Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 189

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The “raw water” trend shows how Silicon Valley has become detached from science

Live Water (Credit: livespringwater.com)

Move over raw food — here comes raw water.

The New York Times recently published an article about a new trend among San Francisco Bay Area’s digerati: so-called raw water, which is water that is untreated, unfiltered, and unsterilized. Much “raw water” is marketed as having come straight from a fresh, sparkling spring.

It’s the kind of pseudoscientific pablum that seems plucked from a dystopian novel. But unfortunately, it’s a trend that is very real in San Francisco. Local grocers like Rainbow Grocery, a trendy cooperative that caters to health-conscious Bay Area consumers, told the Times that one brand, Live Water, is so sought-after it’s often sold out. Live Water is sold for $36.99 for 2.5 gallons and can be refilled for $14.99. Tourmaline Spring sells raw water from a source in Maine ($35.95 for 12 one-liter bottles).

Doug Evans, the founder of the now-defunct juicing company Juicero, told The Times that he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. The same article says Skip Battle — who sits on the board of directors for several companies including LinkedIn, Netflix, OpenTable, and Expedia — has a $4,500 Zero Mass Water system which draws moisture from the air and filters it. Zero Mass Water, an Arizona-based startup, has raised $24 million in venture capital money to move forward with its mission to “transform drinking water for every person, every place.” (Though not branded as “raw water,” the Zero Mass Water system also markets itself as an alternative to tap water.)

Alarmingly, the marketing for these brands all vilify tap water, while marketing their own products as “pure” — as though the risk of disease and unfiltered contaminants somehow constituted “purity.” How is it that Silicon Valley executives are hopping on this trend without hesitation, considering that unpurified water can be life-threatening? How is it that some are paying over $10 a gallon for potentially harmful water, while many across the world struggle for water treated to the same standard as American tap water? Perhaps it’s a subconscious rebellion against the government; after all, Pew Research has reported that trust in the government is at an historic low. Yet one would think that the technologists and scientists who work in an industry that is often on the forefront of applied science might apply the same scientific-rationalist logic to other facets of their lives.

There’s a reason why American cities started to filter their water in the late 1800s. Typhoid Fever was killing people in New England at the turn of the 19th century, and the disease still affects many people in developing countries today. According to the World Health Organization, 2 billion people around the world drink from water sources that are contaminated with feces. Every year, nearly 842,000 people die from diarrhea that’s caused from drinking unsafe water. Likewise, untreated water is linked to diseases like typhoid, cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, and polio. And non-profits like The Water Project provide clean water sources to villages in across sub-Saharan Africa—something hundreds of millions of people lack.

Yet companies like Live Water stand by their delusional mission. After the New York Times published its article, and Business Insider wrote a follow-up on the absurdity of the raw water trend, Live Water issued a statement on their home page, writing that they “envision a near future where more pure water exists and people embrace the free gifts nature offers.” “We advocate people collecting [their] own spring water as the best choice,” the statement continued.

Live Water claims that its water comes from an “ancient aquifer” that’s been “extensively tested” and which has shown no “harmful contamination.” They suggest that much water is impure because of “Industrial Age contamination,” suggesting that their water is safer because it is removed from industry.

But modern water purification systems, like those used in city and county tap systems, aren’t necessarily merely filtering man-made industrial runoff. There are many “natural” minerals that have been in the Earth for millions of years that can be deadly, including Cinnabar, Tobernite, arsenic and sulfur dioxide. The idea that anything that is natural and comes from the Earth is inherently “pure” is a dangerous belief.

Does this mean that natural spring water can’t be consumed safely? Technically no, but it does mean that, if unregulated, it’s an incredibly risky endeavor, and one that comes with a huge liability.

The idea that leaders within an industry that leads technological and scientific innovation are promoting something so dangerous sets a bad precedent. Moreover, it is a huge insult to the many poverty-stricken people around the world who would be overjoyed to have access to public Bay Area tap water — the same water these tech leaders are rejecting in favor of mystery spring water that costs several thousand times more per gallon.

Trump to open nearly all U.S. waters to offshore drilling, despite bipartisan opposition: report

(Andrew Milligan / PA via AP) (Credit: AP)

Despite widespread bipartisan opposition to offshore oil and gas drilling, both from lawmakers and the Pentagon, the Trump administration announced it would open nearly all United States waters to drilling on Thursday, according to multiple news reports.

More than 100 lawmakers, the Pentagon, and even key Republican governors have expressed disapproval over the proposal by the Interior Department that would roll back an Obama-era ban on drilling that covered “more than 100 million offshore acres along the Arctic and Eastern Seaboard,” as the New York Times reported.

