We Are All Paraguay

A digital bank with close ties to the Paraguayan President just collapsed taking the bulk of the savings of about half of the Latin American nation's with it.

The President, Santiago Peña, who aggressively pushed the bank for years, has resigned, though the legislature rejected this, and the lower house voted to impeach him.

Gee, a dodgy bank run by a bunch of tech bros implodes and leaves the rest of us holding the bag.

Why does this sound familiar?

Paraguay’s rightwing president, Santiago Peña, resigned on Thursday after a political and financial crisis collapsed the South American country’s banking system in recent days.

At the centre of the crisis is Ueno Bank, which in just a few years under Peña went from an obscure digital bank to one of the country’s largest lenders, claiming to have about 60% of Paraguay’s adult population as customers.


Last Monday, the central bank ordered Ueno into resolution over insolvency, freezing the deposits of 3 million customers, leaving hundreds of thousands of families without access to money for food and basic daily expenses. Bank executives were arrested, and people took to the streets in massive protests.

In power since August 2023 and with a term running until 2028, the 47-year-old economist was already facing impeachment proceedings that had broad support.

………

Ueno Bank began as a finance company in the 1970s and, in 2021, was bought by Grupo Vázquez, one of Paraguay’s largest business and industrial conglomerates. At the end of 2023, it received authorisation from the central bank, already under Peña’s administration, to operate as a digital bank.

The bank rapidly expanded its operations, attracting customers with generous cash-back offers on groceries and sponsoring Paraguay’s national football team. On Wednesday, the players released a letter “demanding” a “forceful response” from the government and the justice system.

The bank came to manage between $800m and $850m in deposits from state and pension entities, including retirement funds, prompting criticism over conflicts of interest because of Peña’s previous shareholding ties to Ueno Holding.

Just to refresh your memory, Elon Musk wants to make Ecch (formerly Twitter) a bank just like Ueno.

We Are F%$#ed

Have you ever heard of an El Niño atmospheric river?

Well, you are about to. 

The weather is dry for the moment, but signs across the atmosphere are painting a clear picture for when the first atmospheric river will bring rain to California.

As El Niño begins to lock into the atmosphere, it will continue to set up patterns like the one we will see next week, with lower pressure just offshore and a lingering dome of high pressure across the central United States.

Patterns like this that hold in place for a week or more are exceptional at squeezing out oceanic moisture in the form of atmospheric rivers – strings of the jet stream that become saturated with relentless rain. And the first of the season for Central California is taking shape for next week.

………

The next seven or so days look quite dry. A stable atmosphere overhead will make for a wonderful week of high temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s across most of the Golden State.

The trouble comes when this stability moves east. With low pressure already spinning away in the Gulf of Alaska, any stable atmosphere that moves east will pull that Gulf of Alaska low south, where it will quickly be saturated with extra moisture from El Niño and form an atmospheric river.
 A clear signal for lower pressure across the atmosphere west of California is expected late next week, setting up likely rain events for the western United States. The Sacramento Bee

It is too early to say which day these long-lasting rains could ring out over California, but the probable window is approximately Nov. 11-16, with rain likely only lasting for a day or two.

Atmospheric river rains can be substantial, especially with extra fuel to work with thanks to El Niño. Many areas could quickly see a month's worth of rain in just a few days.

We are in for a world of hurt. 

Good News Everyone!

I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

Following Tuesday's elections, we now have a very real possibility that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will be passed, rendering the Electoral College irrelevant.

The NVPIC is a proposed agreement that states would allocate electoral votes int he Presidential election according to the national popular vote totals.

If the states entering the agreement have a total of more than 269 electoral votes, then the winner will always be the candidate who gets the most votes.

Tuesday’s wave election swept Democrats into power in Congress. But the most seismic result for American politics and democracy may come out of the battleground states where Democrats just won trifecta control by taking both state houses and the governor’s mansion: Come January, Democratic legislators will have the votes to elect the next president by the popular vote.

