A couple more letters emerge out of the files, these all involve John Brockman. Brockman was the king of scientific publishing; I believe he was the agent for all of Richard Dawkins’ books, and he was the agent for my one book, he was Lawrence Krauss’s agent, etc.\. If you wanted to publish a science book, you had to make the pilgrimage to New York and kiss the feet of John Brockman, who would then negotiate with the publishers to get you a good deal. He had a lot of clout, clout that was invisible to most people.
So when a “rather nasty young woman” criticized Richard Dawkins, he went crying to John Brockman.
> Date: July 4, 2011 5:42:43 PM EDT
> To: John Brockman < [
> Subject: Lawrence
>
> John
–
> 1. I hope you recovered well from your operation.
>
> 2. There is a rather nasty young woman called Rebecca Watson, who seems to be running some
kind of a witch-hunt against Lawrence Krauss because of his defence of Jeffrey Epstein.
>
> http://skepchick.org/2011/04/lawrence-krauss-defends-a-sex-offender-embarrasses-scientists- everywhere/
>
> There are people on her blog talking about organising a walkout when Lawrence speaks at TAM in Las Vegas. I remember that you told me something of the circumstances of Jeffrey’s arrest, and that his case is not as black as painted. Might you possibly remind of it.
>
> Thanks (and greetings from Jackson Hole, Wyoming)
> Richard
Apparently, Brockman had been making up excuses for Epstein to his clients, and then those clients were echoing those excuses to justify their own ugly behavior. I have no idea what Dawkins thought Brockman could do to help. It was just an incestuous little clique.
This next one is very much inside baseball. I was on Scienceblogs, along with a lot of other very good people, which was founded by Adam Bly, who was also connected to Brockman. Bly got a lot of money from somewhere, I don’t know where, enough to launch a blog networks and a print magazine, but this email suggests to me that one of his sources was Jeffrey Epstein. Now I feel tainted.
The “PR crisis” he’s talking about was PepsiGate. We were all scientists and journalists at ScienceBlogs, except that Bly had suddenly brought a new blog into the network, a great big corporate advertisement for Pepsi disguised as a science blog. It’s true, it was a crisis: several people people yeeted right out of the network, citing ethical issues, and even more of us were yelling at Bly that this was wrong, you can’t do that, it’s blurring the boundary between objective science and shilling for a corporation. It was really, really ugly, and Bly just seemed oblivious to our concerns. (Note also: those of you who remember this event know that it’s also where another blog, ERV, went histrionically pro-Pepsi and lurched into the manosphere. It was a weird time.)
Bly was consulting a convicted pedophile during the whole episode. I suspect said pedophile had provided some degree of seed money for the science magazine, Seed.
From: Adam Bly
Sent: Thur 7/812010 3:18:24 AM
Subject: Thurs.
I’m dealing with a PR crisis at ScienceBlogs (relating to a customer, PepsiCo) and haven’t left my office all day. I don’t know what tomorrow will look like Yet so wanted to give you a heads up in case I’m unable to leave the office again tomorrow.
I have copies of every issue of Seed stored in my house. I guess I won’t feel bad about throwing out the clutter at last.
Dawkins is a gullible mess. Also Brockman did some agent work for another pile of slime, Coyne
Oh. Oh. I mean we all knew about Krauss since 2011, but it did surprise me how many academics, some of whom are still around, were desperate to get some young pussy from Epstein.
Just about everyone publishing popular science had Brockman as an agent, including people who weren’t piles of slime.
Sorry for not knowing, what is ERV? I googled but only got results about energy recovery in heating systems.
ERV, well, special case, a person from Ohio who attracted a lot of attention of the worst kind. Who for a short period of time, was considered a person of values and knowledge.
More names…
The Prince no longer known as Prince has been told by the prime minister to testify for congress about his relationship with Epstein, as he was a public servant at the time.
Somewhat obscured by the Epstein cataclysm, here are other outrages.
“Tulsi Gabbard at Georgia FBI Raid? & TikTok Censored?! | Have I Got News For You US ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VT10IKHYNhk
I remember ERV from Scienceblogs.
She seemed OK and then went off the rails somehow.
After that she disappeared into…I have no idea and I never cared enough to find out.
