Edging

Virginia Heffernan makes an interesting admission about the book publicist John Brockman and his salon for famous science popularizers, Edge. This was well-known group among certain people. Yeah, certain people. It wasn’t very inclusive.

Brockman, my former agent for tech writing, told me Edge was an intellectual salon. Edge.org is indeed intriguingly sprawling, jammed with scholarly idols whose bios have “Booker” and “Nobel” in them. Members of Edge participated in conferences and symposia, and promoted each other’s work. Who was I to say no? Among Edge’s prodigious ranks were Ian McEwan, Yuval Noah Harari, Steve Wozniak, Richard Dawkins, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman.

But if I’d read the member list more closely, I might have hesitated. Edge was overwhelmingly male, for one. It was said to be an intellectual salon, but in the club photos were tech bro billionaires, including Edge members Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Larry Page. And too many members were men now largely renowned for misconduct, professional or personal: Marc D Hauser, Jonah Lehrer, Lawrence Krauss, and Marvin Minsky.

Once upon a time, I was edging into Edge. Brockman was also my former agent. I’d been introduced to Brockman by Dawkins and Adam Bly, I was on his mailing list, I was invited to contribute essays to his series of books. It didn’t last. Partly it was because I was getting weird vibes from the whole group, but also my criticisms of various precious ideas that were current among them, like soft-pedaling eugenics and demeaning women, got me abruptly and finally dropped from the mailing list.

There was also the matter of Jeffrey Epstein’s poisonous influence. I never met him, and pretty much knew nothing about him, it was only later that I discovered what a factor he was in the New York science publishing scene, and was a significant factor in founding Seed, which I wrote for.

I flashed back to the Edge crew’s relentless criticism of the humanities in the 1990s. In The Diversity Myth, Thiel and Sacks bitterly complained about “diversity” as jargon that concealed a nefarious political agenda. Well, now we have metaheuristical eugenics, and the jargon’s on the other foot.

With the Epstein files, we’re confronted with exactly what all the Edge men – from Pinker to Dawkins to Musk to Gates – did with the intellectual territory they seized. With their Ivy League posts, their billions, and their blue-ribbon DNA, the would-be intellectuals in Epstein’s circle converged on nothing less than the ideology of Mein Kampf. The Edge dinners have ceased and the site is now dormant, but generations of young men trained at Harvard, LSE and Oxford absorbed the lesson — and generations of young women learned that their place in intellectual history is sidelined, exploited, or prone.

I’d say I was lucky to have dodged that bullet, except that I was never a particularly good target for them. Although…those who were in the club, with exceptions, seem to have thrived. Has anyone paid the consequences for their association with Epstein? One of the most prominent ghouls who profited off their connections to Epstein, and Brockman, is Steve Pinker, whose unsavoury history gets exposed by Cathryn Townsend. Epstein was cultivating a group of scientists who shared his views on society, and Pinker was a prize catch.

Steven Pinker’s Panglossian worldview of inexorable progress, for example, is likely most appealing to those who have a vested interest in the hierarchical status quo.

There was a deeper ideology than that.

An exploration of Epstein’s connections suggests that eugenics and scientific racism played a role but that there was more to it than that. Investigations of Epstein’s relationships with academic scientists illustrate Epstein’s extraction of four gift types from them: 1) objectification of women, 2) legitimization of eugenics and scientific racism, 3) intellectual cosplay, and 4) cover for depraved and sometimes illegal behavior. The latter ranged from the reputation laundering service that was performed by all the academics who continued to associate with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for sex crimes, to conspiring to help Epstein avoid the legal repercussions of his crimes against children. Each academic in Epstein’s orbit likely offered a unique set of gifts to him but these four types seem to be recurring.

What the select group of academics got from the equation was money or expensive gifts, publicity, and the perceived glamour of being part of the Epstein class. Edge salons came with private flights, Michelin-starred meals, mink throws, and “beautiful young assistants”, after all. Who cared if it was, in Evgeny Marazov’s words “an odd intellectual club located on the dubious continuum between the seminar room and a sex-trafficking ring”?

