Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Fake cryptocurrency giveaway sites have tripled this year: The number of websites promoting cryptocurrency giveaway scams to lure gullible victims has increased by more than 300% in the first half of this year, targeting mostly English and Spanish speakers using celebrity deepfakes. Security researchers at cybersecurity company Group-IB have identified more than 2,000 domains registered in 2022 specifically for this purpose. (Bleeping Computer)
• YouTube’s Dislike Button Rarely Shifts Recommendations: New research from Mozilla shows YouTube users have little control over what is recommended to them. (New York Times) see also Social Media Companies Still Boost Election Fraud Claims: The report, by New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, argues that the companies fuel false conspiracies about election fraud despite promises to combat them. (New York Times)
• Locked Up: The prison labor that built business empires: More than 150 years ago, a prison complex known as the Lone Rock stockade operated at one of the biggest coal mines in Tennessee. It was powered largely by African American men who had been arrested for minor offenses — like stealing a hog — if they committed any crime at all. Women and children, some as young as 12, were sent there as well. The work, dangerous and sometimes deadly, was their punishment. (AP)
• Revealed: the ‘shocking’ levels of toxic lead in Chicago tap water. Tests performed for thousands of Chicago residents found lead, a neurotoxin, in amounts far exceeding the federal standards (The Guardian)
• Why do Russian executives, including 4 connected with Gazprom, keep dying in strange ways? A string of deaths among wealthy Russians has this in common: The circumstances are always unusual. (Grid)
• Killed for Walking a Dog: The mundanity and insanity of gun death in America (The Atlantic)
• Republicans in key battleground races refuse to say they will accept results: Of the 19 GOP candidates questioned by The Washington Post, a dozen declined to answer or refused to commit. Democrats all said they would respect the results. (Washington Post) see also In Wisconsin, Election Skeptics Deploy as Poll Watchers for Midterms: Typically mundane duty becomes flashpoint after Trump falsely claimed fraud cost him the White House. (Wall Street Journal)
• Out of control rise in STDs, including 26% syphilis spike, sparks US alarm: The rate of syphilis cases has hit its highest in three decades as officials work on new solutions such as at-home test kits. (The Guardian)
• How a Child-Killer Set the Stage for Today’s Right-Wing Revelry in Cruelty: The libertarians have had 40 years to make their project work, we’re hitting peak libertarianism and it’s tearing our country apart, pitting Americans against each other, and killing people every day. (Hartmann Report)
• A Legacy of Exclusion: Pro football’s turn toward inequity resonates eight decades later. Change will require intentional action. (Washington Post) see also How the NFL Blocks Black Coaches: Nearly two decades after the NFL enacted the Rooney Rule, teams’ hiring and firing practices still disadvantage Black coaches at every turn — and it’s getting worse, a Post investigation found. (Washington Post)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Steve Case, co-founder of America On-Line (AOL), founder of investment firm Revolution, Char of the Smithsonian, and author of The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream.
Seems legit: Wall Street’s Mysterious 2,200% IPOs Come From Tiny N.J. Broker
Source: Bloomberg
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