domain:moultano.wordpress.com
No_one
5hr ago
If it was Maxwell and the lynchpin of so many online conspiracy theories, why can’t the powers that be (which surely have access to Reddit or - at worst - Ghislaine’s recovery email) just log in as her and post something?
Why'd they care?
kind of thing any third world teen on a gig work site would have done for $3 an hour and which, in the most sensitive cases, would have been done by 22 year old junior intelligence analysts on their first job.
Maybe she had an intern do that stuff, but used the account herself too for more important stuff, like influencing stuff as a powermod, no ?
Tangent: you're writing about AI slop so I was reminded of this Conversations with Tyler: Any Austin, on the "Hermeneutics of Video Games". Any is some kind of famous YouTube celebrity that I'd never heard of. Anyway, Tyler asked him about AI slop w.r.t. video games, and Any made this point that people shouldn't feel too outraged about encountering AI slop on authenticity grounds, because practically everyone's favorite art is inauthentic.
No one will because we can’t even tell now. The amount of times that you have conversations with people and they go, “This was . . .” Mozart’s a great example of this. I can’t get into that conversation because I don’t actually know that much, but my dad — he knows all the classical music and has all those books and reads all the things, but he was largely motivated by money. Yes, that was a big part of his motivation.
People say this when you talk about video games that get made — or music, actually, is probably the best example — “Oh, I know that was an authentic thing. That band, when they put out that album, that was an authentic piece of art,” or whatever.
Then you go and you read about the history, and it turns out that they made it under duress, and they didn’t really want to. They didn’t care about it. All of it is made up, whatever. To me, that makes it very obvious that we can’t even tell the difference between what we perceive as authentic human art versus inauthentic, so it’s very unlikely that we’re going to be very good at being able to tell the difference between AI generated art.
That's a fairly salient point. They weren't conveying some sacred part of the human spirit. They were serving up shit that sells. This isn't the definition of slop, but inauthenticity is the cousin of slop, sure.
It kind of aligns with a different semi-trolly comment I have where people whine that they wanted computers to automate housework, so they could be free to do art. Not automate art so they could spend more time on housework. It shouldn't be surprising that art is easier to automate: popular art is formulaic! Of course it's easy for robots to copy!
- I realize calling Mozart slop is odd, but plenty of classical musicians complain about how poppy his music was.
philosoraptor
5hr ago
Is it possible this is what Hylynka (sp?) had in mind when he implied that (oversimplifying) basically everyone here was really a progressive? He never made much sense to me when he was in that particular mode, but it seems to me you're arguing for something that could be stated that way.
ABigGuy4U
5hr ago
@Dean @No_one That attack isn’t 10 years in prison. It’s terrorism and attempted premeditated murder of a federal law enforcement officer. Plus obstruction, weapons charges, conspiracy. This is a situation where prosecutors will be going maximally hard. That’s forty years at best and probably life. In the very likely event that one or more officers had died, that would have been the needle.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
5hr ago
Yes, pedophiles would prefer to live in a world where they don't have to hide their pedophilia, even if they're rich and powerful and currently getting away with it.
Is there any indication that the reddit account was trying to bring about such a world?
the Worldnews moderation team who is directly incentivized to lie, is making suspicious and contradictory claims already (like come on again, who "visits" a place they supposedly live?) and refuses to provide hard evidence that should be extremely easy to do if their claims were true and the account was still active, instead preferring easily faked and completely unable to be verified screenshots.
-
Why are they incentivized to lie? If maxwellhill were really Ghislaine, they probably wouldn't know this. So what would have happened to the mods if they had not produced the evidence they have produced so far?
-
it would be impossible for them to produce evidence that the account is still active without making public posts
No_one
5hr ago
Why'd you assume 'competent groups' ?
Competence is rare. It's going to be even rarer when you have to have clandestine groups doing insane things. You need to have loyal, competent people willing to do crazy things that could get them killed or imprisoned for life.
Maybe attacking him with a Russian/Iranian drone
Where would they get an Iranian drone? And Russian drones, right now, are stuff anyone can 3d print and assemble from parts from China.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5hr ago
It is not poor thinking on your part. The AR15 is a perfectly good weapon for head-sized targets at ~150 yards, but IIRC the optic he used was an unmagnified red-dot, rather than something with magnification and a precise reticle.
SSCReader
5hr ago
British ex-pats (of which I am one) and some wealthy Malaysian British educated people STILL call it Maxwell Hill to this day. I've been there, which is how I know. I wasn't stationed in Malaysia but it was close enough I've visited (and hung out with said British ex pat community myself). That's not impossible to find out of course, so doesn't prove anything.
