I Had Not Considered This

When one looks at the whole Jeffrey Epstein affair, one thing is clear:  He had a very specific role among the moneyed elites, he was their pimp.

That role did not die with him.

So, who is their new pimp?

As sometime contributor DanfromTo points out, Epstein performed “necessary” tasks for the elite: control thru blackmail and the provision of experiences many of them genuinely want to have. Power is allowed to people who can be trusted with it by other members of the elite, who will do what the elites want: whether that be bailing out rich people or committing genocide.

………

Epstein wasn’t the first pimp to rich people and he won’t be the last. Almost no one who fucked under-age women (or performed worse acts, there are indications of murder and cannibalism in the files) has actually suffered any consequences. There’s no real reason for American elites to stop and Israel, certainly, needs collars on new members of the elite. 

Cui bono?

Lies the Media Tells Us

Notwithstanding the media reports, the 2025 murder rate fell significantly.

The headlines of 2025 painted a portrait of America in chaos, driven by the financial logic of America’s media ecosystem. It’s number one product isn’t news, but fear.

“NYC youth crime doubled since controversial state Raise the Age Law kicked in,” exclaims one hysterical New York Post headline from September. “Business owners express frustration over crime surge in Federal Hill,” reads a banner from FOX45 News, a local outlet in Baltimore. “Office shooter’s rampage shows terrifying rise of motive-free violence, experts warn,” goes a Fox News heading from August.

The scary headlines were all underscored by inflammatory rhetoric from the Trump administration, which continued to insist that America’s cities are crime-ridden hell holes well into the new year.

Selective media coverage of crime certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, though it’s worth revisiting — especially because new data suggests 2025 was actually one of the least violent years for the US in over a century.

According to fresh Council on Criminal Justice crime statistics, Axios reports, murder rates fell 21 percent last year across the 35 largest cities in the US. It’s the single largest one-year-drop ever, the publication reports, and possibly the lowest homicide rates we’ve seen as a nation since the year 1900 — when the last generation of frontier outlaws were still robbing train cars.

Homicide wasn’t the only crime that fell in 2025. Out of 13 crimes tracked by the Council on Criminal Justice, 11 of them were lower last year than in 2024. Aggravated assaults, for example, fell by 9 percent across the 35 cities, while gun assaults and robberies dropped off by 22 and 23 percent, respectively. (The only category that increased was drug crimes, up 7 percent — and which are nonviolent.)

This a toxic combination of the, "If it bleeds, it leads," ethos of local news and the oligopolistic nature of news, particularly broadcast news/

They are selling a lie. 

I am Legitimately Surprised

I just came across a study which shows that metal heads are among the most faithful partners among music fans, which surprises me, though the news that jazz fans are the biggest hounds does not.

Jazz fans may want to keep whatever's in their pants in check — according to a recent survey by affair website Victoria Milan, lovers of jazz are almost 10 times more likely to cheat than heavy metal fans.

The study (published by The Sun), which queried more than 6,500 people who admitted to affairs, also found that three-quarters of unfaithful men and women say they can't stop thinking about their lover when hearing their favorite music.

Jazz topped the list of "seductive" genres, followed by salsa and pop, which were most likely to send respondents into sexual fantasy mode. All I'm hearing is "nobody wants to fuck to metal," which is simply not true. Other genres ranked as follows in order of cheaters' preference: 

1. Jazz: 19%
2. Salsa: 14%
3. Pop: 13%
4. Country: 12%
5. Rap: 9%
6. Classical: 8%
7. Blues: 6%
8. Reggae: 5%
9. Rock and Roll: 5%
10. Electronica: 4%
11. Indie: 3%
12. Heavy Metal: 2%

I wish that I had known this when I was single.

Headline of the Day

Americans Aren’t Traumatized Enough by Gun Violence

—The Fair Observer online journal, stating the obvious.

If Americans had been sufficiently traumatized by gun violence, they would have done something about it.

QED. 

