Don’t read anything into this music video. It’s the only one I could think with family as the theme.
Which is why I have to bail on you folks today: family. My folks are in town and are now subsuming the entire day here. I’ll try to have a normal post tomorrow, but no guarantees since the folks are here through Thursday. And you surely know how it works when family arrives from out of state — anything can happen.
Speaking of family, this post is worth some discussion:
You can see this at work elsewhere across Europe; they protected the wealthy with peerage and pulled them into royalty.
Like the marriage this past week of Lady Charlotte Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington’s daughter, to Alejandro Santo Domingo, a Colombian investment banker.
Two hundred years ago this would have been unthinkable, a scandal; peers did not wed the trade class. Apparently wars and the expensive amusements of the idle rich have a way of upending class barriers when capital accrues on the other side of the tracks.
I guess not every family matters. Open thread as usual, play nicely!
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-05-31 10:36:572016-05-31 10:43:05Tuesday Morning: Family
Hope you’re having a pleasant holiday. I feel sorry for many East Coast folks who are wet due to Tropical Depression Bonnie today. We’ve got clear skies, a light breeze out of the northwest and 80F degrees here, which seems odd for Memorial Day in the Great Lakes State.
The pleasantness heightens the contrast of this embedded short film, Robots of Brixton by Kibwe Tavares and FactoryFifteen. It’s a nice example of Afrofuturism, this one blending science fiction, fantasy, and historical nonfiction from perspective of the African diaspora. We are treating technology as we do humans of color — as disposable inconveniences, seeing their frustration as nuisance rather than a angry plea for deeper consideration.
I’ll let you imagine the things I typed and deleted here about the future. That is the entire exercise of futurism — imagining what could be, will be, should be — and it’s not limited to nor should it be defined by the dominant culture. What do you imagine?
And what did they imagine, the ones we memorialize today? Did the future fail, meet, or exceed their expectations?
Friday, you old dog, you. You came back once again, a little worse for wear but alive and kicking. Let’s see what kind of jazzy treat we can cook up for you.
Ah, let’s have some Third Stream (not to be confused with neoliberalists’ Third Way). Music in this not-quite-jazz subgenre walks the line between classical music’s formality and jazz’s improvisational nature. This isn’t chamber jazz — jazz performed on chamber instruments, discussed in a previous Friday Jazz post. Third Stream is composed work heavily influenced by jazz, played by an orchestra.
In the example shared today, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, this is a composition without improv, but with strong jazz and pre-jazz elements. You can hear the pre-jazz particularly well in the piano; by pre-jazz I mean ragtime, using rapid, “ragged” hand movements (note this sound as early as 1:35 in the music video). The example here is a performance of the original composition using a 24-piece jazz band. Do open the video and play at YouTube’s site in order to expand and read the notes accompanying this piece. Compare this version to a performance based on the later arrangement of the same piece for a full orchestra (ex: Leonard Bernstein and New York Philharmonic, compare ragtime-like keyboarding at 2:09).
And then poke around and enjoy some other Gershwin. It’s a nice way to start the weekend.
All about the (free) speech
Good gravy. This week has been a mess when it comes to free speech and the media. Hard to pick a starting point, there’s so much content. Let’s begin with the circus-like story and a bit of a tick-tock for n00bs unfamiliar with it.
October 2012 — Gawker published part of a sex tape showing Hulk Hogan engaged in sex with radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge’s wife about six years earlier. (Christ, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.)
May 25, 2016 — Gawker tried to get award reduced; the media outlet has already been forced to sell a sizable portion of itself to fund the award to Hogan.
Today — Denton published an open letter to Thiel with a mess of questions, some focused on the legitimacy of Gawker media. It’s a fair question when Facebook is under fire for its presentation of news content to its users.
Speaking of Facebook, the now-open warfare between Thiel and Denton casts a different light on the stories Gawker property Gizmodo published about Facebook. You’ll recall the furor raised among conservatives after Gizmodo relied on a single conservative contract-employee as a source for its claim that Facebook filters out conservative media.
