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Photograph by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images.

 I didn’t make a lot of friends in the retail and publishing industries last week when I suggested that independent bookstores were the spawn of Satan. I argued that by making it cheap and easy for people to buy a lot of books, Amazon has been a boon for the book industry and “literary culture” in a way that many bookstores can’t match.

 Many defenders of bookstores countered that by focusing on dollars and cents, I’d missed the whole point of these establishments. Bookstores, it turns out, don’t primarily exist to sell books—instead, they’re more like bars for readers. “Bookstores provide a space to meet friends, cruise for a date, and hide out when you have nothing to do on a Saturday night,” Will Doig wrote at Salon. I suspect that many bookstore lovers agree with Doig, which is exactly why many of these shops are going out of business. Bars can survive because alcohol is an extremely profitable good. Books aren’t—so if you think of your favorite bookstore as a comfortable spot to find well-read potential mates rather than as a place for commerce, you’re not helping its owner.

 If you want bookstores to stick around, you should root for them to improve the way they sell stuff. Booksellers won’t survive the Amazon onslaught by merely wagging their fingers at the retail giant. Their only hope is to match the commercial innovations Jeff Bezos has brought to shopping. Indeed, this applies to all retailers, not just bookstores. The Internet has revolutionized how we buy stuff, but the main beneficiaries of this revolution have been warehouse companies like Amazon rather than firms that maintain a physical presence in your neighborhood. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This month, Amazon offered customers a discount to purchase stuff online while they were shopping at local establishments. It’s time neighborhood retailers fought Kindle Fire with Kindle Fire. Indeed, tablets and smartphones could be store owners’ best weapons against Jeff Bezos—if only they’d embrace them.

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 Take reviews and recommendations. Pretty much everyone uses the Web to research products before they purchase them. Amazon has turned this fact into a competitive advantage; by collecting and curating reviews for more than a decade—and by creating an efficient recommendations engine based on millions of purchase decisions—the firm has become the first place many people look for product information. This database, which Bezos’ firm spent a huge amount of time and money to build, can just as easily be harvested by local retailers who invested nothing in its creation. If I ran a hardware store, I’d put up a sign encouraging in-store research: “Looking for a drill? People on Amazon love the Black & Decker 9099KC. We offer free Wi-Fi, so feel free to pull out your phone and browse online reviews!” Bookstores could do the same thing: “Confused about which baby sleep-training book is best? The No-Cry Sleep Solution gets nearly 5 stars on Amazon.”

 Of course, many stores are skittish about letting customers browse online. I often look up product reviews and prices when I’m shopping, and I’ve been busted several times by employees enforcing a strict no-barcode-scanning policy. I’m always offended by such policies—why shouldn’t I research the best gas grill before I purchase it?—but I can see the stores’ rationale. Prices online tend to be cheaper, so if I’m looking something up on my phone, there’s a good chance I’ll be attracted to the discount and walk out of the store empty-handed. Market research backs this up. One survey sponsored by Motorola found that in many retail categories—especially consumer electronics, sporting goods, and books—people use their phones primarily to compare prices; checking product reviews is usually a secondary use.

 But fighting the price checkers is a futile endeavor. People think of their phones as constant companions, so you’ll never convince them to keep them stuffed in their pockets. Plus, according to the same Motorola study, price isn’t always the primary reason that people decide to walk out without buying anything. Respondents said that the main reason they leave bookstores “without the item that you wanted” is that the store didn’t have the book they came looking for. That was true at toy stores, furniture shops, and drugstores, too. Other popular reasons for leaving a store without buying stuff? The customer couldn’t find the item, thought the lines were too long, or found the staff unable to answer questions.

 Smartphones could help stores address each of these problems. AisleBuyer, a startup based in Boston, has created a way for local stores to make their own smartphone apps. Among other features, these custom apps let customers make purchases from their phones—when you’re ready to buy that book, just press a button and walk out the door. AisleBuyer also collects and mines sales data from many of its clients, which means that over time, it will be able to build the sort of recommendations engine that powers Amazon. If your local record store uses an AisleBuyer app, then, it might suggest—based on your previous purchases—that you come in to get the new Adele album. Because the app tracks how often you’ve bought stuff, the store could even give you a discount for loyalty.

 Apple could also serve as a model for other retailers. Just before Thanksgiving, the company released an updated version of its retail app, which you can fire up when you enter an Apple Store. In addition to letting you buy products from your phone and pick up stuff you’ve purchased online, the app connects you to sales staff who can answer your questions. Say you go to an Apple Store to buy a laptop. You look at the various MacBooks, and you narrow your choice down to the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air. Which should you buy? Just pull out your app and hit Get Help. This alerts an employee, who sees a map of the store on his iPod Touch; your location is highlighted on his map. So he walks over to make the sale. Anyone who’s ever tried to wrangle help in a busy electronics store—or a home improvement shop, a shoe store, a bookstore, anywhere—will recognize that this is a killer feature. ||||| Have you heard about nootropics? These brain enhancing medicines and supplements can improve your cognitive functions, memory, attention span, cognitive clarity and so many other brain functions. It is no wonder that because of all of these incredible effects, many people, such as professional gamers, athletes, and even ordinary people are beginning to use nootropics. And aside from their cognitive enhancing functions, they can also sometimes alleviate or even improve on existing mental illnesses.

 It is true, nootropics, as a class of drugs, have been proven to help people with mental illnesses, such as ADHD or anxiety. So if you want to alleviate your anxiety you can just get the best cognitive enhancers for social anxiety.

 Nootropics have been taken by a lot of people with varying degrees of mental problems. And these cognitive enhancers have been shown to have a positive impact on these people. Some people with ADHD have been prescribed medication, with the same natural substances that have been found in nootropics.

 These types of smart drugs can increase the level of concentration that people with the attention deficit disorder have, so if these people struggle from too little concentration, one way they can enhance that is through the use of nootropics. Smart drugs can also improve other people’s lives too, such as people with different kinds of anxieties.

 Nootropics can enhance brain functions through chemicals, which are often found in small amounts in food, such as L-Theanine and phenethylamine. These kinds of natural chemicals are found in chocolates and teas. And in small quantities, they do not do much. However, in concentrated and regular dosages, they will have a significant positive impact on your overall cognitive functions. These chemicals have been proven to increase people’s attention span, concentration and other types of brain functions.

 And not only can these smart drugs enhance brain functions, but they can also improve mood too. So for example, if you are someone suffering from social anxiety, you could gain a boost in your confidence and improve your mood by taking smart drugs. This is because these types of drugs can further enhance your brain chemistry, thus allowing it to function optimally.

 This will make your brain function and operate in a better order because your brain chemistry may be improved upon. And even if it does not affect your brain’s chemistry, you will be able to improve your mood, which can have a concrete impact on your anxiety.

 The best cognitive enhancers for social anxiety are also easy to get, because they are supplements, so you do not even need to have a prescription to get them. They are even easier to acquire because you can purchase them online. So if you want to alleviate your social anxiety, you should consider taking smart drugs. Not only will smart drugs make you feel more confident and improve your mood, but they could also greatly enhance your brain functions too. So there are very little downsides to taking nootropics, get them right now if you want to improve your life.

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– After sparking a debate over the value independent bookstores, Farhad Manjoo is presenting a peace offering. Independent bookstores may be inefficient from a financial perspective, but that doesn't mean they're "doomed," he writes at Slate. If we want to keep such bookstores going, we can't just go and browse: We need to buy, and that means they need to sell better. It's time for them to start innovating the way Amazon has: "Tablets and smartphones could be store owners’ best weapons against Jeff Bezos—if only they’d embrace them." Many readers turn to the online retail giant for its well-crafted review system, which is free to use—why not co-opt it? Bookstores could highlight books that have gotten good reviews on Amazon, Manjoo suggests. And shops should try out AisleBuyer, which lets indie stores create their own apps. Customers can buy with their phones in-store; shops can track customer purchases to make recommendations. Apps could also help them connect staff to customers with matching interests. To store owners: "Amazon is stealing your customers. This is a way to fight back."


Article:

One of three people facing drug charges in the investigation into Philip Seymour Hoffman's death had the Oscar-winning actor's contact information stored in his cellphone, a law-enforcement official said.

 Robert Vineberg, 57 years old, was indicted on a single felony count of possession of a controlled substance on Wednesday evening. The case was adjourned to Supreme Court on Feb. 14. Mr. Vineberg, who was not required to enter a... ||||| Three cell phones containing Philip Seymour Hoffman’s number were found in the building where cops made four drug arrests, but it’s unclear whether any of the suspects are tied to the actor’s fatal supply of heroin.

 At least one of the phones found at a rundown building at 302 Mott St. belonged to alleged heroin peddler Robert Vineberg, a struggling jazz musician who was busted Tuesday, sources told the Daily News.

 He was indicted Wednesday for felony possession of heroin with intent to sell, but prosecutors stopped short of linking him to the heroin that killed Hoffman.

 “There’s a very active ongoing investigation into who sold it,” a source with knowledge of the probe told The News.

