#cir. 2021

[queen-of-the-avengers]

Office Romance: Part Two

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.3k

Warnings: smut, fingering

Summary: Work is so much more fun when you're sneaking around with your boss.

PART ONE

Squares Filled: clothing: lace (2021) for @mcukinkbingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

x

Should you be doing this? If anyone catches you, then you and Natasha could lose your jobs. She is very good at what she does and has often stated how much she loves it, so are you willing to risk all of that just because you have a major crush on her? Based on what happened in the elevator, it’s safe to assume she likes you too, otherwise, why would she stick her tongue down your throat?

Are you really going to do this? She asked you to come into work early today but you know it’s not going to be for work. Who knows what’s going to happen when you walk into her office, but are you prepared to deal with the consequences? Fuck it. If you’re going to do this, then you may as well do it properly.

You set your things by your desk and notice a light underneath Natasha’s office door. The rest of the office is dark since no one else is in so it’s just you and her. Her blinds are closed so the only indication that she’s in her office is the light underneath her door. You grab your makeup pouch and make sure you look presentable while fixing your shirt. You loosen two buttons to make your breasts pop, and you fix your hair to give it more volume.

Once ready, you walk over to her office and knock twice on the door.

“Come in,” she says.

You open her door and frown when you don’t see her at her desk. She is by the filing cabinets with her ass sticking out. She is bent over so she can put some files away in the bottom drawer. Motherfucker did this to you on purpose. Her skirt is already short enough so you’re able to see the lace underwear she is wearing just slightly peeking out.

“Fuck,” you whisper.

“Close the door.”

You do as you’re told and she straightens up before facing you. Her shirt also has the first few buttons undone so her breasts pop. Everything about this woman gets you going, it’s pathetic. Never has another woman made you feel things than this woman has, and she’s only kissed you. You’ve gotten home runs with other women but none of them compare to her.

“Thank you for coming in. Please, have a seat,” she gestures to the chairs on the other side of her desk.

You walk to the desk but you don’t sit down like she wants you to. You lean against the desk just in case you need to make a quick escape. It’s not like you want to, but you’d like the option just in case.

“How do you like my skirt? I got it yesterday,” she smirks.

“Yeah, it looks really good,” you nod nervously.

Natasha walks closer to you which makes your heart beat faster. She reaches out and touches the ends of your hair gently.

“Do I make you nervous?” You can only nod. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. You do want this, don’t you?” Of course, you do. You’ve wanted this since the first week you’ve started working here. Still, you can only nod in response. “Use your big girl words.”

Your mouth goes dry at her dominance.

“Yes, I want this.”

“I know exactly how to make you relax.”

She pins you to the desk and leans in to press her lips to your neck. She skips being gentle and starts nibbling on your skin with her bright red lips. She pulls the skin into her mouth as she sucks while running her hands down your freshly pressed dress. She grabs your hips and lifts you to sit on top of her desk. You tip your head back and moan quietly from the feeling of her on you.

“Relax,” she whispers into your ear.

She moves her lips to yours and kisses you passionately. You’re too distracted by her lips that you don’t feel her hands roam underneath your dress. She dips her hand between your legs and easily finds your clit which is throbbing with need. You gasp and try to pull back from her but she chases you to keep you at her mercy. Her thumb rubs your clit in hard fast circles, causing you to moan her name.

“Do you like this?”

“Yes, please… More.”

She pulls your panties to the side and runs two fingers up and down your slit, spreading as much wetness as she caner you.. 

“Already so wet for me.”

She kisses you again just as she slides her middle finger into your pussy. You grip the sides of the desk tightly and she smirks knowing how to make you break. She slides her index finger inside you alongside her other fingers before placing her thumb on your clit. That’s when you break and grab her hair tightly. You yank her head back gently and kiss her forcefully as if you have all the control here.

“Fuck, Natasha!” you gasp against her lips.

“You want to come?”

“Yes.”

“Say please,” she smirks.

“Fuck,” you gasp, “please!”

“Come for me, sweetheart.”

She curls her fingers and rubs the spot that kicks you over the edge. You tighten your legs around her hand as you spill over her fingers. She keeps them inside you to let you ride out your high before she pulls them out. She immediately puts her fingers in her mouth to taste you.

“How do I taste?” you ask.

“Fuck, so good.” She sinks to her knees to clean up your mess when you see the lights turn on in the office. People are just starting to come in which means your activities must come to an end. She chuckles and uses your knees to help her get up. “I guess we’ll have to finish this some other time.”

She walks over to her window to open it to filter the room with fresh air. Her hair is still in perfect place despite you yanking on it, her makeup isn’t ruined despite you two making out, and she looks like nothing happened to her. You, on the other hand, look and feel like a mess. Your hair must be tangled, your makeup is smudging, and your clothes are a bit wrinkled. How does she look this good afterward?

You quickly smooth down your hair and use the mirror in her office to fix your makeup. She grabs some files from her desk and hands them over to you.

“These files need to be digitized, please.”

“Sure,” you whisper.

She walks over to her desk and sits down as if she didn’t finger fuck you five minutes ago. You awkwardly walk out of her office and back to your desk. You’re not sure what to make of this because you’re still so turned on. You’d want nothing more than to go back into her office and take her but you have to be professional.

Wanda comes in and pauses next to your desk. You look fine but you know she has a keen sense of knowing when something is up with you. You’re so distracted by the feel of her lips on you and her fingers in you that you don’t feel Wanda bend down next to you.

“First your makeup, now this? You could have at least sprayed some perfume. You reek of sex.”

“Wanda!” you gasp and hit her arm.

She laughs and takes a seat at her desk which is across from you. Taking her words into consideration, you grab some perfume from your bag and spray it a few times on yourself.

“What would you do without me?”

“I don’t know,” you chuckle.

“So, how was it?” You shake your head because you don’t want to talk about the way you fucked your boss in front of your coworkers. Wanda looks at Natasha’s office and smirks. “Don’t look now but boss lady is watching you.”

You don’t have to look at her to feel her eyes on you. You straighten your back and smirk knowing you have her attention on you. This is going to make work a lot more interesting.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[freetheshit-outofyou]

little nuggets from the Duncan v. Bonta, No. 19-55376 (9th Cir. 2021) ruling. California's magazine ban. Judge Roger T. Benitez (St. Benitez) is dropping truth bombs all over Rob Bonta, Attorney General of the State of California.

“Rather than re-tell the long history of large-capacity magazines in this country, we offer some highlights:

 • The first known firearm capable of firing more than ten rounds without reloading was a 16-shooter invented in 1580.

