Society's ChildS


2 + 2 = 4

Six common themes in the Jussie Smollett and college admissions scandals

Yale University
Winter for the Ruling Class
Hollywood elites are, by definition, in the business of concocting fictional stories. Is it any surprise that they apply these skill sets beyond screen and stage entertainment, where the fiction is acknowledged, and use them to achieve their objectives in realms affecting their personal and political lives?

In both the college admissions scandal and the alleged hate crime fraud masterminded (I use the term very loosely) by Jussie Smollett, I find five other common points in addition to the first point of employing fiction:

Two: Powerful people from powerful families with no concern for issues of right and wrong tried to accomplish their goals "by any means necessary." Religion - the notion the God watches over us and knows when we sin - is regarded as a quaint vestige of the past and a hindrance to achieving necessary ends, both personal and political.

Three: Wealth enables payoffs. Most people cannot conceive of lavishing thousands of dollars, much less hundreds of thousands or even millions, on bribes because they earn their money through hard work. But such are the rewards of stardom or business success: once liberated from concerns over morality (see point two), there is no problem in offering whatever it takes ($3,500 for a couple of Nigerian brothers, or millions to a college official) to get the desired behavior.

Comment: See also:


People 2

'I have morals': Ex- wife of $273mn lotto winner says 'she still doesn't want him back'

New Jersey lottery Mike Weirsky
Here's a woman who knows what she wants - and doesn't want! When Mike Weirsky of New Jersey hit the lotto jackpot for $273 million, many people likely thought his ex-wife would want him back. After all, the couple divorced only months ago and financial issues were apparently part of their problems.

Take him back? No way, 53-year-old Eileen Murray. All the money in the world won't bring her back to her former husband of 15 years.

"He's not appealing to me all of a sudden because he has this money," she told the New York Post. "I'm not going after anything. I have morals. I know what I've worked for and it's everything that I have."

Snakes in Suits

Down the rabbit hole of political intolerance in Silicon Valley

virtual reality
Editor's note: Blake J. Harris is the bestselling author of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation, which is currently being adapted for television by Legendary Entertainment, producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and Scott Rudin. His second book, The History of The Future-which was published on February 19-chronicles the dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus, and its quest for virtual reality, and the company's $3 billion acquisition by Facebook. What follows is an interview with Harris conducted by Quillette's Clay Routledge.
Clay Routledge: I just finished your latest book, The History of the Future. And I have to tell you, I tore through it. Such a fascinating story in so many ways. What made you interested in telling the story of Oculus VR and its founder, Palmer Luckey?

Blake J. Harris: So back in 2014, my first book was published. This was a big, life-changing experience for me. Prior to that-for the previous eight years-I had been a commodities broker, buying and selling things like sugar, coffee and soybeans for Brazilian clients. But with the publication of Console Wars, I was able to quit that job and follow my dream (mostly I mean "writing", but a little part of me also means "never wearing pants" #ShortsForLife). Anyway, as I was saying, Console Wars was life-changing for me; and one of the cool things that happened early on was that Popular Mechanics decided to write a feature about me. Needless to say, this was a VERY big deal in the Harris family. And so when the issue came out-on Mother's Day 2014-I slipped away from our family brunch to go pick up a copy of the issue from a nearby bodega, feeling so excited; my big moment! Except instead of flipping through the magazine and checking out the piece about me, I was captivated by the person on the cover: a 21-year-old-kid wearing a virtual reality headset-and the story about his VR startup. I took it as a good sign that by the time I got back to our family brunch all I could talk about was what I'd read about this kid (Palmer Luckey) and his incredible company (Oculus).

From there, it took me nearly two years to get the access I would need to accurately and authentically tell this story, and then it took over three years to actually research and write the book (especially because-as I'm sure we'll get to-the, uh, "unexpected twist").

Bizarro Earth

'Ridiculous' how N.J. taxpayers foot the bill for illegals to attend college

Cabot Phillips
© Fox News
New Jersey taxpayers are footing the bill to help pay for illegal immigrants in the state to attend college, a move that Campus Reform's Cabot Phillips says sets encourages further illegal immigration to the U.S. and further sets a dangerous precedent for future generations.

As Campus Reform previously reported, New Jersey forked over $1.6 million during the fall 2018 semester alone to help more than 500 illegal immigrants attend college. This is a result of Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signing a law allowing illegal immigrants to apply for state financial aid.

Phillips called the move "ridiculous" on Fox Business Network's Varney and Co. on Tuesday.


Attention

'ISIS & drugs everywhere': Refugees face violence in notorious Moria camp, new doc shows

moria lesbos
© Louisa Gouliama / AFPMoria migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece.
Kurds and Yazidis are in fear of their lives as they try to survive amid rampant lawlessness and militant attacks in an overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, a controversial new documentary shows.

"My life has been in danger since the first day I arrived here. I haven't got a good night's sleep," one of the residents of the infamous Moria camp told the crew of the documentary 'Borderless', which is meant to highlight the migrant crisis in Europe.

The interviewed asylum-seekers claimed the camp was infiltrated by terrorists from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL): "ISIS is here... They can rape, they can kill, they can steal. And the drugs are everywhere."
They attack minorities, such as Yazidi or Kurds. They killed four Kurds lately in this camp.
The residents also complained that police largely ignore the widespread crime.

