Is the Big Bang in crisis? | Astronomy.com – Astronomy Magazine

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Similar to the situation cosmologists confront today, however, the physicists of 1904 had not yet been able to address a few challenges. The medium through which they believed light traveled the luminiferous ether should have induced variations in the speed of light, and yet light always moves through space at the same rate. Astronomers observed the orbit of Mercury to be slightly different from what Newtonian physics predicted, leading some to suggest that an unknown planet, dubbed Vulcan, might be perturbing Mercurys trajectory.

Physicists in 1904 had no idea what powered the Sun no known chemical or mechanical process could possibly generate so much energy over such a long time. Lastly, scientists knew various chemical elements emitted and absorbed light with specific patterns, none of which physicists had the slightest idea how to explain. In other words, the inner workings of the atom remained a total and utter mystery.

Although few saw it coming, in hindsight, its clear that these problems were heralds of a revolution in physics. And in 1905, the revolution arrived, ushered in by a young Albert Einstein and his new theory of relativity. We now know that the luminiferous ether does not exist and that there is no planet Vulcan. Instead, these fictions were symptoms of the underlying failure of Newtonian physics. Relativity beautifully solved and explained each of these mysteries without any need for new substances or planets.

Furthermore, when scientists combined relativity with the new theory of quantum physics, it became possible to explain the Suns longevity, as well as the inner workings of atoms. These new theories even opened doors to new and previously unimagined lines of inquiry, including that of cosmology itself.

Scientific revolutions can profoundly transform how we see and understand our world. But radical change is never easy to see coming. There is probably no way to tell whether the mysteries faced by cosmologists today are the signs of an imminent scientific revolution or merely the last few loose ends of an incredibly successful scientific endeavor.

There is no question that we have made incredible progress in understanding our universe, its history, and its origin. But it is also undeniable that we are profoundly puzzled, especially when it comes to the earliest moments of cosmic history. I have no doubt that these moments hold incredible secrets, and perhaps the keys to a new scientific revolution. But our universe holds its secrets closely. It is up to us to coax those secrets from its grip, transforming them from mystery into discovery.

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Is the Big Bang in crisis? | Astronomy.com - Astronomy Magazine

New Tool Could Pave the Way for Future Insights in Quantum Chemistry – AZoQuantum

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Written by AZoQuantumMay 13 2020

The amount of energy needed to make or disintegrate a molecule can now be calculated more accurately than traditional methods using a new machine learning tool. Although the new tool can only deal with simple molecules at present, it opens the door to gain future insights into quantum chemistry.

Using machine learning to solve the fundamental equations governing quantum chemistry has been an open problem for several years, and theres a lot of excitement around it right now.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Carleo, who is the co-creator of the tool, added that better insights into the formation and degradation of molecules could expose the inner workings of the chemical reactions crucial to life.

Carleo and his colleagues Kenny Choo from the University of Zurich and Antonio Mezzacapo from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, published their study in Nature Communications on May 12th, 2020.

The tool developed by the researchers predicts the energy required to put together or break apart a molecule, for example, ammonia or water. For this calculation, it is necessary to determine the electronic structure of the molecule, which comprises the collective behavior of the electrons binding the molecule together.

The electronic structure of a molecule is complex to find and requires determining all the possible states the electrons in the molecule could be in, along with the probability of each state.

Electrons interact and entangle quantum mechanically with each other. Therefore, researchers cannot treat them individually. More electrons lead to more entanglements, and thus the problem turns exponentially more challenging.

There are no exact solutions for molecules that are more complex compared to the two electrons found in a pair of hydrogen atoms. Even approximations are not so accurate when more than a few electrons are involved.

One of the difficulties is that the electronic structure of a molecule includes states for an infinite number of orbitals that move further away from the atoms. Moreover, it is not easy to differentiate one electron from another, and the same state cannot be occupied by two electrons. The latter rule is the result of exchange symmetry, which governs the consequences when identical particles change states.

Mezzacapo and the team at IBM Quantum devised a technique for reducing the number of orbitals considered and enforcing exchange symmetry. This technique is based on approaches developed for quantum computing applications and renders the problem more analogous to scenarios in which electrons are restricted to predefined locations, for example, in a rigid lattice.

The problem was made more manageable by the similarity to rigid lattices. Earlier, Carleo trained neural networks to remodel the behavior of electrons restricted to the sites of a lattice.

The researchers could propose solutions to Mezzacapos compacted problems by extending those techniques. The neural network developed by the team calculates the probability for each state. This probability can be used to predict the energy of a specific state. The molecule is the most stable in the lowest energy level, also called the equilibrium energy.

Thanks to the innovations of the researchers, the electronic structure of a basic molecule can be calculated quickly and easily. To demonstrate the accuracy of their approaches, the researchers estimated the amount of energy required to break a real-world molecule and its bonds.

The researchers performed calculations for lithium hydride (LiH), dihydrogen (H2), water (H2O), ammonia (NH3), dinitrogen (N2), and diatomic carbon (C2). The researchers estimates for all the molecules were found to be highly accurate even in ranges where current methods struggle.

The aim of the researchers is to handle larger and more complex molecules by employing more advanced neural networks. One objective is to tackle chemicals such as those found in the nitrogen cycle, where nitrogen-based molecules are made and broken by biological processes to render them usable for life.

We want this to be a tool that could be used by chemists to process these problems.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Carleo, Choo, and Mezzacapo are not the only researchers seeking to use machine learning to handle problems in quantum chemistry. In September 2019, they first presented their study on arXiv.org. In the same month, a research group in Germany and another one at Googles DeepMind in London reported their studies that involved using machine learning to reconstruct the electronic structure of molecules.

The other two groups made use of a similar method that does not constrain the number of orbitals considered. However, this inclusiveness is more computationally laborious, a disadvantage that will only worsen when more complex molecules are involved.

Using the same computational resources, the method employed by Carleo, Choo, and Mezzacapo produces higher accuracy; however, the simplifications performed to achieve this accuracy could lead to biases.

Overall, its a trade-off between bias and accuracy, and its unclear which of the two approaches has more potential for the future. Only time will tell us which of these approaches can be scaled up to the challenging open problems in chemistry.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Choo, K., et al. (2020) Fermionic neural-network states for ab-initio electronic structure. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15724-9.

Source: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/

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Cooper: Higher debt a foe now and an even bigger one in the future – Chattanooga Times Free Press

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In the halcyon days before the COVID-19 virus, the United States government was nearly $25 million in debt and was projected to spend $1.1 trillion more this year than it collected in taxes.

Ah, the good ol' days.

Now, in the last two months, Congress has approved about $2.4 trillion in four relief bills to alleviate the collapse of the economy from stay-at-home orders due to the virus. For perspective's sake, $2.4 trillion exceeds the individual economies of Italy, Brazil and Canada. And $240 trillion in $1 bills would stack 140 bills high on the 68.3 miles that comprise Washington, D.C.

But, wait. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats want to spend more than the combined total of the first four bills on a fifth bill, a $3 trillion package that would add more more money to projects in the previous bills and tack on additional pet projects.

This from the party that only a few months ago in an irony itself chided President Donald Trump for the increased debt incurred in his first three years in office.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell seemed to indicate that spending more was the preferred remedy with a record number of people out of work.

"Additional support could be costly," he said in an interview with the Peterson Institute's Adam Posen, "but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery.

"It's not the time to prioritize" concerns about fiscal spending, Powell said.

The problem with the Fed chairman's statement is that "additional support" meaning additional debt is what we would suggest is long-term economic damage.

Even without a fifth virus bill, the U.S. would be looking at a $3.5-$3.7 trillion increase in the debt in 2020, which, as a percentage of gross domestic product (the sum of all goods and services produced in the U.S.), would push it to levels not seen since World War II.

Pro-additional stimulus advocates argue that the debt be darned that putting even more money in the hands of Americans and certain businesses now is what's more important.

The Great Recession offered a few lessons there. During that time, only a dozen years ago, even with a financial stimulus, the U.S. lost around $10 trillion from savings drawdowns and the falling values of homes and investments. And it hit people in lower socio-economic groups harder because they couldn't or didn't save as much and had to deplete their reserves.

Despite the end of the recession in 2009, people stayed out of the workforce, the labor market lagged and the economy grew slowly. Not until Trump was elected and put an emphasis on jobs did people return to the workforce in droves. Indeed, prior to the virus, the U.S. could cite record numbers in the workforce. If former Vice President Joe Biden is elected president in November, the country would likely to return to what former President Barack Obama said would be the "new normal" of slow growth.

Without a strong recovery, many small businesses won't make it, and those who do especially those with government-support packages structured as loans will have to restrict spending and hiring to concentrate on repayment. This also is likely to redound on the real estate market, which again would see little growth.

Continued financial packages also could change attitudes. Instead of seeing loans and bailouts as a last resort, Americans would see the federal trough as the first place to turn after the virus is fully under control. Such attitudes, with no thoughts toward the long-term financial future of one's children or grandchildren, would likely lessen the incentive to save or even dampen the desire to work.

For others, perhaps for those who have kept their jobs during the virus but who have become cautious about what they do have, it would cause them to reduce spending in fear of a prolonged recession or the next virus.

The uncertainty about the staying power of the virus and the length of time until a vaccine is perfected are the great variables. If we knew all businesses could reopen on June 1 and stay reopened, the limited-duration financial packages with low rates of borrowing make some sense. But the country's economy and its future sustainability cannot stomach four (or five) recovery packages every few months until the last American feels safe enough to return to work. Such is the key to financial ruin.

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Cooper: Higher debt a foe now and an even bigger one in the future - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Death by perks – The News International

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Pakistan faces a horrendous economic crisis, where the state must take on vast foreign and domestic debts, not to invest in socio-economic development projects, but to pay exorbitant salaries, pensions, and perks. If anything, we need to lower the public payroll and reform public-sector salaries and pensions. We have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, which despite being the equal of US and Nato in military terms, failed to achieve the pace of economic progress needed to cater for the welfare and aspirations of the masses. To avoid a similar fate, now is the time to rectify our bloated public sector and revive the moribund private economy.

It is an established fact that our expenditure on the bureaucracy far exceeds our means and has become a burden on this nation. There is no rationale for the wide gap in pay between our managers, doctors, engineers, and our high-ranking bureaucrats. For a country like Pakistan foreign loans should only be procured for investment in vital infrastructure, health, and R&D with not a penny for a salary raise. Sanity must prevail before it is too late, and we become so bankrupt that our vital nuclear deterrence may be compromised. It is the economy that sustains national security and not vice versa.

Malik Tariq Ali

Lahore

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The COVID Crisis Tsunami for the Poor – Mainstream

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13.05.2020/SGV

Viruses

Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes Covid-19 is just one of the more recent viruses in our environment, and it is here to stay [One in 3 recover, time to learn to live with virus, says govt; Deccan Herald; 09.05.2020, p.1]. It will add one more virus to the billions of viruses to which human bodies are already host.

The problem faced by humanity is not so much about Covid-19 per se, or about virus-caused disease or death, but more about their aggravating already damaged societal and economic situations nationally and internationally. The pre-lockdown situations of economic and physical violence, hunger and deprivation are due to development agendas based upon economic policy of perpetual economic growth. This economic development policy has been adopted and accepted globally, regardless of the political system, and dictates that perpetual economic (GDP) growth must be ensured at any human, environmental or ecological cost.

Media focus

National and international mainstream media is almost exclusively focused on Covid-19. They discuss and debate governments attempts to balance the dangers and risks of Covid spread on societies, against the unprecedented social and economic crises caused by social-distancing lockdowns to prevent Covid spread.