 Max Rosenblum (right) is arraigned on cocaine possession and was one of the four collared in probe over who sold heroin to Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Steven Hirsch)

 Hoffman was tied to Vineberg, not only by cell phone, but by the suspect’s stepdaughter, Christina Soto, who said the men had known each other for several months.

 “He said he hasn’t seen Hoffman since November,” said Soto, recalling a chat she had with Vineberg. “He was very upset. He said, ‘I wish he would have called me because I could have made sure if he was going to do something, someone was going to be there and he was going to be OK.’ ”

 Soto said she spoke to her 57-year-old stepdad just hours before Vineberg and three other people were hauled away in handcuffs Tuesday night.

 Juliana Luchkiw, caught in Hoffman heroin probe, was charged with possession of marijuana and cocaine. (Steven Hirsch)

 “My father thought highly of him,” Soto, 33, who lives near Allentown, Pa., said of Hoffman. “A great man.”

 But when asked specifically if Vineberg sold Hoffman heroin, the stepdaughter clammed up.

 “That’s my dad,” Soto said. “He got into this because right now he couldn’t find any work — anything. This is the only thing he could think of. He couldn’t even find work washing dishes.”

 Phillip Seymour Hoffman died Sunday of an apparent drug overdose. He was found with a needle in his arm. (VICTORIA WILL/INVISION/AP)

 Vineberg, who faces 25 years in prison if convicted, made his living playing the saxophone under the name Robert Aaron with everyone from David Bowie and Paul Simon to Wyclef Jean, Tom Jones and the late Amy Winehouse.

 Soto said he turned to selling drugs when the gigs began drying up. This was his first arrest.

 His niece Asia Esterak, 32, a filmmaker in Los Angeles, called her uncle a “cool dude.”

 Max Rosenblum and girlfriend Juliana Luchkiw were at 302 Mott St. when cops raided Robert Vineberg's apartment. (Instagram)

 “I knew my uncle struggled with heroin off and on his whole life, but I thought he was past that,” Esterak said. “I can’t picture him selling drugs unless he was in dire straits.”

 Thomas Cushman, 48, was the only one of the suspects who didn’t live in the building on Mott St. He lives in the basement of the same Brooklyn brownstone his ex-wife calls home.

 “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” the clearly shaken woman told The News. She declined to give her name.

 Max Rosenblum and girlfriend Juliana Luchkiw were not found to have ties to Hoffman, according to sources. (Facebook)

 The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Cushman, saying he was at the building — but not linked to drugs.

 “I was visiting,” he said, sporting a blackened left eye he blamed on cops. “I had nothing to do with it.”

 The two others busted were Max Rosenblum and live-in girlfriend, Juliana Luchkiw, both 22. Luchkiw is the daughter of a New Jersey attorney and is studying fine arts and liberal arts at Parsons the New School for Design.

 Robert Vineberg, also known as Robert Aaron, was a struggling jazz musician before he turned to drug dealing, his stepdaughter Christina Soto says. (Facebook)

 “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said her attorney, Stephen Turano.

 He said she was charged with possession of marijuana, a violation, and misdemeanor cocaine possession. Turano added that it was her neighbor, Vineberg, who was accused of heroin possession. Officials said Rosenblum — who has two prior drug collars — was indicted on misdemeanor cocaine possession.

 Vineberg, Luchkiw and Rosenblum were ordered held without bail late Wednesday.

 Robert Vineberg was arrested in connection to the drug-related death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. (robert aaron/facebook)

 “Just for the record, this case and the charges against Mr. Vineberg have absolutely nothing to do with the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman,” his lawyer Edward Kratt said. “I hope that the district attorney will not use Mr. Vineberg as a scapegoat in that unfortunate situation.”

 The couple’s lack of bail appeared unusual since they were hit with misdemeanors.

 Hoffman, 46, was found dead Sunday in a T-shirt and shorts and with 70 baggies of heroin in his $10,000-a-month West Village apartment. The medical examiner’s office said Wednesday results of his autopsy were inconclusive. A needle was stuck in his arm.

 Under the name Robert Aaron, Vineberg has performed with David Bowie, Paul Simon, Wyclef Jean, Tom Jones and the late Amy Winehouse. (Facebook)

 A confidential informant with three drug arrests on his record led investigators to the Mott St. address and gave police Vineberg’s name as Hoffman’s supplier, a source said.

 “I have some information,” the informant told a housing cop.

 Of the four people arrested, only Vineberg had ties to Hoffman, the source said.

 The building at 302 Mott St. where police arrested four suspects in probe to find who sold Philip Seymour Hoffman heroin. (Alec Tabak/for New York Daily News)

 Hoffman made six withdrawals from an ATM on Greenwich St. the night before he was found dead. None of the $1,200 was found in his apartment.

 Neighbors were shocked by the arrest of Vineberg, who had a recording studio in the building.

 “He used to play ‘My Funny Valentine’ at 3 a.m.,” a neighbor said.

 A memorial for Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman outside the building where his body was discovered on Sunday. (Alex Rud)

 Some of the baggies found in Hoffman’s apartment had “Ace of Spades” written on them, sources said. Others were stamped “Ace of Hearts.”

 Vineberg was arrested in Apt. 21, where cops found 27 packets of heroin labeled “Red Bull” and 19 branded “Black List.” A police source said that’s where the drugs were sold.

 Vineberg lives in Apt. 38, where police found 250 packages of heroin labeled “Red Bull” and eight unspecified pills.

 Michelle Williams leaves the home of Mimi O'Donnell, longtime girlfriend of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Wednesday. (Jeff Bachner/for New York Daily News)

 Hoffman had been estranged from Mimi O’Donnell, his longtime partner and mother of their three children. Since his death a steady stream of celebrity friends have come by her Jane St. apartment to console her. Actress Michelle Williams, who lost her lover Heath Ledger to a drug overdose, showed up Wednesday. So did actress Catherine Keener.

 A private funeral has been arranged for Friday. Plans are underway for a memorial service later in the month. Three hundred people attended a vigil Wednesday night for Hoffman at the Labyrinth Theater Company, where he was the former artistic director.

 “I was lucky to get to see him on stage,” said Rachel Falcone, 29, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. “It was beautiful. He had a lot of work left to do.”

 With Rich Schapiro, Caitlin Nolan and Shayna Jacobs

 rparascandola@nydailynews.com

 Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing! ||||| Several suspects were arrested at a Manhattan building as investigators tried to determine whether they sold drugs to actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was found dead of an apparent overdose. Brynn Gingras reports. (Published Thursday, Feb. 6, 2014)

 Several suspects were arrested on drug charges at a Manhattan building as investigators tried to determine whether they sold heroin to actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was found dead of an apparent overdose.

 Two law enforcement sources said Hoffman's phone number was found on the cell phone of one of the suspects.

 Three suspects -- Robert Vineberg, 57, Max Rosenblum and Juliana Luchkiw, both 22 -- were arrested on drug charges Tuesday after police searched three apartments in the Mott Street building and allegedly found about 300 bags of heroin stamped "Red Bull" and "Black List," along with three small bags of cocaine and some unidentified pills, according to NBC News.

 A fourth suspect initially named by sources is not being charged because he does not live in the building and investigators cannot link him to the case, sources said.

 Philip Seymour Hoffman: Life & Times

 All three suspects appeared before a judge Wednesday and entered not guilty pleas through their lawyers. They're being held until their next court appearance.

 Luchkiw's lawyer, Stephen Turano, said his client had no relationship with Hoffman and that she was "in the wrong place at the wrong time." He said he believes the large amounts of recovered heroin were found in the other apartments.

 Rosenblum and Luchkiw are a couple and live in the same apartment. Turano said only small amounts of cocaine and marijuana were recovered from their apartment, not heroin.

 Police are looking into whether the suspects supplied drugs to Hoffman, who was found dead in the bathroom of his West Village apartment Sunday with a syringe in his arm, sources say. The Oscar-winning actor had been dead several hours when he was found by a friend and is suspected to have died of an overdose.

 Actor's Death Sheds Light on New Heroin Wave

 The death of Phiilip Seymour Hoffman is shedding light on the new wave of heroin, the power of addiction, and the boom in the drug's popularity. Marc Santia reports. (Published Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014)

 The medical examiner said Wednesday that the autopsy was inconclusive as to the cause and manner of death. Authorities are awaiting further test results, including toxicology.

 Dozens of bags of heroin were found in Hoffman's apartment, along with prescription drugs and a bag of white powder police were testing for cocaine. Some of the heroin found there was stamped "Ace of Spades."

 Hoffman's last known contacts on Saturday night were with his longtime girlfriend around 8 p.m., and a screenwriter friend about 9 p.m., officials said.

 Sources say bank records show Hoffman withdrew $1,200 from an ATM at a supermarket near his West Village home between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. the night he died. A witness told investigators he saw Hoffman speaking with two men wearing messenger bags as he withdrew the money.

 Philip Seymour Hoffman Found Dead: NYPD

 Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead Sunday in his Manhattan apartment of an apparent heroin overdose, law enforcement sources said. Ida Siegal reports. (Published Monday, Feb. 3, 2014)

 Detectives are looking into whether he bought the drugs the night of his death.

 Hoffman, who was 46 and had three children, won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2006 for his starring role in "Capote." He was nominated for Oscars three other times, including for 2012's "The Master," and he earned two Tony nominations for his work on Broadway.