Speaking of Harvard

Harvard is investigating the students who filmed Larry Summers self indulgent apology to one of his classes.

Officials at Harvard University launched a secret disciplinary investigation into students who recorded Larry Summers discussing his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, The New York Times reports.

Summers, who served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton , is under intense scrutiny for his dealings with Epstein. He resigned from his position at OpenAI in November following the appearance of his name in emails with Epstein and was included in photos recently released by Epstein’s estate.

The students, Rosie P. Couture and Lola DeAscentiis, posted videos online last month of the former Harvard president addressing his ties to late sex trafficker. The university is looking into whether those recordings violated school policies.

Yes, they are defending Larry fucking Summers over this. 

Well Deserved Fall

After an entire career of failing up, and  the immiseration of millions of people, it looks like Larry Summers is seeing some incredibly well deserved karma.

First, the American Economic Association has banned Larry Summers for life.

Personally, I hope that this ban continues for its full term, and that the actual length of this sanction will be brief.  (If Mr. Summers could dine on excrement while shortening the ban duration it would be sweet)

The American Economic Association (AEA) has accepted Lawrence H. Summers' voluntary resignation from membership and, pursuant to the AEA's Policies, Procedures, and Code of Professional Conduct, has imposed a lifetime ban on his membership. In addition, effective immediately, the AEA has imposed a lifetime prohibition on Mr. Summers' attending, speaking at, or otherwise participating in AEA-sponsored events or activities, including serving in any editorial or refereeing capacity for AEA journals. The AEA condemns Mr. Summers' conduct, as reflected in publicly reported communications, as fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of professional integrity and with the trust placed in mentors within the economics profession. Consistent with longstanding AEA practices and to protect the integrity and confidentiality of AEA processes, the AEA will not comment further on individual matters or the specific considerations underlying this determination.

The AEA is committed to upholding the highest standards of professional conduct and to fostering a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all members of the economics community.  The AEA affirms its expectation that all members adhere to the AEA Code of Professional Conduct and the AEA Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation, and remains dedicated to maintaining professional environments in which economists of all backgrounds can participate fully, and with dignity and respect. 

Meanwhile, writing in The Crimson,  the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Harvard alumnus states the obvious, that the Cambridge, Massachusetts school activelhy and aggressively covered up its eager involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, particularly the involvement of Summers:

In 2019, Jeffrey E. Epstein was charged with the sex trafficking of minors. That charge triggered a wave of recriminations across the nation, including at some of America’s most elite universities. In the decade since his first arrest in 2006 for soliciting prostitution with a child, Epstein had nurtured close connections with some of the most prominent academics in the country.

Those recriminations also reached Harvard. While Harvard President Drew G. Faust had forbidden the University from directly accepting his money after a 2008 child-sex conviction, between 2010 and 2015, Epstein facilitated over $9 million in donations from associates like Leon Black to support work at Harvard — with the knowledge and encouragement of Harvard development staff.

………

Almost a year after that first report, the University concluded its investigation, and took formal action against just one member of the Harvard faculty: Martin A. Nowak. Nowak was “disciplined” for his ongoing professional relationship with Epstein. His Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, funded with the help of Epstein, was shuttered, and he was banned from serving as a principal investigator on any academic research for two years.

………

From 2003 through 2019, Summers had been a central figure in Epstein’s relationship to Harvard. He had attended events hosted by Epstein and planned private meetings. Besides Epstein’s lawyer, and now-professor emeritus, Alan M. Dershowitz, he was by far the most prominent of the Harvard elite at the center of Harvard’s Epstein relationship.

Yet Summers is essentially invisible in the official accounts. A gift to support the work of Summers’s wife was mentioned in a footnote to the 2020 report, though obscurely, since she does not share Summers’s name. And never subsequently has Harvard disclosed anything more about his ongoing relationship with Epstein, which continued, as we’ve now learned through the published Epstein emails, until Epstein’s 2019 arrest.