Media is also reporting the lockdown-initiated harsh reality of the misery, suffering and condemnable multiple injustices heaped upon humungous numbers of daily-wage workers, especially migrants and others in the unorganized sector because of job-loss, not being paid by employers, no food and no shelter, and no means to return to their home states. This is apart from the urban and rural poor who are equally impacted. The ground reality can no longer be concealed behind political hype.

India is in an unprecedented economic crisis concerning the manufacturing, farming, services, health, banking, finance and almost every other sector. Governments are planning and implementing measures to restore the economy, but these are directed at reverting to the pre-lockdown model, already characterized by crippling socio-economic inequality, violence, conflicts and tensions in society, miserably poor public health due to malnutrition, and rapidly deteriorating environments.

Governments are unmindful or uncomprehending that reverting to the pre-lockdown development model will drive societies towards becoming profoundly unhealthy, and perhaps towards implosion and collapse.

Pre-Covid invisibility to post-Covid destitution

Of Indias labour force in the agricultural and industrial sectors, over 80% are in the unorganized sector. They do hard, unremitting and often demeaning physical work with their hands. Labour laws, meant to prevent exploitation of labour, do not apply to them. They are exploited in every which way by their employers.

Rural people, whose work or occupation is based upon agricultural seasons, practices and requirements, migrate seasonally to towns and cities for work when they are not required in agriculture. Over decades, millions have migrated to urban areas distant from their homes, and found petty employment, living in slums often cheek-by-jowl with multi-storeyed apartments. They are the invisible poor and infra-poor construction workers, domestic workers, waste pickers, and the homeless, who have established themselves in urban life, subject to the tender mercies of the police and/or the mafia. Only a minuscule fortunate among them have secured white collar jobs in offices or blue collar jobs in MSME.

These out-of-state migrants are often targeted by migrants from within the same state because of scarce jobs or civic resources, and political parties have even come to power on the basis of belonging, creating the other. Thus, social tension is a part of every migrants daily life, compounding the miseries of slum existence and exploitative employers.

The 80% unorganized workers are the backbone of urban society, which is unhealthy by any standards. Due to the 4-hours-notice national lockdown, almost all these invisible poor have lost their jobs, salary dues to them have not been paid, and their employers have vanished. They are stranded in places far from their home, without work, money, food and shelter. Their already burey-din have turned to destitution. But as the lockdown has also affected the middle class and industrial and commercial interests, the pain and suffering of the invisible backbone of urban society has suddenly become visible to them!

About 20% of the work force have the tenuous protection of labour laws, which govern work hours, remuneration, safety and other facilities at workplace, and right of collective bargaining with employers. However, in almost all labour disputes, governments are firmly if covertly on the side of the employer, who even gets police protection. This 20% is also mostly migrant like the 80% unorganized.

Nakedness exposed

Covid is beginning to be more of a political issue than a public health issue. The political class faces the dilemma of balancing further damage to the staggering pre-lockdown economy by continuing lockdown, against handling the political fallout of Covid re-emergence by lifting lockdown to revive the economy. Focus is on the economy.

On the other hand, if people are considered relevant, some realities become apparent. The hundreds of millions of people who are walking home to escape from the daily hell of urban living and working conditions, dont give a damn for the economy, because they now have understood at least seven naked truths:

(1) The economy always took from them much more than it ever gave them. (2) The economy needs them much more than they need the economy. (3) They have been given far worse than a raw deal by the lockdown. (4) The lockdown was imposed to protect the upper economic sections of society who imported the Coronavirus. (5) Social-distancing, washing hands with soap and water, or using hand-sanitizer is farcical, a cruel joke for them. (6) Suffering and death due to hunger or exhaustion is more real than due to Covid, and (7) They have nothing to lose by going back home because, cruelly spurned by their employers, they have nothing anyway.

When lockdown was imposed, migrant workers lost no time to understand these seven truths, and their exodus exploded into national and international media. It took governments by surprise because of lack of foresight and thinking-through their executive decisions. Figuratively, their political jaws sagged open in amazement. As the negative political impact of the money-food-shelter humanitarian crisis images sunk in, the scramble in the central and state ministries of home, health, finance and food & public distribution began.

The already-hurt agriculture sector was badly wounded by the lockdown, but that did not attract governments attention like the urban situation did. A neatly-named (non-public) fund was hurriedly instituted, and governments turned to tracking Covid and scrambling to provide hospital beds and PPE for doctors, nurses and health workers. But the millions on foot across the country did not attract much of governments attention, although its scale was of epic proportions.

Volunteers from civil society groups and concerned individuals in their hundreds across the country stepped in, taking personal risk to supply essential food, etc. to workers who were trekking back hundreds of kilometres to their homes. They spent money from their own pockets, and appealed to friends and groups to help with cash and kind, working continuously for days on end, stretching the limits of their endurance. Yet, obviously nowhere nearly all trekking people could be catered to governments inertia prevailed for days.

Despite partial paralysis of decision-making, and against all odds, doctors, nurses and especially the public health workers nobly rose to the occasion at considerable personal risk and sacrifice. Much political communal finger-pointing and blame-gaming happened, as usual trying to fix who did wrong rather than what went wrong. Some political optics of banging utensils, lighting candles and showering petals happened. Indecision in policy and executive directions at top levels of central and state governments with the possible exception of Kerala resulted in condemnable but characteristic police excesses on escaping migrant workers. Notwithstanding, most district administrations handled both Covid and migrant workers situations with quiet aplomb. It might even be said that the administrations managed in spite of politicians.

Today, the unmitigated, continuing suffering of many millions of urban and rural poor remains standing at the door of the political class, which remains focused on reviving the economy rather than on peoples problems. The preferential focus of the political class stands as nakedly exposed as the suffering of the vast majority.

Economic revival, no social revival

A survey of a small sample of migrant workers indicated that 95% of respondents wanted to return home, 75% wanted to return even if they were offered work, and 63% were owed wages from before the lockdown. [You cant go back, migrant workers told in Tamil Nadu; <https://thewire.in/labour/you-cant-...>; The Wire; May 9, 2020].

Hitherto indecisive on the so-called migrant workers issue, governments have refused to allow migrant workers to return home (as in Tamil Nadu), and are amending already pro-employer labour laws to make them blatantly anti-worker (e.g., 12-hour workday, employers not bound to provide basic working conditions such as ventilation, toilets, protective equipment, etc).

Further, governments are relaxing environmental laws/rules and offering incentives to improve ease of doing business, to minimize the tough situation faced by local industrialists, and offering all possible facilities and concessions to entice industries abandoning China (as in Rajasthan). Influenced by business lobbies, Karnataka announced that it would not facilitate the travel of migrant workers back home as their labour was needed to re-start the economy, although it reversed this due to public pressure.

Thus, to revive the economy, workers have been denied the fundamental right to travel at will anywhere within the country, have lost even the little protection that labour laws provided (12-hour days, etc.), and are obliged to work for employers who spurned them. Shall we call them indentured labour or coin a more politically acceptable term?

Economic revival through labour enslavement can only lead to more injustice and worsen society already suffering due to inequity and disharmony.

Health is a political issue

The measures to re-start the economy are only making an already unhealthy society even more unhealthy, making the fading Acche-din dream even more distant. It does not need proof that holistically viewed, poor health is intimately linked with poverty, with associated hunger, malnutrition, destitution, deprivation, lack of opportunity, etc.

Successive governments have used three yardsticks to measure poverty: [Siddharta Gupta; Medicare in India at the edge of disaster; Emerging Interfaces of Social Science and Public Policy in India; Ed: K.K.Chakravarty, S.Chattopadhyay & N.P.Chaubey; Indian Academy of Social Sciences, 2017; pp.244-251]

(1) On the basis of price of food grain which supply 2,000 to 2,200 calories/person/ day, 37% of our population are poor.

(2) The Arjun Sengupta committee holds that 77% of our population cannot afford Rs.20 per person per day.

(3) The international standard of poverty of $1 per person per day ($1=Rs.55 when this was proposed) makes over 50% of our population poor.

All three yardsticks for poverty do not consider the carbohydrate-protein-fibre-mineral-micronutrient balance essential for nutrition, fuel for cooking, water for necessary intake and hygiene, cost of shelter, clothing, education, health or amusement. Further, about 50% of Indian children under 5-years age are malnourished, under-weight and anaemic. These future adults of India are from the impoverished majority of our population, and benefit nothing but nothing from our economy growing to $5-trillion.

It is clear that poverty is assessed using de-humanized parameters which are convenient for economists to play their statistical games, which are accepted by politicians and bureaucrats. All this, while surplus food grains in FCI warehouses are consumed by rodents and pests, and cost public money merely to maintain inventory, and government is reluctant to release food grains to starving/under-nourished populations.

This mindset of injustice compounded by callousness, understands the price of commodities but not the value of food or of health. It is the mindset of Indias political class which marches to the drumbeat of the corporate band, and its ideology of monetary-profit-and-economic-growth above all else.

Insofar as poverty and socio-economic inequality are concerned, over the decades since 1950, the political class is guilty of more or less but continual dereliction of sworn duty to the Constitution of India, and of neglect of its letter and spirit, to the detriment of We the People.

Healthy societyHealth is about how we live, and the quality of life within the society in which we live. Its not about the absence of disease in an individual, but about life within the family and, along with family, in the wider community. Viewed holistically, health is a multi-dimensional entity concerning every individual within a healthy society. This is beyond the narrow scope of governments health ministries.

The health sector worldwide is corporatized, with the possible exception of Cuba. It uses yardsticks of numbers of hospital beds or doctors per thousand population. Japan stands first with over 13 hospital beds against India having only 0.58. Hospitals are focussed on curing or managing disease and treating injury. They are expensive, demand cash up-front before admission, and closely linked with pharmaceutical, bio-engineering and medical insurance businesses. They are out of reach for people of the lower economic sections and in any case have little to do with health, except when viewed through the narrow perspective of absence of disease. They make little contribution to building a healthy society.

The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution of India, require the State to assure people justice, liberty and equality, and promote fraternity among them. This is precisely about creating a healthy society, which values social qualities such as fairness, freedom, security and tolerance, and ranks them above economic concerns, while providing every individual dignified labour with economic and social security.

Plans for a self-reliant India starting with a Rs.20-trillion Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package, and standing upon the five pillars of economy, infrastructure, system, demography and demand, may provide economic impetus, but need to be guided by Constitutional values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. However, the 4-L principles of land, labour, liquidity and law, would be of little avail, # If government facilitates land acquisition for industry and displaces people who lose livelihood and migrate to cities for work, # If weak labour laws are diluted to be further to be anti-labour, # If money is given to industry rather than to people who will spend it and raise market demand, and # If environmental and other laws/rules are tweaked to help industrialists who are facing tough situations.

Looking forward

The Corona pandemic has resulted in social distancing lockdown, causing very serious economic and health consequences on vast numbers of the poor. As the work-force suffers, so does the national economy. Governments are struggling to cope with the consequences, but it is now clear that the attempts are directed at restoring the earlier economic order, which is characterized by inequality, inequity and iniquity.

This is not to point at any particular government, but at the present development model of perpetual economic growth year-on-year. Quoting Prem Chandavarkar, Our development model assumes an economy that must grow whether or not we thrive, whereas we need an economy that makes us thrive whether or not it grows. [Prem Chandavarkar; The Covid Pandemic: Seven Lessons to be Learned for a Future; May 3, 2020; <https://medium.com/@premckar/the-co...>].

