alt.hn

2/15/2026 at 10:29:43 PM

Peter Thiel: 2,436 emails with Epstein from 2014 to 2019

 https://jmail.world/wiki/peter-thiel

by doener

2/16/2026 at 4:42:06 PM

It's so weird to me that these folks don't just retire with a bag of money to a nice beach house and enjoy life. They're always seeming to meddle. And in doing so they take away our, and their peace. It's like they're troubled deeply and they need us to be also? Why can't they just not do demonstrably evil, deeply wrong things?

by iancmceachern

2/16/2026 at 8:22:28 PM

Because the sample size for "mega-rich" selects for more psychopaths per thousand people than the sample of people who are "just rich".

You can get "just rich" by being a doctor, or a partner at an IT consulting firm, without screwing people over.

But to be "mega-rich", you have to be OK with screwing people over any chance you get. Over time, that behavioural trait has a compounding effect where you don't see things as "right" and "wrong" anymore. That perspective is accelerated further as their money and power insulate them from consequences due to the political and legal latitude it can buy.

Bill Gates plotted to dilute Paul Allen's Microsoft shares because "he wasn't pulling his weight" when he was undergoing cancer treatment. Goldman Sachs' top legal counsel Kathryn Ruemmler accepted expensive handbags from Epstein and called him "uncle" in communications after he was re-arrested on trafficking charges. Bezos, Musk, Zuck, Ellison...need I say more?

by rchaud

2/16/2026 at 4:45:15 PM

Yeah, give me some sunshine and relative obscurity and we're golden.

by SolarToaster

2/16/2026 at 5:31:55 PM

The saying _Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison_ should transformed to _Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising the ultra wealthy_.

by yndoendo

2/16/2026 at 10:52:11 PM

I also suspect there is a vortex of temptation as you become an increasingly interesting person. Rich, famous, powerful, well-connected, beautiful etc are all interesting characteristics to nefarious people since those characteristics can advance their own nefarious interests. I suspect that, as you become an increasingly interesting person, you must actively defend your peace. It's not like they actively undermine their own peace, at least not always.

This vortex of temptation appears to have many points of origin, such as cults like Scientology, or particular persons such as the casually described "gold diggers", or... whatever organization Epstein is a part of, etc.

by etruong42

2/16/2026 at 7:27:01 PM

Well the Forbes Top 1000 (which has a lower threshold of $3.8 B) is missing 30-200 wealthy but totally obscure people. That proportion is close to what HN might consider "smart".

by sigwinch

2/16/2026 at 4:51:58 PM

It takes a certain personality to continue hoarding wealth even when you know that it comes from exploiting others. The reason why they can't just not do demonstrably evil things is that they have relied on doing evil things to get to where they are.

The kind of person that thinks "I've got more than enough money, I might as well use it to help others" doesn't get to be a billionaire.

by ndsipa_pomu

2/16/2026 at 5:13:03 PM

Exactly.

The wife too, "If I were a billionaire…"

I have to stop her right there. I stop myself there too. Neither one of us could, in any iteration of life, become billionaires.

(There's a time-travel story for someone. Like the movie Primer but with one person who round-trips through time—placing stock bets and other investments in order to become wealthy. When they screw up an investment they get a do-over.

Life also happens though: a relationship, marriage… This aspect though begins to play on a sense of guilt and he resists do-overs in the relationship.

By the close of the story his pursuit of wealth wanes, evaporates completely. Contentment comes finally from his relationship, from accepting his missteps, from embracing the uncertainty of the future. The machine is scrapped, no more do-overs.)

by JKCalhoun

2/16/2026 at 5:30:15 PM

You may be interested in the excellent film "About Time". It has a similar, though not exactly the same, premise and conclusion.

by wmeredith

2/16/2026 at 9:46:14 PM

You are getting closer to realizing that becoming a billionaire demands a psychological detachment most people would find disturbing...

It is not always brilliance that drives the relentless accumulation of wealth, but a deep, unresolved hole...an inner void shaped by trauma, by the need for validation never received from a parent, a world, or a past self.

That constant dissatisfaction fuels an endless pursuit of wealth they imagine will finally provide meaning or peace, yet never does. The accumulation becomes the self justification. The proof of worth in a game that can never truly be won. And from that height grows the contempt... Not for ignorance, but for poverty itself. Not because the poor are seen as incapable, but because they serve as a reminder of everything these individuals fear becoming.

by belter

2/15/2026 at 10:32:46 PM

Seems the Antichrist is way closer to him than he thinks.

