The Good News

• An interesting primer for today’s must-read story: MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, is donating $4 billion to charity (Vox) 
• How a homeless man found his way and now feeds hundreds a day (CNN)
• Gay conversion therapy: Hundreds of religious leaders call for ban (BBC). Good faith actors.
• We can’t get enough of these: Students go viral for surprising teacher with gesture on Zoom (Today)

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” ― Albert Pike

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sometimes, It Zucks To Zuck

(Justin Sullivan via Getty Images)

COVID-19 has brought devastation to many, and more wealth to the already wealthy. Add to that the growing criticism of big tech companies and a building backlash over charitable gifts from the mega-rich, and you get the latest flashpoint in the debate over the proper role for billionaire philanthropy. 

San Francisco is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s adopted hometown. In 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital, the city’s sole public hospital, where Chan was a pediatrician at the time. As part of the donation, the hospital was formally renamed the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Since then, Facebook has grown exponentially and been dogged by numerous scandals. Those corporate woes have become increasingly entangled with the couple’s charitable gifts and their philanthropic foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. 

Last summer a group of hospital nurses, anti-Facebook activists, and progressive lawmakers on the city’s board of supervisors began to push back against the hospital’s name. Renaming it would require the return of the $75 million gift, so the group settled on a middle ground: to “condemn” the name while leaving it in place. The measure was debated earlier this month by the Committee on Government Audit and Oversight, a panel on the supervisory board.

“San Francisco’s only public hospital should not bear the name of a person responsible for endangering public health in our country and around the world — and yet it does,” said Gordon Mar, lead sponsor of the measure. “These are policy choices, and they have a body count.”

The final 10-1 vote to approve the condemnation was held Tuesday. The measure is symbolic, with no legal force, but manifests a larger concern over increasingly controversial politics of both the tech industry and its founders. “We’re of course thankful for the gift and … for any gift to our most important institutions during this time,” said another supervisor. “But that doesn’t mean that we should for forever essentially have given away advertising rights on this most essential public institution.”

It Wasn’t Wuhan All Along?

(STR via Getty Images)

• In the early days of the pandemic, COVID-19 was traced to a Wuhan market in China’s Hubei province. The market sold live animals and it was thought that this is where the virus made the leap from animals to humans. Experts now believe the virus may simply have been amplified there. 
• Research suggests that coronaviruses capable of infecting humans may have been circulating undetected in bats for decades. President Trump accused China of trying to conceal the true origins of the outbreak, and the search for the source led to tensions. 
• Finally, after months of negotiations, Beijing agreed to allow the World Health Organization access to the city to conduct an independent investigation, and next month a team of 10 WHO scientists will travel to Wuhan. A biologist on the team said the purpose of the inquiry was not about “finding a guilty country,” but to prevent future outbreaks. (BBC)

Paris Takes A Fine For Feminism 

• Paris, France has a local rule that dictates at least 40 percent of government positions should go to people of each gender. In 2018, 11 women and five men became senior officials. That meant 69 percent of the appointments were women — a violation of the rule. Now the city has been fined 90,000 Euros ( $100,889) for having too many women in senior positions in the government. 
• The law changed in 2019 to provide a waiver to the 40 percent rule if the new hires don’t lead to an overall gender imbalance. That’s the case for Paris, where women still make up just 47 percent of senior executives in its government. And female city officials are paid 6 percent less than their male counterparts. Unfortunately, the rule change came too late to avoid the fine. 
• “It is paradoxical to blame us for appointments that make it possible to catch up on the backlog we had,” said Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s deputy in charge of human resources. The mayor told the city’s governing board Tuesday that she would deliver the check to the Ministry of Public Service personally. (NPR)

Additional World News

• The Big Thaw: How Russia Could Dominate a Warming World (ProPublica) 
• Putin is boiling over rising pasta prices in Russia. It seems more about populism than penne. (WaPo, $)
• Cyberattacks Are on the Decline—But as the Russian APT29 Hack Shows, They Are Getting Worse. (Foreign Policy)
• An eye for an iPhone: iPhone factory workers say they haven’t been paid, cause millions in damages (Ars Technica) 
• After Arab Spring, a decade of upheaval and lost hopes & Ten Years After the Arab Spring, the Uprisings Continue (AP, Foreign Affairs)
• Belarus opposition leader calls on EU to do more (Politico)
• To be franc: US labels Switzerland a currency manipulator (BBC)
• The Paris agreement is five years old. Is it working? (Vox)
• Charlie Hebdo trial: French court convicts 14 over 2015 terror attacks (Guardian) 
• Boko Haram leader claims responsibility for hundreds of abducted Nigerian students (Axios)
• Maduro goes digital: Venezuela’s Socialist Regime Is Mining Bitcoin In a Bunker to Generate Cash (Vice)
• Mexico, in Rebuke to U.S., Adopts Measure Restricting Foreign Agents (NYT, $) 

