Author: openjargon

  • Palantir CEO calls Columbia anti-Israel protests ‘pagan’ and says he’s dreamed of drone striking his enemies

    Alex Karp, the cofounder and CEO of Palantir, looks ahead
    Palantir cofounder and CEO Alex Karp arrives for a US Senate bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Insight Forum at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on September 13, 2023.

    • The CEO and cofounder of Palantir isn't a fan of campus protests against Israel.
    • He called the protests "pagan" and joked that some protesters should travel to North Korea.
    • He also said he had "fantasies of using drone-enabled technology to exact revenge" on his enemies.

    Alex Karp, the CEO and cofounder of Palantir, said at a high-profile Washington, DC-based event that he wants to send college student protesters to North Korea as part of an "exchange program" to give them perspective.

    Politico was the first to report Karp's comments at The Hill and Valley Forum on Wednesday, which was live-streamed on YouTube. Other speakers at the event included the cofounder of AI startup Anthropic, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and several other members of Congress.

    In a conversation about AI's impact on warfare in Ukraine and Israel, Jacob Helberg, the senior policy advisor to the CEO at Palantir, mentioned "pro-Hamas slogans" chanted at "very prestigious universities."

    Karp claimed that some campus protesters were even pro-North Korean.

    "We're gonna do an exchange program sponsored by Karp," he said. "A couple months in North Korea, nice-tasting flavored bark. See how you feel about that."

    Earlier in the chat, Karp took a shot at anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, where NYPD officers arrested 300 protesters earlier this week.

    "Look at Columbia," he said. "There is literally no way to explain the investment in our elite schools, and the output is a pagan religion — a pagan religion of mediocrity and discrimination and intolerance, and violence."

    He added that he thinks a "double standard" has spread across campuses where protesters dedicate themselves to "an architecture of antidiscrimination while dressing in masks and excluding the population that's been most discriminated for the last 3,000 years."

    Palantir did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

    President Joe Biden commented Thursday morning on the protests in a press conference, saying they haven't led him to reconsider his stance on Israel.

    Karp also said at the conference that he's fantasized about drone-striking his VC competitors.

    "I historically have been one that would rage against Silicon Valley venture people," he said. "And I had all sorts of fantasies of using drone-enabled technology to exact revenge — especially targeted — in violation of all norms."

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  • We’re reading: Here’s a helpful hint for people starting a media company in 2024

    Matt Damon in front of an Ocean's Thirteen poster
    "Ocean's Thirteen" was written by the father of Sam Koppelman, one of Hunterbrook Media's co-founders. The movie stars Matt Damon, who sent a letter of recommendation on Koppelman's behalf to Harvard.

    • Hunterbrook Media is a hedge fund that also does journalism. Or maybe a journalism startup that also runs a hedge fund. 
    • Will that work? A new story in the New Yorker wonders if you can combine those things.
    • One thing the story makes clear: Having well-connected parents is useful for startup founders.

    Can a hedge fund also be an investigative journalism outfit?

    That's a provocative question, generated by the existence of Hunterbrook Media, the combination hedge fund/investigative journalism outfit that launched this spring.

    The idea in a nutshell: Hunterbrook's small team of investigative journalists look for stories about companies that could also be attractive targets for a hedge fund to invest in or — more likely — bet against. Then the journalists tell Hunterbrook's hedge fund arm about the stories they will publish about the company, so the fund can short the company (or invest in it).

    You can read more about that via the New Yorker's Clare Malone's excellent look at Hunterbrook, though it's way too soon to assess how any of this will work.

    Read the New Yorker's story on Hunterbrook

    Hunterbrook's first big published investigation was into mortgage underwriter United Wholesale Mortgage, and before publication, Hunterbrook's fund went short on UWM and long on rival Rocket Mortgage; a month later, UWM shares are up Rocket is down slightly. ("We're just getting started, but early signs are that it's working," the company told my colleague Bradley Saacks last month.)

    But Malone's piece also raises a different question: What kind of background do you need to raise $10 million for a media startup — and $100 million for a hedge fund — these days?

    And that one does have an answer: It helps if you are very, very connected.

