On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Chaka Khan and Yolanda Adams will converge in D.C. for the #HaveHerBack rally in honor of Judge Jackson’s path to the Supreme Court nomination and her time as a public defender prior to her current role.https://t.co/5xZbJwYPa3
— theGrio.com (@theGrio) March 26, 2022
Not seeing much else about this event, but I’m probably looking in the wrong places:
… This coming Monday (March 28), Sen. Warren, funk and soul legend Chaka Khan, and gospel great Yolanda Adams will converge in Washington, D.C. for the “Have Her Back” tribute in honor of Judge Jackson’s path to the nomination and her time as a public defender prior to her current role on the bench of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Sen. Warren will also shine a light on the role that public defenders play in the legal system, pointing to law professionals who represent individuals that otherwise cannot afford to secure representation. Along with performances from Khan and Adams, guests will also hear from National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) President & CEO April Frazier Camara and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) Executive Director Lisa Monet Wayne.
The ”Have Her Back” tribute was produced by Demand Justice, NLADA, and NACDL, along with event partners Black Lives Matter, MoveOn, and United State of Women.
Meanwhile, Jerry Brito, “Executive director of @coincenter, the DC-based crypto think tank”, with more of a comment than a question…
why is the person who set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau against a scam https://t.co/Nia3sC2LQw
— self diagnosed Havana Syndrome (@MenshevikM) March 25, 2022
Remember when this entire site spent a week jeering at her because she said the GameStop pump and dump was a scam preying on gullible idiots and then a bunch of gullible idiots lost their entire life savings in it and everyone just moved on like they were never wrong about that https://t.co/1LorTBQxUE
— Syndicalist Weedle Collective (@Weedledouble) March 26, 2022
Yeah sure she’s against money laundering, pyramid schemes, and environmental pollution, BUT https://t.co/bPGBWAmipI
— Tomato Discourse (@ilpomodoro2) March 25, 2022
Nuh-uh, she’s just *jealous*, cuz we’re so *awesome*!
4/ And giving in to this jealous instinct is easy when crypto is associated with their outgroup (i.e. right-wing free-market libertarian ideology). https://t.co/fgKTE9qe6d
— Jerry Brito (@jerrybrito) March 25, 2022
zhena gogolia
God, those crypto tweets are stupid.
Baud
That’s all I need to hate crypto.
raven
My high school buddy wrote Ain’t Nobody
Quincy wanted it for Thriller but Hawk was injure band and had promised it to her! You can sure hear how it would have fit.
Ken
I’m having terrible flashbacks to one or two public planning meetings….
Ken
@Baud: The horrible environmental impact, complete lack of any societal value, and inherent pyramid-scam nature of the bubble are just icing on the cake?
Steeplejack
I love that Jerry Brito is the executive director of a “D.C.-based crypto think tank.” So much to unpack.
Betty
@Baud: Aw, the victims. How sad.
Another Scott
Re: the crypto tweets –
? If it weren’t for bad takes, I’d have no takes at all
Woooah! ?
Another example:
Tracey is a pox. Twitter is a pox. It’s the Gong Show of communication. It’s all about the clicks and the Engagement, not about actual quality or improving understanding.
(via EclecticBrotha)
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
The Brito Bandito?
//
Ken
@Steeplejack: That title often means “In charge of
bribinglobbying Congress”. It’s probably a harder job when you’re trying to give them a thumb drive with a crypto token instead of suitcases full of cash.Baud
@Ken:
Those things hardly distinguish crypto from Baud! 20XX!
No, it’s the libertarians.
laura
@Another Scott: Why oh why must we keep hearing about Micahel Tracey without the caveat that he’s already dead having been murdered at the hands of Maxine Waters? Crypto- computer generated beanie babies. No non-FDIC banking for this gal.
Uncle Cosmo
Craptocurrency. Shitcoin.
Calouste
@Baud: I’ve come to realize over my life that ideology means that first you have the solutions, and then you start looking for problems to apply them to.
Another Scott
Relatedly, … GovExec:
More at the link.
You mean privatizing essential government functions doesn’t work well??! This is my shocked, shocked face.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Baud:
I keep confusing crypto with Krypto, Superman’s dog.
Both can take away all your savings faster than a speeding bullet.
MisterForkbeard
@zhena gogolia: This applies to just about everything related to crypto, yeah :(
Baud
@Calouste:
Astute.
germy
journalamism
mrmoshpotato
What? Do they brainstorm more stupid names for fake currency?
Oogaboogabelugacoin!
germy
@Brachiator:
Krypto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jkw2JPCl18
debbie
@Steeplejack:
What’s to think about crypto? ??♀️
mrmoshpotato
@germy: How can this idiot afford to go to Poland just to be an asshat on Twitter?
debbie
@germy:
Not one of the replies shows any kind of support for his efforts. He’s like a satire of himself.
