Chapotraphouse

I just wish that the billionaires lining up to shoot themselves into space on shoddily constructed hardware could find a less ecologically devastating way to do it, like maybe a really damn big trebuchet.

Ever since I was a kid I wanted to go to space. But only because I loved and still love science

Of all the stupid business plans... I really do not understand this. Who the fuck wants to go to "space"?

Mars bases and colonization is what Musk tries to sell. Similarly asteroid mining, data centers and factories in space, and massively increased rollout of satellites. All of these are stupid because they all rely on massively over-inflating the upsides and really thoroughly underestimating the costs and expenses of doing things in space, even if we could theoretically put some of these things up there. The only plausible part of the plan that makes sense is increased demand for satellites, but that includes a lot of double-dealing, since Starlink is going to be a supposed driver of that.

and everyone getting their internet from starlink

Similarly I don't think it is theoretically impossible. I have not looked at the numbers or how much of the electromagnetic spectrum that that would require with current technology, nor have I seen anyone else try to address it. But my feeling is that this is unlikely to work at that scale and would be prohibitively expensive to keep such a large covering of satellites in low earth orbit, aside from other issues like making ground based astronomy impossible and risk of space debris. I think this is the same thing as everything else, of just really trying to low ball and ignore the actual costs and just rely on the idea of "Musk launches a few more satellites and everyone can just get internet everywhere and we don't have to maintain all of this pesky ground based infrastructure like wires and fiber"

My understanding is that it is the index managers not the fund managers. Indicies started just as nice ways to track the market or sectors in one number (which is why in reporting and checking on the market you will see those numbers quoted). When an index fund decides to track an index and define and market themselves as doing it, the fund is legally obligated to follow the index. Several analysts at the FT has been complaining about how much power this gives the people in charge of the indicies and that most people haven't really caught on to.

Edit: to make it clear guys at something like Standards and Poor (S&P) decide on what to include in the index and the rules around it and then someone at a company like Blackrock or Vanguard markets an index fund that will track that index to investors. So in this hypothetical, it is S&P screwing over Vanguard investors.