Addison Rae

On Twitter, 4.9 million followers.

Pretty. Nice body. Makes you famous. 

Elon Musk Buys Twitter (VIDEO)

I'm just tickled by this. The funniest thing is I had no doubts he'd take over the company. Turns out it was just a matter of arranging financing, and for a guy like than, how hard could that be? 

What's even more hilarious, of course, is the left's reaction to the buyout. Twitter itself is in meltdown mode. Folks on the right are gloating, rolling over laughing on the floor. Folks on the left are panicking, literally not sure what they're going to do now that their Twitter power has been zapped by a force more powerful than kryptonite. 

It's glorious. 

I never moved to Trump's Truth Social. I dismissed all the others as wannabee's, Gab, Parler, Gettr, or whatever. I'm sure they can generate some good discussions or whatever, but they can't claim to be the "digital town square," not just at home, but globally. Until someone beats Twitter at that scale, attracting even more users, I don't see a credible substitute. 

It's an amazing thing, truly a phenomenal thing. And frankly, as shocking and stupendous is all of this, not much is likely to change. In terms of censorship (and free speech), frankly at the granular level, Musk's ownership might not make much difference. As Megan McArdle points out, "No matter what new policies Musk sets, there will be gray areas. And it is Twitter's progressive workforce, not Elon Musk, who will be making the calls in those gray areas."

In any case, lots of loz at Twitchy. See, "Brian Stelter’s alarmed by ‘total freedom for everybody’ after Elon Musk buys Twitter," and "Build your own: Sounds like Robert B. Reich wants to leave Twitter and keep his followers, is haunted by old tweets."

Plus, the fear is palpable, "NBC News reporter who covers ‘extremism and lies’ for a living says you’re not going to like where Twitter is headed."

In any case, at A.P., "Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B and will take it private." 

More, at the video below, Kara Swisher, New York Times tech maven reporter, spurts the truth to make leftists very unhappy. 

And the Los Angeles Times, "Elon Musk reaches $44-billion deal to buy Twitter":

Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter and take the company private succeeded on Monday, 11 days after the world’s wealthiest man first announced that he’d like to buy the social media firm.

After days of back and forth, Twitter’s board approved Musk’s approximately $44 billion offer Monday.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement announcing the deal. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

The company’s leadership initially tried to fend off the bid, adopting a “poison pill” measure that would make a hostile takeover difficult.

But Musk announced that he had $46.5 billion in financing lined up in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, prompting Twitter’s board to meet on Sunday to discuss the bid. Following that meeting, the board opened negotiations with Musk that stretched late into the night, according to reporting by the New York Times.

The deal values Twitter stock at around $54 per share, above the $39 per share that the stock was trading at before Musk’s interest in the company became clear in early April, when he purchased a 9% stake in the company, but also well below the stock’s 2021 high of $77 per share.

Musk stated that his interest in Twitter is motivated not by the company’s finances but by its role as a public forum and his belief that he could manage the platform better than its current leadership.

“Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk said at a public interview on April 14, a day after he first announced his offer to buy the company. “I don’t care about the economics at all.”

He elaborated on this theme in his SEC filing, writing: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” and that he believes “the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.”

Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has become one of the core companies of the social media age — but it has had a difficult time becoming a profitable business and has been a site of explosive disagreement over the moderation of online speech.

Founded by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone as a site that allowed users to post 140-character messages using SMS texting, Twitter experienced its first surge of interest after a presentation at the 2007 SXSW festival in Texas.

The next few years brought explosive growth. In 2011, the company announced it had 100 million monthly active users. By the time Twitter went public, in 2013, that number had doubled to more than 200 million people using the platform every month.

But Twitter could not sustain that rate of expansion. While Facebook, Instagram and upstart platform TikTok rocketed past Twitter to more than a billion users in the past decade, Twitter hit a plateau. The company counted 300 million monthly users in 2019 before switching its reported metrics. Now it has 217 million monetizable daily active users, per its latest corporate filings.

Under a series of chief executives, Twitter did figure out how to squeeze more money out of those users. Revenue grew from $1.4 billion in 2014 public to over $5 billion in 2021. But the company only booked a profit in 2018 and 2019, and returned to losing money in the past two years.

Even as its user growth stagnated, however, Twitter became the go-to platform for journalists and politicians, a volatile combination that has turned it into one of the key battlegrounds in the fight over online harassment, the limits of public speech and the power of tech companies.

Nowhere was the battle hotter than in the debate around banning former President Trump from the platform...

 

Fredrik Logevall, JFK

At Amazon, Fredrik Logevall, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956.

The Teen Mental Health Crisis

As noted just now on Twitter, "This is what we should be talking about. Want a campaign issue, Republicans? You might as well be stepping on a rake, with the mental health crisis ready to smash you in the face."

At the New York Times, "‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens":

Depression, self-harm and suicide are rising among American adolescents. For M, a 13-year-old in Minnesota, the despair was almost too much to take.

One evening last April, an anxious and free-spirited 13-year-old girl in suburban Minneapolis sprang furious from a chair in the living room and ran from the house — out a sliding door, across the patio, through the backyard and into the woods.

Moments earlier, the girl’s mother, Linda, had stolen a look at her daughter’s smartphone. The teenager, incensed by the intrusion, had grabbed the phone and fled. (The adolescent is being identified by an initial, M, and the parents by first name only, to protect the family’s privacy.)

