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Throwaway05
1d ago
Right most people know "open secrets" in their community or profession. Sometimes they get picked up by the public, sometimes they don't, but conspiracy theories that actually come out are almost always in this category.
No_one
1d ago
They would surely have killed him when he was a private citizen and before he was arrested and locked up in a jail in the middle of NYC.
Not everyone has perfect knowledge of what's going to happen.
Epstein’s lawyers told him he was going to die in prison and it is very plausible he told them that in that case he wanted to do it now
Why are his lawyers insisting they don't believe he killed himself? Some self-serving ploy to keep being paid by his estate or what?
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
You can’t prove that the mob killed Jimmy Hoffa either. Sure he had been in bed with the mob for years, had recently pissed them off, and disappeared on his way to meet with a high ranking mobster. But there’s no smoking gun, no witness testimony, no body. Shockingly enough the organization of professional murderers that specialize in getting away with murders made sure there wasn’t any definitive iron clad evidence of the murder.
No_one
1d ago
He was a psychopath who has been getting away with it his entire life. I don't think it's plausible, at all, that he killed himself. These people are optimistic and never really give up. You could maybe expect a guy like that to kill himself once he's in a supermax with no parole, etc.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
And what, pray tell, are the illegal or dangerous acts that Alan Dershowitz has committed on behalf of Mossad?
FtSoA
1d ago
Pulling the trigger to the point that it's just barely not going off and then wiggling it is going to cause problems on a lot of firearms. The trigger should not be pulled as a part of the holstering process, and supposedly the existence or not of a manual thumb safety (standard on the military models) is irrelevant for this kind of failure.
Most of these guntubers are just fucking around until they make the gun go off, without any relevance to the reality of the known cases.
There are so many P320s out there, like 3 million in the US, that the base rate of these discharges is still tiny. In some cases it's just people claiming the gun went off without them having done something stupid. In other cases, it might be poor customization contributing to the problem.
It could be a slight manufacturing defect that is rare, but still enough to cause these discharges in certain circumstances.
Sig has not handled the PR well at all, but it genuinely is still a mystery for what the hell is going on.
I'm sorry, man. We had our first pregnancy self terminate early and while I wasn't affected much, my wife took it really hard.
Aren't early miscarriages really common? I thought like a 1/5 of known pregnancies miscarried in the first trimester and some 30-50% of all pregnancies.
Are you sure two early miscarriages really puts you in 30% chance of being unviable with eachother? It sounds high.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1d ago
Rat races are only an issue when being at the bottom is so horrible that people are desperate to avoid it. In this case, any way you set up society is going to be horrible---what's the alternative to the rat race? Most people are just screwed because of the circumstances of their brith and can never have a reasonable life no matter what they do? If we actually do as you say and make chicken farming less miserable, then the rat race would also weaken.
I think this is a little bit of a distraction though since you aren't supposed to try to justify meritocracy by fairness. Someone has to be the surgeon hypothetically operating on me and I would much rather they were chosen by meritocracy---it's not about the person who gets the position but an instrumental goal to make things best for everyone else. Like many more things than people realize, surgery is really hard and it does actually matter to have the 0.1th percentile performer instead of just the 10th percentile one. Being "competent enough" is beyond humanly possible---medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US according to this.
Finally, while the Korean educational rat-race has gone way over into Goodhart territory, a little bit of rat race is great for motivation and helping everyone become the best version of themselves. I am very happy for the extra motivation this gave me to study for math contests since that made me a much better technical problem solver. I am even more happy for the extra motivation it gave me to do the much less fun writing practice for English class.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Bribing guards to either kill him, let an assassin kill him, or assist him with suicide doesn't strike me as a particularly complex mechanism.
Well, that's why you're not paid to investigate these things. Just consider the probabilities involved. If someone came to your house claiming to be from Mossad or Bill Clinton's people or the Royal Family or whoever and told you that they would totally pay you a lot of money if you committed murder on their behalf, what would you do in response? What would the average person do? What would the average person who has no criminal record and has a job in law enforcement do? If you read enough true crime cases you'll learn that finding a hit man among the general public is incredibly difficult in the best of circumstances because the vast, vast majority of the time the guy you meet in a bar who's short on money and has a checkered past inevitably goes straight to the police.
