I find this a really interesting point because to me it seems demonstrably true but also symptomatic of why the West Ham board are never going to turn around their reputation without a sea change in their thinking. (Thread, mute as appropriate)

“Win more” is the footballing solution of taking a painkiller for toothache. The pain goes away for a bit but ultimately you still need a painful root canal. And West Ham have needed that for a long time. This current limited success is *despite* the Board, not because of them.
Lest we forget, Moyes did a fine job first time around and was let go so we could pursue a bigger name, waste tens of millions and undo his good work. They’re lucky he was still available and willing to work for them again. They don’t deserve him.
But winning is helpful because a lot of the time, fans struggle to articulate what needs changing. So if the team is doing well it’s easy for the media to say “You’re fourth - what more do these West Ham fans want!” and for fans not to have an easily digestible answer.
But we know that a losing streak will arrive, we’ll suffer some bad luck and some injuries and then it won’t seem so rosy. And at that point we’ll be accused of being fickle, when the reality is that the underlying problems have been present for the entirety of the GSB reign:
- underinvestment in the infrastructure of the club (Academy, scouting)
- disregard for modernization (using a single agent over an analytics department who don’t personally profit from player moves, no true Director of Football)
- the relatively subpar training facilities
- the long, interminable struggle to get the Club to engage with our supporter representatives rather than forcing us to engage with theirs
- the continued failure of a transfer policy driven by ageing, big name players on long, eye watering contracts
- the Sun column
Some of this has stopped with Moyes (eg: transfers) but do we have any faith this would carry on if he left? What structural change has happened to drive this change? Nothing - it’s just that Moyes is good. If he goes what would stop us signing the next Wilshere? Nothing
If Moyes left tomorrow, they’d hire Benitez and maybe we’d carry on being successful and maybe we wouldn’t but we still wouldn’t have had that root canal we needed. And eventually, it will flare up again and there will be more unrest because nothing material has changed.
This season is highly unusual. We have a chance at something, just as in 15/16. They blew their chance then and might again. I hope they don’t and I hope we miraculously make the CL/win the cup. But I’d still want that material change because the structure of WHU is still wrong
I’m not so vehemently #GSBOUT out as others, because you do have to be careful what you wish for. I’d characterize my position more as #properstructuralchangein I appreciate this is less catchy but it might have a more immediate chance of happening.
To be clear - of course I want new, wealthy, progressive, decent owners of West Ham - I just think that’s a very unlikely combination so maybe trying to inch the current board closer to competency is also a good interim strategy. Also, win games! As Lee said - it works. For a bit
#properstructuralchangein

More from For later read

@snip96581187 @Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen Clearly, because as I have been saying for 8 months now, DTRA and DARPA have been using Ecohealth and UC Davis to collect novel pathogens for gain of function work back in the USA. I have documented this in many threads which I will post here just to annoy everyone.

@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen


@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen


@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen


@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen
The common understanding of propaganda is that it is intended to brainwash the masses. Supposedly, people get exposed to the same message repeatedly and over time come to believe in whatever nonsense authoritarians want them to believe /1

And yet authoritarians often broadcast silly, unpersuasive propaganda.

Political scientist Haifeng Huang writes that the purpose of propaganda is not to brainwash people, but to instill fear in them /2


When people are bombarded with propaganda everywhere they look, they are reminded of the strength of the regime.

The vast amount of resources authoritarians spend to display their message in every corner of the public square is a costly demonstration of their power /3

In fact, the overt silliness of authoritarian propaganda is part of the point. Propaganda is designed to be silly so that people can instantly recognize it when they see it


Propaganda is intended to instill fear in people, not brainwash them.

The message is: You might not believe in pro-regime values or attitudes. But we will make sure you are too frightened to do anything about it.

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)