Media outlets are very concerned about the future, especially if Trump is elected to the presidency (see also CNBC’s opinion‘s mentioning a chilling effect, suggesting investormnt media very concerned). Billionaires shopping for cases to wipe out small-to-medium-sized media outlets could become more common where laws prevent the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP). Trump has admitted to using litigation to harass or punish media.
Bottom line: Reporting on someone’s sexuality and outing them merely because they’re a hypocrite isn’t adequate reason to do so. Some rich people are going to be asses as they have been through history; media should report when wealth’s actions affect the public’s interests. But using one’s billions to burn down the entire Fourth Estate isn’t merely revenge against careless journalism. Attacks intended to weaken a media outlet are attacks on the First Amendment in general; this only exacerbates inequality, and it’s fundamentally unAmerican.
And now speech having nothing to do with the above…
Exxon shuts out The Guardian, denying access to annual meeting (The Guardian) — Well, here’s another method the rich use to squelch free speech. Exxon’s meeting included shareholder proposals related to climate change, but The Guardian was deemed too biased to cover this meeting. The board shot down climate change-related measures; at least these decisions were cut-and-dried enough for other media outlets permitted access by Exxon. Will shareholders move to replace enough directors to force Exxon’s business model to plan for climate change? Or should the public demand legislation requiring fossil fuel companies receiving any federal subsidies “publish an annual assessment of long term portfolio impacts of public climate change policies”?
Long Reads
Hey. You could use a couple for your road trip to your summer weekend hide-out destination. Try these:
The Bank Robber (The New Yorker) — Great piece on an unreliable character, Herve Falciani, who ‘liberated’ client data from HSBC while working in IT at its Swiss facility. Wonder who’s buying the film rights?
Welcome to Disturbia (Curbed) — Interesting look back at the origins of our suburbs and how they were then perceived as toxic. A look at bowling alone, long before Bowling Alone.
That’s a wrap on this week. See you Monday!
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-05-27 15:52:092016-05-27 16:46:27Friday Morning (Somewhere, Maybe in Alaska): Rhapsodic
Where there is a flame, someone’s bound to get burned
But just because it burns, doesn’t mean you’re gonna die
You gotta get up and try, and try, and try
— excerpt, Try by P!nk
Racier than the usual video here, but I’m trying — hence this selection. I’m fried after a late night, can’t muster much mental wattage this morning. Only one cohesive theme emerged by itself from my news feeds, though I kept trying for a second one.
Surveillance
Surveillance as shrug: British activists doing nothing about surveillance (OpenDemocracy) — Study shows UK activists have not taken action against state surveillance, offering a number of explanations for why. But perhaps the most obvious one not addressed is an unconscious chilling effect of surveillance combined with cognitive dissonance about the degree of instrusion by the state.
Surveillance as future shock: State’s ability to monitor us has exceeded our laws (Ars Technica) — No shit, really? ~sigh~ It’d be nice if this piece actually called out lawmakers for their inability to keep up and put a brake on the state’s capabilities and practices. Even educators on this topic — like Prof. Elizabeth Joh interview here — don’t appear to realize pre-crime has arrived. It’s just not yet evenly distributed.
Surveillance as filler: Access to private surveillance cams makes local news (KOKI) — Fox affiliate in Tulsa OK demonstrates ease with which strangers can access surveillance cam feeds — and the story is picked up by another local news affiliate in Memphis TN. Reaction appears blasé as the story doesn’t spread to national outlets.
Surveillance as art: Watched! Surveillance, Art and Photography (e-Flux) — The panopticon pervades our culture as it becomes the topic of our art, manifest in this exhibition. Anybody making a trip to Gothenberg, Sweden this summer? Check this show out.
Surveillance as social life: Fairly average 13-year-old’s life online (WaPo) — Unrelenting self-examination of one’s life as it may be observed by others — that’s what our kids and grandkids are doing to themselves and others. They’re growing up with a deeply embedded sense that watching everything and critiquing what they see is their life. What is it doing to their sense of privacy, to their understanding of human social boundaries?
