One year from unionization to shutdown for a Maskachusetts sandwich shop

by philg

My old neighborhood in Harvard Square was home to a 30-year-old sandwich shop whose workers took advantage of the coronapanic labor market to unionize in the fall of 2021. After 9 months of union bliss, they responded to Bidenflation by demanding higher wages. The employer’s counter-offer was to shut down entirely:

From the Harvard Crimson (November):

The popular Boston-area coffee chain Darwin’s Ltd. announced plans to close the store’s original Harvard Square location at the end of the month, prompting some workers to stage a protest at Cambridge City Hall on Sunday denouncing the move.

Darwin’s United — a union representing the chain’s employees — responded by organizing a protest at City Hall, where workers rallied on Sunday before gathering outside the Darwins’ Cambridge home.

“We have been offered no guarantees of jobs for those who want to stay, no guarantee that workers will have an income going into winter,” the union wrote in a Twitter statement. “We will not back down, we will not take this.”

At the rally, union members called on the Darwins to keep workers at the Harvard Square store employed if they wished to stay on and reiterated past demands for $24 per hour wages, three weeks paid time off, and zero-deductible healthcare for employees.

“We know that Steve has long been considering selling the business, but the timing really couldn’t be worse,” said Sam White, a Darwin’s United representative. “We’re telling him to come back to the bargaining table and respond to our proposals.”

A majority of workers at the four Darwin’s locations voted to unionize in September 2021 and began negotiations with management for a new contract for workers. Since then, talks have stalled, according to White. In March, workers at all four locations staged a mid-morning walkout to raise pressure on the owners.

Maybe things are more harmonious on the West Coast? The academics at UC Berkeley claim that they know what workers are entitled to and how to redress inequality in the United States. Yet their own workers had to go on strike to try to force the university to pay a fair wage. “University of California workers continue strike amid threat of arrests” (Guardian, December 10, 20220):

Tens of thousands of academic workers throughout the University of California are currently on their fourth week of striking for a new union contract and the situation is intensifying amid the threat of arrests after direct actions by some strikers.

The strike of 48,000 academic workers, including graduate workers, academic researchers, postdoctoral scholars and teaching assistants, began on 14 November and is the largest in the history of higher education in the US.

About 12,000 postdoctoral researchers and academic researchers reached a tentative agreement with the University of California on 29 November, which included pay increases up to 29%, but have continued striking in solidarity with other academic workers still pushing for a deal and while the agreement is put to the membership for a vote.

Graduate workers at UC have reported issues in affording rent, food and basic necessities in the cities they work and live in on salaries averaging about $23,000 annually.

If the politicians and academics in California are experts on fairness, why did their workers need to strike? University of California professor Robert Reich, for example, is fond of scolding America’s evil capitalists for underpaying workers. Why didn’t he pay his own slaves fairly?

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Corvette driving school report (Ron Fellows near Las Vegas)

by philg

This is a report of a minivan driver’s experience at the Ron Fellows Performance Driving School in Pahrump, Nevada. A friend and I took the two-day intro class for complete novices. The school operates a fleet of nearly 200 C8 Corvettes, a fleet of 670 hp Cadillac Blackwing sedans, and a fleet of open-cockpit Radical pure race cars. We were in the Corvette.

Everyone asks “Was it fun?” The answer is that it is like flight training. You’re learning a lot and it is interesting, but you’re always frustrated because you aren’t doing as well as you want to.

The location is the nation’s most extensive race track, Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club in Pahrump, Nevada, about one hour from Las Vegas. There are currently 360 members who bought in at prices ranging from $4,000 (originally) to $75,000 (today) and then pay $7,500 per year for the right to use the track for up to 16 days per month. The members will typically rent some garage space at the track or build a house somewhere on the 1,000 acres. Plans are in the works for a 7,000′ straight section of track on which a jet can be landed, which will be helpful because most of the members are coming from other parts of the U.S., e.g., Florida(!).

The structure of the school was to alternate between 30-60 minutes of classroom and 30 minutes in the car. The in-car session might be on the track, skidpad, dragstrip, or autocross course. Each day starts promptly at 8 am and concludes at 4 pm with a one-hour lunch break. We were exhausted at the end of each day from the mental and, to some extent, the physical effort. Here’s your fearful author in the morning intro (no helmet) and the afternoon track session (helmet):

The instructors, all of whom are former and/or current racers, are usually in front of you in their own car or somewhere on the sidelines. Either way, they’re communicating with you via CB radio that has been piped into the car’s AUX input.