/s (but not much)

by michelangelo

2/16/2026 at 9:08:13 AM

That "antichrist" lecture was an attempt at a reverse Streisand effect - there was a meme that Thiel was the antichrist, but now if you google "peter thiel antichrist" all you're going to see is that lecture.

Pretty clever but to be clear he is an incredibly dodgy human being

by ifwinterco

2/16/2026 at 9:34:10 AM

Yeah that's what I thought as well. Because even if he hates Greta Thunberg, there are much more extreme people in all the direction. So saying something so absurd seems bizarre. And for sure if anyone is to be tagged Antichrist, it would be war machine profiteer for most people.

Tbh it's kind of a genius move when countless comments like GP tags the antichrist as just slightly malicious or weird comment by him.

by YetAnotherNick

2/16/2026 at 9:38:34 AM

Yep it's clever. He's many things but he's not stupid

by ifwinterco

2/16/2026 at 12:50:30 PM

No. He is stupid...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4ZjhdkOf0_E

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s-BQhXdCs8Y

https://www.tiktok.com/@eddiethemediatrainer/video/752115237...

by Betelbuddy

2/16/2026 at 4:37:54 PM

Thiel: Shooting people in the street is wrong!

You (and the guy you linked apparently): OMG what a stupid idiot hahaahaha obviously shooting people in the street isn't wrong

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 4:59:14 PM

He didn't say anything close to "Shooting people in the street is wrong!"

How did you get that from the linked videos?

by secos

2/16/2026 at 5:05:24 PM

The first video says that Thiel is answering the question "What do you make of people celebrating Luigi?" and his response was "There may be things wrong with our healthcare system, but you have to have an argument and find a way to convince people" and that shooting random CEOs "isn't going to work".

Somehow I'm supposed to be led to believe this makes Thiel come across as stupid. My only guess as to how is because the OP must think that shooting CEOs in the street is an obvious rational good and that opposing such is idiocy, or reactionary fascism (in leftist usage, a synonym for idiocy), or so on.

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 9:50:31 PM

Talk about missing the point...

Watch the videos again and try again.

I will indulge you enough to explain it to you like a 5 year old, what they show. Just in case you miss it the second time... :-)

by belter

2/16/2026 at 10:31:40 PM

These videos are just a bunch of leftist smug moralizing for the attention-deficit age.

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 10:59:21 PM

A five year old should not talk like that... :-))

by belter

2/17/2026 at 2:17:13 AM

Only a mental five year old would regularly consume tiktoks and YouTube shorts like those above. I'm sorry your brain is fried hard enough that you can only glean political substance from soyboys making short-form clip content.

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 1:46:40 PM

> He's many things but he's not stupid

evil, sun of satan, bringer of the end of times

by red-iron-pine

2/16/2026 at 12:59:54 PM

People can be profoundly stupid in areas like basic/fundamental morality, while also being in the top 0.001% in areas like manipulating media and making money.

Examples: Every billionaire. Every single one - except Chuck Feeney who proved the rule.

by Schmerika

2/16/2026 at 2:47:45 PM

I'd argue that's not really stupidity, it's more of a moral and spiritual failing.

IMO those are really two separate axes, you can be very smart and also completely evil or quite dumb but a genuinely good person

by ifwinterco

2/16/2026 at 5:14:16 PM

It's not very smart to fail morally and spiritually, over and over, without ever looking into why or trying to correct the issues.

It does take intelligence of a particular kind to examine yourself and what makes you happy, fulfilled. And it takes a certain kind of stupidity to become greedy for more and more and more, neverending.

I don't believe that intelligence is a single axis. You can even have different levels of intelligence on different days for the exact same topic; even on the same day from one hour to the next.

Some people might be great at set theory but terrible at calculus; some people might be great with their hands at sewing but clumsy with glasswork. People are weird and complex.