Yuck. I could just barf after that last one. We are jacking our kids into this monster without pause. That’s enough for today.
There are thirteen verb tenses in English. I couldn’t recall the thirteenth one to save my life and now after digging through my old composition texts I still can’t figure out what the thirteenth is.
If I have to guess, it’s probably a special case referring to future action. Why should our language be any more lucid than our vision?
Vision we’ve lost; we don’t elect people of vision any longer because we don’t have any ourselves. We vote for people who promise us bullshit based on illusions of a simple past. We don’t choose people who assure us the road will be hard, but there will be rewards for our efforts.
Ad astra per aspera.
Fifty-five years ago today, John F. Kennedy Jr. spoke to a join session of Congress, asking our nation to go to the moon. I was six months old at the time. This quest framed my childhood; every math and science class shaped in some way by the pursuit, arts and humanities giving voice to the fears and aspirations at the same time.
In contrast I look at my children’s experience. My son, who graduates this year from high school, has not known a single year of K-12 education when we were not at war, when terrorism was a word foreign to his day, when we didn’t worry about paying for health care because we’d already bought perma-warfare. None of this was necessary at this scale, pervading our entire culture. What kind of vision does this create across an entire society?
I will say this: these children also don’t recall a time without the internet. They are deeply skeptical people who understand how easy it is to manipulate information. What vision they have may be biased toward technology, but their vision is high definition, and they can detect bullshit within bits and pixels. They also believe we have left them no choice but to boldly go and build a Plan B as we’ve thoroughly trashed Plan A.
$1.1M Millennium Technology Prize awarded to Caltech biochemical engineer Frances Arnold (LAT) — Based on her work on directed evolution, Arnold is the first woman to win this prize. It’s worth noting how her career trajectory was shaped by the Reagan administration. What did we lose by not having her working on alternative energy in the 1980s-1990s?
Blast from the past profile on Elon Musk (Inc.) — If you’ve heard all the buzz about Peter Thiel/Hulk Hogan/Nick Denton/Gawker, you may want to read this piece circa 2007 and note Thiel’s role in shaping Musk’s future.
Coca Cola halts production in Venezuela due to lack of sugar (Reuters) — Given the dramatic drought in VZ, I’m actually surprised it wasn’t a lack of electricity or water that put the brakes on Coke. Not a positive indicator of our progress since 2006
Nice explainer on the invisible part of the internet (Ars Technica) — A bit over the heads in a few places when it touches on modulation and multiplexing and other terms without adequate definition, but still a solid read about the current state of the internet.
Google+Levi’s interactive jacket (ItsNiceThat) — Because you can’t get to work these days without being jacked into the invisible internet.
…When the iPhone came out, the BlackBerry continued to do well for a little while. But the iPhone had completely changed the game…
Not only is Arment worrying Apple hasn’t grokked AI as Google has, he’s ignored Android’s ~80% global marketshare in mobile devices. That invisible giant which hadn’t ‘completely changed the game.’
Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in the Mojave Desert caught fire (WIRED) — IMO, sounds like a design problem; shouldn’t there be a fail-safe on this, a trigger when temps spike at the tower in the wrong place? Anyhow, it looks like Ivanpah has other problems ahead now that photovoltaic power production is cheaper than buggy concentrated solar power systems.
Women, especially WOC, win a record number of Nebula awards for sci-fi (HuffPo) — Prizes for Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story and Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy works went to women, which is huge improvement given how many writers and readers are women and women of color. What does the future look like when a greater percentage of humans are represented in fiction? What does a more gender-balanced, less-white future hold for us?
Either I start writing late the night before, or I give up the pretense this is a * morning * roundup. It’s still morning somewhere, I’ll leave this one as is for now. Catch you tomorrow morning — maybe — or early afternoon.
