The Question
How did people living 780,000-years-ago prefer to eat fish?
Talking Points
- Everyone got very excited about a missile landing in Poland
- Thankfully it wasn't cause for WW3
- Three Russians were found guilty of downing MH17
- Istanbul's famous Istiklal Caddesi was bombed
- Covid Zero rules sparked unrest in southern China
- Donald Trump announced that yeah, he's running
- Nancy Pelosi finally stepped down as House Leader
- Amazon and Google sharpened their axes
- Estée Lauder bought Tom Ford
- Elon Musk won: most of Twitter's employees quit
Deep Dive
We're loathe to kick someone while they are down but this story has gone from ludicrous to fever-dream. Sam Bankman-Fried is trying to tweet through it. FTX's bankruptcy specialists are rending their garments and ululating.
The liquidator
Enron's collapse in 2001 marked a crisis point in the arcane world of accountants. The clever bean-counters at the energy giant had hidden chasms on their balance sheet with special purpose vehicles. Commonplace methods like mark-to-market had been used to contort 'fair value' to the point that estimated profits were passed off as money in the bank. It remains a legendary case of financial malfeasance and fraud. One of the specialist lawyers who was hired to unpick that knot was John J. Ray III . This week Ray has been back in the news; he's been hired by FTX to steer it through its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and imminent restructuring. Having had a week to rifle through FTX's books, this is what Ray had to say:
"Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information. From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented."
There was no sophisticated fraud at FTX: the entire thing was just made up. Pretty good!
It turns out the exchange was just having a laugh. For all the palaver about distributed ledgers, Sam Bankman-Fried and roommates neglected to maintain even a simple book-keeping system. Payments were generally okayed with a thumbs up emoji on Slack. There is no clear indication of who actually worked there and several former employees are missing. Should someone have caught this earlier? Well, let's just say that they headquartered themselves in the Bahamas for a reason (the Bahamanian government also managed to leech out a few hundred million after bankruptcy proceedings were underway). It's apparent that the major VC funds that backed FTX all hired the same cartoon duck with dollar signs for eyes to do their due diligence. "We didn't realise these tweaked-out 20-somethings were collateralising Monopoly money" — pull the other one.
What's the spread on Pascal's wager?
Much has been said about SBF's connections to the Effective Altruism movement. There's not much to see here: it's Peter Singer's moral philosophy retooled to help soothe the souls of Silicon Valley billionaires. SBF spent years harping on about the need to make zillions so that he could dispense it effectively. He undid all that during an interview conducted via Twitter DMs this week. It's worth quoting at length.
Kelsey Piper: so the ethics stuff - mostly a front? people will love you if you win and hate you if you lose and that's how it all really works?
Sam Bankman-Fried: yeah
SBF: I mean that's not *all* of it
SBF: but it's a lot
SBF: the worst quadrant is "sketchy + lose"
SBF: the best is "win + ???"
SBF: "clean + lose" is bad but not terrible
KP: you were really good at talking about ethics, for someone who kind of saw it all as a game with winners and losers
SBF: ya
SBF: hehe
Don't panic (not legal advice)
At inkl we have a bird's eye view of the news and there are certain words and phrases that pique our interest. 'Contagion' is one of them. Right now a contagion is spreading through the crypto world. The Winklevoss twins' Gemini has halted withdrawals. So too has Genesis which had its assets on FTX. BlockFi is preparing its Title 11 papers. There's no time for treatment; it's straight to last rites for the lot of them. Changpeng Zhao cautioned, "You should not invest in crypto if you're using money that you ned for next week or next month..." It's just too volatile right now and it's not just hedge funds watching their deposits disappear. A class action has been filed against FTX and all the celebrities (Larry David, Naomi Osaka, Tom Brady) who helped pump it.
As all this was going on, it just so happened that yet another exchange was busily and ineffectively trying to cover its posterior. Crypto.com issued a statement to investors and members which can be boiled down to, 1) don't panic, and 2) we accidentally transferred $415m worth of Ethereum to someone's wallet. This is monumentally silly. Not quite $900m-Citigroup-typo silly, but certainly in the same weight class. Crypto.com got their tokens back after a few sleepless nights but that's not that much of a comfort for their customers.
Charlie Munger , Warren Buffett's right-hand man, called the crypto industry a "venereal disease" this week. One piece in a prominent financial publication slapped back calls for regulation (as it would infer legitimacy) and instead suggested letting it burn. We hope recent events have illustrated the necessity of taking cryptocurrency exchanges seriously. Someone needs to — the chuckleheads running them sure don't.
Worldlywise
Group therapy
Bali, the jewel of the Indonesian archipelago, has it all: exquisite food, epic surf breaks, thrumming nightlife, and tranquil yoga retreats. It is nearly impossible to have a bad time there. But this week, we witnessed one surefire method of spoiling an island paradise: hosting an international summit there. The Group of Twenty met (19 very important countries and the European Union) for their annual chit-chat about the global economy.
This G20 summit was stacked with high drama . Did Russian Foreign Minister Sergey "Mr Putin sends his regards" Lavrov have a heart attack, or was he extraordinarily rendered back to a cell under the Lubyanka? Did Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leak details from his rather terse tête-à-tête with China's Great Leader Xi Jinping? It had the same energy as a primary school classroom that the teacher has left unattended for a few minutes.
