Bill, we hardly knew ye....
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“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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Maybe he should have pursued the European model...Obtain a nice mistress and change out as needed...
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@axtremus said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
@mik said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
This is very hard to imagine.
Fake news abound. Wait for independent confirmation.
Ax, what is "independent confirmation"? Could you elaborate on what this is and how it works in context to judging news stories? Thanks in advance!
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I recall stories of the Google guys having wild parties on their private jumbo jets, back in the day. If billionaires want this sort of stuff, of course they can have it. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to keep quiet, as long as everything is legal.
Education is extremely important.
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@horace said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
I recall stories of the Google guys having wild parties on their private jumbo jets, back in the day. If billionaires want this sort of stuff, of course they can have it. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to keep quiet, as long as everything is legal.
Except that they've apparently failed at keeping it quiet, as finally somebody broke the secret Billionaire Code of Silence and told Amanda Prestigiacomo of The Daily Wire almost all about it.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525.
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@doctor-phibes said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
@horace said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
I recall stories of the Google guys having wild parties on their private jumbo jets, back in the day. If billionaires want this sort of stuff, of course they can have it. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to keep quiet, as long as everything is legal.
Except that they've apparently failed at keeping it quiet, as finally somebody broke the secret Billionaire Code of Silence and told Amanda Prestigiacomo of The Daily Wire almost all about it.
It wouldn't really have been news till recently.
I wonder how many people knew at the time that JFK treated the white house interns as his own personal harem, including lending them to friends?
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@aqua-letifer said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
Ax, what is "independent confirmation"? Could you elaborate on what this is and how it works in context to judging news stories?
A separate source of information that does not derive its information from the source that gave the Daily Wire the information for its reporting on this story. The more such independent sources provide the same information, the more believable the story.
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@axtremus said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
@aqua-letifer said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
Ax, what is "independent confirmation"? Could you elaborate on what this is and how it works in context to judging news stories?
A separate source of information that does not derive its information from the source that gave the Daily Wire the information for its reporting on this story. The more such independent sources provide the same information, the more believable the story.
What if the original news source says they verified with multiple independent sources? Or what if two difference news sources refuse to identify their sources, and you cannot know if the sources are different?
Education is extremely important.
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@horace said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
What if the original news source says they verified with multiple independent sources? Or what if two difference news sources refuse to identify their sources, and you cannot know if the sources are different?
Then you discount your confidence in the story accordingly.
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@axtremus said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
@horace said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
What if the original news source says they verified with multiple independent sources? Or what if two difference news sources refuse to identify their sources, and you cannot know if the sources are different?
Then you discount your confidence in the story accordingly.
I'm just looking for an objective threshold where I can honestly think to myself that I believe a story based on independent verification. I'd hate for it to come down to some sort of subjective judgment call. That's what independent verification is supposed to avoid.
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I kind of agree that this would be very difficult to keep quiet, so I kind of doubt it happened.
In todays world, where people are willing to do (almost) anything to be famous for a few moments, and there are so may ways to get stuff to the public without waiting for a "traditional" news source, seems a bit unlikely.
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How long did they keep the Lolita Express quiet?
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At that point in time, it didn't need to be kept quiet... A rich single guy paying strippers to swim naked in his pool wasn't really anybody else's business...
But back in 1990, Bill Gates wasn't the philanthropist that he is now. He was a self-admitted asshole and jerk. Nobody cared that he was blowing his money on strippers.
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20 years ago:
Microsoft Corp. board members decided that Bill Gates needed to step down from its board in 2020 as they pursued an investigation into the billionaire’s prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate, people familiar with the matter said.
Members of the board tasked with the matter hired a law firm to conduct an investigation in late 2019 after a Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship over years with Mr. Gates, the people said.
During the probe, some board members decided it was no longer suitable for Mr. Gates to sit as a director at the software company he started and led for decades, the people said. Mr. Gates resigned before the board’s investigation was completed and before the full board could make a formal decision on the matter, another person familiar with the matter said.
“Microsoft received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000,” a Microsoft spokesman said. “A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm to conduct a thorough investigation. Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Gates said, “There was an affair almost 20 years ago which ended amicably.” She said his “decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter. In fact, he had expressed an interest in spending more time on his philanthropy starting several years earlier.”
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@axtremus said in Bill, we hardly knew ye....:
Fake news abound. Wait for independent confirmation.
What, you don't trust the New York Times?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/business/bill-melinda-gates-divorce-epstein.html
By the time Melinda French Gates decided to end her 27-year marriage, her husband was known globally as a software pioneer, a billionaire and a leading philanthropist.
But in some circles, Bill Gates had also developed a reputation for questionable conduct in work-related settings. That is attracting new scrutiny amid the breakup of one of the world’s richest, most powerful couples.
In 2018, Ms. French Gates wasn’t satisfied with her husband’s handling of a previously undisclosed sexual harassment claim against his longtime money manager, according to two people familiar with the matter. After Mr. Gates moved to settle the matter confidentially, Ms. French Gates insisted on an outside investigation. The money manager, Michael Larson, remains in his job.
On at least a few occasions, Mr. Gates pursued women who worked for him at Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to people with direct knowledge of his overtures.
And then there was Jeffrey Epstein, whom Mr. Gates got to know beginning in 2011, three years after Mr. Epstein, who faced accusations of sex trafficking of girls, pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Ms. French Gates had expressed discomfort with her husband spending time with the sex offender, but Mr. Gates continued doing so, according to people who were at or briefed on gatherings with the two men.
So, in October 2019, when the relationship between Mr. Gates and Mr. Epstein burst into public view, Ms. French Gates was unhappy. She hired divorce lawyers, setting in motion a process that culminated this month with the announcement that their marriage was ending.
Long after they married in 1994, Mr. Gates would on occasion pursue women in the office.
In 2006, for example, he attended a presentation by a female Microsoft employee. Mr. Gates, who at the time was the company’s chairman, left the meeting and immediately emailed the woman to ask her out to dinner, according to two people familiar with the exchange.
“If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened,” Mr. Gates wrote in an email, according to a person who read it to The New York Times.The woman was indeed uncomfortable, the two people said. She decided to pretend it had never happened.
A year or two later, Mr. Gates was on a trip to New York on behalf of the Gates Foundation. He was traveling with a woman who worked for the foundation. Standing with her at a cocktail party, Mr. Gates lowered his voice and said: “I want to see you. Will you have dinner with me?” according to the woman.
The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want the public attention associated with describing an unwanted advance, said she felt uncomfortable but laughed to avoid responding.
Six current and former employees of Microsoft, the foundation and the firm that manages the Gates’s fortune said those incidents, and others more recently, at times created an uncomfortable workplace environment. Mr. Gates was known for making clumsy approaches to women in and out of the office. His behavior fueled widespread chatter among employees about his personal life.
