#puertopia

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft put their tax-evasion in writing and now they owe $29 billion

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

If there's one thing I took away from Propublica's explosive IRS Files, it's that "tax avoidance" (which is legal) isn't a separate phenomenon from "tax evasion" (which is not), but rather a thinly veiled euphemism for it:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

That realization sits behind my series of noir novels about the two-fisted forensic accountant Martin Hench, which started with last April's Red Team Blues and continues with The Bezzle, this coming February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

A typical noir hero is an unlicensed cop, who goes places the cops can't go and asks questions the cops can't ask. The noir part comes in at the end, when the hero is forced to admit that he's being going places the cops didn't want to go and asking questions the cops didn't want to ask. Marty Hench is a noir hero, but he's not an unlicensed cop, he's an unlicensed IRS inspector, and like other noir heroes, his capers are forever resulting in his realization that the questions and places the IRS won't investigate are down to their choice not to investigate, not an inability to investigate.

The IRS Files are a testimony to this proposition: that Leona Hemsley wasn't wrong when she said, "Taxes are for the little people." Helmsley's crime wasn't believing that proposition – it was stating it aloud, repeatedly, to the press. The tax-avoidance strategies revealed in the IRS Files are obviously tax evasion, and the IRS simply let it slide, focusing their auditing firepower on working people who couldn't afford to defend themselves, looking for things like minor compliance errors committed by people receiving public benefits.

Or at least, that's how it used to be. But the Biden administration poured billions into the IRS, greenlighting 30,000 new employees whose mission would be to investigate the kinds of 0.1%ers and giant multinational corporations who'd Helmsleyed their way into tax-free fortunes. The fact that these elite monsters paid no tax was hardly a secret, and the impunity with which they functioned was a constant, corrosive force that delegitimized American society as a place where the rules only applied to everyday people and not the rich and powerful who preyed on them.

The poster-child for the IRS's new anti-impunity campaign is Microsoft, who, decades ago, "sold its IP to to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city," brokered a deal with the corporate friendly Puerto Rican government to pay almost no taxes, and channeled all its profits through the tiny facility:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-decided-to-get-tough-against-microsoft-microsoft-got-tougher

That was in 2005. Now, the IRS has come after Microsoft for all the taxes it evaded through the gambit, demanding that the company pay it $29 billion. What's more, the courts are taking the IRS's side in this case, consistently ruling against Microsoft as it seeks to keep its ill-gotten billions:

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-microsoft-audit-back-taxes-puerto-rico-billions

Now, no one expects that Microsoft is going to write a check to the IRS tomorrow. The company's made it clear that they intend to tie this up in the courts for a decade if they can, claiming, for example, that Trump's amnesty for corporate tax-cheats means the company doesn't have to give up a dime.

This gambit has worked for Microsoft before. After seven years in antitrust hell in the 1990s, the company was eventually convicted of violating the Sherman Act, America's bedrock competition law. But they kept the case in court until 2001, running out the clock until GW Bush was elected and let them go free. Bush had a very selective version of being "tough on crime."

But for all that Microsoft escaped being broken up, the seven years of depositions, investigations, subpoenas and negative publicity took a toll on the company. Bill Gates was personally humiliated when he became the star of the first viral video, as grainy VHS tapes of his disastrous and belligerent deposition spread far and wide:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/12/whats-a-murder/#miros-tilde-1

If you really want to know who Bill Gates is beneath that sweater-vested savior persona, check out the antitrust deposition – it's still a banger, 25 years on:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/revisiting-the-spectacular-failure-that-was-the-bill-gates-deposition/

In cases like these, the process is the punishment: Microsoft's dirty laundry was aired far and wide, its swaggering founder was brought low, and the company's conduct changed for years afterwards. Gates once told Kara Swisher that Microsoft missed its chance to buy Android because they were "distracted by the antitrust trial." But the Android acquisition came four years after the antitrust case ended. What Gates meant was that four years after he wriggled off the DoJ's hook, he was still so wounded and gunshy that he lacked the nerve to risk the regulatory scrutiny that such an anticompetitive merger would entail.

What's more, other companies got the message too. Large companies watched what happened to Microsoft and traded their reckless disregard for antitrust law for a timid respect. The effect eventually wore off, but the Microsoft antitrust case created a brief window where real competition was possible without the constant threat of being crushed by lawless monopolists. Sometimes you have to execute an admiral to encourage the others.

A decade in IRS hell will be even more painful for Microsoft than the antitrust years were. For one thing, the Puerto Rico scam was mainly a product of ex-CEO Steve Ballmer, a man possessed of so little executive function that it's a supreme irony that he was ever a corporate executive. Ballmer is a refreshingly plain-spoken corporate criminal who is so florid in his blatant admissions of guilt and shouted torrents of self-incriminating abuse that the exhibits in the Microsoft-IRS cases to come are sure to be viral sensations beyond even the Gates deposition's high-water mark.

It's not just Ballmer, either. In theory, corporate crime should be hard to prosecute because it's so hard to prove criminal intent. But tech executives can't help telling on themselves, and are very prone indeed to putting all their nefarious plans in writing (think of the FTC conspirators who hung out in a group-chat called "Wirefraud"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Ballmer's colleagues at Microsoft were far from circumspect on the illegitimacy of the Puerto Rico gambit. One Microsoft executive gloated – in writing – that it was a "pure tax play." That is, it was untainted by any legitimate corporate purpose other than to create a nonsensical gambit that effectively relocated Microsoft's corporate headquarters to a tiny CD-pressing plant in the Caribbean.

But if other Microsoft execs were calling this a "pure tax play," one can only imagine what Ballmer called it. Ballmer, after all, is a serial tax-cheat, the star of multiple editions of the IRS Files. For example, there's the wheeze whereby he has turned his NBA team into a bottomless sinkhole for the taxes on his vast fortune:

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

Or his "tax-loss harvesting" – a ploy whereby rich people do a "wash trade," buying and selling the same asset at the same time, not so much circumventing the IRS rules against this as violating those rules while expecting the IRS to turn a blind eye:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

Ballmer needs all those scams. After all, he was one of the pandemic's most successful profiteers. He was one of eight billionaires who added at least a billion more to his net worth during lockdown:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/billionaire-bonanza-2020/

Like all forms of rot, corruption spreads. Microsoft turned Washington State into a corporate tax-haven and starved the state of funds, paving the way for other tax-cheats like Amazon to establish themselves in the area. But the same anti-corruption movement that revitalized the IRS has also taken root in Washington, where reformers instituted a new capital gains tax aimed at the ultra-wealthy that has funded a renaissance in infrastructure and social spending:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

If the IRS does manage to drag Microsoft through the courts for the next decade, it's going to do more than air the company's dirty laundry. It'll expose more of Ballmer's habitual sleaze, and the ways that Microsoft dragged a whole state into a pit of austerity. And even more importantly, it'll expose the Puertopia conspiracy, a neocolonial project that transformed Puerto Rico into an onshore-offshore tax-haven that saw the island strip-mined and then placed under corporate management:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#que-viva-albizu

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[spanky606]

Regrann from @nuestra_patriapr - Just remember what happening back home is nothing new and is part of a larger picture. If you aren’t aware Puerto Rico has been selected by rich elite yuppies who plan on turning Puerto Rico into a crypto currency playground. If you are unfamiliar with crypto currency it’s digital money it’s like bit coin on crack. The main person pushing this agenda is a man name @brockjpierce who is known for being a pedophile and his first big purchase on the island was the children’s museum is San Juan. Brocks idea is to turn Puerto Rico into Puertopia, the pedophile playground for creeps like him can come have their way with our people while stealing our land! The people that are coming have no idea about our nation let alone our people all they know is that it’s a “good investment” and can’t wait till all the savages are gone so that they can make Puerto Rico great again! This is nothing shy of gentrification aka Settler Colonialism! 🤦🏽‍♂️#Crytocreeps #PuertoRico #BrockPierce #Puertopia #Genocide #Gentrification #FuckGentrification #GentrificationIsSettlerColonialism #PuertoRicoNoseVende #VivaPuertoRicoLibre - #regrann

[silverhatworld]

Bitnation, Liberland, Puertopia and Other Micronations Are Gaining Independence via Crypto, but Crypto Alone May Not Be Enough

Bitnation, Liberland, Puertopia and Other Micronations Are Gaining Independence via Crypto, but Crypto Alone May Not Be Enough

#Cryptocurrency, #Market, #Currency #MarketCap, #Ethereum, #BitcoinCash, #Litecoin, #Dash, #EthereumClassic, #BitcoinGold

Ever since the “decentralised borderless voluntary nation” Bitnation was founded in July 2014, a slowly growing raft of startups and organisations have been attempting to seize cryptocurrencies as an opportunity to build entirely new nations from the ground up.

