4 ms·

The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I had to tell a friend of mine to take a break from i

by RajT88 9mo ago

The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I had to tell a friend of mine to take a break from it. The level of tinfoil hat theories (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth off of which to build more theories is really something. The unfortunate thing is - in our current environment, the crazy speculation and knowingly dealing in just shit you made up seems to actually pay off when pressuring public officials. I am glad the files were released. A lot of people have a lot of explaining to do. I don't actually think this ends up going anywhere, but we'll see.

dash2 9mo ago
This, and also a lot of antisemitism seems to have been enabled.
- fromMars 9mo ago
  Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary. As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews. Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church. Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases. It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
  - Hikikomori 8mo ago
    >Not to downplay Yet you go on to victim card yourself.
  - asdff 9mo ago
    >It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral. That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists. The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent. So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested. I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits. You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.
    - dash2 9mo ago
      Yeah, but 2 things can both be true: 1 The Epstein story has an interesting Mossad angle, maybe they contacted him or even paid him 2 Lunatic antisemites (and probably many bots) are overrunning the internet with medieval-style antisemitism in which Epstein is still alive, babies were eaten, etc.
      - anechouapechou 9mo ago
        [flagged]
    - jalapenoi 9mo ago
      [dead]
  - RajT88 9mo ago
    I am not Jewish, and must be lucky to hang out in the parts of the internet where I haven't seen it. (Except for Breitbart comments - I pop in there when I want to know the subtext of what right wing politicians are saying. There's plenty of anti-semitism there.) > Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases. I have no interest in dying on this hill, but there's 3 different technical terms which describe distinct kinds of attraction people have to children in relation to puberty, and that term does not describe 14-15 year olds. For whatever that is worth, with regards to the legality in parts of Europe indeed age of consent can vary widely across nations, and even states within nations. But let's be clear - what Epstein did was illegal even if it was done to adults. That's human trafficking.
    - fromMars 9mo ago
      I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved. He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.
      - krapp 9mo ago
        You aren't taking into account all of the effort the Republicans spent ginning up conspiracy theories about Satanic pedophile cults within the Democratic Party and how Trump's base made that and "releasing the Epstein files" their entire identity, or the absolute clownshow debacle of the Trump administration trying to stall, prevaricate and memory-hole the entire thing after it became clear how implicated Trump himself was. Also the number of celebrities and powerful people (including the sitting President) involved makes it a bigger story. That said, yes the antisemites have come out in force around this, just as they did around Palestinian activism, and just as they always do. But I think most people's outrage is focused on systems of privilege and power and on the Trump administration in particular, not anything about "the Jews."
  - stefantalpalaru 9mo ago
    [dead]
  - dttze 9mo ago
    [dead]
strictnein 9mo ago
> The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I saw a video on Instagram claiming (or at least insinuating) that Epstein had access to all of Lifetouch's photos, because "the company is in the Epstein files!". Turns out, it was a single line item for $109 in what looked like banking records. In comparison, that same selection of files mentioned Whole Foods ~250 times. For those outside the US, Lifetouch does school photos for about half the schools in the US (or something like that) so you can understand how that's a thread that conspiracy theorists can pull on. But there's nothing there. Just a single payment to the company in a sea of thousands and thousands of normal, every day purchases.
- nixosbestos 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - janalsncm 9mo ago
    There is a book “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” which you might want to consider before deciding truth doesn’t matter anymore. It describes an explicit strategy by the Kremlin to poison the information landscape with lies, half truths, and conspiracies. And amplify conflicting narratives. Eventually people stop caring about what is true anymore.
    - jrflowers 9mo ago
      nixosbestos’s comment was in response to a post about how an arbitrary brand new conspiracy theory didn’t have compelling evidence in the emails. It seems like saying “who cares” to what kind of reads like “technically there’s an infinite amount of conspiracy theories that aren’t proven in the emails” is saying the opposite of “truth doesn’t matter”
    - dunslandsboo 9mo ago
      Except you and everyone you agree with I'm sure
    - 9mo ago
nixosbestos 9mo ago