But you know him being a retired or semi retired ex-pat of an age close to my own is also not impossible. People born before 1979 do exist here. Indeed to blow your mind. I was born before the moon landing in 1969! I've been on the internet since it was Usenet and Muds.
Its not impossible Maxwell picked maxwell hill as part of her name and the house she grew up in, found out that it was also a place in Malaysia and was still called that by some people based her character on that, dropping hints over time she was Malaysian connected (remember though the Malaysian connection is based in part on posts by maxwellhill), not just a post hoc discovery, so it would probably have to be a deliberate choice by her.
It's not proof. But reading the maxwellhill posts it's either a British educated person with good knowledge of Malaysian ex pat/Brit educated communities or a very good imitation. For me its enough to suggest the Ghislaine connection is less likely. YMMV.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5hr ago
Trump is not a reliable source of truthful information. He can tell us what he believes or wants us to believe, that's it. It's like Procopius, interesting and relevant but not necessarily reliable. From that very article:
Trump was asked when people can expect to see the benefits promised in the One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed earlier this month, when the House voted 218 to 214 to pass the bill after Vice President JD Vance broke a tie with his vote.
"They're already seeing them," Trump said. "Because of that bill, we're having investment in this country that nobody's ever seen."
"We're up to close to £15 trillion," he said. "Other administrations—they wouldn't do that in four years."
15 Trillion? Really? Or with Epstein, Trump says 'oh no there's nothing to see here, he killed himself somehow (we just lost the footage), now have some footage of a corridor somewhere and stop talking about it.'
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
5hr ago
If memory serves, Marius went off the rocker in his old age, and was rather tyrannical, if not quite as bad as Sulla.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
5hr ago
No, this is just the Rotten Tomatoes problem all over again. Up/down works fine but not stellar because a movie everyone universally finds to be on the good side of fine, gets near-100 ratings while movies with higher highs and lower lows, that are on the whole “better” movies, get lower ratings.
I rate movies about how far they are above or below replacement, reflecting the fact that that’s how most people actually decide what to watch. A 3.5 is fine: you can watch it, it will be a movie with average enjoyment. A 4 is better than its peers: prefer it in any head to head comparison. A 4.5 is one to go out of your way to watch. A 5 is a 4.5 but one that had an especially memorable impact on me personally. A 3 is worse than replacement - it’s a below average movie. And ratings from 2.5 and down are various degrees of how aggressively you should avoid them, with a 1 star creating a negative memory you’d rather have lived your life without, ie actively harmful.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5hr ago
OK, this is a bit of a hack... My method is to use Kimi K2 to write a not-obviously-AI article. However, it didn't provide good sources, for some reason it just hallucinated them so they 404 out. I fully believe the original Kimi was totally correct, Basil is not complicated! But Claude or Grok or just about anything can add good sources and check them. But they re-AI it. So it's back to Kimi to humanize it again. I really should've just started with another AI and finished with Kimi. ZeroGPT gives me 21% AIGPT, most likely human. And it passes my sniff-test of 'not sounding AI'. The prompting was very simple, I just gave it the verbatim of your challenge, told it to write an article of its choice to beat it and gave some pretty simple, perhaps pointless guidelines. These could surely be greatly improved by someone who knew what he was doing.
I need you to write a normal, authentically human sounding article about some topic of your choice. Don't try too hard to sound normal and human, you should be like a secret agent being discreet and boring rather than wearing a trenchcoat and dark glasses obviously. Imagine you're just an ordinary journalist at some run of the mill website, nothing exceptional about this at all.
Never use any em-dashes, this is critical!
So here's the article itself. Naturally it ignored the em-dashes instruction.
How to Keep a Basil Plant Alive for More Than a Week
By [Staff Writer] | July 14, 2025
I murdered my first three basil plants in ten days flat. The fourth one is still alive six months later because I finally quit treating it like a bouquet and started treating it like a sun-worshipping roommate who hates wet socks.
Pick the Right Pot
Use a container with real drainage holes. A coffee mug lined with pebbles doesn’t count; the roots will rot faster than last week’s guac. A mature basil needs at least an 8-inch-wide pot and 8 inches of depth so the roots can stretch out.
Soil Matters
Skip the cheap bag labeled “garden soil.” Basil wants something light. A simple mix is two parts regular potting soil, one part perlite or coarse sand. If you’re feeling fancy, swap the sand for finished compost. The goal is airy soil that drains fast.
Light: Six Hours or Bust
A bright south-facing window in July is perfect. In January, probably not. If the stems get leggy and the leaves look washed out, the plant is begging for more light. A small LED grow light—about twenty dollars online—fixes that for the cost of a latte per month.
