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#merger

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Europe Says<p><a href="https://www.europesays.com/2324293/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">europesays.com/2324293/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> Cenovus in talks to jointly buy oil-sands producer MEG, sources say <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/acquisition" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>acquisition</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/alberta" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>alberta</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Calgary" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Calgary</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Canad%C3%A1" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Canadá</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Cenovus" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Cenovus</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/CrudeOil" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CrudeOil</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/CrudeOilPrice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CrudeOilPrice</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Energy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Energy</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/FirstNations" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FirstNations</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Indigenous" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Indigenous</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ma" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ma</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/MEGEnergy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>MEGEnergy</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/NorthAmerica" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NorthAmerica</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/OilAndGas" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>OilAndGas</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/OilPrice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>OilPrice</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/OilProduction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>OilProduction</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/OilSands" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>OilSands</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Petroleum" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Petroleum</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Strathcona" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Strathcona</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/takeover" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>takeover</span></a></p>
Church of Jeff<p><a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/DavidLetterman" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DavidLetterman</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/JonStewart" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>JonStewart</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/StephenColbert" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>StephenColbert</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/CBS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CBS</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Paramount" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Paramount</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Merger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/1A" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>1A</span></a> </p><p>The trifecta has formed...</p><p>Trump won't know what hit him.</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/NoKings" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NoKings</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Protest" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Protest</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Solidarity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Solidarity</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Immigrants" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Immigrants</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/MassDeportation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>MassDeportation</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/EndICE" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>EndICE</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/StopICE" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>StopICE</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Project2025" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Project2025</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/MAGA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>MAGA</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/ThisIsFascism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ThisIsFascism</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/ThisIsWhatYouVotedFor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ThisIsWhatYouVotedFor</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/ElectionsHaveConsequences" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ElectionsHaveConsequences</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/SaveDemocracy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SaveDemocracy</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/USConstitution" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>USConstitution</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/DueProcess" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DueProcess</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/FirstAid" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FirstAid</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/JustFollowingOrders" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>JustFollowingOrders</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/NationalGuard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NationalGuard</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/AlligatorAuschwitz" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AlligatorAuschwitz</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/OathToDefendTheConstitution" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>OathToDefendTheConstitution</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/FreePress" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FreePress</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/LetsGoTaco" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>LetsGoTaco</span></a></p>
Church of Jeff<p><a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/CBS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CBS</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/StephenColbert" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>StephenColbert</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a></p>
Hacker News<p>LIGO Detects Most Massive Black Hole Merger to Date</p><p><a href="https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/ligo-detects-most-massive-black-hole-merger-to-date" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">caltech.edu/about/news/ligo-de</span><span class="invisible">tects-most-massive-black-hole-merger-to-date</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/HackerNews" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>HackerNews</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/LIGO" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>LIGO</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/BlackHole" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BlackHole</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Merger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Astronomy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Astronomy</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/GravitationalWaves" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>GravitationalWaves</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/SpaceNews" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SpaceNews</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/ScienceDiscoveries" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ScienceDiscoveries</span></a></p>