    Malone never uses the epithet "nepo baby" to describe Hunterbrook cofounders Sam Koppelman and Nathaniel Horwitz. But they are indeed people who have successful and well-connected parents: Koppelman's father is screenwriter and TV showrunner Brian Koppelman; Horwitz's mother, Geraldine Brooks, is a much-lauded journalist and author, and so was his father, Tony Horwitz, who died in 2019.

    That family history, of course, doesn't automatically convince people to give a couple of 20-something Harvard grads millions of dollars for their first forays into finance and journalism. But it certainly helps them meet people that will eventually do that.

    And Malone spells that part out quite clearly:

    ""Nathaniel and Sam have a pretty ridiculous network," Matthew Termine, one of the Hunterbrook reporters on the U.W.M. investigation, told me. E-mails that Koppelman wrote to the chair of Sony Entertainment about his application to Harvard appeared in the 2014 Sony Pictures leak, as did a note to the school on his behalf from Matt Damon. (Koppelman's father co-wrote "Rounders" and "Ocean's Thirteen.") For a time, he dated the "Euphoria" star Maude Apatow. Horwitz, for his part, once wrote about a series of conversations he had with the Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes as her life and company crumbled.

    Hunterbrook's advisers include Paul Steiger, the founder of ProPublica, and Daniel Okrent, the first public editor of the Times. Former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray and the financial journalist Bethany McLean gave notes on the U.W.M. investigation before publication. Hunterbrook's hedge fund has raised a hundred million dollars, and the company received seed funding from, among others, the venture arm of Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective and the hedge-fund billionaire Marc Lasry, who, Brian Koppelman once told the Financial Times, helped the "Billions" showrunner develop an "understanding of the billionaire psyche."

    So, again: None of Horwitz and Koppelmans' family histories and networks will make their company succeed. But it certainly didn't hurt them getting out of the gate.

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  • I went shopping at Express and saw firsthand why the retailer has filed for bankruptcy

    Jordan Hart posing and sale sign
    I visited two Express stores in Manhattan, NY.

    • Express filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April, and it's closing 95 branded stores in the US.
    • I visited some of its NYC locations to see what the merchandise looks like.
    • One analyst said Express failed to adapt to the post-pandemic world of remote work.

    Express has been a clothing retailer staple in malls across the US for years but filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April and will close 95 stores.

    So, I visited two Express locations destined to shut soon. One thing I found: there's no need to rush to get these deals.

    Store closing sign at Express
    Both locations I visited had signs posted about the closures.

    Express was known as a place to get business casual clothes before the boom of remote work in 2020, but the style choices and high prices left me uncertain about exactly who its target audience is in 2024.

    That seems to be backed up by Neil Saunders, managing director of retail analysis GlobalData, who told Business Insider:

    "The formal and smart-casual market for both men and women has softened over recent years because of a rise from working from home and the casualization of fashion."

    He continued: "This puts Express firmly on the wrong side of trends, and, in our view, the chain made too little effort to adapt."

    The clothes I saw felt like they were in line with last year's obsessions — like metallic styles as seen at Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour. Everything else also seemed a bit dated. Maybe I, a 24-year-old, am not the target audience, but I noticed that the options didn't fit the "clean girl," "mob wife," or "y2k" aesthetics dominating social media right now.

    I also work from home most days, so business casual makes up less than 50% of my wardrobe. But I can't say the slim-leg editor pants from Express fall into my ideal work attire.

    "everything must go" sign in express
    Items were marked between 30 and 50% off.

    The other thing that surprised me when I visited the two soon-to-be-closed locations in New York City was the prices. Even taking 30%-50% off Express's clothes didn't bring items down to a cost I'd see as "affordable" — like H&M or Gap.

    Although the signs said, "Everything must go," marking down a $248 blazer to $209 didn't feel more urgent than any other seasonal sale.

    Saunders told BI that the clothing at Express "is poor in that it is overpriced, lacks differentiation, and comes across as very bland."

    I wouldn't go so far in my description, but I think many styles could be found elsewhere at a much lower price point for the quality.

