Dear Commons Community,

Reuters interviewed several former prisoners of a Russian penal colony similar to the one that Britney Griner will be spending her sentence for bringing drugs into the country. They comment that tedious manual work, poor hygiene and lack of access to medical care are typical of the conditions  conditions awaiting Griner after she lost her appeal last week. Here is an excerpt.

It’s a world familiar to Maria Alyokhina, a member of feminist art ensemble Pussy Riot who spent nearly two years as an inmate for her part in a 2012 punk protest in a Moscow cathedral against President Vladimir Putin.

The first thing to understand, Alyokhina said in an interview, is that a penal colony is no ordinary prison.

“This is not a building with cells. This looks like a strange village, like a Gulag labour camp,” she said, referring to the vast penal network established by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to isolate and crush inmates.

“It actually is a labour camp because by law all the prisoners should work. The quite cynical thing about this work is that prisoners usually sew police uniforms and uniforms for the Russian army, almost without salary.”

The colony was divided between a factory area where the prisoners made garments and gloves and a “living zone” where Alyokhina said 80 women lived in one room with just three toilets and no hot water.

Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, could soon be transferred to a colony in the absence of a further appeal or an agreement between Washington and Moscow to swap her for a Russian arms dealer jailed in the United States – a possibility that was floated months ago but has yet to materialise.

HARSH RULES

In a Pussy Riot show that has toured the world and is now playing in Britain, Alyokhina relives the memories of her time as an inmate – snowy prison yards, plank-like beds, long spells in solitary confinement and punishment for minor infringements such as an unbuttoned coat or poorly attached nametag.

She was constantly being videoed by prison guards “because I am a ‘famous provocateur’,” she added.

Russia’s prison service did not reply to a request for comment for this article.

A more recent penal colony detainee, Yelena, described a similar regime to that experienced by Alyokhina a decade ago.

Yelena, 34, served eight years in a Siberian colony after being convicted for possession of drugs. She said she was paid about 1,000 roubles ($16) a month for toiling 10-12 hours a day in a sewing workshop.

“Girls with a strong, athletic build are often given much heavier jobs. For example, they load sacks of flour for a prison bakery or unload mountains of coal,” she said.

Prisoners could face punishment for inexplicable “offences” such as placing a wristwatch on a bedside table. The ultimate sanction was solitary confinement, known as “the Vatican”.

“Just as the Vatican is a state within a state, solitary confinement is a prison within a prison,” Yelena said.

A gynaecologist paid a monthly visit to her colony, where more than 800 women were imprisoned.

“You do the math, what are the chances of being the one to get through to a doctor? Practically zero,” she said.

LANGUAGE BARRIER

For a foreigner with little or no Russian, it’s harder to navigate the system and deal with the isolation.

The brother of Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine serving 16 years in a Russian penal colony on espionage charges that he denies, said he is granted a 15-minute phone call each day to his parents, cannot call other family members or friends, and has no access to email or the internet.

David Whelan said his brother must work at least eight hours a day, six days a week, on menial tasks like making buttonholes, which has caused him repetitive strain injury.

Inmates sleep in barrack-like buildings and access to many necessities, including medicine, depends on paying bribes to prison guards, he said. Conditions can depend heavily on the whims of guards, the warden or elder inmates.

Paul seems to use his military training “to get through just day to day, to figure out what battles to fight and which battles not to fight”, David Whelan said.

“His phone calls even to our parents are recorded. His letters were all translated before they went out. So you know that everything you do is being watched and you really have no sense of individuality.”

Alyokhina said receiving cards and letters from the outside world offered a rare ray of hope, and she urged people to support Griner that way.

She said they should use a machine translation and send the text in both English and Russian to get it more easily past the prison censor.

“Do not leave someone alone with this system,” she said. “It’s totally inhuman, it’s a Gulag, and when you feel yourself alone there, it’s much easier to give up.”

We all feel for Griner and what she faces!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Hill had an article earlier this week commenting  on the seven people – Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Rick Scott – who have the most at stake in Tuesday’s midterm elections. It is an interesting piece that rings true for its speculation. I would add Mike Pence and Kamala Harris to the list. Below is the entire article.

Tony

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The Hill

“The 7 people with most at stake in the midterms”

Niall Stanage

November 1, 2022, 7:03 PM

Next Tuesday’s midterm elections will have huge implications for President Biden, his party and the Republicans who hope to replace him in the White House in the 2024 election.

The careers of some of the most senior members of Congress will also be on the line.

Here are the seven people who will have the most at stake as the results come in.

President Biden

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the midterm results for the president.

If Democrats lose control of the House — an outcome that is highly probable — Biden will be hamstrung for the final two years of his first term, at least when it comes to domestic policy.

It’s also virtually certain that he, his administration and his family — in particular, his son Hunter Biden — will face GOP-led investigations. Whether or not actual wrongdoing is discovered, those probes could be personally embarrassing and politically arduous.

Then there’s the impact on the president’s broader political standing to consider.

If Democrats keep their House losses modest and retain control of the Senate, Biden can push forward in seeking a second term.

