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In 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.
Normalize the taking money? Maybe, but not the child trafficking part.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Why 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.
It's pretty clear that for certain individuals higher up in the social hierarchy than most of us will ever see, Epstein offered a very exclusive service. And was part of a world of that we mostly think of as fiction. Similar to when the Snowden leaks happened we all saw that "yes, the government really does perform mass surveillance on the population", we are now seeing that "yes, the extremely wealth do play by completely different rules and shape our society in complex ways".
But we won't see much more. Joichi Ito is probably the least powerful person caught up in all this, and him and people like him provide the public retribution we all want to see. We'll see the justice has been served, and return the illusion that this was just a strange aberration rather than the status quo.
In 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.
But everyone doesn't do it, and so we have this norm about how if someone X is an investor of Y, then some of Y's reputation transfers to X -- we assume Y did due diligence on X for us.
The problem exists because accepting morally tainted money isn't a norm. (I'm not arguing that it should be!)
Jesus. Who lets a guy get away with that for so freaking long?
Just look at who Epstein and Weinstein have been photographed partying with over the years...
> I don't get it. This is one of those things where somebody noticed that things just didn't seem right and the proper response to that is to raise concern and ask questions. Sorry, but a 60-something "finance" guy with an entourage of teen models doesn't add up. Sure some of these people have trophy wives half their age, and it raises eyebrows, but this is far beyond that and totally unacceptable once somebody looks…
> Sorry, but a 60-something "finance" guy with an entourage of teen models doesn't add up. The only problematic thing here is the age of those models. Otherwise, rich people like that are often surrounded with girls of questionable morals and intentions, who do stuff and in return get stuff (some would call it prostitution, some would imply that prostitution had an agreement done in advance...). In some poorer countr…
Unfortunately we're talking here about the MIT Media Lab!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Sorry, but a 60-something "finance" guy with an entourage of teen models doesn't add up Honestly, it sounds like you just don’t go out very much.
If this sort of scenario seems normal to you, maybe you live in the wrong neighborhood. I see a lot of shit when I go outside, but old geezers with entourages of very young eastern european women is not something I can claim to have witnessed.
An entourage of eastern european women? You just need to order a bottle.
In 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.
> 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 gets along to go along. Let's be honest - a lot of people in the tech community and related subcultures (particularly genre fandoms) are either ok with, or are ambivalent towards, this behavior, or have a lack of empathy which lead…
The same can be observed in adtech, Facebook etc employees
Good. 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. >…
These women were complicit and, shoot, probably bragged about their jobs.
Good. 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. >…