Cliven Bundy was denied bail in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday, the Guardian reports. He is charged with felony conspiracy to impede federal officers in connection with the 2014 at his Nevada ranch. “If he’s released and goes back to his ranch, that’s likely the last the court will see of him,” the judge said.
Bundy was arrested at Portland international airport on Wednesday. He’d traveled to Oregon ostensibly to visit his sons, Ammon and Ryan, who’d already been arrested—but possibly also as a show of support for the four remaining occupiers at the Malheur wildlife refuge. (A week before, Bundy contradicted Ammon when he told the militants to stand their ground.)
Prosecutors allege that Bundy, who had refused to pay his grazing fees and fines for years, summoned hundreds of militiamen and sympathizers to his ranch in 2014 as the Bureau of Land Management began making plans to impound his cattle. The complaint against Bundy describes the ensuing confrontation, on April 12, as “a massive armed assault against federal law enforcement officers.”
In an affidavit arguing that Bundy should not be released before his case goes to trial, prosecutors describe the rancher as “lawless and violent.” From the Guardian:
On Tuesday, Nevada federal prosecutor Steven Myhre said there were more than 60 guns “raised, brandished, pointed at the officers” during the standoff.
“It’s difficult to find words to represent the level of violence,” Myhre told the court. “Almost to a person, those officers thought they were going to die that day.”
In support of the government’s case that Bundy should not be released on bail ahead of his trial, Myhre argued that Bundy’s “actions and deeds show his violent nature” and that many of the people who came to the standoff at the ranch two years ago were still at large and still “pledged” to support the rancher.
“He does not recognize federal courts—claiming they are illegitimate—does not recognize federal law, refuses to obey federal court orders, has already used force and violence against federal law enforcement officers while they were enforcing federal court orders, nearly causing catastrophic loss of life or injury to others,” the affidavit reads. “He has pledged to do so again in the future to keep federal law enforcement officers from enforcing the law against him.”
Bundy’s lawyer, Noel Grefenson, questioned why it had taken so long to bring charges against his client. “The government is saying he’s a danger and a lawless man,” Grefenson said Tuesday. “And yet, over the last 22 months, Nevada has done nothing.”
A preliminary hearing in Bundy’s case is scheduled in Las Vegas on Friday.
On Tuesday, the South Dakota state senate passed HB 1008 in a 15-2o vote, a bill that makes it illegal for a transgender person to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. The bill is now waiting for the signature of Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who has some weird(bigoted) ideas about what he needs to know before making his final decision.
While the language of the bill does not specifically mention transgender people, it reads:
Every restroom, locker room, and shower room located in a public elementary or secondary school that is designated for student use and is accessible by multiple students at the same time shall be designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex.
And “biological sex” means your assigned gender, essentially:
The term, biological sex, as used in this Act, means the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth.
The rhetoric around the bill is about as delusional and pearl-clutching as you’d expect. BuzzFeed News quoted Sen. Brock Greenfield, for example, as saying, “Do you feel it appropriate for a 13-year-old girl to be exposed to the anatomy of a boy?” Wow, there have been a lot of changes in how high school girls feel about toilet stall privacy since I was that age!
Aside from being fucked up and bullshit, the bill is also attracting a lot of criticism for how much money it will likely cost the state. Democrats arguing against the bill brought up the fact that the federal government could pull funding from public schools, open the school district up to lawsuits, and that the terrible press could lead to a tourist boycott.
No one is sure what Gov. Daugaard will do, but he has said “as far as he was aware he hadn’t met a transgender person and likely wouldn’t do so before deciding on the measure so as to ensure objectivity in his decision.” The objectivity of ignorance is so empowering.
If you sat Tom Friedman in a chair, gave him a piece of paper, snapped your fingers to get his attention, and told him to write down America’s three greatest sources of strength, what would he do?
My guess is he would stare at you for a very long moment with an uncomprehending expression, like a cow. Then, slowly, he would bend over that paper, grasp his pencil tightly, and write:
I would wager a good deal of money that upon completing this list, Tom Friedman would smooth his mustache in a satisfied manner and then go play golf with a friendly tech CEO.
But if you ask Tom Friedman himself, he has a different answer. Tom Friedman himself writes today that America’s three greatest sources of strength are “a culture of entrepreneurship,” “an ethic of pluralism” and the “quality of our governing institutions.”And he is absolutely sick of presidential candidates speaking poorly about these vague and ill-defined thoughts.
Donald Trump is a racist. Ted Cruz is a far-right ideologue who wants to destroy government institutions. And then there’s that Sanders fellow.
I’d take Sanders more seriously if he would stop bleating about breaking up the big banks and instead breathed life into what really matters for jobs: nurturing more entrepreneurs and starter-uppers. I never hear Sanders talk about where employees come from. They come from employers — risk-takers, people ready to take a second mortgage to start a business. If you want more employees, you need more employers, not just government stimulus.
I have just the plan for him: The 2015 “Milstein Commission on Entrepreneurship and Middle-Class Jobs” report produced by the University of Virginia, which notes: “The identity of America is intrinsically entrepreneurial [enshrined] by the founders, popularized by Horatio Alger, embodied by Henry Ford. … With enough hard work anyone can use entrepreneurship to pave their own way to prosperity and strengthen their communities by creating jobs and growing their local economy.”
Bernie Sanders is bleating about taking measures to ensure that a handful of huge financial institutions do not blow up and destroy our economy and necessitate a taxpayer bailout again. Meanwhile, he could be praising great Americans like a formulaic hack author of historic proportions and a noted anti-Semite. Thomas Friedman does not care for this Sanders character one bit. What doesn’t he understand about this great nation?
In short, we’re not socialists.
We’re not socialists. This is America. We are an oligarchy, run by crony capitalists. In a socialist country, everyone pitches in according to their ability to help those with the greatest need. In America, Tom Friedman married into a billionaire dynasty, lives in a $10 million mansion, and holds one of the most coveted jobs in journalism despite having one of the worst ears for the English language of any living native English speaker. If we were socialists, Tom Friedman would be taxed into oblivion, fired to make way for a more deserving writer, and perhaps given a job more suited to his skill set, such as “cab driver.”
Justice Antonin Scalia was taking a free vacation at the exclusive Cibolo Creek Ranch in West Texas when he was found dead inside a guest room Saturday. The trip, the Washington Postreports, was a gift from the ranch’s owner, who just last year obtained a favorable result from the Supreme Court.
