RT @BenjaminNorton
So much for the ridiculous propaganda claiming crypto is a "'decentralized' alternative to Wall Street":
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, now holds more than $100 billion in crypto.
BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF is the world's largest BTC holder.
https://finbold.com/blackrock-now-holds-over-100-billion-in-crypto/
"The State Department released its annual reports on human rights around the world on Tuesday, and revealed an administration set on whitewashing the records of some of the world’s worst violators of human rights.
The hollowed-out reports on roughly 200 countries and territories omit references to LGBTQ+ discrimination and curtail information on government abuses, including gender-based violence and government corruption. They no longer include sections focused on systemic racial or ethnic discrimination and violence, child abuse, or child sexual exploitation.
The congressionally mandated human rights reports, which are used to guide U.S. decisions on diplomacy and aid, have been turned into wholly political documents that target countries with whom the Trump administration has clashed and soft-pedal abuses by the administration’s allies.
Israel, and countries like El Salvador, South Sudan, and Eswatini, which have agreed to accept and in some cases imprison U.S. deportees as part of Trump’s growing global gulag, got a soft touch. South Africa, which has led the war crimes case against Israel at The Hague, received a more pointed report."
https://theintercept.com/2025/08/14/state-department-human-rights-reports/
#USA #StateDepartment #ElSalvador #SouthSudan #Israel #HumanRights
"Of course there have always been Christians in Silicon Valley; they just knew better than to advertise their faith. This is to say: The Christians were effectively in hiding. And one specific place they were hiding was, according to Tan, on a spreadsheet made up of Christians in tech, which was passed around for years among a dozen or so of the techno faithful. One of them was Trae Stephens, cofounder of the defense tech company Anduril and a partner at Founders Fund, the venture capital firm cofounded by Peter Thiel. Stephens, like Tan, has lately been speaking publicly about his faith in the context of Silicon Valley. He has hosted a Bible study reflecting on the teachings of René Girard, a French philosopher popular in certain libertarian-leaning tech circles; spoken at his church about the connection between Christianity and innovation; and written, in what seems a slightly contorted interpretation of the gospel, about how basic venture investing principles are an exemplar of divine forgiveness."
#Religion #SiliconValley #Christianism #Christianity #Palantir #Anduril
Very well said. It all STARTED in 1948, that is, about 77 years ago...
"The time has come. It is no longer possible to beat around the bush and avoid giving an answer. We can no longer hide, evade, mumble, mollify and obscure. Nor can we hang on to legal sophistry about the "question of intent" or to wait for the ruling of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which may only be handed down once it's too late.
It's already too late. That is why the time has come to call the horror by its name – and its full name is genocide, the extermination of a people. There is no other way to describe it. In front of our horrified eyes, Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. It did not begin now; it began in 1948. Now, however, sufficient evidence has accumulated to call the monstrous child in the Gaza Strip by its full name.
This is a moment of despair, but it is also liberating. We no longer need to avoid the truth. On Monday, in the basement of a hotel in East Jerusalem, two important Israeli human rights groups announced that the die was cast. B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights stated that they had reached the conclusion that Israel was committing genocide."
#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #Genocide #HumanRights
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqnedr5xspnk6wzvece5ynnt9wup0v5y508hqu96rykdqftm2pf6xsjr8v4e Sorry, that is utterly bullshit / intellectual crap. Specially because you're forgetting the PRO-extinctionism stance. It means that, when confronted with having to choose between preserving human life and advancing digital non-material entities, these billionaires will not hesitate to opt for the second option.
"We must call this out for what it is: pro-extinctionism. The biological transhumanism of Thiel and the digital eugenics of Altman, Faggella, Yudkowsky, and the others—all of these views aim to supplant the human species with some kind of successors, which would then proceed (on the most popular view) to plunder Earth’s remaining resources and launch itself into space to conquer the universe. This is overtly pro-extinctionist, and given that some of the most powerful people in one of the most powerful centers of society—Silicon Valley—accept it, we must conclude that pro-extinctionism is not a fringe ideology, but closer to the mainstream.
