BC LIFE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Jeff Bezos sells me a holodeck.

Not as fully-appointed as the facilities you’ve seen on television, but the part of me that reads has never been happier in my LIFE

 But there are people who recoil at this

I am one of those people. I think it’s gross. The devil’s agreement one makes with this device is that you permit an enormous corporation an outpost in your backyard.

It skeeves me a little. I think it should skeeve anyone.
It’s in your house, it’s on your network, it’s handling your data:

A multi billion dollar company.

Hoovering up data about the things you put into your BRAIN. Explicitly. Because you want it to.

Because you need more shit for your brain. You’re hooked on feeding it now.
I put up with this revolting transhumanism—consumer cognitively parasitized by corporation—because the upsides are, well, magical.

You tell the thing what you want to read.

30 seconds later, you are reading it.
This is some Reading Rainbow ACID TRIP shit.

The convenience of summoning any book you want, at any time, even if it’s 3 AM and the book shop is closed.

No weight penalty. Nothing heavy to haul around.

The process is so painless.
But come on, you’ve seen Battlestar Galactica, you know how this ends.

We get all smug with our highly centralized, integrated information technology project. And then the complexity gets away from us.

There are consequences we didn’t anticipate.
Books is small potatoes, of course.

They’ve got gadgets that monitor your neighborhood.

They’ll sell you a security drone, now.

At some point what a company like Amazon knows about you, your neighborhood—only the most fanatical surveillance state could have fantasized about it
Amazon handles a significant chunk of digital freight, from the intellectual property itself down to the servers that host and distribute it.

Then handles the logistics of physical goods.

If you do commerce, Amazon is taking a cut somewhere down the stack.
Empires need infrastructure.

Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google—they’re all empires

They are in the business of building roads.

And tollbooths.

And billboards.

Sometimes, when you’re not careful: colonoscopies.
In Amazon’s case, they know what I read. When I read it.

They know when my cat needs something I can’t get locally.

They know… anything they want about my IT situation at any given moment. Network configuration, IP, devices active, overlapping

God knows how much other trivia.
But they don’t just have it for me.

They have it for my neighbors.

They have it for Whole Foods shoppers.

I could draw sets and sets of people out of a hat and we’d find ways Amazon’s got them.
This is actual cyberpunk dystopian shit.

The mainstreaming of OnlyFans even makes it all horny enough that we’ll recognize it as real.

The dystopia’s all so low rent, is what’s really going to throw us off. We were promised neon holograms and instead we have Snapchat filters.
Instead of T-800 coming to us with fuckin LASER blasters and glowing-ass red eyes,

we’ve got a shitty gig economy app on a tiny fragile phone deciding, via algorithm, if someone is going to make enough money to cover food and rent for their family.

That’s some low budget shit!
All that to say.

The machines are here.

The guys who own them want to pick your pocket. Or some other party’s pocket, while on its way to deliver things to you.

All this pocket picking means we get caught in the middle.
Sidebar:

Now we’re going to talk about what an ABSOLUTE FLEX it has been, from the beginning, that the Kindle with cellular radio will work in any country without roaming fees or any particular intervention.

This is some kind of birthday gift James Bond gives his librarian.
From an information technology perspective, I can’t think of anything more imperial-magical than mastery over local telecom operators.

What an imposing flagship.
Normally, data roaming is onerous for the consumer.

You need to pay extra to your carrier, or fiddle with SIM cards for a local provider. Either way, it’s bureaucracy and cost.

Kindle, as envoy to the Amazon empire, pays all your tolls as a courtesy.
Remember, it’s pick-pockets all the way down.

Amazon covers your sporadic international cellular fees to keep the small-time pickpockets at a distance.

They want your undivided attention for their own transactions.

More from Life

Simon DeDeo
Simon DeDeo
@SimonDeDeo
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
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Naval
Naval
@naval
How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.
LIFE , STARTUPS , NAVAL1
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David Rothkopf
David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf
If there is one thing I have learned it is that people love bullshit. They buy bullshit stories from professional bullshit artists, accept bullshit philosophies, purchase bullshit how-to-books, vote for bullshitting politicians.

At first, I resisted believing this because it is illogical and dumb and frankly, doesn't reflect well on the human race of which I am a member (and thus have long been hopeful that it is more of a distinction than it actually turns out to be.)

But if you actually are interested in facts you begin to notice how little most people care for them. Sometimes it is because they are heard to learn and bullshit is so much more widely and easily available. Sometimes it is because facts make them uncomfortable about themselves.

Sometimes it is because just one tiny fact will upset a whole worldview that has grown as comfortable as an overstuffed chair. (Settling into such worldviews is a lot like settling into chairs like that because the longer you're there and the deeper you sink...

...the harder it is to hoist yourself up and out of your fat-assed intellectual laziness.) But I actually think the reason people have such an appetite for bullshit goes deeper, goes to an aspect of ourselves we just can't accept.
LIFE
silkcoeur
silkcoeur
@silkcoeur
[🔞 hopekook, rimming] happy vday if you celebrate it, last night i fell asleep thinking about a horny hopekook date where they set aside time to cuddle and watch something soothing and mindless. jk chooses a nature documentary, more for background ambiance than anything else.

they start out with hobi laying crosswise on the couch, and jk crawls between his legs, rests his head on hobi's sternum. he likes to cuddle like that because he can hear hobi's heartbeat. also hobi will usually skritch his scalp when they're in this position.

he's doing that now, running his fingers from jk's forehead to the nape of his neck, but then he scoops along jk's ear instead. fingertips smoothing along the shell curve and then gently tugging on his earlobe. he keeps doing it, repetitive. the apartment is warm.

and quiet, too, except for the doc in the bg and the soft sounds of their breathing. hobi's fingertips keep tugging easily, gently on his ear lobe and all of a sudden jk realizes he's getting hard. he doesn't pay it much mind, one or both of them often do when they cuddle, even

if it's just a cuddle session & not anything further. but then hobi moves his leg, feels it, laughs softly, & moves his leg again - this time, deliberately. jk smiles, rubbing his mouth against hobi's sweatshirt. he rolls his hips, real slow like, and feels hobi's dick, too.
LIFE
The Stoic Empire
The Stoic Empire
@TheStoicEmpire
//Thread of wisdom//

The modern mind is overstimulated and the modern body is under stimulated and overfed. Meditation, exercise, and fasting restore an ancient balance.