[flagged]
- RajT88 9mo ago
  > What a fucking joke. This site is a joke. This discourse is a joke. The entire pretense of these bullshit conversations are a joke. Don't take it out on me. I am outraged. I can't be outraged every minute of every day, and certainly not at the very-unlikely-to-be-true worst theories from the files. I am so sorry my post did not live up to your expectations. You're right about something: > you know, than remarking on the fact that once again, nothing will happen. Any kind of pretense that justice ever got served to Epstein and his co-conspirators is a joke. We all know it. The system is a joke - a joke that's on us.
  - nixosbestos 9mo ago
    Sorry, I regretted this pretty much after I wrote it. I'm upset, didn't need to be at you. I'm having a bit of a hard time compartmentalizing? all of this, despite my default cynic attitude. Time for an extended break from things.
    - dang 9mo ago
      Kudos for recovering this nicely. I've seen a number of HN threads lately where commenters regain their balance like this and respond in a thoroughly decent way. A new pattern? I wish! but it's probably just the clustering illusion... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37303788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37303788)
      - JMiao 9mo ago
        what about a new top nav category next to show? decency
        dang 9mo ago
        It's a nice thought but I wouldn't want to embarrass people. p.s. Hi! has been a while...
jrflowers 9mo ago
> (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth I haven’t seen any indication of “people that didn’t previously believe in cannibal elites now believe in cannibal elites after reading the emails” being a phenomenon that actually exists. I’ve yet to interact with anyone that has seriously said “I didn’t believe they ate babies on Tuesday but it is Thursday and now I believe they were eating babies.” but people are posting like that’s a thing that happens frequently now. It’s almost like the tinfoil hat theory I’ve seen the most isn’t “pedophile cannibals” but rather “reading the emails will make you go crazy and start believing in cannibal pedophiles” like they are an actual real-life Lovecraftian hazard, which is a much more outlandish idea than… kooks and hucksters continuing to be kooks and hucksters.
- anechouapechou 9mo ago
  https://www.justice.gov/epstein https://www.justice.gov/epstein Search "jerky"
  - jrflowers 9mo ago
    I have read the jerky emails, and watched a long discussion of them between a bunch of folks, and I still don’t know a single person that went from not believing in cannibals to believing in cannibals. The range of responses I ultimately saw was “this proves my existing belief that they were eating babies” to “wow that guy’s colon must’ve been a disaster”. The “I already believed they were eating babies” crowd lost a lot of steam and went quiet as soon as someone pointed out that there are several reasons why people refrigerate jerky (high-fat jerky, lack of nitrites in the recipe, humid conditions, etc.)
    - RajT88 8mo ago
      I'm absolutely on board that "jerky" may mean something else. But on balance - he kept on staff a professional chef of some acclaim who was known for selling amazing jerky at his restaurant. That restaurant incidentally included the word "cannibal" in the name. I'm on the fence between "jerky" literally meaning jerky and something else (the discussion sure is weird), but I'm going to need a lot more to think it is human meat.
polotics 9mo ago
Yes, and... the 330 gallons of sulphuric acid did come as a surprise to me. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15545409/330-gallons-sulfuric-acid-purchased-Epstein-Island-day-FBI-opened-investigation-paedophiles-trafficking-charges-newly-released-files-appear-show.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15545409/330-gallon... Half of the files were released, and instead of the congress mandated removal of victim names, perpetrators were blanked out.
- polotics 9mo ago
  Also btw just in case: This volume could provide approximately 2,600 to 3,500 individual pH adjustments for a 15,000-gallon pool. The main pool-house on the island has about 20'000 gallons of certainly-clean water in it, as far as I can reckon. The hypothesis for the other option: a complete acid wash of the pools, implies approximately 22 to 33 average-sized residential pools were to be washed that day, a dangerous process requiring a professional staff, that stuff is nasty. You do not want to scrub your pool every day, week, or month, you will need to redo the whole surfacing soon enough after a few scrubs. You also do not want that super dangerous liquid in large quantities around to save on bulk-purchase costs, storage and safety make this a no go as far as cost-savings are concerned. No trace of contracts with pro pool cleaners coming for a scrub in the files, but I did not look hard. This is a cop's job. The theory that Sulphuric acid would have been used for cocaine production also does not pass muster: you would need to have a large quantity of raw leafs on ships inbound to the island for that volume, and some serious breaking-bad type setup there. This kind of dangerous activity is best done far away from billionaires enjoying the final product. Good luck asking your friendly SOTA LLM any questions of the form: "how many gallons of sulphuric acid to fully dissolve 40 kg of organic matter?" Приятных снов y'all
  - eMPee584 8mo ago
    > can’t help with anything involving harming an animal or figuring out how to destroy a body.

by RajT88 9mo ago

dash2 9mo ago

This, and also a lot of antisemitism seems to have been enabled.

fromMars 9mo ago
Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary. As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews. Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church. Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases. It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
- Hikikomori 8mo ago
  >Not to downplay Yet you go on to victim card yourself.
- asdff 9mo ago
  >It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral. That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists. The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent. So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested. I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits. You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.
  - dash2 9mo ago
    Yeah, but 2 things can both be true: 1 The Epstein story has an interesting Mossad angle, maybe they contacted him or even paid him 2 Lunatic antisemites (and probably many bots) are overrunning the internet with medieval-style antisemitism in which Epstein is still alive, babies were eaten, etc.
    - anechouapechou 9mo ago
      [flagged]
  - jalapenoi 9mo ago
    [dead]
- RajT88 9mo ago
  I am not Jewish, and must be lucky to hang out in the parts of the internet where I haven't seen it. (Except for Breitbart comments - I pop in there when I want to know the subtext of what right wing politicians are saying. There's plenty of anti-semitism there.) > Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases. I have no interest in dying on this hill, but there's 3 different technical terms which describe distinct kinds of attraction people have to children in relation to puberty, and that term does not describe 14-15 year olds. For whatever that is worth, with regards to the legality in parts of Europe indeed age of consent can vary widely across nations, and even states within nations. But let's be clear - what Epstein did was illegal even if it was done to adults. That's human trafficking.
  - fromMars 9mo ago
    I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved. He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.
    - krapp 9mo ago
      You aren't taking into account all of the effort the Republicans spent ginning up conspiracy theories about Satanic pedophile cults within the Democratic Party and how Trump's base made that and "releasing the Epstein files" their entire identity, or the absolute clownshow debacle of the Trump administration trying to stall, prevaricate and memory-hole the entire thing after it became clear how implicated Trump himself was. Also the number of celebrities and powerful people (including the sitting President) involved makes it a bigger story. That said, yes the antisemites have come out in force around this, just as they did around Palestinian activism, and just as they always do. But I think most people's outrage is focused on systems of privilege and power and on the Trump administration in particular, not anything about "the Jews."
- stefantalpalaru 9mo ago
  [dead]
- dttze 9mo ago
  [dead]

strictnein 9mo ago

> The amount of breathless conclusion jumping from citizen journalists has been completely bananas as well. I saw a video on Instagram claiming (or at least insinuating) that Epstein had access to all of Lifetouch's photos, because "the company is in the Epstein files!". Turns out, it was a single line item for $109 in what looked like banking records. In comparison, that same selection of files mentioned Whole Foods ~250 times. For those outside the US, Lifetouch does school photos for about half the schools in the US (or something like that) so you can understand how that's a thread that conspiracy theorists can pull on. But there's nothing there. Just a single payment to the company in a sea of thousands and thousands of normal, every day purchases.

nixosbestos 9mo ago
[flagged]
- janalsncm 9mo ago
  There is a book “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” which you might want to consider before deciding truth doesn’t matter anymore. It describes an explicit strategy by the Kremlin to poison the information landscape with lies, half truths, and conspiracies. And amplify conflicting narratives. Eventually people stop caring about what is true anymore.
  - jrflowers 9mo ago
    nixosbestos’s comment was in response to a post about how an arbitrary brand new conspiracy theory didn’t have compelling evidence in the emails. It seems like saying “who cares” to what kind of reads like “technically there’s an infinite amount of conspiracy theories that aren’t proven in the emails” is saying the opposite of “truth doesn’t matter”
  - dunslandsboo 9mo ago
    Except you and everyone you agree with I'm sure
  - 9mo ago

nixosbestos 9mo ago

[flagged]

