Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 8:53 a.m. No.16106140   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6144 >>6147 >>6158 >>6185 >>6349 >>6722

>>16106101

muh slime machine.

sensing a theme.

they don't want libsoftiktok to show libs being libs

They don't want American Accountability Project to expose pro pedos being pro pedos, ie libs being libs.

They hate the light being shined on them.

Just hate it.

 

> https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-slime-machine-targeting-dozens-of-biden-nominees

 

The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees

In an escalation of partisan warfare, a little-known dark-money group is trying to thwart the President’s entire slate.

 

By Jane Mayer

April 16, 2022

Illustration of Ketanji Brown Jackson being inundated by dark money slime

The American Accountability Foundation has undermined the likes of Ketanji Brown Jackson, but it’s also gone after relatively obscure political appointees whose public profiles can be easily distorted.

 

During the autos-da-fé that now pass for Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, it’s common for supporters of a nominee to dismiss attacks from the opposing party as mere partisanship. But, during the recent hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, Andrew C. McCarthy—a Republican former federal prosecutor and a prominent legal commentator at National Review—took the unusual step of denouncing an attack from his own side. When Republican senators, including Josh Hawley and Marsha Blackburn, began accusing Jackson of having been a dangerously lenient judge toward sex offenders, McCarthy wrote a column calling the charge “meritless to the point of demagoguery.” He didn’t like Jackson’s judicial philosophy, but “the implication that she has a soft spot for ‘sex offenders’ who ‘prey on children’ . . . is a smear.”

 

In the end, the attacks failed to diminish public support for Jackson, and her poised responses to questioning helped secure her nomination, by a vote of53–47.But the fierce campaign against her was concerning, in part because it was spearheaded by a new conservative dark-money group that was created in 2020: the American Accountability Foundation. An explicit purpose of the A.A.F.—'a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees.

 

While the hearings were taking place, the A.A.F. publicly took credit for uncovering a note in the Harvard Law Review in which, they claimed, Jackson had “argued that America’s judicial system is too hard on sexual offenders.” The group also tweeted that she had a “soft-on-sex-offender” record during her eight years as a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. As the Washington Post and other outlets stated, Jackson’s sentencing history on such cases was well within the judicial mainstream, and in line with a half-dozen judges appointed by the Trump Administration. When Jackson defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.”

 

Mudslinging is hardly new to American politics. In 1800, a campaign surrogate for Thomas Jefferson called Jefferson’s opponent, John Adams, “hermaphroditical”; Adams’s supporters predicted that if Jefferson were elected President he would unleash a reign of “murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest.” Neither the Democratic nor Republican Party is above reproach when it comes to engaging in calumny, and since at least 1987, when President Ronald Reagan unsuccessfully nominated Robert Bork to be a Justice, the fights over Supreme Court nominees have been especially nasty. Yet the A.A.F.’s approach represents a new escalation in partisan warfare, and underscores the growing role that secret spending has played in deepening the polarization in Washington.

Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 8:57 a.m. No.16106158   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6185 >>6299

>>16106140

 

Rather than attack a single candidate or nominee, the A.A.F. aims to thwart the entire Biden slate. The obstructionism, like the Republican blockade of Biden’s legislative agenda in Congress, is the end in itself. The group hosts a Web site,bidennoms.com, that displays the photographs of Administration nominees it has targeted, as though they were hunting trophies. And the A.A.F. hasn’t just undermined nominees for Cabinet and Court seats—the kinds of prominent people whose records are usually well known and well defended. It’s also gone after relatively obscure, sub-Cabinet-level political appointees, whose public profiles can be easily distorted and who have little entrenched support. The A.A.F., which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color. As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women

 

Among the nominees the group boasts of having successfully derailed are Saule Omarova, a nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, whom Biden named to be the vice-chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board. David Chipman, whom the President wanted to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and David Weil, Biden’s choice for the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor, both saw their nominations founder in the wake of A.A.F. attacks. Currently, the group is waging a negative campaign against Lisa Cook, who, if confirmed, would become the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

 

Tom Jones, the A.A.F.’s founder and executive director, is a longtime Beltway operative specializing in opposition research. Records show that over the years he has worked for several of the most conservative Republicans to have served in the Senate, including Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin; Ted Cruz, of Texas; Jim DeMint, of South Carolina; and John Ensign, of Nevada, for whom Jones was briefly a legislative director. In 2016, Jones ran the opposition-research effort for Cruz’s failed Presidential campaign. When I asked Jones for an interview, through the A.A.F.’s online portal, he replied, “Ms. Meyers . . . Go pound sand.” Citing an article that I had written debunking attacks on Bloom Raskin from moneyed interests, including the A.A.F., he said, “You are a liberal hack masquerading as an investigative journalist—and not a very good one.” Jones subsequently posted this comment on his group’s Twitter account, along with my e-mail address and cell-phone number.

Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 9:56 a.m. No.16106540   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6547 >>6610 >>6665 >>6815

>>16106299

Ok, Groomer

 

How The New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz gets teenagersto talk about their digital habits

March 24, 2020 | By Kayleigh Barber

 

The moment that the New York Times’s technology reporter Taylor Lorenz’s alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m., she is on the internet trying to get caught up on the latest in internet culture and memes. When she’s not traveling to Los Angeles or Atlanta to make human connections with her sources, she spends her 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. days in the office oscillating between interviewing teenagers or writing viral features of the famous figures on the internet.

 

This is how Lorenz unearths and writes her must-read stories on digital culture.

 

On the challenges of covering internet culture…

“The biggest, most challenging thing about my job is getting teenagers to talk to me on the phone and getting them to let you into their house and follow them around. To have a photographer come is overwhelming; a lot of kids don’t want anything to do with it, especially if their parents aren’t fully aware of what they are doing. I really do not call myself a teen reporter, mostly because most of the stuff that I write about has nothing to do with teenagers. I’ve been writing about this stuff for a long time and only in the past two years did people associate my beat with teenagers. Before my beat was always associated with millennials.”

 

On developing sources…

“I have written about that stuff and treated people who make a living off the internet as very valid from the beginning, which most people in mainstream media weren’t doing back in 2012 and 2013.

 

I don’t really use email. My Instagram DMs is the first [thing I check] in the morning. It’s just like email to me. It’s my main inbox. My DMs are open on every platform and I try to respond to everyone. I want them to know I’m not some reporter up in an ivory tower. I’m on the internet with everyone else and I want to hear from everyone. The internet is basically run by teenagers. If you’re on there enough, you end up coming into contact with them.

 

I comment on every single TikTok on the “For You” page, like ‘oh cool’ or ‘lol’ just to get the conversation going because that’s how you meet people. Part of it helps being a woman, to be honest. I think it’s much easier for me to slide into these people’s DMs in a non-threatening way than from a male journalist in his 30s kind of DMing random teen girls. So I definitely use that to my advantage. I never talk to teenagers like I’m trying to be a teenager. I want them to know that I am a journalist even though I want them to feel casual enough that they could message me at any time.”

 

On traveling for stories…

“It feels in my heart that I’m traveling like half the time but probably that’s not true. It’s probably around 30%. I try to avoid traveling but the thing is, stories are so much better if you can go there. A travel day is basically a wash. I can’t write unless I’m in a zone and I can’t get in that kind of a zone if I’ve been in an airplane that day. I cannot work in an airplane. I’m terrified of flying and I can’t ever relax.”

 

On her social media usage…

“Pretty much from the moment I wake up to the morning I go to sleep I’m on my phone in some capacity. The times that I don’t check the internet is when I’m writing because it’s distracting.

Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 9:57 a.m. No.16106547   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6601

>>16106540

I post [on TikTok]. I have like 150,000 followers now [editor’s note: She has 292,000 followers]. I always try to be active on everything because the thing is, if you DM someone and you have a completely empty profile, you look like a weirdo or a scammer. And also you want to understand the platform enough as a user that you have to be a poster, not just a lurker. It’s a way to engage with your community.”

 

On unwinding and self care…

“I watch a horror movie almost every night. It’s the only thing I can watch. I’m obsessed with horror movies and if I didn’t work in media, I would try to work for Blumhouse Productions — maybe I still will work there at some point in like 10 years if I’m not a reporter anymore.

 

I read something on Vice about why some people love horror movies and it was saying something about if you have a lot of anxiety, it’s a channel for that anxiety and that kind of made me think that that could be true. I have an insane level of anxiety so I think that I can only watch horror because it’s the only thing that can keep my attention and keep me less stressed.

 

It is incredibly mentally taxing to deal with harassment and it’s something that I deal with a lot online. I know that journalists are technically public figures, but I take every mean comment so personally. Some days I’m so depressed about some comment on the internet that I can’t work.