Hacker News<p>Black hole merger challenges our understanding of black hole formation</p><p><a href="https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-detect-a-black-hole-merger-thats-so-massive-it-shouldnt-exist-2000628197" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">gizmodo.com/astronomers-detect</span><span class="invisible">-a-black-hole-merger-thats-so-massive-it-shouldnt-exist-2000628197</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/HackerNews" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>HackerNews</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/blackhole" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>blackhole</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/astrophysics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>astrophysics</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/spacetime" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>spacetime</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/science" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>science</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/news" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>news</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/cosmicmysteries" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cosmicmysteries</span></a></p>
PrivacyDigest<p>Trump’s <a href="https://mas.to/tags/FTC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FTC</span></a> announces <a href="https://mas.to/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> condition that prohibits <a href="https://mas.to/tags/advertising" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>advertising</span></a> <a href="https://mas.to/tags/boycotts" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>boycotts</span></a></p><p>FTC is approving a merger of big advertising agencies after extracting an agreement that the combined firm won't lead or participate in any advertising boycotts based on <a href="https://mas.to/tags/political" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>political</span></a> or ideological viewpoints</p><p>The merger condition is a new strategy in the Repub-controlled FTC's fight against alleged advertising boycotts, which could help <a href="https://mas.to/tags/Musk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Musk</span></a> 's X social network &amp; <a href="https://mas.to/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a> 's own <a href="https://mas.to/tags/TruthSocial" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>TruthSocial</span></a></p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/trumps-ftc-announces-merger-condition-that-prohibits-advertising-boycotts/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20</span><span class="invisible">25/06/trumps-ftc-announces-merger-condition-that-prohibits-advertising-boycotts/</span></a></p>
Nonilex<p><a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a>’s <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/FTC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FTC</span></a> May Put Unusual Condition on <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Ad" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ad</span></a> Mega-<a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Merger</span></a>: No <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Boycotting" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boycotting</span></a></p><p>The FTC is considering restrictions on <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Omnicom" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Omnicom</span></a> &amp; <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Interpublic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Interpublic</span></a> to prevent the combined company from refusing to place ads on <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/platforms" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>platforms</span></a> for <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/political" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>political</span></a> reasons.</p><p><a href="https://masto.ai/tags/law" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>law</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/democracy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>democracy</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Constitution" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Constitution</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/FirstAmendment" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FirstAmendment</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/FreeSpeech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FreeSpeech</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Authoritarianism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Authoritarianism</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Dictatorship" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Dictatorship</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/AmericanAutocracy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AmericanAutocracy</span></a> <br><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/business/ftc-omnicom-interpublic-merger.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nytimes.com/2025/06/12/busines</span><span class="invisible">s/ftc-omnicom-interpublic-merger.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare</span></a></p>
Nonilex<p><a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Verizon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Verizon</span></a>’s pledge to end <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/DEI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DEI</span></a> was outlined in a May 15 letter to the commission, which Carr shared on X Friday. “A good step forward for *equal* opportunity, *nondiscrimination*, &amp; the public interest,” the <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/FCC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>FCC</span></a> chair wrote. Shortly after he posted that, the FCC announced the approval of the Verizon - <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Frontier" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Frontier</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a>.</p><p><a href="https://masto.ai/tags/law" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>law</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/antitrust" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>antitrust</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/monopoly" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>monopoly</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/competition" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>competition</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/hate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>hate</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/discrimination" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>discrimination</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/labor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>labor</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/business" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>business</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/bigotry" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>bigotry</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a> <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/AmericanAutocracy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AmericanAutocracy</span></a></p>
