Franco Zeffirelli, Director of Theater, Opera and Film, Dies at 96

June 15, 2019

Franco Zeffirelli, the stylish and sometimes controversial theater, opera and film director, has died. He was 96. Zeffirelli, who was Oscar-nominated for his 1968 version of “Romeo and Juliet,” died at his home in Rome at noon on Saturday, his son Luciano told the Associated Press. “He had suffered for a while, but he left […]

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CEO Of Startup Company Turvo Fired For Expensing $76,120 At Strip Clubs

15 December 2019

CEO Of Startup Company Turvo Fired For Expensing $76,120 At Strip Clubs

Paging Lou Pai...

Though likely not on Lou's spending level, the former CEO of startup Turvo Inc., found out the hard way that expensing nearly $80,000 in company funds at a strip club is apparently not OK with the company's board of directors.

As a result, Scott Lang, the company's new CEO, aims to stress the company's new policy: employees are not allowed to entertain clients at strip clubs, according to Bloomberg.

Former CEO Eric Gilmore has been accused by the company's Board of expensing $76,120 at strip clubs over the course of a 3 year span. The Board removed him as CEO in May. Gilmore didn't deny the allegations, but instead turned around and sued the Board of Directors, claiming they didn't follow proper protocol for his termination. Turvo disputes this, saying they settled in September and that all the proper steps were taken.

Lang is a former executive from the energy industry who joined Turvo just before Thanksgiving. The startup, based in Silicon Valley, makes software to help companies track the movement of freight and is backed by about $85 million in Venture Capital. In his first interview as CEO, Lang said he is trying to help the company move past the scandal and, when asked about whether or not he tries to win over clients at strip clubs, he responded: “Never have. Never will.”

The Board's quick reaction at Turvo shows that more and more companies are quietly addressing allegations of misconduct before they become public. The #MeToo movement has already claimed the jobs of many technology executives, like Kris Duggan of Betterworks Systems, and has cost Ken Fisher's firms billions of dollars in assets managed.

Gilmore started the company in 2014 and was a veteran of Microsoft and Coupons.com. Mubadala Investment Co., the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund, led investors with a $60 million injection into the company last year. Soon after, Gilmore hired a new CFO, who discovered the pattern of "unusual charges" from the CEO.

The strip club related expenses spanned most of the company's life and Gilmore made "no effort to conceal them", according to Bloomberg. More than $125,000 in entertainment charges were flagged by the new CFO during a review of corporate spending: more than half of them were from strip clubs.

In May, after the board found out, Directors for Mubadala and VC firms Felicis Ventures and Activant Capital, told Gilmore that his time as CEO was over and demanded he sign a separation agreement. Gilmore declined and argued the process violated the company's bylaws because the confrontation wasn't at first presented as a formal board meeting. The board disagreed and Gilmore's lawsuit over the dispute lasted 3 months before settling.

Gilmore remains on the Board and is the company's largest shareholder. His two co-founders also still hold executive roles at the company.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 23:00 Tags Business Finance

Thousands Of Strange "Penis Fish" Wash Ashore On California Beach

15 December 2019

Thousands Of Strange "Penis Fish" Wash Ashore On California Beach

Authored by John Vibes via TheMindUnleashed.com,

Morning visitors to Drakes Beach in Northern California last week witnessed thousands of strange 10-inch phallic fish washed up on the shore.

The strange creatures are known as “fat innkeeper worms,” and they have been spotted on other nearby beaches in California in the past. They usually wash up on beaches after storms, similar to the storms seen around Drakes beach last week.

Scientists call this creature Urechis caupo and it is classified as a type of spoonworm. The picture below was taken on a different occasion earlier this year, when fat innkeepers washed up on Bodega Bay back in June.

This photo illustrates why the fat innkeeper is sometimes casually known as a “penis fish.”

Photo by Kate Montana, iNaturalist Creative Commons

At Drakes Beach last week, thousands of these things washed up on the beach, making it entirely impossible to walk the beach without stepping on them.

The following images posted to Instagram were taken on December 6th, after the storm around Drakes Beach.