Several Republican governors, including Larry Hogan of Maryland, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Scott of Florida, have openly expressed opposition to offshore oil and gas production.

“In addition to their environmental and cultural importance, Atlantic Ocean waters also provide significant economic value to our state,” an August letter from Christie read. He added that he “strongly opposes any waters off our coastline being considered for inclusion in this leasing program.”

Scott said it’s something he opposes in Florida, and discussed his “concerns” with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. However, Scott did seem less concerned if the offshore drilling occurred elsewhere away from his state.

Governor Scott’s Statement on Trump Administration’s Plan on Offshore Oil Drilling: pic.twitter.com/iQqNU9afsQ

— Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) January 4, 2018

During the Obama administration, officials contemplated “a 5-year plan to permit drilling in the southern Atlantic between Virginia and Georgia,” but ultimately it was “abandoned in March 2016 because of concerns raised by the Navy, which conducts military exercises in a vast area of the ocean near those states…. A barrage of letters and comments from coastal communities opposed to the plan also played a role,” the Washington Post reported.

Offshore oil and gas drilling has led to significant environmental catastrophes, including the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion “and subsequent spill of 215 million gallons of crude into the Gulf that fouled beaches from Louisiana to Florida. The effects of the spill are still being felt more than seven years later,” the Post reported.

The decision strongly aligns with President Donald Trump’s aggressive energy and deregulatory agenda, with next to zero concern for environmental impacts. The move comes only a week after the Trump administration positioned itself to roll back the drilling safety regulations put in place following the 2010 spill, as the Times also reported.

In addition, the Trump administration recently halted “a study that aimed to make drilling platforms safer,” as the Post noted.

Trump has repeatedly downplayed environmental concerns in regard to climate change, as well as in regard to policy measures such as drilling for oil and natural gas. Snuck inside the recently-signed GOP tax bill was a proposal that effectively opened up a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas production, undermining a decades-long fight from activists to keep the refuge untouched. The proposal promised massive economic growth, but as Salon previously reported, those predictions are likely to be wildly optimistic.

 

 

It’s official: You won’t see new “Game of Thrones” episodes for at least another year

Richard Dormer and Kit Harington in "Game of Thrones" (Credit: HBO/Helen Sloan)

HBO has finally admitted it: The final season of “Game of Thrones” will debut in 2019, at least one calendar year from the moment you read this.

The hints were there. Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos) told TV Guide in October that “We’re filming right up until the summer,” he said, months after the summer of 2017 had ended. He added, “When you think about it, up until last season we’d have six months to do ten episodes, so we’re [doing] way more than that for six episodes. So that obviously will translate into longer episodes.”

That same month, Iain Glen, the actor who plays Ser Jorah Mormont, told a Comic-Con crowd in Stockholm, “I think this last season will take much longer to shoot.” And there was the not-so-subtle Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) who told Variety in early December that the eighth and final season “comes out in 2019.”

So, really, everyone said it, besides HBO, who waited until only now to announce that winter isn’t coming this year (East Coast bomb cyclones notwithstanding).

Aside from confirming that 2018 will be filled with excruciating downtime for “Thrones” fans, the network also released some details about those who will be lensing the final season. According to Deadline, “series creators David Benioff & D.B. Weiss are among the directors for the new season along with David Nutter and Miguel Sapochnik.”

Sapochnik has directed four past episodes, including some of the most epic, season 5’s “Hardhome” and Season 6’s “Battle of the Bastards” (an episode which won him an Emmy for Best Directing) included. Nutter is best known for directing season 5’s finale and Emmy-winning “Mother’s Mercy,” featuring the Cersei’s notorious walk of atonement (“Shame . . . shame . . shame . . .”).

Cast members have also been teasing the cinematic intricacy, thrill and scope of the final season. Turner told Variety, “This season, there’s a new threat and all of a sudden [Sansa] finds herself somewhat back in the deep end. And without Littlefinger, it’s a test for her of whether she can get through it. It’s a big challenge for her, without this master manipulator having her back. This season is more a passionate fight for her than a political, manipulative kind of fight.” Oh, Sansa, never safe for long.

HBO programming president Casey Bloys told Entertainment Weekly this summer, “The show has proven that TV is every bit as impressive and in many cases more so, than film. What they’re doing is monumental. When you see these battles in season 7, and what I imagine season 8 will be, it’s a big, big show. We’ve done a lot of great shows, but this one combines the complex characters we love with a huge cinematic scope. I think this is the first show to prove that can be done — and we’re the first people to pay for it.”

And we will be paying for it as well, in time spent waiting — over 12 months of it, give or take a financial quarter.

