#The Weinstein Law Group

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Ok so we all know hp is bad and hp fans are genuinely sus and Not Good people..But are fans of other things such as twilight, mcu, certain horror movies with awful directors, or even things such as rock singers in the 80s who made amazing music but they were Awful. Can people enjoy these things and still be a good person? I've wondered this for a bit and your hp reply was great!

The questions you have to ask yourself are “is [bad person] benefitting from me engaging with this media in some way” and “is [bad person] actively using their success in media as a way to fight for legislature that oppresses a marginalized group”. You also have to analyze if the media itself reflects whatever makes the creator bad.

JKR is a unique case because she uses profits from Harry Potter to fund hate groups and push anti-trans legislation into law. She uses her platform specifically as a means to harm other human beings actively, and her works are rife with racism, antisemitism, sexism, fatphobia, ableism, etc. etc.

It isn’t just a matter of JKR having a bad opinion, she weaponizes her media to groom her fans into TERFs and is directly placing trans people in danger, especially in the UK.

Fans of movies made by Harvey Weinstein or whoever are generally not being groomed to be sexually abusive because he wasn’t using his media as a weapon, he was using his money as a weapon for harm. Do I think people are inherently bad for liking Pulp Fiction or whatever just because the executive producer is a sexual abuser? Not really, because for one thing he’s in prison and can no longer benefit from any profit that movie could make and for another he was just the executive producer for most of the movies you’ve actually heard of, not a writer or director. Death of the author works a whole lot easier if the author is actually dead or otherwise off the table, and how tainted the media is by their involvement is proportional to how involved they actually were with the media.

So something like Mindless Self Indulgence is hard to justify still engaging with even though Jimmy was arrested because he was the direct artistic influence for his music and had more or less full creative freedom with it. I wouldn’t personally say it reflects great on a person to enjoy art made by a known child molester, but that doesn’t mean you have to hate Spy Kids or whatever just because someone on a very large team of people involved who didn’t really have creative control on the project was a bad person.

It’s case by case with a lot of reliance on using best judgment.

[beardedmrbean]

A Black Harvard law professor has been accused of tweeting, then deleting, the word "Karma" in an apparent response to Claudine Gay announcing her resignation as president of the university following accusations of plagiarism and a row over campus antisemitism.

The post was allegedly made on X, formerly Twitter, by Professor Ronald Sullivan Jr., who in 2019 was effectively demoted after serving as part of Harvey Weinstein's defense team when the disgraced film producer was facing sexual assault allegations.

Political commentator Wesley Yang shared what he claimed was a screenshot of Gay's post, adding: "Ronald Sullivan deleted this one word post written in response to former Harvard president Claudine Gay's resignation: 'Karma.'"

Newsweek could not immediately verify the veracity of the screenshot's content or that the tweet was directly related to Gay's resignation.

Newsweek has reached out to Sullivan and Harvard University for comment via email.

Sullivan's decision to represent Weinstein sparked a furious response from some students, after which Harvard decided not to extend his contract as an undergraduate residence faculty dean. According to student-run newspaper The Harvard Crimson, Gay, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was one of those involved in the decision.

Gay announced she was stepping down as Harvard president on January 2, with a letter in which she claimed it was "in the best interests" of the university for her to resign after facing what she described as "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus."

It came amid an ongoing row over free speech and bigotry on campuses, which had already claimed the job of Liz Magill, who resigned as president of Pennsylvania University last month following a controversial House committee appearance alongside Gay and Sally Kornbluth, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sullivan faced protests on campus after The New York Post first reported he had joined Weinstein's defense team in January 2019, with demonstrators demanding he step down as faculty dean and for a public apology be issued.

Weinstein was later convicted of rape and sexual assault in the New York trial and sentenced to 23 years in prison. He was subsequently sentenced to an additional 16 years in prison by a court in Los Angeles in a separate case.

In response to the controversy, Sullivan sent a 1,200-word email to students at Winthrop, then his undergraduate faculty residence, stressing the importance of representing an "unpopular defendant."

In an interview with The Harvard CrimsonGay branded Sullivan's response to the row as "insufficient," and months later it was announced his position as Winthrop faculty dean would not be renewed.

Within hours of Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in around 1,200 people killed and another 240 taken into Gaza as hostages, 34 Harvard student organizations signed a statement written by the university's Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee stating they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence."

The move triggered a furious response from the university's Jewish center Harvard Hillel, which said the statement promoted "hatred and antisemitism."

Appearing before a House committee in December, alongside Magill and Kornbluth, Gay was asked whether "calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct" by Rep. Elise Stefanik.

She replied "it depends on the context," sparking outrage and calls for her to resign. Speaking to The Harvard Crimson, Gay later apologized for her remarks, and said: "Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group, are vile, they have no place at Harvard."

In December it was revealed Gay was facing an anonymous complaint of serial plagiarism, with additional allegations published by the Washington Free Beacon in January.

She initially denied any wrongdoing in response, stating: "I stand by the integrity of my scholarship." However, The New York Times reported that a Harvard investigation concluded there were cases of inadequate citation in her dissertation as well as at least two of her articles.

[pandemic-info]

Staring at the tsunami - by Nate Bear - ¡Do Not Panic!