Linda was alarmed by photos she had seen on the phone. Some showed blood on M’s ankles from intentional self-harm. Others were close-ups of M’s romantic obsession, the anime character Genocide Jack — a brunette girl with a long red tongue who, in a video series, kills high school classmates with scissors.

In the preceding two years, Linda had watched M spiral downward: severe depression, self-harm, a suicide attempt. Now, she followed M into the woods, frantic. “Please tell me where u r,” she texted. “I’m not mad.”

American adolescence is undergoing a drastic change. Three decades ago, the gravest public health threats to teenagers in the United States came from binge drinking, drunken driving, teenage pregnancy and smoking. These have since fallen sharply, replaced by a new public health concern: soaring rates of mental health disorders.

In 2019, 13 percent of adolescents reported having a major depressive episode, a 60 percent increase from 2007. Emergency room visits by children and adolescents in that period also rose sharply for anxiety, mood disorders and self-harm. And for people ages 10 to 24, suicide rates, stable from 2000 to 2007, leaped nearly 60 percent by 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The decline in mental health among teenagers was intensified by the Covid pandemic but predated it, spanning racial and ethnic groups, urban and rural areas and the socioeconomic divide. In December, in a rare public advisory, the U.S. surgeon general warned of a “devastating” mental health crisis among adolescents. Numerous hospital and doctor groups have called it a national emergency, citing rising levels of mental illness, a severe shortage of therapists and treatment options, and insufficient research to explain the trend.

“Young people are more educated; less likely to get pregnant, use drugs; less likely to die of accident or injury,” said Candice Odgers, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. “By many markers, kids are doing fantastic and thriving. But there are these really important trends in anxiety, depression and suicide that stop us in our tracks.”

The crisis is often attributed to the rise of social media, but solid data on the issue is limited, the findings are nuanced and often contradictory and some adolescents appear to be more vulnerable than others to the effects of screen time. Federal research shows that teenagers as a group are also getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person time with friends — all crucial for healthy development — at a period in life when it is typical to test boundaries and explore one’s identity. The combined result for some adolescents is a kind of cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, self-harm and even suicide.

This surge has raised vexing questions. Are these issues inherent to adolescence that merely went unrecognized before — or are they being overdiagnosed now? Historical comparisons are difficult, as some data around certain issues, like teen anxiety and depression, began to be collected relatively recently. But the rising rates of emergency-room visits for suicide and self-harm leave little doubt that the physical nature of the threat has changed significantly.

that teenagers as a group are also getting less sleep and exercise and spending less in-person time with friends — all crucial for healthy development — at a period in life when it is typical to test boundaries and explore one’s identity. The combined result for some adolescents is a kind of cognitive implosion: anxiety, depression, compulsive behaviors, self-harm and even suicide.

This surge has raised vexing questions. Are these issues inherent to adolescence that merely went unrecognized before — or are they being overdiagnosed now? Historical comparisons are difficult, as some data around certain issues, like teen anxiety and depression, began to be collected relatively recently. But the rising rates of emergency-room visits for suicide and self-harm leave little doubt that the physical nature of the threat has changed significantly.

As M descended, Linda and her husband realized they were part of an unenviable club: bewildered parents of an adolescent in profound distress. Linda talked with parents of other struggling teenagers; not long before the night M fled into the forest, Linda was jolted by the news that a local girl had died by suicide...

More at the link.

The Times says, "the findings are nuanced..."

Right.

See this at CNN, "Their teenage children died by suicide. Now these families want to hold social media companies accountable":

(CNN) — Christopher James Dawley, known as CJ to his friends and family, was 14 years old when he signed up for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Like many teenagers, he documented his life on those platforms.

CJ worked as a busboy at Texas Roadhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He loved playing golf, watching “Doctor Who” and was highly sought after by top-tier colleges. “His counselor said he could get a free ride anywhere he wanted to go,” his mother Donna Dawley told CNN Business during a recent interview at the family’s home.

But throughout high school, he developed what his parents felt was an addiction to social media. By his senior year, “he couldn’t stop looking at his phone,” she said. He often stayed up until 3 a.m. on Instagram messaging with others, sometimes swapping nude photos, his mother said. He became sleep deprived and obsessed with his body image.

On January 4, 2015, while his family was taking down their Christmas tree and decorations, CJ retreated into his room. He sent a text message to his best friend – “God’s speed” – and posted an update on his Facebook page: “Who turned out the light?” CJ held a 22-caliber rifle in one hand, his smartphone in the other and fatally shot himself. He was 17. Police found a suicide note written on the envelope of a college acceptance letter. His parents said he never showed outward signs of depression or suicidal ideation.

“When we found him, his phone was still on, still in his hand, with blood on it,” Donna Dawley said. “He was so addicted to it that even his last moments of his life were about posting on social media.”

Now, the Dawleys are joining a growing number of families who have filed recent wrongful death lawsuits against some of the big social media companies, claiming their platforms played a significant role in their teenagers’ decisions to end their lives. The Dawleys’ lawsuit, which was filed last week, targets Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. The suit accuses the two companies of designing their platforms to addict users with algorithms that lead to “never-ending” scrolling as part of an effort to maximize time spent on the platform for advertising purposes and profit.

The lawsuit also said the platforms effectively exploit minor users’ decision-making and impulse control capabilities due to “incomplete brain development.”

