It’s beginning to get hot here in South Florida. Rich people without kids generally stay in Florida for 4-6 months per year, 183 days/year if they’re anxious to preserve Florida as their primary residence/tax domicile. If that’s how people with infinite money live we can presume that it is a good way to live, I think (perhaps the Jeffrey Epstein and friends situation is a counterargument to that principle).
Carl G. Fisher created Miami Beach and, for his second act, wanted to build out Montauk on Long Island as the summer home for all of his customers.
What if we adapt Fisher’s idea for families with K-12-age kids? We set up a school that operates mid-October through mid-April (183 days/year or a little more) in Florida and then shuts down for a week while everyone moves up to New Hampshire. The kids can finish their school year up there and then the enterprise segues into summer camp mode, with activities all day every day for the same kids. The family can enjoy the best weather/seasons in the two states. The family won’t have to pay any state income tax (constitutionally barred in Florida so that should remain the state for 183+ days; NH could have an income tax, but presently does not), even if work is done in both places. The kids and adults will have built-in social circles in both places. If a great teacher doesn’t want to move, he or she can stay in Florida year-round and do the beginning and end of the school year virtually while the in-classroom students are organized by someone who is primarily a camp counselor.
The New Hampshire operation would run like a “family camp” in which everyone could meet for meals 3X/day if desired. Florida already has tons of restaurants and recreational facilities, so it would be more of a standard family life during the winter.
The main objection that I can see to this idea is the difficulty of scaling immediately to a sufficient size. A school with fewer than 200 students would presumably be overwhelmed with regulatory compliance costs and classes of fewer than 18 students would likely seem lame. Rich people are drawn to elite schools and it would be tough for an upstart traveling school to compete with The Greene School in West Palm Beach (founded by a billionaire; gifted students only) for quality, actual and perceived.
Also, there’s the question of where in New Hampshire to locate. Portsmouth has a fantastic airport, a beautiful river and ocean access, but it is expensive. Lake Winnipesaukee has a good airport (KLCI) and is in a traditional area for summer camps, but it is more isolated. The border towns with Maskachusetts could work because they provide quick access to Logan Airport for summer vacation trips, etc.
Obviously this wouldn’t work for most of the parents of the 3.4 million-ish school-age children who live in Florida, but why couldn’t it work for the parents of about 200 children?
More recent new construction hasn’t replaced America’s graying housing stock, meaning the age of the median home is a record 44 years, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The cost of home maintenance, even after accounting for broader inflation, has jumped. Structural repair costs grew by about 14.1% in real terms between 2022 and 2024, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Plumbing jumped by 23.6%. The increase reflects the rising cost of individual parts and labor, and the larger size of necessary repairs.
This is on top of the rising costs of home insurance, property taxes and homeowners association dues, which are making it prohibitive for many to simply own a home, not to mention buy one.
The newspaper says “it [is] prohibitive for many to simply own a home, not to mention buy one” and at the same time tells us that the U.S. should have increased immigration, i.e., more demand for a relatively fixed supply of houses.
Our shabby/old house by Palm Beach County standards is 23 years old and that puts us in the top 25 percent of home youth:
Getting close to my 4% number:
Financial advisers traditionally suggested setting aside 1% of a home’s value annually for upkeep, but many now argue that isn’t enough. While 1% may cover routine upkeep, 2% to 3% provides a more realistic cushion for expected maintenance, home-improvement projects and unexpected repairs, particularly for older homes, said Angie Hicks, co-founder of home-services company Angi.
The Americans who were most eager to lock themselves into their homes during coronapanic will now bear a heavy burden:
Forty-nine percent of all improvement spending is now for necessary replacements like HVAC that owners can’t delay, said Rachel Drew, director of Harvard’s Remodeling Futures Program. The financial burden is particularly heavy in regions like the Northeast, where homes tend to be older.