In the 1980s researcher Neil Weinstein identified what he called unrealistic optimism. In Weinstein’s experiment, people were given a variety of bad outcomes (ill health, tragic accident) and asked to rank their chance of the bad thing happening to them versus the chance that thing would happen to someone similar to them. In almost all cases people believed the bad thing was more likely to happen to others and less likely to happen to them.

...

But by the law of probabilities, this can’t be true. Not everyone can be less likely to experience a particular bad outcome. We can’t all be top quartile. Weinstein identified four cognitive factors contributing to unrealistic optimism. 1. Lack of personal experience with the problem/bad thing 2. Belief that if the problem hasn’t yet appeared it will never appear in the future 3. Belief that the problem is uncommon 4. Belief that the problem is preventable by individual action

...

[The] freeze response is well-documented in other disasters. The passengers whose plane crashed on the runway and stayed strapped into their seats, reassuring each other everything would be fine before they burned to death. The workers in the south tower who returned calmly to their offices on September 11th and watched with their own eyes as flames poured from the huge gaping hole punched in the building across from them. Everything about these situations should have screamed run. But in their novelty and sudden out-of-context appearance, some people found it impossible to readjust their ideas about the future. Cognitively, they found it easier to fall back on an old mental model of the world and their experience of that world than adjust the model in the face of immediate, observable realities.

...

[In a 2011 update to Weinstein's experiment], researchers twice asked people to rate their likelihood of eighty disturbing things happening to them. On their first go, the subjects weren’t told how often statistically these events happened in the real world. The second time, they were. The researchers found that on both occasions people underestimated the chance of the bad thing happening to them, and over-estimated the likelihood of a more favourable outcome. In other words, even knowing how likely they were to experience a negative event didn’t make people any more likely to believe it would happen to them personally.

Unlike in Weinstein’s experiment, subjects were hooked up to an MRI, giving us a more detailed understanding of what was going on in the brain. And it turns out we may be programmed for optimism. The researchers found that those who wrongly assessed their risk levels experienced “diminishing coding in a region in the frontal cortex.” They concluded that “the human propensity toward optimism is facilitated by the brain's failure to code errors in estimation when those call for pessimistic updates. This failure results in selective updating, which supports unrealistic optimism that is resistant to change.”

But the experiment also revealed something else. It revealed that some people did code for errors in estimation. One group of people did have the ability to over-ride innate optimism and accurately calculate risk - the clinically depressed.

& This response on Twitter lmao:

Key words for search: tsunami, optimism bias, "won't be me", psychology,

[brian-in-finance]

Lawsuit Accuses Former Associate of Harvey Weinstein of Rape

A former model has filed a suit against Fabrizio Lombardo and Disney.

Fabrizio Lombardo, the former head of Miramax in Italy and a close associate of Harvey Weinstein, has been accused of rape in a lawsuit filed on April 6 in New York State Supreme Court. The suit was brought by Sara Ziff, a former model and the founder of the Model Alliance, an advocacy group for models and fashion creatives.

The suit alleges that Mr. Lombardo, assaulted Ms. Ziff in a New York City hotel in 2001 when she was 19.

Ms. Ziff is suing Mr. Lombardo, as well as Mr. Weinstein, Disney and its subsidiaries Buena Vista and Miramax, for abuse and negligence under the Adult Survivors Act. The A.S.A., which was passed in May 2022, extended, until November 2023, the rights of sex crime victims to bring civil claims that would otherwise have expired under the statute of limitations.

Mr. Lombardo — whom Mr. Weinstein once credited with saving his life and whose 2003 wedding involved Mr. Weinstein as his best man — often figured on the sidelines of the many stories about Mr. Weinstein’s predations on young women. He was named in the sexual harassment class action suit brought against the Weinstein Company and numerous related entities in October 2018. But this is the first time he himself has been accused of sexual assault in a court of law.

It is also the first time Ms. Ziff has spoken publicly about her own experience, despite being instrumental in helping others tell their stories of sexual abuse, specifically creating a help line for survivors at the Model Alliance.

“It’s taken over 20 years to process this,” she said in an interview in advance of filing the suit. “I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it for the first few years, let alone imagine taking legal action.” When the A.S.A. was passed, however, she said she began to reconsider.

Efforts to reach Mr. Lombardo were unsuccessful. Disney did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment.

Imran H. Ansari, a lawyer for Harvey Weinstein, wrote in an email: “Certainly Mr. Weinstein had no control over any alleged conduct by Mr. Lombardo, nor would he have any reason to know what Mr. Lombardo was doing nor where Mr. Lombardo was at the time that Ms. Ziff alleges she was raped. As such, Mr. Weinstein firmly denies that he has any liability for the alleged conduct of another.” (Mr. Weinstein was sentenced to a combined 39 years in prison for sex crimes in New York and Los Angeles.)

According to the lawsuit, Ms. Ziff met Mr. Lombardo in 2001 when she was considering becoming an actress; her agents brokered the meeting. Mr. Lombardo later invited her to a screening of a Miramax movie and said it would be a chance to meet Mr. Weinstein, then at the height of his power in Hollywood.

After the screening, the lawsuit says, Mr. Lombardo invited Ms. Ziff for a drink at the Mercer and said both Mr. Weinstein and his brother, Bob, would be there. When Ms. Ziff arrived, Mr. Lombardo brought her to a penthouse suite, with no one else present.

The lawsuit says that after making advances and being told by Ms. Ziff she had a boyfriend, Mr. Lombardo “pivoted her around onto the bed on her back,” lay on top of her and raped her.

