12/15/14 Today's Inquiries

Still somewhat without my main computer. But. We can rebuild him!


The Links:

We have a spending deal. Don't worry, Obama will sign the gift to bankers. How did they pull it off?

Are low oil prices an indicator of a global economic slowdown? Yes.

In other words, of the observed 45% decline in the price of oil, 19 percentage points– more than 2/5– might be reflecting new indications of weakness in the global economy.

The dark side of the oil shock:

If there is a really dark side to this oil shock, it is likely to stem not from the developed economies, but from its destabilising effects on Russia (as Paul Krugman has argued) and some other oil producers in the emerging world. That is what transpired, eventually, in the oil shock of 1997/98.

A collapse of the Russian economy, with its dangerous political consequences, is the most important reason to worry that the “idiotic optimists” will be wrong about the beneficial market impact of the 2014 oil shock.

Here is your must-read for today: How to Uphold White Supremacy by Focusing on diversity and Inclusion.

Since the civil rights movement, white people have exploited every opportunity to conceal their colonialist legacy and longstanding (ab)use of white supremacist power. They’ve proven time and again that they have no interest in rectifying that history, only in dealing with the fact that they could no longer deny the reality of those injustices. One effective tactic has been to separate white supremacy and colonialism from the way racism is understood and taught through schools, history textbooks, news media, and through any white-controlled institutions. These lessons, of anti-racism as-told-by-white-people, will be familiar to you: that racism is only explicit racial prejudice; that separatism is the essence of Jim Crow (and therefore inclusion is the antithesis to de juresegregation); and that the remedy for a racist society is a colorblind one.

I think this sounds a lot like that 9/12 project Glenn Beck tried to get started. Does conservatism really need rebranding following a successful election?

A Feminist Critique of Silicon Valley.

When the hostage crisis began in Sidney, thousands in the business district decided to head home for the day. Uber responded by increasing prices fourfold. Hurray surge pricing.

Who has accountability for civil asset forfeiture? Apparently it's not the local prosecutor's office.

The devalued American worker. Don't worry, we'll all get jobs at Uber driving each other around on our days off.

The Vanishing Male Worker. Women too.

The media wealth of whites is $142,000. For Blacks it's $11,000.

Do development workers underestimate the poor?

Arnold Kling makes several predictions about future technological change.

Teach For America trojan horse among the Ferguson protests.

Teach For America recruits young, mostly white grads from elite colleges to undergo a 5 week training program which supposedly enables them to replace experienced, mostly black teachers in inner city schools. Although TFA used to claim it sends its recruits to “underserved” schools where experienced teachers don't want to go, the facts are that underprepared TFA temps have replaced tens of thousands of experienced teachers in Newark, Chicago, St. Louis, and dozens of other cities around the country. Teach For America contends that inner-city public schools are NOT underfunded, that chronic poverty, joblessness, homelessness and short staffing are merely “excuses” used to protect the "bad teachers" which its mostly white temps are replacing. This is precisely the opposite of what knowledgeable young activists like the Dream Defenders Phillip Agnew will tell you.

The TED talk geniuses who gutted journalism.

Thoughts on unsecured personal lending being popularized by sites like Lending Tree and Lending Club.

Would you make an unsecured personal loan to an individual so they can pay off $14,000 in credit card debt? If so, at what interest rate (the credit card debt is at 17%). The person has a 15 year credit history, a FICO score of 699, an annual income of $73,000 and a DTI of 17% (excluding mortgage debt).

The Sony hack is so bad that the company's financials are a mess because the software they use to manage their money is FUBAR. They've also ceased filming.

The Pickup Artist Simulator. Surprisingly tongue-in-cheek.

This movie is getting too much publicity on the NPR/NYT circuit but it does look pretty good. I've never been a huge Pinchon fan though.


While Blackhat may never be as awesome as Hackers, it may still be a decently fun movie.