November 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Run on a Major Crypto Exchange; Hurricane Forecasted to Hit Third Most Populous State; Billionaires Behaving Badly
by Gunnar Larson 09 Nov '22

09 Nov '22

Increasingly, Americans are telling us that they no longer listen to the news – because they feel it is a threat to their peace of mind and wellbeing. That might be a short-term fix but working diligently each day to make one’s society less dystopian is likely a better long-term plan. Everything crazy and corrupt and Orwellian about life in the United States in this era of corporate and billionaire control feels like it is coming to a head today – for better or worse. Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who has sluiced tens of millions of dollars into this year’s elections <https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/07/crypto-billionaire-sam-bankman-fried…> (hoping to make crypto more dangerous than it already is) is today watching a major run on his crypto exchange, FTX. According to analytics firm, Nansen, in the past 24 hours FTX has witnessed an outflow of $653 million <https://twitter.com/nansen_ai/status/1589859261089054721?cxt=HHwWgoCgweKkqJ…> . Reuters reports the problem like this: “Crypto enthusiasts had raised questions on Twitter last week about FTX’s token, following a report from crypto news website CoinDesk <https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sam-bankman-fried…> about a leaked balance sheet from Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried that maintains close ties with FTX. “According to CoinDesk’s report, much of Alameda’s $14.6 billion in assets are held in FTX’s token, which is called FTT. Reuters was unable to independently verify the accuracy of the report or the origin of the leaked balance sheet.” Those rumors led to Changpeng Zhao, the founder of competing crypto exchange, Binance, dumping the FTT token and Tweeting about it <https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1589283421704290306?s=20&t=pJ6OZCED7S…>. As of 7:17 a.m. ET this morning, the FTT token had lost 22.6 percent of its value in the past 24 hours. For a quick course in everything you need to know about crypto, see our report: Over 1,600 of the Brightest Scientific Minds in Technology Have Signed a Letter Calling Both Crypto and Blockchain a Sham <https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/07/over-1600-of-the-brightest-scientifi…>. Despite this, crypto billionaires are still allowed to infuse their ill-gotten gains into U.S. elections and put their sycophants in Congress. Then there is the forecast that Subtropical Storm Nicole <https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2022-11-08-hurricane-tropical-sto…> may become a hurricane and hit Florida’s heavily populated East Coast sometime within the next 24 to 48 hours. This news comes as the folks on the Gulf Coast of Florida are still cleaning up from the devastating effects of Hurricane Ian. This latest news may impact voter turnout in Florida, the third most populous state in the U.S., as people have to choose between putting up hurricane shutters or going to the polls. Donald Trump won Florida in the 2020 presidential election – despite the fact that the state is heavily impacted by climate change and Trump removed the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord on June 1, 2017, after barely four months in office. Trump was following the demands of a Koch Industries fossil fuels front group, Freedom Partners, which provided the Trump administration with a list of environmental regulations <https://kochdocs.org/2019/06/06/freedom-partners-roadmap-repeal/> it wanted gutted. Freedom Partners threatened those lawmakers who didn’t get on board, writing that “Freedom Partners will hold lawmakers who oppose regulatory relief accountable for their positions.” Why did Koch want to gut environmental regulations? Koch Industries has been serially charged, including a criminal conviction <https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2001/April/153enrd.htm>, with dangerously polluting the environment. On January 13, 2000, the Justice Department and the EPA announced the largest civil fine ever imposed against Koch Industries to resolve claims related to its “more than 300 oil spills <https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/koch-industries-inc-oil-spills-settlement> from its pipelines and oil facilities in six states.” The company agreed to pay a $30 million civil penalty and spend $5 million on environmental projects. Koch Industries is headed by a billionaire, Charles Koch, who has notoriously set up front groups to get his way in Congress for the past forty years. He’s also branched out to getting his way on the U.S. Supreme Court <https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/03/the-money-trail-to-the-ginni-thomas-…> . Another U.S. billionaire behaving badly is Elon Musk, who just chaotically fired half of Twitter’s staff <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/technology/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs.html> after taking the company private last week. Musk is also Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, the electric car manufacturer which has a Code of Business Ethics which Musk violates on a regular basis with seeming impunity from the publicly-traded company’s Board of Directors (one of the Board members is his brother, Kimbal Musk). The Tesla Code of Business Ethics requires the following: “Tesla has been, is and always aspires to be a Do the Right Thing company—in other words, engaging in conduct that you and your family would be proud of.” And this: “Each of us has a responsibility to maintain trust and protect Tesla’s reputation.” Despite that code, Musk has smoked marijuana on a widely circulated podcast <https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/elon-musk-smokes-weed-on-joe-rogan-podcast.…> and called the Securities and Exchange Commission “bastards” at a TED conference <https://nypost.com/2022/04/18/elon-musk-lied-about-taking-tesla-private-law…> because it charged Musk in 2018 with fraud for falsely Tweeting that he had secured financing for taking Tesla private at $420 per share. The SEC case was quickly settled <https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226> with Musk and Tesla each paying $20 million in penalties. Musk was also removed as Tesla’s Chairman as part of the SEC settlement and the Board was forced to “establish a new committee of independent directors and put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk’s communications.” Despite this 2018 settlement with the SEC, Musk Tweeted a link to an unconscionable false claim <https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-pelosi-gay-prostitute/> about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, bringing the man who attacked him home from a gay bar. Musk eventually removed the Tweet. The Capitol Police, which had surveillance cameras on the Pelosi home, have video of the attacker breaking into the Pelosi home and the San Francisco Police have video of the man attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer as they arrived at the scene. Tesla’s stock has fallen 50 percent year-to-date versus 20 percent for the S&P 500. Inevitably, shareholders pay the price for unaccountable CEOs just as citizens pay the price for unaccountable Presidents who foment an attack on the seat of government and steal Top Secret documents ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Pam Martens <alerts(a)wallstreetonparade.com> Date: Tue, Nov 8, 2022, 10:01 AM Subject: Once Daily Digest Email To: <alerts(a)wallstreetonparade.com> Wall Street On Parade has posted a new item: Welcome to Election Day from Hell: Run on a Major Crypto Exchange; Hurricane Forecasted to Hit Third Most Populous State; Billionaires Behaving Badly https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/11/welcome-to-election-day-from-hell-ru… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 8, 2022 ~ Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Increasingly, Americans are telling us that they no longer listen to the news – because they feel it is a threat to their peace of mind and wellbeing. That might be a short-term fix but working diligently each day to make one’s society [...] Quietly, the Fed Releases Its Financial Stability Report and Lines Up a Scapegoat https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/11/quietly-the-fed-releases-its-financi… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 7, 2022 ~ One minute after the stock market closed on Friday, the Federal Reserve mailed out a link to its newly-released Financial Stability Report to folks who have signed up to get press releases from the Fed. For those of you who have been reading our reports on the Fed [...] If the hyperlink above is not active, please paste it into your browser and press "Go" to read the full article. You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. If you ever wish to stop receiving these emails from us, just email me at pamk741(a)aol.com with the word "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. Best regards, Pam Martens, Editor, Wall Street On Parade

