A small tool to view real-world ActivityPub objects as JSON! Enter a URL
or username from Mastodon or a similar service below, and we'll send a
request with
the right
Accept
header
to the server to view the underlying object.
{
"@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
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"type": "Create",
"actor": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259",
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"type": "Note",
"id": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259/entities/urn:activity:1322381660112556048",
"attributedTo": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259",
"content": "The Metaverse is at its core escapism from a world afflicted by climate change, extreme inequality, and diminishing natural resources. Rather than deal with these challenges head on, a subset of human beings have decided it is easier to reproduce the conditions which led to these problems in the first place.<br /><br />When individuals dive deeper into hyperreality and further detach themselves from the physical world which underpins everything, the Matrix becomes social realism. But for those using the Metaverse as grounds to experiment with new cognitive tools for shifting human behavior toward better outcomes that remedy the most vexing problems of the time, politics is transformative.<br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/12/what-will-the-metaverse-mean-for-political-movements/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/12/what-will-the-metaverse-mean-for-political-movements/</a>",
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"published": "2021-12-28T01:52:35+00:00",
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"content": "The Metaverse is at its core escapism from a world afflicted by climate change, extreme inequality, and diminishing natural resources. Rather than deal with these challenges head on, a subset of human beings have decided it is easier to reproduce the conditions which led to these problems in the first place.\n\nWhen individuals dive deeper into hyperreality and further detach themselves from the physical world which underpins everything, the Matrix becomes social realism. But for those using the Metaverse as grounds to experiment with new cognitive tools for shifting human behavior toward better outcomes that remedy the most vexing problems of the time, politics is transformative.\n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/12/what-will-the-metaverse-mean-for-political-movements/",
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"id": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259/entities/urn:activity:1322381660112556048/activity"
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"id": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259/entities/urn:activity:1294649486974390282",
"attributedTo": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259",
"content": "When millions of human beings subscribe to an ideology, it becomes real because human beings believe it is real. <br /><br />When swaths of the human population are conditioned to believe certain periods of the calendar year are preordained for communication breakdowns and volatility (Mercury in Retrograde), then that is inevitably what happens.<br /><br />At the minimum, incidences of this nature like the Facebook outage are used as justification to reinforce an ideological imperative.<br /><br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/10/is-astrology-ideology/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/10/is-astrology-ideology/</a>",
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"published": "2021-10-12T13:14:50+00:00",
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"content": "When millions of human beings subscribe to an ideology, it becomes real because human beings believe it is real. \n\nWhen swaths of the human population are conditioned to believe certain periods of the calendar year are preordained for communication breakdowns and volatility (Mercury in Retrograde), then that is inevitably what happens.\n\nAt the minimum, incidences of this nature like the Facebook outage are used as justification to reinforce an ideological imperative.\n\n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/10/is-astrology-ideology/",
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"id": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259/entities/urn:activity:1288996159527849995",
"attributedTo": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259",
"content": "A Federal Reserve economist thinks most common sense inflation theories are “arrant nonsense,” whose only function is to “save us from intellectual nihilism.”<br /><br />“Mainstream economics is replete with ideas that ‘everyone knows’ to be true, but that are actually arrant nonsense,” writes Fed official Jeremy Rudd in his new report titled Why Do We Think Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation? “No doubt, one reason why this situation arises is because the economy is a complicated system that is inherently difficult to understand, so propositions like these—even though wrong—are all that saves us from intellectual nihilism.”<br /><br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/fed-economist-says-nonsense-inflation-theories-save-us-from-intellectual-nihilism/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/fed-economist-says-nonsense-inflation-theories-save-us-from-intellectual-nihilism/</a>",