 Hoffman spoke over the years about past struggles with drug addiction. After 23 years sober, he admitted in interviews last year to falling off the wagon and developing a heroin problem that led to a stint in rehab.

 --Katy Tur contributed to this story ||||| Philip Seymour Hoffman Death Drug Suspects Arraigned

 breaking news

 Three of the four people arrested in what cops believe may be a link to's death were in court, and have been arraigned on drug charges.-- the man a police informant claims sold drugs to him and Hoffman -- pled not guilty to felony possession of heroin with an intent to sell.Vineberg's attorney, Ed Kratt, tells TMZ, "these charges have NOTHING to do with the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman."andare NOT charged with heroin possession. Instead, prosecutors have charged them with 1 count each for possession of cocaine ... a misdemeanor.We spoke with the lawyer for Juliana who pled not guilty. The lawyer says his client has never met Hoffman.A fourth man-- was arrested but not charged with a crime due to lack of evidence.TMZ broke the story .... an informant who triggered the bust has told cops ... Vineberg was Hoffman's main dealer, and the actor came by his apartment twice a week to score dozens of bags of heroin. |||||
What is a summary?

– A struggling jazzman busted in a drug raid linked to the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman had the actor's phone number in his cell phone, law enforcement officials say. Robert Vineberg, 57, is among three people facing drug charges after the raid, reports the Wall Street Journal. He has been indicted for felony possession of heroin with intent to sell and he is being held without bail. Two other people busted in the raid—during which two other phones with Hoffman's number were found—have been indicted on drug possession charges, while a fourth has been freed due to lack of evidence, TMZ finds; all three suspects pleaded not guilty yesterday, NBC New York reports. The New York Daily News has more background on Vineberg, a saxophonist who goes by the name Robert Aaron and has played with artists including David Bowie and Paul Simon. His stepdaughter says he knew Hoffman for several months, and only started selling drugs when the gigs dried up. "He got into this because right now he couldn’t find any work—anything," she says. "This is the only thing he could think of. He couldn’t even find work washing dishes." Vineberg's lawyer insists his client had nothing to do with Hoffman's death and he hopes he is not being made "a scapegoat in that unfortunate situation."


– An actress in the anti-Islam movie causing friction around the world is suing the producer, reports TMZ. Cindy Lee Garcia says producer Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, aka Sam Bacile, told her the movie was going to be a harmless adventure flick called Desert Warrior, not the Innocence of Muslims. The lines insulting to Islam and Mohammed were dubbed in afterward, says the lawsuit. "There was no mention of 'Mohammed' during filming or on the set." The suit also names Google and YouTube, and demands that the video get pulled, reports AP. Garcia says she has gone into hiding because of death threats and is seeking unspecified damages. "This lawsuit is not an attack on the First Amendment nor on the right of Americans to say what they think, but does request that the offending content be removed from the Internet," it states.

Expand this summary.

'Innocence of Muslims' Actress Sues Producer I Was Duped Into Movie

 breaking news

 One of the stars of the anti-Islam movie "The Innocence of Muslims" -- which has sparked violent protests around the world -- is now suing the producer, claiming she was duped into acting in the "vile and reprehensible" film.

 Cindy Lee Garcia filed the lawsuit today in L.A. County Superior Court against producer Nakoula Basseley Nakoula -- aka Sam Bacile -- claiming at the time of filming, she believed she was acting in a "historical Arabian Desert adventure film."

 When the film was released, Cindy says it had been "changed grotesquely" to "make it appear that Ms. Garcia voluntarily performed in a hateful anti-Islamic production."

 Garcia has claimed her voice was dubbed in the movie to include lines that insulted the Muslim prophet Muhammed, which she never uttered.

 After receiving numerous death threats since the film's release, Cindy claims she's been forced into hiding. She says she has also been fired from her job as a result of the film.

 In addition to the film's producer, Cindy is also suing Google and YouTube, demanding a court order requiring them to pull the film from their servers. Cindy claims Google/YouTube have already refused to do so.

 Cindy is also seeking unspecified damages from Google, YouTube, and the producer.

 Google, YouTube, and the producer have yet to comment on the lawsuit. ||||| An actress who appears in the anti-Muslim film trailer that has sparked riots in the Middle East is suing the filmmaker for fraud and slander, and is asking a judge to order YouTube to take down the clip.

 Cindy Lee Garcia's lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles claims the actress was duped by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind "Innocence of Muslims" who has been forced into hiding since its 14-minute trailer rose to prominence last week. She was unaware of the film's anti-Muslim content and that the pages of the script she received had no mention of the prophet Muhammad, according to her complaint.

 The lawsuit states Garcia responded to an ad and thought she was appearing in an ancient Egyptian adventure film. Dialogue in the amateurish film was later dubbed to include anti-Islamic messages and to portray Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester.

 "The film is vile and reprehensible," Garcia's attorney, M. Cris Armenta, wrote in the document.

 "This lawsuit is not an attack on the First Amendment nor on the right of Americans to say what they think, but does request that the offending content be removed from the Internet," the complaint states. Garcia's attorneys plan to seek an injunction against the film Thursday in a Los Angeles court.

 YouTube has refused Garcia's requests to remove the film, according to the lawsuit. The complaint contends that keeping it online violates her right of publicity, invade her privacy and the post-filming dialogue changes cast her in a false light. "(Garcia) had a legally protected interest in her privacy and the right to be free from having hateful words put in her mouth or being depicted as a bigot," the lawsuit states.

 Garcia has received death threats since the trailer began drawing attention, and her suit states she no longer is able to visit her grandchildren as a result. It has also harmed her reputation and caused "shame, mortification, and hurt feelings," the suit states.

 An email sent to Google seeking comment was not immediately returned. The search giant owns YouTube and has blocked users in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt from viewing the "Innocence of Muslims" trailer. It has also blocked the video from being viewed in Indonesia and India because it violates laws in those countries.

 A man who answered the phone at the law offices of Steven Seiden, who represents Nakoula on any criminal repercussions he may face, declined comment. He said Seiden does not represent Nakoula, who is on probation for a bank fraud case in which he opened 600 fraudulent credit accounts, in civil matters.

 According to the terms of his probation, Nakoula was allowed to only access website with the permission of probation officials and for work purposes. It is unclear who uploaded the film to the site.

 The lawsuit also names Sam Bacile, an alias that Nakoula gave to The Associated Press after the trailer was linked to protests that have since killed at least 30 people in seven countries, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

 ___

 Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP |||||


Write a summary based on this article:

Jim Carrey's girlfriend, 30-year-old Cathriona White, was found dead at her Sherman Oaks, California, residence on Monday night, the Los Angeles County Coroner confirms to ET.

 White was found unresponsive by her friend who then called 911. She was pronounced dead at the scene and police confirm a note was also found there. Officials tell ET she may have died of a possible overdose. Her cause of death is being investigated as a suicide and an autopsy is likely.

 MORE: Jim Carrey Slams California Vaccine Law -- 'This Corporate Fascist Must Be Stopped'

 Instagram

 On what is believed to be her personal Twitter account, this cryptic message was posted on Sept. 24.

 "Signing off Twitter," the tweet reads. "I hope I have been a light to my nearest and dearest. ✌?❤ to yo all."

 Signing off Twitter, I hope I have been a light to my nearest and dearest. ✌?❤ to yo all — Cathriona white (@littleirishcat) September 24, 2015

 Carrey's most recent tweet was a photo taken by White on Sept. 16. "I am nothing," the photo message reads. "What a relief."

 Grand Central, NYC. ;^} (photo by Cathriona White) pic.twitter.com/N8QbQQDFLu — Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) September 16, 2015

 The 53-year-old actor met White in 2012 and the two dated on and off for the last few years. They were most recently seen together in New York City on May 21, a day after the actor made an appearance on the finale of The Late Show With David Letterman.

 If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

  ||||| Jim Carrey Girlfriend Commits Suicide

 Jim Carrey -- Girlfriend Cathriona White Commits Suicide

 EXCLUSIVE

 9:43 AM PT -- Jim Carrey released a statement -- "I am shocked and deeply saddened by the passing of my sweet Cathriona. She was a truly kind and delicate Irish flower, too sensitive for this soil, to whom loving and being loved was all that sparkled. My heart goes out to her family and friends and to everyone who loved and cared about her. We have all been hit with a lightning bolt." Jim Carrey's on-again/off-again 28-year-old girlfriend has committed suicide ... TMZ has learned.

 Law enforcement tells TMZ, LAPD responded to a call in the L.A. area Monday night. We're told they went to a residence and found the body of Cathriona White.

 Our sources say White left a suicide note addressed to Carrey which references their break up on Sept. 24. Cathriona tweeted on the 24th ... "Signing off Twitter, I hope I have been a light to my nearest and dearest."

 Law enforcement tells us they believe she died from an overdose of drugs -- pills were next to her body. We're told 2 friends found Cathriona last night when they went to check on her.

