Rose McGowan Accuses Amazon, Jeff Bezos Of Weinstein Rape Coverup

Less than a week after it first hit, the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal fallout has spread across multiple Hollywood circles, and moments ago it appears to have dragged in none other than Amazon CEO, and the world"s 2nd richest man, Jeff Bezos.

In a series of tweets on Thursday afternoon, Rose McGowan, one of the at least 20 women who have accused Weinstein of sexual assault, and who was locked out of twitter overnight after attacking Ben Affleck, accused the Batman star of lying about his knowledge of Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults of women, dragged Jeff Bezos into the Weinstein scandal.

McGowan claims that Amazon optioned a television series from her only to kill it soon after when she voiced concern about a possible move the company was making to bailout Weinstein. McGowan also accused Amazon of winning “a dirty Oscar” by working with accused rapist Harvey Weinstein, despite being warned of accusations against him.

"I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof," said McGowan on Thursday in a tweet directed at company founder Jeff Bezos.

"I had already sold a script I wrote to your studio, it was in development. When I heard a Weinstein bailout was in the works."

Amazon executives, McGowan also claimed, did nothing when McGowan warned them about Weinstein. McGowan is one of several women to have settled with Weinstein. “I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing. I was ignored,” she wrote. “Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar.”

Her full tweets:

• I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof.


• I had already sold a script I wrote to your studio, it was in development. When I heard a Weinstein bailout was in the works


• I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing. I was ignored. Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar.


• I called my attorney & said I want to get my script back, but before I could, #2 @amazonstudios called to say my show was dead


• I am calling on you to stop funding rapists, alleged pedos and sexual harassers. I love @amazon but there is rot in Hollywood


• Be the change you want to see in the world. Stand with truth. #ROSEARMY #Amazon

Here are her tweets (and a snapshot) just in case @Jack decides to suspend her account again.

1) @jeffbezos I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof.

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017

2) @jeffbezos I had already sold a script I wrote to your studio, it was in development. When I heard a Weinstein bailout was in the works

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017

3) @Jeffbezos I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing. I was ignored. Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar.

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017

4) @jeffbezos I called my attorney & said I want to get my script back, but before I could, #2 @amazonstudios called to say my show was dead

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017

5) @jeffbezos Be the change you want to see in the world. Stand with truth. #ROSEARMY #Amazon

— rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 12, 2017

According to the Mail, That "dirty Oscar" seems to be a reference to Casey Affleck"s Best Actor win for "Manchester by the Sea" earlier this year, an award that Ben"s younger brother took home despite two women accusing him of sexual harassment. McGowan did not identify Casey by name, but the only other Oscars that Amazon has won are the Best Original Screenplay award for Kenneth Lonergan and Best Foreign Language Film for the Iranian drama "The Salesman."

Amazon picked up "Manchester by the Sea" at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival for a near-record $10 million, and the film ultimately ended up netting the movie industry upstart seven Oscar nominations and two wins.

It is unclear what role Weinstein played in the funding or sale of Manchester, but he has worked frequently with the film"s two leads Casey and Michelle Williams as well as the executive producer of the picture Matt Damon.

Amazon said that the studio was "reviewing our options for the projects we have with The Weinstein Company" earlier this week. McGowan also did not name the executive she was referencing in her Twitter thread.

While the deal between herself and Amazon was never confirmed, but in June 2016 Amazon Studios head Roy Price did post a photo of himself with McGowan. "You come talking that trash we"ll pull your card. Tough face contest lost to @rosemcgowan #eazye #rosearmy," wrote Price.

He is now finding himself at the mercy of the #rosearmy himself after the actress" tweets. "I called my attorney & said I want to get my script back, but before I could, #2 @amazonstudios called to say my show was dead," claimed McGowan.

