Earlier quoted context omitted.
They killed Aaron Swartz after all.
Aaron Swartz wasn't the first. The Voo Doo MIT Journal of Humor regularly published dark tasteless jokes about MIT driving students to suicide, because it was true. https://web.archive.org/web/20031230203757/http://www.mit.ed... Here's an example from their Fall 2003 issue: page 12, "FORM 27B-6: STUDENT AUTHORIZATION TO SELF-TERMINATE". https://web.archive.org/web/20040806042029/http://www.mit.ed... >This form must b…
Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
311–320 of 353 posts
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#312From the report http://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf Professor Lloyd's dealings look very, very shady: > Professor Lloyd remained friends with Epstein after his conviction in 2008. He visited Epstein at his office in Florida during the period of Epstein’s criminal sentence. Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, and he has acknowledged Epstein i…
I also think it's easy to say "how could they do x and y with a 17 year old..." but humans are made of flesh and blood.
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. Seth Lloyd is a very well-known name in Quantum Computing. It's pretty shady that he's depositing $50,000 gifts from known sex offenders directly into his personal bank account...
Can't these people just go to facebook and get like a 300k salary for a few years?
Tenured professors do sometimes take leaves of absence to work for a period with some company on a problem they think is interesting. And many do consulting on the side.
Tenured professor at an elite school certainly isn't a bad gig. But compensation isn't mostly at the senior engineer FAANG levels that people like to throw around. But then LOTS of jobs that people both enjoy and are useful to society aren't.
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of these are achievements of MIT media labs. Everyone knows that MIT the school, as opposed to Negroponte's pedo-blackmailer funded wank fest, has historically done some important things. If you were originally saying MIT the school is a net positive for humanity, that's not what I am asking for clarification on at all.
Sorry, “the institute” is MIT slang for MIT. The media lab is called the media lab and indeed many people at the institute view it with scorn and/or envy. The document under discussion was about the institute. Several interesting things came out of the media lab including mindstorms OTOH. Not in proportion perhaps to the amount of press, but the media lab was not funded from government grants by and large. Media lab…
I ask because media labs often annoyed me with the twee "look at the future" stuff that never really panned out. The "food computer" thing mentioned above being a particularly ridiculous recent example.
I think it mostly annoys present day me in that I was taken in by this in the early 90s, when I was an avid reader of Mondo2k, Wired and the other kinds of publications Negroponte used to shill in. If the best thing that came out of the place since it was founded back in 85 is ... lego extensions... well, maybe people should stop funding them. I mean, Seymour Papert was pretty cool for his day, but he's dead.
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll admit the Hawking part was poorly worded. I didn't intend to specifically point the finger at him. However Mark Newman's own descriptions of spending days on this Island, eating breakfast with Epstein and all of his guests. Well I'm very suspect.
Epstein was, by all accounts, absolutely obsessed with sex and abusing underaged girls. One of his victims described the abuse he and Ghislaine Maxwell committed as "a full time job." So the question is, was he more or less restrained in broadcasting his proclivities in the early 2000s before his first conviction? And, was he more or less restrained on his private island which was essentially constructed for the purp…
The evidence is there though for those that care to look. As you say, Epstein couldn't not talk about sex and young women, they were around constantly, everyone knew it was weird or they enjoyed the prospect of it.
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#316From the report http://factfindingjan2020.mit.edu/files/MIT-report.pdf Professor Lloyd's dealings look very, very shady: > Professor Lloyd remained friends with Epstein after his conviction in 2008. He visited Epstein at his office in Florida during the period of Epstein’s criminal sentence. Professor Lloyd also visited Epstein’s private island, though for only a few hours for lunch, and he has acknowledged Epstein i…
What would Epstein get from Lloyd? If Epstein was in fact blackmailing the rich and famous, or running a sex trafficking operation for profit, how does he benefit from supplying donations (and whatever else he allegedly supplied) to a quantum computing professor?