But if his party suffers heavy defeats, the whisperings about whether the president should step aside after a single term will grow much louder.

Even if Biden were to choose to soldier on in that scenario, the chances of a primary challenge would rise exponentially.

Former President Trump

Trump has involved himself in the midterms from the start, making a huge number of endorsements in Republican primaries. In most cases, his backing helped lift his chosen candidates to victory.

But next Tuesday brings a moment of truth as the former president and his party mull the possibility of him running again in 2024.

The fate of Trump-backed candidates in tight races will be crucial. Senate candidates Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia and J.D. Vance in Ohio as well as two Arizona candidates — Kari Lake for governor and Blake Masters for Senate — will be the most closely watched of all.

If most or all of those candidates win, it will be a powerful rebuttal to the argument that Trump and Trumpism have limited or fading appeal.

On the other hand, if the Trump-backed candidates lose, it is bound to fuel doubts, even within the GOP, about his belligerent and polarizing approach.

Such an outcome would also prove that one of Trump’s main internal foes, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was on solid ground when he fretted about “candidate quality” back in August.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)

DeSantis is widely seen as the only Republican who has a chance of defeating Trump for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

DeSantis’s backers contend that he has many of the same right-wing populist instincts as Trump but brings less of the self-defeating chaos to the table.

DeSantis’s “electability” argument is likely to grow stronger next Tuesday, when the Florida governor is expected to win reelection comfortably over his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Charlie Crist (Fla.).

In the RealClearPolitics average on Tuesday, DeSantis led Crist by 12.3 percentage points.

If the actual result is close to that margin, it will be very impressive in a state that is still a battleground, albeit a Republican-leaning one.

Trump defeated Biden in the Sunshine State by just 3 points in 2020, and DeSantis himself edged out Democrat Andrew Gillum by less than a point in his first gubernatorial race in 2018.

Conversely, an unexpectedly strong performance by Crist would put a dent in the Florida governor’s 2024 hopes.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)

For California’s governor, next Tuesday isn’t really about his own race.

There is no serious doubt that Newsom will win a second term to lead the Golden State. Most polls give him a lead of about 20 points.

But results elsewhere could be crucial for his future ambitions.

Newsom has been the boldest Democrat in putting his name in the frame as a potential alternative to Biden in 2024.

He has run TV ads on the other side of the country, dinging DeSantis in Florida — a move that seemed mainly designed to spur buzz and media speculation.

He has been critical of the national party’s messaging and overall approach, asking rhetorically during a September appearance in Texas, “Where are we? Where are we organizing, bottom up, a compelling alternative narrative? Where are we going on the offense every single day?”

And although he contends he’s not running for president, it’s hard to find many Democrats who believe him — especially if Biden falters.

On the other hand, an unexpectedly strong night for Democrats next Tuesday could close the window of opportunity for Newsom.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Pelosi has led House Democrats for almost 20 years, but her epic run will likely come to an end soon if the party suffers a significant defeat next Tuesday.

Pelosi is a formidable political operator, but it seems highly doubtful she, at 82, would try to hold on to her leadership position in the hope of reclaiming the Speaker’s gavel in 2024 or beyond.

Plenty of House Democrats are already restless about a leadership team that is rounded out by 83-year-old Rep. Steny Hoyer (Md.) as majority leader and 82-year-old Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.) as majority whip.

All that being said, it’s perilous to ever count Pelosi out.

If Democrats were to surprise everyone by holding on to the House, or even limiting the GOP to a tiny majority, all bets would be off.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.)

The Florida senator is sometimes mentioned as a potential 2024 presidential candidate, but he has a lot riding on the Senate results on Tuesday for other reasons too.

Scott is head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

More importantly, a proposal he outlined back in February has been seized on by Democrats.

One aspect of Scott’s 11-point plan proved more politically toxic than any other — the proposal that all federal legislation would “sunset” after five years, meaning that it would lapse unless it was reauthorized.

The provision would apply to Social Security and Medicare, enormously popular programs on which seniors depend.

Democrats, including Biden and former President Obama, have hit the point hard on the campaign trail, suggesting the GOP would decimate the programs.

McConnell sprinted away from Scott’s plan almost as soon as it was announced.

If Senate Republicans have a disappointing night, some of the blame will accrue to Scott.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)

Cheney, Trump’s most ardent Republican foe on Capitol Hill, has no election to fight. She was defeated in a landslide by pro-Trump challenger Harriet Hageman in an August primary.

Cheney’s alienation from today’s GOP is all but complete — in recent weeks, she has even endorsed some Democratic candidates, including Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio) for Senate and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) for reelection to the House.

It’s a very safe bet that Cheney will be watching closely for how the most pro-Trump candidates fare — especially those who have echoed the former president’s false claims of election fraud, including Arizona’s Lake.

The GOP writ large isn’t going to come around to Cheney’s point of view anytime soon. But she would likely take some measure of satisfaction if the MAGA wing had a bad night.

If the results go the other way, it will just be one more sign that she was on the losing side in the GOP’s civil war.

