unicorn vomit

Of the 48 venture-funded U.S. tech companies that went public since 2014, 35 now trade below their initial public offering prices, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

It isn’t as if venture funding has totally dried up. In the fourth quarter, financing for U.S. startups fell 6.6% to $17.13 billion, the lowest in five quarters but still approaching dotcom-boom levels.

If this catches on then Silicon Valley is fucked.

Two European wireless carriers plan to block online advertising on their networks, threatening Silicon Valley’s prevailing business model.

bad math parts in there that hurt my brain.

I liked this article in Haaretz:
Europeans Find the Odd U.S. Primary Race Strikingly Familiar

The sentiment fueling the unexpected ascent of Trump and Sanders seems the same as the mood powering trends in Europe: a flat-out, let's-make-a-change rejection of the political elite.

Not only that...

Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw, says despite huge differences between politics in Europe and the United States the same sense of grievance and helplessness is driving people to extremes on the left and the right.

He cites the Polish election in October that brought the anti-immigrant Law and Justice party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski to power. "There is the same mistrust of the political mainstream. There is this lethal combination of social economic uncertainties and identity wars that are imposed on them," he says.

Fear of mass immigration is a common denominator that was exploited by Kaczynski in the final stages of his campaign - when he warned that the migrants arriving on Europe's shores were carrying dangerous infectious diseases - and Trump is stoking somewhat similar fears in the United States.
"When we hear Trump, it really sounds like Kaczynski," says Kucharczyk.

I can't quite believe that the following is a justification for Germany. The 'lack of sense of security caused by extremist attacks from foreigner's is a right-wing excuse for their own racism.

In both Europe and the U.S., extremist attacks also have undermined the sense of security, heightening fears of outsiders.

Attacks have been far more frequent and lethal in Europe ... But the December attacks that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, had a noticeable impact on the American psyche. It may have caused a bump in support for Trump, just as backing for anti-Islamic European lawmakers like the Netherlands' Geert Wilders appears to have grown since the extremist attacks in Paris and elsewhere....

Trump alarmed many overseas observers, by classifying some Mexican immigrants as rapists and suggesting a temporary ban to keep Muslims from entering the United States....

Josef Braml, a specialist with the German Council of Foreign Relations, says the venomous attack style surfacing in the U.S. primary campaign is calculated to capitalize on anger with a political class that can no longer be counted on to provide security, job growth and economic expansion.

"They are saying, 'To hell with political correctness, I'm telling you the truth,'" he says. "That tells me they see political correctness as the code of the elite.
...

He sees resurgent nationalism, fed by fear of outsiders, in both the United States and in Europe ...
Trump's disparagement of Mexicans is similar to the anti-Semitic views expressed by the National Front in France, he says.

The author goes on to compare Sander's policies to Social Democratic ones in Europe.

Sanders' rise has been cheered by European leftists including many in Scandinavia with deeply held anti-American views, says Mads Fuglede, a Danish historian and political commentator.
He says, "They see the U.S. as a capitalist nightmare, so when someone says they want to make a revolution against free market capitalism, they embrace that, so he has a lot of fans."

French Institute of International Relations' Dominique Moisi summarizes:

"The two (Trump and Sanders)are really significantly different but you can unite them by saying anti-elite sentiment coming from the left and from the right is gaining ground/ "We have not seen that in American elections before."

Der Spiegel (only in German) reports about the resignation of Mr. Strässer (Social Democrat and Commissioner for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid of the German Parliament) over the recent changes in refugee policies, a so-called Asylum Package II, in which the German parliament will decide to temporarily stop the subsidies for family members of refugees, who follow the first already in Germany accepted family members. Lots of tensions over Merkel's and Social Democrats' and the Greens' refugee policy ideas. Lots of articles about problems arising trying to integrate a Million of Refugees etc.

All of it doesn't feel quite right and irrational fears arise, which are described (in German) in this op-ed asKurz vorm Durchdrehen - Close to getting nuts

I wonder what else we have not seen before, not only in American elections, but in European minds.

and David Bowie. Two of my favorite arty pop artists. I just bought a new Hunky Dory CD as my old CD was trashed.

Here's another pop song about an artsy guy