"reminder to self: don't invest with or take money from assholes" -Joi Ito, Mar 12, 2008
Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
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Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#12Jesus. Who lets a guy get away with that for so freaking long?
Jesus
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#13In the other thread, people were saying "I'd take Epstein's dirty money and do good with it."
But the problem is that doing so normalizes the behavior. Everybody who has doubts about working with the creep looks around the room, and when they don't see anyone else objecting, ends up thinking "I guess we're all ok with this behavior" and goes along to get along.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#14Those in glass houses...
“They were models. Eastern European, definitely,” she told me. Among the lab’s staff, she said, “all of us women made it a point to be super nice to them. We literally had a conversation about how, on the off chance that they’re not there by choice, we could maybe help them.”
And what did these people go home and start doing for Eastern European models since then? I find this pretty condescending. I know a few Eastern European models who are incredibly smart, and perhaps dated some folks who they wouldn't have dated if they were born in the U.S., but used those relationships to get themselves out of possible hellish, abusive, misogynistic situations back home (this is somewhat speculation, but our current First Lady seems to fall in this category). They were young but had been through hard times like the disintegration of the Soviet Union and starvation, and aren't so naive. They were honest about things, and weren't living in delusion. Some of the toughest and smartest people I've ever met in fact. There just seems to be a lot of phony moral outrage here.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#15Good. Here’s a particularly damning passage from Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article [1]: > According to Swenson, Ito had informed Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants,’ ” whom he wanted to bring to the meeting at the Media Lab. Swenson objected to this, too, and it was decided that the assistants would be allowed to accompany Epstein but would wait outside the meeting room. >…
Sorry, I don't get it. Somebody having assistants who look like models and are from Eastern Europe is suspicious of trafficking women? How? Why?
I have heard about Epstein, obviously with hindsight all sorts of things he did can be seen in a new light. I just don't understand what is so damning about the passage above.
Would somebody who is trafficking women really take them everywhere he goes? I thought it would be more of a secret affair.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#16I'm not sure if this is self-aware or not, but Ito's fund is called:"Neoteny", meaning "the retention of child-like attributes through adulthood". Apparently, Epstein's funds / projects were named with innuendos. (edited) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/neoteny#section-over...
No, 'neoteny' doesn't "usually" mean "animals with childlike features", but rather "the retention of juvenile features into adulthood".
It's conjectured that a lot of humanity's advanced intelligence & culture has been achieved with the help of our species' extended retention of juvenile learning-capacity & neural plasticity:
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#17I'm not sure if this is self-aware or not, but Ito's fund is called:"Neoteny", meaning "the retention of child-like attributes through adulthood". Apparently, Epstein's funds / projects were named with innuendos. (edited) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/neoteny#section-over...
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Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#18This seemed inevitable after the New Yorker article yesterday detailing how Ito and his team hid Epstein's involvement from the university, which had disqualified Epstein as a donor. Taking money from a dirty source is one thing; hiding it from the university because they've blacklisted that person in particular is about as unforgivable a crime as you'll find in academia
> Taking money from a dirty source is one thing; hiding it from the university because they've blacklisted that person in particular is about as unforgivable a crime as you'll find in academia
TBH, I've never heard of a blacklisted donor at MIT, so I'm a little surprised (pleasantly, as an alum).
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#19Why would Bill Gates need Epstein to be the middle man for his $2 mil donation? Why didn't he just donate to the Media Lab directly?
And given his insistence that the donation be made anonymously, it seems like he was well aware the optics would be bad if the public knew there was a connection between the two, and yet he chose to make the donation through Epstein anyway.
Re: Joi Ito Resigns from M.I.T. Media Lab After Outcry over Jeffrey Epstein Ties
#20This seemed inevitable after the New Yorker article yesterday detailing how Ito and his team hid Epstein's involvement from the university, which had disqualified Epstein as a donor. Taking money from a dirty source is one thing; hiding it from the university because they've blacklisted that person in particular is about as unforgivable a crime as you'll find in academia
> Taking money from a dirty source is one thing; hiding it from the university because they've blacklisted that person in particular is about as unforgivable a crime as you'll find in academia TBH, I've never heard of a blacklisted donor at MIT, so I'm a little surprised (pleasantly, as an alum).
I'm confused by the blacklisted donor thing. The first questions I had when reading about it was "when did he end up on this list?", "why did he end up on it?, and "how big is this list?"
It doesn't seem like any of the journalists even asked. That sounds like a very interesting story in and of itself.