BC HISTORY
Saved by @jay_millerjay

Accountancy is more likely to be mocked than celebrated (or condemned), but accountants, far more than poets, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

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 Though "bean counters" are employed by firms, they are notionally bound by a professional code of ethics every bit as serious as the Hippocratic Oath: "count things honestly." Without an accurate accounting of quantities, you can't make good decisions on quality.

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Though accountancy concerns itself with counting things, it is inextricably bound up with the realm of ideas, and accounting conventions (how you account for things) are philosophical matters, not empirical ones.

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It's no coincidence that #ModernMonetaryTheory owes more to accountancy than it does to economics. Economic accounts of the economy have an unfortunate tendency to proceed from first principles, creating models based on pure reason, without checking in on the actual world.

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For example, neoclassical econ's "homo economicus," the rational value-maximizing actor who populated so many models; or economists' insistence on targeting inflation with interest rates; or treating national "debts" like they were household debts.

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It's telling that the greatest economics revolution of my lifetime was "behavioral economics," which could also be called "checking to see whether real people act like we've assumed they acted."

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If it seems weird that economists would spend generations operating on the incorrect assumption that people behave in a certain way without ever checking, consider that Aristotle assumed women had fewer teeth than men, - and never bothered to count.

https://t.co/dApCRKT9yj

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Accountants check, and what they find is…gnarly. In "An Accounting Model of the UK Exchequer," @spatchcockable, @widespreadhaze and Neil Wilson offer a mindbending account (heh) of where money comes from (hint: not taxes), and where it goes ("poof").

https://t.co/5pJBIfYkUN

8/
The authors did a two-part @MMTpodcast interview describing the paper's findings, and it is the most extraordinary 2.5h audio you're likely to find: not just the realities of money, but the deliberate obfuscation thereof.

https://t.co/IdK92zx2sX

https://t.co/lmCAQfTXQv

9/
One thing the Exchequer paper reveals is that accountants bat for both teams: team clarity and team obscurity. As many finance scandals and finance dramas have reminded us, accounting can be turned to obscuring and dazzling rather than revelation.

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After all, somewhere in HM Exchequer is a team of accountants who know EXACTLY how money works - and know that it's nothing like the account produced by economists or politicians. They know it because they are in charge of it. They do money, all day long.

11/
When accountants go rogue, things get bad. And thanks to neoclassical economics - and its emphasis on the "efficiency" of monopolies - we are living through a golden age of ghastly accounting fraud.

12/
Just four companies - @ey, @kpmg, @pwc and @deloitte - audit the books of 97% of the 350 largest UK companies; but they make far more selling these companies consulting services, and have made a habit of lying about those books in order to boost their consulting income.

13/
Accountancy is meant to be a profession that understands that conflicts of interest are a moral hazard. But just as doctors convince themselves they won't get addicted to their own painkillers, accountants talk themselves into believing that conflicts won't corrupt them.

14/
That's how the Big Four accounting companies came to sign off Carillion's fraudulent books. The company hid £7b worth of debts, took on management of vital government services up and down the country, then collapsed, leaving the nation stranded.

https://t.co/4TII4dPMMp

15/
For the Big Four, Carillion's collapse was a feature, not a bug. After all, the only accounting firms large enough to oversee its bankruptcy were...the Big Four, who billed millions for cleaning up the mess left behind by their own fraud.

16/
Accounting fraud is a fascinating potential fracture line in economic reform. After all, fraudulent accountants may help SOME plutes get rich - like, say Bernie Madoff, or Donald Trump - but they often do so at the expense of OTHER plutes.

17/
Like @exxonmobil, which lied to its investors for 11 years about the value of its shale-gas holdings, which it purchased at the peak of the fracking bubble and whose revenues and liabilities it has buried in its financial statements ever since.

https://t.co/hpSWKt1ahr

18/
The company is finally writing down $19.3b worth of those assets, but the true figure is more like $50b. And yes, Exxon's big investors include a lot of passive funds that invest pension savings, meaning this hurts Main Street as well as Wall Street.

19/
But as ever, those pension-savers are the Lucky Duckies here, because - joke's on us - Americans have basically no pension savings, thanks to the wage stagnation and asset inflation that left almost all working Americans facing penury in old age.