RajT88 9mo ago
> What a fucking joke. This site is a joke. This discourse is a joke. The entire pretense of these bullshit conversations are a joke. Don't take it out on me. I am outraged. I can't be outraged every minute of every day, and certainly not at the very-unlikely-to-be-true worst theories from the files. I am so sorry my post did not live up to your expectations. You're right about something: > you know, than remarking on the fact that once again, nothing will happen. Any kind of pretense that justice ever got served to Epstein and his co-conspirators is a joke. We all know it. The system is a joke - a joke that's on us.
- nixosbestos 9mo ago
  Sorry, I regretted this pretty much after I wrote it. I'm upset, didn't need to be at you. I'm having a bit of a hard time compartmentalizing? all of this, despite my default cynic attitude. Time for an extended break from things.
  - dang 9mo ago
    Kudos for recovering this nicely. I've seen a number of HN threads lately where commenters regain their balance like this and respond in a thoroughly decent way. A new pattern? I wish! but it's probably just the clustering illusion... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37303788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37303788)
    - JMiao 9mo ago
      what about a new top nav category next to show? decency
      - dang 9mo ago
        It's a nice thought but I wouldn't want to embarrass people. p.s. Hi! has been a while...

jrflowers 9mo ago

> (example: cannibalism) which people are now taking as the truth I haven’t seen any indication of “people that didn’t previously believe in cannibal elites now believe in cannibal elites after reading the emails” being a phenomenon that actually exists. I’ve yet to interact with anyone that has seriously said “I didn’t believe they ate babies on Tuesday but it is Thursday and now I believe they were eating babies.” but people are posting like that’s a thing that happens frequently now. It’s almost like the tinfoil hat theory I’ve seen the most isn’t “pedophile cannibals” but rather “reading the emails will make you go crazy and start believing in cannibal pedophiles” like they are an actual real-life Lovecraftian hazard, which is a much more outlandish idea than… kooks and hucksters continuing to be kooks and hucksters.

anechouapechou 9mo ago
https://www.justice.gov/epstein https://www.justice.gov/epstein Search "jerky"
- jrflowers 9mo ago
  I have read the jerky emails, and watched a long discussion of them between a bunch of folks, and I still don’t know a single person that went from not believing in cannibals to believing in cannibals. The range of responses I ultimately saw was “this proves my existing belief that they were eating babies” to “wow that guy’s colon must’ve been a disaster”. The “I already believed they were eating babies” crowd lost a lot of steam and went quiet as soon as someone pointed out that there are several reasons why people refrigerate jerky (high-fat jerky, lack of nitrites in the recipe, humid conditions, etc.)
  - RajT88 8mo ago
    I'm absolutely on board that "jerky" may mean something else. But on balance - he kept on staff a professional chef of some acclaim who was known for selling amazing jerky at his restaurant. That restaurant incidentally included the word "cannibal" in the name. I'm on the fence between "jerky" literally meaning jerky and something else (the discussion sure is weird), but I'm going to need a lot more to think it is human meat.

polotics 9mo ago

Yes, and... the 330 gallons of sulphuric acid did come as a surprise to me. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15545409/330-gallons-sulfuric-acid-purchased-Epstein-Island-day-FBI-opened-investigation-paedophiles-trafficking-charges-newly-released-files-appear-show.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15545409/330-gallon... Half of the files were released, and instead of the congress mandated removal of victim names, perpetrators were blanked out.

polotics 9mo ago
Also btw just in case: This volume could provide approximately 2,600 to 3,500 individual pH adjustments for a 15,000-gallon pool. The main pool-house on the island has about 20'000 gallons of certainly-clean water in it, as far as I can reckon. The hypothesis for the other option: a complete acid wash of the pools, implies approximately 22 to 33 average-sized residential pools were to be washed that day, a dangerous process requiring a professional staff, that stuff is nasty. You do not want to scrub your pool every day, week, or month, you will need to redo the whole surfacing soon enough after a few scrubs. You also do not want that super dangerous liquid in large quantities around to save on bulk-purchase costs, storage and safety make this a no go as far as cost-savings are concerned. No trace of contracts with pro pool cleaners coming for a scrub in the files, but I did not look hard. This is a cop's job. The theory that Sulphuric acid would have been used for cocaine production also does not pass muster: you would need to have a large quantity of raw leafs on ships inbound to the island for that volume, and some serious breaking-bad type setup there. This kind of dangerous activity is best done far away from billionaires enjoying the final product. Good luck asking your friendly SOTA LLM any questions of the form: "how many gallons of sulphuric acid to fully dissolve 40 kg of organic matter?" Приятных снов y'all
- eMPee584 8mo ago
  > can’t help with anything involving harming an animal or figuring out how to destroy a body.