DL Open Thread: Friday, December 2, 2022
Last Call For Albert Cummings–We already have what I call a ‘Covid sellout’, meaning a sellout minus the 20% or so of our audience that still hasn’t come back. For those of you who like your blues with a side order of country, perhaps this will entice you:
You know what to do. Just. Do. It:
Blockchains For Blockheads? Paul Krugman makes the case:
Still, there was an alternative, more modest justification for using blockchain technology, if not necessarily for cryptocurrencies: It was supposed to offer a lower-cost, more secure way to keep track of transactions and stuff in general.
But that dream appears to be dying, too.
Amid all the sound and fury over FTX, I’m not sure how many people have noticed that the few institutions that seriously tried to make use of blockchains seem to be giving up.
Five years ago, it was supposed to be a big deal — a sign of mainstream acceptance — when Australia’s stock exchange announced that it was planning to use a blockchain platform to clear and settle trades. Two weeks ago, it quietly canceled the plan, writing off $168 million in losses.
Maersk, the shipping giant, has also announced that it is winding down its efforts to use a blockchain to manage supply chains.
A recent blog by Tim Bray, who used to work for Amazon Web Services, tells us why Amazon chose not to implement a blockchain of its own: It couldn’t get a straight answer to the question, “What useful thing does it do?”
Three-Judge Panel Tosses Ruling By Idiot Judge Trump Appointed. You have to admit, the Former Guy knows how to play rope-a-dope:
The three judges — two of whom were nominated by Trump — did not back down from that stance in their written opinion Thursday. They said they could not issue an order that “allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant.”
“Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so,” the Thursday opinion read. “Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
MAGAt PAC Ripped Off Freedom Convoy Truckers. Sad. Great story, though:
Just hours before a pro-Trump mob rioted at the Capitol behind him, Phillips announced in the interview that he was starting a political action committee called the Great American Patriot Project (GAPP) to get more involved in elections. “We’re going to raise money and we’re going to fund candidates and we’re going to fund corrupt GOP out. We’re going to fund new people in,” he continued, giving out the website and asking for donations. “We’re going to build this organization one state at a time, one candidate at a time.”
On paper, Phillips seemed to make good on his promise. Since then, the PAC has raised nearly $1.8 million, largely from small donors, which would have been a sizable chunk of change in a midterm election where the balance of power in Congress was decided by a razor-thin margin. But that assumes his PAC actually spent any money on political campaigns. How GAPP raised all that money and what it spent it on is an unusual story even in the wild west of campaign finance, where political action committees that raise millions but spend little of it on elections are a major scourge, particularly on the right. The story of GAPP involves trucker convoys, bouncy houses, and country western stars. It also involves exactly zero election campaigns.
You know you want to read this.
Fort DuPont Boondoggle Subject Of Lawsuit. Good. This project has been corrupt since the beginning. Maybe someday, people, meaning legislators, will give a shit about it.
Wilmington City Council Finally Names Reparations Task Force. Two years after they authorized the task force.
What do you want to talk about?
I promise you, I am at best a casual observer of the markets. So when I see a news alert pop up that the NASDAQ is dropping, I looked. Turns out, STRONG new jobs report and INCREASING wages are driving the markets down. Why you may ask? It appears that may push the Fed to raise rates at which the government loans money to banks. I get it, the economy is complex. But if people can’t get jobs and be paid better without tanking their own retirement funds, why bother? Just seems like tail wagging the dog. But what do I know?
People making living wages is terrible for the Oligarchs and therefor terrible for “the economy”.
The promise of blockchain is the “distributed public ledger” in which anyone can theoretically inspect transaction paths on the entire ledger, while all identities are protected by encryption. This takes control out of the hands of the banks/corporations. You can see why banks are opposed to this. Bitcoin for example uses a public blockchain.
However, all the corporate/government blockchain projects use “private blockchains,” where the bank/corporation retains ownership and control of the ledger. So I’m not very distressed about those projects being cancelled.