View this post on Instagram

SHOOK 😳 Thousands of these marine worms—called fat innkeeper worms, or “penis fish”—were found on Drake’s Beach last week! These phallic organisms are quite common along the West coast of North America, but they spend their whole lives in U-shaped burrows under the sand, so few beachgoers are aware of their existence. ⛈🌊 A recent storm in Northern California brought strong waves that washed away several feet of sand from the intertidal zone, leaving all these fat innkeeper worms exposed on the surface. 🏖 Next time you go to the beach, just think about the hundreds of 10-inch, pink sausages wiggling around just a few feet under the sand. 🙃 . . Get the full story in our new #AsktheNaturalist with @california_natural_history via link in bio! (📸: Beach photo courtesy David Ford; Worm photo by Kate Montana via iNaturalist)

A post shared by Bay Nature Magazine (@baynaturemagazine) on Dec 11, 2019 at 11:58am PST

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

Even when you don’t see them on the beach there is a very good chance that they are many feet below you, burrowed under the sand. During storms, the layers of sand that were once covering them are washed out to sea, leaving the innkeepers exposed to predators, including seagulls, sharks, stingrays, and other fish.

Some cultures also see the strange fish as a delicacy. In South Korea for example, the dish is known as “gaebul.”

View this post on Instagram

What’s the worst thing you’ve eaten? #Seafood #SpoonWorm #gaebul #Seoul #Korea #Noryangjin #market #yum #gross #weird #food #Yeouido #fishmarket #63building #skyfarm #delicacy

A post shared by Thor (@thorzuroff) on Nov 30, 2019 at 4:17pm PST

//www.instagram.com/embed.js

Of course, the strange phallic appearance of the fat innkeeper seems to attract far more attention than the many other sea creatures that wash up onshore throughout the year.

Researchers estimate that an individual fat innkeeper can live for up to 25 years if they manage to avoid predators. As a species, fossil evidence shows that these creatures may have been around for over 300 million years.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 22:30 Tags Hospitality Recreation

New WikiLeaks Bombshell: 20 Inspectors Dissent From Syria Chemical Attack Narrative

15 December 2019

New WikiLeaks Bombshell: 20 Inspectors Dissent From Syria Chemical Attack Narrative

Late Saturday WikiLeaks released more documents which contradict the US narrative on Assad's use of chemical weapons, specifically related to the April 7, 2018 Douma incident, which resulted in a major US and allied tomahawk missile and air strike campaign on dozens of targets in Damascus.

The leaked documents, including internal emails of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) — which investigated the Douma site — reveal mass dissent within the UN-authorized chemical weapons watchdog organization's ranks over conclusions previously reached by the international body which pointed to Syrian government culpability. It's part of a growing avalanche of dissent memos and documents casting the West's push for war in Syria in doubt (which had resulted in two major US and allied attacks on Syria).

This newly released batch, WikiLeaks reports, includes a memo stating 20 inspectors feel that the officially released version of the OPCW's report on Douma “did not reflect the views of the team members that deployed to [Syria]”. This comes amid widespread allegations US officials brought immense pressure to bear on the organization.

RELEASE: Third batch of documents showing doctoring of facts in released version of OPCW chemical weapons report on Syria. Including a memo stating 20 inspectors feel released version “did not reflect the views of the team members that deployed to [Syria]”https://t.co/ndK4sRikNk

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 15, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The Daily Mail's Peter Hitchens, who saw the leaked documents just prior to WikiLeaks going public with them had this to say:

Sources stress that the scientists involved are ‘non-political, utterly uninterested in any strategic implications of what they reveal’.

They just ‘feel that the OPCW has a duty to be true to its own science, and not to be influenced by political considerations as they fear it has been’.

An internal memo seen by The Mail on Sunday suggests that as many 20 OPCW staff have expressed private doubts about the suppression of information or the manipulation of evidence.

This suppression of information included key evidence which undermined claims Syrian military helicopters dropped a gas cylinder from the air, which had long been the linchpin in Washington's accusation that "Assad gassed his own people" at Douma.

Like waking up from a long nightmare that almost led to WWIII: "The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a senior official at the @OPCW demanded the ‘removal of all traces’ of a document which undermined claims that gas cylinders had been dropped from the air.."https://t.co/MvMwX1xrEr

— Ian Wilkie (@Wilkmaster) December 14, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The leaks also suggest the OPCW possessed scientifically credible evidence showing the victims of the alleged attack had symptoms not consistent with chemical gas exposure (prior OPCW statements pointed to chlorine use), casting further doubt on that aspect of the investigation.

OPCW memo raising concerns: pic.twitter.com/UHFJbm0iDQ

— Koen (@KoenSwinkels) December 15, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

But perhaps the most important leak in the new trove of emails centers on a raging debate among scientists over whether to include in their report the phrase "chlorine containing compounds were detected" and how to qualify it — given it was found only in such trace amounts as to be consistent with common household levels of chlorine-related items.