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"url": "https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1288996159527849995",
"published": "2021-09-26T22:50:32+00:00",
"source": {
"content": "A Federal Reserve economist thinks most common sense inflation theories are “arrant nonsense,” whose only function is to “save us from intellectual nihilism.”\n\n“Mainstream economics is replete with ideas that ‘everyone knows’ to be true, but that are actually arrant nonsense,” writes Fed official Jeremy Rudd in his new report titled Why Do We Think Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation? “No doubt, one reason why this situation arises is because the economy is a complicated system that is inherently difficult to understand, so propositions like these—even though wrong—are all that saves us from intellectual nihilism.”\n\n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/fed-economist-says-nonsense-inflation-theories-save-us-from-intellectual-nihilism/",
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{
"type": "Create",
"actor": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259",
"object": {
"type": "Note",
"id": "https://www.minds.com/api/activitypub/users/1212840429762912259/entities/urn:activity:1287910160404058129",
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"content": "George Soros reached billionaire status by predicting market collapses, and offered some insight several years ago on China’s real estate market that parallels what’s playing out with Evergrande.<br /><br />“China eerily resembles what happened during the financial crisis in the U.S. in 2007-08, which was similarly fueled by credit growth,” the investor told the Asia Society in 2016, according to Bloomberg. “Most of the money that banks are supplying is needed to keep bad debts and loss-making enterprises alive.”<br /><br />Soros in 2016 warned that China’s property and construction projects were overinflated, and China’s banking system had more loans than deposits with “troubles on the assets side but also increasing troubles on the liabilities side.” At the time, new-home prices in Shengzhen—the region of China where Evergrande is headquartered—rose 62 percent. <br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/did-george-soros-predict-chinas-evergrande-woes-in-2016/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/did-george-soros-predict-chinas-evergrande-woes-in-2016/</a>",
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"url": "https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1287910160404058129",
"published": "2021-09-23T22:55:09+00:00",
"source": {
"content": "George Soros reached billionaire status by predicting market collapses, and offered some insight several years ago on China’s real estate market that parallels what’s playing out with Evergrande.\n\n“China eerily resembles what happened during the financial crisis in the U.S. in 2007-08, which was similarly fueled by credit growth,” the investor told the Asia Society in 2016, according to Bloomberg. “Most of the money that banks are supplying is needed to keep bad debts and loss-making enterprises alive.”\n\nSoros in 2016 warned that China’s property and construction projects were overinflated, and China’s banking system had more loans than deposits with “troubles on the assets side but also increasing troubles on the liabilities side.” At the time, new-home prices in Shengzhen—the region of China where Evergrande is headquartered—rose 62 percent. \n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/did-george-soros-predict-chinas-evergrande-woes-in-2016/",
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"content": "U.S. lawmakers are exploring the possibility of moving the Raytheon Iron Dome military defense system from Israel to Ukraine.<br /><br />On September 2nd, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) approved its version of the fiscal 2022 defense bill. The legislation includes an amendment which would require the Pentagon to submit a report to Congress regarding the possibility of selling “existing systems” to Ukraine. Although the bill, which was passed overwhelmingly by a 57-2 margin, does not contain specifics about this type of weaponry, one Congressional staffer says this language hints at the Army’s Iron Dome defense developed by Raytheon.<br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/american-lawmakers-want-to-move-raytheons-iron-dome-from-israel-to-ukraine/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/american-lawmakers-want-to-move-raytheons-iron-dome-from-israel-to-ukraine/</a>",
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"url": "https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1287146598324768784",
"published": "2021-09-21T20:21:02+00:00",
"source": {
"content": "U.S. lawmakers are exploring the possibility of moving the Raytheon Iron Dome military defense system from Israel to Ukraine.\n\nOn September 2nd, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) approved its version of the fiscal 2022 defense bill. The legislation includes an amendment which would require the Pentagon to submit a report to Congress regarding the possibility of selling “existing systems” to Ukraine. Although the bill, which was passed overwhelmingly by a 57-2 margin, does not contain specifics about this type of weaponry, one Congressional staffer says this language hints at the Army’s Iron Dome defense developed by Raytheon.\n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/american-lawmakers-want-to-move-raytheons-iron-dome-from-israel-to-ukraine/",
