https://belib.org/pensamiento-yagé “Epstein wasn't selling girls' bodies, he was selling the experience of impunity. The end product was not the sexual act, but the assurance that there would be no consequences.” FULL texttranslated from Spanish original: “The comparison being made of Pasolini's Salò film and the Epstein files is not a metaphor, in an explanation of the real thing. Pasolini unveiled the intimate logic of naked power, the same that Epstein's roles expose in raw, without aesthetic mediation. Salò does not speak of historical fascism, but of fascism as a permanent possibility of capitalism. It's not about "insanity" or "individual perversion." It is about the instrumental rationality of power when it is emancipated from all ethical limits. Power doesn't just want obedience, it wants to create reality. Epstein was not an isolated sadist but the manager of a legal and morally extraterritorial territory, where the capitalist elites created an experimental space freed from all human law. There the accumulation of capital translates to the accumulation of impunity on feminized and impoverished bodies. Epstein wasn't selling girls' bodies, he was selling the experience of impunity. The end product was not the sexual act, but the assurance that there would be no consequences. That's the supreme commodity in capitalism. The right to transgress without punishment. But power is not omnipotent. It has cracks. And in those cracks grows the ordinary. The resistance here is not "complaintance", but practice of re-appropriation: Re-appropriation of the body. Re-appropriating the narrative. Re-appropriation of the look. Where there is testimony, there is gap in the power. Where there is memory, there is a possibility of justice. Epstein is not a case, he is the most vomiting face of a system that needs to be destroyed before he destroys everything. Burn what has to burn. “ Source: https://belib.org/pensamiento-yagé
In the current trove, I doubt it. He'd have been outed by now. But there are still 3m or 3.5m documents/files still to release. Yeah, the number of men who partook is dumbfounding. And doing so is just gross. I mean, media has primed males to look at younger females as attractive and desirable, so the lusting is one thing, and gross in and of itself. But going beyond that is just disgusting. And that is not even thinking about how those victims were sexually abused/raped and sex trafficked.
I just listened to this, and am putting here, though it is appropriate for the sexism thread, and racism thread, and immigration thread, and so on. This is a Lawfare interview with an author of an upcoming book on how we should treat misogyny and gender-related violence (which includes homophobic violence) as terrorism. And how it is so ingrained in our culture in various was that we don't that type of belief and violence and being part of terrorism. Covers a lot, and is really interesting, and as I listened to it, I could see how how Epstein and the exploitation of female minors was part of this. It's about 50 minutes long, and I listened to it while I was making dinner, so was distracted and didn't get too wound up. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/articl...-violent-extremism-with-cynthia-miller-idriss
Yeah, this is the way I've been describing power here on BigSoccer for years, only this is far, far better written.
I think to them it's a draw largely because it's most taboo and most illegal, and why it's not surprising to me that there's talk of torture and murder in the documents too. There's that famous study from OkCupid:
OK, if we take the premise that we are animals, which we are, and if we assume we are really not that different from animals (except our main adaptive strategy is culture, which is significantly different - so that is an important caveat), then we could look for evolutionary explanations (and there is a limitation to such explanations, not just the culture aspect but also the assumption that traits have to be advantageous whereas in reality they just can't be harmful). An evolutionary explanation is that males (of the heterosexual variety) seek females in their prime reproductive years, which might be considered as relatively shortly after puberty. However, females (of the heterosexual variety) seek males that are the most fit, which can include physical characteristics but also if they are good providers (this, of course, depends on the species, so remember these are generalizations), which might be considered as more mature and established males.
What that strikes me as (obviously, this is being very simplistic to your simplistic description) males are looking for more physical satisfaction (being able to reproduce) where as females are looking more for emotional satisfaction (protection/providing).
Not starving to death and not being killed by the clan in the next valley isn’t emotional, it’s physical. Think of humans as a collection of selfish genes, which we are.
I see his names comes up 1,700 times. So, not exactly a tangential connection. I saw this... er, explanation of how his relationship with Epstein started in an article about this: Ah, yes, the old "Jeffrey Epstein: Funder of Science" rationale. What the absolute ********.
And providing for the offspring. Again, this is species specific. Obviously, for comparisons with humans we would want to focus on primates, and especially monkeys and even more especially apes, but most specifically chimps and bonobos. For chimps protection is important as males are dominant and not always friendly. For bonobos it's all about social relationships. Even young juveniles are sexually active - I always describe them as the horny apes. But in my last response I only gave the evolutionary perspective. As I've written many times before, to understand humans and human morality we need to understand how the group understands nature (hence the evolutionary perspective can be helpful) and the social environment. For the latter we need to focus on Western culture, given Epstein's group emerged out of Western society. To understand Western societal values we need to remember that Christianity is the conduit that transmitted ancient West Asian cultural values down to us. What are those values that are transmitted through the Bible? Well, patriarchy first and foremost. According to the creation myth, women were created to be a helper to men. Women find their social status, belonging, place, etc. through the male - either through her father or, once he "gives her away" through her husband. A woman has no real societal worth except through the male who "owns" her and her primary functions are to help the male and give birth to sons (not daughters mind you, but sons in particular) who will carry on the male's patrilineage. As I've mentioned many times before, you'll note there is no passage in the Bible that condemns rape in general - only very specific instances that focus on the woman being the property of a male (rape effectively injures the male who "owns" the female in one way or another). You will also note there is absolutely no condemnation of pedophilia in the Bible. Again, children were the property of the father; children have no rights of their own as we would understand the inherent rights of all individuals today. When God allowed Satan to kill off Job's kids, God made it up to Job by giving him new ones to replace the old ones. The kids were faceless and irrelevant as individuals; what mattered is they were the property of the patriarch, so God gave back to Job the equivalent worth of the property that had been taken away from him. Now, from this patriarchal mindset that was passed down generations to us through the predominant religion, we can also look at the history within the USA. In 1880 the age of consent in 37 states was 10 years old, while Delaware set the age of consent at 7 (according to Wikipedia). Obviously we have higher age of consent laws today, but this highlights how our current understanding of individual rights, the nature of pedophila, rape, etc are actually relatively recent (especially where women's rights are concerned). Keep in mind in Biblical times the typical age of marriage for a female was about 12-16, while the typical age for a male was late 20s or 30s. It was not all that unusual to see even greater age disparities, especially if the man was wealthy. What patriarch wouldn't want to give their 12 year old daughter to marry (or serve as a concubine to) a rich 60 year old and reap all the social benefits that came with it? Changing cultural norms and values is not something that occurs overnight. You are going to have a lot of wealthy males who "appreciate" the patriarchal "way of life" and wish to continue it.