Donna Dawley said she and her husband, Chris, believe CJ’s mental health suffered as a direct result of the addictive nature of the platforms. They said they were motivated to file the lawsuit against Meta and Snap after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked hundreds of internal documents, including some that showed the company was aware of the ways Instagram can damage mental health and body image.

In public remarks, including her testimony before Congress last fall, Haugen also raised concerns about how Facebook’s algorithms could drive younger users toward harmful content, such as posts about eating disorders or self-harm, and lead to social media addiction. (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a 1,300-word post on Facebook at the time claiming Haugen took the company’s research on its impact on children out of context and painted a “false picture of the company.”)

“For seven years, we were trying to figure out what happened,” said Donna Dawley, adding she felt compelled to “hold the companies accountable” after she heard how Instagram is designed to keep users on the platform for as long as possible. “How dare you put a product out there knowing that it was going to be addictive? Who would ever do that?”

Haugen’s disclosures and Congressional testimony renewed scrutiny of tech platforms from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. A bipartisan bill was introduced in the Senate in February that proposes new and explicit responsibilities for tech platforms to protect children from digital harm. President Joe Biden also used part of his State of the Union address to urge lawmakers to “hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.”

Some families are now also taking matters into their own hands and turning to the courts to pressure the tech companies to change how their platforms work. Matthew Bergman, the Dawleys’ lawyer, formed the Social Media Victims Law Center last fall after the release of the Facebook documents. He now represents 20 families who have filed wrongful death lawsuits against social media companies...

Both of my sons have gone through social-media linked depression. My youngest son has received long-term, extensive, residential treatment as part of his therapy for autism spectrum disorder. (My older son just kept everything boxed inside; he went through this, as a high schooler, a decade or so ago, and the manifestations of the scale of the dangers were still becoming known). 

I've been to more "group" therapy sessions with my youngest than I can count. Literally, over a couple of years of my son being sent away for "long-term care," including an eight month stay at a facility in Texas. Almost every parent I met? Their biggest worry was their kids' social media addictions, and how they could keep them safe. 

It's not nuanced. 

If you're around it enough, especially if you have kids who're being damaged be the entire "influencer" culture --- which more than ever comes with the enormous pressure to be as beautiful and fantastic as these astonishing luxe young bombshells they see on Instagram, etc. --- you will know for a fact that this is *the* epidemic of our age and it's past time to do something serious about it. Very serious. Like shutting down some of these motherfucking vanity hate sites once and for all. 

A cancer on our people, gawd. 

Fresno State Gal

Yeah, there were some incredibly smokin' chicks at Fresno State back in the day --- like my wife, come to think of it, heh. 

On Twitter.

Oh, some beautiful pure country.

And this lady's not Megan Fox. 

BONUS: Addison Rae. 

Union Head Randi Weingarten Says Parents Are Stoking the Flames of War (VIDEO)

At Red State, "Randi Weingarten is the President of the American Federation of Teachers and perhaps the person who is most to blame for the horrific abuse our children have suffered in the public education system over the last two years ... On a recent podcast, the AFT President suggested the current trend of parental interest and parental rights activism is “propaganda” and intimated that parents fighting for their liberties is akin to stoking warfare."

WATCH: 

Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public

Said to be a prescient book explaining the challenges of our times.

See, Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.

Let My Athletes Go! (VIDEO)

Let my Athletics go, that is, to Las Vegas.

The title above plays with Moses and the Book of Exodus 5:1.

Folks were shocked with the attendance for Tuesday's home game against Baltimore. Just 3,748 fans, and that's after an opening day with 17,503 (which ain't that hot either, if you ask me).

I'm watching Friday night baseball on Apple TV right now. Texas at Oakland. It's not very crowded, to put it mildly (though whatever fans are there are fired up and enthusiastic). 

Turns out this is all by design. *Hmm.*

At USA Today, "The Oakland A's (and MLB) discouraged fans from coming to the Coliseum. The people listened":

For the Oakland Athletics, it's all going according to plan.

Observe the arena of sports long enough, and you eventually memorize the playbook. And for franchises aiming to hijack taxpayers for a new arena or hold fans hostage lest they lose their team to a thirstier city, Tuesday night's barren abomination of A's-Orioles at what's now called the RingCentral Coliseum was merely the next page in a well-concocted script.

The attendance – "announced" attendance, at that – was just 3,748, the lowest crowd count at the alternately dreary and cheery Coliseum since 1980. It's also the smallest crowd at a major league game minus pandemic restrictions since an announced 5,297 fans attended an August 2019 Miami Marlins game.

The reasons why are both well-worn and also infuriating.

The A's search for a new stadium is nearing its third decade and so well-documented, you could count more artists' renderings of potential homes than significant free agents the A's retained.

The Coliseum itself – opened in 1966, home to the A's since 1968 and roughly a top 10 major league park when it was a baseball-only facility in a sea of multi-purpose behemoths in the 1980s and early '90s – has been allowed to fall into disrepair, its charm and sunny vistas dwarfed by a renovation inspired by the Raiders' 1995 return to the city.

Yeah, the A's could use a new park. But beyond the "lols" at sewage backups and playoff collapses and payroll-cutting trades, it's what's happened since the club has had the city to itself that's most maddening.

