Latest news with #MarkTwain
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Climate
- Los Angeles Times
City by the Bay? More like City by the Brrr! San Francisco is having its coldest summer in decades
Time to cue that famed quote, often falsely attributed to Mark Twain: 'The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.' It's a cliche, sure. But this year it rings true. It really has been quite chilly in the City by the Bay, which is experiencing its coldest summer in decades, with no significant warm-up in sight and daytime highs topping out in the mid-60s. In downtown San Francisco, the average temperature in July has been 59.3 degrees, about one degree below normal, Matt Mehle, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Monterey, said Saturday. The average temperature in San Jose in July has been 67.4 degrees, about two degrees below normal, he said. And in Oakland, as of Saturday, the temperature had reached 75 degrees or higher just one time in July, compared with three times in February. 'It's not record-breaking — but at this point, we're looking anywhere from 20 to 30 years since we've had this cold of a summer,' said Mehle, noting that the area last saw similar weather patterns in the late 1990s. Mehle said a seasonal high-pressure system that typically brings warmer weather is somewhat misplaced this year, sitting farther west than normal. This summer, he said, a low-pressure system has been parked over the Pacific Northwest and California, leading to unrelenting cloud cover and cooler temperatures. The 'misplacement' of the high-pressure system, he added, has contributed to increased upwelling, a process by which strong winds bring deep, cold ocean water closer to the surface. When the wind blows over this colder water toward land, it brings the temperatures down. 'The coastal upwelling has been really notable right outside the San Francisco Bay and west of Point Reyes,' Mehle said. In the coming days, the drizzly gray weather along the coast is not expected to change much, said Mehle, who drove to work in Monterey on Saturday with his windshield wipers swishing. 'We're basically locked in,' he said of the weather conditions. Even in San Francisco, where countless summer tourists have unexpectedly shelled out money for sweatshirts and scarves, the chill has been the talk of the town. Nudist Pete Sferra, who keeps a journal describing how many times he walks the city in the buff, told The San Francisco Standard this week that he has 'actually been enjoying quite a few nude strolls this year.' But even he would not go out 'if it's freezing.' Walnut Creek resident Lisa Shedd, 60, told The Mercury News: 'I certainly love the temperate weather. I'm not a fan of the really hot. I don't know if it means something bad or it means something good ... but I know I'm enjoying it.' Karl the Fog — the anthropomorphized San Francisco fog with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media — joked on Instagram that the forecast for Thursday was 'partly cloudy, winds coming in from the west, and a high chance of Trump being in the Epstein files.' Farther north, this summer has brought oppressive inland heat and dangerous lightning storms. In Orleans — a tiny northeastern Humboldt County town near the site of the massive, barely-contained Butler fire in the Six Rivers and Klamath national forests— temperatures had been above 100 degrees seven times this month as of Saturday, according to the National Weather Service. In Redding, the temperature had hit 100 degrees or higher 11 times this month, topping out at 109 on July 11. Mild summer temperatures in Los Angeles, where the downtown high has averaged about 82 degrees in July, also have been satirized. This week, the popular @americanaatbrandmemes social media accounts posted a much-shared meme showing a man walking toward his house, saying: 'Summer in LA has been pretty mild!' Just inside the door, unseen by him, a woman and two children are holding knives, ready to pounce. Their names are August, September and October. In the Bay Area, Mehle warned that 'while we started off colder, that doesn't mean that summer is over.' The hottest temperature ever recorded in downtown San Francisco, he noted, was 106, on Sept. 1, 2017. 'We're sitting here under drizzle, clouds, in the cold,' Mehle said. 'It's the end of July. But summer is not over when you look at our climatology. Some people want slightly warmer temperatures — but you have to be careful what you wish for.'