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"content": "When RobinHood placed a freeze on trading Gamestop ($GME) and other meme stocks in January, it was a week-long news cycle. There was a Congressional hearing wherein RobinHood’s CEO had to virtually testify before lawmakers and explain why his company’s decision to halt trades did not constitute market manipulation. When Coinbase prevents users from executing trades, there is no mention from mainstream outlets—the attitude is generally a shrug and chalking cryptocurrency up as an emerging asset class.<br /><br />Glitches happen on any technology platform, but the regularity they happen on Coinbase is alarming, especially for a publicly traded company. The company does not provide proper transparency for why its platform is rendered unusable so frequently, especially at crucial investing moments, and acts with a sense of entitlement toward its users. Coinbase’s repeated exchange outages, and lack of explanation or accountability, could be enough to warrant regulatory action.<br /><br />Brian Armstrong’s tweets toward the SEC reflect this entitlement. The founder accuses the regulatory body of acting “really sketchy,” and says Coinbase gave the SEC “a friendly heads up and briefing” before rolling out a cryptocurrency lending service that will affect millions of retail investors, like a spoiled teenager telling a parent he will be home past midnight. <br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/dont-be-fooled-by-brian-armstrongs-pr-spin-coinbase-isnt-the-victim-with-the-sec/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/dont-be-fooled-by-brian-armstrongs-pr-spin-coinbase-isnt-the-victim-with-the-sec/</a>",
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"url": "https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1286354781496938516",
"published": "2021-09-19T15:54:38+00:00",
"source": {
"content": "When RobinHood placed a freeze on trading Gamestop ($GME) and other meme stocks in January, it was a week-long news cycle. There was a Congressional hearing wherein RobinHood’s CEO had to virtually testify before lawmakers and explain why his company’s decision to halt trades did not constitute market manipulation. When Coinbase prevents users from executing trades, there is no mention from mainstream outlets—the attitude is generally a shrug and chalking cryptocurrency up as an emerging asset class.\n\nGlitches happen on any technology platform, but the regularity they happen on Coinbase is alarming, especially for a publicly traded company. The company does not provide proper transparency for why its platform is rendered unusable so frequently, especially at crucial investing moments, and acts with a sense of entitlement toward its users. Coinbase’s repeated exchange outages, and lack of explanation or accountability, could be enough to warrant regulatory action.\n\nBrian Armstrong’s tweets toward the SEC reflect this entitlement. The founder accuses the regulatory body of acting “really sketchy,” and says Coinbase gave the SEC “a friendly heads up and briefing” before rolling out a cryptocurrency lending service that will affect millions of retail investors, like a spoiled teenager telling a parent he will be home past midnight. \n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/dont-be-fooled-by-brian-armstrongs-pr-spin-coinbase-isnt-the-victim-with-the-sec/",
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"content": "There’s big money in helping corporations diversify workforces, especially if the top brass survives ‘cancel culture‘ PR reckonings.<br /><br />Veterans of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign launched an advisory firm helping CEOs and executives navigate changing cultural norms. Led by Harris’ former national campaign finance chair, Jon Henes, C Street Advisory Group aims to help corporations diversify their workforces, while inoculating leadership against any potential backlash.<br /><br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/kamala-harris-alumni-launch-blackstone-associated-cancel-culture-advisory-firm/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/kamala-harris-alumni-launch-blackstone-associated-cancel-culture-advisory-firm/</a>",
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"url": "https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1284946552455958536",
"published": "2021-09-15T18:38:50+00:00",
"source": {
"content": "There’s big money in helping corporations diversify workforces, especially if the top brass survives ‘cancel culture‘ PR reckonings.\n\nVeterans of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign launched an advisory firm helping CEOs and executives navigate changing cultural norms. Led by Harris’ former national campaign finance chair, Jon Henes, C Street Advisory Group aims to help corporations diversify their workforces, while inoculating leadership against any potential backlash.\n\n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/09/kamala-harris-alumni-launch-blackstone-associated-cancel-culture-advisory-firm/",
