• Supreme Court won't throw out ban on robocalls to cellphones
• No, Dopamine Is Not Addictive
• Secretive data startup Palantir has confidentially filed for an IPO – TechCrunch
• New data shows lawmakers secured millions in small business aid

Supreme Court won't throw out ban on robocalls to cellphones

• WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to strike down a federal law banning automated calls to the nation's cellphone users.
• By a vote of 6-3, the court rejected a challenge to a federal law passed in 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protect Act, intended to stop the nuisance of computer-dialed cellphone numbers.
• In 2015, Congress added an exception to the law, allowing robocalls made to collect debts owed to the federal government.
• A group of fundraisers, political organizations, and pollsters filed a lawsuit, claiming that the revision made the law unconstitutional because it discriminated on the basis of the content of the call.
• A victory for them would have unleashed automated calls to cellphones just as the 2020 presidential election campaign heats up.
• The court said the provision applying to government debts could be stricken from the law, allowing the general ban on robocalls to stand.
• Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent who covers the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, based in Washington.

No, Dopamine Is Not Addictive

• There's a group called The Dopamine Project, which promotes "Better living through dopamine awareness," and asserts that "Expectations of scoring dopamine squirts in their brains keep addicts lying, cheating, stealing and craving the next fix."
• People who treat the unrecognized and unsupported concept of behavioral/process addictions commonly claim that dopamine is at the root of many behavioral problems, and that people develop a drug-like tolerance to dopamine, craving more and more.
• Pornography is called "Playboy on Steroids" where dopamine is squirted into the brain with each click to the online world of "Dopamine-releasing naked females." This delightful article calls dopamine the "Celebrity" neurotransmitter, referring to it as the Kim Kardashian of neurochemicals.
• Most antipsychotic drugs work by inhibiting the function of dopamine, not because its "Reward" makes people hallucinate, but because the brains of people with schizophrenia may be overly sensitive to the effects of dopamine.
• Dopamine serves many complex functions in the brain, and only kindergarten brain science describes it as an addictive drug.
• Dopamine's role in pleasure and reward is that it helps your brain to recognize "Incentive salience." This means that it's like a little red flag to your brain, saying "Hey, pay attention, this is about to feel good, and you want to remember this, so you can do it again." A critical issue here is that a lack of dopamine doesn't actually make the experience feel less good.
• In studies with rats, where dopamine was suppressed, rats showed "Normal hedonic reaction patterns," and still showed normal pleasure responses even though dopamine was suppressed.

Secretive data startup Palantir has confidentially filed for an IPO – TechCrunch

• Palantir did not say when it plans to go public nor did it provide other information such as how many shares it would potentially sell or the share price range for the IPO. Confidential IPO filings allow companies to bypass the traditional IPO filing mechanisms that give insights into their inner workings such as financial figures and potential risks.
• Instead, Palantir can explore the early stages of setting itself up for a public listing without the public scrutiny that comes with the process.
• A confidential filing doesn't always translate to an IPO. A Palantir spokesperson, when reached, declined to comment further.
• Palantir is one of the more secretive firms in Silicon Valley, a provider of big data and analytics technologies, including to the U.S. government and intelligence community.
• Consequently aid deportation efforts by the ICE. As the coronavirus pandemic spread throughout the world, Palantir pitched its technology to bring big data to tracking efforts.
• Last week, Palantir filed its first Form D in four years indicating that it is raising $961 million.
• Palantir's filing is another example of how the IPO market is heating up yet again, despite the freeze COVID-19 put on so many companies.

New data shows lawmakers secured millions in small business aid

• It is not illegal for lawmakers to apply for or accept Paycheck Protection Program money, and every office that responded to a request for comment for this story emphasized that the members had no role in the application process and that the companies or nonprofits took the loans legally in an effort to keep people employed during the pandemic.
• The program's connections to Congress, the majority of which were previously undisclosed, have raised new questions about the administration's secrecy of the $670 billion program, as well as potential conflicts of interest as lawmakers prepare to craft the next coronavirus rescue package.
• The Treasury Department and Small Business Administration finally agreed to divulge some loan recipients, but only for borrowers who took loans over $150,000 - a small minority of the program's total borrowers, as more than 80 percent of the Paycheck Protection Program loans were below that threshold.
• Among the Paycheck Protection Program loan recipients with connections to members of Congress were "Mike Kelly Automotive Group, Inc."; "Mike Kelly Automotive, LP" and "Mike, Kelly Hyundai, Inc.," which each received loans for $150,000-$350,000 from PNC Bank.
• Other lawmakers have family members who work for companies that, at some point, reaped benefits from the small business loans program.
• Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell's spouse is an executive at a restaurant chain, Fiesta Restaurant Group, which received $15 million in aid before returning the loan in full.
• The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which is associated with the CBC, said it received a Paycheck Protection Program loan to "Support its continuity of operations" during the coronavirus crisis.