domain:kvetch.substack.com
Jiro
28m ago
No, that's precisely the kind of rights-based mindset that I'm describing as not being duty-based.
If he owes the duty to other people, his mindset isn't the only one--there's also the other people's mindset to consider. And they may think that they are owed, but that they don't owe. It's exploitation by them.
2rafa
31m 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?
And besides, you again ignore the entire point. In one of the most expensive intelligence operations in modern history, the most banal, easiest, entry level bulk reposting of links (which would have been botted even back then) was supposedly manually done by a middle aged ultra-rich heiress who knew many of the most powerful people in the world and who was moonlighting as a Reddit powermod and farming karma by reposting (in 99.9% of cases) uncontroversial news stories, the 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.
“Sorry, Your Royal Highness, I’m going to have to interrupt our drinks so I can repost an article about an avalanche in Spain on Reddit for 500 karma because the huge intelligence operation I work for values me not for my contacts and charisma but because I can press submit on m.reddit.com several dozen times a day, a skill nobody else you have access to can do”?
hydroacetylene
36m ago
No. I’m familiar with oxygen-acetylene reactions in the context of welding and thought the portmanteau with hydroxychloroquine sounded cool.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
10m ago
We also dislike people declaring they have reported someone. "I'm telling on you!" is not any more effective or impressive here than it was in kindergarten. What is that supposed to accomplish? Put extra pressure on the mods? We can see your report. Submit your report and move on.
Apologies then, I will not do this in the future.
Hieronymus
11m ago
Yes, of course; that's why I mentioned it. It's a funny story, and in some ways the pastor made nerdy, clumsy me feel like a paragon of social grace by comparison. It's not an example to imitate.
And yet... I don't know. The whole service was so incredibly earnest in a way most weddings, even Christian weddings, are not. It wasn't a show. It wasn't just a party. It wasn't a chance for the bride and groom to show off. Great is Thy Faithfulness may never have been sung more sincerely.
The liturgy would not have impressed Cranmer. The preaching would not have impressed Edwards or Baucham. But God was glorified anyway.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3m ago
As far as I can tell, TACO is somewhat responsible, but also, average US tariff rates are just over 50% on Chinese goods?
It seems fairly plausible that TACO/other delays in tariff implementation are substantially responsible. The "Liberation Day" tariffs weren't just a hike on (already high) tariffs on China - they were (supposed to be) a sweeping set of tariffs applying to basically everyone. China is a big trading partner, but it's still only ("only") a little over 10% of US imports. A moderate-to-high increase in the price of Chinese imports is not going to single-handed crash the US economy (especially since I expect re-exportation and other means of evasion to mitigate it to some degree), and given existing stocks and possible mitigation strategies, major impacts might be quite delayed.
On the other hand, if the April 2nd tariffs had gone into effect quickly, we'd likely be looking at a very different state of affairs.
erwgv3g34
1hr ago
Paedophilia is the term that needs definition. There have been some extreme claims of 12-14 year olds being raped, but it seems in the main to be more "underage by American law" which is "not 18 yet" (in other countries, age of consent is 16, for example).
Actually, the age of consent in America varies by state, from 16 to 18. The myth that it's a hard 18 across the country is due to the fact that virtually all television and movies are made in California, where it is indeed 18.
Jiro
24m ago
You have taken him out of context. If you look a few posts down, you see that he also says that people already understand that men need to be held accountable. You've distorted his claim that women should be accountable just like everyone else to imply that he says that only women need to be held accountable.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
36m ago
You continue holding the idea of these people behaving in predefined ways. They don't. You think they wouldn't use an account with their own last name. Yeah, they would. I wouldn't even say it for the tin foil "Triple bluff." No, they just don't actually think about these things. Opsec is often comically bad, it just sort of works out anyway because nobody gives a shit and people are actually really good at keeping their mouths shut. Though for what it's worth, what you are describing is in fact perfect opsec, because you've convinced yourself it couldn't possibly be her.
So. The patterns suggestive to internet sleuths that account was hers is due to "comically bad" opsec, which enable the sleuths to make the connection. Whereas simultaneously, all the other contradictory patterns (rest of accounts post history) suggestive of coincidence is "perfect opsec", and can be dismissed.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
No, that can't be it, because there's one alleged victim who has been trawling the story around for years (and failing in all the law suits) that Trump and Epstein raped her when she was 12/13:
A federal lawsuit filed in California in April 2016 against Epstein and Donald Trump by a California woman alleged that the two men sexually assaulted her at a series of parties at Epstein's Manhattan residence in 1994, when she was 13 years old.
It may well be that there is no convenient little list or black book of clients that can be produced, and any records available are tangled up in "yeah but if you go ahead and say X was an Epstein client they will immediately drag you into court" so that the promised Big Reveal can't be made after all.
The trouble with high-profile cases like these is that there are then a lot of people happy to come forward with claims from "back in the day" which can't be substantiated (but they can peddle them to the media for nice sums of money):
On October 25, 2016, allegations were made by two men stating that Trump had attended and partaken in sex parties filled with underage minor females as young as 15 years old who were induced with promises of career advancement. Illegal drugs were also alleged to have been provided to the minors.
