#brad thiele | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

Text

America's 400 top earners pay less tax than you

Last June, Propublica announced that it was in possession of leaked IRS files detailing the tax affairs of America’s richest people, and that the IRS Files showed that taxes are — as Leona Helmsley famously quipped — for the little people:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

The initial reporting described how, for example, private equity raiders were able to debt-finance acquisitions of productive businesses, run them into the ground, pocket hundreds of millions of dollars, and avoid tax as they sprinted away from the wreckage.

A key scam that enables this looting is the “carried interest” loophole, which most normies assume has something to do with not paying tax on the interest you earn from a loan or something. That’s a reasonable assumption, but it’s dead wrong. “Carried interest” is a doctrine invented to make things fairer for 16th century sea-captains, and it has nothing to do with interest on loans.

How does a scam like that persist in the tax code for 500 years? Well, one thing the IRS Files showed is that lobbying for tax-breaks is an incredibly productive investment. Trump’s “big, beautiful tax-cut” underwent a flurry of last-minute revisions that carved out the tax-evasion strategies of individual billionaires and their dynastic offspring.

These can be directly linked to campaign contributions to the GOP lawmakers who introduced them. Like Senator Ron Johnson, who threatened to block the tax cuts unless it was amended to favor three of his major campaign donors: Dick and Liz Uihlein (owners of Uline), and Diane Hendricks (roofing heiress), who gave $20m to Johnson’s campaign and reaped $215m in the first year of the cuts (they’re still getting hundreds of millions on that investment).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/11/the-canada-variant/#shitty-man-of-history-theory

You may have noticed the presence of an heiress among the Senator Johnson’s owners: dynastic wealth plays an enormous role in shaping the US tax code and its policies. The American myth of the meritocracy has been extended to people whose “merit” consists of emerging from an extremely lucky orifice.

Dynastic fortunes are normally shrouded in secrecy. But thanks to honorable heirs, like Abigail Disney, we are starting to learn more about the dirty business of “family offices” and the ways they ensure that no matter how feckless and idiotic an heir may be, they will continue to be able to influence the lives of millions of people who work for living:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

The tax code is a gnarly hairball of carve-outs and special programs, many of them designed to benefit middle-class earners, like the ROTH IRA. The ultra rich have turned these into piggy-banks they can stuff with hundreds of millions in tax-free loot. Peter Theil’s ROTH is worth $5 billion.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/26/wax-rothful/#thiels-gambit

And REITs — which are supposed to benefit mom-and-pop landlords who rent out an apartment in their retirement — have been transformed into a vehicle for offshore oligarchs to acquire hotels, smash their unions, and siphon off money needed for the local tax coffers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#reit-makes-might

Now, all work and no play make Steve a dull oligarch. The ultra-rich have figured out how to turn their hobbies and follies into tax-free money-pits, like Steve Ballmer’s beloved LA Clippers. He evaded tax on $140m by buying the team — while his athletes (whose labor provides him with a handsome income) pay 30–40% income tax:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

“Find a tax-sheltered hobby you love and you’ll never work a day.” That’s the principle behind the hundreds of millions in tax-evasion practiced by the horsey set ($189m for tobacco billionaire Brad Kelley, $173m for soup heiress Charlotte Weber, $138m for hedge-fund looter Seth Klarman).

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/required-ish-reading/#hobby-lobby-ists

But if you just haven’t found your passion yet, you can still trouser hundreds of millions, through the simple and effective tactic of cheating on your taxes.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/20/la-hougue/#complexity

Don’t worry, the IRS has slashed its budget for auditing wealthy people and focuses its firepower on families with annual incomes of $35k and under:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/democrats-ask-irs-why-tax-audits-for-poor-have-doubled

The IRS Leaks are a couple of years out of date now, and it’s hard to know exactly how much worse it’s gotten. One bellwether is the amount of debt assumed by the ultra-wealthy — when plutes borrow, it’s not like you or I going into debt, rather, it’s part of a “buy-borrow-die” strategy through which unrealized, tax-free capital gains are used as collateral for cheap-as-dirt loans. The super-rich are levered up to their hairlines:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/03/fitzgerald-was-an-optimist/#debt

Meanwhile, President Biden has proposed a billionaire wealth tax, designed to get around the various tax-evasion strategies used by American oligarchs. Unsurprisingly, the wealthy are fighting back, insisting that they do pay tax, and lots of it:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/04/11/billionaire-tax-biden-unrealized-gains-assets/9503953002

Today, Propublica’s Paul Kiel, Ash Ngu, Jesse Eisinger and Jeff Ernsthausen offer a reality check on those claims, with an in-depth analysis of America’s 400 top earners:

https://projects.propublica.org/americas-highest-incomes-and-taxes-revealed/

The team start by observing that your effective rate of income tax does climb as your income does, but once you reach $29m, it plateaus — and then, it goes down, as extreme wealth unlocks access to tax evasion strategies that are beyond the reach of the merely rich.

The main way that the super-rich avoid tax is by arranging their payouts so they come as capital gains and not salaries, which are taxed at 20% rather than the 37% top rate for income derived from doing stuff, rather than owning stuff. Note that the 20% rate is only for long-term capital gains, and that means that nominally flippers who buy and sell assets quickly can’t get it — but have no fear, private equity barons can pretend to be 16th century sea-captains and avail themselves of the carried interest loophole.

The US tax code has had special treatment for capital gains for about a century, but GW Bush’s tax cuts in 2003 supercharged these breaks for the owning class. America’s richest 400 people save an average of $1.9b/year thanks to ole GW.

The American tax-code is especially kind to people who emerge from lucky orifices. If you’re in the DeVos or Walton family, tax giveaways are the key to your ability to shower candidates, PACs and think-tanks with money. 11 Walton orifice-emergers pocket $371m/year thanks to preferential treatment for dynastic fortunes.

But the real winners are tech billionaires, those rapacious, mediocre monopolists who have denuded the internet into five giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other four. Their “charitable contributions” of stock (which can simply be donations to their own family foundations) let them deduct the full value of the stock without any capital gains tax.

The top 400 American earners make at least $110m/year. That’s 2,750 times the average American annual wage. The richest 11 US earners make more than $1b/year. A typical American would have to work for 25,000 years to make that much.

During those 25,000 years, you’ll pay more of your income as tax than billionaires. While they nominally pay a higher rate than you, you’re paying a much larger share of your income into Social Security and Medicare, goosing your tax rate over theirs.

Now all of this is a little misleading. The rich are actually richer than this analysis suggests. As the authors describe, “the richest avoid income when they can.” By using the buy-borrow-die method, the wealthy actually pay a true tax rate of 3.4%.

That number shrinks even further when you consider America’s top 15 earners who are singled out by name in a companion feature:

https://www.propublica.org/article/americas-top-15-earners-and-what-they-reveal-about-the-us-tax-system

Despite what you may have guessed, there are no celebs on that list. Even LeBron James and Taylor Swift don’t approach the fortunes of the tech billionaires, hedge fund looters, and profession orifice-emergers atop the steep slopes of the American wealth-pyramid.

