Ordinary Bookclub: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Chapters 78-87)
Things are beginning to heat up and spiral out of control and take twists.
Jaybird
/// May 20, 2019
Things are beginning to heat up and spiral out of control and take twists.
Jaybird
/// May 12, 2019
Okay. Welcome to the Ordinary Bookclub. We’re reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Our kickoff post is here, we review Chapters 1-5 here, we review chapters 6-15 here, we review chapters 16-25...
Jaybird
/// May 5, 2019
Does anybody really deserve to be in Azkaban?
Jaybird
/// April 28, 2019
We go home for Christmas and then we go back to school to learn about Patronuses and Dementors.
Some other stuff happens too.
Jaybird
/// April 21, 2019
Okay. Welcome to the Ordinary Bookclub. We’re reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Our kickoff post is here, we review Chapters 1-5 here, we review chapters 6-15 here, and we review chapters...
Jaybird
/// April 14, 2019
From the first day of Defense Against The Dark Arts class to Professor Quirrell’s first real conversation with Rita Skeeter.
What do you think?
Jaybird
/// April 7, 2019
From getting the wand to the Sorting Hat to the end of the First Day at Hogwarts
Jaybird
/// April 1, 2019
Okay. So we’ve read the first five chapters.
What do you think?
UK PM Theresa May has announced she will be stepping down effective June 7th.
Comment →In an emotional statement, she said she had done her best to deliver Brexit and it was a matter of "deep regret" that she had been unable to do so.
Being prime minister had been the "honour of my life", she said.
Mrs May said she would continue to serve as PM while a Conservative leadership contest takes place.
It means she will still be prime minister when US President Donald Trump makes his state visit to the UK at the start of June.
Mrs May announced she would step down as Tory leader on 7 June and had agreed with the chairman of Tory backbenchers that a leadership contest should begin the following week.
Boris Johnson, Esther McVey and Rory Stewart have said they intend to run for the party leadership, while more than a dozen others are believed to be seriously considering entering the contest.
The prime minister has faced a backlash from her MPs against her latest Brexit plan, which included concessions aimed at attracting cross-party support.
[caption id="attachment_127799" align="aligncenter" width="508"] Avenatti[/caption]
Ain't that a Basta...
According to the allegations in the Indictment unsealed today[1]:
From August 2018 through February 2019, AVENATTI defrauded a client (“Victim-1”) by diverting money owed to Victim-1 to AVENATTI’s control and use. After assisting Victim-1 in securing a book contract, AVENATTI allegedly stole a significant portion of Victim-1’s advance on that contract. He did so by, among other things, sending a fraudulent and unauthorized letter purporting to contain Victim-1’s signature to Victim-1’s literary agent, which instructed the agent to send payments not to Victim-1 but to a bank account controlled by AVENATTI. As alleged, Victim-1 had not signed or authorized the letter, and did not even know of its existence.
Specifically, prior to Victim-1’s literary agent wiring the second of four installment payments due to Victim-1 as part of the book advance, AVENATTI sent a letter to Victim-1’s literary agent purportedly signed by Victim-1 that instructed the literary agent to send all future payments to a client trust account in Victim-1’s name and controlled by AVENATTI. The literary agent then wired $148,750 to the account, which AVENATTI promptly began spending for his own purposes, including on airfare, hotels, car services, restaurants and meal delivery, online retailers, payroll for his law firm and another business he owned, and insurance. When Victim-1 began inquiring of AVENATTI as to why Victim-1 had not received the second installment, AVENATTI lied to Victim-1, telling Victim-1 that he was still attempting to obtain the payment from Victim-1’s publisher. Approximately one month after diverting the payment, AVENATTI used funds recently received from another source to pay $148,750 to Victim-1, so that Victim-1 would not realize that AVENATTI had previously taken and used Victim-1’s money.
Approximately one week later, pursuant to AVENATTI’s earlier fraudulent instructions, the literary agent sent another payment of $148,750 of Victim-1’s book advance to the client account controlled by AVENATTI. AVENATTI promptly began spending the money for his own purposes, including to make payments to individuals with whom AVENATTI had a personal relationship, to make a monthly lease payment on a luxury automobile, and to pay for airfare, dry cleaning, hotels, restaurants and meals, payroll, and insurance costs. Moreover, to conceal his scheme, and despite repeated requests to AVENATTI, as Victim-1’s lawyer, for assistance in obtaining the book payment that Victim-1 believed was missing, AVENATTI led Victim-1 to believe that Victim-1’s publisher was refusing to make the payment to the literary agent, when, as AVENATTI knew, the publisher had made the payment to the literary agent, who had then sent the money to AVENATTI pursuant to AVENATTI’s fraudulent instructions.
These charges are separate from the additional indictment relating to attempting to extort Nike.
Comment →There has been a bit of a cottage industry over which, if any, Republicans would be the first to breach the "I" word. Rep. Justin Amash appears to be your huckleberry, posting a tweet thread about his conclusions of the Mueller Report:
You can read the whole thread here. In the meantime:
Rep. Justin Amash, a critic of President Trump who entertained a run against him in 2020, became the first Republican congressman to say the president “engaged in impeachable conduct.”
The Michigan lawmaker, often the lone Trump dissenter on his side of the aisle, shared his conclusions in a lengthy Twitter thread after reviewing the full special counsel report.
Amash wrote that after reading the 448-page report, he’d concluded that not only did Robert S. Mueller’s team show Trump attempting to obstruct justice, but that Attorney General William Barr had “deliberately misrepresented” the findings and that few members of Congress had even read it.
“Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” Amash wrote.The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The president often says the report found “no collusion, no obstruction,” though neither is true. Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, which did interfere in the 2016 election. He did not rule on the obstruction of justice question, saying it was something Congress should determine.
So, let's back up to March right quick before processing today's tweeting. Rep. Amash was chatting with Jake Tapper on State of the Union:
Amash, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, declined on Sunday to rule out a possible 2020 presidential run as a Libertarian candidate.
"Well, I would never rule anything out. That's not on my radar right now," he said of a 2020 bid to Tapper. "But I think that it is important that we have someone in there who is presenting a vision for America that is different from what these two parties are presenting."
Amash told Tapper he believes there is a "wild amount of partisan rhetoric on both sides" and that "Congress is totally broken."
"I think that we need to return to basic American principles, talk about what we have in common as a people -- because I believe we have a lot in common as Americans -- and try to move forward together, rather than fighting each other all the time," Amash said.
Question remains, is Justin Amash going to join any Democrat effort to curtail the president, or is he using this as prelude to something else -- such as his own run for the White House? Drama.
Comment →Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is a Game of Thrones fan, and her favorite character is, perhaps unsurprisingly, Daenerys “Stormborn” Targaryen, who Warren says, “has been my favorite from the first moment she walked through fire.” We learned this in a column Warren wrote for The Cut published Sunday evening.
In the piece, Warren outlines her reasons for her fandom. Daenerys is fair, she fights for the people, and she wants to end slavery. But in talking about Daenerys, Warren can also, subtly, talk about herself. Like the paragraph below, in which she describes the Dragon Queen—or is she describing herself?
“This is a revolutionary idea, in Westeros or anywhere else. A queen who declares that she doesn’t serve the interests of the rich and powerful? A ruler who doesn’t want to control the political system but to break the system as it is known? It’s no wonder that the people she meets in Westeros are skeptical. Skeptical, because they’ve seen another kind of woman on the Iron Throne: the villain we love to hate, Queen Cersei of Casterly Rock.”
(Featured image: Samwell Tarly looks skeptically at Jon Snow. Screenshot from Game of Thrones.)
Comment →Our own Michele Kerr made an appearance with Glenn Loury on The Glenn Show, talking about teaching, education, race, and student discipline:
This conversation follows a previous one between Loury and Mary Hudson, who wrote a piece for Quillette on the state of our public schools.
Comment →It Really is All About the Money
May 25, 2019
The Days of Real Sport: Follow The Leader
May 25, 2019
Saturday Morning Gaming: Mutant Year Zero
May 25, 2019
May 24, 2019
A Grand and Glorious Feeling: The Lift
May 24, 2019
Weekend Plans Post: High School Graduations
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019
Elizabeth Warren’s Bold Play on Student Loan Debt
April 30, 2019
The Internet Needs a Town Square
May 9, 2019
May 14, 2019
May 10, 2019
Confronting the Radicalism of Young Men Online
April 29, 2019
The Big Dog Or The Biggest Choke
May 16, 2019
There’s Something About Mary Sue
May 7, 2019
Virtue Signaling the Civil War
May 3, 2019
May 23, 2019
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'ld jump the life to come. But [...]