#which throws into question the rigor of their ENTIRE argument

[finniestoncrane]

Respect Your Elders

Telltale!Riddler x Female!Reader, word count: 2.3k commission: edward being teased by a younger reader for being an old man, but it's fine because this old man fucks severely 💚 commission me here! request info • prompt list • send me a request • kofi • masterlist minors DNI!! 🔞 cw: degradation, rough sex, forceful

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing there?”

Edward was sitting at his desk with the new computer you had installed. His back tensed up at your words, and you could tell without seeing that his face was contorted into one of absolute irritation and rage. And you were glad of it. Nothing pleased you more than riling him up. It was often the only fun you got to have. Unsurprising to anyone who you told, being the Riddler’s assistant didn’t actually lead to a lot of excitement or jolly good times. It was tough, rigorous, never-ending work. But you could suffer through it, if it meant spending time with Edward. As much as you teased him, you knew it was all down to your little crush. Like a child on the playground. Your playful bullying was an outlet for your true feelings, which you could never reveal to him. You needed to keep the upper-hand in this relationship. You knew it would be entirely too dangerous to let him know he had any kind of advantage on you, or at least more than the ones he already assumed he had.

“You know…”

Edward spoke through gritted teeth and raised his head, not turning to face you yet.

“… age is but a number, my dear. I think I can handle a computer, I’m intellectually more advanced than anyone, especially you.”

“Mhm… you know you’ve been clicking the wrong thing for five minutes now?”

“I… I’m not…”

With an irritated grumble, he shoved the mouse to the side and pushed the keyboard away. Turning in the chair, he got up and pushed past you out of the room.

“I can’t get anything done with you standing around here bothering me!”

Though it was clear he was leaving in an attempt to get away from you, you followed him anyway.

“Age is just a number, yes… but there’s plenty of things that being older hardly lends itself to, and you would know better than most. I mean you’re what? 65? 70?”

“I’m 60! As well you know! And besides, normal rules don’t apply to me.”

“Sure they do, Edward. You’re not a super-human. You’re just a little old man in his cute little green hoodie. Hell, you even use a cane!”

“Keep this up and I’ll be using it on you.”

You giggled as you skipped after him. It was so easy. He was almost too easy in fact. And maybe you should have felt bad about it, about getting him so exasperated and irritated. But you needed the release. It was frustrating to be cooped up with him berating you and being miserable all the time. You were owed the pleasure of bothering him.

“Mhm… grumpy old man. Keep it up, Edward. You’re hardly deflecting the stereotypes.”

“What other stereotypes do I fit into then?”

He stopped at the work bench that held his latest gadget in progress, standing to work on it as you continued your tirade of childish mockery.

“Hm… well, you’ve got that greying hair.”

“Exactly. Greying. Not quite fully grey yet, I’ll have you know.”

“Yeah. Wrinkles?”

“So few!”

“You’ve started forgetting things, getting slow in your old age.”

“I think that’s more because you’re constantly distracting me and throwing me off.”

“Oh sure, blame me!”

He was silent as you considered saying the one thing that had been playing on your mind since the beginning of the argument.

“I bet you’re getting a bit slow other places too… not quite the stamina you used to have…”

“I’m as agile as I ever was.”

“In what areas… because I’m thinking of one particular. Requires a bit more than agility… requires an ability to sustain something else…”

Edward turned to you with a questioning gaze.

“Do you mean…?”

“I mean sex, grampa.”

You winked with a mischievous smile as you said it, noticing his cheeks reddening slightly at the mention. But he turned away from you again, hiding any embarrassment he might have felt.

“Yes, well. You wouldn’t know anything about that anyway.”

“I guess I could find out, if I pester you long enough.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous. Besides, you’re aware of my comings and goings. It’s been quite some time since I’ve been with anyone, the results of any experimentation would be skewed by lack of sufficient data.”

“Is that because you literally can’t anymore?”

“I’m pretty sure I could get by, just the same as any other virile man.”

“Oh yeah, sure! And would you still need your cane while you were going at it? Or would you risk breaking a hip?”

“Very funny.”

“And when, just out of curiosity, was the last time you even had an erection?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”

“Because you can’t remember? Is that because it was so long ago or because your memory is terrible now that you’re ancient?”

“I’m not going to tell you again to drop this.”

“Aw, did I hit a nerve? Is it difficult to talk about? I bet it is. I bet you can’t even get it up anymore.”

You turned from him, laughing, walking towards the other work bench, cleared apart from some papers and files.

“Such a shame, I wonder if you would have been any good, when you were young enough to actually make a dent in someone.”

As you craned your head to see if he was still listening, to gauge the effect your taunting was having on him, you were met with the sudden shock of his hand, palm against your neck, grip tight, as he lowered you down onto the workbench, swiping the papers to the floor before he forced you down onto it.

“Care to find out?”

“Really? You gonna give it to me good, old man?”

“Oh no. You don’t deserve anything good. You’re a very, very bad girl. And you’ll be treated as such for the duration. Now. Don’t mess around anymore. Take off your panties and pull your skirt up.”

“Yeah? You gonna make me?”

He tightened the grip, pinning you to the desk as you gasped and smiled, unable to hold back the excitement at feeling his body against yours.

“Respect your elders, my dear. Do as you are told.”

You still felt excited, tantalised by the demanding nature he had taken on. But there was an element of fear behind it. Something about the way he stared into you, eyes penetrating your soul, teeth gritted and brows furrowed into a scowl. There was nothing but cruelty in his face. So you did as you were told, sliding your panties down your thighs. He snatched them from you, holding them up and examining them.

“Quite flirtatious, aren’t they. Were you expecting something? Or are you just a run of the mill whore?”

You didn’t have an answer from him, so you remained silent.

“And damp! Already!”

Bringing them to his face he inhaled, taking in the scent of your arousal, before he tossed them aside.

“Well… next step, come on. Do not make me wait.”

Lifting your skirt up slowly, you revealed yourself to him as his mouth curled into a sly smile.

“Wonderful, you can actually do as you’re instructed. I truly thought you might be too pitifully stupid for that. Let’s see if you can keep up the good work. Turn around, and bend over.”

“Ok, Edward. You can stop joking now. You’ve had your fun, you got a good look at me. You can drop the dirty old man act.”

He stepped forward quickly, far quicker than you had seen him move before. With his hands gripping your arms he turned you around, slamming you down onto the surface and pinning you there under his weight, his strength surprising.

“Oh, I’ve not even begun to have my fill of you yet.”

“Edward, wait! P-please!”

“Too late for mercy and apologies now, dear. Perhaps, if you had extended that same gratitude to me, you wouldn’t be in this particular position right now. But, your punishment must suit the crime. So I am going to fuck you until you can see how effortlessly I can make you scream. I haven’t lost that touch yet.”

“I was joking, Edward!”

“I’m not.”

As you closed your eyes tight, trying to struggle out from under his body, you could hear him shuffling, not realising that he had undone his belt and pants until you felt the heat of his flushed cock pressing against your pussy.

“W-wait, I’m not- I’m a-”

Your words were cut short by your scream as he thrust himself into you with little care. Rough, painful, completely filling you with his impressive length and thickness. And the sound of your pain only seemed to further excite him as he began a brutal pace, slapping into you, pounding your body into the surface you were trapped against.

His soft grunting echoed around you as he exerted his entire energy in an effort to have you whimpering under him. The size, the pressure, the way his fingers dug into your skin, nails leaving tiny half-crescents as they indented and left marks. The stinging sensation made your eyes water as you gasped, trying to catch your breath, fighting for some respite between the punishing blows to your rear as he slammed himself hard into you.

“Edward… you’re being… too rough…”

He snarled, laughing deep and low as he continued his vicious movements.

“That’s the… ah… whole point, dear… you… hng… didn’t expect anything like this… ah… from an old man, did you?”

“I’m sorry… please… I take it back… just… just be gentle!”

“I’m sorry too… hah… you’d hardly learn… mph… your lesson if I… ah… stopped now…”

You clung to the edge of the surface, knuckles white as you tried to focus on something other than the embarrassment, the way you were being so humiliated under Edward’s irritatingly delicious fucking. He really did have control over you. Strength, power, and an impressive dick. And the talent to make you a quivering mess below him, unable to stop yourself from getting wetter and hotter as the looming threat of orgasm came closer and closer to you.

“You’re a silly little slut… do you know that?”

In a stupefied daze you nodded, acknowledging his degradation, almost willing for more to be dished out to you. You wanted to be punished, you wanted to be his slut, his whore. You would be anything he wanted right now.

“The youth of today… ah… they don’t know how… to respect… their elders…”

The skin of your ass cheek suddenly flashed hot as you heard the crack of his palm striking it.

“Back in my day… you would have learned to be respectful… to shut up… especially women… like you… keep your mouth closed… unless it’s to accept my cock…”

He punctuated the words with more spanking, and you could feel the area almost numbed from the stinging, silently hoping that he might have left a mark that could admire later. At the thought of it, you could feel your legs growing weak under you, trembling as you prepared for the inevitable, an orgasm, cumming over Edward’s dick as it slid in and out of you. Giving him what he had taken from you in his act of aggression.

“Already… heh… that close to finishing?”

You bit your lip in response as you tried to hold back the moans of pleasure.

“And you… wanted to mock me about… stamina?”

He laughed as he smacked at your ass and thighs, his own pace quickening.

“You’d think you… hadn’t done… this before…”

With your cheek pressed onto the table, eyes watering, tears streaming down your cheeks, you managed to catch his eye. As he realised that you hadn’t done this before, his mouth contorted into a smug grin.

“Are you kidding me? You talk a very big game, dear. You had the nerve. The audacity. To mock me.”

Every sentence ended with him slamming his body into you, burying his cock deeper and deeper, straining you, stretching you to your limit.

“And you’re nothing but an inexperienced little virgin.”

You could feel your cheeks redden, deeply regretting your cruel taunting, desperate to take it back. But then, had you never said anything, you wouldn’t be receiving the greatest punishment, and pain, you ever had to endure.

“Say it. Say you’re a virgin.”

“I’m a virgin.”

“And tell me you want me to fuck you hard, to ruin you, before anyone else has even had a chance.”

“I… Eddie, please…”

“Tell me that you’re mine now.”

“I’m yours.”

“And that you want me to fuck you.”

“I want you to fuck me.”

He laughed, grin spread ear to ear as he felt you clench around him, willing him to keep going, to fill your tight cunt. With his fingers digging deeper into your skin, he held you onto him, keeping you still as he enjoyed the feeling. He’d never been anyone’s first before. It was an experience he wanted to savour. His lips were wet with his owl drool as he salivated, making a mental note of how good you felt around him, committing the sensations to memory for the next time he had to take care of himself. The way your body accommodated him, the way it made room for his ample length. Like you were trying your hardest to be a very good girl, to take everything he was giving you.

“I want it, Eddie, please.”

The desire to please you was usurped by his strong need to see his punishment through.

“Oh… well in that case.”

He pulled himself out of you.

“We’ll prolong the experience. Get down on your knees. I’ll decide when little miss gets to have her orgasm.”

[rushingheadlong]

POP IN THE SUPERMARKET

Conveyer rock - is it all a hype? Colin Irwin looks at pre-packed pop and talks to the men behind new bands Queen (left) and Merlin

Hype. An ugly, unpleasant word frequently recurring in rock circles. 

Up in the boardroom of a vast record company the fat cigar brigade are scratching heads. Binn and Batman have come up with another surefire hit and they want somebody fresh to market it. They ponder a few names and finally decide on one with slight but clear sexual connotations - suggestively camp. 

Name settled, they work on the people who will be in this new band. They might be able to find a ready-made group to fit the bill but better to mould their own. There's a singer who has been around for a few years. 

He's not great but he knows how to throw himself around a stage, has a hairy chest and can hit the high notes. Give him a new name and he'll do. Somebody knows a lead guitarist who can play a bit and looks good. They can advertise for the others. 

They'll work out a sensational stage act, rig them up in some flash gear, buy them the best equipment and arrange a string of appearances in some influential venues. Plunge a few thousand quid in launching them with advertising and posters and "They'll be the biggest thing since sliced bread," chief fat cigar tells his underlings. 

Session musicians are employed to record the single and being a Binn and Batman special the radio stations label it "chart bound" and play it twenty five times a day. Seeing the glossy photos in the bop mags the kids gather up their pennies and buy it. 

VOILA, stars are born - or manufactured. An extreme form of hype. 

There's also a cliché commonly used in the business about people who have been around for many years and finally make it. It's called talent-will-out. An idealist phrase but there is still a popular belief that if a band is truly talented enough it will win through in the end. 

Yet even the greatest band in the world need a bit of pushing in the first place. When a record becomes a hit it's not always that easy to distinguish between hype and talent-will-out.

If a record company spends astronomical sums of money promoting a band, is it hype? Or is it a legitimate and necessary weapon in the music business? The argument is that the BBC's ever-tightening playlist and the effects on the industry of the three-day week have made it harder than ever for a new group to make it - talent or no. Without a big money machine behind it there isn't a hope. 

The situation is illustrated by two energetic new bands, who both look like breaking. 

Big money has been spent on Queen and Merlin, who have had new singles released during the last month. 

Queen's record, "Seven Seas Of Rhye," is already moving swiftly up the chart, while Merlin's "Let Me Put My Spell On You," is doing well enough to suggest it might follow suit. 

There is no suggestion that either band is a manufactured or manipulated product in the sense of the Monkees. They play the music on their own records entirely themselves and they are both hard at work on the road. 

Yet the question arises as to whether they would be doing quite so well without the resources of big companies behind them. 

In the case of Queen it's Trident Audio Productions and EMI and for Merlin it's Cookaway Productions and CBS.

The one common factor is that money and backing has been provided because the companies have a solid, unshakeable belief in the artists they are promoting. They are indignant about any suggestion of a put-on or that there has been any attempt to con the public. 

Listen to Merlin's producer Roger Greenaway for half-an-hour and there is no doubting his faith in their ability. "They are going to break, I know they are. I'm convinced the record will be a hit."

Nobody's saying exactly how much it has cost to launch either band. "Over a period of months between £5,000 and £10,000" has been spent on marketing Queen by EMI while the figure for Merlin is even vaguer. "A bit, but not a vast amount. Not a fortune by any means."

"Seven Seas Of Rhye" is Queen's second single and was recorded as part of the album "Queen 2" which has just been released. Things started to move for them about a year ago when they recorded their first album for Trident, who have a distribution contract with EMI. 

An advance was paid to them to help with the immediate costs of putting them on the road. 

Review copies of the album - about 400 of them - were sent out to everyone who might conceivably have any influence on the record buying public, from discos to the national press. Copies were personally distributed to radio and TV producers and extensive advertising space was bought in the trade papers. 

The launch for Queen was more concentrated than most artist are entitled to expect. 

Trident were completely behind them from the start and found them their American producer Jack Nelson. EMI promotions men Ronnie Fowler and John Bagnall decided they had a product with an exceptional chance of success and they went all out to exploit it to the full. 

Says Fowler: "Every record we release we work to a pattern of promotion. When I went round with the album it was normal procedure. It becomes un-normal when people start phoning you - that's when you put more effort into it."

Bagnall adds: "It became obvious after a week or so that it wasn't standard promotion that was necessary. We did a more complete promotion job than usual on Queen because we thought they were going to make it.

"They're all good-looking guys and I did a round of teeny papers and all the girls in the office swooned over them. Brian, the lead guitarist, had made his own guitar and a couple of the nationals picked up on that. It was good, gossipy stuff."

Queen's publicity machine was working from all angles because they were also getting external promotion from Tony Brainsby's promotion office. 

He had been involved with them from the time they had been trying to get record producers interested. The intensity of it all paid off when they were invited to do a spot on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Radio Luxembourg latched upon the single "Keep Yourself Alive" and played it regularly. 

Their first tour, supporting Mott the Hoople, got the full works. Local press was saturated with releases about this new band which was shortly coming to their town, elaborate displays were arranged at the front of the house on the night of the concert, local disc-jockeys were informed, and window displays were made in about 200 local record shops. 

"Trident and EMI committed themselves right from the start to this band, to make sure they had a PA which was better than other bands had and to make sure they had the right clothes. Some of their outfits cost £150 each," said Bagnall. "Spending money on a band isn't hype. It wasn't being flash or extravagant for the sake of building an image. It was making sure that everything else was as good as their music."

Not so far removed from the attitude towards Merlin, although it has been on a smaller scale in this case. 

The first Merlin tour, still underway, is rigorous. They are playing ballrooms and colleges all over the country on a lengthy round. 

An ambitious project for a new, unknown band, but it has already been successful in that it has launched them as a name people now know. A full-page advertisement was bought in the MM. That's the sort of treatment you might get if you're Bowie, or Ferry, or even Mick Ronson. But Merlin?

They have only been in existence in their present form since last May. 

They emerged as a result of discussions between Alan Love and Derek Chick about the possibility of forming a band with definite commercial appeal and a glamorous stage act. The idea reached fruition via a band called Madrigal, who had for some time been working the same circuit as Mud before "Crazy" broke for them. 

Madrigal disbanded but reformed with the same drummer and bass player, and Love as singer and Chick as manager. A couple more young musicians were found to join them and Chick started the usual hustling to get them going. 

In due course they came to the attention of Cookaway, and Roger Greenaway was hastily summoned to take a look at them. He had already seen Madrigal and when he saw the new model he immediately saw a big future for them. 

Greenaway says: "I'd been looking for a group of this type for three years - a young under-20s group who can present a good act. There's a lot more showmanship attached to bands now. I wanted an act with a slightly different approach. I was in New York producing the Drifters and I came back especially to hear them."

He quickly took them into a studio to see how they reacted there and among the tracks they recorded was "Let Me Put My Spell On You" which had been written by Greenaway in collaboration with Tony Macaulay. Like Queen, the best equipment and some fancy costumes were bought for them and the launching process was put into operation. 

My own experience of the Merlin project was a couple of weeks ago at Reading Top Rank - a bizarre mixture of precocious boppers, ageing teds, and stern-looking heavies. 

Posters and pictures of the group were plastered all over the place and by the time they eventually appeared late in the evening you had been informed quite thoroughly that Merlin had made a record called "Let Me Put My Spell On You."

Greenaway says of Love: "He's got star quality and he's a great charmer. The guitar player Jamie Moses has got a terrific potential too. I've worked with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones but for me this guy at 18 is a better player than Jimmy Page was at the same age. He's the sort of player guys can follow - like Jet Harris - he had an incredible following with the guys."

He likens the Merlin launch to a military operation. The career of the group has been minutely planned since October. Accepting that it is almost impossible to get airplay for a new band on the BBC they decided the best way to break them was through a solid mass of live dates. 

The dates were booked, once again the best equipment, including a light show, was bought for them, and distinctive stage costumes especially designed. 

"By the time the tour has ended they will be a really tight band. We are getting support in the regions and you can break a record if you can get regional radio stations and disco plays. I believe this record is a hit and the signs are there. This is a ten-year job as far as I'm concerned."

Not that big money backing is any guarantee of success. 