Baltimore prosecutor admits he was wrong to block request to alter Alford plea

(Credit: Getty/AlexStar)

Three weeks after ProPublica published a story detailing how a Baltimore prosecutor had failed to abide by the terms of a plea agreement, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office has reversed course.

Prosecutor Rich Gibson filed a motion in Baltimore City Circuit Court last week saying he had erred in asking a judge to schedule a new hearing for Demetrius Smith. Smith had tried in July to revise a dubious plea deal by asking the judge for a sentence modification that would have essentially cleared his record. Gibson had opposed his request and wrongly claimed the judge didn’t have the power to change Smith’s sentence.

“Demetrius should not be saddled with a felony conviction, and we are grateful that the court has another opportunity to consider Demetrius’s case,” Barry Pollack, Smith’s pro bono lawyer, said in an email.

Smith’s complicated ordeal began in 2010 when Gibson won a conviction against him for a murder he didn’t commit. Then, spooked by that wrongful prosecution, Smith reluctantly agreed to an Alford plea for an unrelated shooting that he also said he didn’t do. An Alford plea allows a defendant like Smith to assert his innocence while still accepting that the state has enough evidence to convict him nonetheless.

As part of the Alford plea agreement, Gibson agreed that should Smith prove his innocence in the murder case, he could go back to court to revisit the Alford plea — and, most importantly, that the judge would have sole discretion to decide Smith’s fate. In other words, Gibson agreed that as the prosecutor he was giving up the say he typically would have over changes to Smith’s deal. Smith was adamant about this aspect because he didn’t want the plea keeping him in prison if his life sentence for the murder was vacated.

In August 2012, Smith was exonerated in the murder, for which the federal government successfully prosecuted the real killers. As a result, the state’s attorney’s office agreed to change Smith’s Alford plea sentence to time served, and conceded that there were some issues with the facts in the shooting. Smith left prison and was cleared of the murder charge but nevertheless remained convicted of the shooting, which greatly impacted his ability to live and work freely. The hearing in July was his chance to fully clear his name of that lingering felony.

But despite the terms of the plea deal, Gibson argued that Smith’s sentence could only be changed with the prosecutor’s approval, and the judge denied Smith’s request. It appeared to close all legal doors for Smith except for a pardon from the governor.

Then, on Dec. 27, after ProPublica’s lengthy story about Smith, Gibson wrote to the court and acknowledged that during the initial agreement hearing the state did “relinquish its ability to block the motion.” Therefore, he asked the court to schedule a new hearing on the sentence modification, so the “court can rule as it determines proper.”

Judge Barry Williams has scheduled a new hearing for Jan. 18.

How Silicon Valley’s capitalist greed continues to cheat creators and rob American culture

(Credit: Reuters//Lucy Nicholson)

First, they came for the music, and we did not speak out — because most are not musicians.

Then they came for the news, and we did not speak out — because most are not journalists.

Now they’ve come for our democracy, and maybe, just maybe, Americans are finally waking up to Silicon Valley’s power and impact on intellectual property, a free press and our democracy.

As the country wrestles with rampant misinformation and the growing reach of Silicon Valley, there has been much talk of Russia, monopoly, algorithms and the need for more fact-checking and moderation.

A few weeks ago, in response to yet another problem with children’s content and comments by pedophiles on YouTube, it was announced that “YouTube plans to have 10,000 people dedicated to reviewing videos in 2018 — though it would not to say how many workers it has doing that job now.”

I argue the system is broken at its core, driven by two rarely discussed laws passed 20 years ago that freed Silicon Valley from accountability for copyright infringement and defamation — wreaking havoc — first for copyright holders and then for news organizations — ever since.

In 1996 Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and in 1998 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — long before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube existed. The laws effectively gave Silicon Valley a “get-out-of-jail-free” card allowing them to disregard long-standing laws and protocols governing intellectual property, media consumption and news, fueling growth at a scale only possible with such blanket immunity.

Silicon Valley called it “disruption,” arguing the laws were necessary to achieve goals of a better society. Instead, they set off an often-arrogant disregard of content creators and news organizations. The rules publishers and media companies followed since the founding fathers enshrined copyright in our Constitution were abandoned. And the public is only now fully understanding the extent of the collateral damage.

The root cause — two laws

Congress passed the Communications Decency Act of 1996 primarily in response to internet pornography, but added a Section 230, stating in part, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” The law effectively immunizes providers of interactive computer services from tort liability, such as defamation, for the actions of their users. As a result, Google and Facebook are not subject to the types of liability traditional print and broadcasting media have faced for publishing tortious materials.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a 1998 U.S. copyright law that governs online digital media and was intended to protect websites that ingest large quantities of user-generated content (UGC).  The law lays out conditions, mostly technical, for “Safe Harbor” where platforms are protected from copyright infringement if they make modest efforts to protect copyrighted content and do not knowingly participate in copyright infringement.

