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Time once again to emphasize the differences between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism. They're often used as synonyms but they are different, although they do tend to lead to each other. Order one, and the other two are usually delivered soon enough.

 Totalitarianism is best understood as the politicization of everything. Every facet of life is infused with political meaning... and subjected to political control. There is little room for privacy or individualism. Every word and deed is seen as a political action.
Totalitarianism does *not* require authoritarian government, although it usually leads to such. You can be totalitarian without having any real government power at all, enforcing your political will through mob actions and corporate power. Examples from recent history abound.
Totalitarianism is the easiest of the three deadly "isms" to slide into, because it can easily be disguised with claims of its good intentions. Totalitarians usually claim to be motivated by the Greater Good. They claim to represent the interests of sympathetic victims.
Totalitarians claim that society is unjust and must be corrected by force. Before they gain the power to become authoritarians, they often assert the right to use force outside of the law because the government is corrupt or serves the interests of their ideological enemies.
A perfect example of the difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism is the slogan "your silence is violence." The people who said this were not generally agents of the government, i.e. authoritarians, but they succinctly distilled the essence of totalitarianism.
Totalitarian ideology paves the way for authoritarian rule - not always by an individual strongman, but often by an all-powerful political party and its clique of high-level insiders. It is a common delusion that democracy is a perfect vaccine against authoritarianism.
"They can't be tyrants if we can vote them out of office!" Oh, yes, they can. Much of the past century can be understood as a worldwide effort to impose authoritarian rule while preserving the illusion of democracy - sanctifying authoritarian power with the sacred vote.
You will notice that almost every bona fide authoritarian ruler makes a point of holding "elections" and announcing he won a huge majority of the votes. They understand the power of the foolish belief in democracy as a magic talisman against authoritarianism.
Even without getting into outright ballot box stuffing, intimidating the opposition, etc., authoritarianism can flourish under democracy because the authoritarians have such incredible amounts of money and power to buy off enough of the electorate to retain their offices.
Modern authoritarians also have a knack for hiding much of their power in bureaucratic structures that are not subject to the disapproval of voters. The bureaucracy can become powerful enough to fight back against - and defeat - anyone the people actually do get to vote for.
The strongman model of authoritarianism is primitive and vulnerable to revolution. It's just too obvious that One Big Guy is an iron-fisted tyrant, and the system grows rickety in his absence, especially if he leaves power to his spoiled, arrogant children.
Totalitarianism paves the way for authoritarianism. You can get people in a totalitarian society to DEMAND authoritarianism. Once they accept the premise that everything is political, why not support a cadre of brilliant, selfless government officials to impose what is "right?"
Once enough people accept the premise that dissenting from "the consensus" about a myriad of subjects is "wrong," why not take the next step and make it illegal? Why allow "special interests" and "selfish, short-sighted" individuals to "sabotage" the consensus with disobedience?
And once enough people accept the notion that the "consensus" (the slick new term for the somewhat outmoded and sinister "Will of the People") should be imposed with government power, why should anyone be allowed to vote against that noble crusade?
Building support for authoritarianism in a democracy is not difficult, if you can sell the notion of stupid, selfish, short-sighted, unruly voters who need a wise and powerful elite to make the Big Decisions for them... and the power to impose their judgments on the unwilling.
And when the amount of power necessary to compel obedience becomes so great that authoritarianism begins to lose its camouflage, when the system threatens to become obvious tyranny that could spark a revolution... that's when you need fascism.
Arguments about the precise definition of fascism have raged for a century, but the key element is the absolute political domination of private capital. The State and its ideology control private resources without actually *owning* them.
That's the "unity" of purpose inherent in the term "fascism." Every bit of power is marshaled in the service of the State ideology - but the State doesn't own, is not responsible for, every instrument of power that it controls. Private resources become instruments of force.
Fascists tend to be totalitarians and authoritarians, because their ideology is the final logical evolution of the other two - the perfect fusion of the politicization of everything and the worship of centralized authority. But each of the elements is distinct unto itself.
Free people should forever be on guard against all three, understanding how they flow together... and how one of those "isms" might be peddled to a people who are too focused upon the dangers of another. They are all seductive in different ways. /end

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Argentina legalizing abortion offers an opportunity to reflect on the great unwritten media narrative of the past few generations: the lives of women and children got worse in so many ways after Roe v. Wade.

Media would never, ever write that narrative, of course - would never string stories together and search for a pattern that could be refined into a political point - but it's the net impact of their reporting on women's issues. Everything started getting worse in the 70s.

There is a valid "narrative" to be discerned from that ocean of bad news about women and children over the past few decades. It's not a coincidence. It's a direct result of the Big Lie pushed by the abortion lobby: that only one person is involved in the decision to give birth.

That's so obviously untrue that entire civilizations are driven mad when they are forced to accept it. It's like forcing everyone to agree that the sky is green or gravity is a myth. Cognitive dissonance inflicts far more social damage than politicians or academics want to admit.

