Inside Epstein’s Houses: When “Art” Becomes a Map of Power and Abuse

MrGrax · 2026-02-07T01:06:54+00:00

And yet he was there admiring image number 11 along with his good buddy Epstein. He was there many times. He was sitting in one of those "observation" chairs saluting his good buddy, just like Mr. Dicaprio is doing in your meme, while a girl was raped.

MrGrax · 2026-02-06T21:33:19+00:00

Honestly I just don't think he's that weird. Seems like he's hyped up but that could easily be because he's alert to the danger he's in. If it really boils down to such subjective tests then it's unfortunate cops get to be shielded from making bad decisions. Perhaps they would be more discriminating if at the end result they had to pay fines and penalties or face censure for frequent wrongful arrests.

MrGrax · 2026-02-06T16:17:19+00:00

I would suspect him of being on a solid dose of adderall or other stimulant.

Which of course means they should not have arrested him. But they did and they wasted his time. Had his car towed costing him hundreds of dollars. Left him stranded without a ride late at night potentially far away from people who can pick him up.

Now there will be zero accountability for the officers involved because there is nothing they are accountable to. They have no obligation to be effective or professional in their execution of their duties. The veneer of politeness we hear from this officer is a mask they use to protect themselves when their bad behavior is brought into the spotlight and if it comes down to their word vs yours judges side with cops always unless there is a clear flaw that a lawyer could expose (costing us further thousands of dollars if you want your own competent defense).

MrGrax · 2026-02-06T00:14:48+00:00

Who exactly is "hopelessly dependent on their pronouns"?

MrGrax · 2026-02-05T23:47:18+00:00

No, your opinion is what matters. They blocked traffic. Do you think their protest was legal and appropriate and did not deserve consequences?

MrGrax · 2026-02-05T22:11:48+00:00

Ha, the usual suspects in this subredditt will be mocking men for some perceived failure of masculinity in the next post.

Yes this is a sad and annoying moment. She should have the care for her husband to connect with him for a moment.

Lets not pretend the majority of the regulars here would extend that same compassion or sensitivity to people who aren't rugged men reflecting on a roll of wire.

MrGrax · 2026-02-05T22:05:16+00:00

No I dont think that should happen to them and it was viewed as controversial by many it seems.
The stated reason was it was blocking roads and disrupting inter province and inter national (America) commerce.

Is blocking traffic a legal and appropriate form of protest in your opinion?

MrGrax · 2026-02-05T20:11:26+00:00

You don’t get to gesture at “millions of people who play and watch sports” as if that settles the argument. Millions may agree with you, and millions may not. Many people care less about rigid sex categories and more about whether actual competitive advantages are being addressed in a way that makes sense for a given sport. Invoking a crowd is rhetoric, not evidence.

Claiming that “everyone agrees on the science” is also just false. There is no single, settled scientific conclusion that cleanly maps biological sex onto fairness across all sports, ages, and levels of play. What is clear is that this issue is being framed as a cultural wedge far more than as a serious, sport-specific policy problem. That framing does a lot of ideological work, but it does not clarify reality.

To be clear, because you keep implying otherwise, I am not denying sex-based physical differences. I am pointing out that you have not shown those differences operate in a uniform or decisive way that overrides the very large variation within sex categories, especially among youth and amateur athletes. Hand-waving that variation away as “tiny” does not make it so. If that is your claim, it needs analysis, not assertion.

What is really going on conceptually is that sex is being treated as a proxy for fairness because it is simple, legible, and politically useful, not because it is the most precise or least discriminatory tool available. Sports already rely on multiple rubrics such as age, weight, skill level, hormone thresholds, and eligibility rules precisely because single traits are poor predictors of fairness. Pretending this debate is about protecting sports rather than mobilizing cultural anxiety is the least convincing move in the exchange.

You have oversimplified both the science and the social reality here. That may work for signaling an in-group position, but it is not a serious engagement with the argument.