Business Insider
5 days ago
- General
- Business Insider
Photos show the extreme inequality between rich and poor Americans during the Gilded Age
The Gilded Age was a period of enormous wealth for some and extreme poverty for others. Photos show how the poor lived in cramped tenements while the rich built multiple mansions. The Gilded Age's wealth inequality eventually led to reforms in the Progressive Era. All that glitters is not gold. The Gilded Age, a period of rapid industrialization and extravagant displays of wealth, gets its name from Mark Twain's 1873 novel about greed and corruption. While gilded ceilings and furnishings are coated in gold, appearing shiny and luxurious, they serve as a metaphor for the dark underbelly of exploitation and inequality that allowed the richest 0.01% of Americans to hold 9% of the country's wealth by monopolizing entire industries while the poor sank deeper into poverty. Photos show the gaping economic disparities that existed during the Gilded Age. During the Gilded Age, Fifth Avenue in New York City was known as "Millionaires' Row." Wealthy families like the Astors, the Goulds, and the Vanderbilts built enormous homes on " Millionaires' Row" modeled after European palaces and chateaus to display their riches. Manhattan's Eighth Avenue, however, was full of slum dwellings. Members of high society owned several homes and rotated between them throughout the year. Newport, Rhode Island, was a popular location for summer "cottages" like The Breakers, a 138,300-square-foot mansion built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, and Marble House, a mansion with 140,000 square feet of living space built by William K. Vanderbilt and Alva Vanderbilt. Meanwhile, many itinerant workers experienced homelessness. The term "homelessness" was used in the US for the first time during the Gilded Age in the 1870s, according to a 2018 study published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The rapid period of urbanization and industrialization made some business tycoons rich and spurred others from less fortunate circumstances to move to cities in search of work, where they slept in shelters or on the streets. Gilded Age mansions featured dozens of rooms for entertaining, dining, and sleeping. The Breakers mansion, which was completed in 1895, featured 70 rooms, including the Great Hall, Billiard Room, Music Room, Morning Room, and Library, as well as bedrooms for the Vanderbilts and their 40 staff members. In New York City's tenement apartments, entire families crammed into one room. The poor hygiene, sanitation, and ventilation in tenement dwellings made disease outbreaks spread quickly. Photographer Jacob Riis documented the squalid conditions in slums and tenements in New York City, which he published in a book titled "How the Other Half Lives" in 1890. Business tycoons like Jay Gould commuted to their New York City offices via train or steam yacht. Gould refused to ride the railroad tracks near his Lyndhurst Mansion estate in Tarrytown, New York, because they were owned by his archrivals, the Vanderbilts. Instead, he commuted into New York City via the Hudson River on his steam yacht, the Atalanta, with his 100-pound Wooton desk in tow. Others worked in sweatshops. In addition to photographing tenements and slums, Riis took photos of sweatshops to show the difficult conditions workers endured. Members of high society attended galas at opulent settings like the Hotel Astor. The Hotel Astor was built in Times Square in 1905 after the neighboring Waldorf and Astoria hotels merged into the Waldorf Astoria in 1897. Hotel staff members who kept the silver gleaming and the liquor flowing remained largely out of sight. Workers were photographed buffing and polishing silver tableware in the kitchens of the Hotel Astor in 1905. Children of the wealthy, like Consuelo Vanderbilt, lived privileged lives, though they didn't always have personal autonomy. Consuelo Vanderbilt, daughter of William K. Vanderbilt and Alva Vanderbilt, grew up in the height of luxury, but was largely dominated by her mother. In 1895, Alva Vanderbilt forced her daughter to marry the Duke of Marlborough despite her love for another man. Among poor populations, child labor was commonplace. Around 18% of children aged between 10 and 15 in the US were employed between 1890 and 1910, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, often in factory and mining jobs. The extreme inequality of the Gilded Age led to political and social reforms in the Progressive Era that followed. The Progressive Era ushered in changes such as women's suffrage, labor unions, and laws such as the Clayton Antitrust Act designed to prevent a select few companies from amassing monopolies. The age of the "robber baron" began to fade, and their mansions on "Millionaires' Row" were torn down to make room for New York City's continuing expansion.