• The earliest record of a repeating firearm in America noted that it fired more than ten rounds: In 1722, Samuel Niles wrote of Indians being entertained by a firearm that “though loaded but once, . . . was discharged eleven times following, with bullets, in the space of two minutes.” Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America 1526–1783, 215 (2000). DUNCAN V. BONTA 133 • At the Founding, the state-of the-art firearm was the Girandoni air rifle with a 22-shot magazine capacity. • In 1777, Joseph Belton demonstrated a 16-shot repeating rifle before the Continental Congress, seeking approval for its manufacture. Robert Held, The Belton Systems, 1758 & 1784–86: America’s First Repeating Firearms 37 (1986).

• By the 1830s, “Pepperbox” pistols had been introduced to the American public and became commercially successful. Depending on the model, the Pepperbox could fire 5, 6, 12, 18, or 24 rounds without reloading. • It took several years for Samuel Colt’s revolvers (also invented in the 1830s) to surpass the Pepperbox pistol in the marketplace.

• From the 1830s to the 1850s, several more rifles were invented with large ammunition capacities, ranging from 12- to 38- shot magazines.

• By 1855, Daniel Wesson (of Smith and Wesson fame) and Oliver Winchester collaborated to introduce the lever action rifle, which contained a 30-round magazine that could be emptied in less than one minute. A later iteration of this rifle, the 16-round Henry lever action rifle, became commercially successful, selling about 14,000 from 1860 to 1866.

• By 1866, the first Winchester rifle, the Model 1866, could hold 17 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, all of which could be fired in nine seconds. All told, Winchester made over 170,000 copies of the from 1866 to 1898. See Norm Flayderman, Flayderman’s 134 DUNCAN V. BONTA Guide to Antique Firearms and Their Values 268 (6th ed. 1994).

• A few years later, Winchester produced the M1873, capable of holding 10 to 11 rounds, of which over 720,000 copies were made from 1873 to 1919.

From this history, the clear picture emerges that firearms with large-capacity capabilities were widely possessed by law-abiding citizens by the time of the Second Amendment’s incorporation. In that way, today’s large-capacity magazines are “modern-day equivalents” of these historical arms, and are entitled to the Second Amendment’s protection.” Pages 132-134 “Characterizing my car ban analogies as “inapt,” the majority says that California’s magazine ban is more akin to “speed limits.” But in attempting to trade my analogies for a more favorable one, the majority misses the obvious point: that in every context except our distorted Second Amendment jurisprudence, everyone agrees that when you evaluate whether a response to avoid some harm is “rational”—much less a “reasonable fit”—you takes into account both the gravity of the possible harm and the risk of it occurring. The majority here completely ignores the latter. Perhaps if I use the majority’s own analogy it might click: If California chose to impose a state-wide 10 mph speed limit to prevent the very real harm of over 3,700 motor-vehicle deaths each year experienced from driving over 10 mph, no one would think such a response is rational—precisely because, even though the many deaths from such crashes are terrible, they are a comparatively rare occurrence (although much more common than deaths caused by mass shootings).” Page 152 “The majority also relies on the argument that limiting magazine capacity provides “precious down-time” during reloading, giving “victims and law enforcement officers” time to “fight back.” But here again, that same “down-time” applies equally to a mother seeking to protect herself and her children from a gang of criminals breaking into her home, or a law-abiding citizen caught alone by one of the lawless criminal mobs that recently have been terrorizing cities in our circuit. The majority focuses only on ways higher capacity magazines might cause more harm in the very rare mass shooting, while dismissing the life-threatening impact of being forced to reload in a self-defense situation as a mere “inconvenience,” and characterizing as mere “speculat[ion] . . . situations in which a person might want to use a largecapacity magazine for self-defense.”

Ultimately, it is not altogether surprising that federal judges, who have armed security protecting their workplace, home security systems supplied at taxpayer expense, and the ability to call an armed marshal to their upper-middleclass home whenever they feel the whiff of a threat, would have trouble relating to why the average person might want a magazine with over ten rounds to defend herself. But this simply reinforces why those same judges shouldn’t be expected to fairly balance any Second Amendment test asking whether ordinary law-abiding citizens really need some firearm product or usage.” Pages 164 and 165

[houseofbrat]

Andrew, his lawyers, and his publicists really trying to work the refs in the UK press via Camilla Tominey in The Telegraph ten days ago:

There is also hope that any unsealing of court papers in the Dershowitz case may clear up an ongoing confusion over Ms Giuffre’s place of residence.

Mr Brettler initially tried to halt the US civil case against the Duke by claiming that the federal court in New York did not have jurisdiction over the matter because Ms Giuffre is domiciled in Australia, not Colorado as she alleged.

Arguing the case should be halted until the “issue of subject matter jurisdiction is adjudicated”, he wrote to the court in December 2021: “In her complaint Ms Giuffre alleges she is a citizen of the state of Colorado; the evidence demonstrates that she is actually domiciled in Australia, where she has lived for all but two of the past 19 years.

“It is undisputed that at the time she filed this action Ms Giuffre had an Australian driver’s licence and was living in a $A1.9 million [about £1.1 million] home in Perth, Western Australia, where she and her husband have been raising their three children.

“In reality, Ms Giuffre’s ties to Colorado are very limited. She has not lived there since at least 2019 – approximately two years before she filed this lawsuit against Prince Andrew – and potentially, according to her own deposition testimony, not since October 2015.”

Ms Brettler said Ms Giuffre only recently registered to vote in Colorado using her mother and stepfather’s mailing address there.

Yet the court rejected this argument, along with Mr Brettler’s plea for the case to be thrown out because Ms Giuffre had a “tortured interpretation” of the law she was relying on. He said some of the alleged offences were said to have happened outside New York state and beyond the jurisdiction of the New York Child Victims Act (CVA) that she was using.

Because this is what the US FEDERAL JUDGE had to say about it:

LEWIS A. KAPLAN, District Judge.

Defendant moves for an order compelling plaintiff to respond to“targeted” but as yet unspecified “written discovery requests pertaining to her domicile,” requiring her “to submit to a two-hour remote deposition limited to the issue of her domicile,” and staying all other discovery until the Court determines whether subject matter exists, lack of which would be a potential defense that the defendant refers to as “anticipated” and that he concededly has not actually raised.

The motion (Dkt 58) is denied, substantially for the reasons set forth in the plaintiff's opposition to defendant’s motion. Among other relevant points, it appears that the defendant previously served on the plaintiff extensive discovery, including at least one comprehensive request for documents relating to her domicile, to which responses are due, and have been promised, by January 14. See Dkt. 58-2, at 2.

This ruling is without prejudice to any defense of lack of subject matter jurisdiction that defendant may raise by motion or by answer. It likewise is made without determining the merit, or lack of merit, in plaintiff's assertion that defendant’s motion is “a transparent attempt to delay discovery into his own documents and testimony.” Dkt. 60, at 2.

SO ORDERED.

