DL Open Thread: Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026

How Epstein’s ‘Male Gaze’ Toxicity Created A Glass Ceiling For Women.

Academia:

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 emails are a reminder to women like Baran that the profession, at its highest levels, still operates under the gaze of men. And in a field where funding is scarce — and climbing the career ladder is often only possible through a combination of luck, mentorship and networking — the files reveal the ways sexism and misogyny still hold women back.

For the boys in the club, the arrangement worked to their benefit. Epstein donated millions of dollars to their research, hosted them at networking dinners at his home, invited them to visit his island or his ranch in Santa Fe, and connected them to potential funders to further their work.

As a result, these men were able to establish their own well-funded labs to pursue their work, land lucrative book deals and make connections to other prominent men, particularly those in Silicon Valley who were working on technological advancements like AI.

But as the emails reveal, these same men did not see women as intellectual equals.

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.” 

The Music Biz:

16 years ago, Jeffrey Epstein looked at one of the biggest record labels on earth and saw the same thing he saw in model agencies and fashion shows: a “P factor” score. (One can reasonably infer the “P” refers to “pussy.”) The now‑public emails around his abortive bid for EMI are a paper trail showing how a convicted sex offender and his friends talked about the industry that signs our favorite artists, negotiates their masters, and decides who gets a slot on which stage—and how little any of it had to do with music.

On February 10, 2010, London‑based deal scout David Stern forwarded Epstein a short news item about EMI’s debt crisis and Terra Firma’s botched ownership, summarizing the situation in one gross little sentence: “Troubled industry but related to P: EMI (music) needs approx US$190m to survive or may be taken over by Citigroup.” “P,” in Epstein‑speak, seems to have been the way he and some members of his circle (namely, Stern) referred to women—a reported abbreviation for a word he used constantly enough that Stern started treating it like a lifestyle metric, wishing him “lots of P” on his birthday and on New Years, offering fashion-show tix “to review Chinese P,” and rating trips and social events with a “P factor” out of ten. (Ibiza: 9/10. Taizhou: 1/10. London, specifically on days with good weather: 8/10. Otherwise, lower. The German-Czech border: “economic atmosphere disaster but: P factor 9 / 10 !!!” Kiev: 7/10.  A “massive Turkish luxury resort…FULL of Russians”: “P factor disaster – but 1 in 100 is bombshell.” An Odessa beachfront: 9/10, “with extra 0.5 dirt bonus !” Sarah Ferguson’s 50th birthday party: 0.2/10. And so on.)

Thankfully, EMI never became an Epstein plaything; Citigroup did take control, split the asset in two, and ultimately sold the recorded‑music side to Universal Music Group and the publishing side to a consortium involving Sony and David Geffen in 2012.

But ignoring these emails because no transaction closed misses the point. The EMI emails are about how Epstein and his class of men thought about a whole sector of the culture: as a “troubled” but potentially lucrative pipeline where owning the infrastructure also meant owning proximity to the people on stage, backstage, in the VIP lounges and modeling agencies.

The concern, then, is not that Epstein got his hands on EMI; obviously, he didn’t. The concern is that the mindset on display in those emails is still considered normal in rooms we never get to see, and that the only reason we know about this one is because the DOJ hit upload on 1.4 million messages tied to a man who finally became too notorious to protect. The artists playing the venues, signing the deals, and smiling through the label dinners are not the ones trading “P factor” ratings over email. But they are, of course, the ones who suffer for it.

Further editorial comment on my part is redundant.

Trump’s Fave Cover-Up Judge Covers Up For Trump:

The federal judge who handled President-elect Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents temporarily barred the Justice Department on Tuesday from releasing a final report about the case by the special counsel, Jack Smith.

In a brief ruling, Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who dismissed the documents case in its entirety this summer, enjoined Mr. Smith from sharing his report outside the Justice Department until a federal appeals court in Atlanta, which is now considering a challenge to her dismissal, makes a decision about how to handle the report.

Judge Cannon has a history of issuing unusual rulings in Mr. Trump’s favor. Early in the investigation that led to the documents indictment, she intervened in the case to impede the inquiry, only to be overruled by a conservative panel that sits over her, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

Not gonna watch Trump’s State Of The Union.  I’ll read all about the carnage tomorrow.  Will he diss the Supreme Court justices?  Will he try to get the rub from the US Men’s Ice Hockey Team? (The women’s team said ‘No’.). Will he talk about the ‘strong man who wanted to kiss him’?  What’s that, you ask?:

This morning, the Supreme Court knocked down President Donald Trump’s arbitrary international tarrifs. He responded by holding a press conference in which he openly fantasized about a “very powerful, strong man” wanting to kiss him.

