Reading a Reddit AMA with a former Q believer and he had a really insightful thing to say: “Conspiracy theory thinking hooks the brain because it feels like critical thinking.”

That seems very true from what I’ve observed. The thread is here if you’re interested:

I also thought it was interesting what shook him out of it: a post from Q containing obviously false information about the field he worked in, computers. He realized the technobabble made no sense, so what else was wrong?

As for what got him in in the first place? He grew up a fundamentalist Christian and so was primed with stories about how only they knew THE TRUTH about things like evolution, the end times, etc, and the rest of the culture was just full of powerful lies. Perfect breeding ground

If you want to see a really good in-depth exploration of how someone falls down an internet rabbit hole into extremism (not Q, but related to it in that it’s about white supremacy and far right politics), I’d recommend the podcast Rabbit Hole, from Kevin Roose at the NYT

It’s here.

After months of building, the new, revamped, reimagined Generalist is ready. I can’t wait to show you.

Here’s what it means.

https://t.co/4RaadaUjKR

*How did this get started?*

In August of last year, shortly after going full-time, I decided The Generalist needed a permanent home. Something that captured the vision for all the great things I thought would come out of this community.

I set to work.

You can hear more about building the new site in the tweets below. Of course, if you’re excited to jump straight in, and become a member, you can do so

*What was the plan?*

Launch by the end of September. Here’s the email I sent to The Braintrust (the awesome folks that have agreed to give their advice on this little venture).

- 15K subscribers
- New site
- New membership
- New community

*How did you do?*

I failed on all four.

By the end of September, I had +11K subscribers — 15K had been a stretch, so that was good with me. But I also had no site, no membership, and no permanent community home.

I learned an important lesson in business when I launched a new retail category early in my career at Amazon: Fail Fast! I spent 18 months shipping a product that should have taken a few months, delaying the oppty to learn and adjust to our initial failure. Here's what happened:

I was originally hired at Amazon on the business development team. After a year I got recruited to help ship a new computer store and run merchandising. I jumped at the opportunity to launch a new business and learn new skills. Amzn was great at creating these opportunities.

Two weeks after joining the retail team, I was in a meeting presenting our pro forma P&L for our computer store launch. I was forecasting inventory turns and gross margins. It was exciting to be thrown into the deep end. I felt like I was at a start-up inside of a start-up.

Our store was predicated on a deal w/ HP that had been part of their earlier bid to win our datacenter biz. Amzn had driven a hard bargain, and when HP couldn't go any lower on server prices they offered to pay us $10M to be our anchor tenant in a new computer store.

HP's consumer business was getting disrupted by Dell who had invented configurable on-line ordering + on-demand manufacturing. HP thought they could fight back by leveraging retail distribution. They would plug their yet-to-be-developed configuration engine into our front-end.

Arizona GOP censures Cindy McCain, Sen. Jeff Flake, and Gov. Doug Ducey

https://t.co/7p4O2KqMFp

Just finished listening to Matt Stoller's Goliath, a political and intellectual history of the anti-monopoly movement over the last ~100 years. It gave me a better understanding of the intellectual history of 20th Century anti-monopoly thinking.

In particular, Stoller draws a distinction I hadn't thought very much about previously: between liberals who favor leaving monopolies in place and regulating them strictly vs. those who oppose bigness as such.

As Stoller tells it, New Dealers erected a complicated legal system designed to tilt the playing field in favor of small companies.

For example, there were laws against discounting to prevent big retailers from using their market power to win lower prices from suppliers and undercutting small retailers. A law capped deposit interest rates to prevent big banks from outbidding small banks for deposits.

Stoller situates Teddy Roosevelt, JK Galbraith, and Ralph Nader in the camp of liberals who (mostly) favored regulating monopolies instead of breaking them up. Also Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and most modern Democratic leaders.

