Mammon category archive
The Pusher Men 0
These days, they wear suits and file expense reports.
The Power of Google, Reprise 0
Several days ago, I noted Josh Marshall’s musings on Google’s dominance of the Inner Webs and his concern that, with great power comes great temptation to abuse that power.
The Value of Labor 0
Robert Reich disputes those who argue that the working and middle classes’ income has fallen in real terms because the value of their labor has fallen. Here’s a bit:
(snip some more examples)
But they did the reverse: They spent more and more of their ever-growing wealth and power on rigging the game to their own advantage.
(Wording corrected.)
Carrion Crows 0
El Reg reports:
“One thing we’ve learned at the Federal Trade Commission is that scams often follow the news – especially when there’s a natural disaster, like Hurricane Harvey, in the headlines,” the warning said.
The robocalls claim that the target’s flood insurance premiums are “past due,” and in order to have any coverage for damages caused by Hurricane Harvey they need to make an immediate payment.
Hoist on the Elmer Gantry 0
In The Roanoke Times, John Freivalds muses on the monetization of the miraculous.
Fly the Fiendly Skies 0
Visit my local rag for news of yet more United fiendliness. (I may have mentioned this before, but my ex once had a great flight via United Airlines. United couldn’t get a plane off the ground, so she got reaccommodated to other airlines in both directions.)
Magic from the Magic Kingdom 0
El Reg reports that Disney is being sued:
“In other words, the ability to serve behavioral advertisements to a specific user no longer turns upon obtaining the kinds of data with which most consumers are familiar (email addresses, etc), but instead on the surreptitious collection of persistent identifiers, which are used in conjunction with other data points to build robust online profiles,” the suit claims.
I wonder whether their defense will be, “All the other kids are doing it.”
DudeBros 0
Well, there is some good news.
Prosecutors had accused Shkreli of repeatedly misleading investors about what he was doing with their money. Mostly, he was blowing it with horrible stock picks, forcing him to cook up a scheme to recover millions in losses, they said.
Much more at the link. The story does not mention a sentencing date.