April '25
Market movers, special relativity, and 35mm
Shot: Lised d'eau douce - Camera: Canon AE-1 - Film: Kodak Gold 200
Market Movers
Google
Losing SEO dominance with the rise of LLMs
So much of G’s revenue is ‘ads’
(websites paying to be promoted to the top of search results)
How does this change with ChatGPT?
Reportedly traffic on Instagram and YouTube doubled during the Tiktok ban
(both G and Meta have a vested interest here)
Amazon
Reportedly 30% of Amazon’s marketplace is based in China
Obvious tariff implications
(and how many Amazon “merchants” are really just importing product to their US based warehouses and upselling?…certainly non-zero…)
“Amazon is experimenting with showing product and inventory from other companies’ websites within search results and if it doesn’t stock the product itself, using an AI agent to help the customer buy from from an external website. [LINK]”
Opens the door for Amazon to become a ‘marketplace SEO’
(and charge vendors a fee to connect Amazon buyers with external product)
How long until an LLM can find your product, purchase it, and organize shipping? Does Amazon simply become logistics for online sales?
Apple
Apparently Google is paying Apple almost 20bn dollars to make Google Search the default search engine when someone buys an iPhone
(which means G must see more than 20bn in opportunity if they’re willing to pay for it)
(also seems like anti-competetive / monopolistic behavior)
Meta
Heard from a mutual that they have gotten very serious about AI internally. Top-down culture mandate. Is this supposed to bolster morale?
Relativistic Beaming
I came across this picture on Instagram. The first simulated image of a black hole, calculated in 1978:
And my first thought was “why is one side brighter than the other?” Key-in ChatGPT:
Relativistic beaming. This is the key reason for the asymmetry. If the black hole is surrounded by a rotating accretion disk (a disk of superheated gas and matter spiraling in), then parts of the disk are moving toward us and parts are moving away. The side moving toward us has its light blue-shifted and boosted in intensity due to special relativity. The side moving away has its light red-shifted and dimmed.
As light spins around the event horizon of the black hole, it either gets sped up (blue shifted) or slowed down (red shifted), which gives the appearance of one side being “brighter” than the other.
Aka, relativistic beaming.
I remember
My buddy telling me about this “amazing girl” he’d just met. Knowing it could be their last first date. The energy they must be feeling. Electricity at the bottom of your gut. Can’t get ‘em off the brain.
You know that feeling.
Some Literature
What is a rainbow, Lord?A hoopFor the lowly.
— Jack Kerouac (Dharma Bums)