 

That’s just a fact of being a reporter on the internet these days. I don’t even cover a controversial beat but if PewDiePie makes a video about you and suddenly you have all these people harassing you for days and it’s just a lot to deal with.”

 

https://digiday.com/media/dont-really-use-email-new-york-times-taylor-lorenz-works/

Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 10:04 a.m. No.16106601   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6609 >>6620

>>16106547

anyone know how to rip soundcloud?

 

Silicon Valley Elite Discuss Journalists Having Too Much Power in Private App

In leaked audio from an invite-only app, venture capitalists pondered everything they think is wrong with journalism.

 

During a conversation held Wednesday night on the invite-only Clubhouse app—an audio social network popular with venture capitalists and celebrities—entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, several Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalists, and, for some reason, television personality Roland Martin spent at least an hour talking about how journalists have too much power to "cancel" people and wondering what they, the titans of Silicon Valley, could do about it.

 

The call shows how Silicon Valley millionaires, who have been coddled by the press and lauded as innovators and disruptors, fundamentally misunderstand the role of journalism the moment it turns a critical eye to their industry. It also suggests they’re eager to find new ways to hit back at what they see as unfavorable and unfair press coverage.

 

Motherboard obtained a recording of the conversation, which took place on Clubhouse, an app which as of late May had just 1,500 users. The app was valued at $100 million after a reported $12 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, and requires an invite to join. In May, New York Times internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz wrote that the app is "where venture capitalists have gathered to mingle with one another while they are quarantined in their homes."

 

"Sometimes there is a tarot card reader critiquing a member’s Instagram account; sometimes it is a dating advice show; sometimes bored people sound off about anything that pops into their mind," she wrote.

 

On Wednesday night, the topic of conversation was Lorenz herself, who had been listening earlier in the conversation but left partway through. After she left, the participants began discussing whether Lorenz was playing "the woman card" when speaking out about her harassment following a Twitter altercation with Srinivasan.

 

"You can't fucking hit somebody, attack them and just say, 'Hey, I have ovaries and therefore, you can't fight back,'" Felicia Horowitz, founder of the Horowitz Family Foundation and wife of Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz, said.

 

In recent days Lorenz, who criticized luggage startup Away co-CEO Steph Korey on Twitter Wednesday, has been harassed and impersonated on Twitter.

 

On the call, Srinivasan suggested that Lorenz—who earlier in the day had accused him on Twitter of "constantly trying to destroy my career on the internet and in private"—was overreacting and that she was perhaps scared of him, and that this was why she left the conversation that night on Clubhouse.

 

"Is Taylor afraid of a brown man on the street?Then she shouldn't be afraid of a brown man in Clubhouse," Srinivasan said. "I have literally done nothing other than one previous tweet. Number one, right? So the whole, you know, talking about tweeting as you know, harassment—completely illegitimate, completely wrong, completely fabricated and just false."

 

The audio chat had spiraled wildly out of control from a broader conversation earlier in the call about the state of journalism and what VCs should do to receive better coverage. Srinivasan, formerly a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, claimed that "the entire tech press was complicit in covering up the threat of COVID-19," and claimed that relying on the press is "outsourcing your information supply chain to folks who are disaligned with you," comparable to the United States having outsourced its medical supply chain. He proposed that the approaches to truth and accountability offered by GitHub, venture capital funding, and cryptocurrency all offer better models for journalism than "the East Coast model of 'Respect my authori-tay.'"

Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 10:05 a.m. No.16106609   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6636

>>16106601

16:00. not sure who this bitch is

I'm ok with cancel culture

 

When asked for comment about the Clubhouse chat, Srinivasan screenshotted our request and tweeted about it.

 

"When it comes to our industry, there’s a really, really toxic dynamic that exists right now," Nait Jones, an Andreessen Horowitz VC, said on the call while speaking about recent reports about abuse in the tech industry. "Because those stories were so popular and drove so much traffic, they also created a market for more of those stories. They created a pressure on many reporters to find the next one of those stories inside of a fast growing tech company because those stories play very well on Twitter, especially around protecting vulnerable people."

 

(In 2020, the idea that fishing for “clicks” to drive ad revenue is a successful or even common business model is a fallacy. Publications that rely exclusively on advertising are failing at an astonishing rate; financially, many journalistic outlets are increasingly moving away from an ad-based revenue model driven by traffic, and instead focus on live events, subscriptions, optioning their articles to movie studios, and other models that rely on having a dedicated readership that trusts the publication).

