The social media giant’s powerful targeting tools appear to be part of Ben Shapiro’s success in growing his audience on the platform
Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, a conservative media company, has mastered Facebook’s complex algorithms like no one else, posting links to stories from his publication that rank among the top 10 best performing posts on Facebook day after day after day.
What’s the key to his success?
As a recent NPR analysis shows, The Daily Wire’s sensationalist headlines garner a ton of engagement on a platform that rewards explosive content. But The Daily Wire is also a sophisticated user of Facebook’s advertising targeting tools to pinpoint users likely to be receptive to its outrage-driven brand of conservative content, The Markup has found.
Using data from our Citizen Browser project, we pulled targeting information from 241 Daily Wire ads that ran on Facebook between April 15 and July 15, 2021. We found that The Daily Wire largely chose to target people whom Facebook had pegged as interested in Fox News, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, and other conservative mainstays, as well as individuals Facebook determined were characteristically or demographically similar to The Daily Wire’s existing audience members. (See our data here.)
Citizen Browser consists of a panel of roughly 1,800 Facebook users across the country who voluntarily share their Facebook news feed data with The Markup—providing a rare, albeit relatively small, window into what different people see on the platform.
By contrast, The New York Times—one of the largest legacy media publications in the U.S.—took a different tack in its Facebook advertising, targeting users according to the topics of the articles. So, for instance, an article about a band could be targeted to Facebook users with “music” listed in their ad interests. (Facebook says it determines users’ interests based on their past activities on the platform but has been somewhat cagey about how exactly this is done.)
Of the two publications, The Daily Wire used interest targeting more frequently than The New York Times did: 39.3 percent of Daily Wire ads versus 23.5 percent of ads from the Times were targeted in this way.
The table below shows the top 10 interests targeted in sponsored posts from both outlets:
While the Times mostly targets topical interests, of the top 20 interests targeted by The Daily Wire, only one (“American Football”) was not directly tied to conservative media or politics.
The Daily Wire also frequently made use of Facebook’s “lookalike audiences” feature to show content to new audiences of users who do not follow the page but share characteristics with those who do. In our dataset, 37.9 percent of Daily Wire posts used this type of targeting. The New York Times also used this targeting type, albeit rarely: Only 3.6 percent of its sponsored posts in our dataset targeted lookalike audiences.
“As you’re looking at this dataset, to me it shows that mainstream media outlets like The New York Times are still approaching the internet as a collective space in which you could potentially learn about anything, from ‘research’ or ‘science’ to ‘family and relationships,’ ” Francesca Tripodi, an assistant professor at UNC School of Information and Library Science at Chapel Hill, said. “But Daily Wire, if you’re saying, ‘We only want to target people who are interested in conservatism in America,’ that creates this bifurcated or dual internet, and that allows for information to circulate unchecked.”
Facebook advertising is designed to use personal data points about its users to guess what sorts of products they might like, she said, but there’s a fundamental difference between a food brand serving ads to people who like potato chips and a news brand serving information to people who like conservatism.
“[Daily Wire] is using the same tactics that these corporate entities are using but to create siloed interests around information,” Tripodi said.
Neither The Daily Wire nor Facebook responded to multiple requests for comment.
Beyond Facebook’s powerful data-gathering system, The Daily Wire amasses its own information on readers and potential readers.
The Markup also scanned Daily Wire ads in the Facebook ad library, which contains a broader range of ads than those seen by Citizen Browser panelists but does not disclose targeting information. Over a three-month period, from May through July, the ad library displayed 47 unique ads from The Daily Wire. Of these, 22 were survey-style ads prompting users to respond to emotive political questions.
Clicking the ad takes users away from Facebook and onto the dailywire.com domain, where they are asked to enter an email address in order to respond.
Over the same time period, no New York Times ads available in the ad library used this technique.
The Daily Wire’s website also contains an unusually high number of data-gathering trackers.
A scan from Blacklight, a website privacy inspector built by The Markup, on Aug. 4, 2021, turned up 41 ad trackers and 117 third-party cookies on the homepage. By contrast, The Markup’s scan of 100,000 of the most popular websites in September 2020 found an average of seven ad trackers and only three third-party cookies per site.
The site also uses Facebook’s bespoke Pixel tracking code to send data back to the social platform about users who have visited the site, which The Daily Wire can use to further tweak ad targeting and build new lookalike audiences.
“What you’ve shown here is clear evidence of the way in which the radicalization of our society is built on many facets of the algorithm, including the tools provided for ad targeting,” said Cameron Hickey, project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship.
Questions about the ethics of using data-driven profiling to target political messages are not new. Perhaps most famously, the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica purported to create detailed psychological profiles of Facebook users and shared those with the campaign of former president Donald Trump. While profiling has been a part of politics for decades to some extent, figures ranging from former Facebook insiders to Federal Election Commission officials have raised alarms over the kind of microtargeting that social media allows. (The European Commission is also considering including a ban on microtargeting in its landmark Digital Services Act package, which is making its way through the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union.)
That said, The Daily Wire’s targeting choices are widely accepted as routine, its success on Facebook more of a feature of the platform’s workings than a bug in the system, said Katie Joseff, a research fellow at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.
“These platforms, when you look at Facebook and YouTube in particular, they want people on there who are engaging their users because then there’s more users and user time overall,” Joseff said. “So [The Daily Wire] is definitely playing into the structure as it was created and doing it well.”
As wildfires swept through the Italian island of Sicily, fueled by an extreme heatwave, officials in one city recorded a Wednesday recorded what is believed to be the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe.
Local meteorologists in Siracusa reported that temperatures reached 48.8ºC or 119.8ºF, breaking the continent’s previous record of 118.4ºF, which was set in 1977 in Athens.
Today has provisionally seen the highest #temperature ever recorded in #Italy 🌡️ ⚠️
SIAS have confirmed that Siracusa in #Sicily reached 48.8ºC earlier this afternoon and if verified by @WMO, it will become a new European temperature record 📈 pic.twitter.com/0L8Af2lp6r
The World Meteorological Organization still needs to independently confirm the high temperature. Local reports of the new all-time record are in line with the weather extremes that have been seen in the Mediterranean region.
“The climate crisis—I’d like to use this term, and not climate change—the climate crisis is here, and it shows us everything needs to change.”
—Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greek prime minister
Firefighters in Sicily and Calabria have carried out more than 3,000 operations in the last 12 hours. Thousands of acres of land have burned, and at least one death was reported in Calabria when a 76-year-old man’s home collapsed in flames.
“We are losing our history, our identity is turning to ashes, our soul is burning,” Giuseppe Falcomata, the mayor of the historic city of Reggio Calabria, said in a statement on social media.
Francesco Italia, the mayor of Siracusa, told La Repubblica that the area is “in full emergency.”
“We are devastated by the fires and our ecosystem—one of the richest and most precious in Europe—is at risk,” Italia said.
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, wildfires driven by extreme heat have devastated other parts of the Mediterranean.
In Algeria, at least 65 people have been killed in wildfires in recent days, including 28 soldiers who had been deployed to battle the flames. Twelve firefighters were also in critical condition in hospitals on Wednesday.
Tunisia recorded its highest temperature ever on Tuesday, registering 49ºC (120ºF).
In Greece, most of the wildfires that have burned through the country this week were under control on Thursday. Surveying the damage, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the fires “the greatest ecological catastrophe of the last few decades.”
“We managed to save lives, but we lost forests and property,” Mitsotakis said at a Thursday press conference in Athens.
The wildfires started amid an intense heatwave that lasted several days and forced officials to call on firefighters from 24 other countries across Europe and the Middle East to help fight 100 active fires per day.
Mitsotakis did not express confidence that the situation will remain under control in the coming weeks, as the country’s wildfire season continues.
“We are in the middle of August and it’s clear we will have difficult days ahead of us,” the prime minister told reporters.
“The climate crisis—I’d like to use this term, and not climate change—the climate crisis is here, and it shows us everything needs to change,”
In November 2017, with the administration of President Donald Trump rushing to get a massive tax overhaul through Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson stunned his colleagues by announcing he would vote “no.”
Making the rounds on cable TV, the Wisconsin Republican became the first GOP senator to declare his opposition, spooking Senate leaders who were pushing to quickly pass the tax bill with their thin majority. “If they can pass it without me, let them,” Johnson declared.
Johnson’s demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation.” Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials’ calendars show.
Within two weeks, Johnson’s ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill’s authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes” and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.
The Trump administration championed the pass-through provision as tax relief for “small businesses.”
Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson’s last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator’s biggest donors.
Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign.
The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.
But the tax break did more than just give a lucrative, and legal, perk to Johnson’s donors. In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows. Republican and Democratic tycoons alike saw their tax bills chopped by tens of millions, among them: media magnate and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg; the Bechtel family, owners of the engineering firm that bears their name; and the heirs of the late Houston pipeline billionaire Dan Duncan.
Usually the scale of the riches doled out by opaque tax legislation — and the beneficiaries — remain shielded from the public. But ProPublica has obtained a trove of IRS records covering thousands of the wealthiest Americans. The records have enabled reporters this year to explore the diverse menu of options the tax code affords the ultrawealthy to avoid paying taxes.
The drafting of the Trump law offers a unique opportunity to examine how the billionaire class is able to shape the code to its advantage, building in new ways to sidestep taxes.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the biggest rewrite of the code in decades and arguably the most consequential legislative achievement of the one-term president. Crafted largely in secret by a handful of Trump administration officials and members of Congress, the bill was rushed through the legislative process.
As draft language of the bill made its way through Congress, lawmakers friendly to billionaires and their lobbyists were able to nip and tuck and stretch the bill to accommodate a variety of special groups. The flurry of midnight deals and last-minute insertions of language resulted in a vast redistribution of wealth into the pockets of a select set of families, siphoning away billions in tax revenue from the nation’s coffers. This story is based on lobbying and campaign finance disclosures, Treasury Department emails and calendars obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and confidential tax records.
For those who benefited from the bill’s modifications, the collective millions spent on campaign donations and lobbying were minuscule compared with locking in years of enormous tax savings.
A spokesperson for the Uihleins declined to comment. Representatives for Hendricks didn’t respond to questions. In response to emailed questions, Johnson did not address whether he had discussed the expanded tax break with Hendricks or the Uihleins. Instead, he wrote in a statement that his advocacy was driven by his belief that the tax code “needs to be simplified and rationalized.”
“My support for ‘pass-through’ entities — that represent over 90% of all businesses — was guided by the necessity to keep them competitive with C-corporations and had nothing to do with any donor or discussions with them,” he wrote.
By the summer of 2017, it was clear that Trump’s first major legislative initiative, to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, had gone up in flames, taking a marquee campaign promise with it. Looking for a win, the administration turned to tax reform.
“Getting closer and closer on the Tax Cut Bill. Shaping up even better than projected,” Trump tweeted. “House and Senate working very hard and smart. End result will be not only important, but SPECIAL!”
At the top of the Republican wishlist was a deep tax cut for corporations. There was little doubt that such a cut would make it into the final legislation. But because of the complexity of the tax code, slashing the corporate tax rate doesn’t actually affect most U.S. businesses.
Corporate taxes are paid by what are known in tax lingo as C corporations, which include large publicly traded firms like AT&T or Coca-Cola. Most businesses in the United States aren’t C corporations, they’re pass-throughs. The name comes from the fact that when one of these businesses makes money, the profits are not subject to corporate taxes. Instead, they “pass through” directly to the owners, who pay taxes on the profits on their personal returns. Unlike major shareholders in companies like Amazon, who can avoid taking income by not selling their stock, owners of successful pass-throughs typically can’t avoid it.
Pass-throughs include the full gamut of American business, from small barbershops to law firms to, in the case of Uline, a packaging distributor with thousands of employees.
So alongside the corporate rate cut for the AT&Ts of the world, the Trump tax bill included a separate tax break for pass-through companies. For budgetary reasons, the tax break is not permanent, sunsetting after eight years.
Proponents touted it as boosting “small business” and “Main Street,” and it’s true that many small businesses got a modest tax break. But a recent study by Treasury economists found that the top 1% of Americans by income have reaped nearly 60% of the billions in tax savings created by the provision. And most of that amount went to the top 0.1%. That’s because even though there are many small pass-through businesses, most of the pass-through profits in the country flow to the wealthy owners of a limited group of large companies.
Tax records show that in 2018, Bloomberg, whom Forbes ranks as the 20th wealthiest person in the world, got the largest known deduction from the new provision, slashing his tax bill by nearly $68 million. (When he briefly ran for president in 2020, Bloomberg’s tax plan proposed ending the deduction, though his plan was generally friendlier to the wealthy than those of his rivals.) A spokesperson for Bloomberg declined to comment.
Johnson’s intervention in November 2017 was designed to boost the bill’s already generous tax break for pass-through companies. The bill had allowed for business owners to deduct up to 17.4% of their profits. Thanks to Johnson holding out, that figure was ultimately boosted to 20%.
That might seem like a small increase, but even a few extra percentage points can translate into tens of millions of dollars in extra deductions in one year alone for an ultrawealthy family.
The mechanics are complicated but, for the rich, it generally means that a business owner gets to keep an extra 7 cents on every dollar of profit. To understand the windfall, take the case of the Uihlein family.
Dick, the great-grandson of a beer magnate, and his wife, Liz, own and operate packaging giant Uline. The logo of the Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, firm is stamped on the bottom of countless paper bags. Uline produced nearly $1 billion in profits in 2018, according to ProPublica’s analysis of tax records. Dick and Liz Uihlein, who own a majority of the company, reported more than $700 million in income that year. But they were able to slash what they owed the IRS with a $118 million deduction generated by the new tax break.
Liz Uihlein, who serves as president of Uline, has criticized high taxes in her company newsletter. The year before the tax overhaul, the couple gave generously to support Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. That same year, when Johnson faced long odds in his reelection bid against former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Uihleins gave more than $8 million to a series of political committees that blanketed the state with pro-Johnson and anti-Feingold ads. That blitz led the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to dub the Uihleins “the Koch brothers of Wisconsin politics.”
Johnson’s campaign also got a boost from Hendricks, Wisconsin’s richest woman and owner of roofing wholesaler ABC Supply Co. The Beloit-based billionaire has publicly pushed for tax breaks and said she wants to stop the U.S. from becoming “a socialistic ideological nation.”
Hendricks has said Johnson won her over after she grilled him at a brunch meeting six years earlier. She gave about $12 million to a pair of political committees, the Reform America Fund and the Freedom Partners Action Fund, that bought ads attacking Feingold.
In the first year of the pass-through tax break, Hendricks got a $97 million deduction on income of $502 million. By reducing the income she owed taxes on, that deduction saved her around $36 million.
Even after Johnson won the expansion of the pass-through break in late 2017, the final text of the tax overhaul wasn’t settled. A congressional conference committee had to iron out the differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill.
Sometime during this process, eight words that had been in neither the House nor the Senate bill were inserted: “applied without regard to the words ‘engineering, architecture.’”
With that wonky bit of legalese, Congress smiled on the Bechtel clan.
The Bechtels’ engineering and construction company is one of the largest and most politically connected private firms in the country. With surgical precision, the new language guaranteed the Bechtels a massive tax cut. In previous versions of the bill, construction would have been given a tax break, but engineering was one of the industries excluded from the pass-through deduction for reasons that remain murky.
When the bill, with its eight added words, took effect in 2018, three great-great-grandchildren of the company’s founder, CEO Brendan Bechtel and his siblings Darren and Katherine, together netted deductions of $111 million on $679 million in income, tax records show.