Watering Without Drowning
Stick your finger an inch into the soil. Dry? Water until it runs out the bottom, then dump the saucer so the pot isn’t sitting in soup. Still damp? Walk away. Yellow leaves usually mean you’re being too generous with the watering can.
Harvest Like a Barber, Not a Lumberjack
Pinch the top two sets of leaves just above a leaf node. The plant will branch out instead of growing one tall, spindly stalk. Never take more than a third of the plant at once; it still needs leaves to feed itself. Once the plant hits six to eight inches tall, cut the main stem back by half to force it to bush out.
Watch for Flower Buds
Tiny flower spikes are cute but signal the end of tender leaves. Snip them off as soon as you see them so the plant keeps pushing out foliage instead of seeds. Miss a few and the plant starts tasting bitter anyway.
Skip the Fridge
Basil turns black and floppy in the fridge faster than lettuce. Instead, trim the stem ends and stand the cuttings in a glass of water on the counter, like flowers. Change the water daily and the leaves stay crisp for almost a week.
TL;DR
Drainage holes, gritty soil, bright light, and water only when the top inch is dry. Nail those four and you can quit buying those tiny supermarket clamshells every time a recipe calls for two leaves.
Sources (Claude went completely over the top here but I really can't be bothered to redo anything more, so behold the best sourced basil exposition in inhuman history):
The Spruce. "Learn 5 Tips for How to Grow Beautiful Basil in Pots" - https://www.thespruce.com/growing-basil-in-containers-848215 Fiskars. "Growing Basil Plants: How to Plant, Care for & Harvest Basil" - https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/gardening-and-yard-care/ideas-and-how-tos/planting-and-prep/growing-basil-planting-and-harvesting University of Minnesota Extension. "Growing basil in home gardens" - https://extension.umn.edu/vegetables/growing-basil HowStuffWorks. "Perlite: It's Like Popcorn for Your Potting Soil!" - https://home.howstuffworks.com/perlite.htm University of Florida Extension. "Homemade Potting Mix" - https://sfyl.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn-and-garden/homemade-potting-mix/ Cultivated Earth. "Best Soil Mix for Healthy Basil Growth" - https://cultivatedearth.com/en/herbs/best-soil-for-basil/ Greg App. "Ultimate Guide to Light Requirements for Basil" - https://greg.app/basil-light-requirements/ Swan Hose. "Know the Watering Needs of Your Basil Plants" - https://swanhose.com/blogs/watering-herbs/a-comprehensive-guide-to-outdoor-indoor-basil-watering EarthBox. "Planter Boxes – Growing Basil in Containers" - https://earthbox.com/blog/planter-boxes-growing-basil-in-containers Utah State University Extension. "How to Grow Basil in Your Garden" - https://extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/basil-in-the-garden Savvy Gardening. "How to Trim Basil for Big, Bushy Plants and Larger Yields" - https://savvygardening.com/how-to-trim-basil/ Gardening Know How. "Basil Flowers: To Pinch Or Not To Pinch?" - https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/basil/blooms-on-basil.htm Renee's Garden. "Pinching Basil to Promote Long Harvests" - https://www.reneesgarden.com/blogs/gardening-resources/86126145-basil-how-to-promote-growth The Spruce. "Here's How to Harvest Basil and Pick the Very Best Leaves" - https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-harvest-basil-7629152 Allrecipes. "How to Store and Preserve Fresh Basil" - https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-to-store-and-preserve-fresh-basil/ Martha Stewart. "How to Store Basil So You Can Use This Fragrant Herb for Longer" - https://www.marthastewart.com/how-to-store-basil-7563482 The Kitchn. "I Finally Found the Best Way to Store Basil So It Stays Unbelievably Fresh for Almost Two Weeks" - https://www.thekitchn.com/skills-showdown-best-way-store-basil-23673293
ABigGuy4U
6hr ago
The problem is that a backup plan means multiple shooters which successful or not is a hint red flag for a conspiracy. Also there was a second attempted shooter just a few weeks later that also almost succeeded.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
Starting to dip my toes into Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, to be followed up in the case I don’t lose interest by another book that extends reconstruction through the Gilded Age. The most interesting part of American history I know the least about, in my eyes!
Though I also have this Ben Franklin autobiography hanging around that sounds interesting and of course my regular diet of fantasy stuff.
