I bought it a few years ago before the new book deal and the name is Marion Wheeler.

I believe it was self published back then. Although it’s a beautiful hard cover that was only like $14 on amazon. I found it funny that it’s one of my favorite recent hardcovers and is cheaper and self published.

Huge difference between constantly being in passive alert mode waiting for the kid to wake up and cry their heart out, and proper uninterrupted “I know have x minutes for myself, no matter what” time.

> being in passive alert mode

AH, MANY THANKS! That was the wording I was actually looking for when our twins arrived - I couldnt even sit down to read a printed newspaper article with 2 pages....

Yeah it's awful huh. People think you get time when the kid sleeps but really it's just.. the worst :-)

Sure thing my kids were cute when they were small but I'm pretty glad they're bigger now!

I've never read as much on my kindle as when my son was born. I didn't want to use my phone so any micro break was spent reading. Much harder to do now that my son is 4 years old, I'm less sleep deprived but there's less opportunities for micro breaks when I'm with him.

And it sounds like that will require additional fees.

System consistently produced an incompetent government that had lots of power.

In this case the author is an attorney, so can presumably understand a contract she signed.

And the non-disparagement wasnt in her hire agreement, it was in her severance agreement, in exchange for a negotiated amount of money. Author was wealthy enough to afford dedicated lawyers to review.

> Author was wealthy enough to afford dedicated lawyers to review.

Yes, for the last several years of her career at Meta she was making a minimum of $4M/year in TC, as she mentions in the book.

In the US, a contract can’t supersede laws like those that protect whistleblowers. (I think this is part of how Harvey Weinstein was prosecuted because his NDAs were found invalid)

The author didnt disclose any illegal activities in her book. And she didnt claim whistleblower status.

> The author didnt disclose any illegal activities in her book. And she didnt claim whistleblower status.

Both statements are factually incorrect.

> Wynn-William filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2024 and with the Department of Justice in 2025, according to her filing.

Also, here's a short but not comprehensive (read the book when it came out and I forget things) list of the sledged illegal activities described in the book:

- Collusion with the chinese authorities

- Securities fraud

- Illegal foreign political contributions

- Sexual harassment and workplace retaliation

I don't know the reasons for why there has been no enforcement/further investigations aside from some congressional circus, especially when Zuck was caught lying to Congress. But I would be willing to bet that they involve money in politics.

… Have you read the book? _Plenty_ of illegal stuff there.

I read the book. Lots of unethical stuff, not so much illegal. There’s no revelation or new info publicly released. If it was illegal, I’d expect prosecution in the past 10 years.

Lots of things I’d like to be illegal. Or I wished were illegal.

What did you read that was illegal?

Not in the book directly, but she did accuse them of securities fraud prior to publication: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/15/whistl...

In the US, a contract is considered law. It’s just only between the parties.

Tort law and criminal law are two of the many subtypes.

You will not go to jail for breaking a contract. The only remedies are civil.

Right. But it’s still law. Civil law.

I mean it is currently legal in most countries to do that.

Read about record contracts. Prince spoke extensively about his restrictive contracts.

She was privileged to even get a severance. Most people just get fired.

That's not privilege.

She earned it.

A company's reputation when it comes to severance is a part of compensation negotiations and decisions whether to accept the offer to work there.

She got a high level job where such a severance is expected. If it weren't, they'd struggle to find anyone to fill that job.

The severance wasn't contingent on her past. Anyone else holding that job would've gotten a difference.

A male probably would've gotten a larger one, for that matter.

She didn’t have to agree to the contract. I don’t really want some arbitrary govt limit restricting what private parties can do with each other.

I very much want the government restricting employment-related contracts myself.

And NDAs and similar, with their entire purpose being restricting speech, should also be restricted pretty strongly.

I’m certain that if these clauses were banned, exactly zero contracts that would otherwise have been agreed would be abandoned. They are completely one sided, and superfluous to the goals of the contract.

> superfluous to the goals of the contract.

How so? The goal of these companies is generally to exercise the maximum possible control over what employees do and say.

Fair, the primary goal. An exchange of labor and expertise for pay.

> I don’t really want some arbitrary govt limit restricting what private parties can do with each other.

Given that this runs tangential with whistleblowing and free speech, this is exactly where I want a government to draw a line.

But it was a severance agreement. She accepted a sum of money for agreeing to not disparage. You don't see anything wrong with someone knowingly accepting these funds, and then turning around and immediately violating the agreement by writing a book (making even more money in the process)?

If it's about whistleblowing and doing the right thing, why not just refuse the money?

There should be a statute of limitations on this stuff. Otherwise we’ll see things like chemical plant employees who signed such an agreement keeping stories of dumping to their deathbeds.

Or, hopefully, not signing such agreements and accepting such payments.

Disclosing illegal activities cannot be silenced by these agreements.

In a better world, disparagement would not legally refer to the dissemination of factual accounts.

In such a world it would only add to penalties for proven libel.

It’s a pretty simple concept: if the truth hurts, you’ve got no one but yourself to blame.

NDAs theoretically should never be able to paper over illegal actions. In a similar vein, non disparagement clauses should not be able to paper over the publication of legitimate insider experience of terrible — even if legal — behavior.

> She didn't have to agree to the contract.

Everyone is aware of that.

> I don't really want some arbitrary govt limit restricting what private parties can do with each other.

Great! Then you surely don't want the government to censor this author if she were to criticize Meta, a.k.a., "enforcing the non-disparagement agreement".

If I'm wrong, and you do think it should be enforced, then my alternative response is this: You are confused. It is the enforcement of the non-disaparagement agreement that is the government limitation and restriction of private parties.

I'm a staunch defender of civil liberties, so I think the government should stay out this affair by declaring the agreement to be unenforceable.

The only way these sorts of contracts can be enforced is if private parties have recourse to government powers- civil courts- to enforce them.

Governments could just not help them do that.