State lawmakers could circumvent the Electoral College by enacting what’s known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the current system, each state gets a set number of electors, and the candidate who wins enough states to accumulate at least 270 electoral votes becomes president. This system allows the winner of the popular vote to lose, as Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton again in 2016. But the NPVIC would bypass the Electoral College, with each state that enacts the compact awarding its electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would only take effect once states representing a majority of electoral votes sign on, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president.

In April, Virginia became the 18th state to join the compact, bringing the total number of electoral votes pledged under the proposal to 222. On Tuesday, Democrats took trifecta control of state governments in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada. That’s 61 electoral votes. Add in Alaska, where late-arriving votes are still being counted, and that’s 64. With Virginia on board, only 48 more votes are needed for the compact to reach 270 votes and take effect. The emerging math means there is a real chance that the next president is selected based on the national popular vote.

On the Always Deplorable and Frequently Entertaining Brandon Herrera

He will not be going to the US Congress in January, as he lost by 7 points in Tuesday's blue wave.

Katy Padilla Stout won the race for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District on Tuesday against Republican YouTuber Brandon Herrera, flipping the seat formerly held by Republican Tony Gonzales.

The Associated Press called the race for Padilla Stout, a San Antonio attorney and former teacher. The 23rd Congressional District, which includes a significant portion of the Texas-Mexico border, covers most of West Texas between El Paso and San Antonio, including the Big Bend region.

………

It was one of several victories in a historic night for Texas Democrats. Two Democratic representatives, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, held seats that were redistricted to favor Republicans. By late Tuesday night, Republicans had conceded three of the five seats their new congressional map was designed to flip.

The 23rd Congressional District, left largely untouched by the mid-decade redistricting efforts, voted for President Donald Trump by a 15-point margin in 2024.

Padilla Stout’s victory is the first time a Democrat has won the West Texas seat since 2012, when former Rep. Pete Gallego won the seat back from Republicans before subsequently losing his reelection bid.

………

Herrera sparked controversy throughout the campaign as Padilla Stout and others highlighted derogatory comments he has made on his YouTube channel and social media about women and jokes about the Holocaust.

Gonzales resigned from the seat in March amid scandal over an affair he had with a staffer who later died by suicide. Days before his resignation, Gonzales had been forced into a runoff in the Republican primary by Herrera, a staunch gun rights activist, by less than 1,000 votes.

Let's go Brandon, I guess.

I Approve

A group calling themselves the Capytistas has announced that they will be releasing the addresses of American oligarchs and their enablers.

Not generally a big fan of doxxing, but in this case, I will make an exception. 

An underground activist group says it plans to start openly doxing billionaires as part of a phased campaign against what it calls the American oligarchy—beginning this month with a release that maps the homes of Elon Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Tesla’s board, alongside investors and suppliers that keep the corporation afloat.

Two of its members, interviewed by WIRED on the condition of anonymity, say they spent the past year constructing dossiers on billionaires—and one trillionaire—and the people they consider their top lieutenants, using nearly every method available to a private investigator, and some that are not.

The pair say the group is international and includes grassroots activists, researchers, journalists, and artists, including some who received top honors in print, television, and digital media in their former careers. For security, many work in “silos” and do not know each other’s names. Through its connections, the group says it has raised more than $1.2 million from “a heartening number of wealthy class traitors” who share in the view that concentrations of extreme wealth and political power pose an “existential threat.”

In a press release Monday, the group says it intends to publish in coming releases more than 150 home addresses, most of them previously unreported. It also promises more than 3,500 records on people with a combined wealth of about $1.4 trillion, plus reporting on what the group alleges are “criminal exploits and security lapses.”

That last bit, revealing how oligarch bend and brek the law to their advantage is called, "Journalism."

………

Pressed on whether its strategy amounted to doxing, the Capytistas members agree that it does, saying they have no qualms with describing their efforts that way. The group has even taken as its creed an adapted quote from the late folk singer and labor organizer Utah Phillips: “Democracy is not dying, it’s being killed,” they say, “and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”

Most of the Capytistas’ work involves digging up property records, court filings, and the LLCs and trusts that wealthy people use to buy real estate. The activists say they turn occasionally, but far less often, to physical surveillance, human infiltration, and advertising intelligence, the location and profile data bought and sold through online ad markets.