………

There’s little need to reform Larry Summers. He will, I suspect, pass quickly from Harvard’s orbit. But it is the culture that would have allowed Larry Summers to be protected that must now be called to account. How could Harvard have allowed this production of Hamlet without the Prince? And will it now commit to a practice that will not protect the elite among us, while shaming those not quite elite enough?

No,Mr. Lessig they will not commit to such a practice.

Harvard's entire brand is built on elite privilege.

People want to go to Harvard because it is the closest thing US higher education to being a "Made Man" by the Mafia, only the scope of criminal activity by Harvard alumni is vastly greater than organized crime syndicates could ever dream of.

Break Out the Brain Bleach

So we have Jeffry Epstein's brother Mark offered a clarification of an email between him and his notorious sibling. 

Specifically, he made comments involving Donald Trump and an unidentified 3rd party. 

Some people on the internet concluded that said rd party was a very prominent figure.

We are talking about perhaps the world's most 

I am going to provide a link where Mark Epstein clarified and denied that the 3rd party was not the very famous individual.

I am being circumspect because this is an internet myth, not a credible report, and because it squicks me out no end, not because of the rumored activities, but because of the mythical participants.

You may not want to click through, it is basically the world's most profoundly disturbing slash fiction.

From a purely social perspective though, this is an interesting insight into the creation of modern mythologies.

Headline of the Day

Elon Musk Doesn’t Give a Fuck About Poverty

—Gizmodo on Elon Musk claim that he is somehow creating a techno utopia.

First, a major raspberry to Gizmodo, because while the headline that you read on the web page says the above, the metadata, the thing that you would see in a bookmark of the page or a Google link, says, "Elon Musk Couldn't Care Less About Poverty."

Also, I do think that Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ DOES care about poverty.  He loves poverty, and insecurity, at least for other people.

If people do not lead desperate and precarious lives, then they would not feel compelled to work for an abusive sexual harasser boss like Elon Musk.

In a just world, the people that he abuses would leave him, and he would not be able to claim credit for their work.

Tesla held its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, and CEO Elon Musk seemed particularly focused on getting his $1 trillion payday. But before the world’s wealthiest man made the case for why he deserves to be the first trillionaire, he wanted to make sure you understand one thing: He’s going to help abolish poverty.

………

The billionaire has long teased the idea that the future will be filled with so many robots and so much automation that nobody will have to work. It’s an idea that was incredibly popular in the 20th century, not just in science fiction but among serious academics. Back in the 1960s, it was just taken as a given that people of the year 2000 would only work maybe 20 hours per week. And beyond that, by the mid-21st century, no one would have to work at all.

………

In reality, Musk does not give a fuck about poverty. To guys like Musk, people who are poor are just getting what they deserve. And all it takes is a quick search of his X account to see how often he says things to degrade homeless people.

………

Musk believes that the U.S. is built on meritocracy, where people who have billions of dollars obviously deserve that money, and people who are poor deserve to stay poor. He demonstrated that time and again with DOGE, claiming that he was rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. The “fraud,” as he saw it, was people who were undeserving of the government benefits they received, whether it was food stamps or Social Security, a program he called a Ponzi scheme.

Yes, I know it's not, "Say fuck January," but I needed to discuss the whole metadata thing.

Headline of the Day

Treat Big Tech like Big Tobacco

—Joel Wertheimer noting the obvious, big tech is a problem because they actively market a harmful product.

This ain't rocket science.

The tech bros are making their money by promoting body dysmorphia, bigotry, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, fraud, etc.

They want engagement (or in the case of crypto, marks) and they will actively harm people to get this.

The problem with Big Tobacco was not that it could charge excess prices because of its market power. The problem with Big Tobacco was that cigarettes were too cheap. Cigarettes caused both externalities to society and also internalities between the higher-level self that wanted to quit smoking and the primary self that could not quit an addictive substance. So, we taxed and regulated their use.

The fight regarding social media platforms has centered around antitrust and the sheer size of Big Tech companies. But these platforms are not so much a problem because they are big; they are big because they are a problem. Policy solutions need to actually address the main problem with the brain-cooking internet.