“Ms. Ziff was in shock and lay in the bed, frozen. Mr. Lombardo fell asleep. Ms. Ziff woke up early the next morning, confused and alone in the hotel room. She walked home to her apartment, took a long shower, and cried,” the suit reads. The suit also says Ms. Ziff did not speak about the rape to anyone at the time. A few years later she told a fellow model, Caitriona Balfe (now an actress), about the assault.

Ms. Balfe confirmed that Ms. Ziff had told her about the rape during a fashion show season in Milan around 2005.

Ms. Balfe said she and Ms. Ziff never thought about making it public. “We were so young, and the crazy thing is as models we were being put in these really compromising situations all the time, and you just kind of accepted them,” Ms. Balfe said.

Now 40, and the mother of a young daughter, Ms. Ziff acknowledged that while her experience may have shaped her decision to go into advocacy and become the public face of models’ rights, she herself had been reluctant to do what she helped other models do.

“I feel more comfortable focusing on the discussions around policy,” she said. She and the Model Alliance are currently working on a new bill, the Fashion Workers Act, which focuses on regulating management agencies in order to prevent these abuses from happening. Co-sponsored by State Senator Brad Hoylman, the bill was introduced in the New York state legislature last year and will be reconsidered during the upcoming legislative session, after it was not passed the first time.

However, Ms. Ziff said, she had spent the last decade talking to other survivors, and in helping other people, she began to feel it was “the responsible thing” to come forward.

“I’ve been very anxious about it and at times wondered if I even want to go through this process,” she said. “I’ve spoken to other people who’ve gone through it and every single one of them says it’s a nightmare. But no matter how much I’ve tried to ignore it or minimize it, this is not my burden to hold.”

In 2017 Ms. Ziff filed a report with the New York City Police Department, though it did not lead to any charges. That was the year Mr. Lombardo was accused by four women, including the actress Asia Argento and the model Zoe Brock, of being Mr. Weinstein’s enabler — and employed by Miramax in part for that purpose. Mr. Lombardo emphatically denied the allegations in an interview with The New York Times.

Mr. Lombardo never appeared in court during the class action suit, and it was later settled as part of the Weinstein Company bankruptcy filing.

“I’ve always been frustrated by the fact that those people seem to escape any kind of accountability,” Ms. Ziff said. She said that when the A.S.A. was passed, she remembered going to the bill signing with the governor and with other women she had come to know over the years who had spoken out about their abuse and trauma.

“It felt like here was a real sense of possibility that perhaps we could do something about what happened,” she said, “even if it happened a very long time ago.”

Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014. In this role she covers global fashion for both The New York Times and International New York Times. @VVFriedman

New York Times 7 April 2023

Remember… I’ve spoken to other people who’ve gone through it and every single one of them says it’s a nightmare. But no matter how much I’ve tried to ignore it or minimize it, this is not my burden to hold. — Sara Ziff

[nastya-sokolova-2002]

Two characters in one day, why not👀

Full name: Linus Necronomicon Ichabodovich

Date of birth: October 1, 1905

Character: kind, shy, brave, caring, sometimes naive

Loves: his family, his friends, his talent for potions, helping others, talking to spirits

He does not like: when he or someone from his family is offended, raise his tone, lose his family, loneliness, feel unnecessary to anyone

Russian voice acting: Mikhail Khrustalev (speech), Dzhigan (real name of the singer Denis Alexandrovich Ustimenko-Weinstein) (vocals)

English voice acting: Richard Butler (singer from the music group "Love spit love")

First appearance in Fanon: The fifth chapter in the fanfiction "SCP Foundation: The Last Pages of History" (as a story)

Last appearance in Fanon: Currently unknown

Story: Linus grew up with his single mother named Gertrude, who is a sorceress and a potion maker. He inherited only his appearance from his father, and the color of his fur and eyes from his mother. From the age of five, he felt that he had discovered a gift for potions (like Gertrude and her father). Before he left his mother just because he had friends (before his birth, Gertrude killed all the mice in Los Angeles until she married Ichabod (he is an ordinary mouse like Pinky and Brain's family), but you know specifically about this in the post about Gertrude), He was talking to his father's spirit. After he got to Burbank, he began to live in the cemetery, continuing to communicate with spirits. When he decided to walk around the city, he noticed Linda, who was singing on stage. At first glance, he thought she was a pretty mouse, but he was too shy to get to know her. The next day, he met her by chance and started walking with her. After a few days, he began to feel that he loved her more than his friend. One day, when Linda also felt love for him, she sheltered him and told him that her parents were not against it and that they really liked him. Later, he and Linda had a daughter, Bella. Linus was very happy until Jasper found out about it and kicked him out of town. After being exiled, not knowing where to go next, he decided to go to a place where the mouse's foot had not yet stepped on, and ends up on an island called the Island of Unnecessary Mice. There he also began to live in the cemetery, or he again felt that he did not need anyone. Later, he meets two mice named Fedya and Zakhar, who became his best friends. When he saw that his friends also had their own girls, he sadly remembered Linda and realized that he would not have a girlfriend here. But suddenly he accidentally meets a lonely mouse named Faina, who lives with her mother Willow and younger brother Bahram. He also thought she was a pretty mouse, but decided that he did not want to risk having love with her, but Faina fell in love with him at first sight and considered him a wonderful male and thought about him every day. A little later, Faina herself invites him on a "date", which he does not refuse. After that, Linus also falls in love with her and also wants to ask her out on a date, but he can't. Fedya and Zakhar help him with this. After he confessed his love to Faina, Linus marries her and lives with her. Soon they have a daughter, Sheila, and Fedya and his wife, Heidi, have a son, Henry. Next, Zakhar and his wife Tabitha have twin sons named Lukum and Rahat. At this time, Bahram starts living alone and works as a banker. Five years later, Linus and Faina have a son named Orm. But after the birth of Orm, a terrible thing happens. Out of nowhere, a Snowy Wind arrives on the island and takes Faina back to where it came from. Linus first went to his mother and asked her to take care of his daughter Sheila, as he alone could not cope with his children. Sheila initially did not want to leave her father, especially her younger brother, but Linus said he would always be there for her. And he gave Orm to his mother-in-law Willow, but she asked him about himself, and he replied that he would leave and promised her that she would not tell Orm, who when he grows up, about his parents and older sister. Willow promised him. Linus goes to the cemetery, says his one last phrase and committed suicide in order to be with his wife in the next world and watch his children with her. And then, almost throughout the fifth chapter, he appears as a story in the form of a spirit.