But what's clear is when people don't even try to be good people. And that requires a particularly dense form of stupidity.

by Schmerika

2/16/2026 at 9:47:03 PM

True yes, I do get what you're saying

by ifwinterco

2/16/2026 at 12:52:16 AM

I can't believe he was calling Greta a potential antichrist when there's... this

by barbarr

2/16/2026 at 6:49:44 AM

Apropos Greta Thunberg, I noticed on the top of the "no stupid questions" subreddit the question "How can people like Greta Thunberg afford to be a full time activist?". The submitter was a one-month old account, one of their posts was in the whatismycqs subreddit - a sure tell for bot/farm accounts.

by vintermann

2/16/2026 at 7:03:28 AM

Yet it is rather serious question - most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves. I think that it is pretty bad for democracy that political action is delegated to only those few that are able to gain sponsorship and don't need to work to eat.

We do not need professional activists, quite the contrary.

by wolvesechoes

2/16/2026 at 10:24:55 AM

> most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves

Do they? Or do they get convinced by adverts that their lives won't be complete unless they spend more than they can afford on an endless stream of shiny promises?

I've always found it very easy to put a huge fraction of my income to one side because all my hobbies are cheap or free.

I've sometimes expressed surprise at how much other people buy, or spend regularly, and in one case the response was approximately "of course I need to spend £2500/month after my mortgage, there's the £50/month phone and same for internet, there's Netflix, I eat out twice a week, there's the car (which I like taking across the channel to France and driving around a lot), there's …"

Meanwhile, I'm mostly content living off my €1k/month passive income, of which 25% is spent on mandatory social and health insurance; and the only thing I'm unsure about at this income level is visiting friends and family on the other end of a 2h flight where the airport isn't all that close to any of them.

by ben_w

2/16/2026 at 10:57:00 AM

Yeah, I'll tell my family we need to move to the mouldy 1 bedroom flat because a guy in the internet says so. That'll help with the mortgage bit;

Also kids need to manage their expectations and instead of having active hobbies (that require some minimum hardware but lots of activities), they should try sculpting with clay instead. Especially that with the asthma they'll get from the black mould they'll be in no position to be very active anyway.

I've seen clay on the field, so we'll save money here. We can also collect their art through the winter to bake them in the sun once they're ready (to save on the oven).

School? Right, we need to move to the closest one, why let them have friends or aspirations.

Now work, hmm, that's easy. Instead of going to the work I get paid a lot but commute cost over £5k a year, I'll take something that pays 1/6 of my original salary but we can save on the commute. Will he'll with arguing why we need to move to the smaller place and ditch their activities.

Living costs a lot.

And if I sound absurd so do you by suggesting your life choices are applicable to everyone or they're just convinced by adverts to spend.

by subscribed

2/16/2026 at 11:25:38 AM

You're inventing a fictional narrative unrelated to anything I just said.

Especially as this was in the context of how Greta Thunberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no kids of her own and thus doesn't need to also cover the cost of their hobbies or how to get them to school, and furthermore in the context of "how does she manage to be a full-time activist with no obvious means of support?" where such things as "commuting" is more like "hitchhiking on someone else's yacht for 2 weeks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_voyages_of_Greta...

You can do a lot of travel very cheaply when your reputation alone is sufficient for people to give you a free lift across the Atlantic ocean as part of your own activism against, in that case, the CO2 emissions of flying. Should that be limited, given the travel itself was part of the attempt at activism to move people away from air travel, but also it took 2 weeks and therefore probably wouldn't do any such thing?

(For those without this advantage, I'm reminded of Tom Scott explaining how he managed to do so much on-site filming around the world for relatively little money; my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination).

by ben_w

2/16/2026 at 12:45:48 PM

> my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination

The cost of any trip to the UK is a constant...

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 4:39:13 PM

Copium is a powerful drug.

by K0balt

2/16/2026 at 1:54:29 AM

Such efforts are just an SEO/media manipulation game for Thiel.

Try and spread a mind virus, see if a "flock" forms behind him.

by problemch1ld

2/16/2026 at 6:07:59 AM

I know a couple of other politicians as well where I say over and over again, that's not them being a blowhard, that's a trial balloon. They're testing the water for how much of a lunatic blowhard it's profitable to be.

These people want to fill Trump's shoes when he's gone, that's very obvious. But I think - and hope - that Trump's fans will notice what they're doing and not be charmed by it.

by vintermann

2/16/2026 at 7:03:40 AM

[flagged]

by problemch1ld

2/16/2026 at 3:15:28 AM

No, some people are actually nutjobs with nutjob beliefs.

by estearum

2/16/2026 at 6:11:44 AM

Sure they are, but Thiel is not one of them. Or rather, there's little reason to think the nutjob beliefs he presents to you are his sincerely held nutjob beliefs.