New thread because new day + progress. My Fogleworm configuration search is now pretty darned working-ish. Here's three stages for N=3: finding unique candidates, generating valid configurations of candidates, and filtering that down to unique configs. N(3) = 2, as hoped!

The same output for N=4 looks like this. I'm expecting N(4) = 96. I got...97. Here's a fun game, find the two grids among the 97 in that last pair of images that are congruent under transformation. [screams in math] But this is CLOSE, which is GREAT.

N=5, targeting N(5) = 856. 1087 is...a great deal more than 856.

I don't dare run N=6 right now, but if I'm lucky and the proportion of search time is going up by "only" two orders of magnitude for each N, it'd probably get done overnight if I start it tonight in this current form.

gonna get colorful, testing out graphics stuff

Belgian snapper Regine Mahaux took these pics in April of 2010. The same month that the brokeass TV reality host got his quickie refund from the government. He was the top Chapter 11 filer in America in the last 30 years. https://t.co/EnSFwjsHVo

"he was far more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life."

"a president who routinely promotes his businesses in an official capacity while they haul in hundreds of millions of dollars from mostly unknown sources is a clear case of corruption"

After he lost the election he desperately raised $250 million using a variety of scams and false campaigns.

Beneath all the bluster, bullshit and braggadocio, he was always on the grift. Racing to stay one step ahead of creditors and tax investigations. When the cultists wake up they will see it was all about a pitchman pretending to be President to make money.

With $50-$500 dApp interaction fees, DeFi mainly just caters to the whales

Major DeFi apps launching on Layer 2 can 10x the number of DeFi users

2021 is the year it happens

But DeFi apps will be launching across a host of different L2s - zksync, Starkware, Optimism, Matic, etc

With long or costly exit times moving between L2 to L1 to a different L2 users don't get the real DeFi UX that make it so magical

Luckily, @thorchain_org exists

People talk about Thorchain in the context of connecting other L1s, but most L2s are separate blockchains themselves that can just as well connect to Thorchain

This means that if Thorchain bridges were built for say Optimism & zksync, users would not need to go through the cumbersome process of moving to L1 first and could instead trade their Optimism coin for the same version of that coin on zksync in one tx

And since transactions on L2 are fast and cheap, so would the transaction to transfer assets between those chains

The UX for moving between chains is dramatically simplified and Arbitragers/Market makers will ensure that the version of each coin is pegged across the L2s

“1651 emails in this sort that connect Clinton to al-Qaida and ISIS in both Libya and Syria, demonstrating Clinton supplied weapons to ISIS via Syria.” #Benghazi #ClintonFoundation

1/ How many times have u been told that ‘Imposter syndrome’ is an internal problem? That it’s your responsibility to make it go away from your mind. That it’s entirely a figment of your own imagination. Well I don’t think so, but the journey to this conclusion has been painful 🧵

2/ Let’s start with the definition of Imposter syndrome: it’s basically those feelings of inadequacy & doubt in your abilities to do the things that you’ve proved successful in doing by virtue of your achievements & qualifications. This in turn affects your confidence to do them.

3/We’re told women, particularly those from minoritised backgrounds, have this more intensely though it can affect anyone. I’ve certainly felt it throughout my life intensifying at times of stress and overload. But is it entirely internally triggered? Well, this is the narrative.

4/ You go to courses, you read articles, you speak to mentors and what they usually tell you is that it’s all in your mind. Perhaps triggered by your social upbringing & cultural background. So you must work on it. But I’ve realised recently that it’s not just that.

5/ Some people in your surroundings trigger this, to be fair to them perhaps unconsciously. They may have in their minds a stereotype of you that is inadequate & incapable of achieving what you’ve achieved in reality. So they do or say things that trigger the feeling in you..

Thread:

Are Man Utd recent wins as a result of Individual brilliance from Paul Pogba or coached & tactics?

