Wikipedia is Biased? Tell Me More!

Wikipedia's Bias

Infogalactic was started several years ago by people who saw Wikipedia's bias long before the mainstream figured it out. Wikipedia is open source and anyone can copy it, so they made a more politically neutral version of the site.

There is an extension in the Chrome store that works on Chrome and Brave browsers, called the Infogalactic Transporter. Since the site is still growing, they don't always have the most updated information, but if people join and contribute, that can change. The transporter will automatically send you to Infogalactic from any wikipedia link, and then you can click the Transporter icon to jump to Wikipedia and see the entry there. Anyone using Wikipedia as an unbiased source is a moron.

American and Chinese Governance Converge

This article has an interesting take from January now that Shanghai was smashed by the lockdowns. The convergence with the US and China is clear though, and only those who don't want to see the similarities refuse to acknowledge what is done through SOEs and direct political control in China is passed through private enterprise in the U.S., at once making China more authoritarian but also more limited in its scope versus the U.S. being seeminly more benign but with more totalitarian reach. Although thsi article makes it sound like maybe China is widening its definition of dissent...

Austrian China: Cross-Examining China’s 2021 Cancel Culture

At the same time, bit by bit China is being transformed from a country with a decentralized minimalist government nurturing a culture of entrepreneurship, competition and private sector-driven innovation into a country with an increasingly centralized big government propagating the idea that better governance is the cure to all ills.

...Before we go on to the wider societal issues, just to provide a rough idea, here are a few examples of the kinds of individuals who ended up getting themselves cancelled.

They include public intellectuals such as Gao Xiaosong (高晓松) or Yuan Tengfei (袁腾飞), celebrities from the entertainment industry such as actress Zhao Wei (赵薇), but also increasingly many prominent Chinese entrepreneurs with a social media presence such as Wei Ya (薇娅).

We published an entire post on the Wei Ya case, and it forms a key part of Man Tianmai’s article, as well.

To be clear, this does not mean that these people were ‘disappeared’, as adherents of the ‘China dystopia’ narrative might imagine. Just as in the West, it’s a virtual jail, not a physical one. On the ground this means that victims are blocked from a role as a public figure, be it on social media, on the screen or on the domestic Internet

...In per capita terms, Shanghai also has one of the largest contact tracing teams in all of China (3000+), and perhaps thanks to this, Shanghai has never had a Covid-19 case outbreak where the source of the outbreak could not be pinpointed. The Xi’an contact tracing team by comparison allegedly only had around 300 people for a city with a population half the size of Shanghai, and in the case of the recent outbreak, it failed to identify the source. This failure led to a city-wide lockdown under which workers deemed non-essential were prohibited from leaving their housing subdivisions.

These events left Chinese feeling that something was amiss, and yet, as Man puts it, faith in the state rarely seemed to waver for long. On the contrary, the epidemic reinforced their "religious identity" in every way. The government pointed to the chaos underway in the West, patted itself on the back for its allegedly successful “zero Covid” strategy, and those not directly affected by the resulting chaos for the most part approved.

...Are these Blackrock companies comparable to China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs)? Perhaps not in all senses, but in many. For Western readers wishing to understand the key differences between China’s economy and that of the West, this point is absolutely crucial. Both are by definition non-competitive and subject to all the ills of central planning. Just like China’s SOEs, Blackrock has de facto direct access to the central bank’s money printing machine and their top staff regularly rotate in and out of government regulatory agencies24. For both Blackrock and China’s state owned enterprises, political considerations are the bottom line, not economic ones. In many US industries, literally every major company is controlled by Blackrock, which necessarily limits the degree of real competition.

...While there are many similarities, there is one huge difference between China’s SOEs and the Western Blackrock companies. Chinese SOEs make up only ~25% of the Chinese economy, a number which pales in comparison to the 50-60%+ share Blackrock enjoys in the US25. In the US and to a large extent in Europe – though less well documented there – Blackrock has become the central planning establishment.

Forget Free Speech: Remove the Censors

Robert Reich, a Clinton administration economic adviser: Elon Musk’s vision for the internet is dangerous nonsense

The Russian people know little about Putin’s war on Ukraine because Putin has blocked their access to the truth, substituting propaganda and lies.

Years ago, pundits assumed the internet would open a new era of democracy, giving everyone access to the truth. But dictators like Putin and demagogues like Trump have demonstrated how naive that assumption was.

