Class one Sept 2024

At the turn of the 20th century, banker J.P. Morgan was the most powerful man on Wall Street, perhaps the most powerful man in the world. Finance in those days was still the Wild West, largely unregulated and prone to boom and bust cycles much more violent than anything we see today. On several occasions, Morgan personally orchestrated emergency measures to stop bank runs that might have otherwise taken down the financial system — typically increasing his own wealth in the process.

Shortly after one of those near misses, the Panic of 1907, an old friend of Morgan’s from Chicago came for a visit. The friend was, in the phrase of Mark Skousen, from whom I got this story, a “perma bear” — no matter what the market did, his outcome was always pessimistic. As usual, he and Morgan got to talking about the markets. And as usual, Morgan’s friend saw poor omens in every market indicator, while Morgan saw only buying opportunities. Eventually they headed out for lunch, and, walking up Broadway, Morgan’s friend was admiring the towering skyscrapers that were starting to define the Manhattan skyline. Impressed, he acknowledged they had nothing like them in Chicago. Eventually, Morgan stopped and turned to his friend. “Funny thing about these skyscrapers,” he said, “not a single one was built by a bear!”

***

WW1 debt

****

Scott Alexander

the cuckoo clock argument. The famous version, from Orson Welles’ The Third Man, goes:

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Isn’t there some sense where conflict (which is bloody and full of suffering) produces progress and strength? And doesn’t that mean that altruists should oppose conflict, but vitalists should promote it?

I’m skeptical of this argument. America’s been at peace since World War II (foreign adventures like Vietnam haven’t substantially changed our national experience) and produced the computing revolution, the Internet, AI, the moon landing, the Human Genome Project, antiretrovirals, the microwave, the laser, the smartphone, and the reusable rocket. During that time, Iraq has had approximately eight major wars and didn’t even get a cuckoo clock out of it.

Is this an unfair comparison, since America has 8x Iraq’s population? No more so than Welles’ is (Italy has 8x the population of Switzerland). But beyond the specifics, I think it’s useful for shocking us into Near Mode. War isn’t actually that great for science, art, or the economy.

“Here I’ll also refer back to my old post on Jo Cameron, a Scottish woman with a rare genetic mutation that makes it impossible for her to suffer. She cannot feel pain, anxiety, fear, or any other negative emotion. As far as anyone can tell, she is completely normal. She is a successful wife, mother, and teacher, generally considered well-liked and excellent at her job. She may not have achieved greatness, but I once talked to someone impressive who you’ve probably heard of (I don’t have permission to share their name) who seems to have a lesser version of the same condition.

Katja Grace has a great article called In Praise Of Pretending To Really Try.

Richard Chappell’s The Nietzschean Challenge To Effective Altruism, which makes some similar points]

***

Once again, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham's mouth has landed him in hot water. The loose-lipped Silicon Valley power broker said some dumb stuff about women.

By Connor Simpson

DECEMBER 28, 2013

This article is from the archive of our partner .

Once again, Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham's mouth has landed him in hot water. The loose-lipped Silicon Valley power broker said some dumb stuff about women.

In an interview with The Information, Graham was asked about discrimination in the tech scene. Troves of evidence exist revealing sexism in tech exists, like this year's TechCrunch Disrupt conference, as one example. But Valleywag highlighted Graham's comments that show he doesn't see sexism as a problem, and in fact thinks women are just naturally behind the hacking eightball. Graham now contends the whole thing is one big misunderstanding.

The Information's Eric Newcomer asked whether Graham's startup accelerator, Y-Combinator, discriminates against women, and his answer quickly became a defense of tech culture as a whole. Graham said his company does not discriminate, and that any gender imbalance can be explained by the fact that girls don't start hacking at the same age boys do.

If someone was going to be really good at programming they would have found it on their own. Then if you go look at the bios of successful founders this is invariably the case, they were all hacking on computers at age 13. What that means is the problem is 10 years upstream of us. If we really wanted to fix this problem, what we would have to do is not encourage women to start startups now.

It's already too late. What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that. God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers. I would have to stop and think about that.

Later, Graham tried to explain that discrimination cannot exist because girls attend tech conferences too. Besides, the time thing. "We can't make women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years," he said, later in the interview.

The notion of limits on when and how one can start coding is astonishing. Coding is supposed to be the one thing anyone can learn and change their life with. What about all the homeless people? Silicon Valley is supposed to be where bootstraps pick themselves up by the bootstraps and change the world. But apparently that's not an option for women because of they're too busy not being on the computer at 13-years-old.

People were predictably outraged over Graham's comments about girls not hacking for the last ten years. A storm is brewing. That these comments are coming from Graham, an extremely important and influential person in the tech world, is especially troubling. "Here is a hacker hero—the figurehead behind Hacker News!—and he has no clue how to get girls to care about tech," said Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku. But maybe they should not be surprising, considering this is the same guy who admitted discriminating against startup founders with foreign accents.

At one point Graham also said startups sometimes don't hire people who did not start hacking until studying computer science in college. This, according to Graham, is why there's some confusion. See, he meant to say "these women," as in the ones who didn't start hacking until college:

What I actually said was "make *these* women look..." I was simply explaining why CS major != hacker. All that got cut.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) December 28, 2013

(Update, 5:25 p.m. Graham expanded his defense in emails to Valleywag. He was allegedly misquoted during an interview for a profile on his wife.) To summarize: girls aren't interested in hacking or coding at an early age, but sometimes they start in college, and then they'll have terrible job prospects because they didn't start early enough. Or, something. That's a rough outlook for any women hoping to break into tech's boys club.

Following Graham's logic can be difficult. Tiku put it best when she said he's merely "justifying the status quo," rather than examining a real problem. Graham has once again proven himself proud to be the champion of everything wrong with Silicon Valley culture. Thankfully, there are people like Elissa Shevinsky telling women they can go to liberal arts school and read Plato and still play with computers.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

Connor Simpson is a former staff writer for The Wire. His work has appeared in Business Insider and City Lab.

Jessica Livingston on startup culture and her role:

I didn't always understand the details of the questions they'd been asked and to this day I can't tell you about operating systems or distributed databases, but I can tell things like when people are BSing, how tough they are, if they get along, and surprisingly often, considering I only have 10 minutes to observe them, whether they're good people or not.

As I said, Paul, Robert and Trevor are really good at technical stuff, but it's precisely because they're so good that they often misjudged founders as people. They'd get excited talking to the applicants about all the things they could do, and afterward think the interview went well, when sometimes all the applicants did was reflect their own ideas back at them. But it was second nature to me to notice these things.

I'd say around 10% of startups have life-threatening cofounder disputes, for example.

On top of my "social radar," I now have experience dealing with literally hundreds of startups. So now when I see a problem I've usually seen the same problem ten times before. It must seem to founders that I'm a mind-reader, but what's really happening is that their problems are less unique than they think.

One of the most important things I know is how much to worry. Having dealt with hundreds of startups, I can look at a problem and tell founders immediately either "Don't worry, these are typical growing pains," or "you are now operating in failure mode and I have no hope for the company." And I think people trust that I'm not going to judge them the way some of their other investors might; they know I just want to help.

from Jessica

The princess of Norway recently married an American “self-styled shaman” whose Wikipedia page makes him sound like a real catch:

Durek Verrett is an American conspiracy theorist, convicted felon, alternative therapist, and self-professed shaman as a practitioner of Neoshamanism. He has been widely described by media and other observers as a conman and conspiracy theorist, and has served time in prison and been arrested and charged with various crimes . . . He asserts that casual sex attracts subterranean spirits that make an impression on the inside of women's vaginas and offers exercises to "clean out" said vaginas; he writes that children get cancer because they want it; and suggests that chemotherapy does not work and is given to cancer patients only because doctors make money from it. He promotes the Reptilian conspiracy theory, and has said that he considers himself to be a reptilian.

10: After a four year experiment with Portugal-style decriminalization of hard drugs, Oregon has declared defeat and recriminalized them. Reasons cited include: they didn’t actually have enough substance abuse programs to send abusers to treatment instead of jail, the state mismanaged grants intended to create such programs, attempts to punish drugs with simple fines didn’t work because abusers didn’t pay them, and the fentanyl crisis is getting sufficiently bad that Oregonians felt less comfortable with experimental solutions.

11: Related: Steve Sailer on legalization vs. decriminalization of vice. My views evolved in something like the way Steve implicitly points at here: decriminalizing marijuana seemed to go okay, it seemed hypocritical and dumb for the law to be “marijuana is illegal but we won’t punish you for it in any way wink wink”, so (I thought) why not go all the way and legalize it? And the answer turns out to be: if it’s illegal but tolerated, then it’s supplied by random criminals; if it’s legal, it’s supplied by big corporations. And big corporations are good at advertising and tend to get what they want.

12: A while back I wrote a piece saying people needed to be clearer about what their “GET TOUGH” plans for dealing with mentally ill homeless people really meant. Later, Charles Lehman wrote a response describing his plan and arguing why it’s necessary. Most recently, Ozy has written a response to Charles, basically expressing fear that Charles’ plan will unnecessarily commit a bunch of harmless well-functioning people. I bet Charles’ response will be that no, this isn’t what he wants at all, to which my response will be that this is why you need to be clearer about what you mean. That is, I’m sure Charles wants to only commit people who need commitment, and not commit people who don’t, but he hasn’t explained the mechanism by which a fallible court system and medical system will ensure that this actually happens, and those are the kinds of details that I’m most interested in.

13: From here:

@Tim_Walz

claim that you can't shout "fire" in a theater, here's what SCOTUS Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said in Schenck v. United States (1919): "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree."

Aaron swartz

I propose instead that one ask “What have you been thinking about lately?” First, the question is extremely open-ended. The answer could be a book, a movie, a relationship, a class, a job, a hobby, etc. Even better, it will be whichever of these is most interesting at the moment. Second, it sends the message that thinking, and thinking about thinking, is a fundamental human activity, and thus encourages it. Third, it’s easiest to answer, since by its nature its asking about what’s already on the person’s mind. Fourth, it’s likely to lead to productive dialog, as you can discuss the topic together and hopefully make progress. Fifth, the answer is quite likely to be novel. Unlike books and occupations, people’s thoughts seem to be endlessly varied. Sixth, it helps capture a person’s essence. A job can be forced by circumstance and parentage, but our thoughts are all our own. I can think of little better way to quickly gauge what a person is really like.

from

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/smalltalkq

At the age of fourteen, he helped to develop the RSS software that enables the syndication of information over the Internet. At fifteen, he helped to write the code for Larry Lessig’s Creative Commons, which allows people to share their work more freely. At nineteen, he was a developer of Reddit, one of the world’s most popular social-networking sites.

The summer after his freshman year at Stanford, he was given money by Y Combinator, an incubator firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to start a company, Infogami, and after some time he merged his company with another Y Combinator start-up, Reddit.

He disliked all vegetables and refused to eat them except in extremely expensive restaurants, such as Thomas Keller restaurants. He had ulcerative colitis, a serious digestive disorder similar to Crohn’s disease; he also thought that he was a “supertaster,” experiencing sensations of taste more intensely than regular people. Partly for these reasons, he ate only foods that were white or yellow. He ate pasta, tofu, cheese, bread, rice, eggs, and cheese pizza. He was phobic about fruit and wouldn’t touch it.

He was a supertaster in matters other than food: things always seemed much better or worse to him than they did to other people.

from the New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/11/requiem-for-a-dream

*****

from quartz

Swartz didn’t particularly care for college. “It’s hard to say this without sounding even more superior than usual, but it doesn’t strike me that most Stanford students (and professors) are exceptionally bright,” Swartz wrote during his first week in Palo Alto.

As Swartz packed for the trip in his Stanford dorm room, Swartz told his roommates that he was off to interview for a summer job. His friend Seth Schoen, amused at the understatement, suggested Swartz explain that the interview was with Paul Graham, the famous programmer and essayist. “Yeah,” Swartz said, “but they won’t know who that is.”

from

https://qz.com/594715/when-aaron-swartz-met-paul-graham-his-life-and-the-entire-internet-changed-forever

*******

from Aaron’s blog

I remember how when reddit started, the whole thing seemed so childish. The cartoony alien, the barebones design, the fresh-faced programmers, the rented house. And none of that has really changed. It’s just that with success behind it, it’s harder to dismiss. A scribbled drawing a kid hands to you is “cute”, the same thing on the wall of a museum is “art”. You assume there must be something there, even if you can’t see it.

It’s hard to notice this when you’re in the middle of it. During the days, I mostly saw my co-workers, who lived and breathed the site. At night, I hung out with my friends, who all knew what I did. On weekends, we’d go to parties for local startups, who all wanted to emulate reddit’s success. Everyone we talked to treated us like it was serious.

But whenever I stepped outside the bubble, things were very different. At non-tech parties, I’d have trouble explaining what it was I did. (“So you, uh, have a web site?”) Once I went far outside the city to have lunch with an author I respected. He asked about what I did, wanted me to explain it in great detail. He asked how many visitors we had. I told him and he sputtered. “I’ve spent fifteen years building an audience, and you’re telling me in a year you have a million visitors?” I assented.

Puzzled, he insisted I show him the site on his own computer, but he found it was just a simple as I described. (Simpler, even.) “So it’s just a list of links?” he said. “And you don’t even write them yourselves?” I nodded. “But there’s nothing to it!” he insisted. “Why is it so popular?”

Inside the bubble, nobody asks this inconvenient question. We just mumble things like “democratic news” or “social bookmarking” and everybody just assumes it all makes sense. But looking at this guy, I realized I had no actual justification. It was just a list of links. And we didn’t even write them ourselves.

But that’s not something you can say on TechCrunch. You can say a site is cool, stupid, popular, a flop, innovative, or clichéd. But the one thing you can’t say, the one thing that everybody skips over, is that these sites aren’t anything serious. And so when Michael Arrington told us that these stories of acquisition were his favorite part of the “entrepreneurial spirit”, I couldn’t help but think that somebody was missing the point.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/theaftermath

lean into the pain

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dalio

from

https://stuartwiffin.substack.com/p/aaron-swartz-on-education

see below

compositions

Third composition for Toefl- week 11 (or quotes below)

https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-academic-discussion-writing-question-learning-styles/

(second composition in class week 8)

Here is the first composition: deadline week 5

Either:

the TOEFL composition below OR

choose one of these titles and write 250 words (intro, conclusion, at least 3 paragraphs in total)

Moon

TOEFL 250 words- no more than 30 minutes for the task

First, give yourself three minutes to read this article:

https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-integrated-writing-practice-living-on-the-moon/

1 One long-distance flight consumes fuel which a cars uses in several years’ time, but they cause the same amount of pollution. So some people think that for the sake of the environment we should discourage non-essential flights, such as tourist travel, rather than to limit the use of cars. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Discuss:

2 If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever. George Orwell.

3 He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security. Benjamin_Franklin

4 George Santayana Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

5 Karl Marx History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

6 Mark Twain:A lie may travel half-way around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots

7 History repeats itself. That is one of the things wrong with history. Clarence Darrow

Any questions, email me

Week 11 20.11

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.

