BC HISTORY
Saved by @jay_millerjay

Accountancy is more likely to be mocked than celebrated (or condemned), but accountants, far more than poets, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

1/

 Though "bean counters" are employed by firms, they are notionally bound by a professional code of ethics every bit as serious as the Hippocratic Oath: "count things honestly." Without an accurate accounting of quantities, you can't make good decisions on quality.

2/
Though accountancy concerns itself with counting things, it is inextricably bound up with the realm of ideas, and accounting conventions (how you account for things) are philosophical matters, not empirical ones.

3/
It's no coincidence that #ModernMonetaryTheory owes more to accountancy than it does to economics. Economic accounts of the economy have an unfortunate tendency to proceed from first principles, creating models based on pure reason, without checking in on the actual world.

4/
For example, neoclassical econ's "homo economicus," the rational value-maximizing actor who populated so many models; or economists' insistence on targeting inflation with interest rates; or treating national "debts" like they were household debts.

5/
It's telling that the greatest economics revolution of my lifetime was "behavioral economics," which could also be called "checking to see whether real people act like we've assumed they acted."

6/
If it seems weird that economists would spend generations operating on the incorrect assumption that people behave in a certain way without ever checking, consider that Aristotle assumed women had fewer teeth than men, - and never bothered to count.

https://t.co/dApCRKT9yj

7/
Accountants check, and what they find is…gnarly. In "An Accounting Model of the UK Exchequer," @spatchcockable, @widespreadhaze and Neil Wilson offer a mindbending account (heh) of where money comes from (hint: not taxes), and where it goes ("poof").

https://t.co/5pJBIfYkUN

8/
The authors did a two-part @MMTpodcast interview describing the paper's findings, and it is the most extraordinary 2.5h audio you're likely to find: not just the realities of money, but the deliberate obfuscation thereof.

https://t.co/IdK92zx2sX

https://t.co/lmCAQfTXQv

9/
One thing the Exchequer paper reveals is that accountants bat for both teams: team clarity and team obscurity. As many finance scandals and finance dramas have reminded us, accounting can be turned to obscuring and dazzling rather than revelation.

10/
After all, somewhere in HM Exchequer is a team of accountants who know EXACTLY how money works - and know that it's nothing like the account produced by economists or politicians. They know it because they are in charge of it. They do money, all day long.

11/
When accountants go rogue, things get bad. And thanks to neoclassical economics - and its emphasis on the "efficiency" of monopolies - we are living through a golden age of ghastly accounting fraud.

12/
Just four companies - @ey, @kpmg, @pwc and @deloitte - audit the books of 97% of the 350 largest UK companies; but they make far more selling these companies consulting services, and have made a habit of lying about those books in order to boost their consulting income.

13/
Accountancy is meant to be a profession that understands that conflicts of interest are a moral hazard. But just as doctors convince themselves they won't get addicted to their own painkillers, accountants talk themselves into believing that conflicts won't corrupt them.

14/
That's how the Big Four accounting companies came to sign off Carillion's fraudulent books. The company hid £7b worth of debts, took on management of vital government services up and down the country, then collapsed, leaving the nation stranded.

https://t.co/4TII4dPMMp

15/
For the Big Four, Carillion's collapse was a feature, not a bug. After all, the only accounting firms large enough to oversee its bankruptcy were...the Big Four, who billed millions for cleaning up the mess left behind by their own fraud.

16/
Accounting fraud is a fascinating potential fracture line in economic reform. After all, fraudulent accountants may help SOME plutes get rich - like, say Bernie Madoff, or Donald Trump - but they often do so at the expense of OTHER plutes.

17/
Like @exxonmobil, which lied to its investors for 11 years about the value of its shale-gas holdings, which it purchased at the peak of the fracking bubble and whose revenues and liabilities it has buried in its financial statements ever since.

https://t.co/hpSWKt1ahr

18/
The company is finally writing down $19.3b worth of those assets, but the true figure is more like $50b. And yes, Exxon's big investors include a lot of passive funds that invest pension savings, meaning this hurts Main Street as well as Wall Street.

19/
But as ever, those pension-savers are the Lucky Duckies here, because - joke's on us - Americans have basically no pension savings, thanks to the wage stagnation and asset inflation that left almost all working Americans facing penury in old age.

