domain:ymeskhout.substack.com
erwgv3g34
8hr ago
Wait, seriously? You are an LLM evangelist and you have never even thought about doing this? Come on. The internet is for porn; there must be something you want to read.
quiet_NaN
8hr ago
Meanwhile FIRE has been pretty consistent in criticizing both the left and right, and even defending their opponents right to speech. It's like the early ACLU protecting the rights of KKK.
This attitude seems certainly praiseworthy. The principled org willing to piss off people on both sides of the CW is much more credible than any organization which only cares about their pet issue when it benefits their side.
Also, calling a freedom of speech organization FIRE (in caps) is brilliant naming.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
8hr ago
We could do a Mr Glass / Unbreakable cosplay lol
True story; in college me and my buddies were fucking around in the park at night and my friend jumped out of a tree and accidentally did a flying knee with his full weight right to my collarbone from 10ft up, hurt like shit but I got up and we kept messing around, went and got beers.
Next morning I went to class and then went to work. My shoulder was killing me but I just kept working.
Finally after a week without it getting better I went to the doctor after my girlfriend wouldn’t let up.
Turns out I had a hairline fracture and I had been just walking around like it was nothing. Only time I’ve ever “broken” something.
Both my girls are built like tanks too, so it’s definitely genetic.
Rov_Scam
8hr ago
But the above makes me wonder - the initial girl (Jane Doe) was 15, yes? So if there is evidence (or at least accusations) that he got 15 year old girls to strip down to their underwear, 'massage' him while he was naked, and he used vibrators on them and/or jerked off in their presence, then paid them - surely that is something more than "well he did a little bit naughty in paying for a massage from an unlicensed person"?
I'll preface this by saying that I don't have access to full transcripts of OPR interviews with the people from the State's Attorney's office, and while the grand jury transcripts have been released, I can't find anything specifying what charging options were presented. But my speculation based on what has been released is this: The State's Attorney was concerned about the ethical implications of charging Epstein with prostitution-related offenses without charging the prostitutes themselves. Krischer had previously charged girls as young as 14 with prostitution, but he clearly recognized that the girls here had been taken advantage of, and the office was uneasy about charging witnesses who came forward.
I think that more importantly, though, Epstein was already offered a misdemeanor plea he refused, and if he tried to nail his ass to the wall he'd be looking at a trial that would be a fucking mess. You mention credibility issues, but it's not just a matter of whether the jury believes the girls, but whether the jury believes they were abused. Remember, this was a time when the public was sneering at kids like this on a daily basis, as Maury Povich sending incorrigible teens off to boot camp was mainstream (if lowbrow) entertainment. It wasn't so much that a jury wouldn't believe what happened, but that they wouldn't be able to view the girls as victims. Adding to the problem, the case hinges on the girls testifying to all of this bad behavior in open court, and even if you can keep some of it out, the fact still remains that they have to admit to prostituting themselves, some on multiple occasions, and to recruiting other girls to do the same thing.
These days juries are much more sympathetic to the idea that kids in these kinds of situations often have serious problems, and it's easier to paint a guy like Epstein as someone who recognized how vulnerable they were and took advantage of them. But it wasn't clear yet in 2006. Federal prosecutions require a grand jury indictment, but in state court the normal procedure is to file an "information", which results in some kind of preliminary hearing in front of a judge to determine if there's probable cause to go to trial. Grand juries are only used in unusual situations; they can be investigative tools since witnesses can testify under subpoena, and they're often used for complicated cases involving organized crime, public corruption, etc. I think that the decision to take the Epstein case to the grand jury was a consequence of the State's Attorney's uncertainty about how a jury would react to the evidence, especially in the face of an aggressive defense. It would give them a chance to defer the charges to somebody else, rather than filing the charges police wanted them to file and taking the chance that the case would fall flat.