One man was identified as model and actor Andy Lucchesi, while the other was identified as a fashion photographer who spoke on condition of anonymity. Both men claim to have been acquaintances of Trump during that decade, which one described as his "Trump days".
Lucchesi, for his part, claimed that he saw Trump engage in sexual activity with the girls but did not witness him taking illicit drugs. Regarding the age of the girls, Lucchesi said he himself never specifically asked about their ages, only remarking of the attendees "a lot of girls, [aged] 14, look 24."
That part seems like careful legal advice about skating past any direct accusations and then counter-accusations of libel - after all, you never said X knowingly fucked a 14 year old when she could convincingly pass for 20, now did you? But it's sufficiently juicy a claim for the paper to run with the story.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
I remain impressed by how you manage to drag abortion in to any discussion whatsoever. Nobody was talking about 19th century attitudes to the personhood of the foetus, but there you went!
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
10m ago
You've distorted his claim that women should be accountable just like everyone else to imply that he says that only women need to be held accountable
No I didn't.
Dean
Flairless
2hr ago
And rightly so. Please keep that link and reminder on hand. It is certainly a good example of AlexanderTurok's bad faith characterizations of past arguments.
Lots of duty based systems eg confucianism lasted long term. I'm not sure how well adapted they are to modern day life, where a lot of the scaffolding¹ that helps maintain the systems is crumbling. But these systems usually specifically have moral parables about people behaving virtuously — dutifully — even when they're reciprocated not just with nothing but with active ingratitude and disrespect.
Confucianism is an explicitly reciprocal duty-based system. It was often explicitly modeled both in terms of father-son relationships, where the son's obedience to the father is contingent on the father being a virtuous enough patriarch to be worth respecting, and between subject and sovereign, where a sovereign's failure to maintain virtue is the basis for losing the mandate of heaven and being replaced by someone else who will appriopriately fill the duties required.
Confucianism and deontological religions have a commonality in that the duty-based system is based on relationships that are reciprocal. Religious deontology works from the premise of virtue's relationship, and thus duty to, one's own god. Doing so brings you closer to your god / earns good karma / etc. from your metaphysical duty-obligator. More secular Confucianism works from the premise of the duty to natural relationship of [child] and [parent]. Doing so brings you more harmonious relationships with the other part of the relationships.
No major deontology system has ever worked from a premise of a duty towards an action outside of the context of the relationship. Even when the Christians preach charity to one's enemies, it is based from the premise of the relationship of the charitable practioner to their god. When the virtue-ethicists like Aristotle talk about balancing bravery between cowardliness and foolhardiness, it is in the context of its effects on, and the relationship of the practitioner to, others.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
He got off the hook in 2008 and pled not guilty here. I don't see why he wouldn't at least fight the charges.
He got off once. He'd used up all his favours. It was likely the truth was going to come out about how he'd been lying all along, and the entire house of cards had collapsed.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
Or he's just really fed-up with people winking and nudging that he was fucking 14 and 15 year olds. I can see him being defensive about "so I hung out with him, so what? So did a lot of people back then, there were a lot of people in those social circles" and "yeah there were girls at those parties, there's always girls at those parties, attractive young women like rich and powerful men, why are you making such a big deal out of this?".
Trump is not somebody to sit back coolly and take a rational approach to this kind of constant dripping of irritation and reporters and others harassing him about Epstein. Particularly after the E. Jean Carroll case where he wasn't convicted of rape but the judge then came out and said "yeah you can say it was rape". People really are out to get him, even if he is being paranoid.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
men in spheres bemoaning lack of trad values often mention virginity but I'm never clear on if they're offering the same virginity themselves
Probably(even if rather unhappily so). But the crux of what makes white weddings work is ‘the man who makes it clear you aren’t a virgin has to marry you’, not ‘men dont get premarital sex’- even if the latter is still discouraged(rightly).
I did have a ‘duty’ frame in mind, but what I was really trying to get at in my post was- different people have different duties. Sometimes this looks unfair, but it’s because people are different.
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
55m ago
You then stake on the idea of intelligence agencies not working with liars and conmen, that's exactly what they do. Treachery, betrayal, is considered the gravest sin. The lowest circle of the Inferno, the ice is full of traitors. What has the US done, time and again?
I think this is ideosyncratic chain of thought and mostly irrelevant as a consideration to intelligence agencies.
Important part is not that Esptein was a liar, it's the narcissim and bragging. It is a more profile of source of leaks than than someone who would be responsible for running anything. Putting this guy in charge of any operation would have been a miscalculation, exactly because he was sort of guy who would be caught. And look, he was caught and convicted, twice.