Sorry, gang, I’ve got a lot of balls in the air today and not much time to write. I’ll try to come back as time permits to flesh out this post but no promises.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the future — apart from the political realm, because that part of our future is just plain bat-shit crey — and I don’t know, nothing seems clear. My crystal ball reads like a shattered Apple iPad display.
Take a look at this new phone concept, Google’s Project Ara. Users can assemble the components they want or need at any time. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s not a phone at all. It’s a new mobile computer platform with communications capability. We’ll accept it more readily if we think of it as a phone first, though, especially since we have yet to fully grasp how our current smartphones have replaced PCs.
Do enough people want a customizable device like this badly enough to merit all the effort put into its R&D?
If you’re a parent, you’ve probably stepped barefoot on a LEGO piece in the middle of the night; imagine instead stepping on your kid’s camera component for their Ara. Or the baby swallowing one of the components. Or the cat flicking off the dresser a key part you needed with all your spreadsheets for work.
Color me skeptical.
The impending decision in the Oracle v. Google lawsuit over Java’s open-source license may also play a critical role. Not because Ara’s technology may be released as open source, but because a negative outcome in the lawsuit may have a chilling effect on development by component makers. If every company participating in the Java development community (prior to Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems) believed Java was open source, BUT the court thinks otherwise, what good are any other assurances that any technology is open source?
As usual, morning threads are open. Talk amongst yourselves. What’s the future look like in your crystal ball?
I could listen to this piece on a loop. It’s Santiago de Murcia’s “Tarantela,” performed by noted lutist Rolf Lislevand. The instrument he is playing is as important as the music and his artistry; it’s an extremely rare Stradivarius guitar called the Sabionari. While tarantellas more commonly feature additional instruments and percussion like tambourines, this instrument is stunning by itself.
You can learn more about the Sabionari at Open Culture, a site I highly recommend for all manner of educational and exploratory content.
Growing percentage of VW investors want an independent investigation (WSJ) — An association 25,000 investors now demands an investigation; the problem continues to be Lower Saxony, the Qatar sovereign-wealth fund and the Porsche family, which combined own 92% of voting stock.
VW production workers get a 5% pay raise (IBT) — Is this “hush money,” too, for the employees who can’t afford to be retired like VW’s executives? The rationale for the increase seems sketchy since inflation is negligible and VW group subsidiary workers at Audi and Porsche won’t receive a similar raise.
Insanity? VW Group a buy opportunity next month (The Street) — Caveat: I am not a stockbroker. This information is not provided for investment purposes. Your mileage may vary. But I think this is absolute insanity, suggesting VW group stock may offer a buy opportunity next month when VW publishes a strategy for the next decade. If this strategy includes the same utterly opaque organization committing fraud to sell vehicles, is it smart to buy even at today’s depressed prices? The parallel made with Apple stock is bizarre, literally comparing oranges to Apples. Just, no.
Bad News (Media)
NPR uses the word “torture” — but not about the U.S. (NPR) — Focus of this audio article is on doctors’ investigating torture using the Istanbul Protocol for documentation, but neatly avoids any torture conducted by the U.S. with the aid of doctors. Or any torture performed by U.S.’ law enforcement and prison complex. Syria is repeatedly mentioned, though.
Cybersec
Organized criminals steal $13M in minutes from Japanese ATMs (The Guardian) — And then they fled the country. What?! The mass thefts were facilitated by bank account information acquired from an unnamed South African bank. Both Japan and SA use chip-and-pin cards — so much for additional security. Good thing this organized criminal entity seeks money versus terror. Interesting that the South African bank has yet to be named.(*)
Slovenian student receives 15-month suspended sentence for disclosing state-created security problems (Softpedia) — The student at Slovenia’s Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security in Maribor, Slovenia had been investigating Slovenia’s TETRA encrypted communications protocol over the last four years as part of a school project. He used responsible disclosure practices, but authorities did not respond; he then revealed the encrypted comms’ failure publicly to force action. And law enforcement went after him for exposing their lazy culpability hacking them.
