"His very notoriety, he said, was what made so many people willing to confide in him. Everyone, he suggested, has secrets and, he added, compared with his own, they seemed innocuous. People confided in him without feeling awkward or embarrassed, he claimed."
He was like a pastor, a confessor to his pariahish church.
So I'm guessing things were an open secret in certain parts.
"Behind him was a table covered with more photographs. I noticed one of Mr. Epstein with former President Bill Clinton, and another of him with the director Woody Allen. Displaying photos of celebrities who had been caught up in sex scandals of their own also struck me as odd."
What's really odd was the NYT guy wanted to talk about Tesla but Epstein kept going back to the twisted stuff. I think Epstein was trying to plant something but the columnist didn't catch his drift.
As for the photographs, they were hunting trophies mounted on his wall.
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To understand the collapse of the media it is first important to understand its rise. People trust the voice that brings them plenty. During Cold War 1, Pravda was the voice of sawdust sausage, the gulag and the KGB. The BBC was London buses, miniskirts and American supermarkets.
The media was once the song of whiskey, democracy, sexy. Then at some point it became the screech of diversity, equity and inclusion; the drone of degrowth, global warming and self hatred. It became the voice not of plenty but poverty. People stopped believing.
Ask yourself: is it really your idea of a good time to watch blank faced faced octogenarians stumble around a stage? Watch obese transvestites caper in the spotlight? We signed up for a future of flying cars and space babes, not to eat bug salad under a creaking windmill.
Why does the workman believe the football scores in the newspapers but not the big stories? Because he may have watched the match himself or knows someone who has. Information corruption will blind the educated most, who only know things at second-hand.
Reliable knowledge must ultimately rest on personal expertise and trust networks which is limited by the Dunbar number. For the rest your mileage may vary. This sets a limit on global governance because even leaders can't be sure they are hearing the truth.
Perhaps the basic reason that tyranny ultimately fails is that complex systems are very difficult to understand, let alone control. The little tyrants attempts to rule the universe, but it's too big. The ideologue is like the dog that catches the car.
Perhaps the moral of the story is we should take people at their word. When they openly vow to take possession "from the river to the sea" or abolish the "colonial state of America", whether you agree or not, you should regard this as a serious declaration.
The mistake was to patronizingly regard these serious undertakings as a joke; a figure of speech, mere hyperbole, adolescent exaggeration. The real jokers were the spineless custodians of culture, who though powerful, lacked the tenth of the resolve of the militants.
1990: experts all agree missile defense will never work.
2024: why doesn't the Fleet defend every country on earth like it did Israel? Seems effortless.
Same thing happened to the Internet and GPS. It seems like secret diabolical Pentagon inventions become basic human rights in two generations. We go from "you must never build it" to "you must provide it, preferrably for free."
I have often thought the smartphone encapsulated the process of how the American empire was built. It was created by accustoming the world to things that they couldn't live without. And suddenly the new Rome was just there.
In assessing the danger of an attack on the Gaza port, you should always figure on capability. Don't assume intent.
In fairness to Joe once he made the decision to stick his presence, into Gaza, absent active protection, he had no choice but to hope no one takes a shot at it. He is defended by "luck".
It has been said that "hope is not a strategy" but actually it is a betting gambit that presumes the future has a hockey stick shape where Joe takes a short term hit or risk in exchange for the prospect of hitting the jackpot down the track.
Nine months into his first term in 2021 Joe Biden told the UN: “as I stand here today, for the first time in 20 years the United States is not at war. We’ve turned the page.”
All Joe thought he had left to fix was Climate Emergency, the challenge of the age, to which he pledged $11B. The road ahead was bright. But somehow bad luck intervened. Future historians will try to understand the misfortune. But at the inflection point it was all rosy.
It's almost like Nagumo at 10:24 June 4, 1942. Tomonaga's force has returned from Midway. All enemy torpedo bombers have been shot down. An overwhelming strike against reported enemy ships will be ready in minutes. Victory!! Suddenly a lookout points up at something unseen ...