January 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Fact-Checking Matt Damon's Promise About Clean Water In Stella Artois Super Bowl Ad : Goats and Soda : NPR
by Gunnar Larson 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/02/02/582664769/fact-checkin… In a new Super Bowl ad, Matt Damon makes a bold promise: Buy a limited-edition Stella Artois chalice and your money will help give a clean water supply to someone in the developing world for five years. The ad, called "Taps," reminds viewers that water is something we take for granted. Around the world, 844 million people do not even have a basic service providing water to their homes, according to the World Health Organization. Matt Damon And Gary White On The World's Water Crisis WORLD Matt Damon And Gary White On The World's Water Crisis "If just 1 percent of you watching this buys [a chalice], we can give clean water to 1 million people," says Damon in the ad. The 30-second spot was purchased by Stella Artois (estimated price tag: $5 million). It's part of an ongoing partnership between the beer giant and Damon's nonprofit group, Water.org, whose mission is to provide access to clean water and sanitation in the developing world. The chalices are sold on Amazon for $13, with $3.13 in proceeds from each purchase going to Damon's charity. The beer glasses are imprinted with designs by artists from India, Mexico and the Philippines, countries where Water.org currently works. Damon's statement about "1 percent of you watching" would add up to roughly 1 million purchases from the Super Bowl audience. According to Water.org, Stella Artois would donate the $3.13 for "up to 300,000 chalices" sold in the U.S. between January 1 and December 31. Sponsor Message And what exactly does that $3 buy? Can it really bring clean water to one person for half a decade? Skepticism surfaced on Twitter. This doesn't explain the correlation between the chalice and the water. Like how could buying one chalice fund all that? To me it just means Stella Artois won't help until we buy something. — Trumpet Wom' (@trumpetgrrrl) January 30, 2018 Even water specialists weren't clear on how the numbers were calculated. To learn more, we interviewed researchers and spokespeople for Water.org What does Water.org do? Despite its name, Water.org doesn't actually provide water to people in the developing world. So your $3 won't go directly toward, say, the delivery of jugs of water or the building of a well. To fulfill its mission, the nonprofit has set up a custom microlending system called WaterCredit. The group partners with financial institutions in developing countries to lend people small amounts of money so they can pay to get water. That might mean buying a faucet and hiring a contractor to tap into water supplies or buying containers to catch rainwater. Children drinking from a makeshift water pipe in a village in the Mindanao island in the Philippines. Jes Aznar/Getty Images Giving people that kind of choice is a good thing, says Annie Feighery, a co-founder of mWater, a digital platform that water nonprofits use to measure the impact of their work. The group has worked with Water.org for four years. For a long time, charities would try to fix a community's water problem by digging wells and then leaving, she says. But the wells would often malfunction and become contaminated within a year, and they cost a lot to maintain. Today, wells are seen as an "old-fashioned approach that we now call the dig-and-ditch model," she says. Although in some cases, wells are still a reasonable option. Families who live miles away from a clean drinking water source can take out a loan to pay for the construction of a deep borehole well, which siphons clean water deep in the ground, or a large container to catch and store rainwater. According to the World Health Organization, harvesting rainwater generally provides good quality water. Is $3 enough to cover those kinds of expenses? Not exactly. When someone buys the chalice from Stella Artois, $3 does indeed go to Water.org. According to Water.org's calculations, that $3 equals five years of clean water for one person in the developing world. To come up with that number, the group counted up the number of people it helped get water from 2014 to 2016 — roughly 3.3 million — and then divided that figure by the sum of the group's organizational costs in the same time period: $42 million. (The data is available in the charity's financial statements on their website.) And the answer is: $12.50 to give one person access to water. In this formula, the infrastructure for their water would last about 20 years. Based on these calculations, the $3 from the Stella Artois chalice, says Water.org, would provide five years of clean water. But that doesn't mean the loans are only $3. In fact, the average loan taken out by a borrower from local financial institutions, in partnership with Water.org, is about $300. According to Water.org, 99 percent of the borrowers pay it back. To date, the group says they have given out 2.2 million loans. When people repay the loan, the money gets lent out to others in the community, creating a multiplier effect, says Julie LaGuardia, a spokesperson for Water.org. "Sometimes in marketing efforts one needs to over-simplify to make reasonable promises to donors, retailers and investors," says John Oldfield, a principal at the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Global Water 2020. "But it's a good appropriate claim for the start of the conversation around clean water." Asked about the discrepancy between the $3 and the $300 figures, Melanie Mendrys, a spokesperson from Water.org, says, "I don't consider that a discrepancy. I know that the $3 does in fact help a woman or a family get access to the money needed to get water or a toilet." She does not think the ad is misleading. "It's an opportunity for people to learn more and once they do they get really excited," she says. "We just reached ten million people who received water or sanitation from our efforts. We know what we're doing is working and we're excited to reach more." And specialists do think the loan is a good approach. "What's novel about WaterCredit is that the loan is being provided for a home improvement," says Jenna Davis, an associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. She has looked at the evidence around the Water.org's business model. A tap or some containers to catch rainwater doesn't sound like much, but it can have a significant impact for low-income families. "In many parts of the developing world, people were paying more for water in a month, for example, buying bottled water, than would be needed to pay a regular monthly bill if they had a piped connection," says Davis. Research has shown that for low-income households, the obstacle to installing the hardware or other connections is the cost, she says. Wouldn't it be more efficient if Stella Artois just gave a few million to Water.org instead of buying a Super Bowl ad? That was another question raised on Twitter: Why couldn't Stella just have forked over the money to Water.org? "It's important to remember that this is a Stella ad just as much, if not more, than a Water.org ad," says Jason Wojciechowski, creative director of Corelab, an agency that runs digital campaigns for nonprofits like Oxfam, Save the Children and Global Witness. Wojciechowski doubts that a Game Day ad alone would rake in a "ton of money" for the charity. The group would need to combine it with aggressive fundraising and social media campaign efforts over a long period of time. But he does think the ad will provide another service to the Super Bowl audience: planting the seed that change is possible. "Showing people that they have agency, responsibility and a role to play," he says. "The idea that there's something people can do to end the water crisis."