The Raiders, as they do, held the city hostage in the '90s and then bailed for Las Vegas, anyway. The Warriors built a dynasty and then hopped the bridge back to San Francisco for a haute couture arena and revenues more in line with their Silicon Valley-esque rise.

That left Oakland – The Town, as it was lovingly known by natives before getting beaten into the ground by appropriaters – all to the A's. And every move that's happened since the Raiders' 2020 kickoff in Las Vegas has smacked of fan alienation.

Let's start with the heel turn of A's president Dave Kaval, who presented himself as the fan-friendly, public-facing voice of a bright new era of Oakland baseball. He littered his social media feeds with "boom" and "100" emojis, celebrating unlikely wins, directly answering fans' queries as if he could solve anything and introducing aesthetically-pleasing and incentive-laced entry points such as food trucks, a "Treehouse" in-game hangout and an A's Access plan that in its first year doubled the season ticket base and very much looked like the future of sports attendance.

Silly us, we thought it was for the purpose of pleasing the clientele. Instead, these clearly were trial balloons aimed at workshopping ideas for a new stadium.

Since the Raiders left and the pandemic landed, the A's have held all the cards and their actions suggest as much.

A's Access was discontinued. Parking was jacked up to $30, even as COVID-19 restrictions left mass-transit options emaciated. Single-game tickets were raised – $25 for a third-deck seat in a decrepit football stadium, anyone? – and in the grimmest turn yet, many season-ticket packages were significantly raised before this season.

How much? A bleacher seat went from $456 in 2019 to $840 in 2022, according to the San Jose Mercury News, with more expensive options also doubling or nearly doubling.

Meanwhile, as the A's continued jumping through ever-growing hoops for their desired waterfront home at Howard Terminal, Kaval and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred teamed up on a not-so-subtle bit of dark messaging: Your current home sucks.

When Oakland, fooled more than once by franchise owners, did not rubber stamp a half-billion dollars in infrastructure and carve out multiple tax districts to enrich the A's, it was game on. Las Vegas was raised as a relocation option, with Kaval tweeting from a Golden Knights playoff game in case you're not into the whole subtlety thing.

Manfred openly pushed Vegas as a "parallel track" to Howard Terminal, stamping the league endorsement on a plan that it was the only appropriate option for the A's, and sending a loud message to those who might have enjoyed the East Oakland sunshine and dream of a newer ballpark there.

"The Oakland Coliseum site is not a viable option for the future vision of baseball," MLB said in its initial public show to play the bad guy in this drama. "We have instructed the Athletics to begin to explore other markets while they continue to pursue a waterfront ballpark in Oakland. The Athletics need a new ballpark to remain competitive, so it is now in our best interest to also consider other markets."

Of course, viability is in the eye of the ticket-holder.

Do you want a modern, 35,000-seat venue with good weather, access and even a few adjacent amusements? That would check off most fans' wish lists, and the Coliseum site, with a billion or two dollars of TLC, could provide that.

Or do you want a real estate development masquerading as a ballpark, with a price tag of $12 billion further enriching the owner and allowing him to keep up with the Atlantas and San Franciscos and Chicagos of the world, with non-baseball revenue lining his pockets regardless of team performance?

Howard Terminal, and Howard Terminal only, could provide that.

Fans in Oakland were always sophisticated, and many hardy souls still showed up anyway. Now, perhaps, the final indignities have been delivered...

 

Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard: Defamation Trial (VIDEO)

I watched this and it's pathetically depressing. 

First, these two shouldn't have been under the same roof. With all of his and her resources, why not live apart and figure out what to do with the marriage. I don't read the tabloid magazines so I have no idea, but it's completely disheartening. 

Second, it's very sad that all of this is out in the open, on public display. You can hear them fighting at the audio, both yelling (and she screaming), and you know this isn't their best moments as humans. That is, the negative spotlight stays a while. Depp looks old and tired. Heard looks shamed and on the verge of tears. 

And these are beautiful people. Johnny Depp is by far one of the most talented actors of his (or my) generation. He's amazing and I love him, but not like this. I'm not familiar with Ms. Heard's work, but I followed her on Twitter some time back, for some reason, and she posts frequently (or at least she was before the trial) and looks full of life and love. 

All of this is a travesty. 

Scroll forward at the video a bit and you'll hear the tape-recorded fight scenes. Neither party comes out well, and, actually, Ms. Heard comes off the worse.

Yesterday, at the New York Times, "Johnny Depp, Accused of Spousal Abuse, Says Ex-Wife Was the Aggressor":

The actor testified in a defamation case that he filed against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, who has said he often struck her during their relationship.

The actor Johnny Depp took the stand for the second day on Wednesday to describe his turbulent marriage to the actress Amber Heard, whom he has sued for defamation, accusing her of “demeaning name-calling” that often escalated into physical violence.

“It could begin with a slap, it could begin with a shove, it could begin with throwing a TV remote at my head, throwing a glass of wine in my face,” Mr. Depp told a jury at Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia.

Ms. Heard has accused Mr. Depp in court papers of repeatedly assaulting her throughout their relationship, from slapping and kicking to dragging her across the floor by her hair and grasping her throat, making her fearful that he would kill her.

But over the past few years of legal wrangling in the United States and Britain, Mr. Depp has maintained that Ms. Heard was the one who was violent toward him. In testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Depp denied ever striking Ms. Heard or any woman.