~ @naval

Retweet to add another.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

~ Galileo Galilei

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

~ Richard Feynman

Your best work involves timing. If someone wrote the best hip hop song of all time in the Middle Ages, he had bad timing.

~ @ScottAdamsSays

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.

~ Lao Tzu
LIFE

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लखोबा लोखंडे...
@LakhobaLokhande
Secrets of Ganapati (Author - Keshav Sitaram Thackeray)

This article is taken from Keshav Sitaram Thackeray's book 'Dharmachi Devale and Devalcha Dharma'. In it, Bal Thackeray's father is claiming how the Hindu deity of Ganesha is imaginary.
(1/20)

Buddha is Ashtavinayak and "Ganapati Bappa Morya" is "Chandragupta Morya".

In the era of democracy, the head of state is the President. But in ancient India, there was a Gana culture in the monarchy and the head of that Gana was called Ganapati
(2/20)

In ancient India, a prince named Siddharth Gautam was born in royalty. He later became the king of Shakya Gana in this Gana culture. In time, Siddhartha attained enlightenment.

Let us now understand the difference between a real Ganapati and an imaginary Ganapati.
(3/20)

Some clever Brahmin manuvadis made the real Ganapati the imaginary Ganapati.

Buddha was the king of the Shakya Gana, so people called him Ganaraja. He founded Buddhism and became the head of the Shakyas. As the head of Gana, people used to call Buddha as Ganapati.
(4/20)

But the Brahmins Brahmanized Ganapati and created a false Ganapati. When Buddha used to give the message of Dharma to the people, two words would come out of his message. Chitta and Malla.

Chitta is the body.
Malla means waste
(5/20)
INDIA
Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
Keep dwelling on this:
Further Examination of the Motif near PRRA Reveals Close Structural Similarity to the SEB Superantigen as well as Sequence Similarities to Neurotoxins and a Viral SAg.

The insertion PRRA together with 7 sequentially preceding residues & succeeding R685 (conserved in β-CoVs) form a motif, Y674QTQTNSPRRAR685, homologous to those of neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) and Bungarus genera, as well as neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains

(20) (Fig. 2D). We further noticed that the same segment bears close similarity to the HIV-1 glycoprotein gp120 SAg motif F164 to V174.
https://t.co/EwwJOSa8RK


In (B), the segment S680PPRAR685 including the PRRA insert and highly conserved cleavage site *R685* is shown in van der Waals representation (black labels) and nearby CDR residues of the TCRVβ domain are labeled in blue/white
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa


Sequence Identity %
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Y674 - QTQTNSPRRA - R685
Similar to neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) & Bungarus genera & neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
T678 - NSPRRA- R685
Superantigenic core, consistently aligned against bacterial or viral SAgs
ALL
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Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
1/ Throughout my startup career, I’ve seen many founders have an aversion to sales. This is a mistake that can kill your startup.

2/ Sales is often viewed as either a saving grace or proof that the product isn’t good enough (because it should sell itself). Neither are ever true. Some common mistakes that result in...

3/ Mistake 1: Hire a sales rep before reaching product/market fit to get your initial batch of customers. This is a mistake because founders need to work through their MVP with early adopters to truly understand what it is they’re selling.

4/ Mistake 2: Reach product/market fit, need to scale, and rely entirely on self-serve. For enterprise products that require big commitments and internal shifts, almost no product is self-explanatory enough to sell itself.

5/ Mistake 3: Make a first sales hire who isn’t scrappy enough to help mold the sales process from scratch. Some salespeople are amazing at their jobs, but not cut out to establish the processes that others end up following. This skillset is what @rdedatta calls a “sales ninja”.
STARTUPS
STEALTH JEFF
STEALTH JEFF
@drawandstrike
Ok I was wrong about theHouse. 2 years of legislative gridlock = not fun. Few bills passing.

Control of the House is useless when it comes to keeping Trump from declassifying all the SpyGate docs. Or stopping an Inspector General from releasing a report.

Trump still gets control of judicial appointments so we can expect another 100 judges over the next two years. This time there’ll be no McCain or Flake playing the Maverick role with their swing vote.

That new margin in the Senate is huge if another Supreme Court seat comes open.

So from the responses I’m getting, people seem to think if Trump declassifies the Spygate stuff now, nothing happens.

Are you under the impression federal prosecutors have to wait until CONGRESS finishes an investigation and makes criminal referrals before the DOJ can act?

There’s a federal grand jury on McCabe right now. Did Congress ever finish it’s investigation and make a referral to the DOJ against him?

No.

BUT INSPECTOR GENERAL HOROWITZ DID. On finishing his McCabe leak report.

Funny how nobody remembers that.
POLITICS
Dr. Thomas Binder, MD
Dr. Thomas Binder, MD
@Thomas_Binder
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Even asymptomatic, previously called healthy, people are tested (en masse) in this way, although there is no epidemiologically relevant asymptomatic transmission. This means that even healthy people are declared as COVID


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