Mitchell embarked on a PhD, published in 2024, in which she interviewed people who had met persistent predatory personalities professionally – some clinical, but others not, from fields as wide as HR, social work, family courts, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, church leaders, and academics from different fields.

When I read the article I noticed that they never linked the PhD thesis they quoted from, so I went to find it. Dr. Mitchell has a site, kalmor.com.au, and it has the link to the PhD, as well as to her book and another interesting research paper about coercive control.

There are other things out there worth reading that came up in a search, it’s just a shame the article didn’t link them.

I’m just going to start calling it Lake Release The Fucking Epstein Files Already You Goddamn Pedo Rapist. Anyone with me?

I keep meaning to check out her version of Freebird. There are those who say it rivals the original, and that’s not really possible IMO, but I’m willing to hear it out, and always meant to.

You’re not wrong about any of that, but if the progressive wing wins a significant minority of a Dem majority, Jeffries’ days as Speaker are numbered, IMO.

This is my take on it as well. Or to put it another way, Jeffries has become SO singularly focused on political strategy and optics manipulation that he has become oblivious not only to what it looks like from the outside, but that voters are actual people with needs who happen to be increasingly angry right now and he’s dancing with the son-in-law of the guy personally responsible for this growing hell.

He doesn’t even seem to have an inkling of the fact that by voluntarily involving himself with Kushner, in many eyes he has aligned himself directly with Trump. He certainly has in mine. I don’t give a good goddamn what the letter after his name is: if he’s voluntarily dealing with Kushner he is not averse to Trump, nor does he have a problem with anything Trump is doing. Period, end of.

This is what it looks like when a political actor gets so mentally sucked into playing the game of politics that they entirely lose sight of human voters and tangible outcomes for others in real life. Only someone so far up their own ass that they can scratch the inside of their right nostril with their left big toe can do what Jeffries is doing with Kushner and think it’s going to fly.

He got booed off the stage by college students after off-putting remarks infuriated what should have been a friendly crowd. And when the crowd turned on him, he tucked tail and left.

The Republican candidate for governor took the stage to boos – a bad sign − and came off as a privileged know-it-all who had no patience for the young crowd.

Then, he made matters worse when he said, “The truth of the matter is, you know, no matter what happens in whichever direction we go, people in my generation have already made it,” Ramaswamy said. “We’re gonna be fine. It’s gonna be your generation…that pays the price.”

Ramaswamy said “peace out” and abruptly walked off the stage as he was serenaded with boos and derision.

This is excellent. Thanks for the link.

This is the same guy that took a leak while on a hot mic during an Alex Jones/Elon Musk/Andrew Tate livestream.

The sound of splashing liquid interrupted Jones, who was in the middle of a rant about what he called a “corporate world government whose aim is depopulation.”

“Someone’s got their thing open peeing! Someone’s got their phone open in the bathroom,” Jones yelled to an audience of tens of thousands of listeners. The livestream’s host, social media influencer Mario Nawfal, tried to alert Ramaswamy to what was happening.

“That’s your phone, Vivek. I’m not able to mute you. Vivek?”

The embarrassing moment prompted laughter from Musk and others on the call.

“Well I hope you feel better now,” a giggling Musk said.

“I feel great, thank you. Sorry about that, guys,” Ramaswamy said.

What an absolute fucking dolt.

Apologies for the source, but the NY Post is great for bottom-scraping trash, and this was a Jones-Musk-Tate mutual admiration event complete with live piss performance. Not sure how much more room for “lower” there is in a print publication.

Someone should tell these motherfuckers about Theresienstadt, the self-administered Jewish ghetto used for propaganda by the Nazis, until it too was swallowed by the machine and administrator and resident alike went into the ovens.

That is exactly how I see gay people who punch down on trans people, or Black people that punch down on Asians, etc.

In an abusive situation, punching down never helps anyone, even the puncher. It just makes the puncher another abuser whose own time is coming too.

Holy shit. That’s some arrogance right there, thinking no one would ever know or find out. Grand juries are secret, but they’re not THAT secret.

they think everything is more openly corrupt than it is yet.

You nailed it.

That whole “a good prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich” was when you could pull your jurors out of a citizen pool that didn’t walk in already believing you were lying through your fucking teeth.

But then they pulled the mask off, and let us all see how they are using the courts for vindictive prosecution and political harassment.

Looks like the ham sammich days are ending, lol.

They would have to get rid of juries altogether.

Given that our current legal system was created as a direct reaction to star chambers and baked into the constitution, they have an uphill climb, at the least.

You’ll never guess what Bill Gates’ daughter has been up to . . .

More information

Apologies for not replying to you directly – I meant to, lol. But thank you.

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted; this is far from being a fringe idea. Rather, it is well established and being studied. (Look at the About pages for an idea of who is behind research such as this.) To extrapolate that it is being done for political gain is no far leap, lol.

