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Those in glass houses... “They were models. Eastern European, definitely,” she told me. Among the lab’s staff, she said, “all of us women made it a point to be
by breck 7y ago
Those in glass houses...
“They were models. Eastern European, definitely,” she told me. Among the lab’s staff, she said, “all of us women made it a point to be super nice to them. We literally had a conversation about how, on the off chance that they’re not there by choice, we could maybe help them.”
And what did these people go home and start doing for Eastern European models since then? I find this pretty condescending. I know a few Eastern European models who are incredibly smart, and perhaps dated some folks who they wouldn't have dated if they were born in the U.S., but used those relationships to get themselves out of possible hellish, abusive, misogynistic situations back home (this is somewhat speculation, but our current First Lady seems to fall in this category). They were young but had been through hard times like the disintegration of the Soviet Union and starvation, and aren't so naive. They were honest about things, and weren't living in delusion. Some of the toughest and smartest people I've ever met in fact. There just seems to be a lot of phony moral outrage here.
- frostburg 7y agoThe ones that you know weren't there with Epstein. Context.
- breck 7y agoIt's a fair point. I wasn't in the room and never met Epstein. I just wanted to provide a counterargument, because I think people are quick to pile on.
- liability 7y ago> "I know a few Eastern European models" Do you?
- khazhou 7y agoHN users are a varied bunch. There is no reason to not believe him.
- liability 7y agoThat particular user is someone I distrust, based on past interactions (a habit of speaking with the "royal we" for instance.)
- breck 7y agoI'm sorry you distrust me, but I do my best to speak the truth as I see it. My name is Breck Yunits, I've been on this site for 12 years. You can find more about me at breckyunits.com. You can see over a decade of commits in just one of my GitHub accounts at github.com/breck7. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. You are free to post your opinions and criticisms of me, I really am grateful for it and often learn a lot from criticism. > a habit of speaking with the "royal we" for instance. This is a fair point. I'll explain. My Tree Notation ideas are simple, bold, and have very big implications if I'm right. I have gotten tremendous help from hundreds of people, and have had thousands of conversations about it. My initial paper had initials of many people who read the initial drafts and helped me publish it. I got a lot of negative comments when I posted it, with the most common that it was nothing original and/or that I was some crazy nut detached from reality. Instead of subject my friends and collaborators to that, I've just decided to be the shield that takes the heat, while everyone else does the hard job of pushing these ideas forward. I think it's now pretty close to the point where people see that we were right after all, and Tree Notation may indeed eat the software world, and you will set a lot of new names, and mine will fade out.
- floodyberry- 7y agoyou can say that again, he definitely stands out from all the other white dudes on here who think they know everything
- paulsutter 7y agoIn Tokyo you could walk into a nightclub at 2am on a wednesday night and the place was filled with eastern european models (bored and in town for photo shoots), and mostly western english teachers. Ok that was kind of bizarre, but if you live in a major city yes there will be models. They don’t just exist in advertising.
- hos234 7y agoWell America currently runs the biggest outrage factories in the world. Don't expect the output to reduce anytime soon. The Attention Economy is still scaling up.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- breck 7y agoThe outrage economy is a good term, thanks.
- SquishyPanda23 7y agoThe context here is that Epstein was a convicted sex offender who was widely believed to traffic women into sexual slavery, and sexual slavery is a serious problem in Eastern Europe [1]. The implication is the staff were concerned that Epstein was bringing literal slaves into the office. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_trafficking_in_Europe
- breck 7y agoGotcha, I don't know the details of the allegations, and whether it was sex slavery or not. I was just giving another data point with a somewhat contrarian view. Thanks for sharing. One nit about the OP, is when any press outlet reports this as a "suicide". At the very least, this should be reported as an "assisted suicide". My infant can't poop without us having video evidence. The odds of this being an individual act given where and who he was are maybe .1%? Only problem is so many people wanted him gone, hard to figure out who helped him.
- WAHa_06x36 7y agoHere's a thought: Don't rush in to give "contrarian views" on things you don't know about. That does not help anyone at all.
- breck 7y agoWell one of my best friends and mentors was an “Eastern European model” who I think would be offended by this quote, which can come across as a patronizing attitude. She would say not to judge by appearance, and that perhaps Epstein is helping these women more than these women would. Don’t just a book by its cover.
- AndrewBissell 7y agoAgain, we're not talking here about a blanket judgment of "attractive Eastern European women" or even "attractive Eastern European women with a much older man." We're talking about this in the context of them showing up with a man who was a confessed and convicted pedophilic sex trafficker. That's why people were entirely in the right to assume that perhaps they didn't have their full agency in the situation. As a matter of fact one of Epstein's & Ghislaine Maxwell's tactics was to confiscate passports, which could very well have been the case with these women Epstein brought to MIT.