 53-year-old Carrey and White met in 2012, dated a few months and then split. They rekindled their relationship in May. |||||

– Cathriona White, the 28-year-old Irish makeup artist whom TMZ refers to as Jim Carrey's "on-again/off-again" girlfriend, was found dead of an apparent suicide Monday night. Two friends found her after going to check on her, the gossip site reports, and law enforcement sources believe she overdosed on pills. Carrey, 53, first met White in 2012 and they dated for a few months. They got back together in May, but broke up on Thursday, and TMZ's sources say White's suicide note was addressed to Carrey and referenced the breakup. (Carrey's last tweet mentions White, and White's final tweet sounds downtrodden—click to see them.)


Article:
After the 2016 election, Mark Zuckerberg went on a “listening tour” while Sheryl Sandberg reportedly orchestrated an oppo campaign against Facebook’s critics. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images and Scott Eisen/Getty Images.

 The leaders of Facebook can no longer pretend they are special people running a special company. Facebook is now just another normal sleazy American company run by normal sleazy executives, engaged in normal sleazy lobbying and corporate propaganda.

 Thanks to some deep reporting by a team of New York Times reporters, we now know that CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent the year after the 2016 presidential election largely checked out and clueless about the monster he had created. And we know that COO Sheryl Sandberg, in the face of growing scrutiny of the company, was so desperate to repair the leak in the price of Facebook stock that she went into cahoots with a number of suspect figures across American politics—including a right-wing opposition research shop dabbling in the PR dark arts as well as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who ran interference for the company within his party.

 Over the past three years, Facebook has been outed for abusing the trust of its users, sharing personal data with third parties like Cambridge Analytica, unwittingly hosting Russian-backed propaganda intended to undermine American democracy, amplifying calls for religious and ethnic violence in places like Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and promoting violent authoritarian and nationalist leaders like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Narendra Modi in India. As these stories piled up and public trust eroded, the Times reports, Zuckerberg consistently exempted himself from crucial discussions with the Facebook security team and acted generally baffled that anyone would question his baby. After all, didn’t he just want, in his words, to “bring the world closer together?”

 The Times report makes clear that Zuckerberg and Sandberg played no-cop-bad-cop while troubles rolled across their screens and into their board meetings.

 Sandberg, a veteran of the Clinton administration and a thoroughly connected member of America’s corporate and cultural elite, called in all the favors she could and appealed to some of the baser instincts of potential allies. Crucially, Sandberg brought on Republican lobbyists like Joel Kaplan, last seen lending public support to his old friend, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during his fraught confirmation hearings.

 Kaplan reportedly led the charge internally to water down Facebook reports about the breadth of Russian attacks on American democracy for fear of angering President Donald Trump and conservative power brokers. Sandberg consistently backed Kaplan, denying the American public a full account of a hostile foreign power’s attempts to influence an election and, just as important, the fundamental vulnerability of Facebook to being hijacked by almost any small but determined force.

 Sandberg also reportedly unleashed a propaganda campaign that leveraged the right-wing meme machine—the same machine that so deeply pollutes Facebook with misinformation and disinformation about life in America. Perhaps the most disturbing allegation in the Times report is that Facebook’s right-wing agents tried to link some high-profile Facebook critics to financier George Soros. Given that Soros is the go-to boogeyman in many recent anti-Semitic campaigns, we should be shocked that Facebook stooped so low. All the while boasting of transparency and concern for the health of our communities, Facebook clandestinely played with the very villains who regularly warp and pollute our culture and politics.

 After months of stalling and dodging and under intense pressure from Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking minority member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Facebook finally revealed in late October 2017 that Russian propaganda had reached at least 126 million American Facebook users. Because of Facebook’s propensity to algorithmically amplify content that generates strong emotions, University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson concludes in her new book Cyberwar that Russian activity in the 2016 election “not only infected the news agenda but also tilted the balance of discourse in battleground states against the Democratic Party nominee.”

 Warner, one of the few in this drama who comes off as more concerned about the fate of the republic than the prospect of Facebook campaign contributions, has been such a strong and consistent interrogator of Facebook that his party leader, Schumer, felt compelled to defend his old friend Sandberg. (As the Times also points out, Schumer’s daughter is a marketing director at Facebook.) The Times reports that he told Warner to back off from his scrutiny of Facebook and that “Mr. Warner should be looking for ways to work with Facebook, Mr. Schumer advised, not harm it.”

 Schumer has always been a transactional politician. But Facebook has not always been just a regular, sleazy company. It’s become one lately, largely as a result of the rush of trouble that has rendered Zuckerberg verbally stunned and Sandberg morally stunted.

 For most of its history, Facebook made too much money to care about money and had too strong a reputation to care about its reputation. It was golden. Just as Zuckerberg and Sandberg graced the covers of magazines, Facebook scaled the peaks of the stock market and the public imagination.

 What explains the cravenness of Facebook’s leadership now? They must realize, as social media scholars have been warning for many years, that Facebook is vulnerable by design. All of the scandals and crises the company has facilitated in recent years are examples of Facebook working as it was supposed to.

 The three features that make Facebook Facebook also make it the ideal platform for working on behalf of dangerous and violent forces. The first is scale. Facebook gathers posts from more than 2.2 billion people in more than 100 languages. The second is algorithmic amplification. Facebook promotes extreme content like hate speech and conspiracy theories over thoughtful, balanced, deliberate work. And the third is the best advertising system ever created. Facebook can put an ad in front of exactly the type of person who might respond to a sales pitch or a call to political action and ignore those who might not.

 Zuckerberg and Sandberg can’t fix Facebook because to fix Facebook is to scrap one or more of these essential attributes. The problem with Facebook is Facebook.

 We are stuck in the world Facebook made. It was a terrible idea in the first place, but as long as advertisers, authoritarians, and Chuck Schumer protect it, Facebook will face little significant pressure in most of the world. All Zuckerberg and Sandberg need to do is ride out this moment, boast about making a good effort to clean the thing up, and keep those campaign contributions flowing. Facebook will be just fine. Democracy will not. ||||| Three years ago, Mr. Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in 2004 while attending Harvard, was celebrated for the company’s extraordinary success. Ms. Sandberg, a former Clinton administration official and Google veteran, had become a feminist icon with the publication of her empowerment manifesto, “Lean In,” in 2013.

 Like other technology executives, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg cast their company as a force for social good. Facebook’s lofty aims were emblazoned even on securities filings: “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”

 But as Facebook grew, so did the hate speech, bullying and other toxic content on the platform. When researchers and activists in Myanmar, India, Germany and elsewhere warned that Facebook had become an instrument of government propaganda and ethnic cleansing, the company largely ignored them. Facebook had positioned itself as a platform, not a publisher. Taking responsibility for what users posted, or acting to censor it, was expensive and complicated. Many Facebook executives worried that any such efforts would backfire.

 Then Donald J. Trump ran for president. He described Muslim immigrants and refugees as a danger to America, and in December 2015 posted a statement on Facebook calling for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the United States. Mr. Trump’s call to arms — widely condemned by Democrats and some prominent Republicans — was shared more than 15,000 times on Facebook, an illustration of the site’s power to spread racist sentiment.

 Mr. Zuckerberg, who had helped found a nonprofit dedicated to immigration reform, was appalled, said employees who spoke to him or were familiar with the conversation. He asked Ms. Sandberg and other executives if Mr. Trump had violated Facebook’s terms of service.

 The question was unusual. Mr. Zuckerberg typically focused on broader technology issues; politics was Ms. Sandberg’s domain. In 2010, Ms. Sandberg, a Democrat, had recruited a friend and fellow Clinton alum, Marne Levine, as Facebook’s chief Washington representative. A year later, after Republicans seized control of the House, Ms. Sandberg installed another friend, a well-connected Republican: Joel Kaplan, who had attended Harvard with Ms. Sandberg and later served in the George W. Bush administration.

 Some at Facebook viewed Mr. Trump’s 2015 attack on Muslims as an opportunity to finally take a stand against the hate speech coursing through its platform. But Ms. Sandberg, who was edging back to work after the death of her husband several months earlier, delegated the matter to Mr. Schrage and Monika Bickert, a former prosecutor whom Ms. Sandberg had recruited as the company’s head of global policy management. Ms. Sandberg also turned to the Washington office — particularly to Mr. Kaplan, said people who participated in or were briefed on the discussions. |||||Summary:

– A New York Times investigative story about Facebook presents a brutal picture of how Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg handled the controversy over Russian hacking in the 2016 election. The Times uses three words to sum up company strategy: "delay, deny, and deflect." The story, based on interviews with more than 50 people, makes the case that Zuckerberg and Sandberg "ignored warning signs" that Russians were exploiting the platform, "then sought to conceal them from public view." Distracted by personal projects and issues, the pair delegated to subordinates key decisions on security and privacy. And when the scope of the problem became clear, Sandberg then oversaw an aggressive lobbying campaign to not only undermine its critics but to shift public anger toward rivals such as Google, according to the story. One key part of that campaign was to have a GOP opposition-research firm link vocal anti-Facebook critics to liberal financier George Soros. Another was to depict the Facebook criticism as anti-Semitic. The story doesn't present a flattering view of Sen. Chuck Schumer, either, asserting that he did his best to blunt criticism of Facebook on Capitol Hill. At one point, he ordered Sen. Mark Warner to back off his repeated criticism of the company. Schumer received more money from Facebook employees than any other member of Congress in 2016, and his daughter is a marketing manager there. One early reaction to the piece comes from Siva Vaidhyanathan at Slate: "Facebook is now just another normal sleazy American company run by normal sleazy executives, engaged in normal sleazy lobbying and corporate propaganda." (Read the full Times story here.)