Whether it be…

[dailycryptocurrencynews-blog]

Bitnation, Liberland, Puertopia and Other Micronations Are Gaining Independence via Crypto, but Crypto Alone May Not Be Enough

Ever for the reason that “decentralised without boundary lines voluntary country” Bitnation used to be based in July 2014, a slowly rising raft of startups and organisations had been making an attempt to grab cryptocurrencies as a possibility to construct solely new international locations from the bottom up. Whether it’s the landlocked Liberland or the…

Bitnation, Liberland, Puertopia and Other Micronations Are Gaining Independence via Crypto, but Crypto Alone May Not Be Enough was originally published on Daily Cryptocurrency News

[newstfionline]

Making a Crypto Utopia in Puerto Rico

By Nellie Bowles, NY Times, Feb. 2, 2018

SAN JUAN, P.R.--They call what they are building Puertopia. But then someone told them, apparently in all seriousness, that it translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin. So they are changing the name: They will call it Sol.

Dozens of entrepreneurs, made newly wealthy by blockchain and cryptocurrencies, are heading en masse to Puerto Rico this winter. They are selling their homes and cars in California and establishing residency on the Caribbean island in hopes of avoiding what they see as onerous state and federal taxes on their growing fortunes, some of which now reach into the billions of dollars.

And these men--because they are almost exclusively men--have a plan for what to do with the wealth: They want to build a crypto utopia, a new city where the money is virtual and the contracts are all public, to show the rest of the world what a crypto future could look like. Blockchain, a digital ledger that forms the basis of virtual currencies, has the potential to reinvent society--and the Puertopians want to prove it.

For more than a year, the entrepreneurs had been searching for the best location. After Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico’s infrastructure in September and the price of cryptocurrencies began to soar, they saw an opportunity and felt a sense of urgency.

So this crypto community flocked here to create its paradise. Now the investors are spending their days hunting for property where they could have their own airports and docks. They are taking over hotels and a museum in the capital’s historic section, called Old San Juan. They say they are close to getting the local government to allow them to have the first cryptocurrency bank.

“What’s happened here is a perfect storm,” said Halsey Minor, the founder of the news site CNET, who is moving his new blockchain company--called Videocoin--from the Cayman Islands to Puerto Rico this winter. Referring to Hurricane Maria and the investment interest that has followed, he added, “While it was really bad for the people of Puerto Rico, in the long term it’s a godsend if people look past that.”

Puerto Rico offers an unparalleled tax incentive: no federal personal income taxes, no capital gains tax and favorable business taxes--all without having to renounce your American citizenship. For now, the local government seems receptive toward the crypto utopians; the governor will speak at their blockchain summit conference, called Puerto Crypto, in March.

The territory’s go-to blockchain tax lawyer is Giovanni Mendez, 30. He expected the tax expatriates to disappear after Hurricane Maria, but the population has instead boomed.

“It’s increased monumentally,” said Mr. Mendez, who has about two dozen crypto clients. “And they all came together.”

The movement is alarming an earlier generation of Puerto Rico tax expats like the hedge fund manager Robb Rill, who runs a social group for those taking advantage of the tax incentives.

“They call me up saying they’re going to buy 250,000 acres so they can incorporate their own city, literally start a city in Puerto Rico to have their own crypto world,” said Mr. Rill, who moved to the island in 2013. “I can’t engage in that.”

The newcomers are still debating the exact shape that Puertopia should take. Some think they need to make a city; others think it’s enough to move into Old San Juan. Puertopians said, however, that they hoped to move very fast.

Until the Puertopians find land, they have descended on the Monastery, a 20,000-square-foot hotel they rented as their base and that was largely unscathed by the hurricane.

Matt Clemenson and Stephen Morris were drinking beer on the Monastery’s roof one recent evening. Mr. Clemenson had an easygoing affect and wore two-tone aviators; Mr. Morris, a loquacious British man, was in cargo shorts and lace-up steel-toed combat boots, with a smartphone on a necklace. They wanted to make two things clear: They chose Puerto Rico because of the hurricane, and they come in peace.

“It’s only when everything’s been swept away that you can make a case for rebuilding from the ground up,” Mr. Morris, 53, said.

“We’re benevolent capitalists, building a benevolent economy,” said Mr. Clemenson, 34, a co-founder of Lottery.com, which is using the blockchain in lotteries. “Puerto Rico has been this hidden gem, this enchanted island that’s been consistently overlooked and mistreated. Maybe 500 years later we can make it right.”

Other Puertopians arrived on the roof as a pack, just back from a full-day property-hunting bus tour. From the middle, Brock Pierce, 37, the leader of the Puertopia movement, emerged wearing drop crotch capri pants, a black vest that almost hit his knees and a large black felt hat. He and others had arrived on the island in early December.

“Compassion, respect, financial transparency,” Mr. Pierce said when asked what was guiding them here.

Mr. Pierce, the director of the Bitcoin Foundation, is a major figure in the crypto boom. He co-founded a blockchain-for-business start-up, Block.One, which has sold around $200 million of a custom virtual currency, EOS, in a so-called initial coin offering. The value of all the outstanding EOS tokens is around $6.5 billion.

A former child actor, Mr. Pierce got into digital money early as a professional gamer, mining and trading gold in the video game World of Warcraft, an effort funded partly by Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump adviser. Mr. Pierce is a controversial figure--he has previously been sued for fraud, among other matters.

Downstairs, in the Monastery penthouse, a dozen or so other expats were hanging out. The water was out that night, so the toilets and faucets were dry. Mr. Minor lounged on an alcove chaise.

“The U.S. doesn’t want us. It’s trying to choke off this economy,” Mr. Minor said, referring to the difficulties that crypto investors have with American banks. “There needs to be a place where people are free to invent.”

Mr. Pierce paced the room with his hands in fists. A few times a day, he played a video for the group on his phone and a portable speaker: Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 “The Great Dictator,” in which Chaplin parodies Hitler rallying his forces. He finds inspiration in lines like “More than machinery, we need humanity.”

“I’m worried people are going to misinterpret our actions,” Mr. Pierce said. “That we’re just coming to Puerto Rico to dodge taxes.”

He said he was aiming to create a charitable token called ONE with $1 billion of his own money. “If you take the MY out of money, you’re left with ONE,” Mr. Pierce said.

“He’s tuned in to a higher calling,” said Kai Nygard, scion of the Canadian clothing company Nygard and a crypto investor. “He’s beyond money.”

The force of Mr. Pierce’s personality and his spiritual presence are important to the group, whose members are otherwise largely agnostic. Mr. Pierce regularly performs rituals. Earlier that day while scoping out property, they had stopped at a historic Ceiba tree, known as the Tree of Life.

