RFK Jr. Picks Nicole Shanahan as VP: Tech Lawyer Once Married to Sergey Brin | Hacker News Reader

RFK Jr. Picks Nicole Shanahan as VP: Tech Lawyer Once Married to Sergey Brin

forbes.com

5 pointsApocryphon10 comments

Much has been made of Shanahan's Silicon Valley connections, but interestingly she's barely been mentioned on HN or by TechCrunch. Despite that, she does seem like the most stereotypically Silicon Valley person ever:

* Reportedly had an affair with Elon Musk: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/24/23276518/elon-musk-sergey...

* had a Druid-inspired "love ceremony" to her partner, a Bitcoin executive, who she met at Burning Man: https://twitter.com/stevemorris__/status/1772635961169461738

* "Global Joy Officer" for a company called the Sloomoo Institute that charges people to play with slime: https://twitter.com/Lowenaffchen/status/1772709512668995642

On the Sloomoo Institute thing, she has a child with autism and those experiences look a lot like the sensory rooms that are proposed as being helpful for kids with autism.

The banner video showing kids supports this too.

Thanks for the context. “Chief Joy Officer” is still a bizarre SV title and these are pretty exorbitant rates though:

https://twitter.com/editingdisinfo/status/177274349133378776...

What is her background, how did she make all this money — from slime.

I can’t imagine Brin gave her that much cash as they weren’t married 10 years which is the CA cutoff, and allegedly she had the affair.

She asked for 1 Billion in the divorce. The actual final figure is sealed but they had a kid together and he's worth about 100 Billion that so I think that explains most of it.

Two weirdos. Great. Weird enough to maybe be a problem for this election.

Shanahan's main strength is deep pockets. I think this gets it right:

> If you’re flummoxed by why RFK Jr has picked Nicole Shanahan, a person no one has ever heard of, to be his VP, understand this: This is purely because she’s the only person capable of self-funding to pay for ballot access that was willing to say yes to him.

https://twitter.com/lucymcaldwell/status/1772709585083617743

Her Google ties are not making right-leaning Kennedy fans happy.

It’s hard to say if RFK will steal more votes from Biden or from Trump. The antivax crowd is pretty solidly Trump since he basically brought the new age into the Republican Party.

My personal dumb take is that Trump was our first New Age president. He basically believes in The Secret and grew up in some radical think and grow rich preacher’s church. Makes the Yoga to Qanon pipeline make way more sense.

I think there is huge overlap between New Age woo and multi-level marketing schemes (or whatever products like Trump U are), but I don't think Trump himself is the first New Age president, even though somehow the Qanon cult of personality has sprung up around him based on truly esoteric magical thinking. We're going to have to wait for Jared Leto to run for office.

So she's going to burn a bunch of her own money on a campaign that is sure to lose. What does she get out of all of this- I don't think a permanent association with RFK Jr. is all that enticing is it?

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