three minutes on where freedom is heading;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrpK90bHO2U

 so is this brave new world or 1984 being brought our way;

Your Search History Will Determine Your Financial Credit Score In Future, Says IMF

In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper (read below) that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future.

The researchers propose using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual or business.

The plan is outlined in a blog written by Arnoud Boot, Peter Hoffmann, Luc Laeven and Lev Ratnovski, pitching the Orwellian notion as a breakthrough in financial technology (Fintech).

Fintech resolves the dilemma by tapping various nonfinancial data: the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches and purchases. Recent research documents that, once powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, these alternative data sources are often superior than traditional credit assessment methods, and can advance financial inclusion.

Overall, while much of the technological progress in finance is evolutionary, its pace is accelerating fast. Fintech’s potential to reach out to over a billion unbanked people around the world, and the changes in the financial system structure that this can induce, can be revolutionary.

Governments should follow and carefully support the technological transition in finance. It is important to adjust policies accordingly and stay ahead of the curve.

Gizmodo commented on the proposal and its mortifying consequences if it were actually implemented on a grand scale.

The researchers acknowledge that there will be privacy and policy concerns related to incorporating this kind of soft-data into credit analysis. And they do little to explain how this might work in practice. The paper isn’t long, and it’s worth a read just to wrap your mind around some of the notions of fintech’s future and why everyone seems to want in on the payments game.

As it is, getting the really fine soft-data points would probably require companies like Facebook and Apple to loosen up their standards on linking unencrypted information with individual accounts. How they might share information with other institutions would be its own can of worms.

However, the policy seems to be designed to bring an end to alternate news media with grave consequences for those engaged with the organisation..........read more......

 insert your own caption should you so choose;

 what goes around comes around, and here you can discover more about that centered on elections;

Democrats who are unhappy that Republicans are skeptical of the 2020 election results have no one to blame but themselves. Democrats cannot understand why Republicans would question the election results in spite of the fact that Democrats sought to undermine anti-voter fraud measures in the run-up to the election; that Republican observers were not allowed to observe vote counting; and that massive numbers of Biden votes were counted in the middle of the night while no Republican observers were present. Of course, in recent years, Democrats have repeatedly disputed unfavorable election results, pushed wild conspiracy theories, and lied about their opponents. A quick review of recent political history seems in order. .......read more.......

 caitlin has a way with words and directs them at targets that haven't been successfully dealt with for a long time;

Hi here’s $600, please forget that guillotines are a thing.

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If a $600 stimulus check isn’t enough for you, then don’t be poor. If you’re poor, get another job. If there are no jobs, find some money. If you find money in unauthorized ways, we’ll throw you in prison. If you decide to just be homeless, we’ll throw you in prison for that too. If all this drives you insane, don’t worry, mental illness is what we have prisons for.

Prison is the social safety net of neoliberalism.

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Life is a series of psyops. When you’re little it’s psyops about Santa and the Tooth Fairy. When you go to school it’s psyops about your government being a democracy and the news being true. When you grow up it’s psyops about capitalism totally working and the economy being real.

As your world gets bigger, so do the manipulations. They start out as cute little lies told to children by parents, and by the time you’re grown it’s a vast power-serving worldview designed to ensure the perpetual domination of an omnicidal, ecocidal global empire.

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The problem with trying to work within the system to fix the system is that the system is not broken; it’s working exactly as intended. Your very first step in that direction is therefore a step right into the mouth of the monster without your sword or shield. It will devour you........read more........

 whatever you may think of aoc, this image makes a very large point few can accurately support;

 one of my all time favorite authors, h. l. mencken writes here about gun control and i stand with his assessment;

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) was the most influential newspaperman of his era and a prolific author of iconoclastic books and essays. This is reprinted from The Evening Sun of Baltimore, November 30, 1925. Copyright 1925 by The Evening Sun. Republication without credit not permitted.

I

The eminent Nation announces with relish “the organization of a national committee of 100 to induce Congress to prohibit the inter-State traffic in revolvers,” and offers the pious judgement that it is “a step forward.” “Crime statistics,” it appears, “show that 90% of the murders that take place are committed by the use of the pistol, and every year there are hundreds of cases of accidental homicide because someone did not know that his revolver was loaded.”

The new law—or is it to be a constitutional amendment?—will do away with all that. “It will not be easy,” of course, “to draw a law that will permit exceptions for public officers and bank guards”—to say nothing of Prohibition agents and other such legalized murderers. “But soon even these officials may get on without revolvers.”

More than once, in this place, I have lavished high praise upon the Nation. All that praise has been deserved, and I am by no means disposed to go back on it. The Nation is one of the few honest and intelligent periodicals ever published in the United States. It stands clear of official buncombe; it prints every week a great mass of news that the newspapers seem to miss; it interprets that news with a freedom and a sagacity that few newspaper editors can even so much as imagine.

If it shut up shop then the country would plunge almost unchallenged into the lowest depths of Coolidgism, Rotarianism, Stantaquaism and other such bilge. It has been, for a decade past, the chief consolation of the small and forlorn minority of civilized Americans.

But the Nation, in its days, has been a Liberal organ, and its old follies die hard. Ever and anon, in the midst of its most eloquent and effective pleas for Liberty, its eye wanders weakly toward Law. At such moments the old lust to lift ‘em up overcomes it, and it makes a brilliant and melodramatic ass of itself. Such a moment was upon it when it printed the paragraph that I have quoted. Into that paragraph—of not over 200 words—it packed as much maudlin and nonsensical blather, as much idiotic reasoning and banal moralizing, as Dr. Coolidge gets into a speech of two hours’ length........read more.....