Interesting facts: Linus and his father Ichabod are the very first mice that look like Brain, but in Pinky's family.

[gwydionmisha]

CW: Domestic Abuse

[somebeltwaytrash]

"Believe women" was the rallying cry of activists in the wake of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein and others.

We did and we do, but here's the thing: Believing women is only the start of a very long process. Believing women does not eliminate the necessity for, and legal right to, a thorough investigation by law enforcement. Believing women does not change the laws about filing charges, getting a case to trial, going through that trial, reaching a verdict, and punishing the guilty.

All of that still has to happen.

Just because someone is accused of a crime by a member of a marginalized group does not mean the accused is guilty. When you pile on, you're as big a predator as any rapist.

It is also true that insufficient evidence of criminal activity doesn't mean the accused did not harm the accuser. If this is the case, the accuser can sue for compensatory damages in civil court.

Here in America, we saw this strategy pursued successfully when E. Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for damages relating to a long-standing sexual assault.

Carroll won that case, and the subsequent case she brought when Trump defamed her in regard to her first case.

Now. Those of you -- journos, pundits, fangirls, fanboys, and the like -- who aren't from the US, shut the fuck up. You don't understand how our justice system works, and it's plain you couldn't care less. Take your fascist systems where accusation is synonymous with guilt, and shove 'em. We don't care how "justice" works in your country; we won't be changing our system just because you make ugly, defamatory noises.

As for the rest of you, just wait. If you don't like the way our system works, study it, and learn how to change it. Then, get to work. You can protest peacefully in several ways -- even if you're not old enough to vote. Good luck -- we admire the hell out of you.

[dan6085]

Historical figures who have been controversial or have faced criticism for their actions or beliefs. It is important to note that opinions on historical figures may vary depending on cultural, social, and political perspectives.

Adolf Hitler: The leader of Nazi Germany during World War II, responsible for the deaths of millions of people, including six million Jews in the Holocaust.

Joseph Stalin: Soviet dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of people through purges, forced labor camps, and famines.

Christopher Columbus: The explorer who is often credited with discovering America, but whose actions also led to the exploitation and mistreatment of indigenous people.

Andrew Jackson: Seventh President of the United States who forced Native American tribes to relocate from their lands, leading to the Trail of Tears.

Richard Nixon: Former U.S. President who resigned after the Watergate scandal, where he authorized illegal surveillance and sabotage of political opponents.

George W. Bush: Former U.S. President who authorized the invasion of Iraq in 2003, leading to a controversial and costly war.

J. Edgar Hoover: Former Director of the FBI who abused his power to target political opponents and civil rights activists.

Joseph McCarthy: U.S. Senator who led the anti-communist "Red Scare" campaign, resulting in false accusations and ruined reputations.

Charles Manson: Convicted murderer and cult leader responsible for a series of brutal killings in the 1960s.

Timothy McVeigh: Perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, resulting in the deaths of 168 people.

Jeffrey Dahmer: Serial killer who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys in the 1980s and 1990s.

Osama bin Laden: Founder of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda and mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

David Koresh: Leader of the Branch Davidians, a religious sect that engaged in a violent standoff with law enforcement in Waco, Texas in 1993.

James Earl Ray: Assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Ted Bundy: Serial killer who confessed to the murders of at least 30 young women in the 1970s.

Bernie Madoff: Convicted fraudster responsible for a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme that ruined the finances of thousands of investors.

Harvey Weinstein: Former Hollywood producer convicted of rape and sexual assault in a high-profile trial in 2020.

Roger Ailes: Founder and CEO of Fox News who was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women.

Rush Limbaugh: Controversial conservative radio host known for making inflammatory and divisive comments.

Roy Cohn: Infamous lawyer who was known for his involvement in controversial cases, including the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage, and his involvement in Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist campaign.

[meeksimpactlaw]

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[arpov-blog-blog]

The Georgia Law permits participants in the rarely use 'Special Investigative Grand Jury to comment on any related issues except their actual deliberation. So don't listen to so called experts who have not served as prosecutors in Georgia. Federal standards to not apply. Emily Kohrs could have legally named Trump, and a host of others who were recommended for indictment but she did not....."The interviews by Kohrs could create public relations headaches for prosecutors already navigating a politically polarizing investigation.