In the late 1990s when UGC was in its infancy, Silicon Valley argued they were Internet Service Providers (ISPs)—“pipes” like a telephone line.  No one would sue AT&T for someone’s slanderous remarks spoken over a phone line. ISPs were not ‘publishers’ like newspapers or magazines, which edit and curate content and accept legal responsibility for defamation and copyright infringement. They did not touch, and therefore were not responsible for, the content they delivered.

In copyright law, a publisher can face punitive damages if they republish a ‘work’ that was already registered by another copyright holder with the U.S. copyright office. With DMCA and CDA protection, a ‘platform’ simply removes the work in a timely manner upon notification of violation of copyright, and informs original copyright holder and potential infringer, according to a process laid out in the laws.

It might sound downright wonky to be quibbling over the legal designation of Silicon Valley behemoths as platforms and tech companies versus publishers and media companies—but the designation is so essential to their wild-west, break-the-bank business models; they go to absurd lengths defending the designations.

If a news story slanders someone in the New York Times, they can sue the New York Times. If a news story slanders someone on Facebook or YouTube, upon notification, Facebook and YouTube remove the content without consequence, regardless of views or damage done. A slandered party can go sue the Ukrainians who posted the content, if they can find them. If a content owner sees someone posting their content without their consent—same drill. They would notify Facebook or Google, which will remove the content, and that’s it. And it wouldn’t be surprising if the content appears hours later, under a new account.

In the recent congressional judiciary subcommittee hearings delving into the Russian hack of our elections, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, Twitter Acting Counsel Sean Edgett and Google Law Enforcement and Information Security Director Richard Salgado were asked, “Are you media companies?” Their ‘no, no, no’ responses may someday rival for misinformation tobacco executive’s now-infamous “cigarettes do not cause cancer” claims before Congress.

Colin Stretch didn’t mention Facebook Watch or Facebook’s intention to spend $1 billion on original programming. Richard Salgado did not discuss YouTube Red, production studios in New York and Los Angeles or new original programming featuring Ellen DeGeneres, Kevin Hart, Ryan Seacrest, Demi Lovato, the Slow Mo Guys, or Rhett and Link.

I guess NBC is an insurance company.

Disdain for creators and copyright

It started with music.

I clearly remember the day, while taxiing five young boys ages 10 to 14 in the early iPod years, learning they’d downloaded 10,000 songs on their devices and were savvy in peer-to-peer content ‘sharing’ and our new copyright-be-damned Apple-device ecosystem. As a father working in media licensing, I suggested they might create media someday and want compensation for their work. Musicians are all rich, they retorted. Silicon Valley knew the consequences of their devices and were happy to rescue musicians with 10 digital cents on the analog dollar solutions.

To fully understand how draconian YouTube became for musicians, I highly recommend Jonathan Taplin’s Move Fast and Break Things. Here is one excerpt:

“YouTube is now the world’s dominant audio streaming platform, dwarfing Spotify and virtually every other service. Yet it pays artists and record companies less than a dollar per year for every user of recorded music, thanks to rampant piracy on its site. The problem has gotten so bad that, in 2015, vinyl record sales generated more income for music creators than the billions of music streams on YouTube, and its ad-supported competitors.”

Jump ahead to this year’s Digital Media Licensing Association Conference in New York. The DMLA is a trade organization representing stock licensors ranging from Adobe Stock to mom-and-pop image, video, audio and motion graphics licensors. The halls are now filled with rights protection companies. Infringements are so pervasive that the services help to identify which infringers from a long list are even worth pursuit. Large companies, at least those that can afford it, employ internal whack-a-mole teams—while Google and Facebook remain off the hook.

I spoke to Joe Lauro, founder of Historic Films, which re-licenses clips from “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Don Kirshner’s “Midnight Special” and other legitimate music collections. He has given up, calling it a “losing battle.” Joe, and collectors like him, have spent lifetimes restoring, at their own expense, historical film and video, only to see their work appear again and again on YouTube. Joe can’t compete online with the pirates, who make no legitimate payments to musicians and often reap advertising revenue from YouTube.

YouTube created a program called Content ID, which requires the content owner to submit a copy of their work, and the technology will find a match and report the potential infringement to the copyright holder. Unfortunately, it is an imperfect technology, and manual claiming is still required. Joe Moschella, SVP, head of business and legal affairs at Jukin Media, a company that specializes in representing user-generated content creators, recently said, “You need manual claiming even on platforms with Content ID… You’ll find your content in compilations, in news broadcasts; CI won’t pick it up when it should.” And he is talking about websites and platforms that have Content ID — and most do not.  Since it requires constant monitoring and Joe Lauro can’t sue YouTube itself, he is left chasing shell companies and kids overseas. He said, “It’s chaos.”