The present model exacerbates economic inequality, heightens social tensions and conflicts, and destroys the environment upon which all life depends. It does not need proof that the result is increasingly unhealthy human societies within which life-style diseases are by far the biggest killers of humans. Public health is a casualty of the development model. Yet, talking-heads only debate Covid-19 infection, death and vaccines, governments struggle to re-establish the same failed development model, migrant workers fall by the wayside from hunger and exhaustion, or are forced by governments to get back to work or else, and privileged people wash their hands with soap and water, and wait impatiently for lockdown to be lifted and to visit their favourite malls.

As India pursues its aim to raise GDP to $5-trillion by 2024, it can only make society more unhealthy than it already is. When philosopher J.Krishnamurti said, It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society, he spoke of the society of decades ago. Society has only sickened more since then.

We need a development model to create a healthy society which ... is much more than a community in which the causes of disease are minimised. It is one where, at the very least, human creativity is free to flourish, individuals have the liberty to be who they wish to be ... and the spirit of all life and not merely human life, prospers. [The Lancet; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00106-9/fulltext%5D.

The Corona crisis demands an alternate development model for a healthy society. Although this is already enshrined in the core principles of the Constitution of India, our leaders have little awareness or comprehension of it amidst their myopic and thoughtless quest for power or pelf. It is the duty of We the People to bring our leaders back to understanding our Constitution. Only then will the tsunami which has struck Indias poor abate, and We the People build a healthy society.

**Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere, VSM, focuses on development and strategic issues, using cross-discipline study and systems thinking. Contact: ; LL:(0821)2975187

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Coronavirus: How Young People Around the World Are Using Art to Promote Social Movements – The National Interest

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Health and government officials around the globe are slowly and ever-so-tentatively moving to relax lockdowns due to coronavirus.

In Canada, where the possibility of health-care collapse seems to have been averted (for the time being), some are beginning to ask questions other than when will the pandemic end? Instead, theyre turning towards how will we move forward?

Young people have some answers that warrant our attention. Over the past five years, through my collaborative ethnographic research with 250 young people in drama classrooms in Canada, India, Taiwan, Greece and England, I have gained remarkable insight into these young peoples experiences and assessments of the world.

I found crisis after crisis being shouldered by young people. Through their theatre-making, they documented their concerns and hope, and they rallied around common purposes. They did this despite disagreement and difference.

Beyond simply creating art for arts sake, or for school credits, many of the young people I encountered are building social movements and creative projects around a different vision for our planet. And they are calling us in. This is an unprecedented moment for intergenerational justice and we need to seize it.

Students from Prerna School in Lucknow, India, rally for the rights of girls. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

Crises are connected

I have had an up-close look at how seemingly disparate crises around the globe are deeply connected through divisive systems that dont acknowledge or respect youth concerns. I have also learned how young people are disproportionately affected by the misguided politics of a fractured world.

In England, young people were burdened by the divisive rhetoric of the Brexit campaign and its ensuing aftermath.

In India, young women were using their education to build solidarity in the face of dehumanizing gender oppression.

In Greece, young people were shouldering the weight of a decade-long economic crisis compounded by a horrifying refugee crisis.

In Taiwan, young people on the cusp of adulthood were trying to square the social pressures of traditional culture with their own ambitions in a far-from-hopeful economic landscape.

Second-year theatre students at the National University of Tainan, Taiwan, warm up with drama activities, November 2016. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

In Toronto, youth tried to understand why the rhetoric of multiculturalism seemed both true and false, and why racism persists and, in so doing, they spoke from perspectives grounded in their intersectional (white, racialized, sexual- and gender-diverse) identities.

They embraced the reality that everything in popular culture may enter a drama classroom. But they responded to current news stories like the 2016 presidential debates in the United States by saying that they had different and more pressing concerns, like mental health support and transphobia.

Hope through creative work

Todays young people are a generation that has come of age during a host of global crises. Inequality, environmental destruction, systemic oppression of many kinds weigh heavily.

I found a youth cohort who, despite many not yet having the right to vote, have well-honed political capacities, are birthing countless global hashtag movements and inspiring generations of young and old.

These marginalized youth are aware that their communities have been living with and responding to catastrophic impacts of crises of injustice and inequalities long before now.

Practising hope

How do these youth live with their awareness of global injustices and what these imply for the years ahead? We learned some disturbing things: as young people age and move further away from their primary relationships (parents, teachers, schoolmates), they feel less optimistic about their personal futures.

But in terms of hope, we learned something very recognizable to many of us now: many young people practise hope, even when they feel hopeless. They do this both in social movements they participate in and in creative work they undertake with others.

This is something we can all learn from. In Canada, we are maintaining social distancing as a shared effort. Acting together by keeping apart is how we are flattening the curve, as all the experts continue to tell us.

We know that in communities around the world, government leadership matters enormously. But citizens, social trust and collective will matter at least as much.

Young people from the Canley Youth Theatre, based in Coventry, England, rehearse their play Museum of Living Stories, based on their personal memories, June 2016. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

Polarization

In this pandemic, institutions, like universities, businesses and individual citizens have stepped up remarkably in the interests of the common good and our shared fate.

However, Jennifer Welsh, Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University, argues that the defining feature of the last decade is polarization, existing across many different liberal democracies and globally.

Along with this, the value of fairness has been deeply corroded because of growing inequality and persistent historic inequalities we have failed to address, like Indigenous sovereignty and land rights in Canada.

In the context of the rise of populist politicians and xenophobic policies globally, and also the rise of the most important progressive social movements in decades, my research has taught me that in this driven-apart, socio-economic landscape, the social value of art has never been more important.

People are making sense of the inexplicable or the feared through art, using online platforms for public learning. Art has become a point of contact, an urgent communication and a hope.

But some are still without shelter, without food, without community and without proper health care. The differences are stark.

A Grade 12 drama class in Toronto performs their play about youth mental health and trans solidarity for their school community, December 2016. (Kathleen Gallagher), Author provided

Moving forward

Arundhati Roy has imagined this pandemic as a kind of portal we are walking through: we can walk through it lightly ready to imagine another world. We can choose to be ready to fight for it.

Its time to put global youth at the centre of our responses to crises. Otherwise, young people will inherit a planet devastated by our uncoordinated efforts to act, worsening a crisis of intergenerational equity.

We should of course develop a vaccine and, in Canada, stop underfunding our public health-care system. But we must also flatten the steep curves we have tolerated for too long. For a start, we could act on wealth disparity and social inequality.

But our response to the pandemic could also illuminate new responses to fundamental problems: disrespect for the diversity of life in all its forms and lack of consideration for future generations.

Youth expression through theatre and in social movements are valuable ways to learn how youth are experiencing, processing and communicating their understandings of the profound challenges our world faces. How powerfully our post-pandemic planning could shift if we changed who is at decision-making tables and listened to youth.

Kathleen Gallagher, Distinguished Professor, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

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Coronavirus: How Young People Around the World Are Using Art to Promote Social Movements - The National Interest

COVID-19: Could Africa’s Awakening be the Silver Lining? – Nairametrics

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COVID-19 is a rude awakening for the world. It has catapulted us into a health and an economic crisis that is affecting not only the poor but also the rich. The inconvenient pandemic has laid bare for the world to see the underlying problems of the global economic paradigm. It highlights the unsustainability of the current systems and the need for change from the US with the biggest economy, to the smallest most fragile economies in Africa.

Sadly, this is not news. It was not a secret that the current economic system was not working for the majority of the planet; the dominant paradigm was simply unquestionable. However, now faced with a shared crisis on a global scale, the impact as with every other challenge will be felt more by the majority poor. And while the pandemic has been problematic for all, it comes with the very real and frightening potential for a systemic meltdown in Africa. Indeed, as that Anon WhatsApp, thats been doing the rounds says: we may be in the same storm, but we are not in the same boat.

The good news is that questions are now a fair game about the system that has left a sizable share of the global population on their knees even in good times. A system that has also been choking our planet. And respected opinion-makers around the world including Africans have indeed been calling for change.So now here we are. In response to the pandemic, many countries and international institutions have moved rapidly to adopt counter-cyclical measures to provide stimulus to the economy. The US approved two programs worth over 2.6 trillion dollars combined. International institutions are announcing programs for immediate relief and plans for additional financing that will help countries return back to scale.

READ MORE: Nigerias External Reserves plunge to $40.3 billion as devaluation concerns brew

While the wealthy countries are mobilising hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus packages, most of the worlds poor nations essentially do not have the fiscal space to do much besides hope and ask for relief. The result is that many are now calling for a moratorium on debt repayments, but this is temporary relief. The debt will still have to be paid and for many African countries, more and more, the debts are owed to the private sector. While some are calling for increased aid, others are calling for China to pay reparations to African countries. Many intellectuals of African descent have signed a public letter calling for change with a focus on the need for African governments to invest in the people, end corruption and aim for second independence.

Though these are all good ideas and will likely help, they are not enough. In essence, everyone is drawing from their usual arsenal of arguments and instruments to suggest the means to recover from this pandemic. It is a view of the epidemic as an interruption rather than as a surprise, even though gruesome, game changer. Even though we do not recognise this as the answer to the prayer we have been making on the need for transformation to deal with chronic poverty, the growing inequality, unsustainability and climate disaster, this pandemic might yet lead us towards positive economic transformation if there were such a thing. It could be the opportunity to confront our demons and perhaps shift trajectory; something we had come to believe is impossible because of our unbridled capitalist holy grail.

READ ALSO: COVID-19: Take-off of Africa Free Trade Zone AFCFTA Postponed

Our conviction is therefore that none of these well-meaning interventions is the long term solutions. Even if all the debts were magically cancelled, without changes in the underlying conditions (both global and national) our countries would likely just get into debt again soon. For example, Nigerias external debt stood at about $36 billion at the end of 2004. Negotiations with the Paris Club in 2005 yielded debt relief and with payments by the government, Nigerias external debt declined to about $3.5 billion in 2006. Today, Nigerias external debt has reached over $27.6 billion and debt service has become the biggest item in the budget, requiring over 50% of foreign earnings.

We are not arguing against aid or reparations; this is a time in which the developing world needs all the support and redress possible. However, we must view these as temporary and residual measures. They should happen, but they are not going to bring about the transformation humanity needs.It is time to break out of this illusion of a box. The problem is not only African; it is a global challenge. No amount of tinkering at the edges without a fundamental shift will solve the underlying problems. After all, Africa was being hailed as rising! Yet just one virus and we are facing a potential economic collapse in Africa and many parts of the world? And the long lines in many US cities for free meals at food banks is an indication that precarity is not limited to the developing world. We cannot and must not continue to produce a few billionaires in return for millions living on the edge. The current economic system is and has been failing humanity.

The question has often been asked what Africa may have to offer the world from her creativity, cultures and wisdom, partly because Africa has seemed less far gone, so to speak, in terms of being entrenched in global capitalism and hyperbole. Yet it has also been difficult to take Africa seriously when constantly on the backfoot patronised and infantilised in part because our leaders circle the globe with begging bowls and promises on one hand, while on the other hand, our elites are siphoning our commonwealth into private accounts overseas. But the times have become urgent, and the needs globally mutual.

READ MORE: Nigeria considers request for debt relief as debt stock climbs

For once, our underdevelopment and exclusion spell not only precarity but also opportunity. Our prevalence of and comfort with alternative and informal ways may not be simply dismissed as backwardness and fragility, but rather read as the seeds for resilience, new models, and better growth paths. Perhaps we finally have albeit in strange costume the level playing field in the realm of ideas about how to better organize our future economies.And yes, Africa is willing and able to lead in finding ideas. In fact, we are proposing a project to do just that. We are launching a project on reimagining economies around the world, starting in Africa. The project boldly calls for a real reset and invites a much more radical, imaginative exploration of new economic foundations, principles, shapes, structures and systems. The goal is to design and propose to the world new socio-economic systems that are more inclusive, sustainable, and just.