And that’s just one generation of Bechtels. The heirs’ father, Riley, also holds a piece of the firm, as does a group of nonfamily executives and board members. In all, Bechtel Corporation produced around $2.3 billion of profit in 2018 alone — the vast majority of which appears to be eligible for the 20% deduction.
Who wrote the phrase — and which lawmaker inserted it — has been a much-discussed mystery in the tax policy world. ProPublica found that a lobbyist who worked for both Bechtel and an industry trade group has claimed credit for the alteration.
In the months leading up to the bill’s passage in 2017, Bechtel had executed a full-court press in Washington, meeting with Trump administration officials and spending more than $1 million lobbying on tax issues.
Marc Gerson, of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier, was paid to lobby on the tax bill by both Bechtel and the American Council of Engineering Companies, of which Bechtel is a member. At a presentation for the trade group’s members a few weeks after Trump signed the bill into law, Gerson credited his efforts for the pass-through tax break, calling it a “major legislative victory for the engineering industry.” Gerson did not respond to a request for comment.
Bechtel’s push was part of a long history of lobbying for tax breaks by the company. Two decades ago, it even hired a former IRS commissioner as part of a successful bid to get “engineering and architectural services” included in one of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.
The company’s lobbying on the Trump tax bill, and the tax break it received, highlight a paradox at the core of Bechtel: The family has for years showered money on anti-tax candidates even though, as The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer has written, Bechtel “owed almost its entire existence to government patronage.” Most famous for being one of the companies that built the Hoover Dam, in recent years it has bid on and won marquee federal projects. Among them: a healthy share of the billions spent by American taxpayers to rebuild Iraq after the war. The firm recently moved its longtime headquarters from San Francisco to Reston, Virginia, a hub for federal contractors just outside the Beltway.
A spokesperson for Bechtel Corporation didn’t respond to questions about the company’s lobbying. The spokesperson, as well as a representative of the family’s investment office, didn’t respond to requests to accept questions about the family’s tax records.
Brendan Bechtel has emerged this year as a vocal critic of President Joe Biden’s proposal to pay for new infrastructure with tax hikes.
“It’s unfair to ask business to shoulder or cover all the additional costs of this public infrastructure investment,” he said on a recent CNBC appearance.
As the landmark tax overhaul sped through the legislative process, other prosperous groups of business owners worried they would be left out. With the help of lobbyists, and sometimes after direct contact with lawmakers, they, too, were invited into what Trump dubbed his “big, beautiful tax cut.”
Among the biggest winners during the final push were real estate developers.
The Senate bill included a formula that restricted the size of the new deduction based on how much a pass-through business paid in wages. Congressional Republicans framed the provision as rewarding businesses that create jobs. In effect, it meant a highly profitable business with few employees — like a real estate developer — wouldn’t be able to benefit much from the break.
Developers weren’t happy. Several marshaled lobbyists and prodded friendly lawmakers to turn things around.
At least two of them turned to Johnson.
“Dear Ron,” Ted Kellner, a Wisconsin developer, and a colleague wrote in a letter to Johnson. “I’m concerned that the goal of a fair, efficient and growth oriented tax overhaul will not be achieved, especially for private real estate pass-through entities.”
Johnson forwarded the letter from Kellner, a political donor of his, to top Republicans in the House and Senate: “All, Yesterday, I received this letter from very smart and successful businessmen in Milwaukee,” adding that the legislation as it stood gave pass-throughs “widely disparate, grossly unfair” treatment.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, responded with a promise to do more: “Senator — I strongly agree we should continue to improve the pass-through provisions at every step. You are a great champion for this.” Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but Treasury officials were copied on the email exchange. ProPublica obtained the exchange after suing the Treasury Department.
Kellner got his wish. In the final days of the legislative process, real estate investors were given a side door to access the full deduction. Language was added to the final legislation that allowed them to qualify if they had a large portfolio of buildings, even if they had small payrolls.
With that, some of the richest real estate developers in the country were welcomed into the fold.
The tax records obtained by ProPublica show that one of the top real estate industry winners was Donald Bren, sole owner of the Southern California-based Irvine Company and one of the wealthiest developers in the United States.
In 2018 alone, Bren personally enjoyed a deduction of $22 million because of the tax break. Bren’s representatives did not respond to emails and calls from ProPublica.
His company had hired Wes Coulam, a prominent Washington lobbyist with Ernst & Young, to advocate for its interests as the bill was being hammered out. Before Coulam became a lobbyist, he worked on Capitol Hill as a tax policy adviser for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Hatch, then the Republican chair of the Senate Finance Committee, publicly took credit for the final draft of the new deduction, amid questions about the real estate carveout. Hatch’s representatives did not respond to questions from ProPublica about how the carveout was added.
ProPublica’s records show that other big real estate winners include Adam Portnoy, head of commercial real estate giant the RMR Group, who got a $14 million deduction in 2018. Donald Sterling, the real estate developer and disgraced former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, won an $11 million deduction. Representatives for Portnoy and Sterling did not respond to questions from ProPublica.
Another gift to the real estate industry in the bill was a tax deduction of up to 20% on dividends from real estate investment trusts, more commonly known as REITs. These companies are essentially bundles of various real estate assets, which investors can buy chunks of. REITs make money by collecting rent from tenants and interest from loans used to finance real estate deals.
The tax cut for these investment vehicles was pushed by both the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group for the entire industry, and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. The latter, a trade group specifically for REITs, spent more than $5 million lobbying in Washington the year the tax bill was drafted, more than it had in any year in its history.
Steven Roth, the founder of Vornado Realty Trust, a prominent REIT, is a regular donor to both groups’ political committees.
Roth had close ties to the Trump administration, including advising on infrastructure and doing business with Jared Kushner’s family. He became one of the biggest winners from the REIT provision in the Trump tax law.
Roth earned more than $27 million in REIT dividends in the two years after the bill passed, potentially allowing him a tax deduction of about $5 million, tax records show. Roth did not respond to requests for comment, and his representatives did not accept questions from ProPublica on his behalf.
Another carveout benefited investors of publicly traded pipeline businesses. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, added an amendment for them to the Senate version of the bill just before it was voted on.
Without his amendment, investors who made under a certain income would have received the deduction anyway, experts told ProPublica. But for higher-income investors, a slate of restrictions kicked in. In order to qualify, they would have needed the businesses they’re invested in to pay out significant wages, and these oil and gas businesses, like real estate developers, typically do not.
Cornyn’s amendment cleared the way.
The trade group for these companies and one of its top members, Enterprise Products Partners, a Houston-based natural gas and crude oil pipeline company, had both lobbied on the bill. Enterprise was founded by Dan Duncan, who died in 2010.
The Trump tax bill delivered a win to Duncan’s heirs. ProPublica’s data shows his four children, who own stakes in the company, together claimed more than $150 million in deductions in 2018 alone. The tax provision for “small businesses” had delivered a windfall to the family Forbes ranked as the 11th richest in the country.
In a statement, an Enterprise spokesperson wrote: “The Duncan family abides by all applicable tax laws and will not comment on individual tax returns, which are a private matter.” Cornyn’s office did not respond to questions about the senator’s amendment.
The tax break is due to expire after 2025, and a gulf has opened in Congress about the future of the provision.
In July, Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., proposed legislation that would end the tax cut early for the ultrawealthy. In fact, anyone making over $500,000 per year would no longer get the deduction. But it would be extended to the business owners below that threshold who are currently excluded because of their industry. The bill would “make the policy more fair and less complex for middle-class business owners, while also raising billions for priorities like child care, education, and health care,” Wyden said in a statement.
Meanwhile, dozens of trade groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, are pushing to make the pass-through tax cut permanent. This year, a bipartisan bill called the Main Street Tax Certainty Act was introduced in both houses of Congress to do just that.
One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, pitched the legislation this way: “I am committed to delivering critical relief for our nation’s small businesses and the communities they serve.”
Originally published on ProPublica by Justin Elliott and Robert Faturechi
When the federal government enacted the CARES Act in March 2020, it boosted jobless aid and expanded the benefits to include people who weren’t typically covered, like gig workers. The legislation was designed to cushion workers against the massive blow of a partial economic shutdown during the pandemic.
Originally published byProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
But if you haven’t already buried your memories of last year, you probably remember how difficult it was to get those unemployment benefits.
Horror stories circulated about people waiting on hold for weeks, trying to get the money they needed to stay afloat. Maybe you remember spending long hours on the phone or the computer yourself. Delays in unemployment benefits heightened feelings of uncertainty that characterized much of 2020, and made the experience of losing your job even more frightening.
But as Cezary Podkul reported for ProPublica this week, this expansion of benefits also attracted fraudsters from all over the world who sought to cash in on the CARES Act. In hindsight, the millions of phony unemployment insurance claims were a large part of what clogged states’ overtaxed computer systems, delaying payments to unemployed Americans filing legitimate claims.
We don’t have a full accounting yet of how much the fraud will end up costing taxpayers. The federal government says it will be at least tens of billions of dollars, but some experts fear it may end up in the hundreds of billions. And on the micro level, every stolen identity fraudsters use to cash in belongs to a real person. If that person tried to file for unemployment themselves, it could take months for them to convince state agencies they were a real person and receive necessary support.
We talked with Cezary about how he discovered the alternate universe of stolen identities and pseudonymous fraudsters selling how-to kits for scamming state unemployment agencies on the dark web. Here’s an inside look at a massive fraud wave.
I was really curious how you went about finding these online forums where scammers were swapping their trade secrets.
So I started off by reaching out to cybersecurity firms and asking them, “Hey, where are fraudsters trading tips and advice and talking about how to do this?” That pointed me to Telegram [an online messaging app]. I got the names of a few Telegram channels where this was happening, and I started looking at those. And then from there I did my own research and found lots and lots of additional ones; it certainly wasn’t hard, because there’s just so many of them.
Did you have a strategy worked out for how you would reach out to scammers?
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect, because I have never been to any of these forums. I realized that they’re open, public forums. I’m sure there’s some that are private, or invitation-only. But the ones that we wrote about in our story, anyone who wants to view them or access them can enter them as if you were entering a public square in a city.
There was a big learning experience involved in this in the sense that there was a lot of unfamiliar language to me. It wasn’t as if you could just jump in and know exactly what’s being said. You had to see a lot of the traffic and read a lot of messages before you learned what certain acronyms were.
For example, what does it mean for a state to be “lit”? It’s paying out state claims.
At one point, I came across a message in one of the forums that actually had a dictionary, which was super helpful. That was kind of like the Rosetta Stone, and once I came across the dictionary I could translate a lot of this stuff into plain language.
You quote one scammer’s response in the article that’s just two eye roll emojis. I was so curious what question you asked that prompted that response.
Yeah, the eye roll emoji! So that was the user who we cite in the story named “VerifiedFraud.” He was the admin for one of these channels where there was something like 1,300 participants, and he posted what’s called a “sauce.” Sauce, in the language of these forums, is the secret sauce for filing fake unemployment insurance claims in a particular state. He gave away a free sauce to his channel participants. And I asked him about that: Hey, tell me about the sauce. I noticed that you put it on your forum for participants along with the “new month prayer” wishing them luck.
When I messaged him about that I got the eye roll.
And I guess you told him you were a journalist?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. With all the people that I was contacting, I made it abundantly clear: “Hey, I’m a reporter, I’m writing a story about this. I noticed you said this or that and I wanted to talk to you more about it.” You know, “Tell me more about your ‘Fraud Bible.’ Does it work?”
Did you ever try a sauce to see if it worked? Or send it to a state agency?
No. As a journalist, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing anything illegal.
I did send a bunch of these sauces — the ones that name specific states that were publicly available — to the states. I sent them to Pennsylvania, New York and California, and I asked them for comments. The states declined to comment on the specifics of whether they worked or anything like that. But they did say generally that they’re aware of them, that they’re monitoring these types of messages with their law enforcement partners.
You have this quote from a scammer in the article: “Virtually all these wealthy entrepreneurs you see around 90% of them started with something illegal to make enough money to run their business.” It seems like some of these people consider themselves businesspeople, and they put some work into this. How different is what they’re doing from working an actual job?
There’s probably some people for whom this has become a full-time endeavor, where this is the main way they’re trying to make money right now because of the opportunity that has been opened up.
But there’s certainly people for whom they might have a day job doing something else. For example, one case involved a Nigerian national who ran an online shoe store. He was also accused of participating in a scheme to defraud states of unemployment insurance funds. And I think the total in that case was something like $489,000 across 15 states. [He’s pleaded not guilty to charges in the case.]
So there’s certainly people who do other things, but there’s others who I’m sure have made this sort of their full-time path. I think it does kind of run the gamut.
Did you get a sense of what percentage of people were working from outside the United States?
There’s no way to tell what percentage. But in reading the messages in these Telegram channels, I definitely got the feel that this was a very international crowd, because you do see messages from people, for example, looking to meet up to do deals in Lagos, Nigeria.
The statistic that really put a period on this for me came from one of the cybersecurity firms that we talked with. They said that one state they work with saw unemployment insurance applications coming from nearly 170 countries around the world.
So these are supposedly state residents applying for unemployment insurance, but when you trace the internet traffic, you see this application is coming from … gosh, they had countries all over the world. It was like the United Nations.
Normal people trying to get unemployment checks in the middle of the pandemic were really struggling, waiting on the line for days at a time and getting disconnected when they were trying to get their unemployment checks. Did you get any sense of if and how fraudsters were better at getting unemployment checks than real humans?
One of the things that I think maybe hasn’t been talked about as much is the interplay between this huge wave of fraudulent claims that we saw and legitimate claimants. Because the information technology on which states are running their unemployment insurance systems is, in many cases, very dated.
Like with North Dakota, they had to actually bring in computer programmers from Latvia to help them run their unemployment insurance computer system last year, because it’s so hard to find anyone who can service the technology. It’s been around for decades.
When you’re dealing with very dated technology, it doesn’t scale well. It can’t handle such huge volumes that we were seeing there during the pandemic. So when you had this huge influx of fraudulent claims, I think it did a few things.
One is it definitely slowed down processing of legitimate claims, because you just end up with backlogs of applications that the states are still struggling to get through because there’s so many people who have applied. There are legitimate claimants mixed in with fraudulent claimants and you have to kind of triage those, and figure out which ones are high-risk, which ones look like they’re very likely to be fraudulent, versus which ones are medium-risk and which ones are low-risk — and you put those through.
The other thing that it spikes is the call volumes. When I asked [Texas officials], why was it so hard for an individual that we profiled in the story to get through to Texas, it was just because they had such a massive call volume. There’s so many people calling the fraud line reporting fraud, there’s so many people calling for help, so many people seeking states’ attention, they just become overwhelmed. That has an impact on legitimate claims.
And then finally, you have legitimate claimants who are collecting unemployment insurance payments, and those payments either stop or are frozen because of suspected fraud. So someone else just stole your identity and used it to file a claim in another state, and all of a sudden you might see your benefits stop, which is what happened to Philip Payton, the individual we profiled in our story.
By flooding the system with so many fake claims, not only did fraudsters, in some cases, get away with pocketing those fraudulent payments, it really caused a lot of hardship for legitimate claimants.
The fraudsters are also probably working with the advantage of being able to send out 40 applications to 40 different states, and if they only get paid by 18 and get stuck in backlogs in the others, it doesn’t cost them very much.
Exactly. It basically comes down to a game of numbers.
Let’s say you go onto a dark web forum and you purchase some stolen identities. You pay $50, $70 for a stolen profile of someone. If you’ve got it, then it makes sense for you to file in all the different states where you think it might pay off, to all the different programs, to all the different government benefits you think that individual might be entitled to. If you don’t, you might be leaving money on the table.
One of the most shocking statistics that I came across, just on a micro level, was in one of the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General reports. They mentioned that one person used a single Social Security number to file fake unemployment insurance claims in 40 states, and 29 states paid up. They got something like $222,000.
