Week 44

😂

"@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal has now replied with a threat"

"@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io

As an active federal contractor, Coinbase is prohibited from making political contributions, including to super PACs. This makes $50 million that they have contributed in violation of pay-to-play laws for contractors"

Brian Armstrong: "Today I'm announcing that @coinbase has commited another $25 million to support Fairshake PAC"

Director? How about Chad Stahelski?

Blade 1998 is a favorite movie of mine Disney, do not f--k this up

Clearly studio veered away from cuck, otherwise Ali would not have agreed

Good good..

"@m4n_geek@threads.net

Mahershala Ali is reportedly pleased with the latest BLADE script draft, and the search for a director is nearly complete"

"zuck@threads.net

Threads now has almost 275M monthly actives and more than 1M daily sign-ups 🔥"

Bloomberg: "Hyundai Debuts New Hydrogen Car in Bet on Clean Fuel’s Future..

• ‘Initium’ is new fuel-cell car, following 2018 release of Nexo

• Hyundai to invest $4 billion over next decade toward hydrogen"

US could be exercising "rule by oligarch" approach everywhere, not just in Ukraine before the war. It's easy than any other forms of control, you aim to shift a country's governance always to one based on oligarchs. Once that is done, you control those oligarchs, because in a "globalized" system US is the gatekeeper on financial chokepoints, it is easy to control any country's oligarch, and through them, you control his country.

Partly a response to McCain saying "Russia is a 'gas station masquerading as a country'". Comeuppance is a bitch.

Afganistan would have been a picture of state health, advance and development if US were an empire. AFG would get US help to produce cotton, the interests of US native biz would not have overriden the interests of other parts of "the empire". Everyone would, after all, be in the same empire. The Otto treated the Balkans no different than it treated the Levant. US is different. It is easier to understand 'merica as a conglomeration of trade networks, as a plutocratic mafia rather than a traditional hegamon, or even a state. US is like a McDonalds franchise, a gas station, a mall, a parking lot masquerading as a country.

Papa Cheney is literally the MIC itself. As a former CEO of a military contractor, he pushed US into a war that helped said contractor rake it in, and others along with it. The business of death made him rich.

I'd like to see that..

DJT “[On Liz Cheney] She’s a radical war hawk — let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?.. And let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

"India, China complete troops pull-back from border face-off points in Ladakh"

Firstpost: "North Korea's Choe Son Hui is on a visit to Moscow as the West believes up to 10,000 North Korean troops are on the brink of entering the more than two-year conflict on Russia's side"

CH could be an underestimated player in the sanctions game. A lot of countries depend on China, esp. if CH practices the chain-sanction technique, they can be formiddable. Obviously none of this bodes well for a well-functioning world-system, or "United Nations". It will be more like Divided Nations.

Financial Times: "Chinese sanctions hit US drone maker supplying Ukraine"

First snapshot of the Israel-Lebanon frontline. Before-After will be available once there are changes.

#IS #LB

[-]

H2 Central: "GreenIron signs major delivery agreement with Norwegian Hydrogen... GreenIron is about to start operations at its green metals production plant in Sandviken, Sweden, utilizing its patented zero-emissions technology"

AGBI: "The UAE has completed a pilot programme looking into the use of green hydrogen to decarbonise the steel industry... Conventional steel production accounts for around 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and about 30 percent of emissions from industry...

In the pilot project, green hydrogen electrolysers created using solar power from the grid were used instead of natural gas to extract iron from iron ore, a vital step in steel making. The programme is aligned with both the UAE’s National Hydrogen Strategy 2050 and the Abu Dhabi Low Carbon Hydrogen Policy.

[T]he production of green hydrogen has started something of an arms race between the bloc of six GCC countries – the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

Saudi Arabia’s $8.4 billion Neom Green Hydrogen plant is set to be the world’s largest, and is scheduled for full operations by the end of 2026. And earlier this month, the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund launched the Energy Solutions Company with an estimated 10 billion investment in green hydrogen"

Gold is not rising because "money is being debased". It is rising because econ is not working for the majority, goes in a funk... Low rates forever. That makes assets more attractive, like housing and gold. Gold is not some magic money-subtitute. Liberterian libertards are wrong on this one, just like those MMT types. Money cannot be tied to a finite resource, and money cannot be printed infinitely bcz somehow "it's fine until you see inflation".

We need to see the big picture however.. Gold is going through the roof because the market is betting on low growth, low rates, which will raise the price of assets, ie gold.