Ms. Heard denied in court papers that she had ever struck Mr. Depp except in self-defense or in defense of her sister.

Mr. Depp has sued Ms. Heard for defamation over an op-ed she wrote in 2018 in which she said she was a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article did not mention Mr. Depp’s name, but he testified that the time-frame reference in the op-ed was clearly in reference to their marriage, which lasted less than two years.

The seven-person jury will also consider Ms. Heard’s countersuit, which asserts that Mr. Depp defamed her when his former lawyer made statements saying that her allegations of domestic abuse were a hoax.

During more than five hours of testimony on Wednesday, the jury heard snippets of recorded arguments between the couple. Those included audio of Mr. Depp confronting Ms. Heard about kicking a door into his head the previous night and Ms. Heard asking, “Why are you obsessing over the fact that I can’t remember it the way you remember it?”

During his testimony, Mr. Depp strove to present his side of several incidents that have surfaced as their problems in their relationship became public, including the time Mr. Depp’s middle finger was severed. The injury occurred in 2015 while the couple was in Australia for the filming of the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.

Mr. Depp told the jury that, at the time, Ms. Heard was angry about a meeting she had with a lawyer about a potential postnuptial agreement and threw two vodka bottles at him, one of which missed while another shattered into his hand, causing his finger to bleed “like Vesuvius.” He testified that he then experienced a “nervous breakdown” and used his bloody finger to write on the walls messages that “represented lies that she told me.”

Ms. Heard, who is expected to take the stand later in the trial, has given a very different account of the incident in Australia, writing in court papers that Mr. Depp became violent with her during an argument about his drug use. She has said that at one point he grabbed her by the neck and collarbone and slammed her into a countertop, then hit her with the back of his hand and slammed a phone against a wall until it “smashed into smithereens,” injuring his finger.

Upon her return to Los Angeles, Ms. Heard wrote in court papers that “I had a busted lip, a swollen nose and cuts all over my body.”

In 2016, Ms. Heard was granted a temporary restraining order against Mr. Depp after telling a court in California that Mr. Depp had thrown a phone at her face at close range, bruising it. (Mr. Depp testified that he “flopped” the phone onto the couch and has asserted in court papers that Ms. Heard’s facial marks were of her own doing.)

Many of the accusations being lobbed back and forth in Virginia have already been aired in a court in London. After Mr. Depp sued The Sun newspaper there for a headline in which they referred to him as a “wife beater,” citing “overwhelming evidence” during their marriage, a British judge ruled against the actor...

 

'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone...'

Oh boy.

Madison Cawthorne's been found out. Hmm. Now we can understand his attacks alleging member of the GOP conference attending drug-fueled orgies. Projection much? 

At Politico, "Exclusive: Madison Cawthorn photos reveal him wearing women’s lingerie in public setting: The embattled congressman has outraged Republican colleagues with accusations of orgies and drug use."

Click through for the photos. 

The title quotation's from the Book of John 8:7.

Katie Pavlich

Ms. Katie ahead of "The Five" today, on Twitter.

Netflix, Facing Reality Check, Vows to Curb Its Profligate Ways

It's funny, because I just haven't been watching *anything* on Netflix of late. I like news, movies, sports. It's got to be a very good streaming series for me to invest the time to binge watch or view over multiple seasons. 

I actually watched the first season of "Euphoria," but that was on HBO. I'm too busy with school right now in any case. Summertime is when I have the time to watch a lot of television (though I did see "Passion of the Christ" on Netflix before Holy Week just past). 

I'm not canceling my subscription just yet, but honestly, I use Amazon Prime more frequently these days. 

Oh well.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Streaming service spent lavishly on productions to win subscribers, but now growth has slowed":

For Netflix Inc., the era of carefree spending is over.

The streaming giant ran up a huge bill over the past several years as it expanded across the globe and produced a mountain of programming, prioritizing growth over cost efficiency. Now the company is imposing more financial discipline, according to senior executives.

The shift comes as competition from an array of streaming rivals begins to take a toll, a new reality that was evident in first-quarter results announced Tuesday. The company lost subscribers for the first time in over a decade, and revenue grew at its slowest pace in years. Shares plunged 35%, the stock’s second-worst one-day decline ever, erasing $54 billion in market value.

“Well, it’s a bitch,” Netflix Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Reed Hastings said of the results while addressing employees in a town hall on Wednesday afternoon, according to people familiar with his remarks.

After churning out over 500 original programs last year, Netflix is looking to add fewer new titles, with a greater emphasis on quality, people familiar with the company’s strategy said. It is revamping production deals to limit its risk, and prioritizing programs with the biggest return, not the greatest reach, the people said. A key internal metric: the ratio of a program’s viewership to its budget.

“We should right-size budgets depending on what the creative dictates, and what the size of the audience is,” Bela Bajaria, the head of global TV for Netflix, said in a recent interview.

She said when Netflix first started making original programs it had no track record and had to make outsize bids to land “House of Cards” and other high-profile shows. “That was the cost of entry, the cost of doing business,” Ms. Bajaria said.

Netflix executives said the company expects to continue to grow spending on content to more than $20 billion this year while scrutinizing it more closely. Ms. Bajaria said that doesn’t mean the service will go cheap on production. “We’re always going to make great shows and have the amount of money needed for the creator’s vision,” she said.