I love that bon mot, "Brain cooking internet."

………

For three decades, internet providers were merely passive hosts of third-party content, immune from liability faced by publishers. That grant of immunity was foundational, and the costs of such freedom were wildly outweighed by the benefits of the internet.

Both of these facts are no longer true. Social media companies are no longer passive hosts but active curators. And the costs of these products are now too high to ignore. They make us addicted to their apps with slot machine-style precision, and they are now helping creators fake reality with text-to-video generation.

The answer is not to destroy these companies or pull the government into the messy and probably unconstitutional world of directly regulating speech. The answer is to remove the special protections they have been granted and finally allow people harmed by these products to hold these companies liable.

………

Recommendation algorithms have allowed large platforms to turn our attention into a solved game. I say this with a lot of trepidation at a time when free speech is seriously threatened, particularly after seeing the harms that the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act wreaked on sex workers. But the time has come to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230). Specifically, lawmakers should remove protections for platforms that actively promote content using reinforcement learning-based recommendation algorithms.

 The argument behind the safe harbor provisions was that websites which allowed users to share their opinions were like bookstores, and bookstores are not held liable for the content of their books.

On the other hand, newspapers ARE held liable for the content of the letters ot the editor that they publish, because they make a conscious decision about which letters to publish.

Their algorithms, and  soon their AI slop are conscious editorial decisions, and these decisions are made to the detriment of their users.

Something Else That Andrew Cuomo Has in Common with Donald Trump

Jeffrey Epstein.

"Rat Faced Andy" is more Epstein adjacent than he is Epstein involved, as Donald Trump is, but it's pretty skeevy:

For the past few months, Donald Trump’s presidency has been roiled by the ongoing scandal over his intimate, yearslong friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. But he’s not the only prominent New York politician with potentially embarrassing links to the billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker. Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo has his own, too.

Cuomo’s links to Epstein were recently highlighted by his opponent for the New York mayor’s office, Zohran Mamdani, in a campaign video that brought up his private consulting work. Mamdani pointed to Epstein’s 2007 real estate deal in the Virgin Islands — where Epstein owned the infamous private island that he would allegedly carry out some of his abuse on — with department store scion Andrew Farkas, whose nonprofit Epstein also donated generously to. In light of this, Cuomo’s own relationship to Farkas has raised eyebrows: the two began a lucrative friendship in the 2000s that saw the property developer hire Cuomo to the tune of more than $2.5 million, before serving as the finance chairman for his attorney general run and donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.

The Farkas case is only one of many examples of those around and supporting Cuomo having troubling ties to the deceased pedophile. Cuomo was himself famously personally listed in Epstein’s “little black book,” together with his then wife, Kerry Kennedy. This is, by itself, not necessarily damning. But over the course of his political career, Cuomo has counted as allies, donors, associates, and friends — sometimes all of the above — a number of figures who have been closely connected to Epstein.

Cuomo has not been accused of any sexual misconduct connected to Epstein or involving minors — his alleged misconduct remains limited to the serial sexual harassment of his adult staffers that led him to resign in disgrace from the governor’s office in 2021 (allegations that Cuomo denies). What these associations do suggest is Cuomo’s friendliness with the same New York elite that Epstein at once courted and was a part of, and which Cuomo will be tasked with confronting and overcoming to solve the city’s problems. 

There are a number of his supporters over the years, most notably one Donald John Trump, who have very close ties to Epstein.

Trump has supported Cuomo through the years, and is quietly supporting him for Mayor of New York City now.

If you look at the list, the conclusion should not be that Cuomo f%$#ed kids, but rather that "His People" the establishment types who are supporting his run as an independent, either f%$#ed kids, or knew that Epstein was running a child sex trafficking ring, 

This is more of a rhetorical indictment (I wish that it were a real indictment) of the establishment that has protected and supported Andrew Cuomo.

Andrew Cuomo has always protected and supported them in return.