Brian Aldiss

RFK vaccines froot loops

Rfk on vaccines https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/1857889442544886236

Fruit loops https://x.com/BradCohn/status/1858016632603344962

"This is not about freedom or personal choice. It's about protecting yourself and those around you. If a person does not have the final decision of their own bodies, and they are owned by whoever does, this was the central discussion during the trials of the doctors who committed war crimes during World War II that resulted in the passage of the Nuremberg Code."

"The very first rule of that code is called informed consent. It states, quote, the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. Any use of force or coercion to inspire a medical decision is considered unethical. Americans today are reawakening to the critical importance of Nuremberg code. Currently, over 75% of Americans who are eligible are refusing to take the latest COVID booster."

"American children are required to take 72 vaccines just to stay in school.

"Just like every drug on the market, vaccines have side effects that severely injure and kill some people every year. If that's in contrast to what you've been told, then your doctor probably never showed you the warning sheet that comes with every vaccine on the market. This is the insert that comes in the box with the hepatitis B vaccine, which is injected into most babies. within 24 hours of birth."

"Let me read you just a few of the serious side effects in this document. Under the heading of nervous system disorders, it says Guillain-Barre syndrome, multiple sclerosis, exacerbation of multiple sclerosis, myelitis, including transverse myelitis, seizure, febrile seizure, peripheral neuropathy, including vellus palsy, radiculopathy, herpes, eye grain, muscle weakness, hypesthesia, and encephalitis, just swelling of the brain, even Johnson's syndrome, alopecia, and eczema. A list of side effects goes on and on. You got the idea."

"For over a decade, I've been attacked and labeled an anti-vaxxer and a conspiracy theorist for simply drawing attention to the serious side effects listed on every vaccine insert and for advocating that the children who are suffering from these side effects. Our health departments believe we shouldn't talk about vaccine injuries because they are rare, but I don't agree with that. We can't fix a problem by ignoring it."

Alpha male, caricatures

Bayer https://x.com/GMWatch/status/1844709227039715721

Bully and dog

Harcelement moral

You excuse things by naming them

Rfk on vaccines https://x.com/newstart_2024/status/1857889442544886236

Fruit loops https://x.com/BradCohn/status/1858016632603344962

Alpha male, caricatures

Bayer https://x.com/GMWatch/status/1844709227039715721

Bully and dog

Harcelement moral

You excuse things by naming them

Week 10 13.11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_participants

Bilderberg

https://www.academia.edu/32475646/Bilderberg_Group_and_Transnational_Capitalist_Class_Recent_Trends_in_Global_Elite_Club_as_Vindication_of_neo_Marxism

Week 9

6.11

Dr Brian Hughes, the associate director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, said Trump has for years been accused of mimicking the rise to power of Hitler and Mussolini, for good reason.

“I think it’s important to remember that fascism isn’t a binary. Fascism is a process,” said Hughes in an interview with the Guardian. “Since the very beginning of the Trump campaign in 2015, there’s been a lot of denialism and a lot of whistling past the graveyard, but the symptoms keep adding up.”

Scott Galloway

“The DNC website has a page titled “Who we serve.” Listed are 16 constituencies, including African Americans, the LGBTQ community, women, veterans, and 12 other demographic groups that comprise approximately 76% of the population. When you explicitly advocate for 76% of the population, you’re not advocating for 76% but discriminating against the 24%. In this case, young men.”

The LDBTQ community

Peter Thiel? Andrew Sullivan

“Andrew Sullivan

A definition of a “normal gay guy”:

“A man solely attracted to biological men, who doesn’t wish to be a female, who believes in the sex binary, whose politics is rooted in something other than tribal victimology, and who does not identify as “queer”. Andrew Sullivan

“William Gibson famously said, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” The same is true of prosperity. And the algorithms that increasingly run our lives want to convince us that everything is awful.”

“If you’re looking for a good shorthand term for healthy masculinity circa 2024, you could do a lot worse than the word “mensch,” which in German simply means “human” and in Yiddish describes “a person of integrity or rectitude; a just, honest or honorable person.”

“The people most vulnerable in a post-abortion America are poor women. Affluent women will be able to get hold of mifepristone or to travel for a safe, legal abortion. A pregnant 17-year-old, Black, single mother in Alabama, however, is at ground zero for an emerging gender apartheid. She’s likely already poor, and forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, she and the father (if he’s even in the picture) become less likely to escape poverty. “

***

more Scott galloway

“But after more than a decade of R&D and support from the Defense Department’s DARPA program, Boston Dynamics still doesn’t have a commercial strategy for Atlas, though it has produced some great YouTube videos. This entire category defines the concept of a technology in search of a use case. “

“Moore’s Law, named for Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, is an observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years. It’s a meme that encapsulates the relentless pace of technological progress.”

“The HBO show Succession was a modern-day Shakespearean drama that captured the essence of power, wealth, and family dysfunction. Ostensibly, it was about Rupert Murdoch, but it also could’ve been about Sumner Redstone, or the Estée Lauder family, which owns 35% of the company and controls 80% of the voting power. Ultimately, this isn’t about China or navigating dispersion; it’s about the frailty of family dynasties. Such dynamics make for good TV drama, but they’re lousy for shareholder value.”

“Arizona Senator Mark Kelly summarized the issue well: The GOP is insincere about immigration, and the Democrats don’t understand it. The immigration debate is intellectually dishonest. Again, why? Simply put, the upside of illegal immigration outweighs the downside. Illegal immigration is “a good problem.”

“The two quotes I managed to secure were more than the down payment on my first home. When I asked to meet with one of the sub-contractors, he was a no-show. Finally, my general contractor and I drove to a local 7-11, where several people rushed his truck. The GC asked them some questions in Spanish, and six guys jumped in the back.

These men, each one with a different skill, worked around the clock, only taking breaks to make design suggestions. They weren’t just laborers, they were craftsmen. Skilled, hardworking, conscientious — and reasonable. Were they taking American jobs? No, as there were no Americans willing to do those jobs. Take this times 2 million (Pew estimates there are 12 million undocumented workers), and you get the scale of what is likely the most agile, inexpensive, and effective labor force in the world.

Construction, hospitality, health care, Big Ag, Big Chicken, and Big Beef all rely on this flexible workforce.”

The political “discussion” of the issue has become dominated by myths and misleading tropes.

One of the biggest is that crossing the southern border on foot is how most undocumented immigrants come into the country. Actually, 50% or more of the people here illegally fly into the country with a work visa and then overstay their visa. No border wall is going to be high enough to keep them out. We’ve made the “border” synonymous with “illegal immigration.” It’s not. The wall is just a logo, not a serious attempt to fix the problem.

Another myth is that undocumented people take jobs from Americans and don’t contribute to the economy. Way back in the ’70s, conservative economic icon Milton Friedman, a fan of free trade and open borders, observed that unrestricted Mexican immigration to the U.S. is a net good thing — as long as it stays illegal.

The economic dynamics behind illegal immigration and our collective lack of will to do anything about it are pretty simple. If, for whatever reason good or bad, we wanted to put a stop to illegal immigration, it wouldn’t be that hard. (We could also easily eliminate some of the worst aspects of social media by imposing age gates, if we were serious about that problem.)

We focus on the supply side of the equation, which is largely a waste of time. Lots of people around the world believe — correctly — that they and their families will live healthier, happier, and more prosperous lives in the U.S. We can’t keep drugs out of our prisons, yet we believe we can seal a 5,500-mile-long border?

The fix is on the demand side. If we want to stop illegal immigration, we need to decrease demand by raising the costs and enacting real deterrence. The quickest route to a solution would involve punishing employers. Create a biometric database of documented immigrants. Then levy any employer who knowingly hires somebody who’s not on it with a $10,000 fine.

This, of course, will likely not happen. Too many of the people who employ undocumented workers also employ lobbyists and give significant money to politicians. Those politicians are happy to accommodate their backers and exploit the racism and fear of many Americans by continuing to tell lies about immigration.

I believe one of the keys to healthy relationships and relative harmony is to not inject agita (argue, get upset, etc.) when the stakes are low. To not create disharmony where there isn’t a real problem. Yes, illegal immigration is a real problem, but why let it divide us when neither side seems genuine about fixing it, or even having an honest discussion?

from Scott galloway

Hitler and Kamala Harris

Week 7 16.10

11.9 Ana

18.9 Thomas Alexis

25.9 Sofia Aline

2.10

9.10

16.10 Léo Léa

23.10 Nicolas Laurène Clara

6.11 Mariam Isaure

13.11 Amel Louise Caroline

20.11 Anaïs Camille

27.11

Minmin Chen

Nov

citoyens ?

Plongez dans les cours introductifs de six de nos professeurs iconiques en droit, économie, histoire, humanités politiques, sociologie et science politique, dispensés aux étudiants du Collège universitaire de Sciences Po.

Le cours d'économie de Julia Cagé

Le PIB est-il une bonne mesure de la croissance économique ? La croissance est-elle nécessairement source d'inégalités ? Comment financer la transition énergétique ?

Autant de sujets complexes que Julia Cagé, professeure d'économie à Sciences Po, interroge dans son cours.

VOIR LA VIDÉO

Le cours de sociologie de Gabriel Feltran

La violence est-elle le moteur de la vie politique ? Est-ce que le féminisme est compatible avec l'amour romantique ? Pourquoi la pensée républicaine est-elle contre la pensée identitaire ?

Autant de questions que l'on se pose dans le cours Global Sociological Debates de Gabriel Feltran.

VOIR LA VIDÉO

Le cours de droit de Guillaume Tusseau

Quels sont les avantages et les inconvénients du régime constitutionnel français actuel ? Quel avenir pour la Ve République suite à la dissolution de l'Assemblée nationale et à la lumière du nouveau paysage politique inédit qui en résulte ?

Des questions auxquelles répond le cours d'institutions politiques de Guillaume Tusseau.

VOIR LA VIDÉO

Le cours de science politique de Laurence Louër

Les débats de science politique permettent-ils de mieux comprendre le Moyen-Orient ? Que nous enseigne l'histoire moderne de cette région ? Que signifie la notion d'"orientalisme" ?

C'est l'objet du cours Fondamental de science politique de Laurence Louër, qui porte sur la région du Moyen-Orient, la mineure géographique du campus de Menton au Collège universitaire.

VOIR LA VIDÉO

Le cours d'histoire de David Todd

Comment le XIXe siècle enrichit-il notre compréhension du monde contemporain ? Pourquoi Sciences Po a-t-elle été fondée, en 1871 ? Quel était alors le programme d'enseignement ?

David Todd répond à ces questions dans son cours Fondamental d'histoire du XIXe siècle, un recul nécessaire pour apprécier le présent.

VOIR LA VIDÉO

Le cours d'humanités politiques de Frédéric Gros

Pourquoi les humanités politiques permettent-elles de voir le monde différemment ? Comment appréhender la politique comme un sujet vivant ? Quels livres lire ?

Le cours Fondamental d'humanités politiques de Frédéric Gros est une initiation à la politique comme expérience.

VOIR LA VIDÉO

23.10

Shipwreck baby

child benefit Khadra

Alisha food banks Amanda and Rachel - 8

Ruth Patrick

What is a large family

right number of people for France

right amount of social housing?

“for one week in their lives, someone listens to them.” Jerry Springer

Paul Graham Jessica Livingston below YCombinator

(Nordstream) Matt Orfalea Fauci

covid origins

***

Albania

When put in proximity to each other, the words “Islamic” and “state” tend to induce more panic than enthusiasm. To Albanians practising an easy-going local variant of the faith—far removed from the fatwas, jihads, caliphates and other Western bugbears—that is a perversion to be defied. Proud of the liberal strand of Islam known as Bektashism that is prevalent in this corner of the Balkans, the authorities have decided to grant the order its own state, with flag, passports and all. The birth of most countries can be traced to decades of battles, upheavals and revolutions. The new Bektashi country, in contrast, was announced out of the blue by Edi Rama, the Albanian prime minister, in an interview with the New York Times last month. Once a few legal niceties are settled, the world will celebrate its 200th-or-so country perhaps as early as the end of the year—if anyone recognises what has inevitably been termed the “Muslim Vatican”.

The Bektashi World Centre, squeezed between an industrial estate and some fields being gnawed at by sheep, measures just 11 hectares, barely a few football pitches. A newly built auditorium and museum offer a focal point for visitors keen to add to their country tally. It is no Sistine Chapel, but it will do for now.

There are even more Muslims than Catholics in the world, though only a fraction would recognise their faith in this Albanian variant. Formed in the 13th century in Turkey, the Bektashis are a Sufi mystic order, combining learnings from the Koran with devotion to their own traditions. Once the religion of the Ottoman military elite, the order took in teachings from far and wide until being banned there in the 19th century. When Turkey went secular in the 1920s, the Bektashis’ leaders moved to Albania. Through their love of the arts, the order’s dervishes have been credited with helping the country shake off the Ottoman yoke in 1912; some describe it as the Albanian “national religion” though more people adhere to mainstream Sunni Islam. The creed’s reward was to face persecution, alongside all other faiths, at the hands of the poundshop Stalinist regime that ran Albania from 1944.

Bektashis claim 20m followers spread thinly across three dozen countries. That may be an exaggeration. Counting its adherents is all the harder given its easy-going ways: some describe it as more of a philosophy than a religion. Baba Mondi, the eighth dedebaba since the move to Albania, speaks with reverence for all faiths. “Don’t constrain yourself while God has made you free,” just about sums it up. There is a bit of fasting (but not a whole Ramadan’s worth), some daily praying (but no imposing mosques or minarets), and a lot of talk of humans “sharing the same destiny”. Being a good Bektashi is about exuding love and tolerance. Their leader calls himself a friend to all, including Israel, whose president he met just last month—hospitality unlikely to be extended in Tehran or Mecca, say. The Bektashis shun politics and decry violence. They are, in other words, easily compatible with the God-shunning ways that prevail in most of Europe these days.

If Baba Mondi is the Bektashis’ religious leader, Mr Rama serves as the faith’s chief ambassador. In an evening chat with your columnist, the former artist delights in his munificence towards the order, describing them as “a national treasure you have to help survive the rest of time”. Never mind his own (latent) Catholic faith, succouring his Muslim brethren is a roundabout way of showing off Albania’s proud history of tolerance. It was the only country occupied by Nazis during the second world war to end the conflict with more Jews than it started with. A majority-Muslim country, it celebrates Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun with local roots. Why stigmatise do-gooders based on something as mundane as faith? The Bektashis are a deserving lot. “It is precisely because some people in Europe have a problem with the word “Muslim” that this is something to be done,” says Mr Rama.

from https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/10/17/hopes-for-religious-harmony-come-to-life-in-the-muslim-vatican

Nobel prize Economics

Chemistry hassabis

protein folding

small, local businesses create jobs- Murphy

Nobel prize for economics- China?

debunked

Not a Nobel

Peace prize Kissinger

geopolitics

tropes and memes Merchant of Venice Shylock

Net zero- Lomborg

ideas

Week 6 9.10

Rock n roll years

Wild is the wind

the evolution of political correctness

1976

(from 10.00)

IRA and Jagger

Red Ken and terrorists

Attempting to reduce London Underground fares, his plans were challenged in court and declared unlawful; more successful were his schemes to benefit women and several minority groups, despite stiff opposition. The mainstream press gave him the moniker "Red Ken" in reference to his socialist beliefs and criticised him for supporting republicanism, LGBT rights, and a United Ireland. Livingstone was a vocal opponent of the Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which in 1986 abolished the GLC. Elected as MP for Brent East in 1987, he became closely associated with anti-racist campaigns.

After failing to become Labour's candidate in the 2000 London mayoral election, Livingstone successfully contested the election as an independent candidate. In his first term as Mayor of London, he introduced the congestion charge, Oyster card, and articulated buses, and unsuccessfully opposed the privatisation of London Underground. Despite his opposition to Blair's government on issues like the Iraq War, Livingstone was invited to stand for re-election as Labour's candidate. Re-elected in 2004, he expanded his transport policies, introduced new environmental regulations, and enacted civil rights reforms.

Livingstone toured West Africa in 1966, visiting Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Lagos, Ghana and Togo.

The Livingstone administration took a strong stance on the issue of nuclear disarmament, proclaiming London a "nuclear-free zone". On 20 May 1981, the GLC halted its annual spending of £1 million on nuclear war defence plans, with Livingstone's deputy, Illtyd Harrington, proclaiming that "we are challenging... the absurd cosmetic approach to Armageddon." They published the names of the 3000 politicians and administrators who had been earmarked for survival in underground bunkers in the event of a nuclear strike on London.

The GLC allocated a small percentage of its expenditure on funding minority community groups, including the London Gay Teenage Group, English Collective of Prostitutes, Women Against Rape, Lesbian Line, A Woman's Place, and Rights of Women.^[97] Believing these groups could initiate social change, the GLC increased its annual funding of voluntary organisations from £6 million in 1980 to £50 million in 1984.^[98] They provided loans to such groups, coming under a barrage of press criticism for awarding a loan to the Sheba Feminist Publishers, whose works were widely labelled pornographic.^[99] In July 1981, Livingstone founded the Ethnic Minorities Committee, the Police Committee, and the Gay and Lesbian Working Party, and in June 1982, a Women's Committee was also established.^[98] Believing the Metropolitan Police to be a racist organisation, he appointed Paul Boateng to head the Police Committee and monitor the force's activities.^[100] Considering the police a highly political organisation, he publicly remarked that "When you canvas police flats at election time, you find that they are either Conservatives who think of Thatcher as a bit of a pinko or they are National Front."^[100]

The Conservatives and mainstream press were largely critical of these measures, considering them symptomatic of what they termed the "loony left". Claiming that these only served "fringe" interests, their criticisms often exhibited racist, homophobic and sexist sentiment.^[101] A number of journalists fabricated stories designed to discredit Livingstone and the "loony left", for instance claiming that the GLC made its workers drink only Nicaraguan coffee in solidarity with the country's socialist government, and that Haringey Council leader Bernie Grant had banned the use of the term "black bin liner" and the rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep", because they were perceived as racially insensitive.^[102] Writing in 2008, BBC reporter Andrew Hosken noted that although most of Livingstone's GLC administration's policies were ultimately a failure, its role in helping change social attitudes towards women and minorities in London remained its "enduring legacy".^[103]

Republicanism, Ireland and the Labour Herald

Invited to the Wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in July 1981, Livingstone – a republican critical of the monarchy – wished the couple well but turned down the offer. He also permitted Irish republican protesters to hold a vigil on the steps of County Hall throughout the wedding celebrations, both actions that brought strong press criticism.^[104] His administration supported the People's March for Jobs, a demonstration of 500 anti-unemployment protesters who marched to London from Northern England, allowing them to sleep in County Hall and catering for them. Costing £19,000, critics argued that Livingstone was illegally using public money for his own political causes.

Livingstone publicly proclaimed his support for those prisoners on hunger strike, claiming that the British government's fight against the IRA was not "some sort of campaign against terrorism" but was "the last colonial war". He was criticised for this meeting and his statements in the mainstream press, while Prime Minister Thatcher claimed that his comments constituted "the most disgraceful statement I have ever heard."^[115] Soon after, he also met with the children of Yvonne Dunlop, an Irish Protestant who had been killed in McElwee's bomb attack.^[116]

On 10 October, the IRA bombed London's Chelsea Barracks, killing 2 and injuring 40. Denouncing the attack, Livingstone informed members of the Cambridge University Tory Reform Group that it was a misunderstanding to view the IRA as "criminals or lunatics" because of their political motives and that "violence will recur again and again as long as we are in Ireland." Mainstream press criticised him for these comments, with The Sun labeling him "the most odious man in Britain". In response, Livingstone proclaimed that the press coverage had been "ill-founded, utterly out of context and distorted", reiterating his opposition both to IRA attacks and British rule in Northern Ireland.^[117] Anti-Livingstone pressure mounted and on 15 October he was attacked in the street by members of unionist militia, The Friends of Ulster. In a second incident, Livingstone was attacked by far right skinheads shouting "commie bastard" at the Three Horseshoes Pub in Hampstead

Courting further controversy, in the Falklands War of 1982, during which the United Kingdom battled Argentina for control of the Falkland Islands, Livingstone stated his belief that the islands rightfully belonged to the Argentinian people, but not the military junta then ruling the country.^[126] Upon British victory, he sarcastically remarked that "Britain had finally been able to beat the hell out of a country smaller, weaker and even worse governed than we were."^[

n October 1991 Livingstone began writing a column for Rupert Murdoch's right-wing tabloid The Sun, a controversial move among British socialists.^[183] In his column, he often discussed his love of amphibians and campaigned for the protection of the great crested newt, on the basis of which he was appointed vice president of the London Zoological Society in 1996–97.^[184] He subsequently wrote a food column for Esquire and then the Evening Standard, also making regular appearances on the BBC quiz show Have I Got News For You?.^[185] In 1995, Livingstone was invited to appear on the track "Ernold Same" by the band Blur.^[185]

Protestants

Murphy

Netanyahu

The Entebbe raid or Operation Entebbe, officially codenamed Operation Thunderbolt (retroactively codenamed Operation Yonatan), was a 1976 Israeli counter-terrorist mission in Uganda. It was launched in response to the hijacking of an international civilian passenger flight (an Airbus A300) operated by Air France between the cities of Tel Aviv and Paris. During a stopover in Athens, the aircraft was hijacked by two Palestinian PFLP–EO terrorists and two German RZ terrorists,^[8] who diverted the flight to Libya and then to Uganda, where they landed at Entebbe International Airport to be joined by other terrorists. Once in Uganda, the group enjoyed support from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.^[9]

Having hijacked the flight of 248 passengers on 27 June 1976, the terrorists took hostages with the stated objective of compelling the release of 40 Palestinian and affiliated militants imprisoned in Israel as well as the release of 13 prisoners in four other countries.^[10] Over 100 Ugandan soldiers were deployed to support the hijackers after the flight landed, and Amin, who had been informed of the hijacking from the beginning,^[11] had personally welcomed the terrorists at Entebbe.^[12] After moving all of the hostages to a defunct airport, the hijackers separated all Israelis and several non-Israeli Jews from the larger group of passengers, subsequently moving them into a separate room.^[13]^[14]^[15] Over the next two days, 148 non-Israeli hostages were released and flown out to Paris.^[14]^[15]^[16] The 94 remaining passengers, most of whom were Israelis, and the 12-member Air France crew continued to be held as hostages.^[17]^[18]

Representatives within the Israeli government initially debated over whether to concede or respond by force, as the hijackers had threatened to kill the 106 captives if the specified prisoners were not released. Acting on intelligence provided by Mossad, the decision was made to have the Israeli military undertake a rescue operation.^[19] The Israeli plans included preparation for an armed confrontation with Amin's Uganda Army.^[20]

Initiating the operation at nightfall on 3 July 1976, Israeli transport planes flew 100 commandos over 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) to Uganda for the rescue effort. Over the course of 90 minutes, 102 of the hostages were rescued successfully, with three having been killed. One of the dead hostages, Dora Bloch, was murdered by Ugandan authorities at a hospital in Kampala shortly after the Israeli rescue operation; she had fallen ill during the hijacking and was removed from the plane for treatment prior to the commandos' arrival. The Israeli military suffered five wounded and one killed; Yonatan Netanyahu was Israel's sole fatality of Operation Entebbe, and had led Sayeret Matkal during the rescue effort. The Israeli commandos killed all of the hijackers and 45 Ugandan soldiers, and eleven of Uganda's^[6]^[7] MiG-17s and MiG-21s were destroyed.

biggest fear

truth

“I’m really starting to wonder if all the lies and propaganda and echo chambers have permanently damaged this country and one election is merely a speed bump. Tens of millions of people can’t discern fact from fiction at this point, and don’t want to.”

https://x.com/Semisan9/status/1843169412972724568

more cog diss

Analysis and predictions for the Middle East

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clylzx1xz2yo

The Nazis

did hitler make a deal with the zionists to send Jews to Palestine

ChatGPT a dit :

ChatGPT

Yes, Adolf Hitler's regime did have limited dealings with some Zionist groups in the early 1930s, most notably through an agreement called the Haavara Agreement (or Transfer Agreement). This agreement was signed in August 1933 between Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency (the main Zionist organization at the time) and allowed Jews to emigrate from Germany to Palestine with a portion of their assets.

Key points about the Haavara Agreement:

The agreement was aimed at facilitating Jewish emigration to British-controlled Palestine while benefiting both the Zionists and the Nazis in their respective interests.
- For the Zionists, it provided a way to increase Jewish immigration to Palestine, helping to build a Jewish homeland.
- For the Nazis, it provided a way to rid Germany of Jews and also brought in foreign currency to Germany at a time when the country was under economic pressure due to international boycotts.
Under the agreement, Jewish emigrants were allowed to transfer part of their wealth out of Germany by buying German goods, which were then exported to Palestine. This was a way to circumvent restrictions on Jews taking assets out of the country.

Based on the provided search results, it is clear that Hitler’s Nazi regime did not actively send Jews to Palestine. Instead, the Haavara Agreement (1933) facilitated Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine, primarily for economic and domestic reasons. The agreement allowed Jews to transfer assets to Palestine, enabling them to escape persecution in Germany.

Reasons for this Policy

Avoiding British Displeasure: Hitler feared that supporting Arab causes in Palestine would alienate Great Britain, which was strategically important to Germany at the time.
Racial Ideology: The Nazis viewed Arabs as racially inferior and supporting them would have contradicted their ideology.
Economic Interests: The Haavara Agreement helped Germany break the anti-Nazi boycott of 1933 and promoted German exports to Palestine.

Contrast with Later Policy

It’s important to note that Hitler’s policy towards Jewish immigration to Palestine changed dramatically after 1941, when he began implementing the “Final Solution” – the systematic extermination of European Jews. By then, Palestine was already largely closed to Jewish immigration due to Arab pressure and British restrictions.

In summary, while Hitler’s regime did not actively send Jews to Palestine, the Haavara Agreement did facilitate Jewish emigration to Palestine from Germany between 1933 and 1939, primarily for economic and domestic reasons.

***

Zionists

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/history/article/2023/08/06/90-years-ago-a-negotiated-transfer-led-over-50-000-german-jews-to-palestine_6082440_157.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Filiu

“ marks the 75^th anniversary of the state of Israel, there is one commemoration that certainly will not take place. Ninety years ago, on August 7, 1933, the Zionist movement finalized a "transfer" agreement, known in Hebrew as haavara, with Adolf Hitler's Germany.

The Nazi regime gained a valuable means of circumventing the international boycott campaign that its antisemitic policies had provoked. The Jewish Agency supervised a "transfer" of both people and capital to British Mandate Palestine, where Jewish immigrants would recover the value of their assets placed in an escrow account in Germany and exchanged for exported German goods.

The Zionist movement, which had become the only authorized Jewish organization in Nazi Germany, was thereby able to "transfer" around 53,000 Jews to Palestine, saving them from persecution.”

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/history/article/2023/08/06/90-years-ago-a-negotiated-transfer-led-over-50-000-german-jews-to-palestine_6082440_157.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele

Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels

hard cases make bad law

Who should decide?

Week 5

2.10

Seth Godin comments:

"It seems to me that if you're not wasting your time and mine, you're here to get me to change my mind, to do something different. And that, my friend, is selling. If you're not trying to persuade, why are you here?"

****

“However, for Sciences Po to fully regain its serenity, it is essential that each of you reconnect with what constitutes the very essence of Sciences Po’s intellectual mission: fostering debate and intellectual controversy. This must be done with respect for pluralism and mutual understanding, resolutely rejecting essentialism and ostracism, and addressing contentious topics in a manner that respects our procedures and institutional frameworks.”

Jean Bassères

Dear Members of the Sciences Po Community,

In addressing you upon my arrival at Sciences Po last week, I highlighted the great privilege we share: together, we sustain a unique institution, deeply engaged with society while fulfilling the invaluable academic mission that is both its prestige and its purpose. I hold a deep conviction in our shared desire to make this institution a place of innovation, one that seeks solutions for a society increasingly marked by divisions.

