I understand the lensing effect; that makes sense to me. Is this time delay an effect of that?

Perhaps a dumb Q (I am a little tired) but is the time delay because the light takes a longer path? Because I would have thought that since space itself is getting bent near a gravitational field then your meter sticks, as it were, would all be the same (1 m) and so you'd not notice any aberration?

I mean some people do evil under duress. The kapos during the holocaust for example. But there is no excuse for choosing to be evil and doing harm for the joy of it.

It kind of doesn’t matter tho does it? They are not really humans anymore as far as I am concerned.

Robert Moses famously design transit out of many projects, and in Wisconsin a rail link from Madison -> Milwaukee -> Chicago was nixed basically because some folks did not want Black people to be able to get to football games at UW.

Better not play much Tom Lehrer

In a way it illustrates why grifting like this works. The trick is to stay away from people who actually know what they are about.

But in journalism as in many other fields, there’s a certain amount of siloing that happens. I covered science for a long while, and it was rather rare that I would run into people who covered finance. I only knew a lot of them because I used to do just that.

I mean, if you go back decades, even and look for a mention of Epstein in the finance pages, you just don’t see it. Among the publications that cover hedge funds his name would sure to be there if he actually was trading with those folks.

(Reporters who cover politics would be interesting here because an occupational hazard is getting too close to the subjects involved. The people who do it best are relative outsiders, generally speaking; they don't get invited to the posh parties).

I'd be interested to see how many people at the WSJ or NYT finance desk (as opposed to style people from say, NY Mag or the like) are in the email pile. I suspect strongly that the former is less prevalent.

Like, I read a couple of these pieces and what's fascinating is that the reporters involved didn't say "hang on, what the heck are you talking about?"

broker dealers (the people who would handle hedge fund trades) had zero contact with him.

I haven't gone through this stuff yet. That said... I covered finance for a long while. The funny thing is nobody in the (finance) industry had really heard of this guy. I have said it before, but he targeted reporters for profiles and such who wouldn't know what to ask.

I envy the fact that even in your dreams you can play chords.

(I learned a non-chord instrument as a kid, but I am always kind'a awed by anyone who can manage piano or guitar).

I am shooting my shot.

I love writing op-eds.

@teenvogue.com was my main outlet, but if there are any others (especially independently ran) that are looking for a contributing writer on race, gender, and the economy, I'd love to work with you.

Signed,

A Black woman who writes for the public

So to that extent a lot of my former colleagues dropped the ball, but Epstein targeted people (reporters I mean) who wouldn’t be hip to the right questions.

Like, I remember a NY Magazine piece from around 2001-ish? 2002? Epstein goes on about “Tibetan equities” or some nonsense and the writer doesn’t say “wtf are you on about?”

To me a more interesting line of inquiry was the money, but I used to cover finance (for a decade). Nobody had heard of Epstein. This fact sailed right by every reporter who profiled him - notably none of them were finance journalists. (This was no accident).

But really, the only thing Epstein might have that (IMO) would be that dangerous to Trump is actual *criminal* stuff that there would belittle doubt about and a prosecutor would have no (political) choice but to pursue.

We all knew Trump was peeping on teenage beauty contestants, and that had no effect. The sex assault stuff might well be a feature, not a bug, to many who vote for him.

But I say this as one who covered a local sex scandal like this waaay back. So maybe I am a tad cynical.

I am late to this party, as it were (I end up in a news blackout all day b/c of my job) but I suspect that all this is basic & banal (which is one reason it is *so* terrible; it's BAU).

Like, honestly, I don't think there's much Epstein could have said that would turn off Trump voters.

...that Epstein had a lot of stuff on a lot of powerful people. And there's still the mystery of just where his money came from (he wasn't getting it via trades and such, because no broker-dealer ever heard of the guy). But I would suspect it is pretty banal, ultimately. Most grift is.

The piece itself demonstrates nothing about ties to any intelligence agency, except a not-very-reliable comment that honestly doesn't sound like any lawyer I've ever spoken to. (And as a reporter I spoke to a number, including people involved in local-level sex scandals). That doesn't preclude.. /1

Like, the Boomers who vote for anyone with that name are fewer these days. I don't know who else would be in the primary yet; but there's likely to be a lot of more serious people out there. If this Kennedy kid tries to be another moderate Dem I don't think he will do well.

Evidently Maureen Dowd wrote this. And I can't see him getting far if there's a serious primary. What's fascinating is the volumes that Dowd manages to not say; this is a long style piece that says... very little except that this kid is handsome and a Kennedy, AFAICT.

Speaking as an educator, no, I am not worried about it. Annoyed, more than anything else. I'm sure GenXers (hi) said something similarly silly my own parents could talk about.

i do think it's funny that the "should parents be worried?" thing is what, 70 years old? and still kicking.

Kress taught an introduction to creative writing at my college back in 1989. I learned a ton from her.

The very first story I read from Butler was “Speech Sounds back when it was published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction.

Maybe you know why but I sure do not. I can’t get my head around why people are so willfully sociopathic, why they take such glee in hurting another person. I cannot see them as human anymore because if that. They are, to me, monsters who have voluntarily left human company.

Also Nancy Kress, Connie Willis, Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, all of whom I first read as short story writers in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

Nonfiction? Aside from books about science, Chomsky's work has been a big deal for on me. People say he's a dense writer, but I never thought so.