"It's bad optics," said legal expert Clark Neily of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. "It makes the process look unfair to targets of the grand jury, even though it doesn't provide grounds for quashing an indictment."

The special grand jury heard testimony behind closed doors including from Trump allies such as Republican U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorney Rudy Giuliani. Excerpts of its findings released on Feb. 16 showed that the panel concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath.

But the grand jury lacked indictment powers. Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney steering the investigation, must decide whether to bring the panel's charging recommendations to a regular grand jury. That extra step would further insulate prosecutors from any accusations of grand juror misconduct based on the Kohrs interviews, legal experts said.

"There still has to be an independent assessment by the district attorney and a subsequent grand jury who hands up the indictment," Weinstein said.

A spokesperson for Willis' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is rare for judges to dismiss indictments based on breaches of grand jury protocols, which require proof that panelists were prejudiced or engaged in egregious misconduct that would make a fair trial impossible, experts said.

Cooke, whose time in the Fulton County DA's office overlapped with Willis's service as a prosecutor before she became district attorney, expressed confidence in the fairness of the process.

"Any grand jury in Fulton County is going to have a huge diversity of viewpoints, politics and backgrounds," Cooke said. "You're going to have a group of well-minded citizens trying to do the right thing."

[college-girl199328]

1 woman's story of rape convinced all Weinstein trial jurors

Most of the jurors at Harvey Weinstein's Los Angeles trial were ready to convict him of crimes related to three of the four women he was charged with raping or sexually assaulting. Yet after weeks of deliberation, the eight men and four women voted unanimously to convict him of crimes against only one: a Russian-born model and actor known as Jane Doe 1. She lived in Rome and was visiting California for a film festival at age 34 in 2013 when she said the now-disgraced film mogul appeared uninvited at her Los Angeles hotel room door in the middle of the night.

The jurors were released from service and allowed to talk publicly after more than two months on Tuesday when they could not reach a unanimous decision on two aggravating factors that might have made for a higher sentence. Their deliberations took nine days, spanning more than two weeks, but those who spoke to reporters said the talks were never contentious. Weinstein was found guilty of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against Jane Doe 1. He now faces up to 18 years in prison in California to go with a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York.

Jurors said that Jane Doe 1's composure and the fact that she did not contact Weinstein after he raped her allowed the divided group to reach consensus on her accusations. "I thought Jane Doe 1 was very convincing in her story," said one juror, a 62-year-old man who works in banking and only provided his first name, Michael, because he sought to maintain privacy amid the publicity surrounding the case.

The physical and technical evidence surrounding Jane Doe 1 was some of the thinnest at the trial, but jurors were told that under the law if they found an accuser's story credible, that alone could be enough to convict. They acquitted Weinstein on a count of sexual battery against a massage therapist. They were deadlocked, with 10 of the 12 voting for guilt on a count of sexual battery against model Lauren Young and voting 8-4 in favor of conviction on rape and sexual assault counts involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker, and wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The Associated Press does not name people who have said they were sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or have given consent through their attorneys, as Young and Siebel Newsom have. Jane Doe 1 was the only one among them who had no further direct dealings with Weinstein or his representatives after the incident. She testified that she barely knew who he was, having been introduced only briefly at the film festival, and wanted nothing from him. Others, including Siebel Newsom, had friendly email exchanges with Weinstein or sought out future meetings after their incidents, a point the defense pounded in their cross-examinations and closing arguments.

That resonated with some jurors. Michael said he voted to convict on the Jane Doe 1 counts but reluctantly voted to acquit on the counts involving Siebel Newsom. The difference, he said, was the woman's "subsequent action."

"In a 2 1/2-year period, she had sent Mr. Weinstein over 35 emails," he said of Siebel Newsom. "She wanted access to Harvey Weinstein." It sounded like she wanted access to a lot of his resources. It raised a reasonable doubt in my mind. Weinstein has repeatedly denied engaging in any non-consensual sex. His lawyers called some of the encounters in the charges consensual and others flat-out fabricated, including the story told by Jane Doe 1. They pointed out that prosecutors had not even produced independent evidence to place Weinstein at her hotel.

"Jane Doe 1 is lying. Period," Weinstein's lawyer Alan Jackson said in his closing argument. One juror suggested that the broad statement was undermined by defense arguments that engaged with the details of Jane Doe 1's account.

"I think Jackson’s last comment, where Harvey just wasn’t there, hurt him," said the juror, Arnold Esqueda, who works as director of security for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. "They were defending all these things, and then they just say he’s not there." They should have just said he wasn't there. He said he and other jurors made that point to a "very old school" man on the jury who "decided that he was going to vote guilty on that one." "On the rest, he remained largely innocent."

While tearful at times, Jane Doe 1's testimony was restrained and straightforward in comparison to some that followed. She spoke slowly with a Russian accent and made nearly no use of the translator on hand. Esqueda said the intensely emotional testimony of Siebel Newsom, who was screaming through tears at times during her testimony, might have been too much for some fellow jurors. The panel was divided 6-6 on the counts involving her when he suggested getting a read-back of her testimony from the court reporter.

"She had a little drama," Esqueda said. "So I suggested let’s re-read it, and I think after we read it, it switched a couple of people in her favor, without the drama." Changes over time in the massage therapist's story helped lead jurors to acquit on that count, Michael said.