Roblox is a known nexus for this kind of activity (pick one, lol) and why wouldn’t it be? It’s one of the places where all the children are there and unsupervised.

Your points are well taken, but usually when responding to a lawsuit – especially a big dollar suit against a deep-pocketed corporation with an army of attorneys – the defending legal team will pile on every exonerating thing it can possibly think of, and continue to do so throughout the proceedings, because every single one is not just a chance to win but a chance to argue on appeal if they lose.

So they will throw in whatever they can think of, because something somewhere might stick, and meanwhile everything they tack on is something else the plaintiffs have to address in their own filings, adding to the plaintiff’s upfront cost of bringing the suit.

isn’t the age at which she signed the ‘contract’ even more relevant?

It’s everything – or it used to be, before the current administration (US) decided to turn two and a half centuries of law into Calvinball.

I’m still pissed off about that. The guy’s wife fucking died and they pulled that shit.

But this was not in court: Disney was trying to force the surviving husband into arbitration and simply withdrew the objection to trial after it got a lot of bad publicity, so it was never heard in front of a judge. Disney never actually said it did not have absolute right to arbitration, it just withdrew the objection, meaning that they could do it again at any time.

I’m no expert, but my Business Law professors were absolutely adamant about the fact that a minor can never execute a legal agreement and there are no exceptions.

No, you’re absolutely right. There are no exceptions. In the US there are roughly six elements necessary for a contract to be legally binding, and this one is the issue of “legal capacity”: does the party entering into the contract have the capacity to understand and be bound to such an agreement? For minors, the broad answer in law is always no. They can get emancipated (a judge rules you an adult for legal purposes), they can have a parent or legal guardian act in their behalf, they can postpone until they are of age, etc. But they do not, as a rule, have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract.

That’s what this is. Minors appear to enter into contracts all the time. Every time a minor clicks on a EULA they’re purporting to enter into a contract. But that does not make it valid. Just because a signature is on a line that is not enough to make a contract binding and enforceable.

The defendants are pulling this because in the US we’ve entered into a new wtf era in the courts and they’re simply hoping to get a judge to allow it to stick, but this whole “an eight year old successfully waived his rights” argument has no basis in law.

To put it another way I’m going to pivot and use a different example that more people are familiar with, and one that I care a lot about: underage marriage. Apologies in advance for the shoehorn but it illustrates the point.

This exact issue of being unable to legally enter into agreement, or provide legal consent, is why underage marriage is so problematic: it’s a legal trap for the minor, and essentially a form of legal slavery. Children can get married, but children have no legal power to initiate a legal proceeding (like getting a restraining order or filing for divorce) nor direct their own health care, even reproductive health, unless they act through a parent or legal guardian. If they are mistreated they can’t even be admitted to a shelter, since shelters have agreements and children cannot enter into contracts, period end of.

Legally, just because a child has married, they do NOT suddenly gain legal emancipation. This is another big misunderstanding. Emancipation happens solely by court order, not by marriage. Even the marriage itself required parental consent to be legally binding, depending on the exact age and location. The married minor is still legally a child, unable to execute or be bound to contracts. The exceptions to this are informal, such as when despite a child’s minority, others allow a child to go through the motions and honor an invalid contract anyway, OR formal, when the child has a legal guardian that is willing to enter into contract and genuinely act on the child’s own behalf.

And the worst of it is that in most states and under federal law, sex with a child that would otherwise be considered rape – in some cases, felony rape – becomes legal within marriage. In those situations, the marriage license becomes a “get out of jail free” card for a child rapist. That’s how few legal rights children have in reality.

There are organizations working hard to turn this around, but it’s an uphill battle. Here’s more information for anyone who wants the actual legal picture: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/child-marriage-in-the-u-s/

For Google, the primary difference between a logged-in user and one who is not logged in is the absence of any contractual agreement that legally binds the anonymous user to terms assigned by Google.

I haven’t read a Google EULA in some time, but as I recall it was long and full of rights and waivers and privileges and protections you assign Google in regard to anything wherein you might possibly have legal standing. The log-in request is not universal, nor is it random, so it’s safe to assume as a hypothetical that for whatever reason, Google wants that in this specific scenario, in this specific geographical region.

On the other hand, if you’re not signed in – AND Google can’t link your anonymous use to an actual agreement you have with them elsewhere – Google just doesn’t have that same comfortably protected legal situation. (See Disney’s recent legal behavior for an example of why, if Google can still link your non-signed-in behavior to an existing EULA elsewhere in their walled garden, you may still be fucked.)

OP’s map seems to be located in the EU, which makes a legal difference as well. We already know that Google does whatever the fuck Google wants in the US, but in the EU laws tend to have more teeth as well as legislators very willing to go after violators.

All that said, I am not an attorney in Spain and I damn sure don’t work for Google, so don’t come at me lol.

This is the way. It’s up to the employer to provide adequate tools for the job, if they decide to make others off-limits.