I think we’re now at that point where we’re starting to realize that this has been a huge problem. And to be fair, it wasn’t just unemployment insurance. You’ve seen our coverage of people creating fake farms in places that wouldn’t even have a farm, like farms on beaches or people claiming they had an orange farm in Minnesota, to apply for PPP loans.
I’ll be curious to see if cybersecurity surrounding these leaks that led to IDs and social security numbers getting out are wrapped up in reform bills too.
If I can put in a plug: If anyone knows where all of the leaked data came from, I would love to talk with anyone who’s got information on that.
One of the terms that you see being used on these telegram chat rooms is the word “fullz.” Fullz is slang for the full suite of personally identifiable information like someone’s name, address, Social Security, driver’s license, the whole thing.
If you’re going to be filling out an unemployment insurance claim form in someone’s name, if you just know their name and their address — okay, that’s one thing. But if you have a full suite of information on a person it just makes it so much easier for you to file a claim that has a significantly higher chance of getting through the system.
So one of the questions that I was asking is: Where did all the fullz come from? This is a question that I became obsessed with in the reporting of this project, and I just couldn’t get a good answer to it. So if anyone reading this has a good answer for that, or a good theory, reach out to me and I’ll be more than happy to talk to you.
by Brooke Stephenson for ProPublica and published via Creative Commons License
Written works of Action, Sci-Fi, Drama and History all soon to be movies or series
The entertainment industry is booming. As production companies are perfecting covid-19 protocols after the long pandemic hiatus, now the need for content is more pressing than ever. Best selling novels are a solid starting point and have done very well for major production companies for decades.
There are currently many books in the works to be adapted for imminent theatrical release or a major streaming platform.
Well over 20+ books! With so many to choose from, we’ve chosen the top 5 best reads that will are most likely to be a great viewing experiences in the near future.
Dune by Frank Herbert:
The Denis Villenuve’s adaptation will be hitting the big screen (and simultaneously available on HBO Max for 31 days, starting from the theatrical release date), and is anticipated to be a huge Hollywood blockbuster this October 2021. Most by now have seen teaser trailers and a glimpse of the star-studded cast.
This sci-fi film by Frank Herbert has been adapted multiple time into movies in the past. Many, however, haven’t been well received. Possibly, this time around things might be different, with millions of eyeballs waiting to see how this version stacks up to other big sci-fi and fantasy genre successes like that of GOT or Lord of the Rings. Click to buy “Dune“.
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid:
Daisy Jones & The Six , as one of Reese Witherspoon’s book club (Hello Sunshine) recommendations is set to become an Amazon series in the near future. Witherspoon recently brokered a whopping $900 million deal for her company, which means many of her other book picks will be making big screen debuts. Reese already had a big success in adaptations; Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere”.
Riley Keough has been slated as the lead, playing Daisy Jones, which is perfect casting, as she looks almost identical to the pre-existing cover art of the book. The series will follow the fictional journey and infamous breakup of the iconic rock group during the 1970’s. Click for more on “Daisy Jones & The Six“.
House of Gucci by Sara Gay Forden:
A recent trailer for the film, scheduled for release this Thanksgiving, gave viewers a glimpse of the crazy over the top wealth and accompanying murder, mayhem and madness that has been a real-life drama known as the Gucci family.
House of Gucci, the film will feature Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Salma Hayek, Jared Leto and Al Pacino, this upcoming production looks like it will benefit from being packed with a truly all-star cast. Click to read “House of Gucci“.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett:
The 2020 must read novel will now be turned into an HBO limited series for the streaming platform. The cast and script are still in the works, however there is word that Issa Rae along with author, Brit Bennet will executive produce.
The premise is sure to follow the book that chronicles a multi-generational family, centering on twins Stella and Desiree, growing up in a small town black community and later navigating racial identities. Click for more on “The Vanishing Half“.
The Last Duel by Eric Jager:
Adam Driver, along with Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Jodie Comer will star in the history epic tale.
The book version of The Last Duel, tells the true story of the trial by combat, a “last” duel during medieval France as a knight defends his wife’s honor against accusations made by a squire.
Set for theatrical release October 15, 2021. Click to find out more about “The Last Duel“.
The number of multimillion-dollar individual retirement accounts has soared in the past decade, as more wealthy Americans use the tax-advantaged vehicles to shield fortunes from income taxes, according to new data released by Congress today.
The data reveals for the first time the staggering amount of money socked away in tax-free mega Roth accounts: more than $15 billion held by just 156 Americans.
The new data also shows that the number of Americans with traditional and Roth IRAs worth over $5 million tripled, to more than 28,000, between 2011 and 2019.
The data was requested by Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., following ProPublica’s story last month exploring the rise of mega Roth IRAs. The story, based on confidential IRS data obtained by ProPublica, revealed that tech mogul Peter Thiel has the largest known Roth IRA, worth $5 billion as of 2019.
In a Senate Finance hearing on retirement on Wednesday, Wyden said such massive accounts underscore the country’s inequalities. “Individuals at the very top — at the very, very top — are able to game the rules to get ahead and basically abuse taxpayer-subsidized accounts with pricey accountants and lawyers,” Wyden said. “This increases the already existing retirement inequality between retirement haves and have-nots to an extreme level.”
Roth IRAs were established in 1997 to incentivize middle-class Americans to save for retirement. Congress imposed strict limits, including a cap on how much can be contributed to the accounts each year, which today stands at $6,000 for most Americans. The average Roth account was worth $39,108 at the end of 2018.
But a select set of the ultrawealthy have managed to get around limits set by Congress and transformed the vehicle into a powerful onshore tax shelter. One way they’ve done that is by buying nonpublic shares of companies with extremely low valuations. That allows them to tuck a huge volume of shares into a retirement account. Congressional investigators have previously found that the IRS has struggled to enforce rules around these investments, including whether the valuations are legitimate.
Once money is deposited into a Roth account, any proceeds from investment gains are tax free. So, for example, a Roth owner who sells a successful tech investment for a $1 million profit gets to keep all of the money, saving a potential $200,000 in federal taxes. The savings can then be reinvested, tax free, as long as the Roth holder waits till he or she is at least 59 and a half before withdrawing the money. Owners of traditional IRAs, by contrast, enjoy tax-free growth but must pay income tax on withdrawals. The Roth is considered the more powerful tax-avoidance tool for the wealthy.
The latest numbers come from analysts at Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. They update a widely cited study from the Government Accountability Office that released figures on large IRAs in 2011.
The new figures show that, as of 2019, nearly 3,000 taxpayers held Roth IRAs worth at least $5 million. (The total of more than 28,000 people holding IRAs of that size includes both traditional and Roth IRAs.) The aggregate value of those Roth IRAs was more than $40 billion.
Both Wyden and Neal said in statements that the new figures show the need for reform. Neal said that “IRAs are intended to help Americans achieve long-term financial security, not to enable those who already have extraordinary wealth to avoid paying their fair share in taxes and deepen existing inequalities in our nation.” Neal said earlier this month, in the wake of the ProPublica article, that the Ways and Means Committee would draft a bill to “stop IRAs from being exploited.”
For his part, Wyden said, “As the Finance Committee continues to develop proposals to make the tax code more fair, closing these loopholes will be a top priority.” Wyden first proposed an overhaul of IRA rules to prevent the accounts from being used as large tax shelters several years ago. One reform that is being discussed would prohibit investors from putting assets that are not available to ordinary Americans, such as shares of startup companies, into retirement accounts.
Wyden and Neal’s push for reforms comes as Congress is considering bipartisan retirement legislation. The bills are being pitched as helping ordinary Americans save for retirement, including by proposing to automatically enroll workers in employer-sponsored retirement plans. But they also include perks for the retirement and financial industries, such as relaxing rules in ways that are seen as a boon for insurers. And buried deep inside the two complex bills are provisions that could make it harder for the IRS to crack down on the ultrawealthy who dodge tax rules.
by Justin Elliott, James Bandler and Patricia Callahan for ProPublica and published via Creative Commons License
They said Google’s decision to block advertisers from seeing “Black Lives Matter” and other social justice YouTube videos was the last straw
By: Aaron Sankin
Following a recent Markup investigation revealing a secret Google Ads blocklist that hides Black Lives Matter YouTube videos from advertisers—but allowed them to find videos related to “White lives matter”—some small YouTube creators have pledged to leave the platform.
“I will not post any further content on the platform,” Carrie the One, a drag queen and YouTuber with a few dozen followers, said in an email. “I hope that by walking away from YouTube, we can inspire others to join us and put enough pressure on them to change course and do better for all of us.”
“I understand it’s one of the largest media sharing sites,” wrote another streamer who goes by the name Jambo and is mostly on Twitch, “but morals matter, and theirs are not for me.”
Both said that the decision was not hard for them because they hadn’t dedicated much time to YouTube content and didn’t depend on its ad revenue for their livelihood.
Google would not comment on the defections.
The Markup’s two-part investigative series, published earlier this month, dug into the Google Ads portal that allows advertisers to pick specific YouTube videos and channels for their ads. We found that Google’s blocklist missed most of the hate terms and slogans we checked but blocked equivalent social justice terms.
When we took our findings to Google, the company blocked all but three of the hate terms, but it also increased exponentially the number of social justice terms it blocked for ad searches, eliminating advertisers’ ability to search for 83 percent of the terms on our list, including “Black excellence,” “civil rights,” and “LGBTQ.”
The Markup also found discrepancies in how different religions were treated. When we first tested the portal last November, we found that terms like “Muslim parenting” and “Muslim fashion” were blocked for searches, whereas “Christian fashion” and “Christian parenting” were not—nor were the anti-Muslim hate terms “white sharia” and “civilization jihad.”
Rather than lift its ban on phrases containing “Muslim,” Google Ads now also blocks those and other innocuous words in combination with “Christian,” “Buddhist,” and “Jewish.”
As the investigation traveled on social media last week, with thousands of people sharing posts about it, dozens tweeted that they’d had enough and would quit the platform.
We spoke to eight YouTubers who said they were quitting, each with relatively small followings of less than 2,000 YouTube subscribers apiece. They said their decisions to leave the platform reflect a desire to push back at a powerful tech company they believe has done a poor job of listening to their concerns.
“I was pretty disgusted that a platform would use such thinly-veiled tactics and exhibit such overt disregard for the experiences and voices of marginalized folks,” Carrie the One said in an email.
“We know that racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and islamophobia exist and thrive within the systems and structures that our society operates within, but to see those same forces INTENTIONALLY employed by a platform that claims to protect the same folks they are targeting was more than I felt like I could tolerate.”
Google would not respond to The Markup’s questions for the original investigation about why terms like “Black Lives Matter” were blocked—or why it expanded the block.
In response to questions for this story, Google spokesperson Christopher Lawton said in an email: “We know that many brands want to reach audiences who are interested in social justice causes and we want our creators who make videos about these topics to thrive on YouTube.”
He added that YouTube “videos about topics like Black Lives Matter, Black culture and Black excellence, can and do monetize on YouTube, along with topics related to a wide range of social justice issues,” meaning that if advertisers can find these videos despite the block, the videos themselves can run ads.
Graham Jenkins, a video game streamer who uploads on the channel 170Out, said the revelations in The Markup’s investigation pushed him over the edge.
“It’s been on my mind to move from YouTube for a little while now,” Jenkins said in an email. “This isn’t the first time that YouTube has blocked phrases like this but allowed right-wing content to stay unchallenged. I think there was an issue where they blocked LGBT content previously, but are quite happy to allow anti-LGBT videos to remain untouched.”
He was referring to research in 2019 by a group of YouTube creators that showed the platform was systematically demonetizing videos that contained LGBTQ content. YouTube was also criticized for knowingly leaving homophobic content accessible on its platform.
Jenkins said he would stop uploading new content to YouTube as soon as he found another platform that is free for videos of any length.
“Sadly, there are currently not any other strong distribution options out there to compete with YouTube…”
— streamer who goes by the handle Glam Shatterskull
That might not be so easy. Other YouTubers told The Markup that the platform’s massive reach and ease of use made the choice to stop posting there more difficult.
“Sadly, there are currently not any other strong distribution options out there to compete with YouTube,” said a streamer who goes by the handle Glam Shatterskull and previously posted video gaming content to the platform.
“I would love to see Twitch flesh out its video production offerings,” he said. “In the meantime I will most likely be building out my own website to host video content.”
These content creators weren’t the only ones with harsh words for Google following revelations about its advertising blocklist.
The method Google used to add previously unblocked terms to its blocklist in response to our investigation makes future similar watchdog reporting impossible.
The blocked terms are now indistinguishable in the code from the responses the portal gives for gibberish. Because we now cannot know for certain which terms are blocked, as opposed to the platform not finding any related videos, Google has shielded itself from future scrutiny of its keyword blocks on Google Ads.
This didn’t sit right with Sen. Ron Wyden (D–OR), who authored legislation in 2019 that sought to require tech companies to audit their algorithms for bias.
“Google clearly has a lot of work to do to block hateful videos from advertisers,” said Wyden, who said he plans to reintroduce the bill. “Hiding how it screens those videos is exactly the wrong way to respond to legitimate reporting.”
Lawton, the Google spokesperson, declined to comment on Wyden’s criticism.
G. I. Joe has proven to be a huge franchise, with years of comics, action figure toys and two big-budget movies: “G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” in 2009 and “G. I. Joe: Retaliation” in 2013. Now, in 2021, the next G. I. Joe feature film will give fans the origin story of one of the more mysterious characters, the ninja warrior named Snake Eyes.
Snake Eyes is also considered one of the more popular known members of the G.I. Joe team of commandos, his character first appeared in the Marvel Comics back in 1982.
In the past his character has been both a silent and masked assassin, which is a stark departure this time around and we get to see much more of what his character is like behind the mask.
From the looks of the trailer, a major part of the film highlights how the friendship and bond was forged between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow.
The origin story for Snake Eyes is said to deviate and take on a more modern spin, steering from the original comic story, which usually cause one of two reactions from fans: love or hate. Yet there is something to be said when the original writer Larry Hama gave his personal approval on the new creative twists the movie will take on. Reactions has been positive, though some have considered it a “bomb” at the box office in first weekend.
Henry Golding, best known for his roles in romantic films like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Last Christmas” will take on a much different role, with more action-packed in his part as Snake Eyes. Andrew Koji as Storm Shadow.
Check out the new trailer from Paramount, as well as a featurette for “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins”.
Along with Golding and Koji, Úrsula Corberó plays The Baroness, Samara Weaving as Scarlett, Haruka Abe as Akiko, Takehiro Hira as Kenta and Iko Uwais as Hard Master.
Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Brian Goldner are producing “Snake Eyes”, which had its theatrical release July 23, 2021.
Boring? Are you kidding me? Time to look under the hood…
Somewhere in the land of media herding there was a familiar refrain. iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 are “boring”. Apparently the idea behind this is that there is no single feature that changes the entire experience of the iPhone or iPad – no “killer app” or killer upgrade.
The “boring” crowd have focused on things like “you can banish your ex from memories in iOS 15”. I saw a slew of articles with a variation on that title.
The biggest problem with the attitude, which must have been initiated by someone that has not really been hands on with any of the new iOS software (which is still in non-public beta only) is that it’s not true. (A public beta is expected in July but it is not recommended unless you are a developer testing on “non-critical” devices).)
Why? Because there are so many killer upgrades that it’s overwhelming, basically due to the avalanche of amazing new features and improvements. This article will attempt to give an illustration of that by focusing on only one feature inside one built-in app: Memories inside of the Photos app.