    Meantime, other than the big signs, it looks like business as usual in the Express stores I visited. The sales associate who rang up my items even offered to sign me up for the rewards program.

    When asked if it mattered since the store was closing, he said it'd take $10 off my total of $71 for the pair of pants and blue tank top I bought.

    Express clothes
    Despite the urgency of the signs, the markdowns weren't very dramatic.

    An investment group led by brand management firm WHP Global is considering acquiring "a substantial majority" of the company, according to a statement from Express on April 22. Some existing lenders committed $35 million to support ongoing operations.

    Representatives for Express declined to comment and directed BI to the news release announcing the filing. CEO Stewart Glendinning has said the company is "taking an important step that will strengthen our financial position."

    "Bankruptcy will allow Express to reset the business, including shutting down a number of badly performing stores," Saunders said.

    All in all, Express would need some serious overhauling to appeal to a critically online — and dare I say fashion forward — Gen Zer like myself. But it's a good place to stock up on some new job interview clothes at a (small) discount.

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  • Russia’s economic survival hinges on prolonging the Ukraine war, think tank expert says

    Russian President Vladimir Putin.
    &quotPutin's war has already been a failure for Russia on many levels," CIA director William J. Burns wrote in an opinion article for Foreign Affairs.

    • Russia needs to keep its war with Ukraine going or risk an economic hard landing, Elina Ribakova wrote for the Financial Times.
    • The country's military industry has been a major driver of structural economic strength during the war.
    • If the conflict ends, a recession could unfold, adding pressure on the Kremlin, Ribakova said.

    Russia has seen strong growth lately, but the fate of the nation's economy hangs on whether it can keep militarizing — something only accomplished by keeping the Ukraine war going, a think-tank analyst wrote in the Financial Times.

    According to the International Monetary Fund, Russia's GDP is set to considerably outpace other Western economies this year, forecasted to grow 3.2%. But while this may look good on paper, the country is actually at risk of a hard landing if war efforts cease, Elina Ribakova said.

    "Contrary to the expectations that economic constraints would hinder Russia's capacity to sustain fighting, the specter of economic collapse might push Vladimir Putin and his officials to double down on militarization and seek further confrontation, even if aggression against Ukraine hits a standstill," the Peterson Institute for International Economics analyst said. 

    Since Moscow's Ukraine invasion in 2022, its economic success is chiefly thanks to military-industrial expansions, heavily bolstered by fiscal support from the Kremlin.

    According to the senior fellow, direct military spending has more tripled since the war's start, now accounting for 6% of GDP. That number is likely to be much higher, she said, as a large portion of government expenditures are not publicly known.

    That's brought profit to regions that have struggled for years, and are now seeing huge upside from the production shift. Local governments are reporting a surge in jobs, production facilities, and enterprises, Ribakova cited.

    In total, military-industrial establishments have exploded across the country, rising from 2,000 to 6,000 in the war's timeframe. These employ more than 3.5 million workers.

    At this point, the pivot towards war-based growth is structural, and aggression needs to keep up to preserve the economy, she said.

    "Reversing the structural investments made in the war will present a monumental challenge. For decades," Ribakova wrote. "Russia has struggled with under-investment and regional inequality, with only a handful of primarily commodity-producing regions being the net contributors to the budget transfer system."

    If hostilities were to end, a Russian recession isn't unlikely. To avoid such a conflict at home, this only incentivizes Moscow to keep its fight going:

    "Should the authorities attempt to halt militarisation, a hard landing could add pressure to the government, which already resorts to oppression to maintain power," she wrote. "Internal conflicts over limited resources may also intensify."

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  • The future of Google — and Big Tech — hangs in the balance at trial

    A Google logo with a judge's gavel
    Google's future is up in the air as its landmark antitrust case wraps up this week.

    • Google's landmark antitrust trial concludes in DC this week.
    • The outcome will have massive implications for other tech giants facing scrutiny from regulators.
    • Google could be completely cleared — or be forced to break up.

    Google is about to learn its fate.

    Google's landmark antitrust trial is wrapping up this week in DC with closing arguments, capping off a yearslong saga.

