Where finance and media interesects with reality.

Screenshot 2022-12-24 at 09.51.21

This edition of the Blind Spot Wrap was compiled by Izabella Kaminska. It’s short and sweet because, hey, it’s Christmas Eve – and who wants to read about finance when you should be baking biscuits and preparing herrings? We will be back after Christmas with our Year in Review – all the stories you didn’t know you missed in 2022. Also, we will send out our next spotlight on December 26.

Business, Econ, Finance etc:

  • Vehicle repossessions rocket amid high monthly payments and inflation.
  • Stiglitz says it was the pandemic and war that caused inflation not government spending.
  • Phil Pilkington accuses the FT’s data journalist John Burn-Murdoch of cherry-picking data to suit his priors.
  • Jack Ma has been hanging out in Japan.

Media Matters:

  • Twitter Helped the Pentagon run a secret Middle Eastern propaganda campaign.
  • Facebook is full of former CIA and FBI agents too.
  • Compare and contrast this Elon article with the comments.
  • Russell Brand interviews Bari Weiss about the Twitter Files.
  • Not for the first time, the New York Times crossword accidentally renders a Swastika pattern into its design.
  • Digital diplomatic residences: Matt Taibbi observes that the new intel bases aren’t in geographic locations anymore, they’re on platforms. From his latest:

    “Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report.

    I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire. A subplot is these companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus, although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed. Details on those “Other Government Agencies” soon, probably tomorrow.”

Geopolitical Pivots:

  • Peru’s defense minister named PM in Cabinet shuffle after protests.
  • Ukraine blasts Henry Kissinger’s peace plan.
  • The strange lengths Putin is going to to protect himself from a potential coup (including counter-psychological ops and hypnosis).
  • Tom Cruise is a lot like Maverick it turns out.

Crypto Crisis:

  • Jo Johnson resigns from Binance advisory council.
  • The FT’s Jemima Kelly says “I told you so” about crypto.
  • In which I compare what’s going on in crypto today to a traditional drug cartel turf war.
  • How did we miss that Hunter Biden appeared on a Mario Nawfal-hosted Twitter Spaces in November to shill his NFTs?

Technology:

  • Their bionic eyes are now obsolete.
  • Silent majority of car industry is worried about electric vehicles.
  • Will Elon block Norad from Tweeting the live coordinates of Santa’s sleigh tonight?

Climate Change:

  • Fears grow of a dead pool on the Colorado River as droughts increase.

The Best Christmas Biscuit Recipe of All Time:

Pani Marii Ciasteczka” a.k.a “Mrs Maria’s biscuits”. I’m letting you all into a big secret here. Truly. Nobody who has tasted these biscuits has ever been able to resist them. The recipe (which has been handed down through my family) is extremely simple too.

What you need:

– 3/4 of a cube of unsalted butter.
– 100 grams of crushed almonds.
– 75 grams of caster sugar.
– 200 grams of self-raising flour.

Process:

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl with your hands until you create a firm dough. Divide the dough into three equal bits putting the two you’re not working on into cellophane wrap and in the fridge. Take the first part and divide it into another four pieces. Roll each piece into a snake. Cut the snake into seven pieces. Prepare a baking tray by lining it with baking paper. Mould each of the seven bits into a little half-moon shape. Bake in the oven on a medium heat (180 degrees or gas mark 5/6) – but I usually just watch until they’re done. repeat the process with all the remaining bits. When the biscuits are cooled, sprinkle them with icing sugar. Enjoy.

 

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