Still, there were some positives. A few billion dollars were scrounged together for the pandemic and sustainability drives. Chairman Xi intimated that China and Australia could return to the old dynamic (ravenous commodities buyer / uncritical commodities seller). Ukraine was a different story. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, a willing host if there ever was one, told reporters, "Until midnight we talked about this, and finally the Bali declaration was reached through consensus." Sounds difficult, so what was in this hard-fought communique?
"Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine... There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions". Well done, everyone. That'll fix it.
FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022
The world's most popular sport event is upon us: congratulations to everyone who got a ticket. This is the inkl guide to the World Cup.
Who is going — Qatar expects 1.2 million visitors throughout the tournament. Quite a feat given the kingdom's population is just shy of 3 million (not counting several hundred thousand migrant workers).
Who isn't going — Sadio Mane , which is a real shame. Bayern Munich ought to pay reparations to Senegal for allowing the talismanic forward to get injured during its 6-1 drubbing of Werder Bremen (we hadn't heard of them either).
Who shouldn't go — Any members of the LGBT+ community who don't want to spend time in a Qatari jail.
Where to stay — If a windswept internally displaced persons camp takes your fancy, you can pay $200 per person per night to share a tent at the Qetaifan Island Fan Camp . Fancier digs are available at the Fan Village Heenat Salma for $1000 a night.
What to wear — A broad-brimmed hat, if you care about your skin. Temperatures are on their way into the mid-thirties .
What to drink — You can quench your thirst thanks to major sponsor Heineken in specially designated boozing tents. A maximum of four can be purchased and they are like $20 per beer. Nothing but the non-alcoholic variety in the stadiums though. Serves you heathens right for wanting to consume alcohol in a Gulf Arab state.
What to eat — The saddest looking $10 Greek salad you ever did see.
Who to barrack for — Anyone but England.
Who to listen to — David Beckham gushed earlier, "Qatar dreamed of bringing the World Cup to a place that it had never been before, but that it wouldn't be enough to just achieve things on the pitch. The pitch would be a platform for progress." No-one can bend it like Beckham.
What to equivocate about — 6,500 migrant worker deaths .
The Worst Of Times
Turn (it) up, tune in, drop out
Intergenerational warfare has been one of the most boring media beat-ups in recent years. It's all fodder for people who want to pigeon hole others. We're all the same! In fact, Zoomers are currently speed-running the lives of baby boomers: like their grandparents they are currently going deaf . The whole lot of them are listening to music and podcasts at unsafe levels — a study published this week warned that somewhere north of one billion people between the ages of 12 and 35 are at risk of permanent hearing loss.
Iran and China use private detectives to spy on their citizens abroad
This is shocking and underhanded behaviour . They should be spying on their citizens abroad like civilised countries (NSA dragnet surveillance of global communications).
The Best Of Times
The hand of Irulegi
The Basque language (euskera) is one of those that keeps historical linguists up at night. It's got almost nothing in common with the Romance languages that surround it. This spoken language has been traced back to an Iron Age tribe, the Vascones, but was believed to have been first transcribed with the arrival of the Romans on the peninsula. This delicate 2,000-year-old bronze hand says otherwise. There for all to see is the euskera word for 'good omen' .
Helpful leprotic anteaters
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have observed a fascinating side-effect in leprosy-ridden armadillos: healthy liver growth . Being able to reprogramme Mycobacterium leprae to nurture rather than damage is tantalising. As we know, chronic liver conditions are difficult to manage let alone heal. It's early days but this nods toward more effective treatments. Thank you, armadillos.
Highlights
The Image
This is one photo that public health officials do NOT want you to see. A Chinese athlete known locally as Uncle Chen ran 3:28:00 at the Xin'anjaing marathon in Jiande this week. He was blasting cigs the whole time. Photo supplied by The Mirror .
The Quote
"You can't win an unwinnable war. DEA knows this and the agents know this. There's so much dope leaving Colombia. And there's so much money. We know we're not making a difference. The drug war is a game... It was a very fun game we were playing."
– José Irizarry , formerly of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, gives a frank assessment of the war on drugs and his role in it. In a compelling case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", Irizarry and his pals colluded with cartels and skimmed millions of dollars off seizures to fund their own hard-partying lifestyles.
The Numbers
8,000,000,000+
- There are now at least eight billion of us . If you are the kind of person who does not believe in the equitable distribution of the earth's resources then that may feel like a lot of people. If you're not, it's not. As COP27 has taught us, billionaires emit one million times more CO2 than your average bear (human).
49 million sperm per millimetre of semen
- The concentration of sperm in adult males fell by 50% between 1978 and 2018 . Is it plastics and pesticides? The depressing ubiquity of porn? Tight jeans? In any case, the film adaptation of Children of Men was better than the book (sorry, P. D. James). Maybe the reality will be better than the movie.
The Headlines
"The Sport of Short Kings" — The Atlantic . In order to broaden the readership of the weekly wrap I am obliged to say: we stan a short king.
"Florida Man Makes Announcement, Page 26" — New York Post . A neat little drive-by on Mar-a-Lago.
The Special Mention
Happy 10th birthday to Candy Crush . We often criticise social media platforms for weaponising behavioural psychology but this garish little mobile game is banging away at the pleasure centres of your auntie's brain like its a conga drum.
The Best Long Reads
- Businessweek foments unrest at the Genius Bar
- Financial Times does some crypto cyber crimes
- Politico wants to know the whereabouts of the JFK assassination files
The Answer...
Well done . Not a plate of sashimi in sight.