Fr Joseph Leonard CM was born in Sligo in 1877 and died in Dublin in 1964, aged 87. He was a priest in the Catholic Vincentian Order – the letters CM stand for Congregation of the Mission – which is devoted to the teachings of St Vincent de Paul.

 Fr Leonard was educated at Castleknock College, a Vincentian boarding school in Dublin, and trained for the priesthood at the Vincentian seminary St Joseph’s in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

 After being ordained he was sent to London and taught in a teacher- training college run by the order in Strawberry Hill, Twickenham.

 During the first World War he joined the British army’s chaplain department, holding the rank of captain and serving on the western front in France. The experience left him partly deaf.

 He was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He returned to work in London and was friendly with prominent social figures including Irish playwright and Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw and the hostess Lady Lavery, wife of artist Sir John Lavery and a friend of Michael Collins.

 Fr Leonard was introduced to, and befriended, a wealthy American couple on honeymoon, Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis and his wife Annie Auchincloss.

 Fr Leonard returned to Dublin in 1939, to the Vincentian seminary at All Hallows in Drumcondra.

 Eleven years later he was contacted by two young American visitors to Ireland: Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and her stepbrother Hugh Dudley Auchincloss III. They had been given Fr Leonard’s name as a contact by Mrs Lewis. Mrs Lewis’s brother, oil heir Hugh Auchincloss Jr, had become Jacqueline’s stepfather in 1942.

 Jacqueline and Fr Leonard struck up an immediate friendship and corresponded regularly after that first meeting. They met on only one other occasion, however, when Jacqueline travelled to Dublin with her husband John F Kennedy, then a US senator, in 1955.

 Fr Leonard’s health declined rapidly in the 1960s. By late 1963 he was unable to stand and had to request special permission from the Vatican to say Mass sitting down – which he did in memory of John F Kennedy following the president’s assassination in November 1963.

 On the morning of Fr Leonard’s funeral in Dublin, as the coffin was being borne into the church, a bouquet of red roses was delivered from Jacqueline in New York.

 Mrs Kennedy, widowed less than a year, subsequently wrote to the rector of All Hallows to offer condolences on the loss of “a great and good friend to all of us”.

  |||||

 Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s thoughts about her marriage to President John F Kennedy, their life in the White House and her reaction to his assassination are revealed in newly discovered letters she wrote to an Irish priest before and after she became first lady of the United States.

 The archive of her 14-year-long correspondence with Fr Joseph Leonard – a Vincentian priest who lived in All Hallows in Drumcondra in Dublin – will be sold at an auction in Ireland next month.

 In the previously unpublished letters, Jackie tells Fr Leonard how Kennedy, who was then a rising star in American politics, was consumed by ambition “like Macbeth”.

 In a letter sent in July 1952, she said her time with him had given her “an amazing insight on politicians – they really are a breed apart”.

 She described with great excitement how she was in love with “the son of the ambassador to England”, but expressed concern he might prove to be like her father, John Vernou Bouvier.

 “He’s like my father in a way – loves the chase and is bored with the conquest – and once married needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you. I saw how that nearly killed Mummy.”

 �?Men of Destiny’

 In a letter written in 1953, when she was still only 23, she confided to Fr Leonard: “Maybe I’m just dazzled and picture myself in a glittering world of crowned heads and Men of Destiny– and not just a sad little housewife . . . That world can be very glamorous from the outside – but if you’re in it – and you’re lonely – it could be a Hell.”

 However, after a year of marriage she wrote to him: “I love being married much more than I did even in the beginning.”

 After her husband’s assassination in 1963, she confided to Fr Leonard how she became “bitter against God” and struggled to find comfort in her deep Catholic faith.

 “I have to think there is a God – or I have no hope of finding Jack again.” She added, with bittersweet humour: “God will have a bit of explaining to do to me if I ever see Him.”

 Although her public life has been subject to the most intense scrutiny, Jackie didn’t publish an autobiography and no memoir appeared after her death in 1994 at the age of 64.

 Her obituary in the New York Times noted that “her silence about her past, especially about the Kennedy years and her marriage to the president, was always something of a mystery”.

 The archive of letters to Fr Leonard has been consigned to Sheppard’s Irish Auction House in Durrow, Co Laois.

 Spokesman Philip Sheppard said the letters were “the dream find of a lifetime for an auctioneer” and they included “simply astounding fresh insights that transform our understanding of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy”.

 He said: “They are, in effect, her autobiography for the years 1950-1964.”

 He expects the archive will sell in an auction on June 10th for “in excess of €1 million”.

 * This article appears as part of a special supplement with today’s Irish Times ||||| Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. |||||

Write a summary.

– A trove of letters spanning more than a decade is offering new insight into the world of Jackie Kennedy, describing her engagement to the future president and her experience after his assassination. The previously unpublished letters to Fr. Joseph Leonard, a Dublin priest, will be auctioned in Ireland next month, the Irish Times reports. Kennedy became friends with Leonard, then 73, when she visited Ireland in 1950, and they stayed in touch, the Irish Times notes. The letters "are, in effect, her autobiography for the years 1950 to 1964," says a rep for Sheppard's Irish Auction House. Among their most fascinating quotations: Jackie noted that John F. Kennedy's ambitions made him "like Macbeth." Politicians, she wrote, "really are a breed apart." But she feared that John's similarity to her father could be dangerous, she wrote in 1952. He "loves the chase and is bored with the conquest—and once married needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you. I saw how that nearly killed Mummy." Part of her was attracted to the limelight, she wrote in 1953, picturing herself in "a glittering world of crowned heads and Men of Destiny—and not just a sad little housewife … That world can be very glamorous from the outside—but if you’re in it—and you’re lonely—it could be a Hell." After JFK's assassination, she felt "bitter against God" but felt she had to believe in him, "or I have no hope of finding Jack again," she wrote. "God will have a bit of explaining to do to me if I ever see Him.” The letters may sell for up to $1.6 million, the Washington Post notes. How the auction house got them hasn't been revealed.


Article:
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. officials won't be penalized as part of a deal the largest U.S. bank is negotiating with the Justice Department over alleged failures to warn about Bernard Madoff's massive fraud, said people close to the talks.

 Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and U.S. banking regulators intend to announce a total of more than $2 billion in fines this week, these people said. But all fines will be paid by the... ||||| It was a $2.6 billion day of reckoning for JPMorgan Chase over its decades of dealings with Bernard Madoff.

 Federal prosecutors announced a $1.7 billion settlement with the bank, which was accused of ignoring red flags about Madoff's crimes, and allegedly turning a blind eye to his massive fraud while acting as his banker.

 U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in New York City said the funds will compensate victims of Madoff, convicted mastermind of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.

 In addition to the settlement with prosecutors, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $350 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and another $543 million to Irving Picard, a court-appointed trustee seeking to recover lost assets for Madoff victims.

 Related: Five things you didn't know about Madoff's scam

 "We recognize we could have done a better job pulling together various pieces of information and concerns about Madoff from different parts of the bank over time," wrote JPMorgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti in an e-mail to CNNMoney.

 He said the bank filed a Suspicious Activity Report about Madoff's activities in the United Kingdom in 2008, but did not file a similar report in the United States.

 "We do not believe that any JPMorgan Chase employee knowingly assisted Madoff's Ponzi scheme," he said.

 Related: Regulator warned against JPMorgan charges

 Federal documents say that from 1986 until Madoff's arrest in 2008, his Ponzi scheme "was conducted almost exclusively" through JPMorgan bank accounts. They also state that "virtually all client investments" were deposited with Chase.

 As part of the deal, the bank has agreed to a deferred-prosecution agreement, which means the company can avoid criminal charges as long as it adheres to specific legal requirements for two years. At that point, the charges against JPMorgan could be dismissed entirely.

 Richard Breeden, special master of the Department of Justice's Madoff Victim Fund, said that all of the $1.7 billion in the settlement with federal prosecutors is going into the fund that he controls. It brings the total in his fund to $4 billion.

 Breeden said that he is still taking claims and has not yet compensated victims. His fund is separate from the approximately $10 billion in Madoff assets recovered by court-appointed trustee Picard.

 Madoff swindled about $20 billion from thousands of investors who thought he was operating a legitimate Wall Street firm.

 Related: Prison exclusive with Madoff, king of thieves

 JPMorgan has announced a series of massive legal settlements in recent months. In November, the financial firm agreed to a $13 billion settlement over the mortgage-backed securities it sold ahead of the financial crisis of 2008.

 Also in November, JPMorgan announced a separate $4.5 billion settlement with institutional investors who suffered losses on mortgage securities sold during the housing bubble.

 Earlier in the year, the firm had to pay about $1 billion in fines related to the so-called "London Whale" trading snafu, and more than $400 million to settle charges that it manipulated electricity prices in California and the Midwest.

