Wednesday, June 29, 2022
The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #1064
Before You Click On The "Read More" Link,
Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.
If You are Easily Upset, Triggered Or Offended, This Is Not The Place For You.
Please Leave Silently Into The Night......
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1764
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
The ‘ESG’ Scam Rates Slave-Using Chinese Firms Higher Than Clean American Energy Producers
A firm in China that uses slave labor has a better ESG score than an American firm that pays landowners who freely sell their mineral rights.
Expecting publicly traded companies to do more than simply return shareholder value — their fiduciary responsibility — is a fairly new development in Western capitalism. The idea that corporate leadership and shareholders should explicitly care about environmental, social, and corporate governance (known as ESG) issues beyond how they might affect the bottom line has been around for only about 30 years.
But now, ESG investing has become a big driver in steering capital to corporations deemed to be good stewards of subjective principles. By 2025, financial management firms that claim to invest with ESG principles are projected to account for $50 trillion of a total global value of $140.5 trillion — more than a third of managed investments.
But is ESG investing trustworthy? Does it really do what it claims to do?
MSCI is one of the world’s largest investment support services firms, with $2.1 billion in revenue. It offers an ESG rating service. I noticed that my Charles Schwab account recently started to display MSCI’s ESG ratings alongside that of the more traditional ratings services — services focused on a company’s profitability.
Comparing U.S. and Chinese Companies’ Ratings
Curious, I looked into the rating of a firm I own some stock in: Texas-based Brigham Minerals (NYSE: MNRL). Brigham looks for land that could produce oil and gas, and owns mineral and royalty interests in 7,909 oil wells and 688 natural gas wells in West Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and North Dakota. MSCI rates Brigham Minerals as a B, the sixth lowest of seven ratings that range from AAA to CCC, labeling it a “laggard” in the industry with an overall score of 2 out of 10.
I previously wrote about ESG investing’s blind spot for China three years ago in Fox Business, pointing out that investment firms playing in the ESG space were also bullish on China — a nation with terrible air and water pollution (the “E”), horrendous human rights abuses (the “S”), rampant corruption, opaque accounting standards, and rule of law only at the forbearance of the Chinese Communist Party (the “G”).
Not expecting the financial industry to have changed for the better, I looked up three China-based energy companies and compared them to Brigham Minerals. They were Xinyi Solar Holdings (OTC: XISHY), China Resources Gas Group (OTC: CGASY), and China Coal Energy Company (OTC: CCOZF). All three beat the American energy company in their overall rating.
Buying Into CCP-controlled Enterprises
Now, it’s important for investors to understand that you really can’t own shares in a Chinese corporation. When you buy shares in a corporation based in China, you’re really buying American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) that represent shares issued by companies in the People’s Republic of China. As such, your ownership rights are more theoretical than real and are subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party.
Further, many Chinese firms that have ADRs traded in the United States are themselves subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises — meaning that if you buy these ADRs, you are directly investing in an entity fully controlled by the Chinese Communist...
PA Drag Queen Arrested and Charged with 25 Counts of Child Pornography
According to The Post Millenial, Brice Patric Ryschon Williams allegedly uploaded and shared at least 135 videos on photos of child pornography.
In May 2020, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children submitted a tip about sexually explicit files including minors to the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General’s Child Predator Section.
The files were allegedly uploaded to a Dropbox with an email registered to Anastasia Diamond, or Ana D. This is the name Williams used when performing drag. At least 49 of the 76 files were found to contain children under 18 performing sexual acts, Tri-State Alert reported.
In July 2020, NCMEC submitted another tip about 10 more explicit files uploaded by the same user. Authorities determined at least 9 of those files contained child pornography.
A search warrant was eventually issued to Dropbox concerning Ana D’s account, and authorities found a total of 135 files containing child pornography, Tri-State Alert reported.
Two more files were uploaded to the Dropbox in December 2020, and authorities were able to validate one of them. Investigators finally tracked the home suspected of uploading the illegal files in 2021.
Investigators confirmed Williams was living in the home, and he was allegedly performing in drag as Anastasia Diamond, which matched the name associated with the Ana D email address. A recovery email address for the Ana D Dropbox account also included Williams’ real name.
Special Agent Travis Nye was finally able to obtain a search warrant for the home on June 22. Authorities carried out the warrant the next day and escorted Williams out of the house while they did so.
Williams initially denied any involvement with child pornography, even as investigators found his phone number matched the backup phone number listed on the Ana D Dropbox account.
Investigators found at least 25 child pornography files on Williams’ phone, which Nye said was just a small sample of the explicit material on the phone. Williams finally admitted to searching for, possessing and sharing child pornography after his devices were found.
He told investigators he was first exposed to child pornography in 2014, and he subsequently began using cloud storage applications to receive and distribute it with others. He was arrested and...
Chevron selling Bay Area headquarters, paying for employees relocate to Houston
Plenty of tech companies have moved their headquarters out of the Bay Area in recent years, from startups like Coinbase to industry pioneers like Hewlett Packard and Oracle. Elon Musk has been one particularly outspoken voice decrying California’s business conditions. Now, one of the East Bay’s legacy companies is joining the trend.
Chevron announced it is shuttering its San Ramon global headquarters and even encouraging some employees to move to Houston, the Wall Street Journal reported. The oil company will cover relocation costs for those voluntarily leaving for the Texas office, which has been growing and employs nearly 6,000 people. Meanwhile, the San Ramon office buildings have experienced dwindling numbers in recent years.
When Chevron vacates the 100-acre campus in 2023, freeing up prime real estate for the area’s growing life-sciences industry or developers looking to build apartments, it hopes to move into a smaller space in San Ramon, which will remain its headquarters, the Wall Street Journal said.
There are deep roots in California for Chevron going back to the late 1800s. While company leadership has pushed for a permanent move to Texas in the past, the oil company’s legacy in the state coupled with the location of its Richmond refinery in the East Bay has kept the company in California, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
"The current real estate market provides the opportunity to right-size our office space to meet the requirements of our headquarters-based employee population," a spokesperson told SFGATE. "The move is expected to occur during the...
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