#pluralistic

48 notes · View notes

richardprice-blog · 4 years

Text

Business Biographies I like

I enjoy reading swashbuckling tales of business adventure. Ideally autobiographies and biographies of business people, but any swashbuckling business story is good.

Here are some autobiographies and biographies I enjoyed a lot:

Grinding it Out, by Ray Kroc. Great read about the guy who effectively founded McDonalds. He founded McDonalds in his 50s.

Made in America, by Sam Walton. About the creation of Wal-Mart.

Shoe Dog, by Phil Knight. About the creation of Nike.

Made in Japan, by Akio Morita. The first half about the founding of Sony is good. The second half about trade relations between Japan and the US was less interesting (for me).

Call me Ted, by Ted Turner. About Ted Turner’s business career, including the founding of CNN.

Built from Scratch, by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. The first 2/3 about the founding of Home Depot is good.

Jack, by Jack Welch.

The Everything Store, by Brad Stone. About Amazon.

Elon Musk, by Ashlee Vance

Titan, by Ron Chernow. Great bio of Rockefeller and the entrepreneurial landscape of 1860's -1910s

Edison, by Matthew Josephson. Great prose and a great life to document.

Both Jobs biographies - the Isaacson one and the Schlender/Tetzeli one.

The Fish that Ate the Whale, by Rich Cohen. About Samuel Zemurray, who rose from nothing to control the banana trade from Central America into the U.S.

Pour your heart into it, by Howard Schultz - about the founding of Starbucks

Onward, by Howard Schultz. Schultz left Starbucks in the early 2000s because he was bored, and things started to go downhill with the company. He came back in 2008 and turned the company around. This is how he did it.

Hatching Twitter, by Nick Bilton

Netflixed, by Gina Keating. Interesting read about the battle between Blockbuster and Netflix.

Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh

Business adventures, by John Brooks. Bill Gates says this is his favorite business book of all time. The prose is delightful and the business insight is excellent.

Once in Golconda, by John Brooks - this is a gripping read about the crash of 1929.- The Go-Go Years - this is about the heady economic decade of the 1960s

Losing My Virginity, by Richard Branson

The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, by Andrew Carnegie

Creativity, Inc, by Ed Catmull

Zero to One, by Peter Thiel

The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

1 note · View note

jgmail · 4 years

Text

EL PAPEL DEL CAPITAL EN LAS ELECCIONES DE ESTADOS UNIDOS

Por Leonid Savin

Traducción del inglés de Juan Gabriel Caro Rivera

El dinero juega un papel clave en las campañas electorales estadounidenses. Se gasta en la publicidad, los salarios de los consultores y las empresas de relaciones públicas. Además, la estrategia de los demócratas muestra que la financiación se destina a protestas callejeras. Dado que este enfoque de confrontación se adopta de antemano e implica provocar a la gente a protestas masivas, es una técnica que también requiere una inversión seria.

Exploraremos los diferentes mecanismos de recaudación de fondos para campañas electorales y los intereses de varios grupos financieros (individuos).

Comités de acción política

Desde 1976, los comités de acción política (PAC) se han utilizado en los Estados Unidos para recaudar fondos para publicidad y propaganda durante las campañas electorales. Después de 2010, cuando la Corte Suprema de EE.UU. eliminó las restricciones a las donaciones políticas, comenzaron a surgir nuevas versiones de estos comités llamados Super PAC que son diferentes a los comités de acción política convencionales, que no pueden aceptar contribuciones de más de $ 5,000 de un solo individuo y las contribuciones de corporaciones o sindicatos son ilegales, pero los súper PAC pueden aceptar contribuciones ilimitadas. Los súper PAC también participan activamente en la lucha contra la propaganda y la desinformación contra sus oponentes políticos.

Más de 2.000 Super PAC se registraron en las anteriores elecciones presidenciales de EE.UU. en 2016. Este es el mecanismo de recaudación de fondos más transparente, ya que las autoridades reguladoras realizan un seguimiento de cada centavo.

El Super PAC de Trump se llama America First Action, mientras que el de Joe Biden se llama Priorities USA.

El Super PAC del senador de la República Seth Moulton también ha estado activo durante la actual campaña electoral (1).

Woman Vote, que está completamente orientado a la mitad femenina del electorado, está trabajando para los demócratas (2).

También hay otros PAC y Super PAC involucrados en estas elecciones para ambos lados.

Los donantes de Trump y Biden

Desde principios de 2019 hasta julio de 2020, Trump logró recaudar alrededor de $ 1.1 mil millones, de los cuales $ 800 millones ya se gastaron en septiembre (3). En julio, Trump reemplazó a Brad Parscale, su ahora exgerente de campaña, por Bill Stepien, y le indicó que trabajara de manera más eficiente y gastara menos dinero.

Según la revista Forbes, el 9 por ciento de los multimillonarios estadounidenses, que juntos valen un total de 210.000 millones de dólares, han donado dinero para cubrir los gastos de campaña de Trump de 2020, ya sea directamente o a través de su cónyuge (4). En total, Trump ha recibido el apoyo de alrededor de cien multimillonarios.

Más de la mitad de los donantes de Trump viven en tres Estados: Florida, Nueva York y Texas. Tres cuartas partes de ellos se han hecho a sí mismos; el resto heredó pequeñas fortunas y las convirtió en fortunas aún mayores. Su negocio está relacionado con bienes raíces, energía, deporte, etc. Una quinta parte de los donantes se enriqueció con las finanzas y las inversiones. Este grupo incluye a personas como el director ejecutivo de Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman, el propietario de fondos de cobertura John Paulson y el exjefe de Franklin Templeton, Charles B. Johnson. Alrededor del 10 por ciento de los donantes ganaron su dinero en bienes raíces, incluido el multimillonario neoyorquino Richard LeFrak de Trump.

El banquero de Texas Andrew Beal ha dado más que nadie al Comité de la Victoria de Trump. Los propietarios de casinos y los hermanos Lorenzo y Frank Fertitta también han donado millones a este comité.

Joe y Marlene Ricketts (TD Ameritrade) han donado más de $ 1 millón. No dieron nada en 2016.

Andrew Beal ha dado aproximadamente la misma cantidad. Dennis y Phyllis Washington (cuyo negocio es la minería y la construcción) han donado $ 1 millón. Diane Hendricks (construcción) ha donado poco menos de $ 1 millón. Kenny y Lisa Troutt (telecomunicaciones): 925.000 dólares. Jeffery y Melinda Hildebrand (petróleo) - $ 775,000. Isaac y Laura Perlmutter (cómics de Marvel): 721.000 dólares. Peter Thiel de Palantir - 250.000 dólares. Cabe señalar que Peter Thiel tiene participaciones en Facebook y donó la misma cantidad a la campaña de Trump de 2016.

