whats up buddy

It used to be around 500 daily users , now it's at 900. So, it's not decreasing, but maybe not increasing by as much I guess.

Zero chance of recession this year.

Here's the explanation. Most recent recessions have been self-manufactured through credit expansion and rapid deflation through interest rate rises. Right now they're holding steady. If they raise interest rates this year, there would be a chance of recession. But here's your explanation of why they won't raise rates this year: the fed's job is to be seen as a non political actor. If they manufacture a recession in an election year, they come off as favouring the challenger, instead of the incumbent. So, they're not going to meddle with interest rates this year.

I use ublock origins with firefox. it works fine.

https://twitter.com/Global_Mil_Info/status/1710511661533028629

Footage of a hamas infiltrator using a motorized hang glider to get into Israel.

first

Removed by mod

hexbear admins: I have one bsky invite, if you want to setup an account on it, instead of twitter.

Suse is older than 18.

The first version appeared in early 1994, making SUSE one of the oldest existing commercial distributions.

How did the biggest lemmy instance end up being lib-central? I thought lemmy was developed by communists?

Congrats

inbox was in unread state

Who is Second Thought? lol

In September 2013, Epstein asked Mrs. de Rothschild in an email for help finding a new assistant, “female…multilingual, organized.”

“I’ll ask around,” Mrs. de Rothschild emailed back.

She bought nearly $1 million worth of auction items on Epstein’s behalf in 2014 and 2015, the documents show.

Mrs. de Rothschild was named chairwoman of the bank in January 2015. That October, she and Epstein negotiated a $25 million contract for Epstein’s Southern Trust Co. to provide “risk analysis and the application and use of certain algorithms” for the bank, according to a proposal reviewed by the Journal.

In 2019, after Epstein was arrested, the bank said that Mrs. de Rothschild never met with Epstein and it had no business links with him.

The bank acknowledged to the Journal that its earlier statement wasn’t accurate. It said Mrs. de Rothschild met with Epstein as part of her normal duties at the bank between 2013 and 2019, and Epstein introduced the bank to U.S. finance leaders, recommended law firms and provided tax and risk consulting.

“In parallel to that, Epstein solicited her personally on a couple occasions for advice and services on estate management,” the bank said.

Mrs. de Rothschild had no knowledge of any legal proceedings against Epstein and “was similarly unaware of any questions regarding his personal conduct,” the bank said. After later learning of his behavior, the bank said, “she feels for and supports the victims.”

One of Epstein’s scheduled meetings with Mrs. de Rothschild, in January 2014, included another of his regular guests: Joshua Cooper Ramo, then co-chief executive of Henry Kissinger’s corporate consulting firm.

Epstein scheduled more than a dozen meetings from 2013 to 2017 with Mr. Ramo, who at the time served on the boards of Starbucks Corp. and FedEx Corp. , the documents show. Epstein had special snacks on hand because he believed Mr. Ramo was vegetarian, the documents indicate.

Many of Mr. Ramo’s appointments with Epstein were in the evenings, typically after 5 p.m., at the townhouse. Mr. Ramo also was invited to a breakfast at the townhouse in September 2013 with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, another regular guest, the documents show.

Mr. Ramo, who still sits on the board of FedEx and recently stepped down from the Starbucks board, didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Kissinger said he wasn’t aware that Mr. Ramo was meeting with Epstein.

Mr. Barak also met Epstein in 2015 with Mr. Chomsky, now 94, a linguistics professor and political activist who has been critical of capitalism and U.S. foreign policy.

Mr. Chomsky said Epstein arranged the meeting with Mr. Barak for them to discuss “Israel’s policies with regard to Palestinian issues and the international arena.”

Mr. Barak said he often met with Epstein on trips to New York and was introduced to people such as Mr. Ramo and Mr. Chomsky to discuss geopolitics or other topics. “He often brought other interesting persons, from art or culture, law or science, finance, diplomacy or philanthropy,” Mr. Barak said.