Even worse, these pro-extinctionists promote their ideology by claiming that, in fact, they oppose human extinction. This relies on two linguistic tricks: first, many define “humanity” in an idiosyncratic way that diverges from the definition that most of us intuitively accept. We tend to equate humanity with Homo sapiens, our species, whereas these people define “humanity” as including whatever posthuman descendants we might have. Hence, as I’ve highlighted elsewhere, our species could die out next year without “human extinction” having happened—so long as we’re replaced by posthumans, then “humanity” will live on. When they talk about avoiding “human extinction,” they aren’t talking about the extinction of our species. To the contrary, our extinction wouldn’t matter one bit once posthumanity arrives."
https://www.techpolicy.press/digital-eugenics-and-the-extinction-of-humanity/
#Transhumanism #DigitalEugenics #HumanExtinction #ProExtinctionism
"What happens when you crush the spending power of the people and you give lots of money to big business? Big business collects this money — of course, it’s free money; why wouldn’t they take it? But they look outside the window of their skyscraper in Paris or Frankfurt, and all they see are impecunious masses.
They’re not going to invest, because the many out there can’t afford to buy high value-added goods. But they have this money that has been printed and given to them, so what do they do? They go to the stock exchange and they buy back their own shares.
Their share price goes through the roof, and their bonus is connected to their share price, so they are laughing all the way to the bank. They go and buy a new apartment, a new yacht, more Bitcoins, a work of art. Asset prices go up, while the many are still impecunious and there’s no investment.
After fifteen years of that, it’s the end of Europe. It is the reason why Germany is now deindustrializing. It is deindustrializing because it did not invest anything in the last fifteen years. The managing directors and the members of the board of directors were doing splendidly, but they were not investing.
While the Chinese were investing their heads off and Elon Musk was investing in Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, and so on, Europe had zero net productive investment for something like sixteen or seventeen years. That is preposterous. The result is that now, Europe is dying. If people ask — and they should ask — why it is that fascism is having a second or third wind, it is because this is what happens when you have something like 1929."
https://jacobin.com/2025/07/yanis-varoufakis-on-the-legacy-of-greeces-oxi-referendum
#EU #Greece #Euro #EuroCrisis #OxiReferendum #Democracy #PublicDebt #Austerity
A última temporada marca uma tentativa de estabelecer a ponte entre a genialidade das primeiras duas temporadas e o comercialismo industrial das temporadas seguintes. De certo modo, o esforço é bem conseguido. Não obstante, mais uma vez o último episódio não deixa de se assemelhar bastante à narrativa típica do final de uma telenovela. Então o fast-forward dos último seis minutos é completamente ridículo - precisamente por ser demasiado rápido e curto.
Apesar do que disse, "Six Feet Under" não deixa de ser uma série bastante boa. Não tão boa para a poder considerar uma das três melhores séries de sempre ("Sopranos", "Better Call Saul" e "Breaking Bad" são para mim indubitavelmente melhores), mas ainda assim não deixa de estar no meu Top 5 - atrás de "Mad Men" mas ligeiramente acima de "BoJack Horseman".
Por outro lado, "Six Feet Under" é possivelmente a melhor série que retrata a minha geração ("Geração X"). Nesse sentido, talvez seja possível que esteja a valorizá-la excessivamente.
Possível próxima série a ver: "The Crown" (2016-2023).
"A decisão pode também levar à remoção massiva de conteúdos, bastando uma simples notificação. Foi o que aconteceu na Europa. Só em 2024, foram 9,4 bilhões de justificativas de remoção reportadas. 87,5% dos conteúdos removidos eram totalmente legítimos, como apontou estudo da Universidade Vanderbilt. Em 2025 já são 9 bilhões de justificativas de remoções nos 6 primeiros meses do ano.
No Brasil poderá ser pior. Há obrigação de remover todos os conteúdos iguais, o que não existe na lei europeia. E se o conteúdo estiver sendo postado para ser criticado, o que é legítimo, vai ser removido também?
No regime anterior, se alguém reclamava de um conteúdo, ele ficava no ar até a decisão judicial. Era um regime de "na dúvida, pró-liberdade de expressão". Agora isso se inverte em três dos quatro regimes. O conteúdo será primeiro tirado do ar. Caberá a quem fez o post acionar o judiciário para colocá-lo de volta. O regime é "na dúvida, pró-remoção"."
#Brasil #STF #MarcoCivil #Censura
"Por 8 votos a 3, o STF declarou parcialmente inconstitucional o artigo 19 do Marco Civil da Internet, de 2014, segundo o qual as redes sociais só poderiam ser responsabilizadas por postagens de usuários se descumprissem ordem judicial de remoção.
Depois de confabulações durante um almoço prolongado antes da sessão, os magistrados resolveram impor, entre outras normas laterais, uma lista de conteúdos a serem removidos de imediato, antes de determinação da Justiça, pelas plataformas.