@4: In this case ERV = endogenous retrovirus, and the title of a blog run by Abby something-or-other (who knew something about that subject). I recall her writing epically scornful eviscerations of Michael Behe’s nonsense. Then came Elevatorgate and she started writing her own nonsense. All downhill from there.
Abby was really switched on, but attracted the absolute worst of the internet, and man was her blog a sewer at some stage. We had a bit of a connection, but holy crap, she turned full Darth Vader.
Also, I’m wondering why any of this got forwarded to Epstein (and poor Rebecca Watson now has the dubious distinction of being mentioned in the Epstein files). What did Dawkins/Brockman expect him to do about it? Of course, IIRC we found out ~5 years later than Krauss was a creep. Wonder if he’ll show up in any pictures from the infamous Island?
There are Krauss/Pinker/Epstein pics aplenty.
@11: There are pix of Epstein with lots of people — he seems to have liked sucking up to Famous Smart People, who may or may not have known* about his other, um, “hobby”. But which of them appear in situations as blatantly compromising as e.g. the recently-released photo of the upper-class-twit formerly known as Prince?
Depending on the date — post-2008 everyone knew, but may have persuaded themselves that he had turned over a new leaf.
Ah, should have been an asterisk on that footnote @12. Software ate it, I think.
rorschach @11:
“There are Krauss/Pinker/Epstein pics aplenty.”
Those are obviously just coincidences. And they never knew those other people in those photos with them, they might have just gotten them coffee once, that’s all. /S
Rebecca actually made a video joking about how she was in the Epstein files a few months ago, due to Krauss writing to Epstein about her after she criticized the former.
The thing emerging from this latest file dump is how desperate certain academics were to get a bit of teen pussy, and to get into the scene. And how Noam Chomsky was ok with it all.
Fixed that for you, you foul pig.
stevewatson @10:
“What did Dawkins/Brockman expect him to do about it?”
Sorry, perhaps your question was merely rhetorical. But if not, Dawkins OBVIOUSLY considered him a “FIXER”.*
**A fixer is someone who is assigned or contracted to solve problems for others. Use in American English implies that the methods used are of questionable morality and legality.” Mango Mussolini has had many “FIXERS”. Some have even lost their lawyer license. Other crazy ones, like Sidney Powell have survived multiple attempts to remove hers, despite the extreme level of incompetence and very obvious criminality and lying. Are professional lawyer organizations really THAT incompetent?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Powell
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/epitome-of-lawfare-that-shouldnt-be-allowed-kraken-lawyer-sidney-powell-again-defeats-disciplinary-effort-by-state-bar-of-texas/
stevewatson: The name was Abbie Smith. When Dawkins (who was probably already going downhill mentally) wrote that “Dear Muslima” travesty and suddenly mobilized a horde of wannabee cyberbullies against one girl (Watson) who’d said “guys, don’t do that,” Abbie jumped wholeheartedly in on Dawkins’ side, and pretty much created what quickly came to be called the Slymepit: post after post on ERV smugly praising everyone who came to trash Watson and everyone who took her side — and there were PLENTY of such people, like over a thousand comments in each thread. I’d call it the worst case of brain-rot resulting from audience-capture I’d ever seen directly.
I’m told she suffered some serious academic-career setbacks as a result of her totally pointless hatemongering; and since then she seems to have taken down most or all of her posts on that subject. She still has more actual science-related stuff up under her name. Once or twice I heard her name come up in connection to some half-assed campaign to bring together grand-old-atheist “thought leaders” to do something or other to counterbalance all the left-wing Political Cancel Correctitude Culture that’s causing all the Deep Rifts or something.
I’d also heard somewhere that Abbie had been sexually assaulted herself, and was treated quite badly when she came forward about it. So maybe that’s where she got her cues about how to deal with other women who came forward with similar claims.
I posted some comments back in 2019 of archive snapshots that corroborated that Ghislaine Maxwell had been on the board of Seed Media between 2007 and 2008 (but as best I can tell, Epstein never was). Checking the timeline, I see that Epstein was indicted in June 2006, and plead guilty in June 2008.
What the fuck was Dawkins doing asking if Epstein wasn’t that bad in 2011?