Europe Says<p><a href="https://www.europesays.com/2050069/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">europesays.com/2050069/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> Are Chambers of Commerce still relevant? <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/america" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>america</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/business" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>business</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/chambers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>chambers</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/commerce" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>commerce</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/community" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>community</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/DerryLondonderry" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DerryLondonderry</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/DonnaMorris" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DonnaMorris</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/GreaterDerryLondonderryChamber" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>GreaterDerryLondonderryChamber</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/LocalChamber" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>LocalChamber</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/lot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>lot</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/NewHampshire" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>NewHampshire</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/president" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>president</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/relevant" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>relevant</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/UnitedStates" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>UnitedStates</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/UnitedStatesOfAmerica" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>UnitedStatesOfAmerica</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/US" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>US</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/USA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>USA</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/viable" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>viable</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/year" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>year</span></a></p>
Europe Says<p><a href="https://www.europesays.com/1893061/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">europesays.com/1893061/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> Senators Call for Probe Into Elon Musk’s X’s Advertising Tactics <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/advertiser" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>advertiser</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/AdvertisingTactics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AdvertisingTactics</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/BusinessInsider" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>BusinessInsider</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/CoryBooker" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CoryBooker</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/doj" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>doj</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ElonMusk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ElonMusk</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ftc" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ftc</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ipg" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ipg</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/journal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>journal</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/letter" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>letter</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Musk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Musk</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/platform" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>platform</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/PressureCompany" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PressureCompany</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/senator" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>senator</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/TrumpAdministration" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>TrumpAdministration</span></a></p>
Nonilex<p><a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Trump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Trump</span></a> sued <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/CBS" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CBS</span></a> for $10B days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing a <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/60Minutes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>60Minutes</span></a> interview w/VP <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/KamalaHarris" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>KamalaHarris</span></a>, many <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/legal" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>legal</span></a> experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet.</p><p>Now Trump is back in the WH, &amp; execs at CBS’s parent company, <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/Paramount" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Paramount</span></a>, believe <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/settling" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>settling</span></a> the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump admin does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar <a href="https://masto.ai/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a>….</p><p><a href="https://masto.ai/tags/law" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>law</span></a><br><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/media/paramount-trump-cbs-news-settlement.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">nytimes.com/2025/01/30/busines</span><span class="invisible">s/media/paramount-trump-cbs-news-settlement.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare</span></a></p>
alchemistmuffin<p>I am not surprised this was the outcome. </p><p>If that orange guy intervenes when he takes office that would be an overreach beyond anything, and sets up dangerous precedent. </p><p>Don't know what happens now.....</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Merger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Corporate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Corporate</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Grocery" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Grocery</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Kroger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Kroger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Albertsons" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Albertsons</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Greed" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Greed</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/corporategreed" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>corporategreed</span></a></p><p><a href="https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/kroger-albertsons-merger-blocked/507-fbfa8cb2-5b5c-4828-b439-06dea96d4012" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">kgw.com/article/news/nation-wo</span><span class="invisible">rld/kroger-albertsons-merger-blocked/507-fbfa8cb2-5b5c-4828-b439-06dea96d4012</span></a></p><p>(Full disclosure: I am employee of Albertsons companies, but views posted here in regards to this is strictly of my own and not in any way represents this company)</p>