Speaking of old, the article highlights the inability of folks in the Northeast to adapt to changed circumstances:
Mindy and Joseph Mevorah own an 88-year-old colonial [“more than 3,500-square-foot”] in Sands Point, a New York City suburb with plenty of old homes that is often considered an inspiration for “The Great Gatsby.” The house is due for a new coat of paint, a task they know to approach with caution. … “A new brick next to an old brick would look terrible,” said Joseph, 66. … The Mevorahs have stayed in their home for 29 years … They have a pool that could be a draw for future grandchildren. … When replacing their copper gutters a few years ago, they considered switching to aluminum, which would have been cheaper, but ultimately stuck with copper to preserve the home’s integrity. After all, they expect to be there for many years to come.
A 66-year-old in Florida whose kids were grown wouldn’t stay in a 3,500-square-foot wreck of a house. The Floridian would recognize that different kinds of real estate are suitable for different phases of life and likely move to a condo or small new house.
Circling back to the immigration theme… how can end-of-career financially comfortable Americans who struggle to afford house maintenance imagine that the U.S. can afford to house tens of millions of additional welfare-dependent low-skill immigrants?
Lifestyles of the Rich and Not-so-famous… a 50-year-old friend who is a good skier reported to our chat group from Aspen. What does it cost to spend a week with the elite? For two parents and two adult children in a rented 2BR timeshare, the basic cost (airfare plus lodging) for mid-March was about $15,000 thanks to his wife, a business genius. If a mere mortal were to arrange this it would be $30,000. “St Regis nearby is $2400 a night, which is not the peak rate.” Note that this trip was booked before the ski season started, so the prices don’t reflect that fact that Colorado had no snow this year.
To save time, the family’s tickets were straight into the Aspen airport.
Tailwinds too strong for a landing in Aspen, so they are diverting to Grand Junction – that is a 2-3 hour drive
20kt gusting 30
These small mountainous airports are bad news
And that is why I prefer SLC to all of them
But [wife] was hell bent on “trying out Aspen”
I have to say the turbulence right now is like on the Katana [Diamond DA20, a paper airplane, basically, in its response to wind]
Given the 3:30am wake up call, this trip is going to be a hoot now
They will need multiple buses to send this plane full of skiers with their gear
My friend used to vacation in Aspen all the time and I remember that he got stuck here because of the weather at least twice. Planes depart SLC pretty much in any weather. One time he was in Aspen with his kids for four days waiting for a flight. Couldn’t get a car rental because everything was rented, car services were all booked.
Just arrived in our hotel. 4 hours after landing
A guy told [wife] that we were lucky we got to grand junction; People were arriving in Ubers without their bags from Denver
(I personally would have booked a flight into Denver (“mile-high”), spent a night or two adjusting to higher altitude, and then proceeded 3.5 hours by car up to Aspen, 8,000′ above sea level.)
What’s the experience?
Aspen is about stopping to ski early because your salesman at David Yurman called you because your diamonds were ready for pick up
they definitely do have snow on slopes, just not as much as usual. Better than a good day on the East Coast
Ikon passes were $5k for 4 people [lift tickets]
[wife] is raving about the Franke coffee machine [in the condo]
Skiing is ok. Not as bad as we thought it would be. Icy at the bottom. Not crowded.
It is kind of a small mountain. Snowmass and Buttermilk are nearby but require a shuttle
I think I know who likes it: it is guys whose wives don’t ski
So they are bored in all other locations. Here they can go shopping or sit in restaurants. If you have a wife who doesn’t ski and bitches at you, then she will drive you nuts in Utah.
Women are visibly prettier.
too few slopes. They arent bad but Snowbird is a lot better
[daughter] just ran for 40 minutes at her usual pace here and said that it was noticeably harder because of the altitude
How about the elites?
Very few non whites. [quoting wife] “I just saw my first Asian just now. She was with a white dude, so the type that wants to be white”. Racism and stereotyping are rampant here
You have people dressed in furs on the top of the mountain – they actually dress up and go up there with their shopping bags
[wife] grabbed our skis from the valet and some woman in the elevator looked at her and said “why are you moving your own stuff…?” Implying that bell staff is supposed to bring it all to our room. We are clearly not used to the luxury lifestyle. These time shares are all run like hotels.
