'What if I choke during my 1st speech?'

Then you choke.

Some of the best speakers from my time during Toastmasters choked their 1st speech.

When you mess up, you realize the world doesn't end.

After making this realization, you feel a sense of relief for your next speech.

This is not a green light to not practice beforehand

But if you gave it your best effort to prepare & the nerves got the best of you, do not beat yourself up.

I guarantee that choking is not a big deal like you think it is.

'How do you know?'

Bc I am speaking from experience.

'So what was it like?'

Well, this was my 1st ever Toastmasters meeting.

I went to just sit on my ass & observe.

Tbh, I went because I was hungry & thought they were going to have toast.

But nah.

There were atleast 75 people there.

Many people that I knew from my school

After seeing all those familiar faces, I sat all the way in the back.

I was praying that I did not get called on stage.

I had massive speech anxiety then.

*the meeting began*

The table topics started (random people get called up & give an impromptu speech about a topic)

Not kidding.

I was the first person called.

The toastmaster from the event thought he was being slick by calling the people in the back.

I was straight up mortified.

Walking to the front of the stage felt like the longest walk of my life.

Felt like a nightmare tbh.

Folks, I know way more important things are going on in the world.

But I honestly find it nuts that so many people in the serious reaches of academia and the thoughtful left are simply dismissing Sokal Squared.

Here’s my response to the main criticisms.

(Thread.)

The main pushback I’ve seen:

1) The journals they pranked aren’t serious
2) No control group
3) Other academic fields are also bad
4) It’s unethical to make people do work under false pretenses
5) They are tools of the right in the culture war

I’ll take these in order.

2/n

1) The canine rape culture paper was published Gender, Place, and Culture. The authors who contributed to the latest issue teach at UCLA, Temple, Penn State, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Manchester, Berlin’s Humboldt University, etc.

3/n

Another paper was accepted for publication in Hypatia. The authors who contributed to the latest issue teach at the University of Michigan, Tulane University, Stockton University, the University of Bristol, and the University of Exeter.

4/n

It’s just not credible to claim that these journals aren't highly influential in areas like feminist philosophy, or that publication in these journals would not make a serious contribution to tenure at many departments in well-known research universities.

5/n

1. Reminder : it has now been 4 WEEKS + , since POTUS Trump made his declassification order of the Page FISA, plus unredacted texts between James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.

The declass order was 14

2. The decision to hold back (in article above) was 21 September, 3 weeks + ago.

You'll recall that the delay was because 'allies' (read Australia & UK) raised 'concerns' about what may be in the material.

Note : they seem to know what's in the documents, in itself revealing.

3. On 4 October, in an act of mind-boggling stupidity, these 'allies' then took advantage of Trump's generosity, using the delay to trot out a combined 'muh Russia' narrative, in full knowledge that it is total BS, esp in relation to the US

4. Trump will be FURIOUS.

It amazes me that the THOUSANDS of so-called experts in western governments, haven't yet worked out that one of the worst things you can do, is to try and play a fast one past Trump.

They have now GUARANTEED Trump will reveal their TOTAL involvement.

5. If they'd been smart, they would have not only kept their traps shut during the delay, but also shared info with Trump about who was involved on their side, with the Obama/Clinton scheme to rig the 2016 election.

They've made things exponentially WORSE for themselves.

Twelve months ago, I believed that a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives like Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would never license a full-out power grab by Donald Trump.

In my latest @slate column, I explain why I’ve changed my

When Donald Trump was elected, no serious political scientist predicted that the Republican Party would become a tool of his whim as quickly and thoroughly as it did.

2/n

Optimists claimed that GOP leaders like Paul Ryan and Lindsey Graham, who shared few of his views, would rein him in.

Pessimists—like me!—claimed that Trump would slowly take over the Republican Party after a protracted civil war.

3/n

We were all naïve. In reality, some conservatives, like Ryan, abandoned the field. Others, like Graham, reinvented themselves as Trumpist populists.

To be part of the conservative tribe today is to go wherever the resentment—and its leader—takes you.

4/n

That makes it all the more scary that the Kavanaugh confirmation process has eliminated the last doubts about a central fact of American politics.

The Supreme Court is not a nonpartisan court of law. It is a realm to do partisan battle by other means.

5/n

Convo w/a founder today about the terms of their recent exit...
"It was a cash, equity and royalty deal. 7 figures cash, close to a million in stock in their company (which is publicly traded), and 5% royalty for 5 years. Not bad for a side project grown over a couple years lol."

We want to create a new narrative, and have more founders focused on being able to tell this story. This founder didn't raise one dollar of VC, and didn't build the biggest business in the world. It was a focused, niche product for the education space. A couple years later...

They now have 7 figures in the bank, a meaningful amount of stock in a fast growing publicly traded company, whose valuation the acquisition of their company helps to grow, plus a royalties check that will hit their bank account monthly for the next 5 years...

It doesn't take raising 7 figures in venture capital, giving away majority ownership in your company, building a billion dollar business, or even building a $10MM business to create a life changing financial outcome for yourself and your family WHEN YOU OWN IT...

We want more founders to stop blindly accepting the narratives everyone in Silicon Valley operates inside of, and simply run the numbers on what size business they actually need to build, and what kinds of margins and revenues it actually needs to generate, for them yo live...

Krzysztof Piątek goal alert! ❗️

vs Val Stubai ⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️
vs Swansea ⚽️
vs Cuneo ⚽️⚽️
vs Albissola ⚽️⚽️
vs Lecce ⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️
vs Empoli ⚽️
vs Sassuolo ⚽️⚽️
vs Bologna ⚽️
vs Lazio ⚽️
vs Chievo ⚽️
vs Frosinone ⚽️⚽️
vs Parma ⚽️

OUT. OF. THIS. PLANET.

