Whatever Works

Tom Gauld

H/t Pharyngula

Like Having Your Mother-in-Law Driving off a Cliff in Your Brand New Car

I was once a student, and any disruption of finals is not good for them, but its cause, the hack of the widely loathed spyware education software platform Canvas.

Everyone who is actually directly involved in education, so not school board members or IT staff, hates it with a passion.

Chaos erupted at schools and colleges throughout the US on Thursday as a cyberattack disrupted online learning platform Canvas just as students were due to take final exams.

Canvas parent company Instructure said that as of Friday morning, the platform was back online. Instructure said it temporarily took Canvas offline on Thursday after identifying unauthorized activity in its network. The threat actor was the same one responsible for a data breach that Instructure disclosed a week ago. Data accessed included user names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and messages exchanged on the platform. The company said it has no indication that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved.

Here's an idea.  Don't use programs where your data is stored with a 3rd party who monetizes that data. 

Charles "Doofenschmirtz" Saroff Will Take Over the Entire Tri-State Area!

We know what he says it is, a lab project for Electronics & Instrumentation II (Mechatronics), but we all know what this REALLY is. 

It's his evil plan to take over the entire Tri-State Area.

Behold the Metronominator !!! 

Yes, I'm bragging about my kid, dads gotta dad. 

In any case, here is his vid:

 

Kids these days with their Arduinos and their 3D printing.

In my day, we had to machine everything with flint tools!

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.

KURT VONNEGUT (who left us 19yrs ago today) was the only one to respond.

His reply was a doozy. pic.twitter.com/r9vE8uNEk6

— Michael Warburton (@For_Film_Fans) April 11, 2026

This is remarkable.

I'm not a fan of Kurt Vonnegut's writing, it's never done much for me, but I love his attitude.

I've confirmed this story, and here is his letter as text, which I find more convenient than an image. 

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!" 

~Kurt Vonnegut 

Color me impressed. 

Maybe It's Just a Jewish thing

But when fascists demand a list of all the Jews in an educational institution, it makes me uneasy.

I know that this could just be dismissed as just another attempt by the anti-Semite in the White House to use antisemitism as a political cudgel against his opponents, but they said exactly the same thing about that unpleasant little man with the funny mustache.

The Trump administration was within its rights to demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge decided Tuesday.

The government’s investigation had united Penn leaders with Jewish students and faculty members as they opposed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s subpoena. Many on campus drew parallels between the government’s approach and methods deployed in Nazi Germany.

But the Trump administration has said that its request was typical for discrimination investigations to seek potential victims and witnesses, and Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court agreed on Tuesday. He gave Penn until May 1 to comply with the administration’s subpoena, though the ruling appeared unlikely to quell the debates around how the administration has pressured top American universities. 

So, they are remaking the movie, only they have recast Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich with Stephen Miller. 

Lovely. 

Snark of the Day

Finally, someone has an ICE reeducation program that might work.

As my reader(s) are aware, I'm generally not in favor of training to change organizational culture, but this suggestion seems to be to be eminently reasonable while also having a good chance of success.

………

I propose a sort of long-term residential program for everyone who remains with ICE and CBP after this week, along with more or less everyone hired since the start of the second Trump administration. This would have to be a mandatory program, reflecting the seriousness with which we ought to take proper law enforcement training in this country.

Obviously, ICE agents will not be able to continue working while they are undergoing this rigorous new training program. And in order for retraining to be effective, it will take a long time—perhaps even years. Because we can’t accept one-size-fits-all solutions, we should expect this mandatory residential retraining program to be somewhat open-ended. I would recommend we place these agents on an indefinite leave of absence from their jobs while they are retraining, and have their essential duties taken over by other agencies, preferably outside the Department of Homeland Security (which will have a lot of its agents undergoing this long-term residential training).

