Key lesson: check your Facebook privacy settings now. Don't allow anyone who is not already a friend to see your photos, your posts, your profile information, your location or your friend list. Lock it down so that all a stranger can see is your name and your profile photo. Then change your profile photo to something other than your face.
Also, of course, read the great Josephine Tey novel "The Franchise Affair".
WTF:
She's a Homewrecker lawyer David Gingras scoffed at that. "The fact that authors can't remove their own posts is intended to reduce the effectiveness of threats such as: 'Take this down or I'll sue your ass into bankruptcy,'" said Gingras by email. "Although the site's policy is not to allow authors to remove their own posts as a matter of course, the site will still consider removal requests from an author on a case-by-case basis....it really just depends on the circumstances. The site will also usually remove content that a court has found to be false."
Usually?
"It would make sense for Google to honor this particular injunction, though it likely would require some research by Google before they can confirm its legitimacy--research that Google really prefers not to do," said Goldman by email. A Google spokesperson said the company reviews all court orders requesting links be removed from search and prefers when parties resolve among themselves in court whether a page should be removed from search results.
What does it matter what you prefer? It's a court order. Either appeal it or comply.
Setting your Facebook to totally private seems like only partial protection because they went to her work site also. Plus, having to set your Facebook to private would prevent you from using it to sell real estate. Which is maybe a bit unseemly, but compared to other shit people use Facebook for seems harmless enough (until the next real estate crash).
5.1: true, but if they'd only had her work site to go by they wouldn't have been able to find the names of all her friends and send them the link to the libel. (Yes, this is a libel; knowingly or recklessly publicising a false and damaging statement about an individual.)
Isn't it technically against Facebook's ToS to use a personal page for commercial purposes?
I don't know, but my brother married a realtor and she's always putting houses on Facebook.
Looking at the article, I think the estate agency, ReMax, had a Facebook page (which is fine of course) and Hannah Lupian posted the libel on that. It doesn't say whether Glennon was using her own FB page for commercial purposes, but of course (I assume) she was FB connected to ReMax and to a lot of her commercial contacts, and had left her friends list open to view, and that's how Lupian found them. I suppose there's no way of stopping your employer putting your face on their Facebook page, but you don't then have to link that to your personal life.
And even if you do, then at least if your settings are locked down, all that Hannah Lupian can find out about you is your name, your face and your employer. Not your friends and family and business contacts.
7: yes. You can only have one personal page and you can't use it for commercial purposes. You can't, for example, have one Facebook page where you chat to your friends and family, and another where you chat to your work contacts. Though you can set up friend lists that do something very similar; if I wanted to, I could have a list of "work friends" who only ever see some of my posts, and a list of "family" who only ever see a completely different set of posts. But all your friends would be able to see each other. Still, that's not really a huge problem.
Here's the thing though. If crazy-retribution lady can't find you through the office page, how can people who want to sell their house?
Live your life as if every stranger who seeks you out is trying to destroy you is both wise and impossible if your job involves selling things to strangers.
11: she can find you through the office page, but all she'll get will be your name, your headshot and your employer. She won't be able to find out all your friends and family and business contacts because you've locked that down.
Looking at somebody's business contacts is a reasonable way to pick a realtor. You want to know that they've sold shit.
Or - crazy thought, ok, but just hear me out - the FB company page could do nothing but link out to an actual company website.
14: this may make sense in the US? Someone else want to chime in - when an American is selling their house and trying to pick which estate agent to use, it's normal to look up their personal Facebook pages and go through their friend lists?
It's either that or pick the person who sends you magnetic calenders for your fridge every year.
My parents' experience has been the fridge-magnet ones were actually the best, because they were area specialists.
It's not so much that I know anyone who picks an agent from Facebook as a deliberate strategy, but people share links with houses for sale by their friends and such. That all have the agent tagged or whatever.
19: well, you could still do that. You could still share a link to a house that ReMax was selling and tag the agent; you just couldn't then see anything else about the agent other than that she existed and worked for ReMax.
Anyway, this is reinforcing my gut revulsion at equating realty with "the American Dream". A scheme by which everyone gets indentured to banks for decades and is also set up to be creamed by professional intermediaries on the one or two occasions in their lives when they have to make massive complicated transactions.
I think that would be a problem. Because you want to know what other properties that agent has listed/sold before you hire them. Otherwise, it could just be somebody whose mom let them list her house but with no actual business.
22: Aren't realtors and/or there accrediting organizations supposed to publish that information anyway? If not, they could certainly do so or be compelled to do so without having to expose anybody's personal life on the open internet.