Dear Commons Community,

USA Today had an article yesterday describing the “new great migration” of blacks leaving northern cities such as New York and Detroit for points south especially places like Atlanta.  It cites census figures estimating that the Black population in Georgia has roughly doubled since 1990, moving from about 1.7 million to more than 3 million in the 2020. (See data above provided by Brookings.) It also comments on how this migration is having s significant impact on the political landscape.  Below is the entire article.

Excellent reading as we head towards Election Day.

Tony

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USA Today

‘Hope is bringing us back’: Black voters are moving South, building power for Democrats

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

November 5, 2022

Malik Rhasaan can often be found at his popular southwest Atlanta restaurant, Che Butter Jonez, where the menu and other items take a decidedly Black and Northern flair.

The borough of Queens is emblazoned on what appears to be a New York City street sign.Other artwork around the restaurant features the legendary Hip Hop group Run-DMC, also of Queens. On the menu, there’s the “Who Wants Beef, Son ?!” burger.

New York can be felt everywhere in the Georgia establishment, and yet it is hundreds of miles away and a place he hasn’t lived for decades. Rhasaan left his hometown for Atlanta because it was “the Blackest place I’ve ever been,” and it offered him career growth and other opportunities.

“With New York costs compared to Atlanta, Georgia, you could just kind of get things started a little faster,” he said. “It’s a little easier to get momentum here.”

Rhasaan, 50, is part of a wave of Black people who have left Democratic strongholds such as New York City and Detroit to move to Georgia, helping to change the political landscape of the Bible Belt that remains fertile ground for conservative politics. And going into the midterms Tuesday, the political coalition built between these new Black migrants who tend to vote blue, long-time Black Southern residents and others could help fuel progressive policies and Democratic candidates in Georgia in the future.

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are in a tight race, polls show. Democrat Stacey Abrams is in a rematch with Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp after losing to him by fewer than 60,000 votes in 2018.

These contests are partially being powered by the new Great Migration, researchers said. The trend is a reversal of the Great Migration, which saw anywhere from 5 to 6.5 million Black people leave the South searching for political and economic opportunities in the North and Midwest between 1910 through 1970.

The Black population in Georgia has roughly doubled since 1990, moving from about 1.7 million to more than 3 million in the 2020 census.

New Great Migration hits Georgia midterms

Roughly half of all Black Southern migrants come from the Northeast, according to census research complied by the Brookings Institution. In contrast, fewer than two-fifths of white migrants from the Northeast chose destinations in the South.

The Black population in Atlanta alone is larger than that of African Americans in Chicago, the city that helped launch the political career of former President Barack Obama and is sometimes called by scholars the “Political Capital of Black America.”

Black voters make up a third of eligible voters in Georgia, according to the Pew Research Center. In North Carolina, they make up about 23% of the electorate.

The number of Black voting-age residents in the South has grown by 15% since 2010, while it grew by 3% among white residents, according to a Pew article from 2019.

Georgia, North Carolina, Florida and Maryland are among the states that gained the highest number of Black migrants for most years since the Great Migration, as was Virginia, according to census data.

William Frey, a demographer at Brookings, said these trends will continue.

“The demography change brought by the Black migration of the second and third generation Black migrants will have a lot more to do with the Democratic vote in a place like Georgia than whatever small voting change patterns that might happen among Blacks,” he said.

Keneshia Grant, a political science professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., said Black voters can be the deciding factor when whites, for instance, remain evenly split.

“When there is a unified Black vote, it makes it the case that politicians have to speak to those voters,” she said.

Even with the demographic change, she emphasized that demographics are not results. Turnout, voting rights laws and voter engagement will also play a role in the midterms.

Heading into the 2022 midterms, Rhasaan sees fewer Warnock signs along the streets near the restaurant than he did in 2021 — a possible indicator of less engagement in politics compared to when protests following George Floyd’s death helped electrify the electorate, he fears.

Rhasaan, founder of the advocacy group Occupy the Hood, expects more statewide representation, particularly among young people, will emerge in the South because of the demographic changes that have already happened.

“I see in the next 10 years or so, more (Black) people running, more people having an influence,” he said. “That’s just a no-brainer.”

‘You can’t ignore them all’

Since the beginning of the nation’s history, the South has been the home to most Black Americans.

Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina and other localities are where nearly nine in 10 Black people were confined, forced into chattel slavery, then ushered into sharecropping and menial work, research shows.

By the 1900s, the first wave of Black migrants left the South, pulled by the prospect of less grueling Northern and Midwestern jobs and simultaneously pushed by the realities of Jim Crow segregation laws, political disenfranchisement and other discrimination.

By the second wave, which started in 1930 and ended by the 1970s, Blacks moved in more significant numbers, drawn by the prospect of jobs opened by World War I and further restrictions on immigration.

“Their migration fundamentally altered the American demographic landscape by shifting almost half of the Black population from primarily Southern and rural places to the urban North,” according to Grant’s book, “The Great Migration and the Democratic Party.”