The 30,000-acre hunting ranch, located around 30 miles from the Mexican border in the West Texas town of Shafter, is also the home of owner John B. Poindexter, who owns the Houston-based manufacturing firm J.B. Poindexter & Co.
The two men already had a tenuous connection outside of the ranch. Last year, an age discrimination suit filed against the Mic Group, a subsidiary of J.B. Poindexter & Co., reached the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
In an email to the Post, Poindexter said Scalia, who was invited to the ranch as a personal guest, was not charged for his stay. A person “familiar with the ranch’s operations” tells the paper Poindexter typically hosts these free events two to three times a year.
“I did not pay for the Justice’s trip to Cibolo Creek Ranch,” Poindexter wrote in a brief email Tuesday. “He was an invited guest, along with a friend, just like 35 others.”
Poindexter added: “The Justice was treated no differently by me, as no one was charged for activities, room and board, beverages, etc. That is a 22-year policy.’’
Poindexter explicitly denied paying for Scalia’s charter flight to the ranch and declined to identify the friend who accompanied Scalia or any of the other guests on the trip.
Yesterday, Gawker brought you an examination of a surprising conspiracy theory that touches the upper reaches of the Republican presidential primary race. Today, one of the conspiracy’s key players confirms that the theory is true—well, part of it, at least.
The chief and perhaps only proponent of this explosive theory is Ed Chiarini of the conspiracist website WellAware1.com. According to Chiarini, Ted Cruz and his wife Heidi are not real people, but characters played by the late Robert Kardashian and the comedian Ana Gasteyer, respectively. Chiarini believes that Kardashian faked his own death in 2003 to assume the role of Cruz, and that the Saturday Night Live svengali Lorne Michaels planted Gasteyer for untold nefarious resons to act as his wife. (WellAware1.com is big on former SNL cast members.)
Considering that Chiarini’s only supporting evidence for his wild claim comes in the form of extremely vague physical resemblances between the parties involved, it is even more impressive that he turned out to be right.
Reached via email Tuesday evening, Gasteyer confirmed her own role in the charade—but maintained that Ted Cruz is 100% real. Gasteyer wrote:
On the record, I need to state that it is in fact me. But contrary to your article’s assertion, I am unfortunately faux-married to the real Ted Cruz, not Kardashian as you state. I really wish it was a conspiracy, but it is a terrible reality for me and it has been very difficult, as I am angry all the time with my fake, smug husband, and I have to just smile and clap and sometimes touch him. It’s been super gross. Honestly, I’m incredibly relieved that the Truth is finally out so I can go home and take a long shower.
At long last, the truth is revealed. We’ve reached out to Cruz’s camp for comment, and will update if they offer a response.
When my former colleague Jason Parham reviewed Stanley Nelson’s documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolutionlast September, much of its retrospective content (dating back to the ‘60s) was uncannily relevant, given the growing amplification of dissatisfaction over racial inequality in this country, including but not limited to the routine police killings of unarmed black people. Parham wrote:
That this film arrives during a time of great social and political unrest is no mistake. The current Black Lives Matter movement is but an extension of the Panthers’ core goals and ideologies. Nelson’s film, while remarkable and revelatory, is a profound reminder that a free people—the free people Stokely Carmichael spoke so lovingly about—can never fully outrun history. But maybe that’s the true price of freedom and maybe the Panthers knew that best: the acknowledgement that liberation—when one is allowed to determine his or her own outcome without restriction and color-coded prejudice—comes only through unceasing battle.
After a theatrical run last fall (and festival screenings before that), The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution aired on PBS last night and is streaming in its entirety on PBS’s website for the next month. The film is more relevant than ever in contemporary culture, thanks to the invocation of the Panthers in Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance. “When I started making the film (eight years ago), I thought I was making a historical documentary. And little did I know that it would become so relevant with Black Lives Matter and such visible killing of black people by police. Beyoncé just took it to a new height with what she did at the Super Bowl,” Nelson recently told the Philadelphia Daily News.
That performance was then misinterpreted by idiots, who didn’t understand what the Black Panthers were about (self-defense and self-sufficiency, among other things), who think that resistance to racism is somehow as bad as or worse than racism. “The Black Panthers from its inception until its demise, were never this black separatist, anti-white organization. Their ideology was ‘organize your own,’” is how Jakobi Williams (author of From the Bullet to the Ballot Box: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago) put it to the Daily News.
A brief synopsis of the Panthers’ Ten-Point Program is in the clip above. It’s a sharp, reasonable course of action (Point 10: We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace), and that so little of it has been achieved decades later is depressing. Too many people with too much power in this country still find the idea of equality terrorizing.
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution isn’t perfect, but it delivers more nuance about a misunderstood group than you’re ever likely to get in a two-hour portion (you get the feeling that whole documentaries could be made regarding women in the group, as well as its free-breakfast program, which as Parham pointed out “at its peak, served 20,000 meals across 19 different communities every week”). But then, neatly summarizing the Panthers just wouldn’t be doing them justice, either. As former Panther Ericka Huggins points out in the doc, “We were making history and it wasn’t nice and clean. It wasn’t easy. It was complex.”
Earlier today, a princess was granted a wish, and that wish was to blog. As it turns out, sometimes, if you truly believe in yourself, dreams really can come true.
As soon as she awoke, the princess got to work. “What do you mean no one grabbed that Jeb Bush gun tweet?” she growled. “It’s been up literally all night.”
Noticing a group of interns dozing in a nearby chair, the princess leaned down. “Where are those interview transcripts?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“I can’t sign off on college credit if you don’t do the work,” she explained to the entitled blogger hopefuls. Walking away, the princess laughed to herself, “Millenials.”
One blogger suggested, “How about ‘10 Ways the Grammys Were Shook’?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” the princess responded. “The Grammys were on Monday. You think Buzzfeed is pulling this shit two days late?” The blogger began to weep.
“I love traffic thisssss much,” she told a man sitting in the corner.
“This is what I look like when I’m blogging,” she explained again. He claps.
The princess clicked a blank space on the screen for several minutes, unfazed by the fact that her click offers no results. Everyone continued to smile out of fear.
The first elected official who is able to pass a law ensuring that airplane seats are large enough for human beings to sit in will be incredibly popular. At the moment, we are still moving in the opposite direction.
