erebus_rex

The EU [0], the USA [1], The Lima Group [2], and the IACHR [3] have all denounced the Venezuelan election as fraudulent among others. The Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard lists 46 countries total that have issued denunciations and gives a thorough explanation of electoral fraud in Venezuela [4]:

> "Chávez created a political regime based on a concentration of power that allowed him to co-opt the Supreme Tribunal and the National Electoral Council. An example of this was the 2004 recall referendum procedure that was manipulated by Chávez to assure his victory."

> "Maduro was elected in 2013, in a contentious election. After that, electoral malpractices increased, particularly after the Supreme Tribunal decided to dismantle the Venezuelan Congress."

> "in January 2018 the illegitimate national Constituency Assembly decided to convene an early presidential election. The single-party assembly was installed in a clear violation of the Venezuelan Constitution. In any case, according to the Venezuelan Constitution, elections must be called with at least six months’ notice."

>"The national constituency assembly decided to ban the participation of several opposition political parties [...]. In addition, several political leaders were banned, while others were prosecuted or are in exile. The right to participate in public affairs and to be elected was violated."

> "The National Electoral Council’s Directors were appointed by the Supreme Tribunal, and not by the Venezuelan Congress, as established in the Constitution. This facilitated its politicization, as was demonstrated during the 2016 recall referendum against Maduro, which was blocked by the Council."

> "The right to equal opportunities to vote and universal suffrage was violated due to several inconsistencies in the electoral register. This included issues for Venezuelans living abroad: only an estimated hundred thousand Venezuelans [of the 4-5 million exiles] were able to comply with the electoral register."

> "Freedom of opinion and expression has been violated, particularly, since the Constituent Assembly approved an “anti-hate law”, that established ill-defined crimes punished with prison up to twenty years. Criticizing the Government can be considered a hate crime."

> "Several critics stated that the Government used social programs to coerce voters, in violation of the Anti-Corruption Law. For instance, Henri Falcon (Maduro’s main opponent in the election) denounced that Maduro used the “fatherland card” –required to access medicine and food provided by the Government- to coerce voters."

> the 2018 election had a 40% turnout (half the turnout in the previous election but the EIP also notes: "abstention could not be deemed as the cause of Maduro’s “victory”. On the contrary, abstention is the consequence of fraudulent actions that allowed Maduro’s reelection".

It is also worth noting that the one legitimate source Maduro insists on evoking to proclaim the legitimacy of its election is the Carter Center which also issued a statement calling those claims misleading and claiming that "The Carter Center has not observed elections formally in Venezuela since 2004"[5].

As for Bolsonaro, his electorial upset and later actions was met with an Economist cover calling him "Latin America's latest menace" [6], An opinion piece by the Editorial Board calling him "Brazil's Sad Choice"[7], an extended segment by John Oliver [8], an extended segment by Hasan Minhaj specifically about the Amazon in May [9], an entire documentary about his rise to power distributed by Netflix [10]. The numerous articles in major media organizations about these recent fires are part of a long trend of robust (and rightful) scrutiny of Bolsonaro's beliefs from election to administration.

I'd like to emphasize this is not my apology of American diplomacy in Venezuela or of Bolsonaro's administration. I am troubled by Mr. Bolsonaro's medieval worldview and assaults on institutions. I also am worrisome about how much US seems to be flirting with military intervention in Venezuela.

But claiming that (a): the 2018 Venezuelan poll was a "legitimate election" and that (b): Brazil's government "gets no media coverage" is resolutely false and doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

[0]: https://www.dw.com/es/uni%C3%B3n-europea-rechaza-elecciones-... [1]: https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/release/senate-... [2]: https://prodavinci.com/grupo-de-lima-solicita-suspension-de-... [3]: http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2018/112.... [4]: https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/international-blog... [5]: https://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/venezuela-020419.html [6]: https://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2018-09-20/ap-... [7]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/opinion/brazil-election-j... [8]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsZ3p9gOkpY [9]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt8EcSyjPY8

A related concept in microeconomics: The Giffen Good [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

A little off-topic but if you want to give silent cinema a go try Abel Gance's Napoleon. It is a 5 hour epic and incredible technical achievement. Some of the tricks in its bag (like the 3 screen finale) haven't ever been attempted since (as far as I know).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6504eRh5h6M

Takeovers cost time and money to execute (lawyers, consultants, bank fees) beyond just the purchases price. If the deal does not go through it is a loss for the acquirer, hence breakup fees. If the chance of takeover failure is low the acquirer will be willing to accept a smaller insurance.

I wonder if a crash would be good for Bitcoin's price. I think it is a bubble but it seems like an asset that would gain traction in times of fear/uncertainty in the fiat economy.

Can't speak for OP but Tumblr has a pretty big SJW subculture; screenshots from more esoteric or radical discussions get some ridicule on reddit and elsewhere. Check (the equally toxic) subreddit tumblrinaction for a sample of this type of content. I can't tell you how representative that is of the whole site though as I am also not a tumblr user.

I have a feeling jobs on craigslist will say "paid in props" now rather than "paid in exposure".

fwiw I did this and it worked for me. It can take more than two weeks and if you login the process is interrupted. A good bet is to ask your friends when your messages appear as "facebook user". After that my login didn't work anymore.

NO it is not. Inflation does not mean growing money supply. It means money supply growing faster than the real economy that transacts on that money. Bitcoin money supply may be growing but not fast enough to accomodate the demand. So it is deflating.

> There really are many more units, with the option of increasing the divisibility past eight decimal places in the future.