Fulham 1 vs. 2 Man Utd — Tactics #MUFC

Much has been made of the wins against Burnley, Wolves, Fulham as United are winning games narrowly with "Individual Brilliance". They are not dominating games. "Scrappy wins", if you will, and said this form will not be sustainable. #MUFC

Let's look at the Fulham game:

United usually buildup in 2 different shapes/patterns:
1. 244(424) or

2. 3-1 shape where one of 2 CMs drop as a 3rd CB to create a 3v2 superiority v the opposition 1st line.

424 shape come from #mufc transitioning quick as mentioned in my threads prev. when #mufc are out of possession their defensive shape 442.

This is not the best ex.👇Sorry

United's shape in the final phase of attack is 235. Luke Shaw is an inverted Winger as AWB stays wide on the other side while Pogba sits in the right half space.

The positioning of the players was great all game.

Saint Dominic Makes the Devil Tell Him Where He Gains in Sin and Where He Loses

On one occasion, as St. Dominic was by night walking about the convent of S. Sabina, guarding his flock with the vigilance of a good shepherd, he met the enemy in the dormitory, going like a lion👇🏽

{PART 2} seeking whom he might devour; and recognizing him, he said, "Thou evil beast, what doest thou here?" "I do my office," replied the demon, "and attend to my gains." "And what gains dost thou make in the dormitory?" asked the saint. "Gain enough," returned the demon. 👇🏽

{PART 3}
"I disquiet the friars in many ways; for first, I take the sleep away from those who desire to sleep in order that they may rise promptly for matins; and then I give an excessive heaviness to others, so that when the bell sounds, either from weariness or idleness they👇🏽

{PART 4} do not rise; or, if they rise and go to choir, it is unwillingly, and they say their office without devotion." Then the saint took him to the church, and said, "And what dost thou gain here?" "Much, answered the devil; "I make them come late and leave soon. I fill them👇🏽

{PART 5} with disgusts and distractions, so that they do ill whatsoever they have to do." "And here?" asked Dominic, leading him to the refectory. "Who does not eat too much or too little?" was the reply; "and so they either offend God or injure their health." Then the saint took

When you are struggling, whether it’s problems at work, low self-esteem, conflicts in your relationships, etc, it feels much better to funnel your negative energy into blaming someone else than to confront your own role in your problems. A lot of people join hate groups because

it allows them to funnel the blame for all of their problems into another group of people while being supported by a group of people who share their beliefs and make them feel like they belong.

Many other people join hate groups because it fills their need for friendship and belonging. You don’t need to do or be anything special, all you have to do is be negative towards other people. It feels easy. Likewise, some people find it easier to make connections by putting

others down and seeing who agrees than to prove to people that they are interesting and valuable companions.

When someone new enters a group, particularly if they are in a position of influence, many people immediately begin gossiping negative things about the person because they fear how that individual will change their group dynamics. Sharing hatred toward the new person is a way

Broad, philosophical thread about how a hybrid authoritarian regime like Russia uses repression when citizens protest.

On this day of protests for #Navalny across Russia.

#RussiaProtests (1/21)

First of all, the defining ethical feature of the modern world is that each human life has equal moral worth.

Only the most extreme regimes can disregard - without consequences - that their citizens are cognisant of this.

#RussiaProtests

(2/21)

In Belarus, escalating violence against protestors caused the regime more damage than it had hoped.

Unlike Belarus, where the special police numbers a couple of thousand, the Russian special police can handle vast numbers of protestors.

#RussiaProtests

(3/21)

So could the Putin regime order the special police, the broader national guard, and regular police to round up 10,000 protestors, and adopt Gestapo-like tactics on them?

At this stage, no- the regime would consider that an act of existential self harm.

#RussiaProtests

(4/21)

The regime can take extreme steps with individuals, e.g. Navalny. But it's not ready to universalise this to all citizens.

Moreover, it can't. The bodies of state responsible for organised violence in Russia compete with one another, & aren't part of a vertical system.

(5/21)