As it looks to rein in costs, Netflix is also exploring new ways to boost revenue. In January, the company said it was raising prices in the U.S. and Canada. On Tuesday’s earnings call, Mr. Hastings said Netflix is exploring adding a lower-priced, ad-supported version of the service to court cost-conscious viewers. And, after blaming password-sharing for limiting its growth, Netflix says it is looking to “monetize” the practice.

The newfound focus on content costs is causing tensions with Hollywood’s producers and show runners, who have benefited from the streamer’s largess. Netflix’s tendency to give shows a quick hook when it believes they aren’t delivering a return is another sore spot with producers and creators. Some producers say Netflix needs to be more aware of its competitive environment, and factor in the programming rivals are launching when deciding when to release its own shows.

“If there is anything I would say is a fault of Netflix, it is that they are so insular. They may not see what’s going on outside their walls or they know and the hubris is so great they don’t care,” said Jeff Fierson, whose credits for Netflix include the movie “Sweet Girl” and the short-lived series “Daybreak.”

Mr. Fierson noted that “Daybreak”—a show about teens in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles—made its debut close to the premiere of Disney+’s “The Mandalorian” and the debut of the Apple TV+ streaming service.

Warning sign Netflix still leads the pack in streaming video with more than 220 million subscribers. But its recent turbulence has rattled Wall Street, causing investors to question how big the pot of gold is in the streaming wars. Shares in Paramount Global, which operates the Paramount+ streaming service, fell 7% on Wednesday, while shares in Walt Disney Co., owner of Disney+, fell 5% and shares in Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of HBO Max, fell 5%.

Disney+, Netflix’s closest rival with 130 million subscribers globally, is starting to feel some pressure as well. The company launched a low-cost, ad-supported tier to boost subscribers. It is broadening beyond the “Star Wars” and “Marvel” programming that has anchored Disney+, hoping to reach new audiences and be better positioned to achieve its target of between 230 million and 260 million subscribers by the fall of 2024. The ABC show “Dancing with the Stars,” which appeals primarily to an older audience, will move exclusively to Disney+ starting this fall.

All streaming players are learning that adding new subscribers is getting much harder, especially in the mature U.S. market. Every service is under pressure to create a steady flow of new shows and movies to draw in new subscribers and retain existing ones. The hope is that every once in a while they’ll score a big hit like Netflix did with “Squid Game,” “Tiger King” and “Queen’s Gambit.”

Veteran media analyst Michael Nathanson, who has raised concerns about the prospects for major players in streaming, said consolidation that reduces the number of competitors might relieve some pressure, but “for the time being, this is a pretty capital-intensive business.”

Some producers and writers say they are frustrated by inconsistent guidance from streaming services, which are always looking for a new formula to attract more subscribers. “As creative people we are getting whipsawed. There is not a mission statement that sticks around for more than a couple of months,” said producer Mike Royce, whose credits include the Netflix reboot of “One Day at a Time.”

When Netflix first introduced original programming to its platform a decade ago, its pitch to creators was that there would be little interference from the “suits” and no worries about ratings. In recent years the company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars signing superstar producers including Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy, setting off a talent arms race among Hollywood studios.

Now, the service has a never-ending conveyor belt of new content. Shows have a window of several weeks to find their audience or they are canceled, meaning they usually aren’t promoted on the home page and become harder for viewers to find. Netflix executives say the company’s cancellation rate is on par with that of rival streamers, and of broadcast and cable networks...

 

How the Gay Rights Showdown Threatens Disney's Unprecedented Self-Rule in Florida

One of the big culture war stories of the moment. 

Governor DeSantis is a fighter.

At the Los Angeles Times, "The speed at which the legislature has acted against Disney reflects the growing tension between the company’s outwardly progressive stance on social issues and Florida’s conservatives":

For more than half a century, Walt Disney World has effectively operated as it own municipal government in central Florida.

A 1967 state law established the Reedy Creek Improvement District, giving Walt Disney Co. extraordinary powers in an area encompassing 25,000 acres near Orlando where the sprawling themed resort now sits. The law grants Disney a wide range of abilities, including the power to issue bonds and provide its own utilities and emergency services, such as fire protection.

The law is partly what convinced Disney to come to Florida in the first place and allowed it to flourish and become the state’s largest private employer, with nearly 80,000 jobs.

Now, though, that special designation is under serious threat as Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican legislators wage an escalating culture war against Disney over the Burbank-based entertainment giant’s opposition to legislation that it considers to be anti-gay.

The Florida House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill that would dissolve Walt Disney World’s private government. The action came a day after the Florida Senate passed the bill that would dissolve all independent special districts established before 1968, including Reedy Creek. State senators voted 23 to 16 in favor of the bill during a special session of the state Legislature.

“Disney is a guest in Florida,” Republican Rep. Randy Fine, who sponsored the bill, tweeted on Tuesday before the vote. “Today, we remind them.”

DeSantis, who had previously backed legislative efforts to revoke Disney’s special privileges, on Tuesday expanded the special session to consider the elimination of the district. The bombshell announcement dropped just hours before the special session that was originally intended to focus on congressional redistricting, which has also been controversial. The lawmakers also approved DeSantis’ redistricting map that favors Republicans.

DeSantis and conservative commentators have spent weeks blasting Disney for its opposition to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which the governor signed last month. Disney has said its “goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts.” The company also pledged to “pause” all political donations in the state as it reevaluates its approach to advocacy.

Disney’s Chief Executive Bob Chapek first voiced opposition to the bill, nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay” by its opponents, after receiving blowback from employees. Chapek, who initially resisted getting involved to avoid Disney becoming a political football, spoke out only after the bill passed the state Legislature.

The Parental Rights law bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through Grade 3 “or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” LGBTQ activists say the law amounts to a homophobic attack on queer youth.

The speed at which the legislature has acted against Disney reflects the growing tension between the company’s outwardly progressive stance on social issues and Florida’s conservatives, particularly DeSantis, who many observers believe will mount a presidential run in 2024.

Some observers had seen the rhetoric as mere grandstanding. But proving a point against Disney may matter more now to DeSantis’ base than the traditional business-friendly aims of economic conservatives, analysts told The Times.

“I thought that this was an effort to shoot across the bow and cause Disney to steer in a slightly different direction, and that wiser minds would prevail,” said Richard Foglesong, author of “Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando.” “That could still happen. But what’s really behind this is the culture war. Things have changed. This is not the Republican Party of the Bushes.”

But aspects of how the dissolution of the Reedy Creek Improvement District would work are still unclear...

Disney's making a big mistake, and they'll lose, badly.

 

Glenn Loury, Brown University Professor of Economics, Was Addicted to Crack in the 1980s (VIDEO)

This is something else, at Loury's Substack, "The Only Professor in the Halfway House, With Jordan Peterson":

A few months back, the one and only Jordan B. Peterson invited me onto his podcast, and I’m happy to say the episode has just been released. Our discussion ranges from climate change to divorce rates to the Pareto principle. Jordan is a clinical psychologist, so we spend a lot of time with our social scientist hats on.

We also get into some more personal material. Jordan’s early research into addiction leads him to ask about the place of spirituality in my own experience with addiction and recovery. As you may know, in the 1980s, I became addicted to crack cocaine. I had a terrible habit, and it could easily have cost me my career, my family, and my life. I had the support of friends, treatment, and my late wife Linda to help me through, but I also found a kind of spiritual support from two different sources: Christianity and Alcoholics Anonymous...

And watch:

The New Class Chasm in the Culture Wars

A really amazing bit of reporting here, from Batya Ungar-Sargon, at RealClearPolitics:

Judging by Twitter, cable news, or our politicians, LGBTQ identity is once again at the front of the culture wars in America, which is ironic given how little debate there is among everyday Americans. A closer look at how this issue is being weaponized reveals something interesting about our current moment.

When it comes to transgender debates, leftist journalists, politicians, and activists have positioned themselves as the defenders of LGBTQ rights against a bigoted anti-gay Republican Party. But in overlaying the transgender issue with gay rights writ large, progressive activists are conflating two issues, one of which is no longer controversial. It’s a category error that allows them to posture as warriors in a war that has already been won, while what they are actually doing is waging a new war that has little purchase even on their own side.

The latest example of this is a much-discussed Washington Post article published Tuesday which doxxed the woman behind an anonymous Twitter account, @libsoftiktok. She reposts videos from TikTok of educators bragging about teaching toddlers to masturbate, or teaching 6-year-olds that doctors sometimes misgender babies, or arguing that 3-year-olds are old enough to learn about gender identity, or having a Q&A with students about coming out trans. The videos amplified by the account have made their way onto conservative media and from there into conservative legislation, which was the impetus behind the Washington Post hit piece.

“Libs of TikTok has become a powerful force online, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage,” the article’s author, journalist Taylor Lorenz, tweeted.

Putting aside the shoddy ethics of doxxing a private citizen for curating already public content, the Washington Post story rather disingenuously whitewashed the actual content of the videos that @libsoftiktok posts. For example, instead of stating what was in a video featuring a woman explaining how she teaches toddlers to touch their private parts, the article only notes that @libsoftiktok called the woman in it a “predator” and that the video went on to be featured on Fox News.

There’s a tell in that obfuscation: The Washington Post probably doesn’t want to defend the “sexy summer camp” counselor teaching toddlers to masturbate, a view that few trans people would defend, so instead it resorts to calling anyone who opposes such education anti-gay. The article characterizes @libsoftiktok as “a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage.” Instead of telling you what’s in the videos, it tells you what @libsoftiktok says about them.

It's a cunning move, one that allows progressives like Lorenz and her readers to portray opponents of strangers teaching 3-year-olds about sexual identity as moral perverts. This brilliant subterfuge leaves the reader with the feeling that she has gotten to know a dastardly person tweeting into the ether, without ever letting on that the captions are about actual content that is often disturbing even to people on the left (hence why they won’t defend the videos).

Lorenz accuses @libsoftiktok of participating in the “groomer” discourse without ever once describing any of the videos that led the account to do so – videos even the most ardent defender of LGBT rights would be hard pressed to defend.

Interestingly, none of the people defending the doxxing of a private citizen have argued that anything @libsoftiktok has posted hasn’t been real or true. They have instead acted like the content is true – and thus must be stopped. “Libs of TikTok is basically acting as a wire service for the broader right-wing media ecosystem,” Ari Drennen, LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, told Lorenz.

In other words, the problem isn’t that the information isn’t true, but that the truth is getting out there...

Keep reading.

