The worst part about these cascades is that you live in complete ignorance of the events unfolding around you until that final precipitating event reveals the intricate weave of The Fates’ tapestry

Ah yes. The classic Cascading Failure. A thing that goes catastrophically wrong, causally linked to an endless chain of other Things That Go Catastrophically Wrong that all set off Even More Things That Go Catastrophically Wrong. Like a circular row of dominos, except each domino is an open oil drum filled with…

Show me a single person that falls into this group that has any meaningful control over a company; specifically the ability to influence the direction of the company...

I dunno about “nobody will ever remember”. I fully understand there’s no such thing as ethical consumption in American capitalism, and I’ve been paying for and playing Blizzard games for 20 years so I’m complicit. Even thinking about playing now after all of this leaves me feeling incredibly icky. I know my withdrawal…

But only the opinion of those rich stock holders matter because they own exponentially more of the stock than us normals. Those retirement fund’s first mandate is to make the numbers go up. They have zero incentive to attempt to make moral changes at companies they invest in. They don’t care about workers, or even the…

This was an investor call with the handful of big institutions that control a large amount of shares and can singe handily make a material impact on the stock price. Including those firms that manage all those retirement accounts. Obviously no one is talking about us rank and file retail investors with no real power.

If you remove capitalism, you remove most of the power companies have to bury that shit. No more lobbying. No more forced arbitration or similar shenanigans. Potentially no more hierarchy which would immediately prevent any kind of “higher-ups” covering up anything because there’s no higher ups anywhere, just equals…

Yeah, the employees are absolutely no concern to the investors... in fact, the employees being treated like shit is a primary reason they have seen profits going up over the last several years. They are no different than the company leaders in that regard... protecting the cash cow is always going to be more important…

Man, I wonder what it’s like to be so insulated from guilt, shame, and public opinion that you can literally feel nothing about any of this and just maintain status quo. It must be so relaxing.

Their product lineup is arguably in the worst state it’s ever been in, the state of California is against them, the public is against them, their employees are against them, and now their investors are against them.

The scope doesn’t have to be that vast, ruthless capitalist bullshit means any loss of efficiency is seen as a massive deal to the shitheads pulling the strings. Check out how much effort Disney is making to not give ScarJo a relatively paltry amount: it’s not about making money, it’s about making ALL the money.

Ah, there’s the other shoe dropping. Blizzard was able to bury employee harassment lawsuits with its arbitration agreement, but it’s a lot harder to distract shareholders losing their money. 

Oh there is a ton of xenophobia directed a China whenever there is economic competition against “the west” in any way. But that said, large corporations like Tencent do seem to have a rather incestuous relationship with the government. Not as much as Russia’s large oil companies, but then again Russia has a much more…

When’s the last time a government existed that didn’t have any court intrigue or a “Minister of X” trying to advance by sabotaging a “Minster of Y”?

The answer to that is the ingenious concept of “pretending it didn’t happen and disappearing anyone who points it out.”

Back in 2014, for example, the Chinese Ministry of Education blamed “weaker” college students on video games

Maybe that’s the thing that will make the cowards at Blizz value free speech over profits. If they are content to be bossed around by China’s arbitrary whims, it’s only fitting that said whims tank their profit margins there

Shit, forgot my tiniest fiddle to play a sad ditty for this dude. Guess he’ll have to fuck off in silence.