Current Events. No debates! — Page 16

Paradise Papers: Apple’s secret tax bolthole revealed:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41889787

More on the Paradise Papers (including who has been benefiting and/or investing in the off-shore investments) - https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/paradise-papers

A wiki page on it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Papers

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/arts/television/louis-ck-sexual-misconduct.html

In 2002, a Chicago comedy duo, Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov, landed their big break: a chance to perform at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo. When Louis C.K. invited them to hang out in his hotel room for a nightcap after their late-night show, they did not think twice. The bars were closed and they wanted to celebrate. He was a comedian they admired. The women would be together. His intentions seemed collegial.

As soon as they sat down in his room, still wrapped in their winter jackets and hats, Louis C.K. asked if he could take out his penis, the women said.

They thought it was a joke and laughed it off. “And then he really did it,” Ms. Goodman said in an interview with The New York Times. “He proceeded to take all of his clothes off, and get completely naked, and started masturbating.”

Well, there’s more where that came from.

https://thehustle.co/facebook-nude-picture-filter

The “preemptive revenge porn defense” will be tested in Australia and 3 other countries for now, and to execute the idea, Facebook will be partnering with e-Safety, an Australian government agency focused on preventing digital abuse.

If a user thinks she might be a potential revenge porn target, she contacts e-Safety, which then instructs the user to upload any suggestive photos and/or videos she thinks might be used against her into Facebook Messenger.

Facebook claims it won’t store the images, but rather a “hash system” that would allow their algorithm to recognize similar pictures without holding them on their servers.

Turns out, before the image can be “hashed,” an actual human at Facebook has to look at it to make sure it “fits the definition of revenge porn.”

So, the solution to preventing complete strangers from seeing your nudes is… to send your nudes to a complete stranger.

Though well-intentioned, it seems like a bad move all around: instead of strengthening its algorithm to prevent such things from happening, Facebook is shifting responsibility to (and making things very uncomfortable for) the potential victim.

Holy shit. Another one.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-takei-accused-sexually-assaulting-model-1981-1056698

A former model and actor is accusing Star Trek icon George Takei of sexual assault in 1981. The accuser, Scott R. Brunton, who was 23 at the time of the alleged incident, claims that Takei took advantage of him when he was most vulnerable.

“This happened a long time ago, but I have never forgotten it,” Brunton tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “It is one of those stories you tell with a group of people when people are recounting bizarre instances in their lives, this always comes up. I have been telling it for years, but I am suddenly very nervous telling it.”

The two men went back to the actor’s condo for a drink the same night. “We have the drink and he asks if I would like another,” Brunton recalls. “And I said sure. So, I have the second one, and then all of a sudden, I begin feeling very disoriented and dizzy, and I thought I was going to pass out. I said I need to sit down and he said sit over here and he had the giant yellow beanbag chair. So I sat down in that and leaned my head back and I must have passed out.”

“The next thing I remember I was coming to and he had my pants down around my ankles and he was groping my crotch and trying to get my underwear off and feeling me up at the same time, trying to get his hands down my underwear,” Brunton says. “I came to and said, ‘What are you doing?!’ I said, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ He goes, ‘You need to relax. I am just trying to make you comfortable. Get comfortable.’ And I said, ‘No. I don’t want to do this.’ And I pushed him off and he said, ‘OK, fine.’ And I said I am going to go and he said, ‘If you feel you must. You’re in no condition to drive.’ I said, ‘I don’t care I want to go.’ So I managed to get my pants up and compose myself and I was just shocked. I walked out and went to my car until I felt well enough to drive home, and that was that.”