April 7, 2024

BEST CHILLSTEP COMPILATION 2024 Awesome Chill Music Special Coffeeshop Selection [Seven Beats]

🎶 Tracklist & timing:

01. 00:00 Emiliano Secchi - Memory Fragments
02. 03:26 Ecepta - Drowning
03. 06:59 100 Day Delay - Atlas [Azaleh Remix]
04. 11:18 ETSU - Laniakea
05. 16:00 Kori - All This Time
06. 19:41 Keysprod - Valhalla
07. 22:52 Suerre - Helpless
08. 26:48 Bloom - Cycle
09. 30:59 Many Miles feat. Wandr - Please Come Home
10. 35:03 Logic23 - The Edge
11. 38:40 VNYRD - Darker Than Black
12. 41:54 Zenstep - Vision
13. 47:44 Junemix - Feel There Are You
14. 50:36 Atlantis Reborn - Desire
15. 54:19 Solfvde - Embrace
16. 56:50 Melldu - Without You
17. 01:00:46 Great Skies - Shadows & Waves
18. 01:04:49 Bloom - Immersion
19. 01:08:34 BK Art - Screen Behind Darkness
20. 01:13:20 Bucky - Crimson Wastes
21. 01:16:28 Orbys - Deflect
22. 01:18:45 Kyak - Pain Tolerance
23. 01:22:11 Blut Own - Anciennes
24. 01:26:29 Brimstone - Penance
25. 01:31:11 Oscuro & Elvya - In The End
26. 01:38:01 Aether - Eidolon
27. 01:41:20 Alchemorph - Mysticism
28. 01:45:51 Day 100 Delay - Raise Your Wings

Seven Beats /Haris Bajramović
Visual Designer | Music Curator

April 7, 2024

Happy goat.....

https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1672355880765906949

April 7, 2024

Why US department stores have most to fear as credit card debt sours

Investors should take a hard look at the core retail business and reset their expectations accordingly

https://www.ft.com/content/2cf2b3bd-396f-48a6-93b8-069a4fbe78b4

https://archive.is/iaK77


Credit card delinquencies are rising in the US. There is a proposed cap on how much card issuers can charge for late payments. But it is department stores, rather than lenders, that may have most to lose as the credit cycle sours. The biggest of these — Macy’s, Nordstrom and Kohl’s — do not own their credit card portfolios. But all three generate surprisingly big chunks of their operating income from profit-sharing agreements with their partner banks. For years, the income stream has helped prop up a retail business model that is now well into its third decade of sustained decline. This lifeline is at risk — yet all three stocks are trading at or above their three-year averages on a forward earnings basis. Constant takeover interest in the sector helps.

Investors should take a hard look at the core retail business and reset their expectations accordingly. US department stores offer all kinds of perks to get customers to sign up for their branded credit cards at the register. Store cards, with their high interest charges and late fees, turn out to be far more lucrative than running a brick-and-mortar store. Credit cards accounted for less than 5 per cent of total sales at the three companies in 2022. But they made up 87 per cent of Nordstrom’s total operating income in 2022 and 55 per cent of Macy’s, according to Citigroup. At Kohl’s, they generated 381 per cent of total operating income, meaning without credit cards, the company would have made an operating loss.


Late fees are a big money spinner. These can be as high as $30 per payment at the moment. But a new rule passed last month could cap them at $8. Analysts at Bank of America think late fees represent between 14 per cent and 30 per cent of the companies’ credit card revenue. A cap on fees could result in a 29 to 68 per cent drop in earnings per share at Kohl’s this year, and under half that at Nordstrom and Macy’s.

Rising delinquencies as well as faltering retail sales growth will add to the pressure. Kohl’s suggested last month that it could take a $250mn to $300mn hit to its annual credit card revenue as a result of the late fee cap. The retailer said there were levers it could pull to offset this, such as growing its co-branded credit card business. Yet a struggling retail sector overly dependent on these cards will unlikely find the answer by opting for more credit business.