From what I've seen, the majority of successful agents are those who are using personal connections to build their business.
What fraction of anybody's personal contacts (actually personal, not FB-defined "friends") are buying or selling property at any one time?
I think about one of ten houses on my street is sold every year, maybe more. If I were sociable in person, that would be a lot of people.
The whole housing sector is, as you noted, obviously a racket. I just think that trying to harden the sales force's tactics against slut shaming will do little besides disadvantage women in the one aspect of the racket where women have been making the same or better money than men.
Point. There's still no reason the client relationship can't be separately displayed from the personal, though.
this may make sense in the US? Someone else want to chime in - when an American is selling their house and trying to pick which estate agent to use, it's normal to look up their personal Facebook pages and go through their friend lists?
Other way around: it's normal to ask your friends who they used. Since realtors are into networking, they're going to friend their clients, so you're fairly closely FB-linked then to the recommendation.
Real Estate (and photography) are the two professions that I call SAHM-lite, meaning the mother quit her career when she had babies and maybe didn't like it very much anyway, and now that the youngest is in kindergarten, she wants to bring in some money while having flexible hours and no training. I feel like I know a dozen mothers who have decided on this, especially mothers that were in tech pre-kids. (I'm not claiming the photographers actually make any real money cobbling together family portraits and weddings.)
Yes. And that's why you always want to be sure they have listings. Anybody can start.
Other way around: it's normal to ask your friends who they used. Since realtors are into networking, they're going to friend their clients, so you're fairly closely FB-linked then to the recommendation.
And people accept those friend requests?
So many people want to sell my house.
Both of the "careers" in 31 make a lot more sense than joining a MLM pyramid scheme. Maybe the pyramid schemes are for mothers who never had a career to start with.
Real estate is also a pyramid scheme, on a longer timescale.
35: Why do you hate essential oils?
What fraction of anybody's personal contacts (actually personal, not FB-defined "friends") are buying or selling property at any one time?What fraction of anybody's personal contacts (actually personal, not FB-defined "friends") are buying or selling property at any one time?
Quite a lot. Anecdotally it seems that at any given moment at least one of my friends is trying to sell or has just sold their house and is finding it tricky enough that they talk about it a lot. Would you reckon that 30-50 year olds move house once every 10 years? And the whole selling process takes four months? Those both sound conservative if anything. So at least 3% of your acquaintances will be selling their house at any one time. 12 of your Facebook friends.
I used to complain about everyone selling shit on Facebook, but now I'm just happy of they aren't posting Russian propaganda as news.
Pick the realtor that gets you frequent flyer miles, people.
it's normal to ask your friends who they used. Since realtors are into networking, they're going to friend their clients, so you're fairly closely FB-linked then to the recommendation.
Ah, but that's OK. That's still (if you've locked things down) invisible to anyone like Lupian who isn't a friend of either you, your friends, or the realtor. The problem is not realtors being FB-friends with their customers; the problem is realtors making those friendships publicly visible to strangers.
21 is obviously correct.
When I finally sold my place last year, the realtor I found had all of her current listings and past sales up on the company website, which seems pretty normal. I guess Facebook would make sense if you were working independently, but this person in this story was with a company, so I don't really see why Facebook needs to enter into it at all.
But then I'm on record with my strong opinion that all of social media is shit.
35: Why do you hate essential oils?
The essential oils scam is totally thriving in the aging mom set. Jammies' mom is way too into them, and when it comes up in conversation, a dozen other people seem to groan and say "my mom, too".
I think the problem is assholes appointing themselves judge, jury, and jailer for the sex police.
Anyway, maybe Glennon can parlay her success as a homewrecker into demolition and rebuilds.
I think the problem is assholes appointing themselves judge, jury, and jailer for the sex police.
Assholes are the nosy neighbors of sexholes.
A relevant quote from the excellent "Franchise Affair":
"For one letter that the Yard gets that has any worth it gets five thousand that are nonsense. Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the 'odds.' The busybodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties----"
"'Pro Bono Publico'----"
"Him and 'Civis'," Grant said with a smile. "Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write!"
My assumption is that anyone going around posting and reposting an anonymous report of a stranger's alleged sexual transgression is masturbating while they do it.
Affairs, and the subsequent divorces, are good for realtors. A good realtor wants all of these affairs to come to light.
48
The people who do the posting/reposting of the false stuff often do it out of a warped sense of justice. In this case, the relator dropped some bad holocaust takes. There is also a lot of on line anger about female sexual ethics that pops up on places like Reddit all the time.
The essential oils scam is totally thriving in the aging mom set.
There also big in the young adult cancer survivor community, AFAICT.