During his press event, Trump claimed that, while giving a speech at a factory that makes steel products, “a very powerful man” who owned the business and worked in the industry for 45 years said, “President, I’d love to kiss you.”

“I don’t want to be kissed by that man,” Trump continued, to small giggles among the press reporters. “But a very powerful, strong man … he said, ‘Sir, I want to kiss you so badly.’ And I said, ‘No thank you.’”

Trump then claimed that this man said he wanted to kiss him because, before Trump placed tariffs on foreign imported steel, the man’s factory was working only “one hour a week.” After Trump’s tariff’s, the man’s factory began operating 16 hours a day, seven days a week. The man allegedly bragged that the factory was considering running 24 hours a day week-long.

“He said, ‘Sir, I want to kiss you so badly,’” Trump added, leaning into the microphone. “And I said, ‘No thank you.’”

It’s unclear if this ever actually happened or if Trump just made it up.

No it’s not.

Annnnd, the winner of Chicago’s Name The Plow competition is…:

When it comes to putting a name to Chicago’s annual battle against its infamously inclement weather, it turns out that the practical is also the political.

“Abolish ICE” was the top vote-getter in the city’s “You Name a Snowplow” contest. Choosing the protest slogan with a double meaning proved a potent way for voters to jab at President Donald Trump after he sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers into the city and its suburbs last fall in a major immigration crackdown.

With a surge of ICE officers beginning in September, “Operation Midway Blitz” resulted in more than 4,000 arrests, a fatal shooting and a sour taste among Chicago’s Democratic leaders and many of its residents, particularly in large immigrant populations. Despite mid-winter frigid cold, “ICE Out” protests in recent weeks have continued downtown, near ICE facilities and throughout the suburbs.

Guess Who’s Gonna Operate That Suxco Softball Complex.  Nah, you don’t have to guess:

The sports arm of the Buccini Pollin Group will operate Sussex County’s largest baseball complex starting this year.

BPG Sports takes over the 16-field facility from independent Softball World LLC, with plans to run at least 22 tournaments or events between March and August.

BPG Sports Senior Vice President Stephen Cavalier said work is already planned to start on upgrading the facility before the heart of the summer travel ball season.

“We’ll hang some TVs, we’ll make it more of a feeling of community and a place you can hang out. People will want to come back summer after summer.”

And eventually convert the fields to synthetic turf, like they’re doing…:

BPG’s move to Sussex County gives the organization a major sporting venue in all three counties.

They are in the process of creating a new domed field at DE Turf in Frederica, where there will be 13 full-length fields, and also starting work on parking lot and other upgrades at Kirkwood Soccer Club south of New Castle.

They are planning to flip four of the existing grass fields there to synthetic turf.

Hey, what’s yet another cancer cluster when you consider the cost of maintaining grass fields? Plus, there’s all those tourism dollars.  Plus, hopefully the kids who get cancer aren’t Delaware residents.

Port Of Wilmington: ‘Yes, We Have Only Some Bananas’:

A buildup of sediment around the confluence of the Christina and Delaware rivers is blocking fully loaded fruit ships from docking at the Port of Wilmington – a facility long known as the top banana port in North America.

In conversations with port workers as well as with state and federal officials, Spotlight Delaware has learned that over the previous month cargo ships bound for Delaware and carrying Chiquita Brands fruit have been sailing past the Port of Wilmington because the waterway leading to the Christina River facility has become too shallow.

While the workaround has kept fruit moving, the situation could amount to a reputational setback for Delaware’s port. It comes at a time when the facility’s operator, Enstructure Inc., has been seeking out new lines of business amid an increasingly intense competition between regional ports.

The situation also means that the hours worked at the publicly owned, privately run Port of Wilmington are lower than what they would have been otherwise. And in some cases, those hours have been filled by non-union labor at upstream ports, sparking outcry from Delaware workers.

Spokespersons for Enstructure and for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – which is in charge of maintaining the navigable waters in the United States – each blamed the sediment buildup on delays in dredging that began last fall.

In an email, Army Corps spokesman Stephen Rochette said a dispute over an awarded dredging contract initially pushed back the start of the project.

“We awarded this contract in the fall and experienced a delay due to a contractual protest from another bidder. Additionally, the selected contractor had other project commitments as well that impacted their start time,” Rochette said.

Perhaps it’s just me, but wouldn’t the ability to carry out the contract in a timely manner be a consideration when awarding a contract?

What do you want to talk about?