James E Powell
@laura:
Thanks. I usually forget it was Tracey. That anyone pays any attention to him is evidence of how bad our political discourse is.
germy
@mrmoshpotato:
Substack been very very good to him
Benw
Liz Warren fucking slaps!
different-church-lady
A whole lot of crypto-utopians are willfully blind to the idea that crypto is a scam. Even if they don’t want it to be a scam, they refuse to see how it’s used as a scam, because it ruins their fantasy.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott: Careful here, Scott. Today you’re gonna have to defend your opinions on Twitter, but three years from now you’re going to have to choose between endless “I was rights” or just smug silence while everyone else wails about how it’s ruined everything.
different-church-lady
@MisterForkbeard: And tweets.
laura
@germy: He’s dead Jim.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
For every crypto-utopian, there are a bunch of scammers. And for every scammer there are a bunch of dupes, many of whom think they’re smart enough to be the scammers themselves.
different-church-lady
Sociopaths gotta sociopath.
Kay
Jake Holcomb is my hero.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
I don’t know that crypto is totally a scam. From what I hear from tax preparers, a lot of people think that it is magical money, and not reportable on tax returns.
They are shocked to find that some basic rules apply.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
It’s not. It’s only about 93% scam. But with a little more work the gap can be closed.
debbie
@different-church-lady:
Are you saying that crypto is the TFG of currencies???
Shalimar
@Brachiator: Capital gains from those 3 bitcoins they bought a decade ago for $5 each and forgot about are gonna be a nightmare.
Brachiator
This is insane, and the notion that wages are bad influences too much economic thinking and reporting.
We have seen a lot of positive reports about jobs. But one thing that the pandemic highlighted was that there is a large class of workers who have jobs that don’t pay enough. It’s dumb that economic reporting would talk about a booming economy based on job reports if people cannot afford to pay for food and housing.
It was also good to see that even though the official minimum wage has not been uniformly increased, it was still the case that some employers were paying premiums to keep and hire workers.
I don’t see any business reporters suggesting that CEOs should take a cut in pay or that profits should be reduced.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
RE: I don’t know that crypto is totally a scam.
The fun thing is though even when it is a total scam, a person still might have to show taxable income.
That is a scam and a burn.
zhena gogolia
1776 is a terrible movie, but Howard da Silva is really good.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@zhena gogolia: You’re totally right, but how is this related to crypto? Just wondering :-)
StringOnAStick
For all of you wondering at why we are where we are, Heather Cox Richardson gets to the meat of it here:
zhena gogolia
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): It’s not, I’m just bored with crypto and watching 1776.
Brachiator
@StringOnAStick:
That’s a hell of a confusing right turn.
So the Constitution and the government is inherently defective because it is secular. And because human beings are flawed, religious authority must rule.
And who decides who holds the whip?
lowtechcyclist
Indeed! I know IANA economist, but the logic seems pretty straightforward: if people in the lower income levels have more money, they’ll spend it, because at any given time they’ve got things they need to buy that they can’t afford to. And that spending will directly boost the economy.
Meanwhile if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos has more money, it’ll mostly just accumulate, because anyone with tens or hundreds of billions of dollars can’t possibly spend more than a fraction of it, and even finding ways to invest it that produces more goods and services is a challenge. And when they do spend or invest it, it could be anywhere in the world; it’s no more likely to happen here in the U.S. than anywhere else. So their having more money really doesn’t do much for anyone but them.
@StringOnAStick:
So in addition to all the other ways that Barr has demonstrated that he is a vile person, he’s also a theocrat. Swell.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I think my own attitudes on cryptocurrency were solidified by: 1) the standard bearer, Bitcoin, being deflationary by design; 2) the attitudes of crypto evangelists, including their insistence that everyone should establish mechanisms for using Bitcoin for purchases and sales; 3) the Ponzi-like investment pattern that the evangelists were pushing. The environmental issues were just the last nail in the coffin for me.
Matt
Speaking of Ponzi schemes, I give you a crypto “investment” claiming to return 916,747% APY:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/tol3i3/totallynotaponzi_yield_zilla_offers_nearly_one/
We’re surely reaching peak “greater fool” with trash like this.
lowtechcyclist
I’ve said this before, but it really is in the way that you use it.
Are there idiots like Tracey on Twitter? Sure! There are idiots like Tracey in the U.S. Congress, sad to say.
But there are also a lot of bright, knowledgeable people on Twitter. One way you can see this is that every morning, Anne Laurie brings us a thread that keeps us up to date on the state of the pandemic, and that thread is mostly a collection of tweets.
