James Booth

After 61 days in the NICU, our Solomon was finally released last week to come start life at home. Thank you for all of your prayers; it was the darkest, scariest, worst two months of my life. But God showed his grace to us in so many ways, and many people banded together to allow me to spend every single day with him in the NICU. We are so grateful to the nurses who loved him like their own; to his physical therapist who is helping him overcome & adapt to his disabilities; to the doctors who performed his surgery; to our priest who baptized him in the hospital; to the friends and family who packed lunches for us, and watched our toddler, and did our laundry, who prayed with and for us and still do. I am grateful in particular for my husband and my mom, who showed me Christlike grace throughout, and for our 3-year-old, who didn't let his joy become dampened by all this fear and sorrow—an example from which we could all stand to learn. "I remain confident of this," Psalm 27 reminds us. "I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." The Lord's goodness has been shown to us every day of these 61. People sometimes denigrate Christians as just those seeking comfort, needing a story to tell themselves. But yes! We are comforted by the Lord. He shows up for us in all kinds of ways, when we're looking—and when we're not. And He looks after the scared and grieving mother, the sick and vulnerable child, the family in need. He did for us, many times over. And many of you did, too, through prayer and acts of kindness. Thank you.

Jensen Huang: "People with really high expectations have very low resilience." "I think one of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations. And I mean that. Most of the Stanford graduates have very high expectations. And you deserve to have high expectations because you came from a great school. You were very successful. You're top of your class. Obviously, you were able to pay for tuition. And then you're graduating from one of the finest institutions on the planet. You're surrounded by other kids that are just incredible. You naturally have very high expectations. People with very high expectations have very low resilience. And unfortunately, resilience matters in success. I don't know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you. And I was fortunate that I grew up with my parents providing a condition for us to be successful on the one hand, but there were plenty of opportunities for setbacks and suffering. And to this day, I use the phrase pain and suffering inside our company with great glee. And I mean that. Boy, this is going to cause a lot of pain and suffering. And I mean that in a happy way, because you want to train, you want to refine the character of your company. You want greatness out of them. And greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character, and character isn't formed out of smart people. It's formed out of people who suffered. And so if I could wish upon you, I don't know how to do it. For all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering."

When we start recognizing digital as a strategic function and treating its leaders accordingly, we’ll be much better positioned to move forward as a party.

I mean, this is it. Right here. You can go to those voters and say "You know that thing you care about that everyone is talking about? My party sucks on that, my opponents ideas are better." It's not the only strategy, but that is one strategy.

The following email is what I sent my team last night. I sent a similar version to my patients, also. *** You’ve put your trust, your credibility, and your hard work into what we have built together, and I take that responsibility seriously. You deserve a complete and honest account of what did and did not happen. I apologize that I did not get this out sooner, but I want to be thorough. The purpose of the DOJ releasing these documents is clear: to identify individuals who participated in criminal activity, enabled it, or witnessed it. I am not in any of those categories, and there is no evidence to the contrary. To be clear: 1. I was not involved in any criminal activity. 2. My interactions with Epstein had nothing to do with his sexual abuse or exploitation of anyone. 3. I was never on his plane, never on his island, and never present at any sex parties. That said, I apologize and regret putting myself in a position where emails, some of them embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible, are now public, and that is on me. I accept that reality and the humiliation that comes with it. *** I want to start by directly addressing the email thread that I’ve been asked about the most. In June 2015, I sent Epstein an email with the subject line “Got a fresh shipment.” The email contained a photograph of bottles of metformin, a medication I had just received from the pharmacy for my own use. The subject line referred to the picture of the bottles of medication. He replied with the words “me too” and attached a photograph of an adult woman. I responded with crude, tasteless banter. Reading that exchange now is very embarrassing, and I will not defend it. I’m ashamed of myself for everything about this. At the time, I understood this exchange as juvenile, not a reference to anything dark or harmful. At that point in my career, I had little exposure to prominent people, and that level of access was novel to me. Everything about him seemed excessive and exclusive, including the fact that he lived in the largest home in all of Manhattan, owned a Boeing 727, and hosted parties with the most powerful and prominent leaders in business and politics. I treated that access as something to be quiet about rather than discussed freely with others. One line in that exchange, about his life being outrageous and me not being able to tell anyone, is being interpreted as awareness of wrongdoing. That is not how I meant it at all. What I was referring to, poorly and flippantly, was the discretion commanded by those social and professional circles–the idea that you don’t talk about who you meet, the dinners you attend and the power and influence of the people in those settings. What I wrote in that email reads terribly, and I own that. *** I met Epstein in 2014 through a prominent female healthcare leader while I was raising funds for scientific research. At that time, he was widely known in academic and philanthropic circles as a funder of science and moved openly among credible institutions and public figures. Between summer 2014 and spring 2019, I met with him on approximately seven or eight occasions at his New York City home, regarding research studies and to meet others he introduced me to. I never visited his island or ranch, and I never flew on any of his planes. When I was at his home, it was either meeting with him directly, meeting with small groups of scientists, doctors, or business leaders, and once at a dinner in 2015 with a number of guests including prominent heads of state. In retrospect, the presence and credibility of such venerable people in different orbits led me to make assumptions about him that clouded my judgment in ways it shouldn’t have. I was not his doctor, though several times I answered general medical questions and recommended other providers to him. Shortly after we met, I asked him directly about his 2008 conviction. He characterized it as prostitution-related charges. In 2018, I came to learn this was grossly minimized (more on this below). I was incredibly naïve to believe him. I mistook his social acceptance in the eyes of the credible people I saw him with for acceptability, and that was a serious error in my judgment. To be clear, I never witnessed illegal behavior and never saw anyone who appeared underage in his presence. *** In November 2018 I read the Miami Herald investigative article. I was repulsed by what I learned. Nauseated. It marked a clear and irreversible line between what I knew before and what I understood afterward. At that point, I told him directly he needed to accept responsibility for what he did. Hoping to provide the victims from the Herald piece with support, I contacted a residential trauma facility to understand what funding comprehensive care for many victims would require. (Those communications were between me and the facility and were therefore not part of the document release.) I spoke with him and shared that information and insisted that he fund their care, beginning with residential treatment and followed by lifelong therapy. In hindsight, even attempting to facilitate accountability was a mistake and once again reflected just how naïve I was at the time. Once the full scope of his actions was clear, disengagement should have been the only appropriate response. My intent does not change that, and I regret not drawing that boundary immediately. *** Nothing in this letter is meant to minimize the harm suffered by the young women Epstein abused. Their trauma is permanent. I am not asking for a pass from you. I am not asking anyone to ignore the emails or pretend they aren’t ugly. They simply are. The man I am today, roughly ten years later, would not write them and would not associate with Epstein at all. Whatever growth I’ve had over the past decade does not erase the emails I wrote then. I recognize that my actions and words have consequences for the people I care deeply about, including all of you. I regret the cost this has placed on you, and I take responsibility for it. I won’t ask anyone to defend me or explain this on my behalf. If you have questions or concerns, I’ll address them directly with you, my team.

I too am 37. One of the biggest things I’ve discovered is that the path to peace is not intense introspection, it’s activity. One full, productive day results in better emotions than hours of self-exploration

Worth noting that all the Industrial Revolutions (we’ve had three) have worked out well in the end, but the first two were pretty disruptive to actually live through.