Chuck Darwin<p>Another aspect of debt, <br>considered as an information technology, <br>is that if affects the information environment of the borrower. </p><p>If you are managing a company which has borrowed money, <br>making your payments becomes one of the survival conditions for that company. </p><p>At low levels of debt, generating short term cash flow is one priority among others, <br>but for a highly indebted company it becomes a signal which swamps all others. </p><p>You might want to change the world, but if you don’t meet the coupon payments, you’ll never get the chance to see if your other strategic priorities would have worked.</p><p>Consequently, a company with lots of debt cannot help but have a bias toward the short term. </p><p>Which might be considered problematic, <br>as the last few decades in the Western capitalist world have seen the rise of an industry <br>(leveraged buyouts, or “private equity”) </p><p>which has made it part of its fundamental operating strategy to load companies up with debt. </p><p>Considered in this light, debt is a technology of control as well as of information <br>– it’s a means of exerting discipline on management teams who might otherwise be tempted to follow priorities other than short-term financial returns.</p><p>This is, as far as I can tell, the real meaning behind the populist critiques of “<a href="https://c.im/tags/financialisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>financialisation</span></a>” in the economy. </p><p>There’s really nothing particularly bad about the growth of the financial sector, <br>even to the extent that it’s outstripped the growth of the “real” economy. </p><p>Quite simple mathematics ought to be enough to convince us that as the economy grows, <br>the number of links and relationships between producers, consumers and investors will grow at a faster rate, <br>and so you’d expect the parts of the economy in which decision making and information processing take place to grow faster than the “real” economy. </p><p>It’s the same logic by which the brains of primates take up proportionally more energy than those of rodents; </p><p>finance is part of the real economy, just like the cerebellum is a real organ.</p><p>What’s bad about “financialisation” is neither more nor less than the over-use of debt. </p><p>Modern corporations do often behave badly, <br>and they make systematically worse decisions than they used to, <br>this isn’t a delusion of age. </p><p>They do this partly because they have outsourced key functions <br>(cutting themselves off from important sources of information), </p><p>and partly because their priorities are warped by the need to generate short term cash flow. </p><p>Both of these problems can in large part be traced back to the private equity industry, <br>working either as a direct driver of excess leverage, <br>or as a constant threat which makes managers behave as if they were already subject to its discipline.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/Management" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Management</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/science" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>science</span></a> and <a href="https://c.im/tags/cybernetic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cybernetic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/history" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>history</span></a> is all about things which began as solutions, <br>💥then turned into problems because the world changed. </p><p>Once upon a time, back in the 1970s, <br>private equity and LBOs were the solution to a problem of lazy, sclerotic incumbent management teams, <br>self-dealing and failing to make tough decisions. </p><p>But it’s now the 2020s, and private equity may itself be the biggest problem in our global information processing system. </p><p>The way that corporate history progresses is that we try to keep up with the ever-increasing complexity of the world, <br>♦️and then when this is no longer possible, we have a crisis and reorganise. </p><p>We’ve had the crisis <br>– or perhaps we are still going through it <br>– and now it’s time to think about how to reorganise.</p><p>(3/3)</p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dan-Davies/author/B07DGHPV6F" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">amazon.com/stores/Dan-Davies/a</span><span class="invisible">uthor/B07DGHPV6F</span></a></p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/debt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>debt</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/information" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>information</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/technology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>technology</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/criminogenic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>criminogenic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/organisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>organisation</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Stafford" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Stafford</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Beer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Beer</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Barry" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Barry</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/accountability" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>accountability</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>sink</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/737MAX" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>737MAX</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/McDonnell" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>McDonnell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Douglas" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Douglas</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>engineering</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ricardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ricardian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fallacy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Fallacy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/hard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>hard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/data" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>data</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/best" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>best</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/practice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>practice</span></a></p>