Last week, an amendment that would set minimum dimensions of airline seats was shot down in a Congressional committee by a 26-33 vote.
The same week, we learned that Airbus has filed a patent application for airline seats that have storage spaces built in underneath the seats—meaning that passengers would not be able to stretch their legs out beneath the seat in front of them.
Currently, and into the foreseeable future, the airline business strategy of purposely torturing your passengers in order to spur them to purchase expensive upgrades continues unimpeded.
The FBI wants Apple’s help to investigate a terrorist attack. Apple says providing this help is the real danger. We’ve reached a boiling point in the battle between tech companies and the government over encryption. And what happens will affect anyone who uses a smartphone, including you.
After the San Bernardino shootings, the FBI seized the iPhone used by shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI has a warrant to search the phone’s contents, and because it was Farook’s work phone, the FBI also has permission from the shooter’s employer, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, to search the device. Legally, the FBI can and should search this phone. That’s not up for debate. If the FBI gets a warrant to search a house and the people who own it say okay, there’s no ambiguity about whether it can search the house.
But if the FBI comes across a safe in that house, the warrant and permission do not mean it can force the company that manufactures the safe to create a special tool for opening its safes, especially a tool that would make other safes completely useless as secure storage. That’s the situation that Apple’s dealing with here.
The FBI obtained an order from a California district court asking Apple for assistance cracking Farook’s passcode. The court order doesn’t flat-out demand that Apple unlock the phone, which is an iPhone 5C* running iOS 9. Instead, the judge is asking Apple to create a new, custom, terrorist-phone-specific version of its iOS software to help the FBI unlock the phone. Security researcher Dan Guido has a great analysis of why it is technically possible for Apple to comply and create this software. (It would not be if Farook had used an iPhone 6, because Apple created a special security protection called the Secure Enclave for its newer phones that cannot be manipulated by customizing iOS.)
The fight isn’t over whether Apple can comply in this case. It’s whether it should.
If Apple makes this software, it will allow the FBI to bypass security measures, including an auto-delete function that erases the key needed to decrypt data once a passcode is entered incorrectly after ten tries as well as a timed delay after each wrong password guess. Since the FBI wants to use the brute force cracking method—basically, trying every possible password—both of those protections need to go to crack Farook’s passcode. (Of course, if he used a shitty password like 1234, the delay wouldn’t be as big a problem, since the FBI could quickly guess.)
The security measures that the FBI wants to get around are crucial privacy features on iOS9, because they safeguard your phone against criminals and spies using the brute force attack. So it’s not surprising that Apple is opposing the court order. There is more than one person’s privacy at stake here!
Apple equates building a new version of iOS with building an encryption backdoor. CEO Tim Cook published a message emphasizing that the company can’t build a backdoor for one iPhone without screwing over security for the rest:
In today’s digital world, the “key” to an encrypted system is a piece of information that unlocks the data, and it is only as secure as the protections around it. Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.
The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.
Apple will be writing its own malware if it complies with this order. It would be creating the best tool to break into its own (older) devices.
“Essentially, the government is asking Apple to create a master key so that it can open a single phone,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a statement supporting Apple. “And once that master key is created, we’re certain that our government will ask for it again and again, for other phones, and turn this power against any software or device that has the audacity to offer strong security.”
Don’t sit there chuckling if you use an Android, by the way. If Apple is compelled to create this malware, it will affect anyone who uses technology to communicate, to bank, to shop, to do pretty much anything. The legal basis for requesting this assistance is the All Writs Act of 1789, an 18th century law that is becoming a favorite for government agencies trying to get tech companies to turn over user data. The AWA is not really as obscure as Apple suggests, but it is a very broad statute that allows courts established by Congress to “issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”
The Department of Justice has even tried to use it to force Apple to turn over suspects’ messages before. I know 18th century law sounds boring, but this is an 18th century law that could fuck you big time.
The All Writs Act can only force a company to do something if it’s not an “undue burden.” Seems like making Apple create malware that will fundamentally undermine its core security features is an enormous burden. And if it’s not deemed “undue” in this case, that sets a horrible precedent. After all, if compelling Apple to maim itself is allowed, compelling Google and Facebook and Microsoft to write security backdoors would also be allowed.
Correction 1:06pm: *I originally wrote that Farook had an iPhone 5S. He had an iPhone 5c. The post has been updated to fix that error.
More than two months after release, it’s still not possible to pirate Just Cause 3. The same is true for Rise of the Tomb Raider, released for PC in late January. Cracking computer games used to be measured in hours or days, but now, it’s turning into weeks and months. The nature of piracy is changing in a big way.
3DM and every other group in the cracking scene has been frustratingly banging their head against the piracy roadblock that is relatively new “anti-tamper” tech from the Austrian company Denuvo. That’s the tech that Square Enix used to protect Just Cause 3, the tech they also used for the new Tomb Raider, and the tech that Ubisoft is using on next week’s Far Cry Primal.
Anti-tamper, according to Deunvo, is different from Digital Rights Management (DRM), which has a historically poor reputation with players.
“Anti-tamper prevents the debugging, reverse engineering and changing of executable files,” a company spokesperson told me recently.
That’s a confusing non-explanation about how Denuvo works. But since Denuvo seems to have pirates on their heels, they won’t spill their dark secrets to me.
Here’s how Denuvo describes the technology on their website:
The license management from Steam or Origin grants legitimate consumers access to the game and our Anti-Tamper solution ensures that these DRM systems are not bypassed.
The million dollar question: what makes anti-tamper so hard to crack? Breaking Denuvo’s anti-tamper tech, even for a single game, amounts to a trade secret in these circles. Denuvo doesn’t have much incentive to give any answers, so I asked a few hackers to take a look at it.
Steam DRM? What Steam DRM?
Denuvo works as a shield for existing DRM protections baked into PC services like Steam and Origin. According to everyone I talked to, it’s trivial to get around Steam’s DRM.
“It is business as usual to see cracks for Steam games within minutes of the game’s Australian release,” said a hacker who goes by the pseudonym MTW. “Obviously this is a bad sign; DRM should not take single digit minutes to crack. There are other, non-Denuvo DRM solutions for Steam games. None of them are worth a shit.”
Denuvo uses a unique piggybacking approach. Because Steam and Origin require an Internet connection to buy, purchase, and authenticate a game the first time around, Denuvo can ride this wave and collect details about the computer to, in a sense, generate a unique key for that copy of the game. If the game isn’t running on that exact machine, the game can assume the game’s been pirated.
“Machine-specific triggers are peppered everywhere,” said MTW. “The game will appear to be insanely buggy, but it’s just copy protection crap. [...] Game developers get to specify points in gameplay where they want a copy protection trigger. A game can be unplayable.”
In other words, even if a cracking team can get the game running, it can’t assume it’ll remain stable.
DRM has a history of onerous requirements for legit consumers, including a requirement that you keep your internet on all the time, register the game, etc. Denuvo largely sidesteps that. (In the past, Denuvo tech has been accused of slowing performance, but seems to have been largely debunked.)
Anti-tamper has reportedly been used in games recently from Electronic Arts, Warner Bros, Square Enix, Ubisoft, Konami, and CI Games. The company doesn’t publicly list clients.
Interestingly, Denuvo isn’t claiming it can protect games forever.
“No DRM or anti-tamper solution can stop piracy entirely,” said the spokesperson. “The goal of Denuvo anti-tamper is to keep a game piracy-free for a game’s initial sales release window, when most of the sales are made.”
For Just Cause 3, that’s 78 days. For Rise of the Tomb Raider, that’s 20 days. Denuvo’s longest record is 272 days for Lords of the Fallen, a Dark Souls-style game from late 2014.
The one group that’s had success against Denuvo is the aforementioned 3DM. Most notably, they broke Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, one of last year’s most anticipated games. But they haven’t been able to maintain that success, as Denuvo has modified their process along the way.
“Denuvo has a staff of highly skilled and dedicated software engineers which constantly monitors every conceivable threat to a DRM system’s integrity,” said a Denuvo spokesperson. “Our job is to stay one step ahead of the hackers/crackers to make sure our anti-tamper system can keep a game publisher’s chosen DRM system safe.”
I wanted to hear 3DM’s side of things, but that’s easier typed than done. My attempts to speak with them have been unsuccessful, but what makes 3DM unique is how the group doesn’t hide in the shadows, as most of the other big cracking groups do. Several 3DM “employees” have public profiles on the social network Weibo, aka China’s Twitter. Their leader, a woman who goes by the nickname Bird Sister, regularly updates a blog discussing 3DM’s activities.
One of the only known photos allegedly depicting Bird Sister.
The cracking scene is competitive, as groups vie to break through a game’s copy-protection and upload it to the world. It’s the equivalent of shouting “first!” in a comment at the bottom of an article, but you’re releasing a hot new $60 game for free. This competition can get so fierce that one group will claim another ripped off their work. (Whatever you think of piracy, it’s not exactly easy to crack software.)
Game developers and many gamers may hate piracy, but 3DM has its happy followers. Bird Sister’s personal blog is full of comments from people thanking her for 3DM’s hard work.
Note: These comments were crudely translated using Google.
Despite the efforts of Bird Sister and the rest of 3DM, though Denuvo, as a whole, remains uncracked.
A Long Time Ago In A DRM Far, Far Away
The concept of preventing people from playing a game they didn’t pay for existed long before games went “digital.” Adventure games in the 90s, for example, asked players specific questions that could only be answered by looking in the game’s physical manual. (i.e. What’s the seventh word in the second paragraph on page 14?)
Over the years, game creators wrestled with how much friction to introduce in the quest to curb piracy. Too often, piracy measures meant to prevent people from stealing the game had more of an impact on paying consumers, leading to a general distrust of any form of anti-piracy.
It was common in the 90s and 2000s to require a CD or DVD in the drive, which was profoundly annoying. This led people who’d legally bought the game to apply “no-cd” patches to remove the requirement.
Image Credit: Penny Arcade
A modern form of this tactic, SecuROM, forced players to register copies of the game online, and players could only authorize a small number of computers per copy. This famously backfired on Spore, partially causing it to become the most pirated game of 2008. EA was hit with a class action lawsuit over SecuROM, arguing SecuROM was installed on computers without proper consent. EA later settled and agreed to better disclose SecuROM’s existence.
Denuvo was formed after Sony DADC DigitalWorks, the creators of SecuROM, were bought out. This new DRM company rose from the ashes of Sony DADC Digital Works, and if you browse Denuvo’s website, developers can still buy SecuROM. (It doesn’t seem very common.)
Denuvo’s goal is to keep hackers and pirates at bay for at least 60 days before a game is cracked. But when a game is broken, the genie can be partially put back in the bottle by updating the game with a fresh layer of Denuvo protection. (It’s why “Denuvo cracked” headlines don’t usually mean very much.) With that approach, only one instance of the game is cracked. The crack doesn’t gain them access to every other Denuvo-locked game, nor access to future versions of the game in question. Denuvo can add new locks when DLC is released or through a patch so that pirates are then stuck with that specific version of the game.
The Not-So-Patient Future
Most torrent websites these days have comments and message boards, and if you take a look at the conversations around Rise of the Tomb Raider or Just Cause 3, there’s a lot of anxiety that Denuvo spells the end of cracked big-budget games.
This doesn’t surprise Andy Maxwell, a reporter at TorrentFreak.
“Some pirates have a tendency to panic,” said Maxwell. “After all, something like Denuvo’s latest iteration upsets their assumption that their next game is coming for free. While some people can’t afford to pay and will always pirate, I think a lot of pirates are too impatient to wait months for a crack.”
If Denuvo is able to keep slowing pirates down, Maxwell says that’s a huge win for the game companies.
“The key here is to break pirates’ motivation,” he said.
To him, that doesn’t involve merely delaying a crack. It’s also about making games cheaper, more accessible, and consumer-friendly. A lack of demos is a sore point, for example. (I’m with him there.) For most people, the end goal is to play a video game.
“The last thing gamers want to do is screw around trying to get a cracked game to work when they could be having fun,” he said. “Some people like that challenge, millions don’t.”
Just Cause 3 will be cracked at some point, and so will Rise of the Tomb Raider. The question is what happens in a world where people don’t know when that’ll happen. Will sales go up, as pirates grumble and buy real copies? Or are people willing to wait? Even Electronic Arts’ new cutesy platformer, Unravel, has Denuvo’s protection. It may not be long before most games do.
“Rules are there to be broken,” said Maxwell. “History tells us that when the motivation is there, pirates will eventually catch up.”
Art Credit: Sam Woolley
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.
