Tracing Ivan Boesky
In America, what exactly is "greed" anyway?
Hello, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, the first time in 25 years the first night of Hanukkah coincides with Christmas day. Chances are you’re gathering today or tomorrow with friends and or family. Gathering in large numbers, even before COVID, has long been controversial. British loyalists and officers were alarmed when the American settlers circulated information between colonies, not just to the British crown. And depending on which French revolution historian one asks, Alexis de Toqueville’s aristocrat father had the responsibility of capping gatherings of the lower classes at 250.
Introduction: My oldest sibling – a Baby Boomer who received Civics education in middle school before the powers-that-be yanked it from the curriculum just before my GenX cohort arrived to only learn “Social Studies” – graduated from the business undergraduate division of U.C. Berkeley the year students voted Ivan Boesky to be commencement speaker.
“Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy,” Boesky told the students, to rousing applause, and three months later Boesky was arrested for illegal insider trading, a charge he served prison time for. After reading his background, it appears Boesky didn’t retain ethics while acclimating to the extreme jump in wealth gained by marrying into his wife’s family. The 1987 movie Wall Street character Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, was clearly inspired by Boesky. Gekko speaks to his proteges earlier in the film about the goodness of greed and his protege, played by Charlie Sheen, is arrested at the end of the film. The miasma of the mass media called the 1980’s “the decade of greed”.
Only this year, in my business accounting class, have I attempted to get a handle on what greed is. One probably cannot talk about it in the mainstream media now, which no longer has the ballast of classified ads and relies solely on advertising of goods and services clients hope consumers will spend money on. One part of greed is compulsion, I’ve decided. When you’re making life worse for yourself in the longer run by splurging today.
An infamous peer-reviewed study that was retracted last week after five years falsely showed hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to be an effective treatment for COVID. Two co-authors did the right thing and asked for it to be pulled once they saw what had transpired in other parts of the study, while the lead author Didier Roualt, after losing his job, accelerated his promotion of HCQ as a sound COVID treatment, taking to Twitter.com to make discredited claims. Multiple journals played a part in this scandal. One group is suing journals Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer for antitrust violations.
Two of the wealthiest people in my social network are managing progressive diseases. While they were not directly hurt by the now-retracted Alzheimer’s study scandal involving perfectly legal patent ownership which some see as conflict-of-interest, fundraising for future research could be more difficult without reform. The wealth of my friends, one who voted for Trump the other for Harris, can’t buy their way around this antiscience scourge. There may never be cures for Parkinsons or Multiple Sclerosis, but to raise money it helps to know donations won’t feed a thief. We need everybody: science sleuths, antitrust lawyers, judges and reporters, the overall system, to keep laying the groundwork for science breakthroughs and excellence if we want to keep horizons bright.
Some who muster the momentum to achieve prestige have defective brakes, like the runaway trains described in the books I talked about in a previous newsletter. Hockey-checking the line-steps of others keeps the system healthy. European travel reporters whose parents lived through authoritarian fascism told Rick Steves that to prevent the slaughter and waste of WWII, “create citizens, not just consumers.”
Without the arts or civics, social creatures narrow life experience into egging each other on and hockey-checking back in tightening and loosening coils.
Oct 15 2020 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls for a 'referendum on capitalism' (Business Insider) - “On Wednesday, he called for ‘referendum on capitalism,’ urging businesses to grade themselves on the wider economic benefits they bring to society, rather than just their profits. Microsoft and others should measure their success by the jobs they create, the revenue they generate for their suppliers, and the money their employees spend elsewhere, he said.