Es interesante que algunos multimillonarios donaron cantidades bastante pequeñas de miles e incluso cientos de dólares.

Un donante importante que solía donar regularmente a los republicanos, el magnate de Las Vegas, Sheldon Adelson, se ha negado a respaldar a Trump.

Biden cuenta con el apoyo de Wall Street (5) y Silicon Valley. También ha recaudado una gran cantidad de dinero gracias a pequeñas aportaciones. En términos de la cantidad de donantes ricos que ofrecen apoyo, Biden ha superado a Trump, recibiendo dinero de 131 multimillonarios (6).

El donante más grande de Biden ha sido George Soros, quien ha gastado más de $ 8 millones durante todo el ciclo electoral (para cubrir diversas necesidades). Los nuevos patrocinadores de Biden incluyen a Sean Parker y Dustin Moskovitz de Facebook, el cofundador de Twitter Ev Williams y el CEO de Twilio, Jeff Lawson.

Jeff Skoll de eBay ha estado invirtiendo dinero tanto en Biden como en los demócratas en el Senado. Mark Pincus, quien está involucrado en juegos en línea, ha donado $ 626,000. Barry Diller, quien ganó su dinero en los medios en línea: $ 620,000.

Los donantes de Biden también incluyen a Nicole Shanahan, esposa de Sergey Brin de Google (25.000 dólares), y Merryl Zegar, esposa de Charles Zegar (Bloomberg LP).

En septiembre de 2020, Biden logró recaudar un récord de $ 383 millones (7). El récord anterior fue de menos de $ 200 millones, recaudado por Barack Obama en septiembre de 2008.

Sin embargo, no todos los representantes de Silicon Valley apoyan a los demócratas.

Bill Gates apoya a Donald Trump. Es una elección pragmática. Hace un tiempo, la Administración de la Casa Blanca ayudó a Microsoft a ganar una licitación para crear servidores para respaldar al Pentágono, aunque Amazon, que anteriormente había obtenido un contrato de la CIA para servidores en la nube, también luchó por la licitación. La disputa provocó un escándalo en el Departamento de Defensa de Estados Unidos en 2019.

Elon Musk también ha brindado su apoyo a Trump, citando la demencia de Biden. Además, Trump cuenta con el respaldo del fundador de Oracle, Larry Ellison.

Aquí se debe mencionar un detalle importante: hay señales de un profundo cisma en la sociedad estadounidense que ha afectado no solo a la élite financiera, sino también a las relaciones familiares. Por ejemplo, el exdirector ejecutivo de Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, ha apoyado a Trump, pero su esposa Connie ha donado 500.000 dólares a un Super PAC para Biden.

La industria de defensa estadounidense y la influencia indirecta

Tradicionalmente, el ejército estadounidense se mantiene al margen de las campañas electorales, aunque Donald Trump ha apoyado activamente al ejército desde el comienzo de su presidencia. Es significativo que, en uno de sus discursos, Joe Biden habló sobre la posibilidad de incrementar el gasto militar, lo que fue considerado como un intento de influir en las preferencias de las fuerzas de seguridad.

Sin embargo, además de los intentos de los candidatos de ganarse a los militares, hay un mecanismo interesante que vale la pena señalar que refleja ciertos intereses contrarios de los militares y los think tanks, cuando estos últimos sirven a grupos políticos.

El hecho es que el complejo militar-industrial de EE.UU. (es decir, los principales fabricantes de sistemas de armas y productores relacionados, a menudo civiles, así como estructuras del Departamento de Defensa) financia a varios think tanks de EE.UU. de manera continua.

Los cinco principales donantes son Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin y Airbus. Junto con estos contratistas, también se transfiere dinero del Departamento de Defensa, el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional, el Departamento de Estado, la Fuerza Aérea de los EE.UU. y el Ejército de los EE.UU. Cada año, se entregan alrededor de $ 1 mil millones a varios centros para programas e investigación. Los think tanks que se ocupan de cuestiones de defensa, seguridad y estrategia militar son los destinatarios habituales. Sin embargo, la lista también incluye una serie de organizaciones que están en el espectro globalista, como el Council of Foreign Relations y el Stimson Center.

Los diez mejores centros que recibieron subvenciones entre 2014 y 2019 (inclusive) son (8):

RAND Corporation – $1,029,100,000;

Center for a New American Security (CNAS) – $8,956,000;

Atlantic Council – $8,697,000;

New America Foundation – $7,283,828;

German Marshall Fund of the United States – $6,599,999;

CSIS – $5,040,000;

Council on Foreign Relations – $2,590,000;

Brookings Institution – $2,485,000;

Heritage Foundation – $1,375,000; and

Stimson Center – $1,343,753.

Además del conocido Consejo de Relaciones Exteriores, esta lista también incluye el CNAS (9), que en realidad es un centro pro-demócrata. Fue establecido por la ex Subsecretaria de Defensa (2009-2012) Michèle Flournoy y el exsubsecretario de Estado para Asuntos de Asia Oriental y el Pacífico (2009-2013) Kurt Campbell. Ambos representan al Partido Demócrata.

La New America Foundation se posiciona ideológicamente como un grupo de expertos liberal y de centro izquierda (10). Eric Schmidt ocupó una vez uno de los puestos más importantes allí. Su actual presidenta y directora ejecutiva es Anne-Marie Slaughter, quien se desempeñó como directora de planificación política en la administración Obama.

Es revelador que esto incluya al centro que lanzó la 2020 Matching Campaign (11) para recaudar fondos con el propósito de reorganizar el sistema político del país. La campaña finaliza el 30 de octubre, justo antes de las elecciones presidenciales.

El Atlantic Council es el grupo de expertos de la OTAN.

De hecho, los donantes mencionados también están financiando indirectamente la propaganda política, ya que están pagando por las actividades de estos centros y, como expertos "independientes" en diversos temas, sus empleados hablan en televisión y escriben artículos en los principales periódicos y revistas. Por lo tanto, dan forma a la opinión pública.

Financiamiento de la protestas callejeras

Dado que los demócratas se han basado en protestas masivas, un factor importante para ellos es la búsqueda de fondos para estimular varios grupos de apoyo.

Antifa, BLM y varias organizaciones de izquierda, incluidos los antiglobalistas, son importantes grupos de protesta para los demócratas.

Los Antifa están relacionados con los trotskistas. En febrero de 2016, el Comité Internacional de la Cuarta Internacional publicó un comunicado que decía: “El nuevo movimiento contra la guerra debe ser anticapitalista y socialista, ya que no puede haber una lucha seria contra la guerra excepto en la lucha para acabar con la dictadura del capital financiero y el sistema económico que es la causa fundamental del militarismo y la guerra. Por lo tanto, el nuevo movimiento contra la guerra debe, por necesidad, ser completa e inequívocamente independiente y hostil a todos los partidos políticos y organizaciones de la clase capitalista” (12).