You are still missing the point. It is not divisibility that makes bitcoin unsuitable as a spending currency, it is the fact that its price keeps rising. Imagine if you are presented with two coins one that historically inflates and another that deflates and are asked to spend one and hold the other. Which do you pick? An inflating coin will always replace a deflating one as a medium of exchange. This is called Gresham's law.

A coin with a fixed supply will never be suitable for daily transaction because the demand for currency isn't fixed (due to economic and population growth).

The Tribeca film Festival happens in NY :)

> Debt is primarily a political obligation

This is question begging to say the least. Political obligation [0] is "the moral duty to obey the law". Debt is money owed to someone [1]. Is that a political obligation? Yes, if the laws concern themselves with debts. But what if the law didn't concern itself with debts do you cease to owe money to someone? Not if they are able to enforce the contract of the debt in some other manner.

> Banks are simply professional lenders. If the transaction were purely numeric and not political they'd be peripheral to the economy instead of central to it.

Yes, state intervention in money markets is of monumental importance in achieving the system we have now. But it wasn't always like this and those systems were far from peripheral [2]. Free banks put themselves in debt every time they issued currency and the state was absent from the interactions.

To clarify, I'm not advocating against the state's importance in defending debt money. The free banking days of multiple competing notes was one of volatility and disastrous crashes. What we have now is strictly better than before. But to say that fiat currency "comes from the state" as OP did is simply not a historical fact. Period.

0: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/ 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking

How do you explain free banking then? Banks issued their own notes (fiat debt instruments) to gold depositors. This was not a good system in the end, which is how central banking and the national note as the only legal currency arose. But it lasted anywhere between 20-100 years in most countries. I too think the state has a role in defending its currency but saying they invented debt money does not square up with history.

Could someone explain why this would dilute voting power?

Voting power of an investor = votes held by investor / total votes

While the dividend will slash the economic ownership of my class A stock, that stock still has the same voting power because the number of votes and distribution of those votes has not changed.

Am I missing something?

Most central banks in the world do a lot of open market operations to keep the economy in check. It is how they affect inflation, interest and exchange rates.

Most cryptos are still commodity currency; the commodity is computation. Because we don't decide how many coins get "minted" our ability to affect the money supply is reduced. So we're castrating one of our major interventional instruments.

Practicality isn't the issue. During the Gold standard, the bars were kept in vaults and we traded in convertible paper notes. The mint could always print notes of smaller or larger denominations if needed, but couldn't print more than it had bars to convert to. And that is the problem.

Does anyone know if this company has any relation to Coin (recently sold to Fitbit)? I ask because they use literally the same actor in their video (and the style is identical to boot) [0].

Did a quick google search to see if maybe they had the same co-founders but no dice.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Sx34swEG0

EDIT: Apparently the actor runs a production company that makes commercials for start ups and he stars in many of them[1]. It is actually quite surreal.

[1] http://sandwichvideo.com/

In 1953 Germany had half its WWI debt erased to rebuild the country and curtail violent attitudes.

Also, Greece did not dig themselves in this hole alone. Its a little telling that so many EU members kept lending to them despite ample signs of fiscal irresponsibility.

I agree with the general gist of your argument but you can't treat firms and nations and equals in this case. Greece's problem reflects a deeper concern of international debt structures and the concerns of the union against those of member nations.

Some commenters are afraid this kid was pushed way too hard and did not have time to learn proper social skills, play sports, get a holistic education in the humanities.

This all might be true but the article makes it very clear how precocious this kid is. I don't think his parents were trying to push him. If anything they seemed to struggle to get him the things that he needed to succeed.

Some people are just so laser focused on their desires that you just have to let them do their thing. I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too.

Could Google simply say to creators: "if you sign this you won't get any revenue sharing from red users but you'll still get your quota from free users."

Gives them a financial incentive to sign up but allows them to opt out without making google eat the loss.

Getting employers to accept online bachelors is a lot harder than masters. Most jobs have bachelors requirements and an online degree will likely get flagged. But for a masters it can work as an added bonus.

I was a longtime user of evernote but recently gave up. The webclipping tool was phenomenal but the notetaking interface was so and so (their desktop app was also poorly built which made things worse). After awhile, onenote took care of my notetaking needs and pocket of my linksaving needs.

I think this was a great part of why evernote faltered. They just became a repo/dump of user crap. People didn't care to engage with the platform and therefore did not care to find out what extra value it could give them, thus preventing them from converting to paid users.

I'll add that I intensely dislike his answer but felt compelled to link it due to its honesty and debate inspiring nature. But here goes: I think it is question begging to call CS a new liberal art without qualifying why (many people go for CS precisely because its practical). And its also unfair to think that a person cannot be intellectually devoted to a practical field (law is a pragmatic degree yes but its a love affair for a supreme court judge, why not the same for a business professor?) I think its more anti-intelectual to rank disciplines based on merit.

Because they make their takedown process incredibly longwinded and kafkaesque. Not only did Destin promptly file his claim, but many of his fans repeatedly contacted facebook and Bauer about it.

The fact that it took so long for either to even acknowledge the problem existed is evidence that facebook has little incentive to speed up the takedown process to a reasonable bureaucracy.

The inherent role of finance is NOT to hide risk. Its role is to connect people who have one type of asset they no longer want with someone who does.

In that way bankers are just like lawyers and accountants. You pay someone to do things you don't have the time to do (or even learn how to do) so you can focus on your job. Its division of labour at the macroeconomic level and everyone benefits from specialisation.

Now, I agree that contemporary finance is bloated with opacity and that banks do benefit from this via corruption (tax code and compliance reform are needed ASAP). But its disingenuous to say that the value of finance is entirely "placebo".