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Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates really needs to say more than just refusing to answer questions about his involvement here. I don't understand how that quells any rumors if it's to be believed his relationship with Epstein is being exaggerated as he is claiming through a spokesperson.

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The Gates angle is weird. Surely MIT has people in his orbit to go ask for donations without having to rely on a convicted sex-offender that they're too embarrassed to even take money from directly.

I think it makes more sense if you look at the specific institution within MIT (the media lab) which has this particular problem.

So while MIT itself may have ample funding from non shady sources, Perhaps this institution doesn’t. Or perhaps it does and the people working there just want to prove their worth by securing funding (which is what most university administrators are incentivized to do).

Yeah I mean most of the research at MIT is funded by the military and department of energy. Those guys are not shady at all.

> Those guys are not shady at all.

This appears to be sarcasm, but I think most of the country would unironically agree with this. Trying to slander MIT for taking money from DoD/DoE really puts you in a bubble.

As Churchill once said, mankind occasionally stumbles over the truth, but picks itself up and carries on.

I'd like to suggest that y'all are almost tripping over the connection that Epstein was possibly trying to get compromising material on researchers working on US military technology projects and then looking at it, going 'huh?' and wandering off again.

to resolve the 2 plot holes of

1) impossible prestige-for-cash if Epstein's involvement is kept secret

2) the weird way in which Gates is involved

check out my interpretation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904781

[citation needed]

I don’t have a citation, but MIT and the defense/energy industry are definitely intertwined and everyone on campus knows it.

Most universities don’t have something like Lincoln Labs, which is literally a DoD research center: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory

MIT restricts sharing funding info with non-MIT people. So you aren’t likely to find a concrete source. But this is very true.

But in this case, they're securing funding from Bill Gates. So if Gates wants to give them money, and they want to take it, why drag a convicted sex trafficker (whose participation they than have to go to the trouble to hide) into it at all? Why not just have Gates, like, mail a check.

Does he? Why? Journalist are on their witch hunt that'll die down within a year, and then Bill Gates can go back to being America's geeky dad figure that does charity work.

We have a justice system. If you don't like the way it works, go fix it. These witch hunts are an attempt to by-pass laws and ruin people's lives based on emotions, not facts.

Just look at what Louis CK has to go through, because somebody completely unrelated to him, was a piece of shit. If he jerked off and made some women uncomfortable in isolation, it'd be a funny 2 second mention and he'd be immediately forgiven, but because there was a Weinstein tsunami of outrage, now Louis has to put up with a mountain of shit.

Bill Gates is wisely avoiding becoming the Louis CK of this particular situation.

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