(That’s weird, “correctitude” didn’t get redlined. Is it officially a real word?)
Answer:
Question:
I’m confused with the style of asking a question when the answer is the previous sentence.
Appreciate the use of ‘yeeted’ but it is a transitive verb and requires a direct object. One cannot yeet; one must yeet something or be yeeted by something.
CD
Director, Foundation for the General Acceptance of the Verb ‘Yeet’
Munchhausen, Nebraska
@21 Raging Bee: Surprised me too.
Merriam-Webster – correctitude: “correctness or propriety of conduct”
Webster’s two examples use the phrase “political correctitude”. Wiktionary has an example from 1921 as a standalone word.
#23 Continental Divide
I was going to make a similar comment about transitive/intransitive. English is a living language and things do change. Yeet is still a youngster word, so perhaps we shouldn’t be helping our fellow boomers try to pass though? :)
Somewhere right now there’s an Epstein’s replacement doing exactly what he did with a whole new set of perverts and pedophiles.
Jeffery is just the one they caught.
@19: Oh, I do recall. This thread has been a trip down Memory Lane for quite a few of us here. I went on vacation (and mostly ignored the internet) for about two weeks in July 2011, and when I came back everyone was shouting at each other, and I was like WTF? Before that the Deep Rifts were about trivial matters like what attitude to take towards religion.
@PZ:
You’ve forgotten that in the 2019 post I just linked to above, you actually cited Blake Stacey tweeting (sigh. . . remember when Twitter was at least vaguely innocuous?) just that.
Stacey was in turn referencing a book — Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal That Undid Him, and All the Justice That Money Can Buy: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein, by James Patterson (& John Connolly with Tim Malloy), 2016, Little, Brown, & Co
There’s really only one line in there, a single parenthetical sentence: “(Sources say that an earlier enterprise, the Seed Media Group, was funded by Jeffrey Epstein in 2005 to the tune of two million dollars.)”
I note that there’s also me quoting an even older comment by Peter Irons (from 2007) saying that he’d heard that “Epstein put up a big wad of cash to set up Seed”. And that was from the Vanity Fair writer (who may be the same as Patterson’s “sources”), whom Irons did not name but might have been Vicky Ward, who wrote the 2003 article about Epstein (and may have toned the article down due to pressure from the — at the time — unindicted Epstein).
Off topic, But, important info for everyone
http://theartsinarizona.org/EssentialUrbanFashionAccessories.pdf
would like confirmation it is readable
Epstein sucked up to the rich and famous and was surprisingly successful in cultivating connections.
I just learned the crown princess of our western neighbor Norway, Mette-Marit, features in the files as she had some contacts with him after his conviction. The prime minister was not happy and made that very clear.
krauss took money from pedojedi hand over fist, and now dances cheek to cheek with theofascists. he’s looking like a perfect symbol for the total arc of the movement we once shared with him.
dawk showing up in this is very unsurprising, but i still regard it as highly likely he was not personally involved with the worst crimes, or believing the allegations were true. he’s just genuinely that thick-headed and blinkered. (i don’t get this kafka thing. is it sff?)
people from that generation are surely used to the idea that some people in their jet set are simply “playboys” who manifest willing young women by nature of “charm.” it’s a cultural idea that surely gave cover to countless sex traffickers in the past.
by now, we should be a lot more clued into this shit. i can believe that he wasn’t and isn’t.
@29: “security risk”
Thanks, stevewatson,
Some browsers now require SSL certificates, even for simple things, the link below should work,
https://theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com/EssentialUrbanFashionAccessories.pdf
@33: I got this:
wget https://theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com/EssentialUrbanFashionAccessories.pdf
–2026-02-01 15:27:41– https://theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com/EssentialUrbanFashionAccessories.pdf
Resolving theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com (theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com)… 208.71.139.130
Connecting to theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com (theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com)|208.71.139.130|:443… connected.
ERROR: The certificate of ‘theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com’ is not trusted.
ERROR: The certificate of ‘theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com’ doesn’t have a known issuer.
