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Saved by @ThomassRichards

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Pelosi kicks Katie Porter off the Finance Committee; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/zf4VwiHi1P

#Pluralistic

1/

 Pelosi kicks Katie Porter off the Finance Committee: Paging Upton Sinclair, Mr Sinclair to the white courtesy phone.

https://t.co/dZSiJ1xFry

2/
#20yrsago Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s formal excommunication https://t.co/7YzBVPa9pr

#15yrsago New discussion draft of GNU General Public License is released https://t.co/s75A4o6n6G

#15yrsago Firefly fans trying to raise enough $ to produce a new season https://t.co/aKUCnjO1n3

3/
#15yrsago King Foundation uses copyright to suppress “I Have a Dream” speech https://t.co/PeYSLzHkuq

#5yrsago Worried about Chinese spies, the FBI freaked out about Epcot Center https://t.co/yzSSdYBikn

4/
#1yrago Court case lays bare KPMG’s crimes: poaching employees from its own regulators and making them steal government secrets https://t.co/JdLATfUqF2

5/
#1yrago Bill from MO’s Rep Ben Baker threatens librarians with prison sentences for allowing minors to read books banned by town committees https://t.co/86CDaPsNYT

#1yrago Carriers ignore studies that show they suck at preventing SIM-swap attacks https://t.co/rcK4EldSoR

6/
#1yrago Hong Kong shoppers patronize “yellow” stores that support the uprising; while “blue” businesses that support the mainland are vandalized https://t.co/KEmO6Ic0mO

7/
#1yrago American conspiracy theorists keep insisting on their right to trial by combat https://t.co/JWOH6NgDWa

#1yrago Five steps for thinking about climate change without being overwhelmed by hopelessness https://t.co/ub3h1CFeOp

8/
Yesterday's threads: Laura Poitras fired from First Look; Kickstarting a pad of "Tiny Paper Dungeons"; Facebook says it's the best henhouse fox; I was investigated by the FBI; Yugoslavia's Cold War obsession with Mexican music; and more!

https://t.co/LYKuPvDxDQ

9/
My latest novel is Attack Surface, a sequel to my bestselling Little Brother books. @washingtonpost called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance."

Get signed books from @darkdel: https://t.co/HfWfdx8sIu

10/
I have a (free) new book out! "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is an anti-monopolist critique of Big Tech that connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies and proposes a way to deal with both:

https://t.co/Us0SPxlcmD

11/
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."

https://t.co/vpGcSZiPZ2

12/
Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote for https://t.co/Lr61KpUI3e, Jan 22 (US) 23 (Australia) https://t.co/7dfEFubGFn

* Evening with William Gibson, Jan 25, https://t.co/k3fvBdqOK0

* Boskone, 58, Feb 12-15, https://t.co/2LfFssVcZQ

13/
Recent appearances:

* Monocle Reads https://t.co/ENWPDLYVXg

* Hedging Bets on the Future (Motherboard Cyber):
https://t.co/7YeNDAjLfc

* Applying the Pandemic Mindset to Climate Change:
https://t.co/syTXEF1gFz

14/
My first picture book is out! It's called Poesy the Monster Slayer and it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.

https://t.co/yQLVua4WkB

15/
You can also follow these posts as a daily blog at https://t.co/iSBh8s9m7q: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: https://t.co/zf4VwiHi1P

16/
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🧶". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

Subscribe here: https://t.co/TwPzz87nAw

17/
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? Follow these threads on the #fediverse at //twitter.com/[email protected]." target="_blank">@[email protected].

Here's today's edition: https://t.co/NcNXHR9wpO

eof/
ETA: if you'd like a surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free version of this thread as a blog post, here's a permalink: https://t.co/bPZqsy3Axn

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
When they write the history of this era, one of the strangest chapters will be devoted to Uber, a company that was never, ever going to be profitable, which existed solely to launder billions for the Saudi royals.

1/


From the start, Uber's "blitzscaling" strategy involved breaking local taxi laws (incurring potentially unlimited civil liability) while losing (lots of) money on every ride. They flushed billions and billions and billions of dollars down the drain.

2/

But they had billions to burn. Mohammed bin Salman, the murdering Crown Prince of the Saudi royal family, funded Softbank - a Japanese pump-and-dump investment scheme behind Wework and other grifts - with $80B as part of his "Vision 2030"

Vision 2030 is a scheme to diversify Saudi wealth away from hydrocarbons by attempting to establish monopolies that will allow the family to control entire sectors of the global economy.

4/

These schemes are longshots, and the fallback position is to unload failed monopolies - with staggering debt-overhangs - on investors who've been suckered with the promise that really big piles of shit surely have a pony buried underneath them somewhere.

5/
UBER
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Surveillance companies assure us that they employ safeguards to ensure that their customers aren't abusing their products to engage in unlawful or unethical surveillance. And yet, inevitably, these companies abuse their tools THEMSELVES.

1/


It's almost as though being the kind of person who dreams of achieving incredible wealthy by spying on people makes you kind of an asshole.

2/

Like the people at @VerkadaHQ, "a fast-growing Silicon Valley surveillance startup" whose male employees used its own products to sexually harass their female colleagues and received the barest wrist-slaps for

Male Verkada employees maintained a private Slack channel where executives posted photos of female employees - captured with the company's own surveillance tools - and made sexually explicit remarks about them.

4/

When this came to light, the company's founder and CEO Filip Kaliszan called an all-hands meeting, expressed disappointment in the harassers, and told them that they could either quit...or lose some stock options. They chose the latter and remain employed there to this day.

5/
TECH
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The US election news has largely overshadowed a seismic moment in global finance: Ant, a fintech company that spun out of Alibaba/Alipay, was scheduled to have the world's largest IPO, topping even Aramco, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

Then Chinese regulators canceled it.

1/


As @yvessmith writes in her excellent @nakedcapitalism breakdown, the consensus narrative on this is capricious Chinese regulators changed their minds and jerked the rug out from under Ali's billionaire owner Jack Ma.

The reality is a lot

To understand it, you need to understand the difference between the Chinese and American "money story." In the US, there is widespread, unquestioning faith in the fairytale that money predates the state and is separate from it.

3/

In this story, people come together to trade but are plagued by disparate goods: if I want to pay for your chickens with a cow, how do you make change? They spontaneously decide that something (gold?) is money and price their cows and chicks in it.

4/

Then, governments come along tax our gold away, and then to add insult to injury, governments abandon gold and insist that paper is as good as gold, print too much of it and crash the economy!

This probably sounds familiar to you, but it's just not true.

5/
ECONOMY , {GIG MONEY} , BANKING AND REGULATION
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Ring - Amazon's surveillance doorbell division - has 4,000 "partnerships" with US police ("public safety") orgs. The company has lied about how these work for years, but the basic deal is that they give cops free stuff to buzz-market their products.

https://t.co/716iaXUXWR

1/


Ring tells its customers that they get to choose whether to share the footage from their street-facing cameras with cops, but that's a lie, too. If you say no, the cops still get to look through your

That's why cops debase themselves to serve as buzz-marketers for Ring - in exchange, they get an off-the-books, free-to-use, warrantless, city-scale, video surveillance grid.

3/

It's an investment that pays off. Back in July, @EFF documented how the @SFPD was able to commandeer 200 Ring cameras to produce surveillance data on #BLM

And in a new blockbuster report, EFF's @maassive and @mguariglia document how @LAPDHQ did the same thing, fraudulently using "unusual occurance" protocols to gain access to last summer's BLM
AMAZON
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
A couple days back, I wrote up my best understanding of what happened with /r/wallstreetbets and meme stocks like Gamestop, trying to show how all the different, seemingly contradictory takes on the underlying financial stuff could all be true.

https://t.co/xWzre4r0Yj

1/


In the days since, a new series of contradictory takes has emerged, these ones disputing the meaning of this bizarre financial spectacle, and likewise what response, if any is warranted as it unfurls.

2/

I think that all of these takes can also be true, and as with the trading itself, reconciling them requires that we widen the frame.

Let's start with Jimmy Carter.

3/

In 1978, Carter's IRS created the 401(k), a tax-sheltered account for people who wanted to gamble on stocks to fund their retirement.

That was a fringe proposition at best.

