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Peter Thiel Is Latest Billionaire Said to Have Met With Jeffrey Epstein Mr. Thiel apparently had several meetings with Mr. Epstein in 2014, according to records of the disgraced financier reviewed by The New York Times. By Matthew Goldstein and Ryan Mac May 18, 2023

In 2014, the venture capitalist Peter Thiel was gaining prominence as one of Silicon Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors. He had made billions of dollars as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, where he was chairman; and he sat on the board of Facebook, where he was the company’s first outside investor.

That made him an ideal contact for Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender with a knack for cultivating the rich and powerful.

Mr. Thiel apparently had several meetings with Mr. Epstein that year, according to scheduling records of the disgraced financier that were reviewed by The New York Times.

The records — in the form of emails that Mr. Epstein’s assistant sent to remind him of upcoming events — show that in September 2014 Mr. Thiel was scheduled to meet with Mr. Epstein on at least three occasions, either in one-on-one meetings or with others over lunch or dinner. Two other times, Mr. Thiel was listed among more than a dozen other well-known people Mr. Epstein should try to see while at his New York mansion.

It’s unclear from the records whether all the meetings with Mr. Thiel took place. Some were listed as tentative or “TBD” — for “to be determined.”

Jeremiah Hall, a spokesman for Mr. Thiel, declined to comment.

The Times obtained the records through a public records request to the attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands, which had sued Mr. Epstein’s estate. (Mr. Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.) The records suggest that Mr. Thiel may have had a closer relationship with Mr. Epstein than was previously known.

Even after his 2008 conviction in Florida on a charge of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl, Mr. Epstein continued to hobnob with top finance executives and investors, scientists, professors, politicians and celebrities.

Mr. Epstein was fascinated with the technology industry, attending conferences with high-profile industry executives. In 2015, for example, the LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman invited him to a dinner attended by, among others, the Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk; the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg; and Mr. Thiel. (The dinner was previously reported by Axios.)

The records reviewed by The Times, which begin in 2011, are not a comprehensive accounting of Mr. Epstein’s meetings. They do not cover every day, and even full years are missing. (Some of the calendar entries were previously reported by The Wall Street Journal in connection with other individuals.)

On Sept. 14, 2014, Mr. Epstein was tentatively scheduled to have lunch with Mr. Thiel, the records show. The schedule then changed, with Mr. Thiel listed as having an appointment in the afternoon, followed by a potential dinner with Mr. Epstein, the director Woody Allen and others. Mr. Thiel was also expected to have lunch with the financier the next day and the following weekend, the records show.

It’s unclear why Mr. Thiel was meeting with Mr. Epstein. At the time, Mr. Thiel sat on the board of Facebook and oversaw Founders Fund, a top venture capital firm. Mr. Thiel was also the chairman of Palantir, the C.I.A.-backed data analytics company, which at the time was seeking outside investments.

Two years later, Mr. Thiel was the most prominent Silicon Valley investor to back the successful presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Thiel’s name comes up in the calendar entries far less often than other names of famous people like the Wall Street financier Leon Black, who is listed as having come over frequently for breakfast and lunch.

Author's note: This was almost infuriating. I only kept a Reddit account to respond to r/writingprompts then they deleted the person's prompt for a stupid reason, so because I didn't want to have wasted my time, here is the prompt I found and responded to.

"A serial killer is going around your town. As a master necromancer, you think it would be funny to revive their victims." Credit unknown

And here is my response:

"There he is!" the disheveled man in scrubs panted in disbelief as he pointed at the wealthy guy in a crisp, black suit. "That's the guy who tried to murder me!" His shirt was bloody and an IV hung from his arm.

The night was about an hour old at this point and I could see the seven-eleven guy just shaking his head in disapproval at what I just did.

"You need help, sir." the man in the suit defended himself.

"I'm serious" the man in scrubs confesses to a group of people in the parking lot watching and filming TikToks from their phone. A woman in braids who looked like she might be college age started laughing.

"No, everyone, this guy is my killer. He has a whole dungeon in his basement"

The woman threw out a sarcastic comment like it became her mission to make this endeavor more dramatic for her followers. "I'd really wanna to see that" She winked and thrust up her head like it would make the business owner respond.

The scrub-garbed man looked at the cluster of faces slowly becoming disinterested and about to get back in their vehicles. He pointed at me and I just knew what was going to pour out of his damn face hole.

"Ask that guy. He brought me back to life this afternoon. I was fortunate to get past all his crude attempts at escape deterrents."