Rose McGowan (above with Amazon studio head Roy Price in June 2016)

Separately, earlier on Thursday, twitter provided an explanation for why it had suspended McGowan"s twitter account:

We have been in touch with Ms. McGowan"s team. We want to explain that her account was temporarily locked because one of her Tweets included a private phone number, which violates our Terms of Service.  The Tweet was removed and her account has been unlocked. We will be clearer about these policies and decisions in the future.  Twitter is proud to empower and support the voices on our platform, especially those that speak truth to power. We stand with the brave women and men who use Twitter to share their stories, and will work hard every day to improve our processes to protect those voices.

We now await Bezos" response.

"You'll Love My Dick" - Amazon Suspends Video Chief After Sexual Harrassment Allegations

Amazon has reportedly suspended Roy Price, its point man in Hollywood and the head of its ambitious video program, according to ReCode.

According to HollywoodReporter, in the wake of revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged years-long sexual harassment and assault, a producer of one of Amazon Studios’ highest-profile TV shows is ready to talk about her “shocking and surreal” experience with Amazon’s programming chief.

"You will love my dick," Price allegedly said to Isa Hackett, a producer on "The Man in the High Castle," who details a July 2015 incident at Comic-Con in San Diego.

On the evening of July 10, 2015, after a long day of promoting Man in the High Castle at Comic-Con in San Diego, Hackett attended a dinner with the show"s cast and Amazon staff at the U.S. Grant Hotel. There she says she met Price for the first time. He asked her to attend an Amazon staff party later that night at the W Hotel (now the Renaissance) and she ended up in a taxi with Price and Michael Paull, then another top Amazon executive and now CEO of the digital media company BAMTech.

Once in the cab, Hackett says Price repeatedly and insistently propositioned her. “You will love my dick,” he said, according to Hackett, who relayed her account to multiple individuals in the hours after the alleged episode. (The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed Hackett told at least two people about the alleged incident in the immediate aftermath.) Hackett says she made clear to Price she was not interested and told him that she is a lesbian with a wife and children.

Hackett says Price did not relent in the cab or once they arrived at the Amazon party. As she talked with other executives, she says that Price stepped close to her and loudly said, “Anal sex!” in her ear.

Hackett says she reported the incident to Amazon executives immediately. An outside investigator, Christine Farrell of Public Interest Investigations Inc., was brought in and spoke to Hackett and executives at Amazon. Hackett says she was never told the outcome of that inquiry, but notes that she hasn’t seen Price at any events involving her shows.

"We take seriously any questions about the conduct of our employees,” an Amazon spokesperson tells THR in a statement.

“We expect people to set high standards for themselves; we encourage people to raise any concerns and we make it a priority to investigate and address them. Accordingly, we looked closely at this specific concern and addressed it directly with those involved."

But, now, as ReCode reports, Price is gone with his suspension effective immediately, according to an internal Amazon memo.

“Roy Price is on leave of absence effective immediately,” an Amazon spokesperson told Variety Thursday.

“We are reviewing our options for our projects we have with the Weinstein Company.”

Albert Cheng, a former ABC executive who joined Amazon’s video group two years ago, will be the interim head of the unit.

Ironically, last week the Wall Street Journal published a critical account of Price’s track record in Hollywood, noting that the company had spent billions on programming but with a handful of exceptions, hadn’t won plaudits or large audiences.

Uber Selects Expedia Chief Dara Khosrowshahi As Its Next CEO

Just nine hours after Jeff Immelt tweeted that he was no longer in the race to be Uber"s next CEO, moments ago Uber"s board selected Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, 48, various news outlets report. According to Recode, the board selected the "third candidate", one who was not only an unknown until now, but one who as the photo below shows, is also not a woman despite his beguiling first name and the board"s rumored prerogative to pick a female next leader.

Dara Khosrowshahi, current CEO of Expedia

In a statement, a spokesperson said: “The Board has voted and will announce the decision to the employees first.”  If he accepts, he would be replacing founder Travis Kalanick and interim CEO Ariana Huffington.

The decision appears to have stumped everyone, including Recode"s Kara Swisher who writes that "what that means is anyone’s guess, and sources close to one of the remaining possible CEO picks — Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman — said she has not been informed of any choice nor had the board agreed to some the the things she was asking for to take the job. Whitman was asking for a number of things, including less involvement of ousted CEO Travis Kalanick."