As an example, Joe pointed to Buddy Holly, with only three video clips in existence — two owned by “The Ed Sullivan Show” and one by Dick Clark Productions. On YouTube, when I played the ‘official’ Sullivan version, there was no pre-roll ad, since Google in their sole discretion decides which content to run ads against and when. No money for Joe. There are 355,000 YouTube results for Buddy Holly, and you can bet only a fraction are by legitimate copyright holders.

The tide may be changing.

In Europe, as reported recently in the Guardian, the UK government is considering the reclassification of Google and Facebook as publishers. Under UK law, the two classifications are “conduits of information” and “publishers” — and internet platforms are considered conduits with limited responsibility for what they publish. Karen Bradley, the culture secretary, said “she was wary of labelling internet company’s publishers but that the government wanted to find a balance between harnessing the benefits of the web while making it safe for users and protecting intellectual property.”

The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (often dubbed the “Hollywood Circuit”) recently handed down a precedent-setting decision that constitutes a strong blow against an expansive reading of the DMCA “Safe Harbor” provisions. In the case, Mavrix, a photography agency, sued LiveJournal, a moderated online forum accused of being a repository of pirated copies of celebrity news stories and photographs, for infringement. While a district court had granted LiveJournal protection from infringement liability based on DMCA safe harbor, the Ninth Circuit issued a resounding reversal.

As John Tehranian, a founding partner at One LLP, the litigation firm representing Mavrix, pointed out, “the holding in Mavrix v. LiveJournal represented a critical victory for content owners by limiting the ability of internet service providers to manipulate the intricacies of the DMCA safe harbor to shield themselves from responsibility for the mass piracy from which they benefit.” By providing critical guidance on judicial interpretation of the DMCA, including whether online services providers have the right and ability to control the actions of their users, Mavrix may constitute a watershed moment in the ongoing legal battle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over copyright protection online.

When interviewed by Digiday, former editor-in-chief of Time Inc. and Bloomberg LP Norm Pearlstine said, “I don’t know how long these companies can continue getting away with calling themselves platforms instead of media companies. Particularly Facebook, Snapchat and Google. At some point they’ll have to take responsibility for the content on their platforms.” He went on, “How Google decides what to put on a home page, there is some editorial judgment there, even if they’re saying, these are our algorithms at work. I view them as editorial products, not as platforms. But I don’t know what that means.”

Facebook and Google are not run by bean counters. Engineers at the top of Facebook, Google and other internet giants fully understand the limitations of their algorithms and the moderators they employ. Don’t believe for a minute they are ‘shocked’ at what is transpiring. They fully understand the collateral damage which is a by-product of their money-minting media machines.

The DMCA and CDA protections enabled a few Silicon Valley giants to become sinfully rich, with a concentration of power not seen since the 1920s. The digital revolution could have succeeded without the ‘disruption’ and their disregard for copyright and content creators.

Donald Trump disbands voter fraud commission

(Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to officially disband the voter fraud commission.

“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry,” a White House statement said. “Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission.”

The commission, which goes by the official title of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, was created last May by Trump to lend legitimacy to his false claim that he would have won the 2016 popular vote if not for undocumented immigrants. Vice President Mike Pence served as the chair of the commission, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach served as the vice chair.

The demise of the commission may have started a few months ago though. As Salon reported in November, the commission was sued for excluding Democrats. Matthew Dunlap, the Secretary of State of Maine who was on the commission, said the commission’s “superficial bipartisanship” had “been a facade.”

“Despite diligent efforts to gain access, Secretary Dunlap has been, and continues to be, blocked from receiving Commission documents necessary to carry out his responsibilities,” Dunlap claimed in a complaint filed in federal court.

Dunlap went on to argue that his denial of access to the commission’s work was directly a result of the fact that he is a Democrat, arguing that “Secretary Dunlap and the other Democratic commissioners have been excluded from the Commission’s work.”

Dunlap reportedly raised the issue last October too when he wrote a letter to executive director Andrew Kossack insisting to be informed as to when and how the panel conducted its work.

Opponents and activists are calling this a victory. Marge Baker, vice president of People For the American Way, said in a statement, “good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“This is a major victory for every activist who has called out this sham commission for what it is,” Baker said.