This will not be a cheap program, admittedly. Fortunately the immigration enforcement agencies are currently funded at extremely high levels, and Democrats have already shown a reluctance to clawing back that money, out of fear of being labeled soft on crime. But what could be more pro-law enforcement than additional training? And as the Trump administration has decisively shown, using appropriated money for its official purpose is more of a “suggestion” than a requirement of our constitutional system, so a future administration can repurpose that funding for this new mandatory long-term residential training program.

(emphasis mine)

I think that this recommendation is is worthy of comparison to the proposals of Jonathan Swift back in the day.

H/t Atrios 

As Anna Russel Would Say, “I’m Not Making This Up, You Know.”

It appears that the "War on Woke" in Texas has led Texas A&M to ban Plato in philosophy class.

I'm not a fan of Plato.  In high school, I came to that he was the direct ancestor to western Fascism, and I find his dialogues to be contrived and self serving.

That being said, banning Plato from philosophy class?  What the fuck? 

I guess that it's time to start making Aggie jokes again.

A professor at Texas A&M University was forced to remove Plato readings from his syllabus after a crackdown on academic freedom in the university system and Texas at large. Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at the university, fell victim to a proposal adopted in November that limits teaching “advocat[ing] race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Campus presidents, in accordance with the new measure, are required to sign off on courses that fit this description as well as those related to sexual orientation or gender identity. According to a report from The Texas Tribune, the university “had identified roughly 200 courses as potentially affected by policy restrictions.”

For Peterson, his story has garnered national attention after his syllabus was reviewed and his department head, Kristi Sweet, gave him two choices — either remove “the modules on race ideology and gender ideology, and the Plato readings that may include these,” according to a New York Times report, or teach another course.

In an interview with the Times, Peterson expressed, “A philosophy professor who is not allowed to teach Plato, what kind of university is that? Is that really what they want?”

………

The president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Todd Wolfson, issued a statement on Jan. 12 regarding Peterson’s situation, stating,

“Silencing 2,500-year-old ideas from one of the world’s most influential thinkers betrays the mission of higher education and denies students the opportunity to engage critically with the foundations of Western thought… A university that censors Plato — as well as other significant texts — abandons its obligation to truth, free inquiry, and the public trust… A college or university of this sort harms its students, faculty, and traditions, and consequently can no longer be regarded as a serious institution of higher learning.”

After all that effort to have a physics department that their football team would be proud of, it's come to this.

So sad. 

 

Well Deserved Fall

After an entire career of failing up, and  the immiseration of millions of people, it looks like Larry Summers is seeing some incredibly well deserved karma.

First, the American Economic Association has banned Larry Summers for life.

Personally, I hope that this ban continues for its full term, and that the actual length of this sanction will be brief.  (If Mr. Summers could dine on excrement while shortening the ban duration it would be sweet)

The American Economic Association (AEA) has accepted Lawrence H. Summers' voluntary resignation from membership and, pursuant to the AEA's Policies, Procedures, and Code of Professional Conduct, has imposed a lifetime ban on his membership. In addition, effective immediately, the AEA has imposed a lifetime prohibition on Mr. Summers' attending, speaking at, or otherwise participating in AEA-sponsored events or activities, including serving in any editorial or refereeing capacity for AEA journals. The AEA condemns Mr. Summers' conduct, as reflected in publicly reported communications, as fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of professional integrity and with the trust placed in mentors within the economics profession. Consistent with longstanding AEA practices and to protect the integrity and confidentiality of AEA processes, the AEA will not comment further on individual matters or the specific considerations underlying this determination.

The AEA is committed to upholding the highest standards of professional conduct and to fostering a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all members of the economics community.  The AEA affirms its expectation that all members adhere to the AEA Code of Professional Conduct and the AEA Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation, and remains dedicated to maintaining professional environments in which economists of all backgrounds can participate fully, and with dignity and respect. 

Meanwhile, writing in The Crimson,  the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Harvard alumnus states the obvious, that the Cambridge, Massachusetts school activelhy and aggressively covered up its eager involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, particularly the involvement of Summers:

In 2019, Jeffrey E. Epstein was charged with the sex trafficking of minors. That charge triggered a wave of recriminations across the nation, including at some of America’s most elite universities. In the decade since his first arrest in 2006 for soliciting prostitution with a child, Epstein had nurtured close connections with some of the most prominent academics in the country.

Those recriminations also reached Harvard. While Harvard President Drew G. Faust had forbidden the University from directly accepting his money after a 2008 child-sex conviction, between 2010 and 2015, Epstein facilitated over $9 million in donations from associates like Leon Black to support work at Harvard — with the knowledge and encouragement of Harvard development staff.

………

Almost a year after that first report, the University concluded its investigation, and took formal action against just one member of the Harvard faculty: Martin A. Nowak. Nowak was “disciplined” for his ongoing professional relationship with Epstein. His Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, funded with the help of Epstein, was shuttered, and he was banned from serving as a principal investigator on any academic research for two years.

………

From 2003 through 2019, Summers had been a central figure in Epstein’s relationship to Harvard. He had attended events hosted by Epstein and planned private meetings. Besides Epstein’s lawyer, and now-professor emeritus, Alan M. Dershowitz, he was by far the most prominent of the Harvard elite at the center of Harvard’s Epstein relationship.

Yet Summers is essentially invisible in the official accounts. A gift to support the work of Summers’s wife was mentioned in a footnote to the 2020 report, though obscurely, since she does not share Summers’s name. And never subsequently has Harvard disclosed anything more about his ongoing relationship with Epstein, which continued, as we’ve now learned through the published Epstein emails, until Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

………

There’s little need to reform Larry Summers. He will, I suspect, pass quickly from Harvard’s orbit. But it is the culture that would have allowed Larry Summers to be protected that must now be called to account. How could Harvard have allowed this production of Hamlet without the Prince? And will it now commit to a practice that will not protect the elite among us, while shaming those not quite elite enough?

No,Mr. Lessig they will not commit to such a practice.

Harvard's entire brand is built on elite privilege.

People want to go to Harvard because it is the closest thing US higher education to being a "Made Man" by the Mafia, only the scope of criminal activity by Harvard alumni is vastly greater than organized crime syndicates could ever dream of.

Support Student Journalism

The Harvard Crimson has been all over Larry Summers relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and now we know that Summers was asking advice from Epstein on the best way to f%$# one of his subordinates.

The email exchanges between Summers and Epstein is nauseating. 

When former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was pursuing a romantic relationship with a woman he described as a mentee, he sought guidance from a longtime associate: convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.

In a sequence of texts and emails between November 2018 and July 5, 2019, Summers turned to Epstein for advice on his pursuit of the woman. Epstein was quick to chime in with assurance and suggestions, describing himself in one November 2018 message as Summers’ “wing man.”

………

Together, the messages show Summers — who served as Treasury Secretary under former United States President Bill Clinton — placing an extraordinary degree of trust in Epstein, asking him for help in navigating a relationship that blurred the boundaries of his professional and personal lives.

This ain't boundary blurring, it is sexual harassment.

Summers, who has been married since 2005, told Epstein he thought the woman was reluctant to leave him because she valued his professional connections. Epstein told him in one June 2019 text, “She is doomed to be with you.”

“Think for now I’m going nowhere with her except economics mentor,” Summers wrote in November 2018. “I think I’m right now in the seen very warmly in rear view mirror category.”

………

A spokesperson for Summers said that the woman described in the exchanges was never Summers’ student, but declined to comment further for this article.

So, he had power over professional career, but never was her instructor.  I guess that it makes OK, right?

Wrong. 

 

Hoist by Their Own Petard

Bigots in Florida are having a major butt-hurt over the fact that Islamic schools are using the state voucher programs to attract students.

They are upset because they wrote the voucher law to divert government funds to Christian schools, not "Heathen" Muslim ones.

Florida Republicans who backed a program funneling taxpayer dollars to private Christian schools are now panicking because some Muslims are taking advantage of those vouchers. They’re claiming—with no evidence, naturally—that the schools in question are promoting Sharia Law, all while their preferred brand of Christian indoctrination is propped up by their own legislation.

The voucher program in Florida began almost 30 years ago, specifically to help low-income families and students with disabilities get access to private schools that could accommodate them. In 2023, Republicans in Florida passed House Bill 1, which expanded the voucher program significantly. Under that bill, pretty much anyone in the state could get a taxpayer-funded “scholarship”—and that money could be spent at private religious schools. Republicans said this would expand “school choice” to all families, though the reality is that voucher proponents have long been trying to destroy public education.

The multi-billion-dollar plan has worked as intended. One report found that over 300,000 students are now using vouchers to attend 2,278 different schools—costing the state over $3 billion a year—and most of the private religious schools are Christian ones. Some of them, according to the Orlando Sentinel, “ban gay students and enforce strict gender-specific dress codes.” In fact, in 2020, the newspaper found that 156 private Christian schools in the state had anti-gay policies, including 83 that outright refused to admit openly LGBTQ students or would expel them if they were discovered.

About two dozen of the participating schools are Islamic. At least a couple of them have policies requiring girls to wear hijabs.

And that is now freaking out powerful Republicans who cannot believe taxpayer money is boosting Islam.

Merciful heavens the 1st amendment is a bitch. 

The bigots are freaking the f%$# out.

Just wait until the Church of Satan starts setting up religious schools in Florida. 

In Union There is Strength

The University of Indiana is upset that their newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, is reporting on news, so the university admins  decided to stop printing the paper except for 5 advertising fluff editions a year for events attracting alumni. (It would remain online)

When the journals at the paper said that they would front page stories about problems at the university in their homecoming edition, administrators shut down printing completely.

In response, management at the Purdue Exponent, who own their own printing press, printed the homecoming issue of the Daily Student and got the copies back to campus so that they could kiosks in time for homecoming.

To hed quotes Aesop.  (Probably, we don't know if Aesop ever really existed)

Last week, Indiana University administrators fired the school newspaper’s (Indiana Daily Student) advisor and ordered students to stop printing the paper.

The student journalists say that University administrators didn’t like the student paper’s decision to increasingly criticize University President Pamela Whitten’s decision to coddle the authoritarian Trump administration, or, at best, remain silent as the Trump administration and state leaders take direct aim at free expression, the First Amendment, and any curriculum teaching about race or gender discrimination.

Enter students at the Purdue student paper, The Exponent, who stepped up and traveled two hours from West Lafayette to Bloomington to help Indiana University students deliver a physical paper to local students anyway:

………

Like many broader mainstream media outlets, what academic administrators want is a sort of pseudo-news that’s devoid of anything that might upset anyone (think of a Ken Doll with all the important bits sanded off to a smooth hump). A sort of feckless simulacrum of journalism that focuses on “safe” issues that, most importantly, don’t upset right wing Americans:

 “According to an Oct. 7 email the IndyStar obtained, Rodenbush passed on guidance from the Media School administration that the IDS’s print publication should solely focus on a special theme, such as homecoming or fall sports, and contain “no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage.”

It's gone viral now, so I think that now that this whole sordid affair has gone viral, President Whitten is not oong for her position.

Maybe instead, she should have just made Bari Weiss editor in chief. 

Isn't This Against the Law?

If not, strong-arming your employees to lobby on your behalf, as the tape of charter school Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz demanding that her employees doing just that SHOULD be against the law.

Of course, Moskowitz has always been skeevy, she literally closed her schools for a day to send the students to Albany to lobby legislators, so this is not surprising.

The founder of Success Academy, New York City’s largest network of charter schools, admonished several hundred employees this week during an “emergency meeting” for failing to lobby elected officials in sufficient numbers ahead of a march over the Brooklyn Bridge on Thursday.