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Hey, at least they're not getting ripped off by Exxon! The real victims of this decade-long, multibillion-dollar fraud are the same people who got snookered into buying into shitty Trump casinos and luxury buildings: rich people.

21/
By definition, rich people deal in quantities that exceed their ability to personally count so they are especially vulnerable to scam accounting. It's only when the frauds tank a company we all suffer, as jobs and businesses disappear, screwing workers and cities.

22/
The absence of a neutral ref and scorekeeper is a really big deal in online business and policy circles. The ad-tech duopoly isn't merely content to price-gouge advertisers - they also lie about what those sky-high prices are paying for:

https://t.co/pmWMTNsPRp

23/
But each member of the duopoly has a different scam. Google's frauds are complex, behind-the-scenes market manipulations, an abstruse, mathematical grift that leverages complexity and monopoly to fleece its customers.

https://t.co/gDyvaKtkwZ

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Facebook is much more straightforward. It just lies. Back in 2016, FB lied about how many people were watching videos, and encouraged hundreds of media company to beggar themselves to chase fraudulent video dollars:

https://t.co/GmcR3tDc8B

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Accounting fraud is in Facebook's DNA. After all, this is a company whose primary sales-pitch is, "We will count everything you do and then charge people to help them sell you stuff."

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This proposition is intrinsically hard to evaluate. How can a customer know if their FB ad generated a sale, or whether it was an ad elsewhere, or random chance, or even that elusive beast, customer loyalty?

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The main source for the belief in Facebook's efficacy is...Facebook. It's not a neutral party, and the accountants who sign off on its books have repeatedly shown themselves to be untrustworthy.

28/
Here's the latest scandal: since 2018, FB's been defending a class-action suit brought by its customers who claim that FB lied about "potential reach" - that is, how many users would see their ads.

https://t.co/alNpNJ8PZw

29/
And while FB strenuously denies that the inaccuracies in "potential reach" metrics were just normal, unpredictable variations in user behaviors, a whistleblowing FB product manager has produced emails in which they warn execs that they're committing fraud.

30/
The execs who got these memos rejected them, telling the product manager that acting on them would have "significant revenue impact" - that is, "Our customers wouldn't buy our products if we were truthful about them."

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The fraudulent reach figures begat fraudulent revenues, and those revenues were fraudulently reported to investors. Those investors will now take a haircut if FB loses in court.

32/
Accounting fraud's pathology is bimodal: it abets the wage-theft and austerity that harms the poorest and most vulnerable - but also the reporting scams that harpoon finance's biggest whales.

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It's a curious alliance of interests. For now, it seems like Big Tech is going to be antitrust and anti-corruption's harbinger, but I wouldn't count accountancy out - it's got exactly the right kinds of enemies to fire sustained political will.

34/
If you'd prefer to read or share this thread as a blog post, here it is on https://t.co/iSBh8s9m7q, a site that is entirely free of ads, trackers, or surveillance:

https://t.co/niVePUyzgf

eof/

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
It's been twenty years, to the day, since I published my first blog-post.

I'm a blogger.

Blogging - publicly breaking down the things that seem significant, then synthesizing them in longer pieces - is the defining activity of my days.

https://t.co/lksXhU6HKM

1/


Over the years, I've been lauded, threatened, sued (more than once). I've met many people who read my work and have made connections with many more whose work I wrote about. Combing through my old posts every morning is a journey through my intellectual development.

2/

It's been almost exactly a year I left Boing Boing, after 19 years. It wasn't planned, and it wasn't fun, but it was definitely time. I still own a chunk of the business and wish them well. But after 19 years, it was time for a change.

3/

A few weeks after I quit Boing Boing, I started a solo project. It's called Pluralistic: it's a blog that is published simultaneously on Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr, a newsletter and the web. It's got no tracking or ads. Here's the very first

I don't often do "process posts" but this merits it. Here's how I built Pluralistic and here's how it works today, after nearly a year.

I get up at 5AM and make coffee. Then I sit down on the sofa and open a huge tab-group, and scroll through my RSS feeds using @newsblur.