The curious case of Donald Trump’s campaign for president

(Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

A wintery chill lingered in the air on April 6, 2016 as I drove west across Long Island to the town of Bethpage for Donald Trump’s first big rally in the New York area. Bethpage is the long-time headquarters of the old Grumman Aircraft Corporation, which manufactured propeller fighter-bombers at its 150 acre plant there during World War II, and jet fighters like the F-14 Tomcat in the 1960’s. By the time of the presidential election of 2016, its massive hangers were being used as TV and motion picture studios, and one of them was scheduled for Trump’s big rally.

At this point, you’ve got to look up and read the stories about the campaign to remember what was going on back in April of 2016. The short version of the story is this: After months of buffoonery at Republican Party primary debates — remember him calling Rubio “Little Marco” and Cruz “Lyin’ Ted and Bush “Low Energy Jeb”? — Trump was on the cusp of doing what nobody thought could be done. He was on his way to winning the nomination. He had practically swept the March 15 “Super Tuesday” primaries in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina, losing only Ohio to Governor John Kasich. He won Arizona on March 22, and would go on to win New York on April 19, and sweep the “Acela Primaries” on April 26 in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. By May he ran virtually unopposed in Washington, Oregon, West Virginia and Nebraska and was crowned the presumptive nominee.

But on April 6, the Trumpian buffoonery was in full flower in Bethpage. The rally was over-sold. I had to take a shuttle bus from a parking lot miles away to the Grumman complex on Route 107. Out the window of the bus was a changed Long Island landscape. Practically every storefront in every strip mall for several miles was taken up by businesses run by Afghan immigrants: Halal groceries, lamb kabob shops, boutiques selling Afghan fashions, mini-Mosques, Afghan bookstores. Two guys in the seat behind me complained about what had happened to the neighborhood. “You know how they do it?” one guy asked the other, referring to immigrants. “They come in, and they take a job washing dishes at a pizza joint, and the next thing you know, they got their family in there and they own the place, and they change everything.”

The rally was packed shoulder to shoulder with couples wearing “Make America Great Again” caps, Vietnam veterans in leather biker vests, and Italian Americans and Irish Americans whose fathers had probably worked at Grumman but who had moved further out on Long Island to escape the “foreigners” who had replaced them in Bethpage. Backed by a wall of American flags, Trump came on to stomping and cheers. He launched into a long story about how he used to drive out to Bethpage to play golf when he was first starting out in New York real estate, before he owned his own golf courses. Cheers. Stomping. Yaaaay Long Island! Some cops grabbed a black guy and carried him down a central aisle in the hanger that looked like it had been fenced off just for that purpose. More cheers. More stomping. Trump said he was going to build that wall, and Mexico was going to pay for it. Pandemonium. A forest of TV cameras on a big riser in front of the stage recorded the whole thing. Coverage of the rally was carried live on local TV and cable.

I left the rally thinking, there’s no way this guy is going to take this crazed act all the way to the White House. A lot of people were thinking the same thing in early April of 2016. That’s what we knew.

But what didn’t we know back then?

We didn’t know that in early March, a young man who was then all of 28 years old by the name of George Papadopoulos had been appointed to be a “foreign policy adviser” to the campaign of Donald Trump. Prominent on his resume was a stint as an unpaid intern at the conservative Hudson Institute. Other than that, nothing was apparent that would qualify him to be a “foreign policy adviser” to anyone, much less a presidential campaign.

We didn’t know that on March 14, young Papadopoulos was in Rome and met a man by the name of Joseph Mifsud, who described himself as a “professor” of a defunct London college. The “professor” took a strong interest in young Papadopoulos when he learned that he was a foreign policy adviser to Trump.

We didn’t know that on March 19, according to a report later on Vice, John Podesta’s email was hacked by groups acting at the behest of Russian intelligence.

We didn’t know that on March 24, the “Professor” would arrange a meeting in London between Papadopoulos and a young Russian woman by the name of Olga Polonskaya, whom he falsely introduced as “Putin’s niece.” The three discussed setting up a meeting between candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Papadopoulos reported back to a “senior Trump campaign official” later identified as Deputy Campaign manager Sam Clovis about the meeting in London. Clovis wrote back that he would “work it through the campaign” and told Papadopoulos he had done “great work” with the meeting in London.

We didn’t know that Papadopoulos would travel to New York for a meeting of the Trump foreign policy team chaired by senior campaign adviser Senator Jeff Sessions. Papadopoulos would describe his contacts with the “Professor” and the Russian “niece” of Putin and suggest that he could help to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. We didn’t know that Sessions would later mislead the Senate about this meeting and his knowledge of Russian contacts during his confirmation hearings for Attorney General.