Nesse rol estão publicações que configurem, por exemplo, terrorismo, pornografia infantil, discriminação racial, tráfico de pessoas, indução ao suicídio, violência contra mulheres e condutas que atentem contra a democracia e o Estado de Direito.
Não é segredo para ninguém que foi este último item da lista que de fato moveu a decisão da corte —com as exceções dos ministros André Mendonça, Edson Fachin e Kassio Nunes Marques. E é aí que residem os maiores riscos da corrente cruzada pela regulação das redes sociais."
#Brasil #STF #Censura #MarcoCivil
"Me aterra pensar que millones de personas emprenden ahora mismo ese delicado proceso sin más guía que ChatGPT, en un milenio plagado de acontecimientos traumáticos, interpretado por líderes inmaduros, irresponsables y narcisistas que trafican con desinformación."
https://elpais.com/opinion/2025-06-23/el-ano-de-la-terapia-sintetica.html
"I am writing this message to the millions of people who have been involved in the climate movement over the past several years. This movement has been an incredible force, thanks to your courage, passion and commitment. It has created a new public consciousness and a powerful sense of popular will. These are major achievements. And yet it is clear that we have now reached an impasse and a new path is needed.
The plain fact is that the climate crisis cannot be addressed within capitalism. This may be difficult for some to come to terms with, but is vital that we understand this fact and develop our strategies accordingly, otherwise we are headed for certain failure. And on this issue, failure is not an option.
First, what do I mean by capitalism? People often assume that capitalism is defined by businesses, markets and trade. But these things were around for thousands of years before capitalism and have taken many different forms. In reality, the main thing that distinguishes capitalism is that it is fundamentally undemocratic."
https://jasonhickel.substack.com/p/climate-socialism
#ClimateChange #Capitalism #GlobalWarming #EcoSocialism #ClimateSocialism #Democracy
"The western political/media class have been dutifully promoting this line and uncritically parroting Israel’s claim that its unprovoked attack on Iran was “preemptive”, but there is absolutely no evidence that any of this is true.
Benjamin Netanyahu has spent literally decades falsely claiming that Iran was a year or two away from developing a nuke, only to have the calendar prove him wrong with the passage of time over and over again.
US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified just weeks ago that “The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
As journalist Séamus Malekafzali recently noted on Twitter, one of the strongest arguments that Iran had not reversed its decision to refrain from obtaining nuclear weapons is that Iranian nuclear scientists have been publicly expressing frustration about the fact that their government won’t allow them to construct a nuke. They want to do it, but Tehran won’t let them."
RT @BrankoMilan
It is impossible to understand European political elites.
Pure Orwell: Europe condemns Iran for attacks on its own territory
"Israel broke the fragile truce, murdering civilians with increased frequency. The Israeli army shot at close range over a dozen marked medical rescuers and a UN worker, then buried their bodies along with the ambulances. It bombed the last standing school buildings and hospitals. It has starved thousands of Palestinian children, maintaining an almost complete blockade of international humanitarian aid for twelve weeks.
It took the levelling of over 70 per cent of Gaza for Germany’s leader to make such a groundbreaking declaration as “what’s happening in Gaza can no longer be justified by the fight against terrorism.” Merz added that he had “stopped understanding what Israel is trying to achieve,” though Netanyahu and his people openly state that the goal of the ongoing “military operation” is the annexation of the Gaza Strip.
The German government even considered such “radical” steps as stopping weapons shipments to Israel – as reported by Israeli public television Kan 11, Tel Aviv undertook intensive diplomatic efforts against such ideas. With positive results – Johann Wadephul, head of Germany’s Foreign Ministry, has already assured that deliveries are not under threat."
https://socialistproject.ca/2025/06/even-germany-now-condemns-israeli-crimes/
#Germany #Israel #Palestine #Gaza #Genocide #HumanRights
"As Jewish protesters began flooding capitol building rotundas, blockading roads in cities across the country, and staging an unprecedented protest in New York City’s Grand Central Station, journalists attempted to pin down this “new” phenomenon. Some in Jewish establishment organizations decried these Jewish dissenters, either claiming them as patsies for terrorism, betrayers of their community, or not Jews at all. Others saw this as a brand new reclamation of Jewish identity, the building of an authentically emergent way of being Jewish that broke with the mainstream Jewish consensus. While this was a resurgence in alternative Jewish organizations and religious and cultural life away from the overwhelming Zionism of American Jewry’s dominant institutions, in truth, nothing about this was new.
As scholar Benjamin Balthaser tracks in his new book, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left, the vision of Jewish identity on display in Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations organized by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and the Jewish Anti-Zionism Network are the latest stage in a long history that sees Jewish identity as in relationship with all communities facing oppression and on a diasporic model of internationalism.