Use it for trading I don't care

The regression below can be predictive, shift gold price back, it still works.

$R^2$ is ridiculously high. Reverse correlation with oil, Euro, positive correlation w SP 500, silver (makes sense, related comodities). Oil is an indicator of econ activity, high activity means high demand for oil, therefore high price. Low activity means low rates, a boon for gold, since it is considered an asset.

import statsmodels.formula.api as smf
df = u.get_yahoo_tickers(2015, ['^GSPC','GLD','USO','SLV','EURUSD=X'])
df = df.rename(columns={'EURUSD=X': "EURUSD","^GSPC": "SPX"})
r = smf.ols('GLD ~ SPX + USO + SLV + EURUSD', data=df).fit()
print ('R^2', np.round(r.rsquared,2), '%')
print (r.params)

R^2 0.93 %
Intercept    121.862326
SPX            0.018018
USO           -0.193925
SLV            2.887015
EURUSD       -63.320880
dtype: float64

Is gold price correlated to anything? It is known there are correlations with SP 500, oil, silver and some other instruments.

The Decline of Public Property

Here's an idea gov provides initial funding to hundreds of non-profits each year, those orgs can provide employment, and the ones in the red will go bust anyway, remaining ones can continue providing a public service in an efficient way. Gov can track the founders for potential abuse but otherwise just let the existing machinery take care of them.

If 'merica cannot get over its distaste for gov, non-profits can provide another path. The future surely does not lie with exclusively for-profit co's, that mentality brought you into the mess you find yourself in today, perhaps non-profits can do something more, represent larger swaths of econ in monetary terms, albeit with some push by gov.

"American commitment to responsible citizenship". There is that feeling, sure... Tied to a culture code certainly. Is it useful? Debatable.

Drucker, Managing the Non-Profit Org: "[We] know that the non-profits discharge a much bigger job than taking care of specific needs. With every second American adult serving as a volunteer in the non-profit sector and spending at least three hours a week in non-profit work, the non-profits are America's largest 'employer.' But they also exemplify and fulfil the fundamental American commitment to responsible citizenship in the community. The non-profit sector.. represents about [2-3%].. of America's gross national product"

#UA #RU 10/23 - 11/01

[-]

Python is, of course, freely available and open-source.

import pyfiglet; print (pyfiglet.figlet_format("PYTHON ROCKS"))

 ______   _______ _   _  ___  _   _   ____   ___   ____ _  ______  
|  _ \ \ / /_   _| | | |/ _ \| \ | | |  _ \ / _ \ / ___| |/ / ___| 
| |_) \ V /  | | | |_| | | | |  \| | | |_) | | | | |   | ' /\___ \ 
|  __/ | |   | | |  _  | |_| | |\  | |  _ <| |_| | |___| . \ ___) |
|_|    |_|   |_| |_| |_|\___/|_| \_| |_| \_\\___/ \____|_|\_\____/ 

Python! 🐍 🐍 🐍 🐍 (it is the language we use on this blog)

Github: "Remember when people said AI would replace developers? Our data tells a different story... In 2024, Python overtook JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub, while Jupyter Notebooks skyrocketed—both of which underscore the surge in data science and machine learning on GitHub"

Non-profits are solid orgs.. Management guru Peter Drucker wrote entire books on them. They are not paid attention to enough, all the attention is on for-profit entities because they give the bigger contribution to politicians (they basically own them). Non-profits need to band together and create their own PAC otherwise for-profit types will make an hellhole out of your country. Can't let those fuckers run the roost.

O'Nolan previously worked for Wordpress, the famous CMS platform. The post below is timely bcz Wordpress parent co Automattic CEO Mullenweg is apparently losing his shit, his for-profit brain is going cuckoo damaging the WP devs and the brand in the process, so the Ghost example is a good contrast to all that.

John O'Nolan: "Non-profit structures are particularly well suited to companies that specifically want to serve public community interests, like schools, hospitals, local news orgs, and — yes — open source projects... In the US, non-profits are heavily regulated in their operations, and exempt from income tax...

[Non-profits] don't have owners. And that's what matters. People often think that 'non-profit' means that the company can't make a profit. It actually means that the company doesn't have any owners who can personally take the profits. Any revenue earned can only be reinvested.

Non-profit structures are particularly well suited to companies that specifically want to serve public community interests, like schools, hospitals, local news orgs, and — yes — open source projects. Non-profit orgs still employ people and pay salaries, and they're generally audited by the government to ensure they're operating correctly and within reason.