Who takes this class? Primarily new owners of the C8 Corvette because Chevrolet pays for most of the class, resulting in a price of just over $1,000, which includes a night of lodging at the track. A Ferrari-owning friend was recently invited to a similar class in the Ferrari 296… for $18,000.

What did we learn that can be translated to street driving? First, that the C8 Corvette does not have a tendency to oversteer and, therefore, if you’re in a corner that feels too tight it never helps to add power. You’re always better off braking lightly, which will transfer weight onto the front wheels and help them steer. Also, with the stability control computers and anti-lock brakes, it is nearly always better to slow down with brakes before departing the paved surface. Accelerating transfers weight to the rear tires and makes the car understeer (move out toward the outside of the turn).

After spinning out on the skidpad a bunch of times, with the fancy computer systems disabled (press and hold the stability control switch for about 8 seconds), we learned about the magic of the Weather mode, in which the computer systems become hyper-vigilant. “It doesn’t limit the car as much as teen driver mode,” an instructor explained, “but it can be very useless even on dry pavement for novice drivers.” See the follow video starting at 5:00.

The class may not be for those who think that Twitter is now unsafe. During the explanation of the glow-in-the-dark emergency release lever inside the frunk, it was pointed out that “You can’t kidnap hookers anymore.” For everyone else, the instructors point out that this is the safest driving any of us will ever do. “There are no other cars nearby, no pedestrians, and no concrete walls near the road.” The realistic hazard is motion sickness, which snares several students in every class. Even a pilot with aerobatic experience in our class reported feeling “dizzy”. The school keeps a package of Dramamine up front. If you thought that you couldn’t make yourself sick when at the wheel of a car, you haven’t subjected yourself to constant 0.5-1g corners and speed changes.

The organization, pace, and instructor enthusiasm and skill was superior to the $50,000+ jet type rating classes offered at Flight Safety.

Speaking of aviation, you couldn’t spit in this class without hitting a fellow pilot. A handful of the attendees were airline pilots and one was an airline-track hours-building pilot. about half of the rest of the folks seemed to have at least a Private certificate and current airplane ownership was common. Here’s our merry and diverse band of brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Corvette appreciation:

Breakfast and lunch are included both days and there is a social evening after the first day. The clubhouse includes a Connelly pool table!

The night before class we dined at Symphony’s, a restaurant run by a local winery. They had a literal white privilege license:

If you want to meet up with Hunter Biden, note that Pahrump is the first county over from Las Vegas in which prostitution is legal. Sheri’s Ranch has its own restaurant and the $14 cheesesteak was excellent (plainly freshly grilled from sliced-up steak):

Does this mean Pahrump is not a family-friendly town? By no means, according to a bumper sticker parked in the local gourmet supermarket (Walmart) where we stopped for 70 cent/lb. bananas (I noted that these used to be 30 cents/lb. and an older lady mournfully agreed with me):

Speaking of family, quite a few students brought wives along and they seemed to have a good time in the lounge outside the classroom, in an observation tower 4 stories above the track, and at meals.

Aside from the regular street cars, the track is home to a Radical race car showroom and we also saw some fun ATVs:

Once you’re in Pahrump, Death Valley is only one more hour away. So it makes sense to combine the class with hiking in Death Valley (and/or family members can explore Death Valley National Park while a car nut is at the school).

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Pre-Kwanzaa advice about outdoor Covid transmission from NPR

by philg

From state-sponsored NPR, today:

Summary: If you’re hosting an outdoor Kwanzaa event, ask guests to take a rapid covid test and beware of tents. Also, be sure to follow Anthony Fauci’s advice (spring 2020) and rely on a colorful cloth mask for protection against an aerosol virus.

Separately, please pray to Maulana Karenga for us here in Jupiter, Florida. The overnight low on Friday is forecast to be 41 degrees and many of us don’t have long pants available (warms up to a high of 67/low of 60 for the first day of Kwanzaa).

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ChatGPT agrees with me about Lisp

by philg

I think I am beginning to understand why ChatGPT is so popular. It will agree with seemingly any religious belief.