Shane Burley spoke with Balthaser about how Jews in both the Old Left and the New Left convened their sense of Jewish identity, how they understood and responded as Zionism emerged and then later dominated American Jewish life, and how this model of Jewishness has found its continuity in the radical Jewish activism attempting to halt the genocide in Gaza."
https://jacobin.com/2025/06/history-left-jewish-identity-politics
#USA #Jews #Zionism #Antizionism #Palestine #Israel
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqk7v7vr7hguelwty67z3knxdl07j78smkn077qhzc9f3ecpup2emshmr90l Ah, I see. You believe in the fantasy world of Peter Pan economics where people believe that the market is going to be able to provide all these goods to them only while excluding all the others who are unable to pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good
But if you really believe in that, shouldn't you already be living without relying on any services or goods provided by a State?
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqk7v7vr7hguelwty67z3knxdl07j78smkn077qhzc9f3ecpup2emshmr90l Roads, electricity, water supply, schools, hospitals, collective transportation, universities, research & development, justice (not the government responsibility), firefighting, street safety, defense. Shall I go on?
"The second approach is much broader, covering every social media user, and that’s tackling the way the platforms function. We have plenty of reporting and research that shows social media platforms are designed to be addictive — to ensure people spend more time on the app, thus generating more advertising profits. Social media platforms learned techniques from gambling companies to keep users hooked by using likes, notifications, and other methods to entice people to keep coming back, triggering dopamine responses that their brains craved even if the platforms made them feel worse at the same time.
Tackling those addiction design practices, dark patterns in interface design that nudge people to perform certain actions, and the way the platforms’ algorithms spread and amplify certain (often extreme or sensationalist) content to keep people engaged is a more difficult task than a hard age limit. Despite the country’s decision to move forward with an age limit, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has already been examining and reporting on platform design issues and the issues with algorithmic recommendation systems.
If we’re serious about minimizing the harms of social media platforms, design interventions and algorithmic limits are a much more promising approach."
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/social-media-must-be-reined-in
#SocialMedia #AddictiveDesign #Algorithms #BigTech #DarkPatterns #AgeVerification #NannyState
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqk7v7vr7hguelwty67z3knxdl07j78smkn077qhzc9f3ecpup2emshmr90l Money is concentrated wealth that provides infinite amounts of power to those who have it over those who lack it. You're not entitled to have that amount of power over me if I'm destitute and therefore forced to be your slave to survive.
Taxes are collected by democratically-based entities named States. You're free to disagree to the way representatives are elected and exercise their rule. But you're not free to disregard the will of your fellow citizens and still enjoy all the public infrastructure paid by them.
if you want to disregard the will of your fellow citizens and don't see any need for living in a society, you can gladly go live in a desert island where all your money is going to be worthless because there will be no one to serve you.
nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqk7v7vr7hguelwty67z3knxdl07j78smkn077qhzc9f3ecpup2emshmr90l Sorry, but I totally disagree with that stance. Higher taxes are not the single magic solution to increasing disparity between capital and labor. But taxes surely must be in the package. Or else we will be forever slaves to capital.
By itself, a tax like this one wouldn't do a thing to shift the current balance of power between capital and labour. Increasing inheritance taxes and enforcing stricter antitrust, anti-monopoly policies would be way more efficient in fighting the real causes of wealth inequality
"Zucman’s project is that every billionaire should pay total annual taxes equalling at least 2 per cent of their wealth. That, he explained, is the level where they would pay the same tax rate as everyone else. If someone already pays 2 per cent through income and other taxes in their own country, “you are good, there’s nothing more to pay”. If they pay less, then any country where they do business could levy additional taxes to reach 2 per cent. For instance, Brazil or France could tax Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, as his company operates there.
“It’s a bold proposal, yet modest at the same time,” said Zucman. He explained that his “starting point” was learning from the “failure” of most previous European wealth taxes. Whereas they hit millionaires, his would exempt even those with wealth of €4.8mn (the threshold for entering the global 0.1 per cent).
This is hardly the Bolshevik revolution. Indeed, 2 per cent wouldn’t even reduce inequality, as billionaires’ wealth has been growing by 7 per cent a year. Piketty, who supports his former protégé’s plan, grumbles that it’s only “a useful first step”.
