Archive for the ‘news’ Category

Rule Britannica

Wednesday, May 27th, 2020

Absolutely Nobody:

Me: Let’s scrape the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica and load it up into an mp-wp instance.

When writing qntra articles I often found myself depending on Pediwiki to find original sources when doing background checks. This was a revolting experience to say the least.

To address this, I am standing up an mp-wp instance containing the the entire 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, which is available in unusable form only from the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. It goes without saying that this will be added to lekythion’s search index.

Obviously it won’t contain bios of more recent public figures, but it is a start, and would perhaps have come in handy when writing the unpersoning piece.

I look forward to being able to reference specific phrases/lines in the best encyclopedia ever.

An Attempt to Enumerate Compelling Aspects of My Qntra Articles

Monday, February 24th, 2020

http://qntra.net/2020/02/chinese-own-california-pension-system-and-use-it-to-fund-development-of-chinese-missiles/

What is compelling about this piece is how it makes obvious that Californians are getting raped in multiple ways. It is also compelling in that it calls things by their true names. Pension fund = ponzi scheme, for example. I personally find the story interesting in how it reveals the weakness of civic nationalism when pitted against actual nationalism.

Of the sources it used, the greater part of the story is probably in this piece, but it is lacking in failing to acknowledge the fraudulent nature of pension funds, and is rather circumspect in its criticisms of Yu Meng.

I don’t know if this aspect is particularly compelling or not, but I like how the last paragraph tied everything together with a line starting with a seemingly innocuous statement of geography.

http://qntra.net/2020/02/usg-welfare-baron-madame-secretary-mike-pompeo-goes-to-senegal-for-security-flavored-welfare-talks/

What I find compelling in this story is how it presents plainly the massive fraud that is foreign aid and the fraudulent nature of those involved. The USG appropriated billions ostensibly for influence in Africa, but only accomplished moar Africans.

http://qntra.net/2020/02/new-york-businessman-who-took-down-former-nypd-commisioner-bernard-kerik-faces-charges-for-operating-education-venture/

The compelling apsect of this story is comparison of the cost of being defrauded. It is obvious at this point that paying any amount for an education outside of the Ivy League is a travesty1. I would also call Larry Ray a fraud since his pupils, according to what they say in the New York magazine article, seem to have learned nothing.

http://qntra.net/2020/01/increasingly-chinese-berkeley-considering-appeasement-by-chiseling-donor-name-off-building/

What I found compelling about this story was how it made plain what was left out of the MSM bullshit articles, namely the reason this particular name had to be unhappened, through the contextualization of publicly available hatefacts.

  1. At least if you pay for the Ivy League you have a shot at becoming a Pompeo. []

Chief Analyst of Guosen Securities Financial Industry: Central Bank R&D is a kind of digital cash, not a digital currency independent of the RMB.

Tuesday, October 1st, 2019

Wang Jianwen, chief analyst of the financial industry of Guosen Securities Economic Research Institute, analyzes how to understand the central bank's1 digital currency2. Wang Jian pointed out in the article that the emergence of Bitcoin means a new currency different from the sovereign currency of each country. Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology. There is no single issuer, and all transactions are recorded at all nodes of the network, which is difficult to tamper with. Bitcoin also wants to control its circulation and maintain its currency by limiting the amount of future issuance. But precisely this kind of goodwill has deviated from the essence of money. This new type of digital currency, which is completely different from the original sovereign currency, is called "digital currency.” Obviously, central banks that have the right to issue currency rights in various countries will not welcome this new thing aimed at depriving them of their currency distribution rights. Therefore, it is obvious that the central bank is researching to launch digital cash, not digital currency. Although it caters to the public, it is also called "digital currency.” At the end of the article, Wang Jian also indicated that although Bitcoin itself has deviated from the essence of money3, the introduction of blockchain technology has made it possible to control the risk of double-spending. The application of the blockchain enables the entire network to identify the only transaction, thus basically eliminating the risk of illegal copying of digital cash, and greatly improved the security of circulation. Adding the function of the smart contract and some personalized functions of the transaction could also help the currency circulation, reduce transaction costs, and improve the service level of the payment link. Therefore, he believes that the central bank is developing a digital cash that uses a new circulation technology rather than a digital currency independent of the RMB.

Source: https://www.8btc.com/article/489732

  1. 'Central Bank of China', which develops and implements monetary policy in China []
  2. This is the specific project referred by by 'R&D' in the title.  The translator clarified when asked what the name of the project might be: It is not mentioned in the article, but as far as I know, the central bank set up a specific team several years ago, called Digital Currency Research Department, focus on researching Digital Currency. And recently the Central Bank announced they researched and developed a digital currency, which is a kind of digital cash. The entire article is talking about Wang Jian's interpretation of the digital currency which is researched and developed by the Central Bank. []
  3. Bitcoin is deviant, you see!  And money has an essence, and I, Wang Jian, know what it is! []