Dated: December 31, 2021

What were some of the reasons set forth in the plaintiff’s opposition? Consider this portion: 

First, Prince Andrew has not made a strong showing that any forthcoming motion he may file will have merit. Defendant repeatedly states that Plaintiff resides in Australia, but where she resides is not the question—it is her domicile, and domicile and residence are distinct legal concepts. See GTG Holdings, Inc. v. Amvensys Cap. Grp., LLC, 2016 WL 931215, at *1 (N.D. Tex. Mar. 11, 2016). “Domicile has been described as the place where a person has his true fixed home and principal establishment, and to which, whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning.” Linardos v. Fortuna, 157 F.3d 945, 948 (2d Cir. 1998) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Accordingly, Plaintiff’s domicile is (and was at all relevant times) Colorado.

Defendant’s selective excerpts of Plaintiff’s prior depositions omit testimony that demonstrates her intent to return to Colorado. For example, Plaintiff testified that she and her husband left Colorado because his elderly father needed their imminent care in Australia after multiple surgeries.(2) As Defendant himself points out, Plaintiff is registered to vote in Colorado, where her mother currently resides. See Dkt. 58-9. 3 These facts, and additional evidence for which Defendant has already sought discovery, establish Plaintiff’s Colorado citizenship. See, e.g., King v. Cessna Aircraft Co., 505 F.3d 1160, 1171 (11th Cir. 2007) (domicile in California where parents testified that, prior to plaintiff’s dying while living abroad, she intended to return home).

Defendant mischaracterizes Plaintiff’s pleadings in the Dershowitz case to suggest, for example, that an allegation in a proposed amended complaint that she “was a citizen of the State of Colorado” is an admission that she was no longer a citizen of Colorado at the time of amendment. Mot at 4. Plaintiff worded the allegation in that way, however, because diversity jurisdiction over her second amended complaint depended on the court having jurisdiction at the time of filing the action. See, e.g., Coury v. Prot, 85 F.3d 244, 248 (5th Cir. 1996) (“diversity of citizenship must exist at the time the action is commenced”).

There we have it. Domicile and residence are different legal concepts in the USA. 

Andrew’s “friend” who talked to Tominey is really dumb. 

“He settled without admitting any guilt and has always resolutely insisted that he has been falsely accused. He’s been utterly consistent about that for more than a decade.

“But when he settled, it didn’t clear his name. So there is a legal resolution, but this was always a three-stage process: legal resolution, followed by clearing his name, followed by whatever it is he wants to do next.

“You can’t expect the Duke to live permanently in this no man’s land with a legal resolution of a civil case, no investigation by any legal authority, let alone any charges. He’s not been found guilty of anything in a court of law, yet in the court of public opinion, his name remains sullied because people think there is no smoke without fire.

“No investigation”? 

You refused to talk to the US DOJ, remember Andrew? Because believe me, everyone at the prosecutor’s office at SDNY remembers. And your Mummy isn’t around to protect you any longer. 

Keep your “sources” talking in the UK press, Andrew. People who work at the US Department of Justice can read articles on the internets just like everyone else. They can see you sending out that bimbo, aka Lady Victoria Hervey, and doing yourself no favors. 

Keep it up Andrew and the US DOJ will grant your wish for an official and very PUBLIC acknowledgement that they’ve been investigating you! 

[undead-faye]

My old room

Cir. 2021

[leodante]

throwback jam 📼: untitled, cir. 2021 (?), digital doodle

this is a doodle that i never published anywhere, yet it is very close to my heart. my refuge often as a teenager was my parent's closet with a blanket, a plushie, and a good book. if they were in the room, it was my bunk bed with covers over the opening. the more enclosed, the better. this was done with my oc, Ico. they have very similar feelings to myself with regards to darkness. however, they are not very comfortable. the reason why, i don't know. this was probably meant to be a vent piece about dissociation or something and honestly fits my current feelings right now

the image above is the original , the bottom with the filter better captures the mood it is meant to give.

[newsdailynow]

What to know about Doe v. Crawford

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF MISSISSIPPI -- NORTHERN DIVISION

November 12, 2023

JANE DOE, Plaintiff, v. CHRISTOPHER PEYTON CRAWFORD, Defendant.

CAUSE NO. 3:23-CV-560-CWR-LGI

ORDER Defendant Christopher Peyton Crawford has moved to seal this case. Docket No. 5. After reviewing the arguments against the applicable law, the motion will be denied. I. Factual and Procedural History Jane Doe alleges that Christopher Peyton Crawford is liable to her for unlawfully sending an intimate image of herself to another person. Docket No. 1. In other words, this is a “revenge porn” case. See Boris Burghardt & Leonie Steinl, Sexual Violence and Criminal Justice in the 21st Century, 22 German L.J. 691, 694 & n.19 (2021) (describing revenge porn as a form of “image-based sexual abuse”). According to the complaint, Doe and Crawford engaged in a consensual sex act in October 2022. Docket No. 1 at 2. Crawford apparently took a photo of Doe during that encounter. Id. Three months later, Crawford texted the photo to another person, without Doe’s consent. Id.

2 Crawford denies the allegations and has counter-claimed against Doe. He says, in essence, that she has inflicted emotional distress upon him by filing this extortionate lawsuit. Docket No. 8. The truth of the matter has not been ascertained. This case is in early stages. Although revenge porn is nothing new, the federal law prohibiting it is. In 2022, Congress established a cause of action for non-consensual disclosure of intimate images. See 15 U.S.C. § 6851. That means people now have much greater leeway to bring revenge porn claims in federal court than they used to. In any event, the issue today is whether Crawford can keep the filings in this case secret. He argues that public access will materially impair his defense. Docket No. 6 at 3. Specifically, he says,

Doe’s pseudonym and her allegations ag ainst Crawford work together to mischaracterize the relationship between Doe and Crawford. Doe’s identity and actual relationship with Crawford are material elements to Crawford’s defense. In other words, Crawford must disclose Doe’s identity and her relationship to Crawford in conjunction with disclosing other intimate and sensitive details to defend himself. Id. For her own part, Doe takes no position on the motion to seal.

This Court convened a hearing to consider the arguments in more detail. It announced its inclinations from the bench and promised a written ruling. This Order followed. II. Legal Standard Federal law in this area is well-established. “Once a matter is brought before a court for resolution, it is no longer solely the parties’ case, but also the public’s case.” Brown v. Advantage Eng’g, Inc. , 960 F.2d 1013, 1016 (11th Cir. 1992). “Judicial records are public records. And public records, by definition, presume public access.” Binh Hoa Le v. Exeter Fin. Corp., 990 F.3d 410, 416 (5th Cir. 2021).

3 “The public has a common law right to inspect and copy judicial records.” Bradley on behalf of AJW v. Ackal, 954 F.3d 216, 224 (5th Cir. 2020) (quotation marks and citation omitted). “This right promotes the trustworthiness of the judicial process, curbs judicial abuses, and provides the public with a better understanding of the judicial process, including its fairness, and serves as a check on the integrity of the system.” Id. (cleaned up).