I have seen that some of these same issues involving patriarchy and social problems like pedophila, rape etc. are also prevalent in societies that do not have the Judeo-christian influence. (China, Japan, South East Asia etc). It was also present to some extent in pre-columbian American societies. To a large extent patriarchy had to do with men in human societies taking prominent roles in political and military leadership.
Yes, West Asian cultures were not the only ones with patriarchy. But it was through Christianity that those West Asian cultural values were passed down to Western society. I like to use the pre-Christian Polynesian Islands as a contrast, given they were not patriarchal or patrilineal. Kids were encouraged to have sex, LGBT+ were accepted, fidelity to a spouse was not really expected (hey, the spouse could learn new tricks from others!), there was no concept of illegitimate children (that is found in patrilineal societies like those in ancient West Asia, not matrilineal or ambilineal societies like in the islands), there are many reports that when sailors arrived they were greeted by lots of youth (male and female) who were sexually available to them (like food and shelter, sex was a primary need that you had to provide to your guests if they so wanted it), etc. I mentioned you couldn't have illegitimate children in a matrilineal or ambilineal society, but you did in patrilineal societies. In the latter a child's social standing, identity and legitimacy came through the father. If the father was not known, then the child had no legitimate standing, and so was illegitimate. In a matrilineal society a child's social standing, identity and legitimacy came through the mother, who was always known. As such, the child would be legitimate even if no one knew who the father was. In an ambilineal society you could chose which lineage to identify with, so if there was no known father, you'd just identify with the mother's lineage and therefore be legitimate. Remember, as I've said before, how a society understands its natural and social environments will determine what its moral system is. (I'm going to simplify things dramatically with the following, but there will be enough key points to keep the broad picture accurate, even if it is blurry compared to reality). In New Guinea you had societies that believed that the essence of gender was passed on through creamy white bodily fluids. Because girls drank the milk of women, the girls would grow up to become women. Because boys drank the milk of women, the boys would grow up to become women unless the men intervened. Naturally, the med did intervene when the boys were about 9 years old or so. This is when the initiation rites occurred to help the boys become men. In order for that to happen, the boys would need to drink the "milk" from older teenage+ boys (if a male had children, then he could not be a "donor" because he had been polluted by putting his member into a woman's vagina, which they saw as "pollution central"; given males would marry in their later teen years and children would arrive soon after, that's when they would of necessity have to stop "contributing milk" to the boys). Thus, you had a form of pedophilia occurring in parts of New Guinea that affected every single boy (and girls were married off about the time of puberty, a little before was not unusual, so that was also a given based on our terminology and understanding). Of course, the reasons and justifications for it were completely different because they had a completely different understanding of how the natural and social worlds worked.
A Yale professor is showing up in the Epstein files. https://yaledailynews.com/articles/...stands-by-praising-student-s-looks-to-epstein He's made an appearance in this forum before - apologies to those of you I just repped for your posts from seven years ago. In which the learned computer science professor opined on whether evolution is a thing, and a couple of still-regulars here commented that he should stay in his lane. https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/t...it-hits-the-fan.2087349/page-54#post-37214480 I mention this because I had a class with this guy. I didn't know he was scum at the time. This was a couple of years before he got a package from the Unabomber, and well before he came out as a sexist Trump supporter, and also well before he allegedly offered up an undergrad to Epstein in 2011. I think there will be some protests on the Yale campus until he takes a sabbatical, but he's not the kind of guy who backs down in the face of woke criticism.
Some of Attia's advice is great. Some of it is a bit unrealistic (most humans can live pretty well without being to carry two dumbbells adding up to their own bodyweight for a minute (though I can do the two minute dead hang he recommends), and his advocacy for some products is iffy), but generally, I share your position. Michael Pollan can't be beat for diet and nutrition (eat real food, not too much, mostly plants). For exercise, there's any number of guys on youtube depending on what you're doing -- weights, kettlebells, calisthenics.
The experience for many French men living in America during the colonial period was largely solitary, most were fur trappers. So they shacked up with the women around, native American women. But the men were Catholics and would want to have their children baptized, so there hundreds of children's baptismal records that list the father's name, but that the mother is unknown. I love that image, a father showing up with his child in his arms, stating that he has no idea who the mother is.
For those who don't understand the unintentional humor here, Jackie Martling was Howard Stern's long-time head writer. Jackie has an email list with filthy jokes. Jeffrey Epstein was part of that email list. (Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins are also part of the files.) The "funny part" (if such does exist) is all the names in the files who obviously weren't part of the whole "fly to the island for sex" thing. Watch Abraham Lincoln or Osama Bin Laden come up eventually.
Who knew Tony Hawk was such a playa? Here he says he never got married on Epstein Island https://people.com/tony-hawk-slams-rumor-of-epstein-island-wedding-as-misinformation-11900870