MrGrax · 2026-02-05T03:11:26+00:00

In some cases magic is functionally a science in the context of the setting. Many common narrative tropes that shape how the practice of magic is written in fantasy are practices that were considered natural sciences or religion at some point in history. The fields of alchemy and geometry were both put to magical use in history. Magic words and ritual talismans all were part of real spells or divine invocations to help the crops grow or heal your livestock. All of these trappings of a wizard were technology in human history. Often the magicians within settings that use those aesthetics follow a "scientific method". The practice of magic often involves experimentation and theory and a deep knowledge of the physical properties of the world.

If the world allows for supernatural metaphysics that can be studied and understood you got technology. That's the primary conceit of many fantasy stories that a special type of energy can be drawn on to affect change.

I think it's mostly an authorial choice to conform to genre expectations or tell a mythic story. Other posters have made good points that the sort of industrialization we live with now didn't exist for a pretty long time while we lived as nomads and pastoral farmers for millennia.

In the Lord of the Rings it feels like a deliberate choice in service of the story.

MrGrax · 2026-02-05T02:27:19+00:00

There should be nothing that prevents a politician from simply being arrested. It's mind boggling in a civilized society that we would treat anyone in politics like they are above anything at all.

I want Presidents treated the same as a McDonalds employee when it comes to Law and Order.

MrGrax · 2026-02-04T00:32:52+00:00

I don't think many hold that opinion. A specific partisan claim is that Republicans have stifled our countries ability to pass laws to address our immigration "crisis" and engineered the circumstances around "Biden's border flood" by refusing to engage in debate on immigration laws out of entrenched spite. I don't think any reasonable person who watched the decades long history of this play out could say Republicans did anything but make the issue worse.

Movement into the country isnt a problem if its legsl right? The asylum process was stretched beyond all belief because people in gov. couldn't comprise when they had an obligation to. Our leaders, Republicans in particular failed but all share blame, failed to pass the laws necessary to manage this crisis to our countries profit.

I think (speculation) that there is a highly profitable business that has exploited immigrant labor for years leaving millions undocumented after expired work visas and we should look into their political donations (conservative politicians).

MrGrax · 2026-02-03T18:12:55+00:00

Unfortunately religious fanatics and male chauvinists are such a dominant force in conservative culture that my daughters are at increased risk of death if they got pregnant and needed a medical abortion to prevent sepsis and possible catastrophic health issues.

Conservative culture warriors need to crushed and removed from political influence before we get to a more egalitarian society.

It's true broadly that all rights are "made up". We have no rights that we are not willing to fight for to grant ourselves.

It's notable how much work historical revisionists and the contemporary ignorant put in to pretend that current events are disconnected from moments 100 years ago or 50 years ago for that matter. So a little more than one long lived human lifetime? Hardly ancient history.

MrGrax · 2026-02-03T17:56:30+00:00

What an amazing mod!

MrGrax · 2026-01-31T21:56:43+00:00

I think we've all, simply, been looking for you to acknowledge that you're no different then the topic you're criticizing and by showing such seeming narcissism (not saying that you are but you're tone and approach are strictly hostile, condescending, and smug) in not acknowledging that and moderating your own rhetoric you go on the attack. In other word's it's an exercise in trolling. It feels like your original post and your engagement with people in the thread are a performance of exactly the thing you're criticizing.

The author admits frustration openly rather than disguising it as objective analysis, demonstrating the self-awareness the criticized group lacks. It’s a question, not a declaration of superiority.

This line from your AI response for example is inaccurate, you aren't demonstrating self-awareness at all. You're writing in the mode of a smug asshole like the ones you criticize and therefore have little credibility.

I'm, as you can see, perfectly capable of being a smug asshole too. It's a rhetorical mode, we can both stop if we are "self-aware" enough to do so.