First a short digression. We have been testing on several devices including a MacBook Pro 15” from 2017, an original 1st generation iPad Pro (2015) and an iPhone XS Max from 2018. None of these machines have the new Apple Silicon chips and for that reason they are only able to produce the upgraded features that don’t require it.
That makes the improvements that are possible without buying any new hardware even more amazing. Stunningly, of the three devices we upgraded the MacBook Pro was the most stable right out of the gate. Any beta software will have bugs, glitches and sometimes crash but that does not prevent one from testing out features that are new.
The iPad pro, in a non-technical observation almost appears as if the screen resolution has been increased, obviously not possible but, as you will read below, could be part of a stunning emphasis on increased beauty, sensuality and luxurious feel in the new suite of OSs.
Memory movies on iPad OS15 are an amazing example of how AI and machine learning are evolving
For those not familiar with “Memories” they are auto-generated film clips that can be found in the “For You” tab in your photos app on iPhone and iPad. While you are sleeping this feature scans everything in your photos library and uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks to choose and edit the clips, as the name says, for you.
One not confirmed but almost certain technical backdrop to this is that the learning is improving even between updates to the OS. Not only that but all Apple devices on earth are “cooperating” to help each other learn. That’s a powerful force that spreads across over 1.65 billion devices.
This feature was added in iOS 12 but started to function in iOS 14 on a much higher level. If you had tested and used the feature over the last few years as we have you’d have noticed that the ability of the AI to “see” and select photos and videos to include was limited and, at times, comical. Not any more.
Much of the data that clues the software in as to what photos belong together is from the embedded meta data. The date, time and location information helps to tell the AI that you took a group of images or videos on a day in a particular location.
The difference in iPad OS15 (iPhone too, of course) is that the more difficult to accomplish tasks, such as recognizing the subjective quality of one photo verses another (humans often take several photos of the same scene to try to capture the best out of a bunch). Or, more importantly, who and what are the subject of a photo.
All of this began to get interesting in iPad OS 14 and many groups of photos and videos were already being chosen, edited and enhanced by the software to a level that was fairly impressive.
AI and aesthetics collide and the result is a Joy to witness
Something that is starting to become a thread and a definitive direction that Apple is taking, particularly with the iPad Pro series, is, true to the name, a Pro level of visual production and manipulation throughout the OS.
Center Stage, for example and many other video and photo related upgrades were some of the big features in the newest generation of iPad Pro. Those are great, but require a new iPad along with the OS upgrade.
When it comes to the memory movie clips what we found is that even on the oldest iPad Pro from 2015 the evolution of the software due to the constant learning by the AI is already taking a huge step forward doing all the things that it was already doing only much better.
Apple’s upgrade took that and give it an additional kick up a notch with somewhat that the company is known for: good taste.
What has changed specifically?
In iPad and iPhone OS 14 there were a few things that felt awkward in the way movies were created. The biggest shortfall was in the softwares ability to deal with various aspect ratios.
These days when we shoot photos and videos with an iPhone it is tempting and, at times, wonderful to use the vertical orientation. Other times, for landscapes and other scenes we might prefer a traditional film aspect or even use the panorama feature to get an ultra-wide screen “cinema-scope” style.
Until now this was dealt with very poorly by the software. Mostly the photos would constantly zoom in (the so called “Ken Burns” effect) and if shown without zooming in a vertical portrait shot would have ugly side bars (like a vertical letterbox effect).
The zooming and most of the effects in general destroyed the resolution and therefore the quality of many photos by enlarging them and adding the effects.
Additionally the effects that were added, while cute and fun, were not much more than a way to add fun and not what would likely be used by a human editor. All of this and more made for a kind of novelty feel to the whole process that was nice to have, but many never even bothered to look at the movies that software created for them.
That’s about to be over.
A whole new array of options for the AI to use while trying to entertain
In iPad OS 15, as can be seen on the photos and videos in this article, the ways that the software solves the aspect ratio issue as described above is genius and, dare I say it, beautiful.
In a collaboration between the AI and the software itself it now has a new bag of tricks to use and, boy, does it work. One feature that is fantastic is the letterbox generator for any wide screen photos in any aspect ratio.
How this works is that it takes the iPad aspect ratio and then uses the photo in it original at 100% full resolution and then adds a letterbox. But this is not the usual plain black bars we are all familiar with – the software and AI are able to see and analyze the photo and create a custom gradient letterbox that can be any shade or color.
The effect is often astoundingly tasteful and often makes the original photo look even better. We tested it on award winning photos (video above) and the result is, basically art. Also on our own “nice” photos, chosen 100% by the AI and software, look amazing also.
Actually, all the photos and videos in the clips generated from the library look much better than I had remembered. That turns out to be because the software and AI now do automated color grading on all the photos and videos in all the generated memories !
Color grading also known as color correction, especially for video, has traditionally required an expensive expert and high end software (and hardware) to enhance and color match various photos and clips, that have often been taken at different times and places, where lighting conditions vary and sometimes were shot with different camera.
AI and machine learning software on iPad OS15 (and iOS 15) now has a virtual colorist actively adjusting your shots and enhancing and color matching them while you sleep. That is basically insane. That’s probably why it appeared that the photos and even the iPad itself had been upgraded.
Ok, I could go on and on about that one feature, but let’s move to some more features. There are also new effects that are added that vary with each memory (there are a lot more clips being generated, including various versions of the same idea to choose from).
In the experiments so far the effects are clearly better and more subtle than in iOS 14. Again in many cases I found myself saying the word “beautiful” when I tried find an adjective to describe the results.
For shots that have a vertical bias there’s a vertical geometric split screen effect, often with a thin black border, and it has a kind of 60’s on steroids feel with the bars sliding in and out and resizing into place.
Another effect not seen in iOS 14 is a kind of circular rotation – great for landscapes – it’s not a common effect probably because it is computationally complex, but for the AI, it’s a snap. Sometimes this effect has a kind of blur-dissolve added which makes it fun and, again, still tasteful.
It appears that the effects are not only better and there’s a larger bag of them, but they appear to evolve and adapt to the content, that is to say that the speed and depth of each changes with the music combined with the photo and video content.
Oh, and the music. OMG. Each clip has 6 songs pre-selected and the entire clip adapts, in real time (!), when you change the song, showing you various styles and looks that match. Apparently Apple Music is also connected if you have a subscription.
As a mater of fact, it is hard to be certain, as we have not had more than a few hours to test this, but nearly everything appears to be “live” and constantly evolving in real time. In order to “freeze” a version of a memory you have to “favorite” it (with the typical heart symbol) and then “add to memories” in order to edit (change the names or choose more images – or remove anything if it is not to your liking).
There is so much more not yet mentioned here: this article could probably be a book
The AI is also getting creative with names and “concepts” for the clips. For example, if you had lunch (or took photos) over the years in the same city (for me it was Knoxville, TN) it might look at the coincidence that you tended to take photos around midday in that town and then create a memory clip called “Lunch in Knoxville over the Years”. Or for example the clip at the head of this article: “Golden Hour Over The Years”.
This is an early and primitive foretaste of the literary ambitions of AI. In the new Photos App in iOS 15 it is beginning to “think” about when, where and why humans take photos and videos and then conceiving a story that fits the behavior it is witnessing.
Other titles go beyond the basic “Amsterdam in 2016” and start to use the understanding and visual ability to “see” what is in the photo to create a clip like : “Playing in the Snow at Christmas”. Snow? Does it know it’s cold? Maybe just that it’s white and happens in the northern hemisphere in December. This is just the very beginning of something that will evolve, hourly, from now on. I can’t wait.
ProPublica drops a second monumental article based on treasure trove of IRS, SEC & court data
Excellent reporting of tax injustices among the obscenely rich continues with a huge and revelatory piece on Peter Thiel and his “little” Roth IRA scheme. Going well beyond the previous article that detailed how Bezos, Musk, Buffet and others all use loans secured with share holdings to avoid income, and thus avoid paying tax the “Lord of the Roths” is even more explosive.
While the emphasis of the article on Thiel’s Roth IRA takes on the task of trying to somehow compare an “average” investor’s potential gains with the unimaginable magnitude of Thiel’s windfall, this is something that makes sense as a valid perspective, but the obscenity is nearly lost in the opaque fog of numbers beyond comprehension.
For example: your Peter is basically gifted 1.7 million shares by the company he was one of the founders of (along with Elon Musk and the rest of the so called “PayPal Mafia). That “purchase” costing less than $2000 based on the ridiculous price of $0.001 per share was used to found a Roth IRA.
The engineered numbers were no accident: at the time, in 1999, a Roth IRA account had a maximum allowable contribution amount of $2,000. Since the shares were “below fair value”, the fact of which was admitted by PayPal in an SEC filing from the time just before the company went public, the value increased massively, by 227,490% in the first year. Which increased the value of the paltry $2k up to $3.8 million.
Though obviously not enforced, regulations at the time forbade this kind of “stuffing”. Meaning, the initial trade that launched this scheme was possibly illegitimate, if not unlawful. Or, as ProPublica more kindly phrased it: “Investors aren’t allowed to buy assets for less than their true value through an IRA. “
As a matter of fact, according to the article, the “stuffing” was so successful that no further contributions were ever made into the account after that initial 1999 sum.
Since a Roth IRA allows a person to trade stocks within the account tax free, as long as no withdrawals are made, this large but still comprehensible sum was the start of a 20 year use of the tax statutes to build a fortune of over $5 billion without paying a single penny in tax.
Hitting $870 million in value by 2008, by 2019 the tax free enterprise, built on the less than $2000 initial contribution (stock “purchase”), ultimately ballooned to 96 sub-accounts with holdings of $5 billion.
Ok, so that’s the short summary of the mind blowing numbers. For a more detailed account, by all means visit the original article.
The numbers are outrageous, but the entitlement and arrogance is on a whole other level
The part of the story that should spark outrage is not in the numbers but begins where the almost inhuman greed, hubris and hypocrisy at this good fortune grows apace with the size of the tax free bonanza. Because Peter Tiel is not just any run-of-the-mill untaxed billionaire.
The endlessly expanding windfall he received, tax free, did not engender a mindset of charity or gratefulness at his miraculous providence.
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic
Instead Thiel, once the wealth lent him a position of power, preached and pushed the idea that the US government, the same one that he was able to avoid paying taxes to, was guilty of over-taxing people like him (and poor people too).
He spent millions of dollars in an effort to influence Republican politicians and groups that have anti-tax agendas, to change the laws in ways that would add even more advantages to his already preposterously privileged position. Then this: as per ProPublica: “In 2016, he became the rare Silicon Valley titan to endorse Donald Trump.”
And, in an arrogance that is as incomprehensible as the size his effortlessly expanding fortune, he espouses the belief that people like him are entitled to these kind of spoils because, after all, without him we might have to live without PayPal and….wait for it…. Facebook.
Yes, you heard that right. In 2004, Thiel used his IRA to buy $500,000 worth of shares in a, then private, company called Facebook, which was the first big outside investment in Zuckerberg’s soon to be massive monstrosity.
By using his IRA funds to buy shares of the start-up he was able to avoid tax on all the future gains of those shares. (ProPublica, in excellent investigative reporting, uncovered this tidbit by combing though Facebook court documents).
So, again, ostensibly, based on his well known statements, we are not only to congratulate him on his clever method of avoiding any taxation whatsoever on the first gambit with the PayPal shares, but we ought to effusively thank him for helping Facebook to become the dangerous purveyor of surveillance and phantom tollbooth Ponzi empire that is it today?
In perhaps one of the greatest illustrations of how power corrupts, this idea that because he was able to amass a fortune on such a massive scale without the burden of any tax whatsoever, he is somehow a hero to be emulated, is the real reason for us to be outraged.
That an average person might be lucky to turn $2000 into $250,000 over two decades, as was illustrated in detail in the article, while Thiel easily turned it into $5 billion, is outrageous, yes.
But the real “crime” is that it was done with zero benefit to anyone except him and other Silicon Valley insiders at companies like PayPal and Facebook.
Could it be argued that Facebook is a gift to humanity? Well, in 2021 that would be a tough argument to put forth without being laughed out of the room. And PayPal? It’s doubtful that Satoshi Nakamoto has to fear competition from any of the PayPal Mafia (including Mr. Musk) when the crown for greatest financial innovator of the century is awarded.
In a revelation that could have received more page inches, the article also exposes a second, possibly more plausible reason, regarding why Thiel went to great lengths to bankrupt Gawker Media, which he blamed for outing him as Gay. That politically convenient motivation could very well have covered up the real reason:
Again, as per ProPublica:
“In a story headlined, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Taxpayer Money,” Gawker Media, citing anonymous sources, revealed that Thiel held his Facebook investment in a tax-free Roth.”
Companies built on greed and hubris create nothing and, in the end, die
Thiel believes he will live to be 120 years old. Based on his comments and writings he appears to believe that the world would benefit from that eventuality.
But when looking at the companies he helped to build, and the obscene fortune he was rewarded with for binging them into being, it seems like most of us, after accessing his life’s works and “accomplishments”, would be more thankful for the improbability of that dream coming true.
2087? That will be the year that either Utopia or Oblivion will have arrived for humanity and the planet earth. If by a miracle an earthly Utopia comes to be, it is highly unlikely that PayPal, Facebook or Mr. Thiel will have had any hand in bringing it about.
Above: Jack Dorsey & Elon Musk – Photo – various / tesla / Twitter / collage Lyxotic
Possibly staged “Twitter feud over BitCoin” leads to portentous upcoming event: “THE talk”
Although both Jack Dorsey, head of both Twitter and Square, and Elon Musk are long standing and staunch BitCoin advocates, a lot of chatter around the internet has painted Musk as having gone soft on the crypto currency.
Th narrative that has been put forth pits his loyalty to Bitcoin as somehow incongruous with his support for DogeCoin, the somewhat less serious AltCoin variant he has openly championed.
Intermingled with this straw-man charade, is the also over-hyped idea that the energy used by BitCoin mining is a factor in global warming and therefore a stain on Musk’s otherwise high profile positive sustainable energy resumé.
While many article have shown this argument to be blown out of proportion at best, apparently the whole world (China, if you’re listening) has seized on this talking point as a way to damage BitCoin’s popularity and pedigree.
The attempt to use this argument to undermine BitCoin’s adoption progress and futuristic pedigree appears to have already backfired, however. For example, at the recent BitCoin conference in Miami, Jack Dorsey announced plans to invest in a sustainable energy powered BitCoin mining facility.
Elon Musk has also stated via his twitter account that Tesla would resume accepting BitCoin payments, as soon as more miners switch to renewable energy. This coming after he had announced, to great fanfare, that Tesla would accept the cryptocurrency and then, in May, reversed the decision after backlash from those who pounced on the issue to try to tarnish Tesla’s sterling reputation as a proponent of the transition to sustainable energy.
Though not yet confirmed 100%, the Twitter exchange between the two titans implied that the “talk” would take place in conjunction with the “The B Word” BitCoin conference, which kicks off on July 21, 2021. Sponsored by Ark Invest, Square and Paradigm, the big name speakers and hype already building, along with the timing, coming on the heels of a huge peak then “crash” in the crypto markets, looks to be a watershed event for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general.
Details on whether the exchange between the two will be live on stage or via video conference have, as of yet, not been revealed.
Twitter and Square CEO Dorsey tweeted Thursday about an upcoming “The B Word” bitcoin event, and Musk responded to it. It’s unclear if the event, which kicks off on July 21, will be virtual or in-person.
The potential for drama as the two discuss a topic on which they, for the most part agree, is a smart way to hype the event, both the conference itself and the monumental meeting for “THE Talk”.
Regardless of any fireworks or revelations coming out of the event and the meeting between these two incredibly influential business leaders, the upshot is that all of the above is a net positive for BitCoins progress toward more widespread adoption and acceptance.