Business Insider
7 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
America's next big land grab
There's a weird contradiction happening at the base level of America's real estate market. Faced with high borrowing costs and an uncertain economy, homebuilders — the engines of the country's housing supply — are cutting prices and tacking on freebies in an effort to keep sales moving. At the same time, they're also staking out huge swaths of land in anticipation of the next homebuilding boom. The land grab is a signal of faith in the long-term demand for housing, a bet that the sluggish market will turn around, and a recognition of the country's deep housing shortage. It could also end up paying huge dividends for regular homebuyers. Whether these bets pay off, and whether Americans see the benefits, will depend on a little-known breed of investor known as a "land banker." These companies scoop up construction-ready land on behalf of builders (for a fee, of course) and then hang tight, biding their time until their patron is ready to put shovels in the ground. The setup allows builders to "control" land for years before technically owning it, preserving a pipeline of new developments and freeing up cash to, you know, actually build more houses. In recent years, builders big and small have latched onto this maneuver. There's no clear data on the prevalence of this model since land bankers are, by and large, private companies, but investors are most likely setting aside tens of billions of dollars' worth of home lots at builders' behest. In the second quarter of this year alone, Lennar, one of the largest homebuilders in the country, bought nearly 22,000 lots from land bankers for a whopping $2.7 billion. The typical buyer doesn't know — or care — about these exchanges, which take place long before the foundation is poured. But the rise of land banking will play a significant role in the efforts to chip away at our nation's housing shortage. Real estate is cyclical, which means periods of strong homebuilding activity are often followed by a retreat when the economy takes a turn for the worse. Land banking could help builders quickly ramp up production after these soft periods, delivering homes the moment more Americans are ready to take the homeownership plunge. The result would be a more reliable homebuilding machine, and maybe even cheaper houses. For buyers in the near future, that's great news. At risk of stating the obvious, land is the most valuable commodity in real estate. As the aphorism, usually attributed to Mark Twain, goes: "Buy land, they're not making it anymore." Even with unsettled economic conditions and a weak spring selling season, competition for prime acreage remains stiff. It usually takes years to turn a vacant parcel into a single-family home, so builders need a steady pipeline of land to keep their businesses moving. Traditionally, they've taken on short-term loans to buy up lots and get them shovel-ready. But this method of grabbing land comes with some downsides. Money tied up paying for idle land could be put to better use. It's also risky: If the costs of readying that land for construction go up, or if the market slows down and it's not profitable to keep churning out homes, builders are left on the hook. The answer to this conundrum is what builders call a "land-light strategy." Instead of buying up land outright and holding it until they sell the finished homes, they bring in a land banker to purchase construction-ready lots and then pay that investor for the option to build on those lots at a later date. The builder will typically put down a nonrefundable deposit of between 10% and 20% of the land's value and work out a schedule for buying those lots from the land banker sometime in the future, usually two to four years down the road. Without a land banker, a typical land purchase might require a builder to put down, say, 35% of the total value and get a loan for the rest. They'd also have to keep up with pesky line items like taxes and maintenance on the lots. A 10% deposit, on the other hand, allows builders to claim more land with less risk and fewer dollars. That's an especially attractive option for big, publicly traded homebuilders whose financials are scrutinized every quarter by Wall Street. Publicly traded homebuilders have employed this strategy to dramatically expand their land holdings since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first quarter of this year, they either owned or controlled nearly 2.4 million lots, up from roughly 1.4 million lots at the same point in 2020, an analysis by John Burns Research and Consulting found. Back in 2017, public builders owned about 64% of their lots and optioned the remaining 36%. Those figures have flipped in the years since. The most recent analysis shows that public builders owned just 26% of their lots and had options on the other three-quarters. Land bankers have been around for decades, but they've really only risen to prominence in the past four or five years. In the past, land bankers were a constellation of small companies or prospecting dreamers that would buy up land in far-flung locations, betting that it would grow more valuable as homebuilders continued to build deeper into the suburbs and exurbs. These days, land bankers are much more buttoned-up, and the industry is now dominated by huge organizations like Walton Global, which says it has $4.5 billion in real estate assets, including 89,000 acres that it plans to feed to builders. The land itself is different, too. Rather than a rocky scrabble or wooded mess that hasn't yet seen a bulldozer, the lots that builders buy from land bankers are typically all set for construction, with the land smoothed over and the roads paved. This leaves builders to focus on what they do best: managing the construction process and selling those homes to consumers. We like to joke about a seven-year cycle and a three-year memory. But I do think the GFC scars ran deep Greg Vogel, CEO of Land Advisors Organization It's not just land bankers who have evolved, though — the entire homebuilding industry has shifted over the past couple of decades. While the size of the current land-buying spree is substantial, it's still far less frenzied than in the years leading up to the global financial crisis in 2008, when builders were hoovering up land the old-fashioned way: using traditional debt to buy the properties outright. Builders absorbed a brutal