The public’s right of access, however, “is not absolute.” Id. “In exercising its discretion to seal judicial records, the court must balance the public’s common law right of access against the interests favoring nondisclosure.” S.E.C. v. Van Waeyenberghe, 990 F.2d 845, 848 (5th Cir. 1993) (collecting cases). “[T]he rele vant facts and circumstances of the particular case” must be considered. Nixon v. Warner Commc’ns, Inc. , 435 U.S. 589, 599 (1978) (citation omitted).

After considering these factors, “the district court’s discretion to seal the record of judicial proceedings is to be exercised charily.” Van Waeyenberghe, 990 F.2d at 848 (quotation marks and citation omitted). “[C]ourts should be ungenerous with their discretion to seal judicial records.” Binh Hoa Le, 990 F.3d at 418 (citations omitted). III. Discussion The first question is simple: why is the Court scrutinizing an unopposed motion? The answer is simple, too: federal law does not permit parties to seal a document or a case by agreement. The Fifth Circuit has rejected so-called “stipulated sealings” in which “the parties agree, the busy district court accommodates, and nobody is left in the courtroom to question whether the decision satisfied the substantive requirements.” Id. at 417. Judges must instead independently examine whether sealing a document or a case comports with the Firs t Amendment and common-law standards of public access to public records. Id.

4 This scrutiny indicates that Crawford has not met the high standard necessary to keep this case from the public. He has not set forth “clear and compelling reasons” why this case should be shielded from the public. L.U.Civ.R. 79(b). First, even after the hearing, the Court does not see how Doe’s “identity” is material to Crawford’s defense. Docket No. 6 at 3. Congress’s new revenge porn law does not establish an “identity” defense. It does not require disclosure of a plaintiff’s name. The statute instead expressly permits courts to “mai ntain[] the confidentiality of a plaintiff using a pseudonym.” 15 U.S.C. § 6851(b)(3)(B). At least at this early juncture, the Court also does not understand Crawford’s argument that his “actual relationship” with Do e is an element of his defense. Docket No. 6 at 3. Congress did not exempt persons from revenge porn liability because they were engaged in a one-night stand, were “friends with be nefits,” or were in a long-term, committed relationship. See Laura A. Rosenbury, Friends with Benefits?, 106 Mich. L. Rev. 189, 208 (2007) (defining the term). Nor is marriage a defense to a revenge porn claim asserted under § 6851. It became apparent at the hearing that Crawford and Doe are both sensitive to the possibility of embarrassment if friends or family learn of these allegations. But every case, civil and criminal, presents a risk of embarrassment to one or all involved. Creating an “embarrassment exception” to the First Amendment would swallow the general rule of public access to public records.

In addition, in this particular case, the filings make clear that Crawford and Doe are presently engaged in other litigation against each other in State court. That suit is being conducted in the public record. So too should this suit.

5 There are compelling interests in secrecy when a case involves a minor. See Bradley, 954 F.3d at 229. Certain trade secrets and national security matters can and should be kept confidential. See Binh Hoa Le, 990 F.3d at 417 and 419. Some banking materials are secret by law. See 31 U.S.C. § 5318(g). But these are exceptions to the general rule of public access to public records. And in these circumstances, the parties have not put forward anything sufficient to remove this case from the default expectation—that the public has a right to see what goes on in its courts. IV. Conclusion The motion is denied. SO ORDERED, this the 15th day of November, 2023.

s/ Carlton W. Reeves UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

[photon-insights]

High-Level Summarization Methodology

Overview– This report provides a very high-level overview of how Photon Insights generates unified summaries across many documents.

Core Summarization Capability: Photon’s greatest strength is providing unified insights from a wide variety of sources (news journals, social media, SEC filings, earnings calls, etc.). Take a look at this sample, “Photon Insight” regarding Microsoft/ChatGPT – Photon produces an AI-generated summary (in a human-like tone) by taking certain elements of a set of articles. At a very high level, the proprietary Photon architecture leverages the power of large language models plus various classical supervised + unsupervised learning methods to generate the appropriate punchlines.

Performance Metrics (Warning, technical discussion to follow):

We are often asked, how much of the information do we capture from our summaries/how good are our summaries (both across many documents and on a per article basis)? We provide some rough metrics below, but want to note, evaluating summarization is extremely subjective (as evidenced by this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.12626.pdf) – thus, even if our AI misses what you might deem as valuable information, we always link back to original sources/you can obtain more context if needed.

On a per document basis:

Based on ROUGE (Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation) scores: Here are our ROUGE Scores relative to a few of the SOTA models (and higher is better).

Metric/Model Photon Proprietary Model Yale-LILY/brio-cnndm-uncased facebook/bart-large-cnn google/pegasus-cnn_dailymail ROUGE-1 61.14 41.44 38.85 35.54 ROUGE-2 45.02 24.69 22.92 20.39 ROUGE-L 52.04 30.20 30.59 28.30, On the one hand, this looks great for us, we seem to be blowing others out of the water – this is actually not as impressive as it seems, as our models were trained based on our datasets (which we feel will result in succinct human-like summarizations)/as a result, the ROGUE scores should be higher. Nonetheless, we included such numbers due to several inquiring scientists, but we feel a better method of evaluation is doing a qualitative comparison provided in the next section.

Qualitative comparison of models: Also, please see this post [INSERT LINK to CIR SUMMARIZATION POST] to see an application of our architectures to construct the CIR executive summary, and how it compares to other models. Most state-of-the-art language models, when given an article to summarize concisely, seem to be biased toward the information in the initial part of the text and perform poorly in extracting the information present in the lower parts of the inputted text – ideally, when we are reading a summary of any lengthy document/article, we need to grasp the whole picture, and we feel our proprietary models excel here.

Thanks to the tool presented in [SummVis: Interactive Visual Analysis of Models, Data, and Evaluation for Text Summarization (Vig et al., ACL-IJCNLP 2021)] we visualize how much of different summaries are captured for different models – we are happy to provide live visualizations, and it’s clear the Photon algorithm captures a large amount of context, take for instance the sample visualizations below corresponding to this document (ARUL, CAN WE LINK THE SOURCE DOCUMENT). In Layman’s terms, to explain these visuals, more different colors denote a more extensive capture of the document.

Photon Algorithm:

Of all the listed models, ours is the only one to show the information about DALL-E (Image generation service developed by OpenAI and which was released well before the days of ChatGPT), which we felt was highly relevant to the context of the article, and the reader will hopefully appreciate the inclusion!

Google Pegasus:

Facebook Larg Bart (CNN):

BRIO:

A Cool GIF showing several models:

Subjective assessment of our unified framework:

People often ask – what percentage of the important insights do you capture? Unfortunately this is tough to answer (as evidenced by the summeval paper, it is a highly subjective task) – here we provide three examples of “Photons” from approximately 4 PM ET on 1/26/2023, and information we might have missed (and the good news with our Photon Insights is even if we miss something, we still reference back to the original articles plus tell you where exactly the summaries were derived from, so if you need more context, we provide it).

Example 1, Tesla:

Photon Insights:

Human generated core points from all articles:

Tesla reported strong profits, with a 59 percent year-on-year gain in quarterly profit and rising demand.

Tesla reported 405,278 vehicle deliveries globally and production of 439,701 vehicles, but its automotive gross margin fell to 25.9%.

Tesla continues to lose money on Bitcoin, but Elon Musk is still holding on

Tesla recently dropped prices on its entire lineup, including the Model Y, which was eligible for a $7,500 US federal EV tax credit.

Tesla has been one of the most talked about stocks since 2020, but is currently down -64% since the start of 2022 due to Insider trading, demand and margin worries.

Analyst wrote that the report was “better than feared.”

Elon Musk is trying to convince Tesla investors that Twitter isn’t a problem, despite the fact that Tesla shareholders have seen their stock price plummet since he bought the blue bird app last year.

Tesla is investing $3.6 billion to expand its Nevada Semi truck factory, which will produce high volumes of semi-trucks and make enough cell batteries for 2 million light-duty vehicles annually.

Score: 7/8, everything except the point on Bitcoin was captured.

Example 2, Amazon:

Photon Insights:

Human generated core points from all articles:

Amazon recently laid off 18,000 employees, which was more than expected. A former employee was part of the company’s job cut, and the process felt “extremely robotic” to her.

Amazon is having difficulty in its battle against its UK employees, as it is finding it tougher to break UK unions than its usual union stomping ground, the US.

Workers at Amazon’s Coventry depot recently staged a historic strike to demand pay of 15 an hour and to be recognised by a union.

Amazon Prime Gaming is offering a variety of free games for February 2023

Amazon is expanding in Virginia, and a Hampton Roads agency is looking to land a data center. The company is investing $35 billion to build more data centers by 2040.

An Amazon Warehouse worker has made shocking claims about the unjust treatment of employees, claiming that the company treats its robots better than its human staff.

Amazon has announced the launch of the RxPass, a subscription-based benefit that allows Prime members to order eligible medications for a flat, low fee of $5 per month.

Score: 5/7, 1. Missed Amazon Prime Gaming (this is subjective as whether important), 2. Could have added the harsh conditions for employees (point 6).

Example 3, Google:

Photon Insights:

Human generated core points from all articles:

Google recently acquired Liist, an app that allowed users to save places they see in Instagram and TikTok.

The Justice Department has accused Google of an advertising monopoly, and the company has been sued by the Department of Justice and eight states.

Google was ordered to pay $161 million, but lost its appeal against the ruling. India’s Supreme Court found Google’s appeal against monopoly fines unappealing.

This week, Google announced plans to cut 12,000 employees due to a slowdown in its revenue growth.

AI is becoming increasingly popular, with Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption.

Score: 4/5, Got everything except the acquisition news but for a company of this scale it might be fine to ignore this and it was reported only in one of the news articles.

Hopefully these three examples help illustrate the difficulty of assessing the frameworks due to the subjectivity of tasks, but also provide confidence that Photon is seemingly obtaining the essence plus also links back to original sources in case we missed anything.

Thanks for reading, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!

[thecazagroup]

NEWLISTING

🏠 in #Brambleton VA 20148 23027 Glenwood Heights Cir 5 🛏 3.5 🛁 $975,000

✅ Exquisitely constructed in 2021 by Van Meter (Porter Model) ✅ Open-concept main level living space ✅ Kitchen with quartz island, extended tile backsplash, under cabinet lighting ✅ Beautiful adjoining deck perfect for outdoor grilling ✅ Expansive dining area and living room ✅ With extra windows and recessed lighting ✅ Impressive family room loft space ✅ Generously sized, sun-filled bedrooms ✅ Owner's suite with 2 walk-in closets and luxurious ensuite bathroom ✅ Elegantly finished lower level, providing flexible space ✅ Unbeatable location, Brambleton Town Center just moments away ✅ Near a plethora of shops, dining options, parks and entertainment venues

☎️ 703.337.3699 #TheCAZAGroup creates #RavingFans by helping our community make smarter #HomeBuying and #HomeSelling decisions with less hassle and better service. We're serious about helping you make excellent and informed decisions. #SatisfactionGuarantee #RealEstate Click for details 👉 https://www.thecazagroup.com

[thedogsleg]

i had such dogshit music taste cir like 2021??? but my untoucnhes soundcloud likes are ncie to visit every now and again

[freetheshit-outofyou]

Duncan v. Bonta, No. 19-55376 (9th Cir. 2021) ruling breakdown.

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 21mar24

Pornhub has shut down access in Texas.

Pornhub wants you to know its feelings hurt over Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 23-50627 (5th Cir. 2024).

CV NEWS FEED // Pornhub has ceased offering its explicit website in the state of Texas, citing the Lone Star State’s passage of a law that protects children from viewing online pornography. The Houston Chronicle reported Thursday that visitors who attempt to access Pornhub’s site from Texas “are now greeted with a long message from the company railing against the legal change as ‘ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.’” “The company calls for age verification by the makers of devices that let people on the internet, instead of individual websites,” the Chronicle added. Pornhub wrote in its message to users: “As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you to access our website.”***

Oh, no. If you're a Texan who like pr0n, how will you survive?

***

CIA was at the Capitol on January 6????

&

&

&

ATF SRT After Action Report, Activation Number SRT- 21-075 (Jan. 6-7, 2021).

WT Flock?

***

Testify against Clinton or something?

Police said the Boeing whistleblower found dead in his car outside a South Carolina hotel last Saturday was found with a "silver handgun" and a "white piece of paper that closely resembled a note," Newsweek reported Friday. The Charleston Police Department said it was still making inquiries about John Barnett, who was discovered in a hotel car park with a single gunshot wound to the head.*** A coroner’s report said Barnett, 62, died from a "self-inflicted" wound, though a close family friend of Barnett’s told WCIV-TV,"I know he did not commit suicide." "He wasn't concerned about safety because I asked him," the friend said. "I said, 'Aren't you scared?' And he said, 'No, I ain't scared, but if anything happens to me, it's not suicide.' "*** https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/john-barnett-boeing-handgun/2024/03/15/id/1157484

***

Colorado Prison Director is "TRAVIS TRANI?"