Within our community, disagreements must be expressed without discord, leading to nuanced and constructive debates. Civility and doubt should prevail over noise and certainty, as is fitting for an intellectual institution. In this regard, internal discussions have been initiated to determine whether or not Sciences Po should take a position on the political issues that stir the world and our society. Their conclusions will be presented to me in a few weeks, enabling us to establish a common framework within our boards.

This week has been marked by political calls to bring the conflicts of the Middle East into our institution. We cannot accept this and must resist any form of instrumentalisation.

This week is, of course, personally significant for many of us. A year ago, an antisemitic massacre saw 1,200 people murdered by terrorist groups. Since then, a cycle of violence has caused immense suffering and the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians—events to which none of us can be indifferent. Today, the war extends to Lebanon, and the risk of regional escalation has never been greater.

In the days to come, I will be particularly vigilant in ensuring that everyone can exercise their freedom of expression in a framework that respects all, and that respects our institution. Intimidation and threats have no place at Sciences Po, nor do hate speech or attempts to impose oneself physically in shared spaces. Respect cannot be a negotiable value.

At Sciences Po, it is desirable that these issues be addressed through the lens of knowledge. Much has already been done in this regard within our institution, including a series of lectures by renowned scholars from around the world on the critical issue of crises in the Middle East.

To act and defend one's analysis and opinions with kindness and responsibility is not a weakness—it is a strength. It is also our greatest asset. Let us take pride in making Sciences Po, especially when chaos so often prevails beyond our walls, a place where debate can be calm, and democracy can be restorative. This is how we will prepare those who, tomorrow, will act to create a better world.

With warm regards,

Luis Vassy

****

debt financing

upstream downstream

red cards - how we look at data changes the results

obvious?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Tuesday that it overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion over the past two years — about double early estimates — resulting in a surplus that will be used for future security packages.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said a detailed review of the accounting error found that the military services used replacement costs rather than the book value of equipment that was pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine. She said final calculations show there was an error of $3.6 billion in the current fiscal year and $2.6 billion in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended last Sept. 30.

As a result, the department now has additional money in its coffers to use to support Ukraine as it pursues its counteroffensive against Russia. And it come as the fiscal year is wrapping up and congressional funding was beginning to dwindle.

News that former Trade and Industry Minister, Joshua Setipa, is in the running to become the next secretary general of the Commonwealth should uplift us all.

It is a rare piece of good news amidst our perennial economic and political vicissitudes.

Not only will becoming secretary-general of the Commonwealth be good for Mr Setipa’s own professional health, it will be very significant for Lesotho and the entire southern African region. It will catapult Lesotho onto the world stage.

The government must thus pull out all the stops to ensure that Mr Setipa gets this important post.

Mr Setipa will be the first southern African to hold the top post if he is successful. That will be good for this entire sub region, from where it has become rare to get good news amid continuous economic stagnation and gloom.

The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 mostly former British colonies, including Lesotho, from Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Pacific. It is a strategic, international body that promotes noble values and positive welfare of its member states. It ranks alongside other important states groupings like the Arab League, Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Organisation of American States and others that address hemispheric, sectorial issues. Having one of our own at the helm of such a body is a worthy cause.

Mr Setipa is a deserving candidate, not only because he is from southern Africa, a region that has never produced a secretary general of the Commonwealth, but because he is himself eminently qualified. He has served in key international bodies like the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at significant levels. He was recently the managing director of the United Nations Technology Bank. At home he was a hard working cabinet minister and once led the all too important Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC). He is deserving of the Commonwealth top post on account of his proven managerial and administrative pedigree. He is in our view a future and inevitable Prime Minister of Lesotho. The good experience and contact book he will garner as Commonwealth secretary general will be good for the Kingdom when his time to lead the country arrives.

The first and only African holder of the top Commonwealth post, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, was from Nigeria and held the position from 1990 to 2000. It is high time Africa got a second bite of the cherry.

https://lestimes.com/govt-must-pull-out-all-stops-for-setipas-bid-for-commonwealth-job/

What’s your source?

https://x.com/DrewPavlou/status/1841067743623463293

Is the CIA manipulating events? It’s certainly doing its best/trying its hardest

“best truth”

Sixty-five percent of Americans have heard, and believe, that a conspiracy was behind the killing of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963. What would the polls have shown if Gallup had asked if respondents had heard of any other events in the life of the 35th President of the United States?

While conspiracy theories have swirled ever since Kennedy's assassination, the official version of events remains the most plausible: Oswald acted alone."

Take, for example, the suggestion that the FBI was behind Kennedy's murder. Proponents of this conspiracy theory point to tenuous connections like the FBI being aware of Oswald and possibly harassing him (per Oswald's own allegations), as well as a memo from J. Edgar Hoover expressing the need to "convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."

Later revelations about documented FBI activity in this period, like the targeted harassment of Martin Luther King Jr, the covert and illegal activities of COINTELPRO, the providing of information that led to the assassination of Fred Hampton, and Hoover's personal involvement in the domestic surveillance of countless American citizens and the crafting of posthumous inaccurate narratives around figures like Viola Liuzzo, all damaged the Bureau's reputation in a manner that took decades to shake (if it ever fully did).

During Eisenhower's presidency, the CIA had already covertly staged coups to overthrow the democratically elected leaders of Iran (Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (Operation PBSuccess), as well as supplied the encouragement, and sometimes even weapons, that lead to the death of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and President Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1c.html

They found no shells

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp88-01350r000200760016-4

Ken Livingstone

Thiel not gay

Obama not black

Clinton black

https://www.sciencespo.fr/en/news/meet-shivani-gupta-visiting-from-nus-singapore-working-on-gendered-everyday-experiences-in-cities/

First, I must say that I have been deeply influenced by bell hooks. The ideas shared by her on feminist, engaged and critical pedagogy, which espouses that education is a commitment towards practice of freedom and liberation for everyone, has inspired and grounded me as an educator. Classroom for me is a space of active engagement for students and teachers, where we need to take into account students’ lived and embodied experiences. Indeed, they don’t come to class as neutral and objective beings but they carry with and within themselves a lot of what they have learned, what they know, and what has happened to them (and so does the teacher). Therefore, when you have them channel their embodied and lived experiences, you get an opportunity to show how things work in society: for example how hierarchies, inequalities are created, how they intersect, as well as how privileges get manifested. A crucial point for such classrooms to work is to create a shared and safe space, where everyone’s voice can be heard, and no one is silenced, through discourse generation.

Regarding her sexual identity, hooks described herself as "queer-pas-gay."^[53]^[54]^[55] She used the term "pas" from the French language, translating to "not" in the English language. She describes being queer in her own words as "not who you're having sex with, but about being at odds with everything around it."^[56] She stated, "As the essence of queer, I think of Tim Dean's work on being queer and queer not as being about who you're having sex with—that can be a dimension of it—but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and it has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live."^[57]

binary non binary queer spectrum

Kemi Badenoch

Al Fayed

Is the universe coincidence or probability?

Binary spectrum

Non binary

Sexual abuse Abbé Pierre,

Dominique Pelicot

Mohammed Al Fayed

Stormy Daniels

https://news.sky.com/story/mohamed-al-fayeds-legacy-smashed-says-alleged-victim-as-number-of-women-coming-forward-soars-13220908

3.14 assistants to lead PA

https://news.sky.com/story/two-mohamed-al-fayed-accusers-say-doctor-who-carried-out-intrusive-medical-examinations-has-massive-questions-to-answer-13222463

Puff Diddy

elites

shell companies

Nigeria

camps Roman Empire look back in 2000 years

our weapon is the theatre

Seth Godin??????

https://bossbabe.com/how-to-create-change-and-do-something-that-matters-a-conversation-with-seth-godin/

more Seth

https://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/11/seth-godin-presentation-how-to-build-a-tribe.html

25.9

Don’t print out the composition!

week 4 substack men and women in sport singularity cognitive dissonance

butterfly effect chaos theory systems theory

“culture is upstream of politics.” Discuss

A systems approach is a way of understanding and solving complex problems by viewing them as part of an interconnected system. Rather than focusing on individual components in isolation, it considers how different parts interact and influence each other to affect the whole system.

Key principles of a systems approach include:

Holistic view: Understanding the system as a whole, not just its parts.
Interrelationships: Emphasizing the connections and interactions between components.
Feedback loops: Recognizing that outputs can influence inputs, creating cycles within the system.
Dynamics and change: Considering how systems evolve over time.
Boundary setting: Defining the limits of the system for analysis purposes.

This method is widely applied in fields like engineering, management, environmental science, and social systems to solve complex, multifaceted problems.

Chaos theory studies complex systems where small changes in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes, making the systems appear random or unpredictable, even though they are governed by deterministic rules. It emphasizes that order can exist within apparent randomness.

Key concepts include:

Sensitive dependence on initial conditions: Also known as the "butterfly effect," small variations can have significant impacts.
Nonlinear dynamics: System behavior isn't proportional to inputs, leading to unpredictable results.
Attractors: Despite chaotic behavior, systems may settle into patterns or structures, like strange attractors.
Fractals: Geometrical structures that repeat at different scales, often found in chaotic systems.

Chaos theory is applied in fields like weather forecasting, economics, biology, and fluid dynamics to understand and model unpredictable systems.

how does chaos theory interact with systems theory

ChatGPT a dit :

ChatGPT

Chaos theory and systems theory are interconnected in their exploration of complex, dynamic systems, though they focus on different aspects. Here's how they interact:

Complex Systems: Both theories deal with systems that are highly interconnected and complex. In systems theory, the focus is on understanding how parts interact to form the whole. Chaos theory zooms in on the unpredictable and nonlinear behaviors that can arise from these interactions, particularly in certain conditions.
Nonlinearity: Systems theory acknowledges that many systems are nonlinear, meaning that small changes in one part of the system can have disproportionate effects elsewhere. Chaos theory goes deeper by showing how these nonlinear interactions can lead to chaos—apparent randomness that emerges from deterministic rules.
Feedback Loops: Systems theory highlights the importance of feedback loops—how outputs of a system can loop back as inputs, influencing future behavior. Chaos theory explores how feedback loops, especially in nonlinear systems, can lead to unpredictable, chaotic outcomes.
Order in Chaos: Chaos theory reveals that even in systems exhibiting chaotic behavior, there can be underlying patterns or structures (like strange attractors). Systems theory helps explain how these patterns may be integral to the system’s functioning, even if the behavior appears random.
Sensitive Dependence: Systems theory emphasizes the importance of understanding the interactions and initial conditions within a system. Chaos theory demonstrates how slight variations in these initial conditions can drastically change the system's trajectory, making predictability difficult.

In summary, chaos theory provides insights into the unpredictable and emergent behaviors within complex systems, complementing systems theory's broader view of how system components interact and function as a whole. Together, they offer a more comprehensive understanding of complex, dynamic systems.

"Downstream solutions for upstream problems" refers to addressing the symptoms or consequences of a problem rather than tackling its root cause. In this metaphor, "upstream" represents the origin or cause of the issue, while "downstream" refers to the effects or symptoms that arise from it.

Characteristics of Downstream Solutions:

Reactive: They respond to problems after they’ve occurred, often focusing on managing or mitigating the effects.
Symptom-focused: These solutions tend to address immediate needs or consequences, without resolving the core issue.
Short-term relief: While they may offer quick fixes, they often don’t prevent the problem from recurring.

Examples:

Healthcare: Treating the symptoms of an illness (downstream) rather than addressing the lifestyle factors that caused it (upstream, e.g., poor diet or lack of exercise).
Environmental Issues: Cleaning up pollution (downstream) rather than preventing the sources of pollution (upstream).
Education: Implementing remedial programs for struggling students (downstream) instead of addressing systemic issues like underfunded schools or inequitable access to resources (upstream).

Challenges of Downstream Solutions:

Inefficiency: They can be costly and resource-intensive, as the core issue persists.
Sustainability: Without addressing the root cause, the problem may keep recurring.
Potential for Oversight: Important upstream factors may be ignored, resulting in a cycle of reactive problem-solving.

Why Upstream Solutions Matter:

Upstream solutions focus on preventing problems by addressing their root causes. This approach tends to be more effective and sustainable in the long run because it eliminates or mitigates the factors that lead to downstream consequences. Ideally, upstream and downstream efforts should be combined, but

Focusing primarily on downstream solutions can be inefficient in the long term because it addresses the symptoms of a problem rather than the root cause, leading to recurring issues and ongoing resource expenditure without solving the underlying issue. Here are key reasons why this approach is often inefficient:

1. Recurring Problems:

Downstream solutions treat immediate effects, but the root cause remains unchecked, meaning the problem is likely to recur. For example, repeatedly treating polluted water without stopping the pollution source will require continuous efforts and resources.

2. Resource Intensive:

Constantly addressing symptoms (e.g., crisis management, disaster response) consumes significant time, money, and human effort, which could be better spent on upstream solutions that prevent the problem altogether. Over time, this can become increasingly expensive and unsustainable.

3. Band-Aid Effect:

Downstream solutions often serve as temporary fixes (like a Band-Aid), masking the real problem rather than resolving it. For example, medical treatments that address only symptoms but not lifestyle factors that cause disease will lead to ongoing treatments and healthcare costs.

4. Delayed Long-term Progress:

Focusing on downstream measures can delay more transformative, sustainable change. Upstream solutions may require an initial investment of time and effort but can result in long-term benefits, saving resources by preventing the issue from occurring in the first place.

5. Systemic Inefficiency:

Solving problems downstream often perpetuates inefficiencies in broader systems. For instance, providing emergency aid for poverty-stricken communities (downstream) instead of addressing systemic issues like education, employment, or housing (upstream) perpetuates poverty cycles and reliance on aid.

6. Cumulative Impact:

As more resources are spent on short-term downstream solutions, it becomes harder to invest in preventive, upstream measures. Over time, this leads to a compounding of unresolved root causes and larger systemic problems, making future interventions more complex and costly.

In summary, focusing on downstream solutions often provides short-term relief but allows underlying problems to persist, leading to recurring issues and inefficiency. Investing in upstream solutions, by contrast, can prevent problems from arising in the first place, creating more sustainable and effective long-term outcomes.