Congress Is Close To Cutting A Check

• Congressional leaders appear close to making a deal on a roughly $900 billion COVID-19 relief measure. The package is expected to include many elements of the bipartisan proposal released by a group of centrist House and Senate members earlier this week, including further federal unemployment insurance, an extended ban on evictions, and a continued pause on federal student loan payments. 
• It’s also expected to include more money for vaccine distribution and for the Paycheck Protection Program, which will likely be individual $600 checks. The bill is not expected to include any new direct money for state and local governments as Democrats have demanded, nor is it expected to include Republican-backed liability limitations. 
• Talks are still ongoing, but leaders appear committed to completing a bill before year’s end. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to attach the COVID-19 measure to an omnibus spending bill to fund the federal government, which will run out of money on December 18th. A temporary short-term bill may be required to avoid a shutdown while both chambers process the final package. (NPR)

Amateurism Hour In The Supreme Court

• Whether or not college athletes should be compensated for their services has long been a debate both on and off the court. But on Wednesday, a new court — the Supreme Court — involved itself in the conversation. The justices accepted a petition from NCAA — the governing body of college athletics — where they defended their policy of restricting compensation from prominent college athletes.
• This sports-centric Supreme Court case comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said the NCAA’s current rules were anticompetitive under the nation’s antitrust laws. Instead, the appeals court suggested that no cap on compensation should be placed on students when it involves education-relation benefits. Legal experts are beginning to weigh in on this rare confluence of sports and the law of the land.
• “This is an issue that has been festering for a number of years now,” said Tulane Sports Law Program Director Gabe Feldman. “The Supreme Court has not ruled on amateurism and the application of antitrust law in relation to the NCAA in over 35 years. There has been a fair amount of confusion in the courts with litigants over the scope and deference the NCAA is entitled to over antitrust law.” (WaPo)

Additional USA News

• Green team 6: What to make of Biden’s energy and climate picks (Axios) 
• Biden says Buttigieg will play key role in rebuilding country after pandemic (WaPo, $)
• Trump pardon requests pour in during final weeks: ‘It’s turned crazy’ (CNN). Vaccines aren’t the only thing providing immunity this winter.
• Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Neighbors Want Him to Retire Somewhere Else: Report (NY Mag) 
• Letitia James wants to see the receipts: Trump Organization must turn over documents to NY attorney general, judge rules (CNN) 
• Paycheck-To-Paycheck Nation: Why Even Americans With Higher Income Struggle With Bills (NPR)
• Why Progressives Want Democrats to Run on COVID-19 Aid (Atlantic, $). Ossof and Warnock are hawking stimulus checks.
• America Is Running Out of Nurses (New Yorker, $)
• Police Say Seizing Property Without Trial Helps Keep Crime Down. A New Study Shows They’re Wrong. (ProPublica) 
• A capital killing spree: Trump administration has executed more Americans than all states combined, report finds (Guardian)
• Myon Burrell Has Life Sentence Commuted by Minnesota (NYT, $)

The Meteorite Millionaire That Wasn’t

• To the outside world, it appeared a blessing fell from the sky for Indonesia’s Josua Hutagalung — who became famous in the press when tabloids reported that the meteorite that fell through his roof was sold for millions of dollars. However, his story of instant riches isn’t so simple.
• It all started on August 1st, when a watermelon-sized meteorite careened through the tin canopy on the side of Josua’s home. After filming the extraterrestrial event, the news quickly became viral and reporters descended onto his humble home in the North Sumatra province. Word eventually got around to Jared Collins, an intermediary who purchased valuables for Americans overseas. Collins flew to Indonesia and made Hutagalung an offer, the two exchanged precious materials, and the deal was done — at an undisclosed price.
• That’s where things get tricky and the sky starts falling for Josua. British tabloids began speculating that the deal was worth upwards of $1.8 million, based merely on a calculation that attempts to multiply the weight and online value estimates from other bits of meteorite that had fallen in the same area. To the outside world, the sale of the meteorite made Josua an instant millionaire, or so it seemed.
• But the man who found the meteorite tells a different story. Initially, he told BBC the sale was worth a mere $14,000 — only for that figure to be dismissed as untrue by Collins himself. To this day, there has been no public confirmation of the sale price — but it doesn’t sound like it was anywhere near seven figures based on Josua’s most recent comments.
• “I’m afraid my child will be kidnapped because they think I’m already rich, and they will ask for ransom. But you can see firsthand what it looks like, just ordinary, still like before, nothing is different,” he told VICE World News. If he actually had the money that everyone thinks he does, he claims he “would recruit at least five security guards” for protection. (Vice)

Additional Reads

• Larry David and the Game Theory of Anonymous Donations (Nautilus)
• Why being kind to others is good for your health (BBC). Altruism alleviates.
• What If You Could Do It All Over? (New Yorker, $)
• Distant Cousins Of Food Crops Deserve Respect And Protection (NPR)
• Holy crap! The History of Poop Is Really the History of Technology (Wired) 
• Bitcoin price passes $20,000, setting new record (Ars Technica)
• Why filmmakers are so furious about Warner’s HBO Max deal (WaPo, $). HBO Max leaves everyone else up the stream without a paddle.
• A year of streaming: how Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO Max compared in 2020 (The Verge) 
• The best of the bird app: Infinite Jest, bodegas, and free speech: the worst tweets of 2020 (Vox)

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