Judge Lisa Lench tentatively scheduled Weinstein's sentencing for Jan. 9 after his attorneys asked that it be done promptly. But Lench said it might not happen so quickly given the issues surrounding the case, including the prosecutors' pending decision on whether or not to retry the deadlocked counts.

"We'll need to consult the victims first and foremost," Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said. He asked the judge if other Weinstein accusers, including some who testified against him at trial but were not part of the charges and the women whose counts were deadlocked, might give victim impact statements at the sentencing.

Lench promptly rejected the idea. "I’m not going to make this an open forum on all of the allegations that were presented in this trial," she said.

“So it'll just be Jane Doe 1, then," Thompson replied.

[webionaire]

Avery, C. and Turner, S. (2012). "Student Loans: Do College Students Borrow Too Much--Or Not Enough?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26(1), 165-192.

Benmelech, E., Guren, A., and Melzer, B. (2017). "Making the House a Home: The Stimulative Effect of Home Purchases on Consumption and Investment," Working paper.

Cellini, S. and Turner, N. (2016). "Gainfully Employed? Assessing the Employment and Earnings of For-Profit College Students Using Administrative Data," NBER Working Paper No. 22287.

Dettling, L. and Hsu, J. (2014). "Returning to the Nest: Debt and Parental Co-Residence Among Young Adults," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-80. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

Dynan, K. (2012). "Is a Household Debt Overhang Holding Back Consumption?" Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2012, 299-362.

Dynarski, S. (2014). "An Economist's Perspective on Student Loans in the United States" Education Policy Initiative Working Paper 01-2014.

Field, E. (2009). "Educational Debt Burden and Career Choice: Evidence from a Financial Aid Experiment at NYU Law School". American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(1), 1-21.

Kurz, C. and Li, G. (2015), "How Does Student Loan Debt Affect Light Vehicle Purchases?" FEDS Notes (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, February 2).

Lang, K., and Weinstein, R. (2012). "Evaluating Student Outcomes at For-Profit Colleges," NBER Working Paper 18201.

Lochner, L. and Monge-Naranjo, A. (2014) "Student Loans and Repayment: Theory, Evidence and Policy," CIBC Working Paper Series 2014-5.

Loewenstein, G. and Thaler, R. (1989). "Anomalies and Intertemporal Choice". Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3: 181-193.

Looney, A. and Yannelis, C. (2015) "A Crisis in Student Loans? How Changes in the Characteristics of Borrowers and in the Institutions They Attended Contributed to Rising Loan Defaults". Brooking Papers on Economic Activity.

Mezza, A., Ringo, D., Sherlund, S., and Sommer, K. (2016). "Student Loans and Homeownership," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-010r. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Mezza, A. and Sommer, K. (2016). "A Trillion Dollar Question: What Predicts Student Loan Delinquencies?" Journal of Student Financial Aid, Vol. 46-3.

Mian, A., Rao, K. and Sufi, A. (2013). "Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump". Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1687-1726.

Palameta, B. and Voyer, J.P. (2010). Willingness to Pay for Post-secondary Education Among Under-represented Groups. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.

Rothstein, J., and Rouse, C.E. (2011). "Constrained After College: Student Loans and Early-career Occupational Choices". Journal of Public Economics, 95, 149-163.

Thaler, R. (1992). The Winner's Curse: Paradoxes and Anomalies of Economic Life. New York: Free Press.

-----

The highest-income 40 percent of households (those with incomes above $74,000) owe almost 60 percent of the outstanding education debt and make almost three-quarters of the payments. The lowest-income 40 percent of households hold just under 20 percent of the outstanding debt and make only 10 percent of the payments. It should be no surprise that higher-income households owe more student debt than others. Students from higher-income households are more likely to go to college in the first place. And workers with a college or graduate degree earn substantially more in the labor market than those who never went to college.

What may be more surprising, however, is the difference in payment burdens. A growing share of borrowers participate in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, which do not require any payments from those whose incomes are too low and limit payments to an affordable share of income for others. And some borrowers are in forbearance or deferment because of financial hardships. As a result, out-of-pocket loan payments are concentrated among high-income households; few low-income households enrolled in IDR are required to make payments.

the gi bill The assistance the bill provided for tuition, books, supplies, counseling services and a living allowance caused postwar college and vocational school attendance to jump exponentially. It also kept millions of vets from flooding the job market all at one time.

According to federal statistics:

1

Within its first seven years of use, about 8 million veterans took advantage. U.S. college and university degree-holders more than doubled between 1940 and 1950.

2

Within 50 years, the number of Americans with advanced degrees rose nearly 20 percent.

3

By July 1956, when the bill initially expired, almost half of the 16 million World War II vets had gotten education or training through the GI Bill.

[acrickettofillthesilence]

PSA

Non-Jewish people, If you’re thinking of naming your kid Cohen, please don’t. I don’t care if it sounds nice and biblical and lots of other last names have been turned into first names. The surname Cohen has religious significance in Judaism and it’s grating to have you treat it as though it’s the exact same as naming your kid Sawyer or Harper. 

Teach yourself.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cyber-mercenaries helped Saudis hack an NYT reporter

The NSO Group are among the world’s most notorious cyber-mercenaries; they’re an Israeli firm under UK/EU private equity control (the owners have previously threatened to sue me and other journalists for reporting on the company’s ownership structure).