Le canard enchainé Private Eye

Angela Rayner's Wardrobe

Based on the provided search results, here is a concise answer:

Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has been involved in a controversy surrounding donations of clothing. According to reports, she received:

£2,230 worth of clothing from luxury brand ME+EM, listed in the Register of Members’ Interests.
£3,550 worth of work clothing from Lord Waheed Alli, initially listed as a “donation in kind” for parliamentary duties.

In response to the criticism, Rayner defended the donations, stating that “all MPs do it” and that it’s a feature of politics. She also acknowledged that people are angry and upset, but argued that a complete stop to donations would require a wider debate about how politics is funded.

It’s worth noting that, as part of an apparent shift in approach, Downing Street confirmed that neither Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, nor Chancellor Rachel Reeves will accept any more free clothes donations in the future.

https://search.brave.com/images?q=angela%20rayner%20clothes

https://search.brave.com/images?q=keir%20starmer%20clothes

Rachel Reeves

Harari on human rights

week 3

Harari, men women, singularity (see below),

pagers

https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/1fj4y28/so_about_the_exploding_pagers/

cognitive dissonance

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

―F. Scott Fitzgerald,The Crack-Up

“human kind cannot bear too much reality” T S Eliot

Ana cognitive dissonance travel

asking the right question

Do sociopaths and psychopaths really exist?
Are they more likely than other people to seek election?
If someone writes a book called ‘The art of the deal’ on how to screw people over, is he/she more likely to be a sociopath or a psychopath?
Which politician made the biggest financial profit from the Iraq war? (Halliburton)
Why did France and Britain enter WW1?
Do you think Mark Sykes and François Picot would agree with you?
Was the financial crisis of 2007 mainly due to a downturn in the housing market? (Big Short)
What was the main motivation for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948?
When was this solution first suggested and by whom and to whom?

binary sorting algorithm

https://x.com/neetcode1/status/1832812672431317366

Harari video

@nguyenvincent7572

1 year ago (edited)

J'ai vu la vidéo et ait découvert les commentaires après, notamment beaucoup de : "Heureusement que je ne l'ai pas lu". Je crois que nous n'avons pas vu la même vidéo. Il (Stan) déconstruit le format et le succès de Sapiens et résume ses principales critiques et l'effet de halo qui entoure Harari, il n'a jamais dit que ce livre était "le mal", ou encore qu'il était à jeter. C'est un livre qui se lit en 2-3 après-midi, je vous recommande de vous faire votre propre avis.

@Zaopong

1 month ago

Too bad we don't mention Harari's very worrying comments like "we don't see why we would need so many humans" or "free will is over, the notion of freedom is an imaginary concept which does not exist in nature" Harari is a dangerous psychopath

from week 2 Ana cognitive dissonance

more men women

“There is also an interesting conversation to be had about the effects of testosterone levels on decision-making – it’s a question that has been studied for a very long time. And you know what those studies show? That testosterone makes men “less likely to question their impulses” and is linked to “less self-reflection”

Why women (still) aren’t welcome on the internet

This week’s edition of Caitlin Dewey’s excellent newsletter Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends contained a link to an award-winning 2014 essay about online misogyny by Amanda Hess titled Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet.

from

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/07/elon-musk-women-testosterone

My biggest issue is that I don’t feel like I’m in my body,” Naomi Osaka wrote this week on Instagram.

Research this year found that labour is a traumatic experience for one in three women. (I often find myself thinking about PMSL, Luce Brett’s brilliantly funny, angry and sad memoir, which explores how “an hour of pushing” left her with a legacy of incontinence, incidentally uncovering an unspoken world of birth injuries around her.) You are no longer in your body when you grow, then expel, another body from it – and that must be far stranger to navigate when that body is your work tool and your livelihood.

from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/birth-changes-womens-bodies-for-ever-and-we-need-to-get-real-about-it

Tony Robbins Mel Robbins

from here 6.05

Mel Robbins

women on substack

Nina Teicholz

“Many of us challenging mainstream health advice find ourselves continually questioning whether the unending stream of inaccurate information from newspapers, academics, and experts is intentional or just ill-advised.

I’ll focus on the low-carbohydrate diet, because it’s been shown to be so effective in reversing many chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, a cruel and costly affliction affecting an estimated 462 million people worldwide. Low-carb can be life-saving for these people. If it were a pill or a device backed by pharmaceutical interests, we’d have been reading about it daily, much as we do now with weight loss drugs like Wegovy. Instead, our top experts and the media have remained largely silent on low-carb.

There’s no question that these diets, because they reverse diseases, constitute a major threat to the pharmaceutical industry, which makes its money from people being sick. Chronic diseases that require lifelong medications are a particular sweet spot of revenue for this industry. Pharmaceutical companies spent north of $8 billion on media advertising last year (up from $6 billion in 2020), and their goal, cynical as it sounds, is to maximize their sales, not make us healthy enough to quit their products.

Low-carb diets, because they reverse disease, are also a threat to Big Food, whose ultra-processed foods are mostly derived from the very sugars and starches that low-carb diets avoid. I’ve written about how Unilever, Danone, Nestlé, the Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo. and other processed food companies were found to dominate global food policy. Nestlé, Danone, General Mills, and Kellogg’s were also among the companies found to have direct ties with the expert group behind our current U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The entity with the most ties to these guidelines’ experts was the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a multinational food industry lobbying group that was started by an ex-Coke vice president and whose members include many of the same familiar names: Unilever, Coke, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, and General Mills. “

from here

anti big pharma

Peterson on Big Five

stripe

Hannah Ritchie

best substacks

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/10/inbox-33-substack-newsletters-culture-to-read-blogging

“Glenn Greenwald, Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan, formerly of the Intercept, Vox Media and New York Magazine respectively, have all jumped ship to sell their work directly to subscribers via the service.”

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/dec/28/substack-five-of-the-best-from-the-niche-newsletter-platform

slowboring

Wikileaks

(Nordstream) Matt Orfalea Fauci MAGA

4.9

Topics? Economics/politics/ media/ business/ new technology

pretty wide.

(Orwell, Mike Lynch, controversies and conspiracies, Oliver North, Putin, Dickens, Margaret Hamilton, WW1, migrant hotels, Ivermectin, Proud boys, Dirty Dancing, Hersh, Hillman, Epstein, Wesley Clark, El Salvador, chemtrails:cloudseeding, Harari, Chomsky, Blackrock, Gladwell)

week 2

Spain chem trails

https://x.com/ErikMagnethi/status/1810231131972698413

Not conspiracy theories but the Peter Thiel question

if it looks like a duck… the grey area, the truth is often hiding somewhere in the middle, often in plain sight

the govt has to do sthg

NAACP

Musk Time reality check truth

blood exports

Mike Lynch CEO resigns -”suffocated”

chips finance tech geopolitics

Nvidia semi conductor chips

3 trillion companies

https://startuptalky.com/trillion-dollar-companies/

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/stock-price-history

TSMC

https://www.taiwansemi.com/en

recap of taxing unrealised gains and here

taxing unrealised gains

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3487486-bidens-tax-on-unrealized-gains-will-hit-far-more-taxpayers-than-he-claims/

Nvidia 2 trillion growth- 15% fall

journalists Greenwald

Musk

lableak?

https://x.com/mattwridley/status/1833334015232807033

Seldon- psychohistory

Musk Foundation

Court Business-standard

business-standard.com › home › world news

20% tax on billionaires and unrealised gains in Biden's budget proposal | INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY NEWS - Business Standard

27 mars 2022 - President Joe Biden will propose a minimum 20 per cent tax rate that would hit both the income and unrealised capital gains of US households worth more than $100 million as part of his budget proposal. The plan – called the “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” by the White House – represents ...

Fortune

fortune.com› 2024 › 08 › 31 › kamala-unrealized-capital-gains-tax-meaning-proposal-explained

Billionaires hate Kamala Harris's novel 'unrealized' capital gains tax proposal. Here's how it would work

il y a 1 semaine - If the plan were to be enacted, folks like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos could be writing one-time checks for tens of billions.

Moneycontrol

moneycontrol.com › home › news › opinion › constitutional or not, wealth taxes are bad economics

Constitutional or not, wealth taxes are bad economics

7 décembre 2023 - Some taxes are harder to implement ... greater economic distortions. Based on both of these criteria, taxing wealth — including unrealised gains — is the worst way to tax. Taxing the

men on the internet Freddie de Boer Scott Alexander

“He then condemns a wide range of people, including me, for failing to understand this:

Some people who routinely violate the Temporal Copernican Principle include Harari, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Sam Altman, Francis Fukuyama, Elon Musk, Clay Shirky, Tyler Cowen, Matt Yglesias, Tom Friedman, Scott Alexander, every tech company CEO, Ray Kurzweil, Robin Hanson, and many many more. I think they should ask themselves how much of their understanding of the future ultimately stems from a deep-seated need to believe that their times are important because they think they themselves are important, or want to be.”

“The closest that humanity has come to annihilation in the past 300,000 years was probably the Petrov nuclear incident in 1983¹, ie within Freddie’s lifetime. Pretty weird that out of 300,000 years, this would be only 41 years ago!

Maybe you’re more worried about environmental devastation than nuclear war? The biggest climate shock of the past 300,000 years is . . . also during Freddie’s lifetime². Man, these three-in-a-thousand coincidences keep adding up!”

criticism of Kurzweil

Kurzweil predictions

singularity

Binary search

Although technological singularity is a popular concept in science fiction, authors such as Neal Stephenson ^[79] and Bruce Sterling have voiced skepticism about its real-world plausibility. Sterling expressed his views on the singularity scenario in a talk at the Long Now Foundation called The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole.^[80]^[81] Other prominent AI thinkers and computer scientists such as Daniel Dennett,^[82] Rodney Brooks,^[83] David Gelernter,^[84] and Paul Allen ^[85] have also criticized Kurzweil's projections.

In the cover article of the December 2010 issue of IEEE Spectrum, John Rennie criticizes Kurzweil for several predictions that did not come true by the originally predicted date: "Therein lie the frustrations of Kurzweil's brand of tech punditry. On close examination, his clearest and most successful predictions often lack originality or profundity. And most of his predictions come with so many loopholes that they border on the unfalsifiable."^[86]

Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, agrees with Kurzweil's timeline of future progress, but thinks that technologies such as AI, nanotechnology, and advanced biotechnology will create a dystopian world.^[87] Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, has called the notion of a technological singularity "intelligent design for the IQ 140 people... This proposition that we're heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably different—it's fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can't obscure that fact for me."^[24]

Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter has said of Kurzweil's and Hans Moravec's books: "It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they're not stupid."^[88]

Biologist PZ Myers has criticized Kurzweil's predictions as based on "New Age spiritualism" rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology.^[89]^[90] VR pioneer Jaron Lanier has called Kurzweil's ideas "cybernetic totalism" and outlined his views on the culture surrounding Kurzweil's predictions in an essay for the Edge Foundation called One Half of a Manifesto.^[47]^[91] Physicist and futurist Theodore Modis claims that Kurzweil's thesis of a technological singularity lacks scientific rigor.^[92]

British philosopher John Gray argued that contemporary science is what magic was for ancient civilizations: it gives a sense of hope for those who are willing to do almost anything to achieve eternal life. He cites Kurzweil's singularity as an example, noting that this line of thinking has been present throughout human history.^[93]

HP Newquist wrote in The Brain Makers: "Born with the same gift for self-promotion that was a character trait of people like P.T. Barnum and Ed Feigenbaum, Kurzweil had no problems talking up his technical prowess... Ray Kurzweil was not noted for his understatement."^[94]

migrant hotels

Biden’s laptop

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1831758321281593543

space Van Allen’s belt

https://www.space.com/spacex-polaris-dawn-astronauts-earth-van-allen-radiation-belt

current affairs- dangerous- you can look stupid- analysis or predictions- Ukraine, Gaza- should versus will

make your own decisions

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Thus many people have been happy to co-opt Hamlet’s words, cloaked in the authority which any Shakespeare quotation is supposed to carry (even if, like Polonius’s ‘to thine one self be true’, the words are spoken by a pompous windbag), in order to criticise or chastise their fellow humans for being closed-minded over others’ religious or supernatural beliefs.

from here https://interestingliterature.com/2021/04/hamlet-more-things-heaven-earth-dreamt-your-philosophy-meaning/

accent John Swinney

5th years, 1st years

Topics

No list of topics to cover

“Most teachers do not like controversy. A study some years ago found that 92 percent of teachers did not initiate discussion of controversial issues, 89 percent didn’t discuss controversial issues when students brought them up, and 79 percent didn’t believe they should.”

Why were the Indians moved further west?” Its teachers’ edition provides the answer: “They were moved so the settlers could use the land for growing crops.” from Lies

***

No grammar items to cover

No exam everyone is preparing for

Not comfortable giving your opinion

So, Speaking? If you don’t like the topic, email me, This is not disrespectful or rude.

sidenote ful or full fuly or fully-RULE and pron mountain contain

present perfect for since/for

I’ve worked here for a long time.

I’ve beeen here since the last train left.

I’ve found it easier since I stopped caring so much.

It’s been a long time since I was asked that question- NOT I haven’t been asked

If you’re feeling bad, it’s too personal, email.

Contact the delegate? Maybe.

16 years

“I’m very pleased to think that there are people with whom I agree on some issues and not others. I don’t want a world in which we all agree. I want a world in which people feel that they have the standing and confidence to feel that they can disagree. I’m interested in why people think as they do.”

— Mary Beard

What is the aim of a Presentation?

The aim is to give information about a topic which the other students will then debate. The topic should therefore be something which you think will divide/interest/stimulate the other students. So, the death penalty, probably not a good topic. Students will already have a firm view and most students will share the same opinion. Possibly a debate on how the use of the death penalty is being changed by the financial crisis and whether governments’ main principles should be economic or financial in deciding policy might work. Should governments pay for hostages? Maybe.Should governments admit they pay for hostages/ pay ransoms/ supply arms to dodgy groups/break the law? Lie to the people?

Here’s a few of my recent favourites, with a few ideas as to why they worked. Should dwarf-tossing be allowed? On the face of it, a bit off the wall, but it provoked a good debate on moral acceptability of a wide range of activities.

http://www.worldcourts.com/hrc/eng/decisions/2002.07.15_Wackenheim_v_France.htm

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09649069608410182?journalCode=rjsf20

Should we burn Hitler’s paintings?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintings_by_Adolf_Hitler

Read from notes? No. The idea is to look at your presenting and speaking skills, not your reading and writing skills. Use notes? Yes, in moderation. Maybe cue cards?