Right to Repair Now

Rolling stock manufacturer NEWAG was discovered to have been bricking trains if they were not serviced at their facilities.

It was unbelievably bad PR for the train manufacturer, and their response is to sue rail lines, repair shops, and tech experts who made it possible for the trains to run, claiming that repairing and running equipment that you purchase violates their copyright.

Because owning a 50 tonne locomotive doesn't mean that you can operate it as if you own it.

This is what is wrong with our current IP system.

It encourages rent-seeking, increases inequality, and stifles innovation:

Back in 2023 we wrote about how regional Polish rail company and a train manufacturer NEWAG had taken to using DRM to lock down trains that are repaired by independent technicians, in a bid to both monopolize — and drive up the costs of repair. This kind of effort to monopolize repair is common across numerous industries, driving an organic, grass roots “right to repair” reform movement.

The original story by 404 Media noted that NEWAG put code in their train’s control systems preventing them from running if a GPS tracker detected that it spent any time at an independent repair company, and if certain parts had been replaced without a manufacturer-approved serial number. Some independent companies responded by hiring a white hat hacking group dubbed Dragon Sector to bypass the DRM and get the trains running again.

Two years later and it sounds like NEWAG has taken all the wrong lessons from the experience.

The folks at iFixit note that the company has now sued both the Polish repair service SPS that fixed those original trains, and has also gone after the individual members of ethical hacking group Dragon Sector for helping them. NEWAG is looking for $1.7 million for copyright violations and “unlawful competition” in one court, and $1.36 million for unlawful competition and infringement of personal rights in another.

 This, as well as the sh%^$ that John Deer, and HP printers, and Tesla, and Ford, and GM, etc. pull needs to stop.

Who Cares About What the Polls Say, They are Bullsh………

Clearly Bibi has to pick up his game So the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is the most hated man in America?

OK, maybe I will make an exception, just this once. 

Elon Musk’s image has tanked so badly that he is now the public figure that Americans dislike the most, according to a new poll.

Gallup asked Americans between July 7 and July 21 what they thought of 14 well-known U.S. and global figures, with 61 percent of respondents having an unfavorable opinion of the Tesla billionaire. Six percent said they had no opinion of Musk, while just 33 percent reported a positive view.

………

This has been reflected in several polls, most recently the damning Gallup survey that shows his popularity below even that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Compared to January’s findings, Musk’s reputation has plummeted faster than Tesla’s sales. His net favorability rating of -4 at the start of the year has worsened to -28 now.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "You can't fool all the people all the time."

Nice to see the worm turning.

BTW, to the members of the Tesla board, the best thing that you could do for Tesla is fire Elon.

He is an albatross around the neck of that car company. (Apologies to Albatrosses, who are magnificent birds) 

You Don't Need More Cops, Hon

Baltimore City has just shown that there are better ways to fight crime than to hire more cops.

Gee, hoocoodanode?  (Spoiler, everyone whose agenda was not an excuse to have armed men abuse people of color)

So many pro-police lawmakers and city officials have always insisted the only way to bring down crime rates is to add more cops to the mix. This may work if you’re mainly interested in racking up meaningless arrests or handing out “broken windows” citations, but it doesn’t address why certain areas have higher crime rates. (And it doesn’t even work then, as Baltimore itself has already demonstrated.)

………

Baltimore has long held a top-level position on lists of annual homicides or per capita crime rates — aspects that have been converted to canon by series like “The Wire,” along with cops’ predilection for corruption and routine rights violations.

………

But homicide isn’t a problem you can solve with irrational hate and being bigoted on main. The Baltimore PD has already tried that and it hasn’t worked, no matter how often it plants evidence, brutalizes residents, or otherwise ignores constitutional rights.

The murder rate continues to drop in Baltimore. And while that does track with post-pandemic trends around the nation, something different is going on in this city, which suggests the current downturn may well develop into an ongoing trend.

What’s different in Baltimore is that it’s addressing underlying causes of crime, rather than just reacting to crime’s often-violent outcomes with more cops and rights violations. Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims have dug into the stats, as well as the circumstances behind them, to explain why Baltimore’s murder rate is more sustainable than just throwing more cops at the problem. 