 

The exclusive users of Clubhouse on the call seemed to conceive of themselves as humble citizens preyed upon by corrupted elites cravenly lusting after money and power; this reached a bizarre apogee when Srinivasan boasted of standing up for the CEO of a scandal-plagued luggage brand, depicting her as all but powerless because of her relatively low Twitter follower count. The conversation essentially resembled a Gamergate chat, with people obsessing over minute drama and, at times, suggesting that Lorenz had crossed a line on Twitter and must be punished.

 

"How can there be an accountability function that's implementable across all media that allows for that to happen, that pushback to happen without it being turned around and can become some toxic thing where all types of power dynamics are being used, and people have their weapons out," Jones said.

 

"Her employer should be saying, you cross the line with your editorial comments," Martin said, adding that "If I'm [Srinivasan], the argument that I would make to her bosses is you should be instructing your reporters not to be making editorial judgments about someone. Stick to reporting."

 

“Taylor is an excellent reporter doing incredibly relevant reporting for this moment. She, and all reporters, should be able to do their jobs without facing harassment,” Choire Sicha, editor of the NYTimes Styles desk, told Motherboard in an email.

 

Clubhouse founders Rothan Seth and Paul Davison didn't respond to a request for comment. Jones did not respond to a request for comment. Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment.

Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 10:09 a.m. No.16106636   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6663

>>16106609

The conversation was set off by a series of exhausting, insidery events from the last two weeks. Some in the Silicon Valley set turned their sights on the Times after Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist who ran the philosophy blog SlateStarCodex, deleted the entire blog because he said the Times was going to "dox" him by publishing his real name in an upcoming story. (It is worth noting that Alexander has republished SlateStarCodex blogs in books using his full name.) This event resurfaced an ongoing and tedious discussion among venture capitalist types about journalism ethics, business models, and publishing incentives.

 

Wednesday, Korey, the co-CEO of Away, a direct to consumer luggage brand that was the subject of an expose in The Verge last year, published a series of Instagram Story posts in which she suggested that she was unfairly targeted by The Verge in part because she is a woman. She also said that journalists should be easier to sue, and suggested that the main thing driving journalism is "clicks." The Verge story focused on a culture of abuse at Away under Korey's leadership; workers there said they were prevented from taking vacation, were banned from emailing each other, and worked extremely long hours.

 

“The incentive isn’t to report what’s happening,” Korey wrote. “It’s to write things that will be shared by people on social media. And several of these digital-only outlets have nearly nonexistent editorial standards (especially the click baity-y ones, you know who they are). Side note: I could write a whole separate essay about how defamation lawsuits should be easier to pursue now that misrepresentation is the business model of some of these outlets.” (In the aftermath of The Verge's story, Korey announced she’d hired the well-known defamation firm Clare Locke LLP, which has made a business out of getting unflattering stories stalled or killed.)

 

While Korey’s Instagram comments were a supposed critique of the journalism industry, they looked at times a lot more like a claim that The Verge story was unfair or inaccurate in ways she didn’t actually address.

 

After Korey posted her stories on Instagram, a number of journalists commented on them, including Lorenz, who tweeted "Steph Korey, the disgraced former CEO of Away luggage company, is ranting on IG stories about the media. Her posts are incoherent and it’s disappointing to see a woman who ran a luggage brand perpetuate falsehoods like this abt an industry she clearly has 0 understanding of."

 

Lorenz's tweet was immediately tweeted about by several Silicon Valley venture capitalists, most notably Srinivasan, who eventually made a seven-tweet thread in which he suggested Lorenz, and journalists like her, are "sociopaths."

Anonymous ID: 8ca7ce April 19, 2022, 10:13 a.m. No.16106663   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>6815

>>16106329

>Who the fuck is Taylor Lorenz?

 

>>16106636

fucking crybully

 

Balaji Srinivasan

@balajis

Taylor Lorenz:

 

  • Attacks a female CEO out of the blue

  • Made a factual error (@stephkorey

is still Away CEO!)

  • Violated NYT social media guidelines

  • Then omits her own attack & plays victim (http://archive.is/rU1Oa)

 

This is how it works. These "journalists" are sociopaths.

Image

2:14 PM · Jul 1, 2020·Twitter Web App

 

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1278391539471839232