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After losing $5 billion in three months Uber boss says business is 'absolutely sustainable'

Uber map
Uber is blowing through billions of dollars, but CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is undeterred.

In an interview with CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour that will air Wednesday, Khosrowshahi defended Uber's business model, which involves the company investing heavily in promotions to entice customers to its on-demand ride and meal-delivery offerings.

"The model is absolutely sustainable," Khosrowshahi said. "The business, for example, is still growing 30-plus percent on a global basis. And anytime you have a business that has the kind of market size of trillions of dollars in terms of transportation and food and global commerce, it makes sense for a company to invest."

Uber lost $5.2 billion in the three months ending in June, its largest quarterly loss ever . Stock-based compensation related to its initial public offering accounted for $3.9 billion, but the remaining $1.3 billion in losses were still 50% higher than the year before.

Mr. Potato

Flat mind: Boxing champ Carl Froch says Earth is flat and 'whole planet has been sold lie'

Carl Froch
© Getty
Carl reckons NASA's been making fake photos
Boxing legend Carl Froch says the Earth is flat and has accused NASA of making fake photos to keep the world's population thinking it's round.

The ex-super middleweight champion bruiser says the entire planet has been sold a lie.

And he refuses to believe proof from the US space agency NASA or space entrepreneur Elon Musk because they are in the "little clique" hiding the truth.

Comment: Though boxing legend Carl Froch has likely sustained many injurious blows to the head, there are many others who have no such excuse for such a ridiculous idea:


NPC

Greta Thunberg is programmed to make you afraid, while big business makes a killing off it

thunberg stare trump glare

Greta Thunberg at the UN.
Do the climate change sermons of Greta Thunberg fill you with anxiety and dread? If so, then that's the point. Thunberg and the modern eco-cultists all sing from the same hymn sheet, and fear is their most effective tactic.

In a speech at the UN Climate Action Summit on Monday, the 16-year-old Thunberg delivered a breathless sermon, chastising the adults in the room for stealing her "dreams" and her "childhood" by failing to take aggressive enough action against climate change.

"We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!" she thundered, voice on the edge of tears.

Comment:


Wolf

Internal document details Google retaliation against employees who reported abuse

google employee protest
© Reuters/Stephen Lam
"Women's Walkout" at Google in protest over alleged sexual misconduct at the company in Mountain View, California, U.S. November 1, 2018.
A leaked document tells 45 stories of Google employees who claim they've experienced sexual harassment, personal insults, and racism, and were then sidelined and denied promotion for being "too much of an activist."

Apparently a product of the company's campaign to uncover cases of retaliation, the document is a cache of personal accounts submitted by Google employees to an internal company forum.

The document was first revealed by Recode earlier this month, but Motherboard published it in full.

Comment: Google left their "Don't be evil" motto behind long ago.


Eye 2

Hypocritical NYT publisher declares Trump a threat to journalism; doesn't mention Obama's war on whistleblowers or Julian Assange's detention

assange New York times
© (L) AFP / Angela Weiss; (R) AFP / Daniel Leak-Olivas
The Trump administration is admonished as a threat to journalism worldwide in a new oped penned by New York Times publisher AG Sulzberger. It's just a pity that in the 3,200-word screed, he found no time to mention Julian Assange.

Perhaps a worse sin than his purposeful omission of Assange's pertinent case, though, is Sulzberger's utterly disingenuous claim that before Donald Trump came along, the US government was "the world's greatest champion of the free press."

Readers who make it to the end of the piece would be none the wiser as to the fact that Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, waged a war on whistleblowers, prosecuting more of them than all previous US administrations combined and paving the way for Trump's further attacks.

Laptop

Tech firms to bolster efforts to censor extremists content online

social media companies
© Reuters
Leading tech companies have joined world leaders to bolter efforts to drive extremist content off on the Internet, as social-media firms come under increased scrutiny in the wake of deadly incidents.

Facebook on September 23 announced the initiative at the United Nations, where French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern led a meeting concerning online extremist risks.

Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube in 2017 formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an informal alliance to deal with the most dangerous material on social media.

But tech companies came under increased scrutiny since a white supremacist in March killed worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter live-streamed the deadly rampage and posted an online manifesto filled with racist conspiracy theories.