4/

The normal retirement system was a "defined benefits" pension where your employer guaranteed you a certain monthly percentage of your salary from retirement to death.

The vast majority of Americans wisely prefered a guaranteed payout to a tax-advantaged gambling account.

5/
TRADING

More from Finance

Kalu Aja
Kalu Aja
@FinPlanKaluAja1
Why are states in Nigeria not paid their share of the oil and gas earnings in the currency it was earned in, i.e., the United States Dollars (USD)?

Crude oil in Nigeria is owned by the Federation — the Federal, State, & Local Govt. Shared as follows: 13% is deducted & paid to the oil and gas producing States; next, the Federal Government (FGN) gets 52.68%; the States get 26.72%, & the Local Governments get 20.60%.

When Nigerian crude oil is sold, the proceeds are in USD and get paid to the NNPC/CBN/JPMorgan Account in the US. The Oil taxes, e.g., Petroleum Profit taxes, are also in USD and are collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Service and paid to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN

The same thing applies to the royalty bonus collected by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and paid to the CBN. The CBN then converts the USD sales proceeds to Naira.

The CBN and Ministry of Finance then fund Federal agencies like NEMA and the Consolidated Revenue Fund in Naira, even the 13% derivation is paid in Naira. In other words, while the CBN retains the USD, the Federal, States, and LGAs get Naira
FINANCE
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Kostas 👨‍💼 📈 💸...
@itsKostasWithK
The British Railway Mania

How a disruptive technology created the biggest speculative bubble in the history of England

/THREAD/


1/ Railways were the most disruptive technology of the 19th century, known as the "railway age", transforming England from an agricultural to an industrialized nation.

2/ The development of railway infrastructure and locomotives started at the end of the 18th century but experienced immense growth after 1830.


3/ Hundreds of railway related bills were passed every year with proposed rails totaling 10,000 miles, a third of which was never built due to poor financial planning, competition, or fraud.

4/ In the mid-1840s, the Bank of England cut interest rates rendering government bonds unattractive, and investors more willing to rush in the railway investments.
FINANCE
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Naval
Naval
@naval
How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.
LIFE , STARTUPS , NAVAL1
Krishna Bahirwani
Krishna Bahirwani
@BahirwaniKrish
What a privilege it was to host @Gautam__Baid for my first ever Twitter Spaces event along with @dadalife369 and @Finvents.

While we wait for the YouTube recording. Here are 8 of my biggest takeaways from today's session.

#investing

1 - Start by coming up with a portfolio allocation strategy based on your aims and objectives for investing. Include flexibility, tracking and rebalancing as part of your strategy.


2 - Learn from those who succeeded before you to ultimately develop your own investing style

Here are three books that influence @Gautam__Baid's investing style - They are some of the best books in investing along with Gautam's The Joys of Compounding.


3 - Develop a robust repository of sources from which you can generate investment ideas.

Here are the ones @Gautam__Baid uses.

It is a super-comprehensive list.


4 - Focus on the process as opposed to the outcomes. This is very important.

Developing a superior process leads to the repeatability of exceptional outcomes.
WISE INVESTING , FINANCE
Finalysis
Finalysis
@Finalysis20
Attended a clubhouse talk on:

"Common Investing mistakes" hosted by
Hena Mehta @hena1220 co-founder of Basis with
Aditi Kothari Vice Chairperson DSPMF &
Kalpen Parekh @KalpenParekh MD-CEO DSPMF
moderated by Dipika Jaikishan @dipikajaikishan

🧵 on key learnings:
@getbasis
@dspmf


A common investing mistake:

Taking out money when market falls!

Reason:

~ It's difficult to get in once you get out

~ If you manage to get in you will be late and lose the rise in the market.

Don't exit when market falls, neither stop the SIPs.

What's important for an investor?

Avoid being a bad investor; than worrying about being a good investor.

Basic mistake in investing:

Not knowing why we are investing!

We often invest because:

~ Others are doing it
~ We see the particular asset class is popular

But we don't understand the asset class

Wrong reasons for investing in asset class!

Gold : Because of family culture or as a symbol of inter-generational wealth.

FD: Because it's safe

Equity : To double money quickly!
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