“Brock nestled into the bosom of it and was there for 10 minutes,” Mr. Nygard said.

Mr. Pierce walked around the tree and said prayers for Puertopia, holding a rusted wrench he had picked up in the territory. He kissed an old man’s feet. He blessed a crystal in the water, as they all watched. He played the Chaplin speech to everyone and to the tree, Mr. Nygard said.

That wrench is now in the penthouse, heavy and greasy.

Later on, at a dinner in a nearby restaurant, the group ordered platters of octopus arms, fried cheese, ceviche and rum cocktails. They began debating whether to buy Puerto Rico’s Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, which measures 9,000 acres and has two deepwater ports and an adjacent airport. The only hitch: It’s a Superfund cleanup site.

Mr. Pierce had fallen asleep by then, his hat tilted down and arms crossed. He gets two hours of sleep many nights, often on a firm grounding mat to stay in contact with the earth’s electric energy. Josh Boles, a tall, athletic man who is another crypto expat, picked him up, and the group headed back to the Monastery.

They walked past a big pink building in an old town square, the start of their vision for Puertopia’s downtown. Once a children’s museum, they plan on making it a crypto clubhouse and outreach center that will have the mission “to bring together Puerto Ricans with Puertopians.”

Workdays are casual in Puertopia. One morning, Bryan Larkin, 39, and Reeve Collins, 42, were working at another old hotel, the Condado Vanderbilt, where they had their laptops on a pool bar with frozen piña coladas on tap.

“We’re going to make this crypto land,” Mr. Larkin said.

Mr. Larkin has mined about $2 billion in Bitcoin and is the chief technology officer of Blockchain Industries, a publicly traded company based in Puerto Rico.

Mr. Collins, an internet veteran, had raised more than $20 million from an initial coin offering for BlockV, his app store for the blockchain, whose outstanding tokens are worth about $125 million. He had also co-founded Tether, which backs cryptocurrency tied to the value of a dollar and whose outstanding tokens are worth about $2.1 billion, though the company has generated enormous controversy in the virtual currency world.

“So, no. No, I don’t want to pay taxes,” Mr. Collins said. “This is the first time in human history anyone other than kings or governments or gods can create their own money.”

He had moved from Santa Monica, Calif., with just a few bags and was now starting a local cryptocurrency incubator called Vatom Factory.

“When Brock said, ‘We’re moving to Puerto Rico for the taxes and to create this new town,’ I said, ‘I’m in,’” Mr. Collins said. “Sight unseen.”

They soon went back to work, checking out Coinmarketcap.com, a site that shows the price of cryptocurrencies.

“Our market cap’s gone up $100 million in a week,” Mr. Collins said.

“Congrats, man,” Mr. Larkin said.

All across San Juan, many locals are trying to figure out what to do with the crypto arrivals.

Some are open to the new wave as a welcome infusion of investment and ideas.

Others worry about the island’s being used for an experiment and talk about “crypto colonialism.” At a house party in San Juan, Richard Lopez, 32, who runs a pizza restaurant, Estella, in the town of Arecibo, said: “I think it’s great. Lure them in with taxes, and they’ll spend money.”

Andria Satz, 33, who grew up in Old San Juan and works for the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, disagreed.

“We’re the tax playground for the rich,” she said. “We’re the test case for anyone who wants to experiment. Outsiders get tax exemptions, and locals can’t get permits.”

[francessgarcia]

Bitnation, Liberland, Puertopia and Other Micronations Are Gaining Independence via Crypto, but Crypto Alone May Not Be Enough

Micronations are increasingly looking to cryptocurrencies for support, although it will be some time before a country relies on crypto alone

Bitnation, Liberland, Puertopia and Other Micronations Are Gaining Independence via Crypto, but Crypto Alone May Not Be Enough published first on https://cointelegraph.com/

[stml]

They call what they are building Puertopia. But then someone told them, apparently in all seriousness, that it translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin.

Making a Crypto Utopia in Puerto Rico - The New York Times

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago Seasteading meets the shock doctrine in Puerto Rico, where ethnic cleansing precedes Going Galt

Naomi Klein's l(ooooo)ongread in The Intercept about the state of play in Puerto Rico is the comprehensive summary of the post-Maria fuckery and hope that has gripped America's colonial laboratory, the place where taxation without representation, austerity, chemical weapons, new drugs, and new agribusiness techniques get trialed before the rest of America are subjected to them.

Puerto Rico has experienced centuries of fuckery, including a brutal anti-independence regime that murdered and jailed American citizens for waving a flag, peacefully protesting, and pure speech acts in which factual recitals of the state of Puerto Rico became crimes.

The fuckery never stopped. After being colonized for medical experiments, chemical weapons experiments, and agribusiness experiments, Puerto Rico was colonized for financial experiments. First the island offered short-term tax incentives for businesses to locate there (the dubious benefits of this were wiped off the ledger and converted to deficits when all the businesses left the island after their tax holiday ended); then the island floated tax-free bonds that rang up massive debt; then came even shittier bonds with predatory interest rates that ballooned to 785%-1000% after their teaser rates expire. The Puerto Rican government was stripped of its power to govern in favor of an appointed board of finance industry execs whose job was to ensure that those bonds got serviced, at any expense -- including the shuttering of critical state institutions and the sale of state assets (often at sweetheart rates to their friends).

Puerto Ricans had just about had enough in 2017, and waves of protests and uprisings shook the island, stemming the tide and showing a solidarity that put the whole neoliberal project in jeopardy. Then Hurricane Maria hit.

You may remember what a piece of fuckery that was, but let me refresh you: there was the two-person company that employed a Trump cabinet member's son, who were awarded a $300,000,000 contract to rebuild the island's shattered power grid; the anonymous mercenaries who flooded the city streets; the not-even-trying spin-doctoring by Trump officials; Trump's war against local officials who stood up to him; the official indifference and incompetence, culminating in the paper towel incident, which is by no means the cruelest fuckery, but possibly the most emblematic.

(Naturally, elected Republicans rejected the Warren-Sanders plan to provide $146B in aid to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.)

In the wake of Maria, in the face of seemingly deliberate governmental indifference, community organizers, anarchists and socialists stepped in to fill the void, laying the ground for a new Puerto Rican resistance that could form out of the ruins of Maria.

But the new face of Puerto Rico is ferociously contested. A group of cryptocurrency speculators have hatched a plan to create "Puertopia," in which a radically depopulated island becomes a kind of on-shore off-shore tax-haven. Puerto Rico already offers a raft of tax-gifts to fly-in bankers; if you overwinter in Puerto Rico, you can avail yourself of a 0% capital gains and 0% interest and dividends tax-rates (this tax deal is not available to year-round, ordinary Puerto Rican residents). Move your businesses's registration to Puerto Rico and you'll enjoy a 4% corporate tax rate. All without leaving the USA or relinquishing your US passport!

The Puertopians and the neoliberal management of Puerto Rico have convergent interests, and those interests likewise converge with trumpism: since Maria, the island has experienced radical depopulation, driven by the incompetence of the relief effort; the government projects (plans) a 20% drop in population overall. There are official plans, some already underway, to sell off state assets at fire-sale prices, and to shutter public schools, end independent consumption-crop farming in favor of corporate cash-crop farms tended by low-wage workers who have no rights to speak of.

Against this are the green shoots of a new Puerto Rican resistance, reborn after Maria. The fact that decentralized, renewable energy; sustainable consumption-crop farming; and publicly run schools all weathered the storm more-or-less intact is an existence-proof of a better way for Puerto Rico, one grounded in fiscal sovereignty, educational sovereignty, food sovereignty, and the refactoring of Puerto Rican infrastructure to benefit Puerto Ricans and resilience.