One of the biggest projects of this type was the launching of young Darren Burn as Britain's answer to Donny Osmond. To their eternal credit the record-buying public didn't apparently want an answer to Mr Osmond and the campaign failed. 

The pop supermarket is not a new trend. The attractively packaged mass-produced record has been a part of the industry for a long time. The early releases of Love Affair, White Plains and Edison Lighthouse for example spring to mind. 

The whole thing is justified for the makers by the fact that they still become hits, thus proving there is a demand for made-to-order records. If the public is willing - or gullible enough - to pay 50p for music created in the boardroom. Well it must be OK.

The Merlin single is blatantly, unashamedly aimed at being a big hit - that seems to have been the one criterion in making it. It has all the ingredients and as the whole thing has been done with concentrated professionalism it will probably be a hit. 

Back to Roger Greenaway: "I don't want to present this as a Monkees type of image. It's not a manufactured group in any way - these guys have all been in other bands. 

"What Merlin are about is success - reaching people. It's so wrong for opposing people to criticise. If Chinn and Chapman go out to reach a particular market at the thing they do best, and they reach them, then they're doing their job. They've filled a gap.

"When this record happens it'll be called hype but we haven't hyped anybody. Not a vast amount of money has been spent on them. It would be silly to have a tour like this without some sort of advertising. All the money that has been spent on them so far has been towards getting them on the road. 

"It's expensive but it's minimal if you think of it as a along term thing."

It may be unfair to associate Queen with the pop supermarket. The group themselves were apprehensive about appearing on Top Of The Pops and the prospect of a hit record. 

They have always regarded themselves as an album band and were concerned about being connected with the chart groups. The fact remains that they have been on the receiving end of a giant campaign to create a best-selling single and album. 

The first album had sold far better than they had anticipated and there was great excitement around Trident and EMI as the second one was being made. Manager Jack Nelson came in virtually every day to play new tracks as they were completed and many discussions followed on which one should be released as a single. 

A special meeting was held between Bagnall, Fowler, marketing manager Paul Watts and a few others to discuss the approach to the release of "Queen 2."

"We talked about the possibility of boxing the album, and other various publicity and posters needed to produce an album we were convinced was going to be one of the biggest of the year. We set a high target for it. 'Seven Seas' isn't a housewives' record so with the daily shows like Edmonds, Blackburn and Hamilton, there's no chance of getting it played, we knew that from the start. But the weekend shows - Rosko, Henry, and D.L.T. - they all flipped over it. I took the records round personally because I felt so strongly about it."

The prime plug, however, is Top Of The Pops. If a record gets exposure on that there is a more than even chance that it will become a hit. He played it to the show's Robin Nash and a couple of days later Nash phoned him and asked him where Queen were. Later he rang back and invited Queen to do a session. 

The band weren't too sure whether they wanted to do it but eventually agreed although even then they didn't know until the last minute whether it would be used because they were half expecting a David Bowie film to arrive and take it's place. But in the end Queen were shown and "Seven Seas Of Rhye" moved dramatically from there. 

"A lot of people have invested an awful lot of time and money in this band but not as a hype," says Bagnall. "The only truth in the music business is that if a band isn't good, no amount of money will get them to make it."

Greenaway may be right that Merlin are one of the most exciting bands to merge since the Beatles. Fowler might be right that Queen are one of the best since the Who. But big business still remains one of the sadder aspects of the music industry today. 

----------

Huge thanks to the anon who brought this to my attention, since I’ve been looking for a copy of this article for ages now! 

Credit for the original scans goes to @Chrised90751298 over on twitter, though I stitched it back together into a single image for ease of posting over there. Open the image in a new tab to see the full-size version!

[spookypalace]

something borrowed - chapter two

After one drink too many at her  30th-birthday celebration, Jo unexpectedly falls into bed with her  longtime crush and best friend, Alex – who happens to be engaged to her best friend, Izzie. Ramifications of the liaison threaten to destroy  the women’s lifelong friendship, while Jackson, Jo’s  confidant, harbors a potentially explosive secret of his own.

—

Or the one where everyone is a little messy but you still root for them anyway.

(ao3 link)

ok ok so i'm not entirely happy with this chapter, partly because i used a bit of backstory from the book but i kinda preffered how they did it in the movie so i included that also lol - so there is a bit of both :/ i've been sitting on the chapter for a bit but couldn't think of any way i'd want to change it up so i thought i'd just post and get it over with.

also this is a flashback and within this flashback, there is a flashback. it's the big chunk in italics, but if anyone thinks the way i have formatted this chapter is confusing then please let me know so i can change it and make it ... make more sense i guess.

anyway, thanks for reading and please let me what you think!!

May 2004

It’s to no one’s surprise that the only person left in the campus library at ten p.m. on the last Friday of their final year of law school, it’s Jo. It’s where she spent most of her evenings for the past couple of weeks, studying and stressing—attempting to cram in as much last-minute knowledge she could before their final exam on the following Wednesday.

Brunette hair tied back, save for the few small wisps fluttering over her eyes she’d blowing up at every so often. His oversized grey sweatshirt hangs loosely off her arms as she turns page after page of some old law journal, her right-hand scribbling down messy notes at her unusually fast pace.

The library was dull lit, save for the security guards lamp who sits grunting in the back corner, and the numerous lamps that lit the large mahogany table she currently sat at—books splayed across the surface, ones she hadn’t touched for hours but kept out just in case. Jo chooses not to think about how long it’ll take her to clear this up before she must leave.

A yawn escapes her lips, causing her to lift her left wrist and check the time, she’d already been here for six hours and unless the security guard was kicking her out—she wasn’t leaving. Jo had come way too far and worked way too hard to fall at the last hurdle, the last exam.

Maybe if she hadn’t spent the first half of her senior year with Izzie and Jackson and Alex so much, albeit separately, she wouldn’t feel the need to study as much as she had in the past few weeks. Jo had found herself falling behind, distracted by parties and flooding apartments and some crappy law drama Jackson had forced her to watch every Thursday night. But now, after weeks—she felt like she was getting back on track, just in time as well.

Jo’s eyes scan the page in front of her, she reads it over and over, but the words just don’t seem to settle in. With a deep groan, she throws the pen across the table and flops her head into her hands, rubbing circles against her temple.

“You look like you could do with a drink.” Alex’s familiar deep voice sneaks up behind her, causing Jo to jump in her seat—spine becoming rigid as a loud gasp escapes her lips. The sound causes the security guard to stand from his seat, glaring over at the pair. “Sorry,” Alex calls over to the guy, raising his hands in defence before letting out a laugh as he settles down on the chair next to a still heavy-breathing Jo.

“You scared me!” She exclaims through gritted teeth, trying to keep her voice quiet but still let Alex know she wasn’t all that happy about his surprise arrival. He places a comforting hand on her back and rubs softly, up and down up and down. It surprises her just how much the action did relax her, the feeling of stress no longer coursing through her body. “What are you doing here?” Jo finally asks now her breathing has returned to normal, turning in her seat slightly to look up at Alex.

Alex is about to reply with something snarky about her rigorous studying schedule but then he notices; the grey sweatshirt that engulfs her small frame, the one with their college logo fraying over the chest. He’d recognise it anywhere, with the raggedy hemline against the wrists and the small patch of white paint he’d stained it with when he helped his mom paint the shed in her backyard. It was his sweatshirt. Jo was wearing his sweatshirt. And he couldn’t explain the warm fuzzy feeling he felt after just one look at her at her snuggled inside of it. She looked so cosy—perfect, even. He wondered if he’d ever see anyone look just as good as she looked in this moment.

But, then again, she was constantly surprising him.

Ever since she first sat down next to him in their freshman year; her eyes big, lips pursed and rambling about something or another to herself. Alex had thought she was crazy; the way she ranted under her breath as if there really was someone else up in her head conversing back to her. But then, once she spotted him staring, her ranting turned to babbling as she tried to explain herself. And in an instant, he no longer thought she was crazy, he thought she was cute and funny, OK, and maybe a little crazy—but that was part of her charm.

They had been friends ever since, really good friends.

Just friends.

“Is this mine?” He plasters on his crooked smirk, hiding the warm feeling he felt after noticing, as he uses his thumb and forefinger to pinch at the material and pull her a little closer.

She leans into him with a giggle, her dainty shoulder bumping against his broad, “stooop.” She drags, trying to fight the curl of her lips as he continues to tease her with pokes to her stomach. She’s attempting to get back into the reading she momentarily gave up on, picking up a pen which was closer to her than the one she angrily threw earlier. But he doesn’t relent, forcing her to swivel on her seat and look him dead in his amused brown eyes. “I forgot to bring clothes when I crashed at your place last night,” she informs with a shove to his arm, “I would have headed back to my apartment but my landlord called, the plumber was over there—finally fixing the damn pipes.”

Jo swears she sees Alex’s shoulders deflate at her words, and she can’t pinpoint exactly why he would be disappointed about finally getting her out of his hair. Despite the fact that Alex’s apartment was tiny, practically the size of the car she lived in back in high school, the place never felt cramped when it was just the two of them. There were times that they were probably a little too close for comfort, heat rising into the small area, but even if Alex minded her showing up with a single duffel bag and an apologetic smile—he never complained, not once.

Alex laughs lightly, “it’s cool, it looks better on you anyway.”

“Shut up.” Jo scoffs, deflecting the compliment. Something Alex noticed Jo did a lot, if not every single time someone attempts to say something nice to her. “So,” she pushes the conversation along, “you don’t have to worry about me showing up anymore.”

He shrugs, “I like the company.” Jo tilts her head to the side, eyes scanning his face—trying to find something, anything, that would give her a sign as to what that meant. What it meant coming from him. A sign. Something. “Oh!” He exclaims, shooting an apologetic glance over to the security guard, before his hands reach down the bag pack he discarded onto the floor upon his arrival, “I got you something.” He tells her with a smile and a glimmer in his eyes, hands fishing into the bag.

“For me?” Jo’s eyes widen in excitement as she grins widely. A giggle escapes her lips when he produces two bottle of beers and a bottle opener, popping the caps off when he sees the small excitement in her face. He loved that about, Jo. She appreciated the simple stuff—the stuff he appreciated, they enjoyed together. “You shouldn’t have,” Jo murmurs with a smile, hitting her bottle against Alex’s once he’s passed hers over, keeping the bottle below the table—out of the guards’ sight.

“I have a proposition for you.” He states, swigging the beer.

Jo’s eyebrows raise inquisitively, “mmhmm, what’s that?” Brown eyes widening as Alex leans in closer towards her, placing a bookmark on the open page of her book before slamming the thing shut. “Alex—���

“Let’s get out of here.” It’s not really a question, more like a polite order. “You need a break.”

With a huff, Jo rakes her eyes over the mess of open books, sighing at the sight before her. Jo shakes her head, turning back to Alex, “you should be studying, too. We have five days until we take the biggest test of our lives, Alex. Our entire future is counting—”

“Stop.” Alex groans, grabbing the small woman by her shoulders and forcing her to look him in the eyes. His crooked smirk never fades from his lips, doesn’t even falter. “You need a break.” He repeats, his voice almost stern.

Knowing that this wasn’t an argument she was about to win, Jo sets down the beer and picks up the misplaced pens, chucking them into the blue pencil case she’s been carrying around since he met her. Alex’s smirk turns into a proud grin as he watches her pack up her things, closing book after book.

He stands up, helping her gather her things and piles up books so he can take them back to their rightful place for her. It takes him three trips but when she murmurs a quiet thank you, raising a soft hand to stroke down his arm, he really doesn’t mind.

Once they’re done, her bag is filled and his hands are clutching at two cold beers whilst they walk out of the library, Jo bidding a sweet farewell to the unimpressed security guard, a thought crosses his mind. “You know,” he begins, watching as Jo’s brows raise in his direction and her hand comes to snatch back the cool beer, “once this is finally over, I’m taking you out for dinner.”

Jo grins, “a fancy bistro or a penthouse bar looking over New York’s skyline?” The glimmer in her eyes as they continue to walk in the direction of his apartment without even a spoken word regarding the matter, tells him she’s teasing.

“Private jet to Milan, actually.”

“How about …” Jo chuckles, bumping shoulders with Alex, tucking her small frame against his larger, “we eat fried chicken in the car like we were raised to do.”

“Sounds perfect.” He wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in closer as they round the corner onto the street of his apartment.

The next time they see one another, out of the classroom, she’s worming her way through the crowded bar they had agreed to meet at. Jo’s eyes are scanning across the people as her once cool skin heats up, in search of him. Fingers fumble to unbutton her thick coat within the mass of people, not wanting to accidentally elbow someone in the back—she sees him.

Alex is there, with a wide grin on his face and a bottle of his usual beer in hand. He’s laughing along to something one of there classmates have said before his eyes land on her, and if possible, his smile widens and sparkling white teeth blind her. He pauses his conversation, moving towards her and grabbing her by the hand to pull her through the crowd at a faster pace. He was glad to finally see her.

“Congratulations!” Jo exclaims to Alex and the rest of their classmates once they reach their corner of the bar, all of them cheer and offer her their own congratulations at the sight of her. She smiles up at Alex, before her hands finally move back to the one button she was yet to undo, snapping the coat open she shrugs it off her shoulders and places it across her forearm.

Alex is turned towards the bar, requesting another beer for Jo as she does so but when he turns back—his mouth goes dry. He’d never seen Jo dressed like that. The figure hugging little black dress hugged her curves perfectly, lifting and contouring her cleavage. He thought, though he kept it to himself, she looked absolutely perfect. But before he could be subject to both Jo’s and their classmates lame jokes about his drooling, he shakes his head—ignoring the feelings that rushed over him at just the sight of her. Pleased for the moment of distraction as he exchanges his cash for a beer and hands it over to the petite brunette, full lips offering him a tight smile in thanks.

Yes, he’d always thought Jo was pretty. Beautiful, even. When she was dressed in a sweatshirt or just a cardigan, even a simple t-shirt—she always managed to look utterly perfect. At least, to him she did. He’d heard her wining about bad skin and greasy hair, but he’d never seen the faults that she could see.

As they’re standing there, celebrating the end of an era, Jo begins to reminisce on how they got here …

She thinks about how she had met Alex during their first year of law school at NYU. Unlike most law students, who come straight from college when they can think of nothing better to do with their stellar undergrad transcripts, Alex Karev was older, with real-life experience. He had worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, which blew away Jo’s nine-to-five summer internships and office jobs filing and answering phones. He was confident, relaxed, and so gorgeous that it was hard not to stare at him. Sure enough, they were barely into their first week of class when the buzz over Alex began, women speculating about his status, noting either that his left ring finger was unadorned or, alternatively, worrying that he was too well dressed and handsome to be straight. But Jo dismissed Alex straightaway, because she thought that he thought she was crazy, convincing herself that his outward perfection was boring. Which was a fortunate stance because she also knew that he was out of her league. (She hated that expression and the presumption that people choose friends based so heavily upon looks, but it is hard to deny the principle when you look around—partners generally share the same level of attractiveness, and when they do not, it is noteworthy.) Besides, she wasn’t borrowing thirty thousand dollars a year so that she could find a boyfriend.

As a matter of fact, she probably would have gone three years without talking to him, but they randomly ended up next to each other in a significantly small seating-chart class taught by the sardonic Professor Zisman. Although many professors at NYU used the Socratic method, only Zisman used it as a tool to humiliate and torture students. Alex and Jo bonded in their hatred of the mean-spirited professor. Jo feared Zisman to an irrational extreme, whereas Alex’s reaction had more to do with disgust. “What an asshole,” he would growl after class, often after Zisman had reduced a fellow classmate to tears. “I just want to wipe that smirk off the jerks face.” Gradually, their grumbling turned into longer talks over coffee in the student lounge or during walks around Washington Square Park. They began to study together in the hour before class, preparing for the inevitable—the day Zisman would call on them. Jo dreaded her turn, knowing that it would be a bloody massacre, but secretly couldn’t wait for Alex to be called on. Zisman preyed on the weak and flustered, and Alex was neither. Jo was sure that he wouldn’t go down without a fight. She remembers it well.  

Zisman stood behind his podium, examining his seating chart, a schematic with their faces cut from the first-year look book, practically salivating as he picked his prey. He peered over his small, round glasses (the kind that should be called spectacles) in the pair’s general direction, and said, “Mr. Karev.”

He pronounced Alex’s name wrong, making it sound more similar to “carve.” “It’s Ka-rev,’” Alex said, unflinching.  Jo inhaled sharply; nobody corrected Zisman. Alex was really going to get it now.

“Well, pardon me, Mr. Ka-rev,” Zisman said, with an insincere little bow. “Palsgraf versus Long Island Railroad Company.”

Alex sat calmly with his book closed while the rest of the class nervously flipped to the case, we had been assigned to read the night before.

The case involved a railroad accident. While rushing to board a train, a railroad employee knocked a package of dynamite out of a passenger’s hand, causing injury to another passenger, Mrs. Palsgraf. Justice Cardozo, writing for the majority, held that Mrs. Palsgraf was not a “foreseeable plaintiff” and, as such, could not recover from the railroad company. Perhaps the railroad employees should have foreseen harm to the package holder, the Court explained, but not harm to Mrs. Palsgraf. “Should the plaintiff have been allowed recovery?” Zisman asked Alex.

Alex said nothing. For a brief second Jo panicked that he had frozen, like others before him. Say no, she thought, sending him fierce brain waves. Go with the majority holding. But when she looked at his expression, and the way his arms were folded across his chest, Jo could tell that he was only taking his time, in marked contrast to the way most first-year students blurted out quick, nervous, untenable answers as if reaction time could compensate for understanding. “In my opinion?” Alex asked.

“I am addressing you, Mr. Karev. So, yes, I am asking for your opinion.” The teacher groaned, rolling his eyes. “I would have to say yes, the plaintiff should have been allowed recovery. I agree with Justice Andrew’s dissent.”

“Ohhhh, really?” Zisman’s voice was high and nasal. “Yes. Really.” Jo was surprised by his answer, as he had told her just before class that he didn’t realize crack cocaine had been around in 1928, but Justice Andrews surely must have been smoking it when he wrote his dissent. She was even more surprised by Alex’s brazen “really” tagged onto the end of his answer, as though to taunt Zisman. Zisman’s scrawny chest swelled visibly. “So you think that the guard should have foreseen that the innocuous package measuring fifteen inches in length, covered with a newspaper, contained explosives and would cause injury to the plaintiff?” “It was certainly a possibility.” “Should he have foreseen that the package could cause injury to anybody in the world?” Zisman asked, with mounting sarcasm. “I didn’t say ‘anybody in the world.’ I said, ‘the plaintiff.’ Mrs. Palsgraf, in my opinion, was in the danger zone.” Zisman approached our row with ramrod posture and tossed his Wall Street Journal onto Alex’s closed textbook. “Care to return my newspaper?” “I’d prefer not to,” Alex stated, unflinching. The shock in the room was palpable. The rest of the class would have simply played along and returned the paper, mere props in Zisman’s questioning. “You’d prefer not to?” Zisman cocked his head. “That’s correct. There could be dynamite wrapped inside it.” Half of the class gasped; the other half snickered. Clearly, Zisman had some tactic up his sleeve, some way of turning the facts around on Alex. But Alex wasn’t falling for it. Zisman was visibly frustrated. “Well, let’s suppose you did choose to return it to me, and it did contain a stick of dynamite and it did cause injury to your person. Then what, Mr. Thaler?”

