What have I been telling you for a year and a half? Congress is an algamation of grandstanding ass grabbing *leaking* drunks. You don't give them ANYTHING unless you're ready to see it go public.
Did everybody catch the FIREWORKS at the end of the Clinton Foundations whistle blower hearing?
No?
That's OK. I've cued them for you in the video below.
Rep. Mark Meadows has just walked the 2 witnesses through how long it took US Attorney John Huber to contact them & acknowledge receiving the thousands of CF docs from them.
1 of them then relates just how many LEO & federal agencies they contacted & gave the docs to.
Last night, I was at a Christmas party, and this nice gentleman struck up a conversation with me. Asked what I do. I told him. He said he works in the Trump administration. He then says: "I vote Republican, but I'm socially liberal." Let's discuss this for a second.
I get that there are folks in D.C. who work in the Trump administration who don't support Trump but want to serve our country capably. I recognize that nuance. I also get there are some conservatives who don't support Trump at all and walk the walk on social equality.
But this gentleman put to me that a) he's a Republican, b) works in the administration, and c) regrettably votes for the GOP, BUT... wants me to know that he's on my side.
That is a summary of the first 90 seconds of our conversation.
1) I have to be VERY frank with you guys. I'm not sure you see yet what's coming down the pike for @realDonaldTrump . Let's talk about what HAS come down the pike for him so far.
2) So far @RealDonaldTrump , since and before winning the Election for President of the United States has been subjected to the following:
- Smear Campaign immediately after the Pied Piper campaign by Dems to give him the GOP Nomination
cont...
3)
-Illegal wiretapping by the FBI/DOJ of the Trump Campaign
- #DeepState sleepers installed in the Trump Campaign (3 made it, over 15 attempted)
- vicious smears by the #FakeNews#MSM during the entire General Campaign
- White House bugged after Trump was inaugurated
Last night, two women emailed me to tell me of their disgust with my piece on boycotting Gary Con. (contessa.rocks/blog/founders-…) It was profoundly disappointing, and today I am filled with frustration and anger.
The white liberal portion of gaming has already written off anyone doing anything with the "OSR". As far as they're concerned, the OSR has nothing BUT abusive types, and if you hang out with them, you should expect to be abused. They either mock or ignore pleas for help.
The alt-right OSR portion of gaming does whatever the hell they want and largely goes unopposed. Comments on their posts are largely congratulatory and in agreement. If someone dares to stand up and point out the wrongness of something, they are quickly hammered down.
This is a pretty great video quilt of shots from many (most?) of the movies released this year -- great edit, and every shot feels like a painting, a vital moment, like lightning caught in a bottle. Neat stuff.
(Also makes me realize yet again how much better movies look on my computer and my television than they do in the movie theaters around here. Unless you go to IMAX specifically, the projection, even digital, is blurry, muddy, too dark, too bleh.)
1/ What are the experiments from crypto in 2015 to 2018? What are the underlying beliefs and thesis that were validated or invalidated? Feel free to add your own.
2/ The beginning was the ultimate OG Bitcoin with Nakamoto Consensus. The underlying assumptions were private key = value (bearer shares), security at all cost, domain specific validation (UTXO validation), single player mode (store of value), and a community around collectible.
3/ The problem was how do you distribute this as a global currency. There are two economies: the services & goods economy and the financial economy. People took the currency and tried to add merchants to bootstrap the demand. Coinbase started with this, and instead pivoted.
But read on for a theory of valuation of crypto-assets, and a fundamental theory to describe NVT Ratio.
I call this work the Quantity Theory of Investment. Not sure if it's unique, but tweeting this out for review and comment.
For economies, I categorise the value flowing within the economy into 3 types:
u - volume of utility
i - volume of investment
s - volume of speculation
For Bitcoin:
u - is BTC used to pay for stuff, needs to be determined by chain forensics
i - is on chain volume passing between different users (filtering out, using forensics, multiple wallet hops by a single user)
s - is global on exchange volume minus (i) and (u)
Having pretty closely tracked the Far Right in the UK this year, the sooner we think about 'Tommy Robinson' and those orbiting him, structurally, as a kind of criminal gang, the more their behaviour makes sense. Here’s an attempt to articulate that... /1
‘Tommy’, of course, had his start in football hooliganism - gang behaviour that is closely linked to organized crime. The violence is almost secondary to the control of territory and hence illicit activity such as drug dealing and protection. /2 independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-b…
We’re all aware in the last few years that ‘Tommy’ has gone ‘straight’, not only eschewing his hooligan past, but supposedly his Far Right beliefs. However, in the organization that surrounds him, there are similarities with organized criminal gangs. /3 bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
1. <Brews some coffee.> <puts on anthropologist hat> <cracks knuckles>
So the theft of my wonderful colleague, @kahente's, daughter's name by a non-Indigenous film production raises the issue of how western/euro-american folks understand 'culture'+ the erasure of Indigenous laws
2. Western/euro-american folks have employed the notion of 'culture' to describe the 'customs, traditions, languages, social institutions' of The Other for a long while now. Made perhaps famous in anthropology's embrace of this unit of analysis in the last few hundred years.