Meanwhile, the Puertopians and the island's technocratic appointed managers plan to supercharge the factors that created a disaster on Puerto Rico: more filthy, groaning fossil fuels that poison the people and the land under normal operating conditions, and then do it a thousand times more when they're inundated by severe weather; more austerity; an end to public education in favor of Devos-compliant charter-schools; more centralization of the ports where fuel comes in and cash crops go out -- more profitable fragility that assumes that big business can always get bailed out by the state, while paying virtually no tax to support that state.

Klein's story shows how the "sovereignty" sought by the Puertopians -- the power to take away someone else's island through corrupt privatization deals and then run the place without any duty to the people you expropriated -- contrasts with the meaningful sovereignty of Puerto Rican resistance. When Devos tries to close their public schools and replace them with charter schools, the teachers and parents occupy their schools and refuse to allow them to be closed. Devos wants "school choice," but only if that choice is to funnel tax-dollars to for-profit charter schools that teach Dominionist gospel.

Klein paints a picture of a wildly overmatched resistance that is fighting "fast capital," "unencumbered by democratic norms" where "the governor and the fiscal control board can whip up their plan to radically downsize and auction off the territory in a matter of weeks." Meanwhile, the resistance is struggling with the administrative incompetence after Maria, struggling to feed themselves, to stave off critical illness, to survive.

The Puertopia vision is to transform the island into "a fly-in bedroom community for tax-dodging plutocrats," who believe that taxation is theft and pay lip service to "freedom" -- while enthusiastically backing the governor's plan to "penalize communities that set up their own renewable micro-grids."

But the resistance has an advantage: its history. They're not starting from scratch: they've been at it for a century, and they reached a zenith last year, just before Maria. The hurricane smashed the island, but the reconstruction process has brought people together in hardened, tight-knit brigades who are fiercely determined to free their homeland from colonialist exploitation. It's not a fair fight, but they stand a chance -- especially now, when so much of the world seems to be waking up to the manifest injustice of inequality and unchecked, late-stage capitalism.

It's a great read, and it holds out hope, which we all need -- especially the people of Puerto Rico.

https://boingboing.net/2018/03/23/from-maria-to-puertopia.html

[joshuajacksonlyblog]

Profiles in Crypto-Awesome: Brock Pierce

Child-actor, serial-entrepreneur, pre-YouTube content creator, MMORPG milker, early bitcoin adopter, and co-creator of two of the top ten cryptocurrencies — number-9 on Forbes’ Richest People in Crypto is donating his entire $1 billion fortune to rebuild Puerto Rico into Cryptopia. Welcome to the weird world of Brock Pierce.

Character Profile

It’s fair to say that cryptocurrency has its share of colorful characters — from the seemingly ever-present crypto-jester John McAfee to the almost never-present anarchist hacker Amir Taaki.

It also isn’t rare to hear of former child actors falling from grace in the pursuit of one demon or another. Brock Pierce may be the result when that pursuit ends up leading to a budding cryptocurrency called bitcoin.

All of 5′ 4″ in a cowboy hat, carrying a satchel full of botanical ‘remedies,’ he might not be what you’d expect from the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation. But he has also been on the founding teams of Blockchain Capital, DNA, the first ever ICO, and cryptocurrencies EOS and Tether.

An Origin Story

Pierce’s first memory is of being on set at age three and a half. He was raised in Minnesota and got his big break at age 12 when he played a younger version of Emilio Estevez’ character in Mighty Ducks. Four years later, he had his first starring role in First Kid — but then quit the business before the movie was released in 1996.

Finding normal childhood impossible, he was introduced to an internet entrepreneur named Marc Collins-Rector. Twenty years his senior, Collins-Rector made a 16-year-olf Pierce executive vice president of his entertainment company.

His next business venture was trading in-game items from online games for real money. This led to an alleged 400,000 people playing video-games professionally for him, and a seven-year stint with Steve Bannon as his ‘right-hand man’.

And that’s when he discovered Bitcoin.

Character Assassination

It will probably come as no great surprise to find out that Marc Collins-Rector was a sexual predator. Surrounding himself with teenaged boys and giving them vast fortunes and chunks of his company wasn’t entirely kosher.

Pierce was himself entangled in the litigation surrounding this, although all cases against him were either dropped or settled. Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver alluded to this scandal in a recent piece on cryptocurrency.

Lights, Camera, Action

Pierce’s path from crypto-convert to evangelist to guru has elements similar to those of other early adopters. There is the obligatory ‘50,000 bitcoin on a thrown out hard drive’ anecdote. He would give away bitcoins to everyone he could until he realized that “no one appreciated it, then they lost it, and it was a waste of my [****ing] time.”

Where it may differ is in that he claims to not actually do very much. He is clearly a facilitator and a bringer together of people, but as he says:

I don’t really have to do much other than show up, and then tell a few of these stories that are inspiring

By all accounts, he is a force of nature. A whirl of endless energy, putting as much into his partying as his business ventures. A laid-back hippy who oversees the creation of these enterprises and then steps back and lets them fly.

Sol/Crypto Rico/Puertopia

Pierce is not the first crypto-billionaire attracted to Puerto Rico by its reputation as a tax haven — but his motivation is perhaps slightly different from most.

Realizing the potential colonialist nature of rich white men buying up a tax haven, he has rallied against it. Pierce’s vision is to use the money saved from the IRS, Robin Hood-style, to rebuild a Puerto Rico still recovering from a debt crisis and recent hurricane. He wants to develop the west of the island, rather than risk the gentrification of the capital and the pricing out of locals who have spent their entire lives there.

His plan is to start a charity crypto-currency and invest his entire $1 billion fortune into it, hopefully encouraging others to follow suit. Certainly, his approach seems to be a more acceptable outcome of the current influx of billionaires — having won over local NGOs who were previously concerned that their island would be portioned off and sold for profit. Whether he succeeds in this venture or not, it is certainly worth keeping an eye on what he does next.

It should come as no surprise to discover that Brock Pierce’s marriage to Sensay CEO Crystal Rose is by smart-contract, which can be dissolved, changed, or renewed annually. Brock Pierce is a true crypto-pioneer.

What do you think of Brock Pierce and his plans for Cryptopia? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Bitcoinist archives.

[Disclaimer: The contents of this article and any opinions contained within are solely that of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Bitcoinist.]

The post Profiles in Crypto-Awesome: Brock Pierce appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

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[michaelbennettcrypto]

Puerto Rico: Future Blockchain Utopia?

A group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs have moved to Puerto Rico with the goal of setting up a libertarian utopia. The settlement was originally named Puertopia but now is known as Sol. The name change is thought to have followed the would-be community’s founders discovering that Puertopia literally translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin – certainly not the kind of branding the group is seeking.

Lured by the promise of freedom, waves of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs have been moving to Puerto Rico this winter following Hurricane Maria which desecrated the infrastructure there in September. They’re led by Brock Pierce, the director of the Bitcoin Foundation and founder of Block.One.

The entrepreneurs are hoping to transform the island of Puerto Rico along libertarian principles. The desperation created by the social upheaval of the natural disaster last autumn has prompted some to welcome the early cryptocurrency advocates (or the money they bring with them). With few other influxes of outside capital, it’s hoped that the idea of a crypto utopia will allow for much-needed infrastructure improvements and repairs.

According to the New York Times, the government of Puerto Rico is receptive to the influx of new money that the crypto entrepreneurs are bringing with them. This is evidenced by the fact that the governor has agreed to speak at the group’s blockchain summit conference called Puerto Crypto. The event is scheduled for this March. What’s more, the entrepreneurs currently living in what they hope will become “Sol” have almost managed to convince local government to allow the founding of a crypto bank – surely, an oxymoron of an idea if ever there was one.