You run into people sometimes, where you realize they're testing the waters constantly to figure out where they have you and what they can get away with.

by vintermann

2/16/2026 at 12:43:10 PM

Strong disagree, he's one of them, and he means it. The myth that these guys are 'really smart' should die, they're good at grifting, but they're not so smart they can't have nutjob beliefs and when they say what they think and it is negative believing them will not lead to a less true picture of the individual.

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 8:28:44 PM

Smart people are also good at convincing themselves.

by Hikikomori

2/16/2026 at 1:06:27 PM

Nah, it's advanced SEO. He almost certainly didn't even come up with it himself; billionaires and even centimillionaires can have teams of PR people just coming up with this shit for them all the time.

Boris Johnson (or his PR team) did it with the bus thing, and cheese [0].

Yes, Thiel has nutjob beliefs. Utterly insane.

No, this wasn't one of them. Too calculated. Too sweaty.

We're talking about one of the guys connected to Cambridge Analytica here.

0 - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/boris-johnson-google-search...

by Schmerika

2/16/2026 at 1:15:11 PM

Maybe we should be clear about which beliefs we're talking about.

If your claim is that he doesn't believe Greta Thunberg specifically is the Antichrist, then sure. But that's just listening to the words that he says. He never says he believes Greta is actually the Antichrist.

"In our world, [the Antichrist] is far more likely to be Greta Thunberg [than Edward Teller or other mad technologist, or implicitly weapons and surveillance tech manufacturer Peter Thiel himsef]."

He does actually believe this.

So yes OP is correct that Thiel said and does actually believe Greta "is potentially" the Antichrist. But that's a different claim than saying that she actually is the Antichrist. There are thousands or millions of people (most unknown to Thiel) who could fit into the Greta-Antichrist category broadly. So it's a much weaker claim than that Greta is herself singularly the Antichrist.

Both claims are equal levels of insane though. If you believe the weaker claim that the Antichrist would be someone like Greta, it requires exactly zero additional insanity to believe the stronger claim that Greta is actually the Antichrist.

by estearum

2/16/2026 at 1:38:47 PM

Exactly. The literal claim is just a fig leaf for being able to say 'oh, he surely doesn't mean that' whereas the subtext is far more important and he definitely believes that based on this and many other statements and actions in the past.

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 12:05:22 PM

You can be a nut job with but job beliefs and be smart about it. Obviously our dear friend from Austria wasn't going to directly talk about crematoria.

by expedition32

2/16/2026 at 11:51:57 AM

Nah, I've met him. He believes plenty of nutjob shit.

by estearum

2/16/2026 at 7:25:48 PM

Traditional response to a non-rich person saying nutjob shit: Are you a fucking idiot?

Traditional response to a rich person saying nutjob shit: That's really interesting, especially as it connects to this thing I am working on that needs funding

Facebook's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: Check out this other nutjob shit

ChatGPT's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: You've nailed it. You're thinking about this exactly how a professional philosopher would.

by mindslight

2/16/2026 at 3:10:57 AM

On the topic of projection, I wonder where the "Pizzagate!" frothing-at-the-mouth QAnon geniuses are, now that the actual sex-child-trafficking conspiracy has been revealed, just that it involves their champion fascists.

Hah at one point they were saying an online furniture shop is a website for trafficking children hiding in plain sight, using coded messages to describe said children (something like "leather sofa" meaning "blonde teenager" or some insanity like that). Come on you freaking geniuses, the Epstein emails show that they don't need codes on a public website, they just talk to each other in plain speech, but over email!

by netsharc

2/16/2026 at 7:04:25 AM

A child-trafficking conspiracy was a total fabrication, meanwhile a major child-trafficking conspiracy was happening under everybody’s noses. What a coincidence, huh?

Seems to me, like all legends, it started on a kernel of truth, then it evolved into something of its own. Not sure why you believe Pizzagate to be totally unrelated to Epstein.

by sph

2/16/2026 at 2:54:58 PM

I'm asking about where the Pizzagate outrage brigade is... Are they quiet now because it's their own champions who are implicated?

To be honest I haven't been looking out for them, but I imagine the news/the Internet detectives would've covered them.