Colorado is poised to become the first state in the country with segregated holding cells for transgender women in prison, if a judge signs off on it.  After a class action lawsuit was filed by several transgender inmates in 2019 against the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) alleging discrimination, harassment and assault, a judge is scheduled to rule on a consent decree that would bring further changes – including surgical sex changes and hormone treatment – to the state's penitentiary, Fox News Digital has learned.  The consent decree, a court-ordered settlement in a legal dispute, would also require all trans women currently or previously in CDOC to receive a $2.1 million payout, depending on the severity of the alleged assault, discrimination and harassment while in prison. Rewards could range from $1,000 to $10,000 per plaintiff. *** The decree would enact several changes. First, it would create two separate housing units for transgender women inmates: the "Voluntary Transgender Unit" (VTU) at the men's Sterling Correctional Facility, and the "Integration Unit" (IU) at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility.*** Greisen told Fox News Digital the decree would also "allow the class members to transition to gender-affirming housing at the women’s facility, and ensure that necessary medical and mental health treatment will be provided." *** https://www.foxnews.com/politics/colorado-to-become-the-first-state-to-build-separate-inmate-units-for-transgender-women

Raven v. Polis, 2019CV34492 (Denver D.).

Nothing in the consent decree says transgender people won't or can't be incarcerated in women's prisons. You might be a small woman serving a sentence for a non violent crime sharing a judicially approved cell with

Keith Rivers, 46, now known as "Cupcake," is currently serving a life sentence for murdering a victim outside a tavern in 1999. According to the class action lawsuit, Rivers came out as transgender in 2004 *** Another plaintiff, Andre Karpierz, 47, who goes by "Lavinya," is also serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first degree murder. Karpierz is currently being held in the Denver Womens Correctional Facility, according to CDOC records.

***

Funny duffleblog -

Military aide must ‘dummy cord’ nuclear football after leaving it on Biden’s Corvette

"I guess finger sandwiches are more important than nuclear security, huh?"

Whiskey Fueled Tirade March 18, 2024 THE WHITE HOUSE – Lt. Col. Jason Schmutz will be required to ‘dummy cord’ the President’s Emergency Satchel, commonly referred to as the ‘nuclear football,’ to his body after leaving it on top of President Biden’s 1967 Corvette Stingray, sources confirmed today.  “What a f*cking newb,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told the Duffel Blog. “The nuclear football sat on the hood of the President’s ‘shaggin’ wagon’ for the better part of an hour while Schmuckatelli was stuffing his face.” This is not the first time sensitive materials were left in the vicinity of the president’s sports car. In 2023, it came to light that President Biden had classified documents stored in his garage next to his Corvette.*** Sources say Schmutz was eating lunch in the West Wing when he stopped eating and looked around his seat, turned pale, and ran out of the Navy Mess. By the time he reached the President’s Corvette, a Secret Service agent had secured the nuclear briefcase and handed it over to the White House Military Office sergeant major.  “Missing something, sir?”, the sergeant major asked, the briefcase sitting on his desk next to a large spool of 550 paracord. “I spoke with the Chief of Staff and he thought it might be a good idea if we made it, uhh, a bit more difficult to leave your weapon system here behind, hooah?”*** “He messed up but I think he can still recover,” Schmutz’s colonel said as he signed career-ending UCMJ paperwork for an enlisted servicemember who lost his government cell phone. “He’s a good officer and man can he run fast.” At press time, Schmutz was seen walking toward Marine One next to the President, the nuclear football tethered to his Army Green Service Uniform belt. https://www.duffelblog.com/p/military-aide-must-dummy-cord-nuclear-football-after-leaving-it-on-biden-s-corvette

***

Why try to hide it?

Both https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/maryland-church-teacher-accused-of-child-sex-abuse/3565670/ and https://wjla.com/news/local/sexual-abuse-teacher-derwood-montgomery-county-police-department-ervin-jeovany-alfaro-lopez-minor-children-charges-arrest-multiple-charges-crime report that Ervin Jeovany Alfaro-Lopez molested multiple kids at a church in Maryland.

What they fail to mention is that Alfaro-Lopez is "an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador who has been deported twice from the United States." Even MSN can see how that's relevant. https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/ervin-jeovany-alfaro-lopez-maryland-church-teacher-charged-with-child-abuse-is-a-twice-deported-illegal-migrant.

***

Yeah, so?

An expert who has testified in foster care cases across Colorado admits her evaluations are unscientific

https://i0.wp.com/www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/TDP-Z-20230410-Bailey-Colorado-Interveners-01-1.jpg?fit=780%2C9999px&ssl=1

Diane Baird, LCSW, at her desk in Wheat Ridge. (Photo by Trent Davis Bailey for ProPublica)

Diane Baird had spent four decades evaluating the relationships of poor families with their children. But last May, in a downtown Denver conference room, with lawyers surrounding her and a court reporter transcribing, she was the one under the microscope. Baird, a social worker and professional expert witness, has routinely advocated in juvenile court cases across Colorado that foster children be adopted by or remain in the custody of their foster parents rather than being reunified with their typically lower-income birth parents or other family members. In the conference room, Baird was questioned for nine hours by a lawyer representing a birth family in a case out of rural Huerfano County, according to a recently released transcript of the deposition obtained by ProPublica. Was Baird’s method for evaluating these foster and birth families empirically tested? No, Baird answered: Her method is unpublished and unstandardized, and has remained “pretty much unchanged” since the 1980s. It doesn’t have those “standard validity and reliability things,” she admitted. “It’s not a scientific instrument,” Eli Hager reports.

If you thought social work was a science, I really must ask you to drop the crack pipe.

+++

Watched a really good movie, Regression (2015). Shrink purported to offer scientific advice on interrogation in a ritual satanic abuse case. trailer The result was false accusations.

***

BB -

***

Aspiring drag queens have the right to Equal Protection

SHANGELA WAS A breakthrough star. With her sharp-tongued retorts, viral catchphrases, and distinctive Southern accent, the gregarious Texas drag queen quickly rose to become one of RuPaul’s Drag Race’s most beloved contestants. “[It’s] like ‘Angela’ with an ‘S-H,’” she explained on the show. “The debutantess of the Deep South.” Despite an early Season Two elimination when the queen was in her late twenties, a more polished version of the future star returned to the runway for two other installments in the show’s franchise. Drag Race fans often complain that she was robbed of the crown during her appearance on the show’s All Stars spinoff. “She’s amazing. We’ve actually put her on the show, like, three times?” RuPaul told Andy Cohen in 2022. “She’s a fabulous queen.”*** But behind the curtain — in hotel rooms and apartments — four people allege to Rolling Stone that Darius Jeremy (“DJ”) Pierce, the man behind the famous drag persona, either sexually assaulted them or attempted to have sex with them when they were too inebriated to consent. A fifth person claims Pierce attempted anal penetration in a bathroom closet despite rejecting his advances. *** Five people independently described nights out with Pierce when they were between the ages of 18 and 23. All five said that Pierce, nearly double their age and fresh off headline-grabbing spots on the silver screen and awards-show red carpets, drank with them through the late hours of the night and into the morning. The accusers all said they were acutely aware of Shangela’s celebrity status — three people said they were aspiring drag queens. *** https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/shangela-rupaul-drag-race-sexual-assault-1234974148/

***

Thurs

Good parents?