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, “the institute” is MIT slang for MIT. The media lab is called the media lab and indeed many people at the institute view it with scorn and/or envy. The document under discussion was about the institute. Several interesting things came out of the media lab including mindstorms OTOH. Not in proportion perhaps to the amount of press, but the media lab was not funded from government grants by and large. Media lab…
Got it; sorry for the confusion. I ask because media labs often annoyed me with the twee "look at the future" stuff that never really panned out. The "food computer" thing mentioned above being a particularly ridiculous recent example. I think it mostly annoys present day me in that I was taken in by this in the early 90s, when I was an avid reader of Mondo2k, Wired and the other kinds of publications Negroponte used…
They did eventually get enough money to build a second building. (Which has a really nice event space--so there's that.) And I assume if I went through their research I'd find some interesting things. But I certainly don't know of anything particularly world-changing off the top of my head.
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the same reason you would show up at Bill Gates house for lunch if you were invited.
Yah, worlds greatest philanthropist and infamous child rapist are not quite equivalent...
Is it your belief that response somehow changed the point? Or maybe you think that response changed human nature? That somehow reacting in that manner changes mankind such that no one would ever be flattered that a rich and powerful person thinks they're interesting enough to have lunch with.
What about their wives? Are the wives pedophiles too? They sometimes went to the island with whomever. How many degrees of separation is necessary before you become just a person who wasn't aware of this rich and powerful persons predilections?
Lets call it Pedophile Bacon. Everyone is at most 6 degrees of separation from Epstein, therefore it has to be a number between 1 and 6, otherwise everyone is a pedophile due to Epstein.
I think what kills me the most is the implication through all of this that Epstein was so important that everyone should have been aware. I certainly wasn't. Until all this shit came out, I had _no idea_ who he was, or that he had been convicted. I don't spend my time tracking pedophile, and I would consider it a bit strange for anyone who does.
Imagine if someone like me is asked to go to lunch by their employer. And then this shit hits the fan, and suddenly you're being accused of being a pedophile because the Pedophile Bacon is 3 or less and you're at 2.
Maybe the guy is a pedophile. But him having lunch with Epstein says nothing about his status of being a pedophile. Because having lunch with a pedophile is not, by definition, what makes a pedophile a pedophile.
But you come in here with this snide ass comment as if it changes any of that. I don't personally understand. Help me understand why you would muddy the waters surrounding pedophiles. How many Pedophile Bacon's does it take before someone once again is presumed innocent until proven otherwise?
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you check the page? Neither 204 of the PDF nor 204 in red at the top seems to be a deposition text page. I'm not imagining that Giuffre made anything up. I'm just trying to work out whether, after she propositioned Minsky as she was directed to by Maxwell (from the deposition, as well as Minsky's own account to other attendees), he accepted.
Page labeled in black in its footer
I'd agree that Minsky agreeing to the proposition would be implied by those sentences in normal conversation, but depositions have carefully constructed and precise questions and answers, so that leaves me unsure.
(Again, I'm not trying to offer a strong defense of Minsky here or claim that any part of the deposition isn't true.)
Re: Jeffrey Epstein and MIT: FAQs
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yah, worlds greatest philanthropist and infamous child rapist are not quite equivalent...
I really don't know how you live your life acting like that. Is it your belief that response somehow changed the point? Or maybe you think that response changed human nature? That somehow reacting in that manner changes mankind such that no one would ever be flattered that a rich and powerful person thinks they're interesting enough to have lunch with. What about their wives? Are the wives pedophiles too? They someti…
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/08/jeffrey-ep...
> There were lavish dinner parties with the likes of Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould during which Epstein would ask provocatively elementary questions like “What is gravity?” If the conversation drifted beyond his interests, Epstein was known to interrupt, “What does that got to do with pussy?!”
It think it's fair to say anyone who was on his island, home or jet should be questioned by authorities about what they saw there. He was a child sex trafficker operating out of his homes and private jet. Those are crime scenes.
Not everyone who went there is guilty, but given everything we now know it's not unfair to question their presence in Epstein's orbit.