As I said, I don't know what charging options the grand jury was given, but for the sake of argument I'll assume that the charges the police were pushing for were among the options. After the transcripts were released last year, prosecutor Lanna Behlolovick was criticized extensively in the media for apparently sandbagging her case by only having two girls testify and bringing up all the bad behavior. I disagree with this assessment. I think she knew that the defense was going to bring it up at trial and she wanted to see how a jury would react. One difference between grand juries and trial juries is that grand jurors have the opportunity to question witnesses, and the questions asked by the grand jurors don't evidence much sympathy. Some of them made glib comments to that effect. This was especially the case when a detective presented the evidence of other girls who had been abused (hearsay is admissible in grand jury proceedings), and they weren't at any risk of offending the girls directly. If they were offered a full slate of charges but only indicted on the solicitation charge, it's evidence that the case was a loser. There's also evidence that the grand jury's unwillingness to indict factored into Acosta's decision to seek a pre-indictment plea, since a Federal jury wasn't likely to be any better on that front. Having immersed myself in this whole mess, it causes me to wonder what the public reaction would be now if Epstein had been charged with serious crimes but acquitted. Would this even be something we're talking about now?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
8hr ago
Besides general American values, how do we address the issue I mentioned of idealogy changing constantly?
Evidence indicates that we fight, with ever-increasing viciousness, over unilateral enforcement of our tribally-preferred ideologies, and the devil take the hindmost.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
8hr ago
They could have been a game changer, but that was conditioned on them containing child pornography, or worse, containing evidence that he transmitted CP over the internet.
That's such a huge game changer, and should be painfully obvious to any prosecutor with experience. Possession of CP triggers all kinds of mandatory minimums that increase the prosecution's leverage by absurd amounts (federally, anyway. I don't know if Florida law has mandatory minimums for it). Even a 1% chance of the computers containing it dramatically changes the case, and it's a tiny mental stretch made by prosecutors every day to say, "hey, we're investigating this guy for sex crimes, perhaps he's a CP collector, too."
You could be right that his homemade videos at the time would be worthless in strengthening the case against him with regards to the known victims. But the chance of finding CP has had every prosecutor I've dealt with jumping at the chance to seize every single electronic device possible from suspects. Proving a hands-on offense with a victim with credibility and reliability issues is tricky; proving possession of CP doesn't have those problems. I don't have training materials from USAO from that era, but even in 2005, I have a hard time believing it wasn't common knowledge that finding CP on a suspect's computer was the "easy win" button.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
9hr ago
I'm fine with that. Surely deactivating an artificial womb before perusing the robot is going to be more reliable than ordinary birth control.
it's usually a sub/dom sorta thing involving racial stereotypes or slurs at the low end
Okay. Still not that tawdry given the context being pornography. I suppose they had to draw a line somewhere. An erotic literature version of Brown Sugar would be a bit much. And not like they have an objective way of drawing the line that would satisfy my understanding of what is more or less extreme.
it must then be ideological, which necessarily means exercising discretion and control over the ideologies of people allowed in or, at the minimum, allowed the rights and duties of citizenship.
Besides general American values, how do we address the issue I mentioned of idealogy changing constantly? Plenty of Americans shift beliefs given the back and forth between parties. Lots of idealogical goals even within parties change, the republican and democratic party of today looks drastically different then just twenty years ago!
Speak up against Israel now and you're anti American. Speak up for Israel now and it's ok. But every four years it could be completely different. Speak up against Israel in 2029 and you're fine, speak up for Israel and you're anti-American.
Against gay marriage in 2010? Perfectly normal American values. Against gay marriage in 2020?. Anti American values.
Legalize marijuana? Countrywide abortion access? Legality of sports betting? Support/don't support the Iraq war? Edit: here's 2016 Trump saying trans people can use whatever bathroom they want so even with the same person in charge you could be perfectly fine idealogical agreement one day and wrong the next.
thejdizzler
9hr ago
Yea I think it's gotta be genetic because those injuries were from the days I was chowing down on steak/hamburgers every night at the college dining hall, so unlikely that it was from diet.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
9hr ago
That’s got to be it; I think I might have given you or someone else here a hard time about being 6’0” & 160 as when I’m the same height and the last time I was that weight I was a cross country runner in high school and super skinny. I was in good cardiovascular shape but I had essentially no upper body strength.
The difference for me is that I have never broken a bone, I’m likely a true outlier in bone density. During college I gained a lot of weight but started lifting heavy and my best health I was like 225 & 20% body fat which means even with literally no fat I’d be heavier than 160lbs.
I wasn’t even that jacked, but I’m also primarily German / Nordic with significant west African admixture and I’d been athletic my whole life so I think I’m just genetically very dense both in terms of musculature & bone.
Funny enough when I gained all that weight I did it by cutting out all land based meat entirely; it was all fish, eggs, beans, and rice which got me in the best shape of my life.
They've helped students here and there sue for damages, but I've never seen them make a university cave and change policy.
They shuttered the entire "bias response team" of the University of Michigan just a few years
And just recently won a policy change at George Mason University.
