News Items

The ‘Emerging Art Bubble’ Has Burst

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Earlier today, Bloomberg published a fascinating article on the collapse of what is known as the “emerging art market.” Namely, a slice of the art world where spraying a canvas with paint from a fire extinguisher had been commanding six figures a pop. Well all of that is now over, as the space has experienced a stunning collapse.

Bloomberg reports:

Art dealer and collector Niels Kantor paid $100,000 two years ago for an abstract canvas by Hugh Scott-Douglas with the idea of quickly reselling it for a tidy profit. Instead, he is returning the 28-year-old artist’s work to the market this week at an 80 percent discount.

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‘The Intellectual Yet Idiot’ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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In particular, they all (totalitarian systems) seem to have in common an intense dislike of the more abstract forms of thought –a dislike characteristically also shown by many of the collectivists among our scientists.

– From my 2010 review of F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

The following is an excellent takedown of the so-called “elite,” the status quo, whatever you want to call them. We all know the type. It’s the self-assured people who constantly get things wrong, constantly screw up on issues of national significance and yet somehow never face any consequences or accountability for their actions.

Here’s the meat of the piece, originally published at Medium:

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

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A Dire Warning – ‘Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet’

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When Bruce Schneier writes a post titled, Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet, you better listen.

Read his post below and share widely:

Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet. These probes take the form of precisely calibrated attacks designed to determine exactly how well these companies can defend themselves, and what would be required to take them down. We don’t know who is doing this, but it feels like a large nation state. China or Russia would be my first guesses.

First, a little background. If you want to take a network off the Internet, the easiest way to do it is with a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). Like the name says, this is an attack designed to prevent legitimate users from getting to the site. There are subtleties, but basically it means blasting so much data at the site that it’s overwhelmed. These attacks are not new: hackers do this to sites they don’t like, and criminals have done it as a method of extortion. There is an entire industry, with an arsenal of technologies, devoted to DDoS defense. But largely it’s a matter of bandwidth. If the attacker has a bigger fire hose of data than the defender has, the attacker wins.

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The Status Quo vs. Donald Trump

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Unless something dramatic happens (certainly possible in this election), I believe Donald Trump will win the 2016 election quite easily, and I believe this victory will be driven by the resentment vote. Forget card-carrying Democrats and Republicans, they will vote along party lines. The key to this election is, and always has been, independent voters. I believe the following chart from Gallup tells you all you need to know about who will decide this thing:

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By definition, most of the 43% of Americans who identify as independents have serious misgivings about the two-party system and its so-called “luminaries.” As such, both Trump and Clinton should be battling aggressively for this key voting bloc. Unfortunately for Hillary supporters, only one of them is. The other candidate is rallying the status quo from both parties under one large, oligarch-funded tend of cronyism, militarism and business as usual. Earlier this week, I highlighted how the resentment vote against mainstream media would play a key role in tipping the scales to a Trump victory (see: The Death of Mainstream Media). Today, I want to look at how the resentment vote also targets the two-party political oligarchy.

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Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Plunges to Record Low in Gallup Poll

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In yesterday’s post, The Death of Mainstream Media, I noted:

At the end of the day, I have concluded that my focus on Hillary as of late (vs. Trump) has as much to with my disgust for the mainstream media as anything else. To see these organs, which have destroyed this country by keeping the people uninformed for decades, now rally around a sickly, corrupt, oligarch coddling politician as the empire enters the collapse stage is simply too much to stomach…

The only positive thing to happen during this election season is the death of mainstream media. With their insufferable propaganda fully exposed, there is no coming back. 

Then today, we learned the following from Gallup:

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WIRED Reports – Feds Will Soon Be Able to Hack Almost Anyone

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America: This is Your Government.

Wired reports:

DIGITAL DEVICES AND software programs are complicated. Behind the pointing and clicking on screen are thousands of processes and routines that make everything work. So when malicious software—malware—invades a system, even seemingly small changes to the system can have unpredictable impacts.

That’s why it’s so concerning that the Justice Department is planning a vast expansion of government hacking. Under a new set of rules, the FBI would have the authority to secretly use malware to hack into thousands or hundreds of thousands of computers that belong to innocent third parties and even crime victims. The unintended consequences could be staggering.

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The Death of Mainstream Media

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Given the fact that I’m not a Trump supporter, a few people have informed me that my recent coverage has been very one-sided against Clinton. This is unquestionably true. Since I’m always trying to question myself and my motivations, I had to ask myself: Why is this the case?

Beyond the incredible torrent of factual revelations that have emerged which should disqualify her from being considered President, there’s something else going on. That something else is the mainstream media.

It all began during the Democratic primary when I noticed a very disturbing trend emerge. A trend which has only gotten worse in the subsequent months. As I noted in February’s piece, A Detailed Look at The New York Times’ Embarrassing, Deceitful and Illogical Endorsement of Hillary Clinton:

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Video of the Day – Clinton Campaign Manager Refuses to Answer Questions on Pneumonia Timeline

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The strangest thing about today for me has been the complete lack of transparency from the Clinton campaign following yesterday’s extremely disturbing and bizarre events.

Hillary Clinton collapsing into the arms of secret service as she was shoved into a van was unquestionably the most significant moment of the entire campaign season thus far. As such, you’d think her people would hold a press conference providing very detailed specifics about the pneumonia diagnosis and, most importantly, why it was hidden from the public.

None of that happened, which makes the whole thing even shadier than it already was.

As The Hill reports:

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Another Pharma Company Scheme to Stop Legalized Marijuana Emerges

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I covered this topic back in July in the piece, The Real Reason Pharma Companies Hate Medical Marijuana (It Works). Here are my opening paragraphs:

Whenever an irrational and inhumane law remains on the books far longer than any thinking person would consider appropriate, there’s usually one reason behind it: money.

Unsurprisingly, the continued federal prohibition on marijuana and its absurd classification as a Schedule 1 drug is no exception. Thankfully, a recent study published in the journal Health Affairs shows us exactly why pharmaceutical companies are one of the leading voices against medical marijuana. It has nothing to do with healthcare and everything to do with corporate greed.

Today’s article provides further evidence that when it comes to the Pharma industry in the U.S., it’s often more about profits than people.

The Intercept reports:

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Here’s the Video of Hillary Stumbling After Leaving 9/11 Ceremony

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Here’s the video that everyone’s talking about. It’s actually really sad to watch. Hillary Clinton is obviously very unwell and she should step down. Bernie Sanders, who came in second during the primary should take her place and give American citizens a real choice in this election.

Beyond this episode, which is huge in its own right, there is a bigger point to be made. Mainstream media should be totally finished after all this. It’s been obvious for a long time now that Hillary health concerns are not a conspiracy theory, yet the mainstream media yelled and screamed about how there was no story to be told. Well there is a story, and anyone who told you otherwise should be forever discredited as a “reporter.”

As an example:

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