Patton Oswalt cs wins the gun debate

 Truth !!

CSI Cyber: Amsterdam

I'm sure it went kinda like this

Fascinating WIRED article about a wildly successful cybercrime investigation, this time in Europe in late 2016.  Law enforcement agencies, led by the Netherlands', worked cross-border raiding an online drug market "Hansa".  Instead of immediately shutting it down, they took over the admin rights, letting it run business as usual for weeks, as they collected mountains of incriminating evidence.  In the end:

"The Dutch police came away from their Hansa takeover with concrete rewards: They obtained at least some data on 420,000 users, including at least 10,000 home addresses, which they've turned over to Europol to be distributed to other police agencies around Europe and the world.  Since the takedown, [Officer Gert] Ras says, they've arrested a dozen of Hansa's top vendors, with more arrests planned for coming weeks.  They seized 1,200 bitcoins from Hansa, worth about $12 million by today's exchange rates. Since Hansa used bitcoin's multi-signature transaction function to protect funds from police seizure, that confiscation was only possible because the [Netherlands National High Tech Crime Unit] had taken over the site and sabotaged its code to disable that feature during Hansa's last month online."

On a weirder unrelated note, researchers discovered child pornography embedded within the Bitcoin blockchain.  Whew.

WTFGuns

☆.´ `. ☽¸.☆
(͡๏̯͡๏)(͡๏̯͡๏)
( , ,)( , ,).
¯**´¯**´¯`

Why the Stormy Daniels saga is important

Yea she's going to be around for some time

The controversy over Stormy Daniels is NOT about Donald Trump having sex with a porn star.  American voters knew they were bringing in a philanderer into the White House.

There are moral issues at the heart of this issue [as if talking morality about a thrice-married, twice-divorced, numerous-adulterer is relevant].  The bullying and abuse of power (see tweet above) are also highly problematic, of course.  But this is also closely related to governing: if a country's elected leader is so vulnerable to blackmail by a ghost of personal past (we haven't even mentioned questionable business dealings), then all of its citizens should want to get to the bottom of this, instead of wishing the problem would just go away.

A leader needs to show, and citizens need to be convinced, that he/she puts the country's interest above all else.

This is exactly the reason why transparency is a must for all public servants. 

....Oh snap, Rex...

Oh my

Toys R' (No Longer with) Us

Retail Apocalypse

Iconic American retailer Toys R'Us announced it will wind down operations, closing or selling its remaining 800 stores in the US and 100 in the UK, threatening 33,000 jobs.  The six-decade old company cited its unsuccessful turnaround after declaring bankruptcy less than six months ago.  It also marked 14 years since the company's leveraged buyout by a consortium of investors Vornado, Bain Capital and KKR for US$6.6bn, which was 80% financed by  debt.

Notables about Toys R'Us:

• Thanks to the massive debt post-takeover, over $500mn went to interest payments every single year.  Sales failed to grow rapidly enough to make the debt sustainable. 
• Also thanks to the debt, the company spiraled into a black hole of cash drain.  There is no resource to invest in better store experience to compete with online prices, or better livelihood for its store employees, killing morale. 
• Despite intense competition from online stores (Amazon) and big box offline stores (Walmart and Target), Toys R'Us still accounted for 20% market share of US toys sales.   Furthermore, despite the well-known retail apocalypse, 2017 holiday sales broadly exceeded market expectations.

Another nail in the coffin of vulture capitalism.

If animals could talk...

Wrong place, wrong time

The Cult of Putin; or why Strongmen are Popular

Ahead of the upcoming Russian elections, a fascinating Christian Science Monitor article exposes the culture of Vladimir Putin: why the Kremlin leader remains wildly popular despite his authoritarian, ultra-conservative and isolationist/anti-Western policies.  Not just a Russian phenomenon, similar people are in power in Egypt, Turkey, and the Philippines. The short answer: power -- not checks and balances -- is the key to their legitimacy.  From the article:

[A Moscow writer and historian] notes that in the US, a president gains legitimacy through elections. In Russia, it’s the president’s top-down control that validates the election result. He says many view Putin’s ability to hold onto power for 17 years through essentially faux elections as a power to respect. “Americans think other people are just like themselves,” he says. “We are not Latin Americans, or Eastern Europeans. We are Russians.”

Indeed, Russians have suffered through multiple devastating wars, revolutions (Bolshevik and the breakup of Soviet Union), and most recently, an economic downturn driven by the crash in commodity prices. Moreover, the aging population means many experienced the turmoil first-hand (or know somebody who did), and the people are sick and tired of unstable politics.  Ultimately they turn to iron-fists to lead the way.

The nostalgia factor also comes into play, Russians long for the good old days when their country was respected as one of the global superpowers.  From the perspective of the average citizen, although the end of the Soviet Union heralded the end of the Cold War tensions, for many, it was the start of years of political and economic uncertainty, as well as a diminished place for the Russian people on the world stage.  Perhaps they wish that somebody, a modern-day Josef Stalin(???), would Make Russia Great Again.

Finally, there is also complacency.  This is particularly acute not in Russia but in many developed western democracies. From Stephen M. Walt:

[...] entrusting one’s fate to a Great Leader is tempting because it spares us the burden of thinking for ourselves. For democracy to work, citizens have to pay a some amount of attention, be reasonably well informed about key issues, and be willing to hold politicians genuinely accountable for success and failure. By contrast, pinning our hopes on a Great Leader allows us to check our own judgment at the door: all we have to do is trust in the Leader’s alleged wisdom and all will be well. Given the repeated shipwrecks that democratic systems have produced in recent years (the financial crisis, Iraq War, Eurozone debacle, growing inequality, etc.) is it any wonder that [some people] are willing to turn the helm over to someone who conveys an image of independence, resolution, and confidence?

The historical evidence, however, is stacked against authoritarian leaders.  From Steven A. Cook:

There are, of course, outliers. The governments of Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar have strong track records of development, security, and global prestige. They claim legitimacy because nondemocratic, but also mostly nonrapacious, governments have created wealth and with it superior infrastructure, longer and healthier lives, and opportunities for their citizens. Of course, these governments are not always [benevolent], but there is no denying Singaporean, Emirati, and Qatari success. These accomplishments are, however, specific to these places with small populations, unique locations, vast wealth, and particularly charismatic leaders. In other settings, strongman states have more often than not become predatory. In large, complex societies, reform requires a degree of consensus and some devolution of authority, neither of which your typical strongman — even a reformist-minded one — can countenance. The result is the instability of authoritarian politics and the pathologies they produce including violence, corruption, and radicalization.

The reason dictatorships tend to fail, is because their goal is ultimately to stay in power.  They particularly understand they are likely to go to prison *or worse* once they are out of office.  So just keep the power center all to yourself.  Everything else -- political reform, rights and freedom, economic growth, and institution-building -- becomes secondary.  In the end, although with great power comes great responsibility, it's still true that absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

The last TWILIGHT movie

"I don't wanna be here either"  ~Kristen Stewart, probably

[The last Twilight movie]
1: I am Kristen Stewart
2: I am werewolf guy
3: I am other werewolf guy
4-10: I am bad guy

[2 hours later: epic fight]

[Actually the fight never really happened]

Me: WTF did I just watch?



P.S.: just discovered the source novel doesn't even have an epic deathmatch that never happened; a multiple-volume series concluded with all the characters gathering in a field, talking it out, and deciding, meh, let's just go home.  So, kinda like how I felt, sitting in the theater during Breaking Dawn.