"It's news to me!"

[Simon of the Playa]

The publication's report, written by Rich McHugh, cites documents obtained from a friend of the flight attendant, who was allegedly paid $250,000 by SpaceX in 2018 to settle a sexual misconduct claim brought against Musk by the employee. The documents state the employee accused Musk of "exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent, and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage."

The documents include a declaration signed by the attendant's friend, as well as email correspondence and other materials obtained by Business Insider. They alleged that the incident in question occurred during a private massage on Musk's Gulfstream jet. The publication reached out to Musk for comment Wednesday. He offered an initial response before ultimately severing communication.

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texa ... 185666.php

[some seeing eye]

Yikes!
For some Christians, ‘rapture anxiety’ can take a lifetime to heal
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/27/us/raptu ... index.html

If burners developed a LNT philosophy for life, that might be good.

[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

On Aug. 31, under the display name “Alpha Top Dog Pure Blood,” Mr. Copelin allegedly threatened to go “kamikaze” against “white law enforcement.” The post was flagged to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center on Sept. 4.

A review of his Gab account revealed a history of posts threatening various targets, including police officers, government officials, Black people, immigrants, Jews, and others:

On Aug. 21, he allegedly threatened to kill young black men in relationships with white women.
On Aug. 22, he allegedly threatened to “blow up” IRS agents.
On Sept. 5, he allegedly threatened to shoot police officers.
On Sept. 8, he allegedly claimed he would “go down to the border … and start shooting invaders,” and allegedly added that he would “blow the FEDS away too.”
Later the same day, he allegedly threatened to kill Jews in the government and law enforcement.
On Sept. 14, he allegedly threatened to shoot Mexicans, who he felt “shouldn’t even be here.”
On Sept. 25, he allegedly threatened to hang supporters of a Texas gubernatorial candidate.

According to the complaint, Mr. Copelin posted online a call for “all strong abled white alpha men with sniper rifles” to enforce the law, “because the government is corrupt.” Agents observed photos of guns and bladed weapons on the “Alpha Top Dog Pure Blood” account.


https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/am ... nic-groups

[some seeing eye]

As the midterm elections approach in the US, the wave of false claims surrounding the vote is a reminder of how hard it is to combat fake news. Does Finland have the answer?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63222819

[Simon of the Playa]

even his mama says he's a lying sack of shit...


https://www.thedailybeast.com/herschel- ... d-cherokee

[some seeing eye]

Through a friend, I learned Crimson Rose goes to Art Basel Miami.

[some seeing eye]

China! It's big!

A long time ago I was to visit China. But 1989 intervened. So I follow it.

The former president, sitting next to the current president was publicly escorted out of the most important meeting of the government

[Simon of the Playa]

a very long but very important read:

https://www.propublica.org/article/sena ... -wuhan-lab

[some seeing eye]

a very long but very important read:

https://www.propublica.org/article/sena ... -wuhan-lab

Zoonotic pandemics are inevitable. So it does not matter at all if COVID-19 came from the lab via an animal or in society from an animal. There will be more to come in history. Never-ending mutation and the close proximity of humans to animal viral reservoirs is the overwhelming reason, not labs.

The genetics of the virus are not conclusive on whether it was modified in the lab or mutated naturally into the first strains infecting people.

There were plenty of fuckups to go around. The Chinese keeping secrets, US, Brazil, fringe groups in Europe, and elsewhere denial.

Trump did massive damage and the numbers show it.

Trump dismantled a joint program with China to catalog/track animal viruses, and joint programs with China which would have warned the US 1-2 months earlier. Trump dismantled good programs solely because they were started or supported by Obama. Some of those programs went back to Bush.

The best luck was the Seattle flu study, which the Trump administration denied because he thought it would negatively impact his reelection. The other good luck was the nRNA vaccine work had been underway already.

The Republicans want to smear China (and all their "enemies" so they can distract voters,) China does not want to be smeared, and it does not matter.

[Elorrum]

The zoonotic back and forth is likely inevitable, not much can be done about it. What concerns me is the possibility of gain of function hybridizing, or studies to see what happens if tab “A” goes in slot “C” (chimeric?) for testing in mice with humanized cells, making new things on purpose, for better understanding, which may or may not have happened in Boston.

[Simon of the Playa]

A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.

The senior U.S. intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the situation.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/wor ... 704659002/

[Simon of the Playa]

54DC6A0B-3AED-4659-9D63-DA4EF3C60475.jpeg

[Simon of the Playa]

An asterisk indicates a company has issued a statement or was publicly reported as stopping its ads on Twitter and subsequently confirmed. Otherwise, companies identified on this list are “quiet quitters,” based on a Media Matters analysis of Pathmatics data. These companies were previously advertising on Twitter, but then stopped for a significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers.


Abbott Laboratories
Allstate Corporation
AMC Networks
American Express Company
AT&T
Big Heart Petcare
BlackRock, Inc.
BlueTriton Brands, Inc.
Boston Beer Company
CA Lottery (California State Lottery)
CenturyLink (Lumen Technologies, Inc.)
Chanel
Chevrolet*
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.*
Citigroup, Inc.
CNN
Dell
Diageo
DirecTV
Discover Financial Services
Fidelity
First National Realty Partners
Ford*
Heineken N.V.
Hewlett-Packard (HP)
Hilton Worldwide
Inspire Brands, Inc.
Jeep*
Kellogg Company
Kohl's Department Stores, Inc.
Kyndryl*
LinkedIn Corporation
MailChimp (The Rocket Science Group)
Marriott International, Inc.
Mars Petcare
Mars, Incorporated
Merck & Co. (Merck Sharp & Dohme MSD)*
Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.)
MoneyWise (Wise Publishing, Inc.)
Nestle
Novartis AG*
Pernod Ricard
PlayPass
The Coca-Cola Company
The Kraft Heinz Company
Tire Rack
Verizon
Wells Fargo
Whole Foods Market IP
Yum! Brands


https://www.mediamatters.org/elon-musk/ ... dvertisers

[some seeing eye]

Have the Anticapitalists Reached Harvard Business School?
Social justice joins discounted cash flows on the syllabus as essential knowledge for aspiring corporate leaders.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/28/busi ... stice.html

[some seeing eye]

[Simon of the Playa]

“Jewish people can’t tell me who I can love and who I can’t love,” he continues. “You can’t say, you can’t force your pain on everyone else. Jewish people, forgive Hitler today.”


https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemi ... cle-724187

39F0CD3D-A422-437B-A490-F2BDFBE6EFBD.jpeg

[BBadger]

Germany arrests 25 accused of plotting coup

"The plotters are said to include members of the extremist Reichsbürger [Citizens of the Reich] movement, which has long been in the sights of German police over violent attacks and racist conspiracy theories. They also refuse to recognise the modern German state.

...

"Three thousand officers took part in 130 raids across much of the country, with two people arrested in Austria and Italy. Those detained were due to be questioned later in the day.

"Justice Minister Marco Buschmann tweeted that a major anti-terror operation was taking place and a suspected "armed attack on constitutional bodies was planned"."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63885028

[some seeing eye]

Hahaha, sell the cult!

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/11/30/ ... rning-man/

Church should be more like Burning Man

For many, the annual festival in the Nevada desert is more than a party. It’s a catalyst for spiritual awakening and long-lasting personal transformation.

By David DeStenoUpdated November 30, 2022, 3:00 a.m.


Toward the end of August each year, thousands of people trek to Nevada’s Black Rock desert for an event like few others: Burning Man. What started in 1986 as a small summer solstice ritual on a San Francisco beach now draws upward of 80,000 people to a temporary city large enough to have its own annual population census, post office, and temple.
For many who go, it’s a party. (Perhaps you’ve heard of the orgy dome.) For others, such as tech titans and social media influencers, it’s a place to be seen and to Instagram a journey to “find themselves.” But for a surprising number — as many as 63 percent of attendees — the experience is something much deeper: a transformation that makes them feel more connected to others and to something larger than themselves. Among the spiritually inclined, some report finding God and reconnecting with their religious faith. These participants say attendance at the festival makes them kinder and more generous. And in a country where people are leaving traditional religions in droves, there just might be a lesson for churches, synagogues, and mosques in the rituals and rites of Burning Man.

This might sound strange or even heretical. How could a place pulsing with naked bodies, loud music, blinking lights, and drone shows change people for the better or encourage spiritual growth? The first step in understanding this is that for most Burners, as attendees call themselves, being there isn’t about self-indulgence or spectacle. It’s about giving.

Burning Man runs on generosity. Hard currency is not permitted. Everyone is expected to give without the expectation of receiving. Some arrive in the hot desert with ice to share, others with skills or just a willingness to serve. Some offer healing sessions, operate steam showers, or give workshops on how to resolve romantic conflicts. Burners pay it forward.

Although humans do typically show care for others, we don’t tend to be overly kind and generous. When it comes to sharing resources with strangers, we even tend to be a bit selfish.
Consider the dictator game, the experimental economics gambit in which one person, the so-called dictator, is endowed with money and given the opportunity to share it with a powerless other, the receiver, if they so wish. Typically, the dictator keeps 70 percent of the spoils and gives away 30 percent. That some give away anything at all has been held out as proof that humans are not completely selfish. But at Burning Man, people playing a version of this game acted with far more generosity than the norm.
Princeton neuroscientist Molly Crockett (also a Burner) and her team found that when Burners were given tickets to exchange for desirable items that made living on the desert playa more enjoyable, they gave away more of them, 62 percent, than they kept.
You might think the Burners were just swept up in an altruistic moment, but Crockett’s team found otherwise. When they ran the same experiment six months after Burning Man, this time using tickets to win $50 Amazon gift cards, the same participants gave away 65 percent of them.
Why?
The more time people spent at Burning Man, Crockett found, the more they reported feeling transformed. And the more they felt connected to others and to something greater than themselves, the more their feelings of transformation led to an enduring generosity and concern for the welfare of strangers.

Crockett found that 20 percent of Burning Man attendees reported feeling fundamentally changed by their experiences at the festival, with many, she tells me, coming to feel boundless connection with and compassion for others.
This is a mystical state akin to one achieved through long sessions of meditation or through the use of psychedelic drugs. Crockett says that both Burners who had and those who had not used drugs reported feeling this way.

What is it about Burning Man that has this effect?
The secret lies in Burning Man the ritual, not Burning Man the party. Rituals of transformation, or rites of passage, have features in common. Participants enter into a liminal space, an environment where normal roles don’t apply. They might face hardship together, such as physical pain or discomfort. And they might be asked to adopt a new set of rules and responsibilities. Doing so breaks down people’s normal sense of themselves and permits them to rebuild themselves in a different way.
Burning Man is ripe with all of these elements. It’s uncomfortable: Daytime temperatures often exceed 100 degrees. Dust coats people’s bodies. Gifts of food, ice, and showers ease the hardships. The outlandish outfits — feathered headdresses, sequined bodysuits, mesh shirts, and winged jumpsuits — permit Burners to inhabit new versions of themselves. Some even adopt new names.

And posted everywhere are the 10 Principles: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Self-Expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation, and Immediacy. Taken together, these tenets lend themselves to personal transformation and the creation of a caring and inclusive community.
For the Rev. Alex Leach, who was a Burner long before he became an Episcopal priest, the Burning Man community reminded him of something else: what a religious congregation should be. “Instead of 20 percent of the congregation doing 80 percent of the work,” Leach says, “in these theme camps, everyone’s pitching in. Everyone’s involved and they’ve figured out something their neighbors need, and they’re offering that as a gift, as grace, to their neighbors.”
Leach was not very religious before Burning Man. “I was an average religious person before I went, meaning I went to church occasionally,” he says. But when he arrived at Burning Man for the first time, he “felt the saturation of God.” That experience, far from turning him away from a traditional faith, motivated him to embrace it more deeply, if a little differently.
Along with several other clergy and lay religious leaders, Leach founded a Christian theme camp with a very Burning Man name — Religious AF — at the festival. “We’re religious people,” Leach says, “but we’re not the religious people who won’t curse. We’re not stuffy.”
The goal isn’t religious conversion but ministry to any who seek it.

At his camp and in front of Black Rock City’s temple, the Christianity-curious, the Christianity-closeted, and avowed Christians alike participate in an Ash Wednesday-like ceremony, a contemplation of death that incorporates ashes from the previous year’s Burning Man effigy. For some, “the last time they were in church, they were called an outsider or called a sinner,” Leach observes. And almost to a one, he says, the response of those who come to camp Religious AF is some version of “I wish my home congregation was more like this. I feel like my faith is renewed.”

This isn’t a story particular to Christianity, though. There’s also Milk + Honey, a Jewish camp that held a shabbat for more than 1,000 people this year. It’s not your typical sabbath. There’s music, meditation, and dancing mixed with the usual blessings and sharing of wisdom from the Torah.
None of this is to say that your next religious service should be filled with naked people setting figures on fire. But perhaps steal a page from the Burners across the country who host “little burns” where they come together to share the joys of giving, face some mild hardship together, and discuss personal challenges. For a day or two at least, they shed who they are and open their eyes and hearts to welcome and care for one another without condition or prejudice.
By creating a ritual that shakes people out of their routines and lets them feel not only their own vulnerability but also their power to help others, Burning Man ignites feelings of belonging and compassion that remain long after the last embers have burned out. Imagine what such a change could do to transform a congregation near you.

David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and host of the podcast “How God Works.”

[Elorrum]

Erica Jong wrote eloquently with self awareness and a little surprise, about how many came to spiritual connection with God perhaps, certainly with others, through the back door, meeting in church basements and empty school classrooms at night, after lifetimes of vehement denunciation. There is a deep need to connect somehow. It is where one finds it. It’s also human nature, I guess, that all goodness can be co-opted, packaged and sold, if it is allowed.

[The Rod]

Australia: Scientists find clitorises on female snakes

""There was a combination of female genitalia being taboo, scientists not being able to find it, and people accepting the mislabelling of intersex snakes," said Megan Folwell, a doctoral candidate and lead researcher."

[some seeing eye]

“I think about my current choices and about the future without reference to morals, then take action”

In the U.S., His Site Has Been Linked to Massacres. In Japan, He’s a Star

Hiroyuki Nishimura, 46, has become a famous voice for disenchanted young Japanese. What he talks much less about is his ownership of the notorious website 4chan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/busi ... imura.html

WTF?

[some seeing eye]

You can't make this up!

Wealthy kick boxing fighter arrested on sex trafficking and rape warrant after revealing location he was hiding in Twitter taunts of climate activist Greta Thunberg

https://jezebel.com/andrew-tate-arreste ... 1849939054

[some seeing eye]

Cases accepted by the Trump Supreme Court may erase decades of Indian policy

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/202 ... s-say.html

[some seeing eye]

NSFW

Proud Boys Rule Book Revealed in Court

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... 234666317/

[Elorrum]

A new bill introduced in the Iowa Legislature would rewrite Iowa's child labor law to allow teens to work in previously prohibited jobs so long as they are part of an approved training program.
Here are some highlights of Senate File 167.

The bill also maintains a list of jobs kids under 18 can't hold, such as working in slaughterhouses, meatpacking or rendering plants; mining; operating power-driven metal forming, punching or shearing machines; operating band or circular saws, guillotine shears or paper balers; or being involved in roofing operations or demolition work. It makes a few modifications, such as removing a prohibition against 14- and 15-year-olds working in freezers and meat coolers.

In an entirely new section, however, the bill would allow the Iowa Workforce Development and state Department of Education heads to make exceptions to any of the prohibited jobs for teens 14-17 "participating in work-based learning or a school or employer-administered, work-related program."

The bill exempts businesses from civil liability if a student is sickened, injured or killed due to the company's negligence. A business also would be free of civil liability if a student is hurt because of the teen's negligence on the job.

[Simon of the Playa]

1453B21D-4C63-4C84-9CA7-E73D1C18C721.jpeg

[Simon of the Playa]

According to the statement, the board’s list of alleged misspending incurred by the nonprofit at O’Keefe’s direction included a $14,000 charter flight to meet someone who could repair his boat. Other alleged expenses included $150,000 over 18 months on private “black cars”and thousands of dollars on “DJ and other equipment.”

The board also accused O’Keefe of wasting $60,000 on “dance events.” O’Keefe, a former high school musical theater performer, has been accused in the past of spending the nonprofit’s money on his own musical interests. Last year, Project Veritas acknowledged improperly spending more than $20,000 to help O’Keefe star in a performance of the musical Oklahoma!

https://www.thedailybeast.com/james-oke ... complaints

[The Rod]

Starbucks losing the battle to prevent worker union organization

“A federal labor judge has ordered Starbucks to reinstate seven fired workers, reopen a shuttered location and stop infringing on workers' rights after finding that the company violated labor laws "hundreds of times" during a unionization campaign in Buffalo, New York.

The decision issued late Wednesday by Administrative Law Judge Michael Rosas of the National Labor Relations Board requires Starbucks to post a 13-page notice listing its labor violations and workers' rights in all U.S. stores.”

[Simon of the Playa]