Incredibly, the fecal proclivities of the wife of a presidential candidate are a matter of public record because there is nothing sacred to Donald Trump. So, with a quiet scream, let’s see what he has to say.
“I’ve never seen her make one, it’s amazing,” is what presidential candidate Donald Trump voluntarily said about his then-girlfriend’s bathroom habits in 2004. “It’s amazing. I’ve never experienced that before, with all the women...”
The important thing to note about this exchange, which occurred about nine minutes into this Howard Stern interview, is that these men have clearly discussed their girlfriends’ bowel movements—or lack thereof—before.
A strange outcome, considering how many assholes Melania has in her life...
One of the most persistent and least useful arguments of this presidential campaign season is taking place among Democrats who (mostly) talk past one another about how economic inequality and racial inequality are or are not linked. Does someone have a good proposal? Let’s hear it.
We should be clear that this very intense and prolonged argument is happening solely on the left side of the political spectrum. Among Republicans, racial equality is paid lip service right before statements about supporting the police, and economic inequality is generally treated as the just and natural outcome of the free market. So it should go without saying that either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders will likely do far more to address these issues than any candidate the Republicans might nominate.
With that out of the way: this argument covers topics that are extremely important. The way the argument is conducted—in the media, online, and wherever people with strong lefty political convictions argue—often renders it extremely unimportant. Economic inequality is very important, and should be addressed by our government to the best of its ability. Racial inequality is very important, and should be addressed by our government to the best of its ability. Virtually everyone who cares enough to participate in this argument agrees with both of those things.
The argument then becomes: Which of these two things is more important? This is an okay thing to think about, but it implies that one of these two versions of inequality is so much more important than the other that we should be focusing our attentions upon it first and solely, when the reality is that both of these forms of inequality are very much intertwined. The other version of the argument is: Do you think that you can automatically solve racism just by solving economic inequality? The answer to that is obviously “no,” and anyone talking about this issue rationally knows that it is “no,” and it’s not really worth pursuing it further, because the answer is “no.”
What has been argued in a serious way, and what I believe is true, is that if we ask ourselves, “What are the most meaningful real world policies that a presidential candidate could support that would help to address racial inequality in America?” the answer is, “Policies that will close the racial wealth gap in America.” Black people in America are far poorer than white people, in large part because of a historic legacy of racism. Closing that racial wealth gap would have enormous meaningful impacts on the quality of life of black people in America. Would it make racism vanish? No. But is there another specific political policy proposal that would do more to address racial inequality than ending the racial wealth gap would? I don’t think that there is. There are policy proposals that could address various aspects of racial inequality issues—housing discrimination, for example, or police brutality—but it is hard to imagine that any of those policies would have a larger real world effect than closing the racial wealth gap.
Also, so that we do not ourselves fall into this morass of argument divorced from reality: both Democratic candidates generally support a variety of policies that would address both racial and economic inequality.
Bernie Sanders is a stronger advocate of closing the economic inequality gap in America, and his proposals aimed at raising the incomes of the poor are stronger than Hillary Clinton’s proposals. For this reason I believe that Bernie Sanders’ proposals would ultimately do more to help racial inequality in America, by doing more to close the racial wealth gap, than Hillary Clinton’s policies would. (The policies of either one would do more than any of the Republican candidates’ policies.) Yesterday, Hillary Clinton gave a widely covered speech in Harlem where she sought to portray herself as the candidate that black America should vote for—as a candidate who would do more for racial inequality than Bernie Sanders would. Touching on a litany of ways that black people in America suffer, she said, “These are not only problems of economic inequality. These are problems of racial inequality.”
Her implication was that Bernie Sanders thinks that economic inequality is the same thing as racial inequality. I don’t think that is true, but even if it was true, I still believe that Bernie Sanders’ socialist-oriented policies would do significantly more to help black Americans than Hillary Clinton’s more moderate proposals. Which is all a long way of saying this:
If Bernie Sanders’ proposals to address inequality aren’t the right ones, what are the better ones? What are the better policy proposals? What specific policy proposals would have more of a real-world impact than closing the racial wealth gap? An explicit program of racial reparations is the only one I can think of, and no candidate thus far has been willing to get behind this idea.
So what are those superior proposals? Honest question.
But before it can call “first” in the ill-advised hunt for our inevitably warring alien neighbors, it needs to build the biggest radio telescope in the world. And before it can do that, 9,110 residents of the Pingtang and Luodian counties need to get the hell out and find somewhere else to live.
Any newly evacuated residents will at least get to walk away with $1,900 in compensation, as well as the knowledge that, when the world ends at the many, many hands of a superior extraterrestrial race, they helped make the dream a reality.
Once the telescope is fully functional, those movable panels will be used to reflect radio signals from distant parts of the universe towards a 30-tonne retina capable of gathering them, the China Daily newspaper reported during tests last November.
... In an editorial celebrating China’s scientific triumph last July, the South China Morning Post boasted: “If we are ever to make contact with aliens, China may play a key role … our eyes and ears are closing in on the possibility of life on another planet.”
Best of luck to China and its many displaced residents. You’ve been warned.
Since the moment New York Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in 2014, his wife Chirlane McCray has been the object of fascination, controversy, praise, and hundreds of weird tabloid stories. This week, she talked with Jezebel about her ambitious plan to revamp New York City’s mental health services, her support for Hillary Clinton, and why closing Rikers Island is “a great idea.”
McCray is back in the papers this week after a New York Times Magazine profile explored her projects—a roadmap for fundamentally revamping the city’s mental health resources over the next four years to the tune of $850 million—and what the story called “the limits of first ladyship.” She spoke to Jezebel about her mental health plans, closing Riker’s Island, and what sounds like an ongoing disagreement in her house about the best presidential candidate.
Jezebel: When did mental health become your project as first lady?
McCray: I’m going to say towards the end of 2013, beginning of 2014.
Do you think people are aware this is your initiative? Is the mayor getting the credit for your work?
I think people are becoming more aware, but yes, it is a challenge. He’s a big guy and gets a lot of attention.
You’ve been criticized over the idea that the First Lady is an unelected position and thus, as a result, you shouldn’t be setting policy, including for things like mental health. Did that criticism surprise you? How would you respond to that?
I haven’t heard that [with the mental health initiative]. I’ve gotten such a tremendous response. People did criticize the role of the first lady at the beginning and did make those kinds of comments. But once I took up mental health, I’ve had nothing but positive responses. People are so hungry for someone to pay attention to this issue in a very ambitious way that really addresses every family, every community. Because it does touch every family and every community. I think people are appreciative that this is what I’ve chosen to work on.
This is a big project. Is there one element of reform to the city’s mental health policy that stands out as a place to start?
You’re right, it is quite ambitious. I think it’s all important, but we have six principles. One is changing the culture, because we have to change the way we think about mental health to be able to do something about it, and acting early. Because so many of the problems we see, everywhere we turn —whether it’s in our schools, where our children are being disciplined for bad conduct, or in our jails, where people are arriving because they’re sick and we’re punishing them because of it, or in hospitals, where people are in and out of the emergency room—there’s so much of that we can prevent by acting early. By making interventions.
That to me is really the most important part, to prevent mental illnesses from becoming serious and becoming real destructive forces in our families and our communities.
You and the mayor are obviously big Hillary Clinton supporters and have been campaigning for her. I’m sure you’re aware there’s a large divide between young and older voters, and consequently, an argument between feminists of different generations about what’s important and who’s the best candidate. Why do you think Clinton is having trouble reaching young women?
I think she’s actually—I don’t know that there’s such a great divide, first of all. I think there’s a lot of attention being paid to that. But I don’t think that’s the end of the story.
I would also say that, for women of a certain age—I don’t want to use the word older [laughs] we’ve known Hillary Clinton for years and years. I remember—and this will date me—I remember reading about Marian Wright Edelman in 1978 and the home visiting nurse program. Those are things Hillary’s been involved in for so long. Younger women just don’t know that history. I think, once they learn more about her values and how long she’s been doing the work that women like me, people like me, find so critical, in terms of children and families and civil rights, once they understand the full breadth and range of her involvement and how prepared she is to make change, that’s going to change. We’re just getting started. This election’s not until November. [Laughs]
It feels like it’s been going on forever.
Right.
We have a powerful woman running for her husband’s old job. Would you ever run for office?
I’m not thinking about that, no. [Laughs]
That’s pretty definitive. To circle back: I do still see criticisms of you popping up in place like the New York Post, that you’re too powerful. I wonder if you see a racist element in that, or a sexist element?
If you read the New York Post, you know their take on pretty much everything, right? There’s no secret. They have a very—let’s just say this. Their job is not to promote or empower women of color. That’s not their job. That’s not what they do. Or people of color in general. They just have a very negative, regressive view of where this part of humanity should be.
Will Chiara be more involved in the mental health initiative? She’s spoken so publicly about her own struggles.
You know, I don’t know. She graduates in June. She’s 21. She’s going to be making her own decisions about what direction she wants to move in. She’s very interested in becoming a social worker. I’m curious to know too. [Laughs]
Are there discussions going on between you and your children about the presidential election?
Oh yes. The discussions are...ongoing. [Laughs] That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Sounds like they [Chiara and her brother Dante] are Sanders supporters.
[Laughs] Uh, well, it’s possible.
What’s next for you, after being First Lady? I know that’s a ways in the future. Mental health has become a big project, but do you have other things you have your eye on?
Mental health is a very big project. I don’t see ever being finished with it. There’s so much to do. And I hope that the people choose that we’ll be here for another six years total. So I’m not thinking about what comes after this administration is over. I have my hands full with what I’m doing now, and I want to do it right. I always tell my husband, serve with distinction and everything else will follow. I’m trying to do the same thing. I want to focus on what I’m doing and make sure it’s successful before I even think about doing anything else.
One of the things that comes up repeatedly about Rikers is that it doesn’t serve mentally ill inmates particularly well. So many of the horrifying stories we’ve seen come out of Rikers are about mentally ill inmates not getting the treatment they need and in some cases dying. What do you think about calls to close the jail?
I think it’s a great idea. And of course the jail doesn’t serve mentally ill people well. There are mental health services within Rikers, but need to do more. We always need to do more. But the issue is, [mentally ill inmates] shouldn’t be in there to begin with. That’s why we’re creating two diversion centers, and training the police to know how to deal with people who are having an episode or are in crisis, so that they can actually get the treatment that they need instead of ending up in jail where they don’t belong.
Two longtime Los Angeles Police Department officers are accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting women while on duty, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced today. James Nichols and Luis Valenzuela, the alleged perpetrators, were partners, working out of the department’s Hollywood precinct.
Nichols and Valenzuela are accused of assaulting four women between 2008 and 2011. According to a press release from the DA’s office, all four women had been arrested by the pair on drug charges at some point. Most of the alleged assaults took place while the officers were on duty, and some of them were perpetrated in their patrol car, according to the release. The victims were 19, 24, 25, and 34 years old at the time of the alleged assaults.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Nichols and Valenzuela were under departmental investigation for sexual assault in 2013. According to that report, the officers allegedly used the threat of jail time to coerce women into performing sex acts. It is not immediately clear whether any action was taken on the investigation between then and the charges filed against the officers this week.
Both men were charged with multiple sex assault crimes, and Valenzuela faces an additional gun charge for allegedly pointing his weapon at one of the victims. If convicted, they each face up to a life sentence in prison.
Your favorite USB car charger just happens to be the smallest one you can buy, and you can grab it on Amazon for an all-time low price today. [Aukey Dual-Port Car Charger, $6 with code JZMYBJHC]
You could argue that Spotify Premium is a bargain on its own for $10 per month, so when they offer to throw in a free Chromecast when you prepay for three months, I don’t really see any downside. Supplies are limited, so act fast. [FREE Chromecast with 3-Month Spotify Premium Purchase]
Today only, Amazon’s running a big sale on boots and work shoes, with options running the gamut from non-slip clogs to full-on cowboy boots. Price start under $30, so be sure to check out the full selection; your feet will thank you. [40% or More Off Work & Safety Boots]
The holy grail of prosumer photography right now is finding a way to combine the optics and light sensitivity of a dedicated camera with the portability and sharing abilities of a smartphone, and the DxO One comes as close as anything on the market. If you’ve had your eye on this unique gadget, Amazon will sell you one for $380 today, an all-time low, and $220 less than its introductory price.
I recommend reading the Gizmodo review for a full rundown of this thing, but basically, it’s a pocket-sized iPhone accessory that can capture 11x the light of the iPhone’s built-in camera, while still allowing you to use the phone’s giant screen to line up your shots, and its LTE connection to share them instantly. Basically, it’s the best of both worlds. Just note that this is a Gold Box deal, meaning the price is only available today, or until sold out. [DxO One, $380]
Personally, I can’t fathom spending $50 on a non-mechanical keyboard, but if you prefer a thin profile and quiet keys, you won’t find many better options than Logitech’s K740.
The K740 comes equipped with a full key layout, backlighting, and a palm rest. One thing you won’t find is a wireless antenna—you’ll need to plug it in over USB—but if you use a desktop at home or at work, that’s not a huge deal. $50 is about as low as this model gets, outside of rare one-day deals. [Logitech K740 Keyboard, $50]
You probably didn’t wake up today hoping to find a great deal on a broom rack, and yet here we are. This thing has a 4.8 star review average, only costs $8, and you should absolutely buy it. [Wall Mounted 4 Position 5 Hooks Broom, Mop, Etc. Holder, $8 with code YXE4N6GP]
Yes, the Yi Home Camera will let you monitor a live view on your phone, and even chat with a two-way intercom function. The real standout feature though is that if it detects any motion, it’ll automatically save the footage to an included 32GB microSD card. Many competing cameras offer similar functionality with a cloud DVR service, but that’s typically associated with a monthly fee. With the Yi, you just pay once upfront, and own all of your data. [YI 87003 Home Camera with 32GB Micro SD, Wi-Fi Video Monitoring IP/Network Surveillance/Video Security, $60]
As you might expect, this discounted Logitech Harmony remote can interface with over 270,000 popular home theater devices, but it’s also set up to control Philips Hue lights, Nest thermostats, and other smart home devices. Plus, the included repeater can turn any smartphone into a full-featured remote, which is great when you can’t find the real thing. [Logitech Harmony Home Control - 8 Devices, $100]
If you need a last minute gift for your favorite outdoorsman, you could do a lot worse than this portable lantern. We’ve seen lots of products like this, but not many include 15,600mAh power banks that can charge your phone over USB, and power the LEDs for up to 35 hours. [Bienna Rechargeable Emergency Lantern with 15600mah Portable Charger, $25 with code ZLXUB948]
Full disclosure, I don’t know if TENS (Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) massagers actually do anything useful. I use one occasionally after playing tennis, and I think it helps reduce muscle pain, but it could be a placebo effect! In any event, this is not a medical endorsement, simply a deal post, and this is about as cheap as you’ll ever see one of these things. [Magicfly Massage Handheld Electronic Pulse with Tens Unit Massager Therapy, $19 with code 38DBAWZI]
$4 gets you a bracelet made a over 12’ of 550 pound paracord, and a buckle that also double as a flint fire starter and eye knife, Hopefully you never have to use this, but it’s not a bad idea to keep it handy before you head out into the wild. [Gonex Survival Paracord Bracelet 550 Paracord, $4 with code 9LWV5OJX]
Sometimes you need to get some work done, but you don’t want to be chained to a desk. Luckily, this LED desk lamp can run for up to four hours via a rechargeable battery, meaning you can take it anywhere, including outdoors. [6W LED Cordless Desk Lamp, $27 with code 35SZPQM7]
This inexpensive mandoline slicer can chop all of your favorite fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and fingers for just $15. Plus, its four interchangeable plates and three thickness settings mean it can adapt to many different ingredients and recipes. [Anybest Good Grips Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer, $15 with code ANYBEST6]
If you’re ready to go all-in on the Wii U, Walmart will sell you a Mario Maker console bundle, an extra game of your choice, an amiibo of your choice, and an awesome amiibo display shelf for $309, or just $9 more than the console by itself. [Wii U Bundle, $309]
Bethesda just announced that they’ll be releasing at least $60 worth of Fallout 4 DLC, which means at the end of the month, the Season Pass will increase from $30 to $50. You don’t need the Cap Collector perk to understand that this means you should buy it now. [Fallout 4 Season Pass, $30]
Note: Amazon seems to be going in and out of stock. Of course, you can always order the season pass through PSN or Xbox Live.
We see deals on car-starting battery packs just about every week, but even by our standards, $28 is a really fantastic starting price (with code UCSB794Q) for a 300A model. And for owners of larger cars, 400A and 600A versions are also on sale. No matter which one you choose, they all include a DC charger to juice it back up inside your car, and they’re all small enough to fit in your glove box.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you don’t have a pressing need for a laminator. But even so, odds are that it’d come in handy at least a few times per year, so you might as well add one to your home office while it’s on sale for $23. Outside of a one-day Gold Box deal, that’s the best price Amazon’s ever offered. [Scotch Laminator, $23]
Amazon’s Prime Pantry program is great for stocking up on household goods and non-perishable foods without actually having to visit a store, and with these stackable deals, the prices will blow away any brick and mortar store in your town.
Next, promo code 10PANTRY will take $10 off any $75 Prime Pantry order, regardless of what’s in it. As long as you hit that minimum, that means you can save a whopping $16 on your order, or even $22 if you had an existing no-rush shipping credit. Not bad at all!
Stick-anywhere motion-sensing lights are perfect for dark hallways, cabinets, and closets, and the more you buy today, the more you’ll save. Just add as many as you want to your cart, and use the appropriate code from below.
If you enjoy cooking, and you don’t own a KitchenAid mixer, it’s a pretty safe assumption that you want one. You can pick up a refurb of the KitchenAid Artisan on eBay today in a spectrum of colors for just $170, one of the lowest prices we’ve ever seen. [Refurb KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer, $170]
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Businessman and presidential candidate Donald Trump promising to secure a future for children much like this one
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has Donald Trump in second place, at 26 percent, to first-place Ted Cruz, at 28 percent. This is, as Philip Bump notes, “the first major poll in which Trump hasn’t led the field nationally since October.” That is another way of saying this poll is an outlier.
Which is not to say that it’s inaccurate. But also today comes a poll from Morning Consult, conducted over the same dates as the NBC/WSJ poll, showing Trump still leading the (national) field with an astonishing 41 percent support.
And maybe that poll is inaccurate. They’re not directly comparable, in terms of sampling and methodology: The Morning Consult poll was of 662 registered voter, while the NBC/WSJ was of 400 likely voters.
But until lots of other polls also look like this poll, it doesn’t really tell us anything.