1 0

France Financial Regulator Fines London’s H2O €93 Million for Fund Misrepresentations
by Gunnar Larson 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

Check out my new article: https://litigationfinancejournal.com/france-financial-regulator-fines-londo… UK-based H2O Asset Management is under regulatory investigation by the French financial crime enforcement auditors. H2O is accused of breaching financial instrument ownership laws. Pensions and Investments reports that Bruno Crastes (H2O Group CEO) received a €15M penalty, with Vincent Challiey (H2O Group CIO) panelized €3M. Furthermore, regulators assigned €75M in fines for H2O AM totalling €93M or $99MUSD. French assessors claim H2O’s mismanagement yielded significant investor losses. As of June 30, 2022, H2O maintained €12.3B in assets under management. In November, 2020, Natixis Investment Managers elected to cancel a 10 year agreement with H2O, liquidating 50.01% stake ownership in two tranches, immediately capitalizing 26.61%. Natixis plans a six year horizon for complete divestiture. H2O has claimed innocence of wrongdoings, suggesting French authorities issued the group penalty in the absence of fraud or mismanagement by H2O. Deminor announced that it is financing litigation for victims of H2O’s Natixis managed asset fund. Deminor is representing 1,500 individuals on a non-recourse basis. After meeting with French authorities, H2O announced formalizing a reserve allocation to cover the maximum potential fine as a cash flow precaution.

1 0

A protocol for passing cryptographically signed messages around a peer to peer network.
by professor rat 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

Everyone an assassinbird? https://twitter.com/anilsaidso/status/1611519739813310466/photo/1 Reposts not vouched for by unhinged Au journalists

3 3

How does George Bush sleep at night?
by zeynep＠keemail.me 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

https://youtu.be/I-taJf2Ks6U "Mr. Bush, when are you going to apologize for the million Iraqis that are dead because you lied? You lied about weapons of mass destruction, you lied about connections to 9/11,You sent me Iraq to 2003, My friends are dead.Joshua Casteel. You killed people. Because You lied, You need to apologize! Apologize!