20/
Hey, at least they're not getting ripped off by Exxon! The real victims of this decade-long, multibillion-dollar fraud are the same people who got snookered into buying into shitty Trump casinos and luxury buildings: rich people.

21/
By definition, rich people deal in quantities that exceed their ability to personally count so they are especially vulnerable to scam accounting. It's only when the frauds tank a company we all suffer, as jobs and businesses disappear, screwing workers and cities.

22/
The absence of a neutral ref and scorekeeper is a really big deal in online business and policy circles. The ad-tech duopoly isn't merely content to price-gouge advertisers - they also lie about what those sky-high prices are paying for:

https://t.co/pmWMTNsPRp

23/
But each member of the duopoly has a different scam. Google's frauds are complex, behind-the-scenes market manipulations, an abstruse, mathematical grift that leverages complexity and monopoly to fleece its customers.

https://t.co/gDyvaKtkwZ

24/
Facebook is much more straightforward. It just lies. Back in 2016, FB lied about how many people were watching videos, and encouraged hundreds of media company to beggar themselves to chase fraudulent video dollars:

https://t.co/GmcR3tDc8B

25/
Accounting fraud is in Facebook's DNA. After all, this is a company whose primary sales-pitch is, "We will count everything you do and then charge people to help them sell you stuff."

26/
This proposition is intrinsically hard to evaluate. How can a customer know if their FB ad generated a sale, or whether it was an ad elsewhere, or random chance, or even that elusive beast, customer loyalty?

27/
The main source for the belief in Facebook's efficacy is...Facebook. It's not a neutral party, and the accountants who sign off on its books have repeatedly shown themselves to be untrustworthy.

28/
Here's the latest scandal: since 2018, FB's been defending a class-action suit brought by its customers who claim that FB lied about "potential reach" - that is, how many users would see their ads.

https://t.co/alNpNJ8PZw

29/
And while FB strenuously denies that the inaccuracies in "potential reach" metrics were just normal, unpredictable variations in user behaviors, a whistleblowing FB product manager has produced emails in which they warn execs that they're committing fraud.

30/
The execs who got these memos rejected them, telling the product manager that acting on them would have "significant revenue impact" - that is, "Our customers wouldn't buy our products if we were truthful about them."

31/
The fraudulent reach figures begat fraudulent revenues, and those revenues were fraudulently reported to investors. Those investors will now take a haircut if FB loses in court.

32/
Accounting fraud's pathology is bimodal: it abets the wage-theft and austerity that harms the poorest and most vulnerable - but also the reporting scams that harpoon finance's biggest whales.

33/
It's a curious alliance of interests. For now, it seems like Big Tech is going to be antitrust and anti-corruption's harbinger, but I wouldn't count accountancy out - it's got exactly the right kinds of enemies to fire sustained political will.

34/
If you'd prefer to read or share this thread as a blog post, here it is on https://t.co/iSBh8s9m7q, a site that is entirely free of ads, trackers, or surveillance:

https://t.co/niVePUyzgf

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Surveillance companies assure us that they employ safeguards to ensure that their customers aren't abusing their products to engage in unlawful or unethical surveillance. And yet, inevitably, these companies abuse their tools THEMSELVES.

1/


It's almost as though being the kind of person who dreams of achieving incredible wealthy by spying on people makes you kind of an asshole.

2/

Like the people at @VerkadaHQ, "a fast-growing Silicon Valley surveillance startup" whose male employees used its own products to sexually harass their female colleagues and received the barest wrist-slaps for

Male Verkada employees maintained a private Slack channel where executives posted photos of female employees - captured with the company's own surveillance tools - and made sexually explicit remarks about them.

4/

When this came to light, the company's founder and CEO Filip Kaliszan called an all-hands meeting, expressed disappointment in the harassers, and told them that they could either quit...or lose some stock options. They chose the latter and remain employed there to this day.

5/
TECH
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
While many Amazon warehouse workers in Europe have unionized, its brutalized, underpaid, routinely maimed US workforce remains tragically unorganized, thanks to the US's weak labor laws that make forming a union far harder than at any time since the Gilded Age.

1/


But all that may be about to change: 6000 warehouse workers in #BHM1, the massive Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL, will vote next month on a push to unionize under the

Amazon, like other tech giants, is absolutely reliant on building and maintaining a competitive advantage by exploiting technology to drive wages ever downward while ducking responsibility for harming workers.