@34 Steve Morrison’s browser said the certificate is not trusted
I reply. Sorry Steve, I don’t know what browser you are using. I accessed the file using Firefox without problems. This is so discouraging, the tower of babel that is the internet is difficult to deal with. The certificate has been, is, valid and recognized for over 20 years by icann.org the international body of names. Most browsers will show it if you just cut and paste the link.
@29 shermanj
Your link worked for me.
Then again, I’m just using the latest version of Chrome.
I didn’t use a browser, I used the Unix command “wget” which is supposed to download a file specified on the command line.
Degrees of separation: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/palmer-denies-bannon-claim-of-election-campaign-influence/106293074
[Australian political slant, but revealed by the files’ release]
It was a weird time.
Hardly even a warm-up for 2026.
“…his case is not as black as it seems…” WTF, Dawkins?
Thanks, raven (@36), I appreciate the feedback.
@37 Steve Morrison used the unix command line ‘wget’
I reply, I don’t know what operating system you’re using or what limitations it may be placing on the ‘wget’ command. Our TLS cert. is from one of the largest firms ‘digicert’. I’m using firefox from a 2024 Linux Distro and it works. I’ve sent a trouble ticket to our hosting firm.
I’m just providing info in that pdf to try to help people who live in cities in the u.s. that may be facing ‘ice storms’. I hope others will at least be able to look at it.
I am on Debian 12.
Thanks for the info Steve Morrison, The Firefox in Debian’s 12 Bookworm release is 115 ESR (Extended Support Release) version. That is the firefox that I’m using on a 2024 Debian hybrid puppylinux and it accesses the file with and without the TLS/SSL cert.
More to the point of PZ’s original topic. Reading massive amounts of info and opinions on this subject of the epstein files, I don’t think any of this political mud wrestling is going to prevent further deaths by ice or get schumer and jeffries to grow a spine.
@29. shermanj : “would like confirmation it is readable.”
Worked for me – fashionable and nicley done and practical too.
@ stevewatson : “Ah, should have been an asterisk on that footnote @12. Software ate it, I think.”
For some reason this blog vanishes * asterisks when used to start a line eg footnote style.
I find using a full stop in front makes them visible and is a reasonable workaround thus like
.* this.
Likely explains “Elevatorgate,” too, which took place at a science convention many years ago. I remember seeing your articles about it on your blog, PZ.
[OT]
“fashionable and nicley done and practical too”
Even in 45C?
Thanks StevoR I appreciate the feedback and kind words
And, John, I assume you mean 45degrees centigrade. I realize this is summer for you and it’s getting hotter almost each year. There are a lot of people in PZ’s ‘neighborhood’ who are facing really Cold, snowy dangerous winter weather that seems to get worse each year. From what I read weather is getting more extreme all the time everywhere.
[OT]
Yes. StevoR was going on about it, how hot it was.
So, yeah. The practicality is rather contingent, no?
Obs, I can see both. Not very droll, but hey.
The problem isn’t the reputation of digicert, nor any fault of your correspondent, nor really their operating system, wget or its TLS library. The deviation from the apparent consensus is that “your” web server (perhaps that of your hosting provider) is not supplying the “intermediate” certificate in addition to the “leaf” certificate. The relevant intermediate certificate can be found at https://cacerts.digicert.com/RapidSSLTLSRSACAG1.crt.pem. Probing the web server in some ad hoc manual way, it self-identified to me as “Parallels H-Sphere”. I’ve never heard of that before but Google’s synthetic stupidity suggested that what would be needed would be for you (or your hosting provider) to “Log into your H-Sphere user control panel, navigate to the SSL management area, and paste the combined certificate, intermediate, and private key data into the designated fields”. Ouch. If only it let you configure the intermediate independently with the like of Apache’s SSLCertificateChainFile setting. Still, there’s a small but non-zero chance that, if you forward that quoted recipe to the person responsible for configuring the web server, they might have the requisite information (in particular the “private key data”, which is secret) and be able to follow eg Google’s instructions on how to combine it in the apparently required way. This is what needs to happen for your message, whatever it was, to be as available as it can reasonably be. Good luck, as I fear you may need it.
The URL might well be that old and continuously secured appropriately since that time but, if I were a pedant, I might point out that the leaf certificate was issued with the condition that it be recognized:
Not Before: Nov 9 00:00:00 2025 GMT
— not all tech bros
And while the Epstein chrisis keeps undermining the credibility of techbros and DJT we can see the wider consequences in local elections.