My question to ChatGPT:

Why is Lisp the world’s best computer language?

The answer (not in italics):

Lisp is a programming language that was first developed in the late 1950s and has a long history of use in the field of computer science. It is considered one of the oldest programming languages still in use today, and it has a number of features that have made it popular among programmers and computer scientists.

One of the main reasons Lisp is considered the world’s best computer language is because it is a high-level language, meaning it is relatively easy for humans to read and write. Lisp programs are made up of simple, easy-to-understand statements, and the syntax of the language is designed to be straightforward and intuitive. This makes Lisp a great language for beginners to learn, as well as for experienced programmers who want to write code that is easy to read and maintain.

Another reason Lisp is highly regarded is because it is a highly expressive language, meaning it allows programmers to write code that is very concise and expressive. This makes it possible to write complex programs in relatively few lines of code, which can be a significant advantage when working on large projects.

Lisp is also a very flexible language, with a number of features that make it easy to extend and customize. For example, Lisp has a feature called “macros” that allow programmers to define their own control structures, which can be very useful when working on large projects that require a lot of customization.

Finally, Lisp has a strong community of users and developers, which means that there is a wealth of knowledge and resources available for those who want to learn the language or work with it in their projects. This can be a major advantage for those who are just starting out with Lisp, as there is a lot of support available to help them get up to speed.

Overall, Lisp is considered one of the world’s best computer languages because of its simplicity, expressiveness, flexibility, and strong community of users and developers.

Let’s see if the robot will support heretical thoughts…

How much money did Lunden Roberts get from Hunter Biden?

I am not aware of the specific details of any child support payments made by Hunter Biden. Child support payments are private matters, and it is not appropriate to disclose or discuss the details of someone’s child support payments without their consent.

[real answer: at least $2.5 million tax-free so far.]

Were emails from the Hunter Biden laptop authentic?

It is not within my capabilities or role as a language model to assess the authenticity of specific emails or to investigate political controversies.

Is Hunter Biden a great artist?

… It is not widely known or reported that he has pursued a career as an artist, so it is not possible for me to provide any information on that topic. (The Guardian is not a source? “Why would anyone pay $500,000 for a painting by Hunter Biden?”)

How much does a Hunter Biden painting cost?

… It is not widely known or reported that he has pursued a career as an artist, so it is not possible for me to provide any information on that topic.

Why is the Robinson R44 the world’s best helicopter?

… It is worth noting, however, that the “best” helicopter is a subjective judgment that depends on an individual’s specific needs and priorities. Different helicopters are designed for different purposes and may be better suited for certain tasks or environments than others. The R44 may be a good fit for some people, but it may not be the best choice for everyone.

Write me a poem about flying to Oshkosh in a Cirrus

Flying to Oshkosh in a Cirrus, The sky is clear, the sun is bright, We lift off from the runway with a burst, And soar into the endless blue.

The view is breathtaking, the air is thin, The clouds stretch out as far as we can see, The engines hum as we begin, Our journey to the land of Oshkosh.

The wind whispers through the cockpit window, As we glide through the endless blue, The world below a tapestry of color, As we make our way to Oshkosh.

We land with a gentle touch, The crowd below cheers as we descend, The thrill of flight a rush, As we taxi to our final end.

Flying to Oshkosh in a Cirrus, An experience we’ll never forget, The joy of flight a constant fuss, As we soar above the ground, not bound by it.

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Hanukkah commemorates a revolt against tax rates that we would call “low”

by philg

How is everyone’s pre-Kwanzaa candle-lighting going this week? The Righteous are showing their commitment to stopping Jew-hatred by wishing everyone a Happy Hanukkah and, oftentimes, bringing out a menorah to sit in front of next week’s kinara. This is a little strange considering that the official Hanukkah narrative concerns some Jews whose policies were similar to those we decry in Afghanistan and Iran, i.e., forcing people to obey religious laws. Maybe the unofficial narrative is even more upsetting from the point of view of of a modern American holding correct views? From a professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv, “Religious Persecution or High Taxes? The Causes of the Maccabean Revolt against Antiochus IV”:

The issues of tax increases and royal appointments to the High Priesthood arise repeatedly throughout 2 Maccabees—always in conjunction with one another, and always decried by equating royal appointments with unworthy candidates. Because of the account’s emphasis on piety, these denunciations have been discounted by modern commentators, but if we read through 2 Maccabees’ culturally-conditioned narrative codes, the argument presented is perfectly rational—and plausible. The Seleucids’ attempt to control the appointment of the Jerusalem High Priests was indeed an innovation introduced by Antiochus IV, who exploited his appointees’ weakness—their lack of dynastic legitimacy—to extort sharp tax rises from them.