Chuck Darwin<p>It’s really striking to compare the two big crises of the last two decades.&nbsp; </p><p>The Global Financial Crisis beginning in 2007 was purely a matter of book entries in computers.&nbsp; </p><p>No actual physical capital was destroyed, nobody died.&nbsp; </p><p>By contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 was a massive blow to productive capacity<br> – millions of people died, <br>buildings were rendered unusable.&nbsp; </p><p>But it was the first of these two crises that led to massive scarring and a prolonged global recession, not the second.&nbsp; </p><p>Why?</p><p>It might be said that the reason why is that if you consider the world economy as an organism, <br>the pandemic attacked its muscles and sinews <br>while the financial crisis attacked its brain.&nbsp; </p><p>The global financial services industry is a crucial part of the distributed decision-making system of the world, <br>and its core component is a very old, but still surprisingly poorly understood technology <br>called <a href="https://c.im/tags/debt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>debt</span></a>.</p><p>In the strictest, purest sense, <br>debt is an “<a href="https://c.im/tags/information" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>information</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/technology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>technology</span></a>”</p><p> – it’s one of the mechanisms human beings have invented to handle information.&nbsp; </p><p>By structuring an investment in someone else’s project as a debt, <br>you immediately reduce the space of possible outcomes to two <br>– you get paid back, or you don’t.&nbsp; </p><p>There are a lot of other information-processing techniques that banks and investors use, <br>from statistical credit scoring to modern portfolio theory, <br>but this is the big one.&nbsp; </p><p>It allows a modern bank to keep track of vastly more financial investments than would ever have been possible for a medieval merchant in the first days of double-entry book-keeping.&nbsp; </p><p>Rather than having to preserve face-to-face relationships with every single borrower, <br>you can rely on the fact that 99% of mortgage loans get paid back in full and on time, <br>and concentrate your attention on managing the 1% of cases where something goes wrong.</p><p>🔥The trouble is that if you build a business on this basis, what happens when it turns out that there’s a small variance❓</p><p>Unfortunately, a small variance in the proportion of good loans from 99% to 97% means a tripling in the number of bad loans❗️</p><p>and consequently a huge excess load on the systems that are meant to deal with them.&nbsp; </p><p>Faced with this massive cognitive overload, <br>the system froze.&nbsp; </p><p>And even more unfortunately, <br>in a world in which trillions of dollars need to be rolled over and refinanced every day, <br>the one thing that the financial sector cannot do is stop for a moment to regain its bearings.&nbsp; </p><p>If information processing was free and the bankruptcy process frictionless, <br>the Global Financial Crisis would have been over in a month.&nbsp; </p><p>As it was, all the information which had been attenuated by the use of multiple layers of secured debt came back, <br>suddenly unattenuated and needing to be dealt with.</p><p>That’s the “cybernetic history” of the debt crisis which I outline in my book, <br>and I think it’s a useful alternative perspective to the economic one, <br>and one which makes it more comprehensible that a relatively small market for synthetic CDOs turned into a continental crisis.&nbsp; </p><p>But this might not even have been the most pernicious use of debt seen in our lifetimes.</p><p>(2/3)</p><p><a href="https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">profilebooks.com/work/the-unac</span><span class="invisible">countability-machine/</span></a></p><p> <a href="https://c.im/tags/criminogenic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>criminogenic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/organisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>organisation</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Stafford" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Stafford</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Beer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Beer</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Barry" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Barry</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/accountability" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>accountability</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>sink</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/737MAX" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>737MAX</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/McDonnell" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>McDonnell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Douglas" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Douglas</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>engineering</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ricardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ricardian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fallacy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Fallacy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/hard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>hard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/data" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>data</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/best" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>best</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/practice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>practice</span></a></p>
Chuck Darwin<p>More from Dan Davies:</p><p>About five years ago, I started to get very interested in an obscure subject called “<a href="https://c.im/tags/management" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>management</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cybernetics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cybernetics</span></a>”.&nbsp; </p><p>It was a product of the technological dreamscape of the 1960s and 70s; </p><p>after the invention of the computer, but before it became ubiquitous, <br>in a period when there was room for speculation about how the new world of artificial intelligence would change our world.</p><p>I had just finished my previous book<br> (Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World), <br>and was keen to say a bit more about how organisations go wrong.&nbsp; </p><p>It seemed to me that it might be possible to expand the concept of a “<a href="https://c.im/tags/criminogenic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>criminogenic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/organisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>organisation</span></a>” <br>(one where the incentives structurally produce illegal behaviour) <br>to a more general 🔸“bad-decision-o-genic organisation”.</p><p>And furthermore, that the weird mixture of pure mathematics, philosophy, accountancy, physics and economics that came together in the work of now-forgotten management gurus like <a href="https://c.im/tags/Stafford" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Stafford</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Beer" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Beer</span></a> and <a href="https://c.im/tags/Barry" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Barry</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> might be the way to think about it.</p><p>What do bad decision-making organizations have in common❓</p><p>Quite a few things, <br>but one of the clearest signs is something you might call an “<a href="https://c.im/tags/accountability" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>accountability</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>sink</span></a>”.&nbsp; </p><p>This is something that might be familiar to anyone who has been bumped from an overbooked flight.&nbsp; </p><p>There is no point getting angry at the gate attendant; <br>they are just implementing a corporate policy which they have no power to change.&nbsp; </p><p>But nor can you complain to the person who made the decision <br>– that is also forbidden by the policy.&nbsp; </p><p>The airline has created an arrangement whereby the gate attendant speaks to you with the voice of an amorphous algorithm<br>-- but you have to speak back as if to a human being like yourself.&nbsp; </p><p>The communication between the decision-maker and the decided-upon has been broken <br>– they have created a handy <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>sink</span></a> into which <a href="https://c.im/tags/negative" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>negative</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/feedback" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>feedback</span></a> can be poured without any danger of it affecting anything.