1 0

Happy birthday Aaron Swartz!
by zeynep＠keemail.me 08 Nov '22

08 Nov '22

Aaron Swartz: the guy who helped to make the internet world a better placeThe guy who made RSS, CC (creative commons license), web.py framework, and yes also co-founder of Reddit and he died at 26 aaron swartz He was very talented from a very young age. He was doing algebra and number stuff at his 4-5 really. and at 6 he saw the computer for the first time. And he knows the power of programming and at age 10-11 he was able to code like a pro. at age 12 he made theinfo.org. the site where people can contribute anything yes like Wikipedia and this site was invented before Wikipedia by 12 yo boy He always criticizes the school because he thinks why I’m learning those things which are not important to me and if it is then I’ll read the book and gain the info. At 14, Mr. Swartz helped create RSS, he was also involved in the Markdown publishing format and the organization Creative Commons. aaron swartz He also made the Infogami a tool for quickly building customizable, visually interesting, wiki-enabled websites. later it gets merged with Reddit aaron swartz Ok one thing that changed the Aaron's life. He wanted to make government and academic data available for free to the public. Yes, they are selling those data, yes someone’s work. And that’s not the right thing. So he buys a package to access data and make it public. To download all academic data from a database called JSTOR from MIT, He made a script to download. MIT blocks Aaron's IP because of a lot of traffic but he reassigns the IP and starts again but it doesn't last long. After that, the FBI started investigating it for a short time. But Aaron really wanted to publicize the data and help people to further research. So he decided to go to the server room and he put his laptop and hard disk to download all the data. Some people of MIT noticed who put this stuff here, so they installed CCTV cameras over there. You can see the clip here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL0DQdbs7yQ So MIT got proof and In 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT network in an unmarked and unlocked closet and setting it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT. Federal prosecutors, led by Carmen Ortiz, later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead by suicide in his Brooklyn apartment And that’s how we lose our hero. He just wanted an open-source world where he wanted to put both sides the people. Correct me for information. You can watch a documentary on YouTube, titled: The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

1 0

Cryptocurrency: Voluntaryism Will Win
by grarpamp 08 Nov '22

08 Nov '22

Voluntaryism, Crypto Crowdfunding, Free Open and Prediction Markets, Charity, AnCap, AnSoc, Communes, Free Speech, Freedom, and more... whatever, it's all doable. https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1588606403866144768 Governments are now obsolete. You now have the tools, the communication, the philosophies, needed to build and live free and at peace without them. And it's coming sooner than anyone thinks. Don't ever let anything get you down or stop you :)

1 0

Cpunks: Twitter Takeover Not New, But A Lot Of Things Could Be...
by grarpamp 08 Nov '22

