Accused serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein isn’t just a fan of underage girls; he’s also, apparently, a big fan of eugenics — and like most of those into the crackpot science, he believes that he’s packing some superior DNA that needs to be spread far and wide.
In the New York Times today, James B. Stewart reports that Epstein “hoped to seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch.”
Stewart describes how Epstein used his charm and his money — well, maybe mostly his money — to “insinuate his way into an elite scientific community, thus allowing him to pursue his interests in eugenics and other fringe fields like cryogenics.”
As Stewart notes,
He dangled financing for their pet projects. Some of the scientists said that the prospect of financing blinded them to the seriousness of his sexual transgressions, and even led them to give credence to some of Mr. Epstein’s half-baked scientific musings.
Epstein loved to regale his new friends — including Nobel prize winners and such well-known names as Stephen Hawking and Oliver Sacks — with his crackpot ramblings on such subjects as “atoms [that] behaved like investors in a marketplace” and “a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you.”
Gosh, I wonder why he might have been worried about people watching him?
One of Epstein’s favorite topics, apparently, was his idea for a vast baby ranch designed to pump out countless baby Epsteins.
On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s, Mr. Epstein [reportedly] told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies … .
According to an attendee at one of his dinners,
Mr. Epstein’s goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe.
Virtual-reality guru Jaron Lanier told Stewart that Epstein seemed to be
using the dinner parties — where some guests were attractive women with impressive academic credentials — to screen candidates to bear [his] children.
So many layers of creepiness here. The last thing this world needs is more Jeffrey Epsteins.
–David Futrelle
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If my two proudest accomplishments in life were being born white and having a penis….
I dunno, it just seems that if the bar were any lower it’d be painted on the basement floor….
@Naglfar;
I just finished a really fun course on genetic anthropology at the local U. One of the terms I learned was the scientific term for species which lose their genetic diversity:
“EXTINCT”
I notice that Epstein’s dreadful little plan doesn’t seem to have made any allowance for, y’know, supporting all these offspring through their childhood and adolescence. I assume the victims are supposed to graciously accept his DNA and then get out of there to make room for the next round of women, never to be heard from again? Ugh.
Completely OT, but…
Does anyone know what the anime represented in Ooglyboggles’ gif is?
I’ve been watching that gif for a few minutes now and I’m really intrigued about that scene and what led to those characters jumping out the window.
Thanks in advance!
@Nagalfar
I see it more as a blend of terror over the inevitability of old age and death and a naive view that future technology can do everything even if it directly defies what we know about biology (see cryonics, which is basically “freeze recently dead person and hope for a miracle”).
Transhumanism in many ways is essentially a religion that replaces every mention of “God” with “The Singularity”. So it’s not surprising that it shares the same tunnel vision as other forms of fundamentalism when it comes to issues that affect people in this world.
This post remains me of an anecdote attributed 2 George Bernard Shaw.
As the story goes, Shaw was approached by a lovely woman with an interesting proposition: that the 2 of them conceive a child together.
“Just think,” she is supposed to have said, “the child will have your intelligence and my looks.”
“My dear, that’s absolutely splendid. Capital idea,” Shaw replied (allegedly). “But what if the child has my looks…and your intelligence?”
Yeaaahhhh fuck this shit. Men who want to use other human beings as breeding stock deserve only one thing in life, and that thing is the gallows.
And @Violet, ugh, so much sympathies 🙁 I hope his victims can find some measure of peace, and honestly I hope the slimebag gets his.
@ObSidJag:
Too lazy to go looking, but pretty sure that in the version of that that uses Shaw, the woman is actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who originated many roles in his plays; though as she was Shaw’s friend and a well-known wit in her own right, his response should probably not be taken to seriously. I’ve also heard a version that changes the players to Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe, and it’s quite possible this one is old as the hills and people in ancient Athens were telling it about Socrates and Gnathaena the hetaera or somebody.
@Weird Eddie
So in other words, the white nationalist eugenicists are white genociding themselves…
@Moon_custafer:
No doubt, you’re right. It definitely has the feel of “this could apply to a lot of brilliant” (if less than Chadesque in certain incel eyes) men.
And now that you mention Albert Einstein & Marilyn Monroe, that rings a bell though I, for one, would like to think Marilyn was somewhat smarter than people gave her credit for.
Sadly, she didn’t always make the best decisions romantically (but, hey, a lot of people are guilty of that).
@Cyborgette
Thanks x
I’m in touch with the women concerned and they are doing as well as can be under the circumstances
If I mentioned what I would like to happen to the smug bastard it would break the comments policy, so I’m just gonna move on
Apologies for the OT rant earlier, and it really was not directed at QuantumInc. Their post was fine, I just have a lot of rage right now.
@Violet
You’re welcome, glad you’re in touch, and aye, mood. And IMO you have nothing to apologize for. I’m right there with you in the Extremely Not Okay camp TBH.
@Kat: It seems to be a common affliction of supposedly intelligent men: Bill Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor, was a notorious eugenecist¹ who had lots of his little Bills put on ice so that future generations would not be deprived of his august pedigree. Silicon Valley urban legend had it that his frozen LIQUID GOLD is still knocking about (presumably, down the back of the freezer with the Halo Top flavours nobody likes), though as Bill himself shuffled off in 1989, it’s probably well past its best-by date by now ?