You should see some of the houses being built on the hills here. Like the Hamptons
Speaking of well-to-do people… Aspen sucks overall. all these dressed up people get old pretty quickly. restaurants are very nice but that’s the only advantage. after i ski all day, i really want to just be in bed or order in. we ordered in twice already.
Getting back home:
Aspen airport doesn’t disappoint on departure. We have been sitting on the ground for an hour because of “quite a few arrivals”
Embraer is being thrown around by rising air like a Diamond Katana
Honestly, I think Aspen is beyond overrated
Final answer?
[wife] might disagree but I think Aspen sucks. Definitely not for you guys. Since you don’t dress up in furs and blow $1k for dinner “to see and be seen”. I was moderately connected to these people and still am to some extent as you saw from my friend’s photos for example, but I don’t go to their parties, which are boring as f*ck. Regarding skiing Aspen is overall inferior to Utah and Vail. Not because all runs suck – there are a few good ones, but overall it is way too small. It is for a green/blue run crowd and has some harder ones so that experienced people can feel that the vacation didn’t totally suck. It is mostly about the town. This is literally it. I think one can cover this entire map in one day of skiing.
Frederic “Rick” Bourke, the co-founder of the Dooney & Bourke accessories brand, is putting his Robert A.M. Stern-designed home in Aspen, Colo., on the market for $70 million.
Completed around 1993, the roughly 11,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom house is built horizontally along a rock face on Red Mountain, with tawny-beige stucco walls set atop a native sandstone base.
Bourke acquired the roughly 3.5-acre Aspen property in the late 1980s. The lot sits high on Red Mountain, about 800 feet above downtown. He asked Stern to design a family home there.
[from the big house to The Big House] Bourke’s neighbor in Aspen was businessman Viktor Kozeny. In 2009, Bourke was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for engaging in a scheme with Kozeny to bribe Azerbaijan government officials. Bourke spent almost a year in prison starting in 2013.
Here’s the VFR chart for the airport, a 8440′ and surrounded by mountains high enough that the FAA says not to fly below 14,600′ (you could still hit a mountain, though, with an altimeter reading of 14,600′ in the winter because the Earth’s atmosphere contracts in the cold and the true altitude is lower than what is indicated):
Airlines have a custom RNAV (RNP) N Runway 15 that supposedly takes them down to about 540′ above the runway before they need to be able to look out the window and see. The lowest approach available to general aviation, including the elites in their private jets, requires the pilots to see the runway when 2100′ above it (up to 91 knots approach speed; Cessna or Cirrus) or 2400′ above (91-120 knots; a lot of rabble-class bizjets) or 3200′ above (121-140 knots; the Big Iron for the Big Shots). This is actually more restrictive than ordinary visual (VFR) flying, which can be done with a ceiling of 1000′.
(In the plate below, notice that the approach features a second localizer that isn’t associated with any runway. This provides guidance for the missed approach. Imagine the consequences, especially in the pre-GPS days, of the obvious mistake of failing to switch the frequency or of forgetting how to use the back course of a localizer, something that the typical instrument-rated pilot might do in training and then never again.)
There’s also a GPS approach that has similar minimums for jets:
Here’s a guy whose profile says that he lives in San Francisco and works at Google. In other words, Iman Rahmati pays taxes to fund the U.S. military.
Iman Rahmati says “Every piece of international law, every moral code, every sign of dignity in a nation, in an army, has been broken by Trump, Netanyahu, and their minions. Bombing hospitals, schools, civilians, universities, infrastructure, factories, etc. The west has zero moral superiority from now on. International order is fractured and no nation has the guts standing up to them, well except the one that is right now.”
Iman (note that this means “faith in Allah” according to ChatGPT and is distinct from “Imam”) is upset that his alma mater was bombed, blaming Israel (the basis for saying that Israel did this vs. the U.S. is unclear):
I owe my career to Sharif University. And many more successful Iranians in Silicon Valley owe it to this university paid fully by Iranian people’s tax and oil money.