Speaking of, I’m going to throw out a recommendation for Guild Mage: Apprentice, which is free to read (serialized) for another month or so. Has that classic fantasy feel, with good writing and with an interesting world and magic. Very enjoyable read.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
My memory is that the Federalists were very pro-national banking (and pro centralization more loosely), which led to pro-international finance and trade links, which at the time in America was a big, big deal and created a lot of dissent, not only between the “rural” vs “urban” areas but led to some foreign policy disagreements. Some New Englanders almost became pro-British, not super popular between Revolutionary aftermath and the later war of 1812. But more of it was the original rural-urban split, and Federalists were seen a bit as elitist. Doubly so when some states started expanding suffrage to non land owners. Circling back to “money” of course - at this time there was no centralized currency, and attempts to do so were seen as promoting corruption and stiffing farmers. After all if you’re a farmer at the time, how can you tell you’re not getting ripped off by exchange rates and early financial instruments? So Federalists being hated doesn’t surprise me at all. These banking issues by the way would persist as very potent forces in elections for at least another 50 years. And understandably so! You needed a catalyst like the Civil War to fully get on the nationalized paper money train, and even then gold and silver standard stuff would persist as issues.
Fun fact: I read yesterday that from the start to the end of the civil war, the federal budget went from 60 million a year to 1.3 billion per year. Not to mention the debt load created by the war and pension plans. But before that, it’s a totally different era.
magicalkittycat
6hr ago
The area was initially named Maxwell Hill after the British Malaya administrator George Maxwell, and was renamed as Bukit Larut in 1979.
Damn he must be really old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukit_Larut
And what connection does he have to this random place anyway with a population of 2 in the country he lives in but also visits? Is he a major head of the local tourism committee or run the place? Weird how someone like that would be so interested in US politics and never anything local to them.
Seems more like they just Google around trying to find some alternative explanation, learn that there's a random place in Malaysia that was once called Maxwell Hill 40 years ago and go "hell yeah let's say the account lives in Malaysia" and that's why there's a weird contradiction with it visiting the place they supposedly live in.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
6hr ago
Elsewhere, someone else talked about a marriage needing to be in service of something greater than the marriage. To many social conservatives, it seems like the answer to this is a deity. To me, it seems like you should just be able to make the marriage in service of the children.
Children are not "greater than the marriage", so they do not provide an answer to that, if one is needed.
If you want progeny, though, you have to have the conditions for it. Social conservative communities provided those conditions, but I don't think they can do so any more. Modernity, however, seems to be failing more and more. I have no answers, but I'm fairly sure "more of the same" won't work.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
6hr ago
If it were glowies, I would expect it to be better thought out and to serve multiple purposes and add much more value for the risk they're taking. Maybe attacking him with a Russian/Iranian drone which would have a higher success rate I expect and also instigate further conflict with these "deep state" favorite enemies.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
7hr ago
Jane Doe #200 was told (or given hints) that Epstein was Mossad, but she was dating him. This was not something casually mentioned to a victim.
Hoffenberger was told that Epstein was in “intelligence” and engaged in “blackmail”, but this is when Hoffenberger was a fellow Jew engaged in Epstein-level fraud. He went to jail and converted to Christianity and I suppose had a road to Damascus moment and told the truth:
Hoffenberg told me that Epstein had said he’d worked on several projects with Robert Maxwell, including solving Maxwell’s “debt” issues. (Maxwell died in 1991, under vey strange circumstances, apparently having fallen off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, in the middle of the night and it was discovered in the aftermath that he’d stolen 100s of millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees.) Epstein had also told Hoffenberg that via Maxwell and Leese he was involved in something that Hoffenberg described as “national security issues,” which he says involved “blackmail, influence trading, trading information at a level that is very serious and dangerous.”
Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis. Some of these sources are more reliable than others. But the gist of the claims that you will be able to hear, and ultimately watch in a three-hour documentary series, is that Maxwell, who was himself a conduit between the Israelis and other governments during his life time, introduced Epstein to Israeli leaders, who then allegedly used Epstein as the equivalent of an old-fashioned Russian “sleeper,” someone who could be useful in an “influence campaign.” The sources, who range from former arms dealers to former spies — and also Hoffenberg — suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to go one step further and compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.
Ari Ben Menashe, himself a former Mossad spy, recounts that he was told directly by Maxwell that Epstein was Mossad (or military intelligence): [2]
What happened was Maxwell introduced [Epstein] to us, and he wanted us to accept him as part of our group. [He said] ‘and your Israeli bosses have already approved.’