5/
CULTURE
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
After the 9/11 attacks, airlines and public buildings adopted a flurry of "security" measures, like taking away pen-knives from fliers or requiring visitors to office buildings to be photographed or present a driver's license.

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Bruce Schneier's seminal 2003 "Beyond Fear" called these measures: #securitytheater.

Schneier pointed out that these measures would be easy to circumvent, and were thus providing only the comforting appearance of security - not security

Security theater is worse than nothing. Security theater gives people the false impression that their risks have been mitigated, when actually things are just as dangerous.

After al, if you know that danger exists, you can take some steps to mitigate or avoid it.

3/

But if you have the false impression that you've been made safer, you might unwittingly engage in risky behavior.

4/

Like, if you know your car's brakes are flaky, you might nurse the car along to the mechanic at low speed on side-streets.

But if you don't know about the brakes, you're apt to discover their flaws at 75mph on the freeway.

5/
FOR LATER READ
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Republican North Dakota legislators have introduced #SB2333, a bill that prohibits large tech companies from locking their users into a single app store or payment processor.

https://t.co/PgyhgOhFAl

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While his has implications for Android and other large tech platforms, its most immediate and far-reaching effects with be on Apple, whose Ios platform uses lock-in to monopolize both apps and payments (and another domain, not mentioned in the bill: repairs).

2/

Predictably, this has thrown Apple into a fury, with Apple's privacy chief @erikn telling the SD legislature that Apple uses its monopoly over the app store to protect its users' privacy and

Neuenschwander makes a good, but incomplete, point. To the extent that Apple has the same interests as its users, it uses its app store monopoly to lock out bad apps (to the best of its ability).

4/

But when Apple's interests diverge from its users' interests, the prohibition on sideloading apps actively harms those users' privacy and security. Think of how Apple caved to Chinese state demands to remove working VPNs from the Ios app store to facilitate mass surveillance.

5/
BUSINESS
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Planet Money on HP's myriad ripoffs; Strength in numbers; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/esjoT3u5Gr

#Pluralistic

1/


On Feb 22, I'm delivering a keynote address for the NISO Plus conference, "The day of the comet: what trustbusting means for digital manipulation."

https://t.co/Z84xicXhGg

2/


Planet Money on HP's myriad ripoffs: Ink-stained wretches of the world, unite!

https://t.co/k5ASdVUrC2

3/


Strength in numbers: The crisis in accounting.

https://t.co/DjfAfHWpNN

4/


#15yrsago Bad Samaritan family won’t return found expensive camera https://t.co/Rn9E5R1gtV

#10yrsago What does Libyan revolution mean for https://t.co/Jz28qHVhrV? https://t.co/dN1e4MxU4r

5/
FOR LATER READ

More from History

Kristen
Kristen
@mediaperuana
A challenge with society in general is a facile understanding of the word “coup.” When the population at large thinks of a coup, they imagine a violent military (Chile, 1973) or paramilitary (Cuba, 1959) overthrow of the government.
Coups are often far more complex and nuanced.

So, let’s talk about the autogolpe—the “self coup” (a perfect example of how some words in Spanish are objectively better than their English equivalents). An autogolpe is, at its simplest, when a duly elected leader revolts against his *own* government to consolidate power.

He (it’s always been a “he”) usurps powers that traditionally reside with the legislative and judiciary bodies, and of course, maintains that power beyond his elected term.

This kind of coup requires a lot of prep work. Generally speaking, you can’t just up and announce your takeover overnight. Instead, you have to spend a few years undermining federal institutions so that, when the time comes, they are powerless and/or unwilling to stop you.

How? You start by installing loyalists in key positions and courting *personal* loyalty within your party.
“Oh, everybody does that!”
Not exactly. Key positions in a democracy, for example, require approval from the legislative body.
So you have to work around that.
HISTORY
Goldstein
Goldstein
@MrGoldstein7
Paul Warburg attended as the American representative, at the Treaty of Versailles conference, where his brother Max was on the German side of the bargaining table…. Before World War II, Max Warburg served on the board of directors of I.G. Farben, the giant German chemical firm.
HISTORY
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History Under Your Feet
History Under Your Fee...
@HUFToday
Today is Jayanti of Satyendranath Bose or more popularly known as S.N.Bose. Well known for the Bose-Einstein condensate theory. And also a class of particles called Bosons named after him by Paul Dirac. One of the great scientists of modern era.