That final report claimed there were ‘reasonable grounds’ that chlorine gas was used in Douma, but an OPCW whistleblower says only tiny quantities of chlorine were detected in forms possible to find in any household. — Daily Mail

OPCW inspector tries to argue to FFM team leader Sami Barrek that the low levels of chlorinated organic chemicals need to be reported to avoid misrepresentation and confusion. Barrek says he'll unilaterally overrule the inspectors and omit the information.https://t.co/nPZtMbakAF pic.twitter.com/norATrlc7l

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) December 15, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

This crucial document (among others), which expresses concern that the media would wrongly assume a "chlorine attack" based on common household trace levels is found in the following memo:

And here's another example:

Another stunning OPCW admission heretofore unreleased to the public:

Hitchens continues commenting on the trove of leaked documents as follows:

Alleged casualties shown in videos of the attack were foaming at the mouth in a way that might be expected of victims of sarin, but not by victims of chlorine. Yet all the reports agree that no traces of sarin were found at Douma.

These doubts were confirmed by expert toxicologists consulted by the OPCW investigation team on a visit to Germany in June 2018.

They concluded ‘there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure’.

In a key passage it adds ‘the team considered two possible explanations for the incongruity.

‘A) The victims were exposed to another highly toxic chemical agent that gave rise to the symptoms observed and has so far gone undetected.

‘B) The fatalities resulted from a non-chemical-related incident.’ In other words, either the victims died from an unknown, undetected gas for which no evidence exists or there never was a chemical attack.

These severe doubts which were expressed internally among scientists, analysts, and technicians were never made public by the OPCW, hence the new leaks, apparently facilitated by frustrated staff who want to make the case to the world about the significant doubts.

Chemical weapons experts taking samples from a prior alleged chemical weapons attack site in Syria, via Reuters.

* * *

14 December, 2019

Today WikiLeaks releases more documents showing internal disagreement within the OPCW about how facts were misrepresented in a redacted version of a report on an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.

Amongst these is a memorandum written in protest by one of the scientists sent on a fact finding mission (FFM) to investigate the attack. It is dated 14 March 2019 and is addressed to Fernando Arias, Director General of the organisation. This was exactly two weeks after the organisation published its final report on the Douma investigation.

WikiLeaks is also releasing the original preliminary report for the first time along with the redacted version (that was released by the OPCW) for comparison. Additionally, we are publishing a detailed comparison of the original interim report with the redacted interim report and the final report along with relevant comments from a member of the original fact finding mission. These documents should help clarify the series of changes that the report went through, which skewed the facts and introduced bias according to statements made by the members of the FFM.

The aforementioned memo states that around 20 inspectors have expressed concerns over the final FFM report, which they feel “did not reflect the views of the team members that deployed to Douma”. Only one member of the fact finding team that went to Douma, a paramedic, is said to have contributed to the final version of the report. Apart from that one person, an entirely new team was gathered to assemble the final report, referred to as the “FFM core team”...

* * *

Read the full WikiLeaks press release

See the new batch of leaked documents

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 22:00

Why Is The System Rigged?

15 December 2019

Why Is The System Rigged?

Authored by Bruce Yandle via The American Institute for Economic research,

It’s crazy season, that special time on the American calendar when aspiring candidates for the nation’s highest office try to outdo each other in an effort to attract more voters to their platforms.

This time around, background support is provided by a virtual anvil chorus of anti-capitalism clatter. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, frequently unleashes criticism of American capitalism by asserting that the “system is rigged,” a complaint that seems to resonate with meaningful populist appeal. It’s an old refrain that has echoed across the years from Karl Marx onward.

Nobel Laureate Robert J. Shiller explains why this may be the case in his new book, “Narrative Economics.” As Shiller points out, when a story is repeated enough, the viral message may be accepted as conventional wisdom, more like an article of belief than a matter of reason.

I’ll also emphasize that for a message to prevail, it helps if its content rests on a preexisting and inherently moral foundation that reflects our tribal instincts as an evolved human species. And what works for a small tribe doesn’t necessarily work so well for a huge industrialized nation.

Consider this: Some may inquire, “Do you believe in capitalism?” almost as if the position one takes is a matter of religion. When answering, we reflect on our tribal preferences, and cooperating and sharing with our family and neighbors is often a key to success. Thus, many people will almost instinctively answer “no,” or at least “yes, but …” followed by some serious caveats and exceptions.

Yes, the beneficial-but-invisible hand of commerce driven by self-interest has never been an instinctually lovable idea. Gains from trade, while well-documented since the days of Adam Smith, can be more elusive than we may first realize. Given the widespread negative views on the subject, politicians’ calls for greater accountability and government intervention may not be welcomed by all, but they’re understandable.

Shiller adds another dimension to his narrative economics story by using data from Google’s Ngram Viewer. The viewer produces charts based on the frequency of particular words and phrases in Google Books, which include some 8 million downloaded volumes in various languages.