"We told them many times to put a camera at least, to protect ourselves," a man was filmed saying, adding that his requests were rejected.


Comment: Southern's recent EU speech shows how her views on the migration crisis changed during the course of filming the documentary:




Snakes in Suits

Feds put Facebook's data sharing deals under criminal investigation

facebook head office
© Jason Henry for The New York TimesFacebook’s offices in Menlo Park, Calif.
Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook struck with some of the world's largest technology companies, intensifying scrutiny of the social media giant's business practices as it seeks to rebound from a year of scandal and setbacks.

A grand jury in New York has subpoenaed records from at least two prominent makers of smartphones and other devices, according to two people who were familiar with the requests and who insisted on anonymity to discuss confidential legal matters. Both companies had entered into partnerships with Facebook, gaining broad access to the personal information of hundreds of millions of its users.

The companies were among more than 150, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Sony, that had cut sharing deals with the world's dominant social media platform. The agreements, previously reported in The New York Times, let the companies see users' friends, contact information and other data, sometimes without consent. Facebook has phased out most of the partnerships over the past two years.

Comment:


Newspaper

Sick joke? Front page of Polish newspaper runs piece on "how to recognise a Jew"

tylko Polska
© Screenshot / Twitter / @szykom89The front page of Polish-language weekly Tylko Polska, or 'Only Poland.'
A right-wing newspaper with national distribution in Poland ran on its front page an article that instructs readers on "how to recognize a Jew."

The Polish-language weekly, Tylko Polska, or "Only Poland," lists on its front page "Names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation" and "disinformation activities."

The text also reads: "How to defeat them? This cannot go on!"

The page also features a headline reading, "Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris." The reference is to a Holocaust studies conference last month during which Polish nationalists complained that speakers were anti-Polish. That article features a picture of Jan Gross, a Polish-Jewish Princeton University scholar of Polish complicity in the Holocaust and a frequent target of nationalist attacks.

Comment: See also:


Sheriff

Leftist exec confronts YouTube CEO about her son watching Ben Shapiro videos; 'gateway drug' to Neo-Nazism

Kara Swisher
© Amy E. Price/Getty Images for SXSWKara Swisher, co-founder of Recode
On Monday, tech website Recode published an interview conducted by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki with Recode's co-founder Kara Swisher, who bemoaned that her 13-year-old son had started watching Ben Shapiro videos, claimed watching the videos was a "gateway drug" to eventually watching Neo-Nazi videos, and said she would remove Shapiro's video's from YouTube if she could. That prompted Shapiro to fire back on Twitter, "It seems rather illiberal of you to ask YouTube to ban my videos."

The two women were discussing how to keep youngsters safe from problematic material on YouTube when Wojcicki stated:
But recommendations, for example, we just made a change to how we handle recommendations, where we have readers, the readers go through - we make sure they're representative from all parts of the US, we publish the guidelines - those readers then identify a set of videos that they think are, could be, they might technically meet the requirements of following our community guidelines, but they're close. And there's a lot of content that, there's 1 percent that brushes up against the community guidelines. So what we do is we identify this with, a set of them, with humans, and then we use machines and machine learning to expand, and based on that then we are basically very unlikely to recommend that.

Comment: In generations gone by, parents would be upset that their kids were listening to heavy metal or rap music that espoused values they found problematic. Today they're upset the kids are learning to think by watching intellectuals like Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson. Sounds like the kids today have their heads much more firmly on their shoulders than their parent's generation did. It also seems like there are much worse things kids could be watching on YouTube.

See also:


People 2

Attraction inequality and the dating economy

sexy couple b&w
Jesus said that the poor would always be with us. Despite the best efforts of philanthropists and redistributionists over the last two millennia, he has been right so far. Every nation in the world has poor and rich, separated by birth and luck and choice. The inequality between rich and poor, and its causes and remedies, are discussed ad nauseam in public policy debates, campaign platforms, and social media screeds.

However, the relentless focus on inequality among politicians is usually quite narrow: they tend to consider inequality only in monetary terms, and to treat "inequality" as basically synonymous with "income inequality." There are so many other types of inequality that get air time less often or not at all: inequality of talent, height, number of friends, longevity, inner peace, health, charm, gumption, intelligence, and fortitude. And finally, there is a type of inequality that everyone thinks about occasionally and that young single people obsess over almost constantly: inequality of sexual attractiveness.

Eye 2

New indictment reveals NXIVM leader Keith Raniere had sex with children and produced child porn

Keith Raniere
Nxivm leader Keith Raniere had sexual relationships with children and produced kiddie porn of it, according to newly unsealed court papers.

Raniere, 58, is accused of having a child "engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing one or more visual depictions of such conduct, which visual depictions were produced and transmitted," reads a new indictment released Wednesday.

Raniere's co-defendants, "Smallville" actress Allison Mack, Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman, Lauren Salzman and Kathy Russell were allegedly aware of his predilection for predation, and even facilitated it, according to prosecutors, who have now charged them for that conduct under a racketeering count.

His co-defendants "were aware of and facilitated Raniere's sexual relationships with two underage victims: (1) a fifteen-year-old girl who was employed by Nancy Salzman and who - ten years later - became Raniere's first-line 'slave' in DOS," the filing reads.

Comment: Previously: