Dr. X's Free Associations

Uber Hid Massive Data Breach For A Year

USA Today:

SAN FRANCISCO — Personal information belonging to about 57 million Uber customers and drivers was stolen by hackers last October, a breach the company kept hidden for a year and for which its chief security officer was fired this week.

The stolen data including names, email addresses and phone numbers of 50 million Uber riders and 7 million drivers. The drivers’ stolen information also including 600,000 US. drivers' license numbers, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement.

"You may be asking why we are just talking about this now, a year later. I had the same question," Khosrowshahi wrote.

One more thing...

Some are complaining now that the standards for workplace conduct are so strict that normal expressions of interest will get men into trouble. It could happen, but I don't think that's a huge problem. Some guidelines to avoid problems.

Don't ask a job applicant out on a date.

Don't try to date a subordinate.

If you express interest in someone and they say 'not interested,' leave them alone. Don't push it.

Don't pull your junk out.

Don't touch anyone anywhere you wouldn't touch your mother. Avoid touching generally.

Don't tell sexual jokes.

Don't announce what you'd like to do to someone sexually, even if they aren't present.

Don't talk about sexual matters.

Don't stare or leer at people.

Keep compliments on appearance infrequent and relatively impersonal.

Okay: That's a beautiful jacket. But again, keep it infrequent and don't use a suggestive tone when you compliment. No one should be made to feel you're evaluating their attractiveness.

Not Okay: Your ass looks great in those pants.

If you find it impossible to adhere to that simple set of guidelines, then don't be shocked when you're the one facing harassment accusations.

Reading The Apologies

Here and there, I've been reading some of the written apologies from men who stand accused of sexual harassment. The latest is from Charlie Rose.

The statement is just vague enough to be unclear as to whether Rose was confronted previously and whether he ever took the complaints seriously when he was confronted. My bet would be that he was confronted, but it has taken this public revelation, at just the right time, to bring about anything that looks like contrition.

In case you're wondering what "insensitive and inappropriate" means:

The claims made against Rose, 75, in The Post's report included groping female acquaintances and walking around naked in their presence. The women were either employees at the "Charlie Rose" show or aspired to work for the show in allegations spanning from the late 1990s to 2011, according to the newspaper. Three women were on the record and five were anonymous.

Two of the women The Post interviewed, Kyle Godfrey-Ryan and Megan Creydt, confirmed their accounts to NBC News on Monday night.

Since Rose disputes some but not all of the accusations, we don't know what he's admitting to.

This reminded me of something that happened at a job long ago. A supervisor was sexually harassing multiple people who were near the bottom of the totem pole, and complaints were repeatedly dismissed with hostility. At one juncture, someone with more power decided they could take the harasser's position if they made something out of the complaints while the harasser was on vacation, and that's when the whole thing blew up.

When the harasser returned from vacation, he was stunned by what had transpired while he was gone. He made a point of visiting everyone's offices where he had individual talks with us about the accusations. I wasn't a victim, but I was a witness like just about everyone else. The guy had been out of control, so his bad behavior was hard to miss.

The harasser was thoroughly contrite, and presented himself as bewildered by the accusations, as if he had no idea where they were coming from. I told him that I was bewildered that he was bewildered because I knew many people had complained to him and to others in authority, and I witnessed his efforts to silence the accusers. What was most strange was that I had even told him on several occasions that he was out of line, even though he was someone who had authority over me. On one occasion that I confronted him, he threatened my job, and my response was something to the effect of "well you do what you think you have to do, and then I'll do what I have to do." I didn't know what I meant by that, but whatever it meant to him, he backed off.

His bewildered contrition is what got me. He'd been confronted before. The only difference this time was that he was about to suffer real consequences.

He didn't lose his job, but he lost that position. It was disheartening to see that the only reason the complaints finally got any traction was that it became convenient to one of his professional competitors. Nonetheless, it was right that he got his comeuppance. Or did he?

Several years later I learned that he was an adjunct faculty member at a university, so I read his reviews at Rate My Professors. In the ratings, there were arguments about whether his behavior was sexually inappropriate. I guess I wasn't shocked.