Darn. I missed out on all those perks, probably because I didn’t provide gifts 1-4. Just think, I could have been at this party, if I’d played my cards right.

Now that’s disreputable group. The only one with a vestige of credibility remaining is Pinker, but the lies are starting to unravel even for him.

Harvard linguist Steven Pinker has claimed that he unknowingly contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defense back in 2007, when Epstein was fighting charges involving the sexual exploitation and trafficking of minors. His claim is contradicted by newly surfaced evidence from the cache of documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice.

An allegation that Pinker received $10,000 for a three-page letter appears in a 2008 memo titled “wrongdoing by attorneys in the Epstein criminal matter”. The memo was apparently authored by Darren Indyke, Epstein’s longstanding personal attorney. It states that “Alan had us give Steven Pinker $10,000 for a letter”. When questioned, Pinker has previously claimed that he was not paid for his expert opinion letter and that he didn’t know who he was providing the letter for. The “Alan” that the author refers to in the 2008 memo is Alan Dershowitz, a high-profile lawyer and former Harvard academic, who represented Epstein in his fight against charges related to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of minor girls.

I have written many recommendation letters over the course of my career, but I have never been paid a penny for any of them, let alone $10,000. If I were even offered $10K for a letter, I’d be instantly suspicious and the only thing I’d write is a damning letter reporting them to whoever they were trying to cultivate a relationship with. Pinker was lying. Pinker was unethical.

Pinker’s involvement in Epstein’s legal defense was first reported in 2019 by BuzzFeed. At the time, he told BuzzFeed that “I don’t recall [Dershowitz] telling me that the question pertained to the Epstein defense … I was not aware of the charges against Epstein at the time. And no, I was not paid for the letter—it’s something that Alan and I do regularly, as colleagues.”

Nothing he says is believable. He was just getting more devious in avoiding exposure.

Pinker claims that he couldn’t stand Epstein, never took funding from him, and tried to keep him at a distance, also describing him as a “kibitzer and a dilettante”. Perhaps, but for all that, he was willing to rub shoulders with him and accept gifts from him, for example traveling on Epstein’s private plane in 2002. Most of Pinker’s meetings with Epstein were through the Epstein-funded boy’s club known as the Edge. After Epstein’s conviction for sexually abusing a 14-year-old, Pinker continued rubbing shoulders with him, but Epstein’s presence within the circle of elite academics was carefully hidden from publicity. In the Epstein files, Pinker’s name appears repeatedly in emails related to Edge events, emails which included Epstein in the list of recipients, or which were forwarded to him, and which often pertained to exclusive salons for the Edge inner circle.

And he was hanging out with the worst people on the planet — billionaires. Yuck.

Pinker was a featured speaker at an Edge salon, billed as a master class on the science of human nature, that was held at a boutique vineyard in St Helena, Napa, CA in July 2011. According to emails between Epstein and Edge director John Brockman the salon was planned to be ‘confidential’ and limited to 20-25 invited guests. Epstein forwarded the email invitation, including the list of recipients, to a redacted email address asking “will you be in la. then”. The list of recipients included Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg.

And not just billionaires — Pinker keeps willfully entangling himself with racists and racist organizations. Right, he just “accidentally” finds himself sharing a stage with Jared Taylor, just like he “accidentally” cashes $10,000 checks from Dershowitz and Epstein, and then forgets about them.