 Madoff is serving a 150-year prison sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina after pleading guilty to 11 criminal counts, including fraud, in 2009, three months after his arrest.

 Five of Madoff's ex-employees are currently on trial in federal court in New York for allegedly helping him conduct the scam. |||||Summary:

– JPMorgan has officially signed off on a $1.7 billion settlement laying to rest complaints about its dealings with infamous Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. Prosecutors accuse the bank of turning a blind eye to Madoff's frauds—the bank filed a Suspicious Activity Report on Madoff with UK regulators in 2008, but neglected to do anything similar in the US. Some funds from the fine will reportedly go into a fund to compensate Madoff's victims, according to CNN. "We do not believe that any JPMorgan Chase employee knowingly assisted Madoff's Ponzi scheme," a spokesperson said. The Justice Department must agree, because no JPMorgan executives will be penalized in the deal, the Wall Street Journal reports. The deal is reportedly a deferred prosecution agreement, meaning prosecutors will file charges that will be dismissed if the bank meets certain conditions. Individuals aren't usually charged in such cases, but it's also rare for Bank Secrecy Act violations to be settled in this manner.


– President Trump's Supreme Court shortlist just got a little longer. Should another vacancy on the high court arise, Trump on Friday added five new judges to his existing list of 20 possible replacements, Politico reports. "These additions, like those on the original list released more than a year ago, were selected with input from respected conservative leaders," the White House said in a statement that also noted Trump was "elected to restore the rule of law and to Make the Judiciary Great Again." USA Today notes that Trump's move "precedes the possible, but still unannounced, retirement of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy." Trump's initial list, released in May 2016, had 11 names on it; in September 2016 he added 10 more, and he ultimately chose Neil Gorsuch from that list to replace Antonin Scalia once he was elected president. The new judges added to the list are Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, Britt Grant of the Georgia Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Kevin Newsom of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, and Patrick Wyrick of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. A director at the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, which spent $10 million on a pro-Gorsuch ad campaign, calls the new additions the "best and brightest judges in the nation," the Hill reports. The full list is here.

Expand this summary.

The White House said President Donald Trump is “refreshing” his list. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Trump releases updated short list of potential Supreme Court nominees

 President Donald Trump released a new list of potential Supreme Court justices on Friday, adding five new judges to his previous compilation of 20 jurists.

 The White House said Trump, who was “elected to restore the rule of law and to Make the Judiciary Great Again,” is “refreshing” his list.

 Story Continued Below

 “President Trump will choose a nominee for a future Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, from this updated list of 25 individuals,” the White House said in a statement. “The president remains deeply committed to identifying and selecting outstanding jurists in the mold of Justice Gorsuch. These additions, like those on the original list released more than a year ago, were selected with input from respected conservative leaders.”

 As the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump initially released a list of 11 potential justices in May 2016. He added 10 names during the general election in September, including Neil Gorsuch, the man Trump successfully tapped in January to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the high court.

 The most reliable politics newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

 In the September announcement, the campaign said Trump had committed to picking any nominees for future vacancies from that final list. However, shortly before the Senate confirmed Gorsuch in April, administration officials said the president did not feel bound to pick a second Supreme Court justice from his campaign list.

 The updated roster omits Gorsuch and adds judges Amy Coney Barrett of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Britt Grant of the Georgia Supreme Court; Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Kevin Newsom of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and Patrick Wyrick of the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

 White House counsel Don McGahn announced the new additions in remarks to a lawyers convention hosted by the Federalist Society later Friday.

 McGahn said the jurists all “have a demonstrated commitment to originalism and textualism.”

 “They all have paper trails. They all are sitting judges,” McGahn said. “There’s nothing unknown about them. What you see is what you get.”

 The Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo played an outsize role in helping vet Trump’s original list of judges, as well as in selecting Gorsuch for the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Scalia’s death in 2016.

 “Our opponents of judicial nominees frequently claim the president has outsourced his selection of judges. That is completely false,” McGahn argued. “I’ve been a member of the Federalist Society since law school — still am. So, frankly, it seems like it’s been insourced.”

 “But seeking advice from Leonard Leo and many members of the Federalist Society is not outsourcing the judicial selection process,” he added. “The fact is we all share the same vision of the judicial role, and we welcome input from many sources.” ||||| CLOSE Footage of the Supreme Court group photo, featuring new addition Neil Gorsuch. The court sits for a new portrait shortly after swearing in a new member. Time

 President Trump added five new names to his list of potential Supreme Court nominees on Friday. (Photo: Eric Thayer, Getty Images)

 WASHINGTON – President Trump added five names Friday to his list of potential Supreme Court justices in a move that precedes the possible, but still unannounced, retirement of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy.

 The biggest new name was that of Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Many Supreme Court justices have come from that circuit, and Kavanaugh tops the list of judges most often named as Trump's next pick.

 Like Justice Neil Gorsuch of Colorado, who was confirmed to the high court in April, Kavanaugh is a conservative who once clerked for the more moderate Kennedy. When Trump selected Gorsuch for the late Justice Antonin Scalia's empty seat, it was viewed as a move that might entice Kennedy, 81, to step down.

 "The president remains deeply committed to identifying and selecting outstanding jurists in the mold of Justice Gorsuch," the White House said in a statement. "These additions, like those on the original list released more than a year ago, were selected with input from respected conservative leaders."

 The White House released the list on the second day of the conservative Federalist Society's annual meeting in the nation's capital, a confab that attracts many of the nation's leading conservative legal thinkers. It appeared to come out of the blue; no Supreme Court vacancies are known to be imminent.

 “There’s no inkling of any vacancy, but the fact of the matter is that you would be foolish to wait for one,” said Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and a top adviser to the White House on judicial nominations. "You never know when there will be a vacancy.”

 The move also was a not-so-subtle signal to Trump’s core supporters that the president may still have the ability to deliver on his promise to nominate conservative justices. It comes amid ongoing confirmation battles over his lower court nominees.

 Trump has won confirmation of eight appellate judges in his first year, more than any president since Richard Nixon, despite nearly unanimous opposition from Democrats.

 Another possible motive: Democrats have increased their likelihood of picking up a Senate seat in Alabama, where Republican Roy Moore is embroiled in a sexual harassment controversy. Republicans now have 52 votes in the Senate and would need at least 50 to confirm a new justice, with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Pence.

 The other new names on Trump's list are Amy Coney Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor just confirmed last month to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit; Kevin Newsom, confirmed in August to a seat on the 11th Circuit court of appeals; Georgia Supreme Court Justice Britt Grant, a former state solicitor general; and Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Patrick Wyrick, also a former state solicitor general.

 Aside from Kavanaugh, Barrett was the most notable addition to Trump's original list of 20 judges and one U.S. senator, Mike Lee. She drew sharp questions about her Catholic faith from Democrats during her confirmation hearings, prompting Republicans to complain about "Catholic bigotry."

 Kavanaugh was left off the original list of 21 in part because his jurisdiction is Washington, D.C., and Trump was elected as an outsider. When Trump's first two lists were released last year, totaling 21 names, they tilted heavily toward judges from "red" states, including many state Supreme Court judges with no federal court experience.

 One name that remained missing from the president's new list of 25 is former U.S. solicitor general Paul Clement, another favorite of legal conservatives who worked in George W. Bush's administration and has been mentioned for years as a logical Supreme Court nominee for a Republican president.

 Trump's choices won instant acclaim from conservatives.

 "These men and women have spent years in the trenches of state and federal government fighting for the Constitution and the rule of law," said Carrie Severino, general counsel at the Judicial Crisis Network. "They represent a diverse range of backgrounds, including both state and federal judges, three who were former state solicitors general with first-hand experience protecting our constitutional balance of powers.”

 Liberals were not impressed.

 "It’s obvious that any of these nominees, if they replaced Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court, would demolish large portions of his legacy," said Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way. "Trump’s nominees all fit the same pattern: narrow-minded elitists who protect corporations and the wealthy over the rights of all Americans."

 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2irFhVX ||||| The White House announced Friday that President Trump has added five judges to his running list of possible Supreme Court nominees, touting Trump's successful nomination of conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch to the bench.

 The updated list of 25 judges includes Judge Amy Coney Barrett from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, a former clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

 Barrett, a vocal opponent of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision who has referred to it as an "erroneous decision," was confirmed to her post by the Senate in October.

 Trump also added Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the appeals court for the District of Columbia, the nation's second most powerful court, who clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy.

 Kavanaugh has been rumored before as a possible Republican nominee for the high court.

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 The list includes two state Supreme Court justices: Britt Grant of Georgia and Patrick Wyrick of Oklahoma. Grant previously clerked for Kavanaugh at the D.C. Appeals Court.

 Former Alabama Solicitor General Kevin Newsom is another recently confirmed judge on the list. He currently serves as the judge for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

 Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, was quick to praise Trump for the additions, calling the candidates the "best and brightest judges in the nation."

 “These men and women have spent years in the trenches of state and federal government fighting for the Constitution and the rule of law," she said.

 "They represent a diverse range of backgrounds, including both state and federal judges, three who were former state solicitors general with first-hand experience protecting our constitutional balance of powers,” she said.

