A Front for clandestine Operations? (Speculative Timeline)

- April 6 & 8, 1980: Sabotage and arson against Philips Data Systems and CII-Honeywell-Bull in Toulouse. Speculation: French State Operation. A move to protect national technological sovereignty during the "Plan Calcul" era.

- May 19, 1980: Arson attack on the archives of ICL (International Computers Limited) in Toulouse. Speculation: Continuation of the French State's "cleansing" of foreign influence.

- September 11, 1980 & December 2, 1980: Attacks against a computing firm in Toulouse and the UAP (Union des Assurances de Paris) in Paris. Speculation: American Operation? Possible retaliation or disruption of French administrative networks.

- January 28, 1983: Bombing of the new computer center at the Haute-Garonne Prefecture in Toulouse. Speculation: American Revenge. A direct hit against the French State's local administrative brain.

- October 26, 1983: Total destruction by fire of the Sperry Univac offices (a US multinational) in Toulouse. Speculation: French Revenge. A final "tit-for-tat" response targeting a key asset of the US military-industrial complex on French soil.

> His next major growth spurt came when his university career ended. When Oxford University rejected his master’s application in 2020, Edwards posted a video of himself crying, entitled “oxford university rejected my masters application… (sorry this video is sad)”. Social media rewards confession. Authenticity, sincerity and vulnerability were important – more important than orthodox intellectual baubles.

It's literally pathetic.

    pathetic
    /pəˈθɛtɪk/
    arousing pity, especially through vulnerability or sadness.
    "she looked so pathetic that I bent down to comfort her"

Like, I get that at some level it's fishing for sympathy and pity, but your real friends are going to be there whether they have a video of you crying or not. Everyone else just... doesn't matter that much?

Young influencers of this nature get a following because of their authenticity. They're genuine, honest, about their experiences, and the comments reflect it. People in the comments open up about their own problems and insecurities and issues. It creates an "illusion of community" as Edwards says in the article.

Now couple with that the complication of making money. An influencer indirectly makes money from their followers. I could easily see how someone who makes that authenticity part of their brand/identity feeling an obligation to their followers to continue to be honest even on subjects of high emotion. These people who are responsible for your success, your lifestyle, how could you be anything but brutally honest with them?

And just like in real relationship where showing vulnerability can strengthen bonds, it has the same effect on the influencer-follower relationship -- despite in reality being parasocial. And strengthening that bond also results in more faithful followers, which is financially beneficial.

Now, whether a given influencer is being vulnerable due to obligation or due to financial incentives, is unclear. For many it seems more obviously financial. But for others it does seem like a bit of a complicated mixture of the two.

Edit: Here's the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8J8fWCNqCI . Personally this feels more genuine than financially motivated, but that's me. And to be fair there is no actual crying in the video! Seems like a bit of a dishonest wording by the author of the article to claim as such.

(I felt the same way when I read this paragraph and the one about Jack being a target of abuse but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to ‘dang’ a ‘dang’ thread. At the same time it is touching how Jack has forged some semblance of a real world community out of this. I still can’t take what he does serious as a whole and I’m not warm to the idea that the “World’s most powerful literary critic is on TikTok” and I do have a sort of apathy toward the cultural intrigue borne from people in their twenties today. Like dang I was expecting a hit piece and was no less impressed to find it the opposite—fluff. Both poignant in some ways and pathetic in most per my own sensibilities.)

Indicating proportions with respect to weight is much simpler. Just put a scale under your mixing bowl and weight stuff as you add them. Less stuff to clean, less waste, easier to dose.

> Mr. Gates, in turn, praised Mr. Epstein’s charm and intelligence. Emailing colleagues the next day, he said: “A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.”

What if I told you that the child sitting on Epstein's lap, the teenager he French-kissed, the girl whose skin he covered with fragments from Nabokov's Lolita, the one who had an entire corridor filled with her pictures in one of his properties, who appeared in every framed photograph on his desk and whose name is on the CD-ROMs, the only woman Epstein said he would ever marry – what if that girl is the daughter Bill Gates mentions? And that she and her mother were Epstein's main romantic interests and most percussive tools?