Dear Universe, could I maybe gently remind you that it did indeed happen that somebody chocked on a pretzel, lost consciousness and collided with a coffee table. By the looks of it the current inhabitant of said living room does snack. He does watch TV. Difference is that he is 20 years older and does not jog 3 miles in 21 minutes.
I really enjoyed Peter Pomerantsev’s 2019 book “This Is Not Propaganda”. It mixes a biographical thread of his very interesting family history with the very recent developments of miss information campaigns. How information topology has changed during the last quarter century has been of some interest to me. While I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination I am not totally naive on the subject either. Pomerantsev does in my opinion a wonderful job in explaining the pedigree of the mayhem that messes with our societies right now. He focuses on a couple of key points along the way that brings them exemplary to life. I think even if one would have not never considered why it can be, that a rather reality TV persona can be what used to be the ‘leader of the free world’, one would understand the causes much better after reading this very insightful book. There were a couple of passages where the author managed to explain topics to me in a wonderful concise way. While the existence of ISIS had not escaped me either, I had never really understood what drove the sudden surge of this phenomenon. After a few pages I realized much clearer why this ‘movement’ became attractive enough for people to actually go there. It is high time that more people understand how manipulation of political movements functions on the Internet. The companies running the infrastructure have provided the backbone for allot of things that are really bad for mankind. They did not intend to. They simply did not notice. Maybe they still are ignorant. They certainly do not much to reign it in. There has never been more junk information on the pages of Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Good information quality is the fresh water in the developed world in the 21st century. Lots of entities have plenty of motivation to dump dead donkeys in the wells that are owned by these companies. People will not stop drinking from them. They actually like the taste.
Back in September I felt that the sudden increase in Fed Repo activity would be a sign that something was afoot.
Specially since, while there was speculation abound, there was no clear explanation why there was that sudden need for money of this nature in September. The treadmill was turning as usual, but also squeaking.
Now Repo is no more. As Reuters writes this is probably due to a rule change making this tool less attractive for banks.
That the balance sheet decreases in the same time is interesting. Not what I would have expected right now.
Gilead releases the results of a study with 312 people being treated with Remdesivir compared to 818 people of a similar group. They headline of a 62% decrease in fatality rate is impressive. 13 people being treated with the drug had died. If my math is not broken (as it is often) that means that 29 people would have died without the drug. With such a small sampling size the percentage range is one that I would take with a grain of salt. Just 3 people more that would have perished and fatality decrease would be less than 50%. I think I own some Gilead stock, so that part works out. And I thankful for everything that seems to work. I am just cautious about headlines that sound really good.
The UK has a rather reasonable list of countries from which returning travelers are excempt from the need of 14 days of self isolation.
China is not on there, which probably can be seen as political rather than medical. I imagine Boris wielding a sharpie.
Speaking of populists, I wonder if anybody ever will bring up the existence of the US on so many travel restriction lists all over the globe to that man who’s core claim of greatness of virus response is that travel ban from China a couple of days after Italy had done so. Yes, that Italy that went though hell in the beginning of the year, and that thankfully seems to have emerged from it. Since it did a brutal lock down. I have emotional scars from just observing it via web cams. I have no idea how hard it must have felt from within a small Apartment somewhere. Same with people in Spain. It gets to show that normal people can be absolute heroes. I am so glad that their sacrifices seemed to have been worth it.
Related: One Mile at a Time writes, as usual insightful and interesting, about an AA executive that seems to have dodged the 14 day rule. Not a good look for American Airlines. But they are pretty much a thing of the past at this point anyway. Eventually the big 3 ones will get thrown into ‘Liberty-Air’ or whatever the US is gonna call the merged national carrier that tax payers will have paid 7 times over when this is all said and done.
Dezeen presents an interesting look at what kind of visuals people want to see right now.
Creative? Maybe, but creepy too. While it appears superfically to be in a in a similar vein to Joseph Kosinski’s early work, to me it clearly is far less substantial or decidedly motivated. After 12 years the aesthetics of a spot for a defunct car company still is relevant. Most of what Dezeen shows on that page will only be of historic interest in 2032. If that …
Eine 80 jährige Frau hebt 12000 Euro ab. Sie wird sie in den nächsten Stunden an einen ihr unbekannten Menschen übergeben. Das passiert. Die Kombination von Gutherzigkeit, Unklarheit und Mengen an Angesparten machen Menschen in Deutschland zu Opfern.
Wenn ich bündelweise Geld von der Bank abhole, dann will ich natürlich in Ruhe gelassen werden. Das geht den Schaltermenschen ja nichts an was ich damit mache. Aber es gibt nicht nur das eine oder das andere. Ein Script könnte so aussehen:
Über 2000 EUR macht der Angestellte eine Bemerkung. Eine die mich nicht nervt, aber dazu führt das die 80 jährige beginnt davon zu erzählen, dass es da diesen Verwandten gäbe der das Geld dringend (Schlüsselwort!) bräuchte. Besagte 80 jährige wird meist bereitwillig erzählen, was der angebliche Hintergrund ihrer Abhebung sei.
Im Idealfall führt das Mitdenken das Bank Angestellten zur Überführung des Täters. Dessen Strafmaß sollte dann auch gleich die Perfidität des Vorgehens mit in Betracht ziehen. Potenzielle drakonische Aspekte der Strafe steuern sehr wohl das Verhalten von Tätern bei dieser Art von Verbrechen.
Natürlich werden sich Menschen, die von solchen Machenschaften leben ihre Taktiken anpassen. Aber erleichtern muß man ihr Treiben ja nicht auch noch.
people unemployed, in case you wondered
The world owes Bruce Schneier. Many people are smart. He is one of those that actually try to use their skills to help us all. He does not need to do that. Somebody with his skills could do whatever he wants. Work? Ha. A couple of little things in the 90s that would still pay his bills. Done. I really appreciate if people with his skillset and area of expertise to write for us muggles. As gushing as I am here I feel the need to say that I am dead serious and not in the slightest bit sarcastic. If more people would have read his piece about information warfare we would be in much better shape. Actually Corona would kill much less people.
Countries like Russia and China have sophisticated operations to manipulate the American mind. You and me. And they are doing really well. Part of why it works is that we all individually are either unaware, or if we are are convinced that it would not work on us. That we could look right through it. We do, but we see nothing, cat memes or whatever. But not the fact that we are nudged into disliking Hillary or thinking that bathroom gender use is the biggest most important topic there is.
I do not know if Dogecoin could indeed be another test of tiktok and how it can throw around its userbase. Today volume spiked by 1900% and the ‘coin’ is priced at $0.0035 $0.0048 as per this site https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dogecoin
In a week I will check on it again.
EDIT: A week later and DOGE is at $0.0031, so no. Not everything flies on TikTok.