3/

Big Tech is pants-wettingly afraid of unionization, and that goes double for any solidarity between high-paid tech workers and misclassified/outsourced warehouse workers and other "unskilled" laborers.

4/

Amazon has gone so far as to hire the Pinkertons, renowned as some of history's most violent anti-worker terrorists, to bust unionization drives in its
BUSINESS
Advertisement
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
@doctorow
It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

1/


Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

2/

In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

3/

This isn't law as we know it, it's Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn't completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

4/

Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish "hacking" and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn't like.

5/
ALL
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
The pandemic has afforded all of us a refresher course on the five stages of grief, a theoretical and controversial framework for describing how people cope with tragedy: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

https://t.co/nqPmjCvyab

1/


A far slower-moving unfolding of these stages can be seen in the reactions of the super-wealthy to the breakdown in neoliberal orthodoxy, the tale that says that inequality results from meritocracy, and makes us all better

Denial came out in the "rationalist" view: the world is better off than ever - richer, less violent, healthier, and any discontent you feel with your plummeting fortunes and the contracting possibilities for your kids is just your tunnel vision. Lack of perspective.

3/

But the Great Financial Crisis and Occupy triggered the anger of the elites: violent suppression of protests, the "Doom Boom" in new luxury bunkers, Howard Schultz's insistence that "billionaire" is a slur (he says we should call him a "person of wealth").

4/

The pandemic - and the "K-shaped recovery"- has revealed the existential threat inequality poses for our species, between price-gouging, fraud, profiteering, flouting health directives, and coercing the poor and vulnerable into risking their lives to keep the economy afloat.

5/
SOCIETY
Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
When you hear the phrase "free market," you probably think of "a market that is free from regulation" but that's the opposite of the phrase's original meaning!

1/


Adam Smith used the term to describe a market that was free from "economic rents" - money earned by owning things, rather than doing things. Smith recognized that markets attract parasites - "rentiers" - who seek to drain wealth by "investing" rather than building and doing.

2/

Which meant that, in the absence of muscular state intervention, markets would become less and less free - more and more dependent on the whims of rentiers who used money to breed money by creating toll-barriers between parts of the productive economy.

3/

For Smith, markets were only free if they were regulated. But that's the opposite of the way that we talk about free markets today. Today, a free market is a market where you are free to collect rents - passive income from owning things, at the expense of people doing things.

4/

This is true in so many metaphorical ways, but it's especially true when we're talking about actual rent - actual homes that people need to survive and produce, whose primary role today is to serve as an asset class to be maximized, not a basic human right.

5/
TRADING

More from History

Whores of Yore
Whores of Yore
@WhoresofYore
This is Camille du Gast (1868-1942). She was a balloonist, parachutist, fencer, tobogganist, skier, horse trainer, concert pianist & singer. She was the second woman to compete in an international motor race & was embroiled in the scandal of La Femme au Masque.

Thread!
HISTORY
Lindsey Simmons
Lindsey Simmons
@LynzforCongress
Joshua Hawley, Missouri's Junior Senator, is an autocrat in waiting.

His arrogance and ambition prohibit any allegiance to morality or character.

Thus far, his plan to seize the presidency has fallen into place.

An explanation in photographs.

🧵

Joshua grew up in the next town over from mine, in Lexington, Missouri. A a teenager he wrote a column for the local paper, where he perfected his political condescension.

2/


By the time he reached high-school, however, he attended an elite private high-school 60 miles away in Kansas City.

This is a piece of his history he works to erase as he builds up his counterfeit image as a rural farm boy from a small town who grew up farming.

3/


After graduating from Rockhurst High School, he attended Stanford University where he wrote for the Stanford Review--a libertarian publication founded by Peter Thiel..

4/

(Full Link: https://t.co/zixs1HazLk)


Hawley's writing during his early 20s reveals that he wished for the curriculum at Stanford and other "liberal institutions" to change and to incorporate more conservative moral values.

This led him to create the "Freedom Forum."

5/
HISTORY
Advertisement
Shalini Singh Sengar
Shalini Singh Sengar
@Maverickmusafir
Post Independence, Army wanted to select the most experienced Indian commander as Army chief. But Nehru without consulting anyone appointed Gen Rob Lockhart, a senior British Army officer as the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Indian Army.