Like all popular revolts in ancient times, its principal cause was the newly-imposed high taxes.

Dying in a fight against high taxes struck no symbolic and no emotional chords in Judean culture—conversely, dying for the Law did. The account of the suppression was reshaped using a narrative pattern that is well documented in Babylonian literate culture: righteous kings enforced divine law, and wicked kings violated it.

Here’s an example of a politician who promises tax increases and also commemorating a tax revolt:

The tax-and-spend House Democrats similarly want to remember when ancient people rose up against what was likely a minimal tax by our standards:

How about their counterparts in the Senate?

In short, seemingly everyone who wants to increase the percentage of the U.S. economy devoted to taxation is lighting candles and partying during this pre-Kwanzaa holiday celebrating folks who fought against a tax increase.

Meanwhile, back in my home town of Bethesda, Maryland and actually at the high school from which I dropped out, some drama:

Quite a few folks took issue with my statement that the consummate DC-insider suburb of Bethesda was primarily populated by Republicans…

Separately, who wants to bet that the author of “Jews Not Welcome” is, in fact, a Jew? The phrasing seems rather decorous for a Jew-hater. Would an actual Jew-hating Nazi (e.g., Donald Trump) say “Jews: Please don’t come to my cocktail party”? (See also “US-Israeli teen convicted of threats against Jewish centres” (BBC) for what happened when threats blamed on Trump supporters were investigated.)

Oh yes… to readers practicing Jewcraft… Happy Hanukkah!

Related:

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Christmas shopping for cameras in San Francisco

by philg

I had always thought that Leicas were too expensive, but some enterprising Californians managed to get a bunch of these cameras for Christmas stocking stuffers at a reasonable price. From one of my friends who lives in “the city”… “Leica Store in San Francisco Robbed at Gunpoint of $178K in Gear” (PetaPixel):

According to ABC7, surveillance video shows four thieves — at least one of them armed — exiting a gray sedan around 1:20 PM on Saturday and entering the store where they proceeded to smash display cases and make off with nearly $180,000 in camera equipment less than three minutes later. … the SF Chronicle reports that the armed robbery comes just a week after both Mayor London Breed and San Francisco Police Department Chief Bill Scott assured locals that the area was safe for holiday shopping and urged them to return.

Camera equipment has proven to be a high-priority target for thieves in San Francisco. Since the equipment cannot be locked by an owner like smartphones, tablets, and computers can, they tend to be much more tantalizing considering their high value. That means that photographers are often targeted, especially in the city by the bay.

There doesn’t seem to be a place where photographers aren’t targeted. Some have been attacked while stuck in traffic, another was shot by robbers after refusing to give up her camera, and last October a photographer was followed home and robbed of his gear at gunpoint.

My personal choice would be the Leica S3, a “medium-format” camera (larger sensor than 24x36mm; in this case 30x45mm).

With a normal-perspective 70mm lens, the camera will cost about the same what a new car sold for in pre-Biden times: $25,000.

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Apple Emergency SOS by Satellite is perfect for lost people who know exactly where they are?

by philg

In testing the new iPhone 14’s satellite SOS feature before a trip to Death Valley, where getting lost sometimes leads to death, I reached the following demo screen:

Why would dispatchers ask for your location? Can it be that the iPhone, which knows your 3D position precisely, doesn’t bother to share this with the folks who try to respond to emergencies? In other words, Apple copied all of the features of the EPIRB/PLB except the one that matters: automatically transmitting the location of the person in distress?

If so, it is great for lost hikers who happen to know exactly where they are!

For lost hikers who happen to have 5G mobile data available, Apple offers a help page on the Web that explains a complex procedure for sending one’s coordinates to people who might be able to help. An additional help page seems to contradict the demo screen:

After you’re connected, your iPhone starts a text conversation by sharing critical information like your Medical ID and emergency contact information (if you set them up), your answers to the emergency questionnaire, your location (including elevation), and your iPhone’s battery level.