 

Warner Bros Discovery to Shut Down CNN+ Month After Launch (VIDEO)

A big story, and a bit shocking, considering the intense fanfare surround the cable network's streaming service. My first response was "wow!," and I'm not the only one. 

At Variety, "CNN+ Is Shutting Down One Month After Launch (EXCLUSIVE)."

Folks on Twitter mentioned that Variety scooped CNN's own story. *Laugh out loud here.*

More at Twitchy, "Say it ain’t so! Warner Bros. Discovery has reportedly decided to shut down CNN+ (without informing Brian Stelter, apparently); UPDATED," and "Incoming CNN CEO’s memo to employees should totally help soften the blow from CNN+’s humiliating demise."

And video at the New York Post, "CNN+ is shutting down less than a month after ill-fated launch."

Matthew Continetti, The Right

At Amazon, Matthew Continetti, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.

Annie Agar in Yellow

This woman grows on you.

Also, from U.C. Irvine.

And Elizabeth Hurley.

Jamie Thompson, Standoff

At Amazon, Jamie Thompson, Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation.

Americans Are Over the Pandemic, Despite the ("Coming") Omicron 2 Wave

I'm over it, but I went to the Book Barn the other day, and the store heavily "recommended" masks and all staff members were masked-up to the hilt. I felt like it was April 2020.

And mind you, this included young people, including a woman at the sales counter who looked like a college student (and thus at extremely low risk of infection).

One good thing I'm noticing is fewer and fewer workers at restaurants --- especially hosts and servers --- are wearing masks. I think things are getting back to normal, and if Democrat states continue mask mandates --- or reimpose them over the summer, when the new "wave" is supposedly expected --- they'll be toying with political death.

At the Wall Street Journal, "BA.2 Proves the Pandemic Isn’t Over, but People Are Over It":

Two years of dealing with Covid-19 have made people tired of taking precautions, getting tested and asking about other people’s status.

BA.2 is spreading in the U.S., although few want to talk about it.

The Omicron subvariant is contributing to school and work absences, yet two years of dealing with Covid-19 have made people tired of taking precautions, getting tested and asking about other people’s status, say physicians, psychologists and behavioral scientists.

If this is a pandemic wave, then many have decided the best response is a weary shrug.

Part of that reaction comes from the fact that while cases are ticking up in some areas, hospitalizations remain low. Research has so far shown most people who are up-to-date with Covid-19 vaccines face little risk of landing in the hospital with BA.2, and prior infection with another variant also bolsters the body’s defenses.

In addition, people in many places got on with their lives long ago and are unwilling to return to a pandemic crouch.

Psychologists say it can be difficult to discern how seriously to take BA.2, given shifting guidance and sometimes difficult-to-parse public-health messaging. That anxiety and uncertainty can result in avoidance, says Dr. Bethany Teachman, a psychologist and director of clinical training at the University of Virginia. Avoidance takes various forms, she says, including refraining from asking friends about Covid exposures to avoid answers people may not want to hear.

Some people say they won’t worry about BA.2 unless it is absolutely clear they need to. Nearly three-quarters of Americans polled by Monmouth University in mid-March agreed that Covid is here to stay, and people should get on with their lives.

Kristin Green, 55 years old, a high-school English teacher in Orange County, N.Y., says when she heard about the BA.2 variant, it felt like the wind was sucked out of her.

“It was like, oh, not again. Come on. We’re finally out together, seeing each other, and I don’t want to have to go back to that,” says Ms. Green. She hopes not to have to don her mask during the school day again.

“If they require it at work, obviously, I will,” she says. “Otherwise, no.”

Some patients are opting out of testing to avoid the financial and social implications of testing positive and missing work or long-awaited travel and events, says Shantanu Nundy, a primary-care physician and chief medical officer at digital healthcare firm Accolade. And some patients who do test positive for Covid-19 don’t want to keep testing until they get a negative result.

“I got a lot of those phone calls when people say, ‘Hey, I’m having a weird cough. It’s probably allergies, right?’ or ‘I’m positive, but it’s been four days and I really don’t have any symptoms. Like I’m sure I’m fine to go on XYZ trip,” he says.

Figures from the Department of Health and Human Services show testing peaked at 7.74 tests per 1,000 people on Jan. 9 and has since declined to 1.91 tests per 1,000 people, according to an analysis from researchers at the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data. These data only account for PCR tests, said researchers, which are lab-reported and easier to track than at-home rapid tests, which have boomed in popularity.

The shift to home testing along with shutdowns in testing sites have made public-health experts concerned that official case tallies are a significant undercount. Natasha Bhuyan, a family physician at One Medical in Phoenix, says some of her patients are unaware how prevalent the virus remains and are surprised when they test positive.

“They come in and they’re like, ‘I think my allergies are acting up, or I have a headache, I’m dehydrated, or I probably have a stomach bug,’ and when I suggest getting a Covid test, people are like, ‘Oh, I don’t think I have Covid,’” says Dr. Bhuyan.

People who do test positive are often confused about whom they should tell and what they should do, as contact-tracing efforts have faded and mandatory precautions have dropped.

When Zach Ruh, 26, a treasury analyst for a tech company in New York City, woke up more fatigued than usual late last month, he chalked it up to jet lag from a recent skiing trip to New Mexico. He happened to pass a pop-up testing site on a grocery-shopping excursion several days later and decided to take a PCR just in case, he says. Two days later, he received a surprising text: He had tested positive...