Now that the who-screwed-who discussion of the Epstein files has died down, is it permissible to look at the other…problematic issues that are being exposed? Like, say, this:

In 2018, an elite group of academics and scientists planned to gather for an exclusive retreat at a luxury farm in the woods of Connecticut. The guests had been hand-picked by prominent New York literary agent John Brockman, who frequently hosted similar salons for luminaries in science, technology and media.

The problem? Brockman had included two women on the list, and his staunch supporter and biggest funder wanted them out.

“John, the old conferences did not care about diversity. I suggest you not either,” Jeffrey Epstein wrote in response to an email about the programming. “The women are all weak, and a distraction sorry.”

The story goes on to quote some of these hand-picked geniuses and their feelings about women:

Take Roger Schank, an AI researcher and theorist who died in 2023. He suggested in one email that “intelligence comes about in part from real focus” and that it is rare for a woman to not be “first and foremost focused on what others are thinking and feeling about her.”

“Hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you or why you don’t own a kelly bag,” he wrote. To which Epstein responded: “It’s the tail of distribution , no really smart women – none.”

This site went on to note they left Epstein and his friends’ punctuation and spelling errors intact. Ha ha ha.

It was the “why you don’t own a Kelly bag” that really chapped my ass. My sample size of female scientists is admittedly small, but in both my professional and personal lives I’ve met a few, and I can’t think of a single group of women less interested in Kelly bags. If one were given such a pricey luxury, they’d be more likely to sell it to fund their labs than actually use it.

One group whose luxury lust I can find believable? Teenagers and Eastern European sex workers, i.e. the sort of females Epstein chose to surround himself with.

Epstein also had problems with people who weren’t white. He had interest in race “science” and is fond of dropping slurs here and there; at one point he refers to black people as chimps. So of course he was besties with the current president.

We now return to my current interest: Finding the craziest groups on Reddit. Hulu is running that stupid JFK Jr./Carolyn Bessette “love story” series, and it has reawakened interest in Bessette, the famous blonde who didn’t want to be famous, but was achingly beautiful, and died with her similarly beautiful husband, leaving behind their story and a lot of pictures. They’d never grow old, never get divorced, never see their bodies change or hair fall out. And they have the nuttiest fans on the internet. I had to step away when I realized there are people out there who can identify Bessette’s hair color by month and year. They’re my current nominees.

Finally, I leave you with a photo of Baldilocks and Beelzeboobs, the chairs of this year’s Met Gala.

The Met Gala is an event that exists solely to generate photos, and I can’t wait to see what Beelzeboobs wears. You could look at this photo all day and not get to the bottom of its weirdness. This is the biggest self-inflicted reputation bazooka in recent memory. And who is advising them in this behavior? They can afford the best PR agency on the planet, and yet.

In the olden days of journalism, this photo would have been pinned to an out-of-the-public’s-eye bulletin board, and captions welcome. Feel free.

In the meantime, I have some stuff to get ready for, so gotta go. Good weekends, all.