CEO Eva Moskowitz's 20-minute harangue was captured in a secret recording obtained by Gothamist. Her remarks are the latest sign that she is bracing for a fight if Zohran Mamdani — who is critical of the privately run, publicly funded schools — is elected mayor in November.

Moskowitz made clear that the employees — many of whom work in administrative roles at Success Academy’s headquarters on Wall Street — had not met expectations for “phone to action” outreach to politicians urging them to support charters. Moskowitz said the employees are required to participate in the rally, which is considered part of the school day. Students will be attending.

“You did not do the phone-to-action because you thought, ‘This is not very serious,’” Moskowitz said. “So I want to just reset for all of you. It is an existential threat.”

Well, it's an existential threat to Eva's salary of nearly one million dollars a year. 

………

An attendee of the meeting who was uncomfortable with Moskowitz’s demands provided the recording to Gothamist. She said employees are “pissed” but also scared to oppose Moskowitz.

Moskowitz, a former city councilmember known for her sharp and aggressive questioning, reminded staffers about Success Academy’s “chain of command.”

It appears that Moskowitz's goal with her employees is that they be, "Good Germans."

Based on the stories I've heard about the school, this is also her goal for the students. 

Remember Those Blue Exam Books?

F%$#, you're old!

If you do, then I need to invoke the Negasonic Teenage Warhead quote from Deadpool.  (It applies to me.

But less about me, and more about the fact that teachers are requiring that assignments be turned in handwritten in those little blue books, because it prevents people from cutting and pasting from AI programs.

Maybe I don't get this, but hand copying into the little blue books is still a lot easier than doing original work in those little blue books:

I’m waiting on a call back from someone at the Roaring Spring paper company in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania that probably isn’t coming. I get it; they’re busy. As the school year begins, the biggest manufacturer of blue books in the United States is currently in very high demand. A new status quo of laptops and tablets seems to have made those flimsy, 24-page exam books with their robin’s-egg blue covers as obsolete as inkwells. Instead, blue books are being stockpiled by educators and institutions seeking ways to redirect students from the call of ChatGPT, Claude and other large language models willing and able to do everything students need.

Since the 2023 launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, researchers have been scrambling to collect data on how many students are using AI regularly, what they’re using it for and how it’s impacting their education. In a May 2025 report, the Chronicle of Higher Education estimated that 86% of students in 16 countries use AI, 56% of American college students, and a whopping 92% of UK students. The year-over-year increase has been dramatic: A survey of K–12 students conducted in 2024 found that use of LLMs doubled since the year before. A study of 558 college students conducted by Intelligent revealed that three out of every four college students believe that using AI to find answers to test questions, write essays and summarize textbooks is cheating — and that about 69% do it anyway.

If the students thought that the educational industrial complex were about education, and not to provide credentials so that one can serve what Roosevelt (Teddy) called the, "Malefactors of Great Wealth," maybe there would be less of this.

If all education is good for is that piece of paper at the end, then cutting corners does not matter. 

Privilege Much?

One of the secrets of Harvard is that within the academic community, the undergraduate program is considered rather mediocre.

I heard this from my step-mom (Radcliffe, 1956, and former college president), economist Brad Delong, and a number of my step-mom's acquaintances.

What Harvard sells, as are the connections created.  You graduate from Harvard, and you are something akin to a Mafia, :Made Man."

What the school is selling is entry into a social set. 

So it comes as no surprise that the university's admissions data indicate a tremendous amount of "White Boy Affirmative Action" for alums, donors, and the like.

Harvard University is a notoriously tough school to get into, with an acceptance rate of just 4.5% in the most recent admissions cycle for the class of 2023. But it’s significantly easier to land a spot at the esteemed Ivy League institution if you’re a legacy student or an athlete—a fact that disproportionately benefits white applicants.