There will be no investment in what has been, no holy cows. A venture of imagination to redefine and expand the economic menu is what is called for. We will explore multiple answers and approaches, pushing to think beyond the current paradigms, to imagine a new world with novel ethos. It will require new imaginaries, new processes of engagement, new institutional configurations and methods, new eco-logics, and boundless horizons. Will the world welcome and support this potential silver lining?

For us, it comes to this: It is time to break free from our limited appetites for new thinking and imaginations. The fact is the time is never right. But there is no better time than now. We are all finally humbled to the point of vulnerability. Nobody knows any better than the other. It is therefore crucial that we seize this opportunity to seek new thinking and new ideas. The world needs everyone to contribute their ideas and innovations. We might as well get started in Africa!

Article written by Olugbenga Adesida, co-founder of The Africa Innovation Summit and co-founder of Bonako, a tech company based in Cabo Verde. and Geci Karuri-Sebina, co-founder of the Southern Africa Node of the Millennium Project and a visiting research fellow at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa

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COVID-19: Could Africa's Awakening be the Silver Lining? - Nairametrics

From Virus to Worse – The Citizen

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Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 which causes Covid-19 is just one of the more recent viruses in our environment, and it is here to stay [One in 3 recover, time to learn to live with virus, says govt; Deccan Herald; 09.05.2020, p.1]. It will add one more virus to the billions of viruses to which human bodies are already host.

The problem faced by humanity is not so much about Covid-19 per se, or about virus-caused disease or death, but more about their aggravating already damaged societal and economic situations nationally and internationally. The pre-lockdown situations of economic and physical violence, hunger and deprivation are due to development agendas based upon economic policy of perpetual economic growth. This economic development policy has been adopted and accepted globally, regardless of the political system, and dictates that perpetual economic (GDP) growth must be ensured at any human, environmental or ecological cost.

National and international media is almost entirely focused on the Covid-19 situation. They discuss and debate governments attempts to balance the dangers and risks of Covid spread on societies, against the unprecedented social and economic crises caused by social-distancing lockdowns to prevent Covid spread.

Media is also reporting the lockdown-initiated harsh reality of the misery, suffering and condemnable multiple injustices heaped upon humungous numbers of daily-wage workers, especially migrants and others in the unorganized sector because of job-loss, not being paid by employers, no food and no shelter, and no means to return to their home states. This is apart from the urban and rural poor who are equally impacted. The ground reality can no longer be concealed behind political hype.

India is in an unprecedented economic crisis concerning the manufacturing, farming, services, health, banking, finance and almost every other sector. Governments are planning and implementing measures to restore the economy, but these are directed at reverting to the pre-lockdown model, already characterized by crippling socio-economic inequality, violence, conflicts and tensions in society, miserably poor public health due to malnutrition, and rapidly deteriorating environments.

Governments are unmindful or uncomprehending that reverting to the pre-lockdown development model will drive societies towards becoming profoundly unhealthy, and perhaps towards implosion and collapse.

Of Indias labour force in the agricultural and industrial sectors, over 80% are in the unorganized sector. They do hard, unremitting and often demeaning physical work with their hands. Labour laws, meant to prevent exploitation of labour, do not apply to them. They are exploited in every which way by their employers.

Rural people, whose work or occupation is based upon agricultural seasons, practices and requirements, migrate seasonally to towns and cities for work when they are not required in agriculture. Over decades, millions have migrated to urban areas distant from their homes, and found petty employment, living in slums often cheek-by-jowl with multi-storeyed apartments. They are the invisible poor and infra-poor construction workers, domestic workers, waste pickers, and the homeless, who have established themselves in urban life, subject to the tender mercies of the police and/or the mafia. Only a minuscule fortunate among them have secured white collar jobs in offices or blue collar jobs in MSME.

These out-of-state migrants are often targeted by migrants from within the same state because of scarce jobs or civic resources, and political parties have even come to power on the basis of belonging, creating the other. Thus, social tension is a part of every migrants daily life, compounding the miseries of slum existence and exploitative employers.

The 80% unorganized workers are the backbone of urban society, which is unhealthy by any standards. Due to the 4-hours-notice national lockdown, almost all these invisible poor have lost their jobs, salary dues to them have not been paid, and their employers have vanished. They are stranded in places far from their home, without work, money, food and shelter. Their already burey-din have turned to destitution. But as the lockdown has also affected the middle class and industrial and commercial interests, the pain and suffering of the invisible backbone of urban society has suddenly become visible to them!

About 20% of the work force have the tenuous protection of labour laws, which govern work hours, remuneration, safety and other facilities at workplace, and right of collective bargaining with employers. However, in almost all labour disputes, governments are firmly if covertly on the side of the employer, who even gets police protection. This 20% is also mostly migrant like the 80% unorganized.

Covid is beginning to be more of a political issue than a public health issue. The political class faces the dilemma of balancing further damage to the staggering pre-lockdown economy by continuing lockdown, against handling the political fallout of Covid re-emergence by lifting lockdown to revive the economy. Focus is on the economy.

On the other hand, if people are considered relevant, some realities become apparent. The hundreds of millions of people who are walking home to escape from the daily hell of urban living and working conditions, dont give a damn for the economy, because they now have understood at least seven naked truths:

(1) The economy always took from them much more than it ever gave them.

(2) The economy needs them much more than they need the economy.

(3) They have been given far worse than a raw deal by the lockdown.

(4) The lockdown was imposed to protect the upper economic sections of society who imported the Coronavirus.

(5) Social-distancing, washing hands with soap and water, or using hand-sanitizer is farcical, a cruel joke for them.

(6) Suffering and death due to hunger or exhaustion is more real than due to Covid, and

(7) They have nothing to lose by going back home because, cruelly spurned by their employers, they have nothing anyway.

When lockdown was imposed, migrant workers lost no time to understand these seven truths, and their exodus exploded into national and international media. It took governments by surprise because of lack of foresight and thinking-through their executive decisions. Figuratively, their political jaws sagged open in amazement. As the negative political impact of the money-food-shelter humanitarian crisis images sunk in, the scramble in the central and state ministries of home, health, finance and food & public distribution began.

The already-hurt agriculture sector was badly wounded by the lockdown, but that did not attract governments attention like the urban situation did. A neatly-named (non-public) fund was hurriedly instituted, and governments turned to tracking Covid and scrambling to provide hospital beds and PPE for doctors, nurses and health workers.

Despite partial paralysis of decision-making, and against all odds, doctors, nurses and especially the public health workers nobly rose to the occasion at considerable personal risk and sacrifice. Much political communal finger-pointing and blame-gaming happened, as usual trying to fix who did wrong rather than what went wrong. Some political optics of banging utensils, lighting candles and showering petals happened. Indecision in policy and executive directions at top levels of central and state governments with the possible exception of Kerala resulted in condemnable but characteristic police excesses on escaping migrant workers. Notwithstanding, most district administrations handled both Covid and migrant workers situations with quiet aplomb. It might even be said that the administrations managed in spite of politicians.

Today, the unmitigated, continuing suffering of many millions of urban and rural poor remains standing at the door of the political class, which remains focused on reviving the economy rather than on peoples problems. The preferential focus of the political class stands as nakedly exposed as the suffering of the vast majority.

A survey of a small sample of migrant workers indicated that 95% of respondents wanted to return home, 75% wanted to return even if they were offered work, and 63% were owed wages from before the lockdown. Hitherto indecisive on the so-called migrant workers issue, governments have refused to allow migrant workers to return home (as in Tamil Nadu), and are amending already pro-employer labour laws to make them blatantly anti-worker (e.g., 12-hour workday, employers not bound to provide basic working conditions such as ventilation, toilets, protective equipment, etc).

Further, governments are relaxing environmental laws/rules and offering incentives to improve ease of doing business, to minimize the tough situation faced by local industrialists, and offering all possible facilities and concessions to entice industries abandoning China (as in Rajasthan). Influenced by business lobbies, Karnataka announced that it would not facilitate the travel of migrant workers back home as their labour was needed to re-start the economy, although it reversed this due to public pressure.

Thus, to revive the economy, workers have been denied the fundamental right to travel at will anywhere within the country, have lost even the little protection that labour laws provided (12-hour days, etc.), and are obliged to work for employers who spurned them. Shall we call them indentured labour or coin a more politically acceptable term?

Economic revival through labour enslavement can only lead to more injustice and worsen society already suffering due to inequity and disharmony.

The measures to re-start the economy are only making an already unhealthy society even more unhealthy, making the fading Acche-din dream even more distant. It does not need proof that holistically viewed, poor health is intimately linked with poverty, with associated hunger, malnutrition, destitution, deprivation, lack of opportunity, etc.

Successive governments have used three yardsticks to measure poverty:

(1) On the basis of price of food grain which supply 2,000 to 2,200 calories/person/ day, 37% of our population are poor.

(2) The Arjun Sengupta committee holds that 77% of our population cannot afford Rs.20 per person per day.

(3) The international standard of poverty of $1 per person per day ($1=Rs.55 when this was proposed) makes over 50% of our population poor.

All three yardsticks for poverty do not consider the carbohydrate-protein-fibre-mineral-micronutrient balance essential for nutrition, fuel for cooking, water for necessary intake and hygiene, cost of shelter, clothing, education, health or amusement. Further, about 50% of Indian children under 5-years age are malnourished, under-weight and anaemic. These future adults of India are from the impoverished majority of our population, and benefit nothing but nothing from our economy growing to $5-trillion.

It is clear that poverty is assessed using de-humanized parameters which are convenient for economists to play their statistical games, accepted by politicians and bureaucrats. All this, while surplus food grains in FCI warehouses are consumed by rodents and pests, and cost public money merely to maintain inventory, and government is reluctant to release food grains to starving/under-nourished populations.

This mindset of injustice compounded by callousness, understands the price of commodities but not the value of food or of health. It is the mindset of Indias political class which marches to the drumbeat of the corporate band, and its ideology of monetary-profit-and-economic-growth above all else.

Insofar as poverty and socio-economic inequality are concerned, over the decades since 1950, the political class is guilty of more or less but continual dereliction of sworn duty to the Constitution of India, and of neglect of its letter and spirit, to the detriment of We the People.

Health is about how we live, and the quality of life within the society in which we live. Its not about the absence of disease in an individual, but about life within the family and, along with family, in the wider community. Viewed holistically, health is a multi-dimensional entity concerning every individual within a healthy society. This is beyond the narrow scope of governments health ministries.

The health sector worldwide is corporatized, with the possible exception of Cuba. It uses yardsticks of numbers of hospital beds or doctors per thousand population. Japan stands first with over 13 hospital beds againstIndia having only 0.58. Hospitals are focussed on curing or managing disease and treating injury. They are expensive, demand cash up-front before admission, and closely linked with pharmaceutical, bio-engineering and medical insurance businesses. They are out of reach for people of the lower economic sections and in any case have little to do with health, except when viewed through the narrow perspective of absence of disease. They make little contribution to building a healthy society.

The Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution of India, require the State to assure people justice, liberty and equality, and promote fraternity among them. This is precisely about creating a healthy society, which values social qualities such as fairness, freedom, security and tolerance, and ranks them above economic concerns, while providing every individual dignified labour with economic and social security.

Plans for a self-reliant India supported by a Rs.20-trillion Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package may provide economic impetus, but cannot create a healthy society without adherence to Constitutional imperatives.

Looking forward

The Corona pandemic has resulted in social distancing lockdown, causing very serious economic and health consequences on vast numbers of the poor. As the work-force suffers, so does the national economy. Governments are struggling to cope with the consequences, but indications are that attempts are directed at restoring the earlier economic order, which is characterized by inequality, inequity and iniquity.