This April, Baltimore saw five homicides. That is the fewest of any month since 1970, when the city began tracking monthly homicide numbers. In the first six months of the year, homicides were down 22% compared to 2024, and non-fatal shootings were down 19%. This is the latest in a string of historic declines in violent crime. In 2024, homicides dropped 23% from 2023 numbers, and non-fatal shootings dropped 34%. In 2023, the city also saw record-breaking decreases.

[…]

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), who was first elected in 2020, has brought the city’s homicide rate down by treating violent crime as a public health crisis. That means treating violent crime as a symptom of multiple factors, including racism, poverty, and past violence.

………

In January 2022, MONSE [Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement] launched the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS). The strategy, launched in partnership with the Baltimore Police Department and the State’s Attorney’s Office, utilizes a collaboration between law enforcement, community members, and social services to “engag[e] directly with those most intimately involved in and affected by violence.” The GVRS aims to target the root causes of gun violence, such as poverty, mental health, and housing issues, by matching participants with a life coach. Participants are also provided with financial support while they seek employment.

The GVRS has delivered results. As of February 2024, the program had a recidivism rate of only 4.3%. An evaluation by the University of Pennsylvania’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab found that the GVRS significantly reduced violence in the city’s Western District, where the program was initially implemented. “[D]uring the first 18 months of implementation,” there was “a 33% approximate gun violence reduction, 60 fewer victims, and a 33% approximate carjacking reduction,” according to the study.

The task force and its implementation program never decided the problem wasn’t enough cops flooding these areas. Instead, it addressed a lot of underlying causes of violence and worked towards fixing those, rather than assuming this was something that just could be forced into submission via the application of even more violence.

Mindlessly punitive policies do not work.  They make the problems worse and cost more money, but too many people want to play the "Hit the n****er" game.

BTW, that game is real, and used human beings as targets. 

More Like Us Every Day

Once again I am talking about Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, more commonly known as Neanderthals, have increasingly been found to have sophisticated capabilities that rivaled those of modern humans.  (H. Sapiens Sapiens)

Case in point, anthropologists have found a fat processing factory that was patronized by Neanderthals from hundreds of miles around.

This is not just a sophisticated process, this is a specialized and sophisticated facility by the standards of the time:

The Neanderthals are our closest extinct relatives, and they continue to fascinate as we peer back through tens of thousands of years of history.

In a new discovery about this mysterious yet often familiar species, researchers have found ancient evidence of a Neanderthal "fat factory" in what is now Germany.

Operational around 125,000 years ago, the factory would've been a place where Neanderthals broke and crushed the bones of large mammals to extract valuable bone marrow and grease, used as a valuable extra food source.

According to scientists, this is the earliest evidence yet for this type of sophisticated, large-scale bone processing, including both bone marrow and grease: the first confirmation Neanderthals were also doing this some 100,000 years before our species made it to Europe.

"This was intensive, organised, and strategic," says archaeologist Lutz Kindler from the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center in Germany.

………

We can add this to the long list of studies that have revealed Neanderthals were much smarter than they're often made out to be. Thanks to recent research we know they were adept swimmers, capable brewers, and abstract thinkers – who raised their kids and used speech patterns in a similar way to humans.

 It does make one wonder why modern humans survived and Neanderthals did now.  

My completely uninformed opinion is that it might have been differences in fecundity, which led to modern humans out-breeding Neanderthals, and eventually lead to modern humans being forced to adopt pastoralism and eventually agriculture because the hunter-gatherer lifestyle cannot accommodate too many people in one area.

Headline of the Day

This Silicon Valley Stuff'll Get You Killed

—Edward Ongweso Jr on The Tech Bubble noting that Silly-Con Valley business plans actually kill people.

I've always felt that the Silly-Con Valley entrepreneurs would have been charged with fraud rather than presented as icons of capitalism if they did what they do during the 1960s and early 1970s.