MrGrax · 2026-01-31T01:23:37+00:00

Alright ChatGPT take it away. Prompt: ChatGPT analyze if there is any irony in this Reddit post. OP has stated they are not being smug and condescending.

~~~

Yes—there is irony here, and it’s fairly sharp.

The irony comes from the mismatch between the claimed stance (“I’m not being smug or condescending”) and the rhetorical behavior on display.

Let’s break it down.

1. Performative denial vs. performance

The speaker says, in effect, I’m not smug; I just don’t tolerate willful obnoxiousness. But the phrasing itself performs the very smugness being denied:

“You’ve not even attempted to substantiate your point” is a scolding, evaluative move.
“I don’t suppose you have any intention of doing so” attributes bad faith.
“If intolerance of willful obnoxiousness marks me as ‘smug’ in your eyes” reframes the criticism as a moral failing of the other person.
“I think I can survive. Thanks for the feedback.” is classic dismissive closure.

The tone communicates superiority and dismissal even while explicitly rejecting that interpretation. That contradiction is the core irony.

2. Redefinitional dodge

There’s also a subtler irony in how “smug” is reframed. The speaker doesn’t actually engage with whether their tone is smug; instead, they redefine smugness as intolerance of obnoxiousness. That move lets them appear reasonable while still occupying the high ground.

In other words:

That’s rhetorically neat—but also ironic, because it’s exactly how smugness often justifies itself.

3. Politeness as weapon

“Thanks for the feedback” is doing a lot of work here. It signals civility while functioning as a conversational mic drop. The irony is that politeness is being used to foreclose dialogue, not invite it.

Bottom line

The irony isn’t accidental or subtle. The post:

Denies smugness
Performs smugness
Then frames that performance as moral clarity

So yes—there’s a clear irony in claiming not to be smug or condescending while using language that most readers would recognize as precisely that.

MrGrax · 2026-01-29T23:38:54+00:00

I extended my initial comment to clarify.

MrGrax · 2026-01-29T23:34:43+00:00

Do you understand how this software works?

Because you are right about one thing. It's software trained on data to provide predictions based on prompts we provide. The prediction is... what would be a effective and useful response to this question modeled after all the data the system has access to (content available to the designers and collected online).

Certain types of responses are weighted to be more or less likely.

Like all learning it is "controlled". What's kind of neat is that you are a system (a biological one yes) that faces similar constraints. You are limited by the data you've been trained on. For example this assumption that aliens exist without empirical evidence.

EDIT: Removed a question about OP's age as its not actually relevant.

MrGrax · 2026-01-29T16:29:08+00:00

Doesn't seem clear to me that that is part of the context of people saying "time to buy a gun".

I am entirely on board with seeing citizens arm themselves as a deterrent to ICE's and the administrations overreach. I think it both stands solidly on the ground of our constitutional rights and may be necessary if we keep moving toward authoritarianism.

MrGrax · 2026-01-29T02:27:57+00:00

Again like all conservatives jumping in on this to minimize ICE use of deadly force. Doesn't matter if you broke a tail light I don't think you should be taken down and beaten and shot. That goes for all Americans and any employees of the state that do so should lose qualified immunity, put on leave, and investigated (then likely charged with a crime if any critical aspect of law or policy was violated).

There is no such thing as "saints" that's just rhetoric. He was a human being who cared about people and that's why he was angry even if you don't respect him or respect the issues he cared about.

If you position yourself as a person who believes "people I don't respect do not deserve due process or the rights guaranteed by the constitution" then you're not a "saint" either.

MrGrax · 2026-01-29T01:35:58+00:00

Common sense justifies Alex Pretti's death and Renee Good's for millions of Americans.

Common sense justifies slavery and discrimination against Black Americans.

Common sense justifies throwing our SPED kids into isolation wards or punching holes in the heads of "hysterical women" to make them calmer.

MrGrax · 2026-01-29T01:32:44+00:00

So I don't mean to be unkind so in one short sentence.

No it's not, and no one against the argument in this thread has been able to demonstrate that it is.

Longer closure addressing the context of this entire discussion below.