</p><p>⚠️This breaking of the feedback links is, I think, one of the most important things that has happened to large organisations <br>– banks, but also large corporations and government departments<br> – over the last fifty years.&nbsp; </p><p>In most cases, it’s not been carried out purely as a responsibility-dodging exercise, <br>or as part of a conscious effort to make things worse.&nbsp; </p><p>That has happened, on occasion, <br>but for the most part, after spending a lot of time looking into examples, <br>I concluded that feedback links were being broken simply because 💥they had to be.&nbsp; </p><p>The world keeps growing and getting more complicated, <br>which means that individual managers gradually become overwhelmed; </p><p>the problem of trying to get a sensible drink from the firehose of information that pours into any large organisation every day has become unbearable.</p><p>And this is why institutions have started ❌ delegating decisions to systems <br>– credit scoring algorithms, regulatory risk weighting formulas <br>and the like.&nbsp; </p><p>As well as allowing decision-making to be automated and industrialised, <br>they provide a psychological defense system, <br>👉preventing individual human beings from the consequences of having to make a decision and own it.</p><p>Most of the time, these systems work well.&nbsp; </p><p>But when they break down, the consequences can be spectacular.&nbsp; </p><p>Because every such algorithm or rulebook is, implicitly, based on a <a href="https://c.im/tags/model" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>model</span></a> of the thing they’re meant to govern.&nbsp; </p><p>And every such model is capable of failure.&nbsp; </p><p>And when something comes along that’s outside the model <br>– like, for example, a sustained nationwide fall in US house prices <br>– you end up in a situation where literally nobody knows what to do.</p><p>(1/3)<br><a href="https://www.netinterest.co/p/decisions-nobody-made" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">netinterest.co/p/decisions-nob</span><span class="invisible">ody-made</span></a></p><p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">@<span>pluralistic</span></a></span> <br> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/737MAX" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>737MAX</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/McDonnell" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>McDonnell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Douglas" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Douglas</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>engineering</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ricardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ricardian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fallacy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Fallacy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/hard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>hard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/data" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>data</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/best" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>best</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/practice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>practice</span></a></p>
Chuck Darwin<p>Dan Davies:</p><p>These thoughts struck me while listening to the ** Odd Lots podcast on Boeing, <br>which I thoroughly recommend. </p><p>The <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/737MAX" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>737MAX</span></a> is one of the core case studies in <br>"The Unaccountability Machine" (you can buy it now!), </p><p>because it’s a really graphic example of 💥a decision-making system which generated an awful result -- ⚠️without any identifiable natural person being responsible for it.</p><p>The Odd Lots episode, focuses on <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Boeing</span></a>'s 1997 <a href="https://c.im/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> with <a href="https://c.im/tags/McDonnell" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>McDonnell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Douglas" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Douglas</span></a> as the inflection point in Boeing’s history.&nbsp; </p><p>♦️This caused a thorough cultural change from Boeing’s historical “<a href="https://c.im/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>engineering</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a>” -- based on ❇️getting things right and doing what was needed, </p><p>♦️to something more in tune with the Jack Welch / Shareholder Value spirit of the times, <br>🆘focused on <a href="https://c.im/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>control</span></a> and "return on investment".</p><p>It's kind of odd, though.&nbsp; </p><p>Boeing was the acquirer and the larger company; <br>McDonnell was actually not in that great shape; <br>it had a good defence business but a bad civilian aircraft business; <br>in fact, one of the attractions for Boeing was that McDonnell had spare factory capacity that it could use to accelerate its own overflowing order book.&nbsp; </p><p>As you’d expect from a company run along financial lines, it was quite indebted too.&nbsp; </p><p>So why was it McDonnell’s culture that became dominant?❓</p><p>⬇️ Let’s take a step back into economics.&nbsp; </p><p>Joseph Schumpeter identified something he called “The <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ricardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ricardian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fallacy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Fallacy</span></a>”.&nbsp; </p><p>This is the tendency of economists to 🔹build a theoretical model,<br>🔹solve the model <br>and then 🔸act as if they have solved the problem in the real world.&nbsp; </p><p>To an extent, this isn’t particular to economists <br>– it’s the nature of modelling that having made a representation of reality specifically in order to attenuate its complexity and make a problem manageable, <br>--⭐️ you don’t then go back and unattenuate it.</p><p>But bearing that in mind, the Ricardian Fallacy then interacts with another thing that economists do; <br>--⭐️ they collect data.&nbsp; </p><p>Data gathering is almost never a neutral activity; <br>it takes place within a theoretical framework.&nbsp; </p><p>And what this means is that if the system for gathering, classifying and tabulating the data was designed by people who had a particular model, <br>👉then the data will most likely support that model.&nbsp; </p><p>Everything which is part of the model will be well-verified, data-driven, empirically based and so on.&nbsp; </p><p>Everything which isn’t part of the model will be handwavey, subjective, “hard to quantify” and other synonyms for “probably special pleading and made up”.&nbsp; </p><p>In the book, I have a subsection called “How Ricardians Win Arguments” <br>and this is how: <br>– they collect the data.</p><p>⬆️ Returning from the digression, <br>the important thing to understand is that the financial accounts are a model of the business.&nbsp; </p><p>They incorporate a lot of assumptions, of which perhaps the least analysed but most important one is “the financial year is a meaningful time period for this process”.&nbsp; </p><p>Some things appear in the accounts, and they are the things which can be backed up with numbers.&nbsp; </p><p>Other things don’t, and therefore they can’t.&nbsp; <br>(Or best case, they can only be backed up with ad hoc, unaudited numbers which everyone will be suspicious of).