He looks at me. "Did you really think all those bear traps and Saw-esque contraptions would hold me. You suck at engineering. And the fucking doorknob wasn't even hot enough. You clearly didn't watch home alone."

"Uh' I paused, "Are you done your rant!? I didn't want you to leave my apartment for this very reason. You can get justice after I get a slim jim and a slushy. In the mean time, why don't you go back to my apartment from the back entrance with this key and get dressed. You have to be well dressed for your hunt"

And I wanted to be front row to this debacle. The business suit guy pulled out a pistol and aimed it at me. "YOU!" He yelled some obscenities and went on, "You are going to make me late for my date"

I remembered that I knew more than necromancy. With the gun still pointed at me I snapped my fingers expecting the time stopping technique to work. Everyone just stared at me looking confused. I booked it. I remembered to zig-zag as I ran so he couldn't get a clear shot. I could hear the reanimated guy yelling at me and closing in. The content creator must have been close because I could hear her "narrating" like this was really that interesting content.

Dammit, I might go viral tonight, I said to myself. I gotta get back to my apartment. That Temu witchcraft and necromancy kit has to have something about actually reversing time. I start running so fast that I could trip at any moment and my ankles are on fire.

I lost them for a while but they will be here soon enough. A strange figure sat in the corner of a nearby alley in a brown robe with a smile on his face. I am hopeful that this guy is a fellow practitioner of the occult, so I ask him. Turns out he was just a junkie trying to score and I was in his way so he pulls out his knife and thrusts it in my direction. I managed to dodge him and keep running.

I lost them completely and it seems as I disappear into a crowd of night-goers. across the street, There is a well dressed guy and he points at me as his arm loosens from his date "Hey, aren't you that guy who broke into my morgue all this month? Yeah, it is you. Hold on" He pulls out his phone and takes a picture "Hope you like six-by-eight foot cells and daily booty calls. I'm calling the cops"

I really have to rethink this whole thing. I start running again until I realize I have been going in a loop. There was the seven eleven. Oh, maybe Amir will help me hide. He seems to like my business and we have pretty interesting conversations.

I rushed into the store.

"Don't steal anyth-, Oh, It's you. We are currently getting a new slushy machine, you will have to try the one on seventeenth st-"

"Wait, Amir, you have to hide me. You know the other week when you said I would never amount to anything and I should quit trying to be something important?"

"Vaguely, sounds like something I might say"

"Well, I bought a 'kit' for raising the dead from an advertisement I saw while doom scrolling. I compulsively bought it thinking it was a scam. And, well. the killer on the loose is actually my ex-wife's lawyer. And I broke into the morgue and brought back to life his last victim with it"

He burst into a rollicking laugh, "You mister Seth, are a funny man. I haven't laughed like that since my youth. You get these." He hands me some KitKats and smiles, "on the house"

"No, you idiot. Hide me. Behind the counter or something. Wait, don't you have a gun behind that desk"

"I might but it's not for you"

"I need it, my life is on the line. The killer AND the victim are after me."

"Wow, you can't even do vigilante justice right."

"I'm a necromancer!"

"Well, can't you just reanimate your own corpse"

"It doesn't work like that, gimme the damn gun"

"Just make sure you bring it back, and wipe off the prints, I don't want to get caught up in your chaos"

I grabbed the piece and bolted out the door. They had to be around here. There was a lot of disruption on Henry street so I went that way.

I saw a few figures arguing but it wasn't them. I spent about ten minutes perusing the streets until I realized that the killer was long gone and was never going to show his face again, tonight. He was for another day, I had to rewrite history and put this other guy back to sleep but where did he get to? I had a facepalm moment, Oh, he has my key, he is at the apartment.

I snuck in with the spare key and found there was no one home. I looked out the window and saw him on the second floor porch.

"What the hell. man this key doesn't work, just give me some clothes"

"Sorry man, I can't mess with the dead or Temu any longer. You belong at that morgue"

I pointed the gun directly at his head. I paused and thought for a moment, then threw the gun on the ground. I, I couldn't do it. I am no killer. I threw the gun into the dumpster below. "What's your name? I'm Seth"

"Ben"

Let's get you some clothes, we have work to do. I've got a case of beer for us in the fridge.

In a near abandoned seven eleven, Amir puts on the news "Tonight, investigators find what they think is the weapon used by the suspect in this haunting series of murders along the main line." Amir, immediately, opens the register and empties the drawer into his bookbag. "I'm going to Mexico"

Some quotes that people might not expect, given their originators and the political views and groupings of the present day:

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

Karl Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in London, March 1850

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Adam Smith, Chapter II, Book V, The Wealth of Nations

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermingling with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln-Douglas debates, October 13, 1858

So is it just me or is because there isn't enough users on here yet but I don't see new content very often. I'll log in after a few days and the same posts are up there, not too far down the feed.