Most people were shocked to know that Nehru selected a British Man after fighting for independence for over 200 years! Major Gen A A ‘Jick’ Rudra of the Indian Army was completely upset with the decision.


One day Lockhart met Nehru with a strategic plan and proposed many government directive defence policies for the country. He placed it on the table and explained the point to PM Nehru. After a while Lockhart walked out of the room and met AA Jick Rudra,+

Lockhart looked shell shocked and stunned. When asked what happened he said “The PM took one look at my paper and blew his top. Rubbish! Total rubbish! We don’t need a defence plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the army!”

One year after the incident the Kashmir crisis had increased and Gen Lockhart used to exchange ideas with the Gen Douglas Gracey who was commander in chief of Pakistan Army.There were many infiltrations along the border which Lockhart knew and took no action. But Lt Gen Cariappa+
HISTORY
Egypedia
Egypedia
@Egypediax
Ancient Egyptians didn't have one name for their country... They only had one name for cities like Memphis or Thebes. Ancient civilizations in general lived only in cities.

Ancient Egyptians named different parts different names:

North land
Sedge land
Ta-mery
Deshert
Kemet


- North land: the North or lower Egypt.

- Sedge land: the South or Upper Egypt.

- Ta-mery: The land of the river bank (where they lived).

- Deshert: The desert or the red land.

- Kemet: The black soil land (Agricultural land).


The cities:

- Memphis or White Walls.

- Thebes or Waset.


Unroll
@threader_app Compile
@rattibha
HISTORY
Lea Goldman
Lea Goldman
@lea
This is the field where my grandmother’s family was murdered in April 1943. I met one of the witnesses, a neighbor, several years ago. She said she saw them being marched away, was told by a Nazi to get back inside or risk joining them... 1/#InternationalHolocaustRemembranceDay


My grandmother and her kid sister ran for their lives into the woods. One detail that sticks out from my great aunt’s testimony many yrs later: the sunflower stalks in Grodzisko were so tall you could lay down and hide among them. Presuming the Nazis didn’t bring the dogs. 2/

My grandmother paid a farmer to hide them in the attic of his barn. This was a perilous act. After the war, my grandmother would send the farmer care packages until he died, as a token of her gratitude.

Most of my grandmother’s family were killed in those awful days in 1943.


In testimony my great aunt recorded—amazing to listen to, truly—she remembers being perpetually hungry and freezing. She recalls seeing a cherry tree outside the window of the attic and fainting. She also remembers my her sister’s nightmares, the screams for Eli...

Before they ran for their lives, my grandmother had given away her 3yo son Eli for safekeeping while she hid. After the war, she returned for him, but he was gone. Vanished. No one could say what happened to him.

I have been searching for Eli, my uncle, for two decades.
HISTORY

You May Also Like

SK
SK
@sk_diary1
Margatha Natarajar murthi - Uthirakosamangai temple near Ramanathapuram,TN
#ArudraDarisanam
Unique Natarajar made of emerlad is abt 6 feet tall.
It is always covered with sandal paste.Only on Thriuvadhirai Star in month Margazhi-Nataraja can be worshipped without sandal paste.


After removing the sandal paste,day long rituals & various abhishekam will be https://t.co/e1Ye8DrNWb day Maragatha Nataraja sannandhi will be closed after anointing the murthi with fresh sandal paste.Maragatha Natarajar is covered with sandal paste throughout the year


as Emerald has scientific property of its molecules getting disturbed when exposed to light/water/sound.This is an ancient Shiva temple considered to be 3000 years old -believed to be where Bhagwan Shiva gave Veda gyaana to Parvati Devi.This temple has some stunning sculptures.
ALL
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
SRI KALAHASTI KSHETRAM, CHITTOOR (AP)
#bharatmandir

Panchbhootasthalam representing vayu element, also called Dakshin Kailasha.
As per Shiva’s boon, Vayu is incarnated here as Shiva and worshipped as Kalahasteeswara.
The kshetram is also associated with Rahu and Ketu.


The Kshetram is named after 3 devotees of Shiva- a snake, spider and elephant who worshipped a lingam in the forest. Elephant did jal abhishek with water from its trunk, spider protected it from dust by weaving a web on it and snake adorned it with his jewel.
@GunduHuDuGa


Once, the web and jewel got washed away when elephant sprayed water on the lingam. Angered snake entered elephant’s trunk and bit him but died in the process. The agitated elephant trampled the spider accidentally. Shiva gave moksha to all three.