Today the illegal terrorist Israeli regime bombed my university, after a week of bombing other major… https://t.co/JsRYJ4Rz8g
As it happens, this university has been under EU sanctions since 2014 for its work in “ballistic missile production”:
Obviously, this isn’t going to change the opinion of the righteous Iranian immigrant to the U.S. regarding the legitimacy of the attack on his alma mater. Therefore, the question of why he would want to stay in the U.S. and pay taxes to support the bombing of his alma mater, as well as other targets in the Islamic Republic of Iran, remains a live one. If he is smart and productive enough to work at Google he could presumably transfer to a Google office in Canada (follow Barbra Streisand), the Islamic Republic of Great Britain, pro-Hamas Al-Andalus (Spain), or even work from home after returning to help defend his beloved home country.
There have to be tons more Iranians who are in a similar position. They support the Islamic Republic regime and live in the U.S. and thus pay taxes to help the U.S. military either (1) bring down the regime that they support, or (2) militarily cripple the regime that they support.
The niece of slain Iranian terror mastermind Gen. Qasem Soleimani – who showcased her luxe LA lifestyle on Instagram while bashing the US as the “Great Satan” – and her daughter have been arrested by ICE agents, the State Department announced Saturday.
Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, who allegedly celebrated attacks on US soldiers and military bases, and her daughter Sarinasadat Hosseiny, have had their green cards revoked over their ties to the Iranian regime.
“While living in the United States, she promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the ‘Great Satan,’ and voiced her unflinching support for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization,” according to a State Department letter confirming the Friday arrests.
Afshar, 47, entered the US in 2015 on a tourist visa, was granted asylum in 2019 and secured a green card in 2021 from the Biden administration.
She made at least four trips back to Iran since receiving her green card, the Department of Homeland Security said.
(This is a great argument for eliminating asylum-based immigration in the U.S. Our government bureaucrats aren’t capable of distinguishing between members of a purportedly oppressive government and those who are actually opponents of said government. This makes sense since few government workers speak or read Farsi, Arabic, or the other languages prevalent in countries from which migrants claim asylum. And none of our government workers have first-hand experience with current events in all of the world’s most violent and dysfunctional societies from which, bizarrely, we have decided to prioritize immigration (the door is closed, however, to folks from Japan, Switzerland, and Taiwan!).)
I can understand why someone would hate what the U.S. government, including the U.S. military, does. And I can understand why someone who was born in the U.S. would stay in the U.S. under those conditions (few other countries will accept migrants as we do). But I can’t understand why someone who is at least a dual citizen and who has the right to leave the U.S. at any time would choose instead to stay and help fund the U.S. government.
Does anyone have a favorite in tonight’s NCAA basketball final?
A friend who works in finance went to the NCAA Final Four games on Saturday. It’s about three hours round-trip from NYC in a two-decade-old mid-sized business jet, which he chartered for about $40,000 plus $2,500 for Signature Indianapolis’s event fee (over $13,000 per flight hour, in other words). The black car service was $900 round-trip to the stadium, normally an 11-minute drive from Signature IND. “Rental cars were $1,000,” he said, “and due to terrorism concerns you supposedly can’t park anywhere near the stadium.” How much were the tickets? One of his companions is so elite that he got prime seats for free as a donor to one of the universities (it’s the same ticket/seat for two back-to-beack games).
What will Costco do if they have any of these left? Sell them for kids’ birthday parties? What is the practical occasion on which 10 lbs. of chocolate is useful?
(I searched to see who is supplying them with the actual chocolate and came up empty. They definitely don’t start with beans.)
Separately, some tasteful Easter decorations in the Canterbury Place neighborhood of Abacoa.
The lead plaintiff in the Bank of America lawsuit, an unidentified woman, came to the United States from Russia in 2011 when she was about 20. The lawsuit said Mr. Epstein had sexually abused her at least 100 times and coerced her into a “cultlike life,” in which she was totally dependent on him.
In 2013, Bank of America opened an account for the woman, then 22, at the direction of Mr. Epstein’s employees, even though she spoke little English and had no job or discernible source of income — all potential red flags for sex trafficking, the lawsuit said.