The idea is to get everyone talking not just to focus on one person reading something they may not even have written themselves.

It doesn’t always work, occasionally a “good” topic just won’t take off. I would like you to end the presentation by starting the debate, so a presentation giving facts about a country isn’t enough. You must finish the presentation with at least 2 questions- it’s the debate I’m interested in, and your participation in other people’s presentations, not your particular presentation. This is ungraded and should last somewhere between 2 and 10 minutes- this is deliberately vague as the goal is the debate, not the presentation.

compositions

Here is the first composition: deadline week 5

Either:

the TOEFL composition below OR

choose one of these titles and write 250 words (intro, conclusion, at least 3 paragraphs in total)

Moon

TOEFL 250 words- no more than 30 minutes for the task

First, give yourself three minutes to read this article:

https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-integrated-writing-practice-living-on-the-moon/

Discuss:

2 If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever. George Orwell.

3 He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security. Benjamin_Franklin

4 George Santayana Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

5 Karl Marx History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

6 Mark Twain:A lie may travel half-way around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots

7 History repeats itself. That is one of the things wrong with history. Clarence Darrow

Any questions, email me and I'll add them to my site.

https://stuartwiffin.substack.com/p/week-3-4-and-5

second week 8

https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-writing-academic-discussion-question-influencers/#google_vignette

third week 11

https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-discussion-board-writing-question-old-age/

questions from here

https://www.toeflresources.com/toefl-writing-sample-questions-and-answers-discussion-board-questions/

Thornbury

"communicative means more than simply interactive. In An A-Z of ELT I list the features of a communicative activity as being the following:

purposefulness: speakers are motivated by a communicative goal (such as getting information, making a request, giving instructions) and not simply by the need to display the correct use of language for its own sake;
reciprocity: to achieve this purpose, speakers need to interact, and there is as much need to listen as to speak;
negotiation: following from the above, they may need to check and repair the communication in order to be understood by each other;
synchronicity: the exchange – especially if it is spoken – usually takes place in real time;
unpredictability: neither the process, nor the outcome, nor the language used in the exchange, is entirely predictable;
heterogeneity: participants can use any communicative means at their disposal; in other words, they are not restricted to the use of a pre-specified grammar item.

“On the other hand, there also seems to be a good case for arguing that only life-like language use can tap into the cognitive and affective factors that both motivate and nurture language acquisition. But this presupposes that the communication matters: that it is both contingent – i.e. it connects to the real-world in some way – and engaging: that it engages the learners’ needs, interests, concerns and desires. In short, the learner needs to have some personal investment in the communication.”

from

https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/c-is-for-communicative/

Scaleable errors, systemic errors eg pron of gh

too much, too many, enough +adj/noun

Problem of fossilized errors, how to correct them?

21st century skills?

critical thinking ?

from Mr Musk

Big Pharma

sales and marketing v R and D

The 4 C's of 21st Century Skills are:

Critical thinking: Finding solutions to problems
Creativity: Thinking outside the box
Collaboration: Working with others
Communication: Talking to others
from
Arguably, critical thinking is the most important quality for someone to have in health sciences.
In business settings, critical thinking is essential to improvement. It’s the mechanism that weeds out problems and replaces them with fruitful endeavors.
It’s what helps students figure stuff out for themselves when they don’t have a teacher at their disposal. here

The problems/dangers of critical thinking

After all, what is the point of power unless you are going to use it to change the world for the better, which can only be done if you relieve the pain of those who suffer?

can sound a bit pretentious

“what it means to he human…”

(heard on skynews)

***

Gladwell

institutions won respect, crucial to defend, impartiality, tweets

keep it under wraps

point of view impossible to erase

are you “fair” in the way you consider evidence?

give them a hearing

call the other side , give them a chance to respond

***

Mike Lynch

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mike-lynch-yacht-bayesian-sicily-autonomy-what-to-know/

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/19/mike-lynchs-co-defendant-in-us-trial-fatally-struck-by-car-while-jogging

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/26/captain-mike-lynch-yacht-investigation-manslaughter-bayesian

****

conspiracy narcissists

“Conspiratorial thinking can be caused by a number of reasons. One of them is the desire to know things that others don't. The idea that they can see things others don't. A sense of superiority. In other words, narcissism.”

https://x.com/mysteriouskat/status/1830043842080649479

“For those who are misinterpreting this... I'd never say don't be curious or skeptical. conspiratorial thinking is defined by the formation of strong beliefs despite the absence of supporting evidence (or via cherry picking information). If you're not doing that, then you're not engaging in conspiratorial thinking.”

https://x.com/mysteriouskat/status/1830142370538799214

But what happens when we question?

G.K. Chesterton — ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.’

truth seeking

https://x.com/OleBeeM/status/1830048744420581820

Narcissism—a conviction about one's superiority and entitlement to special treatment—is a robust predictor of belief in conspiracy theories. Recent developments in the study of narcissism suggest that it has three components: antagonism, agentic extraversion, and neuroticism. We argue that each of these components of narcissism might predispose people to endorse conspiracy theories due to different psychological processes. Specifically, we discuss the role of paranoia, gullibility, and the needs for dominance, control, and uniqueness. We also review parallel findings for narcissistic beliefs about one's social groups.

from https://www-sciencedirect-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/science/article/pii/S2352250X22001051

Why do narcissists find conspiracy theories so appealing?☆

Author links open overlay panel Aleksandra Cichocka ¹, Marta Marchlewska ², Mikey Biddlestone ³

lableak Covid masks vaccines

Hunter Biden’s laptop

“As conspiracy theories are entertaining and elicit strong emotions [46], they might serve as attractive content to distribute. In fact, an unpublished undergraduate dissertation by India Wood demonstrated that narcissistic admiration was linked to sharing and liking (but not believing or fact-checking) social media posts containing COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Similarly, Enders and colleagues [10] found narcissism to be correlated with sharing false information online.

source? Who? The line goes dead-as with many conspiracy theories.

Bruce Ambrose

“No offense but this statement seems pretty narcissistic in that you’re implying that you have special knowledge about a massive undefined class of theories and nullifying them. First you don’t define “conspiracy theories.” Well a theory about an actual conspiracy is a conspiracy theory until it is proven. Take the “conspiracy theory” of the Biden coup by Pelosi, Obama, Schumer, & Commula by threatening him with the 25th amendment. But now Pelosi has admitted to it in public I believe twice now. On the other side, is the Russia collusion “conspiracy theory” that actually flipped into an actual conspiracy of Hilary and the Dem party against Trump with a completely made up lie. I’m sure someone somewhere matches up with your argued profile. But based on my analysis above I’m pretty much stunned by your blanket assessment. It almost seems it’s designed to brow beat someone or some people into silence by associating them with narcissism. But why? I don’t get it.”

https://x.com/bruceami/status/1830088059750154496

Bilderberg thesis unpublished

facts

from

https://x.com/LoriMills4CA42/status/1830093271932289089

****

to do

the preface to “New Numbers” by Christopher Logue.

If this book doesn’t change you

give it no house space;

if having read it you

are the same person you

were before picking it up,

then throw it away.

Not enough for me

that my poems shine in your eye;

not enough for me

that they look from your walls

or lurk on your shelves;

I want my poems to be in your mind

so you can say them when you are in love

so you can say them when the plane takes off

and death comes near;

I want my poems to come between

the raised stick and the cowering back.

I want my poems to become

a weapon in your trembling hands,

a sword whose blade both makes and mirrors change;

but most of all I want my poems sung

unthinkingly between your lips like air.

http://elib.psu.by/bitstream/123456789/17327/1/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%20%28%D1%87%201%29.pdf

CIA 6 million deaths

https://x.com/upholdreality/status/1829911845966086426

***

Oliver North

https://x.com/AdameMedia/status/1830197464088908242

***

communicate

https://x.com/Cominsitu/status/1829939689241075931

Harris Weinstein

https://x.com/nick_jcg/status/1830326590921756795

“intellectual dark web”

Charles

https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/1830139841658360138

to do

Margaret Hamilton

“But then I started watching an oral history by Margaret Hamilton, who wrote the code for Lorenz’s weather simulations in 1961. Hamilton had an aversion to errors, a trait she had discovered in herself when she studied mathematics. While most of the other students in her class, all of them young men, carefully memorised every line of the proofs presented to them on the blackboard, Hamilton had noticed that Professor Florence Long, her teacher at Earlham College in Indiana, USA, never relied on memory. The professor derived each line of a proof from the previous one, as if seeing it for the first time, carefully illustrating how mathematical reasoning led inevitably to logical conclusions. Hamilton realised that, if each step follows on from another in a logical manner, then errors become impossible. It was this view that she had taken when approaching programming. She worked to eliminate all sources of error, so that when Lorenz ran her code, the only explanation for the unpredictable outcomes was chaos – and not a mistake on her part. The discovery of chaos was only possible because of Hamilton’s careful attention to detail.

Hamilton left Lorenz’s lab before he published his article on chaos theory to take a job at Homeland Security and then, in 1963, she applied for and was immediately offered a job as a computer programmer at Nasa. Six years later, it was software written by Hamilton and her team that was used on the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/27/saved-by-a-butterfly-how-chaos-theory-became-the-secret-ingredient-in-my-happy-marriage?

JFK, RFK, Moon landing-radiation? what was in the tanks? Flat earth, vaccines,

did Chem trails

https://x.com/VigilantFox/status/1828628432315359736

substack chemtrails

****

culture?

truth? loopholes? hindsight?

hiding in plain sight

Make it visible

cui bono? who profits?

who guards the watchmen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F

2000 years and we’re still asking the same questions

Orwell Dickens

Dickens wants a “change of spirit rather than a change of structure”. He has no sense that a free market is “wrong as a system”. The French Revolution could have been averted had the Second Estate just “turned over a new leaf, like Scrooge”. And so we have “that recurrent Dickens figure, the Good Rich Man”, whose arbitrary might is used to help out the odd grateful urchin or debtor. What we do not have is the Good Trade Unionist pushing for structural change. What we do not have is the Good Finance Minister redistributing wealth. There is something feudal about Dickens. The rich man in his castle should be nicer to the poor man at his gate, but each is in his rightful station.

from janan.ganesh@ft.com

Orwell on Dickens

”Consequently two viewpoints are always tenable. The one, how can you improve human nature until you have changed the system? The other, what is the use of changing the system before you have improved human nature? They appeal to different individuals, and they probably show a tendency to alternate in point of time. The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot yet foresee. The central problem — how to prevent power from being abused — remains unsolved. Dickens, who had not the vision to see that private property is an obstructive nuisance, had the vision to see that. ‘If men would behave decently the world would be decent’ is not such a platitude as it sounds.'“

***

did

As Education Minister, how could you improve state schools? Which is more important, the teachers, the materials, the desks, where the teacher sits, attitude of staff towards students (expectations, norms) or contacts/network? Or opportunity to expel students who misbehave?

to do

Harkness method

oil magnate Edward Harkness wrote to Exeter Principal Lewis Perry regarding how a substantial donation that Harkness would make to the academy might be used to fund a new way of teaching and learning:

What I have in mind is a classroom where students could sit around a table with a teacher who would talk with them and instruct them by a sort of tutorial or conference method, where each student would feel encouraged to speak up. This would be a real revolution in methods.^[21]

The result was "Harkness teaching", in which a teacher and a group of students work together, exchanging ideas and information, similar to the Socratic method. In November 1930, Harkness gave Exeter $5.8 million to support this initiative. Since then, the academy's principal mode of instruction has been by discussion, "seminar style", around an oval table known as the Harkness table.^[22]^[23] Today at Phillips Exeter Academy, all classes are taught using this method, with no more than 12 or 13 students per class.

What do you think of this method?

Without being able to move chairs and tables, what can we do to facilitate communication?

Do we need a Socrates for the Socratic method?

Who were the greatest teachers- Socrates, Jesus, Maria Montessori, Michael Sandel, Eric Mazur, Kieran Egan? What do they share?

to do

chain of events

“There is no such thing as a chain of events”

Yuval Noah Harari

Give me 3 good reasons:

submarines U boats

“The Germans were well aware that the U.S. could not and would not accept unrestricted submarine warfare, but launched it anyway,” says Goemans. “The U.S. declaration of war was thus already taken into account when the final decision for unrestricted submarine warfare was made in January 1917. Indeed, Hindenburg explicitly admitted the day before ‘We count upon war with America.’”
So why would the German leadership under Paul von Hindenburg take such a big risk?
“It was a gamble, which was very likely to hurt them in the long run,” explains Goemans. “They thought the gamble would open up a window of opportunity in which they could defeat the British. If they defeated the British, then they could prevent Americans from coming to the mainland and they would have a victorious end to the war.”
Cabled by German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann in January 1917 to the Mexican embassy, the secret diplomatic communication was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. In the telegram, Zimmermann proposed a military alliance between Germany, Mexico, and Japan—should the United States enter the war. It basically said, “If you want to, we will help you in the effort of helping you regain some of your lost territories from the United States. The territory you lost in 1848 and subsequently,” explains Goemans, who calls the telegram “a ludicrous proposal.”
Mexico would be given Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico as spoils, according to the German plan. While Goemans says he never found any indication in official notes and papers from the time that the U.S. government took this threat seriously, it nevertheless became “a propaganda gift that could be used against the Germans more than it was a real factor in the decision making of the Americans [to go to war].” However, once its contents were splashed across newspaper front pages, American public opinion turned strongly against Germany, enflaming pro-war sentiments.
Germany formally surrendered on November 11, 1918. In those 19 months of U.S. engagement, more than two million American soldiers served on the battlefields of Western Europe—and 50,000 of them lost their lives.

https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/looking-back-100-years-u-s-enters-world-war-i-on-april-6-1917/

Over time, especially after reports of German atrocities in Belgium in 1914 and following the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania in 1915, Americans increasingly came to see Germany as the aggressor in Europe.

While the country was at peace, American banks made huge loans to the Entente powers, which were used mainly to buy munitions, raw materials, and food from across the Atlantic.

The J.P. Morgan Bank offered assistance in the wartime financing of Britain and France from the earliest stages of the conflict through America's entrance in 1917.

J.P. Morgan issued loans to France including one in March 1915 and, following negotiations with the Anglo-French Financial Commission, another joint loan to Britain and France in October 1915, the latter amounting to US$500,000,000.