To remain profitable, one of the Capytistas argued, the businesses billionaires operate need to continuously collect people’s personal information, often nonconsensually, even as their owners and executives enjoy relatively private lives—entire fortunes built around “doxmaxxing.”

A copy of the Musk dossier seen by WIRED sorts its subjects into tiers and contains 32 home addresses tied to Musk and his executives. Musk is the “primary target.” Tesla’s board members and top executives—among them board chair Robyn Denholm and Kimbal Musk—are “secondary targets.” Each profile pairs a critical biography, drawn from court rulings, labor board decisions, and securities filings, with a home address. Investors such as Vanguard and BlackRock and nearly 40 suppliers are considered “tertiary targets,” listed only by corporate office, factory, or mine.

………

The Capytistas say doxing gives them one thing above all: a sense among those targeted that someone is watching. Some, they hope, will simply fold under the sheer weight of that attention. For the rest, the group wants the public to make its displeasure well known, hoping for protests outside homes and on golf courses—confrontations with those who buy their way into government in the very places they go to escape all the outrage.

Privacy is the one thing that the group believes billionaires, and now trillionaires, value that activists can take away. “The Capytistas intend to level the playing field,” it says, “by giving oligarchs a taste of the invasions of privacy they commit, and monetize, every day.”

The Capytistas argue that by giving people the knowledge to protest the evil doers, they are actually making them safer, because the alternative is Luigi Mangione style violent vigilantism. 

As for me, I think, "Why not both?" 

Moar Election Updates

TIL that Johnson composed the music for 67 episodes of Dragonball Z.

[image or embed]

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) November 4, 2026 at 10:00 PM

This is actually true


Yeah, the Democrats swept statewide office in Texas

First, we need to note that Lauren Boebert is going down in Colorado's 4th Congressional district. (Cue Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith thinking, "Hah, hah, hah.")

Regarding the US Senate, the Democrats have at least 54 seats, with 2 races, Alaska and Mississippi (!) still too close to call.

In Texas, in addition to the Dems sweeping the statewide offices, the Texas House of Representatives now has a Democratic majority.

Also, the new Texas AG won't be pursuing out of state abortion and abortion medication providers.  Elections have consequences.

State legislatures have flipped to Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and possibly Arizona.

Also, at least 5 governors flipped. 

I'm bummed that Prop 40 (the billionaire tax) appears to be going down to defeat in California. 

America's Finest News Source

Chuck Schumer Delivers Victory Speech To Previously Enthusiastic Crowd

—The Onion

Chef's kiss. This is perfect.

Quick Election Update

I'm going to sleep, but it appears almost certain that the Democrats will take control of the House and Senate.

In Texas, it appears that Greg Abbot has been turfed out as Governor of Texas, and Ken "The Most Corrupt Motherf%$#er in Texas" Paxton has lost to James Talerico, and the Democrats have won pretty much all of the state wide elections there.

And Kansas. Hoo boy!  First Democratic Senator from Kansas since the Roosevelt administration. 

Also it looks like Susan "I'm very concerned" Collins has lost in Maine, Abdul El-Sayed has won in Michigan, and Dems flipped 2 Senate seats in the Carolinas, 

W00t! 

Of Course It Didn't Save Money

It appears that Mike Huckabee's efforts to merge smaller school districts and shut down schools to save money actually cost more money.

I'm not sure if McKinsey was involved with this, but it's certainly a McKinsey result. 

When Mike Huckabee was the Arkansas governor in 2004, he wanted government to be more efficient. He signed a law to shut down tiny school districts with fewer than 350 students.

Over the next decade, 85 school districts merged with others, triggering the closure of 105 schools, most of them high schools.

Families and teachers protested. Some students had bus rides so long that they couldn’t participate in sports and other after-school activities. A 2022 study found that the mergers had accelerated depopulation in rural communities and depressed property values; that same year another study found almost no academic gains.

At least there was one potential payoff: saving taxpayers money.

What economic sense does it make to maintain a superintendent and a district office to serve just a couple hundred students? Consolidating tiny districts seemed like an obvious way to eliminate administrative overhead.

But a surprising new analysis by researchers at the University of Arkansas finds that the savings never materialized. Reductions in administrative overhead were offset by rising costs for transportation and instructional staff.

The study, presented Sept. 26 at the annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness in Baltimore, followed the finances of Arkansas school districts for two decades. It found no overall cost savings from consolidation — not immediately after districts merged and not more than a decade later.

………

So where did the savings go?

Administrative costs did fall. The researchers estimate that consolidation reduced administrative spending by as much as $138 per student, on average, according to their preliminary, unpublished calculations. Some instructional costs, including spending on education technology and textbooks, also declined, by as much as $92 per student.

But those savings were eaten up by higher costs elsewhere.

Transportation costs rose $24 per student initially and continued climbing over the years, growing to an additional $63 per student annually. Instructional staff costs — including teachers and aides, as well as math and reading coaches — rose by as much as $179 per student. Pupil-support costs, including guidance counselors and social workers, rose by as much as $61 per student.

The basic problem is that merging two districts doesn’t eliminate the need to educate the same number of children. And larger districts may create new layers of management or add more support staff, such as instructional coaches, counselors and aides.

Also money spent on consultants, I'm sure.

Interesting Historical Data Point

During WWII, and for a few years after, sugar supply was tightly restricted in the UK.  It turns out that the people who grew up under this regime achieved significant health benefits.

Obviously, correlation is not causation, but this definitely bears more research. 

They were born into a Britain still recovering from the hardships of war. Though the air-raid sirens had fallen silent, many everyday foods remained rationed, including sugar. Adults were restricted to about 3 tablespoons (40g) a day to stretch between cups of tea, baking and desserts; children were limited to less than a tablespoon. Babies and very young children were expected to have little or no added sugar.

Then, in 1953, the brakes came off. Separate restrictions on sweets and chocolate were lifted in February, followed by sugar in September. By the second half of 1954, average sugar consumption had almost doubled.

The lifting of postwar sugar rationing inadvertently created a natural experiment, whose consequences scientists are only beginning to unpick. A flurry of recent studies suggests that spending the first 1,000 days of life under sugar rationing may have left traces on people’s health more than seven decades later.

“What makes the end of sugar rationing particularly interesting is the nature of the exposure,” said Dr Jiazhen Zheng at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China, who worked on several of the recent studies. “In September 1953, sugar availability changed quite abruptly at the population level, largely because of policy rather than individual choice. In a sense, history created an experiment that we could never deliberately run over a human lifetime.”

The first of this recent wave of sugar rationing studies was published in the journal Science two years ago. Dr Tadeja Gračner at the University of Southern California and her colleagues used data from the UK Biobank to compare the health of people born shortly before and after sugar rationing ended in the UK. Some had been exposed to this low sugar environment only during their time in the womb; others remained exposed for months or years, while those conceived once rationing ended were not exposed at all.

Gračner found that the longer people had spent under rationing, the lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure in mid- to later life: those exposed throughout their first 1,000 days had a 35% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and a 20% lower risk of high blood pressure than those who had never experienced rationing.

This might explain Keith Richards' longevity. 

BB Rating?

Anthropic is expected to receive junk bond status following its IPO.

I believe that the term here is, "Dead Man Walking," not $2,000,000,000.00 initial public offering.

Anthropic expected to receive high ‘junk’ rating from credit agencies following IPO, FT report says

Anthropic is expected to receive a high “junk” rating from credit rating agencies following its initial public offering, according to a report from the Financial Times.

The FT says the investment giant Blackstone, the anchor investor in a recent $63 billion deal to finance Anthropic’s chips, told investors in the deal that it expects the AI lab to receive a “high” junk rating after its IPO. Previously, the FT notes, Blackstone had said the opposite: that the Claude maker would receive an investment-grade rating (indicating low risk for lenders) before 2027 rolls around.

