Bitcoin Saves Afghani Women from Starvation, Joe Rogan is Not Spotify's "Fake Expert" Podcast (This Fake Psychologist is), Donald Trump is Not Running for Congress (The Five for 02/01/22)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
One quick note before we begin. This publication started out on Mailchimp, but moved after I had concerns that Mailchimp was no longer a safe platform for free expression.
This week, Substack once again doubled down on the platform’s commitment to free speech, which is why I’ll stay here unless a truly crazy reversal of policy were to happen.
If you’re thinking about starting a publication of your own, Substack stands on the right principals, and that’s no easy thing to do in the era of cancel culture.
With that being said…let’s get into the news.
[one]
As we are facing hyperinflation not seen in four decades and tensions in Eastern Europe that look a little too much like World War I: The Remix for comfort…the Biden Administration has a desperate need to regulate Bored Apes Yach Club…as a matter of national security.
That’s admittedly hyperbolic, but it’s true that the Biden Administration is calling for regulation on cryptocurrency and NFT’s (non-fungible tokens—basically, online art) and used the phrase “national security.”
Barrons reports:
The national security memorandum, expected to come in the next few weeks, would task parts of the government with analyzing digital assets and assembling a regulatory framework that covers cryptos, stablecoins, and NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, this person said.
“This is designed to look holistically at digital assets and develop a set of policies that give coherency to what the government is trying to do in this space,” the person said.
The State Department, Treasury Department, National Economic Council, and Council of Economic Advisers would be involved in the initiative.
The White House National Security Council would also be involved, the person said, since crypto has economic implications for national security. Along those lines, the administration would instruct agencies to work on harmonizing regulations of digital assets between countries.
Observations:
A. What is this national security threat we’re under…from Bitcoin? From…digital art? Like…are we talking another 9/11? Oklahoma City bombing? Suitcase nuke…smuggled into a major city via sending a digital painting through the blockchain? Specifically, what am I supposed to be afraid of here?
B. Roughly 1/3 of all printed cash is unaccounted for…meaning, it’s in the hands of drug dealers.
C. One fifth of all U.S. currency was created in 2020…which is why we have rampant inflation…which accelerates poverty. Which correlates to violent crime, addiction, murder, overdoses, child abuse, failing schools…the government is creating national security issues with fiat money. None of that can be blamed on the 22 million Bitcoin in existence.
D. According to CNN, Obama sent $1.3 billion to Iran, which supposedly was due from a previous treaty…but that money arrived just as Iran decided to free several hostages. The official statement read that the two events were unrelated…but, c’mon. The image above has been somewhat in dispute as to whether or not it actually shows $400 million, being delivered, on a pallet, to Iran. But a cash payment was made…and that much cash in the hands of a foreign government that chants “Death to America” about as often as Donald Trump insults people…certainly seems like a monetary national security issue.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin is making it possible to send money directly to women in Afghanistan, who are on the verge of staving to death.
On top of being desperately hungry, she explained that many of her female students have struggled to pay for medicine and internet access.
Forough said she wanted to send emergency payments to these women, but, frustratingly, most of her transactions were blocked by Western Union and JPMorganChase. Once some of the money did eventually go through, often, her students were unable to withdraw cash at local banks.
Bank withdrawals are severely limited due to a shortage of paper money and the Taliban being unable to get its hands on the Afghan central bank's almost $10 billion in reserves that US sanctions have frozen.
Tell me again how crypto is the Devil and fiat will save the world?
Actually, explain it to the women in Afghanistan who aren’t starving to death because of Bitcoin.
[two]
On Friday, MSNBC’s Malcom Nance appeared on Sirius XM, and claimed that President Trump would return to the Oval Office via…election to the House of Representatives, and a Republican impeachment of Biden.
Putin also understands the opportunity of having a Republican, you know, giving the Republicans ammunition to topple the American government this November. And I don’t say that lightly.
If the Republicans win power this November, that’s it; the American experiment is over; it is the basis for autocracy. They, you know, they’ll follow through with their threat to make Trump Speaker of the House and use that as a springboard to make him president, and then there will never be another free or fair election in the United States. Putin understands that.
By giving Biden this crisis, he gets the Republicans like Tucker Carlson, and all of these other people, who is acting as a propagandist for Putin.