"Kernel of truth", hah. Feels more like a distraction tactic. "Oh, Trump barged into dressing room of teenage pageants, let's accuse the other side of running a trafficking ring!"

by netsharc

2/16/2026 at 3:00:01 PM

They just got the wrong place. It was Pizza Express in Woking.

by happymellon

2/16/2026 at 11:49:47 AM

The issue with pizzagate (and a lot of these conspiracy theories) is not that it was directionally incorrect about 'some heinous shit is going down' (which is a good cold reading any day of the week in any age), it's that it jumped to specific and often just unhinged conclusions from basically zero evidence.

The latter part tending to both create more problems and give cover to the existing ones.

by rcxdude

2/16/2026 at 12:35:00 PM

No, the only issue is that it was a purposeful distraction from the real heinous shit. The rest is a distraction from the fact that it was a distraction.

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 10:26:00 AM

But Epstein met the guy in charge of 4Chan the day before /pol got created to "contain" the fascists.

And that's where QAnon started.

So now we have meta-conspiracy theories about who started conspiracy theories.

by ZeroGravitas

2/16/2026 at 12:34:12 PM

They just ended up in the wrong kitchen, instead of that particular pizza parlor they were supposed to go to Florida instead...

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 9:06:50 AM

Always cute to see people speak with such confidence about stuff they know nothing about.

QAnon was always controlled opposition, unlike the website that was monitored then closed by the feds (CF) via false flag attack.

by a-french-anon

2/16/2026 at 10:33:25 PM

qanon was almost certainly foreign agit-prop. it may have started with a real human but if you think they're running false-flags out of 4chan you're literally insane.

the US Gov doesn't need to go to 4chan, they can get headlines in the Washington Post and NBC.

why would Q-anon continue to advocate for Jan 7th and overthrowing the gubmnt even after Biden won?

by red-iron-pine

2/16/2026 at 2:50:39 PM

Always cute to read people who speak with such confidence but just dole out partial information, seemingly bragging "Ooh I know something you don't".

You sound like yet another conspiracy nutjob, but to be explicit: What website? What controlled opposition, where's your info from? I don't know if I'm just feeding a troll who'll be gleeful because in his brain he "knows" something others don't know, so that makes him special; or if I actually want to learn about whatever other meta-conspiracy that made you special...

by netsharc

2/16/2026 at 9:48:16 AM

He is cool with sexual abuse of teenagers and with Epstein philosophyly, connection to crime, racism, sexism ... all if that.

However, Greta Thunberg stands for evrrything he despises. She should be givimg massages and shut up.

by watwut

2/16/2026 at 4:11:11 AM

Man, no /s at all. Peter Thiel is demonstrably evil even before the Epstein files come into play.

by jmye

2/15/2026 at 11:47:33 PM

close? you could say they were right up each others ass, twice a day

by metalman

2/15/2026 at 10:38:36 PM

Greta??? ;-p

by cjbenedikt

2/16/2026 at 3:56:30 PM

Downvoted? PT fans I guess.:)

by cjbenedikt

2/15/2026 at 11:51:43 PM

Bummer. I Don't want him to lose his Kiwi status. Can't wait for him to escape the apocalypse to NZ, that's gonna be hilarious. Not for him though...

by awesomeusername

2/16/2026 at 12:46:51 PM

Why do you hate NZ that much?

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 10:34:08 PM

people too nice, country too majestic

by red-iron-pine

2/16/2026 at 12:40:58 PM

Thiel and Musk are the two biggest jerks to come out of the tech scene bar none. Zuckerberg and Andreessen must be ecstatic, because those two make them look reasonable (which they're not).

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 9:34:51 PM

Thiel briefly talked publicly about his relationship with Epstein on the Joe Rogan podcast. It is interesting to see the juxtaposition of the private conversations with the public presentation of the relationship

https://youtu.be/klRb0_BAX9g @ 2:11:11

by jadusm

2/16/2026 at 1:29:42 AM

Somehow there is a lot less discussion online about Thiel and Musk, both of whom are in the Epstein files. These are the most powerful people on the planet, steering elections at every level in America through their spending and connections. They need to be outed.

Thiel appears to be a Russian asset since he meets with Russians at Epstein’s properties per the files.

Musk is different. He simply begs Epstein to let Musk and his then wife Talulah Riley attend the “wildest party” on the island. Epstein even warns him that the “ratio” on the island may not be to his wife’s liking but Musk insists on coming to such a party.