.
Brian Tyler Cohen takes a deeper look at the Texas election that GOP lost:
“Trump gives OFF THE RAILS response to surprise Texas election loss”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=I44M8Qi4Jc0
Note how much more money the Republicans spent on their candidate – in a Red district – and they could not prevent the huge change compared to previous elections in the district.
In fact our winters have gotten much milder in temperature, and we experience a long lovely autumn. I remember entire Januarys in my 70’s childhood where the temps barely got above 0 degrees F and we weren’t allowed to go outside for recess.
@34, 37, 42 Steve Morrison
Run other commands like
curl -v -i -s https://theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.comandopenssl s_client -connect theartsinarizona.qwknetllc.com:443 -showcertsand see if they provide more information about what your Debian box doesn’t like about the certificate chain.Or RTFM for wget and pass
--no-check-certificateto skip validation.@18:
No, Zetopan, bar regulatory organizations aren’t THAT incompetent.
They’re far, far worse.
Two specific examples:
1. Politician attempts to sell a legislative seat, because the legislator has taken another office and the politician has the right to appoint to the vacancy. Politician gets caught; gets impeached and removed from office; gets separately convicted of corruption; serves half his sentence… and then the bar authority opens an “inquiry.”
2. Politician uses his office and his law practice to whipsaw back and forth, gets caught three times, takes bribes, gets caught twice, is eventually convicted after prior trials resulted in mistrials and hung juries. The bar authority doesn’t take his license because the politician’s wife served on the bar authority final board with other current members, so they couldn’t get a quorum.
It should be pretty easy to figure out who those were. And it’s just one state — but every state I’ve looked into in detail (over 20) has similar tales regarding “fixers,” whether or not they were in office or actively practicing law/appearing in court (not necessarily the same thing).
Trump threatens to sue Trevor Noah over Epstein joke at Grammys
If he does sue, which is TACO doubtful, he will not win. And here’s a helpful reminder:
Streisand effect
Trump will probably try to sue someone who needs to bribe the US government in relation to what Noah said. That’s how he’s settled a series of cases that were completely DOA in court.
Priviliged bastards in trouble, part one million.
.
The son of Norwegian crown princess Mette-Marit was about to face trial for 38 offences including four rapes, but was arrested for assault the day before the trial.
@51 Martin Dorey wrote: 1)not supplying the “intermediate” certificate in addition to the “leaf” certificate. The relevant intermediate certificate can be found at . . .
2)Probing the web server in some ad hoc manual way, it self-identified to me as “Parallels H-Sphere”
3)Google’s synthetic stupidity
I reply: I appreciate your input. However:
1) our web hosting company has been highly knowledgeable and competent in the use of shared and discrete security cert’s for decades, I trust them they have validated the certification process, tested with 3 browsers that connected with no problems and are looking into this. Also, because 5 different browsers have easily connected to the link I posted, it seems almost virtually impossible that the security certificates are incorrectly installed.
2) The info from your ‘ad hoc manual’ probe is completely erroneous. It merely identified the gui used to control the features of the hosting.
3) I agree with your label of ‘Google’s synthetic stupidity’ I wouldn’t touch google with a 10ft. cattle prod.
The absurd tangle of piled-up bureaucracy in the SSL/TSL world is obscene.
I thank all the commenters for their input. I’m satisfied with the competence of our hosting company and
I’m not going to bother with this issue anymore.
@56 Reginald Selkirk wrote about: Trump threatens to sue Trevor Noah over Epstein joke at Grammys
I reply: If each of us had a dollar for every time tRUMP threatened or sued people, we’d all be millionaires, WTF.
@47 Owosso Harpist
I think it is rather the other way round. The precipitating event for Elevatorgate was in June 2011, Rebecca commented on it and Dawkins later put out his ‘Dear Muslima’ post on July 2nd and was then writing to Brockman on the 4th. So it seems like Rebecca’s comments about the Dublin conference pissed him off and he was going after her, knives out, looking for ‘bad’ positions of hers he could take her to task for. Maybe it was less calculated than that and he was just paying more attention to her blogging because of the ‘Elevatorgate’ incident.