Wilson and the Democrats in 1916 campaigned on the slogan "He kept us out of war!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_entry_into_World_War_I

Lusitania was sunk on 7 May 1915, by a German U-boat 11 miles (18 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, killing 1,199 passengers and crew.^[2]

The contemporary investigations in both the United Kingdom and the United States into the precise causes of the ship's loss were obstructed by the needs of wartime secrecy and a propaganda campaign to ensure all blame fell upon Germany.^[1] At time of her sinking she was carrying 4,200,000 rounds of Remington .303 rifle/machine-gun cartridges, almost 5,000 shrapnel shell casings (for a total of some 50 tons), and 3,240 brass percussion artillery fuses, but argument over whether the ship was a legitimate military target raged back and forth throughout the war.

In Schwieger's own words, recorded in the log of U-20:

Torpedo hits starboard side right behind the bridge. An unusually heavy detonation takes place with a very strong explosive cloud. The explosion of the torpedo must have been followed by a second one [boiler or coal or powder?]... The ship stops immediately and heels over to starboard very quickly, immersing simultaneously at the bow... the name Lusitania becomes visible in golden letters.^[35]

U-20's torpedo officer, Raimund Weisbach, viewed the destruction through the vessel's periscope and felt the explosion was unusually severe.

Has time established the truth of what happened to the Lusitania? Is there contemporary relevance?

*****

from https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/23139/how-did-babys-dad-let-her-down-in-dirty-dancing

I just watched Dirty Dancing with my wife the other night. One line in particular utterly baffled me...when Baby (Jennifer Grey) apologizes to her father on the dock, she concludes by saying "I'm sorry I let you down, but you let me down, too!"

How? Was it because he assumed that the father of the girl's baby was Johnny (Patrick Swayze) EXACTLY LIKE SHE DID? Was it because he couldn't trust her word that Johnny was innocent? I can't even make out what the intended meaning was.

So...he let her down by wanting her to become a lawyer, or marry someone from Harvard? That's his supposed crime? Or am I still missing something?
– Chris B. Behrens
CommentedJul 16, 2014 at 15:09
@ChrisB.Behrens - Still missing. She is saying that he let her down because he discriminates. He says everyone deserves a break, but because they are poor. he assumes and discriminates against them. That's how he let her down.
– JohnP
CommentedJul 16, 2014 at 15:44

"I told you I was telling the truth Daddy. I'm sorry I lied to you. But you lied too. You told me everyone was alike and deserved a fair break. But you meant everyone who was like you. You told me you wanted me to change the world, make it better. But you meant by becoming a lawyer or an economist and marrying someone from Harvard.

****

Orwell

“But one must start by recognizing why it is that English Socialism has failed.

In England there is only one Socialist party that has ever seriously mattered, the Labour Party. It has never been able to achieve any major change, because except in purely domestic matters it has never possessed a genuinely independent policy. It was and is primarily a party of the trade unions, devoted to raising wages and improving working conditions. This meant that all through the critical years it was directly interested in the prosperity of British capitalism. In particular it was interested in the maintenance of the British Empire, for the wealth of England was drawn largely from Asia and Africa. The standard of living of the trade-union workers, whom the Labour Party represented, depended indirectly on the sweating of Indian coolies. At the same time the Labour Party was a Socialist party, using Socialist phraseology, thinking in terms of an old-fashioned anti-imperialism and more or less pledged to make restitution to the coloured races. It had to stand for the ‘independence’ of India, just as it had to stand for disarmament and ‘progress’ generally. Nevertheless everyone was aware that this was nonsense. In the age of the tank and the bombing plane, backward agricultural countries like India and the African colonies can no more be independent than can a cat or a dog. Had any Labour government come into office with a clear majority and then proceeded to grant India anything that could truly be called independence, India would simply have been absorbed by Japan, or divided between Japan and Russia.

“I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first three points deal with England's internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the world:

Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries.
Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.
Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.
Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over.
Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented.
Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers.”

“The difference between going down fighting, and surrendering without a fight, is by no means a question of ‘honour’ and schoolboy heroics. Hitler said once that to accept defeat destroys the soul of a nation. This sounds like a piece of claptrap, but it is strictly true. The defeat of 1870 did not lessen the world-influence of France. The Third Republic had more influence, intellectually, than the France of Napoleon III. But the sort of peace that Pétain, Laval and Co. have accepted can only be purchased by deliberately wiping out the national culture. The Vichy Government will enjoy a spurious independence only on condition that it destroys the distinctive marks of French culture: republicanism, secularism, respect for the intellect, absence of colour prejudice.”

from https://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_ter#google_vignette

“The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.” Niels Bohr

“Half a truth is often a great lie.” Benjamin Franklin

“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth. “Mahatma Gandhi

“If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow. “Emile Zola

People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe. Andy Rooney

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. Rene Descartes

I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it. Herodotus

The truth is more important than the facts. Frank Lloyd Wright

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain

There are no facts, only interpretations. Friedrich Nietzsche

If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. Hunter S. Thompson

“The truth shrinks as the crowd grows.

In a large meeting at work, people hold back their honest opinions. The resulting conversation offends the fewest people but is often not the truth.

Smaller groups are more likely to find truth than larger ones.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_forgetting

Power?

Belief: trust, trustworthy, msm,Mainstream Media-who owns it, who decides? self-censoring (Noam Chomsky and Andrew Marr- 5.10)

4.10 we should pay attention to our own crimes

“Very simple. If they do it it's terrorism, when we do it it's counter-terrorism”

4.18 what are the just causes?

4.30 Kurds, Suharto Indonesia, cherrypicking?

https://x.com/zei_squirrel/status/1803151795104948456

Seymour Hersh

https://www.wired.com/2008/03/gallery-abu-ghraib/

Hersh on Hillman

“Hillman, a former McKinsey consultant, stunned at least one board member at the February meeting when he raised questions about the validity of Iraq’s existing oil contracts. “Hillman said the old contracts are bad news; he said we should kick out the Russians and the French,” the board member told me. “This was a serious conversation. We’d become the brokers. Then we’d be selling futures in the Iraqi oil company. I said to myself, ‘Oh, man. Don’t go down that road.’ ” Hillman denies making such statements at the meeting.”

lawyer

“Reid Weingarten’s list of former clients reads like a who’s who of high-profile Americans who have ended up in court.

The veteran lawyer, one of the US legal system’s most celebrated white-collar defenders, has represented Enron executive Richard Causey; the WorldCom chief executive Bernard Ebbers; and the filmmaker Roman Polanski.

Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei chief financial officer, hired him after she was detained in Canada on US fraud charges.

Weingarten, of East Coast firm Steptoe and Johnson, also represented Jeffrey Epstein in the weeks after the disgraced financier was charged with sex trafficking in 2019, until Epstein’s death by suicide a month later.

The attorney was reportedly considered for Donald Trump’s legal team while the then president battled investigations into the 2016 election.

This week, Weingarten will stand up in a San Francisco courtroom to defend another client, the British businessman Mike Lynch.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/17/epstein-defender-reid-weingarten-keep-mike-lynch-us-prison/

Orwell’s nose

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/13/george-orwell-nose-stench-socialism

Who owns Blackrock?

https://x.com/myhiddenvalue/status/1828746916726976808

***

Chinese mega developer Evergrande has been ordered into liquidation owing almost $350 billion US ($532 billion AUD) to its creditors. This is more debt than some entire nations- Thailand, Israel and Portugal – and concerns are high that its liquidation could have some disastrous knock-on effects.

Every year Chinese local government sells hundreds of millions of square metres of land to state owned and private developers. In the year to August 2023, 300 cities across China sold a total of 220 million square metres of land to residential property developers, worth 2.71 trillion Yuan ($580 billion AUD).

To put Evergrande’s holdings into perspective, their land reserves came in at 230 million square metres in June 2022

***

China

The survey data suggest that about 50% of China’s wealth is in the hands of the 113m or so people with a net worth of 1m-10m yuan. This cohort—just 8% of the population—has even more influence over financial markets than their wealth would suggest. They own 64% of all publicly traded shares, for instance, and 61% of investment funds (see chart 1).

wealth gini index

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/02/08/chinas-well-to-do-are-under-assault-from-every-side

cf USA

interest rates in Africa

“A mind-bending 70% of the buildings expected in Africa in 2040 do not exist, reckons the UN. Building them could be a boon not just for slum-dwellers but for growth, jobs and, potentially, climate-friendly construction. Africa will be the construction site of the world, enthuses Ian Shapiro of Reall, an investor in African housing.“

“Uganda, with almost 50m people, has about 7,000 mortgages outstanding. It is not an extreme case. In most sub-Saharan countries the stock of mortgage debt to GDP is lower than 1%. By comparison, in Britain it is 65%. A second reason is that perhaps 85% of people have informal jobs, such as selling fruit at the market or riding a motorbike taxi”

“A rule of thumb is that mortgage rates need to be in single digits to have a chance of being affordable, says Simon Walley of the World Bank. Yet just 15 out of 48 countries for which there are data in sub-Saharan Africa have rates below 10%. That is firstly because central-bank rates, a floor for mortgages, are persistently high to curb inflation.”

“Banks and investors can earn 13-15% a year simply by buying government bonds.”

“In Tanzania, which has a population of 67m, the mortgage-refinance company directly backs only 1,500 outstanding mortgages. In Kenya, with a population of 56m, the mortgage-refinance company has backed just 2,876 loans in almost five years, less than a tenth of its target. Mr Walley of the World Bank, which has lent to most of these companies, says the problem is that “the housing supply response hasn’t happened, or not to the scale we would have liked”. High underlying interest rates also limit their impact, says Aliou Maïga of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector arm of the World Bank. He also points to a tougher problem: poverty. “Whatever you do, it’s very very difficult to fit income levels into the housing equation,” he says.”

https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/02/07/how-to-house-the-worlds-fastest-growing-population

*****

Paul Graham

How to know if he wants to accept someone on Y Combinator

GRAHAM: Well, YC — one of the reasons I’m so contemptuous of university admissions is that I am also in the admissions business. I am obsessed. [laughs] We not only measure when we fail, but we’re obsessed with the failure cases. YC has a list of all the companies that we’ve missed, that have applied to YC and we’ve turned down, and they’ve gone on to be successful.

Paul Graham on Richard Hamming

Dead activists

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa

Her van had been struck by 30 bullets. Three had found her. Only three months before, in October 2009, she and her husband José had been ambushed as they drove through the town of El Limón. She had been hurt then, too, and her husband had been killed, leaving her with three small children and a mayor’s job to do. Well, she was still doing it; still on her feet.

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2012/12/08/maria-santos-gorrostieta

Rachel Carson Silent Spring Earth day, Greta?

Dissidents, Solzhenitsyn,

Fred Hampton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

Trial of the Chicago 7

Matt Damon water,

Sowell

intellectuals stray from their field

Chomsky- linguistics, Sowell economics, Russell maths

Max Weber “I’m not a donkey and I don’t have a field”

wired

Loopholes, retrospective guilt, crime

breaking stories

My Lai, Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo Bay, Iran-Contra, Unabomber (CIA)

The Money

By Jeff Mason and Nandita Bose

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris' election effort has raised around $500 million since she became the Democratic presidential candidate, sources told Reuters, an unprecedented money haul that reflects donor enthusiasm going into the Nov. 5 election.

George Clooney, who had just raised $30 million for Biden’s campaign two weeks earlier, asked him very publicly to end his campaign. So did I, and I asked all of you to join us in this plea. A few dozen members of Congress joined in, too. And then, Pelosi.

from Michael Moore

Gladwell on spies CIA here

USA spies

was a spy?

If you can’t tell by their actions if they were spies….?

Angleton privately accused various foreign leaders of being Soviet spies. He twice informed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he believed Prime Minister Lester Pearson and his successor Pierre Trudeau were agents of the Soviet Union. Angleton accused Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson of being assets for the Soviet Union.^[27]

In 1964, Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer based in Geneva, insisted he needed to defect to the United States, as his role as a double agent had been discovered, and he was being recalled to Moscow.^[27] Nosenko was allowed to defect, although the CIA was unable to verify a KGB recall order. Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant defectors in an effort to discredit him. Under great duress, Nosenko failed two highly questionable lie detector tests but passed a third test monitored by several Agency departments.^[28] Judging his claim (as well as additional claims regarding Lee Harvey Oswald) improbable, Angleton permitted David Murphy, head of the Soviet Russia Division, to hold Nosenko in solitary confinement for over three years. This confinement included 16 months in a small attic with no windows, furniture, heat or air conditioning. Human contact was completely banned. Nosenko was given a shower once a week and had no television, reading material, radio, exercise, or toothbrush. Interrogations were frequent and intensive. Nosenko spent an additional four months in a ten-foot by ten-foot concrete bunker in Camp Peary.^[23] He was told that this condition would continue for 25 years unless he confessed to being a Soviet spy

***

(Peter Thiel interview question)

Stanislas, Claudine Gay (Ackman), Exeter, Link.

general Weslay clark talking about Iraq etc

then clark again on isis

and putin on syria

***

balance

El Salvador’s election math: 2 + 90 = 71

You need three numbers to understand this Sunday’s presidential election in El Salvador.

The first is 2. Since taking office in 2019, President Nayib Bukele’s sweeping anti-gang crackdown has resulted in the incarceration of 2% of the country’s adult population. In US terms, that’s the equivalent of throwing 5 million people in jail.

The second is 90. The official homicide rate has fallen more than 90% since 2015, including roughly 75% since Bukele took office.

The third is 71. Polls show Bukele leading his nearest competitor by 71 points. He will cruise to victory in a free and fair election.

The meaning of this math: Bukele has been criticized by human rights groups for thousands of abuses. He has used the military to strong-arm congress and twisted the constitution to run for a second term. But ordinary Salvadorans are OK with it because their cities are livable again after years when the country was one of the bloodiest in the world.

from https://www.gzeromedia.com/news/watching/el-salvadors-election-math-2-90-71

from the Economist

“Tossing aside due process is an essential part of Mr Bukele’s strategy. Previously, when a gangster swaggered into a shop and demanded protection money, the owner knew that to refuse was to court death. He could call the police, but if he testified he would be murdered and if no one testified there would not be enough evidence to lock the gangster up.

Now, if a gangster swaggers down the street, anyone can get him locked up with an anonymous phone call. This completely changes the balance of power in previously gang-dominated neighbourhoods. “Before, the good people were afraid. Now, the bad people are,” says Miguel. (However, he asks that The Economist use a pseudonym.)”