Their approaches to defend themselves are different too. Thiel is silent. Musk has made huge numbers of posts, retweets, and replies trying to pretend he’s not part of the Epstein class, pointing fingers at others, and claiming he’s never been to the island. And he hasn’t ever explained why he was asking Epstein about the wildest parties.

Keep in mind that Elon was asking Epstein about these island parties years after Epstein was already a convicted child sex offender. He knew what was happening and wanted in.

by SilverElfin

2/16/2026 at 1:50:09 AM

People talk about "inbox zero". I want to learn "inbox Epstein".

Somehow, this guy had time to have regular email conversations with about 1,000 of the most powerful people in the planet (the head of the Nobel Prize Committee was one).

And he did this before LLMs.

by profsummergig

2/16/2026 at 10:03:13 AM

You can answer a lot more email if you type badly. And don't care about not recording federal crimes in a durable medium.

by pjc50

2/16/2026 at 10:51:45 AM

There were some occasions he replied to questions as "not for email".

by spacebanana7

2/16/2026 at 3:08:57 PM

The trick is to keep it short and send off your first attempt at it. Takes a few seconds.

by dyauspitr

2/16/2026 at 1:55:52 AM

Almost like he had a couple secretaries

by Ancalagon

2/16/2026 at 2:07:01 AM

Both members of the South African contingent of the Paypal Mafia

by keernan

2/16/2026 at 6:13:10 AM

What are the chances that AI czar / All In podcast host David Sacks had NO IDEA that his close friends Musk and Thiel were Epstein affiliated?

by SilverElfin

2/16/2026 at 7:18:15 AM

Well, I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO. Even though I cannot stand buffone Musk, it looks like it to me.

Thiel and especially Trump though are very different story. Trump happily dived in all the crime he could get.

by deepsun

2/16/2026 at 12:50:46 PM

> I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO.

There is a meme for this.

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 11:15:54 AM

> Well, I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO.

... Wait, okay, I realise Musk isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but just how stupid do you think he is? Anyone corresponding with Epstein after his first conviction knew very well the sort of person they were dealing with; they just didn't care.

by rsynnott

2/16/2026 at 12:35:23 PM

Well… judging by his behaviour on all the times he's been told "no" by domain experts, and that random reward schedules are highly addictive (which in this context means "on some occasions he's even correct when he tells experts he knows better"), I think it's very plausible that someone told him what Epstein was and he ignored and/or fired them for doing so because he didn't want it to be the case.

But that's the positive spin, where Musk actually didn't know and was simply an idiot, and at this point I'm tired of giving him the benefit of the doubt.

by ben_w

2/16/2026 at 12:12:39 PM

Example of the kind of stuff easily findable in 2006 if you ask an underling who knows how to Google to check out the guy throwing sex parties you want to attend:

https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/sex/billionaire-palm...

by ZeroGravitas

2/16/2026 at 1:07:08 PM

Oh, yeah, if you were to do any due diligence (which you probably _should_, as a billionaire intending to go to sex parties) the red flags were there long before. But the first conviction really removed any vestiges of plausible deniability.

by rsynnott

2/16/2026 at 10:36:24 PM

elon musk, a guy touted for being a literal genius, didn't know what happened on the epstein island?

by red-iron-pine

2/16/2026 at 8:28:53 AM

Musk's brother Kimbal had close ties to Epstein too.

by weare138

2/16/2026 at 10:30:10 AM

Which I found amazing when one of Musk's tweets to defend himself was to say that if he wanted to have creepy sex parties he could just throw them himself and not need a loser like Epstein involved.

What a way to totally burn your brother.

by ZeroGravitas

2/16/2026 at 10:47:00 AM

Okaaay... Except Thiel is the one guy we know wasn't fucking any underage girls.

by h33t-l4x0r

2/16/2026 at 11:50:47 AM

The emphasis is on the wrong word

by nhinck3

2/16/2026 at 12:06:06 PM

So you're saying he was drinking their blood? That makes sense.

by h33t-l4x0r

2/16/2026 at 3:22:03 PM

Yeah not girls… just the boys.

by dyauspitr

2/16/2026 at 12:47:23 PM

You lack imagination.

by jacquesm

2/16/2026 at 11:05:50 AM

We know that. Just go ask Jeff Thoma- ohhh right he got murdered.

by kotaKat

2/16/2026 at 10:36:13 AM

> Thiel is known for his libertarian political views and became a prominent supporter of Donald Trump

Apparently AI does deadpan sarcasm now?