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"content": "Main Character Syndrome as a cultural reference point is significant because it encourages individuals to adopt hyper-realistic frameworks for viewing themselves in the real world. Reality is governed by the terms observing hyperreality: An individual becomes their representation through an ideological worldview gamifying basic interactions. Monotonous daily activities become pursuits, challenges to be overcome, reframed adventures fed back into hyperreality through communications tools like Facebook and TikTok (each platform serving as a vehicle for spreading either American individualism or the American individualism Made in China version). When Ashley Ward tells her TikTok followers, “You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character, because if you don’t, life will continue to pass you by,” what she offers is a zero-sum choice between a reality of happiness in which an individual becomes their representation (the “romanticizing” is happiness, rather than happiness existing as happiness itself), and a reality of unhappiness in which “life will continue to pass” by an individual who does not accept to live in total representation. Without the process of “romanticizing,” life exists just as how it is without the process: unhappiness.<br /><br />Main Character Syndrome blurs further the distinction between an individual and the representation of an individual. An individual now perceives themselves as a third person video game character, operating within a capitalist realist matrix of brands and simulated experiences and its hyperreality of simulacra. <br /><br />Read \"TIK TOK'S MAIN CHARACTER SYNDROME: AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM IN THE AGE OF BLACK MIRROR\" <a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/07/tiktoks-main-character-syndrome-american-individualism-in-the-age-of-black-mirror/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/07/tiktoks-main-character-syndrome-american-individualism-in-the-age-of-black-mirror/</a>",
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"url": "https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1264650863401721856",
"published": "2021-07-21T18:31:01+00:00",
"source": {
"content": "Main Character Syndrome as a cultural reference point is significant because it encourages individuals to adopt hyper-realistic frameworks for viewing themselves in the real world. Reality is governed by the terms observing hyperreality: An individual becomes their representation through an ideological worldview gamifying basic interactions. Monotonous daily activities become pursuits, challenges to be overcome, reframed adventures fed back into hyperreality through communications tools like Facebook and TikTok (each platform serving as a vehicle for spreading either American individualism or the American individualism Made in China version). When Ashley Ward tells her TikTok followers, “You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character, because if you don’t, life will continue to pass you by,” what she offers is a zero-sum choice between a reality of happiness in which an individual becomes their representation (the “romanticizing” is happiness, rather than happiness existing as happiness itself), and a reality of unhappiness in which “life will continue to pass” by an individual who does not accept to live in total representation. Without the process of “romanticizing,” life exists just as how it is without the process: unhappiness.\n\nMain Character Syndrome blurs further the distinction between an individual and the representation of an individual. An individual now perceives themselves as a third person video game character, operating within a capitalist realist matrix of brands and simulated experiences and its hyperreality of simulacra. \n\nRead \"TIK TOK'S MAIN CHARACTER SYNDROME: AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM IN THE AGE OF BLACK MIRROR\" https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/07/tiktoks-main-character-syndrome-american-individualism-in-the-age-of-black-mirror/",
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"content": "As the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, El Salvador’s announcement comes with significant risks not only for its own economy, but cryptocurrency markets and the entire global financial system. Paradox has outlined four central issues, and how they could work in tandem to create a financial contradiction.<br /><br />1. Bitcoin is extremely volatile.<br />2. El Salvador’s reserves will face considerable challenges contending with this volatility.<br />3. The compulsory mandate for businesses to accept Bitcoin will pigeonhole El Salvador’s government into dipping into its reserves.<br />4. El Salvador has officialized a crypto-to-fiat offramp that could lead to strange arbitrage and artificial economic activity.<br /><br />The most obvious of these reasons is that Bitcoin is a volatile asset. Bitcoin’s price skyrocketed to an all-time high of $65,000 this year, only to crater and lose half its value following Elon Musk’s tweets and the China mining lockdowns. The asset is not pegged to anything other than scarcity and what buyers are willing to pay for it, unlike stablecoins (many of which like Tether and USDC hold a peg to the U.S. dollar).<br /><br />With a GDP of roughly $27 billion and $3 billion in foreign exchange reserves, El Salvador is one of the weaker Latin American economies. Bukele has set aside $150 million, or 5% of El Salvador’s trust, to buffer Bitcoin’s volatility. The fact that Bitcoin isn’t the best medium of exchange, and that it’s now legal tender (which means businesses must accept it), forces El Salvador’s government to make up for potential economic losses.