In this case the murderer wouldn't even have the luxury of picking a vetted assassin from among the general public; he'd be relying on two specific people who are members of the law enforcement community to conduct the hit. People who are specifically screened for not having any criminal record, let alone murder. And you're asking them not only to commit a capital crime but commit it in such a way that will fool the medical examiner and require them to stage the scene. And they would be the only two people with access to the target at the time of the death and be the obvious first suspects in any investigation. And this person is a high-profile inmate whose death will be national news. One of these people is a woman (this detail never seems to get mentioned for some reason). And there are two of them.
And if they do accept your offer and successfully kill Epstein, then what? Given that they've never killed anyone before, there's a good chance that they get prosecuted for his murder. Do you really think that someone under indictment for a capital crime is going to keep his mouth shut for your benefit? What reason could they possibly have to keep quiet?
If you're one of the guards in question and someone offers you money to kill Epstein, why would you even believe that they are who they say they are? How much money would this person have to pay you to take on this kind of risk? At the very least, it is guaranteed that you will lose your job in the aftermath and be virtually unemployable at the same salary you were making, so it would have to be enough money to live in New York for another 50 years, and with a high standard of living, at that. Of course, if either of this guards were living the high life with no discernible source of income, that would raise all kinds of red flags (or at least pique the interest of the IRS), so you'd have to keep this money hidden away so it didn't look like you were living beyond your means, working at whatever menial rent-a-cop job you could get. What would make you think that some rando you met in a bar actually has this kind of money? Of course you're going to demand prepayment. After all, once a man commits murder, breach of contract doesn't seem like such a big deal.
If I'm the guy ordering the hit, how to I get this money to him? Write him a check? How easy do you think it is to transfer that kind of dough without raising any red flags among the banking community? Or maybe you think it would be easier to show up with a suitcase full of cash to a bugged hotel room with Federal agents waiting for you in the parking garage. Or maybe NYPD if he happens to go to them instead. Getting someone to commit murder on your behalf is hard. Getting someone to commit a murder that he will immediately be suspected of is harder. Getting two people to do the same? Damn near impossible.
Consider the probabilities here, just for fun. Let's generously assume that 5% of the extremely law-abiding-background-check-passing population would commit such a murder for the right price. The odds are already 95% that your attempt to off Epstein will end with you in handcuffs. Add in a second person (required here) to be in on the plan and the odds of failure are now 99.75%. Add in a generously high 75% chance that they can actually commit the murder without arousing any suspicion, and you're now down to about 6 hundredths of a percentage point likely to succeed. Even if I use the impossibly optimistic assumption of 50/50 all around, you still wind up in prison 7 out of 8 times. And why are you taking such a huge risk? To prevent the theoretical uncorroborated testimony of a guy who is wholly incredible and has nothing to gain by talking. These conspiracy theories make no fucking sense whatsoever.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
You are sidestepping my assertion. Blackmail isn’t needed to ensure general support. Blackmail is needed to get people to undertake specific illegal or dangerous acts.
The trick here is claiming there's such thing as quantifiable "use value". It's actually two tricks. The first one that there's some objective fixed value that an object has, regardless of anybody's opinions, and it can be calculated, even if it required omniscient entity having total view of the economy. The second trick is that a specific person or organization (Gosplan if you will) can calculate it. Both are wrong. This is actually one of the fundamental reasons why socialism fails - it can not produce proper prices, and without proper prices, economic cooperation can not function, as prices drive resource allocation. The Soviets tried to implement non-price resource allocation and failed miserably. You can just "assign" prices but as they would be disconnected from actual economic value, you will either get massive deficits, or a ton of resources wasted on producing useless widgets. In a socialist economy, you usually have plenty of both.
And also equally applies to capitalist speculative bubbles
Sure, bubbles are a consequence of resource misallocation. But you know what is also true of bubbles? None of them can last for long. Exactly because this is a self-defeating process - the longer the price remains misaligned, the higher is the pressure to correct. Until the bubble bursts. On the contrary, the misallocation that is driven by directive prices and resource assignment can last indefinitely, it does not have the feedback mechanism.
No_one
1d ago
He has some sort of trauma because someone in his family died bc of alcoholism? I've seen similar behavior in Russian expats. They won't even have a beer bc of what they saw in 1990s Russia. Very odd people.
No_one
1d ago
I don't think he actively prefers them.
A single look at the period photo of the prostitute he got into trouble with - Stormy Daniels(middling tasteful nude) makes it pretty clear he's not interested in teens.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
That's very kind of you, and I'll see if I can take you up on that! The Florida climate should feel like home, and I'm used to handling packs of street dogs. What is an alligator but a very slow, cold-blooded and 'ornery dog?