Good Grief!

News for the locals.

Todd Stroger got it in his head that we might want an encore performance his County Board presidency. I guess the Stroger clan needs county jobs again.

A lot of people hate on Toni Preckwinkle, but she inherited a horrible situation from Stroger and his predecessors. She does the tough things pols are loathe to do: raise taxes and cut jobs. But no matter what combination she chooses, one-side, the other or both sides, are scathing in their attacks on her.  I'll vote for her again, just as I voted for her the last time.

Film Reviews

Greta Gerwig's directorial debut, Ladybird, is a pleasant coming-of-age, launching-the-children dramedy that explores a fraught mother-daughter relationship. This film garnered 100% positives from critics and 90% from audiences, but I give it 85/100 on the X-ometer because it was a little too sentimental for my taste.

On to better things.

Last night, we caught Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, this quirky Coen-esque dark comedy is the best film I've seen this year. Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson turn in stellar performances. McDormand, who is married to Joel Coen, has appeared in eight Coen Brothers films, and though this isn't a Coen film, you could be excused for assuming that it is, making it a perfect vehicle for McDormand, a master of oddball middle-America characters.

McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, an enraged, guilt-ridden woman, who is hellbent on avenging the unsolved rape and murder of her teen daughter. Though it's a comedy, the subject matter is dead serious.

As one ditzy character quoting a bookmark she used in a book she read about polo or polio notes (she can't remember which, but it's the one that's about horses), anger only begets greater anger. This oft-trivialized observation actually represents a profound truth about the role of aggression and vengeance in the human condition. If all evil acts must be avenged, then evil will course metastically through the fabric of human affairs, robbing the human race of any hope of living more peacefully.

Willoughby (Harrelson)—the Ebbing police chief who is afflicted with a fatal cancer—is under siege as Mildred publicly attacks him for failing to solve the sadistic murder of her daughter. In the face of cruel pressures from both the cancer and Mildred's accusations, Willoughby, who is himself no softie, chooses to respond with love rather than punitive hate.

On the other hand, Mildred and Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) exemplify cruelty and vengeance as responses to evil. As we see in their characters, vengeance isn't entirely righteous. It becomes clear that Mildred's bitter mission is at least partly animated by a hidden need expiate her own sense of guilty responsibility for her daughter's death. In her attempts to relieve her own guilt, Mildred attacks others who are innocent of any real wrongdoing, while relying on thin rationalizations to excuse her cruel actions. While the movie never reveals whether Mildred and Dixon will change for the better, there are signs by the end that their moral salvation (and ours) is possible.

There is so much to talk about in this film, but I'll leave you with the X-ometer rating: 100/100

Quote of the Day

“More women are sexual predators than men. Women are chasing young boys up and down the road, but we don't hear about that because it's not PC." -- Pastor Franklin Raddish

Wish Granted

A couple of weeks ago we were at the local supermarket checkout, and I pointed to some nonsense headline on one of those checkout tabloids and asked the clerk, "why do they sell this trash here?"

This afternoon I was in the same store. All the tabloids are gone. All. Of. Them.

I wonder if I was one too many.

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton: A Reckoning

Feminists saved the 42nd president of the United States in the 1990s. They were on the wrong side of history; is it finally time to make things right?

Therapy Lamps ctd

Last Monday I reported that I'm trying out a therapy lamp to "kickstart" my day.  Here's what I've experienced using it every day this week.

Kickstart would be the wrong word to describe the effect. The feeling isn't like a jolt, so much as accelerated awakening. Yes, I feel more awake after a half hour with the lamp than I would feel if I'd begun my day without the lamp. For the past two days, I used the lamp for close to an hour while getting some work done on my laptop. When the lamp shut down automatically at a half-hour, I felt a strong desire to continue, so I did. So the lamp is a bit addicting.

I'll continue to use it through the winter.

Friday Night Music Drop

Some musical madness from the incomparable Hiromi Uehara. You must watch this all the way through.  Trust me.