Los trotskistas de todo tipo, incluido el especulador financiero George Soros, apoyan activamente a los grupos radicales de Antifa en todo el mundo. En julio de 2017, sus recursos ayudaron a movilizar a más de 100.000 antiglobalistas y miembros de Antifa para las protestas en Hamburgo durante la cumbre del G20 (13).

Pero dado que los Antifa han sido reconocidos como una organización terrorista en los EE.UU., están imitando con éxito recientemente fusionarse con el movimiento Black Lives Matter (BLM) para evitar problemas con las autoridades.

BLM se presenta en los medios globales como un movimiento por los derechos de las personas negras en los Estados Unidos que son víctimas de la brutalidad policial, el racismo institucional, etc. Sin embargo, la realidad es algo diferente. La expresión #BlackLivesMatter apareció por primera vez en forma de un hashtag de Twitter en 2013. Se cree que el movimiento fue organizado por los activistas radicales de izquierda Alicia Garza (14), Patrisse Cullors y Opal Tometi. El eslogan "¡Manos arriba, no disparen!" fue popularizada por la activista negra Nelini Stamp, una de las organizadoras del movimiento “Occupy Wall Street” (financiado por George Soros), tras el asesinato de Michael Brown en agosto de 2014. También representó al Partido de las Familias Trabajadoras, que fue uno de los fundadores de la organización Dream Defenders. La Junta Asesora de Dream Defenders incluye a Angela Davis, exlíder del Partido Comunista de EE. UU.

Alicia Garza (15) también tiene vínculos con la Alianza Nacional de Trabajadoras del Hogar, Personas Organizadas para Ganar Derechos Laborales (POWER), la Escuela de Unidad y Liberación (SOUL), la Alianza por el Derecho a la Ciudad y Forward Together, todos los cuales han sido apoyados por varios donantes.

BLM también recibe fondos indirectamente, a través de varias estructuras, de Democracy Alliance (16), un fondo especial creado en 2005 para “construir una sociedad progresista” en los Estados Unidos, incluido el apoyo a las minorías sexuales y las personas de color. Se considera que el fondo es el club de donantes liberales más poderoso del país, y fue financiado inicialmente por George Soros, el empresario Peter Lewis y el desarrollador de software gay Tim Gill. Además de la participación directa de Soros, el club también incluye al multimillonario Tom Steyer.

Sin embargo, el dinero no se gasta solo en la enseñanza y la construcción pseudocientífica de nuevos "valores". Se utilizan técnicas típicas de revolución del color para alentar a sus activistas de primera línea y movilizar al BLM. Una de las formas más efectivas es el financiamiento directo de los participantes de la protesta. Se sabe que a los manifestantes callejeros se les pagaba 5.000 dólares al mes para incitar y mantener disturbios civiles en Ferguson (17). Aquí también hay una conexión con el establecimiento de la élite. Una de las organizaciones involucradas en la financiación de los disturbios civiles en Ferguson en 2014 fue Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), una antigua rama de la Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), que quebró en 2010. Barack Obama solía trabajar para ACORN y lo representó en la corte como abogado (18).

Aunque los medios de comunicación limitan la información sobre Black Lives Matter a las protestas contra la violencia policial y la lucha por los derechos de los afroamericanos, los objetivos del movimiento son en realidad mucho más amplios. BLM busca reemplazar las piedras angulares fundamentales de la sociedad estadounidense: 1) abolir el concepto judeocristiano de la familia nuclear tradicional, que es la unidad social básica en Estados Unidos; 2) abolir la policía y desmantelar el sistema penitenciario; 3) incorporar lo transgénero y deslegitimar la llamada heteronormatividad (la creencia de que la heterosexualidad es la norma); y 4) abolir el capitalismo (una economía libre) y reemplazarlo por el comunismo (una economía controlada por el gobierno) (19).

Los demócratas también cuentan con el apoyo de anti-globalistas de perfil relativamente alto. Entre otros, Naomi Klein ha pedido que la gente se una a la lucha contra Trump (20). Sin embargo, esta paradoja - que los Antifa y los anti-globalistas están trabajando para los intereses de los globalistas - no está siendo reportada por los medios conservadores de Estados Unidos.

En el ámbito de los medios, Biden cuenta con el apoyo de la organización de noticias The Intercept (21).

Inicialmente fue creado y financiado por el fundador y propietario de eBay, Pierre Omidyar, a través del Omidyar Network Fund.

The Washington Post, propiedad de Jeff Bezos de Amazon, también se pone del lado de los demócratas al criticar constantemente a Trump. Sin embargo, ni Jeff Bezos ni Mark Zuckerberg de Facebook respaldan abiertamente a Trump o Biden. Algunos creen que están financiando a ambos en secreto (22).

La complejidad de las predicciones

Es difícil hacer una predicción precisa en esta elección, ya que los demócratas están pidiendo una votación por correo. Aunque el servicio postal de EE.UU. es una agencia gubernamental, este método es altamente vulnerable al fraude en los EE.UU. Y no existe un mecanismo adecuado para verificar y controlar el proceso en sí. El equipo de Trump ya advirtió sobre el riesgo que representa este elemento del sistema de votación.

Según los datos más recientes basados en las calificaciones promedio de Cook Political Report, Inside Elections y Sabato's Crystall Ball, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Carolina del Sur, Pennsylvania y Wisconsin se consideran actualmente los Estados que determinarán en gran medida el resultado de la elección.

Notas:

1. https://serveamericapac.com/

2. https://womenvoteproject.org/

3. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-09-09/Why-are-billionaires-dumping-Trump--TCP7JM0ZLa/index.html

4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/04/17/here-are-the-billionaires-backing-donald-trumps-campaign/

5. https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/08/09/new-york-times-wall-street-backs-joe-biden/

6. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2020/08/08/biden-pulls-away-in-race-for-billionaire-donors/#2599feb83b62

7. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-383-million-fundraising-record-2020-election_n_5f87a9cbc5b6e9e76fba0373

8. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/swamp-report-top-50-u-s-think-tanks-receive-over-1b-from-gov-defense-contractors/

9. https://www.cnas.org/

10. https://www.newamerica.org/

11. https://www.newamerica.org/2020-matching-campaign/

12. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/18/icfi-f18.html

13. https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article166435531/Die-hohlen-Erklaerungen-der-Antifa.html

14. https://aliciagarza.com/

15. https://capitalresearch.org/article/blm-roots/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=ce2d22c6151a6eb9a88549dfb1b361aa61b8decb-1601384582-0-AWrnPV3jDI07_k0PL-N7TBNj_az8p3ptjjtjuTzuXyhh4SYOSdzdmpMKbCRrmwZPHW-zXMIkwCjZJyJOjBhrZ3H1I581bond8XF-TlNqSxn-tyoL_a_BKzE3psT7v25X4qMAfxZNJr6aifamaK8lnUP10xKcJVem42JoUlfw8Ygg0VPmS3HyQzm9vfp6HxPi2jGKj-V6jAyWIKZatn0wTfsgk-vk0wiVKYEXvm6ozRvfiRYCRuSqf8sU_RW8C81ugo78e1iFxgIZREiRv5GNXgNDmDheDb1E6xxn3TSeysxH7LH0OvrqDAObUm3m3e7eBPy2VhT5yEViqfvC2Gil_MkQdAeYLuHlMqxHorNP-6jK