This is not to point at any particular government, but at the present development model of perpetual economic growth year-on-year. Quoting Prem Chandavarkar, Our development model assumes an economy that must grow whether or not we thrive, whereas we need an economy that makes us thrive whether or not it grows. [Prem Chandavarkar; The Covid Pandemic: Seven Lessons to be Learned for a Future; May 3, 2020; ].

The present model exacerbates economic inequality, heightens social tensions and conflicts, and destroys the environment upon which all life depends. It does not need proof that the result is increasingly unhealthy human societies within which life-style diseases are by far the biggest killers of humans. Public health is a casualty of the development model, yet talking-heads only debate Covid-19 infection, death and vaccine, while governments struggle to re-establish the same development model.

As India pursues its aim to raise GDP to $5-trillion by 2024, it can only make society more unhealthy than it already is. When philosopher J.Krishnamurti said, It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society, he spoke of the society of decades ago. Society has only sickened more since then.

We need a development model to create a healthy society which ... is much more than a community in which the causes of disease are minimised. It is one where, at the very least, human creativity is free to flourish, individuals have the liberty to be who they wish to be ... and the spirit of all life and not merely human life, prospers. [The Lancet; https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00106-9/fulltext%5D.

The Corona crisis demands an alternate development model for a healthy society. Although this is already enshrined in the core principles of the Constitution of India, our leaders have little awareness or comprehension of it amidst their myopic quest for power or pelf.

It is the duty of We the People to bring our leaders back to understand our Constitution.

Major General S.G.Vombatkere, VSM (Retd) focuses on development and strategy issues,using cross-discipline study and systems thinking.

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From Virus to Worse - The Citizen

Bisexual Matilda star candidly recounts childhood struggle with OCD to explain why we should all listen to trans kids – PinkNews

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In an interview with the trans charity Mermaids, the bisexual actress was asked about the move by the UK equalities minister Liz Truss to remove healthcare options for trans children. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Shorty Awards)

Mara Wilson, the former child star from Matilda, has opened up about her childhood mental health problems to show that trans kids are capable of making their own choices.

In an interview with the trans charity Mermaids, the bisexual actress and LGBT+ advocate was asked about the move by the UK equalities minister Liz Truss to remove healthcare options for transgender children.

Wilson explained her view that children should be able to make decisions about their own bodies, recalling how she was perfectly capable of advocating for herself at the age of 12.

I mean, the way that I see it, when I was 12 years old, I knew that I had a mental illness, she said. I knew that I was suffering terribly from anxiety and depression, and I read some books about obsessive compulsive disorder and immediately thought, This is it, this is what I have, and I want help for it.

So I went to my school counsellor and said, I think that I have this, I want to get treatment. And they sent me to a therapist and said, Do you want to go on medication? And I said I want to do what would help me, and I did. And I advocated for myself at 12.

I dont know if every child can do that, I but I knew at 12 and at 13 years old that that was the best move for me. I wouldve been suicidal if hadnt done that. I knew what the issue was.

She noted that its not an exact parallel because being transgender is an identity, not a mental illness, but added: I do think a lot of people know from a very young age that they are different, or that they are special, that they are affected in a certain way.

Mara Wilson acknowledged the concerns about putting children on medication, but recalled a doctor saying to her once: I wish they would just think about what helps.

And thats kind of how I feel as well, she said.

If children are able to know that this is not the body they want to be in or this is not the identity that they are I really wish people would just listen to children more in general, honestly.

The star also discussed the differences in opposition to trans rights between the UK and the US, admitting that she was baffled by British transphobia.

Personally I see a lot of it from public figures in the UK, [whereas] in the US its generally a religious thing, but its a very specific thing, its a religious thing that is tied in with a lot of conservative religious political power. And its a lot of scare tactics, she said.

She continued: I dont quite understand why I see it in the UK among prominent writers and musicians and people like that. I dont understand it and a lot of seems to be like, This is coming from knowledge and reason and rationalism, and its just like well, what about compassion? What about understanding?

Wilson concluded the interview with a message to cis people on how to be a good trans ally, stressing that it begins with the simple act of listening.

The most important thing is to listen to trans people to listen to non-binary people, to try to understand them and have compassion for them, she advised.

Even if you dont understand it right away, theres a lot of things you dont understand that you still have compassion and kindness for, and thats just the way that it is. Its not about being politically correct, its just being polite, and kind, and those are things that more people should be.

Host and Mermaids head of policy and legal, Lui Asquith, said: Interviewing Mara Wilson was a dream for me and an empowering moment for young trans and gender-diverse people in the UK suffering the dual anxiety of isolation compounded by the worry created by recent statements from Liz Truss MP.

Hearing Mara talk so honestly and with such kindness towards our families was a real moment of sunshine at a difficult time.

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Bisexual Matilda star candidly recounts childhood struggle with OCD to explain why we should all listen to trans kids - PinkNews

Chair Designs by legendary designers that transformed the world of design – Yanko Design

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Chairs can you imagine living without one? One of the first things we need the moment we set up our home is the furniture we will use to rest ourselves. Over time, the shape, form, materials, design language everything has evolved except for our primary need to rest against a surface. Im sure that even as you read this, most of you are seated on a chair! Now give that chair a long hard look and think of the years of design practice that went into making the design what it is today. Inspiring, right? The iconic chair designs showcased here have played a part in our history from reflecting the needs of the world, merging art and design to even creating practices that transformed the manufacturing ideology, everyone should pay homage to these revolutionary designs.

Chair_ONE is constructed just like a football: a number of flat planes assembled at angles to each other, creating the three-dimensional form. I think my approach was a mixture of naivety and bluntness. Given the chance to work with aluminum casting I thought that I should take it all the way. The more we worked on the models the more we learned to understand the structural logic behind what we were doing. What began as a simple sketch, a series of cardboard models, prototypes, is now a real chair. says the designer Konstantin Grcic. The German industrial designer is known for having a pared-down aesthetic with his functional designs being characterized by geometric shapes and unexpected angles.

Tejo Remy works as a product, interior, and public space designer together with Rene Veenhuizen in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Where there is abundance of materials, there is also an abundance of waste. Considering everything as material, Remy incorporates existing information, circumstances, or found goods into new situations, or simply put, repurposes the products to give them a new life. The ideology behind this collection is elegantly simple, make your own world with what you encounter like Robinson Cruso created his own paradise on his island. says Tejo.

In 1984, at a Pratt Institute laboratory in Brooklyn, Italian designer Gaetano Pesce cast nine chairs using the same mold. For each, he changed the resin formula ever so slightly. The first, jiggly as Jell-O, collapsed immediately on the floor. The second stood up, but, with one touch, toppled over. The third, fourth, fifth, and so on, grew more and more sturdy, but the eighth and ninth were so rigid that they were uncomfortable for sitting. The reason for this experimentation? To prove that the difference between art and design is merely a slight alteration in the chemical formula. This narrative has been the core of his design practice for decades! Pesce explains, A chairyou sit in it, and its comfortable. But the same chair, when you change the rigidity, it becomes a sculpture. There is no difference. An architecture critic from Italy once made a book talking about how there is no difference between a spoon and the city. The spoon is small, the city is huge, but they are all objects. Architecture is just an object with a big scale; an object that you can enter inside.

With The Flag Halyard Chair, Hans Wegner acknowledges the early modernists such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer, and proves that he too masters designs in chromium-plated steel pipes. An iconic and dramatic lounge chair, this engineered stainless steel frame comes with a seat and back made of plaited flag halyard (A halyard is a line/rope that hoists or covers a sail.) However, the story behind the design is more than just a dialogue of art history. The shape of the chairs seat was conceived during a family holiday in rhus, Denmark. The story goes that Wegner conceived this design while on the beach towards the end of the 1940s. He supposedly modeled the grid-like seat in a sand dune, presumably with some old rope that lay close to hand. The chair went into production in the 1950s and its unlikely combination of rope, painted and chrome-plated steel, sheepskin, and linen are still landmark in the world of furniture design.

The Box chair was designed by Enzo Mari in 1971 for Castelli. This self-assembly chair consisted of an injection-molded seat and a collapsible tubular metal frame that came apart to fit into a box, hence the name! Enzo Mari is considered one of the most intellectually provocative Italian designers of the late 20th century, known for products, furniture, and puzzles alike. Mari adhered strictly to rational design constructed in a way that corresponds entirely to the purpose or function. Maris commitment to rationalism stood the test of time, gaining him work with giants like Muji and Thonet at the end of the century when minimal, user-friendly design made a comeback.

Charles Eames famously said, The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests. The couple that revolutionized American furniture design, Eames have created a universal response to what everyone wants from a chair: a simple, gracious form that fits any body and every place. Its what makes the chair a classic worthy of museum collectionsand living rooms, laundromats, lobbies, and cafs. With its unmistakable character, the Eames Wire Chair DKR is not just aesthetically charming but reminds us of the emergence in the 1950s of popular culture: a movement which in terms of furniture design brought decorative elements back to the forefront. With its cool, shiny steel wire and lascivious bikini shaped padding the Wire Chair Bikini represents more than most other furniture objects the decadent pop culture of 1950s America. Speaking of the 50s, Im glad to see those red Formica tables disappear!

This stunning chair was designed by Adolf Loos in 1898 to furnish that renowned Cafe Museum in Vienna. Its timeless allure comes from the refined curves of its silhouette, obtained with the signature steam-bent beechwood that creates stunning accents at the top of the legs and in the two parallel curves that grace the open backrest. The structure of the piece has an elliptical section that gives it lightness, making the design ageless.

How High The Moon by Shiro Kuramata is made of expanded mesh, thin sheets of which have been steel-cut and extruded. The chair has no interior frame or support yet provides the outline of a chair and its transparent structure retains the shape and silhouette of a traditional upholstered armchair. Freeing from gravity was one of the key themes for Kuramata throughout his entire career, and hence expanded mesh was an ideal material for the designer the chair appears light and vulnerable yet amply strong enough for use. This chairs appearance is the result of the overlapping hashing of the mesh sheets (it really does seem to buzz in the air)

A collection from Big Easy, the steel chair designed by Ron Arad in 1988 shows that a volume, as simple form, can be translated, without compromising the design principles, through a reinterpretation of materials and production processes. The model obtained from a constructive gesture showcases the visual softness and fullness of the volumes, promising comfort. Big Easy explores the rotational molding and the use of polyethylene as a material while its design language invites you to rest irrespective of the material used, proving the dominance of the form over materials in this case.

Hans Corays Landi Chair

Developed for the 1939 Swiss National Exhibition, the Landi Chair by Hans Coray occupies an important place in the history of twentieth-century design: this classical chair by Hans Coray established the new typology of a three-dimensionally molded seat shell on a separate base. The lightweight, stackable Landi Chair is robust and weather-resistant: its 91 holes allow water to flow. Technical innovation, systematic use of materials, minimalist forms, and understated elegance are the elements that have made the Landi Chair into a classic over the years, which looks as fresh and vital as ever.

This is a brief beginning to the history of one of the most iconic products used globally the humble chair. We will continue this series to showcase more of these designs and share the knowledge of how each chair is a description of the mood of the world in their time.

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Chair Designs by legendary designers that transformed the world of design - Yanko Design

5 things to watch for in the Budget – Otago Daily Times

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Amidst a welter of commentary about how momentous this Thursday's Budget will be, how about this for a prediction? Prepare to be disappointed.

To those on the left, who hope the Government will have crafted a new, green utopia: forget it. Like the rest of us, they're still trying to work out what's hit them.

There will be plenty of nods in the direction of climate change resilience, but also plenty of new roads and fast-track resource management legislation to get the economy moving again.

