Here’s what I’m talking about this morning.
1. Dallas has some bills: Last week, The New York Times had a horrifying article about Dallas’ Fire and Police Pension fund.
The rundown:
- The pension fund was set up with the unrealistic expectation that it would make a 9 percent annual return.
- The fund has unorthodox withdrawal rules which have made some retirees millionaires.
- And now Dallas has a hidden pension debt of about $7 billion, which it can’t pay. Cue bankruptcy.
The latest: Dallas Mayor Rawlings is pissed, so he sent a CYA letter to the fund on Tuesday, asking it to stop some of the most ridiculous withdrawal policies. TBD on how Dallas is going to avoid bankruptcy.
2. YouTube stars: Last night, we went to the Windmill Bar near the Dallas Medical District. Our twinkish bartender told us that he was getting his degree in communications so he could be a YouTube star.
This reminded me of an article from Fusion about the sad economics behind being a mid-level YouTube star. Basically, it’s a “winner-take-all” system where some vloggers are rich and “mid-level” vloggers (with 50k-200k followers) have to wait tables to pay rent.
The Verge has a fascinating article about a specific YouTube vlogger called Connor Manning, who is trying to make it in Hollywood. I think that’s our bartender in two years.
3. South Korea: South Korean President Park Geun-Hye is being brought down in a bizarre political scandal. Apparently she allowed her bestie (a cult leader’s daughter) to influence state politics. Korean Rasputin?
It appears that President Park will resign this week as millions of South Koreans protest in the streets.
The sad part about this is that it’s not uncommon. All of South Korea’s presidents have ended their terms in scandal, including one suicide (details at the bottom of this post.)
Hopefully they can get it together.
4. Trump’s fake news: Most of us have heard that some teens in the Balkans are behind many of the shady pro-Trump fake news websites. But did you know that people close to Trump also run their own fake news operations? Specifically Laura Ingraham and Floyd Brown.
The most disturbing part of all this is that Ingraham and Brown’s websites are among the most trafficked news sources on the web.
This isn’t a new phenomenon however. Fake news has been around forever. (Think Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the Spanish-American war) – the only difference is Facebook and sloppy journalism are helping fake news spread more quickly and shady ad networks create incentives for people to create more fake news.
5. Monocle: It’s a “foreign affairs and lifestyle” magazine that has been around forever, but that I just learned about. Think Foreign Affairs meets GQ, but extra fancy.
Upcoming
What’s going on in the gayborhood tonight:
Impulse Group Dallas is having its World AIDS Day photo challenge:
- 10-10:30pm – Jr’s Bar And Grill
- 10:30-11pm – Havana Lounge
- 11pm-midnight – Station 4 (S4)
There are also drag shows at Jr’s Bar and Station 4 (around 11ish.)
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