Comment: You'll be forgiven for being skeptical. For years these very companies have been facilitating groups like ISIS, Antifa, and alt-right ethnostate promoters in their online propaganda, while banning and blocking moderate voices who simply criticize war criminals like the Israeli state, or pro-censorship SJWs. Facebook's "expanded definition" of terrorist organizations is unlikely to be any better than their previous definitions.


Quenelle - Golden

'IMF must DIE!' Leading Russian banker says International Monetary Fund should be put to rest

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) logo
© Reuters / Yuri Gripas
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) logo
The CEO of Russia's Sberbank, Herman Gref, has taken aim at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), saying the organization should cease to exist.

"I don't have much to say about higher audit institutions, but as for international organizations like the IMF, they must die," Gref said on Wednesday as he addressed the 23rd Congress of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI).

"I think that the IMF is absolutely dead," Gref added.

Comment: Yet another way that Russia has bucked the West's systems of control - that seeks to subjugate and diminish the wealth and life's blood of sovereign nations.

See also: Russia refuses to comply with IMF's demands to put surplus money into other countries' financial systems


Bulb

Why the heck isn't Greta and the UN talking about world peace - something that IS man made?

UN Secretary General, António Guterres and Greta Thunberg

UN Secretary General, António Guterres and Greta Thunberg
Monday, 23 September, the UN in New York hosted a special meeting on Climate Change. There were massive predominantly youth demonstrations of tens of thousands around the globe, many of them in New York, one of them led by Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 16-year-old climate activist, who is sponsored mostly by Soros and his clan to travel around the world and address world leaders to act on climate change - preventing climate change, stop climate change. Others with the same objective, called "Friday's for the Future", originated in Germany, students striking every Friday - meaning literally not going to school, on behalf of stopping climate change.

And there is yet another international group, the "Extinction Rebellion" (ER). They all are against the use of hydrocarbons as a major energy resource. Me too. But what's the alternative? Do they promote and push for active research in, for example, solar energy? Not that I have heard of. There is no viable revolution without a viable alternative that has ever been successful.

The worldwide spill-over is apparently enormous. On Saturday some youth groups met with UN Secretary General, António Guterres, telling him that Climate Change is the world's political issue number ONE. Mr. Guterres did not contradict, yes, it was a key problem and had to be addressed and world leaders needed to commit to take actions. The UN General assembly will further dedicate part of its program to Climate Change.

Easter Egg

Long-lost $6.5M Renaissance masterpiece called "Christ Mocked" found in kitchen of elderly French woman

© AP
"Christ Mocked" by Florentine master Cenni di Pepo, or Cimabue, is expected to fetch millions of Euros at auction.
An elderly French woman in the northern town of Compiegne didn't realize she had long had a Renaissance masterpiece hanging on her kitchen wall, but just thought it was a random religious icon.

After an expert came to the home to take a look at it, it was discovered to be by the hand of a 13th-century Florentine artist widely recognized as the father of Western painting, and is expected to sell at auction for between €4m and €6m⁠, or 6.5 million dollars.

The painting is said to be by Florentine artist Cenni di Pepo, known as Cimabue, who was so famous even in his own day as to get a mention in Dante's Divine Comedy: "Cimabue thought to lord it over painting's field; and now the cry is Giotto's and his name eclips'd."

Experts have claimed of the piece, known as "Christ Mocked," that there's "no disputing" its origins, after infrared light tests as well as an examination of damage to the wood panel. Analysis of the wood revealed it to be the same as two other panels confirmed to be by Cimabue's hand.

Windsock

A line-by-line response to Greta Thunberg's UN speech

angry greta thunberg

Greta Thunberg speaking at the UN
Note: Greta's speech is reprinted below. Her quotes are in italics, mine follow each quote. If it turns out there were errors in transcription — as seems likely — I'll try to update with corrections. I apologize for the snarky tone, but if a 17-year-old can dish it out, I think she can take it.
"My message is that we'll be watching you. This is all wrong, I shouldn't be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean."
So in your first paragraph you confess that what you're doing is wrong, and you shouldn't be doing it. You note you should be back home and in school. OK, so far we're 100% in agreement. Next?
"Yet, you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you?"

Comment: See also: