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The horse replies I just found out that my husband and daughter were killed in the Manchester bombing."
On a lighter note, remember the bronze statue of the entitled millennial standing in the way of the bronze statue of economic growth?
Artist installs statue of urinating dog next to ‘Fearless Girl’ in protest POSTED 2:21 PM, MAY 30, 2017, BY ALIZA CHASAN
FINANCIAL DISTRICT, Manhattan — A sculptor showed people in New York exactly what he thinks of "Fearless Girl" with a statue of his own: a urinating dog.
Alex Gardega placed his urinating dog statue next to "Fearless Girl" on Monday. The girl's presence in front of "Charging Bull," he said, is like putting something in front of Michelangelo's "David."
"I'm bringing attention that the girl should not be invading the space of that bull," Gardega said. "It's not some artistic statement."
Gardega planned to leave his dog statue next to "Fearless Girl" but removed it after people began throwing and kicking the sculpture. He hasn't ruled out returning his statue to the area though.
The sculptor is a fan of "Charging Bull," a feature of the New York Stock Exchange since its installation after the 1987 stock market crash. It's stood since as a symbol of America's financial resilience.
It's creator, Arturo Di Modica, has called "Fearless Girl" an "advertising trick." Di Modica said the addition of the 4-foot tall girl staring down his own 11-foot bull infringes on is own artistic copyright by changing the creative dynamic of the bronze statue.
“Fearless Girl” was placed opposite the bull in March for International Women’s Day on a temporary permit. Women's groups have since rallied to keep her around for longer.
Gardega says he's actually pro-feminism, but that he believes "Fearless Girl" is just a display of corporate feminism. She was created by two corporate giants — State Street Global Advisors, the Boston-based investment giant, and McCann, its New York advertising firm.
"It's a promotion for an index fund," Gardega said. "It is not from a street artist who came and stuck it."
Di Modica is an artist who "came and stuck it." He installed the bronze bull without a permit in the middle of the night.
"That's a real artist," Gardega said. "That is punk rock. That is serious stuff."
Gardega spent about two hours creating his dog. He's since received an offer of several thousand dollars for it.
"But that's not the point," he said. "I'm standing behind the statement and not backing down."
Feeling insulted, Mexican to market 'Trump' toilet paper
Peter Orsi, Associated Press Published 3:54 p.m. MT May 31, 2017
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican businessman offended by President Donald Trump's insults to his countrymen is seizing on a possible oversight in the magnate's branding plans.
Corporate lawyer Antonio Battaglia is introducing "Trump" brand toilet paper, marketed under the slogans "Softness without borders" and "This is the wall that, yes, we will pay for."
Mexico's Institute of Industrial Property has granted Trump's company trademarks on his name in sectors such as construction, hotels, tourism, real estate and financial services. But the Trump Organization didn't bother to cover what's referred to in Spanish as "hygenic paper," and Battaglia's trademark for Trump toilet paper was approved in October 2015, according to the institute's records.
This illustration released by Antonio Battaglia shows toilet paper wrapped in mock-up packaging, featuring a cartoon image in the likeness of President Donald Trump, with the Spanish phrases "Softness without borders," center, "This supports migrants," top right, "Four pure rolls," bottom right, which is a play on words in Spanish that roughly translates as "Pure nonsense."
Packages are expected to begin rolling off production lines later this year, with 30 percent of the profits promised to programs supporting migrants.
Battaglia said he was "really bothered" when Trump launched his presidential bid by characterizing migrants who enter the U.S. illegally as criminals, drug runners and rapists.
"My thinking was: We can't keep quiet, right?" he said by telephone from the central Mexican city of Leon. "So with this insult that was made, (I figured) I'm going to add my grain of sand in response."
Battaglia said he has signed a contract to manufacture a small initial run worth about 400,000 pesos ($21,400), enough to fill two cargo trucks. He said he hopes to generate enough demand to expand production.
A mock-up package provided by Battaglia boasts it contains four "puros rollos" — a double-entendre that literally means "pure rolls" but can also be understood as "pure nonsense." It shows a grinning cartoon character giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up. It's not an exact likeness of Trump, but its swooping blond locks are a clear nod to the president's famous hairdo.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization did not respond to phone messages and emails seeking comment. But Trump has been aggressive about protecting his brand when he feels it is being encroached upon.
Battaglia argued he is well within Mexican law as the legal trademark-holder, with no direct link between his product and Donald Trump or his image.
Feeling insulted, Mexican to market 'Trump' toilet paper
Peter Orsi, Associated Press Published 3:54 p.m. MT May 31, 2017
MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican businessman offended by President Donald Trump's insults to his countrymen is seizing on a possible oversight in the magnate's branding plans.
Corporate lawyer Antonio Battaglia is introducing "Trump" brand toilet paper, marketed under the slogans "Softness without borders" and "This is the wall that, yes, we will pay for."
Mexico's Institute of Industrial Property has granted Trump's company trademarks on his name in sectors such as construction, hotels, tourism, real estate and financial services. But the Trump Organization didn't bother to cover what's referred to in Spanish as "hygenic paper," and Battaglia's trademark for Trump toilet paper was approved in October 2015, according to the institute's records.
This illustration released by Antonio Battaglia shows toilet paper wrapped in mock-up packaging, featuring a cartoon image in the likeness of President Donald Trump, with the Spanish phrases "Softness without borders," center, "This supports migrants," top right, "Four pure rolls," bottom right, which is a play on words in Spanish that roughly translates as "Pure nonsense."
Packages are expected to begin rolling off production lines later this year, with 30 percent of the profits promised to programs supporting migrants.
Battaglia said he was "really bothered" when Trump launched his presidential bid by characterizing migrants who enter the U.S. illegally as criminals, drug runners and rapists.
"My thinking was: We can't keep quiet, right?" he said by telephone from the central Mexican city of Leon. "So with this insult that was made, (I figured) I'm going to add my grain of sand in response."
Battaglia said he has signed a contract to manufacture a small initial run worth about 400,000 pesos ($21,400), enough to fill two cargo trucks. He said he hopes to generate enough demand to expand production.
A mock-up package provided by Battaglia boasts it contains four "puros rollos" — a double-entendre that literally means "pure rolls" but can also be understood as "pure nonsense." It shows a grinning cartoon character giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up. It's not an exact likeness of Trump, but its swooping blond locks are a clear nod to the president's famous hairdo.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization did not respond to phone messages and emails seeking comment. But Trump has been aggressive about protecting his brand when he feels it is being encroached upon.
Battaglia argued he is well within Mexican law as the legal trademark-holder, with no direct link between his product and Donald Trump or his image.
While I doubt it'll be available on Amazon Prime anytime soon I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd love to wipe my *** with the image of our current president.
Spend your money much more wisely and buy a bolt-on bidet from Amazon. So much better than smearing everything around.
I've never used one of those bolt-on bidets, but as someone who spent quite a lot of time in the Caribbean as a child, where proper, installed bidets are still common, they are really quite nonpareil. Never quite understood why they never made it to the mainland US.
^ I can scarcely imagine how horrid a cold-water-only bidet must be.
In other news, certain parties within BLM are donning their tinfoil hats:
In Trump’s America, Black Lives Matter activists grow wary of their smartphones
By Craig Timberg June 1
OAKLAND, Calif. — As a longtime political activist, Malkia Cyril knows how smartphones helped fuel Black Lives Matter protests with outraged tweets and viral videos. But now Cyril is having second thoughts about her iPhone.
Is it a friend or a foe?
For all of the power of smartphones as organizing tools, the many streams of data they emit also are a boon to police wielding high-tech surveillance gear, allowing them to potentially track movements and communications that activists such as Cyril would rather keep private.
Such worries are driving a nationwide push by Cyril and other activists to train members of their movement in the tactics of digital defense — something they say is crucial with an aggressive new president who has displayed little sympathy for their causes.
Even as a leader in this drive, Cyril found herself startled one recent evening in a class called“Digital Security in the Era of Trump,” one of dozens of such sessions held since the November election. With the help of an app, she was able to see voluminous data recorded with the snapshot of a chocolate cupcake from an office birthday celebration earlier that day.
Among other information, the app showed Cyril’s exact location — marked by a giant red pin atop her downtown Oakland office — the moment she snapped the picture. It was the same information authorities could extract from the device or potentially even from the image itself if it were texted, emailed or posted on a social-media platform.
“That is crazy,” said Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice and a member of the Black Lives Matter network, as she shook her head at the eerie precision of the data, which even included her altitude. Had the picture been taken at a clandestine meeting of protest organizers rather than a birthday celebration, their cover could have been blown.
Such concerns have fueled the nationwide spread of sessions such as this one in a fluorescent-lit classroom in downtown Oakland, where political activists over four hours learned how to encrypt messages, browse the Web anonymously and guard against accidentally revealing their locations when they want to operate in secrecy.
Their fears go beyond the change in the White House. The Justice Department’s announcement in April that it would review police reform agreements reached during the Obama administration has heightened concerns that the federal government is sharply curtailing its oversight of state and local police forces. Many departments in recent years have expanded their capacity to track cellphones, collect massive troves of video and analyze social-media postings, yet these police forces often operate with fewer restrictions than those in effect at the federal level.
Federal officials have warned for years that the spread of encryption and other defensive measures increasingly is thwarting legal surveillance of crucial targets, such as terrorists, criminals and child pornographers, making it harder to solve cases and prevent crimes. Officials also have lamented the rioting and other violence that has accompanied some political protests sparked by police killings, saying that the potential for spontaneous criminal activity can justify the monitoring of some large gatherings, even when the leaders intend only peaceful political protest.
The perception among political activists that they are unfairly targeted has fueled a new wave of technical training intended to blunt what they consider government overreach that threatens their constitutional rights to free expression.
But it remains unclear whether such a big, diffuse movement born on social media — Black Lives Matter began as the Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 — can maintain its spontaneous energy while curbing the use of technologies that expose activists to government surveillance.
“Now that this massive infrastructure has been handed to the Republicans and Trump, people are freaking out,” said Chinyere Tutashinda, national organizer for the Center for Media Justice. “People have this big, scary thought in their heads, but they don’t know what they can do. What can the local cops do? What can the feds do?”
Suing over surveillance
Fear that authorities use digital tools to aggressively monitor political demonstrations began before President Trump’s election. Two activist groups, the Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights, sued the FBI and Department of Homeland Security in October to obtain records on the surveillance of Black Lives Matters protests and its leaders in recent years.
The lawsuit points to reported incidents in 11 cities, arguing that government monitoring of political protests with surveillance technology undermined free speech while serving to “chill valuable public debate about police violence, including the use of deadly force, criminal justice and racial inequities.”
Federal officials, the suit notes, used social-media tracking to monitor demonstrators after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, 2014. Baltimore County police used similar technology during the protests that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray from an injury he suffered while in police custody; the FBI also conducted overhead surveillance flights as those demonstrations were overtaken by rioting.
The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment for this article. The FBI issued a statement saying: “The FBI investigates activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security. Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity. As part of its work, the FBI uses a wide array of lawful investigative methods, each used only under appropriate circumstances, and always in accordance with applicable Attorney General’s Guidelines, the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, and the U.S. Constitution.”
Yet law enforcement officers faced with demonstrations in volatile political climates often struggle to assess when rioting or other violence might break out, said Ronald Hosko, a former assistant director of the FBI who is now president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, which raises money to defend officers accused of misconduct. Intelligence-gathering through digital and other tools allows authorities to evaluate threats and possible criminal activity, even when political leaders intend to lead peaceful, legal protests.
“That’s what law enforcement needs to be vigilant about, to find the way in,” Hosko said.
But activists recount a long history of authorities overstepping constitutional bounds because of fears of violence. Federal officials extensively surveilled the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, wiretapping the phones of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the movement.
Many activists say that, despite reforms, similar tactics continue. As recently as 2015, the Department of Homeland Security monitored a funk-music parade and an unrelated community parade in historically African American neighborhoods in the District, according to a report in the Intercept based on government records.
“The apparatus that has been handed over to Trump is something that has been around for 50, 60, 70 years,” said Cyril, whose mother was a member of the Black Panthers, a black nationalist group that once was the focus of intense FBI surveillance and disruption efforts.
The Center for Media Justice sponsored the class in Oakland and plans similar sessions in Detroit, Atlanta, Minneapolis and other cities in the coming months. Cyril considers the effort long overdue.
“Part of me is, ‘Why are we starting now?’ ” she said. “I’ve never felt safe.”
The fear of Trump
The simple answer is: Trump. Or rather, the fear of Trump.
Although he has at times expressed worry about government overreach — including his unsubstantiated allegation in March that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower during the presidential campaign — activists say they have little hope that the administration will move to curb its own capabilities. The president’s impassioned support of law enforcement, meanwhile, has convinced activists that he is not sympathetic to their concerns about questionable police shootings and other possible misconduct.
In August 2015, when Trump was a candidate for president, he was asked on “Meet the Press” about Black Lives Matter protests. Trump responded by invoking high crime rates in Baltimore and Chicago, saying, “We have to give strength and power back to the police. And you’re always going to have mistakes made. And you’re always going to have bad apples. But you can’t let that stop the fact that police have to regain some control of this tremendous crime wave and killing wave that’s happening in this country.”
Trump’s conservative Cabinet appointments, especially Jeff Sessions as attorney general, have deepened concerns, as has the Justice Department’s apparent moves to retreat from aggressive monitoring of state and local police departments — which political activists fear could embolden police departments to employ surveillance more aggressively.
Such worries run especially strong among African Americans, Latinos and other activists of color working to resist the administration’s initiatives on criminal justice, immigration and other issues.
Although laws and court precedents govern how and when surveillance tools are used, there remain broad legal gray areas as technology rapidly evolves. The Justice Department, for example, in 2015 began requiring that federal authorities get search warrants before using cellphone-tracking technology, a standard that requires demonstrating probable cause that a target has committed a crime. But the federal restrictions do not apply to state and local police forces, most of which have not adopted the standard.
As concerns have grown since the election, Equality Labs, a human rights group that works in the United States and South Asia, has led dozens of digital-security training sessions, including the one in Oakland. Other groups, meanwhile, have increased the frequency of “cryptoparties” that teach how to encrypt messages, hard drives and other digital essentials that are vulnerable to surveillance.
“It’s this moment when, all of the sudden, people are very worried and suspicious of the government,” said Matt Mitchell, an African American security researcher who founded the New York group CryptoHarlem. “They feel like using these tools will give them some semblance of freedom and autonomy and ability to speak.”
Better security, however, has always carried costs, because the most vulnerable technologies also tend to be the most widely available and easiest to use. Emails and text messages are vulnerable to interception and can open the door to hackers. Social-media postings create streams of data that law enforcement authorities can monitor using powerful analytical software. And cellphones, no matter how advanced or primitive, continuously transmit location data in ways that surveillance gear can collect.
The more secure alternatives often require new technical skills or extra precautions, such as using the heavily encrypted Tor browser for surfing the Web more safely — if somewhat more slowly — than is possible with Chrome or Internet Explorer.
Cyril acknowledged that the push for tighter security might dampen or discourage some activists who are reluctant to change familiar habits. “There is a tension, but not one that can’t be overcome.”
The lead trainer this evening, Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Equality Labs, compared the techniques she was teaching to “safe sex” campaigns stressing the use of condoms to block HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Such measures, while not perfect, help guard against persistent dangers, she said.
“You should never use the Internet without protection,” she said.
The horse replies "I just found out that my husband and daughter were killed in the London Bridge attack."
In other knooz:
The Single-Payer Party? Democrats Shift Left on Health Care By ALEXANDER BURNS and JENNIFER MEDINA JUNE 3, 2017
Allison Miller checking a patient’s blood pressure during free health screenings in Los Angeles in 2012. On Thursday, California’s State Senate approved a preliminary plan for enacting single-payer health care.
For years, Republicans savaged Democrats for supporting the Affordable Care Act, branding the law — with some rhetorical license — as a government takeover of health care.
Now, cast out of power in Washington and most state capitals, Democrats and activist leaders seeking political redemption have embraced an unlikely-seeming cause: an actual government takeover of health care.
At rallies and in town hall meetings, and in a collection of blue-state legislatures, liberal Democrats have pressed lawmakers, with growing impatience, to support the creation of a single-payer system, in which the state or federal government would supplant private health insurance with a program of public coverage. And in California on Thursday, the Democrat-controlled State Senate approved a preliminary plan for enacting single-payer system, the first serious attempt to do so there since then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, vetoed legislation in 2006 and 2008.
With Republicans in full control of the federal government, there is no prospect that Democrats can put in place a policy of government-guaranteed medicine on the national level in the near future. And fiscal and logistical obstacles may be insurmountable even in solidly liberal states like California and New York.
Yet as Democrats regroup from their 2016 defeat, leaders say the party has plainly shifted well to the left on the issue, setting the stage for a larger battle over the health care system in next year’s congressional elections and the 2020 presidential race. Their liberal base, emboldened by Senator Bernie Sanders’s forceful advocacy of government-backed health care last year, is increasingly unsatisfied with the Affordable Care Act and is demanding more drastic changes to the private health insurance system.
In a sign of shifting sympathies, most House Democrats have now endorsed a single-payer proposal. Party strategists say they expect that the 2020 presidential nominee will embrace a broader version of public health coverage than any Democratic standard-bearer has in decades.
RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association, powerful labor groups that back single-payer care, said the issue had reached a “boiling point” on the left.
Supporters of universal health care, including activists with Ms. DeMoro’s union, repeatedly interrupted speakers at the California Democratic Party’s convention in May, challenging party leaders to embrace socialized medicine. Demonstrators waving signs with single-payer slogans have become a regular feature at town hall meetings hosted by members of Congress.
“There is a cultural shift,” said Ms. DeMoro, who was a prominent backer of Mr. Sanders. “Health care is now seen as something everyone deserves. It’s like a national light went off.”
Representative Rick Nolan of Minnesota, a populist Democrat whose district voted for President Trump by a wide margin, said he had rarely seen core Democratic voters as enthusiastic about an issue as they were about single-payer health care. Mr. Nolan said he would support creating a state-level system in Minnesota, but believed the party’s goal should be a national law.
Representative Rick Nolan, Democrat of Minnesota, campaigning in Duluth, Minn., last year. He said he supported creating a single-payer system in his state but believed the party’s goal should be a national law.
He warned Democrats against being too cautious on health care or trusting that they could passively reap the benefits of Republican missteps, saying that his party needed a more boldly “aspirational” health care platform.
Rank-and-file Democrats, Mr. Nolan said, “are energized in a way I have not witnessed in a long, long time.”
At this point, state and federal single-payer proposals appear mainly to embody the sweeping ambitions of a frustrated party, rather than to map a clear way forward on policy. A handful of legislators in Democratic states — some positioning themselves to run for higher office — have proposed single-payer bills, including in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Only in California does the legislation appear to have at least a modest chance of being approved this year.
Even there, State Senator Ricardo Lara, an author of the bill, said his legislation would not clear the State Assembly without detailing how expanded coverage would be financed. The proposal currently lacks a complete funding plan.
The bill would mandate far more comprehensive access to health care, with no out-of-pocket costs, for all California residents at an estimated cost of $400 billion annually. Roughly half would come from existing public money spent on health care, but the rest would require new taxes. Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat who once campaigned for president supporting single-payer care, has questioned how the state can plausibly foot the bill.
Should California enact a single-payer law, it would still require a waiver from Washington to redirect federal funding to the state program — which might be difficult with Trump appointees running the Department of Health and Human Services.
But Mr. Lara said that Mr. Trump’s election, and subsequent Republican efforts to unwind the Affordable Care Act, had upended the conversation about health care among Democrats. He said he would have been unlikely to press for single-payer under a Democratic president.
“I no longer have the luxury of going step by step,” Mr. Lara said. “We need to do a single-payer or we’re going to be in a position where millions of people are going to lose coverage.”
There remains considerable skepticism among senior Democrats about a single-payer plan, and party strategists fear that proposing a potentially divisive health care agenda would offer Republicans a welcome diversion from their own tortured wrangling over the Affordable Care Act.
At a briefing with reporters last month, the House minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, replied with a flat “no” when asked if Democrats should make single-payer a central theme in 2018. She said state-level action was more appropriate, though she said she supported the idea in concept.
“The comfort level with the broader base of the American people is not there yet,” Ms. Pelosi said.
RoseAnn DeMoro, right, the executive director of National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association, in 2014. She said the issue, which her groups support, had reached a “boiling point” on the left.
In the past, top Democrats — including President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — have suggested more incremental approaches, proposing the creation of an optional government health plan that people could buy into or lowering the eligibility age for Medicare.
Democrats were unable to pass either of those measures into law the last time they controlled Congress and the White House, in 2010, because they failed to draw unanimous support from both liberal and centrist Democrats. Mr. Obama never tried to create a full single-payer system, and Mrs. Clinton described the idea as unachievable during the 2016 campaign.
A study published in January by the Pew Research Center found that about 40 percent of Democrats favored a single-payer system, including a slight majority of self-described liberal Democrats. Among all Americans, support was markedly lower: Just 28 percent said government should be the sole provider of care.
But a sizable majority — about three in five Americans — said the government had a responsibility to ensure everyone had health care. And the idea of single-payer health care has stirred interest among some business leaders, like Warren E. Buffett and Charles Munger, who see health care costs as a drag on the economy.
Karen Politz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation who has tracked the single-payer debate for years, said it would be difficult to persuade the country to move to an all-government health care system — a disruptive process that would likely lead to higher taxes in place of the premiums people now pay to insurance companies.
Even if most consumers paid less over all, as single-payer proponents claim, Ms. Politz said, morphing premiums into taxes would be culturally and politically challenging. “It does involve big government, and it’s kind of baked into the American psyche that we resist that,” she said.
Still, Democrats acknowledge that there is a palpable appetite on the left for comprehensive government health care. A number of the party’s potential 2020 presidential contenders, including Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, have signaled support for some version of universal government care, though neither Mr. Booker nor Ms. Harris has endorsed the single-payer proposal in his or her home state.
In the House, 112 of the 193 Democrats have co-sponsored a single-payer bill proposed by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan and called the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act.” Until recently, the bill had attracted a fraction of that support.
The Conyers proposal would effectively void the current private health insurance system and impose new taxes on wealthy people and on certain kinds of income to pay for benefits. In May, the bill won a symbolically telling endorsement from Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, the chairman of the Democratic caucus and a leading possible successor for Ms. Pelosi.
Mr. Crowley said his support for the bill was “part practical, part aspirational,” conceding that there was no immediate path to making it law.
Footage from London shows a man getting angry with another for his comments on Muslim terror as they both hide from the horrors of Muslim terror.
In the clip – reportedly from last night – patrons at an unidentified bar can be seen scrambling for cover at the behest of men who appear to be either police officers or security guards.
As the patrons hide behind chairs and under tables, a man can be heard clearly shouting, “******* MUSLIM *****.”
“Shut up mate,” responds a man close to the camera. “You ******* idiot. It’s not Muslims.”
Miro Poplawski I've noticed a lot of comments here on Facebook saying that not all Islam worshipers are the same. Yes, there are obviously some good people amongst the Muslims, just like there were probably some friendly and likeable ***** working as guards in the Death Camps.
Be careful about exercising free speech in forums which are only semi-private:
Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
By Samantha Schmidt June 5 at 4:32 AM
The Facebook messaging group was at one point titled “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens.”
It began when about 100 members of Harvard College’s incoming freshman class contacted each other through the university’s official Class of 2021 Facebook group. They created a messaging group where students could share memes about popular culture — a growing trend on the Internet among students at elite colleges.
But then, the exchanges took a dark turn, according to an article published in the Harvard Crimson on Sunday. Some of the group’s members decided to form an offshoot group in which students could share obscene, “R-rated” memes, a student told the Crimson. The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group.
The students in the spinoff group exchanged memes and images “mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children,” sometimes directing jokes at specific ethnic or racial groups, the Crimson reported. One message “called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child ‘pińata time’” while other messages quipped that “abusing children was sexually arousing,” according to images of the chat described by the Crimson.
Then, university officials caught on. And in mid-April, after administrators discovered the offensive, racially charged meme exchanges, at least 10 incoming students who participated in the chat received letters informing them that their offers of admission had been revoked.
In an email to The Washington Post Sunday night, Rachael Dane, a Harvard spokeswoman, said “we do not comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants.”
But according to the Harvard Crimson article, written by Harvard student Hannah Natanson, representatives from the admissions office emailed the implicated students asking them to reveal every picture they sent in the group.
“The Admissions Committee was disappointed to learn that several students in a private group chat for the Class of 2021 were sending messages that contained offensive messages and graphics,” read a copy of the Admissions Office’s email obtained by the Crimson. “As we understand you were among the members contributing such material to this chat, we are asking that you submit a statement by tomorrow at noon to explain your contributions and actions for discussion with the Admissions Committee.”
“It is unfortunate that I have to reach out about this situation,” the email continued.
According to Harvard college admissions policies, the university reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission if the admitted student “engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity or moral character,” among other conditions, Dane told The Post.
The Harvard College Class of 2021 official Facebook group — like similar groups for incoming students at other universities — allows admitted students to meet classmates, ask questions and prepare for their first semester. The group is managed by the Admissions and Financial Aid Office and states in its description it is “not responsible for any unofficial groups, chats, or the content within.”
“As a reminder, Harvard College reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission under various conditions including if an admitted student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character,” the group description states.
Cassandra Luca, an incoming student who joined the first meme group but not the second, told the Harvard Crimson the “dark” group chat was a “just-because-we-got-into-Harvard-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-have-fun kind of thing.” Luca’s admission offer was not revoked, she told the student newspaper.
This spring, 2,056 students were invited to join Harvard’s incoming freshman class, drawing from a record number of applications — 39,506, according to a university news release. Nearly 84 percent of the admitted students eventually chose to enroll at Harvard — the highest yield rate in several decades.
The university’s decision to rescind the students’ acceptance to Harvard underscores the dangers of social media posts — public or private — among prospective college students. According to Kaplan Test Prep, which surveyed more than 350 college admissions officers, 35 percent of admissions officers said they check social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to learn more about applicants. About 42 percent of those officials said what they found had a negative impact on prospective students.
“For better or worse, social media has become an established factor in college admissions, and it’s more important than ever for applicants to make wise decisions,” Yariv Alpher, executive director of research at Kaplan Test Prep said.