Now Blackstone expects double B range rating, the top tier of speculative “junk” grade, according to the reporting.

Is it too early to call a Lehman moment?

 

Headline of the Day

Defund Musk!

—Robert Reich, explaining how the biggest welfare queen in history should not be allowed to feed at the taxpayer trough.

Works for me. 

Yeah, I've Always Been Tinfoil Hat About This

When the FBI declared case closed in the Anthrax mailer case following Bruce Ivins' suicide, I was dubious.

It appears that ProPublica (and McClatchy and Frontline) has similar doubts.

Months after the anthrax mailings that terrorized the nation in 2001, and long before he became the prime suspect, Army biologist Bruce Ivins sent his superiors an email offering to help scientists trace the killer.

Already, an FBI science consultant had concluded that the attack powder was made with a rare strain of anthrax known as Ames that's used in research laboratories worldwide.

In his email, Ivins volunteered to help take things further. He said he had several variants of the Ames strain that could be tested in “ongoing genetic studies" aimed at tracing the origins of the powder that had killed five people. He mentioned several cultures by name, including a batch made mostly of Ames anthrax that had been grown for him at an Army base in Dugway, Utah.

Seven years later, as federal investigators prepared to charge him with the same crimes he'd offered to help solve, Ivins, who was 62, committed suicide. At a news conference, prosecutors voiced confidence that Ivins would have been found guilty. They said years of cutting-edge DNA analysis had borne fruit, proving that his spores were “effectively the murder weapon.”

To many of Ivins’ former colleagues at the germ research center in Fort Detrick, Md., where they worked, his invitation to test the Dugway material and other spores in his inventory is among numerous indications that the FBI got the wrong man.

What kind of murderer, they wonder, would ask the cops to test his own gun for ballistics?

To prosecutors, who later branded Ivins the killer in a lengthy report on the investigation, his solicitous email is trumped by a long chain of evidence, much of it circumstantial, that they say would have convinced a jury that he prepared the lethal powder right under the noses of some of the nation’s foremost bio-defense scientists.

PBS' Frontline, McClatchy and ProPublica have taken an in-depth look at the case against Ivins, conducting dozens of interviews and reviewing thousands of pages of FBI files. Much of the case remains unchallenged, notably the finding that the anthrax letters were mailed from Princeton, N.J., just steps from an office of the college sorority that Ivins was obsessed with for much of his adult life.

But newly available documents and the accounts of Ivins’ former colleagues shed fresh light on the evidence and, while they don't exonerate Ivins, are at odds with some of the science and circumstantial evidence that the government said would have convicted him of capital crimes. While prosecutors continue to vehemently defend their case, even some of the government’s science consultants wonder whether the real killer is still at large.

Prosecutors have said Ivins tried to hide his guilt by submitting a set of false samples of his Dugway spores in April 2002. Tests on those samples didn’t display the telltale genetic variants later found in the attack powder and in sampling from Ivins’ Dugway flask.

Yet records discovered by Frontline, McClatchy and ProPublica reveal publicly for the first time that Ivins made available at least three other samples that the investigation ultimately found to contain the crucial variants, including one after he allegedly tried to deceive investigators with the April submission.

I do not know if Ivins did it, but in any case, this was not the slam dunk that the DoJ said that it was.

When the Experts Warned Us About a Cyber Apocalypse

Not one of them said a word about comically poorly protected freezers in supermarkets.

The internet of sh%$ strikes again.

Dozens of supermarkets across seven European countries have been hit by a cyber-attack affecting their refrigerators and freezers.

Around 40 Delhaize supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected, while a smaller number of shops were hit in Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Estonia and Finland.

Sabcobel, a Belgian company that manufactures some of the affected refrigerators, said the units' evaporators were switched to defrost mode, causing them to warm up, in what is believed to be the same method used in last month's incident that hit hundreds of French supermarkets.

Millions of euros worth of food had to be thrown away in October, local media reported at the time

Internet connected appliances are a bad thing. 

.

Damn

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has been hospitalized for a stroke.