Anyone who has said free speech would be easy to defend would be a liar, but anyone fighting for free speech knew that from the start. You don't win by being perfect everywhere at once, you win by taking it on battle by battle.
So you'll often see libertarians defending Corporations, Universities or NGOs for trampling your rights (It's a private entity, it can do whatever it wants!), while they condemn the government for doing the same. Or they'll be a feckless speed hump against the expansion of the welfare state, and crucial allies for open borders, ensuring we get the worse of both worlds.
That's crazy, the idealogy around limiting government and protecting individual private liberty primarily wants to limit government and protect private entities. At this point it might as well be a generic "they don't agree with me about everything, I like it when they're allies but hate them when they're opposed" complaint.
Your whole comment comes off like you're against principles just because those principles sometimes come into conflict with your desires
Rov_Scam
9hr ago
To clarify, when police searched Epstein's house as part of the initial investigation, the computers had already been removed. Later, the FBI learned that they were in the custody of a certain individual, and the USAO requested that they be turned over. Epstein's attorneys initially agreed to produce them by a certain date, then asked for an extension, and on the extension deadline they took legal action to prevent having to turn them over. By this point negotiations were underway, and in the course of negotiations the USAO agreed to postpone the date of the hearing, which was then rescheduled for late September. By this point, the self-imposed indictment deadline was nearing, and the parties were close to a deal, and they agreed to postpone the hearing indefinitely, Once the deal was signed the matter was dropped.
I agree with you that they should have pushed the computer issue a little harder, but I can understand why they didn't. The idea that they would contain evidence that improved the prosecution's position was speculative. I wouldn't call it incompetence so much as poor judgment. If the computers contained video of Epstein engaging in the sex acts that they already knew about, it would improve the case, but not by much. They could have been a game changer, but that was conditioned on them containing child pornography, or worse, containing evidence that he transmitted CP over the internet.
We need to step back and consider what they were likely dealing with. This was 2005, and the taping system probably wasn't brand new. You were looking at 480p tops, compressed, taken with a wide angle lens. I don't have any information about the camera equipment that the police discovered, but they did mention that the cameras were hooked up to the computers for recording. Epstein could certainly afford commercial-grade recording equipment, but most such equipment would have recorded to disc at the time, and not a PC. So we're likely looking at webcams. In either event, though, any video would have been low-resolution and recorded from a fixed vantage point. Webcam videos from 2005 weren't great, and commercial surveillance video wasn't much better. There would have been problems authenticating the video and identifying the victim as a minor.
I think that Acosta's plan was stupid and ultimately ineffective. It's certainly not what I would have done had I been in charge. However, once they were committed to that course of action, I don't think that yielding on the computer issue was a huge mistake. A mistake, yes, but not a huge one. It's pretty clear that the defense strategy was to draw out the process as long as possible. If the prosecutors had insisted on sticking to the September hearing, it would have required postponing the indictment deadline again, since they'd need to give time for the defense to turn over the computers and for the FBI to analyze them, and then to figure out what what to do with the information. The defense holding back could have just been a ruse to get another extension. I personally think that once they became aware that the defense had the computers they should have put everything on hold until they got them, but Acosta was hell-bent on state charges and thought a deal would be easy. I think Acosta just figured that the indictment was ready to go and if they made a deal he'd be happy and if they had to indict there was plenty of time to get the computers. I don't think he wanted to delay things based on the speculation that there might be evidence of other crimes. It was a bad decision but it was understandable.
thejdizzler
9hr ago
Probably a difference in bone density. I have to think I have lighter bones, which probably explains all the stress fractures in college.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
9hr ago
I think your instinct is correct in general with regards to how much the game is up in terms of being able to “hide your power level”, I’m just an extreme outlier living in an extreme outlier environment.
I have a very social job that requires me to be everyone’s buddy and have an “always on” personality. Disagreements, even polite ones, are not tolerated and heavily punished.
The area I live in is not only deep blue like the Pacific Ocean, it’s extremely isolated from trends that are obvious to outsiders.
I live in the DMV area and close enough to the dark heart of the stay-behind operation of Obama’s America that I’m dealing everyday with maximum ideologically motivated reasoning. I call it the “Iron Bubble”, people are extremely out of touch and in denial with what’s been shifting underneath their feet in the culture at large. Ironically, it’s very “Hitler & his closest associates in the Bunker” vibe, or reminiscent of “Baghdad Bob”.