Women and (born) children suffer after abortion becomes broadly legalized because men are erased from the picture. A lot of men - including rich and powerful men - LIKE being erased from that particular picture. Others are intimidated out of insisting they belong in it.
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John Hayward
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Just as no amount of flat temperature data would dissuade the climate cult, so no amount of flat (or even negative!) data on mask effectiveness will shake the faith of the Church of Covid. Beautiful Theories cannot be disproven by mere information.

The "Covid emergency" will never be over. It will mutate and seek out new missions when this particular virus threat abates, repurposing its funding and clinging to its power. They're already talking up the "next pandemic" and how we must forever remain at DEFCON 2 to be ready.

Masks are now a visible and tangible symbol of an entire agenda. Its champions will use every means possible to force you to wear them forever, including corporate pressure, their new favorite tool. Expect commercial mask requirements to linger, especially big corporations.

True believers, meanwhile, will wear their masks with grim determination and scowl ostentatiously at everyone who refuses to join them. It's a new virtue signal that will not go away any time soon. Mask scolding is a quick, easy, heady power rush.

All the while, studies will keep rolling out that masks don't help, and might even hurt. That was fairly common medical knowledge before the pandemic began, but it was aggressively suppressed when masks became a political symbol, and a totem for people desperate to DO SOMETHING.
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John Hayward
John Hayward
@Doc_0
An important lesson of the post-Cold War era, learned far too late: allowing totalitarian regimes to interface with the political, economic, and media systems of free nations is like installing a dangerous virus on a computer.

The suicidal folly of globalism was believing the reverse: that freedom and democracy would leak into totalitarian systems and produce quiet revolutions. As we know after 30 years of disastrous experimentation, tyranny is FAR more viral than liberty in the modern world.

Tyranny, like a computer virus, breaks all the rules that allow free markets and democracies to function. Tyranny ruthlessly exploits "weaknesses" in the code of free systems, working from beyond the reach of the legal or social enforcement systems in targeted nations.

Tyrannical nations use brutal methods to extract value from their people, then invest that value to target and destroy industries in free countries, taking control of important supply chains with production unencumbered by the costs free societies impose on their companies.

Tyrannical nations easily overwhelm the media of free societies with propaganda, ideological content and official lies. A tyranny can run op-eds in free-world newspapers while silencing all dissent, both foreign and domestic, in its own state media.
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One reason the Left hates Rush so much is that he was so effective at skewering their pretensions to moral and intellectual superiority. He made it okay to laugh at them, to judge the failure of their policies without ritually celebrating their alleged good intentions.
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John Hayward
John Hayward
@Doc_0
When people voted to drain the swamp, they knew the alligators - the high-profile D.C. power players, special interests, and safe seat senators-for-life - would be a problem. They underestimated the vast horde of smaller critters squirming in the muck at the bottom of the swamp.


As @davereaboi pointed out, the ecosystem that feeds on the endless torrent of deficit-fueled D.C. spending is vast beyond belief, and it has tentacles that reach around the world. That ecosystem has multiple layers, and every one of them will fight to keep Big Gov money flowing.

There are entities wholly dedicated to spend money spent by entities that spend money spent by entities that spend money spent by entities that spend money from D.C. Many are invisible to taxpayers. Some are foreign operations utterly beyond the reach of American voters.

And even when an outsider comes along and dislodges a few swamp creatures, we find another massive ecosystem dedicated to breeding and replacing them. Most people in the heartland have no idea how vast is the machinery that produces manpower for the permanent bureaucracy.

Pluck out one parasite, and a swarm of fresh parasites is ready to flow in and replace it. Educational institutions and bureaucratic recruitment systems are working around the clock to embed the ideology of statism in legions of aspiring government employees and NGO staffers.
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On December 25 Mr Pool retweeted August 16 message about the Phoenix and that the worst was still on the horizon to come. 1/*


Maybe now we can assume that November 3 message meant "FUD" nor "FUN". Putting the word in capital letters seems to indicate the aspect the word fud has in our space, FUD. 2/*


Brad started it on December 22 (1/3 posts (Don't say? Sure) = 13 = Plan B). 3/*


And immediately the SEC followed dropping the bomb (1.3 billions (Don't say? Sure) = 13 = Plan B). 4/*


FUD materializes, Bitstamp is one of the first that haltes XRP trading and so on. 5/*
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One fascist to watch in 2021 is Joseph Charles "Oakman" Golinske of SE MI. He's been a Proud Boy for a couple years, but took a break recently from the group and promotes himself through the "Oak Nation" channel on Telegram.


Most people may be familiar with him as the tall guy in the Proud Boys bridge shot, from their August 17, 2019 attack on Portland, which featured an American Guard bus trying (and failing) to bludgeon antifascists with hammers.


He was also with his g/f at the time (Dominique Tota, left of Tarrio), and that's definitely a twitter account folks will want to block/report because he posts on it.


He's been plenty active at the pro-Covid/anti-mask/ReOpen protests in Lansing MI, seen here with Jerry Wayne and an effigy of Gretchen Whitmer, who his militia friends tried to kidnap and publicly execute.