16. https://democracyalliance.org/

17. https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/ferguson-rent-mobs-exposed-matthew-vadum/

18. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/10/is_acorn_behind_violent_unrest_in_ferguson.html

19. https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16181/black-lives-matter

20. https://theintercept.com/2020/01/22/bernie-sanders-movement-solidarity/

21. https://theintercept.com/

22. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/9/30/21492411/tech-billionaires-endorsements-trump-biden

#capital #joe biden #Donald Trump #elecciones #Estados Unidos #democracia #BLM

1 note · View note

reading-writing-revolution · 4 years

Text

Heather Cox Richardson:

July 15, 2020 (Wednesday)

As the coronavirus continues to ravage the country, the way the government will collect data about Covid-19 cases changed today. On March 29, Vice President Mike Pence asked hospital administrators to report data about coronavirus through three different systems: the network provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC), HHS Protect, and TeleTracking. Last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that, beginning today, hospitals should report daily information about coronavirus cases not through the CDC system, which has been in place for 15 years, but rather through the other two.

This move has met with widespread condemnation as observers worry that Trump is trying to take control of information about the coronavirus in order to conceal it. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has hidden information this way, and Trump has made it clear he believes that if only he downplays the numbers, he can convince people to go back to work and resurrect the economy.

But there is another angle to this change that seems to me likely to be at least as attractive to the president as control over data information. That primary issue is money.

HHS Protect is developed by Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm that works with the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Peter Thiel, a billionaire Trump supporter, co-founded the company, which last week confidentially filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. An initial public offering (IPO) would have made bucketloads of money in any case, but a federal contract to compile coronavirus information is a sweet addition to its portfolio.

The TeleTracking system also raises suspicions of a financial deal. On June 3, Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) wrote to the director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Robert P. Kadlec, to ask why HHS had awarded a $10 million no-bid contract to create this data system that duplicated the one the CDC already had. Why indeed?

There is, in the letter shifting data collection, a peculiarly nasty stick. Underlined on the first page of the instructions is that “We will no longer be sending out one-time requests for data to aid in the distribution of Remdesivir or any other treatments or supplies. This daily reporting is the only mechanism used for the distribution calculations, and the daily [sic] is needed daily to ensure accurate calculations.”

Remdesivir is one of the two drugs proven effective at combatting Covid-19. Two weeks ago, the Trump administration bought up almost all of the world’s supply of the drug for the next three months.

The rest of the world was outraged at this purchase, but at the time HHS Secretary Alex Azar defended the move by saying “To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it. The Trump administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for Covid-19 and secure access to these options for the American people.”

Now, it appears, in order to get access to it, hospitals will need to use the private data systems the administration supports.

There were two other big stories today.

First, Trump announced tonight he is replacing his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, less than four months before the election. A replacement at this stage of the game indicates trouble for the campaign. Parscale has borne the brunt of Trump’s anger at his dropping polls, which today showed Trump behind the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by double digits. The debacle of the Tulsa rally, in which Tik Tok users and K-pop fans so badly polluted the data the campaign was harvesting from the event it almost certainly could not be used, appeared to seal his fate. This is a tad awkward for the campaign, since Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump, Jr.’s girlfriend, and Lara Trump, Eric Trump’s wife, have been receiving $15,000 a month through Parscale’s company to avoid disclosure on Federal Elections Commission reports.

Parscale will stay on the campaign as an adviser for data and digital operations.

Bill Stepien, a political operative who worked for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, will replace Parscale. Stepien got embroiled in the 2013 Fort Lee Lane Closure scandal that snarled traffic on the George Washington Bridge for four days. Intended to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for opposing Christie, the scandal instead hurt Christie’s national ambitions. Emails and texts show that Stepien knew of the scheme before it happened. Christie fired him when the communications came to light, but Stepien was never indicted in the case.

Second, this afternoon, Twitter was hacked. Some of the nation’s most prominent politicians and entertainers lost control of their accounts, which mysteriously posted messages sounding like a giveaway. They told readers that if they sent Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, the Twitter user attacked would double the money. Eventually, Twitter was forced to shut down all verified accounts for two hours, silencing official voices on the platform Americans increasingly use to stay on top of breaking news. The attack interrupted tweets from the National Weather Service about a tornado in Illinois, for example, when the verified account providing information was shut down.

The attack was a dramatic illustration of how vulnerable our communications systems are to hackers. Casey Newton, who writes about social media and democracy at The Interface, noted that this hack was a sign of what could come: the incitement of “real-world chaos through impersonation and fraud.” Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and the former chief security officer at Facebook, told the New York Times: “This demonstrates a real risk for the elections. Twitter has become the most important platform when it comes to discussion among political elites, and it has real vulnerabilities.”

2 notes · View notes

annotator · 5 years

Text

Carl Thiel - Seis Manos (Ep. 95)

Listen

CARL THIEL is an award winning composer and producer who splits time between Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Born into a European family and raised in Mexico City, he was exposed to a rich and wide variety of cultural experiences and musical styles from a very early age. At age 6, he began taking classical piano lessons under the tutelage of Carlos Alcaráz -from the National Conservatory of Music- and within a couple of years, he was already improvising and composing his own music.

Just a few of Carl Thiel's recent projects include: "From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series”, “The Teller and the Truth”, Rooster Teeth's sci-fi comedy "Lazer Team 2", and "Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike deGruy". He recently completed the score to "Seis Manos", an exciting new Netflix original Animé series, produced by the same team that brought you "Castlevania".

Seis Manos is an American adult animated web television series created by Brad Graeber and Álvaro Rodríguez. The story is set in the fictional town of San Simon in 1970 Mexico, where three orphaned martial arts warriors join forces with a DEA agent and Mexican Federale to avenge the death of their beloved mentor. The series debuted on NETFLIX on October 3, 2019.

In this episode - Carl Thiel shares what techniques and instruments he used to musically blend Chinese and Mexican cultures together in his original score. He also dives into several key character themes and action sequences and details a number of the unique instruments he employs to help create, what he calls, a "melting pot" of a score.

ANNOTATED TRACKS

02:25 - Seis Manos - Main Titles 03:43 - Be a Flower, Be Nothing 05:28 - Brister 06:40 - Serrano's Demise 11:17 - Chi Sau Training

SOUNDTRACK

The original score for Seis Manos was released on October 4, 2019, by Milan Records and can be purchased at Amazon.com, iTunes or streamed on Spotify and Apple Music.