To the promoters of so-called 'shovel-ready' projects, who hope $170 billion of aspiration can be jammed into maybe $5 billion to $10 billion of immediately available capital spending: forget it.

The list of possible projects is so long and the ability to fund them so inevitably limited that there will be disappointment aplenty.

To small and medium-sized business owners hoping there's more in the kitty for them: forget it. The wage subsidy scheme and the various cashflow measures to date - in particular, the almost haphazard conversion of the tax department into a bank of last resort - are probably as good as it's going to get.

HELP FOR TOURISM

The only likely exceptions to that: tourism operators and associated parts of hospitality and the events sector.

Even there, there is only so much a government can do when the reality for many is that their businesses will be either much smaller or unable to operate until international tourists return - whenever that may be.

Some of the help for these sectors will target retraining for the employees who must swiftly find a new trade.

Even trade unions, who have been closer to the emergency policy-making action than they have been for years during normal times, may not welcome Finance Minister Grant Robertson's enthusiasm for encouraging small, entrepreneurial businesses to flourish.

Disappointed, too, will be the modern monetary policy theorists who think central banks should simply fund everything that everybody wants out of thin air. It is tempting to think that's already happening, with the Reserve Bank pumping up financial market liquidity by buying government bonds at unprecedented levels.

But Robertson is no fan of that. He knows debt created today must, some day in some way, be paid back. And he values the fact that New Zealand has had its super-strong credit ratings reconfirmed in recent days. Maintaining that credibility - hard-won over the past four decades - remains important for a small, open economy.

However, Roger Douglas, who kicked off that path to credibility, will be disappointed too. Robertson delivered a curt "no" when asked last week whether he'd read the latest think-piece from the reforming Labour finance minister whose radical egalitarianism remains as chronically misunderstood as ever.

ON THE BACKBURNER

Perhaps most disappointed of all will be those who were looking forward to the progressive political investment agenda outlined in the Budget policy statement in December last year. Robertson was very clear last week: unless there are cost pressures that must be addressed, those priorities are shelved for now.

Nor will there be much, if anything, for anyone hoping for a fairer tax system. It is far too early to start raising taxes to pay for the current debt pile-up and it would be political suicide to broach the debate that must be revived about the taxation of wealth.

For taxpayers on middle incomes who are now paying the top income tax rate, there might be a skerrick of relief, but dealing to fiscal drag is something even governments with strong books resist. Now is not the time.

A UTILITARIAN SHORTLIST

Instead, this Budget is a first, inevitably imperfect attempt to get to grips with one of the biggest shocks the New Zealand economy has ever experienced, and which is not over yet.

So, rather than a utopian wishlist, how about a utilitarian shortlist of five key things to watch for in this Thursday's Budget?

1 - Budget surpluses

Firstly, will the word 'surplus' appear in the Budget documents? For all Robertson's rejection of Roger Douglas, it is an enduring Douglas legacy that New Zealand governments have both striven for and produced Budget surpluses whenever they could during the past 30 years.

In an interview last week, Robertson avoided the word, carefully defining his ambition as a "sustainable" fiscal position, with a focus more on the level of net Crown debt than whether income exceeds expenditure any time in the next decade.

That may simply be prudent. It's likely that current forecasts show Budget deficits as far as the eye can see because of the size of the economic crater made by covid-19.

However, the rhetorical ambition to return to surplus is a political as much as an economic totem. Its inclusion or exclusion will be significant in itself.

2 - Treasury forecasts

On Budget day, it will be exactly a month since the Treasury released its first set of scenarios outlining possible paths for the economy post-covid.

These were not forecasts but guesstimates based on various possible outcomes for the global and domestic economy. If anything, the scenarios given greatest credence were less apocalyptic than might have been expected. Unemployment was low, back under 5 percent, within four years and the economy bounces back strongly to be as large in 2022 as it was in 2019.

That picture will have changed in the intervening weeks, but by how much?

The important thing will be the direction rather than the extent of change. No one can accurately predict anything about the economy right now. The disruption is so great that Statistics New Zealand probably can't even be sure it's collecting all the right data at the moment.

Instead, it's the frequency of updates that matters. This week's forecasts are a way-station before the production of pre-election fiscal and economic updates in late August, assuming the election goes ahead on Sept. 19.

3 - Level 1 and the trans-Tasman travel bubble

The Australian government has so far been franker than ours about a timeline to something close to normal life, which includes the potential for open borders between Australia and New Zealand. Aussie Prime Minister Scott Morrison has talked about the bubble being in place by July. Being able to travel across the Ditch again is less significant than the powerful signal that such a relaxation will give, acting as both a fillip to confidence and as a proxy for confirmation that both countries have the virus under control.

Will our government chance its arm by nominating its own timetable, or maintain its currently more conservative stance?

4 - Articulation of a vision

Robertson talked last week about the opportunity to use covid-19 to "build back better." It should be far too early to give anything more than a verbal outline of what this means, with perhaps one or two symbolic but probably low-cost pointers.

However, the way the government talks about the role of government in this Budget is vital. If it says too little, it will be suspected of developing an agenda that it doesn't want to discuss before the election.

Equally, it must judge carefully how much and exactly what it says about these ambitions because they will be key to the themes of the election campaign. The government is already a far larger player in the economy than it was possible even to imagine two months ago.

For some, this is an opportunity to rebuild a fairer, better society and economy. For others, it threatens to march New Zealand backwards into a low productivity, state-directed future where capital is allocated politically and a generation of economic rationalism is unwound.

By the time the election rolls around, the covid-19 virus will be less the focus than the unemployment, business closures and hardship its impact will wreak. The competition of ideas for how best to get out of this mess will be intense. The Budget is the government's throat-clearing moment for that contest.

5 - How Simon Bridges reacts

The National Party leader has fallen twice at crucial hurdles - first when the initial level 4 lockdown was announced and second in reaction to the move to level 3.

The Budget is a third such hurdle.

If Simon Bridges pitches his tone wrong again this week, the chances of a reluctant but unavoidable attempt at a leadership coup will go through the roof.

- By Pattrick Smellie

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5 things to watch for in the Budget - Otago Daily Times

Gresham College: Prof. Yorick Wilks The State of AI: War,Ethics and Religion #3/3 Artificial Intelligence and Religion – stopthefud

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About this series

Will you be murdered by AI? What if AI were conscious? And will a religion based on an AI god inevitably rise?

In his second series about the state of Artificial Intelligence, Professor Yorick Wilks will examine some of the tougher questions about ethics for AI in war zones, whether (and when) we should care about AI as we do about animals, and the impact AI could have on religion. Are we getting AI right?

About this lecture

This lecture addresses the potential links between AI and religious belief, which include the question of whether an artificial superintelligence, were one to arise, would be well-disposed towards us. Religious traditions historically assume that creations are well disposed to those who made them.

The lecture also looks at the recent US cults claiming to be ready to worship such a super-intelligence, if and when it emerges, as well as other futurist discourse on Transhumanism and its roots in 18th-century rationalism.

Professor Yorick Wilks

Yorick Wilks is Visiting Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Gresham College. He is also Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield, a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, and a Senior Scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Professor Wilks is especially interested in the fields of artificial intelligence and the computer processing of language, knowledge and belief. His current research focuses on the possibility of software agents having identifiable personalities.

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Gresham College: Prof. Yorick Wilks The State of AI: War,Ethics and Religion #3/3 Artificial Intelligence and Religion - stopthefud

Telegram shuts down its cryptocurrency operation – The Verge

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After years of drama with the SEC, Telegram is calling it quits on its crypto-focused subsidiary, Telegram Open Network (TON).

Telegrams active involvement with TON is over, wrote Pavel Durov, founder and CEO, in an announcement on his channel. You may see or may have already seen sites using my name or the Telegram brand or the TON abbreviation to promote their projects. Dont trust them with your money or data.

TON was a blockchain platform designed to offer decentralized cryptocurrency to anyone with a smartphone, in a similar fashion to Facebooks Libra project (which has also faced significant scrutiny).

Last October, the SEC ordered Telegram to halt sales of its cryptocurrency (called Gram) after it failed to register an early sale of $1.7 billion in tokens prior to launching the network. The funds were raised in a series of what Telegram billed as pre-ICO offerings back in 2018, though the company ended up canceling the much-hyped ICO due (in part) to increased SEC scrutiny.

Durov spoke out against the ruling in his announcement, arguing that American courts shouldnt have the power to stop the sale of cryptocurrency beyond US borders, and he urged others to take up the decentralization fight in Telegrams stead. This battle may well be the most important battle of our generation, he wrote. We hope that you succeed where we have failed.

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Telegram shuts down its cryptocurrency operation - The Verge

The Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association in Chicago wants to be the one to regulate digital currencies – Crain’s Chicago Business

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They all support developing rules to bolster the industry's credibility and jettison its Wild West image, but there is no consensus on a path to get there, including on issues like creating a self-regulatory organization.

Chicago and New York have long battled for supremacy in financial markets. At stake now are billions of dollars in digital assets, such as bitcoin, and more participation in the industry, which has grown in popularity as the pandemic undercuts major economies and government currencies.

"Whenever everything shakes out, there will be one (regulatory organization) standing that's probably cobbled together from the three or four initiatives that are out there, but for the time being, we are going to push forward with the mindset that (Chicago's) is the one," says Matt Lisle, general counsel at Chicago-based cryptocurrency lender Drawbridge Lending and one of the informal leaders of the Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities & Exchange Commission share authority to thwart fraud and manipulation in the cryptocurrency market, but they don't have general regulatory oversight, except at CFTC-regulated exchanges. CFTC Commissioner Brian Quintenz has encouraged the industry to develop a self-regulatory organization, or SRO-like entity, similar to the Chicago-based National Futures Association, to fill that gap. That would bring more protections for consumers, he says. "I don't think it's a prerequisite to establishing market integrity, but it helps expedite it," Quintenz says.

MORE THAN A FAD

Getting everyone on the same page won't be easy. There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies, and they are decentralized by definition. The distributed ledger technology that underpins most of them hinges on an open international network of computers that collectively track their value.

Cryptocurrencies are turning out to be more than the fad some believe them to be. The pandemic has given new life to the most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, which more than doubled in value so far this year. Trading in bitcoin futures contracts at Chicago exchange giant CME Group has also surged, with average daily volumes up 40-plus percent over last year, through May 6.

With its legacy of creating new trading markets, Chicago became a hub for the industry in recent years. While it had setbacks, with some operations shutting down, new ventures have sprung up, including Bitnomial. That cryptocurrency exchange, led by founder and CEO Luke Hoersten, won regulatory approval this year. Accelerator DeFi Alliance also launched this year, with backing from DRW Trading.

DRW's Cumberland cryptocurrency unit supports New York's Association for Digital Assets but is working with multiple groups on a regulatory ecosystem. Cumberland's director of strategy, Brian Melville, says: "We believe having clear, sensible rules is an important and necessary step in the development of this emerging asset class," he says in an emailed statement. "We expect that some associations may merge as the discrete issues they are addressing start to converge."

The Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association effort grew out of a Chicago event last year sponsored by Fintank, a local fintech booster. With a plug there from then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Drawbridge's Lisle joined with K&L Gates attorney Cliff Histed, a former CFTC lawyer, and Gabriella Kusz, a former World Bank executive who has consulted with SROs, to spearhead the Chicago group.

As part of a larger, 16-member committee, they crafted a cryptocurrency industry code of conduct over the past couple of months and circulated it to a broader group of about 40. In developing the code, Lisle says they cribbed from the foreign exchange market. A distinguishing feature of their approach is a related arbitration system that will allow market participants to resolve disputes before a panel of their member peers. "This new group wants to create an SRO with teeth," Histed says.