But then again to call S.N.Bose just a scientist, would be akin to calling Leonardo Da Vinci a mere painter. Much like his other namesake and contemporary, J.C.Bose, he was a polymath, equally adept in music, literature,mineralogy.

The multi facted genius was born on January 1, 1894 in a middle class Kolkata family, his father Surendranath Bose, an accountant in the East India Railway Company. The only son in a family that had six daughters after him.

Bought up by his mother Amodini Devi, he later joined the New Indian School in the Goabagan neigbhorhood of Kolkata. Seeing his skills at mathematics, his father encouraged him more by giving problems to solve.

Joining the prestigious Hindu School in 1907 at the age of 13, he soon got recognition as an oustanding student in maths and science. His maths teacher, believed he could be the next Pierre Laplace.
HISTORY
Dr Holy Cow MSc BA says I\U0001f499U, Georgia!\U0001f5fd
Dr Holy Cow MSc BA say...
@GastonW250
@tribelaw Hi, Germany 🇩🇪 here again.
[Thread.]
In the 1970's West Germany suffered from severe series of domestic terrorism.
The Rote Armee Fraktion RAF.
Their attacks on capitalism, targeted Bankers, Politicians, Embassies. To finance, they were committing robbery, killing police.
... /1

October 20, 1977, former chancellor Helmut Schmidt held a speech on the responsibility of the democracy to protect his citizens, as also had been outlined by the German Supreme Court.
He said :
... /2

"The Federal Constitutional Court did in the early Morning hours of October 16 on behalf of ours People recognized for right: Articles 1 and 2 of ours Of the Basic Law oblige the state to to protect life. This duty to protect is full.
.../3

She commands the state to protect itself and to put it in front of this life in a promoting way; this means above all, it also protects against unlawful attacks by Preserving the pages of others.
... /4

Have at this commandment all state organs, depending on their particular Tasks, align.
All state organs!
... /5
HISTORY
Jonathan Ware
Jonathan Ware
@ReassessHistory
Rhino Barges

One of the dullest, coolest, more bizarre and fascinating pieces of kit used in Normandy.

Which NO ONE REALLY CARES ABOUT.

BUT I DO AND YOU SHOULD TOO.
/1

#WW2 #SWW #History


Planning for Overlord and Neptune had a serious snag, how to get troops from LSTs onto the beach as simply ramming them onto the beaches and dropping the ramp was known to damage the exceptionally vulnerable LSTs and felt to be unsustainable in the mid to long term. /2


LSTs were essential in sustaining Overlord's progress and were a subject of major headaches in the planning phase, and a real subject of friction when it came to launching additional amphibious operations such as Dragoon.

A single LSTs loss represented a capability nick. /3


So, logic dictated, we don't really want these remarkable but rare and highly valuable vessels constantly doing beach landings, we want something to act as a medium between ship to shore, and in came the (mostly) American designed Rhino. /4


I fucking love Rhinos.

Seriously.

Graceful lines of pure industrial pedigree.

Modular.

LOOK AT IT. /5
HISTORY

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Ranvijay Singh\U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Ranvijay Singh🇮🇳...
@ranvijayT90
#Thread Two divine forms of Khatu Shyam ji...


On the day of Amavasya, devotees get the darshan of Shyam Baba in Shyam varan (black color). In ordinary days, the form of Baba is saffron. The reason for this is a custom. The real head of Shyam Baba which had appeared from Shyam Kund is of Shyam varan.


Every day Shyam Baba's grand Shringar is done by Pujaris. The main part of Shyam Baba's shringar is Tilak. This Shringar is done by the members of Nij Mandir sevaks. The sevaks of the Nij Mandir do sandalwood tilak to Baba everyday in the auspicious time.


This Divine Tilak is applied from the forehead to the nose. When Baba is given a bath by sevaks, this tilak comes off. Then in the auspicious time, the sevaks again apply tilak to Baba.