Critical mass may already been achieved for crypto in the US
The overly manic focus on price fluctuations notwithstanding, there is a rapidly growing sense that the #1 cryptocurrency as well as all related coins and activities are reaching the point, in the US, that it will be impossible to return the genie to the bottle.
Any attempt to block or outlaw, in totality, the emerging world of crypto-finance, is likely to fail. Realizing this there appears to be a faint whisper of capitulation on the part of both the government in the US and among the “old guard” establishment, namely Wall Street.
Dorsey’s take, as quoted from his appearance at the BitCoin conference in Miami:
“Governments are trying to block cryptocurrency use to avoid losing hold of power”
“It can’t, and it never will.” — musing on the likelihood of Wall Street controlling bitcoin.
“That’s why we don’t deal with any other currencies or coins — because we’re so focused on making bitcoin the native currency for the internet.” — when asked about payments provider Square’s ambitions for bitcoin.
The full moon that happens in June is often referred to as the strawberry moon. Although, if you look to the sky, the moon will look full starting Wednesday night and into Friday night, the moon will be 100% full starting 2:40 P.M. EDT Thursday, June 24, 2021. This will mark the first full moon after summer solstice and the last supermoon of the year.
Despite the sweet name, the moon will not really resemble any coloring of a strawberry, rather it will have more of a golden color. The reference to the fruit was often used by Native American tribes, like that of the Algonquins to signal the ripening of strawberries that were ready to be harvested.
What makes a full moon a “Supermoon”, according to NASA, occurs when the Moon’s orbit is closest to the Earth at the same time as when the moon is full, making the moon appear much brighter and larger than the usual full moon.
In addition, any full moon that comes within 224.791 miles/ 361,766 km of Earth is categorized as a supermoon. For the Strawberry Supermoon on the 24th, the moon will be 224,662 miles / 361,558 km away from Earth.
More sky news: mercury has gone direct
In an alternate celestial observation, the dreaded retrograde mercury ended when mercury went direct on June 23rd. Astrology buffs always welcome the end of the mercury retrograde periods, known for confusion and, in particular, technological snafus and breakdowns.
Fortunately the full moon due on the 24th / 25th is seen, astrologically speaking, as a highly positive force and should help us all to celebrate the escape from mercury in retrograde and it’s chaos, as we glide smoothly into a more productive phase into July and beyond.
To get additional information on when the moon will rise and set in your area, click on the moonrise and moonset calculator.
Marking the beginning of a new era of Hollywood tech glamour
Somehow it is slightly disconcerting to see iconic and historic movie theaters repurposed or simply demolished. The former is preferred. However, this is not just any renovation, not just any commercial repurposing.
This is a bold and strategic statement that Apple is not just the future of computing but the future of entertainment, enabler of creativity and the beating heart of digital communication.
In renovating, really rescuing the location, Apple has, seemingly, taken the deeper meanings to heart and tried, with a budget befitting the world’s largest company, to do justice to the majestic, historic landmark, even as they transformed it into a temple to all things Apple.
The link to Hollywood’s glory days is not inappropriate or hard to grasp, and there’s a nod to the innovative and pioneering spirit of those early days of film, and an attempt to draw a lane directly to the potential for Apple’s products and services to enhance creativity, entertainment experiences, and, well, life.
There’s also statement lurking in the transition, potentially a permanent one, which sees in-person pleasures like viewing a film on the big screen in opulent surroundings begin to fade into the past and a move into sales and learning nodes for devices and methods we can use to build and inhabit the metaverse.
In the press release from today the sub-head reads: “Historic theater has premiered new technology since 1927” – in an, apparently, heartfelt attempt to build a link between the technology of today and the entertainment marvels showcased at the theater during a bygone era.
The connections to Hollywood are no longer metaphoric
With Apple in the middle of a long transition away from just devices and hardware and into a service and communications company, the importance and multi-layered meaning of this location is unavoidable.
Creativity and communication, and most of all a deep bond with the emerging “creator class” that Apple itself had a huge role in bringing into being, are at the heart of the message they are sending with this location, the lavish and loving renovation and in the press release itself.
Once literally an underdog, first to IBM and later to the “evil empire” of Microsoft’s Kock-offs, Apple is still, oddly, often underestimated and misunderstood, or at least not understood until changes permeate society.
Nothing says, nay screams, that we are approaching a golden age of Apple than the new Apple Tower Theatre complex. That golden age will occur when the world catches up with the potential of having a professional film production studio in your pocket and all the other technical innovations still to come.
The great singularity of the Apple ecosystem
There is a hugely important convergence coming in the galaxy of Apple products, software and services, that is not yet halfway implemented. The next couple of years are bound to see powerful, sometimes confusing, always remarkable advances in the company’s offerings and the way that we interact with them.
And now, with the Apple Tower Theatre in LA, there is also a mecca which can be the end destination for any pilgrimage of the faithful. Also, with Hollywood creative talents literally around the corner, what better location could there be as a reminder for the power brokers that AppleTV+ is here to stay and plans to engage at all levels and intends to seek options on any deal.
Today at Apple Creative Studios will reach out to budding creativity everywhere
Strongly associated with the theater’s launch is also a enlargement and
Today at Apple Creative Studios – the project is a global initiative for “underrepresented young creatives” and is an ongoing part of Today at Apple which is hosted at Apple Stores worldwide.
As per the Apple press release:
“In collaboration with the nonprofit Music Forward Foundation, as well as Inner-City Arts and the Social Justice Learning Institute, Creative Studios LA will provide access to technology, creative resources, and hands-on experience, along with a platform to elevate and amplify up-and-coming talents’ stories over nine weeks of free programming.”
Apple: The overhead dome, which originally depicted scenes full of clouds and cherubs, had been painted over in a previous restoration. It now brightens the space with an atmospheric sky.
“Today at Apple will also offer public in-store sessions at Tower Theatre and virtual sessions hosted by Creative Studios teaching artists and mentors, including photographer and filmmaker Bethany Mollenkof, rapper and producer D Smoke, singer-songwriter Syd, and cellist and singer Kelsey Lu. Noah Humes and his mentor, Maurice Harris, two artists who worked on the mural outside Tower Theatre inspired by the spirit of Creative Studios LA, will also teach a virtual session. Everyone is welcome to register at apple.com/creative-studios-la.”
“Originally home to the first theater in Los Angeles wired for film with sound, the historic Tower Theatre was designed in 1927 by renowned motion-picture theater architect S. Charles Lee. That legacy of technological innovation continues today as the perfect venue to discover Apple’s full line of iPhone, iPad, and Mac, each of which has transformed modern-day filmmaking, photography, and music composition.”
“Upon the closing of its doors in 1988, the space has lain empty and unused. With the same level of care found in previous restoration projects, Apple collaborated with leading preservationists, restoration artists, and the City of Los Angeles to thoughtfully preserve and restore the theater’s beauty and grandeur. Every surface was carefully refinished, and the building has undergone a full seismic upgrade.”
Apple Tower Theatre Opens Thursday at 10 a.m.
The store team will welcome its first customers Thursday, June 24, at 10 a.m. Apple Tower Theatre will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday, with team members ready to provide support and service to all visitors. For those wishing to order new products online, customers can get shopping help from Apple Specialists, choose monthly financing options, trade in eligible devices, receive Support services, and elect for no-contact delivery or Apple Store pickup.
Less than 14 hours of Free Standard shipping for all orders
Not everyone is a Prime member of the giant retail behemoth. And not everybody wants to be. And independent booksellers have not exactly benefited from the rise of the giant. If you love books, appreciate bookstores in your local area, or just know a great deal when you see it, today is your day.
In an unprecedented move, bookshop.org is offering free shipping, no membership required, no strings attached, on purchases made on June 21st and 22nd. We have compiled a list of ideas below, but feel free to just head over and browse, or even search right here:
Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page
Above: Photo Credit / Publishers / Various
In music the famous example is Pink Floyds “Dark Side of the Moon” which, incredibly, remained in the top 100 charts for more than 18 years. When it comes to popularity and longevity, there are certain works of art and literature that exist on a whole other level.
When it comes to books, classics remain on must-read lists for centuries. During more recent times we have these examples of books that remain the most popular around for decades. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho was first printed in 1988, 33 years ago. Rich Dad Poor Dad, meanwhile, was published by Robert Kiyosaki and resonated immediately with readers, and has never lost its appeal, still hovering near the top of best seller lists. The Four Agreements, similarly, has remained immensely popular for 24 years. And, finally, The 48 Laws of Power has fascinated and attracted readers, with a nearly unmatched power for 21 years.
Below we are happy to feature these incredible, evergreen wonders, along with some information on the titles.
In The Four Agreements, bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering.
Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.
– A New York Times bestseller for over a decade – Translated into 46 languages worldwide
In the 20th Anniversary Edition of this classic, Robert Kiyosaki offers an update on what we’ve seen over the past 20 years related to money, investing, and the global economy.
Sidebars throughout the book will take readers “fast forward” — from 1997 to today — as Robert assesses how the principles taught by his rich dad have stood the test of time.
In many ways, the messages of Rich Dad Poor Dad, messages that were criticized and challenged two decades ago, are more meaningful, relevant and important today than they were 21 years ago.
Combining magic, mysticism, wisdom and wonder into an inspiring tale of self-discovery, The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.
Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure.
His quest will lead him to riches far different–and far more satisfying–than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.
First published in Spanish in 1988 and in english on April 15, 1993
In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.
Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.
There are many new books emerging recently covering health and wellness that align with the goal to make healthier lifestyle choices. Whether looking for alternative health options, proven ways to build good healthy habits, wholesome food recipes, mind and bodyoptimization, or to find the best ways to shed weight, it’s better than ever now to choose a book to get started.
The books below are chosen to represent an eclectic selection on health and wellness featuring the authors’ wide ranging expertise in their respective fields. Clinical herbology, integrative medicine, neuroscience, naturopathy, nutrition, and human behavior are all represented.
Our curated selection contains the best selling and most recommended in the category of health and wellness thus far for 2020:
Click to Buy “Wild Remedies” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
Millions of people are interested in natural or alternative health–but many of them are missing out on the most important ingredient: Nature itself Wild Remedies inspires readers to rekindle their connection with nature by identifying, tending, and harvesting the plant medicine they find growing around them. Experts Rosalee de la For t and Emily Han explain the benefits of 25 commonly found wild plants, many of which are also easy to grow. Readers will also find a wealth of recipes, remedies, crafts, and activities to bring the healing and transformative powers of these herbs to life. After reading Wild Remedies, readers will view their lawns, parks, community gardens, and other natural spaces in a whole new way. Instead of “weeds,” they will see delicious foods like Dandelion Maple Syrup Cake, Nettle Frittata, and Mallow and Quinoa Patties. They will also begin to revel in nature’s medicine chest as they make remedies like herbal oils, salves, teas, and more.
Click to Buy “Atomic Habits” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving–every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don’t want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you’ll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.
Click to Buy “The Defined Dish“and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
Alex Snodgrass of TheDefinedDish.com is the third author in the popular Whole30 Endorsed series. With gluten-free, dairy-free, and grain-free recipes that sound and look way too delicious to be healthy, this is a cookbook people can turn to after completing a Whole30, when they’re looking to reintroduce healthful ingredients like tortillas, yogurt, beans, and legumes. Recipes like Chipotle Chicken Tostadas with Pineapple Salsa or Black Pepper Chicken are easy enough to prepare even after a busy day at work. There are no esoteric ingredients in these recipes, but instead something to suit every taste, each dish clearly marked if it is Whole30 compliant, paleo, gluten-free, dairy-free, and more. Alex includes delicious variations, too, such as using lettuce wraps instead of taco shells, to ensure recipes can work for almost any diet. And for anyone looking to stick to their Whole30 for longer, at least sixty of the recipes are fully compliant.
Click to Buy “In the Flo” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
The bestselling author of WomanCode presents a biohacking program for women, teaching them how to use their natural 28-day cycle to optimize their time, diet, fitness, work, and relationships.
Women have a important biological rhythm they experience every month that affects productivity, weight, sex drive, energy, and mood. It is essential to be aware of and take care of this rhythm, but it has been widely ignored by medical, nutrition and fitness research. So as women, we diet, we deprive, and we cram as much as possible into our day, striving to accomplish impossible to-do lists, and scheduling our lives based on a 24-hour time cycle, ignoring the intuitive time our bodies naturally keep: a monthly cycle with four hormonal phases that offer incredible advantages.
Click to Buy “Boundless” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
What if the ability to look, feel, and perform at peak capacity wasn’t the stuff of lore but instead was within easy reach? Sure, some of us find ways to hit peak performance in one area or another–there are professional poker players, computer programmers, and race car drivers hunched over card games, keyboards, and steering wheels with optimized minds; UFC and NFL gladiators fighting for glory on television with optimized bodies; and monks and meditators roaming the planet with optimized spirits. But in a perfect world, you would be able to have it all: complete optimization of mind, body, and spirit.In Boundless, the New York Times bestselling author of Beyond Training and health and fitness leader Ben Greenfield offers a first-of-its-kind blueprint for total human optimization.
Click to Buy “The Keto Reset Diet“and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
Mark Sisson–author of the mega-bestseller The Primal Blueprint–unveils his groundbreaking ketogenic diet plan that resets your metabolism in 21 days so you can burn fat forever. Mounting scientific research is confirming that eating a ketogenic diet could represent one of the greatest nutritional breakthroughs of our time–and that it might be the healthiest and most effective weight loss strategy ever. Going “keto” by eating high fat, low-to-moderate protein and low-carb foods enables you to break free from the disastrous effects of carbohydrate dependency by resetting your metabolism and promoting metabolic flexibility–where your body learns to burns fat instead of sugar for energy, even when you go off plan.
Click to Buy “The Healing Self” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
After collaborating on two major books featured as PBS specials, Super Brain and Super Genes, Chopra and Tanzi now tackle the issue of lifelong health and heightened immunity.We are the midst of a new revolution.
For over twenty-five years Deepak Chopra, M.D. and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D. have revolutionized medicine and how we understand our minds and our bodies–Chopra, the leading expert in the field of integrative medicine; Tanzi, the pioneering neuroscientist and discoverer of genes that cause Alzheimer’s Disease. After reaching millions of people around the world through their collaborations on the hugely successful Super Brain and Super Genes books and public television programs, the New York Times bestselling authors now present a groundbreaking, landmark work on the supreme importance of our immune system in relation to our lifelong health.
Click to Buy “The 10-Day Belly Slimdown” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores
“This isn’t another gimmicky diet–it’s a powerful eating strategy that will take your extra pounds off quickly, safely, and permanently.” –Mark Hyman, MD, Director, Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Fat Get Thin“The best gift you can give yourself is a slim, beautiful, healthy belly–and in this book, Dr. Kellyann, an expert I trust, tells you exactly how to get it.” –Mehmet Oz, M.D. The New York Times bestselling author of Dr. Kellyann’s Bone Broth Diet reveals her powerful belly-slimming plan that will help you lose up to 10 pounds in 10 days
Although a hit ‘The Bomber Mafia’ is less known than previous Gladwell bestsellers
With “Blink” (2007) and “The Tipping Point” as well as “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell burst onto the scene with a new kind of popular non-fiction. Rather than being another single minded academic focused on a particular specific niche, it was in choosing what phenomena to study, and then taking his now patented unique approach, that he was able to excite and inspire the minds of millions of readers.
Drilling down into the exact aspects of his chosen topics to focus on just what made him choose them in the first place, and doing so with an excited air of adventure and discovery, Gladwell continues to delight, and for some, his entire body of work consists of one page-turner after another. Even his titles, like outliers and the tipping point, though in usage before, after he nailed them into more expansively defined concepts, were brought into more popular use and the widespread level of understanding to a whole new level.
Below we feature a broad selection, including his latest, for fan and the curious alike.
To make it easier they are featured front and center, below, along with descriptions, provided courtesy of the Bookshop (and the various publishers), and with some links for a variety of options of where to purchase.
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
In The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafia,” asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, “Was it worth it?” Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge.
Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news.
He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland–throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know.
And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David’s victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn’t have won.
Or should he have? In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwellchallenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.
Gladwell begins with the real story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy those many years ago. From there, David and Goliath examines Northern Ireland’s Troubles, the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, murder and the high costs of revenge, and the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms—all to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity.
In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.
Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.
Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.
This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
A unique talent for choosing and presenting exactly the theme and subject of the moment, and for posterity
Above:Photo from ‘The Big Short’ courtesy of Paramount
Very few authors have the intense feeling for the “zeitgeist” that Michael has shown throughout his long career. The ability to capture the spirit of the times so well is also possibly the reason why so many of his books have been snapped up and made into successful films. Examples are “The Big Short” (Christian Bale), “Moneyball” (Brad Pitt), “The Blind Side” (Sandra Bullock), all three of these also received Best Picture Oscar nominations.
While perhaps not an author to be remembered as a high literary genius such as James Joyce or William Shakespeare, the body of work, as a chronicle of modern times seen through the lens of his minds eye is, nevertheless, substantive and engaging. While “The Big Short”, both the book and subsequent film, capture with amazing clarity a confusing period that has been in many ways glossed over, even willfully, by those that were partially responsible but never held to account.
Though it remains to be seen how the future will look back on the 2020 novel coronavirus era, “Premonition” has, once more, the same potential to become one, potentially definitive portrait, of the crisis and it’s emergence into a full blown worldwide pandemic.
Now, soon, “The Premonition” is set to be produced by Amy Pascal for Pascal Pictures, with Rachel O’Connor. Directors are slated to be Phil Lord and Chris Miller who are mostly known for lighter fare.
To make it easier a great selection of Michael Lewis’ books are featured front and center, below, along with descriptions, provided courtesy of the Bookshop (and the various publishers), and with some links for a variety of options of where to purchase.
Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.
The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control.
A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society.
A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.
Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.
The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts.
The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking.
Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar’s Poker.
Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.
Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms.
During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years–a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business.
From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is Michael Lewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A’s, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge–insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money. Also made into a hit movie starring Brad Pitt, Moneyball is a book that exposes human nature, and how it can suddenly be overcome when unique perspectives lead to innovative choices.
When we first meet him, Michael Oher is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write.
He takes up football, and school, after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets. Then two great forces alter Oher: the family’s love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost.
Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback’s greatest vulnerability, his blind side.
In Michael Lewis’s game-changing bestseller, a small group of Wall Street iconoclasts realize that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders.
They band together–some of them walking away from seven-figure salaries–to investigate, expose, and reform the insidious new ways that Wall Street generates profits. If you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. Billions have been spent by Wall Street firms and stock exchanges to gain the advantage of a millisecond. “Is it a scam?” 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asks during his interview with the author, It’s bigger than a scam, Lewis says.
Lewis further explains how ordinary investors are affected and argues that high-frequency traders have created instability in the stock market — for everyone. A reoccurring metaphor Lewis uses in his book “Flash Boys” is one of “prey and predators.” According to Lewis, the prey is “anybody who’s actually an investor in the stock market.”
Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed.
The government manages a vast array of critical services that keep us safe and underpin our lives from ensuring the safety of our food and drugs and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black market uranium before the terrorists do. The Fifth Risk masterfully and vividly unspools the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.
Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics.
One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. In The Undoing Project, Lewis shows how their Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.
So much is going on in the area of Crypto-currencies, Blockchain, Alt Coins, and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) that it can make your head spin. And that is not to even mention Crypto Mining, Farming, Baking and Trading, all of which have had skyrocketing activity recently.
How much interest there is runs the gamut from the curious onlooker to the serious professional. And then there are predictions regarding the future of the world financial system, the political and legal ramifications of the rise of crypto and all the opinions going every which way, and more.
Based on all of the above it only makes sense to put together a list of fundamental ground floor guidebooks to help anyone who wants and needs to really understand what all the fuss is about. Bitcoin and the whole area of blockchain technology has come so far already, and is so established and entrenched that it is unlikely to disappear completely anytime soon, no matter which way the political winds may blow.
So if you are a beginner an intermediate or even advanced learner that wants to know more, these are the best books to really dig into the phenomena and explosion of information and viewpoints. To make it easier they are featured front and center, below, along with descriptions, provided courtesy of the Bookshop (and the various publishers), and with some links for a variety of options of where to purchase.
Mastering Blockchain – Third Edition: A deep dive into distributed ledgers, consensus protocols, smart contracts, DApps, cryptocurrencies
Blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrencies, and it has applications in finance, government, media, and many other industries. With a legacy of providing technologists with executable insights, the third edition of Mastering Blockchain is thoroughly revised and updated with the latest blockchain research, including four new chapters on consensus algorithms, Serenity (Ethereum 2.0), tokenization, and enterprise blockchains.
Apart from covering the basics, including blockchain’s technical underpinnings, cryptography, and consensus protocols, this book provides you with expert knowledge on decentralization, decentralized application development on Ethereum, Bitcoin, alternative coins, smart contracts, alternative blockchains, and Hyperledger.
Furthermore, you will explore how to implement blockchain solutions beyond cryptocurrencies, such as the Internet of Things with blockchain, blockchain scalability, enterprise blockchains, and tokenization using blockchain, and the future scope of this fascinating and disruptive technology.
By the end of this book, you will have gained a thorough understanding of the various facets of blockchain technology and be comfortable applying them to diverse real-world scenarios.
Updated with four new chapters on consensus algorithms, Ethereum 2.0, tokenization, and enterprise blockchains
Dive deep into foundational pillars of blockchain technology such as decentralization, cryptography, and consensus protocols
Get to grips with Solidity, Web3, cryptocurrencies, smart contract development and solve scalability, security, and privacy issues
Discover the architecture of different distributed ledger platforms including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth, Corda, and Quorum
Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Blockchain Technology& Altcoins For Beginners: Explore The Decentralized World, Investing in Crypto Blueprint, Mining Basics+
Do you want to understand what Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency actually is? Do you want to understand how it could change the world & finance industry FOREVER? Do you want to discover how you can get started investing in Crypto TODAY?
By now we’ve all heard of it, yet few of us understand it, and without understanding it how could you even dream of investing in it?
You hear all the tech ‘bros’ talking about it, you hear the media slandering it, you can see the bankers are scared by it’s potential, but you still don’t quite get the fuss.
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there.
But, luckily, this book has been written for people just like you.
The purpose of it is to demystify the world of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Decentralization & The Blockchain.
And, if those 4 words currently sound like a foreign language to you, you’re not alone. But, after this book, you’ll be the one explaining about the ‘Crypto Craze’ to everyone you see!
Inside, we will go over the origins & history of Bitcoin, it’s potential to change the world, as well as how it could all go wrong.
And, of course, we will go over how you can invest in potentially the greatest wealth transfer the world has ever seen.
Here’s a tiny Example of what’s inside..
Exactly What Bitcoin Actually Is And How It Is Drastically Disrupting The Global Economy
Everything You Need To Know About The ‘Bitcoin Halving’ Cycles & How To Maximize Your Gains From Them
What Is A ‘Blockchain’ And How It Could Quite Literally Revolutionize EVERY Aspect Of Your Life In The Coming Decades
What Are ‘Altcoins’ And How They Are Different To Bitcoin & What Their Purpose In All Of This Is…
Why We Are Still In The VERY Early Days Of The Crypto ‘Boom’
And SO Much More!
So, If You Want To FINALLY Understand The World Of Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency So You Can Actually Understand What All The Fuss Is About And Whether You Want To Get Involved, Then Scroll Up And Click
From preeminent math personality and author of The Joy of x, a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus–how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better.
Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.
Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down-to-earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number–infinity–to tackle real-world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.
Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew.
The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking
When a pseudonymous programmer introduced “a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party” to a small online mailing list in 2008, very few paid attention. Ten years later, and against all odds, this upstart autonomous decentralized software offers an unstoppable and globally-accessible hard money alternative to modern central banks. The Bitcoin Standard analyzes the historical context to the rise of Bitcoin, the economic properties that have allowed it to grow quickly, and its likely economic, political, and social implications.
While Bitcoin is a new invention of the digital age, the problem it purports to solve is as old as human society itself: transferring value across time and space. Ammous takes the reader on an engaging journey through the history of technologies performing the functions of money, from primitive systems of trading limestones and seashells, to metals, coins, the gold standard, and modern government debt. Exploring what gave these technologies their monetary role, and how most lost it, provides the reader with a good idea of what makes for sound money, and sets the stage for an economic discussion of its consequences for individual and societal future-orientation, capital accumulation, trade, peace, culture, and art. Compellingly, Ammous shows that it is no coincidence that the loftiest achievements of humanity have come in societies enjoying the benefits of sound monetary regimes, nor is it coincidental that monetary collapse has usually accompanied civilizational collapse.
With this background in place, the book moves on to explain the operation of Bitcoin in a functional and intuitive way. Bitcoin is a decentralized, distributed piece of software that converts electricity and processing power into indisputably accurate records, thus allowing its users to utilize the Internet to perform the traditional functions of money without having to rely on, or trust, any authorities or infrastructure in the physical world. Bitcoin is thus best understood as the first successfully implemented form of digital cash and digital hard money. With an automated and perfectly predictable monetary policy, and the ability to perform final settlement of large sums across the world in a matter of minutes, Bitcoin’s real competitive edge might just be as a store of value and network for final settlement of large payments–a digital form of gold with a built-in settlement infrastructure.
Ammous’ firm grasp of the technological possibilities as well as the historical realities of monetary evolution provides for a fascinating exploration of the ramifications of voluntary free market money. As it challenges the most sacred of government monopolies, Bitcoin shifts the pendulum of sovereignty away from governments in favor of individuals, offering us the tantalizing possibility of a world where money is fully extricated from politics and unrestrained by borders.
Above: photo from “Lost Cause” – photo credit: BillieEilish.com
Music Video Vignettes Combined into Prime Day Promotion
Amazon prime is a way for the company to combine and bundle features for a yearly subscription fee. Every year, in addition to the usual subsidized shipping, prime video and the rest, there is Prime Day, which is now upon us. This year that also includes “Prime Day Show” which is a “free” offering for Prime members, basically 30 minute music video vignettes by Billie Eilish, H.E.R. and Kid Cudi.
The long form multi song productions are enjoyable enough, however, it is also true that music videos are a form of free advertising for the artists and songs that they feature. So, in this case that makes this a kind of subsidized collaboration between the artists (presumably paid to have the Amazon moniker associated with their music) and the company.
None of this makes it less enjoyable, of course, but it is interesting how it is not live (nothing like the huge live concerts put on by AliBaba and Tao Bao for “Singles Day” in China, but rather a pre-recorded, fairly standard, traditional, music video style production).
As the shopping kicks off in Ernest later, at one minute after midnight on June 21st, this show could be a way to relax ahead of the shopping frenzy.
The first episode contains several songs by H.E.R., interspersed with short drama interludes and featuring celebrity cameos. All set at Los Angeles’ Dunbar Hotel, known in the 1930s and 1940s as the hub of the city’s Black culture, and the lavish production and assist from acting talent makes for a showcase of songs from her new album, “Back of My Mind”.
Next, in the second episode Kid Cudi goes with an outer Space theme and, similarly, has scenes linking the production extravaganzas built for each song. This is all appropriate since he is presenting songs from his album “Man on the Moon III”.
A second space connection comes from the participation in collaboration from the International Space Orchestra, who happen to be the world’s first orchestra entirely consisting of space scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center, the SETI Institute and the International Space University.
The closing act, of course, is Billie Eilish, and the city of Paris (or at least a studio set of it) is the conceptual backdrop used to elevate what are otherwise live performances for the purpose of creating a video, sans audiences. The first song is set in a romantic hotel room set and features the song “My Future” as well as “Lost Cause”, “Therefore I Am” and “My Power”. As a whole the set is very “jazzy” and has an intimate feel that appears to be a project rendition original version take.
All in all, while there is respectable and well produced performances and visual enhancements, at the same time there is a lack of any event style excitement or sense of a musical live performance (which is not the point, admittedly).
Perhaps the three episodes can best be seen as a kind of chestnut to show fans of the artists that “Prime” is giving back and that the bundling extends beyond free shipping, prime video, prime music, other perks and deals and into another area, event bases collaborations for the sake of commerce.
Not only are thousands of physical products on sale for Prime Day, starting tonight at midnight, but virtual deals, such as films and shows are getting big promotional discounts also. The streaming deals are already live, so if you are inclined to watch while it’s still weekend prime time, a large assortment is available.
Some examples of films currently deeply discounted to view:
Titles that are normally priced higher for rental viewing or purchase are set for a limited time to $.99, $1.99 or $2.99 depending on the title. Naturally the newer and “hotter” the choice the less likely that it is at $.99 cents, but on the other hand, we all have different taste and perhaps you can find a film or show that you have been wanting to see but did not want to pay a higher price to watch.
For some reason, documentary films such as “Chasing Madoff” or “Good Trouble“, the excellent documentary on John Lewis, which is part of a Juneteenth special promotion, tend to show up at the rock bottom price. So perhaps, taking advantage of the promotion as a way to educate and enlighten oneself might be more economical than jumping in to the top hits and most current feature films.
If you do shop around, hovering or clicking on the deals designated with a “$” in the upper left hand corner, you will find at least a few titles here and there at the low $.99 cent watch price. Much more common are $1.99, $2.99 and even $3.99, which is a discount but does not feel like a huge one.
Also, since newer popular titles are normally priced much higher, up to $5.99 and sometimes more, even the $2.99 special price represents a bargain opportunity.
An example of a recently released, high quality film is “The Courier” which is currently available to watch for $2.99 (normally $5.99)
Above:Promotional Photo for “The Courier” courtesy of Lionsgate
An invitation to save on streaming current hot films and shows, plus $.99 teaser rates for subscriptions
Not only are thousands of physical products on sale for Prime Day, starting tonight at midnight, but virtual deals, such as films and shows are getting big promotional discounts also. The streaming deals are already live, so if you are inclined to watch while it’s still weekend prime time, a large assortment is available.
Some examples of films currently deeply discounted to view:
Titles that are normally priced higher for rental viewing or purchase are set for a limited time to $.99, $1.99 or $2.99 depending on the title. Naturally the newer and “hotter” the choice the less likely that it is at $.99 cents, but on the other hand, we all have different taste and perhaps you can find a film or show that you have been wanting to see but did not want to pay a higher price to watch.
For some reason, documentary films such as “Chasing Madoff” or “Good Trouble“, the excellent documentary on John Lewis, which is part of a Juneteenth special promotion, tend to show up at the rock bottom price. So perhaps, taking advantage of the promotion as a way to educate and enlighten oneself might be more economical than jumping in to the top hits and most current feature films.
If you do shop around, hovering or clicking on the deals designated with a “$” in the upper left hand corner, you will find at least a few titles here and there at the low $.99 cent watch price. Much more common are $1.99, $2.99 and even $3.99, which is a discount but does not feel like a huge one.
Also, since newer popular titles are normally priced much higher, up to $5.99 and sometimes more, even the $2.99 special price represents a bargain opportunity.