The EU has long backed Zucman’s research. But his big breakthrough came last year, when Brazil, host of the G20 summit, invited him to present his plan to the assembled finance ministers. Brazil twisted the arms of even Argentina’s libertarian president Javier Milei to agree to a shared declaration: “With full respect to tax sovereignty, we will seek to engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed.”"
https://www.ft.com/content/859ef96a-daa8-4fcc-96ab-a3a9465a441a
#Inequality #Billionaires #WealthTax #FiscalPolicy #Taxes #PoliticalEconomy
This is exactly the type of policies that is leading to the crisis of left and center-left parties in Europe. They don't understand that, besides circulating on a global scale, capital tends to concentrate where monopolies, oligopolies and cartels can easily emerge in the absence of antitrust regulation. That's why IP reform - including patents, copyright, and trademarks - is so important. Parties with tax-based policies are doomed to failure.
By itself, a tax like this one wouldn't do a thing to shift the current balance of power between capital and labour. Increasing inheritance taxes and enforcing stricter antitrust, anti-monopoly policies would be way more efficient in fighting the real causes of wealth inequality
"Zucman’s project is that every billionaire should pay total annual taxes equalling at least 2 per cent of their wealth. That, he explained, is the level where they would pay the same tax rate as everyone else. If someone already pays 2 per cent through income and other taxes in their own country, “you are good, there’s nothing more to pay”. If they pay less, then any country where they do business could levy additional taxes to reach 2 per cent. For instance, Brazil or France could tax Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, as his company operates there.
“It’s a bold proposal, yet modest at the same time,” said Zucman. He explained that his “starting point” was learning from the “failure” of most previous European wealth taxes. Whereas they hit millionaires, his would exempt even those with wealth of €4.8mn (the threshold for entering the global 0.1 per cent).
This is hardly the Bolshevik revolution. Indeed, 2 per cent wouldn’t even reduce inequality, as billionaires’ wealth has been growing by 7 per cent a year. Piketty, who supports his former protégé’s plan, grumbles that it’s only “a useful first step”.
The EU has long backed Zucman’s research. But his big breakthrough came last year, when Brazil, host of the G20 summit, invited him to present his plan to the assembled finance ministers. Brazil twisted the arms of even Argentina’s libertarian president Javier Milei to agree to a shared declaration: “With full respect to tax sovereignty, we will seek to engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed.”"
https://www.ft.com/content/859ef96a-daa8-4fcc-96ab-a3a9465a441a
#Inequality #Billionaires #WealthTax #FiscalPolicy #Taxes #PoliticalEconomy
When LLMs suffer from Digital Alzheimer...:
"Large Language Models (LLMs) are conversational interfaces. As such, LLMs have the potential to assist their users not only when they can fully specify the task at hand, but also to help them define, explore, and refine what they need through multi-turn conversational exchange. Although analysis of LLM conversation logs has confirmed that underspecification occurs frequently in user instructions, LLM evaluation has predominantly focused on the single-turn, fully-specified instruction setting. In this work, we perform large-scale simulation experiments to compare LLM performance in single- and multi-turn settings. Our experiments confirm that all the top open- and closed-weight LLMs we test exhibit significantly lower performance in multi-turn conversations than single-turn, with an average drop of 39% across six generation tasks. Analysis of 200,000+ simulated conversations decomposes the performance degradation into two components: a minor loss in aptitude and a significant increase in unreliability. We find that LLMs often make assumptions in early turns and prematurely attempt to generate final solutions, on which they overly rely. In simpler terms, we discover that when LLMs take a wrong turn in a conversation, they get lost and do not recover."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.06120
#AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #ChatBots #MultITurnConversation
"Encrypted chat apps like Signal and WhatsApp are one of the best ways to keep your digital conversations as private as possible. But if you’re not careful with how those conversations are backed up, you can accidentally undermine your privacy.
When a conversation is properly encrypted end-to-end, it means that the contents of those messages are only viewable by the sender and the recipient. The organization that runs the messaging platform—such as Meta or Signal—does not have access to the contents of the messages. But it does have access to some metadata, like the who, where, and when of a message. Companies have different retention policies around whether they hold onto that information after the message is sent.
What happens after the messages are sent and received is entirely up to the sender and receiver. If you’re having a conversation with someone, you may choose to screenshot that conversation and save that screenshot to your computer’s desktop or phone’s camera roll. You might choose to back up your chat history, either to your personal computer or maybe even to cloud storage (services like Google Drive or iCloud, or to servers run by the application developer)."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/back-it-back-it-let-us-begin-explain-encrypted-chat-backups
#CyberSecurity #Privacy #Encryption #Messaging #Signal #WhatsApp