I follow a handful of people – less than a dozen – who are knowledgeable in areas that interest me, and have better things to do, themselves, than to get into Twitter fights. And I basically never look at my own timeline; I’ve bookmarked their timelines, and I read what they have to say. I’ve learned a lot this way.
And Twitter fights? Nobody’s making you get into Twitter fights, and nobody’s making you stay in one either. And if a combative soul like me can largely stay out of them, most people can if they want to.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
Yep. But it’s crazy that business reporters talk about the US economy being consumer driven, but then quote economists who claim that people having wages is inflationary. I guess if I were an economist I would not see the contradiction.
And the hot desire to cut wages reminds me of another piece of nonsense. During the pandemic right wingers would constantly complain about people receiving the extra unemployment supplement. They would accuse people of lazily staying home. But the extra benefits meant that a lot of people didn’t have to take the first job that came along.
Conservatives deeply hated this. They want people to work, but they want to control wages and opportunity.
This is crap. I like that Biden talks about fighting for higher wages. But I also think it an absolute good that the 2021 tax credits are putting more people into the pockets of lower and middle income families.
Anyway, that’s my little soap box on this issue.
I think that both these people are re-investing in their businesses and starting new ones. This is an economic good.
And throwing away money on super yachts.
But I think I also have read that some of these people take out very low interest loans against their wealth, and use this for spending without having to reduce their assets.
Calouste
@Brachiator:
Like slavery really, without the actual chains.
LivinginExile
@lowtechcyclist: That’s exactly how I use twitter. A good source for information if you follow the right people, and I don’t even see any of the ignorant shit.
StringOnAStick
@Brachiator: My jaw dropped IRL when I read that. Very illuminating.
StringOnAStick
@Brachiator:
Isn’t this their favorite way to avoid paying taxes?
Brachiator
@StringOnAStick:
RE: But I think I also have read that some of these people take out very low interest loans against their wealth, and use this for spending without having to reduce their assets.
Yep. There is a good CNBC story on tax avoidance strategies here.
VOR
@Another Scott: Not a historian and it has been awhile since I read about it, but I seem to recall France tried outsourcing government revenue collection prior to the French Revolution. And it worked badly.
prostratedragon
As they say, obligatory, from Chaka Khan, written by Ashford and Simpson.
MisterDancer
This is so bizarre a take I hardly know where to being.
Here — you know where I picked up tons of my historical awareness? From reading Academicians on Twitter.
You know where I get a pulse of my fellow Black community’s opinions and concerns? From Twitter. This post would have been a major haul w/o people on Twitter pointing me to sourcing.
So, too, on Trans issues; I couldn’t have made this post without the help of a lot of Trans activists I follow on Twitter. And that’s with me having multiple Trans friends.
All those, and many more, have led to not only a flood of books I’m struggling to get time to read, but a ton of lived experiences I would never have known of, otherwise.
Twitter is a tool. Yes, it’s dodgy and weird and it’s support is sub-par, but there is also so much good, so much Truth, to be found there. There’s a reason so many posts here include Twitter embeds, and it’s not just out of laziness.
I don’t love it. But I sure as heck respect it — far moreso, the work millions put into making it worth my while to read.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist:
For now.
One of the fundamental differences between Facebook and Twitter is that Twitter is not relentless about driving you towards conflict in the name of “engagement”. It’s pretty clear to me that Zuckerberg secretly relishes the culture wars, because he knows it’s one of the ways to make his platform addictive. I dunno if Twitter is run by sociopaths the same way Facebook is, but if it is, they’re a lot less overt about it.
Another Scott
@MisterDancer:
I guess my job here is done, then. ;-)
Twitter is intentionally limited in the number of characters that can be used in a message (with exceptions for URLs and some other things). It rewards speed. It, like FB, rewards things that are “popular” and “edgy” and “exciting”. It’s horrible for clearly imparting ideas – especially ideas that require nuance.
Yes, it is a tool.
Yes, it can be used for good (e.g. CherylRofer does a good job with it). I don’t have a Twitter account, but I check lots of accounts daily – Popehat, DPRK_news, LOLGOP, dsquareddigest, CherylRofer, CT_Bergstrom, ssurovell, IamHappyToast, and more. But most of the people who use it well don’t do the things that get millions of followers and retweets. They use it to poke fun, or to point to thoughtful, longer pieces that explain all the nuance that Twitter intentionally elides. They make it work in spite of the reward system on the platform, not because of it.
Yes, it’s intentional. Look at the way Jack treated TFG.
My $0.02. :-) Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: To continue beating a dead thread… :-)
(via EclecticBrotha)
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.