In their new homes, their Black children could be educated. They had greater access to the ballot, drastically changing the electorate in those states, pushing civil rights issues to the fore and leading to increased Black representation.

In Detroit, for instance, the Black vote accounted for nearly 3% of the total voting-age population in 1915 and 43% by 1970, figuring in white flight and other factors, according to Grant’s book.

“There are some instances where either the number of Black people in a community or the way that community’s political system is organized makes it such that white politicians, in particular, can ignore them for a little bit longer,” said Grant, the Howard University professor. “By the time we get to 1965, 1970, the numbers in what I call the Great Migration cities — Chicago, New York, Philadelphia — their numbers are so high that you can’t ignore them.”

In 1970, the Great Migration drew to a close as deindustrialization took hold, leading to the end of Black manufacturing jobs that would never return. Moreover, segregation and discrimination were still barriers in the North.

Seeing opportunity and kinship in the South, Black people slowly moved back over the next few decades.

Democratic strategists often point out Cobb County as an example of how demographic changes have taken hold in Georgia. Just north of Atlanta, Cobb County was a former conservative stronghold that has become bluer as the population grows more diverse.

In 2020, the county’s sheriff, a Republican, was replaced by a Democrat. The same shift happened to the district attorney and the county commissioner. All three of the winners were Black.

Previously, the Sixth Congressional District, which includes parts of the county, was picked up in 2018 by Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath, a gun rights advocate and mother to Jordan Davis, who was killed in 2012 by a white man at a Florida gas station for playing loud music.

In the 1990s, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a conservative, was the representative for the district.

Tharon Johnson, a Democratic strategist in Georgia, said the appeal for Cobb is multifaceted for people of color.

“You have a well-educated workforce of individuals who are Black and Brown, who choose to go there for the improved school system and quality of life,” Johnson said.

Michael DuHaime, a Republican strategist and former Republican National Committee political director, said the trends are concerning, particularly as the nation diversifies. He said Republicans need to recruit more Black voters and candidates.

“When (former President) Donald Trump came in, I think progress that Republicans have made, you know, was pushed back a number of years and there was too much of a nativist strain within the Republican Party,” he said. “My hope is that will go away at some point.”

‘Hope is bringing us back’

For many Black migrants, Georgia represents better opportunities and a changing environment.

After being raised in Detroit and living in other cities, Willie Davis and his fiancé considered relocating to Atlanta as Georgia moved purple during the 2020 presidential elections.

He and fiancée, Anna Nettles , who is white, had been searching to find a place where they could both thrive. They wanted to be closer to his mother and sister who lived in Florida.

Now, as a real estate professional working in both Detroit and Atlanta, Davis, 36, helps relocate many people of color from Detroit to the South. He said those clients often point to the Southern weather and opportunities within their fields of work.

“In a lot of these areas like Atlanta, like Houston, I’m seeing greater opportunities for Black people,” he said. “And I’m also seeing greater opportunities for Black people and people of color in places and spaces that were not there before.”

Many new residents are more likely to be college-educated Black Americans looking for more opportunities, Brookings said in research. And so, many of the advantages may not trickle down to struggling longtime Black Atlantans, advocates say.

While the South still has high poverty rates, especially in many Black communities, it is also a place where Black people can successfully tackle the structural racism that often drives these issues, activists said.

“We’ve got blood that is still saturated in this ground for what Black folks have done to bring wealth to this country,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, an Atlanta-based advocacy group. “So if there is anywhere that literally rightfully is a space for Black prosperity … we believe it is in the South. We have paid for this space with our blood, sweat, tears.”

“Fear had us leave; hope is bringing us back,” she said.

That change can also be felt outside the confines of metro Atlanta. Today, Clinton Vicks is known for The Vicks Estate, Farm, & Fishery in Albany, Georgia. But as a young man, he left behind his hometown and moved to the North to pursue a career in the arts.

He found success. But after nearly a decade in New York, he felt the call of the South, much like his parents who moved to Detroit and back in the early 1970s.

During the pandemic, he started The Vicks Estate, Farm, & Fishery at a then-dilapidated nearly six-acre estate. He hopes to make a more significant role in his community, possibly sitting on an economic board in the historically Black side of the area.

For other African Americans looking to find their Black mecca, he said they need not search too far.

“You have something in you that you don’t have to find,” he said. “You take it with you.”

Dear Commons Community,

Major civil rights organizations including the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League are calling on advertisers to boycott Twitter.  In a statement released yesterday, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson wrote that “until [actions] are taken to make Twitter a safe space, corporations cannot in good conscience put their money behind Twitter.” Johnson affirmed that “Twitter must earn its advertisers by creating a platform that safeguards our democracy and rids itself of any account that spews hate and misinformation.” 

While organizations claimed they were having productive discussions with Tesla billionaire Elon Musk in the aftermath of his takeover of the social media platform, progress took a Sisyphean roll back down the hill yesterday. The Anti-Defamation League called for advertisers to boycott Twitter, as well, releasing a statement in conjunction with several organizations indicating that despite stating concerns regarding the proliferation of antisemitism and hate on Twitter, Musk “has taken actions that make us fear that the worst is yet to come.”