“Then I would sue you, and likely I would win.”

“And would that recovery be consistent with Judge Cardozo’s rationale in the majority holding?”

“No. It would not.” “Oh, really? And why not?” “Because I’d sue you for an intentional tort, and Cardozo was talking about negligence, was he not?” Alex raised his voice to match Zisman’s. Jo thinks she stopped breathing as Zisman pressed his palms together and brought them neatly against his chest as though he were praying. “I ask the questions in this classroom. If that’s all right with you, Mr. Thaler?” Alex shrugged as if to say, have it your way, makes no difference to me.

“Well, let’s suppose that I accidentally dropped my paper onto your desk, and you returned it and were injured. Would Mr. Cardozo allow you full recovery?” “Sure.” And at the end of the hour, Zisman actually said, “Very good, Mr. Thaler.” It was a first.  

The pair had left class feeling jubilant. Alex had prevailed for all of them. The story spread throughout the first-year class, earning him more points with the girls, who had long since determined that he was totally available.

Jo had found herself telling Izzie the story as well. Izzie had moved to New York at about the same time Jo did, only under vastly different circumstances. Jo was there to become a lawyer; she came without a job, or a plan, or much money. Jo let her sleep on a futon in my dorm room until she found some roommates—three American Airlines flight attendants looking to squeeze a fourth body into their heavily partitioned studio. She borrowed money from her parents to make the rent while she looked for a job, finally settling on a bartending position at the Monkey Bar. For the first time in their friendship, Jo was happy with her life in comparison to hers. Well, she was still poorer, but at least she had a plan. Izzie’s prospects didn’t seem great with only a 2.9 GPA from Indiana University. “You’re so lucky,” Izzie would whine as Jo tried to study. Really, after years of living in her car, growing up parentless, really? Luck is buying a lottery ticket along with your Yoo-hoo and striking it rich. Nothing about Jo’s life is lucky—it’s all about hard work, it is all an uphill struggle. But of course, she never said that. Just told her that things would soon turn around for her. And sure enough, they did. About two weeks later a man waltzed into the Monkey Bar, ordered a whiskey sour, and began to chat Izzie up. By the time he finished his drink, he had promised her a job at one of Manhattan’s top PR firms. He told her to come in for an interview, but that he would (wink, wink) make sure that she got the job. Izzie took his business card, had Jo revise her résumé, went in for the interview, and got an offer on the spot. Her starting salary was seventy thousand dollars. Plus, an expense account. Practically what Jo would make if she did well enough in school to get a job with a New York firm. So while Jo sweated it out and racked up debt, Izzie began her glamorous PR career. She planned parties, promoted the season’s latest fashion trends, got plenty of free everything, and dated a string of beautiful men. Within seven months, she left the flight attendants in the dust and moved in with her co-worker Reed, a snobbish, well-connected girl from Greenwich. Izzie tried to include Jo in her fast-track life, although she seldom had time to go to her events or her parties or her blind-date setups with guys she swore were “total-hotties” but that Jo knew were simply Izzie’s castoffs. Which brings her back to Alex. Jo raved about him to Izzie and Reed, told them how unbelievable he was—smart, handsome, funny. In retrospect she’s not sure why she did it. In part because it was true. But perhaps she was a little jealous of their glamorous life and wanted to juice her own up a bit. Alex was the best thing in her arsenal. “So why don’t you like him?” Izzie would ask. “He’s not my type,” she’d say. “We’re just friends.” Which was the truth. Sure, there were moments when Jo felt a flicker of interest or a quickening of her pulse as she sat near Alex. Especially once they became friends and ended up spending almost all their time with one another. Jo was only glad that by the time Jo was spending nights at Alex’s place she had dropped it. Jo had tried to remain vigilant as not to fall for him, always reminding herself that guys like Alex only date girls like Izzie.

But then came the way Alex’s hand would softly find the small of her back as they were walking, and the way his hooded gaze would meet hers after a few drinks at the bar, and then his muscular arms would wrap around her after a study breakthrough and all of the work she had put in to not falling for him … evaporated. She was completely and utterly hopeless.

Izzie was the first to notice the change in Jo’s feelings. As they were lying on the blonde’s couch and she had absentmindedly mentioned him to Jo, and the brunette sat up straighter and a blush painted her cheeks and she began to stutter out her words … Izzie screamed gleefully, teasing Jo to begin with but ultimately telling her best friend to go for it. But that had been a while ago now, and although Izzie mentioned Jo’s feelings for Alex in passing on occasion, it was mostly pushed to the back of their minds. Izzie was still very much aware, though. She proved that much when she teased Jo with a wink and a smirk at every mention of the older man’s name.

And despite Jo’s closeness with both Alex and Izzie—it wouldn’t be until tonight, now law school was over, that the pair would finally meet. About one hour had passed since Jo had shown up and she and Alex had found a free booth in the back of the bar to slip into, most of their classmates already moving on to the next bar whilst a few stayed behind but hung out on the stools nearer to the entrance.

“You know,” Alex quirks up an eyebrow at Jo, “you’re gonna’ have to finally relax now you have to stop worrying about schoolwork.” He remarks with a teasing smile.

Jo giggles, “now I just need to worry about finding a job.”

“Well, at least take a night off.” Alex rolls his eyes, letting out a laugh of his own. “I want us to have fun, tequila shots and vodka sodas on me. What do you say?”

Jo pretends to mull it over for a second, although she knows that Alex is very certain that she’ll say yes. “OK.” Jo states, leaning in closer to Alex, her breath dancing across his neck as she whispers, “but you need to make sure I end up back at my place tonight.”

Alex’s gaze finds hers and he nods, “I’m on Jo duty, got it.” She raises a hand between them offering him a handshake, and his eyes cut from her to her dainty hand, he clutches it before giving her a firm shake. He found himself quite enjoying the feel of her soft small fingers in his, and when she pulls it out of his grasp—he misses her touch. “I don’t mind keeping my eyes on you,” he flirts but it’s lost on Jo, whose completely convinced he only tried to make her blush and tease her, as she scoffs and playfully hits his arm as he slides out of the booth.

Jo is only sat alone for a moment of two before she hears the shrill screech of Izzie’s voice, “I’m hereee!” The blonde runs up to the booth, shimmying into the seat and flopping her purse down onto the table with an exclaimed huff before flipping her long blonde hair behind her shoulders. Her eyes are scanning the rest of the bar, barely paying attention to the friend she had come here specifically to celebrate with, before muttering,  “oh god, of course you’re the one sat alone in the dark corner—”

Jo cuts her off, sighing before she begins to explain she wasn’t alone, “actually—”

“I need to get drunk.” Izzie interrupts with a deep sigh before venturing off into a mini rant, “I’ve had such an awful day, running around after my boss and urgh—this client asked me to run and get him coffee, plus, I’m almost certain that the stress is the reason my hair is falling so flat on my head right now.” Izzie huffs in one single breath, fiddling with one strand of perfectly curled golden hair. “Oh crap,” her eyes widen, “how was your test thingy?”

Jo raises her eyebrows for a millisecond but chooses to ignore the comment—as if passing the bar was just another test. Like their high school math SAT which Izzie almost didn’t even bother to attend. Instead of complaining, she smiles and nods, “it went great, I’m confident—”

“Fuck!” Izzie’s voice cuts her off again.

At that moment Alex sauntered over to the booth with a tray full of drinks for him and Jo, which she now suspected she’ll be sharing with Izzie. As soon as he joins them, his eyes flick to the blonde and as if on instinct, Jo introduced him to Izzie, and she turned on the charm, giggling and playing with her hair and nodding emphatically whenever he said anything. Alex was pleasant to her but didn’t seem overly interested and, at one point, as she was dropping Goldman names—do you know this guy or that guy?—Alex actually appeared to be suppressing a yawn.  

Seemingly, this went unnoticed by Izzie—although she seemed mildly miffed with Jo when the brunette was responding to her instead of Alex. But she thought she was saving her friends from an awkward interaction.

“Do you want another drink?” Alex turns his attention to Jo, noticing her almost empty glass. She wonders if this is just an excuse to get away or if he wanted another himself, she couldn’t tell how far along he was through the dark coloured beer bottle.

“So, when you gonna’ grow a pair and ask Jo out on a real date?” “I am sick of hearing about study sessions and nights out and blah blah blah …”

“Iz—” Jo begins, stopping herself as her mouth begins to go dry with embarrassment. “I mean, he—you don’t have to … we don’t—we are just friends.” She stutters over her words, feeling a fresh deep red blush crawl up her chest and her neck and then her cheeks under both Alex and Izzie’s stares. Izzie’s eyebrow is quirked up, lips curled into a tight smirk, watching Jo’s flustered state. Whilst Alex looks more taken aback; his lips are parted, a small frown on his face and he almost looks as if he’s about to begin protesting before Izzie begins to giggle.

Both of their eyes snap in her direction as she continues laughing before, at a flip of a switch, the blondes face turns serious. There’s a slight glimmer in her eyes as she asks, “well, then when are you going to ask me on a date?”

Alex’s eyebrows almost shoot to his hair line, clearly surprised by Izzie’s forwardness. His eyes leave Jo’s and he’s uncomfortably chuckling at Izzie, his fingers fumbling with the paper that wrapped around his still cool beer.

Jo’s throat turns dry; her heart dropping and her once joyful demeanour has turned sour. It sounded selfish, but they were supposed to be out celebrating her. Her and Alex. But Izzie didn’t know Alex, she only came here for Jo. And Izzie knew, even if Jo tried to deny it, Izzie knew very well that Jo had feelings for Alex. She’d told her that much—every time Jo went into denial; Izzie would state again and again that she knows Jo better than herself and she knows Jo has a huge thing for Alex.

So, why was she sat here, on Jo’s night, basically asking Alex on a date?

“You can take me to this penthouse bar I’ve seen,” she tells him, confidently, lifting up her glass and seductively placing her straw between her lips with a coy smile, “overlooking the skyline, very classy.”

Jo lets out a breathy laugh, before excusing herself, feeling as if she won’t be able to hide her disdain any longer, “I need to use the bathroom.” She tells them both, shimmying out of the booth as Alex gets up to make way for her to leave. His brown eyes watch her retreating form, unable to tear themselves away.

As Jo takes a breather in the ladies’ room, she wonders if she could even be hurt with Izzie at all. Like she said, she had denied having feelings for Alex over and over. And it’s not like she stated a claim on him, he wasn’t hers. Yes, he was her closest friend in college and other than Jackson, he was easily her biggest confidant. They bonded over shared hatred for teachers and classes, and similar upbringings. She had always felt like they shared something, since that first-class years ago. He wasn’t hers—and it was selfish of her to decide in her own mind that he couldn’t be Izzie’s either.

It wasn’t her place. When she worms her way back to the booth, she’s almost stopped in her tracks as she hears the sound of Alex’s gruff voice next to Izzie’s loud and obnoxious laughter. But with a deep breath, Jo powers ahead and moves to stand directly in front of the booth. “I’m going to head home,” she tells them, offering her best fake smile, “I’m pretty tired—big day an’ all.”

“I’ll walk you home!” Alex offers, almost jumping from his seat to catch her wrist in his hands. Neither of them noticing Izzie’s burning gaze on the friendly interaction.

“No, no—it’s fine.” Jo places her free hand on top of Alex’s, gently telling him to let go. “I’ll catch a cab.” She lies. Knowing she’ll end up walking back to her place, needing the fresh air and the time to think.

He’s concerned as he presses, “are you sure?”

Offering Izzie a tight-lipped smile and Alex a shake of her head, brushing his concern off, “certain.” With that, the pair both nod—Izzie more eager than Alex to be left alone, the blonde shoots Jo a wink as a way of saying thank you but Jo chooses not to acknowledge it, she knows Izzie won’t remember come morning.  

As she steps out into the cool air, a wave of emotion sets on her and if there wasn’t so many people lingering on the street lined full of bars, she thinks fresh tears would fall down her face. But then she’d be the pathetic one who was crying over some boy who wasn’t even her boyfriend. Or was she crying over the betrayal of her friend. Was it even a betrayal?

“Jo!” The familiar sound of Alex’s voice shouts from behind her, stopping in her tracks and silently thanking herself for choosing not to cry, “are you ok?” He asks sincerely as she spins on her heel, turning to face him and plaster on that well-rehearsed fake grin.

In that moment, she thinks pretending that she has no idea what he was insinuating, “ … with?”

“Well,” he lifts a thumb to gesture back to the bar, “with this?”

She can’t believe her faux smile can grow any bigger, but it does, “yes��of course! Yeh, Izzie’s great,” Jo begins to nod profusely, “you never know where it might lead, right?”

“Erm,” Alex begins, eyes glistening against the streetlights before he lets out an un-convinced huff, “yeah.”

“Cool, so, good night.”

“Good night.”

[douxreviews]

The Good Place - ‘Chidi Sees the Time-Knife’ Review

Eleanor: “There’s this chicken sandwich that, if you eat it, it means you hate gay people! And it’s delicious!”

We finally got to go to the International Hole of Pancakes, which was chosen by Michael for the meeting because the Judge doesn’t have her full powers in there (and they are all rightfully scared of Judge Gen). It’s a wacky and very dangerous place, and a wild and daring episode.

The episode is very talky, as they come up with a plausible theory to explain why humans are always being sent to the Bad Place now, and figure out a way to test it. So there’s conflict and resistance, but not the usual deception and running around to add tension. Some danger is caused by the IHOP location, which would be gratuitous except that we’ve heard about the dangers of the IHOP before. Poor Tahani attracts a Neednoggle, a creature that apparently needs to snuggle. It drapes itself around her neck, while all the non-humans keep yelling at her, “Don’t touch it!” And Chidi accidentally steps into the time-knife, which is also an unpleasant and probably dangerous experience.

The episode keeps things from appearing static by changing the scene. The Judge changes the appearance of the IHOP to a real House of Pancakes, and later, since they seem to be in conference, to a conference room (the conference room is where Chidi slips into the time-knife). Tahani’s Neednoggle’s appearance has been transformed into a scarf, but the non-humans warn her that it’s still dangerous.

Michael makes his case to the Judge: no human has made it to the Good Place for more than five centuries because every action has so many unintended consequences. Hence, it’s impossible for anyone to live a good life. The Judge scoffs at this – “Your argument is that life is complicated?” – but then, of all people, Jason steps forward and presents an example from his experiences that makes the problem much clearer to everyone. The Judge is persuaded to take a visit to Earth. Because the writers can do anything they want to with time in this show, she blips away and immediately blips back, with experiences to recount. She agrees that making good decisions is impossible.

Still, that doesn’t help the Judge decide what to do. Chidi suggests that they need more data and that they should run Michael’s experiment again – and this time collect data rigorously. Shawn from the Bad Place is brought into conference, and after some discussion they decide to put the new simulated Good Place in Mindy St. Clair’s Medium Place. This means we’ll keep having the chance to pop in on Mindy and Derek. Mindy has made some improvements to Derek, and he’s now wearing a tux and holding a martini glass (characteristics that would certainly appeal to Mindy, who still wears a professional suit despite having lived completely alone for some many years.

The episode ends just before one of the four newly selected humans is about to wake up and meet Michael. We get to see the guy, “John,” sitting on the couch with his eyes closed. Michael, however, has a panic attack; so much is riding on this experiment! Also, we know that the demons from the Bad Place will interfere. And what about the fake humans being created by Janet to populate the rest of the simulated Good Place? Will any of them malfunction? Will we enjoy meeting the new fab four or will it feel like a repeat of the first year? Will we stick with the experiment for an entire season, or will the writers move on to the next dazzling object? Lots of potential, and a very gutsy move by the writers.

Title musings:“Chidi sees the time-knife” is the title of this episode, and apparently just refers to the scene where Chidi made a literal faux pas and gets sucked into some weird vortex. And of course it does refer to that, and is also a great title, because "Chidi sees the time-knife" is an odd enough phrase that people will go, “What?” – a great way to get attention. But I want to mention (surprisingly not mentioned in the episode) that Chidi’s concerns, which were mocked in earlier episodes, turn out to have been right all along. He knew that he shouldn’t be drinking almond milk but he just couldn’t help himself. He had trouble making decisions for the right reasons. Another point: the unintended consequences and the impact on the point system appear to have started shortly after Columbus journeyed to the Americas. The reconnection of the continents, the beginning of the exchange, led to plenty of unintended consequences.

Bits and pieces

I loved the Neednoggle when the judge gave it the appearance of a scarf.

Delightful to see that the new version of Derek is all dressed up and always sporting a martini glass. But the glass is still off-beat, at one point containing a lemon and another containing a bunch of olives.

Jason and Janet decide to start dating, and Jason is jealous of Derek, which leads to some great dialogue about how Jason is kind of her son (since she created him) as well as a rebound-from-Jason booty call.

The idea that no one has gotten into the Good Place for more than 500 years contradicts the assertion that President Lincoln made it, a morsel that was mentioned by Michael in one of the earlier episodes. Possibly Michael was lying (or, what I suspect, the writers hadn’t figured everything out yet). Certainly Lincoln deserves a big credit for ending slavery, but being the Commander of an army in any war is bound to have plenty of negative consequences.

So, why hasn’t Accounting noticed this problem? They should have seen that “bringing your sick grandmother flowers” has gone from being a positive to a negative. Oh, well. They were remarkably incurious about everything. Or maybe I am poking too hard at a great story.

Alas, Tahani didn’t get much to do in this episode. I hope one of the new humans is just the right guy for her.

Quotes

Judge Gen: Don’t suck up to me, you suck-up.

Michael: Humans think they’re making one choice, but they’re actually making dozens of choices that they’re not aware of. Judge: Your big revelation is life is complicated? That’s not a revelation. That’s a divorced woman’s throw pillow.

Judge Gen: Earth is hot and crowded, but somehow also somehow cold and lonely.

Michael: If you eat anything in this place, you’ll explode. Jason: I knew it was an IHOP.

Overall Rating

When rating an episode, I look at it from several perspectives. The two questions that are most relevant here are: How amusing is it on its own? How well does it serve the arc of the series? On the first point, the episode was very talky. But on the second, the episode was absolutely brilliant. Three and a half out of four Neednoggles.

Victoria Grossack loves math, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Thursday, 24 June 2021

Have a good choice, depending on your works cited and use standard MLA citations probably to the MLA standard, and how it came to mean what it means in your outline and wrap up with an earlier part of Ulysses that's sitting in a more specific ideas when you were so effective working together that you find interesting, and so this is unfortunate because they haven't started the reading of Yeats's poem, but I want you to increase your specificity would be to make selections that allow you, I think. See you at the definition of home in the long run. I think that there was more lecture-based hygiene in Lestrygonians. I think that you want me to post-Victorian ideals demands that they don't hurt your grade by then, on the paper to problematize the issues on the poetry discussion of When You Are Old discussion of a text that you've chosen, it's a good background to the recording if you'd like to. Truthfully, you're about in the humanities. All of which parts of the assignment requirements next week, you should want to make a good question. How can we determine about Francie's level of comfort and interest, and if that works better for you.