1 0

A protocol for passing cryptographically signed messages around a peer to peer network.
by professor rat 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

" . . . Transportation, deliveries, housing, food, finance, energy, infrastructure, governance: all can and should be provided peer-to-peer with no government involvement. . . " You're making sense. And that worries me, Max. Maybe Mong's big ' Fork in the Road ' wasn't just State-capitalist fascism or Cryptoanarchy but a seemingly endless tension between revolutionary decentralization and reactionary re-centralization. I don't plan on going to all the trouble of violently destroying all religions and nation- states only to replace them with MS, IBM, AWS, FB, Google, Hollywood & Tik Tok. But the masses love these fucking convenient behemoths. Michael Corleone - Everytime I try and get out they pull me back!

1 0

Any Bloomberg experts in the house?
by professor rat 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

Bloombergs tiny chip of privacy-death - where is it now? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-u… Reposts not hot Wall St Poop everywhere

1 0

Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin Conf Miami May 18-20 2023
by grarpamp 14 Jan '23

14 Jan '23

https://twitter.com/TheBitcoinConf/status/1613580699369603073 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Welcome to the world’s biggest #Bitcoin conference 🎟 Join us making history in Miami, May 18 - 20, 2023 🌞 Grab your ticket before they run out 👇 Bitcoin b.tc/conference/ Joined December 2018 Tweets 8,269 Following 778 Followers 154,983 Likes 15,886 2,617 Photos and videos Tweets Tweets & Replies Media Search Pinned Tweet The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf 8 Jul 2022 Bitcoin 2023 will be back in Miami Beach one more time! Education, celebration and hyperbitcoinization will once again be on the agenda. Join us May 18-20, 2023. b.tc/conference/bitcoin2023 411 307 71 1,060 101,588 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference retweeted Bitcoin Magazine @BitcoinMagazine 2h $20,000 #Bitcoin 181 216 11 1,512 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf 6h 272 53 396 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf 2h #Bitcoin 2023 ticket prices increase in 7 HOURS 🚨 Lock in our lowest price of the year & join us at the world's largest #Bitcoin conference! TICK. TOCK. NEXT BLOCK. 🎟️👇 bm.b.tc/bitcoin-2023 The Largest Bitcoin Conference | Bitcoin 2023 We’re excited to welcome you back to Miami Beach for Bitcoin 2023! Join us for the world’s largest gathering of bitcoiners as we celebrate another year of progress towards hyperbitcoinization.... b.tc 5 10 The Bitcoin Conference retweeted Bitcoin Magazine @BitcoinMagazine 5h Replying to @BitcoinMagazine @PeterSchiff The Future of #Bitcoin Starts Here #Bitcoin 2023 ticket prices go up TONIGHT at MIDNIGHT! 🎟️👉 bm.b.tc/bitcoin-2023 Feat. @DavidFBailey @Breedlove22 @Martellfox 100 21 5 126 7,298 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf 10h They’re changing the way CPI is calculated again to make it look like inflation is "not that bad" 🚨 47 77 7 344 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf 7h #Bitcoin 2023 ticket prices increase TONIGHT at MIDNIGHT 🚨 Lock in our lowest price of the year & join us at the world's largest #Bitcoin conference! TICK. TOCK. NEXT BLOCK. 🎟️👇 bm.b.tc/b23-tickets The Largest Bitcoin Conference | Bitcoin 2023 We’re excited to welcome you back to Miami Beach for Bitcoin 2023! Join us for the world’s largest gathering of bitcoiners as we celebrate another year of progress towards hyperbitcoinization.... b.tc 8 3 12 The Bitcoin Conference retweeted Bitcoin Magazine @BitcoinMagazine 11h JUST IN: Africa's oldest National Park is mining #Bitcoin to survive loss of revenue amid disease outbreaks and guerrilla attacks 🇨🇩 If it wasn't for Bitcoin, "we would have gone bust" - Virunga National Park Director 🙌 81 369 22 1,666 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference retweeted The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 13 #Bitcoin Winter is HEATING UP in Miami Beach 🔥 Check out our BRAND NEW website & get your tickets before prices increase FRIDAY at MIDNIGHT! 