The company claims to be a “lawful interception” supplier, helping democratic, human-rights-respecting governments to spy on terrorists. Their extreme secrecy helps them sell this tale, but thanks to a group of academic human rights researchers, we know better.

For years, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — a group of tech-savvy human rights defenders — have helped civil society groups defend themselves against cyber-threats from oppressive states. Don’t let the “cyber-threats” part fool you: digital surveillance is the prelude to mass arrests, disappearances, torture, and murder. It’s thanks to Citizen Lab that we know the truth about the NSO Group.

The truth, then: NSO isn’t in the counter-terrorism business. Its signature weapon, a devastating surveillance tool called Pegasus, has been used in at least 45 countries, including some of the world’s most brutal autocracies.

https://citizenlab.ca/2018/09/hide-and-seek-tracking-nso-groups-pegasus-spyware-to-operations-in-45-countries/

It has been widely deployed against human rights workers and journalists — more than 50,000 people have been attacked with NSO’s weapons:

https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pegasus-project/

There is no target too petty or insignificant for NSO’s customers. For example, NSO weapons were used against Mexican anti-sugar campaigners, and their young children:

https://citizenlab.ca/2017/06/reckless-exploit-mexico-nso/

The NSO Group’s intimidation tactics don’t stop with legal threats against journalists. After Citizen Lab broke a string of NSO Group stories, it was targeted by ex-Mossad “private security” mercenaries working for the same firm that did Harvey Weinstein’s black-bag operations:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citizen-lab-intelligence.html

Wherever we find brutal autocrats, we find the NSO Group. Their tools were part of the Saudi royals’ plot to murder and dismember the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and were used again in a failed attempt to blackmail Jeff Bezos into ending the Washington Post’s investigation into the slaughter:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v74v34/saudi-arabia-hacked-jeff-bezos-phone-technical-report

The Saudi royals are a major NSO customer, and NSO tools like Pegasus are key to helping their secret police track down dissidents for detention, torture and murder.

The Saudi state doesn’t always know who those dissidents are, but they know which journalists they talk to. That’s why they used NSO Group’s Pegasus malware to hack the New York Times’s Ben Hubbard.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/insider/hacking-nso-surveillance.html

The technical forensics linking NSO surveillance to the hacks against Hubbard’s Iphone can be found in Citizen Lab’s new “Breaking the News” report:

https://citizenlab.ca/2021/10/breaking-news-new-york-times-journalist-ben-hubbard-pegasus/

Despite the damning evidence, the NSO Group insisted that its tools were not behind the attack, claiming that “contractual reasons and restrictions” made that impossible. It’s the same excuse the company gave last July when a consortium revealed 50,000 uses of its malware:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas

NSO Group insists that its weapons are sold under the condition that they only be trained upon terrorists, thus whenever we discover them being used against journalists or dissidents, it can’t possibly be their weapons.

Last July, Edward Snowden published “The Insecurity Industry,” rebutting this claim:

https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/ns-oh-god-how-is-this-legal

Snowden’s article reminded us that commercial surveillance and state surveillance can’t be disentangled. Companies like the NSO Group are legal because state actors depend on them, so any attempt to rein them in gets clobbered by spy agencies who lean on lawmakers to halt legislation.

According to Citizen Lab’s forensics, Hubbard’s Iphone was compromised with a “zero-click” exploit — a security vulnerability that could be exploited without any user interactions. These are the scariest kinds of security defects, since there’s nothing you, as the owner of an Iphone, can do to defend yourself against them.

Apple has patched that bug, thankfully, but it’s certainly not the last defect that will creep into the Iphone’s operating systems (indeed, similar defects might lurk in current versions). Apple often (and rightfully) boasts about its security prowess, but as this incident demonstrates, Apple alone can’t be trusted to secure its devices.

Schneier’s Law tells us that “anyone can design a security system that works so well that they themselves can’t think of a way of breaking it.” As with other forms of knowledge-creation, security is an adversarial process, requiring transparency and peer-review to validate its conclusions. There is no security in obscurity.

Apple has a managed process for security researchers, paying bounties in exchange for following a proscribed methodology, including restrictions on the timing and manner of disclosures. This is a great idea, but it’s not enough. As we see with the NSO Group hacks, Apple’s process misses defects that put its customers in mortal danger.

For obvious reasons, companies aren’t good stewards who gets to criticize their products, and how. It’s not that it’s impossible to report on a defect in irresponsible ways, but companies have an unresolvable conflict of interest that disqualifies them from deciding what constitutes “responsible” criticism.

Which is why it’s such bad news that companies — including Apple — have used legal intimidation to control the conduct of security researchers. Most recently, Apple attacked Corellium, a tool that allows independent security researchers to investigate the inner workers of Apple’s software to uncover defects.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/08/17/1032113/apple-says-researchers-can-vet-its-child-safety-features-its-suing-a-startup-that-does-just-that/ (Apple lost the suit, thankfully)

The NSO Group and other mercenaries don’t care whether Apple approves of their tactics. They will find and weaponize every error, and sell those weapons to monstrous tyrants. We can’t afford to let companies’ commercial priorities trump their users’ right to know about defects in their products.

Rather than directing its fire against security researchers who find and disclose its bugs, Apple should follow Whatsapp’s lead and sue the NSO Group for exploiting its technology:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x5nnz/nso-employees-take-legal-action-against-facebook-for-banning-their-accounts

It should terminate the accounts — personal and commercial — associated with NSO Group employees and executives and permanently bar them from using its services.