Erika Medina-Vecchini, the chief business development officer for the Department of Economic Development and Commerce espoused further positive sentiment about the idea of new money coming to Puerto Rico courtesy of Sol. She told the New York Times:

“We’re open for crypto business.”

Those who have sought refuge in Puerto Rico spend their days hunting for property to buy out and transform in line with their vision of a utopia. For now, the community hub is a 20,000 square foot hotel complex that the group are renting. The building has been dubbed the Monastery.

One of the first tasks for the community will be to restore the electricity infrastructure that has been inconsistent thanks to the hurricane. The incentive to do so is obvious. Not only will it make living on the island far more comfortable for those used to First World luxuries but it will allow for cryptocurrency mining, an endeavour many inhabitants have made their fortunes from. Naturally, this will benefit those native to the island too.

However, not everyone is pleased with the developments on Puerto Rico. Andria Satz, a worker at the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico has her reservations about the group’s incentives:

“We’re the tax playground for the rich… We’re the test case for anyone who wants to experiment. Outsiders get tax exemptions, and locals can’t get permits.”

Whilst the group currently express altruistic ambitions for Sol and Puerto Rico, it’s unclear how genuine this sentiment is. There are certainly clear incentives for the libertarian-minded entrepreneurs to flash some cash to set up a community there. For one, citizens of the island do not need to pay Federal personal income taxes or capital gains. They will also benefit from hugely favourable business taxation too. Possibly the most alluring prospect about the site they’ve decided to call home is the fact that they don’t even need to renounce their US citizenship to relocate there. If the community completely fails, they can always jump on the next plane back to the States, where the crypto community should supposedly regulate itself.

The post Puerto Rico: Future Blockchain Utopia? appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[brettzjacksonblog]

Puerto Rico: Future Blockchain Utopia?

A group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs have moved to Puerto Rico with the goal of setting up a libertarian utopia. The settlement was originally named Puertopia but now is known as Sol. The name change is thought to have followed the would-be community’s founders discovering that Puertopia literally translates to “eternal boy playground” in Latin – certainly not the kind of branding the group is seeking.

Lured by the promise of freedom, waves of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs have been moving to Puerto Rico this winter following Hurricane Maria which desecrated the infrastructure there in September. They’re led by Brock Pierce, the director of the Bitcoin Foundation and founder of Block.One.

The entrepreneurs are hoping to transform the island of Puerto Rico along libertarian principles. The desperation created by the social upheaval of the natural disaster last autumn has prompted some to welcome the early cryptocurrency advocates (or the money they bring with them). With few other influxes of outside capital, it’s hoped that the idea of a crypto utopia will allow for much-needed infrastructure improvements and repairs.

According to the New York Times, the government of Puerto Rico is receptive to the influx of new money that the crypto entrepreneurs are bringing with them. This is evidenced by the fact that the governor has agreed to speak at the group’s blockchain summit conference called Puerto Crypto. The event is scheduled for this March. What’s more, the entrepreneurs currently living in what they hope will become “Sol” have almost managed to convince local government to allow the founding of a crypto bank – surely, an oxymoron of an idea if ever there was one.

Erika Medina-Vecchini, the chief business development officer for the Department of Economic Development and Commerce espoused further positive sentiment about the idea of new money coming to Puerto Rico courtesy of Sol. She told the New York Times:

“We’re open for crypto business.”

Those who have sought refuge in Puerto Rico spend their days hunting for property to buy out and transform in line with their vision of a utopia. For now, the community hub is a 20,000 square foot hotel complex that the group are renting. The building has been dubbed the Monastery.

One of the first tasks for the community will be to restore the electricity infrastructure that has been inconsistent thanks to the hurricane. The incentive to do so is obvious. Not only will it make living on the island far more comfortable for those used to First World luxuries but it will allow for cryptocurrency mining, an endeavour many inhabitants have made their fortunes from. Naturally, this will benefit those native to the island too.

However, not everyone is pleased with the developments on Puerto Rico. Andria Satz, a worker at the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico has her reservations about the group’s incentives:

“We’re the tax playground for the rich… We’re the test case for anyone who wants to experiment. Outsiders get tax exemptions, and locals can’t get permits.”

Whilst the group currently express altruistic ambitions for Sol and Puerto Rico, it’s unclear how genuine this sentiment is. There are certainly clear incentives for the libertarian-minded entrepreneurs to flash some cash to set up a community there. For one, citizens of the island do not need to pay Federal personal income taxes or capital gains. They will also benefit from hugely favourable business taxation too. Possibly the most alluring prospect about the site they’ve decided to call home is the fact that they don’t even need to renounce their US citizenship to relocate there. If the community completely fails, they can always jump on the next plane back to the States, where the crypto community should supposedly regulate itself.

The post Puerto Rico: Future Blockchain Utopia? appeared first on NewsBTC.

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[bitcoinpuertorico-blog]

It will be awesome to buy Mofongo in Puerto Rico with Bitcoin BTC #PuertoRico #puertocrypto #bitcoinpuertorico #bitcoinbtcpr #cryptorico #puertopia #puertocrypto #cryptocurrency #btc #bitcoin

[click2watch]

The Trolls Accused Me of ‘Crypto-Colonialism’ in Syria – I’m Listening

Rachel-Rose O’Leary is a reporter at CoinDesk, covering how cryptocurrencies are being used in areas of economic, social and political unrest.

This article is part of her ongoing dispatches from Rojava, Syria. 

“Crypto-colonist.”

“Neo-fascist.”

These are two of the more critical responses to my relocation to North Syria, also known as Rojava, to assist in a newly formed academy of media and technology. And while the comments represent some of the worst feedback I could imagine since it’s a dark interpretation (one I don’t buy into) of what I’m doing here, for the most part, I was overwhelmed by messages of support.

Wolfgang Spraul, a leading coder at ASIC manufacturer Linzhi, spoke of his friend, Bassel Khartabil, a programmer who was executed by the Syrian regime in 2015 following three years of incarceration and torture. The execution was part of the ongoing and brutal repression of technological innovation by Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria.

When the news of Khartabil’s death came to light in 2017, it was a deep shock to the open-source community – shock that continues to resonate today.

“Stability is a miracle, so fragile,” Spraul wrote to me. “Be aware you have friends and reach out.”

Another email pointed to a legal system for stateless societies called Creative Common Law, encouraging me to consider the material, asserting that “It would be so wonderful if the world of stateless legal systems and overseas countries wanting a decentralized world could actually connect!”

While I don’t agree with everything in the legal system – in particular, its hard emphasis on property rights – I’d encourage everyone to read the specs.

The interactions convinced me that I am on the right path – even if my mother was quick to remind me that at least some of the contact had been made by “CIA, ISIS sympathizers and the Russians,” trying to pry me for details.

Finally, in an email that reminded me how everything is interwoven, Greg Colvin, the leading programmer behind ethereum’s virtual machine, the EVM, mourned the Syrians that had been killed in last month’s New Zealand terror attack.

While he feared U.S. allies might eventually abandon the Kurds in Syria, he added:

“We can hope that political decentralization and non-violence will make the difference this time.”

Smoke fills the sky on Newroz, Qamishli.

Feeding the trolls

As such, most of these interactions stood apart from the usual barrage of trolling that has followed my work on ethereum.

While the ethereum community has a gentle heart, it can be brutal in cyberspace – something testified to by the fact that one of its brightest contributors, former Parity release manager Afri Schoeden was effectively bullied out of his position last month. A source as well as a friend, not only did Schoedon play a crucial role in the overall coordination of the blockchain, but he was also one of its more critical voices – often trying to forge a link between the developer elite and an increasingly disenfranchised community.