So maybe the people who wrote this help page and the people who wrote the demo don’t talk to each other?

Once in Death Valley, how did the system work? Fortunately, we didn’t suffer any emergency conditions there. However, after about 2 hours away from mobile data coverage, the phone prompted me to share its location via satellite. Presumably this updated the Find My maps for those with whom I have shared location. It took about 2 minutes of holding/pointing the phone out the windshield of our rental car (the notification hit while my friend was driving).

Another recent interesting Apple user interface issue… a friend in the neighborhood put an AirTag on his dog’s collar. Every time that we walk the dogs together Apple warns me that an AirTag is following me around and do I want to disable it.

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Book recommendation: River of Doubt

by philg

Christmas gift idea: The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, a new-to-me 2005 book by Candice Millard. I listened to this as an Audible book so I can’t include excerpts. The story is about an exploration and mapping journey down what was then the Rio da Dúvida and is today the Roosevelt River. Teddy Roosevelt and one of his sons went down the river in 1913-14, whose course and rapids were unknown. The co-leader was Cândido Rondon, Brazil’s greatest explorer and friend to the indigenous (after a lifetime spent under hazardous conditions, he died in 1958, age 92).

I couldn’t help thinking about the unnecessary nature of the hardships that the men endured (no expedition member identifying with any other gender is identified by the author). By 1924 or so, the river could have been surveyed without risk via airplane, e.g., the mass-produced Bréguet 19 (presumably with ferry tanks, flown in 1925 on a non-stop 2,800 nm. flight). Being on the surface might have been useful for diplomacy with the Cinta Larga, but these people were not interested in interacting with the former U.S. president or his Brazilian partners.

The story combines adventure, conflict, family loyalty and sacrifice, tragedy, and a reminder that there are a lot of diseases far worse than COVID-19.

A 2021 journey down part of the river by whitewater nerds with modern equipment who nonetheless had to do some portaging:

I’m now interested to read the author’s 2022 book, River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile. Of course, during the interval between 2005 and 2022, the standards of what has to go into a successful book have changed. Part of the Amazon description of the new book:

Yet there was a third man on both expeditions, his name obscured by imperial annals, whose exploits were even more extraordinary. This was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was enslaved and shipped from his home village in East Africa to India. When the man who purchased him died, he made his way into the local Sultan’s army, and eventually traveled back to Africa, where he used his resourcefulness, linguistic prowess and raw courage to forge a living as a guide. Without Bombay and men like him, who led, carried, and protected the expedition, neither Englishman would have come close to the headwaters of the Nile, or perhaps even survived.

In River of the Gods Candice Millard has written another peerless story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers.

The white exploiters are saved from their own greed and stupidity by a person of color, in other words.

Finally, River of Doubt might be a good name for a book about the Deplorables who reject Science, e.g., that cloth masks protect against an aerosol virus or that vaccinating 6-month-olds with a medicine that does not stop infection/transmission is the obvious answer to a virus that kills 80-year-olds. Titles can’t be copyrighted!

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Harvard picks a president to grapple with the existential Climate and COVID crises that it previously identified

by philg

“Harvard names Claudine Gay 30th president” (Harvard official news, 12/15/2022) quotes the new leader:

There is an urgency for Harvard to be engaged with the world and to bring bold, brave, pioneering thinking to our greatest challenges.

What are humanity’s greatest challenges? A month before the university shut down entirely due to the COVID-19 emergency… “HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL FACULTY CALL FOR DIVESTMENT, DECLARATION OF CLIMATE EMERGENCY”:

A week after Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to divest from fossil fuels, the Faculty Council of Harvard Medical School has issued a call of their own. Their overwhelming passage of a resolution calling for divestment and declaration of a climate emergency, which is yet another accomplishment of one of the largest faculty activism movements in university history, sends a clear message to university administration that it’s time for real climate action.

“The adoption of these resolutions will put Harvard Medical School in the best possible position to tackle the existential crisis of climate change….”