An example of a recently released, high quality film is “The Courier” which is currently available to watch for $2.99 (normally $5.99)
International Report Documents Expanded Risks from All Sides…
For decades, the human species has been treating its oceans poorly. Oil spills, pollution, overfishing, melting ice caps, and above all climate change have made our seas into perpetual punching bags. As a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows, however, the ocean is now at its most fragile. If we do not help it, then it will soon start punching back.
The report is based on an extensive review of more than six thousand studies from scientists in 36 countries and the results are voluminous and, frankly, very scary for any sane observer. These compounded dangers are becoming harder to dispute, and previously challenged assertions such as how to measure the acceleration of the rising sea levels are being more clearly defined and more confidently confirmed by scientists.
The ocean has always been one of the earth’s most crucial natural deterrents to global warming. As a pool of water that covers over seventy percent of the world’s surface, the ocean is an enormous carbon drain. Like a forest, it sucks in lots of our carbon emissions and uses it to sustain its ecosystem.
Unfortunately, as climate change evolves and accelerates, the ocean’s ability to absorb that carbon diminishes. There is so much CO2 in the atmosphere that the ocean is all but overwhelmed. Simultaneously, other kinds of pollution—such as plastic or oil—are also taking their tolls on the seas’ ecosystems.
Rising Sea Levels, Extreme Weather Events, other threats are in Extreme Acceleration
The biggest threat that the ocean poses if climate change is not effectively combatted is rising water levels. The IPCC report shows that with our current level of carbon emissions, arctic ice will start to melt at a more rapid pace, and sea levels will rise significantly. By the next century, certain coastal communities and entire island nations could be uninhabitable. As a huge percentage of the world lives by the water, this could leave millions of people incredibly vulnerable.
The water is not only getting higher, though. It is also getting warmer. As the world’s temperature increases with an oversaturation of atmospheric carbon, the oceans follow suit. Water temperatures are rising and the rate of that rise is increasing.
Warmer water has already brought with it a whole new line of ecological issues. When the temperature changes, it affects marine life behavior and migratory patterns. This is impacting everything from the food chain to the fishing industry, making it a far greater issue than just a few confused fish ending up on the wrong side of the sea.
Furthermore, hurricanes thrive off of warm water, so as the ocean gets hotter, we are already seeing larger and more brutal storms washing up on our coasts. The IPCC report underscores an increased occurrence of powerful storms, with category 4 and 5 hurricanes becoming far more frequent. Flooding will also continue to occur more frequently, and beachside infrastructure will find itself in dire straits all-year around.
Dangers Lurk beyond rising Sea Levels: Pollution, Disease and Contagions Threaten to Rise as well
Then, there is also the fact that our oceans are getting dirtier. Acidification and pollution have led to the extinction of certain species, the eradication of coral reefs, and numerous health problems that find their way to the surface. More foodborne illnesses are turning up in seafood; Marine heat waves affect seabirds and amphibious mammals as well as fish; And a summer dip in the ocean may soon become a grimy bath that leaves you sick and dirty.
The ocean is powerful and beautiful. Ever since humankind evolved out of its depths millions of years ago, the great blue saltwater haven has been helping sustain us on land. Its wondrous waves and illustrious currents have inspired many, and mystified even more. Conscienceless as a silent part of this humble planet we call home, the ocean has asked for nothing in return for her millions of years of ecological service. Now, however, in no small part due to our exploitative nature, she is suffering. If we do not help her now when she is desperate, then her years of docility will soon run out, and we will feel her wrath.
Sci-fi sounding, inevitable upgrade for today’s online communications
You might have heard lately about the “metaverse” and yet that can mean a variety of different things to different people. Often, it’s a term that relates back to gaming and 3D augmented reality enhancements of networked communications.
There are even crypto and blockchain related projects using this term and concept. While all of these various factors are welcome, and potentially part of this next phase of convergence of communication via networked technology, there’s something else happening under the surface.
”The pandemic, with its requirements of physical distancing, has brought people into online digital environments for a growing range of shared human experiences.” — Wired UK from “The Metaverse is coming” by David Baszucki
The acceleration in AI application, machine learning, and converging use cases for all communications tech has created a situation where the entry-portal to the emerging metaverse is already here.
One often overlooked aspect of a transition to a more complete digital life is the need for humans to have adapted to the need and potential benefits of the idea. This is what is happening via many routes, including Apple and the constant synergistic upgrade cycles that have just gone into a new, bigger phase with the migration to a unified OS structure built around Apple Silicon.
The gradual increases in iOS functionality and user sophistication are changing how we interact
iOS15, previewed this week at the WWDC2021 is rolling out literally dozens of new features, many based on machine learning, neural networks and AI that propose a new level of highly sophisticated options to communicate with video, photos and text.
While this mixture of “basic” media has been the staple of our current modes of online communication, particularly via social media, the incredibly increased depth of new options and functionality of iOS15 and iPadOS15 and MacOS Monterey will make all modes of communication feel completely new.
In the evolution of online media and enriched communication (OMEC to coin an 80s sounding acronym) the slow and uneven progress is based on many factors. #1 is always user adoption and sophistication.
Second is the quality of the hardware devices and software upgrades each user around the world has access to. In the case of iOS (iPad, iPhone & macOS) the immediate adoption of upgrades is a large factor on the plus side, helping new innovation to arrive in general use more quickly.
The last factor, a huge one, is access to fast ubiquitous internet data connections, and, in the US at least, this is less consistent than ever (or our expectations are rising faster than the build out).
However, particularly in Asia, 5g is beginning to make a dent. Satellite broadband, like Starlink, should also start to be a factor as early as 2022. Government infrastructure build-out funding and subsidies in the US is on the way in 2021.
Augmented 3D features are still growing but will merge with 2D
The upshot of this topic is that “2D” factors and increasingly sophisticated manipulation and interactive features that are already coming in iOS15 will bring us all closer the entry-portal stone-age version of the metaverse.
We all depend more and more on communications and using our devices – work from home, personal, business and hybrid activities (such as the emerging content creator class). Often, as a result, we have fewer options to go offline for “organic” RL (real life) interactions.
The increasingly sophisticated capabilities available are beginning to make even face to face communications, particularly in work situations, feel “un-enhanced” as we become accustomed to and dependent on the digital enhancements and potential of a full media rich interaction.
This is an example, one could say, of the subtle encroachment of the emerging metaverse onto the “real world” and how the boundaries are blurring and even beginning to disappear.
Rather than a sudden “jump” into a metaverse, similar to the cliché sci-fi plots from films like “Ready Player 1”, what is happening is a nearly imperceptible transition to metaverse-like experiences that will become commonplace, initially in a primitive form, and then eventually become the norm. Similar to the proverbial Frog in pot, with warm water temperatures that increase so slowly that the Frog doesn’t even notice, until it finds that it is swimming in pot that is already boiling.
The misconception that a “killer app” or sudden shift into an online, virtual reality world, is the future, and that a big leap will happen nearly all at once, is harmlessly superimposed on the real transition that has already begun.
When Apple’s 2007 launch of the iPhone changed communication forever: the journey began
The new “Digital Legacy Program”, also announced at WWDC2021, is another hint that we are already living in an extremely primitive version of the metaverse. Our online identity, data, and even behaviors and experiences are so essential and all pervasive that it has become necessary to keep a digital key to access the huge trove of personal data we will leave behind to pass on to our living loved ones, after we are gone.
The metaverse, that means, is not only creating a parallel digital universe for us to live in, in an ever more complete and sophisticated way, but we are also already setting up the eternal storage of our virtual life experiences to be passed down to future generations.
Though nearly invisible while in such a relatively primitive iteration, the concept, an example of overlapping advancements in innovation, is a tiny step towards digital immortality.
The metaverse could help to save us all
It’s not just professional and work related communication that relates to the gradual increase in the depth of networked communication options, but, even more so, casual and leisure communication and interaction is key.
TikTok and other video communication trends are at the forefront of of user evolution and metaverse activity expansion. When people feel motivated to find new and better ways to communicate using richer media and augmented techniques for fun, and to gain more recognition in online societies, that advances digital sophistication.
This process of the evolution of user comfort and sophistication, while existing and interacting in the metaverse, is the fastest way for the augmentation to become more effective.
There’s a mostly unseen benefit and need for this, otherwise seemingly pointless, global development
The challenges that the world faces, encroaching, devastating fallout from global warming and excess carbon in the atmosphere, political corruption and inequality, disinformation and cybercrime, and so on.
Ultimately, unlike at any time in human history, we are facing a challenge. The survival of our species and even the planet are at stake.
In the years and decades to come it will become more and more obvious that there are only two paths possible. One path toward a kind of Utopia, or another one that will lead, inexorably to Oblivion.
Though the metaverse is scary in many ways, and does not always appear as a way to a better life, augmented and enhanced communication is one of the most desperately needed ways that solutions could eventually be discovered and implemented.
And that would put this progression and evolution of tech more in service of Utopia, and could be at the heart of a rescue plan to prevent Oblivion, before it’s too late.
Netflix’s French original series “Lupin” took Netflix subscribers by storm. Millions tuned in, voraciously binge-watching, including myself, furiously consuming the first season when the show debuted earlier this year. Part 1 ended as most shows do these days, leaving us wanting more with a nerve wracking cliffhanger, yet, rejoice streamers, we will not have to wait much longer to tune in to see Omar Sy as Assane Diop for Part 2.
The main character, as mentioned above, Assane Diop, has held a lifelong obsession with Lupin novels and has transformed much of his life, in the process becoming somewhat of a modern-day counterpart to “Lupin, gentleman thief”. His masterminded plans are always artfully crafted with unexpectedly creative genius precision, style and not to mention incredible costume changes.
Those that have not yet seen the series, this is the perfect time to get caught up. The series is inspired on the French fictional character Arsene Lupin created by writer Maurice Leblanc.
The official trailer for “Lupin Part 2” just dropped along with the release date that is now coming soon: June 11, 2021. Those that are deterred from foreign programs because of subtitles, English dubbed audio is also available and this series is abolutely worth the watch.
For what seems like a long time many of us have been living inside our iPhone, immersed in a metaverse of our digital lives.
And the deeper into Apple’s walled garden we are submerged, the more monumental the yearly OS upgrades become. That’s because, when you are in a digital life, we’ll, lots of things are worse than the “real” world. The sensual experience is built of fractions of the full sensory bandwidth of life.
But there’s one thing about the metaverse, the fact that, since it’s artificial and human engineered, it can, and does, improve.
In the case of Apple’s universe, the yearly upgrades and constant, sometimes nearly imperceptible changes in a thousand different parameters add together, over time, and suddenly, the world comes alive with vibrant, super sensual satisfaction …
Sure, the weather animations just got sent to a 3rd convolution level of better-ness, that’s true. But add this to all the thousands of better feelings and deeper interactions with yourself and the spirit of ourselves, and you will find: the future
Photo credit: Apple
WWDC 2021 was a pure upgrade fest with a lot of detail to sift through
We are in the middle of our ongoing coverage of the Apple event and all that was revealed. There are so many features and so many important details and interdependent uses for this features that it can be more easily digested in bites.
What we are witnessing is the growing interdependence and interoperability of iOS 15, iPad OS 15 and macOS 12 Monterey, particularly with the built in apple apps they all have built in.
Safari, though still with slight variations between the three OSs, is becoming more powerful everywhere, FaceTime got a huge upgrade in the new systems, and utilities connected to iCloud such as the Find My network are also extensively revamped.
While some find the sheer width and breath of Apple’s hardware, software and services conceptually off-putting, it is, at this early stage of the monumental changes that are being wrought by Apple Silicon, a wonder to behold how all the various products and underlying software for those products is evolving in a way that is constant and deep.
As put forth in articles published by Lynxotic years ago the changes that are underway are vast and were conceived and put into motion based on Steve Jobs’ core concepts for the future of Apple many years ago. And Tim Cook and the rest of Apple have not deviated from that vision, in fact are reaping benefits on behalf of users that could barely be imagined a decade ago.
One bite we’ve started to delve into is the dual and interdependent features from macOS Monterey; Airplay to Mac and Universal control. It turns out that compete interoperability for Airplay to Mac is still in the future, the list of the various models and vintages that it functions on is as follows:
2018 or later MacBook Pro or MacBook Air
a 2019 or later iMac or Mac Pro
an iMac Pro
the 2020 Mac mini
As you can see this is a fairly exclusive list. What is most conspicuously missing is the possibility to use and older mac, such as a 2018 27” 5k iMac to take advantage of the beautiful screen.
Universal Control, meanwhile appears to work with most devices that run on iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey. It allows you to a single mouse and keyboard and flow from iPad to Mac and back, pretty much as you would imagine using the cursor and keyboard for either, and, thankfully there is no setup required.
FaceTime just got a Facelift
FaceTime’s big jump ahead is somewhat more complex since the iPhone, iPad (various models of both) and the mac each have a UX and screen size that varies, as well as different computing advantages. One interesting note on the various technical enhancements, pretty much across the board from what was announced at WWDC 2021, M1 chips and Apple Silicon based devices get the biggest boost from all the new capabilities.
Rather than being a marketing ploy, at least so far there’s no evidence of that kind of approach, this is an organic by product of the underlying “big picture” goal – to unify the experience and potential of the three device categories even as they cross pollinate one-another.
All the various, and gradually hard to list, OS flavors, macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, iPadOS 15, tvOS 15, watchOS 8 and all the various accessories that benefit from the upgrades such as AirPods pro spatial audio, HomePod mini liaison with Apple TV 4k and tvOS 15, as well as SharePlay where FaceTime can allow multiple users to share streaming audio or video content for a synchronized experience.
Please stay tuned for the many articles to come that will further dive into the changes and improvements that are on the way, free of charge, for Apple users with this massive roll-out that will culminate in fall 2021.
As per Apple:
Redesigned Weather and Notes Apps
Weather includes more graphical displays of weather data, full-screen maps, and dynamic layouts that change based on conditions. Beautifully redesigned animated backgrounds more accurately reflect the sun’s position and precipitation, and notifications highlight when rain or snow starts and stops. Video animation below:
Notes adds user-created tags that make it easy to quickly categorize notes, and mentions allow members of shared notes to notify one another of important updates. An all-new Activity view shows the recent history of a shared note.
Notes adds user-created tags that make it easy to quickly categorize notes in line with relevant content:
Pride month power grows as the community becomes larger and stronger
One year ago, June 2020, in correspondence with protests around the country, spurred on by the killing of George Floyd, Pride month parades become protests and took on a new meaning.
In the middle of the pandemic it was a tense time, important elections were on the horizon and the were forces of prejudice and discrimination rising seemingly on all sides. In spite of the challenges and the forces aligned in misguided opposition, bravery and pride could be seen in the street around the US and the world.
Above: West Hollywood, June 2020 Photo: Lyxotic
A year later and there is the feeling, if only a faint one, that a chance exists for all of that to be turned back, not in a day a week or a year, but though the arc of history bending toward equality and inclusion.
And June was wisely chosen with rainbow colors, sunshine and hope for the future in a combination that can lead to hope for the future and joy for today. Joy is a concept that leads to and is a natural part of celebration just as much as pride equals hope, equality, inclusion and love.
June is the time, as spring transforms the world into summer, for us to remember not only the justice that is to come, but the joy of the journey, and even the joy of the righteous struggles to get there.
A way for the world to change must always begin with thoughts, ideas, information, education and, ultimately, understanding. In the books we’ve compiled there are chapters that contain stories of pride and struggles, and with more forthright and open information circulating the possibility for justice can only rise.
So, as June continues to beam it’s sunlit powers throughout the northern hemisphere, it’s a great time to reflect on the road ahead, the progress achieved, and most of all, the reasons for joy and celebration.