To lure members, the associations will have to strike a balance between serving the industry's needs and enforcing the rules. Self-regulatory regimes suffer when member conflicts of interest go unchecked.

Kusz emphasizes that the Chicago group is taking a grassroots approach and soliciting input from a wide array of market participants. The New York organizations have cultivated support from a narrower range of interests.

The Virtual Commodity Association was launched by cryptocurrency exchange Gemini Trust, which appointed one of its top executives, Yusuf Hussain, as the association's president. VCA agrees with the need for industry self-regulation and is seeking SRO status, he says. "When regulation is done right it can pave the way to healthy and sustainable markets," Hussain testified before the CFTC technology advisory committee in February. "Regulation is the pathway to building trust and broader market adoption."

The Association for Digital Assets, which also testified before the CFTC committee, is backed by a handful of trading firms and other market participants, such as Cumberland and Hudson River Trading. It doesn't necessarily believe that a self-regulatory organization is necessary and doesn't want to disrupt the market's unique non-institutional aspect, says Brad Vopni, a founding board member of that association and a top Hudson River executive. "It's not a perfectly clear path as to what the optimal outcome is," he says in an interview. For now, he expects the associations will be both collaborators and competitors.

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The Global Digital Asset & Cryptocurrency Association in Chicago wants to be the one to regulate digital currencies - Crain's Chicago Business

This Minor Cryptocurrency Is On Track To Smash Bitcoin In 2020 – Forbes

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Bitcoin has outperformed most other assets so far this year and is on course to be one of the best bets of 2020.

The bitcoin price, after plummeting in March amid a wider coronavirus-induced sell-off, is up around 30% so far this year.

However, one minor cryptocurrency has almost doubled in price since Januarywith many expecting it to climb yet further.

Bitcoin has increased its domination of the cryptocurrency market in recent months though some ... [+] smaller cryptocurrencies are still making massive gains--ahead of even the bitcoin price rally.

Tezos, trading as XTZ, has risen by 85% since the beginning of the year, adding to gains made last year and giving tezos a market capitalization of almost $1.8 billion.

At the beginning of the year, tezos was the 15th most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to CoinMarketCap data, but has now broken into the top tenand could move quickly past some rivals if its run continues.

"Tezos seems to be one of the most popular platforms for new projects to build on at the moment," said Mati Greenspan, the founder of market analysis firm Quantum Economics, who holds some tezos.

"Several projects that I'm currently advising are using it. As well, the tokenomics are structured in a way that a lot of the incoming supply are diverted to staking and taken off the market."

Tezos, which styles itself as a "self-amending cryptographic ledger" and uses the so-called proof-of-stake consensus model, has emerged as a favourite blockchain and cryptocurrency for tokenized real-estate and security tokens.

Since bitcoin's closely-watched supply squeeze this week, some have suggested those that maintain the bitcoin network, known as miners, might switch their computing power to other cryptocurrenciespotentially giving them a boost.

However, tezos, which uses proof-of-stake instead of bitcoin's proof-of-work, cannot be mined like bitcoin.

Proof-of-stake blockchains are generally thought to be more scalable and less resource-intensive as they don't require miners to solve complex mathematical problems in order to create the next bloc.

They also incentivize tokenholder participation in network security.

Tezos holders, if their funds are stored in certain wallets, can "stake" their XTZ and receive additional tokens as a reward for creating and verifying new blocks in the chain.

The tezos price is up some 40% over the last 12 months, outpacing bitcoin's rally.

"Tezos is not a proof-of-work based coin, so it can't be mined," said Joe DiPasquale, chief executive of hedge fund manager BitBull Capital.

"However, it is one of the more promising projects to come out of the initial coin offering-era, which gives it an edge in times such as these, when the bitcoin price appreciates and lifts the market for a select-few, quality projects."

Tezos has benefited from various platforms supporting the ability to "stake" tezos tokens over recent months, according to DiPasquale, who pointed to the U.S. division of major bitcoin and crypto exchange Binance, "which is also a positive driver for price."

The tezos rally, which began in November last year, has also been pushed on by major partnerships with the financial world and the so-called Tezos Foundations Faucet, that awards users up to 0.01 XTZ every 12 hours.

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This Minor Cryptocurrency Is On Track To Smash Bitcoin In 2020 - Forbes

Bitcoin investors are bracing for a key technical event here’s what you need to know – CNBC

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A visual representation of the digital cryptocurrency bitcoin.

Yu Chun Christopher Wong| S3studio | Getty Images

Bitcoin faces a key technical event Monday known as the "halving." Due to take place later in the day, industry insiders are debating what effect it might have on the cryptocurrency market.

So what is the halving? You can think of it as an update to the underlying network that logs all bitcoin transactions. There are so-called "miners" on this network with specialized computing rigs competing to solve complex math problems to validate bitcoin transactions. Whoever wins that race gets rewarded in bitcoin.

On Monday, the amount of bitcoins rewarded to those miners is set to get cut in half. This is something that takes place roughly every four years to keep a lid on inflation. The current reward stands at 12.5 bitcoins, or BTC, so that will now be reduced to 6.25 BTC.

Unlike fiat currencies like the dollar, there is no central bank that manages the supply of bitcoin or its inflation rate. Instead, this is maintained thanks to a rule written into bitcoin's code by pseudonymous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.

The total number of bitcoins that will ever be mined is capped at 21 million. Rewards to bitcoin miners keep halving until they reach zero. Bitcoin bulls say that this scarcity is part of what underpins the cryptocurrency's value and make it a potential "hedge" against currencies that are vulnerable to devaluation in times of economic crisis.

"With its finite and scheduled supply and decentralized architecture, BTC, in particular, offers the certainty needed in times like these, and will likely become a new safe-haven asset class," cryptocurrency lending start-up Nexo wrote in a note last week.

Investors are likely to closely watch the reaction of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices to the halving event later in the day. Some believe the event has been mostly priced into markets already, but there are others who think it could boost prices.

The past two halvings led to opposite short-term price movements, according to British bitcoin exchange CoinCorner. Bitcoin climbed 7% one month on from the first halving event in 2012, but slipped 10% a month after the second one in 2016. However, the price rose 944% six months on from the 2012 halving and 38% in the same period in 2016.

"While many anticipate bullish movements post-halving, we believe the supply shock that comes immediately after the halving event should have limited impact on price in the short term," Lennard Neo, head of research at Singapore-based bitcoin index fund provider Stack, said in a note Thursday. "As the block reward for miners decreases, there will be a time lag as miners (supply side) reposition towards market equilibrium."

"We anticipate that it could take 6-9 months before this equilibrium is found and Bitcoin realises halving-induced price appreciation. That said, further turmoil in the broader economies could accelerate its upward trajectory."

But there are also fears that the 2020 halving will also have an impact on miners' earnings, as they'll need more competitive mining gear to win bitcoin rewards.

"Miners currently need to produce more work to get the same reward," said Ed Hindi, CIO at Cayman Islands-based cryptocurrency hedge fund Tyr Capital. "Post halving their expected returns will be cut in half."

Bitcoin has risen more than 20% since the start of the year. The virtual currency, known for its volatility, suffered at sharp drop over the weekend. It briefly touched $10,000 on Friday but has since declined to around $8,800 as of Monday morning.

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Bitcoin investors are bracing for a key technical event here's what you need to know - CNBC

Explainer: Understanding cryptocurrency trading in the region – Gulf Business News

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Gulf Business

Saturday 16 May 2020

Can you explain how crypto-trading works?Trading crypto assets is similar to trading traditional financial products and asset classes in capital markets at present. Crypto assets (depending on the exchange) are traded in pairs either with at currency [which represents any currency that is issued by a government of any country] to the specied crypto asset i.e. BTC [bitcoin] / USD or crypto to crypto i.e. BTC/ ETH [ethereum].

There remains a lack of clarity about how the cryptocurrency market operates. Is that changing?The FSRA in the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has introduced a transparent, bespoke digital assets regulatory framework to regulate the trading of digital assets which includes virtual assets, at tokens, digital securities, and the use of derivatives within the framework.

The regulatory framework identies each assetclass with unique characteristics for transparency. It also provides a robust approach from a compliance, market surveillance and market infrastructure perspective. ADGM is the rst jurisdiction in the world to take this unique approach and its exciting to be a part of the UAEs digital asset sector. The regulation should help to shape the international digital asset ecosystem and encourage institutional participation in virtual assets as an alternative asset class around the world.

Is the regulatory framework in place regionally to support the sector?The digital asset framework being implemented in the ADGM represents a clear and transparent approach with a robust regulatory framework as implemented by the FSRA. Jurisdictions such as Switzerland, Singapore and Japan have taken a progressive approach to developing regulatory frameworks to govern digital assets in equivalency.

The Covid-19 crisis has disrupted economies. How has this affected SMEs like DEX?The current situation will undoubtedly impact sectors differently; for some it has been crippling, and capital markets have reected the market sentiment. Fortunately, weve have been able to sustain and continue moving forward accordingly.

Looking ahead, what are your plans for DEX? Do you plan to expand operations?DEX has received in-principle approval in 2019 and our current focus is to work towards receiving full approval to serve the digital asset markets as a regulated entity. This would allow us to provide a platform for both retail and institutional players to participate in a highly regulated nancial ecosystem.

Lastly, what is your long-term outlook for the crypto-trading business in the region?Abu Dhabi is becoming a global hub for digital assets with a robust regulatory framework. This should give market participants condence in this asset class and it also broadens the global reach to provide a progressive ecosystem therein.

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Explainer: Understanding cryptocurrency trading in the region - Gulf Business News

How Investors Are Presented With Bitcoin: ‘A New Decentralized Monetary Asset, Akin to Gold’ – Bitcoin News

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Bitcoin (BTC) is a compelling investment case for patient, long-term investors willing to spend the time to understand the top cryptocurrency, a new paper by Paradigm co-founder managing partner Matt Huang notes.

The crypto entrepreneur places BTC besides gold, as a go-to store of value, amid unprecedented stimulus spending by governments during the Covid-19 crisis.

Bitcoin is likely to earn a place alongside gold as a sensible part of many investment portfolios, Huang says in a paper aimed at reaching out to conventional investors, Bitcoin for the open-minded skeptic.

It combines the scarce, money-like nature of gold with the digital transferability of modern currency, he added. At the peak of the virtual currencys adoption curve, central banks may come to view bitcoin as a complement to their existing gold holdings.

Huangs paper is not so much premised on novel insights as it is about mapping a future out of BTCs intrinsic features.

Beyond comparing favorably to some cryptocurrencies for its classic money features such as scarcity (at 21 million coins), portability, and broad accessibility, bitcoin intrinsically improves on traditional assets. Its digital format, programmability, universality, and decentralization are a source of alternative appeal.

Decentralization and immunity to censorship afford BTC holders a special kind of confidence: that bitcoin cannot be devalued by arbitrary monetary policy decisions, and that they will always be able to hold and transfer their bitcoin freely, Huang writes.

This becomes especially important at a time when the markets are unusually exposed to politics, not just benign government interventions but also crisis-related protectionism and bilateral hostilities.

A recurring objection to BTC as an asset class is that it is a bubble but Huang turns the same criticism around in favor of the crypto. Citing Nobel laureate Robert Shiller, he notes that BTC is in good company as gold is also a bubble, being an asset class of no immediate utility but rather valuable for popular conviction about a future value that occasionally pushes the prices up.

Bitcoin bubbles of note, 2011, 2013, 2013-15, and 2017 began with high-conviction investors buying when things were quiet on the front, followed by media attention, speculation, further attention, and investor interest.