A new study notes that in the six admissions cycles between 2014 and 2019, 43% of white students admitted to Harvard were either legacies, recruited athletes, children of faculty and staff, or students on the Dean’s Interest List—a list of applicants whose relatives have donated to Harvard, the existence of which only became public knowledge in 2018. By contrast, no more than 16% of admitted students who were African-American, Asian-American, or Hispanic fell into one of those favored categories.………

It’s not news that elite institutions like Harvard give special dispensation to athletic recruits and to applicants whose relatives have a relationship with the schools, whether as alumni or donors. The Wall Street Journal reports that over the past five years, Princeton University admitted 30% of its legacy applicants, compared to 7% of the general applicant pool, while the acceptance rate for legacies at the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, and the University of Virginia is roughly double the rate for the overall applicant pool. 

………

The newly revealed statistics on legacies and athletes are a reminder that inequality in the Ivy League isn’t an accident; it’s by design.

 Indeed.

Quote of the Day

Never thought I would root for fucking Harvard though. Welcome, comrades?

—Mike the Mad Biologist

He is commenting about the fact that Harvard has learned that you cannot negotiate with Donald Trump, because in order to have good faith bargaining, you have to negotiate with someone who has good faith.

 

Well, Knock Me over with a Feather

In a 4-4 split, the Supreme Court has allowed a ban on funding religious charter schools in Oklahoma to stand.  (Barrett recused herself)

I did not expect this:

The Supreme Court on Thursday morning left in place a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court rejecting an effort by a Catholic virtual charter school to become the country’s first religious charter school. In an unsigned one-sentence order, the justices indicated that, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused from the case, they had divided 4-4. The order did not indicate how any of the justices voted. That tie means the state supreme court’s opinion remains good law, although it is binding only in Oklahoma and does not have nationwide effect.

Barrett did not state why she did not participate in the case. But the charter school was represented at the Supreme Court by the religious liberty clinic at Notre Dame’s law school, where Barrett taught for 15 years before becoming a federal judge and later a justice. And Nicole Stelle Garnett, who is a law professor at Notre Dame and a leading advocate for allowing the use of public funds at religious schools, is a close friend of Barrett’s. Barrett is godmother to one of Garnett’s children.

I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth on this one.  

The Christo-Fascist Brownshirts lost, and that is good enough for me.

Skeet of the Day

You’re allowed to argue that black people and women are genetically inferior. But you’re NOT allowed to argue they are NOT inferior because that’s divisive. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...

[image or embed]

— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) May 10, 2025 at 2:26 PM

The Naval Academy has to suppress anti-racist books, but must keep racist books.

How is this not f%$#ing racist? 

This expands a similar purge recently at the Naval Academy library, in Maryland. Last month, civilian Navy officials, following orders originating from Mr. Hegseth, pulled from shelves books including one that critiqued “The Bell Curve,” a 1994 text that argues that Black men and women are genetically less intelligent than white people. But the academy kept “The Bell Curve” itself on its shelves.

Headline of the Day

You Want to Fuck With Harvard?

—Bill King

The equally epic sub-hed is, "Mall Cops Give it a Go." 

His thesis is that f%$#ing with Harvard is a lot like Tommy DeVito killing, "Made Man," Billy Batts in the Scorsese classic movie Goodfellahs. (My analogy, not Mr. King's)*

He thinks that the legal power available to the university will defeat Trump completely.

I'm not sure that I ascribe the nigh mythical capabilities of Harvard alumni that Mr. King does, but I do know that the Harvard community does seem to be an extremely connected clique at the highest levels of society.

Yes, I know, it's not, "Say f%$# January," but the hed deserves to be reproduced in its entirety.

^*It's the only reason that many of the writers at The New Republic in the Marty Peretz era had those prestigious jobs
^†Well, that and plagiarism. Peretz seemed to love serial plagiarists.

Trump Blinks Again

In response to Harvard publicizing it's f%$@-you to the White House demands for control over its admissions, hiring, and curriculum, the Trump and his Evil Minions™ are now claiming that it was just some rando who sent the letter without authorization.

Yeah, and I'm the Queen of Sheba:

Harvard University received an emailed letter from the Trump administration last Friday that included a series of demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum so onerous that school officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.