At least the US responded to Trump’s lies. Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before Twitter took him off its platform – just two days after the attack on the Capitol, which he provoked, in part, with his tweets. (Trump’s social media accounts were also suspended on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitch and TikTok.)

These moves were necessary to protect American democracy.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

The doubt increasingly creeping into my mind is that everyone who wants censorship should lose their free speech. That we should not try to create free speech while these people are around or in power, but that the solution is to remove them from power and the wider society. All major media outlets should be banned, all journalists working at major media outlets should be "deplatformed" for life if they called for censorship.

The march to authoritarian and totalitarian society is underway for one reason and one reason alone: the opponents of tyranny believe they are fighting society or technology or culture or some other force. They think they can oppose it with debate and education. No. There is one way to solve the crisis: remove the authoritarians.

Orban in Hungary did this. He created a free country with open debate. Those who opposes Orban, who claim Hungarian society is not free, are the same people calling for censorship all over the West. The ruling class is terrified that people will learn the great lesson from Hungary: that the ruling class and most of what we view as the fruit of a free society in the West, from gay marriage and transgenderism to climate and systemic racism, to endless wars all over the globe, bailouts for Wall Street, shipping jobs overseas (free trade is a false ideology too), mass immigration...it is all a manufactured belief system by an authoritarian ruling class.

Once their grip on the key societal control points is gone, it all collapses. Someone who genuinely believes in all these ideas would never be worried that people online oppose them. That people debate them. They are panicked over the Internet and free speech and run from debate because they know their beliefs are all false ideas that cannot compete. Or maybe they believe in their ideas, but know they'd be extremely lucky to get 20 percent of the vote if they openly stated their beliefs. They also may believe, in a bit of projection, that those who oppose them merely push their own false ideas. Non-Christian, "post-modernists" may believe there is no truth except power, therefore censoring your enemies is good because it's lies versus lies, and only one set of lies can win. They cannot fathom that there are people out there who still believe in the Truth. And then there is the smallest number among them, those who know exactly whom they serve and who they oppose.

Discord and Twitch are Dead Platforms

Discord's new policies ban dangerous health misinformation

Discord hasn't been as active in fighting pandemic misinformation as social networks, but it appears ready to change its tune. According to Protocol, Discord is updating its community policies to ban any misinformation that poses a "significant risk" of physical or social harm, including claims that threaten "public health." A chat server could face action if it spreads falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines, to put it another way. The community rules also bar spam, manipulative bots, fake accounts, bad-faith account reporting and "malicious" impersonation of others. The guidelines also forbid hate linked to age, caste, gender identity and serious illnesses. Discord will also consider "off-platform" activity when making decisions on bans and other policy decisions. Someone who belongs to a hate group or commits real-world crimes could face repercussions online.

Twitch Says It Will Bar Chronic Spreaders of Misinformation

Twitch, the livestreaming site beloved by video gamers that has become a key internet communications service, said on Thursday that it had created new rules aimed at clamping down on egregious purveyors of misinformation.

The company, acknowledging the real-world harms that could come with its rapidly expanding influence, said it would prohibit “harmful misinformation superspreaders who persistently share misinformation on or off of Twitch.”

Twitch will target only channels that meet a handful of criteria. To fall afoul of the new policy, users must be persistently sharing harmful misinformation that has been widely debunked, the company said, adding that it had “selected these criteria because taken together they create the highest risk of harm, including inciting real-world harm.”

Remember that saying things such as "men can't have babies" is dangerous and debunked misinformation.

Exit question: why do China and the West have the same Internet censorship regimes?

Regulatory Pain for Alibaba, Tencent may Not Be Over

Global Times: CPC’s disciplinary agency renews anti-corruption drive, to fight new challenges of ‘capital-power collusion’

The Communist Party of China's (CPC) top disciplinary agency pledged to maintain a strong and persistent crackdown on corruption in a communiqué released Thursday, and the document also said the Party will actively handle "the new challenges and new situations" of the anti-corruption campaign, including strengthening investigations and punishment behind the "disorderly expansion of capital" and monopoly of some online platforms, vowing to cut off the collusion between capital and power.

The communiqué also stressed that the corruption behind "disorderly expansion of capital" and monopoly of some online platforms should be investigated and punished, and the ties between political power and capital should be cut off.

Zhu said this is a new challenge which emerged in the past 10 years, as the fast development of China's economy has brought huge changes in social media networks, IT industries and digital economy, and some capitalists have gained unprecedented influence as some of their products have become the key parts of public goods of the nation.

Without strict law-enforcement and legislation that keep up with the times, there will be vast space for corruption and misconduct, and the ambition of some capitalists will expand to gain political power and undermine the socialist nature of our country, said analysts.

"The capital is showing its intention to cross the line," said Wu Xinwen, a professor and expert on Chinese politics at Fudan University in Shanghai, noting that some capitalists are no longer satisfied with only having economic power, but intend to expanding their influence to public media and education to eventually gain political power, and without restrictions and management, the capital could overrun politics and society in China.

Although the lines are drawn differently, U.S. tech companies are also engaged in violation of political and economic norms, the latest being Google's abuse of its ad system.

False Flag Cyberattack on Financial Markets or Supply Chains Incoming

If something like this happens, I am certain USG will be behind it. Russia and China are always blamed first in every cyberattack. The public is being primed for war and a "Russian" attack.

Money Printer Go Brrrr is a Ponzi Meme

Some memes are powerful because they condense a truth into a simple phrase or picture. Other memes are false, but induce herd behavior. Essentially a memetic ponzi that eventually "blows up" in an Emperor's New Clothes moment. Or in financial markets, a crash or panic.

Surplus Population Will Voluntarily Enter Metaverse

Back in the mid-2000s I thought Chinese kids paying money to put clothes on their avatars was absurd. Look at where things are going. People willingly exist almost solely online, their status is online. They need ways of showing status online.

When it comes to something like Bitcoin, many like to laugh at the older people who think the whole entire project, not simply altcoins or the speculative bubble, is a scam, that this will all fade away like pet rocks or be replaced by central bank digital currencies. Perhaps the bigger mistake is in thinking that something like Bitcoin will exist in the real world. It's entirely possible we have two parallel societies that exist side-by-side. Many people will opt to live in the matrix. Don't think of it as a prediction, but as a thought experiment if you can't fathom why people would pay $1 for digital land, let alone millions.

BI: Metaverse property sales are accelerating as investors stake out virtual land in the potentially $1 trillion market. Here are 3 recent examples that have sold for eye-popping amounts

China Still Trust Busting BigTech

Reuters: No let up in China's aim to curb tech monopolies, says cbank governor

The central bank will work with anti-monopoly authorities to prevent firms from abusing dominant market positions and actively deal with new monopoly problems, Yi said at a meeting of the Bank for International Settlements on Thursday.

China will implement regulations that require platform companies engaged in financial business to establish financial holding companies, according to Yi's speech published on the central bank's website.

China is treating technology companies as the natural monopolies they are, while U.S. "anti-trust" regulators and courts approve the takeover of the U.S. economy by a handful of major firms. Maybe the financial sector should be wiped out by cryptocurrency and technology firms, and China's CCP is protecting itself more so than the financial sector, but the U.S. will have to deal with its monopolies eventually.

China Overseas Tech Stocks a Bad Bet for Investors

One of the most misunderstood realities of the past decade, and still to this day, is the fundamental weakness of the renminbi. Until there is a wholesale change in the economic environment, which includes China reforming away from GDP-push policies such as making as much steel as possible, the yuan will remain in danger of a breakdown. Perhaps China can lockdown the market and avoid ever paying a price in the FX market, but a price for policies artifically propping the yuan will be paid in full, plus unintended damages.

ZH: The Deepest Motivation Behind China's 'Reform' Agenda Revealed As Very Simple

Thus, in the waning days of the Chinese growth story, the deepest motivation behind China’s reform agenda is revealed as very simple: capturing dollars and then leveraging up foreign reserves by printing up a massive money supply in RMB. And directing a portion of the dollars, of course, into leadership pockets.

Quantum Internet

New internet woven from ‘spooky’ quantum links could supercharge science and commerce

By year’s end, drivers in the largest U.S. metro areas—including, largely thanks to Figueroa, the suburbs of New York City—may unwittingly rumble over the tenuous strands of a new and potentially revolutionary network: a “quantum internet” stitched together by entangled photons like those in Figueroa’s lab.

Billions of dollars have poured into research on quantum computers and sensors, but many experts say the devices will flourish only when they are yoked to each other over long distances. The vision parallels the way the web vaulted the personal computer from a glorified typewriter and game console to an indispensable telecommunications portal. Through entanglement, a strange quantum mechanical property once derided by Albert Einstein as a “spooky distant effect,” researchers aim to create intimate, instantaneous links across long distances. A quantum internet could weld telescopes into arrays with ultrahigh resolution, precisely synchronize clocks, yield hypersecure communication networks for finance and elections, and make it possible to do quantum computing from anywhere. It could also lead to applications nobody’s yet dreamed of.

Bombs Away: ARKK Loses Support

Virtual Price Index When?

Reuters: How a 10-second video clip sold for $6.6 million DrBurry buying it up.

Everyone Laughed at Dow 36,000, And Then They Bought It

The first chart shows SPY/QQQ versus the 10-year yield. A clear general trend. The next charts are finance and tech ETFs versus SPY. The blue line is TLT/IEI for XLK, and IEI/TLT for XLF. When TLT outperforms IEI, it indicates rates are coming down, which benefits TLT more than IEI because it has greater duration. The reverse is true when rates go up, IEI goes down less than TLT for a given rise in interest rates. If rates have finished going down, the time to exit tech and enter value has arrived, but a major correction has also arrived or will be coming soon.

There remains a deflationary argument for bond yields dropping. We've been here before on rates, remember 2018? The market forced the Fed's hand back then. I mention this because at this juncture, I don't see tech outperforming from here. Whether oil and copper keep rising, or everything sells off, tech is going to get hit.

I've seen some chatter about the market overreacting to higher interest rates, but I don't see an overreaction. I think its an underreaction thus far in tech. Tt isn't an inflation or bond yield issue, but a stock market issue. As interest rates went down, increasing numbers of investors justified higher stock prices based on low interest rates. Once stocks are valued like bonds, they become as volatile as bonds once intrest rates change. Tech stocs are effectively a zero-coupon bond in this model because it has very low divdends and many companies have zero earnings. When rates increase, the tech sector should have, and does have, a highly volatile downward adjustement. The book Dow 36,000 is rightly pilloried for predicting Dow 36,000 in the years after 1999 (it was published 6 months before the market peaked), but the underlying thesis was that stocks are safer than bonds because they grow their earnings. Stocks should be valued like bonds (or even at a premium) and that gave a Dow 36,000 target based on interest rates back then.

For myself, I'm mostly drawn to the volatility index because I think it has support from both bearish and bullish moves (vertical rises in things like BTC).

Digital Currency Completes the Last Mile for Payment Apps

Digital RMB will complete the "last mile" for payment apps by making it possible to transact with people on different apps or when one pary is offline. 21st Century: 挑战微信支付宝痛点 解码数字人民币比较优势

Although from the perspective of user experience, Mu Changchun also said frankly, “For ordinary people, the boundary between electronic payment and central bank digital currency for basic payment functions is actually relatively blurred.” But it is worth noting that this The experience result is based on the network environment and payment environment that have certain conditions. If it is in a scene where online payment is not available in subways, airplanes, remote areas, etc., the digital renminbi can exhibit characteristics superior to those of Alipay.

Hao Yi said that there is basically no difference between the use of digital renminbi and Alipay in big cities. The difference between the two is not at the scene level, but in the technology, that is, dual offline payment technology. In other words, digital renminbi can complete transactions without the Internet, and it also promotes the expansion of transaction scenarios.

"If WeChat Pay and Alipay must do dual offline payments, it should be possible." Dong Ximiao, deputy dean of the Chongyang Institute of Finance, Renmin University of China, also believes that the cost is too high due to the multi-party technical transformation and the requirements for equipment. Enterprises have no motivation if the input-output ratio is too low, and now they have a huge number of users.

A reporter from 21st Century Business Herald conducted an offline payment test on WeChat Pay and Alipay and found that one party must be online to complete the transaction. Currently, the dual offline payment that the digital renminbi intends to achieve cannot be realized.

Chinese Consumer Companies Turn to Live Streaming During Pandemic

21st Century: 社论｜直播带货是长期价格战的产物

In the past few days, live broadcasts have brought goods all over the country, and governments, enterprises, and e-commerce companies have set up machines to promote various products and services. Affected by this trend, many units and enterprises have launched network anchors and joined the vast army of live broadcast goods.

The live-broadcast sales method has risen in 2019, because online traffic is becoming more expensive, and the cost of acquiring customers continues to increase. In order to increase sales, some e-commerce companies have begun to convert static picture displays of products to small videos. Some merchants use live webcasting. Interact with the audience to promote the product. This can reduce platform traffic costs and lower costs. This method is also a derivative of the Internet video trend, which makes online sales no longer limited to e-commerce platforms, and can carry live broadcasts on different platforms, such as game platforms, small video platforms, live broadcast platforms, etc., and many platforms Internet celebrities can also realize value by bringing goods.