We didn’t know that throughout the month of April, Trump foreign policy adviser Papadopoulos would exchange numerous emails with Olga Polonskaya regarding setting up a meeting between Trump and Putin. We didn’t know that Polonskaya would put him in touch with an official of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow. We didn’t know that Papadopoulos would have numerous conversations by phone and Skype with this official of the Russian government about setting up a meeting between Trump and Putin, and he would report back to Deputy Campaign Manager Clovis about his negotiations.

We didn’t know that on April 26, Papadopoulos would meet with the “Professor” for breakfast at a London hotel, during which the “Professor” told him that his contacts in the Russian government had informed him that they had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton and “thousands” of her emails. This was months before it became publicly known that the emails of candidate Clinton and her campaign chairman Podesta had been hacked. It is hard to believe young Papadopoulos didn’t report this delightful tidbit of top-secret intelligence directly to his superiors in the Trump campaign.

We didn’t know that through the rest of April and throughout May, Papadopoulos would continue his contact with the official from the Russian Foreign Ministry, and he would continue to report these contacts back to the Trump campaign.

We didn’t know that, according to a recent report in the New York Times, following the meeting with the “Professor” in London, Papadopoulos would have drinks with a senior Australian diplomat and tell him about how he had learned that the Russian government had “dirt” and “thousands” of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

We didn’t know that two months later, when Democrats’ emails were first revealed by WikiLeaks, the senior Australian diplomat would inform his American counterparts of his conversation with Papadopoulos about Russian interference in the American election.

We didn’t know that in July of 2016, the FBI would act on this information and establish a counterintelligence investigation of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, and that they would keep this investigation secret until it was revealed by (then) FBI Director James Comey in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20, 2017.

We didn’t know that in January of 2017, George Papadopoulos would be questioned by the FBI about his contacts with Russians during the Trump campaign. We didn’t know that he would lie to the FBI about those contacts. And we didn’t know that he would later plead guilty to lying to the FBI and begin cooperating with the investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the presidential election of 2016.

Way back in the Spring of 2016, on the heels of Trump’s appearances in the clown-car debates of the Republican primaries and his unhinged performances at campaign rallies in Bethpage, Long Island on April 6; Rochester, New York on April 10; Albany, New York on April 11; Rome, New York on April 12; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 13; Hartford, Connecticut on April 15; Syracuse, New York, on April 16; Poughkeepsie, New York on April 17, through several dozen more campaign rallies right up to the Republican National Convention in July, we didn’t know shit about what was going on behind the scenes between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. What we would come to know, however, was that Trump would mention the Clinton emails, which were stolen by the Russians, and WikiLeaks, which received the emails from the Russians, more than 160 times in speeches during the closing months of the campaign.

With two indictments and two guilty pleas and more on the way, we’re going to learn what we didn’t know about the Russians and the ways they helped Donald Trump’s campaign for president. That I can promise you.

“Grown-ish”: The kid is alright

Yara Shahidi as Zoey Johnson in "grown-ish" (Credit: Freeform)

Leaving the nest often is accompanied by a roiling stew of emotions. Exhilaration, certainly, as a child breaks free of adult supervision — but insecurity as well, and plain old fear. We question ourselves: can we do this? Are we good enough? What if we fail?

“Grown-ish,” premiering Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Freeform, sets whatever trepidations it may have right in front of the viewer in its opening half-hour. They aren’t personified in Yara Shahidi’s composed and confident Zoey Johnson, the eldest daughter of Dre and Bow Johnson on “Black-ish.”  Well, not at first, anyway. We read them in the peripheral characters first, Zoey’s eventual gang of complementary opposites at Southern California University.

Soon enough, even she relaxes her mask of self-assurance, and the show’s chemistry coalesces.

“Grown-ish” joins a long line of spinoffs following characters ready to strike out on their own by way to joining another ensemble, a tactic yielding mixed results over the years. But creator Kenya Barris and his writers assertively establish Shahidi’s solo outing as its own entity, even though they connect the story to its parent series with a comedic and sweet moment between Zoey and her father (Anthony Anderson, in an appropriately over-the-top cameo) as the series begins.

By way of subtly paying homage to “The Breakfast Club,” “Grown-ish” pulls together a band of disparate but similarly searching personalities around Dre Johnson’s beloved eldest daughter, all of whom give voice to their own dread, or mask it, with artfully cultivated ennui.

The series itself displays no such lack of confidence, however. More than a worthy inheritor to its network progenitor, “Grown-ish” takes full advantage of Shahidi’s presence and energy to realistically explore what the undergrad experience is like in the modern age, without ginning up a cautionary tone or diluting the honesty of its plot points. “Black-ish” never did that either, so viewing a similar level of nimble sensibility and lively humor in the “Grown-ish” examination of college life is entirely on brand.