Related? Slovenian bank intended target for Vietnamese bank’s SWIFT attempted hack funds (Reuters) — Huh. Imagine that. Same country with highly flawed state-owned encrypted communications protocol was the target for monies hackers attempted to steal via SWIFT from Vietnamese TPBank. Surely just a coincidence, right?
Just for the heck of it, consider a lunch read/watch on a recent theory: World War 0. Sounds plausible to me, but this theory seems pretty fluid.
Catch you here tomorrow morning!
* UPDATE — 1:20 P.M. EDT —
Standard Bank reported it had lost 300 million rand, or USD $19.1 million to the attack on Japanese ATMs. First reports in South African media and Reuters were roughly 11 hours ago or 9:00 a.m. Johannesburg local time. It’s odd the name of the affected bank did not get wider coverage in western media, but then South Africa has a problem with disclosing bank breaches. There were five breaches alleged last year, but little public information about them; they do not appear on Hackmageddon’s list of breaches. This offers a false sense of security to South African banking customers and to banks’ investors alike.
Japan Times report attribute the thefts to a Malaysian crime gang. Neither Japan Times nor Manichi mention Standard Bank’s name as the affected South African bank. Both report the thefts actually took place more than a week ago on May 15th — another odd feature about reporting on this rash of well-organized thefts.
This Latin jazz song was on the very first album I owned — Santana’s Abraxas. I have no idea what possessed my father to select this way back in 1971 because he’s not musically inclined. I prefer to think he was persuaded by the music store staff to buy it for me rather than think the cover art did it for him. To this day I don’t dare ask; I’d rather live with my illusion.
Perhaps he simply liked Oye Como Va by Tito Puente and decided I needed it. Maybe that’s what he wanted to listen to when I played the album over and over again, ad nauseam. The song is still easy to listen to even when played by a septuagenarian, isn’t it? Though Puente probably still felt the same way about this song in his last live performance as he did when he first recorded it in 1963.
The personal irony I’m certain my father never considered: the last line is a reference to a mixed race “mulatto” woman. That’s me.
Vamos, amigos!
Wheels
South Korea frustrated by Volkswagen’s response to Dieselgate (Yonhap) — Hard to tell how many VW passenger diesel cars with the emissions controls defeat tech have been sold in South Korea to date. Last year’s sales of 35,700 suggest VW needs to exert itself a little more than offer to recall a total 125,000 cars.
Technology Trends
Breakthrough in memory technology could change computing dramatically (IBM via YouTube) — I’m still trying to wrap my head around this; could be the simplicity of the underlying science seems so obvious I can’t understand why it wasn’t discovered sooner. Using polycrystalline rather than amorphous material, more data can be stored and in a manner which is stable and not prone to loss when electricity is cut. This technology could replace DRAM at flash memory prices. Imagine how quickly systems could begin processing if they could avoid seeking programs and data.
Google’s annual I/O event chary on enterprise computing (ComputerWorld) — Wonder if Google executives’ expressed intent to focus on the enterprise is a veiled threat directed at Oracle? The I/O annual conference didn’t have enough enterprise applications to satisfy the curious; is Google holding back? Or are there pending acquisitions to fill this stated intent, ones not yet ready for publication? I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google launch something on par with Salesforce or Zoho very soon. Google Drive components already compete with or are integrated with some of those Zoho offers in its small business offering.
Android’s coming to Chromebooks — finally! (Google Blog) — I’ve put off buying another laptop until this happened, guess I’ll look at the first three models on which developers will focus their development. The applications available for Android phones have been mind-boggling in number; it’d be nice to have the same diversity of selection for laptops. And then maybe desktops in the not-too-distant future? That would really make a dent in enterprise computing.
Cybersec
Security camera not password protected? Police may be able to tap it (Engadget) — Love the subhead: “Don’t worry, it’s supposed to be for a good cause.” Just add the invisible snark tag. Purdue University researchers found surveillance cameras could be tapped to allow law enforcement to monitor a crime scene. I don’t know about you but this sounds like a backdoor, not a convenient vulnerability. If the police can use it soon, who might already be using it?