He observes, IMNSHO honestly, that they do more than defraud people, they are responsible for a not inconsiderable number of deaths.

Feet of clay:

Most of my thinking on Silicon Valley—on its firms, its products, its financiers, its ideologues, its boosters, and its projects—rests on a relatively simple understanding: these people will sacrifice us.

My first experience witnessing this came when helping organize ride-hail drivers working for Uber and Lyft as well as talking with taxi drivers struggling to survive the ascent of these firms. These companies, in a desperate scramble for their first profits, brazenly ignored the law, misclassified and immiserated countless workers, pushed drivers into predatory leasing agreements, paid out starvation wages while dodging taxes and ensuring drivers were blocked from dignified working conditions, and countless more abhorrent practices.

Who cared if a few taxi drivers committed suicide because UberLyft’s predations degraded pay and labor conditions across the entire ride-hail sector, or if drivers were forced to sleep in their cars to meet aggressive quotas crafted to effectively lockout and fire workers (minimizing labor costs), or if they were attacked or robbed or killed on the job. So what? Were you going to complain on behalf of people who couldn’t adapt to the future, who made a bad choice in betting their livelihood on a line of work that should be Flexible and Temporary, who are lucky enough to get in early on “the operating system for your everyday life.”

Have things improved? Uber’s global lobbying and law breaking campaign was a resounding success—they’ve successfully degraded working conditions worldwide, convinced regulators that their specific model and structure is inevitable, integrated themselves into policy planning visions and decisions, and burned enough capital to create their desired markets and consumers and behaviors where they did not exist before.

………

Things have only gotten worse as Silicon Valley’s business model has metastasized, with oligarch-intellectuals poised to reorganize wider and wider swaths of our economy, culture, social relations, and politics. To maximize profits and efficiency and productivity, to purge capitalism of its last vestiges of democracy and liberalism, to transform speculative gains into real wealth then into political power that makes this alchemy easier, to discipline consumers and workers and regulators, to foster paranoia (whether by states or communities) and preserve order, to pursue geo-strategic primacy, to summon some artificial superintelligence that will either end history or realize historic profits, anything and everything will be offered up. Something has to give—the situation demands a blood sacrifice.

If it really demands a blood sacrifice, better that it is Musk, Andreeson, Zuckerberg, and the like rather than my children, or their (eventual) children.

People Are Flipping Out over This

The Wall Street Journal has a story describing an album of birthday cards given to Jeffrey Epstein which included a card from Trump.

It's clearly newsworthy, it shows that Trump and Epstein were friends, but the fury from the White House over this seems to be a bit excessive.

Part of this is no doubt due to the approbation coming from the MAGAt community over this, I guess.

That being said Epstein and Trump were BFFs for over a decade, and that is a basic fact.

Of course, the card itself, is profoundly disturbing, and it appears to be tacitly acknowledging Epstein's child raping proclivities, which might explain some of the furor over all of this.

It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump.

Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Pages from the leather-bound album—assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006—are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages. It’s unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration’s recent review.

………

The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

Stay classy, Donny. 

………

Allegations that Epstein had been sexually abusing girls became public in 2006 and he was arrested that year. Epstein died in 2019 in jail after he was arrested a second time and charged with sex trafficking conspiracy.

………

Among those who submitted letters were billionaire Leslie Wexner and attorney Alan Dershowitz. The album also contained a letter from a now-deceased Harvard economist, one of Epstein’s report cards from Mark Twain junior high school in Brooklyn and a note from a former assistant that included an acrostic with Epstein’s name: “Jeffrey, oh Jeffrey!/ Everyone loves you!/ Fun in the sun!/ Fun just for fun!/ Remember…don’t forget me soon!/ Epstein…you rock!/ You are the best!”

Gee, no signs of elite corruption here. 

………

It isn’t clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared. Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person.

“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.

Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.

Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Oh, yeah, there is nothing creepy at all about this letter,

When Tim Walz called Trump and his Evil Minions™ weird, he did not know the half of it.