There is no auspicious time on the Amavasya. Because of this, tilak is not done on that day. That's why devotees have darshan of Shyam Baba on the Amavasya only in the actual real form (Shyam Swaroop). Baba's tilak is done on Amavasya only on the day of Deepawali.
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ashkan soltani
ashkan soltani
@ashk4n
BREAKING: @CommonsCMS @DamianCollins just released previously sealed #Six4Three @Facebook documents:

Some random interesting tidbits:

1) Zuck approves shutting down platform API access for Twitter's when Vine is released #competition


2) Facebook engineered ways to access user's call history w/o alerting users:

Team considered access to call history considered 'high PR risk' but 'growth team will charge ahead'. @Facebook created upgrade path to access data w/o subjecting users to Android permissions dialogue.


3) The above also confirms @kashhill and other's suspicion that call history was used to improve PYMK (People You May Know) suggestions and newsfeed rankings.

4) Docs also shed more light into @dseetharaman's story on @Facebook monitoring users' @Onavo VPN activity to determine what competitors to mimic or acquire in 2013.

https://t.co/PwiRIL3v9x
TECH
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The Light - Truthpaper
The Light - Truthpaper
@LightTruthpaper
Latest update from @TheBernician

1/19

Hancock, Whitty, Vallance & Ferguson Stand Accused of Pandemic Fraud.

After yet more damning evidence arose last week, further additions had to be made to the court papers, which we are now aiming to lay in the coming week.

2/19

The four defendants will be Matt Hancock, Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and Neil Ferguson, each of whom has inextricable and ultimately incriminating connections with Bill Gates and Big Pharma.

3/19

As well as three counts of fraud by false representation and seven counts of fraud by non-disclosure, under sections 2 and 3 of the Fraud Act 2006, we can now also prove that the entire worldwide scamdemic originated on these shores.

4/19

In fact, we can show that, without the dishonest statements and non-disclosures of the four defendants we are initially proceeding against, COVID-1984 would not have transpired.

5/19

Furthermore, the 1st defendant, Matt Hancock, cannot rely upon the defence of Parliamentary Privilege, on the ground that none of the evidence relied upon by the prosecution is capable of preventing parliamentarians from carrying out their lawful business in Parliament.
CULTURE
Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
THE MEANING, SIGNIFICANCE AND HISTORY OF SWASTIK

The Swastik is a geometrical figure and an ancient religious icon. Swastik has been Sanatan Dharma’s symbol of auspiciousness – mangalya since time immemorial.


The name swastika comes from Sanskrit (Devanagari: स्वस्तिक, pronounced: swastik) &denotes “conducive to wellbeing or auspicious”.
The word Swastik has a definite etymological origin in Sanskrit. It is derived from the roots su – meaning “well or auspicious” & as meaning “being”.


"सु अस्ति येन तत स्वस्तिकं"
Swastik is de symbol through which everything auspicios occurs

Scholars believe word’s origin in Vedas,known as Swasti mantra;

"🕉स्वस्ति ना इन्द्रो वृधश्रवाहा
स्वस्ति ना पूषा विश्ववेदाहा
स्वस्तिनास्तरक्ष्यो अरिश्तनेमिही
स्वस्तिनो बृहस्पतिर्दधातु"


It translates to," O famed Indra, redeem us. O Pusha, the beholder of all knowledge, redeem us. Redeem us O Garudji, of limitless speed and O Bruhaspati, redeem us".

SWASTIK’s COSMIC ORIGIN

The Swastika represents the living creation in the whole Cosmos.


Hindu astronomers divide the ecliptic circle of cosmos in 27 divisions called https://t.co/sLeuV1R2eQ this manner a cross forms in 4 directions in the celestial sky. At centre of this cross is Dhruva(Polestar). In a line from Dhruva, the stars known as Saptarishi can be observed.
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Abigail See
Abigail See
@abigail_e_see
Can we control the output of neural generation systems?
Can we build a better chatbot using this control?
And what makes a good conversation anyway?

Check out the blog post for our NAACL paper:

https://t.co/UAAUxSeA0L

#AI #NLProc #DeepLearning #ConversationalAI @facebookai

This post got a little delayed since the paper's publication, but the intervening time has given me an opportunity to reflect.

So this post has some extra thoughts regarding more recent NLG developments - e.g., pretrained models like GPT(2), and the suitability of beam search.
ALL