The NAACP and ADL are part of #StopToxicTwitter, a coalition of more than 60 civil society groups, which also includes Color of Change, Voto Latino, Free Press, LULAC, GlAAD, the National Hispanic Media Center, and Sleeping Giants. Members of the group met with Musk on Nov. 2 to discuss concerns over “potential changes being discussed for Twitter,” as well as an “uptick in extremist activity, racism, antisemitism, homophobia, disinformation and more.”

“Until Musk can invest in and prioritize teams that can robustly enforce Twitter’s existing community standards,” the coalition wrote in a statement, “the platform is not safe for users nor advertisers.”

The statement came hours after Musk blamed “activists” for Twitter’s plummeting advertiser revenue, accusing them of wanting to “destroy free speech in America.” 

Musk fired huge swaths of Twitter’s workforce on Thursday, following a steady trickle of dismissals among Twitter’s executives, including their chief content moderation officer. 

According to internal documents reviewed by The New York Times, Musk plans to launch a revamped version of Twitter Blue on Monday, which at $8 per month will allow users to pay for a verification badge; the documents suggest the program will not require any form of identity confirmation. 

In a statement released on Twitter, Free Press, a media advocacy group, echoed concerns that Musk’s gutting of Twitter’s staff would essentially render it “impossible for the company to uphold critical brand safeguards and content-moderation standards.”

The concern is compounded by the fact that the changes Musk is implementing are taking place days before the United States holds its midterm elections. Various candidates are running on platforms infused with election fraud conspiracies, and there are concerns that the radical transformation of Twitter could amplify misinformation surrounding breaking news events.

I agree with the position these civil rights groups are taking.  Elon Musk is ignoring Twitter’s social responsibility.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist,  Farhad Manjoo, takes a look at the state of Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse and is not impressed. To the contrary, he characterizes it as a “cartoony wasteland” that has nothing to show for the billions of dollars that has been invested.  Entitled, “My Sad, Lonely Expensive Adventures in Zuckerberg’s V.R.”, he concludes:

“I’m not ruling out socializing in V.R.; it’s possible that someday, someone will crack the code for having a good time in virtual worlds. But Meta’s big spending isn’t getting us there. This is a company with too much money and too little original or innovative thought. It’s burning billions on a party that nobody wants to attend.”

Wow!

His entire column is below

Tony

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The New York Times

My Sad, Lonely, Expensive Adventures in Zuckerberg’s V.R.

Nov. 4, 2022

By Farhad Manjoo

Opinion Columnist

Where is all the money going?

Meta, the corporation formerly known as Facebook, has been investing staggering sums in what it calls “the metaverse,” the virtual-reality wonderland that Mark Zuckerberg argues represents the future of human connection.

But to me the most interesting questions about the metaverse are less sociological than financial. When I don the company’s latest V.R. headset, the $1,500 Meta Quest Pro, and parachute into Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual theme park, it isn’t the future of human communication that I’m left wondering about. Instead it’s the state of Meta’s accounting department.

Zuckerberg’s Xanadu is a cartoony wasteland; everywhere you look, billboards promise big fun — there are concerts, game rooms, open mics, dance halls, bowling alleys, escape rooms and much more. But nearly all of it is a tease. Most of these places have been left for dead; you’ll be lucky to find many venues populated with more than a single other avatar. Every corner of Meta’s metaverse reeks of creepy abandonment, like the post-apocalyptic United States of the Fallout games. And as you wander about the forsaken place you can’t help picturing all those billions being set on fire: Zuckerberg spent all that dough … on this? How? Why? What is he thinking? Is he being blackmailed?

The amounts are stupefying. In an earnings release last month the company said Reality Labs, its metaverse business, had burned through nearly $4 billion in the latest financial quarter. The division spent more than $10 billion so far this year, on pace to exceed the $12 billion it spent on the metaverse last year. In just a few years, Meta’s V.R. investments have exceeded what the United States spent on the Manhattan Project (adjusted for inflation).

Sure, lots of tech companies pour boatloads into new initiatives. Netflix has invested tens of billions of dollars in movies and TV shows. Tesla is spending mightily to build out its car and battery manufacturing operations. And every year Amazon spends billions and billions on data centers and fulfillment warehouses.

But what sets Meta’s spending apart is how amazingly little it has to show for the money. At least Netflix’s billions got us “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game”; Tesla’s money is revolutionizing the car industry, and Amazon’s endless investments let me get same-day shipping on toothpaste and toilet paper. Meta’s V.R. spending, on the other hand, seems barely more fruitful than shoveling cash into a furnace. Reality Labs’ $12 billion in costs resulted in just $2.3 billion in revenue last year; so far this year revenue is just barely higher, while costs are up by more than a quarter.

Meta’s big spending might make sense if it were using the money to subsidize the cost of its V.R. headsets — lowering its prices enough to make the devices a mainstream hit. But as I said, the company’s latest V.R. device sells for an eye-bleeding $1,500.