The university announced its intentions on Monday, setting off a tectonic battle between one of the country’s most prestigious universities and a U.S. president. Then, almost immediately, came a frantic call from a Trump official.

The April 11 letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism, this official told Harvard, should not have been sent and was “unauthorized,” two people familiar with the matter said.

The letter was sent by the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sean Keveney, according to three other people, who were briefed on the matter. Mr. Keveney is a member of the antisemitism task force. 

I'll believe that it was an honest accident if Mr. Kevene is fired and deported to El Saklvador's CECOT prison.

OK, I know that this is extreme.  His head could be impaled on a pike, or he could be publicly hoist up a flag pole by his testicles.

………

After Harvard publicly repudiated the demands, the Trump administration raised the pressure, freezing billions in federal funding to the school and warning that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy.

A senior White House official said the administration stood by the letter, calling the university’s decision to publicly rebuff the administration overblown and blaming Harvard for not continuing discussions.

“It was malpractice on the side of Harvard’s lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force who they had been talking to for weeks,” said May Mailman, the White House senior policy strategist. “Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.”

And then the Trump administration caved like the bitches that they are.

And those claims of an accident?

………

Harvard pushed back on the White House’s claim that it should have checked with the administration lawyers after receiving the letter.

The letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised,” Harvard said in a statement on Friday. “Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government — even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach — do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”

OK, my bad, THREE flagpoles.

And of course, Trump responded by cutting off billions of dollars in aid, and ordered the IRS to try to pull Harvard's tax-exempt status. 

Yeah, clearly an error.

It’s Fraud (Turtles) All the Way Down

Former, "30 Under 20," business star Charlie Javice has been found guilty of fraud while selling her company to JP Morgan to the tune of about $175,000,000.00.

She faked her customer numbers during the sale.

If this had not come out before JP Morgan had flipped it to retail investors. (aka "suckers")

Am I the only one who thinks that a this is more the rule than the exception, and we only see prosecutions when the big fish lose money?

Charlie Javice, who made big headlines in 2023 when JPMorgan Chase accused her of faking her start-up’s customer list, was found guilty in federal court Friday of three counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud.

She now faces the possibility of decades in prison.

The bank has its own civil lawsuit on standby as it attempts to claw back some of the $175 million it paid for her company, Frank. It sued her three years ago, and Ms. Javice was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport not long after that.

Frank, which was founded in 2016, aimed to help customers fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid at a time when the FAFSA was notoriously complicated. Ms. Javice, 32, quickly became a go-to quote for journalists writing about paying for college and turned up on lists of under-30 and under-40 up-and-comers.

Gee, we are going to make millions of dollars helping people filling out financial aid forms, and you are going to dominate the market because ………?

Bueller?  Bueller?

This isn't even a business model?  It's sillier than WeWork's plans for world domination, because colleges already have financial aid offices that help students for free, because the Colleges want their f%$#ing money?

Not long after Ms. Javice sold Frank to JPMorgan, there was trouble. The bank ran a test of Frank’s customer list, hoping to persuade its young customers to open Chase accounts. Of 400,000 outbound emails, just 28 percent arrived successfully in an inbox.

………

An internal investigation ensued, and the bank claimed to have found evidence that Ms. Javice and Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth and acquisition officer, had faked much of its customer list. JPMorgan sued her, and the federal government followed with its own charges, which resulted in the verdict Friday.

But we do find why they wanted to buy her sh%$ idea:

Sweet.

………

During the trial, JPMorgan bank executives said that one appeal of Frank was its promise of over four million customers, with detailed contact information, whom the bank could pitch. The bank could hook young adults with a checking account and potentially keep them and their business through decades of mortgages and retirement savings.

So Frank and JP Morgan were co-conspirators with a goal of raping the privacy of their customers, only Frank faked its customer base, hue?

You know, if we prosecuted everyone on both sides of the case who broke the law, the world would be a much better place.

I guess that it is just business as usual in the United States of Fraud.