    And its not just Alphabet that needs to pay attention. The findings in the case will have massive regulatory implications for not just the world's biggest search engine, but also fellow tech behemoths like Amazon, Apple, and Meta.

    The 10-week trial, presided over by US District Judge Amit Mehta, featured testimony from the likes of Microsoft chief Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai — the defense's star witness.

    The Department of Justice first filed suit in 2020, alleging that Google's deals making it the default search engine provider for device makers like Apple blocked off healthy competition.

    Google says its deals aren't exclusive, and that users can always switch their default browsers — though one government expert testified in September it wasn't that easy.

    Google also argued it simply makes good search products, and noted that the rise of AI technology has increased competition.

    "People don't use Google because they have to — they use it because they want to," Google's president of global affairs, Kent Walker previously told Business Insider in a statement.

    In the end, Judge Mehta could clear Google or find it liable, which could result in changes to its search engine contracts. Mehta could even bar Google from making future deals around its search engine.

    Worse (and perhaps least likely) Google could be ordered to make structural changes.

    The trial provided a glimpse at Google's massive search deals

    Though the trial wasn't publicly broadcast, certain exhibits and moments of testimony have given us a glimpse into Google's inner workings.

    In November, an apparent slip-up by an expert witness for Google revealed the company pays Apple a staggering 36% of the ad revenues it gets when people search in Safari.

    It also emerged at trial that Google spent $26 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine for various smartphone makers — with Apple's cut being $18 billion, according to The New York Times.

    In 2022, that figure climbed to an eye-watering $20 billion," new court documents revealed.

    As part of the trial, an email from Satya Nadella was made public that highlighted Microsoft's concerns about Google's AI prowess all the way back in 2019.

    Still, Google has tried to downplay its power. In his testimony, Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan noted the search giant is referred to as "Grandpa Google" in some circles and cited execs' fears that its influence might be dwindling.

    Apple, Amazon, and Meta face similar regulatory battles

    Google's antitrust case is the most consequential since Microsoft faced comparable DOJ scrutiny in the late nineties.

    DOJ lawyers have even argued that the ruling against Microsoft at the time paved the way for Google and Apple to become the behemoths they are today, the AP reports. Microsoft settled in 2001 after agreeing to restructure its business.

    The DOJ filed an antitrust suit against Apple in March, alleging the iPhone maker was suppressing app development and worsening the quality of cross-platform messaging, among other claims.

    And in September, the FTC sued Amazon for inflating prices on its marketplace and overcharging smaller sellers.

    The agency previously sued Meta in a bid to force it to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, which it said marked a monopoly.

    US regulators are clearly taking aim at Big Tech again.

    Mehta's decision — which could come later this summer or early in the fall, the AP reported — will be the biggest signal yet about how likely the government's other regulatory battles are to succeed.

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  • The Fed likely won’t cut rates until after a recession strikes, research firm says

    jerome powell
    Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill February 27, 2018 in Washington, DC.

    • The Fed likely won't cut interest rates until after a recession arrives, according to GlobalData TS Lombard.
    • The research firm said Fed Chair Powell is likely to fall into the trap of being reactionary when it comes to rate decisions.
    • "By not cutting now, pre-emptive is off the table," chief US economist Steven Blitz said.

    The Federal Reserve is making a big mistake by not cutting interest rates right now, according to GlobalData TS Lombard chief US economist Steven Blitz.

    By waiting to loosen monetary policy, Fed chairman Jerome Powell is falling into the trap of being reactionary rather than anticipatory when it comes to interest rate decisions.

    Blitz said in a note on Wednesday that Powell is all but guaranteeing that they won't cut interest rates until after a recession has arrived, and by then, it will be too little too late for lower interest rates to have the intended effect of stimulating the economy. 

    Powell said at the central bank's policy meeting on Wednesday that one way he would cut interest rates is if there was a surprise significant hike in unemployment, regardless of where inflation is. That comment "cements" Blitz's thinking that the Fed will be too late to the party. 

    "By not cutting now, pre-emptive is off the table and this, in turn, guarantees that when they do cut it will be too late to avoid recession – the usual course of events," Blitz said.