The repercussions spurred both praise and criticism from Harvard students, alumni and others at a time when university campuses across the country are in the midst of clashes over free speech. Some felt the decision was justified, while others expressed a belief that admissions officers crossed a line by judging students for their private conversations.
Erica Goldberg, an assistant professor at Ohio Northern Law School who calls herself a “free speech enthusiast,” wrote in a blog post that by “ferreting out” the members of the private chat group and revoking their acceptances Harvard “has proven that there is an oppressive force to transgress.”
Goldberg, who said she taught at Harvard Law School for three years, compared the dark humor used by the Harvard students to the popular “unabashedly irreverent” game Cards Against Humanity, “whose purpose is to be as cleverly offensive as possible.
“Even many good liberals love the game, precisely because the humor is so wrong, so contrary to our values,” Goldberg wrote. She called on Harvard to reconsider its decision.
“Harvard should not teach its students to be afraid to joke in private, among people willing to joke back,” Goldberg wrote. “Harvard should not teach students to turn on each other for speech.”
This was not the first time Harvard administrators addressed controversial messages exchanged among incoming students. Last year, after connecting on the university’s official Facebook page for the Class of 2020, incoming students joined a private unofficial chat on the GroupMe messaging app. In it, some students exchanged images that included racially charged jokes and at least one message that mocked feminists.
Though the exchanges prompted a controversy among members of that incoming class, administrators did not discipline the students who sent the messages, according to the Harvard Crimson. Thomas A. Dingman, then the interim dean of student life, said in an interview at the time that the individuals were “not matriculated students at this point.”
In recent months, college meme groups on Facebook have become institutions among Ivy League students; some even refer to the craze as “college meme wars.” The groups have been popping up at the campuses of Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Penn, Yale and Dartmouth, as well as the University of California Berkeley and others.
Students use the groups to share memes picking fun at college cliches, inside jokes and even standard student topics, such as textbook prices. Old-school college rivalries often play out in the groups, as Mic pointed on in a story titled “Inside the elite meme wars of America’s most exclusive colleges.”
These groups have become so popular that many now have more members than the schools have students. In early February, a Harvard freshman started a Facebook group titled “Harvard Memes for Elitist 1% Tweens,” modeling it after two similar university-based groups: “UCLA Memes for Sick AF Tweens” and “UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens,” according to an article in the Harvard Crimson magazine, Fifteen Minutes.
By early March, there were more members of the Harvard meme group than Harvard undergraduate students. The group now has nearly 30,000 members — including “pharmabro” Martin Shkreli, the former Turing Pharmaceuticals executive who became known as “Pharma Bro” after he dramatically boosted the price of a drug.
According to the Harvard meme Facebook group description, all memes must be Harvard-specific. “If the meme could apply to any group of wealthy, pretentious pseudo-intellectuals, at least Photoshop a Harvard logo in there somewhere,” the description states.
As the group’s popularity swelled, so did disputes and controversies that played out in exchanges between its members.
“Most of these fights fell in line with a discourse familiar to contemporary college campuses,” Tarpley Hitt wrote in the article in the student magazine, “with one side calling for increased moderation of posts which played into racial stereotypes or targeted marginalized groups, while the other championed freedom of expression.”
One participant in the Harvard meme group posted a link Sunday to the news about the obscene meme exchange.
“When the memes get too real,” the post read.
One Twitter user who shared the story surmised: “Are these the first casualties of the college meme wars?”
That we Hispanics (I don't like the term Latino) made such a great living at $8,000 a head! When there are 12 of us living in a house, that's like $100k a year household income! Movin' on up indeed!
Shifting into serious mode, this is actually kind of an interesting legal argument, and one for which I'm not aware of any precedent. How often does a Constitutional issue arise which is also a case of first impression? Twitter users blocked by Trump say he’s violating the First Amendment
Presupposing that the content was related to the operation or structure of the US Government, does the POTUS blocking a user from commenting on his own Twitter feed constitute an infringement of the 1st?
05-30-2017, 08:20 PM
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