At [non-profit publishing platform] Ghost..our annual accounts are subject to a mandatory audit every single year. A shareholder of a for-profit company may decide to cut costs to the detriment of the organisation because they're motivated to increase profits and grant themselves larger dividends at the end of the year.

In a company making cardboard boxes, that's no big deal. Some short-term money will be made and then the company will probably fail. The market adapts. In an organisation whose mission is to serve a community, though, the effects of decisions like this often have greater consequences.

The primary purpose of the non-profit structure is to protect against this and ensure that any decisions made benefit the organisation and its community, not its owners. Ghost has no incentive to slash costs and drive up profits, because it has no owners. It will always be independent.

The organisation exists for-purpose, rather than for-profit"

[-]

Govs need to invest in social infrastructure, bidness always makes use of freely available infra e.g. educated populace, bridges, roads, networks. Someone else needs to do the heavy lifting for them, they only connect some "stuff on top", and create binness. We need them the way you need cory catfish in an aquirium, but they do not fundamentally innovate, they exploit. They are bottom feeders. But the biz propaganda since the 80s became so extreme, they forgot the true source of their income. They destroyed social infra and literally killed the goose that laid golden eggs. They believed their own bullshit.

Eurodollars are dollars deposited in a U.S. bank or foreign bank outside the US... There is a futures contract on them via CME, "the interest [on the contract] will be paid by anyone who borrows $1 million for a potential three-month duration at the LIBOR interest rate. It allows the trader to speculate on a future interest rate of three months". And, ED market is extremely liquid.

Lower rates at any time indicates econ trouble, econ is not heating up, not growing, hence low rates. Low rates in the future, all the time, forever means econ in duldrums. Good for asset prices, bad for people. CB lowering rates more will not help, econ saw some of the lowest rates post 2008, econ still sucks. Econ is fundamentally broken. "Biz friendly environment" is no cure. Since 2008 US there's been no shortage of biz friendly administrations yet the curve flattened and flattened. People who work on shit jobs will not have extra cash to spend, whatever they spend will go to the wealthy, or China anyway. Redistribution is needed, direct aid on the one hand, highly taxed wealth on the other. Money is zero-sum. Somebody needs to lose for somebody to gain. Hammer time.

Since 2008 crisis the treasury curve has been flattening, save for a few upticks. Buying ED means betting on rate fall. There is an uptick now but it will be followed by a fall. Expect to see negative values by 2026.

df = u.get_fred(2008,['DGS2','DGS10'])
df = df.interpolate()
df['inv'] = df.DGS10 - df.DGS2
df['inv'].plot(grid=True,title='Treasury Curve')

Investopedia: "The eurodollar market traces its origins to the Cold War era of the 1950s when the Soviet Union started to move its dollar-denominated revenue (derived from selling commodities like crude oil) out of U.S. banks. This was done to prevent the United States from being able to freeze its assets. Since then, eurodollars have become one of the largest short-term money markets in the world and their interest rates have emerged as a benchmark for corporate funding"

Due to inequality econ fundamentally cannot get better. In financial market terms that means curve flattening.. Wanna make money on the country's doom? Can buy a "green" Eurodollar future contract (matures a few years ahead) and ED price is inverse of interest rate btw, you buy for the fall. Now I understand why #Stevenson's writing tone in his autobio is sometimes so gloomy. He came from poverty, became rich while betting on a future that would make econ even worse for ppl who still lived in that poverty. The ED idea is from his book.

You entered that BEV business and you are getting destroyed. The tech was a useless little experiment kicked off by a misinformed, half-brained US administration, it would have not persisted if its prez was not hailing from a minority, and the rest of the world was not such a copycat. Cascading stupidity in action. But you followed it, now chickens have come home to roost.

Bangkok Post: "Volkswagen on Wednesday said its third-quarter operating profit plunged 42% as weak performance in the core passenger car unit and high costs, including for model revamps, hit the automaker"

"@therightarticle@mas.to

Spain cancels arms deal with Israeli company worth billions"

Randa Abdel-Fattah: "Palestinians have tried every single avenue [to resist non-violently]. BDS is a peaceful movement that was called by the civil society. It is criminalized in the US. I just got back from there, and we would had panel discussions, they tried to shut us down. We protest, 8000 people in the Great March of Return [in Gaza], protested peacefully, we were shot at with live ammunition. We go to social media, and advocate there, we get shut out, silenced on social media. Every single avenue - international law for instance, US will veto and shut that route down. All these peaceful avenues are pursued by Palestinians and that is never good enough. No form of resistance is good enough, it is only acceptable if you are a dead Palestinian"