MORE ABOUT THE COMPOSER

You can find out more and hear more music by Carl Thiel at his official site, https://carlthiel.com/ and you can follow her on Twitter @cutmasta

ABOUT THE ANNOTATOR Produced by Christopher Coleman (@ccoleman) and you can find more episodes at THEANNOTATOR.NET or you can subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher Radio or wherever you find quality podcasts. SUBSCRIBE

iTunes

Spotify

Stitcher Radio

RadioPublic

Google Podcasts

RSS Feed

Twitter @audioannotator

Facebook @TheAnnotator

Instagram @TheAnnotator

Email [email protected]

#carl thiel #seis manos #composer #commentary #soundtrack #podcast

9 notes · View notes

epeuthutebetes · 3 years

Text

‘National Conservatism’ II: The National Conservatism That Isn’t

I recently caught wind of some ‘national conservative’ conference, about which Brad Littlejohn seems rather excited: I am distinctly less impressed. Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Peter Thiel, perhaps US chauvinists – particularly against nations DC wishes to subdue with sanctions, coups, and compradors – but none of them actual nationalists. And of the other speakers, what does Ayaan Hirsi Ali know…

View On WordPress

0 notes

phowr · 6 years

Text

Books for product people

DESIGN The Design of Everyday Things (Don Norman) Emotional Design (Don Norman) Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug) The Inmates Are Running The Asylum (Alan Cooper) The Shape of Design (Frank Chimero) The Humane Interface (Raskin) PRODUCT MANAGEMENT Managing Product Management (Steven Haines) The Product Manager’s Desk Reference (Steven Haines) What Customers Want (Anthony Ulwick) Jobs To Be Done (Anthony Ulwick) Product Leadership (Banfield et. al.) The Innovators Solution (Clayton Christensen) Hooked (Nir Eyal) LEADERSHIP & HIRING Radical Candor (Kim Scott) Who (Geoff Smart) High Output Management (Andy Grove) The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) Work Rules! (Laslo Bock) The Leadership Pipeline (Charan et. al.) The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) STRATEGY & MARKETING Crossing The Chasm (Geoffrey Moore) Zone To Win (Geoffrey Moore) Playing To Win (A. G. Lafley) Good To Great (Jim Collins) The Innovators Dilemma (Clayton Christensen) Zero To One (Peter Thiel) Positioning (Ried & Trout) STORIES Behind The Cloud (Marc Benioff) Steve Jobs (Isaac Walterson) Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) The Everything Store (Brad Stone) How Google Works (Eric Schmidt & Jon Rosenberg)

#product

1 note · View note

garadinervi · 9 months

Text

Brad Thiele, Some Things Are Beyond Words, (miniature book, letterpress printing), 2015, Edition of 30 [Center for Book Arts, New York, NY. © Brad Thiele]

#art #typography #visual writing #book #cover #book cover #miniature book #brad thiele #center for book arts #2010s

36 notes · View notes

beautifulbizarremagazine · 3 years

Photo

Amazing work by Mary Jane Ansell, "Eventide" [Oil on Aluminium Panel, 12" x 12"] for our upcoming exhibition 'Animalia' at Haven Gallery - Opens this Saturday!The opening reception at Haven Gallery will be open to the public, all are welcome!

Exhibition Dates: October 23rd – November 28th, 2021Opening Reception: Saturday, October 23, 5 - 7pmAt: Haven Gallery90 Main St, Northport, NY 11768, United States

To receive the Collectors Preview please email Erica on [email protected]

Participating artists including the Winners of the 2021 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize: Adam Alaniz, Alessandra Pisano, Alex Louisa, Alpay Efe, Amahi Mori, Andi Soto, Annie Montgomerie, Bella Kotak, Bill Mayer, Brad Woodfin, Brian Mashburn, Brian Viveros, Brittany, Brodie Colbourne, Caia Koopman, Crystal Morey, David Rice, DD-Anne, Dewi Plass, DULK, Ed Binkley, El Gato Chimney, Elizabeth Wakou, Ellen Jewett, Erika Sanada, Ewa Prończuk-Kuziak, Forest Rogers, Gail Potocki, Hope Doe, Howard Lyon, Ian Francis, Jisu, Jana Brike, Jason Mowry, Jesus Inglés, Jon Ching, Joseph Weinreb, Julio Reyes, Kate MacDowell, Kelsey Bowen, Kevin Peterson, Kevin Sloan, Kim Slate, Koh KiSung, Kris Lewis, Kristin Kwan, Kristine & Colin Poole, Kseniia Boko, Laura Colors, Lavely Miller, Lesley Thiel, Lindsey Carr, Lucia Heffernan, Lucy Havard, Madeline von Foerster, Margo Selski, Mary Jane Ansell, Mathieu Nozieres, Matt Dangler, Michael Bergt, Miho Hirano, Naoto Hattori, Nicole Evans, ONEQ, Phillip Singer, Rachael Bridge, Richard Ahnert, Roland Mikhail, Rose Freymuth-Frazier, Ross Jaylo, Ruth Speer, Sana Yoshida, Scott Brooks, Scott Musgrove, Scott Radke, Stephanie Law, Steven Kenny, Sui Yumeshima, Susan McDonnell, Susannah Martin, Thomas Ascott, Tina Yu, Tran Nguyen, Travis Louie, Vanessa Foley, Victor Grasso...#beautifulbizarre #artexhibition #artinfo #newcontemporary #art #havengallery #bbanimalia #newyorkart #artforsale #artcollector #maryjaneansell #oils #oilpainting #figurativepainting #portraitpainting #realismart #redhead

38 notes · View notes

nancydsmithus · 5 years

Text

That Was SmashingConf Toronto 2019

Rachel Andrew

2019-07-11T15:00:59+02:002019-07-11T15:06:56+00:00

We all enjoyed returning to Toronto for the second Smashing conference, and in this post, I am sharing some of the things that took place as well as the resources that were shared over the course of the two conference and two workshop days. Look out for the videos of all the presentations which will be released very soon.

The Presentations

Day 1

Day 2

Workshops

Side Activities

Morning Run

Jam Session

Graffiti and Photo Walks

Conference Party

Focus On The Local Community

The team worked hard to create a friendly welcoming space for everyone at the conference. We all know how it can be a little overwhelming to walk into a room of a few hundred strangers, knowing that you would love to make friends and have interesting discussions, but finding it hard to get started.

In order to avoid that, we asked everyone to read and follow our Code Of Conduct, try to create a range of spaces and activities where people can meet like-minded people, and also encourage everyone to follow “The Pac-Man Rule” when standing in a group.

