Surveillance Log 007 - Noteworthy links for 2025-11-14
Hello! Welcome to this week’s list of five (or less!) interesting links. If you want to revisit earlier weeks, all previous issues are available here.
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‘Squid Game market’: how Asian retail traders are driving US meme stocks — Korean retail investors appear to be responsible for huge swings in the price of some highly speculative stocks on the US markets. In some cases, they hold nearly 25% of the total equity of a company, and their collective purchases of US assets have depressed the Won. This article is fascinating on two counts: it illustrates an unexpected effect of globalisation and more accessible shares trading, and it explains why stock market investing has become so popular in South Korea. Spoiler: because of extreme inequality and unaffordable housing, Koreans approach investing with a lottery mentality. (FT $)
FBI Warns of Criminals Posing as ICE, Urges Agents to ID Themselves — Adding to the long list of reasons why masked law enforcement is a terrible idea: it makes it trivially easy for criminals to impersonate officers and, erm, commit crimes. (Wired)
Mamdani’s Win Shows That Believing In Something Beats Performative Hatred — Zohran Mamdani made waves last week by winning the race for New York mayor, despite polling in the single digits at the beginning of the year. Pundits have been falling over themselves to explain why he is or mostly isn’t the future of the Democratic Party, but I endorse Mike Masnick’s interpretation of the result: Mamdani stood for something. (Techdirt)
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