When it comes to Boston and their brahmins, alas, I'm a lower caste than that, and it'll come down to fists and concealed carry laws.
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
1d ago
Come to Florida
I’ll buy you the ripest of IPAs and grill you a very large ribeye
You can’t walk anywhere tho - or take the bus, so I imagine you’ll move to Boston and we’ll be reading about your hijinks as related to Massholes
No_one
1d ago
I listened to Carlson's interview with MM and I remember MM making a claim that Epstein was more of a freelancer. Surely at times he worked for Israel and other western services , but mostly he was in it for himself and for profit - and what he did was help with tax evasion using shady financial means, steal from his clients - more for the love of the game than actual need and so on.
No_one
1d ago
Still, a lot of epistemic commons are burned in the process, and I really don't like that.
Still, a lot of epistemic commons are burned in the process, and I really don't like that.
Compared to what went on before - e.g. transgender self-id, male pregnancy etc.. I don't find this newest, frankly pathetic attempt meaningful or even very aggravating. It's just what the post-tumblr left does. Back before it's brain was melted by lack of talent and internet, they just played games with language.
Now, the games are stupid, nobody who isn't a tumblr-type person can take it seriously and they keep engaging in circular firing squads.
Not sure this is going to influence anyone - people who already believed Trump is a philandering stupid bald nazi clown etc.. he's already maximally bad in their eyes. Everyone else has tuned out their yammering and they no longer have much of a megaphone to command with the decline in TV viewership.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Right wing complaints of voter suppression?
Maybe not direct voter suppression - at least I don't have a definite proof of it yet - but we have multiple and very well verified instances of speech suppression, economic suppression, access suppression etc. And this happened both on governmental level and on the level of various non-governmental gatekeepers, such as academia, media industry, entertainment industry, big corporations, etc. - every level that defines how the society is managed has multiple examples of people being suppressed for being on the Right.
The argument that social bonds are weaker because new people showed up seems weak and weird
How it's weird? Who am I likely to bond with - the person I (and my ancestors) lived next to for three generations, or with somebody who showed up around yesterday, doesn't speak my language, has totally different culture and beliefs, wears something I can't even name, and can't answer positively to any of my "remember when" questions? I'm not saying the latter is impossible, but claiming it's less likely than the former - if anything is ever "weird" is claiming something like that, and without any justification, just dropping it like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Of course it's not.
A pedophile, in my book, is someone who is sexually attracted to pre-pubescent kids. Often, the term might imply exclusive pedophilia, e.g. someone who is only attracted to pre-pubescent kids. This seems like the worst sexual attraction card to be dealt, while being straight, gay, bisexual, into MILFs, or into BDSM, or most other kinks means you have a decent chance of getting laid, the lack of adults who could pass as pre-pubescent means that there are no sex partners who could consent. If used as an insult, the unfortunate implication is that people are morally responsible for their sexual inclinations.
Your book is not the book most people are using. Most people don't think about sex in those terms (they don't really think 'straight' or 'gay' either)- otherwise, the group(s) that wants to impose those definitions/morality on everyone else wouldn't need words words words to do it.
For most people, "pedophilia" means "man on little girl" exclusively.
Men can't be raped, so we don't really care about man on boy (unless it's a political group we hate for other reasons that was covering it up, which in combination with that hatred is sufficiently scandalous to destroy them- we're not really after boyfuckers qua boyfuckers, that's a side-effect). As for woman on boy, our reactions range from Nice to "if we don't throw you in jail for this, society's standards might shift and allow man on girl, so off you go". And woman on girl is a statistical anomaly.
Feminists/gynosupremacists launder the moral disgust with "man on girl" into the "man on any woman" definition they've always wanted (though note that this is fundamentally a woman vs. woman thing about how best to exploit men rather than primarily being man-hating, which is how men perceive it). This is why they push to have older and older women be considered "children", and why white-knights (traditionalists and progressive men) accept that. It's also why all the "pedo" literature progressives use only features man on boy (or man on boy-dressed-like-a-girl).
As you noted,
I think that power discrepancy is why we have age of consent laws
is correct, but those laws aren't set up that way to protect children (they aren't the right tool for that). They're primarily for keeping young women out of the sexual marketplace and providing women-as-class a weapon to exploit men more powerful than them (to which they are inherently attracted).
Once you understand the concept of "consent" is a lie (and intended to confuse "raping little girls" with normal human behavior) you can start to understand how people actually think about sex. Then, you can also see that Rs have a better understanding of this than Ds do because they're more likely to reject this framework (to the point that even traditionalist Christian sexual ethics paint a better picture), so Rs are less likely to be concerned with "non-consentual" behavior than Ds are.
