Crawling Through The Bloggodome...

IAmMyOwn
AlgorithmVille


Interesting stuff that (mostly) popped up on the Blog Crawl, which is located stage left for those of you all not on their phones,  over the last little while:


Paul Krugman Unleashed: Crypto Is For Criming.

...If you go back to the 2008 white paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto that gave rise to Bitcoin, its main argument was that we needed to replace checking accounts with blockchain-based payments because you can’t trust banks; crypto promoters also tend to preach libertarianism, touting crypto as a way to escape government tyranny. Now we have crypto boosters demanding that the evil government force the evil banks to let them have conventional checking accounts...

...(T)he real reason banks don’t want to be financially connected to crypto is that they believe, with good reason, that to the extent that cryptocurrencies are used for anything besides speculation, much of that activity is criminal — and they don’t want to be accused of acting as accessories...

Relevance?...The Bitcoinlandic aspirations of our current mayor Mr. Sim.

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City Hall Watch: Local (Lotuslandian) News Stories to Watch in 2025 (the following is just one of many worth considering).

...The Broadway Plan will see more proposals coming forward that will ask for density well in excess of the maximums put in place. One example is tower proposal at 1110 West 10th Avenue that has a proposed floor space ratio of 10.1, while the maximum under the Broadway Plan is 6.5. Such changes will essentially make this plan meaningless and a “free for all”. Staff have no intention to Pause the Plan (see video of the Pause the Plan rally here)...

Relevance?...All (developmental big money) politics is local.

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Jody Paterson's Closer Look: Lessons from the United Healthcare Murder:

...(O)f course, (United Healthcare CEO) Thompson wasn’t doing anything illegal when he ran his company hard on health-care claims. His shareholders and his big bosses might have loved him for it.

Yet millions of Americans have died, grown sicker or been bankrupted by the decisions of their health-care insurance providers. One study found that 36 per cent of the Americans surveyed had had at least one claim denied, and most of them had been denied multiple times.

What justice exists in such a system? Most companies would have an appeal process for individuals, but this 2023 ProPublica article says the appeal rate is one per cent. There’s court, but that’s money and time that few have. In truth, Americans have virtually no chance of justice against corporate decision-making around health care, yet their very lives are being ripped apart by the corporate direction being set by men like Thompson...

Relevance?...When it comes to public healthcare and justice for the public, universality matters for both.

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A. L. Kennedy writing in the Guardian: In Hopeless Times We Can Never Afford To Lose Hope.

...Whether we dig out a new sub-basement to hell’s deepest circle (in 2025) rests partly in the hands of Elon “Space Karen” Musk, who’s busy gridlocking the US government, but will officially become the de facto Goblin King of Everywhere at roughly noon on 20 January. Thereafter, Xitter will shake off its remaining sane users and simply become a vast international Ouija board, amplifying the worst afterthoughts of the world’s worst people...

{snip}

...Our dying country and our dying world are mostly in the hands of underqualified nepo babies and grifters destined to fail upwards, abandoning every fire they’ve started, and kicking through drifts of our money like kids in autumn leaves. The future can seem bleak. And the majority can seem weak. But we’re not.

Need to know even more about survival? Drop in at a refugee support centre like the splendid Refuweegee and talk to the expats from countries other than Britain, people who have endured the unimaginable and not abandoned hope. Talk to domestic abuse survivors, to street homeless people, to people who are mocked and hated for simply existing. They’re still here – alive, against the odds. We’re all still here with an unmet obligation to help and learn from one another...

Relevance?... Self evident.

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Image at the top of the post?...That 'Space Karen' reference, above, as public art, at the corner of 10th and Market in the City once roamed by a writer, Dashiell Hammett, whose characters would most assuredly wipe the floor of such creatures if they were around today.

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