 The Judicial Crisis Network spent $10 million on an ad campaign to get Trump's first Supreme Court appointee, Gorsuch, confirmed to the bench.

 Trump's update of the list comes after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) said Friday that she would vote for Senate candidate and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore (R) despite the sexual assault allegations against him, saying that he would help appoint Supreme Court justices.

 The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment. ||||| Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

 Keith Blackwell of Georgia, Supreme Court of Georgia

 Charles Canady of Florida, Supreme Court of Florida

 Steven Colloton of Iowa, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

 Allison Eid of Colorado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

 Britt Grant of Georgia, Supreme Court of Georgia

 Raymond Gruender of Missouri, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

 Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

 Brett Kavanaugh of Maryland, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

 Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

 Joan Larsen of Michigan, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

 Mike Lee of Utah, United States Senator

 Thomas Lee of Utah, Supreme Court of Utah

 Edward Mansfield of Iowa, Supreme Court of Iowa

 Federico Moreno of Florida, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida

 Kevin Newsom of Alabama, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

 William Pryor of Alabama, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit

 Margaret Ryan of Virginia, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces

 David Stras of Minnesota, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

 Diane Sykes of Wisconsin, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

 Amul Thapar of Kentucky, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

 Timothy Tymkovich of Colorado, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit

 Robert Young of Michigan, Supreme Court of Michigan (Ret.)

 Don Willett of Texas, Supreme Court of Texas

 Patrick Wyrick of Oklahoma, Supreme Court of Oklahoma |||||


Write a summary based on this article:

I love when one creative process inspires another. Recently a French dance troupe licensed some of my footage for their routine and project it as a backdrop to their interpretive dance performance.

 25 1 ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. |||||

– "Makes me feel at peace," "My headache soon went away," and "With this through my headphones, studying never has been easier" are just a handful of the comments you'll find underneath a viral YouTube video created by UK visual artist Johnnie Lawson. But Lawson isn't hawking some kind of wonder drug: The eight-hour-plus video of a waterfall cascading under a footbridge on the River Bonet in Ireland has apparently made quite an impression on insomniacs and relaxation-seekers from all over the world, with almost 7 million views and about 27,500 "likes" since he uploaded it in 2013. Lawson tells the BBC he's heard from people globally—even from the Vatican—gushing about his creations, and the video and others like it that he's put together are being used for medical research in several London hospitals. A trial at London's University College Hospital is trying to lessen trauma and PTSD among ICU patients. Incorporated into the patients' recovery are tablets with varying "relaxation materials," including Lawson's catalog of sounds and images from the woods and shorelines of County Leitrim and surrounding areas. He has just over 170 videos in his collection, and some of those compilations can get difficult sleepers through the entire night. "Insomnia [sufferers] would fall asleep listening to some of my videos, but they'd wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of silence. That's when I started making eight-hour-long videos," he says. The descriptive sayings he posts on his Facebook wall are similarly peaceful and inspirational. Sample: "Under a warming evening sun, a gentle breeze caresses still waters." (Click to find out why married women might want to check out these videos.)


Article:

Facebook Execs and 'Social Network': Not Friends

 Email This Heard about that little website founded in a Harvard dorm room that soon made status updates, friend requests, and stamping "Like" on comments a daily part of modern life? 'The Accidental Billionaires,' Ben Mezrich's controversial book about the founding of Facebook, has been adapted into an already controversial movie, out this fall: 'The Social Network,' written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher ('Fight Club'), and starring Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Now, a new report exposes the back-channel diplomacy between Facebook and producers of 'The Social Network,' and the desire of execs at the hugely popular website to ignore the movie when it opens Oct. 1. But can they? Heard about that little website founded in a Harvard dorm room that soon made status updates, friend requests, and stamping "Like" on comments a daily part of modern life? 'The Accidental Billionaires,' Ben Mezrich's controversial book about the founding of Facebook, has been adapted into an already controversial movie, out this fall: 'The Social Network,' written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher ('Fight Club'), and starring Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Now, a new report exposes the back-channel diplomacy between Facebook and producers of 'The Social Network,' and the desire of execs at the hugely popular website to ignore the movie when it opens Oct. 1. But can they?

 Filed under: Movie News

 In a New York Times article published this weekend, 'Social Network' producer Scott Rudin talks about his largely futile attempts to involve Facebook, or at least obtain their tacit blessing on the film -- which depicts Zuckerberg as an ambitious player and willing betrayer of his cohorts, while also capturing the enormous achievement of his vision. Now 26, Zuckerberg declined to comment for the article.With no apologies, Rudin says Zuckerberg is "simultaneously a builder and a destroyer." He adds, "It's a big subject. It's a big American subject." (Zuckerberg doesn't seem to think it is. He told ABC's Diane Sawyer in July, "The real story is actually probably pretty boring....We just sat at our computers for six years and coded.")And what's Sorkin's take on his hero/antihero? The script leaked online clearly portrays Zuckerberg as a 19-year-old brainiac with nothing more than a motivation to be accepted socially, and the tech savvy to make it happen. Much of the story is reportedly based on depositions in cases (settled by Zuckerberg and his company's attorneys) that were filed in efforts to vie for a stake in Facebook.According to the Times, David Kirkpatrick, author of 'The Facebook Effect' (which is not source material for 'The Social Network'), insists that too many details in the movie are fictional and "horrifically unfair." And Chris Hughes, a Facebook cofounder who left the company three years ago, concurs: "All of a sudden Mark becomes this person who created Facebook to get girls or to gain power....That's not what was going on. It was a little more boring and quotidian than that."Rudin says that during production, he reached out to show the script and a cut of the film to top Facebook execs, who he says "saw the movie a while ago, and they do not like it." Rudin admits the filmmakers did accomodate small requests for changes to the script, but says, "We made exactly the movie we wanted to make."In recent weeks, Zuckerberg -- considered the youngest billionaire in the world -- has been consistently reluctant to even acknowledge 'The Social Network,' dismissing it as "a distraction" and insisting, "The movie is fiction."Obviously this goes without saying, but anyone wanting to learn more about 'The Social Network' can always visit...its Facebook page ||||| Lloyd Grove talks to The Social Network writer about empathizing with Mark Zuckerberg—and the art of creating a new personality from scratch. Plus, View Our Complete Coverage of The Social Network

 In some ways, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t have had a more empathetic interpreter of his life for Hollywood than Aaron Sorkin, the acclaimed screenwriter of The Social Network.

 “Here’s how I empathize with Mark,” Sorkin tells me at New York’s Harvard Club (Zuckerberg is a Harvard dropout), where the Columbia Pictures promotional machine has him being charming and witty in 15-minute increments to a conveyer belt of press junketeers. “I watch the show Entourage and I think, ‘Wow, that looks really cool. I wish I could be part of that life.’ Not only am I part of that life, I’m on Entourage playing myself. And I still feel like I’m on the outside looking in! I empathize with Mark for another reason. He’s got right now—frankly, because of me—the whole world wondering if he’s an asshole, OK? He’s got to pick up the paper every day and see that.” And yet: “The reaction of most people who see the movie is they want to give him a hug.”

 The movie—directed by David Fincher, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake, and based on Ben Mezrich’s partly fictionalized book The Accidental Billionaires and Sorkin’s own research, including talks with some of the key players—seems a good bet for big box-office and Oscar nominations. And even the media-shy Zuckerberg, who has made no secret of the distress it has caused him, seems resigned to being turned into grist for mass entertainment.

 “It’s a movie—it’s fun,” he said last week during an Oprah Winfrey Show appearance in which he announced a $100 million grant to the Newark, New Jersey, public school system. It was a spectacular bit of largesse that many suspect was timed to deflect attention from his less-than-appealing depiction in The Social Network. “A lot of it is fiction. Even the filmmakers will say that. They’re trying to build a good story,” Zuckerberg added. “This is my life—so I know it’s not that dramatic.”

 Although two decades and billions of dollars separate the 49-year-old Sorkin from the 26-year-old Zuckerberg (net worth: $6.9 billion), both men are brilliant, intense, misunderstood, envied, and attacked. Both have been accused of being arrogant and controlling; both have had to defend themselves against complaints of taking credit for other people’s ideas; and both have made a deep footprint on the popular culture.

 And—if one accepts Sorkin’s vivid version of Zuckerberg as compellingly portrayed by Eisenberg in this critically admired film, opening October 1—both are motivated by a healthy dose of insecurity and anger.

 It’s debatable whether the real-life Zuckerberg, who presents himself as calm and confident, resembles the celluloid version.

 But there’s little doubt that Sorkin—whose impressive writing credits include such commercial and critical successes as A Few Good Men, both the play and the film, The American President, and television’s The West Wing—is in touch with his inner misanthrope.

 When I ask if he feels any kinship with the much-sued Zuckerberg because of his own experiences as an Emmy-winning writer fending off claims from less successful detractors (especially since Zuckerberg's defendant status in various intellectual property lawsuits form the movie’s dramatic spine), Sorkin seethes.

