I’ll also go on another Orwell tangent: Conservatives love calling any new “woke” word that enters common usage as “Orwellian”, because they don’t want to be “forced” by social pressure to learn new terminology important to people whose humanity they refuse to acknowledge anyway

But Newspeak is a version of English where descriptive words have been removed, not added. 1984 is written with a deeply limited vocabulary set.......so in fact, conservatives share an ideology with *the villains* of 1984.
Newspeak is not called that because the words are new. It’s called that because that’s *exactly* what authoritarian fascists would call a restrictive language set, it’s propaganda. The state in the book came up with the name, and that context is important
It’s “Newspeak” for the same reason they’re “National Socialists”, an intentional misnomer intended to obscure reality, to wear down your defences. Fascists don’t call a spade a spade, they point at a cloudy sky and say “it is sunny”, until you’re tired of arguing with them.
Fascists may claim to value free speech, but they jump at the chance to censor specific words, and it’s not the words they themselves would use. That’s why they hate obscenities and any kind of terminology related to social justice, but not slurs.
The fucking fundamental point of 1984 is that you can more effectively curtail freedom of speech by obliterating the words you need to form and communicate complex ideas, than you would by simply making certain expressions seditious, because complexity is anathema to fascism
If I don’t have the word “genderqueer” in my vocabulary, I can’t be my entire self, that is a thing I struggled with for decades, and it was only in having that word that I was able to exist in an authentic way.

That’s literally why fascists protest having to learn new words.
So cast your mind back to “grab them by the pussy”

The left was offended because he advocated sexual assault, with the meaning and not the words themselves.

The right insisted we were offended by the word “pussy”, that “better” words would make the meaning more palatable.
I can’t think of a better illustration to keep in the back of your head any time you read or hear a statement being issued by a fascist:

Ignore the words themselves, interrogate what they MEAN, because they meticulously choose words to intentionally obscure meaning.
That’s counter intuitive if you’re someone who puts a lot of thought and effort into word choice because you want to accurately communicate what you genuinely think and believe, but I swear it is the decoder ring for nazi-speak.

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I should mention, this is why I keep talking about this. Because I know so many people who legally CAN'T.

How do I know they have NDAs, if they can't talk legally about them? Because they trusted me with their secrets... after I said something. That's how they knew I was safe.


Some of the people who have reached out to me privately have been sitting with the pain of what happened to them and the regret that they signed for YEARS. But at the time, it didn't seem like they had any other option BUT to sign.

I do not blame *anyone* for signing an NDA, especially when it's attached to a financial lifeline. When you feel like your family's wellbeing is at stake, you'll do anything -- even sign away your own voice -- to provide for them. That's not a "choice"; that's survival.

And yes, many of the people whose stories I now know were pressured into signing an NDA by my husband's ex-employer. Some of whom I *never* would have guessed. People I thought "left well." Turns out, they've just been *very* good at abiding by the terms of their NDA.

(And others who have reached out had similar experiences with other Christian orgs. Turns out abuse, and the use of NDAs to cover up that abuse, is rampant in a LOT of places.)
I’ve asked Byers to clarify, but as I read this tweet, it seems that Bret Stephens included an unredacted use of the n-word in his column this week to make a point, and the column got spiked—maybe as a result?


Four times. The column used the n-word (in the context of a quote) four times. https://t.co/14vPhQZktB


For context: In 2019, a Times reporter was reprimanded for several incidents of racial insensitivity on a trip with high school students, including one in which he used the n-word in a discussion of racial slurs.

That incident became public late last month, and late last week, after 150 Times employees complained about how it had been handled, the reporter in question resigned.

In the course of all that, the Times' executive editor said that the paper does not "tolerate racist language regardless of intent.” This was the quote that Bret Stephens was pushing back against in his column. (Which, again, was deep-sixed by the paper.)

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.