FYI, on the topic of privileged predators…
The last day there has been a spectacular development in Norway (I have mentioned it on the infinite thread).
The son of the crown princess Mette-Marit is scheldued to go on tral for 38 offences, including four rapes.
.
In Sunday, it was revealed that the crown princess had been in contact with Epstein after he was convicted in 2008.
.
And now, the son has been arrested for assault the day before he was due to go on trial.
“Trump’s Inner Circle Terrified After New Epstein Release”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=lQd3K8l02zY
What’s this I hear about Kent Brockman involved with this “Epstein” fella?
Tethys
Be that as it may, this winter has been one of the coldest in years in many places including here in MD.
@65
Be that as it may, 2025 was the third hottest year on record for the planet. And while we’re tossing out anecdotes, here in the Pacific Northwest has been the warmest, mildest winter in my memory. I power-washed my driveway today while rose bushes blossom in my backyard. I’d gladly take some of your colder air if just to remind me what an unbroken climate use to look like.
And yet it is so. This is why: browser vendors, at least ones with Linux ports, maintain their own certificate stores, which include lots of intermediate certificates from well known members of the TLS cartel, like DigiCert. Contrast OS certificate stores, at least Linux ones, which don’t seem to get so much investment, leading to breakage like this for command line tools and other programmatic use. Browser release cycles are measured in weeks but eg https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/ca-certificates hasn’t been changed since 2021, despite that release of Debian still getting frequent security patches. The capability to configure an intermediate certificate exists, on all web servers I’ve encountered, to solve just this problem, but the benefit of doing so might be best appreciated in the Linux world, whereas “Parallels” suggests Apple to me. Still, if they’re worthy of the praise you give them, your hosting provider should be able to take a hint that they’re missing the intermediate, even if it makes them kick themselves for having forgotten about it again and swear under their breath about having to go out of their way to cater to those unkempt hirsute oddballs who don’t pay for their operating system, but would still rather not leave their politically sensitive traffic unencrypted.
More energy in the system, due to AGCM.
cf. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-62576-2.pdf
Seth Meyers: “Musk’s Emails to Epstein Revealed; Trump Sues IRS for $10 Billion, Rakes In UAE Money.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SDuxH6m4ld0
.
Jon Stewart: DOJ Protects Trump From Epstein Accountability as MAGA Attacks “Sanctuary Cities”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cwXIq81eE24
I am not in the files. Am I the only one? Jon Stewart at least got incidentally mentioned.
Birger, cf. #38: “Degrees of separation”.
You reckon you’re at least 6 away? ;)
(I most certainly am not; not even 6 away)
@71 John Morales
Is Dick Cheney in the files? I’m 3 degrees from him, that makes you 4 degrees away.
John Morals @ 71
I bet there is some namesake from the Minnesota Swedes in the list.
Winter in the Western USA is very warm and dry this year.
It is almost eerie and alarming since the West runs on winter snow pack. Which in some places is all but nonexistent.
“Colorado is having its warmest winter since 1895.”
“Last year at this time, Mt. Bachelor (Central Oregon Cascades) had 109 inches of snow at its base; this year it has 27 inches.”
The Colorado river area is way behind on snow pack.
California is doing OK for once. They are low on snow but had a lot of major rain storms so the reservoirs are nearly full.
@74 raven
I was thinking about snarking that this isn’t news, but your snippet said as much:
We have evidence from samples at Valles Caldera that suggests this megadrought could just be getting started. In the past 550,000 years, exceptional megadroughts in New Mexico have exceeded a thousand years in duration.
If “commenting on the blog of” counts as a degree of separation, then we’re all no more than 3 degrees from Epstein, because, as mentioned in the OP:
PZ Myers ➞ Seed Media/Adam Bly ➞ Jeffrey Epstein
PZ, @64:
So, you wanted to know more about Brockman and the Epstein Files? Are you sure? Really sure? Well, here you go.
• • •
Unfortunately, due to past professional duties my “degrees of separation” from some pretty awful people — a number identified in this thread — average less than two. If, that is, “in the room with, and engaged in conversation with while maintaining a professional appearance and holding one’s lunch down,” counts.