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Promoters plugged crypto as the key to accelerating Black America’s path to prosperity. It was going to level the playing field once and for all. The world of cryptocurrency was painted as a welcoming place for Black investors leery of traditional finance, a golden opportunity to build wealth and achieve financial empowerment. There was lots of talk of big returns, and few warnings of risks. Exuberance took hold.

But when markets began to crumble, Black people were left holding the bag. Many investors who came in after 2020 are now underwater; some have said goodbye to their life savings. Last in, hardest hit.

Yellen wanted this to be the best of all possible worlds, but the best world she could conceive of was terrible.

The post In Confidential Memo, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Celebrated Unemployment as a “Worker-Discipline Device” appeared first on The Intercept.

Community activism is an established part of Britain’s contemporary left: groups like ACORN, London Renters Union, and Living Rent are well known, and many of us will be familiar with their work. But what about the history of this form of struggle? These groups didn’t come from nowhere, but beyond word of mouth, the record […]

The post Hide ‘n Sneak appeared first on scheerpost.com.

What makes a good society? Is it a guaranteed right to pursue happiness, as our Declaration of Independence proclaimed? Perhaps, as Gandhi said, it’s providing the poorest and most vulnerable among us with the means to control their own lives. But what happens when it’s the pursuit of happiness that makes someone most vulnerable? Let me introduce you to my child, my one and only. They — and, no, it wasn’t as hard as I expected to get used to the gender-neutral plural pronoun that they prefer — are brown-skinned, Mexican-American, secular-Jewish, and gay-married. In a country where Donald Trump is still admired by some 40% of the public, don’t imagine for a second that my child, with all those... Read more

Yukihiro Takahashi has died.  He may have been the most intelligent drummer in the history of rock and roll.  Quite the techie braniac.

For this early solo record he imported some side-men from Roxy Music, halfway round the world.  That lonesome saxophone and weird guitar sound like arrivals from another planet.  The English-language lyrics are also quite cryptic and astral.

Forty years later and it sounds more like a philosophy statement than a pop album.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK, discusses her book on the Ukraine conflict, the dangers of escalating military spending, peaceful negotiations, and international cooperation in preventing nuclear war and promoting peace.

The post Making Politicians Uncomfortable, with Anti-War Activist Medea Benjamin appeared first on MintPress News.

“[Dylan’s] ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song,’ an entire tome of wild, erratic writing about music that is sure to bedazzle and befuddle.” — Slate

Full House

This is a show about the hell of modern life. The milkman, the paperboy, the evening TV—where did it all go? Vanished into the endless vacuum of time. You once had San Francisco in the palm of your hand. Now your wife is dead, and you’re a widower with OCD and three daughters to raise. Your Windex can’t save you now. Your best friend needs to move in to help you. Your brother-in-law moves in. Still, you can’t cope. Your daughter drives a car through your kitchen wall, which seems to symbolize the pointlessness of it all, the inevitability of disaster, the futility of trying. The hilarious goddess of chaos laughs in the corner.