Outside of the Proud Boys, his solo "career" with Oak Nation features the same misogyny, classism and gateway to far-right domestic terrorism the Proud Boys themselves feature. Here's him peddling oxychlorinque and bragging about harassing service workers.
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Mason Currey
Mason Currey
@masoncurrey
The Creative Process in 43 Hayao Miyazaki Screengrabs

(Context: https://t.co/nqjmAtLAND)
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Ooana Trien
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@ooana
I shared this on my FB page and asked, can ya really blame him?

I was half kidding. I also assumed someone would think of what I did pretty quickly and waiting for the comment to mention what I assumed was obvious.

The timing. I was sure someone else had thought of it.


But no one did. 20+ comments in people discussed the morality or bad sense or libertarian perspectives. Someone even said I’m thinking about doing that. No one said what I thought was obvious. Have you thought of it? Is it obvious to you?

Here’s a clue...recognize it?


How about this?


The author discusses it with Mike Wallace in 1958
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@MuellerSheWrote
THREAD: My thoughts on the decision not to call witnesses. Please correct me if I'm wrong. This take is based on what I think I know, and there's much I don't know, but I do not understand why the dems didn't depose Rep. Beutler. Let's talk about the objections: 1/

First, many are saying it would drag this thing out and prevent Biden's agenda from moving forward. I don't see how that's possible. The senate had the votes to depose Rep. Beutler. We saw that with the 55-45 vote to allow witnesses. GOP can't filibuster that 2/

It would have taken probably a week to depose her and introduce her testimony into the senate record. The senate is scheduled to be in recess this week. The only thing a deposition of Beutler would have done is stopped the senate's vacation. 3/

Since everything would have been done in roughly a week, and the senate was scheduled for a week-long vacation, the deposition of Beutler wouldn't have delayed any of Biden's agenda. 4/

Next, many are saying Mitch threatened to filibuster Biden's agenda. That's also an empty threat. Cabinet confirmations require only a simple majority vote, and the Covid relief package is going through the budget reconciliation process so it's not subject to filibuster 5/
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How did you get your first customers for WIP? How did you grow BetaList’s traffic? Etc.

Makers are looking to reverse-engineer success. I see it everywhere.

I don’t think it works that way and the answers to those questions are mostly useless. 💥

I have built dozens of different products over the last couple of years. The vast majority failed. 😭

Surely if I know the answers to these questions, but still fail over and over again, these answers aren’t that useful. 🤷‍♀️

So what’s a better question to ask? 🤔

99.9% of the questions I receive are about the products that did well. In a way that makes sense, because we quickly forget about those that didn’t succeed.

🧠 This is known as survivorship bias.

Focusing on what survived, while ignoring what made it survive in the first place.

The real question, what you really want to know, is this:

What makes @WIP, @BetaList, and to some extent @AllStartupJobs succeed where my countless other attempts failed?

What separates a failed product 👎 from a successful product 👍?

Honestly, I don’t know. I wish I did.

It’s like Steve Jobs said “I’ll know it when I see it.” 👀

Same is true when we make products. We don’t know upfront what will work. But once we see an inkling of a product that does have potential, it’s not that hard to spot.
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1/OK, I should really write another thread about university-centric regional development, because I think people often make some (very understandable) mistakes when thinking about this issue.

2/The biggest myth, I think, is that universities help regions by educating locals as undergraduates.

Skeptics of universities say: "But most of the people who graduate end up leaving."

3/In fact, most of what a university does for a regional economy is NOT about educating local kids.

Educating local kids is good for the nation, but doesn't help a region much.

The way a university helps a region is through

4/Undergraduates usually leave town after graduation.

But university RESEARCH pulls in OTHER smart people from other regions, and they stay there.

Here's a paper showing that this is the main way universities increase a region's human capital:

5/Research also pulls in business investment.

Companies want to partner with university labs, so they can commercialize the technologies the labs produce. So they invest in the labs, and sometimes they even put their offices in the town.
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Ever wonder how traders get in stocks before they explode? 🧐

Or find options that move 1,000% in a single day/week?🤯

I made a thread going over exactly how I find these stocks BEFORE they take off 🚀
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So, let's start with the software I use…

Finviz!! Finviz is a free website that I use to scan for stocks.

They have a lot of other cool features as well, but I only use their scanner.
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Head on over to finviz and go to the screener

Click on the “All” tab on the top and put in the criteria in the next tweet
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THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVI BEEJ / BIJA MANTRA.

Once Suutji in his discourse with King Janmajeya repeated the words of Vyasji regarding the pronounciation of the word ऐ. Vyasji had heard the importance of this word in a meeting of all important saints at Naimisharanya.


There this story was discussed.

In that gathering of such great sages, Rishi Jamdagni asked a question to all the eminent luminaries. He wanted to know which diety is the most revered and gets satisfied easily with our prayers. So Lomash rishi replied that Devi

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There lived a Brahmin named Devdutt in Kosal.

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He sang the verses very well, but he had to take respite in order to breathe between two verses. This angered devdutt. He spoke his thoughts to Gobhil rishi.

The rishi got very angry as devdutt did not realise the practicalities of singing. He cursed devdutt that
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