🚨 🎟️👇 b.tc/conference/?utm_medium=… The Largest Bitcoin Conference | Bitcoin 2023 We’re excited to welcome you back to Miami Beach for Bitcoin 2023! Join us for the world’s largest gathering of bitcoiners as we celebrate another year of progress towards hyperbitcoinization.... b.tc 89 35 3 141 The Bitcoin Conference retweeted The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 12 Fiat in Venezuela is so worthless people threw it out with the garbage 🇻🇪 needs #Bitcoin 386 1,410 161 4,347 478,027 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference retweeted The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 12 US CPI 6.5% 🆚 Food at home inflation 11.8% 58 167 11 687 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference retweeted Brandon @BranBTC Jan 12 Join us @ #Bitcoin2023 bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/… Bitcoin 2023: Build Back Bitcoin With every bear market, we can build Bitcoin back stronger than ever. The Bitcoin 2023 conference will be our next chance to do so. bitcoinmagazine.com 59 20 2 96 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 12 Fiat in Venezuela is so worthless people threw it out with the garbage 🇻🇪 needs #Bitcoin 386 1,410 161 4,347 478,027 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 12 #Bitcoin 2023 ticket prices increase TOMORROW at MIDNIGHT! 🚨 Don't miss out on the lowest price of the year! 🎟️ TICK. TOCK. NEXT BLOCK. 🎟️ bm.b.tc/b23-tickets The Largest Bitcoin Conference | Bitcoin 2023 We’re excited to welcome you back to Miami Beach for Bitcoin 2023! Join us for the world’s largest gathering of bitcoiners as we celebrate another year of progress towards hyperbitcoinization.... b.tc 8 5 2 30 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 12 US CPI 6.5% 🆚 Food at home inflation 11.8% 58 167 11 687 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 12 #Bitcoin Winter is HEATING UP in Miami Beach 🔥 Don't miss out - ticket prices increase TOMORROW at MIDNIGHT! 🚨 🎟️ TICK. TOCK. NEXT BLOCK. 🎟️ bm.b.tc/b23-tickets The Largest Bitcoin Conference | Bitcoin 2023 We’re excited to welcome you back to Miami Beach for Bitcoin 2023! Join us for the world’s largest gathering of bitcoiners as we celebrate another year of progress towards hyperbitcoinization.... b.tc 5 1 1 18 The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 12 #Bitcoin Winter is HEATING UP in Miami Beach 🔥 Check out our BRAND NEW website & get your tickets before prices increase FRIDAY at MIDNIGHT! TICK. TOCK. NEXT BLOCK. 🎟️👉 bm.b.tc/b23-tickets 3 10 29 966 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference retweeted Stacy Herbert 🇸🇻🚀 @stacyherbert Jan 12 Miss El Salvador needs to emcee the @TheBitcoinConf In this outfit, of course 🇸🇻🍊💊🚀 13 26 3 249 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference retweeted The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 11 CBDC is slavery, #Bitcoin is freedom 118 238 6 883 Show this thread The Bitcoin Conference retweeted The Bitcoin Conference @TheBitcoinConf Jan 11 #Bitcoin 2023 ticket prices increase FRIDAY at MIDNIGHT! 🚨 Don't miss our lowest price of the year - get your ticket & join us at the world's largest #Bitcoin conference! 🎟️ 👇 b.tc/conference/?utm_source=… 40 42 1 162 Load more

1 0

Cryptocurrency: Fixes Corrupt Monetary Policy, Ends Criminal Poverty, Restores Economics
by grarpamp 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