That headset, the Meta Quest Pro, is quite nice. It’s more comfortable to wear than older and cheaper versions, and its display and motion-tracking system work much more smoothly, eliminating the slight sense of motion sickness and eye strain I’ve felt with previous V.R. devices.

Still, it’s far beyond the price range of most consumers. Meta says the device is aimed at professionals who want to make V.R. a big part of their remote offices, but even that seems a stretch. It’s still a big, bulky thing sitting on your head — I struggled to stay in any V.R. session for longer than an hour or so before my head started to ache. I doubt there will be many office workers turning to this headset as their primary work device.

And Meta’s cheaper headset is hardly cheap. At $399, the Meta Quest 2 is as costly as many high-end video game consoles — and far less useful. Where an Xbox Series S or PlayStation 5 teems with games and a huge community of users to play against, much of Meta’s Quest ecosystem feels like a work in progress. There are many apps and games available in Meta’s V.R. store, and a few are pretty fun — most, though, seem like beta products, asking you for $10 or $20 for games that offer barely an hour of enjoyment.

And then there’s Horizon Worlds, the social corner of Meta’s metaverse. Horizon Worlds is meant to be the V.R. equivalent of the Facebook app — it’s a place to hang out, to chat with friends and strangers, to play games, to explore the digital future of human relationships. It seems to be Zuckerberg’s favorite part of V.R.; he frequently posts images of his adventures through Horizon Worlds, often describing it as the future of digital socialization. But on a call with investors last month he did concede that Horizon Worlds “obviously has a long way to go before it’s going to be what we aspire for it to be.”

I’ll say. Citing internal company documents, The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Meta has been forced to reduce its growth expectations for Horizon Worlds — the company once aimed for hitting 500,000 monthly active users by the end of the year, but it’s currently at fewer than 200,000.

“An empty world is a sad world,” noted a company document cited by the Journal. That rang true to me. My time in Horizon Worlds often felt more gloomy than fun. Here is the main social app on the most important new device made by the internet’s most successful social-networking company — and it’s a buggy, empty, low-fi mess, where avatars don’t even have legs (yet); where most of the “worlds” I visited were deserted and the most populous places I found had just dozens of people; and where conversations frequently go little deeper than “hey” and “how you doin’?”

I’m not ruling out socializing in V.R.; it’s possible that someday, someone will crack the code for having a good time in virtual worlds. But Meta’s big spending isn’t getting us there. This is a company with too much money and too little original or innovative thought. It’s burning billions on a party that nobody wants to attend.

Dear Commons Community,

Elon Musk will begin laying off Twitter employees today, according to a company-wide email, culling the social media service’s 7,500-person work force a little over a week after completing his blockbuster buyout.

Twitter employees were notified in the email that the layoffs were set to begin, according to a copy of the message seen by The New York Times. Workers were instructed to go home and not go to the offices today as the cuts proceeded. The message, which came from a generic address and was signed “Twitter,” did not detail the total number of layoffs.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” the email said. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

About half of Twitter’s workers appeared set to lose their jobs, according to previous internal messages and an investor, though the final count may take time to become clear. As the email landed in employee inboxes on last night, workers posted salute emojis and heart emojis in Slack, the messaging service. Later in the evening, some employees said they had lost access to the company’s systems, a possible prelude to being laid off.

Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Oct. 27 and immediately fired its chief executive and other top managers. More executives have since resigned or were let go, while managers were asked to draw up lists of high- and low-performing employees, likely with an eye toward job cuts. Mr. Musk also brought in more than 50 engineers and employees from his other companies, including the electric carmaker Tesla, to review the layoff lists of Twitter workers and the social platform’s technology.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Brooklyn Nets suspended guard Kyrie Irving indefinitely yesterday, calling him “unfit to be associated” with the team because he had declined to say he has no antisemitic views in the week since he posted a link on Twitter to a film with hateful claims about Jewish people.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Such failure to disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity to do so is deeply disturbing, is against the values of our organization, and constitutes conduct detrimental to the team,” the Nets said in a statement.

Irving had declined to apologize despite fierce backlash, but late last night, hours after the Nets suspended him, he relented in a post on Instagram.

“To All Jewish families and Communities that are hurt and affected from my post, I am deeply sorry to have caused you pain, and I apologize,” Irving said in the Instagram post.

The Nets said Irving would be suspended without pay for at least five games and “until he satisfies a series of objective remedial measures that address the harmful impact of his conduct.”

Yestyerday, before he was suspended, Irving did not apologize for his post but said there were some things in the film he did not agree with.

“I didn’t mean to cause any harm,” Irving said after a Nets practice. “I’m not the one that made the documentary.”

When asked what specific points in the film he did not agree with, Irving responded vaguely.

“Some of the criticism of the Jewish faith and the community, for sure,” Irving said. “Some points made in there that were unfortunate.”

The team said in the suspension announcement that it was “dismayed” that Irving did not “acknowledge specific hateful material in the film.”

