Tuesday, January 04, 2022

Treasury Yields Rise in Anticipation of Fed Rate Hikes

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SENSITIVE SUBJECT: Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction

Hold your breath - Faced with crises on an unprecedented scale, our heads are filled with insistent babble.
The trivialisation of public life creates a loop: it becomes socially impossible to talk about anything else.

I’m sure it’s not deliberate. I don’t think anyone, faced with the prospect of systemic environmental collapse, is telling themselves: “Quick, let’s change the subject to charcuterie boards for dogs.” It works at a deeper level than this. It’s a subconscious reflex that tells us more about ourselves than our conscious actions do. The chatter on the radio sounds like the distant signals from a dying star. . ."

Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction

 
George Monbiot
the Guardian

Instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and level down, not up

There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. It’s that we always put our survival first. . .[...]

Here is what we know. We know that our lives are entirely dependent on complex natural systems: the atmosphere, ocean currents, the soil, the planet’s webs of life. People who study complex systems have discovered that they behave in consistent ways. It doesn’t matter whether the system is a banking network, a nation state, a rainforest or an Antarctic ice shelf; its behaviour follows certain mathematical rules. In normal conditions, the system regulates itself, maintaining a state of equilibrium. It can absorb stress up to a certain point. But then it suddenly flips. It passes a tipping point, then falls into a new state of equilibrium, which is often impossible to reverse . ."

 

SOME EXAMPLES: The deliberate effort to stop us seeing the bigger picture began in 1953 with a campaign called Keep America Beautiful. It was founded by packaging manufacturers, motivated by the profits they could make by replacing reusable containers with disposable plastic. Above all, they wanted to sink state laws insisting that glass bottles were returned and reused. Keep America Beautiful shifted the blame for the tsunami of plastic trash the manufacturers caused on to “litter bugs”, a term it invented. . .

The corporate focus on litter, amplified by the media, distorts our view of all environmental issues. For example, a recent survey of public beliefs about river pollution found that “litter and plastic” was by far the biggest cause people named. In reality, the biggest source of water pollution is farming, followed by sewage. Litter is way down the list. It’s not that plastic is unimportant. The problem is that it’s almost the only story we know.

Like Keep Britain Tidy, the Keep America Beautiful ad campaign shifted responsibility away from big corporations. Photograph: Alamy

In 2004, the advertising company Ogilvy & Mather, working for the oil giant BP, took this blame-shifting a step further by inventing the personal carbon footprint. It was a useful innovation, but it also had the effect of diverting political pressure from the producers of fossil fuels to consumers. The oil companies didn’t stop there. The most extreme example I’ve seen was a 2019 speech by the chief executive of the oil company Shell, Ben van Beurden. He instructed us to “eat seasonally and recycle more”, and publicly berated his chauffeur for buying a punnet of strawberries in January.

The great political transition of the past 50 years, driven by corporate marketing, has been a shift from addressing our problems collectively to addressing them individually. In other words, it has turned us from citizens into consumers. . .

[...] We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth. In Fridays for Future, Green New Deal Rising, Extinction Rebellion and the other global uprisings against systemic environmental collapse, we see people, mostly young people, refusing to consent. What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience."

READ MORE between-the-lines https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction

 

 

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2022 Top Risks: US & China Domestic Dysfunction (Not US-China) | Quick T...

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BLEEPINGCOMPUTER: Transition from 2021-2022 ...so you can protect and take control of your network, devices, and data.

First let's MEMORIALIZE last year... and then see new posts for 2022
Bleeping Computer® is an information security and technology news publication created in 2004 by Lawrence Abrams. Millions of visitors come to BleepingComputer.com every month to learn about the latest security threats, technology news, ways to stay protected online, and how to use their computers more efficiently.
For our work in analyzing ransomware, issuing news alerts about the latest security threats, and offering free ransomware decryptors, BleepingComputer is the first news and support site to be added as a partner of the No More Ransom Project. This project was started in 2016 as an alliance between Europol's European Cybercrime Centre, the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Netherlands police, and McAfee to battle ransomware.
> In addition to news, we provide a wide array of free technical support services, downloads, and self-education tools that allow users to resolve issues on their computer.
> Whether you are a novice user here to learn basic concepts about computers or an advanced user infected with ransomware, BleepingComputer can offer solutions to your problem for free.
Ultimately, our goal is to turn your #$@!* computer that never does what you want into one that you praise as a well-tamed tool.

Mission Statement

Our mission: To provide accurate and relevant information about the latest cybsecurity threats and technology advances so you can protect and take control of your network, devices, and data.

Ways to contribute

As part of our mission to help you take control of your data and devices, we always welcome news tips and research that you think our readers would find interesting.

To share a news tip with BleepingComputer, you can our News Tip form to share the information confidentially.

 

2021

Technology, Microsoft, Security

BleepingComputer's most popular cybersecurity and tech stories of 2021

​2021 is over, and we can look forward to a hopefully healthier, safer, and more normal 2022. However, it was a big year for technology and cybersecurity with massive cyberattacks and data breaches, innovative phishing attacks, privacy concerns, and of course, zero-day vulnerabilities.

========================================================================

Red Cross Health Hospital

Security

Top 10 healthcare breaches in the U.S. exposed data of 19 million

The healthcare sector has been the target of hundreds of cyberattacks this year. A tally of public data breach reports so far shows that tens of millions of healthcare records have been exposed to unauthorized parties.