Sen. Chris Murphy is being hospitalized following a stroke, an aide to the Connecticut Democrat said Sunday.

“Yesterday afternoon, Senator Murphy started experiencing numbness in his arm while at his son’s hockey game. He was taken to a local hospital, where it was discovered he had experienced a stroke,” Allison Herwitt, Murphy’s chief of staff, said in a statement.

“He was transferred to Johns Hopkins for further monitoring and is responding well to treatment. The doctors are encouraged by his progress, he is awake and alert, and we are optimistic he will make a full recovery,” she added.

Go Utah?

Normally, I am not a fan of the state government of Utah.

Generally, when something newsworthy comes from Salt Lake City, it is bone-headed reactionary bullsh%$.

That being said, I approve of Utah going postal on Kalshi for illegal gambling in the state.

Utah is escalating its legal battle with prediction market platform Kalshi.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Kalshi, several of its subsidiaries, and two financial trading firms that work with the company, accusing them of violating the state’s anti-gambling laws.

In the lawsuit, the state compares Kalshi to a “back-alley gambling den,” arguing that the company facilitates bets and takes a percentage of the money that’s bet on its platform.

Utah is asking a court to block Kalshi from offering wagers in the state. It also wants the company to use a court-approved geolocation service to prevent Utah residents from placing bets on the platform. And the state is seeking to recover millions of dollars the company allegedly made from illegal gambling. According to the lawsuit, Kalshi has collected an estimated $30.6 million to $61.2 million in fees from wagers placed by Utah users.

Utah is the latest state to take legal action against Kalshi as the company and rival Polymarket face a growing wave of lawsuits over allegations that they are operating illegal gambling businesses. 

………

The Trump administration, meanwhile, seems to be backing prediction markets, with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) pushing back against states trying to regulate the industry.

………

In Utah’s case, the state argues there is little difference between Kalshi’s event contracts and traditional gambling. 

More of this.

I Like This

Turn About is Fair Play

At a city council meeting, someone opposing the construction of data centers played the loud noise emitted to the council members, who found this noise unbearable, but since they won't live next to the data center, they are still likely to approve the projects.

A fiscal court meeting in Carroll County, Kentucky grew contentious when local residents started playing the sound of a data center to county officials. Spoiler: they didn’t seem to like it.

As local news station WHAS11 reported last week, Carroll County is the planned location for two separate data center projects, each of which will likely be around 800 megawatts and will overtake hundreds of acres of Kentucky land. At that size, the data centers are considered hyperscalers.

“I believe they talked about 800 megawatts, so it is a hyperscale unit,” Scott Nab, a magistrate on the fiscal court, told WHAS11 of one of the projects. “It’ll be multiple buildings. It’ll spread over 1,000 acres when completed.”

As the news station notes, a data center of that size would consume the equivalent of 560,000 average homes.

Nab is among the data centers’ proponents, arguing that data is the industry of the future. Local residents of the rural region, however, are pushing back. One of their strategies? Subject county officials to the horrible, 24/7 screech that large data centers emit. 

This is not a bad 

Vote Blue No Matter ……… Never Mind

So the losing candidate in the Michigan US Senate Democratic Party Primary has endorsed the Republican in the race because she wanted the winner, Abdul El-Sayed, to condemn an ad that he had nothing to do with.

In related news, the bulk of her congressional staff resigned and condemned her.

Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who lost the Michigan Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, in an extraordinary rebuke of her party’s nominee on the eve of the midterm elections.

Her endorsement came in a video posted to X after she attended an event with Rogers at the predominantly Black Perfecting church in Detroit on Sunday. Stevens’s endorsement was the culmination of an escalating feud between the former primary rivals – primarily over support for Israel – that has roiled one of the most fiercely contested Senate contests of the cycle.

The endorsement was met with immediate pushback from Democrats, who condemned Stevens for her “betrayal”.

Actually, that was noted Israel-hater Chuck Schumer, who called her endorsement a, "Despicable betrayal."

It appears that this was precipitated by members of the Michigan Democratic Party establishment, most notably Debbie Dingell, told her to stop grand-standing and STFU.