Apr 14 2024 Ex-Google CEO says successful AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to ‘clean up the mess’ | “But if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content,” Eric Schmidt said during a recent talk at Stanford that has been taken offline. (The Verge) -
Contents:
The Virtue of Killing Trees
School Closures in Year 5 Could be Misread
HCQ Study Retracted After 5 Years
Donald Trump Incurred Boos in Two States by Promoting COVID Vaccine
Taking on a Kennedy: RFK Jr.’s Nomination
Bird Flu: Rancher Pride
Polio Vaccinators Expelled in Pakistan
The Virtue of Killing Trees
Reports this year showed students even at elite colleges lacked the mental stamina to read entire books. Physical books can activate an additional sense, touch, which facilitates loading up the memory of the portion of a book one has read thus far, answering the question “where was I?” in the story.
Generative AI warns users away from consuming paper via lengthy, beautifully formatted reports which cite no sources. Users of generative AI sometimes cite “search” as the source of facts within a rich generative AI-produced report like the one in the screenshot above.
Paper media tends to deliver macro-targeted content, that is the same content to every reader of every copy of that publication. Macro-targeted content makes a good complement to the individualized storytelling and individualized wrong facts or “hallucinations” served by generative AI. Paper news also facilitates intra-regional commerce by printing reviews of plays and events in the area in a medium that garners one’s full attention. Post-election reports show that voters trust the press, no matter how many tech-funded studies or conference panels divert attention away from platform ad monopolies by discussing the trust problem.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said over a decade ago he preferred newspapers stop printing physical editions, perhaps because that would force all advertisements live on the internet. (Many internet companies in his firm’s portfolio live on an advertising revenue business model.)
But as Leonardo Da Vinci knew, and newer technologies like fMRI have shown, one part of the eye is alert to movement and threats, a lizard-brain activity, while the center of the eye is dedicated to focus and detail. Paper media is motionless, facilitating reason.
📕 May 22 2007 Chapter 1 (The Assault on Reason) - “Neurologists and brain researchers describe how disturbing images go straight to a part of the brain that is not mediated by language or reasoned analysis. There are actually two parallel pathways from the visual centers to the rest of the brain, and one of them serves as a crude but instantaneous warning system.”
Dec 12 2012 Andreessen denies Internet bubble, advises Times to stop printing (Reuters) - "’It's not that you can't make money in print newspapers,’ he said.
‘It's not that there aren't people who love them.’ But successfully dealing with transformative technology requires going ‘on 100 percent offense,’ he said.”
Feb 21 2009 Andreessen in realtime (Tech Crunch) - “Stop the presses tomorrow. I’ll tell you what. The stocks would go up.”
Jan 01 2024 Forest for the Trees (Harper’s) - “In only half a day, a lumberjack can cut down enough trees for an entire print run of one of our issues. Thus, even if we sold one hundred times as many magazines and he were felling trees nonstop, he would still be unable to compete with the slow and steady growth of Sweden’s forests. We wish you good reading.”
Dec 09 Covert Facebook Network Found Targeting Romanian Voters (Bloomberg) - “The campaign was run across 24 seemingly separate Facebook pages for entities whose websites share hosting, advertising and email infrastructure, indicating an organized effort to influence the election, according to a report by the digital threat research groups Reset Tech and Check First.”
Nov 25 Nearly all Gen Z workers in survey admit to using A.I. (Independent UK) - “The majority of Gen Z workers are using generative A.I. tools in their jobs, according to a new survey. The Harris Poll and Google Workspace research also found a resounding 93 percent of those who identified as Gen Z used two or more tools on a weekly basis. And, 79 percent of millennials do the same.”
Dec 19 Opinion: AI’s dangerous mental-health blind spot (STAT News) - “In the recent killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, for instance, a phone has been recovered from the alleged suspect; in the future, analysis of a suspect’s interactions with an AI-powered chatbot may provide valuable insights into their thought processes leading up to the crime—far more than simply analyzing static search queries.”
Dec 19 Apple urged to remove new AI feature after falsely summarizing news reports (CNN) - “The backlash comes after a push notification created by Apple Intelligence and sent to users last week falsely summarized a BBC report that Luigi Mangione, the suspect behind the killing of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, had shot himself.”