More seriously, is there a technical write up on how they are generating these wiki pages from the emails?

by ZeroGravitas

2/16/2026 at 12:39:53 AM

[dead]

by NedF

2/16/2026 at 3:29:27 AM

[flagged]

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 4:48:58 AM

Oh no, this is definitely something. We need to root out the truth and see that all these people are held to account. You shouldn’t be minimizing the importance of this.

by replwoacause

2/16/2026 at 5:11:24 AM

[flagged]

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 5:30:33 AM

I see Peter Thiel conversing repeatedly with someone who was convicted in Florida in 2008 for procuring a 17-year-old for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.

You’re writing a lot here to obfuscate that. If Mr. Thiel didn’t know, that is at minimum a reason to question his judgment.

by westernmostcoy

2/16/2026 at 5:22:56 AM

I love when people happily come out and defend people in contact with a known pedophile and sex trafficking ring

by ulfw

2/16/2026 at 5:23:55 AM

[flagged]

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 5:27:37 AM

> I love when leftists are so willing to have such a weak grasp on reality that they're able to convince themselves that the sitting president of the united states ate babies.

Quite a statement to protect the president that claimed immigrants ate cats and dogs, and the base had no problems with it. There are problems with the left, but this is a hypocritical take.

> Something about how the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Well, have you tried to educate them instead of insulting them? Like Carlin said, there are a lot of dumb people out there. But belittling them doesn’t seem to be the solution if you actually want a functioning democracy. Education doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the top priority for the right as that’s too woke these days.

by pixelatedindex

2/16/2026 at 5:30:07 AM

[flagged]

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 12:34:36 PM

> Ah yes, because claiming that people are eating cats and dogs, something that actually happens in some parts of the world, is the same thing as claiming that the president ate babies.

We are actually saying that the president raped teen girls. Which is something that happens around the world - even happens within the orbit of Trump given the conviction of Epstein.

by dragon-hn

2/16/2026 at 6:30:09 AM

And when your favored divine-right monarchy comes for their "divine right" with your underage daughters and sons? Will you still be willing to give all for the cause?

by mindslight

2/16/2026 at 1:04:41 PM

I'm going to draft a new theory of sociopolitics called Pedophile-Oriented Ontology. It's when someone's political critique becomes entirely oriented around accusations of pedophilia or lack thereof.

Monarchy? Le bad, because the king could be a pedo!

by ratrace

2/17/2026 at 12:46:25 AM

You didn’t answer the question. Is it because: 1. You think the question isn’t applicable 2. You think doesn’t happen 3. You think justice is served for pedophiles 4. The president didn’t do anything wrong and so none of these discussions are valid

by pixelatedindex

2/16/2026 at 4:59:40 PM

Well in this case it would be "is" rather than "could." Maybe Thiel himself doesn't partake in the forbidden underage fruit (although I don't see why we would rule that out, as it seems to be how the Epstein club binds its members). But then Thiel isn't set up to be the king either, right?

But yes such a critique would be interesting! I think all of Moldbug's florid prose about enlightened monarchism would land much differently if the apogee of that enlightenment isn't some sort of assumed societal grand plan or direction, but is rather just the old base desire for increasingly-immoral perverted debauchery.

by mindslight

2/16/2026 at 5:16:42 PM

Tens of thousands of years of political history and the only known paranoia-fueled scandal and suspicion of the elite being immoral pedophiles that I'm aware of is currently happening in a democracy, because a guy who based his identity on knowing as many other powerful people as possible happened to know many powerful people (really??? no way!), and anti-capitalists are desperate for moral superiority so they're willing to psy-op themselves into thinking it's plausible that every person this guy ever emailed must have been a pedo too.

Monarchy never had any of this nonsense. Bring back King George. We made the wrong choice.

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 5:27:58 PM

You're saying that monarchies never had perverted debauchery? It sounds like you need to read a little more broadly, rather than just contemporary writings that seek to burn down all of Chesterton's fences.

And keep in mind that the monarchies of old were still constrained by religion, and by the lack of digital communications! What is being pushed today is better characterized as autocracy. The "monarchy" label is merely meant to evoke simpler-seeming times that are comfortably in the past.