</p><p>💥I think that’s one of the deep causes of what went wrong in Boeing; <br>♦️the McDonnell-Douglas executives were the ones who could back up their business cases with a ream of <a href="https://c.im/tags/hard" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>hard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/data" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>data</span></a>.&nbsp; <br>♦️The legacy Boeing executives were left talking about <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>culture</span></a> and <a href="https://c.im/tags/best" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>best</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/practice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>practice</span></a> and all sorts of soft-sounding things that were hard to put into a model.&nbsp; </p><p>⚠️The Ricardians won the argument, and 🔥the disastrous decisions turned out to have been made without anyone realising they were making them -- when they decided to use the financial reporting system as a tool of management</p><p>(0/3)<br><a href="https://backofmind.substack.com/p/how-the-wrong-side-won-at-boeing" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">backofmind.substack.com/p/how-</span><span class="invisible">the-wrong-side-won-at-boeing</span></a></p><p>** Odd Lots Podcast <br><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-moment-that-boeings-culture-started-to-rot/id1056200096?i=1000642200497" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/</span><span class="invisible">the-moment-that-boeings-culture-started-to-rot/id1056200096?i=1000642200497</span></a></p>
Variety<p>Disney-Reliance Entertainment Merger Approved by Indian Regulator<br><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Variety" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Variety</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Asia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Asia</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Global" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Global</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>News</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Disney" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Disney</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/India" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>India</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Merger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Reliance" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Reliance</span></a></p><p><a href="https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/disney-reliance-merger-approved-1236120829/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">variety.com/2024/tv/news/disne</span><span class="invisible">y-reliance-merger-approved-1236120829/</span></a></p>
🧿🪬🍄🌈🎮💻🚲🥓🎃💀🏴🛻🇺🇸<p>&gt; Already <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Americans" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Americans</span></a> pay too high <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/grocery" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>grocery</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/prices" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>prices</span></a>, and if competition is removed from this <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> then prices could go even further, That’s going to be real trouble, because a lot of us are on fixed incomes — we can’t afford higher prices right now</p><p><a href="https://www.kgw.com/article/money/business/kroger-albertsons-merger-portland-federal-court-lawsuit/283-39b7018b-ac54-4742-8a7e-976326e5c3b4" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">kgw.com/article/money/business</span><span class="invisible">/kroger-albertsons-merger-portland-federal-court-lawsuit/283-39b7018b-ac54-4742-8a7e-976326e5c3b4</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/albertsons" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>albertsons</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/kroger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>kroger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/groceries" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>groceries</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/inflation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>inflation</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/monopoly" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>monopoly</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/food" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>food</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/capitalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>capitalism</span></a></p>
ErosBlog Bacchus<p>If Etsy acquires, gets acquired by, or merges with eBay or Amazon or Alibaba or Temu in the next six months, I called it yesterday, based on my theory that when a platform rolls out new pornocalypse policies, it usually indicates a financial inflection point like a merger or acquisition. </p><p>Here's yesterday's ErosBlog post on the upcoming Etsy pornocalypse: </p><p><a href="https://www.erosblog.com/2024/07/05/pornocalypse-comes-for-etsy/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">erosblog.com/2024/07/05/pornoc</span><span class="invisible">alypse-comes-for-etsy/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Pornocalypse" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Pornocalypse</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Etsy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Etsy</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/ErosBlog" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ErosBlog</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Finance" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Finance</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/News" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>News</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Merger</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Prediction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Prediction</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/eBay" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>eBay</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Amazon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Amazon</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Temu" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Temu</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Porn" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Porn</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/Ban" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Ban</span></a> <a href="https://kinkyelephant.com/tags/PornBan" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PornBan</span></a></p>
Matt Willemsen<p>Evidence of Dark Matter Interacting With Itself in El Gordo Merger<br><a href="https://www.universetoday.com/167236/evidence-of-dark-matter-interacting-with-itself-in-el-gordo-merger/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">universetoday.com/167236/evide</span><span class="invisible">nce-of-dark-matter-interacting-with-itself-in-el-gordo-merger/</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/astrophysics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>astrophysics</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/DarkMatter" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DarkMatter</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/ElGordo" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ElGordo</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/interacting" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>interacting</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/StandardModel" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>StandardModel</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Self" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Self</span></a>—Interacting</p>