Feb 22 2023 Print ad revenue halves in six years as three tech giants make $400bn annually (Press Gazette UK) -
Jun 21 2019 Working With Your Hands Does Wonders for Your Brain (Psychology Today) - “My favorite Mind-Body Medicine expert, Dr. Herbert Benson, wrote about this phenomenon (and strategy) in his book, The Breakout Principle. When we engage in a repetitive task, completely taking our minds off whatever problem or issue we have been struggling with, the solution will often magically appear.”
Feb 14 2019 Comparing Comprehension of a Long Text Read in Print Book and on Kindle: Where in the Text and When in the Story? (Frontiers in Psychology) - “Results showed that on most tests subjects performed identically whatever the reading medium. However, on measures related to chronology and temporality, those who had read in the print pocket book, performed better than those who had read on a Kindle.”
School Closures in COVID Year 5 Could be Misread
California saw out-migration after interest rates rose and the tech sector contracted hiring. Also the Hollywood strikes in the face of generative AI put a halt to movie- and tv-production in 2023, causing more people to leave the state.
Dec 19 School attendance among pupils drops significantly since Covid-19 pandemic (Irish Times) - “Just more than 25 per cent of all primary school pupils and 20 percent of all second-level students missed 20 or more school days in the 2022/2023 school year. This is up significantly from 11 per cent for primary school pupils prior to the pandemic and 14.5 per cent for students at second level in 2018/2019.”
Dec 16 ‘Kicking the can down the road’: School closures in California painful but inevitable (San Francisco Chronicle) - “While migration out of state and immigration policies contribute to the problem, the biggest factor in school enrollment is a declining birthrate. People are simply having fewer children, both in California and nationwide.”
Dec 08 Few school districts rebound from pandemic learning loss across St. Louis region (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) - “Ten years ago, North Side students routinely doubled and tripled the scores of their counterparts in other high-poverty schools. …But in the last five years, North Side fell from 46% to 23% proficiency in English and 44% to 14% in math, the steepest drop in the region.”
HCQ Study Retracted After 5 Years
Dec 17 Infamous paper that popularized unproven COVID-19 treatment finally retracted | Study on hydroxychloroquine by Didier Raoult and colleagues gets pulled on ethical and scientific grounds (Science) - “The retraction notice states Elsevier and the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, which co-own the journal, decided to retract the paper because of ethical issues, as well as concerns raised by three of the authors themselves regarding the articles methodology and conclusion.”
Jun 06 2022 Covid-19: Doctor who sold hydroxychloroquine as magic bullet treatment is jailed (The BMJ) - “A doctor in California who sold hydroxychloroquine online and told an FBI agent that it was a magic bullet for covid-19 has been sentenced to 30 days in prison and a year of home confinement.” Jennings Ryan Staley of San Diego “told the [undercover FBI] agent that he got the last tank of hydroxychloroquine smuggled out of China, and that he tricked customs by labelling the barrel as yam extract. He had enough to make 8000 doses in capsules, he said.”
Jan 15 2021 Many scientists citing two scandalous COVID-19 papers ignore their retractions (Science) - “Questions soon arose about the validity, and even existence, of the Surgisphere database, however, and the retractions followed on 4 June.” “Science also found a handful of articles that uncritically cited an influential April preprint based on the same Surgisphere data set, which described the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as beneficial in critical COVID-19 cases.”
🔒 Dec 22 HCQ Timeline (TracingVRL) - To anyone asking “where was the press on this?” They reported on the scandal as it unfolded. 32 news artifacts in this timeline.
Donald Trump Incurred Boos in Two States by Promoting COVID Vaccine
People change each other. Will Donald Trump push back on the craziest of antivaxxers, as he did last week in defense of the polio vaccine? Or will his legacy be one of American disease and decline?
Dec 20 2021 Trump met with boos after revealing he received Covid-19 booster (CNN) - This event was in Dallas.