Pinker’s interest in legitimizing scientific racism doesn’t seem to have died along with Epstein. Recently, he has appeared on a podcast outlet that is infamous for promoting scientific racism and eugenics. The media outlet concerned has produced an interview with Jared Taylor, a white supremacist who was apparently banned from the Schengen Area of Europe, and a blog post arguing that in order to achieve economic growth in Africa, eugenics should be used to engineer more intelligent Africans. An undercover investigation by Hope Not Hate exposed the neo-Nazi connections of the outlet’s holding organization. In the Hope Not Hate investigation, one of the directors of the holding organization explained to the undercover investigator (who was posing as a potential donor) that well-known commentators like Noam Chomsky were being used as part of a deliberate ploy to attract “high-value” subscribers: “We’re using these people to get legitimacy by association,” similar to Epstein’s strategy. Incidentally, Chomsky is another academic Epstein managed to add to his trophy shelf. To be charitable to Chomsky, he did at least reject Epstein’s racist ideas.

Separately, at a recent festival of cringe that Epstein would have loved, Pinker delivered a speech tritely titled ‘A Positive Vision for Scholarship and Society’ alongside titles such as ‘Parasitic Ideas and Suicidal Empathy Are Killing the West’; ‘Is Islamophobia Real? Finding Empirical Answers to Questions We’re Not Supposed to Ask’; and the showstopping ‘Truth, What it is, How to Find it, Why it Still Matters’. Papers by authors who attended this conference are being prepared for a special issue in a social science journal that has recently had a new editorial leadership imposed by the publisher, Springer. It now includes Pinker on the editorial board alongside an editor from a conservative think tank that has previously sponsored research by The Bell Curve author Charles Murray.

That Edge gang was one fucking creepy gang of creeps. Don’t forget it, let’s not let these losers escape their well-earned reputation.

Epstein, Krauss, Pinker

Humans are awful creatures

I learned about this horror from Greta Christina: there are networks of websites that host videos of men raping their partners. These sickos drug women without their knowledge, record themselves assaulting these unconscious women, do live video streams where they take suggestions on what to do to them, and thousands of men log in for the thrill of watching rape.

While the platforms vary, inside such groups, video is king. Some users advertised livestreams, showing the abuse of drugged women in real time, for $20 per viewer, with cryptocurrency the preferred means of payment.

Of course, these are human beings being abused for the entertainment of strangers, but sometimes they get even.

When Zoe Watts learned that her husband of 16 years had been crushing her son’s sleeping medicine into her tea and raping her while she was passed out, it shattered her world.

“We worry about who’s coming behind us, walking down the street, or who’s even friending us on Facebook. You know, we worry about going to our car late at night in a car park, but we don’t worry about who you lie next to. I didn’t realize I had to,” Watts said.

Her then husband’s confession came on an otherwise ordinary Sunday in 2018, after the couple – who share four children – had returned from church.

“He reeled off a list of his wrongdoings… as if it was, you know, a shopping list,” Watts said, speaking to CNN at her house in Devon, England.

He told her the abuse had been going on for years.

Telling her after church was a nice touch. Her response was appropriate: she turned him in to the police, all the evidence was right there on video, and he is currently serving an 11 year prison sentence.

Good.

Now let’s get all the other participants in this criminal activity — these sites had 62 million visits — arrested, and shut down all these facilitating web sites.

Another evolutionary biologist exposed as a jerk

Well, as more of a jerk — I think everyone already knew that Robert Trivers was a poor excuse for a human being. But he came up with all these interesting concepts in theoretical evolutionary biology, like reciprocal altruism and parental investment. Well, now Trivers is in the Epstein Files.

Specifically, Nichols found correspondence between Epstein and biologist Robert Trivers dating back to 2009; notably, this was after Epstein had pled guilty to one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18 and one count of solicitation of prostitution in 2008, and was sentenced to 18 months in a minimum-security facility. That first email saw Epstein inviting Trivers to Florida “to discuss what youare [sic] doing,” and offering to pay for Trivers’ tickets and accommodations.

Though it’s unclear when Epstein and Trivers established a financial relationship, by 2015, he had emailed Noam Chomsky claiming that he was Trivers’ “major funder,” after the biologist had been “thrown out of ru=gers [sic] for good this time.” That refers to Rutgers University in New Jersey, where Trivers was suspended from teaching in 2015 after refusing to teach a class.