Using Thnder

Edit to add that I think it's fine if the reason there isn't an endless stream of posts is because of the limited amount of users. I'm ok with waiting and think the platform is awesome. I'm just trying to see if it's Thunder or something else technical.

58" vehicle in a 60" garage. English subtitles.

They really probably weren't supposed to install those outdoors...

I couldn't figure out how to upload the video without getting an error (I just woke up). Here's a link to someone else sharing it.

https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/3bf38d29-c6d6-403d-9c72-14f7bd712764.mp4

"Death, death to the IDF."

Some relatives and I are undergoing the formalia regarding selling the house and property my grandfather left us when he passed last year.

While filling out the forms electronically I noticed that the small field labelled "Protected due to culturally significant site" was automatically ticked.

So I just looked it up, and as expected it was in regards to the old cemetery right next to the property. For as long as I can remember we always referred to the area as "The old cemetary."

I allways thought it was like 200 years old at most. Nope, turns out that it's almost 600 years old on paper - The first written reference to the site is from 1432, and it is therefore most likely older. And a small piece of it overlaps with the property from my grandfather.

If it wasn't for the fact that we've all agreed to sell our share to my aunt I would've asked my GF if she's interested in becoming creepy crypt keepers when we retire.

• People put too much faith in admins/mods making judicious modlog actions and entries. A bad admins/mod’s word can mar you permanently because their flawed perception molds your reputation and their word is worth as much as a judicious word.
• Modlog entries are often not written thoroughly enough to give a complete story, and content being removed also removes context. This affects users’ judgment of other users.
• You can block an instance but you can't block all of its users (without hopping to another instance that happens to be defedded from them). You have no recourse to users on another instance slandering you locally for all to see, which comes down to how the Fediverse is not just one big bubble but many overlapping smaller bubbles.
• Community/instance rules are not written clearly enough to be understood by a vast audience. A user may interpret a rule differently from a mod/admin or a rule may be obscured from the user due to the poor design. A site with a large audience like FaceBook or Reddit will have their rules written in a way that is clear to anyone, whereas Lemmy only tests rule comprehensibility on a select few.
• There are crazy mods/admins out there, and the good ones are so desperate to build the Lemmy userbase that they will maintain association with these crazy mods/admins for as long as they have to, all while the damage accrues.
• Some users treat their admin as a Messiah, and some admins treat an absurdity as a Messiah. Admins across multiple popular instances find their ideologies as an absolute guide and they will follow them to the absurd, deriving superstition and/or conspiracy paranoia that they feed to their userbase to convince them of the same. I have been forced to leave Lemmy because of an admin leading a baseless witch-hunt against me simply because I voiced disagreement with what they consider a Messiah.
• People don’t do their research about other users/mods/admins. This can turn baseless accusations into witch-hunts, or true accusations into something that is ignored in favor of assuming that a mod/admin must be judicious to hold their position. If Lemmy were to implement a removed comment/post archive, that would only help the few users who care enough about making evidence-based decisions.

You can have modlog entries against you for communities and instances that you’ve never even interacted with, and each of these are counted as individual pieces of evidence against you. You can get modlog entries against you for communities in which you’ve strictly followed the rules, and each of these are counted as individual pieces of evidence against you. You can have modlog entries against you that don’t provide any evidence — maybe you mentioned that you were of a certain demographic that an admin/mod is bigoted against so they ban you and say you did xyz crime with actually linking to a case of you committing xyz crime. Maybe you said you held a certain opinion so a mod/admin who disagrees bans you and says you committed xyz crime when you didn’t. You can do everything right and still be judged wrong.

Too many users/mods/admins put too much faith into that which lacks evidence, and even if the site were designed to give them more evidence, I doubt they would change.

I had been on Lemmy for 2 years and saw little to no headway in the infrastructure that would remedy this.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/30028880

See the stickied comment below for an explanation and statement of our purpose, based on simple back-of-the-napkin math

E: if someone could please link this community to r/aspen and r/roaringforkvalley I would greatly appreciate it. I’ve been IP banned by the all powerful AI mod monster, like many folks on Lemmy

Why is there so much cruelty? So much us vs. them thinking? Why is the MAGA movement a thing? Watch this video for partial answers.

For anyone out of the loop:

• What Was The Internet Checkpoint?

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