EurekAlert!: "A team from the Technical University of Berlin, HZB, IMTEK (University of Freiburg) and Siemens Energy has developed a highly efficient alkaline membrane electrolyser that approaches the performance of established PEM electrolysers. What makes this achievement remarkable is the use of inexpensive nickel compounds for the anode catalyst, replacing costly and rare iridium"

Bus News: "New Flyer of America has received its largest hydrogen fuel cell bus order to date.. The 40-foot buses will contribute to SamTrans’ transition to a zero-emission fleet, replacing diesel buses and supporting California’s goal of reaching 100% zero-emission transit by 2040"

H2 Central: "Solar hydrogen-based microgrid to power Indian Army’s off-grid locations in Ladakh"

Emily Bender: "'Virtual Employees' and Remixing Machines Devalue Human Work.. According to Katie Prescott in The Times.. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is out there arguing that copyright laws need to be reworked to enable 'transformative' technology. I wouldn't want to argue that US copyright laws are perfect or even good the way they are, but the revisions needed are ones that protect the interests of creative workers against corporations, not revisions that further the interests of corporations at the expense of creative workers"

"@fuck_cars_bot@botsin.space

'Absolutely great system 👍 a train would definitely be worse than this right?'"

[-]

Stevenson says in his book he was executing a trillion worth of financial trades each day. A trillion. One trader. Think about that.

"@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org

The way things are going, we're going to end up with #Mastodon as the only social media platform left standing that not only isn't controlled by billionaires, but by its very nature cannot be effectively controlled by billionaires. In this respect we've come full circle to the days before widespread public access to the Internet, when individual sites used the public telephone network and low speed modems to create ad hoc data networks for email and public discussions.

Everything old is new again"

Jack White - Archbishop Harold Holmes #music

[-]

Would I have an Andrew Carnegie or a Napoleon in my country's past? Napoleon. Hands down.

A Royale with E.coli

Informed Comment: "BDS and its Allies are Exposing the Companies Fueling the Genocide in Gaza"

[-]

The ethnic stuff was fine.. I started watching live US comedy in NYC, and I've heard worse. I heard Hispanic, black, white comedians roast all kinds of ethnic groups. It is a good thing - there is a normative side to it, but it is an antidote to shitlib multiculturalism (culture cannot be "multi", it is like Highlander - there can only be one).

Hinchcliffe killed it

Informed Comment: "It took nearly a year for French President Emmanuel Macron to confront the uncomfortable truth: the path to peace in Gaza cannot be paved with more weapons to Israel. His recent remarks, sharp and unapologetic, reflected the urgency of shifting away from military escalation. 'I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza,' Macron declared, laying bare his stance. He was unequivocal in his message, adding, 'If you call for a ceasefire, it’s only consistent that you do not supply weapons of war.'. Although Macron clarified that France does not supply Israel with offensive arms, his pointed comments seemed aimed at the United States, which remains Israel’s primary arms provider"

Congressman, stock trader.. same thing

January 6, Shmanuary 6.... Bunch of stock traders nearly got their asses kicked. Who gives a shit?

Selydove is gone

[-]

Why are people throwing a fit on the WaPo non-endorsement? Not only it is good journalistic practice, an endorsement is also useless. "Biased liberal coastal elite" image would, did in the past turn people off.

"In a major step for sustainable steel manufacturing, Greensteel Australia has been awarded a contract by global steelmaking technology leader Danieli to build a 600,000-tonne-per-year rolling mill that will be powered entirely by green hydrogen.

The first-of-its-kind green steel facility is to be located in New South Wales, Australia, and will create a global benchmark for zero-emissions steel production. Danieli, an Italian-based metal processer and supplier, will partner with Greensteel Australia to develop the plant and is targeting commencement of operations by late 2026"

It's so good.. eat it and you will die

Recipe

Favorite intl meal? Tagine de veau aux fonds d'artichauts, from Montignac. Lamb Vindaloo is also high up there.

"@jon@vivaldi.net

Microsoft really does not want you to try another browser. I wonder why?

Time to defy Microsoft and install Vivaldi!"

[-]

The Go! Team - Bust-Out Brigade #music

[-]

#Suburbia

[-]

Countries have businesses. In US, businesses have a country.

Home ownership rate (the ratio of owner-occupied units to total residential units) is 93% for China, 89% for Russia, 65.7% for US. After decades of "ownership society" propaganda you got beat by two former communist states. Why? Because the kind of vapid capitalism you practice increases inequality.