Shahidi ably meets the challenge of carrying a new comedy while taking the high school version of her character in a new direction. Where Zoey’s hallmark on “Black-ish” is a know-it-all coolness, “Grown-ish” allows her to admit that maybe she doesn’t have it all figured out. And this is entirely in keeping with the Johnson family’s tradition.

This theme of confusion bleeds into a few of the production’s stylistic choices, evidenced in the bewildering portrayal of Zoey’s shifting inner dialogue. Sometimes she breaks the fourth wall, addressing the camera, and sometimes her narration plays in voiceover. This is distracting enough to note but not at all derailing; indeed, we probably won’t even notice when one tactic disappears in favor of the other. (Note to producers: If y’all haven’t picked a lane yet, please do so quickly and stay in it.)

Besides, the characters surrounding Zoey are equally endearing. That’s not only true of the kids, but the adults, particularly Deon Cole’s Charlie, a brilliant carry-over from “Black-ish” who turns up as a professor teaching a marketing course that begins at midnight, and people familiar with the character may correctly deduce that its odd scheduling is the only aspect of this so-called course that makes sense. Cole plays a minor character on the ABC series that wields a marvelously concentrated weirdness, employed in the correct amounts on that show and this one.

Chris Parnell adds another element of mature silliness as Dean Parker, one of the adults orbiting the group who they reluctantly recruit to be a sounding board, though one lacking in wisdom.

The adults in “Grown-ish” aren’t entirely feckless, and the writers make them appealing enough to invite older viewers to enjoy the series with as much zeal as the intended younger audience. If anything, they exist to make the point that nobody in this Petri dish of learning really gets it.  But “Grown-ish” is really about Zoey’s friends and the choices they make, and Shahidi’s co-stars, particularly the wry Emily Arlook, charismatic Trevor Jackson and Jordan Buhat as the group’s resident materialist, play well with and off of each other.

The evolution of “Grown-ish” will be fascinating to watch, more so than most of the other new comedies introduced this season. At least for the time being, it looks like Dre Johnson’s kid is going to make it on her own just fine.

The urgent mission of “Making Gay History”

Demonstrators participate in gay rights protest in San Francisco, July 15, 1984 (Credit: AP/Joe Skipper)

In the late ’80s, author Eric Marcus set out to record the oral history of the gay civil rights movement in America.

“I had terrible anxiety over not being able to complete the project, or that something would happen to me on a flight from one place to another,” said Marcus. “Every time I had to fly somewhere, I made back up disks of all the material I had. I didn’t want my death — I cannot believe I thought of that — to kill the project. This had to be done. I felt such responsibility to these people, most of whom had never had their stories told, or they had been long forgotten.”

Before researching what would ultimately become his 1992 book “Making Gay History” (which was updated in 2002), Marcus didn’t know that he came from proud and courageous people. “I was outraged that I didn’t know my history. We were not the fairies. We were not the cowering, fearful people I heard us described as. These were tough people, living through the most — unimaginable to me — difficult times.”

Marcus made a list of the people he had to interview first: the elderly and the people dying of AIDS. There was an urgency to his mission and deeply personal stakes.

One of his early trips brought him to Colorado, to find any living members of the Mattachine Society, which was founded in Los Angeles in 1950, as one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the United States. “They came up with this idea that gay people were an emergent culture,” Marcus said, “and that it was possible to change the way things were.”

The Mattachine Society had had a local chapter in Denver, and the owners of the local LGBTQ bookstore said Marcus should speak to Wendell Sayers, who attended meetings in the late ’50s.

“I walked up to Wendell’s house,” said Marcus. “I have a vivid memory of him standing there with a beautiful smile. This was a man who clearly worked for what he had. He was the first black man to work for the Attorney General’s office in Denver. He was warm, he was engaging, and he was very eager to answer my questions. No one had asked.”

Sayers, who died in 1998, told Marcus the story of his father and mother driving him to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota because his father had a suspicion that his son might be gay. At the time, hotels open to African Americans could be few and far between, so they slept in a tent they brought with them. “I was terrified,” Sayers told Marcus.“They had me in the hospital, in and out, for several days. They determined that I was homosexual and that there was nothing they could do about it.” The hospital told Wendell’s parents that he should be incarcerated.

“I had the opportunity to revisit this work,” said Marcus, “and I was completely take in by it again. Revisiting this material has been so life-affirming. If I did one thing in life, I recorded these stories, and I have the astounding privilege of sharing these memories of people who lived, who were important, whose stories might not have otherwise been told. And in sharing these stories I know that there are young people today, and young people for decades, maybe generations to come, who will know about their history. They won’t have to grow up the way I did, feeling as badly about themselves as I did, thinking I was alone.”