<br /><br />If a corporation is required to accept Bitcoin, the payment goes into the company’s treasury. However, the costs factored into goods, manufacturing, and labor are not accounted for in the immediate. While this isn’t a problem with stable currencies like the U.S. dollar, it is a problem with volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin: What someone pays for something one day may not be what it’s worth the next. Sharp Bitcoin selloffs could severely impact company bank balances and lead to liquidity crises El Salvador’s government has obligated itself to intervene in; again, with limited resources to do so. Since El Salvador has dollarized its economy, it cannot print money like the United States to replenish the trust.<br /><br />Even Bitcoin’s biggest advocates have cautioned Bukele from making Bitcoin payments mandatory. Castle Island Venture Funds Partner Nic Carter, who recently interviewed the El Salvadorian president during a Twitter Spaces conversation, called the policy “politically unwise.”<br /><br />“Very real impediments exist to implementing a digitized transactional network in El Salvador,” wrote Carter in a column for CoinDesk. “Not everyone has access to a smartphone, power or the internet, and learning how to use bitcoin- whether on-chain, via Lightning or through a custodial app – takes time and effort. Bitcoin is great for some types of exchange, but brick-and-mortar retail transactions are not among them.”<br /><br />Problems arising from Bitcoin’s volatility and El Salvador’s low reserves will likely be exacerbated by the foreign capital flocking to take advantage of the only government sanctioned crypto-to-fiat offramp. Traders often capitalize off Bitcoin’s arbitrage discrepancies across various exchanges, and a situation could easily emerge where the price of Bitcoin in El Salvador increases relative to other parts of the world, which in turn fuels more volatility and makes hedging more difficult for businesses and the government.<br /><br />Artificial economic frenzies could occur in-contradiction with the fundamental problem that Bitcoin is not the best medium of exchange. The parties using El Salvador as a crypto-to-fiat ramp to convert Bitcoin to U.S. dollars have no incentive to keep their capital parked in the country, and could prey off arbitrage discrepancies and volatility affecting businesses in the region.<br /><br />Bukele’s announcement is a significant one that could transform the global financial system. It could also reveal a contradiction and set off a chain reaction, given how immeshed cryptocurrencies have become within the global economy.<br /><br />READ: <a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/could-el-salvadors-bitcoin-adoption-spark-economic-crisis/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/could-el-salvadors-bitcoin-adoption-spark-economic-crisis/</a>",
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"url": "https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1257094804255670272",
"published": "2021-06-30T22:05:57+00:00",
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"content": "As the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, El Salvador’s announcement comes with significant risks not only for its own economy, but cryptocurrency markets and the entire global financial system. Paradox has outlined four central issues, and how they could work in tandem to create a financial contradiction.\n\n1. Bitcoin is extremely volatile.\n2. El Salvador’s reserves will face considerable challenges contending with this volatility.\n3. The compulsory mandate for businesses to accept Bitcoin will pigeonhole El Salvador’s government into dipping into its reserves.\n4. El Salvador has officialized a crypto-to-fiat offramp that could lead to strange arbitrage and artificial economic activity.\n\nThe most obvious of these reasons is that Bitcoin is a volatile asset. Bitcoin’s price skyrocketed to an all-time high of $65,000 this year, only to crater and lose half its value following Elon Musk’s tweets and the China mining lockdowns. The asset is not pegged to anything other than scarcity and what buyers are willing to pay for it, unlike stablecoins (many of which like Tether and USDC hold a peg to the U.S. dollar).\n\nWith a GDP of roughly $27 billion and $3 billion in foreign exchange reserves, El Salvador is one of the weaker Latin American economies. Bukele has set aside $150 million, or 5% of El Salvador’s trust, to buffer Bitcoin’s volatility. The fact that Bitcoin isn’t the best medium of exchange, and that it’s now legal tender (which means businesses must accept it), forces El Salvador’s government to make up for potential economic losses.\n\nIf a corporation is required to accept Bitcoin, the payment goes into the company’s treasury. However, the costs factored into goods, manufacturing, and labor are not accounted for in the immediate. While this isn’t a problem with stable currencies like the U.S. dollar, it is a problem with volatile cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin: What someone pays for something one day may not be what it’s worth the next. Sharp Bitcoin selloffs could severely impact company bank balances and lead to liquidity crises El Salvador’s government has obligated itself to intervene in; again, with limited resources to do so. Since El Salvador has dollarized its economy, it cannot print money like the United States to replenish the trust.\n\nEven Bitcoin’s biggest advocates have cautioned Bukele from making Bitcoin payments mandatory. Castle Island Venture Funds Partner Nic Carter, who recently interviewed the El Salvadorian president during a Twitter Spaces conversation, called the policy “politically unwise.”