¹ As well as a raging all-around douchebag who was impossible to work for, which is why we have companies like Intel today, while Shockley Semiconductor is a historical footnote
RE: the transhumanism stuff, I’m a bit of a transhumanist myself. Ifeel like there are two very different types of transhumanism depending on your political position. Left transhumanism tends to be about stuff like cybernetic limbs for people with disabilities and fully functioning sex changes for trans people. Essentially, it’s scientifically possible stuff that we will certainly be able to do eventually, we’re just not quite there yet. Meanwhile, right transhumanism is basically about trying to make Arnim Zola.
OT: Archeologists have apparently discovered the grave of the original bonbon-eating go-hunt-me-a-mammoth woman misogynists like to fantasize about:
She was also part of a “wine-guzzling, gold-designing, poly/bisexual, naked-warrior-battling culture.” Not sure what they’ll make of that.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/iron-age-celtic-woman-was-buried-hollowed-out-tree-trunk-180972773/
@Talonknife
I didn’t mean what I said as a personal attack in any way. I was mostly criticizing what you have called “right transhumanism,” as this was the variety of Epstein’s fantasy.
@Rabid Rabbit
Interesting. I’m curious how we know what sexuality the people had in that culture. It sounds like it would be hard to verify thousands of years later who had sex with whom.
I also might mention, there would have been no mammoths to hunt when this woman lived, as they would have been extinct for thousands of years before. So nobody hunted the mammoth to feed her.
@Rabid Rabbit
WHERE DO I SIGN UP
Y’all don’t know what bad is… what bad is?!?!?!?
Lemme tell y’all what BAD really is!!!!
I’ve followed and commented on this thread, but I was thinking Jordan Peterson, not Jeffery Epstein…. The “bad” part? In the context of the weblog post, there really isn’t enough difference to bother with….
@ Naglfar:
“White” people are genetically unviable…. If’n you have a genetically recessive trait in danger of extinction, you have three choices:
1) do nothing and watch the trait slowly decrease in frequency…
2) completely shield every member of the species which displays that trait, and watch the trait disappear more slowly due to genetic drift…
3) completely shield every member of the species which displays that trait, kill every new member which displays a dominant allele, and watch the members of the gene pool die from disease or deformity due to inbreeding (see Tsarevich and hemophilia)
… bitch bein’ white, I tell ya.
@Naglfar
Clearly, these were the notorious Sasquatch-Mammoths of Switzerland.
As for sexuality, the knowledge seems to mostly come from the Greeks and Romans. A few links:
https://mandascott.co.uk/the-celts-women-and-sex/
https://www.dailyxtra.com/same-sex-celts-2-39898
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/40316/was-celtic-society-promiscuous
http://www.beyond-the-pale.org.uk/zCeltKiss.htm (NSFW)
@Violet the Vile
Caesar kind of put an end to them, and then the Church did. You may have to recreate it.
@Weird Eddie
I don’t know why people are so obsessed with being white anyway. It’s only a gene for producing a smaller amount of melanin in the skin. I can’t understand why it’s the hill all these people want to die on. We’re all the same species, so we have all the genes and all the culture, right? Nothing is going anywhere.
There’ll always be white people anyway, because it’s a recessive so it’ll crop up now and again.
@Rabid Rabbit
That sounds like a profitable use of my time tbh
@ Rabid, Violet;
prehistoric bon-bons!!!
@Rabid Rabbit:
This is the future that liberals want
@ Moggie:
Can we leave out the “battling”, I’m to old and slow for that shit…
@Naglfar
In addition to what Rabid Rabbit mentioned, bits of it survive in legend and law of the Celtic regions. Frex, in the Táin Bó Cúailnge, Queen Medb says that she is a woman with many lovers, and thus any man who marries her can’t be a jealous man, because she isn’t going to stop.
In the old Brehon legal system of Ireland, the only mention of homosexuality says that if a woman’s husband spends too much time sleeping with his boyfriend(s) to get her pregnant, she can divorce him. Alternatively, if a woman’s husband fails to impregnate her for any reason, she is entitled to go find someone who can, and the resulting offspring are legally hers and her husband’s in all regards.
@Dalillama:
And if he refused to grant her a divorce, she could take him to court to have the marriage dissolved… and a divorce court was one of the few venues in the Brehon system where a woman’s testimony would be taken over a man’s. I imagine, “divorce me or I’m spilling some serious tea in court” was a powerful threat in a culture where personal reputation was paramount and even the most powerful lived in fear of having a satire written about them.
Also, while there are recorded instances of women with multiple husbands, polygamy was more common. A man could take a concubine, even against his wife’s wishes… but the law granted the senior wife a week to make her displeasure known to the newcomer, so long as she didn’t leave any permanent scars… ?
Brehon Law is strange. When I started researching it a few years ago, I was fascinated by it– it’s only touched on superficially in the history curriculum in Irish schools– because it’s based on a very different set of assumptions to that of common law (the idea of everyone being equal before the law, for example, would have struck its practitioners as absurd. Pre-Conquest Irish society was extremely stratified, though some social mobility was possible, and the “honour-price” of even the highest in rank could be stripped for sufficiently heinous crimes). It also varied over time in areas like women’s rights; by the time of the Christianisation of Ireland and the writing of law texts to codify what was originally an oral legal tradition, it had become quite regressive– to the point where it was the Church that had a moderating influence on some of its more obnoxiously misogynistic elements!