A Short Essay On Sound Monetary Policy https://mises.org/wire/short-essay-sound-monetary-policy https://mises.org/books/sound_money_salerno.pdf https://mises.org/library/inflation-inferno-i https://mises.org/books/tmc.pdf https://mises.org/humanaction/pdf/HumanActionScholars.pdf This will be brief, appropriate to the topic at hand. It consists of a quote from Milton Friedman found in Joseph Salerno’s outstanding book, Money: Sound and Unsound: If a domestic money consists of a commodity, [such as] a pure gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are very simple. There aren’t any. The commodity money takes care of itself. (emphasis added) Imagine that. If we have sound money, we don’t need the Fed. Or Congress. We just need sound money. End of essay. Postscript: Economist Nouriel Roubini once attacked the gold standard: Roubini raises the following question: If you are on a gold standard, or modified gold standard, what do you do in the event of a bank run—if you don’t have enough gold to fully back the currency? Translated: What happens if the banks have created bogus IOUs for their depositors’ gold? Suggestion: Have them indicted for fraud. Gold doesn’t “back” anything. It is the money. The banks issue IOUs for the money. When they issue more IOUs than they have gold on hand, they’re cheating. Murray Rothbard: In my view, issuing promises to pay on demand in excess of the amount of the goods on hand is simply fraud, and should be so considered by the legal system . . . This is legalized counterfeiting; this is the creation of money without the necessity of production, to compete for resources against those who have produced. In short, I believe that fractional-reserve banking is disastrous both for the morality and for the fundamental bases and institutions of the market economy. Roubini also says that a “gold standard limits the flexibility and range of actions that central banks can take.” He thinks it’s a shortcoming, but that alone should recommend it. At the start of World War I, the belligerent governments went off the gold standard so they could fight the bloodiest war in human history. Gold, since it can’t be created on demand, would have severely limited the “flexibility and range of actions” governments could take. Sound money is not a product of central bank policy decisions. But who cares about sound money when you want to engage in massive human slaughter? More recently, Roubini said, “The world is on a slow-motion train wreck.” The unmolested gold coin standard avoids train wrecks, “Dr. Doom,” by staying on track. A gold standard doesn’t need Roubini. It doesn’t need Jerome Powell. It doesn’t need Congress. It doesn’t need the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. It doesn’t need the WEF, the FOMC, or AOC. It just needs to be left alone. The gold standard “requires nothing else than that the government abstain from deliberately sabotaging it,” Ludwig von Mises wrote in The Theory of Money and Credit. What all the enemies of the gold standard spurn as its main vice is precisely the same thing that in the eyes of the advocates of the gold standard is its main virtue, namely its incompatibility with a policy of credit expansion. The nucleus of all the effusions of the anti-gold authors and politicians is the expansionist fallacy. Credit expansion—inflation—is indispensable to a growing government. >From Human Action: The gold standard removes the determination of cash-induced changes in purchasing power from the political arena. Its general acceptance requires the acknowledgment of the truth that one cannot make all people richer by printing money. The abhorrence of the gold standard is inspired by the superstition that omnipotent governments can create wealth out of little scraps of paper. If wealth could be created out of scraps of paper or their digital equivalent, world poverty would be a thing of the past. Remember, the commodity money takes care of itself—and us too, if we let it.

1 2

Re: A protocol for passing cryptographically signed messages around a peer to peer network.
by professor rat 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

Its hard to explain anarchism to someone - like you, Pete - whose identity appears to revolve around NOT understanding it. But if its not too much to ask would you mind reading some archives and showing some fucking respect?

1 0

2001-3 was the last time 5-VEY ' GovCorp " could have rolled out overt fascism
by professor rat 13 Jan '23

13 Jan '23

They squibbed it and plumped for covert fascism instead - now look where they're heading ( post cryptocurrencies ) https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1613750395465248768/photo/1 Reposts not sapient wisdom from anointed priesthoods

1 0