As the NYT adds, Jeff Immelt, a finalst until this morning, withdrew when it became clear that he did not enough have support. Recode adds that "Immelt dropped out of the running this morning, with sources close to his thinking calling the process totally “dysfunctional” (and worse)."

And while the board was leaning toward Meg Whitman, the chief of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, "matters changed over the course of Sunday afternoon and the board decided on Mr. Khosrowshahi" according to the NYT.

While not much is known about Dara Khosrowshahi, and why the board thinks the Expedia chief can successfully replace Travis Kalanick as head of the world"s most valuable private company, what is known is that under Khosrowshahi, Expedia was one of the first tech companies to file a legal challenge against Trump"s travel ban, citing the potential harm it could do its employees and customers. As such, the Iranian-American appears to be high on the #resistance totem. His anti-Trump bias was further exposed in his year end note to employees, in which he said he wants to send "just a big thank you to our global employee base for an improved 2016 and certainly an improved end to the year. And hopefully we will all be alive to see the end of next year."

Some further background:

Dara Khosrowshahi has served as CEO of Expedia, Inc., since August 2005. Since that time, Expedia has extended its global presence to more than 60 countries worldwide through Expedia, Hotels.com, and Hotwire online booking brands, and the travel community sites of TripAdvisor Media Network. Ten years later, in 2015, Expedia awarded him $90 million worth of stock options as part of a long-term employment agreement, stating he would stay until 2020. 

Before joining Expedia, Khosrowshahi served as the CEO of IAC Travel. Khosrowshahi worked at Allen & Company from 1991 to 1998, and as its vice president from 1995 to 1998. He is also a board director for BET.com, Hotels.com and several other companies.

In February 2015, the New York Times Company announced Khosrowshahi as one of two new nominees for its board of directors. He will formally stand for election at the annual meeting of stockholders on May 6, 2015. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher of the New York Times and chairman of The New York Times Company praised Khosrowshahi"s "comprehensive digital and international experience, as well as significant financial expertise".

The search for Uber"s new CEO had been riven by scandal and discord, especially between former CEO Kalanick and Benchmark, the VC firm that is a major Uber shareholder and that also has a seat on Uber’s board. Both Kalanick and Benchmark had their own preferred candidates for a new chief. Benchmark recently sued Kalanick to try and force him off the board.

20 Amazing Things That Happen Every Single Minute Of Every Single Day In Our Rapidly Changing World

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Our world is changing at a blinding pace that is accelerating with each passing day. 

Thanks to the Internet, information travels at a speed that would have been unimaginable at other times in human history, and our technological capabilities are advancing at a rate that is exponentially increasing.  What all of this means is that seismic cultural shifts that used to take decades can now be accomplished in a matter of months or even weeks. 

The following are 20 amazing facts about what happens every single minute of every single day in our rapidly changing world... 

#1 250 babies will be born, and 113 of them will be born into poverty.

#2 500 hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube.

#3 The Earth will travel 1,118 miles around the sun.

#4 McDonald’s will sell 4,500 hamburgers.

#5 Lightning will strike our planet about 6,000 times .

#6 28,500 trees will be cut down.

#7 51,000 applications will be downloaded from Apple’s App Store.

#8 65,000 barrels of oil will be used used.

#9 People will watch 64,444 hours of content on Netflix.

#10 120,673 pounds of edible food will be thrown away in the United States.

#11 $203,596 worth of products will be sold on Amazon.com.

#12 448,800 tweets will be posted on Twitter.

#13 527,760 photos will be shared on Snapchat.

#14 3.3 million posts will be made to Facebook.

#15 3.8 million Google searches will be conducted.

#16 5 million pounds of garbage will be generated.

#17 6 million chemical reactions will happen in each one of our cells.

#18 20.8 million messages will be sent using WhatsApp.

#19 25 million Coca-Cola products will be consumed.

#20 204 million emails will be sent.