Due to the impact of the epidemic, this year's physical business has been hit hard. Online business sales have been blessed by disasters, influencing more consumers who cannot go out shopping, and training more online users. At the same time, a large number of corporate sales have been hit hard and there is an urgent need to find online sales channels. Live broadcast goods can be directly connected with the factory, eliminating the traditional sales tier-by-tier wholesale agency fees, channel fees and other such as advertising costs, which can be lower prices Direct sales to consumers.

Many governments have also actively promoted live streaming. On the one hand, government departments actively help small and medium-sized enterprises to resume production and production, promote the expansion of consumption, make the flow of people and logistics work, and live broadcasts have become more effective sales channels when the epidemic prevention and control are not over; on the other hand, agricultural products and other features in poor areas The slow sales of products are serious. Local government officials or celebrities, presenters, live broadcast influencers, etc. are actively broadcasting goods for these agricultural products for free, so as to achieve poverty alleviation through e-commerce. It can be seen that live streaming is first a new business model evolved from online sales, but also encounters the special market environment and poverty alleviation caused by the epidemic. Therefore, this new model has been pushed to all walks of life and blossomed everywhere.

Drowning in Oil in 1999

A follow-up to the last post.

About That 1998 Analog and Y2K Scenario

Action in the forex and commodity markets is echoing with 1997-1998.

Nasdaq peaked at 2028 intraday on July 31. It fell to a low of 1475 on August 31, a drop of 27 percent. It rallied nearly 17 percent, then sold off again. It lost 23.6 percent in the second wave. The total drawdown at intraday low was 33 percent. The bottom was in early October, making for a nine-week crisis.

Few are thinking about a positive outcome, but there was real panic in summer 1998. The Federal Reserve organized a bailout of Long Term Capital Management. If coronavirus were a similar situation in time (with larger percentage moves), the bottom might come around the last week of April or first week of May. I'm not proposing that is going to happen, but it's worth keeping in the back of your mind. The final leg up was caused by Fed liquidity and also the destruction of the bears. Skeptics were calling the market a bubble before 1998, they were betting against Internet and tech stocks. The euphoria rally that followed was in part driven by the failure of a bear market in the face of a 33 percent correction.

The economy isn't heating up into a cyclical peak this time. Growth has been terrible for 11 years. Social mood isn't climbing into a major peak. It is arguably expressing a depression on par with the 1930s and even 1920s Weimar Germany. But the potential for an explosive bull move is not out of the cards yet, not until the virus pushes the economy into a clear recession that will not lift with the virus.

Update:

Do You Believe in Cycles? The Economist From March 1999

Drowning in oil, trade war and BigTech regulation.

China BigTech Fully Implements Social Credit Infrastructure to Fight Coronavirus

Chinese Internet giants are using the social credit infrastructure to fight coronavirus.

Nasdaq: China seeks help of national tech giants to track coronavirus with QR codes

On Wednesday, Alipay, the payment app operated by Alibaba's financial division Ant Financial, released a feature in collaboration with the government that assigns a coloured QR code representing the health of residents in Hangzhou.

Users in the city fill out an online form reporting their ID number, whether they have travelled outside Hangzhou recently, and any symptoms they might have that suggest an illness, such as fever or a heavy cough.

After filling out the questionnaire, users receive a colour-based QR-code, a type of barcode, on their mobile phones indicating their health status.

Users with a red code are instructed to remain quarantined for 14 days and provide regular check-ins via DingTalk, a workplace chat app also run by Alibaba.

Users with a yellow code are instructed to stay inside for 7 days, while users with a green code may travel freely.

The system is currently fragmented by city.
Caixin: 浙江率先破解复工难 杭州以报备代替审批

When applying for a health code on Alipay, the reporter found that the data including the recent address, whereabouts, history of contact, and current health status came from the user's initiative to declare. At present, the health code data of various cities and counties in Zhejiang are not interlinked and need to be separated.

...From 00:00 on February 17th, Hangzhou's public transportation and road passenger transportation have been fully resumed. Both the driver and the driver need to use the health green code to register and activate the QR code on the taxi. Passengers are required to cooperate with the scan code to ensure the driver and driver information. Truly traceable.

Anyone think this system will go away after coronavirus? The next phase will be removing cash from the economy such that it is impossible to engage in economic activity without a QR-code or similar account.