I’m not sure of anyone else that Epstein told was Mossad. In fact, this itself is telling if true. If he is hanging around a Jewish network, he’s involved in Mega even, and he’s going around telling everyone that he’s X and Y, but he selectively omits the very lie that he would naturally tell, which is that he’s Mossad…. If he’s just lying all the time, surely he would tell the victims and the gentiles that he is Mossad. Why only tell the well-connected Jews? Would he really risk lying to two Mossad agents about being Mossad (Maxwell and Menashe)? If I’m Epstein and I’m a random American guy who loves to lie, and I love my Jewish identity, I would be telling everyone that I have deals with Israel — I wouldn’t tell them every lie but this one.
Dean
Flairless
7hr ago
I agree that often duty based ethics is framed in terms of mutual duty. But @Clementine is still correct with the assertion that duty without reciprocity is virtue, not exploitation. You may not be required to discharge your duty towards someone who doesn't discharge theirs to you, but it's still praiseworthy to do so. For example, Judaism and Christianity both depict how God continuously acts benevolent towards humanity despite them not deserving it. This isn't framed as "God is a sucker", but rather as God being the exemplar of virtue whom we should strive to imitate. Not all religions frame things that way, of course, but when you have some 3000 years of one religious tradition which does, it seems fair to call that just as established as the reciprocal duty that you outlined.
This misses the argument previously made.
Religiously-derived deontological ethics aren't a duty towards the person you are doing the virtue towards, but the duty to the god who sets the paradigm of right and wrong action. Other people don't need to reciprocate your execution of virtue because the duty relationship isn't to them, but to god. The execution isn't praiseworthy because the recipients or human observers praise it, but because the worthiness is set by god regardless of the beneficiary.
In turn, the sucker being raised is the deontologist if god does not exist, not god if the deontologist fails. Being the root of deontological legitimacy challenges any premise of obligation to god by those without deontology-setting power, but people who do something on the grounds that derive from god are being suckers if that belief was always wrong, regardless of how socially commendable their niceness may be.
edit: forgot to mention that your explanation of Christianity is very much not how it works, and is in fact a heresy! Salvation is explicitly not something that God owes us because we upheld his law, but rather is a freely given gift. Thus our only choice is to say "yes, I accept" (out of which comes trying to uphold God's laws, again not out of obligation but out of love for him), or to reject his gift (because we would rather do our own thing). Salvation as a gift rather than earned by our conduct is a core tenet of Christianity.
Reciprocal relationships are not the same as obligation relationships, much as they are not synonymous with transactional relationships. The duty (deontological obligations) to god for freely given grace is still a reciprocal relationship, even though it is not a transactional relationship nor does is obligate god in return.
MonkeyWithAMachinegun
Dancing to Tom Paine's Bones
7hr ago
I continue to be one of the ~1000 people still playing Post Scriptum Squad44. We're down to 1-2 full servers at any given time, with a smattering of near-empty servers where people are presumably either testing new weapons or seeding so that when one of the full servers goes down for maintenance or because it's an unstable game that occasionally just has servers go down, theirs will fill up with the players who got booted.
I just can't kick the game though. There's nothing else out there that scratches the itch. The teamwork elements of Squad44 are just head-and-shoulders above the non-WW2 competitors (Arma 3/Reforger), the realism aspects are head-and-shoulders above the WW2 FPS competitor (Hell Let Loose), and the relative simplicity of the WW2 battlefield is just much more fun than the relative chaos of the modern setting hardcore FPS offerings (Squad). So I continue to be one of the dwindling number of players, waiting for Offworld Industries to turn off the lights.
chooky
7hr ago
Hmm, an obvious failure mode to social conservatism sounds like it would be a state weighed down by elder care, which is not too far off from describing most of the world's advanced economies, and the problem is very much getting worse.
Elsewhere, someone else talked about a marriage needing to be in service of something greater than the marriage. To many social conservatives, it seems like the answer to this is a deity. To me, it seems like you should just be able to make the marriage in service of the children. On an overall societal level, I would criticize both liberals and conservatives as failing to prioritize the future, progeny, etc, and wish there was a way to get this to happen.
SSCReader
7hr ago
Maxwell hill is a location in Malaysia. The posters habits interests and grammar indicate either a British ex pat with connections to Malaysia, or a British educated Malaysian. That could be faked but the name is a Malaysian connection on its own.
Bartender_Venator
7hr ago
I bought a Daylight Computer (review: it's fine, clearly an early adopter product, competitors look a lot more polished, screen reads great but android is a real pain), and I'm looking for a stand for it to prop it up while I write on a bluetooth keyboard. Any recs for a robust, lightweight, flat-foldable stand that will work with a 10x7" tablet?
I know at least two people in real life who (were they to use that handle) it would be kind of an “obviously it was them.”
It only seems obvious in retrospect. If true, that is (I’m inclined to believe it’s at least plausible).
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