This weekend, disturbing video of unmarked federal agents detaining a protestor in Portland circulated on Twitter. Even the state government of Oregon was unable to identify the agents. Now, the state is suing the federal government. Oregon is seeking a restraining order to stop the unlawful detention of its citizens. Why is this happening in Portland?
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There's evidence deforestation has gotten worse under the pandemic. It's especially troubling news. Scientists are discovering a strong correlation between deforestation and disease outbreaks. NPR correspondent Nathan Rott talks to Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong.
In particular, she investigates how these communities are considering the question of diversity and inclusion. Using ethnographic methods – interviews, participant observation, and deep readings of texts – Dunbar-Hester shows how the problem-solving ethos of open tech does not quite meet the challenge of structural social problems.
Civil rights activists Rep. John Lewis and Minister CT Vivian passed away on Friday. Democrats in Congress are urging lawmakers to honor Lewis by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020, which would restore voter protections struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Federal agents in camouflage are patrolling streets in Portland, Oregon,using tear gas and other violent means to control protestors. The agents reportedly came as a result of Trump’s order to have federal agencies protect federal property, statues, and monuments.
And in headlines: a study found that older children spread Covid-19 at the same rate adults do, more info about the massive July 16 Twitter hack, and Minnesota police use drones to catch sunbathers.
To read more about the Strike for Black Lives: j20strikeforblacklives.org
To follow events out of Portland: oregonlive.com and opb.org
“I am not a victim” is the message that conservative African Americans send to the left in the new film "Uncle Tom."
The movie, which was executive produced by radio talk-show host Larry Elder, features interviews with prominent black conservatives, such as Carol Swain, Robert L. Woodson, Allen B. West, Candace Owens, and many others.
Elder joins the podcast to explain the purpose of the film and why it is so critical at this moment in history.
Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about how one man’s GoFundMe campaign has raised $300,000 to buy Goya products for food banks.
The game of basketball is perceived by most today as an “urban” game with a locale such as Rucker Park in Harlem as the game’s epicenter (as well as a pipeline to the NBA). While that is certainly a true statement, basketball is not limited to places such as New York City.
In recent years scholars have written about the meaning of the game (and triumphs on the hardwood) to other groups, such as Asian Americans (Kathleen Yep and Joel Franks) and Mexican Americans (Ignacio Garcia). To this important literature one can now add an examination of the sport in the lives of Native Americans, through Wade Davies' Native Hoops: The Rise of American Indian Basketball, 1895-1970 (University Press of Kansas, 2020).
The game, as Davies notes, was not just something imposed upon Natives in locales such as the Indian Industrial Training School in Haskell, Kansas (and elsewhere). The game provided linkages to the Native past, and was embraced as a way to “prove their worth” within a hostile environment designed to strip students of all vestiges of their cultural inheritance. The sport provided both young men and women with an opportunity to compete against members of other institutions (both Native and white) and to challenge notions of inferiority and inherent weaknesses.
Davies’ work does an excellent job of detailing the role of the sport in the lives of individuals, schools, and eventually, Native communities. Additionally, it examines how these players competed against sometimes seven opponents (the five players on the court and the two officials) to claim their rightful place on the court. They also often had to deal with the taunts and racism of crowds at opposing gyms. Still, most of these schools managed to field competitive teams that created their own “Indian” style of basketball that proved quite difficult to defeat.
Wade Davies is professor of Native American studies at the University of Montana, Missoula.
Jorge Iber is a professor of history at Texas Tech University.
On this week’s Long Reads Sunday, we look at two essays about stablecoins previously published on CoinDesk.
The first is called “USD Stablecoins Are Surging, but Zero Interest Rates Complicate Business Model” by Hasu and was one of the first pieces to recognize that demand was coming not just from the crypto space but from emerging markets facing crisis time currency pressures.
The second is “Hyper-Stablecoinization: From Eurodollars to Crypto-Dollars” from Pascal Hügli. The piece argues that stablecoins are likely to play an increasingly important role in the global economy. In effect, they are a better version of the critical eurodollar system.
There have been 5 acknowledged presidential elections in US history where the winner of the popular vote did not win in the electoral college.
However, there is a very good argument to be made that there is a sixth election that should be added to that list.
The conventional wisdom holds that John F. Kennedy narrowly beat Richard Nixon in the 1960 popular vote by 112,827 votes. However, to get to this number, you have to put a tortured spin on the numbers from one state in particular.
Bitcoin days destroyed (BDD) was first introduced as a concept back in 2011. At the time, it had only been two years since the creation of the world’s first cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Individuals were already beginning to innovate ways to measure on-chain transaction activity and value.
As the first cryptocurrency metric to be created, BDD was quickly followed by a plethora of other unique metrics including unspent transaction output (UTXO), market value to realized value (MVRV) and spent output profit ratio (SOPR). Despite the sophistication of cryptocurrency data and analysis since 2011, BDD remains a fundamental metric to understanding and valuing bitcoin.
“[BDD] is a metric that reflects the collective action of long-term [BTC] holders,” said CoinDesk senior research analyst Galen Moore on a special podcast episode about the metric. “What’s the psychology of the long-term holder? You can see that in a collective way [through BDD] in a way I don’t think is possible in other asset categories.”
Moore interviewed Coin Metrics’ Lucas Nuzzi on Tuesday, July 7, to learn more about the use cases for and limitations against BDD. In a follow-up discussion about the interview recorded Thursday, July 9, Moore noted no other financial asset enables traders and investors to see the activity of long-term asset holders as transparently as bitcoin.
To this, CoinDesk research intern Duy Nguyen noted the motivations behind why long-term holders are moving funds at any given time is still largely a guessing game that requires further off-chain analysis beyond the scope of BDD.
For more information about BDD, you can watch the 30-minute webinar featuring an exclusive presentation on the metric by Nuzzi on the CoinDesk Research Hub.