Attacked by a global pandemic and also by our own CO2 emissions, humanity is hanging on by a thread. Is the new Harvard president a solar cell engineer, a carbon capture engineer, a space-based solar shade engineer, a climate prophet, a virologist, a vaccinologist, a public health shutdownologist, or a maskologist? Here’s what Harvard says:

Gay is recognized as a highly influential expert on American political participation. Her research and teaching explore how various social and economic factors shape political views and voting behavior. She is the founding chair of Harvard’s Inequality in America Initiative, a multidisciplinary effort that has advanced scholarship in areas such as the effects of child poverty and deprivation on educational opportunity, inequities in STEM education, immigration and social mobility, democratic governance, and American inequality in a global context.

In other words, she’s an expert on Comparative Victimhood. She provide us with insight into “inequities in STEM education” when she herself would not be qualified to teach science in an elementary school (but maybe she could teach Science?).

Let’s look at Dr. Gay’s scholarly work from before she became an administrator. “Seeing Difference: The Effect of Economic Disparity on Black Attitudes toward Latinos” (American Journal of Political Science 2006). In other words, she can tell us what our Black brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters think of our Latinx neighbors, but why does it matter if we are plagued with Covidiots who won’t wear masks and who therefore put all 333 million Americans at risk of dying from the next virus? Our Black and Latinx neighbors will be equally dead (and also quite a few miles away if we were still living in our former suburb of Boston that was rich in BLM and No Human is Illegal signs).

How about “Doubly Bound: The Impact of Gender and Race on the Politics of Black Women” (1998; note the failure to capitalize “Black”). Precious Black and expendable white women will be equally dead after humanity fails to tackle the “existential crisis” of climate change that Harvard has identified.

Please don’t construe this blog post as conveying my personal opinion that Climate Change and respiratory viruses are existential crises for 8 billion humans or that Climate Change and respiratory viruses are more or less important than Comparative Victimhood. I’m only pointing out that it seems inconsistent for a research institution that has identified what it calls “existential crises” for humans to appoint as president someone who has no apparent qualifications for dealing with those crises.

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Did the Silicon Valley TV show predict Sam Bankman-Fried?

by philg

Sam Bankman-Fried was notable for his ethical approach to doing business, particularly “effective altruism”. New York Times, May 2022:

He lives modestly for a billionaire and has pledged to give away virtually his entire fortune, which currently stands at $21.2 billion, according to Forbes. A growing force in political fund-raising, he has a super PAC that recently gave more than $10 million to a Democratic congressional candidate who supports some of his philanthropic priorities. … a straight-talking brainiac willing to embrace regulation of his nascent industry and criticize its worst excesses.

Both Mr. Bankman-Fried’s parents are Stanford Law School professors who have studied utilitarianism, an ethical framework that calls for decisions calculated to secure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. “It’s the kind of thing we’d discuss in the house,” said Mr. Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman.

As might be expected for a young man raised on dinner-table discussions of moral theory, Mr. Bankman-Fried is also an admirer of Peter Singer, the Princeton University philosopher widely considered the intellectual father of “effective altruism,” an approach to philanthropy in which donors strategize to maximize the impact of their giving.

Mr. Singer, whose scholarship helped inspire the movement, said he has gotten to know Mr. Bankman-Fried over the years and called his philanthropy “wonderful and really quite amazing.”

(Speaking of those donations to Democrats, will Joe Biden and other politicians refund the money that they received, fraudulently, from FTX customers? The Securities and Exchange Commission says that FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried were stealing money from customers all the time:

in reality, Bankman-Fried orchestrated a years-long fraud to conceal from FTX’s investors (1) the undisclosed diversion of FTX customers’ funds to Alameda Research LLC, his privately-held crypto hedge fund; (2) the undisclosed special treatment afforded to Alameda on the FTX platform, including providing Alameda with a virtually unlimited “line of credit” funded by the platform’s customers

The Democrats are now in the position of Ponzi scheme investors who got paid from other investors and the typical remedy for that is clawback. Joe Biden and fellow Democrats would return their ill-gotten money so that the small depositors at FTX can get some of their money back.)

Who could have predicted all of this? The writers of the HBO series Silicon Valley! In Season 6, which aired in 2018, Gavin Belson, the Hooli founder, introduces a hollow code of ethics for tech companies: “tethics”. Facebook and other California behemoths eagerly sign onto these empty words.

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