5️⃣ Thoughts for the week #05

A couple of weeks ago I said that having a sea shanty remix stuck in my head wouldn’t mean anything in a few years (I’m realizing this is what writing these sorts of things is all about). This week’s equivalent is the – there’s no other word for it – debacle surrounding Robinhood and gamestop. Folks from a reddit group basically pumped up a stock, mostly because someone figured out that some billionaire hedge funds had ‘shorted’ (gambled that it would reduce in price) that particular stock. So by buying loads of this stock (increasing its price), not only would the hedge funds lose money, the folks who bought in to the stock early, would earn money.

It’s a pyramid scheme wearing a disguise.

It turns out Robinhood is beholden to hedge funds (Robinhood earns money in part by selling the trade data to hedge funds giving them a very small time window advantage) and that particular game got stopped. Lots of people are saying that the hedge funds have thrown a pissy-fit because they’ve been beaten at their own game, or that it’s just Average Jo using the mantra “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

The system is broken; of that I have no doubt, but I can’t help but think that this simply furthers the divide between those that have some and those that have practically nothing. It’s not an equitable way to fix the system.

I don’t think the hedge funds will end up losing – many have already recouped some or all of their losses after the buying of some stocks was paused – only allowing sales – so the stock price came down. Oh, when I say ‘buying was paused’ I only mean for the Average Jo. Those hedge fund traders could still buy tho. So they did. Artificially pumping the price back up, meaning they bought a dip — essentially hedging their own hedge. It’s hedges all the way down. Always has been.

Urgh. Tax the rich, ffs.

At least this young man got a nice surprise. 🏹


My uncle, who was diagnosed with covid 2 weeks ago continues to be “ok”. He is in the ultra high risk category (age, medical history, immune system, physical characteristics, the lot). He’s in good spirits. Fingers crossed. 🤞🏻

Locally, our top doctor – Dr. Bonnie Henry – asked us to dig deep for the next two weeks. We’re on the precipice, basically. We’ve plateaued at too high a number (~500 new cases per day) and if one of the new variants catches hold here, we would, I am certain, be in all sorts of trouble.

Lots of folks then asked what more they could do – they say they’ve been following all of the health orders. So Dr. Henry answered — she said those folks could do more by helping spread the message. To which those same people replied “oh you actually meant we could do more? How dare you, ThE GovERNmeNT SHOulD bE DOinG moRE.” Completely missing the hypocritical nature of their pushback.

We do need to dig deep. The next two weeks are critical. With vaccine quantities coming into the province being lower than initially anticipated, we absolutely must reduce community spread.

I’ve been saying privately to anyone unfortunate to be within earshot that we would need to be incredibly lucky to avoid a full lockdown. I’m wrong. We don’t need luck. We need people to do what Dr. Bonnie Henry has asked of us – whether that be following the health orders, or spreading the message, or both. 👩🏼‍⚕️

I’m a bit ranty this week, I guess.


Billed as an ‘Open Source email replacement’ MNM caught my eye this week. Email is weird. It was almost universally hated for ages. Then slack came along with the goal of killing email (… and yet…). Developers generally disliked it because it was a hard thing to get right. Sysops folks hated it because there are myriad ways for email to go wrong. 📨

Yet, here we are, with email newsletters suddenly being really popular again. 🤷‍♂️

Formality is a new-to-me WordPress plugin to create forms. It is deeply integrated with the block editor which I really like. ☑

Baron Samedit was how my Tuesday went, thank you for asking.

I love CSS. scroll-margin-top was new to me : https://piccalil.li/quick-tip/add-scroll-margin-to-all-elements-which-can-be-targeted


BC COVID-19 Vaccine Count: 2.47% and 2.19% Canada-wide. 👩🏼‍⚕️

BC released their vaccination strategy. Early indications are that I’ll hopefully be getting my first shot in July, “thanks” to being 40 this coming May.