    Of course, Powell said during his press conference that if inflation gets back down to the Fed's long-term target of 2%, they would have flexibility in reducing interest rates, but that last mile of getting inflation back down to the target level appears out of reach for now based on a string of hotter-than-expected inflation reports so far this year.

    And if inflation sees a sharp rebound to 5%, "they obviously hike" interest rates, Blitz said.

    But the reactionary nature of the Federal Reserve hits on something market watchers have been cautioning about for a while, including Jeremy Siegel, who has argued that the Fed was too late to the game in hiking interest rates in 2022 when inflation was running out of control in 2021. 

    All-in, according to Blitz, it means that interest rates could stay at current levels for longer-than-expected, especially since it appears there will be no recession this year. 

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  • Army National Guard hasn’t paid out enlistment bonuses to thousands of soldiers, alarming House lawmakers

    Gen. Daniel Hokanson, Chief of the National Guard Bureau
    Gen. Daniel Hokanson, Chief of the National Guard Bureau, testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing.

    • House lawmakers criticized the National Guard over enlistment bonuses owed to more than 13,000 soldiers.
    • Nearly 4,000 soldiers have since left the service without bonuses, which can total up to $20,000.
    • Due in part to staffing issues and system outages, the delay comes amid the Army's recruiting crisis.

    A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is demanding answers from the Army National Guard on its plans to pay delinquent enlistment bonuses to the thousands of soldiers who are owed.

    In a letter Tuesday to Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the National Guard's top officer, Reps. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona; Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican; and Trent Kelly, a Republican from Mississippi, questioned how the service component has seemingly bungled how it pays its troops after Military.com reported it is behind on paying about 13,000 soldiers their enlistment bonuses.

    Most recently, the Army National Guard sent out thousands of letters to former soldiers regarding potentially missed bonuses — asking them to figure out whether they're owed money. The Guard pointed them to a series of bureaucratic and time-consuming hurdles, including gathering service documentation that may be difficult to obtain.

    US National Guard soldiers in uniform carry backpacks in preparation for deployment
    Soldiers from the Idaho National Guard prepare for deployment to southwest Asia in support of Operation Spartan Shield.

    "Civilians are not required to navigate through an extensive, monthslong claims process just to get the payments they were promised doing their job," lawmakers wrote to Hokanson. "It is deeply disappointing that the Guard believes that they can withhold payment when it involves our men and women in uniform."

    The issue has gotten so out of control, nearly 4,000 of those 13,000 soldiers are estimated to have completed an entire contract, usually four to six years, and have since left the Guard without bonuses initially promised when they signed up. The bonuses can be up to $20,000.

    Instead of outright telling those former service members what they are owed, the Army National Guard has instead placed the onus on them to figure it out. It's also unclear whether the Guard has updated addresses for veterans or why it can't parse through who is and isn't owed a bonus.

    A US soldier with the Oklahoma National Guard stands watch along a perimeter fence
    A US soldier with the Oklahoma National Guard stands watch along a perimeter fence near the US Capitol in Washington, DC.

    The lawmakers in the group are all veterans. Kelly serves as the National Guard assistant adjutant general in Mississippi.

    In the letter, they included a series of questions for the Guard, including whether it has an appeals process for veterans who may end up being denied payments; how the Guard plans to support those without proper documentation; and why Guard officials burdened veterans to begin with.

    "Beyond severely impacting recruitment and retention, it signals a lack of respect for their service," the lawmakers added in the letter. "Particularly for our enlisted men and women."

    Soldiers are typically paid their bonuses in two chunks: when they complete their initial training and halfway through their contract. The National Guard Bureau aims for bonuses to be paid out within 30 days of those milestones, but that is not codified into policy. On average, it takes six months for soldiers to be paid when the process runs smoothly.

    US Army and Air National Guardsmen wear riot gear and gas masks during training
    US Army and Air National Guardsmen participate in a Civil Disturbance Unit training event with Capitol Police in Washington, DC.

    Meanwhile, the bonus backlog has been ongoing for years and is due to a variety of issues.

    Some Guard officials have described to Military.com that some states have poorly trained or poorly performing staff to process the benefits. It isn't uncommon for state-level staff to manually track bonuses on pieces of paper or dry-erase boards, leading to numerous errors.

    The backlog was particularly inflamed by two 10-month outages of the Army National Guard Incentive Management System, or GIMS, which manages bonuses. The system crashed in 2018 due to a fire in the Pentagon's servers and again in 2021 in an unrelated incident.

    The news also comes amid an ongoing recruiting crisis. While there's little evidence enlistment bonuses have much of a direct impact on recruiting, they do sweeten the deal and can direct applicants to jobs in the service that are in more desperate need of being filled.

    The Army is also in the midst of reviewing its education benefits for possible cuts as costs have ballooned, Military.com first reported. Congress and some veteran advocacy groups have signaled they would put up enormous resistance to the service cutting benefits.

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  • Sony and Apollo offer $26 billion for Paramount: report

    Paramount on building

    Sony and Apollo Global Management are reportedly bidding big for Paramount.

    Sony and the private equity firm teamed up for an all-cash offer of $26 billion for Paramount Global, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

    The bid was officially sent on Wednesday, the Journal reported, based on anonymous sources. Sony and Apollo's offer was nonbinding, according to the Journal.

    Skydance Media and its largest private-equity backer RedBird Capital Partners have also been trying to win over Paramount for the better part of a year. Business Insider's Hayley Cuccinello recently reported that the Skydance consortium, including fellow Skydance investor KKR, submitted a revised offer on Sunday.

    Last week, Paramount announced its CEO Bob Bakish was stepping down. Majority shareholder Shari Redstone hasn't commented on the rumors of a sale.

    This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

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  • Universities are making it worse with their ‘overreaction’ to pro-Palestinian protests, expert on American dissent says

    A person is detained by police as pro-Palestinian students protest the Israel-Hamas war on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, on April 24, 2024.
    A person is detained by police as pro-Palestinian students protest the Israel-Hamas war on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.

    • Pro-Palestinian protests on American campuses are escalating.
    • Some universities have resorted to militarized police responses to clear encampments.
    • History professor Ralph Young, an expert on dissent, said that reaction may be counterproductive.

    As anger among young Americans with Israel's war in Gaza spreads, so are protests on college campuses.

    At Columbia University and City College of New York, New York City Police Department officers clad in riot gear faced off with protesters occupying a university building for several hours this week. They made over 300 arrests.

    At the University of Texas at Austin, local police and state troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety cleared an encampment on the university's main mall, making dozens of arrests.

    Similar scenes unfolded at the University of Southern California, Emory University, George Washington University, the University of Arizona, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Portland State University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and many more.

    The protesters are calling on their universities to boycott— and divest from — companies that do business with Israel. They are also calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them civilians, have died during Israel's scorched-earth response to the October 7th Hamas terror attack that killed at least 1,200 Israelis.

    Members of the New York Police Department's Strategic Response Group stage outside the main gate at Columbia University, in New York, early Friday, April 26, 2024, as demonstrators continue protesting the Israel-Hamas war.
    Members of the New York Police Department outside the main gate at Columbia University in New York as demonstrators protest the Israel-Hamas war.

    Ralph Young, a Temple University history professor who has studied and written extensively about American dissent and protest movements, said universities are shooting themselves in the foot with their response.

    "The overreaction that the universities are having is only going to magnify these protests. They're going to spread more rapidly and grow larger," Young told Business Insider. "Maybe instead of forcibly removing protesters, they should be listening to them and listening to why they are upset about the Gaza war."

    A common refrain from those opposing the pro-Palestinian protests is that they are anti-Jewish or antisemitic, though many of the pro-Palestine protests have been attended by Jewish people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has referred to the protests as "antisemitic mobs."

    "The antisemitic stuff is… it may be isolated cases of it, and there tends to be somebody, maybe like Fox News picks up on it, and then kind of emphasizes the examples of that," Young said. "Whereas most of the demonstrators, from what I've seen and heard, are not doing that, and there are quite a few Jewish students that are part of the protests, too."