Last week, Irving posted a link on Twitter to the film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” which is driven by antisemitic tropes about Jewish people lying about their origins. Its false and outlandish claims about Jews include the assertion that the Holocaust never happened.

“Those falsehoods are unfortunate,” Irving said when asked if he believed that the Holocaust occurred, despite what the movie said. “And it’s not that I don’t believe in the Holocaust. I never said that. Never ever have said it. It’s not come out of my mouth. I never tweeted it. I never liked anything like it. So, the Holocaust in itself is an event that means something to a large group of people that suffered something that could have been avoided.”

On Sunday, Irving deleted the Twitter post that included the film’s link, but he had not spoken publicly since Saturday. That night, during a postgame news conference, Irving argued with a reporter about whether he was promoting the movie by posting about it on Twitter.

In his apology yesterday, Irving said he “initially reacted out of emotion to being unjustly labeled Anti-Semitic, instead of focusing on the healing process of my Jewish Brothers and Sisters that were hurt from the hateful remarks made in the Documentary.”

In the past week, the N.B.A. and its players’ union released statements condemning antisemitism without naming Irving. The Nets owner Joe Tsai said in a tweet that he was “disappointed” with Irving and would speak to him.

In a statement released with the Anti-Defamation League on Wednesday, Irving and the Nets said they would each donate $500,000 to unspecified causes and organizations that combat hate in their communities. When asked Thursday if he had met with the Anti-Defamation League, Irving said he was told that the organization wanted a meeting and “we handled it.”

Irving had said in his statement Wednesday that he took responsibility for his post.

Yesterday morning, less than an hour before Irving spoke to reporters at practice, N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said he planned to meet with Irving and expressed disappointment that Irving had not “offered an unqualified apology and more specifically denounced the vile and harmful content contained in the film he chose to publicize.”

In his Instagram post, Irving apologized for “posting the documentary without context and a factual explanation outlining the specific beliefs in the Documentary I agreed with and disagreed with.”

He said he “had no intentions to disrespect any Jewish cultural history regarding the Holocaust or perpetuate any hate,” but he did not cite specific arguments from the film that he disagreed with.

The Nets said in their statement announcing Irving’s suspension that they had tried to help Irving “understand the harm and danger of his words and actions.”

What a sad situation!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump saw Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their “only chance” at overturning Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, according to emails turned over to congressional investigators and first obtained by Politico.

“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Kenneth Chesebro, one of the then-president’s lawyers, wrote to other members of Trump’s legal team on Dec. 31, 2020.

Thomas was seen as key to the strategy of contesting the election results because he is the justice assigned to adjudicate emergency appeals and potentially issue a stay in matters in Georgia, where Trump and his lawyers claimed without evidence that voter fraud had cost them a victory. A stay issued by Thomas, Trump’s lawyers believed, might convince others that the fraud claims had merit.

One of the people on the email chain was lawyer John Eastman, a central architect of the Trump strategy to overturn the election who had clerked with Thomas and was in contact with the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, regarding efforts to block the Electoral College certification of Biden’s victory.

“Realistically, our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas — do you agree, Prof. Eastman?”

“I think I agree with this,” Eastman replied in one of the emails given to the select committee last week, adding that a stay issued by Thomas would “kick the Georgia legislature into gear.”

In another email sent on Dec. 31, Chesebro laid out the urgent timeline of the Trump team’s election Hail Mary.

“[I]f we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5, ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it’s our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress,” Chesebro wrote.

The Supreme Court did not intervene in the matter, however, and then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to go along with a plan hatched by Eastman to simply send the Electoral College votes back to the states. Instead, Trump’s supporters waged a violent attempt to disrupt the certification of Biden’s win, ransacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified to the Jan. 6 selection committee that the day after the insurrection, he was contacted by Eastman.

“He started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something potentially for appeal and I said to him, ‘Are you out of your effing mind?’ I said, ‘I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: orderly transition.’”

After Eastman repeated those words, Herschmann continued. “Good, John, now I’m going to give you the best free legal advice you’re ever getting in your life: Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer. You’re going to need it.”

Trump’s effort to overturn Georgia’s election results is the subject of an ongoing Fulton County grand jury investigation. In that matter, Justice Thomas did issue a stay that initially blocked a lower court order compelling Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., from testifying.

On Tuesday, however, the full court declined to block the subpoena issued to Graham, clearing the way for him to testify before the grand jury about his efforts on behalf of Trump in Georgia.

In late August, Eastman invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and cited attorney-client privilege Wednesday when he was brought before the Fulton County grand jury.

What a sleazy bunch of characters!

Tony

George Will

Dear Commons Community,

Conservative commentator George Will sent a stark warning to Democrats in his latest column for The Washington Post.

He urged them to ditch President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as candidates for the 2024 presidential election or potentially face former President Donald Trump returning to the White House.

Biden is “past his prime,” Will wrote in the opinion piece titled “For the good of the country, Biden and Harris should bow out of the 2024 election” that was published Wednesday.

Harris is “unqualified to be considered as his successor,” he added in the article which detailed what he believed were multiple missteps from the pair.