Also, a tangent:
It bears saying that a significant fraction of child molesters are not exclusive pedophiles but just men (mostly) with broader sexualities who use the opportunity of the power discrepancy between kids and adults.
Well, if you're only looking for physical penetration as a subset of "abuse with sexual intent", yes, you'll find that's mostly men.
Men and women are different especially when it comes to the way they think about sex; thus we should expect the ways they intend and perpetrate sexual abuse would be different.
TowardsPanna
1d ago
I've been to the Round Table Hold now and bought a longbow! Also got the claw mark seal (can't remember how) and bought a couple of faith spells. Fireball and urgent hp. The fireball does decent damage despite my faith being at 10. Range isn't great though. Still might come in handy from time to time.
Can't equip three weapons (sword, flail, bow) without going into heavy load. So now I'm almost forced to increase endurance. :P
I saw some items for sale that would help with online play, like one that summons a hunter ally for when you get invaded. I'm playing offline but still get invaded by those red jackass NPCs. Guess there's nothing to be done about that. I very nearly died to one of them after going a long time without finding a new site of grace. In fact the "Tarnished-Eater" spawned as a result of trying to enter a church with a grace site. Welp!
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
WW2 affected more people than just jews.
At the risk of invoking a meme around here, "What did you think 'Never Again' looked like? Vibes? Essays? Poetry?"
Of course it potentially meant finding or making a safe place for themselves and investing in defense spending to be too thorny to tangle with again. That mentality clearly seems to explain how they interact with parties that call for their deaths regularly (see the Houthi flag, for example). Many of those calls come from Muslims, but I'm not sure they like Richard Spencer any better.
But that 'Never Again' thread runs in other groups too: see defense spending in Poland and Finland, arguably China and Korea too. Or why you shouldn't ask the South American with a German last name when their ancestors moved to the New World (not always 1945, but it's common enough).
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1d ago
Part of the problem with just opening a discussion on "individualism and meritocracy" is that these are very fuzzy and connotationally charged words. It's therefore best to talk about specific examples as much as possible---this was just a relevant one that's somewhat timely. Any specific example is going to have a billion imperfections and distractions, but I really think it's still better to be concrete. If your quibble is that I picked a bad example, maybe you have a better one in mind?
I also think there's an huge difference between saying "most posters here are ideologically degenerate" in some absolute sense and saying "I have the impression that most posters here have values that are incompatible with my own for these reasons, am I right or wrong about this?".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
I think in one of your past posts you called yourself "a one issue voter on the subject of identity", and as time goes on I think I agree with you more and more... in a very Anakin and Padme kind of way... In any case, yes, it's one of the most important questions of our time, though I'm somewhat frustrated by the conversation not really going anywhere, and just getting restarted every few months.
You focus on the disagreement with the part where he says having ancestors that fought the civil war grants you a stronger claim to the country than agreeing with it's creed, but can you talk about your agreement with the concept of the "credal nation"? Vance picked "agreement with the ADL" as a criterion for adherence to the American creed, would that something you agree with? If not that specifically, what would you say is the American creed? If we're going by the credal nation, and the historical core principles of the USA, doesn't that imply that any socialist, communist, critical theorist, non-liberal feminist, devout Muslim or black separatist, can be deported on sight? Regardless of whether or not he was born there, and regardless of any heritage?
Does this place actually overwhelmingly support JD Vance's statement?
That's a very collectivist question, woudn't you say? But if you want my personal opinion, I agree with his statement.
Is this statement actually anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic as defined above?
I think the most you can get is "anti-individualistic", and once someone takes that on the chin, claims of "anti-meritocracy" start falling apart. For example, does Ukraine have to hire a Russian general as there supreme commander of their armed forces, if his resume looks better, or else accept they're being "anti-meritocratic"?
Are the above interpretations of meritocracy and individualism reasonable and consistent with anti-individualism and anti-meritocracy being very bad things or are they just word games?
That's probably the most complex question you asked here. Yeah, sometimes people play word games. Sometimes consciously, because they want to win, sometimes unconsciously, because they really like the idea of something being true. Sometimes a completely sincere person uses the exact same argument that a 100%-dishonest word-game-player.
Either way, I don't think you're playing word games, but I disagree with either your basic assumptions, or a logical step you're taking somewhere, but I'm not sure which.
Is that any different from checking a girl who looks questionable's ID to check the age?
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