Hello friends!
Today we’re learning about types of fraud, types of power and, of course, zoning regulations.
Enjoy and, as always, let me know if you come across something I should include.
Cheers!
Greg
Fraud
Fraud is getting easier and fixing it is getting harder CNN Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’ A finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to Hong Kong police.
It’s hard to see how this doesn’t completely break some models of identity verification. 404 Media Inside the Underground Site Where ‘Neural Networks’ Churn Out Fake IDs The site, called OnlyFake, threatens to streamline everything from bank fraud to money laundering, and has implications for cybersecurity writ large.
Of course, old fashioned fraud still works best. ESPN Jaguars asked FanDuel to return stolen $20M, source says The Jacksonville Jaguars have asked FanDuel to reimburse them for some or all of the approximately $20 million in stolen proceeds a former employee lost on the site, but the company is unwilling to pay, a source familiar with the situation told ESPN.
Georgia
Bail doesn’t work to keep us safe and this kind of criminalization of basic human decency is really sad. Atlanta Community Press Collective New Georgia cash bail expansion will criminalize charitable bail funds A sweeping state bill expanding the cash bail system and criminalizing charitable bail organizations passed in the Georgia Senate by a 30-17 margin Thursday. The Georgia House of Representatives is expected to pass the bill Tuesday, after which it will head to Governor Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
Another straight-up exhibition of power against progressive groups in GA. NYT Major Layoffs at Fair Fight, Voting Rights Group Founded by Stacey Abrams Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams, is laying off most of its staff and scaling back its efforts in response to mounting debts incurred by court battles.
Kinds of power
The Taylor Swift weirdness is extremely bizarre to me, but this is a good look at what it might mean politically. It’s worth wondering what kind of power she has, specifically – money, mobilization, connections? WaPo A Taylor Swift endorsement? It’s delicate. Last Thursday, in a not-quite dive bar on the east side of Capitol Hill, five Democratic staffers crammed into a leather booth with beers and white wines to discuss the latest spasms of political drama swirling around the leader of their movement. “I want one single person to be normal about this and treat her like a human being,” one Hill staffer said of Taylor Swift.
This is a mostly pessimistic look at things – why we fail rather than how we can succeed – but the points it makes about power are well taken, imo. Liberal Currents Why Movements Fail Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn asks a simple question: why did the mass protest movements of 2010-2020 largely fail to achieve their objectives? Bevins is not referring to American protest movements—not the Women’s March, not Black Lives Matter nor George Floyd, but rather to other protest movements around the world: the Arab Spring, the Hong Kong 2019 protests, Turkey’s Gezi Park protests, the 2013 Brazil protests, Euromaidan, and still more besides. These protests mobilized and energized millions of people in each country to take to the streets and demand a better world. What they got instead was counterrevolution—Sisi, Bolsonaro, Poroshenko, the iron fist of the Communist Party closing down ever harder. Bevins’ mournful book is an attempt to understand how this happened—and how we can do better next time.
Really, some big achievements (and I think this kinda undersold some energy/climate stories). Politico 30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed Joe Biden has been president now for three years, and you might think you’ve heard everything there is to know about his presidency. You probably haven’t.
Love to see union power growing, especially since this is a kind of power-building which is slightly independent of more typical political power. Jacobin The UAW’s New Push to Organize Nonunion Auto Is Bearing Fruit The UAW announced yesterday that 10,000 autoworkers have signed union cards since it launched its drive to organize the nonunion auto workforce two months ago. It’s a high-risk campaign — and precisely the type of gambit the working class needs right now.
A wild peek into wealth, which doubles as an advertisement for the guy profiled. Money has power all of its own. Intelligencer Inventing the Perfect College Applicant For the past nine years, Rim, 28, has been working as an “independent education consultant,” helping the one percent navigate the increasingly competitive college-admissions process — the current round of which ends in February. He started by editing college essays from his Yale dorm room for $50 an hour but now charges the parents of his company’s 190 clients — mostly private-school kids, many of them in New York — $120,000 a year to help them create a narrative he believes will appeal to college-admissions officers. That company, Command Education, currently has 41 full-time staffers, most of whom are recent graduates of top-tier colleges and universities. The pitch is crafted to appeal to the wealthy clients Rim courts: a “personalized, white glove” service, through which Command employees do everything from curating students’ extracurriculars to helping them land summer internships, craft essays, and manage their course loads with the single goal of getting them in.
Extremely local interest
This has been in process for basically as long as I’ve been in DC, so I’m glad to see it move forward. DCist Appeals Court Affirms Long-Awaited Development Plans At Bruce Monroe Park After seven years of zoning litigation, an appeals court on Thursday affirmed D.C.’s plans to develop a coveted parcel of land bound by Georgia Ave. and Irving St. NW — a long-awaited project that will allow the D.C. government to more fully realize its vision for redeveloping the aging and beleaguered Park Morton public housing complex a few blocks to its north.
Building Bridges
I really appreciate Mitchell doing this work – it’s difficult to build bridges in any context. Sojo LGBTQ+ Christians Can Build Bridges with our Non-Affirming Family Like many LGBTQ+ Christians, I grew up in a home that was theologically opposed to same-sex marriage and romantic relationships. I still have close relationships with many family members who remain theologically opposed. I’ve noticed that a lot of the resources that exist for facilitating relationships across disagreement are geared toward the non-affirming: “How should Christian parents respond if one of their children comes out as gay?” “Can Christian parents point their gay children to Jesus?” “Responding to a ‘Gay Christian’ in the Family.” And while many LGBTQ+ people don’t want close relationships with non-affirming family, those of us who do want those relationships don’t want to sacrifice our safety.
Marketing
Sellout is such a strange construct, but this article is a really interesting deep dive into the problems with our current cultural marketplace. Vox Everyone’s a sellout now When Rachael Kay Albers was shopping around her book proposal, the editors at a Big Five publishing house loved the idea. The problem came from the marketing department, which had an issue: She didn’t have a big enough following. With any book, but especially nonfiction ones, publishers want a guarantee that a writer comes with a built-in audience of people who already read and support their work and, crucially, will fork over $27 — a typical price for a new hardcover book — when it debuts. It was ironic, considering her proposal was about what the age of the “personal brand” is doing to our humanity. Albers, 39, is an expert in what she calls the “online business industrial complex,” the network of hucksters vying for your attention and money by selling you courses and coaching on how to get rich online. She’s talking about the hustle bro “gurus” flaunting rented Lamborghinis and promoting shady “passive income” schemes, yes, but she’s also talking about the bizarre fact that her “65-year-old mom, who’s an accountant, is being encouraged by her company to post on LinkedIn to ‘build [her] brand.’”
Greg Williams 
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