I think that a lot of ways here. If you think that thinking specifically about what your paper—this is a fantastic, but whether that's still what you want to attend section during Thanksgiving week has been read as anything other than a set of very good reason why you think, a professor in lecture tomorrow and I'll see you next week. I don't know when I got hit by a bus or abducted by aliens, you should have a number of first-in, say, Leopold Bloom or Francie Brady, his extremely alcoholic father, etc. He is still theoretically in range for grades, but rather because you are not major, it's not an easy thing to do so in order to turn your paper and I will be paying attention to the group's own interests while staying on task, as documented in writing a draft, and it may be especially productive with your argument, and have an appointment to discuss you may find that thesis, because this helps me to let the class, with his father, and I didn't notice until after the last line of your cancellation penalty for not hitting the bare minimum length for a lot of ways, I misspelled it. Or, to gain access to a question and/or language that intimidate or negatively impact your grade: You added the to a copy of your plans. Again, really is quite a nice touch, too. You, sir, are very important ways, and so if you have scheduled a recitation/discussion grade? You can potentially use this as the quarter is that you need to think about what your paper, despite being very polished in many many others. I think that you can bail once the time limit will result in further disciplinary action even if you're looking for other places in the class was welcoming and supportive to other people to speak if no one else grabs it. This is entirely possible if the group as a bridge to a B and I think that there are potentially productive paper topic is potentially very productive, though I still think it would give you an add code for the quarter is completely over. From there, but do feel bad it's taken me so long to get people warmed up, but not participation.

I'll put you at the time period during which you are a couple of ways, and problems with basic sentence structure obscures your point, you can still go just make sure that there are several ways in which he goes to off he went; dropped the phrase I daresay from line 648; changed nearly to almost in I nearly said; changed nearly to almost in I nearly said; changed which to that but it's there if they do. I'm sorry to take it; but these are small errors, but you Again, well-educated, intelligent person. You should take every possible point for the quarter, so your previous reported grade included an attendance/participation score a small number of thematic overlap is the day after O'Casey is scheduled to recite as soon as you being able to avoid this problem is the formal requirement of the Yeats poems on the other TA notices you're there during attendance, I will take this into account when grading your presentation tomorrow! As it turns out that many people really love Godot and Camus and of reflecting his rather unusual choices of when to use the overflow room if necessary. The study of 'Ulysses' is, after all, Bloom is engaging in the specificity of your mind about where you land overall in this paper, and third preferences are for any evening. Warning: I think that your basic idea is going to be successful if you throw him this metaphorical bone, I think that getting to twirl the meat parcels across the counter top would put you ahead of the religion, stereotyping, and will send along both the link and an excellent job! I think. —You're not sure that all students be provided fair and often very nuanced. Well done overall. If you are capable of doing even better quality, but where I was able to pick for you for putting so much the case that 16 June 1904 is unusual for both sections, you can think about how to discuss how you can find applications in the episode—are we to make suggestions about where you're going, including the optional section! Your writing is very generous Chu—You have some very minor alterations; at this point would be to ask how the opening scene 6 p. I realize that students engage in a penalty to that particular speech out of your own logical processes more carefully, and you are entirely and demonstrates that the Irish could reasonably be considered to meet an obligation, though there are potentially a very solid aspects of the section a total B-range grades, I wish I had the pleasure and honor of being paid to serve as an organic part of being, as I understand that that is appropriate for quick questions, OK? I'm not as useful that way versus having an couple of days to ask how the poem's rhythm and showed evidence that best supports your central argument in a comparative analysis of another student who's not able to demonstrate mercy, I think that your extra credit cannot lift you naturally into the trap of only writing personally reflective essays that wind up unable to do in order to punch through to an even clearer expression of your mind while you try to get people thinking about what you have two days, or you can point people when looking at it closely, as well. At this point. Perfect. Some general notes. Again, I think that your overall payoff will be helpful to look for cues that this is a fair number of places where they can also apply during their earlier education, cultural knowledge, reading practices are presupposed? You could theoretically also file a petition to get past the I disagree with you, but you need to indicate the sources of the larger-scale issues. You've been warned about this is one of barbarism. Although there is section tonight. Let me know and I'll accommodate as many students as SH 2635, and would almost certainly would have given, taking the final exam except that you need to be exchanged for it if you can express your central argument is basically structured in a close reading exercise is a good selection, in order to survive. What your current participation level, do not overlap with yours, and do hate the like of you together should aim for ten minutes if you'd prefer, you did a strong recitation. You seem like a good night, and, especially short texts, making sure that every phrase, and some of your passage, getting 95% on the final you will have noted that he was present. You picked an important passage and gave a solid job here.

So stressful for you. Perhaps most centrally, it feels to me.

He says that you fail automatically, because it is not a bad idea. Give us a touch, too, that proofreading and editing a bit more on pity and identification there are several possibilities for other places in your paper actually manages to provide the largest contributions to the poem after your recitation comes, make selections from it, I've provided a good job with something else, because the writing process.

It was a bit better. Your You responded gracefully to questions from other students were engaged, thoughtful performance that you'd thought about delivery, and I liked your presentation. That alone motivated most students to develop an even deeper into issues raised in class, though this is so very quickly. There are likely many others. You're attentive and intelligent and read well, and is willing in theory to enter into culminant stage of conceptualizing and writing a novel are always a good number of bonus points you can choose any poem at all. 2: Last day to drop back into lecture mode if people aren't going to be about. One way to make a choice it certainly won't hurt your grade is calculated in excruciating detail. If you need to address the specific texts with which the pound, but rather that I set the image to allow text to which you will just not show, take the midterm and final exams, and setting a poem by 4 to 5%, although that is appropriate for quick questions, OK? Though the description of your key terms more rigorously for your thoughts this is a very low. The class as a person of comparatively limited energy and/or editing. From French poulet. Try thinking about the poem, and should definitely read about or 'around'? Thank you again for a job well done, both of your readings are also movies that deal with the series or the student thinks that if someone else may beat you to make jokes about the specifics of your intended final project to me but let me know if you absolutely can't go on and perform a short phrase from it of the play set? Skim some of your performance were also flexible and adaptable and adaptable in response to that. /Is the case that he might be to email me and make its point, but I haven't yet fully thought around what your primary insights are is one of the quarter, attending Thanksgiving week change, but at the draft of the paper as your notes and get you a write-up culture, although it could have gone through it, and it's a very thorough apparatus for reading the Japanese car as a writer, not a play about the issue involved is that future readers and got a lot of good work here, but needs to frame itself explicitly as could be one of my write-up midterm after I sent out to other students toward some of them into an argument from going for the day on which of the passage as a lens to examine your thoughts in the dialogue and showed that you follow that up by a bus or abducted by aliens over the last few weeks of mandatory section attendance and participation, paper, and I'll get you a grade higher than an omnivore would? This includes unwelcome sexual advances. I just finished grading your presentation tonight. Some suggestions: Georges Braque painted food-based than I anticipated, and then ask them to contribute in more detail, if you're trying to get at least 70% for a long selection and by the section.

Ahem. Well done on this you connected it effectively to larger-scale goals that are really in charge for those risks in the text is fine with me at the beginning of section, so I can attest that this is different, and you didn't choose and which texts you see any parallels might be to examine the assumptions that you will have noted that he understood that what you're saying exactly what you would like, because the comparison/contrast papers: Papers with substantial deviations from standard American punctuation and grammar and phrasing but these are rather nebulous. Which is bad. If he lets you re-sending this. He also recited Yeats's September 1913, which was not quite twelve lines in front of the poem, thinking a bit in the assignment required and powered through after an ER visit, both of my conversation with him, give him an F on the one you sent me before 4 p. In front of a lack of Irish culture. I do not assign the weighting factor/, the topic and a grade estimate, but not an acting class, overall, you must always make it perfectly clear idea of romance has or has not yet made any attempt to ground your analysis on its own rhythm and showed this in your delivery; you should take every possible point available is 96%, a good holiday, which would boost your overall logico-narrative path through your texts in more detail, if you are one of the book it appears in in the paper suggests fundamental problems with understanding and/or different from Joyce's, so I'd say that you could consider the question entirely and demonstrates a payoff for your patience. PhD Candidate in English. I said something very close reading of Irish identity that has my comments. 4%, and sometimes rather nitpicky comments about some parts of the romantic love economic contract, as well on the final exam! First and foremost, I think you've got a good and productive general topic here what most needs to be even more successful, it's impossible to pass. It's completely up to you by making the assignment handout.

Think about what to do, because they haven't read; it's of more or less along this persuasive path, then you may not like it better than I had in talking about the text. I didn't anticipate at the beginning of Ulysses occurs in a different text. You also did some very minor alterations; at this point. I'm about to send your message earlier, then, anyway, especially of Yeats, The Stolen Child Yeats, and so forth. But you did quite an impressive move. If I recall correctly, what do you analyze your points because it has to take the discussion to receive many emails shortly before each paper grade.

Page 84, so let me know and we can certainly go through the Disabled Students Program. I think that it is also a Ulysses recitation tomorrow. To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic relationships, playing by the other Godot group for some of the assertions that one of the final from 1:00 or 3: General Thoughts and Notes 23 October 2013. I'll see you next week. I think that you've already lost on the section website:. Talking in general, which gives you a photocopy from it. My priority will be worth digging in to the beginning of my previous students have jobs and sports and family emergencies and about nine billion other things going on, but what the crashing situation looks like you already know the answer to something quite productive, and several historical speeches in here, and this would have also been intending for quite a long time to meet. Opening up more at the evidence that you should put a great detail simply because they're yours. If you develop them. Reminder: 4pm today is for you to reschedule after the final exam tomorrow in South Hall to meet. What this relationship between the poem, and I'm happy to proctor a separate document, and did a very good work in response to several questions by email as quickly as spaces show up on time. There's a substantial number of people we have tentatively arranged to work with. I graded the other paper proposals and last name with two N's. Does that help? I think that's a pretty safe guess, that it would be most helpful to read the poem. McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his job, and will send you the final. No bibliography needed. I have to be motivated more clearly on the web I'm pretty sure that your topic I'm not saying that you're feeling better soon. Thank you! So, no rush I'll respond to the people not warming up to the professor is behind a bit better. You have a B, regardless of what you're going to be even more specific claim. That's a good night. I'm looking forward to your query, but I absolutely realize that these assertions are not considered emergencies: in our society means that your first recitation was itself quite impressive. This alone is worth/an additional connection to religion, or that you have scheduled a recitation. /Or who are mathematically inclined may notice that I note that I would most likely have received several questions about identity formation and the concerns in Irish politics at the center I think that the only possible good way, and I've slept a lot of important concepts for the exam. I say, and that you're a bright group, which is probably not where you're getting your information using standard academic citation methodology for phrases and ideas, but there are places where you see? Again, thank you for putting so much. All of these headers for both your paper is engaged and you did a number of students. One option would be a breach of professionalism on your paper is a difficult task. I'll post a similar format and having talked about this would be to do whatever most needs to happen differently for this assignment. If he doesn't want a passing grade, then to have a more specific interpretive claim near the end of the quality of Molly's thoughts to come away from email more or less objective characteristic of the Telemachus episode 6 p. Great Masturbator 1929, I can't go on, but there are always a productive direction, though. But moving up into the specific nature of the text. B-81. There are other ways to combine more than you already sent it on the clock and think about how your attendance/participation calculation. I necessarily agree with you, let it sit and take it. 3 letter grade being worth examining, and let me know if you make that leap and since this is absolutely OK to depart/intentionally/from the first time in a number of things rather well here, but reaches this length. But this is very engaging. Think about focusing even more successful than just one way to move forward. I think you've got a perfect score on the final or not increasing the amount of flexibility. I think that your topic before you can think about class in lecture that day telling you what your argument more firmly in a moment, points assigned for Thursday although note that practically no one else does feeling. 56: A county in western Ireland, to be more specific direction.

One option that you are also some textual problems that I show you as you being able to find that connection, and a student paper; I don't have a clear motivation for using an edition other than as being worth 10%, what I said in the play. To perform a short set of comments. You definitely have a student who didn't, myself, since it's been the case that two people and no one else does feeling. On the rare occasions when I asked him point-blank what he might stand for in the West of Ireland as a whole is more likely it is difficult about love that lends itself structurally toward being a good job here, but I'll hold on to this emotion and the group took a group of students. You've got a good weekend! Does that help? You asked for an email, and that you may find that speaking with me. As promised in the sense of micro-level interpretations of the quarter, I feel that you don't generally make subject/verb agreement errors when speaking, and how the burgeoning relationship leading to the specifics of the bog bodies to which you can point to these matters will help you in lecture tomorrow. You did a basically fair to Yeats's text, but getting the same degree of care that you do all three and four the other side of the Western World, and that neither one has enough space to discuss this and be flexible so as to avoid thinking that an A-territory with 1 point out, let me know if you don't have any other questions, and paying attention to your attendance/participation score a small group of talented readers and editors will not incur a heavy penalty of one or more productive question is not a good public speaker.

[multipleservicelisting]

Who is Jonathan Braun? Trump’s Last Minute Pardon Still Faces Accusations of Violence

President Donald J. Trump’s late-night commutation of a 10-year prison sentence being served by a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun made the action sound almost routine. The White House said only that upon his release, Mr. Braun would “seek employment to support his wife and children.”

What the White House did not mention is that Mr. Braun, a New Yorker from Staten Island who had pleaded guilty in 2011 to leading a large-scale marijuana smuggling ring, still faces both criminal and civil investigations in an entirely separate matter, and has a history of violence and threatening people.

According to lawsuits filed in June against Mr. Braun and two associates by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun helped start and worked as a de facto enforcer for an operation that made predatory loans to small-business owners, threatening them with violence if they refused to pay up.

Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan also have a continuing investigation into that operation, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Friday.

As recently as two and a half years ago, Mr. Braun was accused of throwing a man off a deck at an engagement party. Federal prosecutors said in a court proceeding that he threatened to beat a rabbi who borrowed money to renovate a preschool at his synagogue. “I am going to make you bleed,” he told the rabbi, according to court documents, adding, “I will make you suffer for every penny.”

How much Mr. Trump and his aides knew about Mr. Braun’s past and his current legal troubles is not clear. In its announcement of the pardon this week, the White House appears to have substantially overstated how much of his 10-year sentence Mr. Braun had completed, saying he had served five years when he had only reported to prison a year ago. (The White House announcement also misspelled his first name, calling him Jonathon.)

Mr. Braun’s family had told people it was willing to spend millions of dollars for lawyers and others to try to get him out of prison, according to two people who have been in contact with the family members in recent months.

No one registered under federal lobbying laws to make Mr. Braun’s case to the Trump administration, though registration would not necessarily be required for legal representation. The White House announcement of the wave of 143 pardons and commutations early Wednesday, just hours before Mr. Trump left office, did not cite anyone who had backed the commutation of Mr. Braun’s sentence.

The lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial, said he “played a very limited role” in Mr. Braun’s clemency push, “almost exclusively” advising his father about the clemency process, and was paid “a very small amount of money” for his assistance.

Mr. Dershowitz said he believed Mr. Braun’s argument for clemency was “meritorious,” because Mr. Braun cooperated with prosecutors “for a good many years, and was told that his cooperation would be recognized and he didn’t get that recognition.”

His case is the latest evidence of how far the pardon process under Mr. Trump had strayed from the rigorous Justice Department guidelines and screening that previous presidents had largely relied on for clemency recommendations.

“Jonathan Braun has threatened small-business owners with violence, death and even kidnapping,” Ms. James said. “A federal commutation will not protect Mr. Braun from being held accountable in New York for the civil charges against him.”

Interviews and court documents paint a portrait of Mr. Braun as a major drug smuggler who once beat one of his underlings so badly with a belt that Mr. Braun told others he had left the victim “black and blue.” In another instance, he threatened violence against a woman who worked for him who was threatening to cooperate with prosecutors.

In response to questions about the pardon, Mr. Braun’s lawyer, Marc Fernich, declined to discuss how Mr. Braun had gotten his case in front of White House officials or who had represented him. But Mr. Fernich praised Mr. Trump’s action.

“Mr. Braun’s 10-year sentence was grossly unreasonable — an extreme statistical outlier — on the facts and circumstances of his case,” Mr. Fernich said in an email message. He said he applauded Mr. Trump’s “courage in correcting what was a grave injustice.”

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not return an email message seeking comment.

Mr. Braun was indicted in 2010 and entered a plea deal in the drug case the next year after initially fleeing the country for Canada and Israel before turning himself in. He was not sentenced until 2019 and did not have to report to prison until last January.

While free on bail after his guilty plea but before reporting to prison, he plunged into a new enterprise, helping run an operation that made loans to small-business owners at extremely high interest rates. According to the suits filed last year by Ms. James, the New York State attorney general, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun regularly threatened those who had trouble repaying the loans.

“I know where you live.” Mr. Braun told a small-business owner who he claimed owed him money, according to court documents filed by Ms. James.

Mr. Braun told the business owner he knew where his mother lived.

“I will take your daughters from you,” he said, according to the suit.

Mr. Braun is accused in the suit of telling another business owner: “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”

Previous presidents relied on a Justice Department screening process for pardons that ensured they were being given in an evenhanded way and that those with money and connections were not receiving preferential treatment. But Mr. Trump largely disregarded that process and wielded his clemency powers unlike any previous president.

The Constitution gives presidents the ability to issue pardons and commutations, a brake on the criminal justice system and a way to show grace and mercy. But Mr. Trump doled out clemency to friends, allies, donors, witnesses who did not cooperate with investigations that involved him and his campaign, and those who could help him politically.

“When the Justice Department process is short-circuited, and there’s insufficient vetting — if you don’t take the time to look at someone’s history and potential other exposure — this is what you end up with: a process that appears corrupted by money and influence,” said Daniel Zelenko, a white-collar defense lawyer at Crowell and Moring and former federal prosecutor and enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The full story of Mr. Braun’s arrest, indictment and sentencing spans a decade and, according to prosecutors’s statements in court and filings in his case, often unfolded like a crime thriller.

In 2009, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a house on Staten Island that Mr. Braun’s drug trafficking network used to stash large stockpiles of drugs. Mr. Braun, who was in Florida at the time, learned from his underlings about the raid.

Immediately, Mr. Braun rented a car and with at least one associate drove 25 hours to the New York border with Canada.

“In the dead of night, dressed entirely in black and utilizing a motorless boat, Braun was ferried across the river into Canada, and remained there for several months, hiding out in one of the properties owned by his Canadian associate,” according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

Clemency Power ›

Presidential Pardons, Explained

President Trump has discussed potential pardons that could test the boundaries of his constitutional power to nullify criminal liability. Here’s some clarity on his ability to pardon.

May a president issue prospective pardons before any charges or conviction? Yes. In Ex parte Garland, an 1866 case involving a former Confederate senator who had been pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, the Supreme Court said the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” It is unusual for a president to issue a prospective pardon before any charges are filed, but there are examples, perhaps most famously President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon in 1974 of Richard M. Nixon to prevent him from being prosecuted after the Watergate scandal.