Pac-man rule for conversations (Large preview)

I’m not usually a conference Twitter person, but I have to shout-out the fantastic job @smashingconf have done of making this such a warm, welcoming, inclusive place. Some places talk inclusivity, but here you can feel it, even in the little things. Thanks y’all!#SmashingConf

— Em Domingues (@MiaSparkles) June 26, 2019

“It’s a genuine friendliness that the Smashing team possesses, and that serves as the foundation for an inclusive, approachable event. It turns out that little things like launching balloons to kick off the event and advocating for the Pac-Man Rule go a long way towards making everyone feel welcome.” — Dan Rose

The Presentations

The first thing you think about when attending a conference is to wonder who is speaking, and what they will be talking about. At SmashingConf Toronto, we had an amazing lineup of speakers, with people you might know quite well plus some new faces. As many of our speakers presented without slides, we don’t have a huge number of slide decks to share. However, the list below links to some of the resources our speakers shared. We will also have videos available very soon!

Vitaly and Phil throw candy to audience members (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

Day One

The Day One Collaborative Doc created by attendees is full of takeaways from day one of the conference.

In 45 mins @sarah_edo: - creates SSR Vue app - with multiple routes - beautifully styled (with flex grid) - SVG animated - calls 3 party APIs - hooks up state management - pushed to GitHub - and deployed Incredibly impressive!@smashingconf #SmashingConf pic.twitter.com/omN3EB3cVT

— Alex Okrushko @ ng-MY (@AlexOkrushko) June 25, 2019

Speaker Name Talk Title Brad Frost Let’s Build a Design System Sarah Drasner Let’s Write a Vue App From Scratch Phil Hawksworth JAMStack: Silly Name. Serious Stuff. Chris Gannon Make It Move! Create a Web Animation From Scratch Kristina Podnar Help! I’m Your Ailing Website. The Digital Policy & Standards Rehab Hour Steven Hoober Authentic Digital Design By The Numbers

Sarah Drasner writes a Vue app on stage. (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

Day Two

Check out the Day Two Collaborative Doc for more resources and thoughts from our attendees and speakers.

Our mystery speaker was Seb Lester, and many of you were thrilled to get to hear his talk.

This is the type of inspiration one needs in their life every morning! So humbled and honored to hear @SebLester chat with us about his journey and process 🔮✨ Thanks @smashingconf for making this happen! #mysteryspeakersolved #nasa #apple #doritossalsa 🤣 pic.twitter.com/rlCPtlDFvb

— Shane (@ShainaSilver) June 26, 2019

We then enjoyed talks covering a wide range of topics from our day two speakers.

Speaker Name Talk Title Phil Nash Diving Into Service Workers, Live Jules Forrest For The Love Of The Grid Dan Rose Seeing The Pages For The Components Diana Mounter The Secret Lives of Color Systems Scott Jehl Move Fast & Don’t Break Things

We found a few blog posts sharing takeaways from these talks. Arshabhi Rai recapped Day 1 and Day 2; and kinopo shared their takeaways in What a lovely SmashingConf.

Workshops

Vitaly shares responsive design knowledge with his workshop group (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

Our workshops are a big part of each of our Smashing conferences. In Toronto, we had two days of full-day workshops, with some attendees choosing to do a workshop day before and after the conference. Workshops this time round were as follows:

Name Talk Title Rachel Andrew Next Steps With CSS Layout Chris Gannon Designing Delightful Animations For The Web The Deque Team How To Translate Wireframes Into Accessible HTML/CSS Vitaly Friedman Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns Scott Jehl Lightning Fast Web Performance Sarah Drasner Intro To Vue.js Brad Frost The Design System Process Vitaly Friedman New Front-end Adventures, 2019 Edition Cloudinary Hacking Lizard Brain: Improving Visual Experience On The Web

A great day learning about everything #designsystems with the talented Mr. @brad_frost! The cherry on top to a wonderful week at #SmashingConf 🎉🎉 Can’t wait to share all this knowledge with the rest of the Hulu design family 🤓😊🇨🇦💚🎉 pic.twitter.com/EaTndwlFxm

— Shane (@ShainaSilver) June 27, 2019

Side Activities

A conference isn’t just about the talks and speakers. We want to make spaces where attendees and speakers can learn from each other and share experiences in a more informal setting. To help with that, we ran various other things over the conference. At lunchtime, we had lunch sessions run by Deque on Day 1, and Netlify on Day 2, attendees could grab a plate of lunch and settle down in a more cozy environment to take part in those sessions.

How to test your website with AxePro and build better accessible websites with @theHarrisius at the @dequesystems lunch session. #SmashingConf pic.twitter.com/7f79jFEqdn

— SmashingConf (@smashingconf) June 25, 2019

We had a great lounge area, with the talks live-streamed for folks who wanted to step out of the movie theater for a while.

Our lounge area (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

Morning Run

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’m a keen runner, and it’s always nice to have some company on an early morning run. For a few conferences now, we’ve been organizing pre-conference runs — Toronto was no exception. We had 12 runners on Day 1, and 6 hardy souls on Day 2 joining us despite having attended the party. We only got slightly off-track once, and got a nice view of Toronto to take our photos.

Doing a lovely morning run with#smashingconf Toronto peoples pic.twitter.com/rFmCKRZRxP

— Jarijn (@jarijn) June 25, 2019

Jam Session

First Jam Session talk at @shopify of the evening, @tiffany_tse talking about Building Accessible Experiences, while the volunteers dogsit Walnut. #SmashingConf pic.twitter.com/oCwnURjGHs

— SmashingConf (@smashingconf) June 25, 2019

On the evening before the conference, we had a Jam Session at Shopify hosted by Tiffany Tse (and her lovely assistant Walnut). There was a speaker panel featuring Steven Hoober, Scott Jehl, Kristina Podnar, Brad Frost, Jules Forrest, Phil Hawksworth and myself, plus lightning talks from Tiffany Tse, Kelly Harrop, April Ellsey, Steve Pereira, and Christine Fowler.

Graffiti And Photo Walks

On the day before and last evening of the conference, walks took place to explore graffiti around Toronto and take photos of the city. A great way to meet people and explore the location for those coming from out of town.

On the graffiti walk (Photo credit: Scott Whitehead)

Conference Party

There has to be a party, and we always try to do something fun and perhaps a little unusual for our conference parties. This time, we went bowling — courtesy of sponsorship by SpeedCurve.

Focus On The Local Community

Between sessions on stage, we invited organizers of community groups in the Toronto area on stage to share information about their groups. We hope that local attendess found some new meetups to go to. The groups that we featured were:

Name Details Women Who Code Toronto Twitter: @WomenWhoCode, Introduced by Stephanie DevHub Toronto & Vancouver Twitter: @devhubTO Events, educational programs, collaboration, and co-working Introduced by Emma The DevOps Toronto meetup Twitter: @devopsto Introduced by Steve Designers & Coffee Twitter: @Doriganic Meetups, hands-on design challenges and feedback sessions, to casual networking nights. Introduced by Dorsa DevTO Twitter: @DevTO Coding stories, eats and drinks. Join us on the last Monday of every month! Introduced by Nael. Serverless Toronto meetup Introduced by Daniel Zivkovic Toronto Web Performance Group Twitter: @towebperf Introduced by Henri Helvetica

Want To Join In The Fun?