It’s not surprising, there’s real money and power at stake here with the fall of the old order. Things like DOGE & the fall of DEI broadly have extreme direct consequences to these people. I’d love nothing more than to loosen up and be sincere as is my nature, but it’s like being in a squad of Japanese soldiers who are holed up in an island and don’t know the war is over.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
9hr ago
In the past I've known people who've made a simple HTML page with some links on it set as the home page for easy access from new tabs. Not sure if file:// would send a referrer, but a lightweight local-only server isn't crazy either. I doubt they know they're sending referrer headers.
Supah_Schmendrick
9hr ago
This idea has been played with. Personally, I liked the resulting comic series, but YMMV.
I recall you had a post a while ago where you said you’d dated both men and women. Did you develop a preference for men, or how did women fit into this?
something that requires a deep emotional connection to work
Well, I guess all I can say is, join the club. We don’t have fun prizes but there are occasional butterflies in the chest. And you get a stamp on your card when someone says, “you’re sweet but I don’t see this going anywhere.”
I found straight/bi men are generally more understanding when you make it clear that that's not what you're after (if they're manipulative, it's at least a sign of knowing what you want).
Interesting. I’d never considered that being played could actually be preferable to sex-forward behavior, but I can see it. I guess gay men just didn’t even make an effort? Just, “oh, no dick pic, seeya?”
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
9hr ago
I'm still convinced that veganism isn't harmful for performance, at least in endurance sports. Plenty of endurance athletes at the highest levels are at least mostly vegan.
The gourmet vegan diet available to people with time and money (so that all macros are hit and they have a wide variety of plant proteins) is not the typical vegan diet I see among regular people.
I'm closer to 160 now, but a 150 with a height of 6' put me at a very normal BMI of 20.
I'm 6'2" and was 155 for a long time. I look skeletal in those pictures. I don't look much better in later photographs where I was 170. That's a 20-22 BMI. I'm not going to tell you you're a twig or emaciated, but it was a terrible look for me.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
9hr ago
While I don’t doubt your take on your friends is correct
Believe me, based on some conversations I've had to sit through, they are True Believers. And probably example #1 of Henderson's luxury beliefs theory. They are vocally (strongly, and often) in favor of all kinds of lefty positions that are destructive to society, and they follow none of them. Aside from not attending church, one would be hard-pressed to identify a traditional belief they don't obey.
Otherwise, I agree with you fully because I've followed the same pattern.
People just assume because I’m smart, courteous and well spoke and I keep my cards close to my best that I agree with them.
These days, this provides less coverage than you might think. I do the same, but my nigh-absolute refusal to engage in culture war politics has led some friends and family to (correctly) conclude I'm to the right of Attila the Hun. As the sage said, one must be very right wing to not discuss politics.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
9hr ago
I don't think 4chan "won" some much as the simply contributed to the blue and grey tribes collapse in influence which cleared the way for the Tea-Party to build a national mandate.
Totalitarianit
9hr ago
I remember watching Earthlings in college and it serving as the last straw before my attempt at veganism, which eventually shifted to vegetarianism, which eventually shifted all the way back to me eating meat again. The way humans treat animals on a global scale cannot be morally justified, so I don't even try to justify it. If there are practical policies we can implement to reduce suffering without upending entire industries then I'd be happy to contribute.
As far as the nutritional aspect, I'm not learned up enough on micronutrients, absorption, macros, etc. to go toe to toe with people, but what little I do know about nutrition makes me think the vegan diet still isn't where it needs to be to keep people at their optimal level of health.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
10hr ago
Somewhere there is a good sketch comedy when you realize a good chunk of "almost every person" who'd be scandalized actually agrees with you.
I don't think you're alone: I think I am far more centrist than you are, but the rest of the description applies to me. I try to avoid discussing politics IRL, although griping about general government incompetence is evergreen, although not trivially to actually solve generally.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
10hr ago
Im not even convinced they lost the culture war. It's the liberals who appear to be imploding.
Familial/tribal/ethnic loyalties? Nobody is born into a void, into the "view from nowhere"; we're all born into a particular place, a particular family, particular conditions; embedded in a specific social context, full of unchosen bonds and obligations, which indelibly shape who we are.
You (generic/rhetorical "you," not making any assumptions here) love your family not because they're "the best family" according to some prior metric, you love your family because they're yours. Much the same with patriotism. To quote Chesterton, "Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."
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