51.last: Ryan didn't know about the bad Holocaust takes and apparently makes a hobby of trying to spread stories from Homewrecker. I really dislike them, knowing nothing else about them. The woman who created the story is obviously a problem, but she's also in prison for kidnapping. I think there are bigger issues there.
I mean, I've insulted many people on the internet, but I've never graduated to kidnapping.
Which, I'm assuming, is the next step. So as long as I don't take it, I can't get any worse.
56: I believe making up a completely false scandalous story about a person and posting it on the web is the intermediate step between insulting people on the internet and kidnapping.
I'm honestly not sure if I've done that or not. Depends on if the pee tape is found.
Holy fucking shit - is this person equally as monstrous as the original poster? ...why does this Ryan character have to escalate things so awfully?!
The Internet has created a new sub-thrill for assholes who don't want to go to the risk or effort of actually harassing people - facilitating harassment by linking up people when obscurity would otherwise prevent acrimony. The two-bit Twitter version is snitch-tagging. (Of course there it's more to call down the flying-monkey fans to harass the dunkers, but same principle.)
To continue the process internet tradition of baseless speculation about others, I think large numbers of people assume that women who make good money selling things, especially expensive things that men often buy, have succeeded because of their appearance even if they haven't actually slept their way to the top.
49: That reminded me of this story https://www.jstor.org/stable/25125646?seq=1&refreqid=excelsior%3Ab804ac3b24f1e4bf73c0848429df9967#page_scan_tab_contents
- she's a serial homewrecker who presumably is doing it for revenge, but it would have been a better story if she had an arrangement with a realtor and they shared the profits.
I mean, I've insulted many people on the internet, but I've never graduated to kidnapping.
How many credits do you have?
59 et al: Under US law, could anything be done to such people?
It appears the only way Ms. Glennon was able to clean up her online record was by making this story about how she was libeled be the thing that came up first on google searches.
Eventually, after $100,000 in attorney's bills, Glennon was able to unmask the culprit. It turned out to be a complete stranger who had been offended by a comment Glennon had made about a news article on Facebook.
And that's why you should never comment on any news articles on Facebook.
Even worse, you might end up with a strong desire to broadcast an opinion about Bernie Sanders.
One of the reasons I deactivated my Facebook account was because I was told my profile picture couldn't be an abstract symbol. I don't know if it had to show a face but it had to resemble a person. I was not allowed to save any picture that failed their recognition test.
The whole thing made me suspicious because the only reason I'd logged in was because Facebook told me someone tried to reset my password. After confirming it wasn't me I was then told I needed to change my profile pic. It made me wonder if the password reset alert was fake and just a way to manipulate me into logging in. To be clear, I don't think I was specifically targeted, more like an automated alert was sent to people with profile pics deemed unacceptable under the rules.
Huh. Not long ago I changed my profile pic from actually me to an image of neither a person nor a symbol.
I've been off for a year now, but it sounds like their policies never stay the same and are never clearly stated. Maybe they were on a post-election "identify yourself!" trip.
|| Marx said that "anti-semitism is the socialism of fools" and you can see what he means; the most lunatic conspiracy theories are largely true except for one bit that is wildly, dangerously wrong. So, yes, 19th century Europe is largely run by a small group of very rich people; yes, they shape policy to suit their own ends and ignore the needs of the rest of us, often to our great detriment; yes, they meet secretly to conspire together; yes, they exert non-obvious influence on the media to shape public opinion. It's just the "and they're all Jews!" bit that is wrong.
With that in mind:
SOURCE: OK, listen buddy, you need to let the world know about this dynamite story.
RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY NUT: Say on.
S: There's a massive conspiracy of child abusers in America.
RWCN (writing busily): Go on.
S: I can't tell you exactly who it is because I don't want to blow my cover, but I'm going to give you some really obvious hints.
RWCN: Sounds fair.
S: It's hiding inside one of the most beloved and respected institutions in American society.
RWCN: OK.
S: It's an institution that is heavily influenced by Italians.
RWCN:... OK...
S: Millions of American parents regularly trust their children to this institution.
RWCN: Oh my God.
S: They're best known for producing, shall we say, a certain disc-shaped bread product...
RWCN: Oooh.
S: ...which millions of Americans consume every weekend...
RWCN: Go on...
S: ...often accompanied by vast crashing feelings of guilt.
RWCN: Say no more. (Shouting) Guys! THE PIZZA RESTAURANTS! IT'S THE PIZZA RESTAURANTS! (Exits)
S: Wait! Wait! ...shit.