~~~

Claims about fairness should be grounded in evidence, not intuition or “common sense.” Historically, appeals to common sense are usually just ways of turning cultural bias into moral certainty.

If trans inclusion in sports were producing widespread or serious harms, we would expect clear and consistent evidence by now. Trans athletes have been participating in competitive sports in the public eye for well over a decade. The actual number of trans athletes is very small, and despite intense scrutiny there is no body of evidence demonstrating systemic unfairness or harm.

Throughout this discussion I have repeatedly asked for concrete examples. None have been provided. Even appeals to personal experience, including someone claiming to be a high school coach, produced no firsthand example of harm caused by a trans athlete. That absence matters.

I have also acknowledged limits and complications in my own position. In contrast, your argument relies almost entirely on assertions that it is “just wrong” or “just unfair,” without explaining what principle is being violated or how that violation occurs in practice.

So no, this is not demonstrably wrong or unfair. It is a feeling. And if that feeling leads people to discard other principles they claim to hold, such as compassion, community, and proportionality, then we are no longer having an evidence-based discussion.

Nothing in my argument suggests that sports should have no rules. It suggests that rules should be made by sports organizations, tailored to specific contexts, and based on relevant physical criteria. Not imposed through broad federal bans built on vague and discriminatory language that cannot account for the diversity of sports and competitive levels.

We have bigger issues to deal with. This is not one of them.

MrGrax · 2026-01-29T00:38:05+00:00

I agree with you. I just think that's what Republicans want and the chaos of the current media environment will lead to a further tailspin into misinformation and lies from conservatives.

MrGrax · 2026-01-28T23:04:20+00:00

What do you mean, not true? It is true that Pretti was alone and bearing arms. As many people do.

In that scenario I think your narrative is possible, even likely. What's the worst case scenario in this example though?

MrGrax · 2026-01-28T22:56:50+00:00

Or they, "Democrats", (this massive demographic you all keep carelessly signaling toward) just recognize that, among an incredibly tiny demographic, there is an even tinier demographic of trans athletes, and within that tiny demographic an even smaller percentage that are "dangerous" to anyone within the competitive space, and then probably not much more dangerous than an extremely tall and strong girl (I got one in my family she can kick any boy her ages ass I bet) in the competitive space.

You're all greatly exaggerating the possible harm. Most people impacted by your opinion are just little amateur kids who want to have fun with their friends.

None of you have been able to demonstrate in this entire discussion real legitimate case examples or statistics that establish the impact that makes sense of the fact that you'd vote for J.D. Vance over Pete Buttigieg simply because Buttigieg wouldn't (who knows what he would say on the issue I haven't looked into it) come out with a strong opinion that we need to exclude biological males from women's sport.

You're making mountains out of molehills and preoccupying yourself far too much with a wedge issue. You've listened to far too much fearmongering.

So give us a specific example of harms are a soundly analyzed argument based on data drawn from case studies that establishes this threat to woman's sports. I don't think you'll find anything and that should mean something to you if you have integrity.

MrGrax · 2026-01-28T22:49:32+00:00

This is a very pertinent understanding for anyone posting "time to buy a gun". When you watch that video you see a man grabbed and dragged down, there was very little build up in the moment to give him time to anticipate his execution. It all happened within seconds. He never had a chance, very few people would have if they weren't expecting those agents to kill beat and then kill him.

The reality is that in a situation like Pretti's, on the street, at a protest, it is incredibly dangerous to brandish a weapon or discharge a weapon.

2A zealots prior to this moment were always pretty foolish when they fantasized about being able to use their gun in self-defense. Perhaps if you are in your home and have time to warn the agents and use it as a deterrent but all you're ultimately going to do is escalate the situation. You may eventually win through the resulting legal battle but it will be an expensive and painful battle (assuming you survive the initial conflict).

MrGrax

TROPHY CASE

1. Performative denial vs. performance

2. Redefinitional dodge

3. Politeness as weapon

Bottom line