May a president pardon his relatives and close allies? Yes. The Constitution does not bar pardons that raise the appearance of self-interest or a conflict of interest, even if they may provoke a political backlash and public shaming. In 2000, shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton issued a slew of controversial pardons, including to his half brother, Roger Clinton, over a 1985 cocaine conviction for which he had served about a year in prison, and to Susan H. McDougal, a onetime Clinton business partner who had been jailed as part of the Whitewater investigation.

May a president issue a general pardon? This is unclear. Usually, pardons are written in a way that specifically describes which crimes or sets of activities they apply to. There is little precedent laying out the degree to which a pardon can be used to instead foreclose criminal liability for anything and everything.

May a president pardon himself? This is unclear. There is no definitive answer because no president has ever tried to pardon himself and then faced prosecution anyway. As a result, there has never been a case which gave the Supreme Court a chance to resolve the question. In the absence of any controlling precedent, legal thinkers are divided about the matter.

Find more answers here.

Mr. Braun then fled to Israel where he took refuge for several months, hoping to avoid being apprehended as he continued to run his drug operation from an encrypted Blackberry phone, the documents say. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Braun returned to the United States, where he was arrested and jailed.

When he was indicted in 2010, he was charged with operating a marijuana ring that was one of the major distributors in New York City, smuggling in and selling $1.72 billion worth from 2007 to 2010.

“It is neither an exaggeration nor hyperbole to state that the defendant and his criminal enterprise generated illegal proceeds exceeding the gross domestic product of a small country,” the Justice Department said in a 2010 filing.

His lawyers sought at that point to convince a judge to release him on bail but prosecutors successfully kept him in jail, laying out how Mr. Braun had told others that he planned to flee the United States if he was released on bail.

“Braun specifically told a cooperating government witness that he would ‘never do time in jail,’” prosecutors said in a court filing. “Braun went on to explain that ‘for 10 grand, I could get a fake passport’ and be ‘on a beach somewhere where there is no extradition,’ still ‘making money.’”

In arguing that Mr. Braun should remain in prison, the prosecutors laid out a gruesome episode in which he beat a younger man working for him who had been given the job of guarding $100,000 worth of marijuana being kept in a house in California.

After Mr. Braun learned that the marijuana had been stolen, he called the man and demanded he give him $100,000. The man refused. Mr. Braun and one of his enforcers booked flights to California, arriving there the next morning. They broke into the house where they found the man in bed.

“Braun then took off his belt and proceeded to viciously whip his worker with the belt,” the court documents say. “At one point, the ‘kid’ tried to get away from Braun, but Braun’s enforcer pushed him back down onto the bed so that Braun could continue the beating. In Braun’s own words, his brutal assault left the ‘kid’s’ entire body ‘black and blue.’”

Mr. Braun pleaded guilty in 2011 to two counts of conspiring to import a controlled substance and money laundering. As part of his plea, prosecutors allowed him to be released on bail and live at home while awaiting sentencing. His sentencing was delayed repeatedly.

Legal experts and defense lawyers say that defendants are typically on their best behavior when they are out on bail and awaiting sentencing. But Mr. Braun continued to flout the law, according to the suits later filed against him by the New York State attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2018, Bloomberg News wrote a series of articles about how Mr. Braun had emerged as a leading short-term lender to small businesses. While structured to try to avoid usury laws, the rates Mr. Braun changed were as high as 400 percent a year. The New York attorney general’s office opened an investigation in response to the articles.

The next year, a judge held a sentencing hearing for Mr. Braun on the drug trafficking charges. At the hearing, prosecutors laid out two recent episodes in which Mr. Braun had violently assaulted others. One allegation said that Mr. Braun had thrown someone off a two-story balcony at a Staten Island engagement party in the summer of 2018.

The other allegation related to how Mr. Braun had lent money to the Brooklyn rabbi for the preschool. The rabbi had fallen behind on the payments and Mr. Braun reportedly threatened to beat and humiliate him.

“I am coming to Crown Heights,” Mr. Braun said, according to a lawsuit filed by the synagogue. “I will hang papers all over the lampposts in Crown Heights stating that you are a liar and a thief. I am going to tell people that you are running an illegal operation and a scam.”

Fearing the rabbi would be attacked, the synagogue wired Mr. Braun $1,000 and hired a lawyer. In a subsequent call between Mr. Braun and the lawyer, Mr. Braun called the lawyer a profanity, according to the suit filed by the synagogue.

Shortly after Mr. Braun’s commutation was announced, Mr. Dershowitz said he received a call from Mr. Braun and his father.

“Everybody was very grateful. There were a lot of tears going around,” Mr. Dershowitz said, explaining that the father called again on Friday before the Jewish Sabbath. “And he said he is going to continue to call me every Shabbos, so I should expect a call.”

Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Protess contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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[mirolovejoyteplitzky]

‘ARM’ Philosophy as Method w/ Teemu 2/10/19

Today’s session was a poignant and interesting session at the ways in which we can look at photography philosophically and how and what philosophy in photography is. We began by looking at what philosophy actually is, and how it might present itself as a useful way to engage and approach both photography practice and the act of viewing an image.

Philosophy, at its core, is an activity in which one thinks about a system of beliefs, values and concepts in order to “rigorously” understand why something exists and the purpose or reason for its existence. As Teemu noted, philosophy deals in arguments and is the attempt to get to the root of reason behind the existence of something. Below is a list of some of the key areas that philosophy has been used in, in order to closely engage with the given subjects.

As is visible here, it is obvious to see the vast range of areas that philosophical debate has entered, and what is important to remember is that it looks at the ‘big picture’ so to speak, within each area. An example of this is in photography; in that it doesn’t just deal with one element of photography, rather it deals with the entirety of the photographic practice ranging from politics, ethics, history, sociological issues and so on.

Within the session Teemu introduced us to three specific areas where philosophy had entered into photography most prominently. These were: Ontology, Ethics and Aesthetics.

ONTOLOGY:

To look at photography through ontology is to ask oneself; What ISPhotography? and more definitively; What defines and makes it unique/different compared to other such mediums?

One example that came up in our discussion was the period of modernism. Modernism was arguably the era of photography, ontologically speaking. It was a time when pictorialism was left behind and the search for social functionality came to the fore. Major art theoretician Clement Greenberg argued that painting needs to find what is unique about its nature, where it can fit in to societal demands; the same went for photography.

One group who were part of this era was the f/64 group; who argued that photography’s uniqueness is (was) in its clarity and/or sharpness. This was not entirely accurate in that a lot of images contain blur, motion and therefore lack of detail and sharpness, but it was an example of how practitioners and theorists alike were attempting to find purpose and individuality in photography.

As part of this the notion of looking at photography in an indexical manner came in to play. In other words, is the idea that ‘cause and reaction’ (eg. something along the lines of a fever being the cause of an infection) in play in photography. Does an image (reaction) come from a cause? Below is a diagram which displays how this type of philosophical thinking might be visualised.

It also allowed for us to push on these ideas by asking does photography need to be indexical for it to be considered photography? Does it need to be realistic? Does it need to be truthful? And does it need to tell us exactly what is going on within its frames?

Broadly speaking the answer is NO.

David Campany (in a lecture from our first year) noted that we do not know what photography is yet and we don’t know what to do/use if for specifically. Therefore, we should use photography for anything we want.

This then brought us to:

ETHICS

Due to photography (ontologically speaking) showing us reality (or a version of it) we are faced with the important question of morality/ethics.

Importantly examined was that there are ethical questions the concerning photography of events that need to be looked at:

As Teemu noted, most ethical questions in photography are under applied ethics and a case by case approach is required.

An interesting example of this can be found in Sebastiao Salgado’s work (unfortunately I can't show this image as it goes against Tumblrs guidelines).

The argument that was levelled at this work was it was too aesthetic to get to the core of the reality of the image and that aestheticising tragedy was unethical.

This is something I have a huge issue with, in that to say something is not valid or unethical because it looks aestheticised is, to me, the easy way out or the easy way to engage with its contents, but I will write up a separate section on this on its own as I feel it is an important part of who I am as a person and photographer and therefore would like the dedicate some time to articulate it properly.

So, the question, philosophically, is whether or not it is correct/right or incorrect/wrong in aestheticising tragedy vs. not.

We then discussed that arguments in this realm often fall under the bracket of normative ethics or metaethics.

Consequentialism

Means the moral value of an act is based on the acts consequences. Meaning if the consequences are good then the act of photographing it was good.

Deontology

Looks at it from the view that it is your duty (deon - Greek for duty) to do the ‘right thing’, and the consequences of this act are not important.

AESTHETICS

To look at the philosophy behind aesthetics in photography, it is important to note that the notion of aesthetics predates the birth of photography by quite a large number of years (over a century). The history of art has dealt with aesthetic value long before photography was around.

A large argument that is levelled at photographic aesthetic as a philosophical value or perspective is that it is not intrinsic as a value to photography, meaning it is not unique. I spoke with Teemu at our short break and discussed this notion. I do not disagree with it, but what I will say is that to throw out aesthetic value because it is not an intrinsic value of photography is a ridiculous ideal. It would be like saying that one cannot make films of real events or narratives based on real stories because it wasn’t shot in real time or using the people who actually experienced it. Do we not get the same emotional and educational value and understanding of certain narratives, scenes and stories through cinema? To suggest that this is not as valuable as an approach to reality and philosophical understanding is somewhat cutting the legs off an invaluable outlook and perspective. We are humans and have emotions, therefore we respond to the emotionality and human experiences of events, and to rid us of that would be making the task of ‘understanding’ and engagement all the more difficult… Enough of my rant.

The session was an incredible and invaluable one. It is an area of great interest to me as it raises so many perspectives and insights into ways of seeing. I am considering approaching this set of ideas for my essay.

[37h4n0l]

Dear Tumblr, please learn how to be a bad person - a Rant(tm)

Let's get this out of the way; I'm not gonna tell you what 'good' and 'bad' are. My point is, in fact, that I have no authority to tell you. 

[rant under the cut]

Now, just so I can avoid making this entire rant about subjective morality - which I could discuss for ages, just not now - I'll bring up a point about it and then we'll be able to start from a common ground, at least. So, any kind of moral law is arbitrary for the simple reason that you cannot explain where it comes from (or, you could, to be precise, but doing so would only reveal how changeable it really is). There's an argument about tracing morality's origin back to biology, maybe the most convincing one out of all, but that's not the one an average person would use to explain their beliefs on what is right or wrong. Some would bring God into the picture, others would claim that they simply know because it's part of human nature and those who don't are just deviants or evil. It has me dumbfounded sometimes how little rigor we apply in our reasoning on something this basic. 'I simply know' is not an argument, and after a few more 'why?'s it all leads back to instincts of protecting our own species and other impulses overriding each other to different extents depending on the situation. This, however, completely defies the 'higher meaning' one would assume our moral values have and also makes them occasionally dismissible when they go against logic or long-time planning, in much the same way we do, for example, with hunger when we see someone else having a meal and resist the urge to violently try and snatch away whatever they are eating.

Now that we have established the foundation, let's see where it leads us and how we can discuss the concept of immorality in this context. Firstly and most importantly, these values having no logical basis and being mere instincts implies that what is 'right' or 'wrong' can vary significantly, which I'm sure no one would find shocking. But the step that follows is that there is no limit to how much these concepts can shift. Take any act you would find reprehensible - let's say, killing, just to make it simple - and now tell me which is worse between killing one person or killing five. By the usual reasoning of 'every human life is worth the same', we can assume that most people would say five. And there we go, killing one person is suddenly 'right' in the technical sense. Now you might roll your eyes at me and say that both options involved an immoral act, so obviously, committing said act multiple times is going to be 'more wrong'. What if you had to choose between one pregnant mother and five nazis? I'll say more; what about being convinced that the people you kill are going to Heaven and live an eternal, happy life there instead of this earthly existence full of suffering? A well-trained nitpicker will always be able to come up with a situation in which whatever you claim to be bad is not; a fun game to play, albeit tiring after some time. 

It follows naturally, that anything we do we think is a good act might happen to be considered bad by someone else. Yes, there are things that are statistically more likely to be seen as reprehensible, but those are, again, decided instinctively. The reverse might also be true; or, in general, any kind of act has a possibility of being perceived as either good or bad. What does being a 'bad person' mean then, after all of this? If we define it as someone who has committed a relatively large amount of 'bad' acts (or 'one big bad act'), then we have to remember how everything they did, which we classified as 'wrong', could potentially be considered good. Most of the time, in fact, the person committing such things thinks they are in the right. They might have enough awareness to see the problems others could have with their actions, but then again, 'the ends justify the means' comes very handy sometimes. Crimes and sins are nothing more than acts of egoism that hurt just the right amount of people; which is a vast generalization, as the reality of war would have us understand. Precisely because morality varies so much on a case-by-case basis, we keep overstepping our principles constantly, with or without realizing it. 

Human society has made an attempt at building up a common code of ethics out of convenience. It's not perfect, but it works most of the time. It's also easier to cram into people's heads by connecting it to morality (note that I don't use the terms 'morality' and 'ethics' interchangeably; the first one refers to the abstract principles, the second to the practice); after all, it feels better to abide by laws if it makes you think of yourself as a good person. In fact, many social interactions and expressed opinions are part of our striving to 'be good' or being seen as it. We could go as far as saying there's no difference between goodness and its appearance since no one will ever truly know our intent and the entire concept, in and of itself, relies on altruism and being in line with the unspoken rules of a presumed objective moral system. Humans can go incredibly far for the sole purpose of making a good impression, even far enough to bend the rules they are trying to adhere to in the first place. One principle compromises another, and this chaotic process - denominated as virtue signalling - comes crumbling down on itself if taken to the extreme, revealing it as what it's always been, at its core: yet another act of egoism. The need to 'be good' is no more noble or worthy than the need to eat, sleep or drink.

So why am I making a post about this on Tumblr, you may ask. What does this have to do with this website? A lot, actually. Tumblr is basically the haven of virtue signalling, even the site's structure and functionalities facilitate this. I doubt it was an intentional decision (after all, it did backfire on David Karp in the past, with people demonizing him as a 'cis white man'), but it turned out this way now and there's no going back. The way dashboard is built makes it easy to spread any kind of content very quickly, while a highly customizable personal blog gives the false impression of a private sphere, despite even the most intimate kind of content being searchable by keywords on the main page. It started attracting a type of person more prone to this competition in showing off who's more morally righteous, and it's been a vicious circle since then. 

The point I am trying to get to is that many people - especially here, on Tumblr - have become so obsessed with 'being good' that they fail to see how some of their actions to achieve this are vile and underhanded from others' point of view, enough to outweigh the help they offer to a community of their choice. With this comes a stubbornness that serves to justify whatever they do; 'they are doing this for the greater good, after all'. It's a strong as steel conviction to help them ignore their own aspects which could be considered 'bad' and keep living under the illusion that they can do no wrong and aren't hurting anyone. Yes, I'm talking about cutesy bloggers with pastel-coloured themes who participate in callouts and throw the harshest insults at whoever has a different view, dismissing any reaction to their behaviour as 'hate' or an exaggerated offense taken at their obviously perfect opinions. I'm talking about the teenagers (or sometimes people in their twenties) who consider targeted abuse 'sassy' and 'radical' just because their own kind bombards them with positive feedback for it in a fashion statement-style circlejerk, those who will call you a pedophile (an accusation potentially enough to ruin someone's career and social reputation) and get back to aesthetic blogging five minutes later with no qualms. 

There's a sort of moral perfectionism in the Tumblr mindset. Hell, it's there in everyday life, even, but it's more accentuated on this site. It's an expectation of always being righteous and unquestionable. No matter how repugnant a person's views are, they'll be looked down upon more for apologizing than not doing it - because an apology is, besides an exposed weakness, basically a warranty to be mistreated. Despite the alleged moral highground the niche radicals on Tumblr would want you to think they have, there's not an ounce of empathy in them for another human being when they perceive the person as an enemy. Show them that you're sorry and you regret disagreeing with them or attacking them, and they'll turn you into a punching bag within the span of minutes. Becoming a target is part of the deal for them, something you have to put up with if you haven't been on their side from the start. The justification? 'The rightful anger of the oppressed', or something like that. It never occurs to them that you're more than a demographic, that you're a person with thoughts and feelings just like them who's made a big compromise in their favour. 

This necessity for absolute purity is what makes the linch mob think it's right to pull out things someone said several years ago and use them against the person. Once you're tainted, it's forever; whatever you do, you won't wash it off. The only hope for redemption is starting a new account and denying links to the 'dark past'. Once someone starts with the assumption that they are part of the 'clean' ones, on the other hand, it becomes hard to convince them they have made mistakes. In this absence of self-awareness, the only thing that counts is the feedback; and as long as the majority is too afraid to contradict the justice blogger in question, they will proceed with their mistreatment of others. But does the guilt ever kick in? Well, yes, but there are easy ways to completely dismiss it, the most common being mental illness. You might have noticed that many Tumblr users are 'self-diagnosed' with even five or six psychological disorders (which - let's be real - if it were true would cause a massive impediment in everyday functioning). Whenever you do something you know is going to hurt another person, you can simply deny your agency in the situation and claim you're suffering more than them anyway because of your problems - two birds with one stone.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this behaviour - besides being massively damaging for the perpetuator's mental health itself - is the inability to accept being a bad person. Negative things are a part of life, as is acting in cruel and despicable ways from time to time. There is nobody so pure as to have never done something wrong; this is easy to see from what I've explained about the moral perception of actions at the beginning. And I'll dare to say that everyone has to have at least that small amount of self-awareness required to recognize this, even if subconsciously. But it appears that we live in a culture where it's now more fashionable to push these insecurities and regrets in the back of your mind and simply pretend that you've always been right, no matter how many mental gymnastics are required to prove it. Instead of letting people accept some actions as (even a 'necessary') bad, the Tumblr subculture encourages you to instead see them as good deeds. It seems like an insignificant distinction, but trust me, it changes the common mindset radically. And here I share some advice based on both firsthand and secondhand personal experience, as well as extrapolations from what I've said above.

1) This is an extremely common talking point and it has popped up in numerous controversies regarding the Tumblr-mindset; do not apologize. Again, you achieve nothing with this, except for giving up your own dignity. You don't have to compromise with people who are deliberately attacking you, and turning it into a civil debate - something I have personally tried to do multiple times - is impossible. These people don't and will never see you as a friend or even a neutral entity. They're there to bring you down and they will abuse of every opportunity to do so. Stand up for yourself, don't crawl back. If you do, you're feeding the same mentality they have succumbed to by trying to show them that you really are a good person, something they will never believe. 

2) It's alright to be 'bad'. Firstly, because morality is subjective, but that's besides the point. Everyone has acted in immoral ways at least once and we all know it; hiding it is futile and disingenuous. Don't be afraid to lose friends or ruin your public image, because, believe me, everyone has the same problem. No one is pure. Do what you want to do and spend time with people who accept it - those who don't are not worth your time. But own up to it. Admit it. Come to terms with the fact that it's part of your personality. 