There are a lot of problems with this wild theory, but the biggest one is that Donald Trump has made no moves to run for House of Representatives. In fact, Trump generated headlines over the weekend all but saying outright he’s running for President in 2024 at a rally in Texas (full video here).
I suppose we can’t call Trump running for Congress an outright impossibility, but the odds of it are about the same as me going vegan.
In the age of “misinformation” policing, I’m perplexed as to why the mainstream media gets a hall pass.
[three]
An uproar online erupted after a middle school in Tennessee banned a graphic novel about the Holocaust, citing nudity and adult themes.
The most recent high-profile example was Art Spiegelman’s award-winning “Maus,” a graphic novel that depicts the horrors of the Holocaust, being removed from a Tennessee eighth-grade language arts curriculum. The McMinn County School Board voted 10-0 to remove Spiegelman’s book on Jan. 10, but the story began to circulate Wednesday after a report from the Tennessee Holler. According to the minutes from the meeting, the use of curse words and “nakedness” were the impetus for the change.
The school board issued a statement Wednesday saying that the decision was not about ignoring the Holocaust but about finding options that were more “age-appropriate” in their content, concluding, "We simply do not believe this work is an appropriate text for our students to study."
If it were my call, I likely wouldn’t have banned this. I haven’t read the graphic novel, but a quick Google search of individual pages seem to show that all the characters in the book are mice…so, nude, yes…sexual, not really.
The more ignored story around book bannings happened in Fairfax County, VA, when a parent found out that Lawn Boy and GenderQueer, which contain pedophilia. Full stop.
From Lawn Boy:
I was ten years old, but it’s true. I put Doug Goble’s d*** in my mouth.”
“The real-estate guy?”
“Yeah.”
Nick looked around frantically. “What the f*** are you talking about, Michael?”
“I was in fourth grade. It was no big deal.”
Cringing, Nick held his hands out in front of him in a yield gesture. “Stop.”
“He sucked mine, too.”
“Stop! Why are you telling me this?”
“And you know what?” I said. “It wasn’t terrible.”
There are huge differences between a book that’s in a school’s curriculum, in a school’s library…and a book in the public library.
Either you believe in free speech, or you don’t. Lawn Boy certainly tests my mettle when it comes to free speech, but I would never advocate for a print work to be banned from a public library.
But school libraries are not supposed to be complete resource centers the way public libraries are…so there’s a very good case that Lawn Boy has no place in your local jr. high.
Of course, free speech runs both ways…so if we’re going more pop culture that attempts to normalize sexual relations between adults and minors, I imagine we’ll see more merch for sale that offers a counter-viewpoint.
According to Fontbonne University, the most banned books in schools are not controversial new works, but classics, including: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
[four]
Over the weekend, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and a couple of artists you haven’t heard of pulled their music off of Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming platform, in protest of two episodes of the Joe Rogan Podcast, a Spotify exclusive.
Both #CancelSpotify and #ThankYouSpotify trended, with roughly 5,000-10,000 tweets each (those who canceled, and signed up, respectively, over the controversy), a statistically insignificant number out of the platform’s 172 million monthly subscribers.
Spotify kinda-sorta bowed to the pressure.
Spotify will only bar Covid-19 misinformation content on one of four grounds, according to its content policy released Sunday: saying that approved vaccines are intended to kill people, claiming Covid-19 is not real, encouraging people to intentionally get Covid-19 or promoting the consumption of bleach for medical treatment.
To me, the most interesting part of the story isn’t the music that’s been pulled…it’s another notable Spotify exclusive podcast.
Popular author Brene Brown paused all future episodes of her Spotify exclusive podcast, which may need a content warning of their own. Brown masqurades as a psychologist, but she isn’t. Brene has a master’s degree in social work and a PhD in Philosophy…neither of which prepares her, academically, to give guiding advice on the human brain.
Brown’s latest book is entitled Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of the Human Experience.
I haven’t read the book, but the Amazon reviews torched it for claiming to be grounded in research…and not containing any.
From the top review on Amazon for Brown’s most recent book:
I had heard that Brene said on an Oprah podcast that this book makes the point that we should no longer try to recognize emotion in other people.
Indeed in the book she says that she and other researchers have said thousands of times "We need to understand emotion so we can recognize it in ourselves and others." but now she says "I no longer believe that we can recognize emotion in other people, regardless of how well we understand human emotion and experience or how much language we have." (pages 263-264 on Kindle).