I could be as well as that Epstein had some connections but also overinflated ego which lead to running a blackmail operation on his own initiative. Perhaps he offered services to whatever genuine CIA/Mossad connections. Perhaps he put up airs of intelligence connections in order to appear more serious and invulnerable, and the rest of the weirdness surrounding his circumstances was because of regular interpersonal corruption and blackmail.
manually reposting links across Reddit to farm karma
To continue her work in the giant psy-op that is reddit. This isn't a trivial affair. Reddit a bastion of progressivism and a key component in their narrative machine.
For my money, I don't view Epstein as a Mossad op. I view it as a joint operation between multiple countries' intelligence services where they each found benefit.
You continue holding the idea of these people behaving in predefined ways. They don't. You think they wouldn't use an account with their own last name. Yeah, they would. I wouldn't even say it for the tin foil "Triple bluff." No, they just don't actually think about these things. Opsec is often comically bad, it just sort of works out anyway because nobody gives a shit and people are actually really good at keeping their mouths shut. Though for what it's worth, what you are describing is in fact perfect opsec, because you've convinced yourself it couldn't possibly be her.
It was. Your priors are wrong, probability has her dead to rights.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
Oh, yeah. "He's not like that with me" up to the minute he is like that.
I don't get it, I genuinely don't. "Love" must be one hell of a drug, to hollow your brain out like that.
Also, in a lot of these situations and that class, the guy doesn't give a damn about if the woman gets knocked up or what. If she wants babies, fine. If she doesn't want babies, fine. It's her job to ensure she doesn't get pregnant. So it's perfectly plausible he'd threaten to kill the baby because it isn't his baby to him in any meaningful way. (The only use of "my client is a father of three children" to the likes of those scumbags is so their lawyers can plead them off in court).
HereAndGone
1hr ago
Had experience a couple of years back with a family member who tried suicide, and despite their protestations, it was one of the "cry for help" types rather than genuine "will kill myself for sure". They certainly intended to die, but the method they picked wasn't 100% fatal (indeed, looking it up, it wouldn't have been fatal at all but they didn't know that).
So yeah, people can try and kill themselves and even be serious about it, but not so serious as to pick a really working method. I think Epstein was the kind of guy who would try and use a suicide attempt to bargain his way out of things, he just mis-timed it and it turned out it worked.
No, I mean I used to have a duty-based mindset and I pulled myself partially out of it by noticing that people who are very interested in my duties towards them (personally or in a wider sphere) are often uninterested in any duties they might have to me, or regard their traditional duties as historical oppression now thankfully abandoned.
One must have both. Otherwise it’s just playing cooperate with defect-bot.
Don’t get me wrong, I know what you’re getting at. I’m just saying that, long-term, people have to feel that their duties broadly even out. It doesn’t have to be literal ‘I will give you X if you perform Y duty’ but ultimately you have to persuade people, generation by generation anew, that your conception of duty and virtue is a valid one they should follow.
I would say that a big part of the decline in duty you mention is both sexes observing, in different times and at different ways, that they seemed to be being taken advantage of. You can’t sustain such systems long term.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
On a cursory reading, it seems to be more that it was Epstein who liked them very young, and the other girls were recruited around ages 14-16 or so by other girls or by Maxwell and then groomed into being the party favours by promises of modelling careers and the like, with threats then if they tried leaving.
2rafa
3hr ago
It's also notable that the headmaster at the Dalton School while Epstein worked there was Donald Barr. Barr worked for the OSS (CIA precursor) during WWII and was also former AG Bill Barr's father.
This is incorrect, Epstein joined Dalton 3-4 months after Barr left (which I believe may even have been before Epstein dropped out of NYU) and there’s no evidence Barr would have had anything to do with his hiring.
"According to Hoffenberg, it was Robert Maxwell who first introduced his daughter to Epstein in the late 1980s."
Hoffenberg was quoting Epstein, whom he knew since this would have been in late 1992 / early 1993 before the Towers Financial collapse. Your friend asks who how you’re dating an infamous tycoon and press baron’s daughter, saying that her father told you to look after her before his mysterious death is peak Epstein, peak drama, peak bullshit, just like telling them you were personally centrally involved in Iran Contra which he was also known to do.
Ghislaine’s friends at the time, not to mention her brothers (who were very close to her and to their father, and to whom he had actually entrusted her care) first heard of Jeffrey after she moved to NYC full-time and introduced him as her new man. Epstein’s narrative that Maxwell senior introduced him (a sleazy New York conman less rich, less influential, less powerful and less well connected than countless other rich and influential friends he had) to her as her ‘protector’ doesn’t make sense.
We're not going to take sides in a situation like this. People accuse other posters of misrepresenting and strawmanning them all the time. Sometimes people are misrepresenting and strawmanning other posters, but y'all need to work this out yourselves-civilly!-or let it go.
When we do intervene is when threads become pointless back and forth exchanges of "Did not!" "Did too!" Which is what this is becoming.
We also dislike people declaring they have reported someone. "I'm telling on you!" is not any more effective or impressive here than it was in kindergarten. What is that supposed to accomplish? Put extra pressure on the mods? We can see your report. Submit your report and move on.
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