lesson back then. First, they were stuck with too much land that was suddenly a lot less valuable when the bubble burst. A bunch of builders went belly-up or were forced to offload lots at low prices. Then the remaining builders were forced to play catch-up and seek out more land when housing demand rebounded. The mistakes of that era were a crystallization of the short-term thinking that so often screws over people in the real estate industry. "We like to joke about a seven-year cycle and a three-year memory," says Greg Vogel, the CEO of Land Advisors Organization, a land brokerage firm based in Scottsdale, Arizona. "But I do think the GFC scars ran deep." Land banking, on the other hand, offers a measure of safety and predictability for homebuilders, allowing them to lay claim to home lots without assuming all that risk. Even when the economy hits the skids and builders slow down production, they can rework deals with the land bankers rather than walk away from their land positions altogether. "They learned last time that they're in a much worse position having to go scramble and find land when the market did come back," Katie Hubbard, an executive at Walton Global, tells me. That kind of flexibility will come in handy as homebuilders weather another rough spot. The spring selling season, when builders typically move the bulk of their inventory, was "hugely disappointing," Jody Kahn, the senior vice president of research surveys at John Burns, tells me. Prices for new homes during the typical selling season would be up 4% to 6% from the previous year — John Burns' recent survey of builders indicates that prices dropped in June by about 1.5% year over year. Other data is similarly disheartening for developers: There haven't been this many new homes sitting on the market since the summer of 2009, data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development shows. Roughly 119,000 new homes were available for sale in May, more than triple the number at the same point in 2022. That glut of new homes may help consumers to some degree. Builders are tossing in a bunch of deal sweeteners to get buyers through the door, and some are finally starting to cut prices (typically the option of last resort). But the fact they're even having to do that points to a bigger issue: Many would-be buyers can't afford a new place, and the ones who can are wary of making the leap. The typical mortgage rate is stuck near 7%, up dramatically from the sub-3% rates seen early in the COVID-19 pandemic, which means homebuyers these days are most likely shelling out hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars extra each month on interest payments alone. Many homeowners, who either bought homes or refinanced during the pandemic, don't want to move and give up their cushy low rates. Home prices in most places haven't fallen enough to make a meaningful difference in the affordability picture. Other prospective buyers, having scanned the headlines about tariffs and a wobbly job market, may decide to wait until the economic outlook is less cloudy. When builders can't get rid of homes they've already completed, they're typically forced to pump the brakes on new construction. In the decade after the housing bubble burst, builders delivered about half as many homes as they had in the three decades prior. That's an extreme example, but we're already starting to see builders pull back given the softness in the market. The number of single-family homes going into construction in June dropped about 10% from a year prior. Permits for new single-family homes — the step before construction begins, and an indicator of builders' plans for the future — were down by about 8%. It's not an easy machine to turn on and off. Will Frank, land-banking expert at John Burns Research and Consulting A boom-and-bust cycle isn't good for anyone. Builders felt the pain after the housing market collapsed in 2008, but so did millennials, who were starting to reach their prime homebuying years right as home construction waned in the aftermath of the Great Recession. That case of bad timing has plagued them throughout their adult lives. In the 2010s, builders started work on just 21,000 single-family homes per 1 million people, compared with a rate of more than 41,000 homes in each of the three decades prior. With fewer homes reaching completion and more people trying to climb onto the housing ladder, price spikes were inevitable. While home prices rose about 46% in the 2010s, compared with about 31% in the 1990s, the problem really came into focus during the pandemic frenzy. Home prices jumped more than 50% between the spring of 2020 and the same point this year, even as builders played catch-up to try to meet the wave of demand from millennials. "It's not an easy machine to turn on and off," says Will Frank, a land-banking expert at John Burns. The true benefits of land bankers in this housing cycle are, admittedly, still a bit theoretical. This is the first time that builders and the current crop of land-banking partners are wading through a slowdown in the market, and it could still be a while before we see construction roar back. There's also the open question of just how big a discount could end up in the final sale price thanks to land bankers. After all, these investors are just one piece of the chain that transforms raw land into homes, since they're usually not the ones navigating the red tape of local permitting or doing the early legwork to get the lots ready for construction. The land developers who handle that part of the process play a vital role in shaping the housing supply years into the future. But land bankers have already aided builders in vastly expanding their land holdings to get ready for demand that may arrive years in the future. "There are deals that just wouldn't get done without a land banker," says Chase Emmerson, a partner at a land-investment firm in Arizona. And while they may not be the cure-all for the cyclical nature of the housing market, they will most likely help builders get their shovels into the ground more quickly when housing demand ramps up. In soft markets, builders can kick the can down the road and work out deals with these investors to delay some of the land purchases until sunnier times. Neither the builders nor the land bankers want those deals to fall through entirely. And when demand inevitably comes back, builders will be poised to respond with the land in their back pockets.