\n\n“Very real impediments exist to implementing a digitized transactional network in El Salvador,” wrote Carter in a column for CoinDesk. “Not everyone has access to a smartphone, power or the internet, and learning how to use bitcoin- whether on-chain, via Lightning or through a custodial app – takes time and effort. Bitcoin is great for some types of exchange, but brick-and-mortar retail transactions are not among them.”\n\nProblems arising from Bitcoin’s volatility and El Salvador’s low reserves will likely be exacerbated by the foreign capital flocking to take advantage of the only government sanctioned crypto-to-fiat offramp. Traders often capitalize off Bitcoin’s arbitrage discrepancies across various exchanges, and a situation could easily emerge where the price of Bitcoin in El Salvador increases relative to other parts of the world, which in turn fuels more volatility and makes hedging more difficult for businesses and the government.\n\nArtificial economic frenzies could occur in-contradiction with the fundamental problem that Bitcoin is not the best medium of exchange. The parties using El Salvador as a crypto-to-fiat ramp to convert Bitcoin to U.S. dollars have no incentive to keep their capital parked in the country, and could prey off arbitrage discrepancies and volatility affecting businesses in the region.\n\nBukele’s announcement is a significant one that could transform the global financial system. It could also reveal a contradiction and set off a chain reaction, given how immeshed cryptocurrencies have become within the global economy.\n\nREAD: https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/could-el-salvadors-bitcoin-adoption-spark-economic-crisis/",
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"content": "As children played in Washington Square Park’s fountain, a Fox News camera crew distorted the public land into simulacra, intellectual property, and political ideology.<br /><br />Fox News anchor Jesse Watters on Wednesday confronted a woman wearing a black t-shirt with the tagline “Be Kind.” Watters did not appear to take this advice, as he repeatedly shoved his microphone into the woman’s face, causing her to shrink back in fear. The questions he asked followed an all-too familiar playbook: Frame the opponent’s ideology, inject a question containing a premise that will prove the ideology as illogical or extremism, and then have the opponent either accept or reject the premise (if the premise is accepted then the opponent and their ideology become illogical, and if it is rejected then the opponent and their ideology become extremism).<br /><br />“How do you feel about crime?” asked Watters as a Fox News producer tapped away in boredom on their phone, having clearly seen this playbook deployed many times before.<br /><br />The scene is reminiscent of basketball dunk contests wherein carnival barkers lure in unsuspecting marks with dreams of a new Sony Playstation—the fantasy in this case is appearing intelligent on a news network profiting from those appearing illogical or extreme to bolster the ideological counterpart. Both are rigged systems: If the opponent does appear intelligent or outmaneuvers the star protagonist, then the segment is scrapped. There is no debate, despite the illusion of one.<br /><br />“Are you a winner today?” smiles the charlatan as he fingers the hidden button which will cause the hoop to drop ever so slightly.<br /><br />“Do you have a minute?” smiles Jesse Watters to another passerby as the television personality extends his microphone.<br /><br />“New York City is back” goes the narrative as businesses do away with face masks and New Yorkers reengage with social activities found in the “real” world. But with this explosion into markets comes the return of something else.<br /><br />“The neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone-remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness,” wrote the late theorist Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation.<br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/fox-news-jesse-watters-terrorizes-washington-square-park-proving-nyc-is-back/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/fox-news-jesse-watters-terrorizes-washington-square-park-proving-nyc-is-back/</a>",
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"published": "2021-06-24T13:41:10+00:00",
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"content": "As children played in Washington Square Park’s fountain, a Fox News camera crew distorted the public land into simulacra, intellectual property, and political ideology.\n\nFox News anchor Jesse Watters on Wednesday confronted a woman wearing a black t-shirt with the tagline “Be Kind.” Watters did not appear to take this advice, as he repeatedly shoved his microphone into the woman’s face, causing her to shrink back in fear. The questions he asked followed an all-too familiar playbook: Frame the opponent’s ideology, inject a question containing a premise that will prove the ideology as illogical or extremism, and then have the opponent either accept or reject the premise (if the premise is accepted then the opponent and their ideology become illogical, and if it is rejected then the opponent and their ideology become extremism).\n\n“How do you feel about crime?” asked Watters as a Fox News producer tapped away in boredom on their phone, having clearly seen this playbook deployed many times before.