Last year, I published Attack Surface, the third novel in the Little Brother series, in which I tell the story of Masha, a young woman who works for a company like the NSO Group until she has a crisis of conscience.

At the time, I ran a series of virtual panels (“The Attack Surface Lectures”), exploring the themes in the book. The first one, hosted by the Strand, featured Citizen Lab founder Ron Deibert and EFF’s Eva Galperin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlORdWC3g3E

(here’s the audio)

https://ia801807.us.archive.org/27/items/asl-politics/Politics%20and%20Protest%20with%20Eva%20Galperin%20and%20Ron%20Deibert.mp3

Attack Surface just came out in paperback:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757517/attacksurface

My local bookstore, Dark Delicacies, has signed copies in stock and I drop by regularly to personalize them:

https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Cory_Doctorow_-__Attack_Surface_HB_%26_TPB.html#/

Last year, I ran a Kickstarter campaign to produce an indie audiobook (outside of Audible’s DRM walled garden), read by Amber Benson. It was the most successful audiobook crowdfunding campaign in world history!

For the rest of this month, I’m selling an audio bundle featuring the audiobooks for all three Little Brother titles (read by Kirby Heyborne, Wil Wheaton and Amber Benson) for $30 (normally $70!).

https://sowl.co/uqT2G

[affectiondeficitdisorder]

Let Us Not Praise Famous Men (But James Franco Might Be Okay)

I normally have little to no sympathy for famous and powerful men who cry “sex addiction” after they’ve been caught with their dick in their hands one too many times, and throw themselves on the mercy of The Meadows or The Hills or The Ranch to some other rehab. Back in 2017, when Harvey Weinstein was finally publicly accused of what everyone in Hollywood knew he had been doing for decades, I wrote a column called “Don’t Let Harvey Weinstein Give Sex Addiction A Bad Name.” To quote myself:

“Here’s my highly educated but technically non-professional opinion: Harvey Weinstein is not a sex addict. Harvey Weinstein is an abusive asshole. Some sex addicts may be abusive assholes. Some abusive assholes may be sex addicts. But they are two very different things. [Harvey Weinstein doesn’t] need Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. [He needs] Abusive Assholes Anonymous – but AA is taken, and AAA will really upset the Automobile Association of America.”

The latest celebrity to self-define as a sex addict is actor James Franco and you know what? I do believe him.

In a cringingly intimate, widely publicized interview with veteran entertainment journalist Jess Cagle, Franco admitted to sleeping with his acting students (which cost him a $2.2 million lawsuit settlement) and cheating on every girlfriend he’s ever had (which cost him every girlfriend he’s ever had.) He says he would likely have continued this behavior, until his sister-in-law gave him a book about sex addiction.

“When I read this book, it hit me like a bullet. It was like ‘oh my god, that’s me’.”

Now, I would like to think it was my book LOVE ADDICT: SEX, ROMANCE AND OTHER DANGEROUS DRUGS that switched on the light bulb, but I suspect not. Love Addict is more about love addiction (no surprise) than sex addiction. Still, feel free to give him a copy if you run into him.

Here’s why I believe him: Franco has been sober in a 12-step program since he was 17 years old. “I went to meetings all that time,” says the now 43-year-old actor. “I even tried to sponsor other people. So in my head, it was like, ‘Oh, I’m sober. I’m living a spiritual life.’ Where on the side, I’m acting out in all these other ways, and I couldn’t see it.”

That was also my story, and a story I’ve heard from a number of people who crawled into sex and love recovery groups with a decade and more of sobriety. I was sober AF, working a program — a good program, if I say so myself — and still had this incredible blind spot where my sexual and romantic life was concerned. Eventually, as as Franco put it, “the behavior spun out to a point where I was hurting everybody.”

Once Franco saw sex and romance within the framework of addiction, he made a decision to move towards recovery.

“Once I couldn’t use alcohol to fill the hole, I got addicted to validation. It’s such a powerful drug. Attention from women, success with women, became a huge source of validation for me. The problem is that, like with any drug, there’s never enough. I’m just trying to fill that hole and it never gets filled. It’s never ending.”.

Cagle takes Franco to the woodshed over his acting-out behavior, and thank god most of us don’t have to make our amends quite so publicly. As much as we all want to be famous, there is a down side…  It’s a tough listen at times, but it’s also a service - if he can survive this, surely we can live through telling our roommates we slept with their boyfriends.

You did that too, right….?

Franco talks about fear of intimacy, he talks about withdrawal, he talks about what life is like when you stop living out a pattern of sex and love addiction: “My god, I have to get to know James now? I had the social skills of a 13-year-old. I hid behind the facade of my fame.”

It sounds a lot like what you hear in a recovery group. It sounds like self awareness, which is something I don’t hear from some other famous dudes who turned themselves into sex addiction rehab - not your Weinsteins, not your Kevin Spaceys, not even a pathetic mess like Anthony Weiner.

“I’ve used my recovery background to kind of start examining this and changing who I was,” says Franco. “You’re trying to fill that hole with all these outside things, because there’s something deeper going on - I just couldn’t see it at the time. There’s probably an iceberg underneath. It isn’t going to be solved overnight. I’ve been doing a lot of work.”

I believe you, kid. Welcome to the club. Good luck.

And fuck Harvey Weinstein.