While dazzling voters with his charm, Mr Bukele has steadily removed checks on his own power. He won over the army and police with lavish benefits. Then he methodically asserted control over all three branches of government, wagering that the public wouldn’t mind ceding new powers to a man waging war on crime. In 2020 Congress refused to approve the hefty sums he wanted for his security plan, so he marched into the chamber with soldiers and accused lawmakers of thwarting the people’s desire for public safety. In 2021 his party won a super-majority. In June it passed a law to reduce the number of seats in the legislature from 84 to 60 and turn the country’s 262 municipalities into 44 districts. Critics say he has tweaked rules to benefit his own party.

When El Salvador’s courts tried to restrain Mr Bukele, he first ignored and then gutted them. In 2020 the constitutional court ruled that emergency powers he assumed during the pandemic were illegal. He wielded them anyway. Once he had a majority in Congress, he pushed aside the judges of the constitutional court and the attorney-general, who was investigating Mr Bukele’s ministers for embezzling funds, replacing them with yes-men. He forcibly retired a third of the country’s judges and replaced them with yes-men, too. The way he did so was unconstitutional, says Antonio Durán, a judge.

El salvador https://stuartwiffin.substack.com/p/el-salvador

***

Saatchi

“I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea. I am supposed to be one of the more fertile inventors of big ideas, but in my long career as a copywriter I have not had more than 20, if that. Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you.”

— David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

farnham street Y combinator

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18433161

awaxman11 on Nov 12, 2018 | prev [–]

To play devil's advocate, I think there is a relatively small overlap of 1) very successful people in finance/tech/etc and 2) people that dedicate enough time to effectively communicate ideas in a book/blog

There are exceptions, Ray Dalio being a recent good example. But I think he is more the exception, not the rule.

Below is a related passage from Essentialism that touches upon this dynamic:

"Jim Collins, the author of the business classic Good to Great, was once told by Peter Drucker that he could either build a great company or build great ideas but not both. Jim chose ideas. As a result of this trade-off there are still only three full-time employees in his company, yet his ideas have reached tens of millions of people through his writing."

McKeown, Greg. Essentialism (p. 55)

Richard Perle and Mike Lynch (and Seymour Hersh)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/mar/21/usa.world

Harari

no links in history

but

Iraq - Why Iraq? Why Saddam? 9.11? Israel?

amount of donations to Kamala harris- who’s donating? Why don’t they give to charity instead? What are they expecting? What have they been offered?

nationality of terrorists

Iraq or Iran- biggest threat to West?

Gaddafi? Arafat? Hamas?

more interesting if you can pull things together before rather than after with hindsight

https://freepress.org/article/wexner-war

George Soros partner Joe Lewis

https://protos.com/scoop-indicted-billionaire-joe-lewis-sold-property-to-sam-bankman-fried/

Larry Lessig

Lessig on Musk

“Musk is a poisonous type that this moment in history has made increasingly possible. (I discuss the type in The Age of the Fantasist.) He’s a man of enormous wealth, surrounded by people who don’t tell him the truth, psychologically unconstrained by the truth, convinced he is a savior, and that the world can’t live without him. He’s Putin but without an army. He’s Trump but constitutionally barred from being President. His single obsession is to be the center of attention. Yet he actually apparently doesn’t realize just how embarrassingly inane his ideas actually are. Years ago, I admired Musk, because I saw only what he had done, and very little of what he thought. Then, I saw a recording of him presenting an argument favoring a carbon tax. The argument was right and true, but the presentation was totally banal. If a first-year grad student had given the same talk, he would have been asked to leave grad school. Musk then followed this up by endorsing the election of a party that is constitutionally committed to denying climate change. Apparently, lower taxes on rich people is more important than honestly addressing climate change.” from https://medium.com/jammernd/on-a-tesla-dont-c6bdb6bf6138

Taibbi on Goldman Sachs- see below cntrl F squid

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-195229/

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/sep/10/inbox-33-substack-newsletters-culture-to-read-blogging

YCombinator hacker news on substack

*****

Ivermectin by Scott Alexander

“Except that everyone is still focusing on deaths and hospitalizations just because they’re flashy. Mahmud et al, which everyone agrees is a great study, found that ivermectin decreased days until clinical recovery, p = 0.003?

So what do you do?

This is one of the toughest questions in medicine. It comes up again and again. You have some drug. You read some studies. Again and again, more people are surviving (or avoiding complications) when they get the drug. It’s a pattern strong enough to common-sensically notice. But there isn’t an undeniable, unbreachable fortress of evidence. The drug is really safe and doesn’t have a lot of side effects. So do you give it to your patients? Do you take it yourself?

Here this question is especially tough, because, uh, if you say anything in favor of ivermectin you will be cast out of civilization and thrown into the circle of social hell reserved for Klan members and 1/6 insurrectionists. All the health officials in the world will shout “horse dewormer!” at you and compare you to Josef Mengele. But good doctors aren’t supposed to care about such things. Your only goal is to save your patient. Nothing else matters.

I am telling you that Mahmud et al is a good study and it got p = 0.003 in favor of ivermectin. You can take the blue pill, and stay a decent respectable member of society. Or you can take the horse dewormer pill, and see where you end up.

In a second, I’ll tell you my answer. But you won’t always have me to answer questions like this, and it might be morally edifying to observe your thought process in situations like this. So take a second, and meet me on the other side of the next section heading.

…

The Synthesis

Hopefully you learned something interesting about yourself there. But my answer is: worms!

As several doctors and researchers have pointed out (h/t especially Avi Bitterman and David Boulware), the most impressive studies come from places that are teeming with worms. Mahmud from Bangladesh, Ravakirti from East India, Lopez-Medina from Colombia, etc.

Here’s the prevalence of roundworm infections by country (source). But alongside roundworms, there are threadworms, hookworms, blood flukes, liver flukes, nematodes, trematodes, all sorts of worms. Add them all up and somewhere between half and a quarter of people in the developing world have at least one parasitic worm in their body.

Being full of worms may impact your ability to fight coronavirus. Gluchowska et al write:

Helminth [ie worm] infections are among the most common infectious diseases. Bradbury et al. highlight the possible negative interactions between helminth infection and COVID-19 severity in helminth-endemic regions and note that alterations in the gut microbiome associated with helminth infection appear to have systemic immunomodulatory effects. It has also been proposed that helminth co-infection may increase the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19, because the immune system cannot efficiently respond to the virus; in addition, vaccines will be less effective for these patients, but treatment and prevention of helminth infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19. During millennia of parasite-host coevolution helminths evolved mechanisms suppressing the host immune responses, which may mitigate vaccine efficacy and increase severity of other infectious diseases.

Treatment of worm infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19! And ivermectin is a deworming drug! You can see where this is going…

The most relevant species of worm here is the roundworm Strongyloides stercoralis. Among the commonest treatments for COVID-19 is corticosteroids, a type of immunosuppresant drug. The types of immune responses it suppresses do more harm than good in coronavirus, so turning them off limits collateral damage and makes patients better on net. But these are also the types of immune responses that control Strongyloides. If you turn them off even very briefly, the worms multiply out of control, you get what’s called “Strongyloides hyperinfection”, and pretty often you die. According to the WHO:

The current COVID-19 pandemic serves to highlight the risk of using systemic corticosteroids and, to a lesser extent, other immunosuppressive therapy, in populations with significant risk of underlying strongyloidiasis. Cases of strongyloidiasis hyperinfection in the setting of corticosteroid use as COVID-19 therapy have been described and draw attention to the necessity of addressing the risk of iatrogenic strongyloidiasis hyperinfection syndrome in infected individuals prior to corticosteroid administration.
Although this has gained importance in the midst of a pandemic where corticosteroids are one of few therapies shown to improve mortality, its relevance is much broader given that corticosteroids and other immunosuppressive therapies have become increasingly common in treatment of chronic diseases (e.g. asthma or certain rheumatologic conditions).

So you need to “address the risk” of strongyloides infection during COVID treatment in roundworm-endemic areas. And how might you address this, WHO?

Treatment of chronic strongyloidiasis with ivermectin 200 µg/kg per day orally x 1-2 days is considered safe with potential contraindications including possible Loa loa infection (endemic in West and Central Africa), pregnancy, and weight <15kg.
Given ivermectin’s safety profile, the United States has utilized presumptive treatment with ivermectin for strongyloidiasis in refugees resettling from endemic areas, and both Canada and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have issued guidance on presumptive treatment to avoid hyperinfection in at risk populations. Screening and treatment, or where not available, addition of ivermectin to mass drug administration programs should be studied and considered.

This is serious and common enough that, if you’re not going to screen for it, it might be worth “add[ing] ivermectin to mass drug administration programs” in affected areas!”

from Scott Alexander

Astral Codex Ten

Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

4 years ago · 406 likes · 2150 comments · Scott Alexander

Migrants

Boats, Rwanda, hotels

Last year, the cost to the taxpayer of putting up asylum seekers in hotels was revealed to be £8.3 million a day. Though there may be no end to Britain’s migrant crisis, the Labour Party has pledged to end the use of asylum hotels.

A swimming pool and gym in the basement has been out of bounds for more than five years. At times, there is no one behind the reception desk; it seems that anyone can come and go as they please.

When I began my Britannia Hotels odyssey, I was initially surprised by how few of the company’s establishments I would actually be able to visit. The company’s online booking form showed that no rooms were currently available at 18 of its 63 premises. I later find out that these unavailable hotels are often those that have been used to accommodate asylum seekers. But the Home Office’s press team could not say exactly how many of Britannia’s hotels are currently block-booked on this basis.

The next day, I park outside the Airport Inn near Gatwick, another Langsam hotel that has also been used to accommodate asylum applicants. I have been there for just a few seconds before a security guard strolls across the car park and tells me that the hotel is now “private”.

Is anyone staying there at the moment, I ask? Neither the first guard nor a colleague who soon joins us will initially answer. After repeating the question, I am told the building is closed for a “refit”. As far as I can see there are no workmen or tradesmen’s vans in the car park. During the two-minute conversation before I am firmly asked to leave, I see a couple of young men smoking outside the hotel. Dressed in hoodies and jeans, they don’t look like plumbers, electricians or decorators.

A few days later I meet Ahmed Sami, a 28-year-old asylum seeker from Jordan, outside the Britannia Hotel Bournemouth. Sami is standing on the pavement while his room receives its weekly clean. He tells me he has been waiting three years for his asylum claim to be processed.

For the last three months, his home has been this scaffolding-clad hotel. When I suggest this sounds like a long time, Sami seems surprised. “Many people are here for two years, more even,” he says.

There are thought to be around 700 asylum applicants living in Bournemouth’s hotels. Most of them are men aged between 18 and their late twenties, many having made their way to the UK from Iran, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Afghanistan or Yemen.

the hotels are arguably better than the alternatives: a detention centre or the Bibby Stockholm, the barge moored a few miles away in Portland Harbour used to accommodate asylum seekers. Last month, Labour announced that the barge will be closed in January 2025.

Langsam simply loves to run the tightest of ships. Annual profits at the group’s largest company have climbed by 18% to £39.4 million over the past year.

Three separate companies in the Britannia group now show net assets of more than £400 million. But a group structure involving a Jersey-based parent company and a trust ensures it is not possible for outsiders to see the full value of Langsam’s holdings.

His legitimate use of the soon-to-be wound down non-dom tax status has allowed him to pay less UK tax. But it has also provided a glimpse at the publicity-shy hotelier’s character.

Some years ago, Langsam launched a professional negligence campaign against the accountancy firm Hacker Young for not realising more swiftly that he could become a non-dom. Three days before the dispute was due to head to court, Hacker Young made a £1 million settlement to Langsam.

But that wasn’t the end of the matter. The property mogul later launched proceedings against the solicitors at Beachcroft who had represented him during the claim against Hacker Young. Why? Well, Langsam argued he should actually have received a £3 million settlement from Hacker Young — not a mere £1 million.

His claim against Beachcroft was lost but the judgement gives a feel for the way Langsam operates, describing him as a “large personality” who is “clearly used to getting his way and dominating those around him”.

from https://unherd.com/fr/2024/08/le-magnat-des-hotels-pour-demandeurs-dasile-britannique/

Britannia hotels photos

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2022/nov/09/britannia-named-worst-uk-hotel-chain-for-tenth-year-in-a-row

**********

Undercover FBI Capitol

Proud Boys

https://www.economist.com/1843/2024/07/22/how-the-proud-boys-are-prepping-for-a-second-trump-term

The world has moved on since Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, went to prison two years ago.

Federal agents arrested Tarrio in March 2022 – he and five other Proud Boy leaders were charged with a number of offences, most seriously seditious conspiracy, a rarely invoked crime dating from the civil war. According to our analysis, more than 50 Proud Boys were charged, making them the organised group with the largest number of indictments for their actions on that day.

his emails pass through “a special system that filters my messages and scrutinises every detail”, he told us. “I’m the Bete Noire, remember?” He was referring to his conviction last year on charges related to his role in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th 2021. A judge sentenced Tarrio to 22 years – the longest sentence given to any January 6th defendant.

Leaders of the Proud Boys insist they pose no threat to democracy and that the accusations against them reflect anti-Trump hysteria on the left, in the media and among overzealous prosecutors aligned with Biden. “They accused us of trying to overtake the United States government by any means possible. With 30 guys unarmed?” asked Fernando Alonso, the president of a Proud Boy chapter in Miami who is a friend of Tarrio’s. He found the suggestion laughable. The real reason the Proud Boys have been persecuted, he and his comrades believe, is to undermine Trump’s bid for re-election. “They’re trying to set us up as Trump’s Army,” said the chapter vice-president, a financial analyst who asked not to be named. “If it wasn’t for Trump they wouldn’t give two craps about us.”

This wasn’t the first time Tarrio had worked with the cops. As a young adult, he had drifted. In 2012 federal authorities charged him with fraud for his role in an illegal scheme to resell diabetic test strips. Tarrio pleaded guilty but managed to reduce his sentence by going undercover as a police informant, to expose illegal gambling, drug-smuggling and other crimes.

Tarrio’s past work was unknown to the Proud Boys who elected him. In a group wary, for good reason, of being penetrated by FBI informants, the truth might have spooked some of his comrades. (Indeed, the public revelation of Tarrio’s past as an undercover informant in 2021 was a factor in the Proud Boys’ split into two factions.) “I’ve never had a client as prolific in terms of co-operating” with police, his lawyer said.

also from Michael Moore

The Sheep that thinks it's a Wolf

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