\n\nThe scene is reminiscent of basketball dunk contests wherein carnival barkers lure in unsuspecting marks with dreams of a new Sony Playstation—the fantasy in this case is appearing intelligent on a news network profiting from those appearing illogical or extreme to bolster the ideological counterpart. Both are rigged systems: If the opponent does appear intelligent or outmaneuvers the star protagonist, then the segment is scrapped. There is no debate, despite the illusion of one.\n\n“Are you a winner today?” smiles the charlatan as he fingers the hidden button which will cause the hoop to drop ever so slightly.\n\n“Do you have a minute?” smiles Jesse Watters to another passerby as the television personality extends his microphone.\n\n“New York City is back” goes the narrative as businesses do away with face masks and New Yorkers reengage with social activities found in the “real” world. But with this explosion into markets comes the return of something else.\n\n“The neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone-remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness,” wrote the late theorist Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation.\n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/fox-news-jesse-watters-terrorizes-washington-square-park-proving-nyc-is-back/",
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"content": "House Republicans will accept cryptocurrency as political donations.<br /><br />The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) announced on Thursday plans to process crypto donations through BitPay.<br /><br />“We are focused on pursuing every avenue possible to further our mission of stopping Nancy Pelosi’s socialist agenda and retaking the House majority, and this innovative technology will help provide Republicans the resources we need to succeed,” NRCC Chairman and Representative Tom Emmer told Axios in a statement.<br /><br />READ: REPUBLICAN PARTY APPARATUS WILL ACCEPT POLITICAL DONATIONS IN CRYPTOCURRENCY<br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/republican-party-apparatus-will-accept-political-donations-in-cryptocurrency/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/republican-party-apparatus-will-accept-political-donations-in-cryptocurrency/</a>",
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"published": "2021-06-17T20:03:05+00:00",
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"content": "House Republicans will accept cryptocurrency as political donations.\n\nThe National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) announced on Thursday plans to process crypto donations through BitPay.\n\n“We are focused on pursuing every avenue possible to further our mission of stopping Nancy Pelosi’s socialist agenda and retaking the House majority, and this innovative technology will help provide Republicans the resources we need to succeed,” NRCC Chairman and Representative Tom Emmer told Axios in a statement.\n\nREAD: REPUBLICAN PARTY APPARATUS WILL ACCEPT POLITICAL DONATIONS IN CRYPTOCURRENCY\n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/republican-party-apparatus-will-accept-political-donations-in-cryptocurrency/",
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"content": "The dystopian nightmare of billions of propertyless workers serving a minority of landowning elites is already here. But many Americans awoke to this reality following a Wall Street Journal report outlining how BlackRock and other private equity funds buy up entire neighborhoods, renting out blocks of residential homes as the properties accrue in value.<br /><br />When private equity firms like BlackRock buy residential homes, those with concentrated capital benefit at everyone else’s expense. “Neo-feudalism” is the term best describing the relationship between renters and the monolithic structures profiting from their living conditions; the current system resembles European feudalism wherein lords maintained massive estates, while a majority of propertyless serfs maintained them.<br /><br />The decline of ownership is not limited to real estate either. Even well before the pandemic, Silicon Valley executives fetishized the concept of the “sharing economy,” wherein ownership becomes an obsolete concept as consumers increasingly rely on-demand services. Billionaire Bill Gates in 2018 wrote a blog post about how a large swath of the modern global economy was being powered by “intangible assets” like software (“something you can’t touch”). Yet over the past several years, Gates has acquired over 242,000 acres of farmland. There is a paradox between what is being preached by those who created such abstract concepts as cloud computing, and the physical territories they are amassing with their capital. <br /><br />READ: “HOW BLACKROCK’S GOBBLING OF HOMES IS FUELING NEO-FEUDALISM” <br /><br /><a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/blackrocks-gobbling-of-homes-is-fueling-neo-feudalism-why-does-only-the-populist-right-understand-this/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/blackrocks-gobbling-of-homes-is-fueling-neo-feudalism-why-does-only-the-populist-right-understand-this/</a>",
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"published": "2021-06-17T13:40:42+00:00",