You don’t get to do that. The faculty in a discipline have obligations to teach, and sometimes you have courses imposed on you. I mean, if I had my way, I’d be teaching developmental biology and evo-devo courses every semester, but there isn’t enough demand to fill those courses, and we also have all these required courses that need to be taught, so teaching the basics within your discipline in addition to your specialties and preferred courses is also necessary. After all, if you don’t teach the core, where will the students qualified to take your advanced courses come from? So I’ve already lost any sympathy for Trivers, and we haven’t dived into the truly evil stuff yet.

Trivers was paid by Epstein to do research on…guess what?

Nichols located an email in which Trivers thanked Epstein for “extra money and appointment as an advisor to your Foundation.” Epstein responded, “i want to see you [sic] piece on transgender in the bio world.” Two months later, Trivers responded and said he was “getting to the end of ‘transsexuality.’”

Trivers continued to make dehumanizing comments about trans women, including, “if you as a heterosexual male and have a minor desire to suck a dick then what better organism to do it with than a transsexual? ‘she’ will smell like a woman, be softer and more hairless like a woman and may, to some degree, actually resemble one morphologically — leaving the dick for you to enjoy in a feminine setting.”

In 2018, Trivers and Epstein once again corresponded about trans people in dehumanizing ways, “comparing” trans women and trans men, with Trivers calling the latter “unhappy and lonely — they are men with mum-pums, the worst of both worlds.”

So Trivers leapt into the field, and published a bad paper that I hadn’t seen before, because I’m not into evolutionary psychology or half-baked phrenological analyses of fingers. I’ve seen it now. Trivers may have won a Crafoord Prize, but he’s also a fucking idiot.

In 2019, Epstein once again encouraged Nichols “to focus on transgender biology.” A year later, and months before Epstein’s death, Trivers published his co-authored research on “transgendered belief,” focusing specifically on ratio of finger length as a supposed predictor for gender identity. (As Nichols notes, this theory is easily “disproven by anyone whose digit ratio does not predict their gender identity,” such as herself.)

I looked into these digit length studies, which claim to be able to detect your sex and sexual orientation from the relative length of you index finger to your ring finger, the 2d:4d ratio. The data is inconsistent and noisy, there might be a weak effect of testosterone on relative finger length, but it’s utterly useless for predicting sex, let alone sexual orientation. It’s the kind of garbage I’d expect to see in an evolutionary psychology journal. I’m aghast that Trivers, or anyone, thinks it useful. What else? Palmistry?

It’s bad science fueled by motivated reasoning and a cash payout by a convicted pedophile, and Trivers supported it. I’m going to have to go back and question all of his contributions to theoretical evolutionary biology now.

Naturally, Trivers made excuses for his friend the pedophile.

Notably, in 2015, Trivers was interviewed by Reuters about his financial relationship with Epstein, saying that the financier remained a friend even despite his allegations of sexual abuse of a minor. “Did he get an easy deal? Did he buy himself a light sentence? Well, yes, probably, compared to what you or I would get, but he did get locked up,” Trivers told the publication at the time, adding, “By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don’t see these acts as so heinous,” he said.

I think maybe I’m going to be sick.

So, is it OK to traffic grown women and sell them into sexual slavery?

It’s too much

More Epstein files have been released, and I’m sorry, I can’t bear to read any more about them. They confirm that the richest people in the country are all lying sex criminals. Bill Gates picked up an STD cavorting with Russian prostitutes, and wanted antibiotics he could sneak into his wife’s food? Trump was having sex with 14 year olds, and slapping them? Clinton and Prince Andrew were partying with “Jeff”? Elon Musk was requesting wild parties when visiting? Here’s a pre-digested summary, which is as deep as I want to go.

Take all the rich people in this country and throw them into a deep pit. I never want to hear from them again.