Hence the name-Sri for Spider, kaal for snake n hasti for elephant.

Shiv bhakt Kanappa is said to have plucked his own eye to put it on the lingam here when he saw blood oozing from the eye on the lingam
This place is the ultimate location for Rahu Kethu Sarpa Dosha Nivarana.
ALL
Advertisement
AKASH
AKASH
@AKASHBH95801446
THE SCIENCE BEHIND YAJNA

Fire is, of course, one of the greatest discovery of mankind. Our control over the fire dramatically changed the entire human habits; earlier it was used to cook food, protection from animals and to stay warm.


Among the many applications of fire, one is Yajna (यज्ञ, yajña); also called as Havana (हवन) or Agnihotra (अग्निहोत्र).
Yajna is elaborately described in Yajurveda. In Yajurveda, Yajna is the greatest among all works (Karman). One can purify his /her soul by performing Yajna.

In Vedic culture, it is thought that the holy fire is the mediator between Gods and us; when the offerings are made to Yajna with chanting mantras, it directly reaches the Gods, who bless the people with rains, food, health, and good luck.

According to Apastamba Sutra, the definition of Yajna is Vedic sacrifice; an act by which we surrender something for gods e.g. grains (Anna), pulse, milk and milk product (ghee, butter, curd) fruits, plant juice (soma), etc.

As we said; Yajna is the contact medium for gods and

to seek their blessings.

There are many types of Yajna performed by Hindus for e.g.,

1. Rajsuya Yajna
2. Ashwamedha Yajna
3. Chaaturmasya Yajna
4. Vaajpey Yajna
5. Purushmedha Yajna
6. Sarvamedha Yajna
RELIGION
Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
Santkumaras-The four adorable kids of the Universe.

The Kumaras r the four sages who roam the Universe as children from the Puranic texts of Hinduism named,Sanaka, Sanatana,Sanandana& Sanatkumara.They r described as the first mind-born creations &sons of the creator God Brahma.


Brahma,who had received the knowledge of Puranas from the Universal being(God Himself), imbibed this to his 4 Kumaras.
Sanat Kumaras then taught the Puranas to Narada.Narada transmitted it to Krishna Dwaipayana who in turn scripted them in monumental epic documents of 18 Puranas.

The Vishnu Purana is recorded in two parts,the Vishnu Purana & Naradiya Purana.The teachings of Sanaka of the Kumara brothers r contained in the Naradiya Purana which is also divided in two parts, the first part containing the teachings of Sanaka &second part,teachings of others.


Born from Brahma's mind,4 Kumars took lifelong vows of celibacy against their father's wishes.They r said to wander throughout materialistic &spiritualistic universe without any desire but with the aim to teach.All 4 brothers studied Vedas from their Childhood&travelled together.


The Bhagwata Purana lists the Kumaras among the 12 Mahajanas(great devotees or bhaktas) who although being eternally liberated souls from birth, still became attracted to the devotional service of Vishnu from their already enlightened state.
ALL
Daoyu
Daoyu
@Daoyu15
@franciscodeasis https://t.co/OuQaBRFPu7
Unfortunately the "This work includes the identification of viral sequences in bat samples, and has resulted in the isolation of three bat SARS-related coronaviruses that are now used as reagents to test therapeutics and vaccines." were BEFORE the


chimeric infectious clone grants were there.https://t.co/DAArwFkz6v is in 2017, Rs4231.
https://t.co/UgXygDjYbW is in 2016, RsSHC014 and RsWIV16.
https://t.co/krO69CsJ94 is in 2013, RsWIV1. notice that this is before the beginning of the project

starting in 2016. Also remember that they told about only 3 isolates/live viruses. RsSHC014 is a live infectious clone that is just as alive as those other "Isolates".

P.D. somehow is able to use funds that he have yet recieved yet, and send results and sequences from late 2019 back in time into 2015,2013 and 2016!

https://t.co/4wC7k1Lh54 Ref 3: Why ALL your pangolin samples were PCR negative? to avoid deep sequencing and accidentally reveal Paguma Larvata and Oryctolagus Cuniculus?
ALL