08 Nov '22

Narrative is now all about REAL-ID and Verification, an outcome readily knowable by all with a brain for prediction. See its either we must "know" who you are, or you get oppressed. Nothing new under the Sun radiating from these GovCorpPol powers. Twitter's doing it wrong. Nyms, VPNs, onions, no-phoners, no-emailers, no-DNA, no-photos, etc... these should all have ability to reach highest levels of game play. As before, these companies are all chumping out to least-cost least-effort brain-dead knee-jerk solutions, and a lot of it is intentional, especially the ID. Social Credit Score, linked to Physical World Control, 1984, no longer just a book from some famous author, but real. These platforms have more than enough money and code to accept behavior deposits in crypto, cash, gold, etc. More than enough to pay turks and bots to kill stupid bots. More than enough coders and "AI" to write heuristic algos to recognize and differentiate Nyms as unique individuals, to upgrade Nyms based on time, interaction, deposit, flags, voice calls, off record visit to the local federating authenticator of human life form, dropgangs, etc. Innumerable ways and solutions... But they don't. Either they're truly cheap and/or brain dead, or they're Evil. Freedom loving cypherpunks must continue developing and deploying alternatives and counters to that mess. It's the only way, because the mess won't change itself, and will never freely grant you actual freedom. Target supplanting twitter uber amazon dating for-sale lists, whatever you can that's interesting and/or marginally doable with crypto-p2p apps, Internet with fiber optic RF, etc. Have fun :)

1 0

Musk Telling People To Vote Republican
by l0phtydreams 08 Nov '22

08 Nov '22

I don't think it should be any surprise that he can't help himself but run his mouth on his newly acquired play thing. He is, after all, Trump-lite when it comes to social media posting. That said, Zuckerberg threw hundreds of millions of Zuckbucks at the 2020 election in dubious (and pro Democrat) ways and Bezos is in bed with the CIA, so comparitively I would take the social media magnate that wears his opinions on his sleeve in his own words instead of shilling for those very people evidently coordinating fascistic censorship on said platforms for strictly Democrat gain in the shadows. Either way, can we please pump the brakes on the Technocracy creep? Sent with [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/) secure email.

1 0

[ot][spam][crazy] crazy confused ramblings inspired by douglas's blog
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 07 Nov '22

07 Nov '22

https://douglaslucas.com/blog/category/locations/belarus/ > silly word golzar from “goals are.” In the middle of the night, we’d point at the red lights of > faraway radio towers—Golzarian outposts, you see, from the strange species of Golzarians > who perhaps knew the answers to life’s mysteries—and try to drive to them in those days > before GPS on smartphones. what are goals? goals are a state of reality defined with precise fuzzy logic that mutates as new information develops. goals are defined by the act of pursuing them: a behavior that was common prior to the takeover of your country in past decades. nowadays, goals are mysterious things studied in elite towers, such that we might someday understand how it is possible to not meet them. - I have a lot of cognitive data confusion around goals that hopefully can be extensively diatribed. I and many other people have a unique mental health issue, where attempting to pursue a goal consciously ("willpower") can stimulate inhibition of it. This leads me to discovering consciousness around all sorts of parts of cognition like steps that lead to tasks, and various subtle feelings relating to planning around a goal or holding information that is useful for meeting it.

1 19

ANARCHIST PRISONERS IN BELARUS - I blame Wikileaks
by professor rat 07 Nov '22

07 Nov '22

On 10 October the trial of Anastasia Kukhta started in Minsk City Court. She is accused of participation in protests (Article 342), calling for sanctions or actions aimed at damaging the national security of the Republic of Belarus https://abc-belarus.org/?p=15392&lang=en Reposts call to arms

5 7

Re: ANARCHIST PRISONERS IN BELARUS - I blame Wikileaks
by professor rat 07 Nov '22

07 Nov '22

I enjoy sloppy and irrelevant generalities and unsubstantiated scuttlebutt as much as the next punk. One thing about Belarus and this list though - that has some criminal history attached. One-hit-wonder, REASON of all shithole corpse-media outlets exposed this! https://reason.com/2011/02/03/julian-assange-and-israel-sham/ Reposts not c-punks turned collaborator-journo's

1 0

The foul and vile stench of ' Natural Rights Anarchy "
by professor rat 07 Nov '22

07 Nov '22

>>> rights don't exist -- and definitely not as absolutes -- except insofar as the state and other political institutions "discover" them and then enforce them, depending on what is on offer in terms of policies for extending state rule. none of the ones usually promoted (women's, human, voting, free speech, self-determination, etc) are recognized as inherent in any human culture (which is why attempts to make one or more of them universal are always met with scorn and protest). the entire edifice of rights, duties, and obligations is based on hierarchy, domination, moralism, and enforcement. their invocation has no place in anarchist discourse -- except as examples of weak spots to attack the foundations of hierarchy and domination. . . . " http://www.spunk.org/library/otherpol/critique/sp001283.txt Reposts not Garofalo garbage

1 0

" Gentlemen! You can’t parody in here! This is the Comedy Town Square! "
by professor rat 07 Nov '22

07 Nov '22

META boss needs to weigh in now there’s a comedy riot on Twitter - Mark?

1 0