So will all of this change lead to a wonderfully positive future for humanity, or will it result in a dystopian nightmare?  Only time will tell, but what everyone can agree on is that our world is rapidly becoming a much different place than the world that our parents and grandparents grew up in.

Who Has The Best (And Worst) LinkedIn Profile Photos?

Submitted via Priceonomics

A quick spin through LinkedIn reveals that the quality of peoples" profile photos is rather uneven. Some photos appear to be from highly professional photoshoots while others are grainy pictures captured from old cell phones.

Is there any pattern in the data around professional networking photos? What professions have the highest quality photos? Do people that are fresh on the job market tend to have better headshots? Are certain countries more likely to have better professional networking photos then others?

We decided to analyze the data from Priceonomics customer Snappr, which has a Photo Analyzer tool for LinkedIn photos. The tool uses an algorithm to analyze portraits for things like expression (e.g. smile and jawline), composition (e.g. zoom and background), and photo quality (e.g. saturation and sharpness). These attributes are graded individually and incorporated into an overall photo quality score. The database contains tens of thousands of Photo Analyzer results and anonymized information from the LinkedIn profiles they’re attached to. We analyzed that database to identify the groups with the best-scoring photos. 

According to our data, lawyers have the best professional photos on LinkedIn, Chile is the country with the highest quality pictures, and people who recently joined a company are much more likely to have a nice photo than someone with a long tenure.

Do some countries take better photos than others? We first grouped our sample based on nationality, filtered our list to countries that contributed at least 50 scores, and ranked them based on average overall photo score.

 

According to our Photo Analyzer, Chileans take the best profile pictures. A look at their individual attribute scores revealed that they earned the top spot by taking photos that were technically strong, with great saturation and brightness and neutral backgrounds.

Developed, politically stable nations make up the bulk of this ranking, but developing countries like Brazil and India show up too, demonstrating how accessible decent photography equipment is these days.

 

This ranking doesn’t bear a strong resemblance to rankings of physical attractiveness by country, but that makes sense: our analyzer calculates scores based only on features the subject has some control over.

We next asked whether photo quality varies with industry. We thought photos might be stronger for employees in people-oriented fields like sales and human resources, or among aesthetically-oriented creatives. We grouped our sample based on industry, calculated the average overall photo score for each group, and rank the top and bottom 10 below.

 

Workers with high-paying prestige positions in law, consulting, and investment banking take the best photos, according to our Photo Analyzer. They are joined, perhaps not surprisingly, by workers in broadcast media and people-oriented staffing and recruiting industries.

What is surprising is the ‘worst’ ranking, as photographers find themselves with the lowest average photo quality score. It"s important to remember that Photo Analyzer is an algorithm and perhaps professional photographers take creative liberties that don’t jibe with the science of what makes a good professional photo according to an algorithm.

Photographers are joined in this ranking by other creatives - architects, fashion designers, and media producers - as well as professionals in behind-the-scenes industries like information services, machinery, and computer networking.

We associate some of the professions on the ‘best’ list with large firms that grant their employees access to a broad network, and that led us to wonder whether network size is correlated with photo quality. We grouped our sample based on the user’s number of LinkedIn connections and charted the average overall photo score for each group.

 

The more connected you are, the better your LinkedIn photo is likely to be. This doesn’t necessarily mean upgrading your photo will net you more friends, though. It’s likely that individuals with access to a wide network also have access to top-notch photography services. If they work at a large enough company, their employer may even arrange a headshot for them.

This ranking suggested that people with more seniority - who have been around longer to develop a wider network - might also have better profile photos, as determined by our Photo Analyzer. We explored this possibility by grouping our sample based on how long users had been in their current position and charted the average overall photo score for each group.

 

People with more seniority in their current positions actually have worse photos, on average, than newer employees. This makes some sense - technology has advanced since these veterans had reason to update their profile pictures. By the same token, recent hires will have been job-hunting recently, and had an incentive to invest in a high-quality photo.

Keep in mind, our Photo Analyzer is a technical tool, not the final word on photographic artistry. Your portrait may very well deserve a space at the Met, but if it doesn’t follow the rule of thirds, have a neutral background, or showcase your dazzling smile, it won’t receive a high score. Research has shown that these attributes inspire positive impressions in viewers, and our Analyzer is designed to measure them.