I'm not sure if it fits in this thread or the Musk thread, but he's restating his accusations against the cave diver who saved the kids in Thailand saying that if they weren't true, the diver would have sued him. That's probably a bigger legal hassle than suing random crazy person from the internet.
I don't want a stranger to ruin my life. That's my job.
76 I'm starting to go with this being another case of projection.
Everything is about movies with you.
I'm thinking he's Trumpian in trying to ruin the reputation of anyone who crosses him regardless of facts. Or he's trying to distract from the obvious, illegal stock price manipulation he did.
On the OP, I am wondering what percentage of "She's A Homewrecker" reports fall into this category: complete libellous nonsense, invented by some crazy woman with a grudge. Because it's unlikely that this is the only one.
72 Bravo!
Did that story about the orphanage run by abusive nuns in Vermont get linked? A very long and very harrowing read.
82: I don't see why sane women with grudges wouldn't try that. It seems to have potential.
Relevant: Elon Musk's Ipod Submarine.
https://imgur.com/gallery/mTzrTky
I really want to play this game now.
Orphanages sound bad. Birth control seems to have improved Western society.
Sure, if we're just going to rule out having orphans push a giant wheel around until the strongest are trained to fight for the entertainment of gamblers.
Birth control doesn't prevent orphans, though. It can only be used by parents who are alive.
I read that story and it led me to a bunch of other stories and it really sounded like most of the kids in the average orphanage (or at least Catholic orphanage) were just abandoned by their parents because they had too many kids or they were indigent or it was an unwed mother whose life would be ruined by having a kid.
89: ah, I see. But I wouldn't call an abandoned child an orphan. That's a foundling. An orphan is someone whose parents are dead.
I would have liked to see more on the backgrounds of the nuns. She interviewed the only one she could find, who was 88 at the time. What led to someone born circa 1880-1930 in Vermont, Maine, New Brunswick or Quebec becoming a nun? Why weren't any of them nice?
Also, nobody sleeps in the restroom. They should call them Poopapoluzas.
The mothers superior were all distaff members of ousted dynasties?
I guess this is on topic now?
Richard Abramowitz started at Cinecom in 1983 in sales, and he left in 1992 eight and a half years later. "All those years at Cinecom, I was Amir's sole defender inside the company," he says. "We used to eat lunch together, but I gained a perspective on him as time went on. We used to refer to Amir as the poster child for anti-Semitism. This is not the guy I would want out there for--Oh yeah, that's a Jew! It was like, Do something, you're making us all look bad.
Why weren't any of them nice?
Because to become a nun you had to believe that the world and the people in it were irredeemably sinful and wicked, and you were saving yourself by cutting yourself off from it. That's not something that nice people believe. Nice people are nice because they like people. Nice people who specifically want to look after children become school teachers or nurses or doctors or nannies or foster parents. (Or, indeed, parents.) They don't become nuns.
96: I think for the great majority of Christian history most nuns had less than perfectly free choice.
96 is wrong. Among other issues, thinking the world irredeemable is heresy and being a nun hasn't been the same as being cut off from the world since the Franciscans.
But, per 97, if you were Catholic and didn't want to marry, you had limited options unless your family was rich. Maybe even then.
96: How fascinating! Do go on.
Also, AIUI for most of the Middle Ages most monastic communities only obeyed their rules very loosely; more a differently organized kind of village or manor than a religiously defined community.
98: Irredeemably was the wrong word. Irrevocably, perhaps.
I'm sure they'll find bodies one day. They've found them in the dozens and hundreds in Ireland and elsewhere and they'll find them in the US too.
Did that story about the orphanage run by abusive nuns in Vermont get linked? A very long and very harrowing read.
Agreed, long and harrowing.
I'm sure they'll find bodies one day. They've found them in the dozens and hundreds in Ireland and elsewhere and they'll find them in the US too.
I doubt on anything like the same scale, mostly because the Catholic Church in the US doesn't have anything like the monolithic authority it used to have in the ROI. In the 19C they were at occasional risk of pogroms, and over most of the 20C they were still treated as suspect.
72:
In the same vein, have you heard the This American Life story about the Proud Boys? And how one of their key tenets is "No Jacking"? They don't masturbate because they liked a radio advice columnist who temporarily decided not to jack because he thought it made him callous to women. After a while, he felt better about himself globally and has resumed masturbating as appropriate. And it just all kills me. His lesson was 'don't jack off to an objectified version of women and intimacy' and the Proud Boy translation has been 'jacking off weakens masculinity'. So now they don't jack off!