 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

internet vs real life pic.twitter.com/XUqFrplcLw

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) May 6, 2025

This is true, as true as turnips is, as true as taxes is, and nothing is true than them.

Funny, Innit?

Following the end of World War II, doctor's in the then Soviet Union became overwhelmingly women.

This was rapidly followed by a loss of pay and socioeconomic status for doctors.

We are Now seeing the same thing with college now that women make up the bulk of college students in the United States.

In the 1950s, men outnumbered women 2:1 in college.

By the 1990s, the ratio was 1:1.

Today the ratio is 4:6 with fewer men than women attending college.

The question on everyone’s mind is why? Why aren’t men going to college anymore?

………

While many of these reasons address why college is less appealing to boys, almost none of them address what has actually CHANGED in recent decades to cause the drop.

Many people cite the lure of trade schools and blue collar jobs as more appealing to men, but when you consider that blue collar jobs have gone down from 31.2% of total employment in 1970 to 13.6% today- why would men suddenly be more attracted to blue collar work compared to an era when these jobs were more plentiful?

As I listened to the Freakanomics podcast, I was confused why they kept skirting around the thing that has actually changed—

As an aside here, listening to or reading Freakonomics is a recipe for being stupider. (Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.)

As I showed over 15 years ago, there's folks go out of their way to twist facts so as to come up with a counterintuitive result.

This is, as Mount Everest is, and Alma Cogan isn't.

What has changed is an increase in girls.

When you look at other areas where this exact same thing has happened, it is not such a head scratcher why fewer men are going to college.

We’re just not talking about it.

The example of veteranarians is then given where make attendence dropped from 89% to 22.4% between 1969 and 2009.

As we’ve seen with teachers, nurses and interior design, once an institution is majority female, the public perception of its value plummets.

Scanning through Reddit and Quora threads, many men seem to be in agreement- college is stupid and unnecessary. A waste of time and money. You’re much better off going into the trades, a tech boot camp or becoming an entrepreneur. No need for college.

Gee, imagine that.

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When Your Employer Tries to Kill You

It is natural for employees to be less invested in the success of their firms.

That was the lesson from Covid: 

Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, with only 31% of employees engaged. This matches the figure last seen in 2014. The percentage of actively disengaged employees, at 17%, also reflects 2014 levels.

The percentage of engaged employees has declined by two percentage points since 2023, highlighting a growing trend of employee detachment from organizations, particularly among workers younger than 35.

These are among the findings of Gallup’s most recent annual update of U.S. employee engagement. Though engagement increased slightly midyear, it declined through the rest of 2024, finishing the year at its decade low.

In Gallup’s trend dating back to 2000, employee engagement peaked in 2020, at 36%, following a decade of steady growth, but it has generally trended downward since then.

Gee, what happened in 2020 that would have made people not trust their employers?

It Was as true...as Turnips Is. It Was as true...as Taxes Is. And Nothing’s Truer than Them

Ken Klipperstein notes, "Doesn't this pair of headlines capture 2024 perfectly?"

Yes it does.

It also paints a picture of a nation that is in decline and fetishises cruelty.

Homelessness in America has risen by 18 percent overall, according to the latest annual data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Hardest hit were families with children, which experienced a staggering 39 percent increase in homelessness(!). Incredibly, in a press release accompanying the new data, the Biden administration says that it “has been tackling the nation’s homelessness crisis with the urgency it requires,” downplaying the data as not current enough.

As 2024 draws to a close, a major theme of this past couple years seems to be American anger. From the schadenfreude over the billionaire passengers on board the doomed Titan submersible, to Trump’s reelection, and most recently the backlash against health insurers following the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Americans seem to be yelling at the top of their lungs that they hate the management. Yet the confusion in elite quarters over what these people could possibly be so angry about persists, even as the warnings get louder and louder. On the rare occasion that a prominent elected official actually hears these warnings and tries to explain it to their peers in Washington, they are punished for it.

This is not sustainable, and if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.