> FTX’s collapse was unthinkable just days earlier.
I was shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to find out there was gambling going on in there.
I was shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to find out there was gambling going on in there.
This was plain fraud.
Let us not sugarcoat it by saying it was "plain" gambling.
It was gambling BUT with stolen funds.
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EDIT: That being said, the level of shock here is warranted.
> “It’s definitely a mess,” says Josh Morrison, who heads 1Day Sooner, a pandemic preparedness research and advocacy organization that received $375,000 from the Future Fund and the FTX Foundation. During the pandemic, 1DaySooner became known for advocating so-called human challenge trials, which deliberately infected volunteers with SARS-CoV-2 to test vaccines.
So FTX allegedly donates a lot of money to various causes. Those scientists begin the trials (expecting the money to pay them back eventually), but... FTX goes bankrupt before it hands those scientists money.
That's... bad. I'm not in the scientific field, but it seems like these groups had reasonable expectation that some money was coming for them... and that money wasn't related to cryptocoins or whatever.
Quick FYI: there are no call-girls and the place is not (nominally) a casino, it's Rick's Café Américain, which Renault calls a cafe and Rick famously calls a gin joint -- in any event, a popular nightspot.
Here's the text of the relevant scene, from IMDB[0]:
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]
Captain Renault: Everybody out at once.
In Renault's defense, right before all this, he was told by a superior to close the place down and, when a reluctant Renault says he has no excuse to do so, he's told, "Find one." Hence his feigning being "shocked" at the gambling.
(If you have 32 seconds, you can watch this classic scene here: [1]).
http://www.paper-dragon.com/fistsand45s/ricks-cafe-americain...
(Amusingly, in the comments, someone says they're building it in Minecraft).
As an aside, this post from 2008 does point to all of the carbon being released from the 1st meter of soil/permafrost, which has probably since melted.
https://phydeauxpseaks.blogspot.com/2008/08/you-know-that-ol...
Casablanca, it turns out, has a relevant quote for this too[0]:
Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
I would suck at pop culture trivia :)