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April 7, 2024

Washington Says It Warned, Not Asked, Iran Against Attacks On U.S. Troops

https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-us-warning-israel-response/32893647.html



The United States has warned Iran against attacking its troops and bases in the Middle East as Tehran plans its response to a suspected Israeli strike that killed seven military men on April 1. A deputy to the Iranian president's chief of staff said on April 5 that Iran had told Washington in a written message to "stay away" from Israel or risk getting "hurt." "In response, [the] U.S. asked Iran not to target American facilities," Mohammad Jamshidi wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

https://twitter.com/MhmmdJamshidi/status/1776238843710058907
Responding to a request from RFE/RL for comment, a U.S. State Department spokesperson disputed Jamshidi's claim. "We did not 'ask,'" the spokesperson said in written comments. "We responded by warning Iran not to use this as a pretext to attack U.S. personnel and facilities."

A building that Iran says housed the consular section of its embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus was destroyed in suspected Israeli air strikes on April 1. Seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), including two generals, were among 12 people killed. Israel, as per its usual policy, has not commented on the strike.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pledged retaliation after the attack, vowing that Israel would be "punished by the hands of our courageous men." The IRGC's chief commander, Major General Hossein Salami, reiterated the threat on April 5, and a top military commander on April 6 again renewed the promise.

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Netanyahu is drawing the US into war with Iran to save himself by provoking retaliation from them.

April 6, 2024

Benga & Coki - Night (2007) UK Dubstep

Label: Tempa – TEMPA 030
Format: Vinyl, 12"
Country: UK
Released: 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Dubstep

April 6, 2024

Noted Tesla bear says Musk's EV maker could 'go bust' and stock is worth $14

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/03/tesla-bear-says-elon-musks-ev-maker-will-go-bust-stock-worth-14.html




Tesla could “go bust” while its stock could fall to $14, Per Lekander, a hedge fund manager who has been shorting Elon Musk’s electric car maker since 2020, told CNBC on Wednesday. His comments come after Tesla reported 386,810 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter of the year, significantly below even the lowest market estimates. “This was really the beginning of the end of the Tesla bubble, which probably, arguably was the biggest stock market bubble in modern history,” Lekander, managing partner at investment management firm Clean Energy Transition, said on “Squawk Box Europe.” “I actually think the company could go bust.”

Lekander was a former portfolio manager at investment firm Lansdowne Partners who successfully called a 2018 rally in carbon prices. Since 2020, Clean Energy Transition has been short Tesla’s stock, meaning Lekander’s firm will profit if the automaker’s shares fall. In a March 2021 interview with CNBC, Lekander called for Tesla’s stock to go down. At the time of the interview, Tesla’s shares closed at $233.94. On Tuesday, the stock closed at $166.63. But Lekander also called for a comeback of the traditional automakers, singling out Volkswagen. Shares of Volkswagen have fallen around 53% since that call, though they rallied at the start of this year.

Lekander has taken his bearish Tesla call further, suggesting the stock could fall to $14 per share. He said his call is based on an estimate that the company’s full-year earnings per share this year would be $1.40. Lekander contends that Tesla is a “no growth” stock and should be valued on 10 times forward earnings, versus around 58 times forward earnings currently. Forward earnings are an important metric used by traders to gauge the value of a stock. If Tesla’s stock hit $14, that would represent around 91% downside from Tuesday’s close. Tesla’s shares have already fallen more than 30% this year.

“I think however Tesla cannot be at $14. If it falls under a certain level because of everything that’s been going on, it’s going to go bust.” Lekander gave a number of reasons for his negative outlook. He said Tesla’s business model has been based on strong revenue growth, vertical integration and direct-to-consumer sales. Vertical integration broadly refers to when one company internally handles many parts of a process from the manufacturing of the car to the software. This model is “brilliant” when a company grows, but goes in “reverse” when sales fall, Lekander said.