Aug 22 2021 Trump booed at Alabama rally after telling supporters to get vaccinated | "But I recommend take the vaccines," Trump said. "I did it. It's good. Take the vaccines."(NBC News) -
Taking on a Kennedy: Reactions to RFK Jr.’s Nomination
RFK Jr., who said in a deposition he suffers both short- and long-term memory problems, is one of the lawyers representing Children’s Health Defense (CHD) in its lawsuit against the Associated Press. Whether this qualifies as a SLAPP suit the AP didn’t say. CHD is suing the newswire for antitrust violations after it identified misinformation about vaccines.
Dec 09 The pharma industry isn’t lobbying against RFK Jr.’s nomination for a top health role (STAT News) -
Dec 18 RFK Jr. tries to build momentum for his HHS candidacy on Capitol Hill (Anchorage Daily News) -
Dec 18 Health experts eager for RFK Jr’s impact on diet, fearful he’ll trigger disease explosion (Independent UK) -
Dec 18 RFK Jr. and vaccines: A history of false and misleading claims | Fact check (USA Today) -
Jul 02 RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets. (Vanity Fair) - “In anticipation, Rory warned her production team they had a potential liability: Her brother, though a prominent and successful environmental lawyer known for suing polluters, could be fast and loose with the facts. ‘He can say some crazy shit,’ she told them, according to a person involved in the film.”
May 21 Spoiler Alert: Trump Mega-Donor Timothy Mellon Gave Millions to RFK Jr. Campaign (The Daily Beast) - "Billionaire mega-donor Timothy Mellon, who has poured millions into a super PAC supporting Donald Trump, gave another $5 million to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April, according to newly released campaign finance filings....” “Recent polls have shown Kennedy pulling support from both major party candidates."
May 08 R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain | The presidential candidate has faced previously undisclosed health issues, including a parasite that he said ate part of his brain. (New York Times) - "‘I have cognitive problems, clearly,’ he said in the 2012 deposition. ‘I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.’”
🔒 Jul 12 RFK, Jr. (TracingVRL) - A collection of 32 newsclips showing his trail of antivaxx and other statements over the last two years.
Bird Flu
Dec 18 More L.A. cats appear to be infected with H5N1 bird flu (Los Angeles Times) - “Of the three new sick cats, two died and one tested positive for influenza A, an unusual finding in domestic cats that haven’t been exposed to infected birds or contaminated dairy products. … The three cats all lived in the same household.”
Dec 19 Why has California declared a state of emergency over bird flu? (Al Jazeera) - “The emergency declaration on Wednesday was made after several more dairy cows tested positive for the virus in southern California. Newsom said declaring a state of emergency would make funds available to ‘streamline and expedite’ efforts to tackle an outbreak.”
Nov 30 Ranchers' Pride in Raw Milk Herds (LinkedIn) - “I think the 760 people experiencing negative side effects from raw milk is an extremely underreported number. There's clearly a reporting bias as well as a selection bias built into acquiring that data. That is my answer as a physician and a researcher. As a person who grew up on a dairy farm drinking raw milk less than a minute after it was acquired, I can tell you that ranchers under report all illnesses. When they do report illnesses they will be very defensive about the cause being associated to their herd.”
Polio Vaccinators Expelled in Pakistan
Dec 20 Karak's women expel polio teams (The Express-Tribune | Pakistan) - “Women of the southern Karak district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have expelled polio teams from the region and come onto the streets, braving the bitter cold, to protest prolonged gas load-shedding in their area. They announced a boycott of the polio campaign across the area. The demonstrators carried gas bills and banners during their demonstration in the Seri Khwa area, declaring a boycott of the ongoing polio eradication campaign and expelling the polio team from the region.”
Marshall McCluhan Quote
Dec 31 1970 Marshall McLuhan Predicted the Emerging Infowar (McLuhan Galaxy) - “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.”