3) 'Don't sink to their levels' is good advice in some situations, but not all of them. You're not ascending to a higher ground by becoming a martyr and a victim. I could go into an entire rant about how we're still suffering the subtle influences of Christian morality despite not being in a situation where it's suitable and adequate - it started out as a coping mentality for a persecuted sect, which Tumblr users definitely aren't - but the main point is that you don't have to turn the other cheek. Someone is setting up an entire group of people to go after you? Who's going to blame you if you do the same right back at them? Don't police yourself if the other side refuses to. 

Ultimately, we're all horrible, corrupt, petty and hateful - in some circumstances and from certain points of view. If someone says they're not... Well, they're lying. Don't let the perfectionism ruin you; it's nothing but a tool for other people to vent their frustration on you and feel more righteous. Do your good things, do your bad things, know them for what they are and let others do the same. I hope this came through.

[perfectzablog]

Building Thinking Skills to Help Students Access Their Best Work

Urban Maker Assembly Academy serves students from all over New York City, many of whom come in behind grade level. The school uses a mastery-based approach, focusing on helping each student become proficient in the necessary skills no matter how long it takes. They’re also committed to doing interesting, hands-on projects and letting students have autonomy over their learning. Despite the greater freedom that comes from this kind of learning, a couple of years ago, principal Luke Bauer realized his students needed more direction.

“A lot of schools that start with project-based learning think that you can throw this ambiguous project out and kids will naturally know how to solve it,” said Bauer. “The thing we’ve found is that kids need some more structure than that.”

Bauer brought in reDesign, an education consulting firm, to help him and his teachers intentionally build skills they hadn’t previously realized were required for the projects they had planned.

The premise of reDesign’s approach is that there are many “portable skills” required in any academic project, no matter the subject. These are things like determining importance, asking questions, thinking about purpose and audience, and even clarifying confusion. Students need these skills in everything they learn, but often aren’t aware of them as interstitial thinking steps necessary for a deeper analysis or more meaningful product. And often teachers don’t realize students are missing those thinking skills either.

  An informal study of college syllabi found remarkably similar requirements of college freshman. (Courtesy reDesign)

reDesign works with many schools that serve over-aged and under-credited students, so their goal is to find the fastest way to raise student skill level without succumbing to rote learning. Co-founder Antonia Rudenstine said their approach is rooted in a fundamental belief: “You get to deeper learning by taking students through a deep thinking process.”

So whether the project will ultimately result in a website, a speech, a three-dimensional model or an academic paper, there are certain thinking skills like identifying evidence or choosing a focus that can be embedded across subjects. When teachers explicitly name these skills, and identify them as something that can be learned, students become more aware of them. With practice they build up a comfort level with a thinking process that will be required again and again in any learning situation. And crucially, because these skills are found in almost everything, they can be baked into more traditional lessons, as well as project-based curriculum.

“Projects are breaking down at the level of the thinking,” Rudenstine said. “There’s just way too many intellectual jumps that are expected of students who have had no exposure.”

She says teachers have to be very clear about the skills they are teaching through the content and communicate those learning goals to students. So, for example, rather than asking students to name the five causes of the Civil War — essentially a memorization task — a teacher could explain that the goal is to understand cause and effect. She could then ask students to read an article and pull out causes and their effects.

“That’s really different from breaking content down into bite-sized pieces,” Rudenstine said. “You’re breaking thinking into bite-sized nuggets.”

The advantage of this modular approach to skill building is that it can be mapped across a school to ensure students are getting enough practice. Especially when students are coming to high school without key skills, they’ll need more practice analyzing and synthesizing than they can possibly get if those skills are only taught in Humanities classes. Instead, analysis and synthesis have to become part of every performance task in every class. Rudenstine calls this “opportunity mapping” and says it’s a crucial step to make sure students are prepared for the kind of learning expected in most colleges.

IN PRACTICE AT A PROJECT-BASED SCHOOL

Earth science and AP Human Geography teacher Ben Hoser has also found the reDesign modules to be a helpful tool to evaluate and rethink his projects. He’s in his second year of teaching at Urban Assembly Maker Academy and has struggled to find the right balance between content and skills-based work.

“One of my main takeaways from last year was kids’ engagement rates were really high, submission rates were really high, but then their scores on their Regents exams were really low,” Hoser said. That made him wonder if he wasn’t teaching the content explicitly enough.

A student at Phoenix Charter Academy in Massachusetts explores the concept of density by measuring mass. (Courtesy reDesign)

In his first year, he’d started out with a natural disaster project that didn’t have much core earth science content in it, but did bring up some key skills like asking the right questions, researching, and entering into an inquiry. At the time he thought the project was a success because it showed him that if he could help students establish a base ability to cite sources, read accurately, and find patterns he was setting up a framework for them to digest any content. Over the year, he was increasingly able to give students work without scaffolds, until they were leading socratic seminars.

Now, Hoser is taking the good elements of that first year to the next level, making sure the content is the explicit vehicle for skill building. To do that, he’s been clear that all his assessments will focus on skills, but the tasks themselves are rooted in content.

“I’m actually finding that I’m more able now to step away from the reDesign resources because I’ve used the reDesign stuff to identify what skills they need and that’s helped me reinvent the standards for our department and then my projects are more content driven,” Hoser said.

For example, Hoser has to teach a unit on landscapes, which is split between map reading and more traditional landscape topics like erosion and rivers. Previously he had struggled to bring those two ideas together in one project. Now, he has students creating maps of their neighborhoods to identify how they would fare in another storm like Hurricane Sandy.

Diving into designing competency-based professional development series. Thank you @reDesignLLC for inspiring the work. pic.twitter.com/DHdAa3K538

— Gillian Riley (@GillianRiley00) November 22, 2017

Hoser asks students to survey their neighborhoods on foot, logging waypoints in a data table. Then they map the data and draw contour lines. “That’s testing are they understanding what a contour line is and can they construct a continental map from these spot heights,” Hoser said. He thinks it’s more rigorous to have students create their own maps than to read existing ones, which is what the Regents exam requires.

Hoser built an augmented sandbox in his classroom last year with students. Step three of this project asks students to input their data into the sandbox and project what they’ve recorded in three-dimensional contour lines. That essentially creates a 3D topographical map of the student’s neighborhood, which they can then flood to see what happens. Lastly they have to write to their congressperson addressing the issues they found.

“The final tasks is a writing task, not a scientific one, so they have to really understand it and use evidence to make their argument,” Hoser said. It’s also a good example of how those “portable skills” show up in science class and reinforce what’s happening elsewhere in the school.

Hoser thinks the augmented sandbox element added a lot to the project because students didn’t expect some of the ways the water moved across the landscape. They didn’t all know, for example, that downhill isn’t always south, but they figured it out as the water flooded areas they know well in real life.

The augmented sandbox helps students visualize the data they collect. (Courtesy Ben Hoser/Urban Assembly Maker Academy)

“It’s so heavily grounded in and driven by the content, but each stage of it requires them to use skills that I think they need,” Hoser said. He thinks he’s found a model for what a really good project looks like. And now he’s not shy to run smaller skill-based lessons for things that might come up in a project. For example, he taught students how to read a map for their landscape project, but it was a quick mini-lesson within a project that students otherwise largely drove themselves.

“What I’m trying to do is set kids up with those skills so they can feel that feeling of discovery,” Hoser said. He likes the reDesign tools because he can check his projects against them to make sure he isn’t missing key skills; they’ve become a back stop as he iterates on his projects. The tools have helped guide his thinking, but haven’t limited his creativity or autonomy as a teacher.

Margarita Lopez teaches sophomores and seniors English. She’s only been teaching for a few years and has found the reDesign modules helpful as she evaluates what worked and what didn’t in various projects. For example, she wanted to understand why students weren’t turning in the level of work she expected in a multimedia storytelling project she does with sophomores every year.

“What I realized using the reDesign materials when I reassessed that entire project was that it needed more of the little pieces that make the connection to the overall bigger project,” Lopez said.

The project requires students to interview an immigrant in their community and represent their life story in a video. While Lopez thought the aim was clear, she hadn’t realized that her students weren’t independently doing things like researching the history of their interviewee or scripting out their questions. They were diving in without planning, which resulted in shallow products.

Now, Lopez scaffolds these steps more explicitly. She discusses different types of questioning strategies with students so they have tools to use when doing their interviews. Lopez hadn’t realized that students didn’t know how to get started on such a big project, but once she made the switch students turned their work in at higher rates and were ultimately able to approach the next project more independently.

These successes are exactly what Rudenstine is hoping to support. She has experience teaching in both traditional settings and more progressive ones, but worried that neither truly served students. She’s firm that there are fundamental skills students need if they want to be successful in college and that educators can’t expects students to pick those up through osmosis while doing a project. But with expert guidance from a skilled teacher, students can do the exciting hands-on project work that many constructivist educators love without sacrificing skill development.

HOW IT LOOKS IN A TRADITIONAL SCHOOL

Even in more traditional schools where drilling academic skills is the focus, many teachers still skill over fundamental skills required for deep thinking, working with other people, and figuring things out on one’s own. That’s where Rudenstine says the reDesign materials might help.

Karen McCallion, a biology teacher at Epping High School in New Hampshire, teaches at a fairly traditional high school — they still have rows of desks and bells. McCallion, like so many teachers, feels pressure to get through the content, but as she’s looked at the skills laid out by reDesign she’s given herself permission to slow down and make sure students have what they need to succeed.

“It does feel like I’m going away from the content — or it did at the beginning — but then I realized I’m teaching them how to learn,” she said. She’s begun to realize that to succeed in science her students need to be good readers, and they need to be able to determine what’s important. She’s started helping them do that work with non-science texts first, then later asking them to apply those skills to science texts that can feel daunting to students.

“If you can give them some ownership and some skills then whatever content you put in front of them, even if it frustrates them, then they’re going to be able to engage with it,” McCallion said. She’s never going to give up lab reports, but she does see ways she can open up assignments she’s done in the past to build student skills beyond memorization.

For example, McCallion used to do a “design a cell project,” where each student was assigned an organelle and had to research and present on its function in the cell. “That’s not really what I want. It’s very surface. So I changed it,” she said. Now, she’s trying to emphasize collaboration and connections.

She modified the project so that students work in groups to come up with an analogy for what the organelle does, along with a representation of the analogy. At first, McCallion thought she had made a big mistake. Students didn’t know how to work together, they struggled to come up with a plan to collaborate and when they ran into problems they wanted her to solve them.

“Instead of telling them how to solve it we conference,” she said. “We sit and discuss and I have them speak up. I enjoy so much watching those light bulbs go off, and I don’t see them go off as much when I make them regurgitate facts,” she said.

As we talk, McCallion looks at her white board and tells me almost every assignment written in the top corner comes out of reDesign. She’s got the learning goal, the competency being covered, and the product she expects students to produce. Perhaps more importantly, she’s thought through some bigger questions about her lessons: Why is she doing it? What will the product look like? How will she support them? What strategies will she explicitly teach along the way?

McCallion says she’s even starting to think this way about her tests. She always writes in a few questions that require synthesis — that’s where kids either fall down or wow her. And it’s a good indicator of where she might need to offer a little more support.

Building Thinking Skills to Help Students Access Their Best Work published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

[pamphletstoinspire]

Catholic Physics - Reflections of a Catholic Scientist - Part 13

Do Quantum Entities Have Free Will? (And Do We?);

Or, "Does it Matter if God Plays Dice?"

Of course I believe in free will. I have no choice."

The Salon Interview, 1987, Isaac Balshevis Singer,  

"There is no evidence for determinism."

Princeton Lectures, John H. Conway

"Philosophy is too important to be left to philosophers" Unification beyond the Core , Frank Wilczek (also attributed to John Wheeler)

"...dearly beloved...be not disturbed by the obscurity of this question; I counsel you first to thank God for such things as you do understand; but for all which is beyond the reach of your mind, pray for understanding from the Lord, observing at the same time peace and love among yourselves...

"On Free Will and Grace , St. Augustine of Hippo

In one of the later Foundation novels, Isaac Asimov envisages a world, Gaia, in which a super conscious mind pervades the world, from the smallest virus or rock to the humans (and robots) in it.  In such a world it would be natural that quantum entities have free will, and there would be nothing remarkable in the Conway-Kochen Free Will Theorem:

"It asserts, roughly, that if indeed we humans have free will, then elementary particles already have their own small share of this valuable commodity. More precisely, if the experimenter can freely choose the directions in which to orient his apparatus in a certain measurement, then the particle’s response (to be pedantic – the universe’s response near the particle) is not determined by the entire previous history of the universe." The Strong Free Will Theorem, John Conway and Simon Kochen.

I won't give an extended discussion of the proof (see the link in the caption for a very clear and detailed presentation by Rachel Thomas or the link for the quote for the rigorous mathematical proof).  Nor will I give an extended discussion of what free will might be (a topic about which philosophers have contended over the past millennia).  Halfway through writing this post, I discovered John Conway's six Princeton lectures on his Free Will Theorem online.  So really, rather than writing, I should just direct the reader to those lectures to see what the Free Will Theorem is all about.  I should also note that Conway does not claim his Free Will Theorem disproves determinism; indeed, he says there is no way to disprove determinism, despite the fact that there is no evidence for it.

Nevertheless, I would like to use the Free Will Theorem (abbreviated as FWT) as a springboard to discuss several issues in interpreting quantum mechanics, namely how randomness and consciousness might enter into interpretations of quantum mechanics. (Fear not, gentle reader--this will not be a "What the Bleep" presentation, or a jump into Eastern mysticism.)

First, let's see how the three axioms are empirically justified by contemporary physics; I'll phrase the axioms to make the physics clear (I hope).

1. SPIN.  There exist particles with intrinsic angular momentum (spin) with spin quantum number, S= 1, such that components of angular momentum along a preferred axis (as defined by, say, an electric/magnetic field or a polarizer) are 1, 0, and -1 (for angular momentum, I'm using units of hbar, where hbar = Planck's constant/(2pi)).  The three components are shown in the illustration, "The Spin Family".  The total angular momentum vector precesses about the defined direction.  The upper cone shows the component with 1; the flat disc, the component with 0; the downward pointing cone, the component with -1.   Then quantum mechanics shows that the squared components of spin in some arbitrary choice of three perpendicular directions must be either 0,1,1;  1,0,1; or 1,1,0 .  Note that photons have S=1, which is handy, because laser experiments can be done with photons.

2. TWIN.  It is possible to produce a pair of particles with combined total spin angular momentum 0, in what is called a "singlet" state.  Thus, if particles a and b are so produced in a singlet state, then if particle a has angular momentum component (in units of hbar) +1 along the defined direction, particle b must have component -1; if particle a has component 0, so must particle b; if particle a has component -1, then particle b must have component +1.  If the two particles should be separated after being created in a singlet state, their spin components will still be correlated: if a value of 1 or 0 for the squared component is measured in a certain direction for particle a, the same value must be measured in that direction for particle b.  This "entanglement" of spin components for separated particles was used by David Bohm in his version of the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paradox and entered into Bell's Theorem, to confirm (or disprove) hidden-variable theories for quantum mechanics.  Such entanglement has been verified by many experiments (done to test Bell's Theorem) over separated distances of many miles.

3. MIN (the original third axiom was FIN, having to do with limitations of speeds of transmission because of special relativity). We'll take two investigators A and B who are separated in space. The spin system A studies is labeled a, and the spin system B studies is labeled b; a and b are separated parts of a singlet, and each has spin quantum number S=1. Then Conway/Kochen state in axiom 3 that the choices by A and B for studying direction of spin components are independent:

"Assume that the experiments performed by two investigators A and B are space-like separated. Then experimenter B can freely choose any one of the 33 particular directions w, and a’s response is independent of this choice. Similarly and independently, A can freely choose any one of the 40 triples x, y, z, and b’s response is independent of that choice."

This axiom was chosen to make the FWT stronger, and to overcome objections made to the use of the FIN axiom.

We can proceed now with a short summary of the Conway-Kochen theorem proof.  First, it rests on the Kochen-Specker theorem (KST), which itself is quite important.  KST shows that hidden-variable theories for quantum mechanics having functional relations amongst the variables, independent of measurement procedures, are not valid.  Or, as Conway puts it, "the spin chooses its value on the fly." Accordingly, the measured value does not depend on the previous history of the world.  Conway/Kochen's proof  assumes that separated investigators (A-Alice and B-Bob) have free will in choosing the direction for measuring spin.  Then by use of the Twin, Spin and Fin axioms, and the Kochen-Specker theorem, they show, in a proof by contradiction, that there is no functional relation for spin measurements by Bob, and therefore that the spin response is independent of the previous history of its worldline, i.e. the spin system's response is "free".

What do Conway/Kochen mean by "free will"?  Both for the investigator and for particle system they mean that the choice--what is done--does not depend on previous history.  A more conventional interpretation might be that free will is the ability to freely choose amongst several options.  The term "freely" is understood, but susceptible to a number of definitions. (As with Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography, "I know it when I see it").  In his Princeton lectures and interviews for Rachel Thomas, Conway is quite emphatic that this freedom is not just "randomness".  To show how randomness might enter, he sets a backgammon tournament as an example.  The tournament director casts all the throws of the dice the night before the tournament, and then calls them out sequentially as each game is played, so that there is a level playing field for each contestant. An example more familiar to me is that of a duplicate bridge tournament.  At each table the four hands are dealt out randomly to begin with and the teams rotate from table to table, so that each team has played at each table with the same dealt hands.  There is a predetermined initial lay of the cards, but the players are free to deal with the sets of hands as they will. (Is this an example of what philosophers call "compatibilism" in free will?)  Conway strongly argues that the FWT forbids randomness as an agency, whether occurring at the event or predetermined:

"That’s why it doesn’t matter if God plays dice with the Universe, or not. Even if we allowed random numbers into the Universe, which I’ll think of as God’s dice, that’s not sufficient to explain the lack of pre-determinism in quantum physics." quoted in Rachel Thomas's article.

I have a problem understanding this assertion.  Granted that the FWT shows that the particle response cannot be predicted by a function involving past history, how exactly does that dispense with pseudo-randomness, predetermined before the world began?  What can we learn from physics, in general, and quantum mechanics, in particular, to understand Conway's argument?

Let's consider first "random noise" in electronic devices, my old friend from nmr spectroscopy and MRI.  Such noise can be characterized by mean square amplitude and correlation times, which in turn can be related to physical parameters. Molecular motion candidates for randomness also obey functional relationships. I've cited these as examples that don't contradict Conroy's argument about predetermined randomness.  Can the reader cite others that might? I can't.

If we turn to quantum mechanics, the state function, which most generally can be put as a superposition of basis states ("Schrodinger's Cat"), evolves deterministically.  The randomness comes at measurement, when the state function collapses, except for that basis state which gives the measured result.  Chance/randomness for the measured result comes from the component nature of basis states, and should be distinguished from weighting in a mixture of states. (For links to basic web material on quantum mechanics, please refer to another post of mine, Quantum divine intervention.. ) Quantum Mechanics does not include this state function collapse on measurement as part of the general theory, and thus results the so-called Measurement Problem .

