Author: Michael

I can’t stop thinking about Jason Arday.  He is the British-Ghanaian professor at Cambridge University who was credibly accused of plagiarizing academic work and embellishing his life story in a storm of controversy in the past month, countered by accusations of racism that fell flat and ended suddenly with his resignation from the university in early August and his death by suicide a week after that.  It’s a tragedy, a nauseating one, drawn in the red ink of our hyper-charged identity politics.  Arday was not simply an apparent fabulist or fraud. He was an attention-seeking comer lacking the credentials for the…

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Paramount has requested a court order that would require a group of 12 state attorneys general and the Writers’ Guild of America to post a $1.88 billion bond to cover financial damages as their litigation delays the closing of its pending $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The bond amount is based on the straightforward calculation of the maximum potential ticking fee consideration and other financing costs. Per the terms of the merger, Ellison is on the hook to pay WBD shareholders a 25 cent per share ticking fee starting Oct. 1, which translates to a payout of $7 million…

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