The two law firms representing the victims, Boies Schiller Flexner and Edwards Henderson, could be eligible to receive fees totaling 30 percent of the settlement amount, according to the court filing.
Note that Boies Schiller Flexner was Theranos’s law firm, absolutely critical to keeping the fraud going according to the book Bad Blood, and David Boeis was actually a Theranos board member (see Evaluating trustworthiness; lessons from Theranos).
So… this woman got paid to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein from age 20 to age 28. In addition to whatever she got paid at the time, e.g., via the Bank of America account at issue, she would have received about $3.5 million from JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and the Epstein estate. Let’s say with this latest settlement she’ll be up to $5 million, all tax-free because it will be payments for damages suffered. She says that she had sex with Jeffrey Epstein 100 times so that works out to $50,000 per sex act plus whatever Emmanuel Goldstein paid her on a current basis.
Loosely related… “[OnlyFans] proves that, when given the choice and opportunity, many women will choose to enter the prostitution industry voluntarily”
RIP to the man whose work challenged a common lie and assumption about women being forced into the porn industry.
his creation proves that, when given the choice and opportunity, many women will choose to enter the prostitution industry voluntarily…Despite having no barriers… https://t.co/R31fFZOxOg
The standard expression “You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out” could be adjusted for recent events in Iran, where a popular uprising doesn’t seem practical: “You can vote your way into Islamic Theocracy, but you have to shoot your way out”.
It seems that very few Iranians could shoot their way out even if motivated to do so. The Islamic Republic has a near-monopoly on gun ownership that is enforced by a Chicago or New York Democrat’s dream common sense gun control system:
The Islamic Republic purportedly has only about 20 percent support (poll), but could probably have stayed in power forever if not for its nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, Hezbollah, Houthi, and Hamas programs.
Could the divergence between what the Iranian people supposedly want (to the extent that can be measured accurately) and what the Iranian government does lead some Americans to reconsider their goals of eliminating private gun ownership in the U.S.?
(Note that I personally believe that Americans’ right to own guns will disappear within the next few decades, a casualty of our immigration system and the consequent creation of a society that is a random assemblage of humans without any common values. When shooting jihads such as Ndiaga Diagne‘s become weekly events, Americans will gladly surrender their rights in exchange for a perceived safety advantage, just as Americans meekly surrendered their First Amendment right to assemble during coronapanic.)
I’m wondering if LGBTQIA is the most popular social justice cause because there is no obvious connection between saying one is passionate about supporting LGBTQIA and having to donate money. If someone says “I care about the poor” and then buys a Tesla instead of a Honda Accord, a friend might ask “Why didn’t you give $70,000 to the poor and drive a Honda rather than your fancy Tesla?”
In the intervening seven years, Teslas have gotten cheaper so perhaps a better analogy is to the $10,000 European vacation. Certainly over those seven years, though, heterosexual Rainbow Flagism, i.e., the public celebration of homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. by white cisgender heterosexuals, has become even more common. Nominally Christian churches in majority-Democrat parts of the U.S. will usually have a rainbow flag even when their entire congregation is hetero. None of these churches have flags or signs out front saying “help the poor by giving them half of your income since you already live at least 2X as well as Americans in the 1950s”.
I wonder if we’re seeing the same phenomenon right now with respect to people indignantly condemning Jeffrey Epstein. Hardly any of these folks were important enough to be included in the Epstein Files and, therefore, they can’t have been personally offended by Epstein’s conduct. If we assume that Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for “soliciting prostitution” wasn’t coerced by the threat of decades in prison, what has been established is that he had sex with a paid 16-year-old female roughly 20 years ago. (He is often referred to by the Two Minutes Haters as a “rapist” or “pedophile”, but he was never charged with rape, much less convicted of rape, and having sex with a 16-year-old is not an example of pedophilia as the term was previously used in English.)