Put Bari Weiss and Kristi Noem in CECOT

That’s just the start, everyone in this rotten administration should follow.

Wait, no, I can’t recommend following any of the evil policies that the United States is using right now, not even for Nazis. It’s a struggle, but we have to be better than them, even though this story is so enraging.

Bari Weiss, the unqualified bigot who has never practiced journalism, was appointed to be in charge of the news division at CBS — the rich vermin who run the major media companies wanted to do more mergers that benefit no one but themselves used appointments of puppets as a tool to get regulatory permission to construct monopolies. Weiss has used her power to censor the news, axing a segment of the news show 60 Minutes that put the government in a bad light. The excuse given was that the Trump administration refused to comment on it, which implies that the government has de facto control of what journalism can be presented on CBS. Bari Weiss has sold out.

The segment that was killed was all about our policy of deporting people to CECOT, the inhumane torture dungeon in El Salvador. It’s a brazenly evil place; the administrators have openly encouraged ‘influencers’ to tour it and record what is going on, because they are proud of what they do. 60 Minutes was going to show what the El Salvadoran and United States government was doing to the inmates.

The deported migrants were sent to CECOT, short for the Terrorism Confinement Center, a massive high-security prison built by El Salvador’s government as part of President Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. Designed to hold tens of thousands of inmates, CECOT is known for extreme isolation, strict control, and conditions that human rights organizations have repeatedly described as inhumane.

Former detainees interviewed by Sharyn Alfonsi describe being held in overcrowded cells with little access to sunlight, medical care, or basic hygiene. Several recount routine physical abuse, prolonged confinement, and psychological trauma. Their accounts paint a picture of a system built for punishment rather than due process, with detainees often unsure why they were there or how long they would remain.

Bari Weiss could not allow that, because, Jesus Christ, it makes Trump and his lackeys look bad. Kristi Noem is shown touring the prison, strutting past prisoners held in excruciating positions, standing in front of packed cells while speechifying about how these are the worst of the worst. She looks like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

So it got cancelled.

Except…it was briefly shown on Canadian networks before it was pulled. And someone recorded it — it looks like they just aimed a camera at a hotel room TV — and has made it available to the world.

Go watch it. Quick, before it is pulled down.

These motherfuckers, Kristi Noem, Bari Weiss, Donald Trump, the guards at the prison, the warden, are all evil monsters. They are committing war crimes, except that we aren’t at war, making it even worse. We are all complicit. We don’t get to claim that we didn’t know about the torture prisons — we know. You have no excuse. Are we going to tolerate this corrupt regime any longer?

After watching that video, I needed a cleanse. Maybe you do too — here’s Rage Against the Machine.

If we’re going to hang any member of the “loser generation,” start with…

He looks like a genuine American Psycho

Joe Lonsdale. He’s emblematic of the problems of the rich: he’s a billionaire, he’s an entitled dumbass, he despises education, and he wants to kill people less privileged than he is. He has a name for students who seek accommodations for disabilities.

Loser generation. At Stanford, it’s a hack for housing, though and at some point, I get it, even if it’s not my personal ethics. Terrible leadership from the university.

College is only for rich, healthy people who want to join a frat. He also disparages university education.

Claiming your child has a disability to give them a leg up became an obvious dominant game theoretic strategy for parents without honour in the 2010s. Great signal to avoid a family / not do business with parents who act this way.

…

No great companies are interested in the BS games played by universities.

What great companies? Lonsdale was a member of the PayPal Mafia, and he made his fortune at Palantir — not a great company by any means, but a damned evil one. He got a BS degree in computer science from Stanford, one of those elite colleges that the rich pollute with their bogus aspirations. Who needs an education when any dumbass can get filthy rich by gouging government contracts and being buddies with other amoral billionaires.

Remember, this guy was a cofounder of the University of Austin — he’s undermining his own scam by scorning universities, which tells you he’s not very bright.