But limitations aside, what did we find? We saw that professionals in law and management tend to have better photos than workers in creative or behind-the-scenes roles. Network size is positively correlated with photo quality, whereas length of tenure with present employer is correlated negatively.

No - The Oil Market Is Not Fixed! (Video)

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SNAP Surges Above $40 Billion - Bigger Than Ebay Or Sony

Desperate buyers  - fearful of missing out on the next Facebook - are panic-bidding Snap"s stock price this morning. Up 17% to $29 the cash-losing company is now worth almost $41 billion - more than Ebay or Sony...

We wil have to wait for Monday/Tuesday for the shorts to appear (T+3)...

The question seems to be - Facebook, Twitter, or... Pets.com?

At This Point - It`s Just Pure Gambling (Video)

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The Houston Real Estate Market Crisis (Video)

By EconMatters

We discuss the fundamentals of the oil market, and how we are starting to experience the beginnings of the Real Estate crisis that is going to hit Houston`s Commercial and Residential Real Estate Market in this video. I knew there was going to be a delay, and the telltale signs are starting to emerge in the Market.

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The Copper Market Relative to Gold, Equities, Dollar (Video)

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The Entire Retail Sector is a Short (Video)

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Palladium, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, Bonds and the Dollar Market Correlations (Video)

By EconMatters

We go over some viewer questions in this video regarding trading theory, and then go over a question regarding market correlations of assets in the metals market. Blame the programmers for overly simplistic market correlations, they are just being lazy! But know the nuances of each specific market because you are giving away too much edge to just lump everything into general trade baskets.

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Facebook Stock Sinks As Social Network Admits Another Advertising Metric Error

Fool me once...

For the umpteenth time this year, Facebook has come clean with an error in its advertising metrics. In November, Facebook said that after discovering several mistakes in its reporting methods, it would be more transparent about errors in the future. And so they have...

We"ve uncovered an issue for a small group of Instant Articles publishers that impacts reporting in comScore. comScore alerted us to the issue, and we’ve since identified this is a result of a recent Facebook update that impacted publishers using our legacy comScore integration who support HTTPS on their websites. This caused an underreporting of iPhone traffic from Facebook in comScore products between Sep 20 to Nov 30, 2016. iPad and Android traffic were not affected. We have fixed the issue and are working with comScore to produce updated estimates for the relevant time periods for the small group of partners affected. We have reached out to affected publishers.

We know how important it is to be open about meaningful updates we make to our metrics, so we’ve created this channel for regular information on metrics enhancements.

As Bloomberg reports,

Facebook said it found another problem with metrics used by publishers and advertisers to gauge the reach of content posted on the world’s largest social network.

Facebook said in a blog post that it had been under-reporting traffic from publishers that participate in the company’s Instant Articles system. The mishap, which Facebook said was discovered by comScore, was traced to a recent software update. It resulted in some traffic not being counted properly from iPhone users from Sept. 20 to Nov. 30.

“We have fixed the issue and are working with comScore to produce updated estimates for the relevant time periods for the small group of partners affected,” Facebook said in the post.

Facebook has been trying to lure publishers into the Instant Articles program. It lets media companies publish content on the social network directly instead linking back to their own websites. Articles load faster for users, but some publishers have raised questions about ceding control to Facebook and diminishing their relationship with readers.

The disclosure is the latest in a string of problems Facebook has disclosed about metrics critical to business decisions made by advertisers and publishers working with the Menlo Park, California-based company.

The result, for now, is selling pressure...

We Look at the Gold Trade From Election to December Rate Hike (Video)

By EconMatters

We examine Gold and the US Dollar Index from election into the December Fed Rate Hike in this video. If the December Rate Hike is a Go, then Gold is a Sell into said event. Pay attention to the pulse of the consumer, and how America and the World seem to react to the election results and aftermath for your clues on price range and degree of the move in Gold after the election.

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