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April 5, 2024

Far-Right Extremist Accounts Surging on Mainstream Platforms

As mainstream social media companies’ content moderation teams shrink and policies fail, extremists are flourishing and no longer have to hide on the fringe.

https://globalextremism.org/post/far-right-extremist-accounts-surging-on-mainstream-platforms/



The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) monitors hundreds of far-right extremist accounts across social media, including individuals, local organizations, and far-right political parties. Between June 2023 and March 2024, several of these accounts have shown substantial growth on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, while losing subscribers on Telegram, a fringe platform embraced by extremist groups when they weren’t allowed on the mainstream platforms. It seems now that they no longer need fringe accounts to push their hateful ideas.

The lack of adequate moderation resources on mainstream platforms is well-documented. Every platform, at differing levels, hosts harmful anti-LGBTQ+ content regarding conversion therapy, continues to host members and affiliates of the Identitarian movement, whose ideology advocates for the ethnic cleansing of Europe, and YouTube even hosts established neo-Nazi political parties such as Greece’s Golden Dawn. YouTube has continued to platform extremists over the years, and in some cases, monetizes their bigoted content, while Twitter has become a safe haven for every kind of hate you can imagine. TikTok is not immune either, having been the impetus for the spread of neo-Nazi memes like “Aryan Classic.”

In the United States, the international white supremacist movement White Lives Matter’s (WLM) California chapter increased its Twitter following from 8,839 to 14,000 (+5,161) from June 2023 and March 2024, representing a 58 percent increase. Meanwhile, their Telegram channel has only grown from 1,106 to 1,252 subscribers (+146). Similarly, WLM California’s Gab account, a platform originally meant to be a “free speech social network” opposed to Twitter, only grew from 499 to 529 (+30), representing an even smaller six percent increase in followers. WLM California’s Telegram channel will post sparsely, a maximum of two to three times a day, while their Twitter account is much more active. On Twitter, WLM California will post similar content to Telegram, but more often. They will also post more “jokes” meant to appeal to a wider audience, bolstering their recruiting efforts.



Far-right influencer and Trump ally Jack Posobiec saw his Twitter following rise from 2,100,000 to 2,400,000 (+300,000), representing a 14 percent increase, and his subscribers on YouTube grew from 12,600 to 18,600 (+6,000), representing a 48 percent increase. Meanwhile, his Telegram channel demonstrated a stark decrease in subscribers, going from 162,649 to 146,867 (-15,782), a 10 percent decrease. Neo-Nazi and director of the Nationalist Network Ryan A. Sanchez, who attempted to capitalize on recruitment efforts during the recent border standoff between Texas and the federal government, didn’t have a presence on Twitter in June 2023, but created an account in August. Since then, he has amassed 2,082 followers, while his Telegram channel’s subscribers dropped from 6,095 to 5,959 (-136), representing a two percent decrease.

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April 5, 2024

DEI and Multiracial Coalition

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-04-05-dei-and-multiracial-coalition/



Our friend and Prospect Board member Randall Kennedy is a distinquished law professor at Harvard. Kennedy once clerked for Thurgood Marshall. He is author of many books, including one titled For Discrimination, a comprehensive defense of racial preference as the necessary remedy for the long legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, racial redlining, and other elements of state-sponsored racism. But Kennedy sees the DEI movement as increasingly counterproductive. In a piece written April 2 for The Harvard Crimson, Kennedy quotes an emblematic diversity statement proposed by Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. He writes: For the purpose of showcasing attentiveness to DEI, the Center suggests answering questions such as: “How does your research engage with and advance the well-being of socially marginalized communities?”; “Do you know how the following operate in the academy: implicit bias, different forms of privilege, (settler-)colonialism, systemic and interpersonal racism, homophobia, heteropatriarchy, and ableism?”; “How do you account for the power dynamics in the classroom, including your own positionality and authority?”; “How do you design course assessments with EDIB [equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging] in mind?”; and “How have you engaged in or led EDIB campus initiatives or programming?”