There was a preachy Sherri Tepper book in which a piece of religious gospel had been transformed by the patriarchy from something like 'value mothers and children' to 'don't eat eggs' and I thought that was heavyhanded and crude and ridiculous. And yet here we are, watching people in the world adopt stupid and ridiculous interpretations.
(I don't remember the original parable (in the book setting) that got twisted, but I am certain the result was a dietary restriction on eggs.)
As I remember, the original radio advice columnist (who seems reasonable in his interviews) was disturbed by his own reactions to porn and took a break from masturbating to redirect himself.
103: That was my reaction too. Did they scan the grounds and the lake for bodies?, I thought to myself.
I did wonder why the nuns were so vicious. I could see myself devolving like that if faced with an unrelenting flow of needy children, without being the type of person who wants to be with children, and no other agency over my life, and peers who are equally jaded about the worth of any child in the huge river of children, and explicit mantle of moral superiority.
106.2: I think you must be referring to the Bible verse You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk which is the basis for the rule that you aren't supposed to eat milk with meat. But I don't think it has anything to do with eggs.
Nah, the whole set-up was fictional, including the original parable and whole religion (and planet they were on). If I must, I suppose I could actually link the book. I just remember thinking that Sheri Tepper was writing this thing completely over-the-top heavyhanded.
I have no beef with goat cheese.
113: Oh!
Well, then maybe that biblical passage and its interpretation is what gave Tepper the idea.
Moby probably needs to go to askanorthodoxrabbi.com.
My understanding is that observant Orthodox Jews won't eat any kind of cheese with any kind of meat.
I think I know somebody with two kitchen sinks. I could ask them.
113: Was it The Gate to the Women's Country, Megan? I read that, but decades ago, and I don't remember it basically at all.
If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young:
But thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.
I think I know somebody with two kitchen sinks. I could ask them.
If a state line goes through a house, you judge residency by the kitchen. If it goes through the kitchen, you go by the sink. What if there's a sink on each side?!?
And yes that is totally apocryphal and I refuse to verify.
I think the dairy sink is secondary.
What if the sinks are stacked, one on top of the other, and the line goes through both? Like one of those fancy zen drip run-off spouts.
I think that would defeat the purpose of having two sinks to keep dairy from meat.
Of course, I'm no authority. You should ask a Cohen, probably whichever is in the news most these days.
||
3rd day of school, I got a call today from the assistant principal. Pokey threw a ball and hit his teacher in the face. (Intentionally.) Then he was belligerent enough with the asst principal that she was sort of dumbfounded - "I said, 'Come here!' and he said, 'No, you come HERE if you want to talk with me.'"
So second grade is going swell.
(Wtf is up with my sweetie? How do you teach a 7 year old skills of calming down in the face of situations that get him angrier than he can handle?)
|>
106: They heard "who says you have to stop crying?" as permission to keep crying.
I wonder what percentage of Proud Boys are lying to each other about not jacking off. 70%? 90%?
Do I need to remember what a Proud Boy is? I keep forgetting and I think thanks my brain trying to help me.
They've got some kind of punching each other while naming cereal thing? It's about masculinity, and I guess also kind of about breakfast?
As you all know there is a close connection between breakfast and wanking in the US. That's why corn flakes were invented.
128: And what percentage are jacking each other off?
If you see an American eating breakfast and there's no cornflakes or Grape Nuts on the table, assume they are getting ready to masturbate.
Especially if they are Lewis C. K.
126: That sounds really frustrating, and I have no idea how I'd handle it. What did you do?
Rented him out to detasselate corn, obvs.
136: He was willing to talk this time, and I'm not sure what the difference is, but that made life much easier. So we went for a long walk and focused on strategies for de-escalating intense situations. It became very Pokemon-like, talking about different moves he can do in battle. Moves like saying "I need space" or exhibiting deference ("being an obedient puppy dog"), which is a huge huge problem - teachers want displays of deference and submission when they show up to a conflict, and that causes him to explode. Anyway, I think the video game framing decreases the intensity and allows him to put some distance into the situation. He's going to practice his moves the next battle that he finds himself in, and get back to me at our next Poké-training session. I suppose Pokéy was aptly named.
138: If Pokemon strategizing is involved maybe you should consider bringing Moby in as a consultant.
138: I am totally stealing that Pokemon-move framing. That is brilliant.
140: I'm hopeful. The other two moves we discussed, fwiw, are "being a statue" and "going to get a teacher".
||
Disney didn't charge Miramax for operating capital, and there was no cap on the amount it could borrow from Disney to finance its operations. Disney wanted to take out life insurance policies on both brothers, but they had a hard time finding a carrier willing to write them.|>