Epstein arranged several meetings in 2015 and 2016 with Mr. Chomsky, while he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When asked about his relationship with Epstein, Mr. Chomsky replied in an email: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”

In March 2015, Epstein scheduled a gathering with Mr. Chomsky and Harvard University professor Martin Nowak and other academics, according to the documents. Mr. Chomsky said they had several meetings at Mr. Nowak’s research institute to discuss neuroscience and other topics.

Two months later, Epstein planned to fly with Mr. Chomsky and his wife to have dinner with them and movie director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, the documents show.

“If there was a flight, which I doubt, it would have been from Boston to New York, 30 minutes,” Mr. Chomsky said. “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”  Epstein donated at least $850,000 to MIT between 2002 and 2017, and more than $9.1 million to Harvard from 1998 to 2008, the schools have said. In 2021, Harvard said it was sanctioning Mr. Nowak for violating university policies in his dealings with Epstein, and was shutting a research center he ran that Epstein had funded. MIT said it was inappropriate to accept Epstein’s gifts, and that it later donated $850,000 to nonprofits supporting survivors of sexual abuse.

In a 2020 interview with the “dunc tank” podcast, Mr. Chomsky said that people he considered worse than Epstein had donated to MIT. He didn’t mention any of his meetings with Epstein.

Mr. Chomsky told the Journal that at the time of his meetings “what was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.”

MIT said lawyers investigating its ties to Epstein didn’t find that Mr. Chomsky met with Epstein on its campus or received funding from him. Harvard declined to comment beyond the report it published on its Epstein ties in 2020. Mr. Nowak has said he regretted his role in fostering a connection between Epstein and Harvard. He didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Botstein, 76, president of Bard College since 1975, had about two dozen meetings scheduled with Epstein over about four years, which were mostly visits to the townhouse.

“I was an unsuccessful fundraiser and actually the object of a little bit of sadism on his part in dangling philanthropic support,” said Mr. Botstein. “That was my relationship with him.”

Mr. Botstein said he first visited Epstein’s townhouse in 2012 to thank him for unsolicited donations to Bard’s high schools, then he returned over several years in an attempt to get more donations. In 2015, Epstein donated 66 laptops, the documents show.

“We looked him up, and he was a convicted felon for a sex crime,” he said. Bard has a large program providing education to prisoners, he said. “We believe in rehabilitation.”

Mr. Botstein, also the longtime music director for the American Symphony Orchestra, invited Epstein to an opera at Bard in 2013, then a concert at the college in 2016, the documents indicate. Epstein planned each time to bring some of his young female assistants and arrive by helicopter.

Mr. Botstein said he was expecting Epstein to support classical music causes and that the school took precautions when he visited. “Because of his previous record, we had security ready,” he said. “He did not have any free access to anybody.”

At Epstein’s home, Mr. Botstein was led to a dining room where they discussed classical music and other causes, he said. “He presented himself as a billionaire, a really, really rich person,” he said. “I found him odd and arrogant. And what I finally came to believe, which is why we stopped contact with him, is that he was simply stringing us along.”

Despite all his meetings, Mr. Botstein said, Epstein never made another donation to Bard. “It was a blessing in disguise,” he said, “that we never got any [more] money.”

—Rob Barry contributed to this article.

Write to Khadeeja Safdar at khadeeja.safdar@wsj.com and David Benoit at David.Benoit@wsj.com

Not necessarily or always. I'm saying that this was the case in this instance.

Chat. Let's get some crabs going 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 🦀 :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party: :crab-party:

He was definitely pedo, and he himself probably had a history of being abused.

Yo. This guy supports Hindutva and Modi!

deep cuts lol

The Dig radio did two episodes on Gramsci recently, which were very good. Check them out.

https://thedig.blubrry.net/podcast/gramsci-organization-crisis-w-michael-denning/