Also I think you meant "capitalists" rather than "anti-capitalists". That people who were successful under capitalism want to move to a different system does not imply that their favored system is also capitalist! If monarchy/autocracy is "capitalist" then North Korea is also "capitalist" and the word is meaningless.

(also it seems like you're still in denial about the implications of Epstein's emails, regardless who was or was not partaking in the minors)

by mindslight

2/16/2026 at 5:41:05 PM

> Also I think you meant "capitalists" rather than "anti-capitalists".

No, I'm very much talking about talibanized socialists/communists/whatever they want to particularly call themselves. "Eat the rich" has become "The rich eat babies" because it doesn't matter what you try and get people to believe as long as they align themselves with your side and against the people you don't like. The Big Lie of our times, perhaps?

by ratrace

2/17/2026 at 12:48:33 AM

> No, I'm very much talking about talibanized socialists/communists/whatever they want to particularly call themselves.

Ad hominem attacks for me but not for thee?

by pixelatedindex

2/16/2026 at 5:53:16 PM

> I'm very much talking about talibanized socialists/communists/whatever they want to particularly call themselves.

So you're just bashing a strawman that you've pigeonholed all opposition into? Okay then...

We had a previous exchange that I ended up dropping. I was a bit sorry about that because I thought it would have been interesting to critique "universalism" on its own merits, rather than the term generally only being mentioned by its detractors.

(For context here I was reading Moldbug while he was writing, and spent a bunch of time internalizing other reactionary writings. I actually credit Moldbug with my transition from a right-Libertarian to an unaligned libertarian that sees left vs right as mere modes of thinking, each with their own merits)

But after seeing how quickly this conversation went downhill, I'm not sure that conversation would have been terribly productive either!

by mindslight

2/16/2026 at 9:13:02 PM

> So you're just bashing a strawman that you've pigeonholed all opposition into?

If you think radicalized left-wingers are a strawman, you live in a separate universe from mine. Unfortunately, I live in the one where I have to wake up and see flyers around my town unironically claiming Trump ate kids.

Can we swap?

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 9:25:50 PM

Oh no, flyers? That changes things. Flyers are the worst. How do you even manage?

by mindslight

2/16/2026 at 10:12:26 PM

I get by by resenting democracy and the political process. It ain't much but it's honest work.

by ratrace

2/17/2026 at 1:20:17 AM

I understand. In fact, I've been there - I was working on ecash and cryptography before bitcoin and the bastardization of the term crypto. "Code is law" and all that.

I'm sure some of it is due to getting older, but with open cult-of-personality autocratic authoritarianism (aka fascism) upon us I have become quite conservative. I had been taking a lot for granted about the freedoms we do have, and the position of the Western world. Don't let a desire to make things better goad you into wanting to destroy what we do have.

But regardless, if you recoil from the groupthink of the leftists you should be similarly allergic to the groupthink of the rightists. They have taken up the mantles of so many of our longstanding societal problems, only to be led by outright con men and liars who are doing nothing to actually address those problems. And I don't just mean hate-but-hold-your-nose-for-some-greater-good, but rather hold them in the same exact regard as the leftists. Especially as that red tribe groupthink is now in power, and its results are not pretty.

by mindslight

2/16/2026 at 7:08:07 AM

I want a functioning democracy because we have an entire history of monarchies and dictatorships being far worse. And because I want everyone to have a say, not just a minority of elites who are only human and just as fallible as the rest of us.

by goatlover

2/16/2026 at 1:02:12 PM

[flagged]

by ratrace

2/16/2026 at 5:33:37 AM

Since no charges have been laid for all the noise this topic has generated, I can only assume that this is a distraction from another more important operation. Maybe there's war coming, maybe that 1 Trillion dollar interest payment is a very big problem but you shouldn't panic, and we'll help you with that.

by givemeethekeys

2/16/2026 at 9:16:49 AM

A lot of the noise about this is specifically because the entities that are supposed to be investigating and bringing charges on this matter seem to be doing anything but that.

by rcxdude

2/16/2026 at 9:09:07 AM

> Since no charges have been laid for all the noise this topic has generated

Considering that both the FBI and DOJ themselves seems to be compromised and more interested in a cover-up than finding the co-conspirators, who exactly would you expect to bring up charges here, if FBI and DOJ basically been put out of play?

by embedding-shape

2/16/2026 at 10:04:06 AM

You're wondering why the people who report to Epstein associates aren't prosecuting them?

by pjc50