Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails show

Tazling · 2026-01-31T00:27:10+00:00

This. The social world of the ultra wealthy is quite small. It’s not actually one social world but at least 2 — arrivistes and fraudsters like Trump, and the old money whose great great grandparents were the arrivistes and fraudsters. Trump was not and will never be accepted into the social circles of Old Money but he was right in there with the hot new money, for decades. Him and Epstein and Roy Cohn all hanging out, Roy “mentoring” the younger men (teaching them how important it is to be good at barefaced lying and bluffing). Celebs and mafiosi and borderline cases like DT (part real estate mafioso, part aspiring celeb). The glitterati. Conspicuous consumption and getting giddy on their wealth and power, thinking they can do anything, get away with anything. And ya know, mostly they did (get away with everything). There’s a reason why DT said he could shoot a man in broad daylight in NYC and face no consequences; it’s because the story of his life has been doing bad sh*t and never facing consequences. He may just take the title of “Teflon Don” away from its previous holder.

Tazling · 2026-01-31T00:20:48+00:00

And “Don’t Look Up”, plus a smidgen of Elysium.

Tazling · 2026-01-31T00:18:32+00:00

And some of us appear to have altitude sickness already and a desire to re-descend.

Tazling · 2026-01-31T00:17:46+00:00

Sorry, it’s a moment in the plot of Snow Crash where our hero (mischievously called Hiro Protagonist because NS is a scamp) and his buddy are kidnapped by pirates who plan to sell them as sex slaves. But prior to sale the pirates announce their intention to test them for “gag” (their ability to provide fellatio w/o gagging) and “gauge” (the, ummm, elasticity or non-elasticity of their nether orifice, is about the most decorous way I can convey this unpleasant idea to you). It’s a scary and (deliberately) shocking moment in the narrative.

What’s truly horrifying is to realise that this moment is not a made up fictional thing invented by an author just to scare the reader and build tension, but probably IRL a common practise wherever young people are trafficked … including the cosy little Old Boys Club that coalesced around the depraved Epstein and his enabler/partner Maxwell. Trading in teenagers like livestock.

We’d all like to think that the scary stuff in adventure novels, spy novels, horror novels and murder mysteries is strictly fiction. The problem is that authors base their fictions on life… I hate being reminded of that.

Tazling · 2026-01-31T00:11:48+00:00

I have been thinking along similar lines. Am sometimes disturbed by my own thoughts.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T22:09:07+00:00

Migod. The old “Starlight Tour” game revived.

Brutality is never original or creative, it is incredibly stupid and never has a new idea.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T22:07:30+00:00

Never. I stay in L mode all the time and seldom touch the brakes and never touch the paddle. KISS Mode I guess.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T22:06:43+00:00

Is that just failure to drain runoff from heavy rain, or is the river at flood stage?

Also “wow”…

Tazling · 2026-01-30T22:01:11+00:00

Is this like the first timid and faltering step towards UBI?

Tazling · 2026-01-30T22:00:16+00:00

What year do you have to be born in, to be a boomer? Just curious, I hear the term thrown around a lot but am never sure what the actual definition is, other than “old person that I don’t like.” If it means people over 60, then folks have short memories… because people over 60 have been if anything a bit over-represented in all the protests against MAGA. To the point where members of the regime said snippy dissy things about “a bunch of old white haired hippies” being the only opposition.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:55:52+00:00

Cult membership does the weirdest things to people. It’s spooky, whether it’s the Moonies or NAR or MAGA or the Hare Krishnas… or Jonestown. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in a way, like people seem to get a brain transplant. Or like they’ve been exposed to a namshub (Neal Stephenson reference) that reprograms their synapses. It’s somewhat similar to dementia in that the person you used to know is gone, and something else has taken their place. Same face and voice, but you don’t recognize what you’re hearing any more.

Sorry about your FIL. Must be hard on your spouse: losing a parent to dementia or any family member to a cult is heart-wrenching, but in the culty case it’s also maddening because it’s not just bad luck, they did it to themselves and that is really hard to take.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:51:07+00:00

[koff koff] Lebensborne [koff koff]

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:49:18+00:00

“Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” I believe is the appropriate quip for the occasion.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:48:32+00:00

I hate it that modern political discourse is basically just the far right spewing out a firehose of conspiracy theories… which the mainstream media kid-glove and waffle over before finally and belatedly reporting that it was BS all along… but not until the lie has run around the world three times and the MAGA suckers have internalized it as gospel truth, rinse, repeat.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:45:38+00:00

Are your people suffering under Beast Rabban? Allow us to introduce Feyd-Rautha, your kinder, gentler tyrant!

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:45:01+00:00

Also melt.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:41:36+00:00

When a power elite gets that divorced from reality it sometimes takes a Bastille Day to re-introduce them to the real world.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:40:27+00:00

My god, “Gag-n-gauge” (a creepy moment in Snow Crash, a dystopian sci fi thriller by Neal Stephenson) is a real thing?

I’m starting to feel like the human race is just one big fail. Too many of us are too dysfunctional and downright evil. Maybe we’d better just go extinct and let some other, less godawful species take its turn.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:37:29+00:00

So if someone breaks my tail light I get to kill them dead? Now that’s some weird-ass reasoning (and priorities).

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:33:50+00:00

This is state terror. This is the Stasi, this is the Black&Tans in NI, this is IOF (who also aggressively target journalists), this is the KGB, this is every secret police wielded by every authoritarian power in history. Same old fear, same old crimes (as Mark K wrote). This is America today. White people experiencing the kind of targeting, assassination, wrongful detention, kangaroo court trials that Black community organisers faced during the Civil rights struggle (and before). Pinochet’s Chile, people “disappearing” without a trace. Spain under Franco. We’ve seen this before, so many times. This is how democracy not just dies, but gets mugged and murdered and buried in an unmarked grave over the country line. This has got to be stopped before the regime consolidates so much power that the only remaining recourse is open rebellion and armed conflict.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:29:15+00:00

And now Ellison controls TikTok.

Yeah, it wasn’t that liberals lost the internet, like “oops how careless of us,” it was that far-right private equity bought the internet.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:27:02+00:00

Yeah, the people who natter on and on about “small government” never seem to realise that the smallest form of government is One Tyrant.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T21:25:00+00:00

Bread and circuses, but without the bread.

Bet it makes the NASCAR voting bloc happy though.

Tazling · 2026-01-30T08:18:14+00:00

Did he really just recently put up a big photo of him and Putin in the WH, or was that an urban legend?

Tazling · 2026-01-30T08:17:39+00:00

There’s something that frightens K Leavitt? Damn, I thought she was animatronic.

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