    Police arrest more than 100 students at New York University protesting Israel's attacks on Gaza, in New York, United States on April 22, 2024.
    Police arrest more than 100 students at New York University protesting Israel's attacks on Gaza.

    The campus protests reminded Young of students protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s, when he was among them.

    "I was one of the protesters, and you were just so outraged at the terrible loss of life that was going on in Vietnam and that the United States was responsible," Young said. "So many of the students today, even though they're not being threatened to be drafted and sent over there, they see this as a humanitarian crisis."

    The outrage is compounded by the fact that the United States is sending funds and weapons to Israel, Young said.

    "Back in 1968 in Columbia, where they took over the president's office, they stopped the university from functioning," Young said. "The protests were much more militant, really, than what's going on now. And the response right now is disproportionate. They're setting up an encampment. That's basically a peaceful protest."

    Since the initial arrests, there have been reported incidents of violence at some campuses.

    "To do things like calling the National Guard or do military-style tactics in removing protesters is definitely not a good thing," Young said. "We don't have a good history of that. When you think of Kent State, when the National Guard was brought in there, four students were killed, and quite a few others were seriously wounded. And that, of course, just infuriated students all over the country."

    The result then, and possibly now, could be even more protests, Young said.

    "The way the universities are responding to them, they're not even that upset about the fact that the universities might disagree with their point of view," Young said of students. "What they're really getting upset about is that their right to free speech, the right to protest, is being stifled."

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  • LinkedIn wants you to compete against your coworkers and classmates with its new Wordle-like puzzle games

    Screenshot from LinkedIn ad for its new suite of puzzle games, including "Queens"
    LinkedIn is introducing a new suite of games, following in the footsteps of Wordle and other popular brain teasers.

    • LinkedIn is getting into games.
    • Its new puzzle games include trivia, word association, and a colorful twist on sudoku.
    • There are company and school leaderboards, and you can share scores with your LinkedIn connections.

    If you get tired of networking the next time you're on LinkedIn, you can now take a break with one of its competitive puzzle games.

    The social media site announced a new suite of games this week, seemingly looking to capitalize on the hype surrounding Wordle and other online puzzle games to keep its users coming back.

    "We've designed each game to only take a few minutes, and fit right into your work schedule — whether it's prepping your mind on the commute in, taking a quick mental break between meetings, or unwinding after a long day," said LinkedIn's director of project management, Lakshman Somasundaram, in a Wednesday post.

    "There will be only one edition of each game each day, crafted by the best puzzle makers in the world," he added.

    The three games are available under the My Network tab on desktop and mobile, as well as under the LinkedIn News section on a browser or by going to linkedin.com/games.

    In "Pinpoint," users try to guess the category that includes five different words — with the twist being that you only find out the words as you go, starting with one, then two, then three, etc. The trick is to name the category by using as few words as possible.

    Screenshot of the game "Crossclimb"
    In Pinpoint, users have to figure out the relationship between all of the clues — with extra points for getting it before exhausting all the clues.

    Users playing "Crossclimb" will be asked to figure out five words from clues and arrange them in order, with each word changing one letter from the one before.

    Screenshot of the LinkedIn game "Pinpoint"
    Crossclimb is essentially a trivia game, but all the answers are connected in a word ladder.

    "Queens" is deceptively straightforward. The goal is to place a queen in each intersecting Tetris-esque piece, while trying to ensure that each row and column has only one queen in it — essentially, sudoku without numbers.

    Screenshot of hte LinkedIn game "Queens"
    Only one "queen" can go in each row or column, so users have to be careful.

    Though the games may seem simple (if a bit hard to explain), there's a spin that makes the experience unique to LinkedIn: you'll be able to see connections that have also played the day's game, and share your score with them.

    The platform says it will also introduce "school leaderboards," so users can see how graduates of their alma mater are collectively faring against a college rival. "Company leaderboards" fulfill the same function.

    Online word puzzle games seem to have exploded in popularity in recent years. That's elicited interest from suitors not traditionally active in the gaming world, as evidenced by the blockbuster, seven-figure acquisition of Wordle by The New York Times in 2022.

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