The Citizen
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Citizen
SA's military proves resilience despite the odds
Despite budget cuts and ageing equipment, the SANDF continues to perform with dedication and distinction at home and abroad. It was either American novelist Mark Twain or British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who famously wrote that there are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics, which proves just how difficult it is to get to the truth. It is easy to twist facts to fit convenient narratives, but for the truth to emerge, it is vital for these narratives to be tested against other truths. In the war for survival, the South African National Defence Force's (SANDF) greatest foe is disinformation in the battle for hearts and minds, not enemy soldiers taking aim at our members. There is no doubt that the majority of our key equipment is on average 40 years old, nor that our air force is struggling to maintain serviceable fighter capacity, nor that our navy has maintenance challenges. But what this narrative does not include is the fact that the threat that our country faces is of a very different profile from the insurgency war of liberation that ended 40 years ago and, indeed, of the conventional wars of invasion and attrition in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. This narrative also forgets that our prime mission equipment is very well maintained despite its age and budgetary constraints, as evidenced every year during our live fire all arms brigade-strength exercises at the Army Combat Training Centre in Lohatla in the Northern Cape. The doomsayers' narrative also ignores the fact that while the median age of all serving members might be as high as 40, the average age of those in our special forces and airborne is well within international norms and that these members conduct themselves in an exemplary fashion across Africa, winning the respect of other militaries. ALSO READ: From tiger to a pouncing police cat? Ramaphosa is remixing the 'corrupt' until a new caretaker arrives As for our navy, we have budgetary challenges with the mid-term refits for our frigates and submarines, but we have also made great strides through the construction and acquisition of our littoral multimission in-shore patrol vessels and the building and acquiring of SAS Nelson Mandela, the navy's new hydrographic vessel. Our air force remains a concern. We have severe constraints with our transport fleet while our Gripen fighter squadrons have well documented woes, because of a lack of budget. This is perhaps the crux of the matter. As successive ministers of defence and the chiefs of the various arms of service and the chief of the SANDF have said time and again over the past seven years, the SANDF is woefully underfunded by international norms. Prior to the ongoing conflicts in Eastern Europe which have pushed defence spend beyond 5% of GDP among Nato countries, the average norm was 2%. In South Africa, it's traditionally 1% or less and currently below 0.7% of GDP is budgeted for our defence needs. The biggest question that has to be asked before anyone starts any debate is simple: what kind of defence force should South Africa have? The second question is just as important: how much is SA prepared to pay for the defence force it thinks it wants? ALSO READ: 'A coup is not discussed on social media': Holomisa says no need to press panic buttons The fact that we have a functioning people's defence force that has smashed glass ceilings, created opportunities and does more and more with less is a story that should be told. It is easy to fixate on vehicle parks of redundant and superannuated equipment, but ignore the work being done every day inside our borders on humanitarian missions and beyond on peacekeeping missions, where there are no media or influencers to tell that story. For an organisation that works cheek by jowl with danger, deploying into perilous situations, our members execute their tasks commendably and most return safely afterwards. Critics would have you believe the SANDF is a shambles, wholly unfit for purpose and a waste of taxpayers' funds. Nothing could be further from the truth – and our proud record since our founding more than 30 years ago is stark testimony to precisely that. The SANDF and the department of defence do have problems. In typical age-old South African style, we have made a plan and it has got us this far. All we ask is that the critics take that into account when they step into glasshouses and pick up stones to lob. NOW READ: NPA to appeal bail ruling in case of 12 SANDF soldiers accused of killing Hawks investigator
Newsweek
21-07-2025
- Newsweek
What's Real and What's Fake—Global Action Is Needed To Protect Us All