 “This absolutely infuriates me,” he says. After a studio publicist protests my line of questioning, the interview is halted. It is left to Sorkin to salvage the train wreck a few minutes later, taking me by the arm and flashing a grin as he suggests we resume the interview. “Let’s be friends,” he says—and then he thoughtfully answers the question that originally set him off. ||||| Days before The Social Network hits theaters, critics are saying to forget the Oscar race—David Fincher’s Facebook movie has already won. How good is it? Read the reviews here. Plus, View Our Complete Coverage of The Social Network

 It has already been compared to Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Balzac. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is a perfect 100 percent.

 Still days from release, The Social Network—you know, that one Facebook movie—has film critics straddling the line between breathless and hallucinatory over its generation-defining zeitgeistiness, brainiac script by Aaron Sorkin, and inspired performances by Jesse Eisenberg, as digital boy-wonder (and Facebook founder) Mark Zuckerberg, and Andrew Garfield as his BFF-turned-foe.

 Before The Social Network even screened, Oscar pundits were declaring David Fincher’s unsparing portrait of a nerd’s rise to moguldom a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination.

 The buzz has been growing steadily for weeks. Before it was even screened, Oscar pundits were declaring David Fincher’s unsparing portrait of a nerd’s rise to moguldom a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination. Now that it has screened, they’re saying: Forget the nomination. Hand over the trophy. Film critics, meanwhile, are reaching deep into their arsenals of praise to define what is easily the best-reviewed movie of the year. (Sorry, Toy Story 3.) If there are any naysayers, they have yet to show up to the party.

 It’s the film that “defines the decade,” Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers gushes. The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis says that it “evokes 19th-century narrative of ambition,” and goes on to quote Le Père Goriot: “To be young, to have a thirst for society, to be hungry for a woman.”

 Herewith, a sampling of the love.

 Rolling Stone / A + + + +

 “Award-caliber performances”

 “A modern Rashomon”

 The New York Times / A + +

 “Fleet, weirdly funny, exhilarating, alarming”

 “A creation story for the digital age and something of a morality tale, one driven by desire, marked by triumph, tainted by betrayal and inspired by the new gospel: The geek shall inherit the earth.”

 The New York Post / A + +

 “A timeless and compelling story that speaks volumes about the way we live today.”

 “Zuckerberg ultimately commits an act of betrayal of Shakespearean proportions.”

 Variety / A + +

 “Fincher [has a] fascinating transition from genre filmmaker extraordinaire to indelible chronicler of our times.”

 The Hollywood Reporter / A + + +

 “A mesmerizing, bewildering and infuriating protagonist makes this movie about Facebook's creation a must-see.”

 Box Office Magazine / A + + +

 “Mesmerizing”

 “Never less than extraordinary”

 “A landmark masterwork and a must-see movie event”

 IndieWire / A + + + +

 “David Fincher can make five more masterpieces, Aaron Sorkin can win an Oscar, Tony and 20 more Emmys; Timberlake, Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer and Mara Rooney can all be big stars for the next half-century, but it will rarely be as sweet as this.”

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 For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com. ||||| “The Social Network,” directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, rushes through a coruscating series of exhilarations and desolations, triumphs and betrayals, and ends with what feels like darkness closing in on an isolated soul. This brilliantly entertaining and emotionally wrenching movie is built around a melancholy paradox: in 2003, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), a nineteen-year-old Harvard sophomore, invents Facebook and eventually creates a five-hundred-million-strong network of “friends,” but Zuckerberg is so egotistical, work-obsessed, and withdrawn that he can’t stay close to anyone; he blows off his only real pal, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), a fellow Jewish student at Harvard, who helps him launch the site. The movie is not a conventionally priggish tale of youthful innocence corrupted by riches; nor is it merely a sarcastic arrow shot into the heart of a poor little rich boy. Both themes are there, but the dramatic development of the material pushes beyond simplicities, and the portrait of Zuckerberg is many-sided and ambiguous; no two viewers will see him in quite the same way. The debate about the movie’s accuracy has already begun, but Fincher and Sorkin, selecting from known facts and then freely interpreting them, have created a work of art. Accuracy is now a secondary issue. In this extraordinary collaboration, the portrait of Zuckerberg, I would guess, was produced by a happy tension, even an opposition, between the two men—a tug-of-war between Fincher’s gleeful appreciation of an outsider who overturns the social order and Sorkin’s old-fashioned, humanist distaste for electronic friend-making and a world of virtual emotions. The result is a movie that is absolutely emblematic of its time and place. “The Social Network” is shrewdly perceptive about such things as class, manners, ethics, and the emptying out of self that accompanies a genius’s absorption in his work. It has the hard-charging excitement of a very recent revolution, the surge and sweep of big money moving fast and chewing people up in its wake.

 We know from “The West Wing” that Sorkin can write the smartest and swiftest dialogue since Ben Hecht and Preston Sturges. His adrenaline-pumped men and women anticipate one another’s best shots; they fill out or overturn one another’s half-finished sentences, answering what’s implied rather than simply what’s said. Sorkin’s script for “The Social Network” is his best work yet—incisive and witty from moment to moment but expansive over all as a picture of college social life, hipster business enterprise, friendship, and rivalry. But Sorkin’s particular skills in “The Social Network” are familiar. The unexpected element is David Fincher’s work. The director of “Fight Club,” “Zodiac,” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is a master of sullen menace, convulsive violence; he loves creating an aura of the magical and the uncanny. Yet he treats Sorkin’s real-world situations with extreme delicacy and precision. Fincher has always been obsessed with outsiders and rebels, but now, in mid-career, he has transferred that obsession into a subtler, more telling form, with both comic and tragic implications.

 “The Social Network” draws on a 2009 book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” by Ben Mezrich. Mezrich also went to Harvard, and in both the book and the movie the Harvard lore is laid on a little thick. The eager suburban co-eds trucked in for parties, the rabbity competitiveness and status-seeking among the men, the terrific excitement of being “punched” for one of the all-male “final clubs” (off-campus social sites for the chosen élite)—to outsiders, all this frenzied self-importance seems slightly mad. Yet the filmmakers don’t satirize Harvard, and you can see why: they needed to re-create the pressures and the social stratifications that led to Zuckerberg’s revolt. Fincher has often worked within a frantic boys’ world—by way of having fun in “Fight Club,” guys literally punch one another, to a pulp—but here the violence is emotional, not physical. Watching Zuckerberg and his friends toss beer-bottle caps and ideas at one another in the dorm, we’re meant to think that they really are the brightest (and perhaps the most obnoxious) kids in the country. In the opening scene, Zuckerberg tells his lovely and intelligent girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara), that he could introduce her, a mere Boston University student, to important people if he gets into one of the clubs. He’s prickly, overprecise, condescending; he keeps wrong-footing her and then scolding her for not keeping up. Yet, even as he acts like a jerk, you feel for him, because at some level he wants Erica, and the harder he tries to impress her the faster he drives her away. Sorkin created an emotionally stunted, closed-off young man, and Fincher pulled something touching out of Jesse Eisenberg. Slender, with curly light-brown hair and dark-blue eyes, Eisenberg pauses, stares, then rushes ahead, talking in bristling clumps, like a computer spilling bytes. The self-assurance he gives Zuckerberg is audacious and funny. It’s also breathtakingly hostile. Yet, after many of Zuckerberg’s haughtiest riffs, a tiny impulse of regret quivers across his lips.

 As Zuckerberg and his friends lay siege to computers in marathon sessions—the pace is giddy, Beck’s-enhanced—they turn women into objects, even prey. In the end, Facebook becomes gender neutral, but the movie is sparked by a bitterly comic irony: a worldwide social revolution, capable of rattling authoritarian governments, began with nothing more urgent than the desire of two middle-class Jewish boys to be considered cool at college and meet girls without having to endure the humiliation of campus mixers. By focussing on the moment of creation, Fincher and Sorkin are getting at something new. From the first scene to the last, “The Social Network” hints at a psychological shift produced by the Information Age, a new impersonality that affects almost everyone. After all, Facebook, like Zuckerberg, is a paradox: a Web site that celebrates the aura of intimacy while providing the relief of distance, substituting bodiless sharing and the thrills of self-created celebrityhood for close encounters of the first kind. Karl Marx suggested that, in the capitalist age, we began to treat one another as commodities. “The Social Network” suggests that we now treat one another as packets of information. Mark Zuckerberg, as interpreted by this film, comes off as a binary personality. As far as he’s concerned, either you’re for him or you’re against him. Either you have information that he can use or you don’t. Apart from that, he’s not interested. |||||
What is a summary?

– Mark Zuckerberg already hates The Social Network—but after hearing the early reviews, he probably hates it even more. It doesn’t open until Friday, but critics are already calling "The Facebook Movie" a masterpiece, predicting an Oscar, and comparing it to Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Balzac, and Rashomon, the Daily Beast reports. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 100%; some are calling it generation-defining; one even uses the term “Shakespearean.” Yes, there’s the question of how much of the film is actually true—but “accuracy is now a secondary issue,” writes David Denby in an extensive New Yorker look at the film and its creators. David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin “have created a work of art.” Meanwhile, Sorkin and actor Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Zuckerberg, both give interviews to the Daily Beast in which they both say they kinda relate to the awkward Facebook founder: “The reaction of most people who see the movie,” Sorkin says, “is they want to give him a hug.”