HOUSTON – A trio of suspected bank robbers dubbed “little rascals” are in custody, according to FBI Houston. The three boys are accused of robbing a Wells Fargo in the 10200 block of North Freeway. “They are 11, 12, and 16-year-old boys charged locally with robbery by threat. Because they are juveniles, their names, and no additional details will be released,” FBI Houston said on X, formerly known as Twitter. According to KPRC 2, KSAT’s sister station in Houston, the group of suspects demanded cash from a bank teller.*** Two of the suspects were arrested after their parents allegedly noticed them in the security footage and contacted law enforcement, according to CNN.*** https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2024/03/20/group-of-children-dubbed-little-rascals-arrested-for-robbing-wells-fargo-bank-fbi-says

***

Free speech case

Rubbing it in.

***

If you want to work at that school, they prolly want your fingerprints

Bensenville, Illinois - Chicago suburb

***

[sophieshouses]

Gorgeous 4/3 Home

[ear-worthy]

Mother Jones Magazine & Center For Investigative Reporting To Merge -- Newly merged organization will produce a podcast.

Mother Jones was one of the most famous women in America. Articles about her regularly appeared in magazines and newspapers, and for many working Americans, she had achieved legendary, even iconic, status. Yet the woman for whom Mother Jones magazine is named is scarcely known any longer.

Some might recognize her name, know something about her activism on behalf of working people, or even recall her famous war cry: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

But few remember much about Mother Jones, who battled corporate presidents and politicians, who went to jail repeatedly for organizing workers, and who converted tens of thousands of Americans to the labor movement and the left.

Her legacy has been kept intact via Mother Jones magazine, which has published since 1976. It is one of the longest-running magazines still publishing today.

Two of America’s most storied and trusted investigative news organizations, Mother Jones and The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), are poised to merge and become a multimedia nonprofit news outlet, providing in-depth reporting across every platform where people get their news, from online and social media to video, radio, podcast, and print.

Of course, for us, it's the podcast that has the most relevance.

“Journalism is in crisis just when democracy needs it most,” said Monika Bauerlein, CEO of Mother Jones. “By combining these two organizations’ deep track records, we can deliver the hard-hitting journalism that Americans so urgently need. Together we will reach an audience of 10 million monthly, including 3.5 million across digital platforms, 1.8 million on radio and podcast platforms, and nearly 500,000 print or newsletter subscribers.”

The two organizations have a long and interwoven history. Mother Jones was founded in 1976, and CIR in 1977, and they have frequently produced joint reporting projects over the years. Both are based in San Francisco, and Mother Jones has additional offices in New York City and Washington, D.C.

“Ethical, fact checked investigative reporting is one of the pillars of our democracy, and by merging into one newsroom we will increase our ability to deliver stories that would otherwise not be told,” said Robert J. Rosenthal, CEO of CIR. “We will also enhance our ability to work with other newsrooms large and small and support a robust and sustainable business model. At a time when journalism is under assault, I am energized by the opportunity to continue to make a difference at this critical moment for our nation.”

The merger is expected to take effect early in 2024. The two organizations will integrate their newsrooms, and will continue to produce Mother Jones’ magazine and website and the Reveal radio show and podcast, as well as video storytelling and documentary film. Bauerlein will serve as CEO and Rosenthal will serve as CEO emeritus in a strategic leadership capacity.

Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones’ Editor-in-Chief, will lead the combined newsroom, and Al Letson will continue as host of Reveal, which is distributed nationwide to more than 500 radio stations. CIR’s TV and film storytelling arm, CIR Studios, will continue to produce documentary films and news reports.

Mother Jones and CIR secured an initial $21 million in funding commitments over the next three years to implement the merger, and will continue developing support from individual and institutional donors for the combined organization.

Both organizations have created award-winning journalism that influences public policy and national opinion, including a joint project in 2021 about labor conditions on sugar plantations that led the U.S. government to ban imports from the company in question.

Mother Jones has won 10 National Magazine Awards, including for General Excellence three times; three National Press Club Awards; and has won the Hillman Prize, and George Polk Award. CIR has been selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism five times; nominated for an Academy Award; won seven national Emmys; and won 19 national Edward R. Murrow Awards.

Notable reporting from Mother Jones includes its investigation in 2016 of the country’s private prison system, which led to major reforms by the federal government; its 2012 scoop about then-Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s disparaging “47%” comments about voters, which were widely seen as having influenced the outcome of that election; its ongoing series on abuses in the child welfare system; and its Climate Desk collaboration, which since 2009 has brought together multiple news organizations to ramp up climate coverage.

Standout reporting from CIR includes its recent episode about the Mormon Church’s handling of sexual abuse claims; its reporting about sexual assault victims being wrongfully charged with false reporting, captured in the documentary film “Victim/Suspect;” its 2019 expose of high injury rates sustained by Amazon warehouse workers, which led to new worker protection laws in several states; and its 2018 investigation about how banks keep people of color from becoming homeowners.

Check out Mother Jones and The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) in 2024. Together, they will be twice as strong.

[harvest-moonie]

cheese part 9

"Chymosin". GMO Compass. Archived from the original on March 26, 2015. Retrieved March 3, 2011. Patrick F. Fox (2000). Fundamentals of cheese science. Springer. p. 388. ISBN978-0-8342-1260-2. Archived from the original on November 7, 2020. Retrieved September 12, 2020. Patrick F. Fox (1999). Cheese: chemistry, physics and microbiology, Volume 1. Springer. p. 1. ISBN978-0-8342-1338-8. Archived from the original on June 10, 2021. Retrieved March 23, 2011. "Classification of cheese types using calcium and pH". www.dairyscience.info. Archived from the original on July 23, 2011. Retrieved March 23, 2011. Barbara Ensrud (1981). The Pocket Guide to Cheese, Lansdowne Press/Quarto Marketing Ltd., ISBN0-7018-1483-7"Classification of Cheese". www.egr.msu.edu. Archived from the original on November 24, 2011. Retrieved March 23, 2011. McGee, Harold (2004). On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Scribner. ISBN978-0-684-80001-1. Archived from the original on October 28, 2021. Retrieved September 12, 2020. Xanthe, Clay (November 18, 2006). "Finishing in style". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on October 11, 2018. Retrieved October 11, 2018. "How to eat: cheese and biscuits". The Guardian. June 27, 2012. Archived from the original on June 9, 2016. Retrieved January 3, 2017. Clara Olshansky (March 16, 2018). "Wisconsin Cheesemakers Just Created the World's Longest Cheeseboard". Food and Wine. Archived from the original on May 25, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2018. "2011 Assembly Joint Resolution 89: commending Ralph Bruno, the creator of the cheesehead hat". Wisconsin State Legislature. January 19, 2012. Archived from the original on May 26, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2018. "Nutrition facts for various cheeses per 100 g". Nutritiondata.com. Conde Nast; republished from the USDA National Nutrient Database, version SR-21. 2014. Archived from the original on June 4, 2016. Retrieved June 1, 2016. "SELF Nutrition Data - Food Facts, Information & Calorie Calculator". nutritiondata.self.com. Sacks, Frank M.; Lichtenstein, Alice H.; Wu, Jason H.Y.; Appel, Lawrence J.; Creager, Mark A.; Kris-Etherton, Penny M.; Miller, Michael; Rimm, Eric B.; Rudel, Lawrence L.; Robinson, Jennifer G.; Stone, Neil J.; Van Horn, Linda V. (June 15, 2017). "Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease: A Presidential Advisory From the American Heart Association". Circulation. 136 (3): e1–e23. doi:10.1161/CIR.0000000000000510. PMID28620111. S2CID367602. "Food Fact Sheet - Cholesterol" (PDF). Association of UK Dietitians. December 1, 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 1, 2012. Retrieved July 28, 2019. "Eat less saturated fat". National Health Service. June 1, 2017. Archived from the original on April 24, 2015. Retrieved July 28, 2019. "Heart-healthy diet: 8 steps to prevent heart disease". Mayo Clinic. January 9, 2019. Archived from the original on July 27, 2019. Retrieved July 28, 2019. FDA Warns About Soft Cheese Health Risk"Archived January 22, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Consumer Affairs. Retrieved October 15, 2005.

