I can't imagine how sickening it must have been to spend that much time
with the material. Thank you for turning whatever your reactions have
been to this horrid culture into your 17 year mission. Hopefully a tiny
silver lining here is that it's easier for things to change 🙏
On 05/02/2026 14:42, Cindy Gallop via Silklist wrote:
I highly recommend reading Helen Rumbelow's UK Times article, 'I
Studied The Latest Epstein Files. As A Woman, This Is What I Felt.'
Non-paywalled link here:
https://archive.ph/hI1gs
Here are four of my posts on LinkedIn about the Epstein files and
who's in them, from a female perspective:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7424869059839574016/
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7425176380268662785/
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cindygallop_reminder-this-month-makes-it-17-years-that-ugcPost-7424944258350120960-Xorx
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7425186871225270272/
On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 9:00 AM John Sundman via Silklist
<[email protected]> wrote:
I suppose it goes without saying, but please do not share this
gossip (below) outside of Silklist. It's tangential to the
question of the humanity of billionaires, but you may find it amusing.
I reside on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA, a
place where many people have (second or third. . .) vacation
homes. In times when I didn't have income from freelance technical
writing, I have worked for my friend Lou, a general contractor, on
construction/home-remodelling jobs. Over the years I've done a lot
of work — a couple of months — on a house that belongs to Harvard
professor Dan Goleman. Most of this work was done during the
colder months when Goleman wasn't there. It was a nice but not a
grand house. Four bedrooms, 3 bathrooms. It needed /a lot/ of
maintenance. It had a view of Vineyard Sound and the Elizabeth
Islands, which made it worth millions.
From wikipedia:
/The term [emotional intelligence] became widely known with the
publication of Daniel Goleman's 1995 book: Emotional Intelligence
– Why it can matter more than IQ. Goleman followed up with several
similar publications that reinforce use of the term. Late in 1998,
Goleman's Harvard Business Review article entitled "What Makes a
Leader?"Â caught the attention of senior management at Johnson &
Johnson's Consumer Companies. The article argued that EI comprised
the skills and characteristics that drive leadership
performance. Johnson & Johnson funded a study which concluded that
there was a strong relationship between superior performing
leaders and emotional competence, supporting theorists'
suggestions that the EI is a distinguishing factor in leadership
performance./
/
/
According to Lou, Goleman and his wife purchased the house in
partnership with another Harvard professor & his wife. Alas,
Goleman evidently did a poor job assessing this couple — his EQ
failed him? — and he ended up getting swindled by them and losing
a lot of money. Goleman also bought a fixer-upper house on the New
Jersey palisades, and lost a lot of money on that project. Which
is why he was always hustling to make as much $$ as he could from
his status as the Guru of Emotional Intelligence. I met Goleman
only once. Lou introduced me to him saying 'John's a writer, like
you.' Goleman was nice enough but didn't strike me as especially
emotionally astute. He asked if I would give him one of my books,
and offered to sell me one of his, lol.
I also spent nearly a year working on the trophy house of David
Wetherell, who was, very briefly, a billionaire. In 1999 his
company CMGI was the poster child for 'the new economy' — later
better known as 'the dot-com bubble.' When I was working on his
house the CMGI stock price was ~$300/share. Two years later it was
fifty cents and the stock got delisted from NASDAQ. I wrote an
essay for /Salon/ about that experience — /How I destroyed the New
Economy <https://www.salon.com/2002/10/23/wetherell/>/— in which I
hypothesized that the reason the bubble burst was because I had
helped to build Wetherell's mansion on an ancient Wampanoag burial
ground.
In my very brief encounters with Wetherell, he did seem to conform
to the 'billionaire == arrogant jerk' stereotype. My main job on
that site was moving heavy stuff from point A to point B — hard,
dirty, grunt work, which made me virtually invisible. Wetherell
barely registered me as a fellow human. But he did notice the
essay, lol. It still rankled him five years later when he
threatened to sue me and /Salon/. "Whenever anybody searches for
me on the internet, that damn story is the first thing that comes
up!" But everything I had written was true & I had witnesses
(including the Wampanoag tribal genealogist & tribal medicine man)
who backed me up & /Salon/ stood by the story. Wetherell did not sue.
jrs
 P.S. The Wetherell stuff is not confidential ;^)
/
/
On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 5:46 AM Udhay Shankar N via Silklist
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 3:59 PM Manar Hussain via Silklist
<[email protected]> wrote:
I had a long chat with an SF friend last year about the
challenge of maintaining a meaningful healthy relationship
with his best friend who went from modest to billionaire
over the last few years. Despite the friendship
remaining mutually strong and important to both of them,
he's found himself *silently* self editing what he does
and says to keep it workable. This is the progressive
adaptation, ecosystem change, that fuels the emerging new
reality for his billionaire friend that ratchets down
awareness of what it is to be "ordinary folk"... lower
empathy, lower EQ by default.
One thing I have observed with the few billionaires I have
worked with in the past is that, outside of a small subset of
their pre-existing friends+family network, almost EVERY SINGLE
interaction with a human being has to do with said human being
asking them for money. That is also one major factor in
warping their worldview.
--
Silklist mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
--
/Sundman figures it out! <https://johnsundman.substack.com/>/ — an
ongoing autobiographical meditation.
--
Silklist mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
--
*Cindy Gallop*
Consultant + Founder/CEO
MakeLoveNotPorn Academy is now live in early-stage beta:
https://www.makelovenotporn.academy/
You can make tax-deductible donations/donate from Donor Advised Funds
to help us grow and scale MakeLoveNotPorn Academy
<https://www.makelovenotporn.academy/>: donate here via non-profit
Inspire Access <https://givebutter.com/InspireAccessxMLNP>.
Watch my SXSW London 26-min keynote 'How Sex Education Can Help End
Gender Violence And Bring Back Love'
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOnymx5eTi8>
Listen to Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway: Sex, Porn And Knowing The
Difference With Cindy Gallop
<https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-prof-g-show-with-scott-galloway/id1498802610?i=1000575745417>
Book me to speak
<http://www.robinsonspeakers.com/cindy-gallop-speaker-speakers-bureau>
Hire me to coach/consult <https://cindygallop.com/> | Connect with me
on LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindygallop/> Follow me on
Instagram <https://www.instagram.com/cindygallop/> Follow me on
Twitter <https://twitter.com/cindygallop>
--
Silklist mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
