It’s not every day when the Simpsons, The Music Man, 1960s Cold War themes from the Prisoner and the SEC changing reporting rules all come wrapped in a single package to stoke the brushfires of your mind. This Summer Nights Radio episode made a few connections. With song, dance and cartoons while describing a theory regarding the SEC allowing for longer periods of pump and dump stock schemes to let initial private equity regain their huge expenditures from public offerings.
Voicing Opposition to Relaxing Reporting Requirements
It’s vital that we use whatever means necessary to continue a consistent flow of information from companies that are traded on the public exchanges. The discipline of reporting on the health of the company signal to investors if a ship is off course. After all, it is your money that will be lost should the leadership fail at keep their businesses attuned with providing quality product or services. Your dollars are a vote. And after all we’ve had bailouts of these same companies, the public deserves to know what has lead up to the “emergency” that now requires a public safety net.
Here is a link to the Public Comment for the SEC 10Q rule change.
Background Reading
Cultural Courage has been tracking trends in it’s unique way for quite a while. And while some of the imagery is cartoonish, the characters who preen before us are that bizarre. Somehow that cache they have cultivated is amplified by fanboy media and others, money flows, and our society is influenced in ways that not healthy.
There are also things that today seem like wishful thinking on my part, a glass half empty view that sadly turned out to be wrong. They are worth examining as well, as they will sketch out different patterns that should we regain our senses, could guide us to saner stewardship over our resources and technology.
It's Not OpenAI's Sputnik Moment, It's Their Theranos / Elizabeth Holmes Moment
Remember that weirdo woman in the black turtleneck who spoke in clearly affected yet artificially deep tones while staring at you with unblinking eyes? Her hair was always all messed up because she was working all night at the lab and didn’t have time to shower before the interview. Elizabeth Holmes, touted as the next Steve Jobs because, well, the C…
Viva Aviato!
The protests in support of Hamas organizations which have included the occupation and destruction of Columbia University property, threats of violence against Jewish students has escalated with the occupation of Trump Towers. This was in response to the ICE detaining Muhammad Khalil and a more aggressive response by the State Department.
On the Flipside of the Stargate
And to be honest I was floored when the first technology announcement from his administration was with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison, two oligarchs not even prominent during the campaign. Their project is Stargate, a series of massive data centers needed to power the systems which provide AI services.
There are significantly bad ideas involved with Stargate, and significantly good ideas as well.