Now he’s also defending turning murder into spectacle.

Joe Lonsdale defended open-air executions in a series of posts on X, saying their reintroduction would be an example of the “masculine leadership” the country is sorely lacking.

“If I’m in charge later,

Wait. Hold it right there. He has hopes of being in charge? Dear god no.

we won’t just have a three strikes law. We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others,” he wrote. “Our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable.”

Biggest sign of an entitled asshole: he throws around the word “masculine” as if it is a flawless great good, and treats “feminine” as a weakness. I want leaders who are human and humane, and don’t think more than half the population are unsuited for learning or leading because of their biology.

Acquit Luigi Mangione. His job isn’t done.

The Battle of Chicago has begun

It is not bringing glory to the fascists.

In the pre-dawn hours of September 30, federal agencies coordinated a large-scale immigration enforcement action targeting a five-story apartment building near 75th Street and South Shore Drive, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The DHS said that 37 individuals were arrested and that the operation involved the U.S. Border Patrol, FBI, and ATF.

The agency claimed the building and surrounding area were tied to activity by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and that those arrested included people allegedly involved in drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations.

Ebony Sweets Watson, who lives across the street from the building, told WBEZ Chicago that she saw federal agents dragging residents, including children, out of the building without clothes and loading them into U-Haul vans. She said the children were separated from their mothers.

Assaults on apartment buildings to tear naked children from their mothers is not very photogenic, especially when the assailants are armored up and masked. Were the children members of Tren de Aragua? Were they armed and selling drugs? I could believe that there were a few individuals in that building who were suspected of “drug trafficking, weapons offenses, or immigration violations,” but that doesn’t warrant harassing and harming and terrifying the innocent people who lived there.

Follow the rule of law or GTFO, ICE.

The perils of listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene

Oklahoma is deep in the heart of Tornado Alley — this is where weather forecasting is a matter of life or death. It’s also a place infested with militias and right-wing “patriots” who have fully embraced a belief in mysterious government-controlled weather control machines. You can imagine the conflicts that emerge when the state builds weather prediction gear, and you have groups of people who are convinced the gubmint is intentionally targeting civilians with deadly tornadoes. Those groups are trying to destroy weather radars and cell phone towers.

A man who, years ago, became convinced a child sex-trafficking ring was operating at an abandoned cement plant in Tucson has moved to Oklahoma and found a new target: radar systems he believes the military and media use to control the weather.

Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who leads the anti-government group Veterans On Patrol, claimed credit for the July 6 sabotage of the weather radar system of KWTV-TV, Channel 9, in Oklahoma City. Meyer did not vandalize the station’s radar system himself, but had posted pleas on his group’s Telegram channel asking for others to join his cause.

Security footage posted by the television station showed a man tossing a bag over a chain-link fence, climbing it and damaging a power supply. The video then showed the man spray painting over the lens of a security camera.

You can see this idiot vandalizing the power supply for a weather radar.

The ringleader for this gang of vandals, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, has his own justification for the destruction.

“Eliminating directed energy weapons that are embedded in our infrastructure is not going to harm a single American,” he said. “It will take away a loaded weapon pointed at the American people.”

And of course he is a raving Christian Nationalist looney.

Last year, Meyer was part of an effort in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene for posing as an aid worker to encourage locals to tear down cell towers and attack the military.

“When the military plays God with the weather, they’re mocking our Heavenly Father by calling one of his most favorite instruments a ‘weather weapon,'” Meyer added.

Veterans on Patrol has their own page on the Southern Poverty Law Center. It’s not just weather forecasting that they hate!