(That won’t stop the press from seizing on this poll as “proof” that Trump’s support is collapsing, as a sort of half-conscious attempt to turn a compelling narrative into electoral reality, in much the same way that we continually hear of Marco Rubio’s “resurgence,” in stories that have surely helped keep his candidacy alive despite his various failures as a candidate. Nor will it stop Donald Trump from freaking out and responding with some crazy new attack line, crackpot policy proposal, or fresh angle on the white racial anxiety beat.)
This afternoon, SB Nation’s Longform vertical published 12,000 words on Daniel Holtzclaw, the former Oklahoma City police officer who was convicted of abusing his position of power to rape multiple women over a seven month period. It was, in many ways, a disaster of a story, and after a wide outcry that amounted to nearly everyone who offered an opinion asking “What the fuck is this?” the entire story was deleted five hours later, memory-holed along with tweets promoting the story.
In a statement published more than an hour after the story was deleted, SB Nation editorial director Spencer Hall writes,
“The publication of this story represents a complete breakdown of a part of the editorial process at SB Nation. There were objections by senior editorial staff that went unheeded. It was tone-deaf, insensitive to the victims of sexual assault and rape, and wrongheaded in approach and execution. There is no qualification: it was a complete failure.”
“Who Is Daniel Holtzclaw?” lives on, of course, in cached form. It should be read—it should be taught—as an exemplary failure of the longform economy, the writer-driven idea that length is tantamount to quality. These are the pieces that people praise without reading, and this specifically was a piece that, however many firewalls it went through to get to publication, reads as if quantity was mistaken for complexity.
The article, written by a freelance sportswriter who covered Daniel Holtzclaw’s college football career, went wrong in any number of ways, all of which will be exegeted at length for some time to come. A brief rundown:
It starts off with expressions of full sympathy for Holtzclaw, hinting that perhaps there are two sides to this story. It tells only one. The side based in reality—that Holtzclaw violated and brutalized at least eight poor, black women and is in jail for the rest of his life—is never given more than cursory attention.
It presents an endless litany of character witnesses for Holtzclaw—his lawyer, his family, former teammates—all expressing their disbelief that Holtzclaw could be guilty, which is among other things a monotonously boring thing to hang a story of this length upon. Basically, this is the local news interviewing the shocked neighbors—“He always seemed like such a nice kid”—over and over again for 12,000 words.
It makes the mistake of thinking the unremarkable amateur football career of a vicious criminal is worthy of inspection, or tells us anything about the man.
It irresponsibly speculates whether PED use or disappointment at not making the NFL could have been responsible for Holtzclaw’s crimes—if indeed he committed any.
It gets real fucking messy with race. Holtzclaw’s beat was “a dangerous assignment that regularly brought him in contact with people and lifestyles with which he had little prior experience.” It speaks of tension “between members of Eastern Michigan’s football program and locals within the Ypsilanti community.” It notes that Holtzclaw had a “number of black friends.”
It repeatedly portrays the victims as having had “troubled pasts”—eliding the fact that Holtzclaw used his power as a cop to obtain sex in exchange for promising to let them off on minor offenses. Somewhat incredibly, this attempt to humanize Holtzclaw succeeds only in dehumanizing his victims.
This kicker:
I don’t know how this story happened, or whether the author came out of it (or went into it) believing in Holtzclaw’s innocence. One entirely plausible scenario—which I’ve seen play out with much smaller stakes—is that the intent was to paint a complex portrait of a villain, which can be done if done well, but that one-sided reporting that involved mainly or only speaking to Holtzclaw’s supporters ended up producing a piece of propaganda.
I don’t know if the pitch resembled the story that was filed. As an editor, I know that it can be very hard to kill a piece, especially one of this length. I also know that killing a piece is almost always better for everyone involved.
I do know that soon after this piece was published, it was praised and shared by those both within and without the company. We saw the same thing play out, over a longer timeframe, with Grantland’s Dr. V controversy. Here is the dirty secret of longform: most people, even those who urge its consumption, don’t actually read it. Longform may win awards and it may bring prestige, but it remains at least as subject to Sturgeon’s law—90 percent of everything is crap—as any other format.
SB Nation has poured resources into its longform vertical, hiring the respected Glenn Stout—who was listed as the editor on this story—to solicit and shepherd lengthy features. Many of these have been great—the Mel Hall piece still stands as an example of how to cover a sex offender—and most of them go largely ignored. There had never been a complete failure of concept and execution quite like this one, but it was nearly inevitable. If a company has a gorgeous CMS designed for longform, and a mandate to produce longform, and staff in place to present longform, it’s going to publish longform—whether the stories are there or not.
“The untold side of an American monster” is an intriguing pitch. “Twelve thousand words on it” is praise bait. “Who Is Daniel Holtzclaw?” turned out to be an irresponsible, offensive disaster, an uncomplicated hagiography of a man who deserves one about as little as anyone can. But it appears that when it was cloaked in the presentation of what we’ve been conditioned to recognize as quality journalism, the people whose job it was to notice this simply didn’t.
“Gender should not be one of the issues cited to determine leadership capabilities,” Elliot, best known for developing the so-called blue eyes/brown eyes experiment, wrote, “but Mrs. Clinton has made many references to the fact that she will be the first woman elected to the presidency.”
When people tell us, hold on, wait a while, and that’s what the other Democrat is telling you. Hold on Black Lives Matter, just wait a while. Hold on young people in this country, just wait a while. And then she get good, she have your own momma come to you, your momma sit down and say, “Well, you’re a woman.” But I talked to Jane Elliott a few weeks ago and Jane said, “Michael, a uterus doesn’t qualify you to be president of the United States. You have to be, you have to have policy that’s reflective of social justice.” Paying women a fair wage is social justice. Making sure that minorities have jobs is social justice.
“If President Obama had insisted that he should be elected because of the color of his skin, all Hell would have broken loose, and rightly so,” Elliot told Gawker. “Of course, everyone knows that he was not our first black president; Abraham Lincoln was, and he seemed to set a fairly high standard, wouldn’t you agree?”
It’s not actually clear that everyone does know that: Such claims about Lincoln’s heritage—while certainly compelling, and somewhat pervasive—have never been conclusively proven. Elliot did not immediately respond to an inquiry about her source for the claim.
Update – 7:24 pm
Of where she learned that Lincoln was our first black president, Elliot wrote:
I read that information in a piece of material that I picked up at an African-American book fair several years ago. Of course, over the years, I’ve lost track of the book which contained that information, but checking it shouldn’t be too difficult, what with all the technology which is available for that purpose, today.