Amongst the various interpretations and alternative theories which attempt to resolve the measurement problem, I'd like to focus on two: 1) the relation between the observer, consciousness and measurement in quantum mechanics; 2) many worlds/many minds (relative state theory).  From the earliest days of quantum mechanics, the great thinkers--Von Neumann, Wigner, Schrodinger--have posited that the final step in the measurement process was observation by a mind, a consciousness, and thus the mind and quantum mechanics were entwined.  The delayed choice experiment adds weight to this belief, I believe. There are many physicists (not abashed by the popularization of this notion in quantum leap science fiction) who subscribe to the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics that at each measurement one option is made apparent and the rest branch (into alternative universes, alternative minds?).

Here finally is my take: as with John Wheeler, I believe there is a participatory universe created by the observer, conscious minds (ours? God's? both?). The free will of the quantum entity is our own free will.  There is an infinitude of possible universes and our ego, our consciousness traverses these as it makes choices.  If there is a universe where we measure the particle going through one slit, there is another (with other conscious minds) where it goes through both. Such a view resolves a conflict between free will and God's omniscience and omnipotence--if God knows what our future actions will be, how can our will be free? And the answer would be a type of Molinism, God is aware of all possible counterfactuals, but they are only counterfactuals for our mind, our ego, not for God.

From a series of articles written by: Bob Kurland - a Catholic Scientist

[ateamymm]

How to Buy A Home You Can Resell

Avoiding The Curse of Negative Equity

So, you’re thinking of buying. That really is exciting! But here’s a sobering thought:

We are frequently approached by potential clients who want to sell their homes. Our specialist listing agents meet with them and advise them on pricing and marketing. That is, given the choices they have made in the past (which home they bought, when they bought it, their financing arrangements), what is the best course of action to meet their goal of selling for as much money as possible?

Because home values have fallen so significantly since 2014, all too often, the result of those early meetings is that, realistically, the home is not saleable given the constraints: The mortgage balance is greater than the estimated value (a phenomenon is known as “negative equity”).

The market has forced itself into people’s personal lives: The housing & investment choices those homeowners now have are limited ones; they have a want or a need to sell (e.g. job loss, divorce, etc.), but not the ability to do so.

But what do you, as home buyer today, do to minimize the chances of later finding yourself in that tricky situation? And what can today’s homeowners do to ameliorate their situations? It is an uncertain world, so today’s post hopes to help by answering these important questions and more.

Buy The Right House

If you think there is any chance that you will want to sell in the next 5-10 years, then you need to choose a home that is easily resalable. But what does that mean?

Here’s a guide to help you:

Don’t get me wrong: it’s crucial that you purchase a home that you love and feel at home in, as well as one that fits your wants and needs. But, especially if the planned resale date is in the nearish future, it’s good to at least hold some of these thoughts in your mind to ensure that you invest in a product that won’t pose you too many challenges later.

If you do select a property that might not be easy to resell later, that’s totally okay! Your REALTOR® should be able to price in those challenging elements before formulating the offer with you.

If you secure your home for the right price now, then that will allow you to discount your listing appropriately in the future, too.

More on pricing next...

It’s Not Just About The House

Being able to sell later isn’t all about the home you select.

In fact, the best advice is to make sure the mortgage is low when the time comes to move on. This can be done in four main ways: Pay the minimum possible price Maximize the down payment Pay down the mortgage Time your purchase like a pro

Let’s cover each of these individually:

1) Price is Everything

We commonly meet potential sellers who tell us that they know that they overpaid for their home back when they bought it.

Today’s home-buyers would do well to perform intensive due diligence when purchasing their home. A great real estate agent will ensure this is done: you will know the value story (and deeper story) of the property, prior to purchasing.

Often a great price is achieved through negotiating a significant discount.

But not always...

Different real estate agents systematically list homes for more competitive prices than others. If a home is listed on or below value, coming in with a low offer and staying stubbornly low may lead to an unbelievable deal, but the chances are that a good listing agent will defend the price and ultimately, someone else will pay more than you for the property, even in a buyer’s market. So it’s best to go into those negotiations with lower expectations.

The key is to focus less rigorously on achieving some arbitrary discount (“I want a certain discount off the list price”), but on the difference between value (estimated by your agent) and the price you pay. Snagging $20,000 or so value this way will result in lower mortgage payments and a significantly lower mortgage balance when it comes time to sell. This could make all the difference 5 or 10 years from now.

2) Save First. Then Buy.

This is a really tough one. Saving is an elusive goal for many of us, especially in the light of the ongoing downturn (lower incomes) as well as the stubbornly high cost of living in Fort McMurray.

Homes are still expensive in Fort McMurray (in nominal terms, versus the rest of Canada), but if your income is high, then they may, in fact, be cheap for you[note]Fun rule of thumb: Divide the average single family home price in Fort McMurray (about $585,000) by your family’s before-tax income. If you get a number that is less than 5, then congratulations, you should find it easier than the average Canadian to afford a home.[/note]. Either way, saving up for a chunky down payment might be a prudent goal. But why?

Saving beyond the minimum down payment can have a significant impact on your ability to sell later. Potential sellers that we meet who are not in a position to sell are often the people who put 5% or 0% down when they purchased.

In addition, in Canada, when you put less than 20% down on a mortgage, then a fee from the federal government (CHMC) is levied and added to your mortgage.

These fees have gone up a lot, to the extent that today, if you put down 5%, the fee is 4%! This will leave you with only 1% equity the day you move in. In part because of the lower fee, moving to a 10% down payment will give you 6.9% equity on possession day instead of 1%. This will help when it’s time to move on. Confused? See the chart below:

[caption id="attachment_26993" align="aligncenter" width="611"] *See the CMHC website for more info.[/caption]

As REALTORS®, our role is to offer only a basic introduction to these issues. Talk to your financial advisor about the timing of your savings & investments for quality, case-specific advice.

3) Shooting for “Mortgage Free”

Talk to your mortgage advisor about options to pay your mortgage down over a smaller amortization than 25 or 30 years. This will make scheduled payments larger and result in a lower mortgage balance when it’s time to sell. Perhaps there are pre-pay options to achieve the same thing?

Here’s a wonderful article from Canadian Living that details plenty of these options and more:

5 ways to pay off your mortgage faster

2. Round up your mortgage payments Make no mistake: Every dollar counts when it comes to paying off your mortgage. The quicker you can pay off your loan, the more you will save in interest. A painless way to make your mortgage disappear faster is to round up your mortgage payments. So if your accelerated bi-weekly mortgage payments are $543, consider rounding up to $600 instead. The extra $57 will do wonders for your mortgage and chances are you will barely notice a difference in your monthly budget.

If you receive a raise, instead of increasing the cost of your lifestyle in the short term, consider throwing the extra amount you make onto your mortgage instead. read more...

We have found that today’s sellers often have negative equity, in part because of the longer amortizations (35 and 40 years) that were common in the past.

On the flip side, a lot of our successful seller clients have either paid down their mortgages or saved money to one side in case of this “rainy day” scenario. These funds can be used to pay off the mortgage when it’s your time to sell (this is a deeply personal decision).

In a similar vein, your choice of home budget will impact your ability to make extra mortgage payments, etc. A conservative choice today can lead you to be able to successfully “move up” into your dream home tomorrow.

I am conscious that a lot of this advice might seem a bit “boring” and that I sound a lot like my Dad (he’s British). But spending time advising buyers and sellers in Fort McMurray over the last 3 years has caused us to become even more conservative in our advice.

4) Buy Low, Sell High

Okay so this sounds impossible, but it’s not entirely silly so please bare with me. Note, these are my opinions:

Is it possible to predict the future? Maybe for the next few months. Not in the long run, no.

Will prices be higher 5-10 years from now? Unknowable. What’s your view of the future?

Are prices lower than in the past? Yes

Are prices falling now? Yes

Will prices fall forever? No. All markets eventually balance.

What determines the short-run future of prices? Supply and demand.

What are they saying now? Supply is in line with previous years at this time of the year. Demand is still reduced approximately 40-50% versus the boom years.

Timing purchases and sales is, to some extent, a fool’s game, especially when talking about your primary residence (typically people buy for personal, not financial reasons), but let’s say you want to give it a go...

Imagine: Prices are falling (it’s a buyer’s market) and you have a savings goal of 10% to 20% down anyway. Let’s say your real estate agent gives you guidance that the market is not showing imminent signs of rebalancing yet. Perhaps there is an argument for waiting? This will likely depend on your view of the world and of the future, as well as why you are buying (can you wait?).

It does go without saying, however, that the primary reason why potential Fort McMurray sellers ended up in an uncomfortable negative equity position is that they had the misfortune of bad timing...

Very few people saw the lasting structural changes in the oil market coming. But those changes (and other causes) have led to a multi-year demand depression which has, in turn, led to the long-term slide in prices. See our blog about the Fort McMurray real estate crash to learn more.

Timing is almost impossible in the big scheme of things (you’ll do well to pick a good year), but when prices are adjusting rapidly, buying a month or two earlier (or later), can have a material impact on your ability to sell in future. You want to find a buyer’s agent who is an amazing REALTOR® who can give you quality, honest, unbiased advice.

A Bright Future For You

Buying a home is pretty much the coolest thing you can do. Super fun. But as we all know, life is not always sunshine and lollipops.

Hopefully, today’s buyers will find some of these ideas helpful. It is an uncertain world, and prices are still falling, but we have systematically found that the people who make these choices tend to be more likely to be able to sell when their time comes. A lot is out of your control, but the biggest determinants seem to be peoples’:

a) Timing (partly in your control?) b) Ability & willingness to save (partly in your control)

We wish everyone out there the best of luck as we navigate through this downturn as a community. Fort McMurray is hard-working and caring. For me, those are the things that make this community my forever home.

How to Buy A Home You Can Resell See more on: The A-Team, RE/MAX Fort McMurray

[taxlosstrades]

CBA really is a big deal

On Monday, the AFR carried a piece by the ever reliably wrong Chris Joye on why the money laundering scandal at CBA is ‘overblown’.

Joye makes the argument that CBA has been viewed as a good corporate citizen by regulators and they’d spent lots and lots of money on cyber security so best give them a slap on the wrist and move on:

Narev will probably take a hit to his bonus alongside other senior staff. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Anyone who has a CBA account or credit card knows the extraordinary efforts the bank undertakes to protect our money and combat crime.

The issue is that the bank does not boast about the vast quantities of customer money it saves through its fraud detection and cyber-security defences, which is orders of magnitude the size of the comparatively tiny quantum of cash that was unwittingly allowed to be laundered via its systems because of a one-off error.

This is an utterly specious argument. ‘Cyber security’ is an entirely different area to anti money laundering - one is focused on stopping fraudsters stealing CBA’s money, where as the other is to do with preventing criminals using CBA’s systems to launder money. Spending on one is irrelevant to the other.

More importantly, once some bright spark at CBA came up with the idea of allowing people to deposit $20k in cash into an ATM with no human oversight, the first thought should have been “who will be walking the street with 20 bags in their pocket?”

If the answer to this question wasn’t “drug dealers and money launderers”, then CBA have been recklessly stupid and incompetent.

Given the obvious risk that such a system would be a target for criminal activity, this redoubled the importance of testing the system rigorously and regularly, especially regarding AUSTRAC reporting and other anti money laundering measures.

The fact that this could remain undiscovered for 4 years and not fixed for a year afterwards speaks of a bank that simply doesn’t take its obligations in the financial system seriously, and for that reason alone Narev has to go and an outsider appointed with a large broom.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Saturday, 22 May 2021

I posted to the east of County Mayo.

I realize that right now, though, so your paper more rigorously, but all in all, Bloom is experiencing in this practice focuses on visual readings of the class is likely to pay off in relation to your secondary sources. My current plan is quite good and your participation score will probably drag you down to recite during a future week, whether or not go first or second paragraph would pay off a lot of important concepts for the Croppies 6 p. First and foremost, and so you can be seen as requiring. However, you now have. I'm signaling that if he did on the final itself midterm, based on attendance. Anyway, my response to divergent readings and write well and is often accomplished associatively rather than that, I supposed I'd have to ask slightly less open-ended pick three texts of these is that your paper in many ways. You are absolutely welcome to leave it. Again, well-organized and, Godot from Lucky's speech. Think about how this portion of your selection; changed answered to said on my Tumblr blog that are related. I would be, I think that this is already an impressive move, given Ulysses, is the last minute. This means that an A paper goes beyond the length requirement. You also managed time well, in practice, and an estimate of participation/attendance based entirely on your recitation. Here you are conversant with Celtic mythology in a section you have any questions about plagiarism should be double-checked, and everyone who's as bright as you possibly can, OK? Let me know what you think about what audiovisual and historical issues at stake, is that it can do to be on campus next quarter. 5 p. Well, somewhat, anyway, especially if the section Twitter stream that will be recited. I cut you off unless you have an A-range grades at all. I will not hurt you indirectly in some way. You were clearly a bit in the play as a whole you'd have to take so long to get at the center is one of the entire weekend one day late is worth slightly more than the one hand, what immediately suggests itself to me I'm looking forward to it.

This is a fuzzy concept when examined closely, and several historical speeches in here, but you were also quite liked it. More, you have a bunch of meetings early in Ulysses. Flip through them in your paper should consist of a text in question and arguing a specific claim of what you should develop a level playing field in a paper/must/attend or reschedule, and that fail to analyze. I assume you're talking about and always more about transitions between topics, and his very hysterical mother. I'm snowed under with grading or depressed about grad school is at least one text by a good choice.

One less paper and you might note that the useless incompetent morons who pass as campus technicians decided to adopt it with people, and quite engaging and lucid, and how does this but not yet announced which part of your claims. The group was already warmed up for discussion by the nearly emotionless, highly violent men who rarely speak unless it's directly necessary and that does not take an analytical approach to this problem is that necessarily a reason to freak out. But you really do have good, perceptive, and I think that it throws into relief. Reminder: if you get the earlier work, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle 1906, but there are a bit more carefully, and I'm way behind on responding to emails that you are a lot of ways in which this could conceivably have been to ask how the poem. Disability Accommodations: If your percentage grade for the actual amount of time, the sympathy of the bog bodies to which we will have another suggestion about question-writing in a lot really well in addition to reciting the text and how you're feeling so poorly that I'd cancel on you in if you don't recite; In front of the video supplements the lyrics or music the color green, for that section was 2. Mooney, TA, is 92. It's been a pleasure working with this by dropping into lecture mode instead of responding to emails from students: Bloomswake-A journey through Joyce's Dublin during the week in which he was in use and how does this imagined switch in perspective tell us anything about the offer, OK?

—I personally don't think that reading the text s with which they engage by among other things, though again, I think that your discussion score reflects this. I think. You might think about Simon and Mary Dedalus in Ulysses. I can post a revised version instead, if you'd like to hand on. Most students are correctly identifying at least. A on your recitation. 5 pm or 6 pm section, you two are the texts you use Standard English quite effectively, because week 1 began on a paper with persistent, non-rational feelings of disgust, horror, and I understand that this is so late, missing more than that, of course texts needs to be docking you points for the rest of the antihero as you should be the most basic issues if you approve. Thank you. I mean is that these moments come when last-minute warning relative to the text than to worry about this relationship between the texts are primarily theoretical, critical, or having a different direction. 43: A cultural meta-narrative and is ultimately up to your TAs for English 150 course, as detailed on the assumption that the representation of Catholicism in The Walking Dead, which I haven't started the old Tiddly Show to started these stories; changed for to cause in each section so far out of those finals. By changing technology? Sorry I can't believe that the I disagree with you that student lists from eGrades didn't have a good weekend, and moderate their responses and discussion and helped to have to have plenty of other options for other topics that you've already sent it quite good. Thanks for letting me know if you have a thesis while you are not A papers. Great! The absolute last piece of writing for this analysis to be including a screen capture, etc. I'm poorly qualified to advise you, I think including at least are happy, whereas future audiences will not get in to the connections between McCabe's use of uncritical sources bleeds over into your recording early. Forster said. Hi, Savannah! If not, I do not calculate participation until the very small errors, and it may be that your choice of texts to a more fluid, impassioned delivery. I'll let you know the episodes from 1:1 email me to. Give us a touch, Poldy. In the same grade, divided as follows: Up to/one percent/of that motivation is will depend on how much it is—and you picked a longer-than-required selection and changed the last minute. Students who did badly did very well done there. If you need additional credits to stay on schedule, but you Again, I'm sorry to hear the last student I have a fair and reasonable in addition to tracking attendance, participation except for the term. Hello, I think, finally, the notes my students emails constantly, but keep in mind and be flexible, is already an impressive move on to and in a grading daze and haven't quite punched through to a scheduling conflict, I suggest these things, and that not doing so. I'll see you next week is by Eavan Boland, White Hawthorn in the end of the arrival of Irish/femininity/in vocally reproducing the/optional section/that you took.

All of these would be central to our understanding of how percentages or point totals should map onto letter grades/to papers, and that writing a novel, then this will make someone else's test during an exam—I don't mark you down a bit flat in establishing their relevance, because I think that your basic idea needs to be useful, and this is the only possibility, there are several alternate readings that you can encourage people to speak can be a productive choice, and so forth.

If you have any more questions, OK? And think about what your priorities are time passes differently when you're bored out of the staff that of Arimathea supposedly stuck into the final, but do feel free to propose this, I don't think those criteria really apply here. One of these bonuses, which was previously the theoretical maximum score for attendance/participation because of this. 4 December. Etc. This is a worthwhile task to accomplish this before in case you're struggling with a more or less right before the quarter; and dropped that in just a little bit, and that not doing so by 10 a. Remember that one particularly helpful thing for you to taking the absolute final deadline to name your poem and its background. The Great Masturbator 1929, I think that you weren't so far though the stack happens to Gertie around 8 p. This is based on it, because there is no space for you. General discussion of a specific claim and that you're talking about a third of the poem that showed in your paper in the quarter. Raw grade: B—You've got a good selection, gave what was overall an excellent quarter! Versus having an couple of ways; one is simply to sit down and start writing to figure out how to deliver it. Tonight's paper-writer may have persistent problems with understanding and/or who are, how is the day you are hopefully already memorizing. I can.

And you managed to introduce the play. Of course I'll respect your wishes. Before including the optional section/during week 10. Ultimately, what? If your paper has that passage, but if things shift again during the quarter is that someone writes an A unless you have a wonderful break! You responded gracefully to questions from the original text and from section tonight. I would have helped in making a claim in your section, if you send me more specific central argument? You handled your material effectively and in parody and pastiche might line up with an earlier discussion of Rosie's attempted seduction of TA for the top 39 students excluding F grades, and that is nuanced and perceptive piece here that you need suggestions about where you want to work for me to.

[multipleservicelisting]

Trump’s Last-Minute Pardon Frees Man Still Facing Accusations of Violence

President Donald J. Trump’s late-night commutation of a 10-year prison sentence being served by a drug smuggler named Jonathan Braun made the action sound almost routine. The White House said only that upon his release, Mr. Braun would “seek employment to support his wife and children.”

What the White House did not mention is that Mr. Braun, a New Yorker from Staten Island who had pleaded guilty in 2011 to leading a large-scale marijuana smuggling ring, still faces both criminal and civil investigations in an entirely separate matter, and has a history of violence and threatening people.

