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Wednesday, April 06, 2022

Inside Wuhan: Taxman” (Sam’s Version)

François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire tends to share the most profound observation: “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh”


‘Like a bomb hit’: Sydney beaches could take a year to recover


“This Shouldn’t Happen”: Inside the Virus-Hunting Nonprofit at the Center of the Lab-Leak Controversy Vanity Fair


Senate Estimates Transcripts Hirschhorn, Fish, Jenkins


Juraj Janošik aka Robin Hood of crypto: The 30-year-old billionaire who wants to give his fortune away


Figures suggest a handful of Sydney suburbs have now recorded one COVID-19 case for every three people, with analysis revealing the virus has shifted to infecting people with higher socio-economic advantage as restrictions eased.

The 2174 postcode – which covers Edmondson Park, in the city’s south-west – had the highest case rate per capita, with more than 56 cases per 100 people recorded over the course of the pandemic.

Neighbouring Leppington, and Schofields and Box Hill in north-western Sydney, had the next highest case rates, each recording more than 35 cases per 100 people.

Edmondson Park - The Sydney suburb with one COVID case for every two people


The recent expulsion of property developer Zheng Jiefu is one of several cases in which long-time Australian residents have been deported or barred entry into the country because of their suspected ties to Beijing’s security or foreign interference apparatus.

Millionaire Chinese property developer quietly expelled for ‘harming security interests’


Did Sweden beat the pandemic by refusing to lock down? No, its record is disastrous Michael Hiltzik, LA Times


Ukrainian Journalist Finds Charred Remains Where Alleged War Crime Was Filmed The Intercept


Zelenskyy is Not a Jewish Hero Times of Israel


Optimism, pessimism or skepticism? News outlets focus on the right thing in Russia-Ukraine coverage

While intelligent analysis and predictions can be worthwhile, news outlets are mostly doing the responsible thing: reporting the facts.

March 30, 2022
  
Tom Jones


Ukraine says Russia is seeking to form ‘occupation administrations’ FT


 Ukraine doomscrolling can harm your cognition as well as your mood – here’s what to do about it – What use are we in helping to solve difficult global challenges if we’re so depressed and cognitively depleted that we can’t think of the best actions to take? Ukraine doomscrolling can harm your cognition as well as your mood. Professors Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley, Chun Shen and Jianfeng Feng describe their research findings on what to do about it.


“Taxman” (Sam’s Version)

By Sam Brunson Almost seven years ago(!), Leandra wrote about the Beatles's "Taxman" to celebrate its 50th anniversary. At around the same time, I tried to figure out and record the song. At the time, unfortunately, neither my playing nor my recording chops were up to the challenge. Over the … Continue reading →


“This website is created and maintained by Sarah Lawsky, a tax law professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. The website uses Dash and Python and is freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license. 

Q: What does this website do? A: It generates multiple-choice practice problems for federal income tax and partnership tax (that’s still a work in progress). The problems are a random selection of facts, names, and randomly (but thoughtfully) generated numbers about a range of basic tax topics and partnership tax topics. You decide whether you want to focus on basic tax or partnership tax, and then you can pick a particular topic within that subject, or you can have the website to pick both a topic and problem within that subject at random…”



Center for Data Innovation: “The Washington Post has created a series of visualizationsshowing how keeping daylight savings time all year around would affect sunrise and sunset times across the United States. One visualization groups sunrise times into half-hour increments from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., shown by increasingly darker colors, and displays the correlating color across the country. For example, if Daylight Savings Time is made permanent, the sun won’t rise in some parts of Montana, North Dakota and Michigan until after 9:30 a.m. on the days with the latest sunrise.”



Popular Science – “When you decide to share a large file or folder online—perhaps you want to send a cute home movie to a doting relative, or need to back up a photo archiveto a secondary location—you can’t just attach it to an email. Under the virtual weight of all those 1s and 0s, your regular email client could collapse. Instead, once your files reach a critical size, you must turn to apps and programs to shuttle them around the web. Use these services to shift any heavy data load, whether you’re transferring it from one computer to another or sharing it with another person…”


Huawei: The Chinese tech giant Trump couldn’t kill Axios I don’t think that was his intent, but he was at best naive about the fact that even if he gave Western firms the opportunity to gain ground, Huawei was too well entrenched for much of that to happen. 


 


Apple and Facebook gave user data to hackers who provided fake law enforcement subpoenas

Virginia: Estonian man extradited to the US guilty of ransomware attacks; gets 66 months prison; caused $53 million losses

PPP scams called largest fraud in American History; minimum of $80 billion lost

BBB Studies. Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud,  tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  job scams,  online shopping fraud, and crypto scams
Fraud News Around the world

Humor

FTC and CFPB  

Virus Benefit Theft

Business Email compromise fraud 

Ransomware  

Data Breaches 

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency

ATM skimming

Jamaica and Lottery Fraud

Romance Fraud and Sextortion

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