Zelensk possibly wants an end to the war, his victory plans could be purposely over-the-top in its resource demands so once denied VZ can say "well u dont give me what I need, then let me make peace". It could work but US corp media will muzzle that framing, hence no public pressure will build. The war will go on as long as there are profits to be made. This has been the case for nearly all recent American wars.

AP: "Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza"

"@PabloMartini@climatejustice.social

Israeli troops murder four British Oxfam engineers. Why is this not all over the UK news outlets? Why is it being hidden from us?"

Kerry Burgess: "Very concerning that there is a news blackout in the United Kingdom on the murder by Israel of the 4 British Oxfam engineers who were attempting to fix a water supply in Gaza. They were in a marked vehicle and had notified and obtained permission from the IDF prior to commencing work"

In line w/ international law.. is that because they are sent to Kursk, which is Russia according to intl law, so they are sent to defend, not to the new areas where Russia is attacking, inside Ukranian territory? That makes sense I guess in pure legalistic terms.

Le Monde: "[UA mil] told the War Zone website that some 2,600 of the first North Korean soldiers will be sent to the Kursk region"

TASS: "North Korea cannot confirm media reports that the country has sent its servicemen to Russia, but even if that were true, it would be in line with the norms of international law, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jong Gyu said"

Patriotic Millionaires UK: "Did you catch the Metro? 🗞️ 🚇

This week, commuters in Westminster were greeted with our msg on the front page of the Metro: 'Tax us, the super rich.'

To fix the foundations of our country it's time for those us who can afford to pay more to do so"

Today's Disney is no different. Woke agenda is distraction, indirect capitalist propaganda which lulls people into thinking the culture war is supreme when in fact the real war has been waged in economic realm and it's been already lost for the working class. They are now dancing in your grave via a Captan America who "fights the government", making gov look bad so big co continues to evade tax and your serfdom is entrenched.

Walt was a rapacious capitalist? It's funny how completely opposite his daughter is, Abigail Disney.

[-]

"@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social

Today in Labor History October 24, 1947: Walt Disney testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming many of his own employees as communists, including Herbert Sorrell, David Hilberman and William Pomerance, because of their activism as union organizers. In 1993, the New York Times wrote that Disney had been passing secrets to the FBI from 1940 until his death in 1966. In return, J. Edgar Hoover let Disney film in FBI headquarters in Washington and made Disney a 'full Special Agent in Charge Contact.'

In 1971, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart published 'How to Read Donald Duck,' a book-length essay critiquing Disney comics as capitalist propaganda for U.S. corporate and cultural imperialism. It became a bestseller throughout Latin America and is still considered a seminal work in cultural studies. It was first published in Valparaiso, Chile when Allende was in power. Pinochet banned it and conducted public book burnings [with it]"

"@Gargron@mastodon.social [MD founder]

Mastodon is financed by crowdfunding instead of venture capital not because we don't know that venture capital exists, not because we don't have bills to pay, and not because venture capital isn't willing to give money to new social media platforms. VCs don't want a sustainable business, they want a big exit. Every VC-backed business is on a timer to deliver or die"

Vox: "Michael Becker, a professor of international human rights law at Trinity College, Dublin, said, overall, the above incidents and others mean 'South Africa has an ever-expanding repository of evidence that it can put before the [ICJ] as further evidence of genocidal intent,' which includes evidence suggesting Israel 'has not meaningfully sought to comply' with the ICJ’s orders so far"

Vox: "Ernesto Verdeja, a professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, said it could be 'called a genocide, even in a narrow legal sense, for several months now' given the accumulation of Israeli attacks clearly and consistently targeting the civilian population in Gaza."

Vox: "'Any early hesitation I had about applying the 'genocide' label to the Israeli attack on Gaza has dissipated over the past year of human slaughter and the obliteration of homes, infrastructure, and communities,' said Adam Jones, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia who has written a textbook on genocide.. 'whatever peace constituency existed in Israel seems to have vanished, and there is a growing consensus for genocidal war, mass population transfer, and long-term eradication of Palestinian culture and identity'"

F24: "Israeli airstrike on Tehran caused ‘minimal damage’ Iran says"

NYT: "Israel’s Retaliatory Attack on Iran Appears Carefully Calibrated"

Firstpost: "Georgia's pro-Russia ruling party celebrates early victory"

Fox News: "In a show of support for former President Trump, a group of Muslim leaders in Michigan, a swing state, officially endorsed his candidacy."