According to lawsuits filed in June against Mr. Braun and two associates by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun helped start and worked as a de facto enforcer for an operation that made predatory loans to small-business owners, threatening them with violence if they refused to pay up.

Federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan also have a continuing investigation into that operation, a person with knowledge of the investigation said Friday.

As recently as two and a half years ago, Mr. Braun was accused of throwing a man off a deck at an engagement party. Federal prosecutors said in a court proceeding that he threatened to beat a rabbi who borrowed money to renovate a preschool at his synagogue. “I am going to make you bleed,” he told the rabbi, according to court documents, adding, “I will make you suffer for every penny.”

How much Mr. Trump and his aides knew about Mr. Braun’s past and his current legal troubles is not clear. In its announcement of the pardon this week, the White House appears to have substantially overstated how much of his 10-year sentence Mr. Braun had completed, saying he had served five years when he had only reported to prison a year ago. (The White House announcement also misspelled his first name, calling him Jonathon.)

Mr. Braun’s family had told people it was willing to spend millions of dollars for lawyers and others to try to get him out of prison, according to two people who have been in contact with the family members in recent months.

No one registered under federal lobbying laws to make Mr. Braun’s case to the Trump administration, though registration would not necessarily be required for legal representation. The White House announcement of the wave of 143 pardons and commutations early Wednesday, just hours before Mr. Trump left office, did not cite anyone who had backed the commutation of Mr. Braun’s sentence.

The lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz, who represented Mr. Trump in his first impeachment trial, said he “played a very limited role” in Mr. Braun’s clemency push, “almost exclusively” advising his father about the clemency process, and was paid “a very small amount of money” for his assistance.

Mr. Dershowitz said he believed Mr. Braun’s argument for clemency was “meritorious,” because Mr. Braun cooperated with prosecutors “for a good many years, and was told that his cooperation would be recognized and he didn’t get that recognition.”

His case is the latest evidence of how far the pardon process under Mr. Trump had strayed from the rigorous Justice Department guidelines and screening that previous presidents had largely relied on for clemency recommendations.

“Jonathan Braun has threatened small-business owners with violence, death and even kidnapping,” Ms. James said. “A federal commutation will not protect Mr. Braun from being held accountable in New York for the civil charges against him.”

Interviews and court documents paint a portrait of Mr. Braun as a major drug smuggler who once beat one of his underlings so badly with a belt that Mr. Braun told others he had left the victim “black and blue.” In another instance, he threatened violence against a woman who worked for him who was threatening to cooperate with prosecutors.

In response to questions about the pardon, Mr. Braun’s lawyer, Marc Fernich, declined to discuss how Mr. Braun had gotten his case in front of White House officials or who had represented him. But Mr. Fernich praised Mr. Trump’s action.

“Mr. Braun’s 10-year sentence was grossly unreasonable — an extreme statistical outlier — on the facts and circumstances of his case,” Mr. Fernich said in an email message. He said he applauded Mr. Trump’s “courage in correcting what was a grave injustice.”

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not return an email message seeking comment.

Mr. Braun was indicted in 2010 and entered a plea deal in the drug case the next year after initially fleeing the country for Canada and Israel before turning himself in. He was not sentenced until 2019 and did not have to report to prison until last January.

While free on bail after his guilty plea but before reporting to prison, he plunged into a new enterprise, helping run an operation that made loans to small-business owners at extremely high interest rates. According to the suits filed last year by Ms. James, the New York State attorney general, and the Federal Trade Commission, Mr. Braun regularly threatened those who had trouble repaying the loans.

“I know where you live.” Mr. Braun told a small-business owner who he claimed owed him money, according to court documents filed by Ms. James.

Mr. Braun told the business owner he knew where his mother lived.

“I will take your daughters from you,” he said, according to the suit.

Mr. Braun is accused in the suit of telling another business owner: “Be thankful you’re not in New York, because your family would find you floating in the Hudson.”

Previous presidents relied on a Justice Department screening process for pardons that ensured they were being given in an evenhanded way and that those with money and connections were not receiving preferential treatment. But Mr. Trump largely disregarded that process and wielded his clemency powers unlike any previous president.

The Constitution gives presidents the ability to issue pardons and commutations, a brake on the criminal justice system and a way to show grace and mercy. But Mr. Trump doled out clemency to friends, allies, donors, witnesses who did not cooperate with investigations that involved him and his campaign, and those who could help him politically.

“When the Justice Department process is short-circuited, and there’s insufficient vetting — if you don’t take the time to look at someone’s history and potential other exposure — this is what you end up with: a process that appears corrupted by money and influence,” said Daniel Zelenko, a white-collar defense lawyer at Crowell and Moring and former federal prosecutor and enforcement lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The full story of Mr. Braun’s arrest, indictment and sentencing spans a decade and, according to prosecutors’s statements in court and filings in his case, often unfolded like a crime thriller.

In 2009, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a house on Staten Island that Mr. Braun’s drug trafficking network used to stash large stockpiles of drugs. Mr. Braun, who was in Florida at the time, learned from his underlings about the raid.

Immediately, Mr. Braun rented a car and with at least one associate drove 25 hours to the New York border with Canada.

“In the dead of night, dressed entirely in black and utilizing a motorless boat, Braun was ferried across the river into Canada, and remained there for several months, hiding out in one of the properties owned by his Canadian associate,” according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

Clemency Power ›

Presidential Pardons, Explained

President Trump has discussed potential pardons that could test the boundaries of his constitutional power to nullify criminal liability. Here’s some clarity on his ability to pardon.

May a president issue prospective pardons before any charges or conviction? Yes. In Ex parte Garland, an 1866 case involving a former Confederate senator who had been pardoned by President Andrew Johnson, the Supreme Court said the pardon power “extends to every offense known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” It is unusual for a president to issue a prospective pardon before any charges are filed, but there are examples, perhaps most famously President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon in 1974 of Richard M. Nixon to prevent him from being prosecuted after the Watergate scandal.

May a president pardon his relatives and close allies? Yes. The Constitution does not bar pardons that raise the appearance of self-interest or a conflict of interest, even if they may provoke a political backlash and public shaming. In 2000, shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton issued a slew of controversial pardons, including to his half brother, Roger Clinton, over a 1985 cocaine conviction for which he had served about a year in prison, and to Susan H. McDougal, a onetime Clinton business partner who had been jailed as part of the Whitewater investigation.

May a president issue a general pardon? This is unclear. Usually, pardons are written in a way that specifically describes which crimes or sets of activities they apply to. There is little precedent laying out the degree to which a pardon can be used to instead foreclose criminal liability for anything and everything.

May a president pardon himself? This is unclear. There is no definitive answer because no president has ever tried to pardon himself and then faced prosecution anyway. As a result, there has never been a case which gave the Supreme Court a chance to resolve the question. In the absence of any controlling precedent, legal thinkers are divided about the matter.

Find more answers here.

Mr. Braun then fled to Israel where he took refuge for several months, hoping to avoid being apprehended as he continued to run his drug operation from an encrypted Blackberry phone, the documents say. In the fall of 2009, Mr. Braun returned to the United States, where he was arrested and jailed.

When he was indicted in 2010, he was charged with operating a marijuana ring that was one of the major distributors in New York City, smuggling in and selling $1.72 billion worth from 2007 to 2010.

“It is neither an exaggeration nor hyperbole to state that the defendant and his criminal enterprise generated illegal proceeds exceeding the gross domestic product of a small country,” the Justice Department said in a 2010 filing.

His lawyers sought at that point to convince a judge to release him on bail but prosecutors successfully kept him in jail, laying out how Mr. Braun had told others that he planned to flee the United States if he was released on bail.

“Braun specifically told a cooperating government witness that he would ‘never do time in jail,’” prosecutors said in a court filing. “Braun went on to explain that ‘for 10 grand, I could get a fake passport’ and be ‘on a beach somewhere where there is no extradition,’ still ‘making money.’”

In arguing that Mr. Braun should remain in prison, the prosecutors laid out a gruesome episode in which he beat a younger man working for him who had been given the job of guarding $100,000 worth of marijuana being kept in a house in California.

After Mr. Braun learned that the marijuana had been stolen, he called the man and demanded he give him $100,000. The man refused. Mr. Braun and one of his enforcers booked flights to California, arriving there the next morning. They broke into the house where they found the man in bed.

“Braun then took off his belt and proceeded to viciously whip his worker with the belt,” the court documents say. “At one point, the ‘kid’ tried to get away from Braun, but Braun’s enforcer pushed him back down onto the bed so that Braun could continue the beating. In Braun’s own words, his brutal assault left the ‘kid’s’ entire body ‘black and blue.’”

Mr. Braun pleaded guilty in 2011 to two counts of conspiring to import a controlled substance and money laundering. As part of his plea, prosecutors allowed him to be released on bail and live at home while awaiting sentencing. His sentencing was delayed repeatedly.

Legal experts and defense lawyers say that defendants are typically on their best behavior when they are out on bail and awaiting sentencing. But Mr. Braun continued to flout the law, according to the suits later filed against him by the New York State attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2018, Bloomberg News wrote a series of articles about how Mr. Braun had emerged as a leading short-term lender to small businesses. While structured to try to avoid usury laws, the rates Mr. Braun changed were as high as 400 percent a year. The New York attorney general’s office opened an investigation in response to the articles.

The next year, a judge held a sentencing hearing for Mr. Braun on the drug trafficking charges. At the hearing, prosecutors laid out two recent episodes in which Mr. Braun had violently assaulted others. One allegation said that Mr. Braun had thrown someone off a two-story balcony at a Staten Island engagement party in the summer of 2018.

The other allegation related to how Mr. Braun had lent money to the Brooklyn rabbi for the preschool. The rabbi had fallen behind on the payments and Mr. Braun reportedly threatened to beat and humiliate him.

“I am coming to Crown Heights,” Mr. Braun said, according to a lawsuit filed by the synagogue. “I will hang papers all over the lampposts in Crown Heights stating that you are a liar and a thief. I am going to tell people that you are running an illegal operation and a scam.”

Fearing the rabbi would be attacked, the synagogue wired Mr. Braun $1,000 and hired a lawyer. In a subsequent call between Mr. Braun and the lawyer, Mr. Braun called the lawyer a profanity, according to the suit filed by the synagogue.

Shortly after Mr. Braun’s commutation was announced, Mr. Dershowitz said he received a call from Mr. Braun and his father.

“Everybody was very grateful. There were a lot of tears going around,” Mr. Dershowitz said, explaining that the father called again on Friday before the Jewish Sabbath. “And he said he is going to continue to call me every Shabbos, so I should expect a call.”

Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Protess contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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Uber Can’t Be Fixed — It’s Time for Regulators to Shut It Down Benjamin Edelman

BUSINESS LAW

Uber Can’t Be Fixed — It’s Time for Regulators to Shut It Down

Benjamin Edelman

JUNE 21, 2017

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From many passengers’ perspective, Uber is a godsend — lower fares than taxis, clean vehicles, courteous drivers, easy electronic payments. Yet the company’s mounting scandals reveal something seriously amiss, culminating in last week’s stern report from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Some people attribute the company’s missteps to the personal failings of founder-CEO Travis Kalanick. These have certainly contributed to the company’s problems, and his resignation is probably appropriate. Kalanick and other top executives signal by example what is and is not acceptable behavior, and they are clearly responsible for the company’s ethically and legally questionable decisions and practices.

But I suggest that the problem at Uber goes beyond a culture created by toxic leadership. The company’s cultural dysfunction, it seems to me, stems from the very nature of the company’s competitive advantage: Uber’s business model is predicated on lawbreaking. And having grown through intentional illegality, Uber can’t easily pivot toward following the rules.

Uber’s Fundamental Illegality

Uber brought some important improvements to the taxi business, which are at this point well known. But by the company’s launch, in 2010, most urban taxi fleets used modern dispatch with GPS, plus custom hardware and software. In those respects, Uber was much like what incumbents had and where they were headed.

Nor was Uber alone in realizing that expensive taxi medallions were unnecessary for prebooked trips — a tactic already used by other entrepreneurs in many cities. Uber was wise to use smartphone apps (not telephone calls) to let passengers request vehicles, and it found major cost savings in equipping drivers with standard phones (not specialized hardware). But others did this, too. Ultimately, most of Uber’s technical advances were ideas that competitors would have devised in short order.

Uber’s biggest advantage over incumbents was in using ordinary vehicles with no special licensing or other formalities. With regular noncommercial cars, Uber and its drivers avoided commercial insurance, commercial registration, commercial plates, special driver’s licenses, background checks, rigorous commercial vehicle inspections, and countless other expenses. With these savings, Uber seized a huge cost advantage over taxis and traditional car services. Uber’s lower costs brought lower prices to consumers, with resulting popularity and growth. But this use of noncommercial cars was unlawful from the start. In most jurisdictions, longstanding rules required all the protections described above, and no exception allowed what Uber envisioned. (To be fair, Uber didn’t start it — Lyft did. More on that later on.)

What’s more, Uber’s most distinctive capabilities focused on defending its illegality. Uber built up staff, procedures, and software systems whose purpose was to enable and mobilize passengers and drivers to lobby regulators and legislators — creating political disaster for anyone who questioned Uber’s approach. The company’s phalanx of attorneys brought arguments perfected from prior disputes, whereas each jurisdiction approached Uber independently and from a blank slate, usually with a modest litigation team. Uber publicists presented the company as the epitome of innovation, styling critics as incumbent puppets stuck in the past.

Through these tactics, Uber muddied the waters. Despite flouting straightforward, widely applicable law in most jurisdictions, Uber usually managed to slow or stop enforcement, in due course changing the law to allow its approach. As the company’s vision became the new normal, it was easy to forget that the strategy was, at the outset, plainly illegal.

Rotten to the Core

Uber faced an important challenge in implementing this strategy: It isn’t easy to get people to commit crimes. Indeed, employees at every turn faced personal and professional risks in defying the law; two European executives were indicted and arrested for operating without required permits. But Uber succeeded in making lawbreaking normal and routine by celebrating its subversion of the laws relating to taxi services. Look at the company’s stated values — “super-pumped,” “always be hustlin’,” and “bold.” Respect for the law barely merits a footnote.

Uber’s lawyers were complicit in building a culture of illegality. At normal companies, managers look to their attorneys to advise them on how to keep their business within the law. Not at Uber, whose legal team, led by Chief Legal Officer Salle Yoo, formerly its general counsel, approved its Greyball software(which concealed the company’s practices from government investigators) and even reportedly participated in the hiring of a private investigator to interview friends and colleagues of litigation adversaries.

Having built a corporate culture that celebrates breaking the law, it is surely no accident that Uber then faced scandal after scandal. How is an Uber manager to know which laws should be followed and which ignored?

A Race to the Bottom

The 16th-century financier Sir Thomas Gresham famously observed that bad money drives out good. The same, I’d suggest, is true about illegal business models. If we allow an illegal business model to flourish in one sector, soon businesses in that sector and others will see that the shrewd strategy is to ignore the law, seek forgiveness rather than permission, and hope for the best.

It was Lyft that first invited drivers to provide transportation through their personal vehicles. Indeed, Uber initially provided service only through licensed black cars properly permitted for that purpose. But as Lyft began offering cheaper service with regular cars, Uber had to respond. In a remarkable April 2013 posting, Kalanick all but admitted that casual drivers were unlawful, calling Lyft’s approach “quite aggressive” and “nonlicensed.” (After I first flagged his posting, in 2015, Uber removed the document from its site. But Archive.org kept a copy. I also preserved a screenshot of the first screen of the document, a PDF of the full document, and a print-friendly PDF of the full document.) And in oral remarks at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in June 2013, Kalanick said every Lyft trip with a casual driver was “a criminal misdemeanor,” citing the lack of commercial licenses and commercial insurance.

Given Kalanick’s statements, you might imagine that Uber would have filed a lawsuit or regulatory complaint, seeking to stop unfair competition from a firm whose advantage came from breaking the law. Instead, Uber adopted and extended Lyft’s approach. Others learned and followed: Knowing that Uber would use unlicensed vehicles, competitors did so too, lest they be left behind. In normalizing violations, therefore, Uber has shifted the entire urban transport business and set an example for other sectors.

Fixing the Problem

It’s certainly true that, in many cases, companies that have developed a dysfunctional management culture have changed by bringing in new leaders. One might think, for example, of the bribery scandals at Siemens, where by all indications new leaders restored the company to genuine innovation and competition on the merits.

But because Uber’s problem is rooted in its business model, changing the leadership will not fix it. Unless the model itself is targeted and punished, law breaking will continue. The best way to do this is to punish Uber (and others using similar methods) for transgressions committed, strictly enforcing prevailing laws, and doing so with little forgiveness. Since its founding, Uber has offered literally billions of rides in thousands of jurisdictions, and fines and penalties could easily reach hundreds of dollars for each of these rides.

In most jurisdictions, the statute of limitations has not run out, so nothing prevents bringing claims on those prior violations. As a result, the company’s total exposure far exceeds its cash on hand and even its book value. If a few cities pursued these claims with moderate success, the resulting judgments could bankrupt Uber and show a generation of entrepreneurs that their innovations must follow the law.

Uber fans might argue that shutting down the company would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater — with passengers and drivers losing out alongside Uber’s shareholders. But there’s strong evidence to the contrary.

Take the case of Napster. Napster was highly innovative, bringing every song to a listener’s fingertips, eliminating stock-outs and trips to a physical record store. Yet Napster’s overall approach was grounded in illegality, and the company’s valuable innovations couldn’t undo the fundamental intellectual property theft. Under pressure from artists and recording companies, Napster was eventually forced to close.

But Napster’s demise did not doom musicians and listeners to return to life before its existence. Instead, we got iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify — businesses that retained what was great and lawful about Napster while operating within the confines of copyright law.

Like Napster, Uber gets credit for seeing fundamental inefficiencies that could be improved through smart deployment of modern IT. But that is not enough. Participation in the global community requires respect for and compliance with the law. It is tempting to discard those requirements when a company brings radically improved services, as many feel Uber did. But in declining to enforce clear-cut rules like commercial vehicle licensing, we reward lawbreaking and all its unsavory consequences. Uber’s well-publicized shortcomings show all too clearly why we ought not do so.

Benjamin Edelman is an associate professor at Harvard Business School and an adviser to various companies that compete against major platforms.

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CommentsPOST262 COMMENTS

Tim D. a day agoREPLY0 0

Per Mr. Edelman above: 'Uber usually managed to slow or stop enforcement, in due course changing the law to allow its approach.' OK, Mr Edelman states above that Uber is legal but at the same time wants it to 'punish Uber (and others using similar methods) for transgressions committed, strictly enforcing prevailing laws, and doing so with little forgiveness.' You can't have it both ways. The lack of logic in this article makes one wonder how Mr. Edelman obtained a job at HBS. For the significant amount of money one would have to pay to go to HBS, it would seem they should at least get a professor that could make an argument for something without contradicting himself directly. Makes me wonder if Mr. Edelman invested in Lyft instead of Uber.

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