European Golden Shoe classification:

18 PIATEK
16 Stuani
14 Silva
14 Neymar
12 Thauvin
12 Hazard
12 Alcacer

Some idiot came to me and told me that my ex-girlfriend is now fresh, cute, and looks more sexy and beautiful.

My friend, if they renovate my primary school, does that mean I should leave university and start fresh at primary school again?

Gordon and Bruce in our pilot vs our final season. Thank you so much for your fandom!

#gotham #gothamtvwriters #gothamseason5

Odell Beckham Jr.: “I don’t know” if El Manning is the reason for the Giants’ struggling

Jamal Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist who Turkish officials say was killed in Istanbul this week after walking into the consulate of Saudi Arabia, has been writing columns for The Post since last year.

Here are some excerpts from his columns:

“When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?” – Sept. 18, 2017

“How can we become more moderate when such extremist views are tolerated? How can we progress as a nation when those offering constructive feedback and (often humorous) dissent are banished?” – Oct. 31, 2017

“MBS’s downsizing and relative humbling of the House of Saud is welcome news. But maybe he should learn from the British royal house that has earned true stature, respect and success by trying a little humility himself.” – Feb. 28, 2018

“At the end of [‘Black Panther’], the young king of Wakanda chooses to use his country’s power to engage with the world for the greater good. Will Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman .... use his power to bring peace to the world around him?" - April 17, 2018

So let me tell you another reason we need to not back down, not sit down, not be quiet: coward that he is, Donald Trump is at his most dangerous when he feels like he's on top of the world.

The horse race headlines are saying that Donald Trump had his best day as president, and I'm sure he felt it. He just came through a knock-down, drag-out fight and won a battle that people had been telling him to drop for weeks, so right now no one can tell him anything.

If he gets it in his head that maybe he should fire Rosenstein? No one's going to be able to talk him out of it. He might even do it just to extend the high, or see how far he can take it.

When he's afraid and uncertain he'll lash out and that can be dangerous, but his insecurity causes him to both seek approval and fear traps in that state. But when he's invincible, he will indulge his worst impulses freely.

The same people who have been telling him not to mess with the investigation until after the midterms were among those telling him it would be so much easier to just replace Kavanaugh with someone less contentious. And what did they know? Nothing, he thinks. So why listen?

Lithuania's independence is truly an amazing story. As the state began to break away from the USSR in 1990, tanks were sent in, and Soviet troops shut off the nation's broadcaster.

But suddenly, a family TV station that usually went online only once a week started broadcasting.

The broadcaster wasn't on the air, a technition was. He told the world that the Soviet Union was invading Lithuania and that he needed people who spoke as many languages as possible to rush over so the world could be told.

University professors rushed over to the building and began translating the broadcast into several languages, live.

The Soviet troops called into the station live, threatening to shut them down.

By that time, the Swedes picked up the broadcast and began sending it to the world.

The Soviets, once they learned that, called again and said they wouldn't kill the people in the station as long as "no misinformation was given."

The Lithuanian people saw the broadcast, and 50,000 people took to the streets to block the tanks. The tanks retreated.

One random small town TV show technician stopped a Soviet invasion and coup by going in front of the camera in his studio and begging to the world for help, knowing that the Soviets had taken out the state's major broadcaster.

1/ Critics denounce Bitcoin as technology that just isn’t that useful. In many respects, they’re right. The network doesn’t scale. Privacy is fragile. Prices are volatile. Custody is hard.

2/ If we take a step back, however, it might be easier to understand why Bitcoin is such an incredible achievement.

3/ Bitcoin is many things.

It's a network in which anyone with an Internet connection can participate. A network no single entity controls.

4/ It's an economic system. A system in which anyone can opt and transact. A system in which trust is minimized.

5/ It's money. Money that you don't need permission to own or use. Money whose rules are set in stone, not dictated by any government. An Austrian-economic experiment at grand scale.

Ok, we found something amazing and we demand you to come on a journey with us:

A lot of our offices are like this.

The usual depressing office furniture, the utilitarian bookshelves, the archive trolleys which we *definitely* don’t ride down the corridors and…

…boxes with eighteenth century diaries from Kent.

Just normal archive stuff.

Except this isn’t your normal farm diary.

It's not even a diary.

It’s a Mathematics book owned by someone called Richard Beale, from a farm in Biddenden, Kent.

(As an aside, though, we got this book thanks to a generous donor because it’s connected to some of our farm diaries, which are a lot like normal diaries but with more cows.

We wrote a blog back in 2016 when we first got this family’s diaries:

In trying to assess what I'm feeling in this final month before the election, I come back to the difference between fear and anger, and how today's GOP fundamentally fails to appreciate the distinction.

All their insults about "triggering," all the delight they express in making vulnerable people upset, betrays this misunderstanding. I was seeing it from the gun nutters for years before Trump came into the picture. Here's their mistake:

They think "triggered" people are simply terrfiied. Which can happen. But the instinct triggered by trauma isn't necessarily fear. Remember? It's FIGHT or flight.

Much of the time, people who are threatened, abused, or assaulted become very, very, very angry.

Looking at the small number of people in power who are now giddily forcing through policy and law that run counter to the values of the majority of Americans, you have to ask, are we any different from other societies that have succumbed to authoritarianism or fascism?

Fascism takes a certain amount of buy-in, but it also relies on fear. Autocracies use fear and force to control the greater numbers of people that are harmed by the small number of powerful people. They need their subjects frightened and impotent at all times.