Although painful for those involved, each bubble leads to broader awareness and motivates bitcoins underlying adoption, gradually expanding the base of long-term holders who believe in bitcoins potential as a future store of value, Huang explains.

Through successive bubbles, bitcoin reaches greater levels of scale in users, transaction volumes, network security, and other fundamental metrics, he argues.

Bitcoins relative ease of access through in-built financial inclusion mechanisms will be useful in growing its market size as people with eroding currencies are more likely to get the digital asset than they are to get gold or other valuables like art or property.

Political considerations may also work in the cryptocurrencys favor. If foreign governments (some of whom already bristle at their dependence on US dollar forex reserves) begin to adopt bitcoin as a complement to existing gold holdings, the market size for bitcoin could expand significantly, Huang adds without committing to a precise estimate.

Huang contrasts the general optimism of his paper with BTC risks such as volatility and regulation. Volatility, however, aids adoption and may terminate when broad acceptance lead to stability, while regulation can be mitigated by bitcoins decentralized nature.

What do you think about Bitcoins comparisons to gold? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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How Investors Are Presented With Bitcoin: 'A New Decentralized Monetary Asset, Akin to Gold' - Bitcoin News

FATF: How Will the Guidelines Affect Canadas Crypto Industry? – Finance Magnates

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As of June 2020, it will have been one year since the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published Recommendation 16; it will also be the deadline for when countries should have entered the process of making these guidelines into laws.

The Most Diverse Audience to Date at FMLS 2020 Where Finance Meets Innovation

However, each country will have its own iteration of what those laws will look like; as such, the respective cryptocurrency industries in each of the countries that makes the decision to comply with the FATF guidelines will have its own unique set of regulations.

Recently, Finance Magnates sat down with Elsa Madrolle, General Manager of blockchain security company CoolBitXs International department, to speak about the effects of the possible effects of implementing the guidelinesspecifically, in Canada.

In many ways, Canada has sort of flown under the radar when it comes to the crypto world. While countries across Asia and Europe, and certain parts of the United States, have earned recognition as cryptocurrency hubs, most people in the cryptosphere primarily associate Canada with the QuadrigaCX scandal that came to light in early 2019.

However, the quiet North American country does have a considerable cryptocurrency industry: for example, the Canada Energy Regulator reported in February of this year that crypto-currency mining is booming in Canada.

How will the FATF guidelinesand the changes in AML laws that they will bringaffect the cryptocurrency industry in Canada and beyond?

This is an excerpt. To hear Finance Magnates full interview with CoolBitXs Elsa Madrolle, visit us on SoundCloud or Youtube. Special thanks to Elsa and to the CoolBitX team.

Elsa explained that her company, CoolBitX, has had its eye on Canada for quite some time; now that the FATF deadline is imminent, the company is hoping to become a go-to solution for the countrys crypto exchanges.

Essentially, CoolBitX is a blockchain security company, Elsa explained. Our mission is to grow mainstream and institutional adoption of the asset class. In order to do that, weve got two main lines of business: the first is a hardware, credit [card]-sized wallet that people can use to hold their cryptocurrency in, called the CoolWalletS.

The other line of business is more targeted toward institutions, Elsa continued. Its an investment sharing platform that we call Sygna Bridge, that allows exchanges to start communicating the data required by regulators. She added that this is particularly relevant in the current moment, as were seeing new laws across the world that govern crypto starting to be implemented.

Specifically, Sygna Bridge was built to address the Financial Action Task Force guidelines that were published last June in Recommendation 16, which recommend legislation that will require cryptocurrency exchanges to adhere to the Travel Rule, which states that inter-exchange transactions must include personal identity data about the sender.

CoolBitX is working on developing relationships with cryptocurrency exchanges around the world that may be interested in adopting Sygna Bridge as a compliance solution to get in line with the FATFs recommendations.

And theres one place that Elsa pointed to in particular: Canada is very interesting to us, Elsa said.

We have Canadian clients and targets for both lines of business, she continued. The CoolWallets been around for a while; this year is really the Sygna Bridge year, [and were] very interested in moving to North America.

But why Canada, say, before the United States? The US market has its own idiosyncrasies, Elsa said. However, [its] less onerous from a regulatory standpoint for Canadian firms to comply with regulation than for US firms to comply with US regulation, so its a good place for us to start.

There has already been some progress on the regulatory front in Canada ahead of the FATFs deadline: FinTRAC announced an enhanced AML regime in March that requires cryptocurrency exchanges to be considered henceforth as money service businesses (MSB).

That now requires registration as an SMBand thats not just any Canadian firm, Elsa explained; it also includes any firm globally that has Canadian clients. These firms will have to register as FMSBs (foreign money service businesses).

This effectively means that securities law applies, she continued; in other words, the Travel Rule isnt just a compliance recomme

ndation for Canada any longerits the law.

But it may be some time before FATFs recommendations are signed into law elsewhere in the world. FATF is a supranational organization that has countries [as] members; therefore, its audience is regulators, Elsa explained.

Therefore, the timeline that the FATF originally sent out for when countries should be compliant with its guidelines was for the regulators; Recommendation 16 set June of 2020 as an ostensible deadline for regulatory adoption.

On a practical level, this means that regulators have until June of this year to demonstrate the fact that if they want to remain a part of the club, that they are issuing regulations.

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Thats why FinTRAC went ahead with the crypto exchanges-as-MSBs law earlier this year: the Canadian government has to issue regulation ahead of that June deadline, Elsa said.

However, this doesnt mean that exchanges need to be compliant by June 1st, she continued. Instead, FATF is primarily concerned about regulatory actions: it wants to see that countries have complied with the timelines that they were suggesting.

Additionally, these werent necessarily hard timelines, because they will meet again to decide whether the timeline sticks, or whether that timeline could be moved back, Elsa explained.

However, Elsa doesnt believe that FATF is likely to kick the can down the road any furtherin other words, the original deadline is likely to stick.

I think FATF was very active in actually speaking to industries, speaking to regulators, getting feedback throughout the course of the year to make sure that the technology might be available, and that it wasnt too onerous for firms to start to comply.

When the FATF guidelines were released last June, there was quite a bit of a stir around the possible effects that enforcing the travel rule on cryptocurrency exchanges could have on the ways that exchanges operateand thereby, cryptocurrency markets.

How could the adoption of the FATF guidelines onto cryptocurrency exchanges in Canada and beyond affect cryptocurrency markets?

What were dealing with here are really institutions, or exchanges that should be deemed institutions, Elsa said. Youre not covering non-custodial wallets, which is probably where the majority of trading actually happens: it doesnt happen on an exchange, it largely happens on OTC [mediums] and between large individual [traders] transacting with each other.

Therefore, Elsa any regulation that only applies to transactions sent to and from cryptocurrency exchanges likely doesnt have a major impact on cryptocurrency markets, as most cryptocurrency trading volume arguably happens outside of cryptocurrency exchanges.

The guidelines dont capture all of that, she said, so, I dont think its going to hinder the growth [of cryptocurrency usage] specifically, because the part that it does capture was already pretty compliantthe large exchanges tend to already require advanced KYC and AML [checks], et cetera.

Therefore, in spite of the fact that the FATF guidelines received negative press at the beginning, Elsa doesnt believe that there will be a huge change in the way that people transact, or in peoples appetite for coming onboard.

Elsa also argued that theres one area in particular where adoption of the FATFs guidelines could result in greater usage and adoption of cryptocurrencies: institutional investors.

Essentially, the enhanced KYC and AML standards that the guidelines would support could potentially make it a more attractive environment for institutions to start considering the asset class.

This is partially because custody is a major issue, and regulation does start to cover custody, Elsa said. Once you start addressing the concerns that institutions may have, you stand more of a chance for longer-term, broader adoption.

By comparison, if institutional flows start to come into the asset class, those would be much larger than retail flows, she continued.

However, the fact remains that while more institutional traders may foray onto cryptocurrency exchanges for the first time once the FATF guidelines are implemented, the majority of cryptocurrency trading will still probably take place on OTC trading desks.

In other words, [] the entities that are being asked to comply probably were not the ones that FATF should have been worried about, Elsa said.

This is problematic for several reasons. In addition to the fact that implementing the guidelines will take time and money, and may sink some businesses.

This is particularly true for small businesses in countries that will design laws that will stringently apply the FATFs guidelines, as opposed to those who may leave a bit more flexibility in the ways that the guidelines are implemented. This is also true in countries that already have onerous regulations in place for cryptocurrency exchanges.

Each country has quite a bit of wiggle room to decide how they are going to implement [the FATFs] guidelines, Elsa explained, ranging from the very relaxed to the very stringent.

For example stating that everybody who deals in crypto is going to be an MSB, as Canada has done, is a pretty stringent application of that guideline.

However, that being said, to be an MSB in Canada is much easier than to be an MSB in a country like the United Statesso, you have to define what being an MSB is by jurisdiction, she said.

In any case, though, Elsa believes that the guidelinesand their implementationis [only] a first step.

This is just warming the industry upthere are further regulatory changes that are going to be imposed.

This is an excerpt. To hear Finance Magnates full interview with CoolBitXs Elsa Madrolle, visit us on SoundCloud or Youtube. Special thanks to Elsa and to the CoolBitX team.

Original post:

FATF: How Will the Guidelines Affect Canadas Crypto Industry? - Finance Magnates

Thailand Sticks by its Cryptocurrency Commitment – The Phuket News

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The world is facing a great deal of uncertainty in the light of the coronavirus pandemic. But against that background, Thailand is continuing to show its support for cryptocurrencies.

As the virus was continuing its spread across the globe in early March, the country saw the full launch of Huobi. The exchange gives full fiat access to currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Huobi Token. It received its Digital Assets Licence in 2019. More recently, it received full clearance to operate from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is fully in line with the countrys commitment to cryptocurrencies in general. In fact, its one of relatively few countries in the world in which they have been officially recognized. The reason for this interest is simple. The authorities believe that cryptocurrency businesses may contribute greatly to the economy by offering future employment opportunities.

However, despite the launch, many people are advising caution. Already volatile, cryptocurrencies have been seen to experience even greater shifts in value against the backdrop of increased global uncertainty. As the biggest single cryptocurrency, its logical that Bitcoin is the one whose fortunes are being most closely followed. And the double-digit falls between February and March mean this scrutiny has intensified. Arguably, one of the founding purposes of Bitcoin was that it would be a safe haven in times of economic uncertainty. But in the current circumstances, some observers are expressing doubts that this is the case.

That said, cryptocurrencies are available to trade on a 24/7 basis. This means that, unlike traditional markets, they are arguably less exposed to volatility over the weekend. The same can be said of anyone investing or trading in them. Some platforms have begun to allow for market trading at the weekend on shares indices in addition to forex and cryptocurrency markets. This proves the importance of being able to make decisions and take actions on the spot when trading. At this time, all these markets seem to be in a state of constant flux. One outcome of that could be that the tendency for trading to be concentrated during the working week from Monday to Friday will slacken. It is therefore significant that cryptocurrencies have always been available to trade in this way.

Indeed, the Thai authorities seem to be sticking by their commitment to cryptocurrencies. It is believed that they are planning to make several changes to the laws governing the way they are traded. This move was first discussed last year and comes in the wake of just five companies applying for licences and authorization to trade. That will have been a source of great disappointment to the financial authorities. What these changes will be is not known. It is equally hard to guess whether national and global economic conditions will also have an effect on them.

But it is certain that, as the world emerges from the restrictions forced upon it in the early months of 2020, there will be a great deal of economic ground to make up. Whether Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, will have a valuable role to play in the process, only time will tell.

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Thailand Sticks by its Cryptocurrency Commitment - The Phuket News