Not only do we continue permitting the slaughter of our own Children in Abortion Sacrificial Centers…
Not only do we permit altering our Children’s DNA with Globalist Vaccinations that kill and sterilize…
Not only do we permit Government Agencies like CPS to abduct Children from their Parents…
Not only do we permit the Captivity, Rape, and Abuse of Migrant Children being trafficked by Catholic Charity Services…
We now permit Afghan Pedophiles to bring their Child Rape Victims for further Abuse on our own Soil…
Americans will reap horrible consequences for continuing to allow God’s Children to be defiled and abused.
I ask everyone to Pray for the Children… and I ask my Father to destroy this Nation for perpetuating evil equal to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Americans will not fight for these Children… May our Father in Heaven bring His Righteous Judgement upon this Satanic Nation claiming to be under Him
PREPARE YOUR FAMILIES.

Read that whole page. He has a long history of insane conspiracy theories and active destruction.

Here’s one odd thing: google Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer. There are lots of news stories about the guy being arrested, not showing up at court hearings, just generally running about sowing chaos. None of the arrests seem to have stuck! I found news of his arrest back in 2018, right up to 2025, yet journalists today are just calling him up and getting these insane comments. Meyer said his group was monitoring Oklahoma radars closely and claimed that there were no laws that could prevent them from destroying the radars. This is an open, vocal right-wing terrorist who is allowed to continue his rampage with no significant impairment of his ability to blow shit up. All I can think is that he’s very clever about getting idiotic dupes to do his dirty work for him, like the goober in that video.

Just in case you spot this sanctimonious nutcase in your neighborhood, here’s a photo.

Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer


‘

Lock him up!

This man served in the North Dakota senate for 54 years

The state of Minnesota would like to put up a wall along our border with the Dakotas. Or, at least, we’d like you to know we don’t have anything to do with them. I don’t know, I kind of cringed away to the east learning about this story.

Prosecutors said Holmberg traveled at least 14 times from 2011 to 2021 to Prague, Czech Republic, to pay for sex with adolescent-age boys. In court last year, Holmberg admitted to paying young male masseuses, some of whom he had sexual contact with at an alleged brothel. But he claimed not to know for certain how old they were.

Acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer Klemetsrud Puhl said the crime was “an assault of the dignity of many young boys.” And the majority and minority leaders in the North Dakota Legislature described Holmberg’s crimes as “evil” in a statement that vowed additional resources to law enforcement to help combat increases in criminal sexual assaults and human trafficking, KFGO reported.

Not just the Czech Republic: he was a roaming predator, criss-crossing the country and traveling abroad to abuse boys.

Records previously obtained by The Associated Press show that Holmberg made dozens of trips throughout the U.S. and to other countries since 1999. Destinations included cities in more than 30 states as well as Canada, Puerto Rico and Norway. At least one of Holmberg’s trips to Prague was state-funded through a teacher exchange program, the Klemetsrud Puhl wrote in court filings last week.

“Holmberg’s offending conduct over the course of decades … can only be described as corruption,” she wrote. “That is, he used his position to serve his own ends.”

His position is what makes this even worse: he has a long history as a distinguished state senator in the North Dakota senate.

Holmberg served 45 years in the North Dakota Senate. He resigned in 2022 after The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported on his many text messages with a man in jail in connection with child sexual abuse material. Holmberg chaired two powerful legislative panels, including the Senate’s budget-writing committee.

Because he’s wealthy and privileged and a Republican, and also 81 years old (he’s been playing this vile game for a long time), lawyers tried to argue that he should only get a 3 year sentence. The judge would have none of it, and he’s going away for ten years. That’s still not enough, given this one final twist:

In 2012 and 2013, Holmberg posed as a teenage boy in an online chatroom for teens who had undergone circumcision, and misled and manipulated a 16-year-old Canadian boy into sending him explicit photos, the filing said.

The full story of the relationship is unclear because the boy later took his own life in 2021, “but no doubt Holmberg’s conduct contributed to his struggles,” Klemetsrud Puhl said.

Yeah, he can die in prison. No loss.

Would you believe he was reimbursed by the North Dakota senate for his sex vacations? He was. He led the senate and personally approved all of his expenses.