The Two Minutes Haters often live within a short drive of places where teenage prostitution is going on right now. I’m in a politically diverse Facebook group with a Big Law partner (average partner at his firm earns about $1.5 million/year in post-Biden dollars) who posts daily about his sympathy for the Epstein victims. He lives in an elite neighborhood of Greater Los Angeles that is within a one-hour drive of the street that the New York Times recently identified as having a high-density of juvenile prostitutes:
Ana paced on the sidewalk at 68th and Figueroa, her front teeth missing and an ostomy bag taped down under her hot pink lingerie. … Ana was 19, but the girls on the street reminded her of herself and her sister when they were first put out on Figueroa for sex. She had been 13. Her sister, 11. … Ana had grown accustomed to the protocols of the Blade, a roughly 50-block stretch of Figueroa Street that had become one of the most notorious sex-trafficking corridors in the United States. … The Blade was an eight-minute drive from the University of Southern California … The younger the girl, the more customers would pay, which meant preteens were often being robbed and assaulted by groups of older girls trying to make quota.
My response to one of his recent demands for more action regarding the Epstein Files. I’ll call him “Hassan” since that’s the first name of one of the Somalis charged in the Minnesota welfare state frauds and we are informed that Somalis built the United States:
There are teenage prostitutes whom you can rescue tonight, Hassan. The New York Times tells you exactly where in Los Angeles to find them. I will send you $1,000, Hassan, if you will go to Figueroa St. tonight and take home one of the under-18 prostitutes and keep her safe in your guest rooms for at least one month. This is to offset the cost of her food (I know that it should be a lot less than $1,000 to feed a skinny kid, but I see you more as an Uber Eats kind of person than a competent chef).
His only response to this offer was to take issue with my criticism, admittedly unsupported, of his cooking abilities. A few hours later he was posting the assertion “Donald Trump was actively recruiting girls for Epstein”, apparently made by someone the FBI interviewed in 2021.
The easiest way for authorities to bring the criminal justice system down on men who have sex with “underage” women is to prosecute them for statutory. Then a jury doesn’t need to sort out whether providing a female with housing, private jet rides, clothing, jewelry, spending money, etc. is prostitution or just legal “dating” in our debauched country. The people who engage in the Two Minutes Hate regarding Epstein often live in states where sex with a 16-year-old might be perfectly legal because that’s the age of consent. Here’s my offer to one of the haters who sent me a stream of enraged X messages regarding my failure to unequivocally condemn Jeffrey Epstein:
If you want to work together to lobby the Massachusetts legislature to raise the age of consent in MA to 18, I will be happy to help with that.
He did not respond to this offer.
What we’re seeing is a huge group of Americans who don the mantle of righteous protectors of teenage females because they posted on social media about Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, all of whom are now adults and nearly all of whom have been or are being paid $millions, i.e., more than the typical American female will earn in a lifetime of W-2 slavery. See “Jeffrey Epstein victims program shutting down with $121 million paid to abuse survivors” (ABC, 2021):
The Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, since launching last year, received approximately 225 applications from alleged victims from the United States and abroad. That astounding number was more than double the initial expectations of the fund’s administrator and advocates for the victims. … Of the 150 applicants deemed eligible for compensation, more than 92% accepted the offers. The awards were paid by the executors of Epstein’s estate, but the claims were evaluated independently “free from any interference or control” by the estate, said Jordana Feldman, the program’s designer and administrator.
(75 out of 225 applicants were considered to be obvious liars by the administrators and, therefore, not eligible?)
The lawsuit is one of several targeting banks who serviced Epstein’s financial dealings for years, even after it emerged in 2006 that Epstein was using his wealth to exploit minors and young women. Last month, Deutsche Bank agreed to a $75 million settlement in a similar case.
News of the JPMorgan settlement emerged on Monday, the same day a federal judge granted class-action status to the lawsuit, saying the number of plaintiffs involved could be “well over 100 people.”
Let’s assume it is the same 150 people who will also share the JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank cash. That’s $486 million divided by 150 = $3.24 million on top of whatever Jeffrey Epstein paid them while they were spending time with him. A reasonable person could certainly argue that $3.24 million tax-free isn’t sufficient compensation but it is unarguably far more than the typical teen prostitute receives. Thus my confusion regarding why it’s considered righteous to dwell on Jeffrey Epstein’s victims of 20 years ago rather than try to rescue today’s teen prostitutes.