We packed a lot into those few days! If you were there, we hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did. It was great to meet so many of you.

SmashingConf Toronto opened with balloons (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

If you would like to be part of the SmashingConf fun next year, we already have tickets on sale for SmashingConf San Francisco and you can leave your email to be the first to know when SmashingConf Toronto 2020 goes on sale. The rest of the 2019 events (New York and Freiburg) are already sold out! There are a few workshop-only tickets available for New York 2019, but be quick!

(il)

0 notes

dorothydelgadillo · 5 years

Text

Looking Back At SmashingConf San Francisco 2019

Rachel Andrew

2019-04-30T12:00:59+02:002019-04-30T11:06:34+00:00

This year, SmashingConf took place at the Fort Mason Center which has superb views of the Bay and Golden Gate Bridge. The weather was very kind to us making it a very pleasant location to spend a few days in.

As always with any Smashing Conference, there were plenty of surprises! We had icecream and cookies, our amazing DJ Tobi Lessnow kept everyone well entertained between talks, and Vitaly opened the conference with just the right amount of balloons!

Balloons, anyone? (Image credit: Marc Thiele) (Large preview)

The videos are now posted, so you can see exactly what our speakers got up to, most of them presenting slides-free, with livecoded sessions.

Conference Videos (Day One)

“Let’s Build A Design System!,” Brad Frost

“Building Accessible Interfaces,” Sara Soueidan

“Effortless Performance Debugging,” Anna Migas

“Animating With Emotion,” Darin Senneff

“How To Think Like A Front-End Developer,” Chris Coyier

Chris Coyier interviews Brad Frost (Image credit: Marc Thiele) (Large preview)

Conference Videos (Day Two)

“Dynamic CSS,” Miriam Suzanne

“Visual Git: Filling In The Gaps,” Katie Sylor-Miller

“Making A Difference With Differential Serving,” Jeremy Wagner

“Dynamic Web Typography,” Jason Pamental

“Thinking With Grid,” Jen Simmons

Katie Sylor-Miller explaining Git (Image credit: Drew McLellan) (Large preview)

Our attendees collaborated on a Google Doc for both conference days. These documents are a treasure trove of information and links from our speakers.

Collaborative Doc (Day 1) Notes for talks by Brad Frost, Sara Soueidan, Anna Migas, Darin Senneff, Steve Schoger, Chris Coyier, Jennifer Brook and David P. Simon.

Collaborative Doc (Day 2) Notes for talks by Miriam Suzanne, Katie Sylor-Miller, Brendan Dawes, Jeremy Wagner, Jason Pamental and Jen Simmons.

In between the scheduled sessions, we had some great lunch sessions on both days from our friends at Deque, Netlify, and Medium.

DJ Tobi Lessnow hard at work (Image credit: Marc Thiele) (Large preview)

Workshops

Workshops are a great way to spend a day really thinking about a subject. We ran workshops on Monday (the day before) and on Thursday (the day after the conference); they were all sold out, and the rooms were packed! I got to demo subgrid in my workshop which had just appeared in an early build of Firefox the day previously, so they were some of the first people outside of Mozilla to get to see that working.

Here is the cards example for my @smashingconf workshop tomorrow, which I use to explain why we need subgrid and now I'll be able to demo. See how the footers line up even if they contain different amounts of content? That's useful. pic.twitter.com/xqoxPbCCeF

— Rachel Andrew (@rachelandrew) April 14, 2019

Monday

“How To Translate Wireframes Into Accessible HTML/CSS,” Deque Team (free workshop)

“Accessible UI Patterns,” Sara Soueidan

“Next Steps With CSS Layout,” Rachel Andrew

“New Front-end Adventures, 2019 Edition,” Vitaly Friedman

Sara Soueidan running her accessible UI patterns workshop (Image credit: Marc Thiele) (Large preview)

Full house at my @smashingconf workshop today. #a11y pic.twitter.com/zpk30bpO2b

— Sara Soueidan (@SaraSoueidan) April 15, 2019

Thursday

“The Design System Process,” Brad Frost

“Git To The Next Level,” Katie Sylor-Miller

“Advanced CSS & Sass For Modern Applications,” Miriam Suzanne

“Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns,” Vitaly Friedman

Side Events

We always want to offer more than the conference, and try to arrange a bunch of side events which offer something for everyone.

Jam Session

On Monday, before the conference began, we had a Jam Session, organized by Mozilla and Shopify and held at the Mozilla offices. In addition to drinks and snacks, there were several micro-talks including:

“Creative Design With CSS Shapes And clip-path,” Mandy Michael

“Building Accessible Experiences,” Tiffany Tse

“The Power Of Code–Based Design,” Marcin Treder

“Axe-Pro: A New Kind Of Accessibility Tool,” April Ellsey

“Scroll Up! Scroll Up! A Tale Of Animating Over 10,000 Data Points,” Becky Rush

“What’s New At Mozilla,” Ali Spivak

Great Jam Session hosted by @shopify tonight for @smashingconf! Lots of tips about #a11y! pic.twitter.com/VIiG3Skkxy

— Tiffany Tse (@tiffany_tse) April 16, 2019

Graffiti Walk

Also on Monday, we got together for a graffiti walk led by Scott Whitehead. A group of attendees spent time together exploring the street art of the Clarion Alley Art Street.

A few photos from the Graffiti walk we did at @smashingconf San Francisco 2019! #smashingconf #streetart #graffiti pic.twitter.com/wQxt78qP5A

— Scott Whitehead (@scottwhitebread) April 18, 2019

The Smashing Run Club

At Smashing SF 2018, Josh Clark suggested a morning run, which I helped organize. I thought we should continue the tradition this year and we had two lovely runs on both conference days out towards the Golden Gate Bridge. It has to be one of the most scenic locations possible for a conference run. It really is a great way to start a day of sitting and learning, by stretching your legs and getting some fresh air.

Well done SmashingConf SF runners! 🏃🏼‍♀️ 🏃🏻‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/kGqRD3a7BD

— Drew McLellan (@drewm) April 16, 2019

Conference Party

I was surprised to see so many Wednesday morning conference runners, as on Tuesday night we had a party sponsored by Speedcurve. There were drinks, mediterranean food, and the venue was filled with old-school arcade games!

Yesterday thanks to @smashingconf a dream from my childhood came true! Got to play with unlimited tokens all those great arcade games 🕹 Add nice beer to that and cool people to hang out with and you have the best conference party ever!#SmashingConf pic.twitter.com/zayrIm2wYE

— Nasia Makrygianni (@nasiamakryg) April 17, 2019

The Photo Walk

After the final day of the conference, some attendees went off on a photo walk, to enjoy a pleasant San Francisco evening. If you have any photos from that we would love to see them — drop a note in the comments.