Kennedy sees such statements as “a troubling invitation to ritualized dissembling. A cottage industry of diversity statement ‘counseling’ has already emerged to offer candidates prefabricated, boilerplate rhetoric.” Does Kennedy have a fair point, or has he gone neocon on us? Let’s recall the distinct origins of affirmative action and DEI. Affirmative action was invented during the Johnson administration, as civil rights advocates appreciated that it wasn’t enough to simply prohibit discrimination in employment, as the 1964 Civil Rights Act did. Deep-seated racist pattens of recruitment required deliberate countermeasures. So in 1965, LBJ issued Executive Order 11246 requiring federal contractors to “take affirmative action” to reach minorities in recruitment, advertising, apprenticeship and training, as well as employment. That was literally the first use of the term. Affirmative action was embraced by corporate America, and quickly spread to higher education. It was right-wing courts, not public opinion, that challenged affirmative action, beginning with the Bakke case of 1978.

In Bakke, the Supreme Court deadlocked over whether an affirmative action program at the University of California was illegal discrimination against white people. In that case, Justice Lewis Powell broke the tie by inventing, out of whole cloth, an entirely new rationale for affirmative recruitment and acceptance of minorities: diversity. It was pedagogically good for white students to experience a diverse classroom. With the Black Lives Matter movement, a more militant version of diversity took hold. In Ibram X. Kendi’s formulation, white liberals might think they were “allies” of racial justice, but they needed to work harder at it. Meanwhile, the high court, after chipping away at affirmative action in several cases since Bakke, finally killed it last year in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. So we now have two conceptions of racial remediation going in opposite directions and talking past each other.

Affirmative action, explicitly aimed at the descendants of slaves, is in ruins. The more diffuse concept of diversity, requiring ever more exquisite sensitivity, is targeted at well-meaning white liberals. Meanwhile, in Trump country, DEI doesn’t make a dent in patterns of racism and stimulates ridicule and backlash. Kennedy writes, “Universities are under a legal, moral, and pedagogical duty to take action against wrongful discriminatory conduct. But demands for mandatory DEI statements venture far beyond that obligation into territory that is full of booby-traps inimical to an intellectually healthy university environment.” But the wider consequences may be even more serious. If we are ever to return to the days when courts and broad public opinion were accepting of affirmative action, that will take more robust multiracial governing coalitions, who in turn will elect presidents who appoint progressive judges and pursue progressive economic policies that bridge racial divides. The right question to be asked of DEI initiatives is not whether they increase sensitivity among the already sensitive but whether they help us get back to a multiracial governing coalition.

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April 5, 2024

Congress Poised to Prevent One Form of Student Debt Relief

https://prospect.org/education/2024-04-05-congress-prevent-student-debt-relief-flight-faa/



A five-year reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration has become the unlikely stage for another round of sparring on the thorny issue of student debt relief, with Congress retreating to the familiar territory of enabling more debt rather than investing in education. A provision tucked into the 1,072-page bill would increase current federal student loan limits for flight education and training. Flight experience and licensing is mandatory for incoming pilots, and a labor shortage has created a significant need to increase the numbers in the pipeline, with some airlines canceling flights over the past several years due to sheer lack of manpower. Flight training alone can cost as much as $80,000 for a four-year degree, not including tuition. The increase in loan limits, which will allow up to $107,500 in borrowing toward a degree for qualified programs, may enable more students to afford flight education. It’s taken from a bipartisan bill introduced by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) last year, though the increases are smaller than what that bill envisioned.

But in exchange, the current FAA bill includes a provision that says that, regarding flight education and training loans, the government “may not take any action to cancel or forgive the outstanding balances, or portion of balances, on any Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, or otherwise modify the terms or conditions of a Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, made to an eligible student, except as authorized by an Act of Congress.” This would create a carve-out for flight education from any mass cancellation program, such as the one the Education Department is negotiating right now in a rulemaking process. The prohibition on debt cancellation was not in the original Baldwin-Sullivan bill. Since the prohibition wasn’t in the original bill, it certainly feels like it was inserted due to a Republican demand during negotiations, amid their high-profile fight to bar mass student debt relief. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, was one of the key negotiators of the FAA reauthorization.