[captainmdhridoyhossain-blog]

[ad_1] At the snowy roads close to Kursk, tanks and army apparatus prevent site visitors. Movies from across the Russian town—kind of 100 miles from the border with Ukraine—display cars waiting in line to move educate tracks getting used to move tanks from one position to the following. Dozens of army automobiles were filmed parked together. And shaky pictures displays tanks rumbling throughout snowy flooring alongside a busy road. All of those information have something in commonplace: They have been shared on TikTok.If Russia invades Ukraine, don’t be expecting the TikToks to forestall. From small Belarusian villages to commercial Russian towns at the Ukrainian border, because the tanks and troops have rolled in, native citizens have captured the scenes on their telephones—and uploaded what would possibly someday be a very powerful proof to social media.“There's a large number of knowledge available in the market,” says Benjamin Strick, investigations director on the Centre for Data Resilience (CIR), a nonprofit group that makes a speciality of countering affect operations. The CIR crew, in conjunction with different open supply investigators, were busy verifying and mapping movies of troop actions in Russia and Belarus for a number of weeks, painstakingly evaluating landmarks in video pictures with satellite tv for pc photographs and different professional knowledge to substantiate their authenticity. The CIR’s map of verified movies plots the actions of army apparatus and troops all around Ukraine’s eastern flanks. In January, the CIR mapped 79 items of pictures; in February, it has verified 166 movies thus far.Since April 2021, the mobilization of Russian troops has been accompanied by way of reams of virtual proof. Those come from a number of assets, from smartphone pictures to high-resolution overhead photographs captured by way of business satellite tv for pc firms. Troops, helicopters, and army hardware have all been noticed in satellite images. However for other folks at the flooring, TikTok has emerged as a key platform for appearing army actions.“TikTok is for sure probably the most major platforms getting used to file this,” says Eliot Higgins, the founding father of open supply investigative unit Bellingcat, which has been exposing Russian espionage for years. That pictures steadily additionally reveals its means onto Twitter or different social media platforms and joins different pictures being posted there.The TikTok movies from round Kursk—all of that have had their location verified by way of the CIR—supply a snapshot of the way robust open supply intelligence, often referred to as OSINT, has grow to be. The movies give a contribution to media reviews and coverage discussions. They are able to be low high quality and poorly framed, however they display precisely what is going on at a selected second in time.Accounts sharing quick movies of troop buildups, which were reviewed by way of WIRED, steadily seem to be from common other folks—movies of tanks shifting take a seat subsequent to clips of youngsters taking part in. This additionally way no longer many of us are staring at them. More than one verified movies from round Kursk have underneath 1,000 perspectives or even fewer feedback and stocks. “There is not any want for traitors, on tik tok the entire actions of apparatus shall be proven 😂,” reads one remark under a TikTok video of tanks ready to move a street. [ad_2] Source link #Russia #Invades #Ukraine #TikTok #Shut

[tedamley]

Trade Secrets “reasonable measures” for Safeguarding:  Second Circuit Weighs In

July 25, 2022

In Turret Labs USA, Inc. v. CargoSprint, LLC (“Turret”), the Second Circuit highlighted the importance of trade secret holders taking specific steps under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C § 1836(b) (the “DTSA”) for information with potential value to be legally protected.

According to the Court,

"the DTSA gives scant guidance on what constitutes “reasonable measures” to keep information secret. But given that trade secrets may appear in a wide variety of “forms and types,” § 1839(3), “[w]hat measures are `reasonable’ must depend in significant part on the nature of the trade secret at issue,” see Exec. Trim Constr., Inc. v. Gross, 525 F. Supp. 3d 357, 380 (N.D.N.Y. 2021). We agree with the district court that where an alleged trade secret consists “primarily, if not entirely,” of a computer software’s functionality — “functionality that is made apparent to all users of the program” — the reasonableness analysis will often focus on who is given access, and on the importance of confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements to maintaining secrecy. Turret Labs, 2021 WL 535217, at *4; see also Mason v. Amtrust Fin. Servs., Inc., 848 F. App’x 447, 450 (2d Cir. 2021) (holding that plaintiff’s failure to “execut[e] a nondisclosure or licensing agreement or . . . stipulate[e] in his employment contract that the [software] was his proprietary information” evidenced that he “had not taken reasonable measures to protect his information”); Inv. Sci., LLC v. Oath Holdings Inc., №20 Civ. 8159, 2021 WL 3541152, at *3 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 11, 2021) (concluding that the plaintiff did not employ reasonable measures to protect its claimed trade secrets because, among other reasons, the plaintiff “concede[d] that it did not require [the defendant] to sign a confidentiality agreement before sharing the contents of the [product]”); Exec. Trim, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 380; Charles Ramsey Co., Inc. v. Fabtech-NY LLC, №1:18-CV-0546, 2020 WL 352614, at *15 (N.D.N.Y. Jan. 21, 2020) (collecting cases); Mintz v. Mktg. Cohorts, LLC, №18-CV-4159, 2019 WL 3337896, at *6 (E.D.N.Y. July 25, 2019) (dismissing a DTSA claim because plaintiff “did not require defendants to sign a non-disclosure agreement nor any sort of covenant to protect the passwords”)."

Turret, thus, points to the advisability of licensors and other owners of trade secret information, in an effort to take DTSA-related “reasonable measures”, putting into place robust written nondisclosure instruments to be executed by permitted users thereof.

Do you possess valuable trade secrets that you hope to commercialize or monetize? If so, please reach out to me to schedule an introductory consultation.