Consider an Ngram we might apply to Senator Warren’s comments. The nearby figure contains one for “system is rigged” that shows the frequency of the phrase’s occurrence from 1940 through 2008, the final year in the database. I have smoothed the data by using a three-year running average:

The data show four viral periods: 1940-1950, 1960-1985, 1990-1998, and 2000-2008.

The first period encompasses World War II, a time of draft, rationing, price controls, defense contracting, and related cronyism that may in some cases have been highly profitable for hand-picked firms.

The second viral period is much longer and encompasses a period including the Vietnam War and related draft, Watergate and significant social unrest.

The third period includes the first Iraq war,

and the fourth contains anti-capitalism protests and budding expressions of concern about income inequality as a version of the economy closer to what we know today took shape.

The Ngram suggests that in seeking to communicate to her base, Senator Warren artfully chose a phrase that had gone viral before—which is to suggest that there may be an embedded tribal norm that reacts during periods when a relatively small number of people are able to build large fortunes or avoid burdens, such as the draft, as a result of government actions and favors.

Oddly enough, Senator Warren and other capitalism critics seldom ask how the system got rigged and what might be done to undo the rigging. But of course, the rigging is done in Washington, sometimes when special interest groups—including corporations—lobby congress for favorable treatment.

And how might that be undone? By trimming away uneven regulation and adopting policies that expose all business firms to the refreshing winds of competition. Put another way, by forcing capitalists to act like capitalists and not lobbyists.

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 21:30

"You Backing The Russians, Boy?" - Illinois Man Charged With Threatening To Murder GOP Congressman

15 December 2019

"You Backing The Russians, Boy?" - Illinois Man Charged With Threatening To Murder GOP Congressman

It would appear all the escalating rhetoric from a month of impeachment hearings - including one Democratic congressman asking fellow lawmakers to imagine the teenage daughter of Ukraine’s president tied up in Trump’s basement - have sparked more than just verbal assaults on Republicans (just as Maxine Waters would had suggested previously).

The Hill reports that a man in Illinois has been charged after allegedly threatening to shoot Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and accusing the congressman of "backing the Russians."

Rodney Lee Davis

64-year-old Randall Tar of Rochester, Ill. was charged with communicating threats to injure a person and threatening to assault, kidnap or murder a federal official, according to court documents released this week (full release below).

Contacted at his home Thursday, Tarr said he saw a television ad in which Davis, a Republican from Taylorville, claimed that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, and it angered him enough to call.

Prosecutors say Tarr called Davis's district office last month and left a profanity-filled voicemail, saying:

"I just saw you ... on the TV. You backing the Russians, boy?"

"Stupid son of a bitch, you're gonna go against our military and back the Russians?" he allegedly added.

"I'm a sharpshooter. ... I'd like to shoot your f---ing head off you stupid motherf---er."

Tarrlater reportedly told The Associated Press:

“I screwed up,” Tarr said.

“I don’t even have a weapon to do it, is the silliest thing.”

“I wish I could just take it all back and just say he’s a lousy (expletive) for backing the Russian theory.”

Of course, the only problem with all this is that the Democrats' constant spewing of the narrative that Ukraine did not 'meddle' in the 2016 election is entirely false.

So did Democrats' lies cause an unstable person to threaten a Congressman?

* * *

Full Affadvit below:

Tyler Durden Sat, 12/14/2019 - 21:00 Tags Politics Law Crime

Strictly's Anton Du Beke 'sparks speculation he may quit the show after vowing to leave on a high'

15 December 2019

A source has claimed that the British dancer, 53, met with BBC bosses amid claims he wants to leave the show 'on a high' after reaching the final with EastEnders star Emma Barton.

Forty Kangaroo carcasses found dead at a holiday hotspot raising fears a psychopath is on the loose

15 December 2019

Dozens of mangled kangaroo carcasses have turned up rotting in a field after being shot, decapitated and disemboweled, sparking fears a psychopath is to blame.

Strictly Come Dancing 2019 final: Taylor Swift stuns in a gold ensemble during performance

15 December 2019

The show kicked off its 2019 final in spectacular fashion on Saturday night, with Taylor Swift taking to the stage to perform.

Downing Street boycotts Radio 4's Today programme in a bust-up over election bias

15 December 2019

Downing Street has boycotted the BBC's flagship news programme amid ongoing rows over the Corporation's Election coverage and questions over the future of the licence fee.

Actress Carey Mulligan's grandfather was just inches from death in Japanese suicide pilot

15 December 2019

Actress Carey Mulligan knew nothing about it - until this gripping part of her own family history was revealed to her by Channel 4 series My Grandparents' War.