Thankfully, even as Schoedon has fallen silent, other developers are continuing the tradition of challenging the internal powers that be.

If bullying to the point of banishment is how ethereum’s online community treats its most faithful contributors, imagine then, how it treats reporters.

On the ethereum beat, I received regular direct messages from one man, reminding me that I was wasting my life.

Another man, who I later learned had lost his savings trading ether, sent me persistent emails with a single word: “cunt.”

A street at night, Qamishli

But all of this feels very far away now, as the proximity of war has driven things into focus. Aspects of my life that used to feel important have faded into the background. And while crypto-colonialism and neo-fascism aren’t ideal feedback, at least they’re interesting political criticism – miles away from the low-level name-calling I had become accustomed to.

Crypto-colonist – a term popularized by Naomi Klein – is a comment at least worthy of rebuttal. (It is a term primarily associated with Brock Pierce’s attempt to build a crypto city in Puerto Rico.)

On the surface, our projects have similarities, as both are fueled by a desire to use decentralized technologies at the societal level. However, Pierce’s work, while he has repeatedly insisted is in the best interests of the local population, seems characterized by an insensitivity to the conditions in which it is ensnared.

To highlight this, Klien describes two political movements that are active in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria – there are the community-driven efforts to repair the island with an ecological and democratic focus and then there’s a government plan to entice foreign investors with tax benefits and privatize the island, while continuously displacing its native population.

Pierce’s work, Klein argues, is tied to the latter.

Coupled with statements from Pierce and his friends (such as, “This is where you’re going to bring your wife and kids and build the New World”), the so-called “Puertopia” is largely viewed as a project that is disinterested in the needs of the local population, instead focused on securing a sandbox for wealthy technocrats.

Not uninvited

Electricity cables, Qamishli

Like Puerto Rico, North Syria and the Kurdish people have had a long history of colonization.

It is primarily that history, combined with the revolution’s war on fascism and the state, that inspired me and many other Westerners to offer support here. Some came from colonies inside the West; others were born into colonial empires and wanted change.

Yet we haven’t come uninvited, and in all cases, intend to work hand-in-hand with locals and in constant feedback with the needs of the Rojava population.

On a new website, the tech committee – which consists of Kurdish, Arab and other groups from the Middle East, as well as Westerners – details its diverse plans for full technological autonomy of the region, with a particular emphasis on hardware and infrastructure projects.

Projects include building an anonymous cryptocurrency to reduce the reliance on the Syrian state-issued lira, network anonymity through mixnets and hacker academies to be implemented to educate the population.

A general network called the “backbone” will allow people to access the internet no matter where they are in North Syria. This network will also host tools for services such as digital governance, allowing users to politically participate in the society.

The creation of code frameworks will even allow people without advanced technical knowledge to participate in crypto development, by linking libraries and algorithms into easy-to-use toolkits.

Cumulatively, the projects represent an attempt to modernize the region in harmony with its philosophy; to break out from the poverty trap without damaging the history and culture of North Syria in the process.

“Tech is the top priority for Rojava’s survival. The Syrian lira is dropping like a stone, and worldwide access to markets is crucial given the embargo,” a coder within the technological academies who wished to remain anonymous told me.

And while being aware of the colonial forces that have shaped this area in the past, the goal is much, much different.

Summing it up, the coder concluded:

“We’re not occupying Rojava with white settlers, we’re training people, establishing a mutually beneficial partnership and also learning the philosophy to export it.”

Photos courtesy of Deniz Tekoshin

This news post is collected from CoinDesk

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12 People and Moments That Shaped Youth Culture in 2018

From the hippies of the 1960s to the grunge kids of the ’90s, it’s often the youth culture that comes to define its decade. Generation Z has been called a lot of things: industrious, shy, technologically obsessed, mysterious. We’re the most anxious generation and a fast-growing sector of the workforce. We’re barely in our twenties, but we’ve already been credited with disrupting popular conceptions of gender and shopping with a conscience. But a generation so young is still figuring itself out; only time will tell who we really are.

In the 2010s, you can make millions on YouTube and lose it all to Bitcoin in a snap. Public discourse is more nuanced and complex than ever before, and technology is increasingly more embedded with our daily lives. This year ushered in the authority of CGI influencers, a J-pop band proselytizing cryptocurrencies, the global domination of Chinese app TikTok, and two redesigns of Snapchat. It was also a breakout year for campy designer Paolina Russo, model-activist Chella Man, and artist Aria Dean. Here are the 12 moments and people that defined visual culture for the youth of 2018.

America’s school-aged youth deal with 95 school shootings

New York Magazine cover featuring Parkland shooting survivor Anthony Borges, 2018. Photo by Michael Avedon. Courtesy of New York Magazine.

According to a mid-December roundup by the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, there were 95 school gun-violence incidents this year. Only a handful made national news. Among the most visible of the tragedies, the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, claimed 17 lives, while the May shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas claimed 10. Survivors from both shootings—as well as those of others, including 1999’s Columbine shooting—told their stories in October’s New York magazine and were photographed by Michael Avedon. On the cover was 15-year-old Parkland student Anthony Borges, his thin torso still recovering after being shot five times while barricading a door, ultimately saving over a dozen lives.

Just days after the shooting in Parkland, then–high school senior Emma González called out the National Rifle Association at a press conference. Along with fellow survivors David Hogg and Cameron Kasky, González went on to help organize the March For Our Lives in Washington, D.C. “The Parkland kids,” as they came to be known in national headlines, have become the faces of a new generation of gun-control advocates, dubbed the #NeverAgain movement.

With her shaved head and Spanish family name, González became an easy target for pro-gun conservatives bemoaning young liberals: A Republican candidate for Maine’s State House, Leslie Gibson, went so far as to call González a “skinhead lesbian.” When a Teen Vogue shoot with photographer Tyler Mitchell presented the young activist as self-determined and righteously defiant, antagonists tried to use the images against her. They doctored Mitchell’s image of her tearing apart a target-practice poster to make it appear as if she were ripping apart the U.S. Constitution instead—igniting controversy across social media, where the highly charged fight over gun control often plays out, with images as the ammunition.

Miquela Sousa, a.k.a. Lil Miquela, redefines CGI: Computer-Generated Influencer

Miquela Sousa in Kenzo. Courtesy of Brud.

Thin, pretty, and ethnically ambiguous, Lil Miquela is the perfect influencer by design. When Miquela Sousa first emerged in 2016, it was obvious that she was CGI, but no one was sure who had created her. It didn’t seem to matter that she wasn’t a real person—she’s starred in a national ad campaign for UGG and graced the covers of Notion and Highsnobiety. But this year, Lil Miquela went from quirky art project to cultural phenomenon: In February, Prada invited her to its fall show in Milan; in October, she was named one of Dazed’s contributing editors.

Miquela Sousa. Courtesy of Brud.

Miquela Sousa. Courtesy of Brud.

Miquela Sousa. Courtesy of Brud.

But Lil Miquela is not the only one of her kind, and in April, she was victim to an absurd act of CGI-on-CGI crime. Bermuda, a Trump-supporting CGI influencer, hacked Lil Miquela and held her Instagram account hostage until she promised to “tell the world the truth.” The hack connected Lil Miquela’s origins to Brud, a Los Angeles–based studio “that creates digital character-driven story worlds.” Then the story took another turn: The reporters covering the drama had unwittingly played into its creators’ fantasies—Bermuda was also a Brud creation.

