Wednesday, December 28, 2022

TikTok pushes harmful content promoting eating disorders and self-harm into young users’ feeds


Stephen King is completely different than celebrity. King has a magic all its own: “Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.”


Donald Trump knowingly committed dozens of brazen tax frauds during the six years when he ran for office and was President, my analysis of the Congressional report on his tax returns and other documents shows. This explains why he fought all the way to the Supreme Court in a failed effort to keep his tax information secret.

One technique he used at least 26 times between 2015 and 2020 was as simple as it was flagrant. Trump filed sole proprietor reports, known as Schedule C, that showed huge business expenses despite having zero revenue. That created losses which Trump used to offset his income from work and investments, thus lowering his income taxes. Additional Schedule Cs had expenses exactly equal to revenues while only a few showed profits.

David Cay Johnston: TFG Commited Tax Fraud 26 Times from 2015 to 2020 - Updated


Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to End Container Dwell Fee They Never ImplementedgCaptain



Amanda Parsons (Colorado; Google Scholar), Tax's Digital Labor Dilemma, 71 Duke L.J. 1781 (2022) (reviewed by Sloan Speck (Colorado; Google Scholarhere):

Duke Law Journal (2022)

Digitalization has reshaped the relationship between companies and their customers and users. Customers and users increasingly serve a dual role. They are not only consumers but also producers, creating data and content. They are a value-creating workforce, functioning as “digital laborers.” 


TikTok pushes harmful content promoting eating disorders and self-harm into young users’ feeds

Center for Countering Digital Hate Report – Deadly By Design: “Two-thirds of American teenagers use TikTok, and the average viewer spends 80 minutes a day on the application. The app, which is owned by the Chinese company, Bytedance, rapidly delivers a series of short videos to users and has overtaken Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube in the bid for young people’s hearts, minds, and screen time. 


MSC, a Balkan Gang and the Drug Bust That Changed an Industry Jalopnik

  1. “I have exposed myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians” — David Hume is interviewed at 3:16AM
  2. Electrons seem to spin, but actually don’t. So what is really going on? — Scientific American considers the answer given by philosopher Charles Sebens (Caltech)
  3. “It’s the method of using opposing views to seek truth; Hegel thought his own style of it was better than Plato’s” — Hegel was a category on Jeopardy! last night
  4. “The organoids are coming!” — and their use is a step forward not just scientifically, but morally, says Katharine Gammon
  5. “Nothing is true”: big, if true — David Liggins (Manchester) on why we should take alethic nihilism seriously
  6. “Weirder options are conceivable, but exceedingly improbable” — two physicists have “calculated an equation that counts universes. And they’ve made the striking observation that universes like ours seem to account for the lion’s share of the conceivable cosmic options”
  7. “Twitter makes preexisting elites accessible, but it also creates its own elites… Still, I think our situation with hierarchy is improved by Philosophy Twitter, not because the hierarchy it institutes is more intrinsically fair, but because it diversifies the unfairness of hierarchy” — Mason Westfall (WUStL) applies the multiple-status-hierarchies approach to unfairness to the world of academic philosop