Qualcomm mobile chip flaw leaves 60% of Android devices exposed (Threatpost) — Not good, especially since this boo-boo may affect both oldest and newest Android versions. But a malicious app is required to take advantage of this flaw, unlike the Stagefright exploit. Android has already issued a patch; the problem is getting it to all affected devices.
LinkedIn’s 2012 breach yielded info on more than 100 million accounts (Motherboard) — Only 6.5 million accounts were initially breached — but that’s only the first batch published online. The actual haul from 2012 was at least 117 million accounts, now for sale for a mere five bitcoins or $2200. Are you a LinkedIn user? Time to check Have I Been Pwned? to see if your account is among those in the breach.
Polymath Eleanor Saitta considers climate change and comes to some grim, mortal conclusions (Storify by @AnthonyBriggs) — If you’re a policymaker, you’d better worry about dealing effectively with climate refugees and deaths in the millions. Maybe billions. Refugees from Syria will look like a minuscule blip. If you’re not terrified, you should be.
Looks like it’s going to be a lovely late spring weekend here — hope you’re going to have a nice one, too. See you Monday!
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-05-20 11:46:072016-05-20 11:46:07Friday Morning: Mi Ritmo
It’s true
That it kicks you in the teeth when you are least expecting
Bad news
Oh it beats you black and blue before you see it coming
— excerpt, Bad News by Bastille
This little ditty seemed appropos for today. I’m surprised it was just a B-side.
Spin Factory BAD DOG, REUTERS — When a big event happens, news media jump all over it and churn out reporting. But in the age of social media and the failure of traditional business models, crap is published and too often blown off. Like this tweet:
Looks innocuous, right? But it’s not — this is the replacement for a tweet that preceded it. Same story, but with a frigging picture of Donald Trump attached. I’d post that original tweet here but they deleted it before I could snag it.
Initial reaction too often is “It’s just a tweet, it’s just Twitter.” No. Hell, no. If Reuters can’t get something as simple as a photo on a tweet correct, what else are they getting wrong with slap dash coverage?
Reuters isn’t just any news outlet; businesses pay its parent corporation, Thompson Reuters for their information products. What are businesses getting in purchased real-time feeds? Some of these businesses are broadcasters. Are erroneous feeds shaping broadcasters’ perceptions before they even reproduce news content? It’s rather important today when some news outlets sought whacko tweets and quotes from Trump before attempting to get a reaction from the White House.
Reuters’ alleged bias has already been controversial; a contributor left in 2013 claiming editorial bias for climate skepticism demanding false balance made reporting on climate change difficult. Reuters denied the claim.
ON THE MEDIA — Rather than allow media churn to burn us with bad (as in poorly executed and unethical) news, best to consult On The Media‘s Breaking News Consumer’s Guide — Airplane Edition.
FIFTY CENT PARTY — You’ve probably seen a news story about this research. Cut out the middlemen and read it at this link:
King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts. How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument. 2016. http://gking.harvard.edu/50c.
RIP MORLEY SAFER — And more bad (as in sad) news: former CBS reporter and correspondent Morley Safer has died at age 84. The three-time Peabody Award winner retired from CBS only last week. We need more journalists like Safer, who began his career with reporting from the Vietnam War that galled then-President Lyndon Johnson for its honesty.
Busy day here, can’t spend any more time at the keyboard. See you here tomorrow morning!
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-05-19 13:27:312016-05-19 13:28:44Thursday Morning, Late: Like a Sucker Punch
I admit it, I’ve betrayed my kind. I’ve been remiss in my responsibilities, haven’t been equitable.
To fix that, you need a dose of estrogen, stat. This morning’s medication is Veruca Salt’s Volcano Girls.
Feel better soon, eh?