The publicity served Lil Miquela well; by the end of the month, she had reached 1 million followers on Instagram. They love her pictures of delicious tacos she doesn’t eat and clothes she wears, but doesn’t own. Like other influencers, she can sometimes look comically artificial, and supplements her social-media fame with a capricious music career. But Lil Miquela is the question mark that punctuates any discussion of online authenticity in 2018. She may not be “real” in the flesh-and-blood sense of the word, but her impact is undeniably authentic.

Snapchat’s redesign²

Snapchat’s current interface for its premium content, which was updated in May. Courtesy of Snapchat.

Snapchat’s current interface for its “Friends” page, which was updated in May. Courtesy of Snapchat.

Snapchat started 2018 strong: It was beating its own record of worldwide daily users with a peak of 191 million. Teens were leaving Facebook in droves for Snapchat and other apps. In January, the Pew Research Center estimated that 78 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the United States used Snapchat (as well as 54 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds). According to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, the time had come to conquer older audiences, too.

But Snap’s February redesign (piloted in November 2017) merged incoming messages and stories into one messy page, while the “Discover” page only hosted featured and sponsored content. The redesign made using the app so tedious and frustrating that it was met with the ire of over 1 million petitioners asking for a reversal. The kiss of death came from the lip mogul herself, Kylie Jenner: “Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?” she asked her Twitter followers. Reporters didn’t waste time in characterizing the redesign as the overly ambitious whims of a precocious, then-27-year-old CEO.

By March, Snapchat had lost 3 million daily users, its stock prices dipped, and its quarter-by-quarter growth rate fell for the first time in the company’s near-seven-year history. Its solution? Another redesign. In May, Snapchat rolled out a redesign of the redesign—redesign², if you will. This time, the “Discover” page was divided into three sections: “Friends,” “Subscribers,” and “For you.” Despite the brief hemorrhaging of daily users, Snap’s CEO remarked that the app has started seeing positive results, “including increased new user retention for older users.”

Erika P. Rodríguez captures Puerto Rican youth in revolt

Protestors recover from tear gas after a clash with the Police of Puerto Rico at banking district, known as La Milla de Oro, in Hato Rey, San Juan, P.R., during the National Strike on May 1, 2018. For the International Workers Day protestors, including unions, teachers, students, and citizens, took the street to protest against the Fiscal Management Board austerity measures. Photo by Erika P. Rodriguez.

In 2018, Puerto Ricans struggled to rebuild after Hurricane Maria swept away any sense of security that remained in one of the world’s oldest colonies. In a year of hardship, local photographer Erika P. Rodríguez emerged as a leading documentarians of contemporary life in Puerto Rico.

Brock Pierce inside the former Children’s Museums in Old San Juan on January 26, 2018, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Brock Pierce, one of the lead winners in the current crypto-boom, is heading the Puertopia movement in the island. The former actor and his friends hope to take advantage of the islands’ law no. 22, that gives onerous tax exempts for the wealthy residing in the recently storm-ravaged American territory. Pierce and his crew, plan to buy the former Children’s Museum of Puerto Rico, located in the heart of the old city, where they plan to make it a clubhouse and lounge. Photo by Erika P. Rodriguez.

Protestors clash with the Police of Puerto Rico at banking district, known as La Milla de Oro, in Hato Rey, San Juan, P.R., during the National Strike on May 1, 2018. For the International Workers Day protestors, including unions, teachers, students, and citizens, took the street to protest against the Fiscal Management Board austerity measures. Photo by Erika P. Rodriguez.

Rodríguez’s images, part of her ongoing series “The Oldest Colony,” provide a multifaceted glimpse into life in a colony in the 21st century. In February, on assignment for the New York Times, she captured a budding generation of American entrepreneurs eager to build a crypto-utopia on land they saw as a slate wiped clean by the hurricane.

On May 1st, dozens of community and student groups took to the streets in protest. Cornered by oppressive debt, the island’s 3.4 million U.S. citizens can’t participate in federal elections, and the local government answers to a congressionally imposed fiscal control board—a group of seven appointed officials with absolute control over Puerto Rico’s finances. By late April, they hiked university fees and planned to close down hundreds of schools. Thousands of people responded by funneling into the heart of the financial sector, aptly named the “Golden Mile.” Rodríguez was on the ground and among her peers, capturing it all. And while local media jumped at the chance to chastise an unruly youth, Rodríguez’s pictures tell a different story.

Chella Man, IMG’s first deaf and trans model, becomes the voice of a generation

Portraits of Chella Man. Photos by Alex Cruz/IMG Models. Courtesy of IMG Models.

It’s rare to see a model with cochlear implants and top surgery scars, but such are the badges of pride of artist-activist-model Chella Man. Man signed to IMG in September, capping off a year of exponential visibility as a multi-hyphenated creative and de facto intersectional spokesperson of Gen Z. As an activist, the 20-year-old encouraged youths to vote, gave a TEDx Talk, advocated for the deaf, and authored a column on Condé Nast’s Them. Man lives in New York, where he is pursuing an undergraduate degree in virtual reality programing. In owning his myriad labels, he discovered who he is.

Portrait of Chella Man. Photo by Emily Rabinowitz. Courtesy of IMG Models.

Portrait of Chella Man. Photo by Alex Cruz/IMG Models. Courtesy of IMG Models.

Man is living proof of how Gen Z uses the internet as a place that can nurture and foster personal development. On YouTube, Man posts intimate videos of his relationship and how testosterone has transformed his body. Some might dismiss it as a symptom of a digital native’s oversharing, but in Man’s case, it’s more like paying it forward. In his TEDx Talk in May, he emphasized that one of the most important things he learned growing up was how to use the right words to describe himself authentically. In his childhood home in central Pennsylvania, Man could only access that kind of knowledge through the internet, where queer folks of older generations shared their stories.

A cryptocurrency girl group performs in Japan for the first time

After China and South Korea outlawed cryptocurrency exchanges in 2017, Japan swiftly legalized them. And in early 2018, the world was introduced to the Virtual Currency Girls, a J-pop idol group on a mission to proselytize virtual currencies. In their debut single, the group reveres blockchain’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and sings about how surrendering to technology can be “so thrilling and exciting.”

They performed the song, “The Moonlight, Cryptocurrencies and Me,” for the first time in January to an audience of about 20. But the performance made headlines in U.S. media, with the Wall Street Journal writing that their performance seemed to promote Japan as “an idyllic cryptocurrency paradise filled with colors and fun.” The eight members of the group, who wore girly maid outfits and aggressively colorful luchador masks, each stamped with the logo a different cryptocurrency, chanted their names as they danced: “Nem! Neo! Mona! Ada! Ripple! Bitcoin! Ether!”

In 2018, a series of multi-million-dollar trading hacks shook Japan’s confidence in the security of such currencies. It might not be a coincidence that apart from adding a new member, Trigger, the Virtual Currency Girls have also spent most of the year under the radar. But their January performance left us with some zany but relevant consolation: “Calm down, baby. Tranquilo. Accidents are inevitable!”

Artist Me Love Me Alot, a.k.a. MLMA, breaks through with her army of clones

By using her body as her primary medium, Korean visual artist Me Love Me Alot has honed a hallmark style of freakishly defiant makeup looks, trademarked by a signature blue eye. Last year, she unwittingly started the undulating “wavy brow” trend, to both the delight and disgust of beauty bloggers everywhere. She has since revamped her SoundCloud rapper-persona and plugged her underground streetwear brand, Skoot. This year, she poured her creative energy into the creation of a series of collages and documented the process for her YouTube channel. But she shares her best work on Instagram.

Scrolling through MLMA’s feed, you feel yourself spiraling down her dark corner of the internet. Her anxiety-ridden work takes Haruki Murakami–esque twists in which the line between fantasy and reality blurs. A mirror selfie shows MLMA without eyes, taking a selfie in an elevator with a friend, the artist’s clone. At second glance, you then realize that the reflection in the mirror is a third clone staring back at you.

