Happy Holidays & Thank You – Plus Updates

Hi Followers, Thank you for following my blog! I wish everyone reading a happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year celebration. Now is the time to be thankful, and I'm thankful for everyone in following along my long-winding thoughts on politics and business. I never imagined I would be writing this blog for an …

Why is US Cybersecurity So Weak?

It has been confirmed that many US agencies, as well as private companies, were hit with cyber attacks that the US government believe is coming from Russia, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former attorney-general William Barr. This further implicates the imminent danger Russia is, but also highlights the United State's weak cybersecurity. …

The Rise of SPACs

SPACs are changing the IPO game for investors. But is the market already saturated? While for many, 2020 is the year of COVID-19, for investors small and big alike, 2020 is the year of SPACs. SPACs, or Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, can be seen as special "shell companies" whose sole purpose is to acquire companies …

AstraZeneca Acquires Alexion

In the first bit of news beyond COVID-19 in the pharmaceutical world, AstraZeneca makes a splash in landing perhaps the most expensive acquisition of a biotech company. On Saturday, the UK based pharmaceutical giant revealed a $39 billion cash and stock deal for Alexion, a specialist in rare diseases in immunology. Historically, AZ had a …

Hunter Biden Under Federal Investigation

It has been revealed that in 2018, the Justice Department began an investigation into Hunger Biden's finances, especially scrutinizing deals made with China. Hunter Biden claims he learned about this investigation just two days ago on Tuesday, and confirmed the investigation on Wednesday. “I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a …

Why is the US Going After Facebook?

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission, alongside 46 other states, sued Facebook on two antitrust charges. The first case seeks to unwind Facebook's WhatsApp and Instagram subsidiaries. The other alleges that a lack of competition has harmed consumers, including weakening privacy protections. There are two points to look at here, and I disagree with one of …

Uber Dumps Self-Driving Unit

Yesterday, Uber announced a deal in which autonomous vehicle startup Aurora would acquire Uber ATG, their self-driving unit, in exchange for a 26% equity stake and $400 million investment into Aurora. Uber was an exciting new startup and hot tech IPO that instead brought pain and frustration to investors. Uber has seen excruciating painful profitability …

AI Solves Protein Structures

Those that work in molecular biology know - it can be a long, arduous process to solve protein structure. I only worked for a couple years as an undergrad research assistant in a molecular biology lab, but I already saw the wear and tear in PhD students spending years attempting x-ray crystallography and cryo-EM experiments …

The Necessity of Ranked Choice Voting

The past few elections have highlighted the need for legitimate candidates outside of the two mainstream parties. People would like to believe that Republicans and Democrats accurately capture the view of all Americans - after all, what more is there than "liberal" and "conservative"? But historically, there has always been a higher number of "Independents" …

Tesla to be Included in the S&P 500

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced on Monday that Tesla will be included in the S&P 500 index. Not only does this solidify and legitimizes Tesla's meteoritic growth, it means that many funds and indexes tracking the S&P 500 would have to purchase incredible quantities of the stock in order to rebalance their portfolios. Tesla will …