“In 2024, the Republican Party might present the nation with a presidential nominee whose unfitness has been demonstrated,” Will said, referring to Trump. “After next Tuesday’s sobering election results, Democrats should resolve not to insult and imperil the nation by doing likewise.”

George Will quit the GOP in 2016 in protest of Trump’s takeover of the party and his presidential nomination. In 2020, he said he would vote for Biden — the first time he’d cast his ballot for a Democratic president.

George Will has a good eye for politics but I don’t know that I agree with him.  It is not clear to me that Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The two largest U.S. pharmacy chains, CVS Health and Walgreen Co., announced agreements in principle yesterday to pay about $5 billion each to settle lawsuits nationwide over the toll of opioids, and a lawyer said Walmart, a third pharmacy behemoth, is in discussions for a deal.

The prospective settlements are part of a shift in the legal landscape surrounding the opioid epidemic. Instead of suspense over whether companies in the drug industry would be held to account through trials or settlements, the big question is now how their money will be used and whether it will make a difference in fighting a crisis that has only intensified.

The deals, if completed, would end thousands of lawsuits in which governments claimed pharmacies filled prescriptions they should have flagged as inappropriate. With settlements already proposed or finalized between some of the biggest drugmakers and distribution companies, the recent developments could be the among the last multibillion-dollar settlements to be announced.

They also would bring the total value of all settlements to more than $50 billion, with most of it required to be used by state and local governments to combat opioids, which have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the last two decades.  As reported by the Associated Press

“It’s one more culprit of the overdose crisis that is having to pay their dues,” said Courtney Gary-Allen, organizing director of the Maine Recovery Advocacy Project. “Average Americans have been paying it for a long time.”

Gary-Allen, who is a member of a council that will help determine how Maine uses its opioid settlement funds, said more money to address the problem will help. In her state, she said, the needs include more beds for medical detox and for treatment.

Neither Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based CVS nor Deerfield, Illinois-based Walgreens is admitting wrongdoing.

The plans spring from mediation involving a group of state attorneys general. Before they move ahead, state and then local governments would need to sign on. So far, the detailed, formal deals have not been presented to the government entities so they can decide whether to join.

Under the tentative plans, CVS would pay $4.9 billion to local governments and about $130 million to Native American tribes over a decade. Walgreens would pay $4.8 billion to governments and $155 million to tribes over 15 years. The exact amount depends on how many governments join the deals.

Both noted they have been addressing the crisis through such measures as starting educational programs and installing safe disposal units for drugs in stores and police departments. And both said the settlements would allow them to help while staying focused on their business.

“We are pleased to resolve these longstanding claims and putting them behind us is in the best interest of all parties, as well as our customers, colleagues and shareholders,” Thomas Moriarty, CVS chief policy officer and general counsel, said in a statement.

Walgreens said in a statement: “As one of the largest pharmacy chains in the nation, we remain committed to being a part of the solution, and this settlement framework will allow us to keep our focus on the health and wellbeing of our customers and patients, while making positive contributions to address the opioid crisis,” Walgreens said in a statement.

Paul Geller, a lawyer for governments in the lawsuits, said talks with Walmart continue. Walmart representatives would not comment Wednesday.

“These agreements will be the first resolutions reached with pharmacy chains and will equip communities across the country with the much-needed tools to fight back against this epidemic and bring about tangible, positive change,” lawyers for local governments said in a statement. “In addition to payments totaling billions of dollars, these companies have committed to making significant improvements to their dispensing practices to help reduce addiction moving forward.”

If these settlements are completed, they would leave mostly smaller drug industry players as defendants in lawsuits. Just this week, a group of mostly regional pharmacy chains sent to a judge, who is overseeing federal litigation, information about claims they face, a possible precursor to scheduling trials or mediating settlements involving some of those firms.

“One by one, we are holding every player in the addiction industry accountable for the millions of lives lost or devastated by the opioid epidemic,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement. “The companies that helped to create and fuel this crisis must commit to changing their businesses practices, and to providing the resources needed for treatment, prevention and recovery.”

Most of the nation’s opioid overdose deaths initially involved prescription drugs. As governments, doctors and companies took steps to make them harder to abuse and obtain, people addicted to them increasingly switched to heroin, which proved more deadly.

In recent years, opioid deaths have soared to record levels around 80,000 a year. Most of those deaths involve illicitly produced version of the powerful lab-made drug fentanyl, which is appearing throughout the U.S. supply of illegal drugs.

Only a handful of opioid settlements have had bigger dollar figures than the CVS plan. Distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson this year finalized a combined settlement worth $21 billion, and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson finalized a $5 billion deal.

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and members of the Sackler family who own the company have a proposed settlement that would involve up to $6 billion in cash, plus the value of the company, which would be turned into a new entity with its profits used to combat the epidemic. That plan has been put on hold by a court.

This is good news for all involved but there is an open question whether any of the owners and senior executives of the pharmaceutical companies who knew the dangers of opioids should also face criminal liability.

Tony