It’s because of works like this that MLMA’s Instagram following alone grew eightfold in 2018. Her images riff on social media clichés and poke fun at the indulgences of the influencer class. She is irreverent in her use of social media because she refuses to take it seriously. Perhaps it’s because, to MLMA, virality comes naturally.

China’s TikTok takes over the world

On the morning of August 2nd, American Musical.ly users found that the red soundwave logo on their phone screens had been replaced by a stereographic music note. Overnight, they had been migrated to the app TikTok, following Beijing-based parent company ByteDance’s purchase of Musical.ly late last year for a reported $800 million.

Known in China as Douyin, TikTok is structured like Musical.ly, where users can share 15-second videos of themselves lip-syncing to popular songs. But to browse through TikTok’s “Discover” page is to dangerously lean over a rabbit hole of internet subcultures. From J-pop to K-pop and from black youth culture to gaming culture, TikTok follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, Vine, as a chain of pop-cultural references. TikTok-native viral trends like the “Karma’s a Bitch” challenge have already become part of the internet’s cultural canon. From the looks of it, Musical.ly’s Gen-Z user base gracefully accepted the transition, but the advent of TikTok, a Chinese import, has prompted millennials to write bemused thinkpieces and commentary on its overnight success.

Back in June, ByteDance reported to have over 300 million active monthly users in China—while that’s just 1 in 10 people there, it’s nearly equal to the United States’s entire population. It’s often said that the future is in the hands of the young, but with TikTok toppling all of Facebook’s apps in the iOS app store, it looks like the future of internet culture is more specifically in the hands of China’s youth.

Designer Paolina Russo becomes the future of camp in fashion

Paolina Russo makes clothes for the sartorially deranged. Her work revels in nostalgia and childhood imagination, a place where there’s no such thing as “too much” and concepts are meant to be turned on their heads. The 23-year-old won the L’Oreal Professionnel’s Young Talent Award for her fantastically tacky graduate collection for Central Saint Martins in London. (Stella McCartney, John Galliano, and Alexander McQueen are but a few of the school’s noteworthy graduates.)

In an age where athleisure is the name of the game, Russo’s approach to lycra and shin pads turns “sportswear” into camp. Her collection “I Forgot Home” is a tribute to her Canadian hometown of suburban Toronto, and shows a level of whimsy and excess inspired by the sports culture of her childhood: Her models walked down the catwalk with rollerblade hats and soccer ball helmets; they wore kaleidoscopes of sneaker parts that fanned out from the hips and shoulders as Nike swooshes and Adidas stripes embellished their torsos. It’s easy to picture one of her creations in the upcoming 2019 Met Gala, whose corresponding exhibition will be “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”

Photographer Sarah Bahbah opens up about child abuse

Sarah Bahbah, I Could Not Protect Her, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Palestinian-born Sarah Bahbah established her photography practice three years ago, and her signature subtitled images reached a point of ubiquity early in 2018, when she was tapped to shoot campaigns for Gucci and Dior. In April, she announced on Instagram that she’d be sharing a new series, “I Could Not Protect Her.”

Sarah Bahbah, I Could Not Protect Her, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Still from Sarah Bahbah, Unspoken Love for Gucci Guilty, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Sarah Bahbah, I Could Not Protect Her, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Still from Sarah Bahbah, Unwavering Love for Gucci Guilty, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.

Sarah Bahbah, from the series “Sex and Takeout.” Courtesy of the artist.

The series follows a big-eyed brunette who is cradled by a lover, as her inner monologue, subtitled at the bottom of each picture, keeps her from being present in the moment. They have dinner, the protagonist drinking away her problems. She eats a clementine in a bathtub, dreaming of escape. She smokes a cigarette in the street, angry. Bahbah released the final scene of “I Could Not Protect Her” on June 1st, the day she told Teen Vogue that the series was about surviving sexual abuse as a child.

Teen Vogue readers learned about the panic attacks Bahbah had when she was four, the body dysmorphia she had in middle school, and the hard drugs she took in her twenties to deal with it all. She discussed how little girls are held accountable for the actions of grown men, and how it’s made worse by the adults who don’t believe them. “My sole intent in my work and my being is to practice transparency of my emotions,” Bahbah said, “and to express, express, express, as for so long I didn’t have a voice.”

Young voters disprove apathy myth and turn out to vote—was it Taylor Swift’s doing?

In November’s midterm elections in the U.S., an unprecedented 31 percent of voters under 30 turned out to cast their ballots. Young voters face a challenging future—more brazen white supremacy movements; the worsening effects of climate change and income inequality—all of it motivation enough to hit the voting booth. But a month before the election, Vote.org made headlines by claiming that it was pop star Taylor Swift who was partly responsible for record-breaking registration numbers.

On October 7th, Swift took to Instagram and encouraged her 112 million followers to register to vote, endorsing two Democrats running for office in Tennessee. It was a stark contrast to her actions in 2016, when she didn’t publicly acknowledge the election until Election Day; her silence led to the alt-right proclaiming her an “Aryan goddess” that May.

While crediting a previously apolitical pop-star for results that generations of activists have worked for is a dangerous line to walk, there is something to be said about the power given to a single Instagram post. It’s hard to picture young voters waiting by their phones, with bated breaths, for Swift to give them the thumbs-up to vote. But according to Vote.org, that’s not too far from what actually happened. “The bottom line,” a Vote.org spokeswoman told the New York Times, “is that she did significantly impact registrations.” Over 166,000 people registered to vote during the subsequent 36 hours, 42 percent of which were under 25. And although it’s normal to see similar surges as registration deadlines approach, Vote.org pointed to the surge of 6,200 registrations in Tennessee in those three days (which equaled the number of registrations from May to September) as proof of how far a celebrity endorsement can go.

Artist Aria Dean exhibits art about blackness on the internet

Installation view of Aria Dean, But as One Doesn’t Know Where My Centre Is, One Will With Difficulty Ascertain The Truth . . . Though This Task Has Made Me Ill, It Will Also Make Me Healthy Again (Crowd Index) at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2018. Photograph by Tom Loonan. Courtesy of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

Aria Dean, an artist and curator of net art and digital culture at New York’s Rhizome, has penned essays that analyze selfie culture and how blackness manifests itself online. The 25-year-old’s artistic practice combines her curatorial concern for documentation with her academic interest in critical engagement. In October, the success of her first solo museum presentation at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery established the writer-curator as a formidable artist grappling with the issues of our times. In a year, she had moved from writing about art to elevating her own art practice.

Untitled (Canvas #1),, 2017. Aria Dean Topical Cream: Benefit Auction 2018

Installation view of work by Aria Dean at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2018. Photograph by Tom Loonan. Courtesy of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

Untitled (Canvas #5), 2018. Aria Dean AA|LA

Installation view of work by Aria Dean at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2018. Photograph by Tom Loonan. Courtesy of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.

This year, Dean was also an artist-in-residence at Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum, curated an upcoming exhibit at New York’s New Museum, and exhibited in a group show at London’s Serpentine Galleries. The philosophical and ontological nature of much of her work is leavened by the recognizability of the images she examines: Anyone who’s spent enough time online will immediately recognize the viral videos and memes she compiles in her works.

Dean’s art questions how we consume and reproduce black bodies in the digital age. Although rarely acknowledged, blackness is part of the fabric of internet culture. It’s in the dances on Fortnite; it’s in every meme captioned “dis,” “dat,” “issa,” and “Bye Felicia.” Blackness is the mother of the acrylic nails, human hair wigs, and overlined lips behind every social media “baddie.” As a demographic that is consistently undervalued, America’s black youth are the unsung authors of a great deal of its culture.

from Artsy News

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