Republican attorneys general appealed to the Supreme Court to strike down Biden’s first debt relief plan, and have recently mounted a second lawsuit about the administration’s version of income-driven repayment, which has been in place in one form or another for over three decades. The provision talks specifically of “mass cancellation,” so presumably income-driven repayment programs would be unaffected. But a final adjudication of that would be up to the courts, and it could mean that flight education debtors might not even be able to access programs that made their debt more manageable. Another mass cancellation program involves remedies when a higher-education program defrauds students or closes down. So if this provision were to pass into law, flight education students who were given worthless degrees that cannot be used for placement into jobs would have no recourse but to pay back those loans they took out under their school’s false pretenses.



The reauthorization bill came out of a bipartisan negotiation and has been pre-conferenced between the House and Senate. Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) are the Democratic co-sponsors on the Senate side. Neither of their offices responded to a request for comment. Sen. Baldwin’s office has also not responded to a request for comment. Other Senators are unhappy with negotiators including the prohibition on debt forgiveness. “President Biden has cancelled student debt for nearly 4 million Americans, and Republicans in Congress are trying to undermine this life-changing relief through a legislative trick in the FAA bill,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), one of the biggest proponents in Washington of student debt relief. “It’s a shameful political trap that Democrats in Congress need to stand united against and strike from the final bill.”

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https://twitter.com/strikedebt/status/1775856807832949191

April 5, 2024

Madam Architectuur perches green-tiled home extension on curved concrete terrace in Belgium

https://www.dezeen.com/2024/03/27/sofie-madam-architectuur-belgium-house-extension/











Brussel-based architecture studio Madam Architectuur has renovated a home in Dilbeek, Belgium, adding a green-tiled extension built on a green-pigmented concrete base. Green hues were chosen for the extension to match the surrounding lush landscape and set it apart from the existing white house, which was built in 1937. Named Sofie, Madam Architectuur aimed to retain most of the home as possible and celebrate its unique shape, which has a steeply pitched roof and arched openings. The extension, which was made from steel and timber. was built on the north side of the home to create a dining room with views of the nearby fields.











"The idea was to restore the existing house to its honour as much as possible," Madam Architectuur co-founder Door Smits told Dezeen. "The plan was also very logical, but the orientation of the house was not optimal. We wanted to add a space with direct sunlight and a link with the beautiful green area," he continued. "We also wanted to add a contemporary addition that is an interesting contrast to the existing architecture so that spaces with a different character coexist, allowing different experiences." Covered in green tiles, the extension was built on a green-pigmented polished concrete platform, which forms the internal floor.











Designed to create flow between indoor and outdoor spaces, the concrete platform extends from the extension and curves around the side and rear of the home, forming two outdoor terraces on either side of the dining room. "The terrace is wider where needed and narrower where not," said Smits. "The organic form makes a softer transition with the surroundings." "It embraces the house, both the old and the new part, and makes everything one whole. As the terrace goes around the house, it catches the morning, noon and evening sun in different places." The terrace at the side of the home is sheltered by a roof with a circular opening. "Through the round opening, the light falls very nicely on the floor ?? a round circle that turns with the sun, sometimes on the floor of the terrace and sometimes on the floor inside," said Smits.











Inside, Madam Architectuur altered the kitchen to make it more spacious while preserving the home's existing wood flooring, stairs and mouldings. Informed by the home's existing arched windows and doorways, the studio added curved shapes to the interior, including on the kitchen island and in the changes of flooring between the kitchen and dining room. "There were many arches in the existing house," said Smits. "This form was continued in the opening between the existing house and the extension, both in the wall opening and in the transition of the two floor materials."

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