3. the thing about 'culture' in its emergence as anthro's unit of analysis (vs, say, sociology's also fraught but in different ways study of 'society') is that it was employed through colonial period (+ still) to displace the legal-governance standing of nations of 'The Other'.
Un nouveau #Thread historique, ça vous dit ? On pourrait parler de J.P. Allen, l'astronaute qui ne savait pas qu'il voulait devenir astronaute... Et qui a mis 15 ans à y parvenir.
Allez, c'est parti.
En 1966, Joseph Allen termine son doctorat à Yale en physique nucléaire. Il ne rêve pas du tout d'être astronaute, écoute distraitement les nouvelles de la conquête spatiale. C'est plutôt la recherche en labo qui l'intéresse, pas la couverture du magazine Life.
Mais un jour il tombe sur un formulaire qui demande aux jeunes chercheurs "Intéressés par la NASA ? Postulez pour être astronautes". Joe, il est curieux. Il se demande quel genre de tests ils leur font subir, aux candidats, surtout aux scientifiques !
This is a pretty great video quilt of shots from many (most?) of the movies released this year -- great edit, and every shot feels like a painting, a vital moment, like lightning caught in a bottle. Neat stuff.
(Also makes me realize yet again how much better movies look on my computer and my television than they do in the movie theaters around here. Unless you go to IMAX specifically, the projection, even digital, is blurry, muddy, too dark, too bleh.)
1. <Brews some coffee.> <puts on anthropologist hat> <cracks knuckles>
So the theft of my wonderful colleague, @kahente's, daughter's name by a non-Indigenous film production raises the issue of how western/euro-american folks understand 'culture'+ the erasure of Indigenous laws
2. Western/euro-american folks have employed the notion of 'culture' to describe the 'customs, traditions, languages, social institutions' of The Other for a long while now. Made perhaps famous in anthropology's embrace of this unit of analysis in the last few hundred years.
3. the thing about 'culture' in its emergence as anthro's unit of analysis (vs, say, sociology's also fraught but in different ways study of 'society') is that it was employed through colonial period (+ still) to displace the legal-governance standing of nations of 'The Other'.
I'm turning 30 in a week. People often write about things they've learned by the time they hit 30, but that felt a bit too preachy for me. So I decided to write about 30 things I’m *still learning* at 30. A mix of personal and professional notes to self. Deep breath, here we go:
1. How to feel. Feeling something is more powerful than thinking about something.
2. How to understand. Just because you can describe it, doesn't mean you get it.
THREAD: I counted up over the weekend the various *distinct* investigations targeting Donald Trump right now. There are at least *17* of them. Here are my five top observations: ... wired.com/story/mueller-…
1) When you look at all of them together, we're probably thinking of this wrong—it's not a Russia probe, it's a financial investigation. Russia's only a part of it—and the full picture includes multiple countries trying to buy influence from Trump. ... wired.com/story/mueller-…
2) While Trump said he’d see investigations into his business dealings as crossing a “red line,” it appears that Trump himself obliterated that line, intermingling his business and campaign such that prosecutors can't untangle one without the other. ... wired.com/story/mueller-…
Maddow w the details of Trump's 1st public declaration that US should drop US sanctions after being asked by Russian spy Maria Butina ... meaning Trump could go forward with his Moscow Trump Tower deal financed through a Russian bank subject to sanctions
On the day of the 3rd GOP debate, Trump personally signed a letter of intent for Moscow deal
All during 2016 & 2017, Trump lied, “I have nothing to do w Russia” & “I have no deals in Russia.”
Following Michael Cohen’s plea:
“Everybody knew about it.”
How does a now imprisoned Russian spy just happen to ask Trump a question about sanctions in 2015?
Trump answering Maria Butina in 2015 re: ending sanctions— 1 month after Trump launches his campaign
Maybe we'll find out. Is Butina really cooperating?
The Trump admin is using Central & South American #Immigrants as scapegoats to drum up fear & xenophobia in their base, which is primarily white, and terrified at the idea of white people no longer being the majority in the US. 1/7 #BorderWall
Since his campaign kickoff, Trump had demonized Latino immigrants as violent criminals.
This gives bigots and #whitesupremacists (public & closeted) incentive to vote GOP to MAGA, which is code for "make America white again". 2/7
It's legal to present yourself at a border crossing point to apply for #asylum, so Customs & Border Patrol make it difficult to do so.
