January 26, 2021

empowering you with insights and information from the edge of today’s headlines

What you might have missed while being mesmerized by Amanda Gorman

Retail investors get their revenge: The subreddit WallStreetBets has been going head to head with several large hedge funds, and apparently, the redditors are winning. WSB took a liking to Gamestop (the retail store that sells video games in malls) when former Chewy.com executives joined the board and vowed to make the retailer omni-channel. (Or the redditors found out that large hedge funds were shorting the company, and decided to take them on a squeeze.) Retail investors have been buying call options in bulk forcing the stock to price to quintuple in the last month. Redditors seem to have discovered that stock prices are not just about value, but they are about who holds the weakest (or largest) position. As Matt Levine wrote: some “stocks these days are driven not by rational calculations about their expected future cash flows but by the fact that people are bored at home due to the pandemic and have nothing better to do but trade stocks with their buddies on Reddit”.

Yellen gets the Hamilton treatment: Janet Yellen was confirmed as the first female Treasury Secretary this week, and to celebrate the moment she has her own rap song: Dessa’s “Who’s Yellen Now?”

Navalny goes for the Palace: Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, returned to Russia last week following his recovery from poisoning. Navalny was immediately detained upon arrival, and mass protests erupted across the country. Navalny did not take his imprisonment sitting down: his team released a video (watched by over 86M people) detailing Putin’s $1.35B Black Sea Palace. The 2-hour video details the hockey palaces, cinemas, swimming pools, saunas, music rooms, casinos, hookah rooms, and wildly expensive toilet brushes, and claims that Russian oligarchs paid for the construction in an effort to remain on the leader’s good side. Putin denied any links to the palace.

Bill goes to the farm: According to The Land Report, the number one private owners of farmland in America are none other than Bill and Melinda Gates. The Gates reportedly own 242,000 acres (about a third of the size of Rhode Island) of farmland across as many as 18 states—with the biggest holdings in Louisiana and Arkansas. We don’t think we’ll be seeing Bill on a tractor any time soon, as apparently the couple rents out the land to sustainable farmers. One of the Gates’s farmland initiatives (Gates Ag One) focuses on research that helps “small-holder farmers adapt to climate change and make food production in low- and middle-income countries more productive, resilient, and sustainable.”

Audio gets a boost: A new wave of apps are betting that audio is the new social media, combining podcasts and twitter (although these apps too will have issues with content moderation). The best-known audio-focused network is Clubhouse, the invite-only app that debuted last spring to glowing reviews for its talk-show-like twist on the chat rooms of the early internet and loved by the same Silicon Valley investors that funded it. (Clubhouse recently raised $100M, giving it a $1B valuation.) The gaming chat app Discord has also morphed into a social media platform and was even used in mass during the Capitol insurrection. We see the attraction of chat rooms (Zoom without the video), but for now we’ll stay in listen-only mode.

VCs going into media: Silicon Valley venture capitalists have long been critics of the tech press, and since technologists often seem to believe they can do everything better, Andreessen Horowitz has doubled down by creating its own in-house media venture. A16z announced its intentions in a blog post, citing its goal of building "a new and separate media property" that allows the firm to speak directly to its audiences of startup founders, investors, and general business readers. Part of that new editorial strategy will include building out an independent opinions section, which the firm says will be "pro-tech, pro-future, [and] pro-change." 

Sitting out the Super Bowl: While most of us watch the Super Bowl for the ads, this year we’ll most likely be disappointed: many major brands are sitting out the festivities in order to donate to COVID vaccination efforts. Budweiser, Coke, Pepsi and Audi have decided not to advertise on the Sunday show (although Aheuser-Busch will still promote Bud Light, and Pepsi will still highlight Frito-Lay products). The prospect of a major party in the middle of a pandemic heightened the brands’ sensitivity toward the annual event, and as some companies like Coca-Cola were forced to layoff employees, they determined the money was better spent elsewhere (ads usually cost around $5.5M for 30 seconds of air time).

COVID jails: Germany has decided to outfit rooms in several unused detention centers as COVID jails: rooms that will house those who refuse to abide by quarantine rules. "Inmates" will be allowed televisions, laptops, phones and other domestic comforts. Psychological support is also available for residents and the rooms themselves have a comfortable bed and space to walk around, a far cry from a stereotypical prison cell. No word on how many “inmates” have actually been sent to the facility or whether it is just a ploy to intimidate residents into accepting the rules.

Leahy takes on Batman: You might have heard of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the longest serving member of the Senate, since he’ll be third in line to the Presidency and will preside over Trump’s second impeachment trial. However, you might not have heard that Leahy has appeared in five Batman films. Leahy has been enamored with the Bat since childhood, and even collaborated on a graphic novel about the Horror of Landmines. Leahy’s most notable cameo was being attacked by Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Knight.” Unfortunately, he declined a cameo in the upcoming reboot due to COVID and his busy schedule.

Feeling like an after death experience: Robert Thomas Bigelow, the Las Vegas real estate investor, is offering $1M in prizes for the best evidence for “the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death.” The prizes will be announced in November, but you must first quality as a serious researcher next month. Bigelow has been interested in the afterlife for quite some time, even endowing the the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada Las Vegas with a $3.7M gift in 1997. (Bigelow is also an aerospace investor, and is very interested in UFOs and paranormal activities.)

Missing the white board: Although Katie Porter (and her white board) will no longer be on the House Financial Oversight Committee, she still wants the world to know who is boss — her California minivan will have a new license plate: OVRSITE.

— Lauren Eve Cantor

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