Since she is a self-proclaimed researcher, I assumed she would show research backing up this claim that goes against a huge body of work that is contrary to this last statement. She presents NO RESEARCH AT ALL. She is basically implying that empathy doesn't work and can't be learned. She only uses a very simplistic, flawed argument that "Too many emotions and experiences present the exact same way" and "How we express what we're feeling and experiencing can be unique as we are." Of course, these last two statements are true but she is making an entirely different point. She is making a "straw man" argument against not first understanding the situation.
Amazon reviews aren’t an academic source by any means…but when dozens upon dozens of verified purchases complain about the same thing, they do point to a trend.
There’s a huge difference between Joe Rogan, a pot-smoking hippie comedian who claims to just be a guy talking to interesting people, and Brene Brown, who is constantly alluding to academic credibility in Psychology and human development…an area where she has no formal training or credentialing.
For the record, I haven’t listened to Brown’s podcast…because, well, I like smart people stuff rather than endless jawing about feelings.
I happened to catch Brown at the Global Leadership Summit in Chicago, and found her to be off-putting and disingenuous.
Her keynote was little more than off the cuff marks about feelings…and why feelings are important.
That is a message that deserves to be heard.
On Sesame Street.
By the time you’ve reached adulthood, you probably have it figured out that emotions are real and play a part of the human experience.
The “no research in the book” comment from the aforementioned Amazon review certainly lines up with Brown’s interview with NBC News:
Emotions present in a way that makes it almost possible to identify. If I saw you, and you had your head in your hands and you were crying, I might assume you were sad. But it could be grief, anger, shame. The call is much more complex, it’s about asking ‘what’s going on.’ It’s about being stewards of people’s stories.
Are you $#@!ing kidding me?
Is there one person in the world who didn’t know that there could be more than one motive for crying and needed a non-psychologist pop culture “expert” to explain it?
Later in the interview, she Brene explains that she coined terms for new emotions, such as “shoy,” or “sharing the joy.” You mean like…telling people good news when it happens to you?
Feel free to listen…if Brown brings her podcast back (to Spotify or elsewhere). That’s the beauty of free speech…it gives people the opportunity to open their mouths and prove how wrong they are.
Those who are demanding Rogan's show get shut down assume that banning is the best way to eliminate a person's influence. This assumes the audience are morons.
If the audience are not morons…the best way to defeat bad ideas is to let them be heard. Brown is very popular right now, but I can't imagine her work will hold up over the long haul.
The whole thing reminds me of the “Women are from Venus Men are from Mars,” phenomenon. The book was described as “the bestselling work of non-fiction of the 1990’s.”
In the 2000’s, academics got around to shredding the book for it's wild claims and lack of grounding in psychological research. Journalists eventually dug up Gray's “PhD,” and it was an unaccredited correspondence course scam from a university that has since closed…his second doctorate was ceremonial, from a school he gave a commencement speech at. In other words, Mars/Venus was nothing more than personal experience and feelings sold as credible psychology.
I suspect Brene Brown is headed to a similar fate. Which is why I want you to hear her podcast on Spotify, along with Joe Rogan’s, and anything else you feel like listening to.
Because bad ideas get found out, sooner or later. And the bigger the audience, the more quickly the fraud is uncovered.
[five]
Let’s wrap this issue up on some very good news. Light pollution is really, really bad for people and wildlife and the environment.
It’s not a difficult problem to fix, it’s just that nobody is fixing it.
At least, that was true last week. Now, Pittsburgh is fixing light pollution this year.
The world’s urbanization has made it increasingly difficult to see the stars in city skies, but that may be changing — at least in Pittsburgh.
The Pennsylvania city announced in August it will become a dark sky city starting in 2022, meaning that it will switch to lower wattage LED bulbs and add shades along bridges, roads and other public areas. It’s the first city in the eastern part of the U.S. to adopt such policies but it joins other cities, including Tucson, Sedona and Flagstaff in Arizona, and Fulda in Germany, in their efforts to reduce light pollution and increase energy efficiency.
“It's a relatively easy fix that all local governments could take on,” said Grant Ervin, Pittsburgh’s chief resilience officer and spearhead of the dark sky ordinance. “It’s one of the tools that local governments have an ability to regulate and install as standard.”
Slow.
Clap.
Until the next one,
-sth