Did the late Pope Francis really stride around in a puffy down jacket? Did an elephant really wrap a crocodile in its jaws? More seriously, is the person with a telephone voice that seems 99.8 percent the voice of your daughter really in such grave danger that only a quick bank transfer could rescue her? As long as there has been human society, there have been scammers and scams. The too-good-to-be-true deal. The sob story that pulls at the heartstrings at the same time as it opens your wallet. The grifter who wheedles his way into your life, family or work, exploiting every psychological weakness he can find. And the internet has made it much worse, with the age of AI threatening to make every single one of us, no matter how smart and savvy, into a potential victim. Probably everyone reading this got at least a dozen emails in the 1990s from a Nigerian "prince" asking for $1,000 to get him to the U.S. and then he'd pay you $100,000. Or saying that there was $1,000,000 in a bank account with your name on it if only you paid a service charge to get the money transferred. Some people fell for that, crude as it was, and lost money—sometimes many thousands. Posters are displayed at a news conference to unveil the Take It Down Act to protect victims against non-consensual intimate image abuse, on Capitol Hill on June 18, 2024, in Washington. Posters are displayed at a news conference to unveil the Take It Down Act to protect victims against non-consensual intimate image abuse, on Capitol Hill on June 18, 2024, in Washington. Photo byToday, with AI, that fraud would no longer be crude. The "prince" could have a video conference with you from a room looking exactly like a lavishly appointed palace. Official-looking documents could be produced at the touch of a button. Remember what the great American author Mark Twain once wrote: "It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." Most people only wake up when their bank accounts have been raided and the "prince" has long faded into safety. Even more sinister is the recent spate of "sextortion" scams where fraudsters convince teenagers to send explicit photos of themselves and then extort large sums of money from them under threat of public release. This sad scam has caused several teenage Americans to commit suicide and countless others to have severe mental distress. This is now tragically even easier to do. A 65-year-old man could easily manipulate the AI on live chat to make him appear to be a young, attractive woman, preying on the lonely, the desperate and the inexperienced. To remove AI deepfakes from the internet is a game of whack-a-mole that can be very expensive and time consuming. As a lawyer, I dealt with a situation where as soon as I removed images, they popped up elsewhere and we had to go to great lengths to stop it, including sending someone to an internet server farm in Romania to surveil the activities there. In another case, a man was harassing my pro bono female client for turning him down for a date, and every time we got one of his websites taken down, another one popped up. The Take It Down Act, a rare bipartisan bill signed by President Donald Trump that enacted stricter penalties for the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery, sometimes called "revenge porn," as well as deepfakes created by AI, is a step in the right direction. This will hopefully be followed by the bipartisan bill No Fakes Act, which seeks to create federal protections for artists' voice, likeness and image from unauthorized AI-generated deepfakes that could be extended to all individuals victimized by AI deepfakes. Groups supporting this bill have argued that Americans across the board—whether teenagers or high-profile music artists—were at risk of their likenesses being misused, and this legislation, reintroduced in the Senate last month, would combat deepfakes by holding individuals or companies liable if they produced an unauthorized digital replica of an individual in a performance. But having laws in one country is not enough—the internet is global, and images hop countries in a nanosecond. Denmark is leading the charge against deepfakes by granting individuals ownership of their facial features, voices and physical likenesses. Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt said: "No one can copy your voice or face without consent. This is not just about deepfakes—it's about reclaiming control over our digital identities." This is the minimum that we need in this AI age. The deepfake crisis demands urgent coordinated action, not just in places sensitive to the issues already, like Denmark or the United States, but also in places where the vast server farms are hosted and bots by the tens of thousands can be released at the touch of a button. We need clear legal frameworks to protect our digital identities. We need standardized takedown protocols, so lawyers protecting the innocent can quickly and efficiently go on the attack. We need global cooperation at the governmental level, ensuring that innocent citizens like you and me are served by technology, and not exploited or harmed by it. Bryan Sullivan is an attorney who has represented high-profile clients in entertainment, intellectual property and corporate investments.