========================================================================

Latest Articles

 

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Apple Makes History as Rally Results in $3 Trillion Market Value

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U.S. Treasuries May Be in for a Bumpy 2022

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WORKING ON CREATING A BETTER WORLD: Hoping + Haunted

Hmmm....Here's part of the last paragraph, ". . .and I still am amazed each day that anyone pays any attention at all, let alone contributes to the discussions we have here. The community -- of which you reading this are a key part -- is integral to what makes Techdirt so much fun for me. You challenge me, make me think, introduce me to new ideas, help me explore impossibly challenging subjects, and just generally push me and the rest of Techdirt to be better.
So thank you, once again, for making Techdirt such a special and wonderful place where we can share and discuss all of these ideas.
I look forward to whatever happens as we enter 2022."
Doing a better job is it?

New Year's Message: The Arc Of The Moral Universe Is A Twisty Path

Techdirt

from the twisty-little-passages,-all-alike dept

Fri, Dec 31st 2021 9:00am — Mike Masnick

"As long term readers of Techdirt know, each year since 2008 my final post of the year has been a kind of reflection on optimism. This tradition started after I had a few people ask how come it seemed that I was so optimistic when I seemed to spend all my time writing about scary threats to innovation, the internet, and civil liberties. And there is an odd contradiction in there, but it's one that shows up among many innovation optimists. I'm reminded of Cory Doctorow's eloquent response to those who called internet dreamers like John Perry Barlow "techno utopians."

You don’t found an organization like the Electronic Frontier Foundation because you are sanguine about the future of the internet: you do so because your hope for an amazing, open future is haunted by terror of a network suborned for the purposes of spying and control.

And to some extent, my own thinking follows along those lines. I can see amazing, astounding opportunities to continue to make the world a better place through the power of the internet and innovation. I also think we have a bit of amnesia about just how much good the internet and innovation have already created for the world. But, that doesn't mean we get to stop thinking about ways in which it might go wrong.

If you'd like to read the past years' New Year's Messages, here's the full list:

Just a few months ago in a conversation with some friends in the tech policy world, I had to admit I was kind of surprised at how defeated they sounded. With dozens of laws being proposed (and a few getting passed) around the globe, at the federal level, and at the state level, there was a sense of despair among many internet supporters, that the good parts of the internet were on their last legs. I can understand where this thinking is coming from, and yet... even with all that, I remain optimistic. That's not to say I don't expect any of the bad laws to go into practice and destroy some of the value of the internet. I'm pretty sure a few such laws are likely to happen, and the consequences of them will be bad.

But, perhaps I've reached the age where I recognize that there is no "end of history" and no final state of things. These very bad ideas may come into play, but the internet is amazingly resilient in routing around such nonsense, one way or another, over time. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous quote is that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." A similar kind of thing can be said about innovation. How it plays out may take quite a while, but it tends towards improving the world.

That's not to say that there aren't setbacks and problems and disasters -- because obviously there are. But a key part of innovation is not just the act of creating something new and useful and getting it adopted by the world, but rather having society learn to adapt to it. I'm reminded of Clay Shirky discussing the innovation of the printing press, and how there was about a century of upheaval over that bit of innovation, until society really began to grapple with its power. Obviously, the internet has taken that to an entirely new level, and society is still very much adjusting.

Indeed, as we've noted repeatedly, many of the "problems" that are now blamed on the internet are actually problems that have existed in society for centuries that we just see more now because of the internet. I am still waiting for people to do a better job breaking down which of the problems commonly associated with the internet today are actually just the internet shining a light on existing problems v. exacerbating or creating them (and also weighing those against which societal problems have actually diminished thanks to the internet -- because that's a long list as well).

But, in the end, I have faith that society itself adapts. Not always neatly, and certainly not without many (potentially extremely problematic) mistakes. But society adapts. And the innovation drives it forward: not in a straight line, not without trips and falls, but eventually.

Indeed, despite the mess of the last few years -- and especially "the narrative" that "everyone hates the internet" -- I've been seeing more and more recognition that there are opportunities to return to an optimism about tech. Over the summer, I wrote about the concept of the Eternal October, bringing back an optimistic view of how tech and innovation can be good, but with the humility and wisdom gleaned from the mistakes of the past couple of decades.

History doesn't end. It just teaches us more lessons. The question is what do we do with those lessons.

I've spent the past few months exploring these concepts more and more, and in the New Year expect to see a lot more writing on this. I've been talking to lots of people who are legitimately exploring ways to turn today's innovation into something a lot more promising than it is, and it has me more excited than I've been in a while. And that's even with all of the nonsense happening among policy makers and regulators around the world. Even as they do whatever it is that they do, actual innovators are heads down working on creating a better world.

More specific to what's been happening here at Techdirt and the Copia Institute, we've been engaged in a number of different policy discussions to try to prevent governments from making things worse. The Copia Institute officially launched our Copia Gaming initiative (and we've been really busy on that front so stay tuned for a bunch of exciting announcements). We've also got some fun changes for Techdirt itself in store -- including a big one that has been over two years in the making, but where we finally see some light at the end of a tunnel.

This year, we also took all third-party ads off the site as well as all Google tracking (at some point next week, we'll do our annual stats review -- but for the first time without using Google Analytics, since that's gone). Of course, that also means that we're more reliant than ever on having our community support us, so please consider supporting the work we do if you can. A few months back, we finally moved on from our own homemade "Insider Chat" and launched the Techdirt Insider Discord, which has been tremendous fun -- and we've got more planned for that too.

 
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BEA News: Gross Domestic Product by State and Personal Income by State, 3rd Quarter 2025

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