature improves your privacy by having the browser track everything you view across every web site, regardless of any privacy software you might be running.
-
The College Board web site is telling Facebook students' GPA averages and SAT score ranges.
Technology
-
BMW discovers that people won't pay a subscription to use the heated seats already in their cars.
-
San Francisco Fire Department says self-driving taxis blocked an ambulance on its way to the emergency room, contributing to a patient's death.
Irony department
-
Those eco-friendly paper straws? 90% of them are laced with PFAS, those toxic "forever chemicals".
-
The British Museum has accused an employee of stealing valuable relics.
Crapto
- Cryptocurrency startup claims it has gone bankrupt after losing multiple chunks of solid steel etched with the password to its hardware cryptocurrency wallet. Definitely not a rug pull, nope.
Business ethics
-
According to a lawyer for the US Virgin Islands, JPMorgan Chase notified the US Treasury that it handled a billion dollars of human trafficking transactions for Jeffrey Epstein over the course of 16 years.
-
Former Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach is very unhappy that she has been named as a descendant of wealthy slave traders. (Ex PM David Cameron, who ruled out reparations, also has a wealthy slave trader in his family background — and so does his wife.)
-
The CEO of Peet's Coffee won't stop doing business in Russia, because (he says) coffee is essential and if he didn't sell it to Russia someone else would. The company will, however, be renaming its Russian brand to avoid damaging its other brands.
Very bad people
-
Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a mutiny against Putin, died after a jet plane suddenly stopped transmitting tracking signals and dropped from the sky. Strangely, Russia will not be investigating the crash.
-
After Russell Brand is accused of rape and sexual assault by four women, he is defended by Elon Musk, Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson, but nevertheless insists he is innocent.
Don't do that
-
Melbourne man accused of lighting fires while having ducklings in his underwear and possessing an unspecified weapon.
-
Nebraska man stopped while driving with a fully-grown bull in the passenger seat.
-
Florida man arrested trying to walk across the Atlantic ocean to London.
Good news, bad news
- The good news: a new trial suggests an effective treatment for type 2 diabetes…
Consumer news
-
Costco's discount Kirkland-branded vodka is an excellent deal, if you like its "bathroom urinal puck vibe". If not, well, they're offering refunds…
-
Finally, pumpkin spice flushable butt wipes!