Wheels Mitsubishi’s Tetsuro Aikawa to leave, asks Nissan to name replacement (Bloomberg) — Announcement comes six days after Nissan announced it would buy a controlling interest in Mitsubishi. Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn indicated he does not intend to subsume and phase out the Mitsubishi brand; this may have encouraged Aikawa he was leaving the company in good hands. I wouldn’t bet on some overlap between Nissan/Mitsubishi being eliminated.
Suzuki apologized for using the wrong fuel economy tests (Reuters) — Suzuki says it didn’t need to change its declared mileage data based on correct testing. I sure hope independent testing confirms this, though I suspect the same study which revealed Volkswagen’s cheat would have indicated additional validation needed.
Volkswagen says it will focus on profitability, pronto (Bloomberg) — Investors are restless and complaining about VW’s recalcitrance toward cost cutting in light of 16 billion euros it set aside for fixes and claims due to Dieselgate. Executives’ pay is on the butcher’s block. More than a little overdue as VW execs knew about the emissions controls defeat’s detection two years ago.
The (Fossil Fuel) Business Goldman Sachs downgrades stocks to neutral while going bullish on oil (Bloomberg) — I like the subhead on this article: “Too many things to worry about.” ~LOL~ Excess valuation, lower growth, “a wall of stock market worries” encouraged the bear move. Things not explicitly mentioned: the U.S. and Australian elections and Brexit referendum outcome.
But…bullishness on oil out of whack (MarketWatch) — Another LOL-ish subhead today: “The fine print shows Goldman analysts believe oil will struggle to easily top $50.” So GS is telling its clients to reduce excess oil holdings while conditioning overall market to firm up what’s in their clients’ portfolios? ~smh~ Just as above, not mentioned in this take are any elections/referendums.
Note, too, that neither of these reports mentions Iran.
Anadarko Petroleum downgraded to neutral by Credit Suisse (Trade Calls) — You want another confusing take on fossil fuels? Read this article. Supports MarketWatch’s calling out GS on oil, though Anadarko also includes natural gas.
Total SA’s CEO Pouyanne pooh-poohs France’s ban on shale gas (Bloomberg) — Man, this dude is as arrogant as his predecessor. France could simply outlaw any imports without a certificate of origin, and force the industry to figure it out. Yet another article that doesn’t mention Iran, which sits on one of the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Pouyanne’s predecessor was cozy with Iran, too. So why all the attitude about North American shale gas imports?
Artificial Intelligence Hedge fund used AI to pick through Fed Reserve’s minutes (Business Insider) — Using AI gleaned from a competition it hosted, Two Sigma fund analyzed the Fed Reserve. The app used Natural Language Processing and found some interesting trends. Wonder if the results would be different using Google’s SyntaxText open sourced this past week?
NSFWhut? Cynically opportunistic marketing push promotes so-called ‘anti-Zika’ condoms (IBTImes-AU) — Pharmaco Starpharma Holdings and condom-maker Ansell will give Australia’s Olympians “Dual Protect” condoms lubricated with VivaGel for “almost 100-percent anti-viral protection” against Zika. Never let a perfectly good health crisis go to waste, right?
CDC says any condom will work against Zika (MarketWatch) — Yeah. That. I said this already: condoms are recommended for other viral STIs like herpes and HIV, will work fine for Zika, no special anti-Zika condom required. But you have to use the consistently and for at least six months after exposure to Zika since the virus can remain in men’s reproductive system for at least that long after infection.
ONE company will release condoms in 56 different sizes (Glamour) — Holy schnikes. This is a broader range of sizes than men’s off-the-rack suits. No excuses about not wearing condoms, there will be one bound to fit gents. Would be nice if ONE could hit the market with these in Brazil before the Olympics. (And don’t turn your nose up at Glamour. It’s one of the better articles I read today, includes some good links.)
There’s enough material to get you over the hump. Catch you in the morning tomorrow!
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2016-05-18 12:11:472016-05-18 12:23:12Wednesday Morning: Meet Me on the Floor