A mother’s memoir of her transgender child’s odyssey, and her journey outside the boundaries of the faith and culture that shaped her. From the age of two-and-a-half, Jacob, born “Em,” adamantly told his family he was a boy.
While his mother Mimi struggled to understand and come to terms with the fact that her child may be transgender, she experienced a sense of déjà vu–the journey to uncover the source of her child’s inner turmoil unearthed ghosts from Mimi’s past and her own struggle to live an authentic life.
Mimi was raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family, every aspect of her life dictated by ancient rules and her role as a woman largely preordained from cradle to grave.
As a young woman, Mimi wrestled with the demands of her faith and eventually made the painful decision to leave her religious community and the strict gender roles it upheld.
Having risen from the ashes of her former life, Mimi was prepared to help her son forge a new one — at a time when there was little consensus on how best to help young transgender children.
Dual narratives of faith and motherhood weave together to form a heartfelt portrait of an unforgettable family. Brimming with love and courage, What We Will Becomeis a powerful testament to how painful events from the past can be redeemed to give us hope for the future.
June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States.
Drawing from the New York Public Library’s archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots.
Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after.
Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.
A singular, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a Filipino boy with albinism whose story travels from an immigrant childhood to Harvard to a gender transition and illuminates the illusions of race, disability, and gender Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a sun child from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America.
Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity.
As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender.
Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni’s Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.
The online giant bans products related to drugs, spying and weapons, but we found plenty for sale; one of the items bought on the site left a grim trail of overdoses
By: Annie Gilbertson and Jon Keegan
Eric Falkowski said he made an easy living working a few hours a week making counterfeit prescription opioids before some two-dozen people overdosed and the authorities caught up with him.
He mixed fentanyl with active ingredients from Xanax and Tylenol and pressed the compound into pills that looked like Percocet, he said, down to the exact color and markings.
Where did he get the equipment? According to federal court records and Falkowski himself: Amazon.com.
“I purchased two pill presses on there. I also purchased the pill press dies, which are the molds to shape the pills and imprint them with whatever number they need be,” Falkowski said in a phone interview from prison, where he is serving a 22-year sentence for crimes connected to his counterfeit drug business.
“You search under the code on the pill … and it’ll just come up,” he added. “It really wasn’t that complex.”
Two people died after taking Falkowski’s pills, and another woman was found dead from an overdose on the property where he kept his makeshift lab, according to officials, law enforcement documents, and autopsy reports. More than 20 others were sickened by the pills but survived.
“Someone could wipe out a whole town” with these “poisonous pills,” said Derrick Helton, a former sheriff’s deputy for Rutherford County, Tenn., where the mass overdose took place. One of the fatalities was his sister Tiffanie Scott, a 33-year-old mother of a young daughter.
Amazon bans pill presses used to make prescription drugs. They’re included among 38 pages of third-party seller rules and prohibitions for its U.S. marketplace.
Yet an investigation by The Markup found that Amazon fails to properly enforce that list, allowing third-party sellers to put up and sell banned items.
Alongside its third-party marketplace, Amazon sells products to consumers directly, and The Markup found it was also selling banned items itself, revealing cracks in the largely automated purchasing system that feeds its massive product catalog.
We found nearly 100 listings for products that the company bans under its categories of drugs, theft, spying, weapons and other dangerous items, a virtual back alley where mostly third-party sellers peddle prohibited goods, some of which are used for illicit and potentially criminal activities.
Amazon’s Choice?
The Markup filled a shopping cart with a bounty of banned items: marijuana bongs, “dab kits” used to inhale cannabis concentrates, “crackers” that can be used to get high on nitrous oxide, and compounds that reviews showed were used as injectable drugs.
We found two pill presses and a die used to shape tablets into a Transformers logo, which is among the characters that have been found imprinted on club drugs such as ecstasy. We found listings for prohibited tools for picking locks and jimmying open car doors. And we found AR-15 gun parts and accessories that Amazon specifically bans.
Almost three dozen listings for banned items were sold by third parties but available to ship from Amazon’s own warehouses. At least four were listed as “Amazon’s Choice.”
The phrase “ships from and sold by Amazon.com” appeared beneath the buy button of five of the banned items we found, which two former employees confirmed means those products are, in fact, sold by Amazon. In addition, one of the sellers we were able to reach also confirmed it sold the items to Amazon.
Many of the items we found had been up for sale for months, some with positive reviews showing they had been sold, including some of the items sold directly by Amazon.
And Amazon led us right to the prohibited listings. When we typed “bong” into the website’s search bar, autocomplete suggestions included “bongs for smoking weed.” When we typed “pill press,” autocomplete suggested “pill press for making pills xanax.”
In a written statement to The Markup, Amazon spokesperson Patrick Graham said the company has “proactive measures in place to prevent suspicious or prohibited products from being listed,” and that the company stopped more than six billion “suspected bad listings” from posting last year, repeating the company’s remarks to Congress earlier this year.
“If products that are against our policies are found on our site, we immediately remove the listing, take action on the bad actor, and further improve our systems,” he said.
Graham did not respond directly to many of our specific questions, including how many of the banned items that The Markup found had been sold, why the company had not noticed some of them for months, why some were listed as Amazon’s Choice, and why many were stored in Amazon’s warehouses for shipment.
He did not respond at all to questions about why Amazon itself had offered banned items for sale.
Most of the banned listings we reported to Amazon have been removed, although at least three have popped back up.
The company removed the six specific terms that we mentioned from autocomplete, according to Graham, who said that feature is informed by “similar searches by other customers.” He wouldn’t say whether the company also removed all other banned items from autocomplete.
Graham also declined to explain why the company chose to allow 13 listings for banned items that we reported to the company to remain for sale. These products were specifically named as banned in Amazon’s rules, met the U.S. Department of Justice’s definition of drug paraphernalia, or were confirmed by two weapons experts to be a gun part or tool. Two of them were items that Amazon sells itself.
In addition to the nearly 100 listings for banned items we found for sale in the U.S. marketplace, we found several pill presses for sale on Amazon’s Canadian marketplace that were available for shipment to the United States. Amazon took them down after we reported them to the company, including a $4,100 TDP 5 Desktop Tablet Press, one of the models Falkowski used.
“Almost dead”
Michael “Shane” Shipley, 39, a native of Rutherford County, Tenn., was one of the people who died after taking Falkowski’s fake pills. He’d worked his entire adult life operating machinery at a local factory.
“I couldn’t even tell you what my dad’s death has done to my family,” his daughter Brittany Conway said in an interview.
Within a day of her father’s death, Conway said, she woke up in a hospital bed herself. She didn’t realize her father had slipped the counterfeit pills into his prescription bottle of Percocet at home and, distraught with grief, she had taken what she thought was a safe medication to help her relax.
“I went from up, talking—to almost dead,” Conway said.
Graham said Amazon’s policies allowed pill press sales when Falkowski was making counterfeit drugs in 2016. He declined comment on the overdoses and said, speaking in general, that the company is not responsible for harm from third-party product sales.
“We are not liable for those products because we do not make, distribute, or sell those products,” he said. He said that also applies to third-party products that are fulfilled by Amazon, which charges sellers to store and ship their items.
The company has successfully shielded itself from legal liability for harm caused by third-party products sold on its website by invoking Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which states websites are not responsible for third-party content that appears on their sites.
Last year, one federal appeals court ruled that Amazon may shoulder liability for a customer’s injuries from a defective product sold on its site, in part because the company “enables third-party vendors to conceal themselves from the customer, leaving customers injured by defective products with no direct recourse to the third-party vendor.”
Three million third parties from across the globe are now selling on Amazon’s platforms, according to e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse. And third-party sellers have fueled the company’s explosive growth for years, according to a 2019 report to shareholders. Last year, Amazon third-party sales reportedly topped $200 billion—a sum that rivals the annual GDP of New Zealand.
Will It “Kill Someone?”
Multiple current and former employees, most of whom asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said the company struggles to oversee that army of independent sellers.
“Because sellers have the ability to upload items themselves to the website, it makes it very difficult to police all of that without hindering the ability to do business,” said a former member of the product safety team who left the company in 2018. “Amazon knows there’s tons and tons and tons of stuff that shouldn’t be on the website.
“We basically would categorize risks based on their severity,” the former employee added. “Will this product injure or kill someone? Is it high legal risk?”
An Amazon executive acknowledged in the statement to Congress earlier this year that “bad listings” get through but said the company is working to shore up the slippage of “counterfeits, unsafe products, and other types of abuse” by requiring sellers of certain items to be preapproved, partnering with brands to pull counterfeits, and enhancing “proactive” tools to spot problems.
Yet Amazon’s sellers’ tools sometimes help, rather than hinder, the listing of banned items, The Markup found.
When we opened a new seller account and started listing a bong for sale, Amazon suggested we list it as a vase in home decor. We never posted it.
Last month, we successfully listed two banned items for sale: an AR-15 10-round magazine and an AR-15 armorer’s wrench. We removed them within minutes of confirming they had posted. We were able to evade detection by Amazon’s automated filters by purchasing a universal product code for the magazine and by both avoiding specific keywords and miscategorizing the items.
The listings went up even though we had no seller history and had already twice been prohibited from listing the same items using more precise descriptions.
Graham declined to comment on why we were able to post these items but said Amazon’s sellers’ tools “suggest listing categories to help sellers easily categorize their products, but sellers are responsible for choosing the correct category, as they know their products best.” He also declined to comment on why the tools suggested an incorrect product category for listing bongs.
Other media have exposed Amazon’s lax product controls, including three reports just last year: a CNN investigation that documented dangerous child car seats, a CNBC report that revealed Amazon was shipping expired food and baby formula, and a Wall Street Journal investigation that found thousands of unsafe, banned, and deceptively labeled products on the site.
Graham said Amazon investigated these “with urgency” and sought to improve systems when needed but gave no specifics.
Consumer advocates say the company isn’t doing enough to protect the public, and regulators need to step in.
“It’s clear there’s not a major prioritization or investment in resources in policing the terms of service or ensuring that prohibited products are not sold,” said Lori Wallach, a director at the nonprofit organization Public Citizen. “It may be more profitable to have the ‘wild, wild west’ of sales, but it’s also much more dangerous for consumers.”
“We categorically disagree with this claim,” Graham replied.
Automating Enforcement
When Rachel Johnson Greer joined Amazon in 2010 as a product safety program manager, she said she found many problematic products for sale, from unapproved treatments of erectile dysfunction to illegal police radar jammers.
“They were up for sale and selling happily away on Amazon,” Greer said.
She said some troubling products were sold directly by Amazon itself, which she and others said relies on a mostly automated purchasing process.
“Ships and sold by Amazon is Amazon. This is how it all started,” said Greer, who worked for the company until 2017. “They built algorithms to figure out which books they needed to buy and then how much.”
It was Greer’s job to put an end to sketchy sales, she said. Her team wrote programs to flag undesirable products and amassed a universe of terms to feed an automated policing system. She said the tool eventually could scan billions of line items in the catalog in about five minutes.
But it proved flawed, she said. The system by its nature was confined to known threats—things it had seen before. Greer said new problems emerged all the time and slipped right through initial safeguards, only to be flagged by customers after something went wrong.
“The biggest problem with Amazon’s system to begin with is that nearly everything is reactive,” she said. “The reality is when you have a system that relies on finding defects per million, that means that there will always be defects.”
She said some third-party sellers devised “clever, tricky ways to list products. And these rules couldn’t catch it because they hadn’t been written by a human who was thinking in clever, tricky ways.”
One current employee of the restricted products team wearily put it like this: “No matter how much we remove, there’s always more.”
Graham did not directly respond to these descriptions of the company’s difficulties in keeping restricted items off the site. Instead, he said more generally that Amazon strives “to make sure that all products in our store are safe” and “we continuously monitor the products sold in our stores.”
Yet we found an unproven treatment to fight cancer with electromagnetic frequencies that is banned by Amazon’s policies—a rife machine—had been on the site for five years. The listing was removed after we contacted Amazon.
While most of the specific banned listings we brought to Amazon’s attention were removed, similar items that we did not report to the company remained live, including some listings by the same third-party sellers.
Many of the sellers of the banned items that we found continued to sell banned products, including Lead and Steel, which sold gun accessories, and another company, which sold a compound that reviewers said they used as injectable drugs. When we asked Amazon about this in follow-up questions, those storefronts disappeared from Amazon.com.
Graham denied that injectable drugs were sold on its platform, saying they were not sold for that purpose but rather marketed for “research” in the listing. Of the two compounds we found, the World Anti-Doping Agency designates one, TB-500, as a “prohibited substance,” and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency warned athletes about the risks of the second one, BPC-157, as not approved for human use. Customer reviews on the listing showed people were injecting the product.
Graham said the company removed the listings and would add them to its banned product list “out of an abundance of caution.” But as of publication, both compounds could be found for sale by other sellers on Amazon.com.
Amazon isn’t the only online retailer that has had to grapple with policing the unruly world of third-party e-commerce, where just about anybody can sell just about anything. Falkowski said he bought some of his drug-making supplies on another site.
Some marketplaces are known for thoroughly reviewing products before they go up.
Apple, which offers mobile apps from third-parties, checks the code before any app or update appears in the App Store, for instance. According to its site, Apple uses a combination of automated systems and hundreds of human experts speaking a total of 81 languages to review them before posting.
“We take responsibility for ensuring that apps are held to a high standard for privacy, security, and content,” Apple’s website states, “because nothing is more important than maintaining the trust of our users.”
Amazon’s users appear to know exactly what they’re buying, even when banned products are lightly disguised.
Lead and Steel listed a gunsmithing tool for an AR-15 as a “paperweight desk organizer,” posting a photo of the vise block holding paper clips and erasers.
Customers joined in on the ruse in reviews. “Helps when you need to do a hands free clean up of your desktop,” wrote one. “Locks items solidly into place, will Load plenty of paper clips or tacks.”
Another customer retorted, “Sorry. I’m not playing along. I can buy AR-15 parts all day on Amazon.”
To go along with the vise block, Amazon’s “frequently bought together” tool suggested other gunsmithing tools, showing at least one of Amazon’s automated systems received signals that it was not an office product.
Graham, the Amazon spokesperson, declined to explain why the items were still for sale, even though the “frequently bought together” tool seemed to recognize they were related to firearms.
Lead and Steel, which declined to be interviewed for this story, had sold at least four dozen vise blocks from that posting since it went up in December, according to reviews, until we reported it to Amazon, which pulled the listing.
On the Hunt for Honey Oil Equipment
Vic Massenkoff, a retired fire investigator from Contra Costa County, Calif. said he tried years ago to get Amazon to take down dangerous equipment—but said he was frustrated by what he sees as the company’s inaction.
He said he’d seen too many fires caused by the process of extracting highly potent hash oil, or “honey oil,” from marijuana using butane and in 2013 decided to investigate where the equipment could be found for sale. He said he found it on Amazon.com.
“There it was lined up, everything from the extraction tubes, to the grams digital scales, to the silicone pads, the silicone containers, to the digital thermometers,” Massenkoff said. “Everything you would need to set up shop.”
When he clicked on a listing for the glass tubes, Amazon’s recommendation engine suggested he buy the other items needed to make and use hash oil. He kept screenshots of the suggestions.
“There is no safe way to make butane honey oil,” he said in an interview.
He said he emailed Amazon from his work email to alert the company to the danger. He still remembers the reply: “Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We have assigned it to someone on our staff to research this.”
He said he got one other email from Amazon and then heard nothing.
Graham, the Amazon spokesperson, declined to say how the company handled Massenkoff’s complaint, for which he said The Markup had provided no “evidence.”
Amazon’s current rules ban the sale of equipment to make hash oil; we were able to find it on the site.
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