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"content": "The dystopian nightmare of billions of propertyless workers serving a minority of landowning elites is already here. But many Americans awoke to this reality following a Wall Street Journal report outlining how BlackRock and other private equity funds buy up entire neighborhoods, renting out blocks of residential homes as the properties accrue in value.\n\nWhen private equity firms like BlackRock buy residential homes, those with concentrated capital benefit at everyone else’s expense. “Neo-feudalism” is the term best describing the relationship between renters and the monolithic structures profiting from their living conditions; the current system resembles European feudalism wherein lords maintained massive estates, while a majority of propertyless serfs maintained them.\n\nThe decline of ownership is not limited to real estate either. Even well before the pandemic, Silicon Valley executives fetishized the concept of the “sharing economy,” wherein ownership becomes an obsolete concept as consumers increasingly rely on-demand services. Billionaire Bill Gates in 2018 wrote a blog post about how a large swath of the modern global economy was being powered by “intangible assets” like software (“something you can’t touch”). Yet over the past several years, Gates has acquired over 242,000 acres of farmland. There is a paradox between what is being preached by those who created such abstract concepts as cloud computing, and the physical territories they are amassing with their capital. \n\nREAD: “HOW BLACKROCK’S GOBBLING OF HOMES IS FUELING NEO-FEUDALISM” \n\nhttps://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/blackrocks-gobbling-of-homes-is-fueling-neo-feudalism-why-does-only-the-populist-right-understand-this/",
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"content": "Deutsche Bank warns the golden days of neoliberalism and Reagan era economic policy are over, and the worst is yet to come.<br /><br />“It is no exaggeration to say that we are departing from neoliberalism and that the days of the new-liberal policies that begun in the Reagan era are clearly fading in the rear view mirror,” writes the investment bank in a new paper titled ‘Inflation: The Defining Macro Story of the Decade.’ “The effects of this shift are being compounded by political turmoil in the U.S. and deeply worrying geopolitical risk.”<br /><br />Deutsche Bank notes that policymakers in the U.S. and Europe are too focused on social issues like combatting climate change, and have lost sight of broader macro economic trends that will inevitably hurt the marginalized populations they claim to help. Inflation will be the greatest challenge of the new economic paradigm, along with “scarcity of workers” from declining working age populations.<br /><br />The rise of inflation coupled with massive stimulus bailouts has created “the most important shift in global macro policy since the Reagan/Volcker axis 40 years ago.” Deutsche Bank warns that “history is not on the side of the Fed” and that “policymakers are about to enter a far more difficult world than they have seen in several decades.”<br /><br />“We worry that in its new inflation averaging framework, the Fed will be too slow to damp the rising inflation pressures effectively,” writes the bank. “In turn, this could create a significant recession and set off a chain of financial distress around the world, particularly in emerging markets.”<br /><br />READ: DEUTSCHE BANK ANNOUNCES END OF NEOLIBERALISM AND FORECASTS RECESSION\" at PARADOXPOLITICS.COM <br />LINK: <a href=\"https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/deutsche-bank-announces-end-of-neoliberalism-and-forecasts-recession/\" target=\"_blank\">https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/deutsche-bank-announces-end-of-neoliberalism-and-forecasts-recession/</a>",
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"published": "2021-06-10T17:01:07+00:00",
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"content": "Deutsche Bank warns the golden days of neoliberalism and Reagan era economic policy are over, and the worst is yet to come.\n\n“It is no exaggeration to say that we are departing from neoliberalism and that the days of the new-liberal policies that begun in the Reagan era are clearly fading in the rear view mirror,” writes the investment bank in a new paper titled ‘Inflation: The Defining Macro Story of the Decade.’ “The effects of this shift are being compounded by political turmoil in the U.S. and deeply worrying geopolitical risk.”\n\nDeutsche Bank notes that policymakers in the U.S. and Europe are too focused on social issues like combatting climate change, and have lost sight of broader macro economic trends that will inevitably hurt the marginalized populations they claim to help. Inflation will be the greatest challenge of the new economic paradigm, along with “scarcity of workers” from declining working age populations.\n\nThe rise of inflation coupled with massive stimulus bailouts has created “the most important shift in global macro policy since the Reagan/Volcker axis 40 years ago.” Deutsche Bank warns that “history is not on the side of the Fed” and that “policymakers are about to enter a far more difficult world than they have seen in several decades.”\n\n“We worry that in its new inflation averaging framework, the Fed will be too slow to damp the rising inflation pressures effectively,” writes the bank. “In turn, this could create a significant recession and set off a chain of financial distress around the world, particularly in emerging markets.”\n\nREAD: DEUTSCHE BANK ANNOUNCES END OF NEOLIBERALISM AND FORECASTS RECESSION\" at PARADOXPOLITICS.COM \nLINK: https://paradoxpolitics.com/2021/06/deutsche-bank-announces-end-of-neoliberalism-and-forecasts-recession/",
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