Maybe the best response is to offer anyone piling on condemnation of Epstein three options: (a) spend time and money rescuing today’s young female prostitutes, (b) spend time and money lobbying to raise the age of consent in every U.S. state and every country where it isn’t at least 18 (you could also argue for 27, at least for women, given recent outraged stories about Epstein and 26-year-old females (e.g., NYT)), (c) spend time and money on imposing alcohol prohibition within the U.S. (my standard proposal for improving a lot of stuff, including sexual behavior), or (d) spend money on a new fund that will give people who say that they were Epstein victims additional money. Perhaps the new fund could find the 75 women who were denied any compensation by the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program and give each of them $1 million?
Related:
Fox story about Wendy Stephens, just 14 years old when she was murdered by the Green River Killer; Wendy Stephens ran away from home in Colorado and found her way to Seattle somehow. Not only did Wendy Stephens not get paid $millions, but she didn’t get to enjoy her remaining 60+ years of life expectancy. Had the citizens of Seattle shut down their teen prostitution corridor, which is where Gary Ridgway picked up nearly all of his victims, Wendy Stephens would likely be with us today. (The arch-criminal, according to Wokipedia: “Ridgway, who is dyslexic, was held back a year in high school and exhibited an IQ recorded as being in the ‘low eighties.'”)
“LA County reaches $828 million abuse claims settlement on top of previous $4 billion accord” (ABC, October 2025), a story that interested almost nobody either inside or outside of LA: “Los Angeles County announced a tentative $828 million settlement with more than 400 plaintiffs who claim they were the victims of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of county workers. The settlement is on top of an earlier $4 billion settlement reached on behalf of roughly 11,000 claimants.”
Would it be possible to use AI to determine whether, as is commonly asserted these days, that Jeffrey Epstein was a rapist of 14-year-old girls?
ChatGPT says that it is fair to characterize Jeffrey Epstein as a “pedophile” because at least some women were under age 18. When asked about Mohammed and his marriage to Aisha, on the other hand, it turns out that the Prophet was not a “pedophile”:
Traditional Islamic hadith literature — especially reports in collections such as Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim — state that:
Muhammad married Aisha when she was six.
The marriage was consummated when she was nine.
These reports have been accepted as authentic by the majority of classical Sunni scholars for over a millennium.
…
4) Comparison with Jeffrey Epstein
The comparison is difficult because the contexts differ on multiple axes:
Dimension
Muhammad
Epstein
Time period
7th century
20th–21st century
Cultural norms
Early marriage common
Sex with minors illegal & stigmatized
Evidence type
Religious texts & historical reports
Court records, testimony, indictments
Pattern alleged
Specific marriages
Large network of abuse
Legal framework
Pre-modern tribal law
Modern criminal law
Because of this:
Epstein’s conduct was criminal under the laws and norms of his own society.
Muhammad’s marriage practices reflected norms widely accepted in his historical setting.
This doesn’t make moral evaluation impossible — but it makes clinical labeling across contexts methodologically unsound.
It’s Super Bowl Sunday, a day when tens of millions Americans with jobs will sit on their sofas instead of working and paying taxes associated with working, e.g., payroll and personal income tax.
We have been gifted by far-sighted and generous politicians whose dreams of an improved cradle-to-grave welfare state for roughly 50 percent of Americans have been spoiled by the laziness of Americans who have jobs but don’t work enough hours to fully fund progressive dreams.
Imagine the boost to tax revenue if working Americans worked all weekend instead of watching games on TV. What if we augmented televisions and streaming services with EBT card readers and only those with active SNAP/EBT/food stamps would be able to watch NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.? (It’s easier to get someone who works 50 hours per week to instead work 60 hours per week than it is to get someone who works 0 hours per week to toil for 10 tedious hours per week.)
I pointed this out yesterday, but it is worth pointing out again today: Santa Clara County just recently issued a mask order to reduce the spread of COVID-19 (below) and today they’re going to host a COVID-19 superspreader event. #Science!
