Thread - The most dangerous threat to a man's potential is his fried dopamine receptors:

I'll be talking about a problem that most of us deal with in the modern world.

Dopamine imbalance.

I'll be sharing insights and actionable advice that I personally used that have helped deal with this problem.

But first, let us dive into the problem itself.

"Why cook a healthy meal when I can just Uber Eats?"

"Why go meet girls and have real sex when I can just jerk it to porn?"

"Why do meaningful work when I can just hop on social media, create "content" and get validation in form of likes/retweets?"

"Why level up in life, when I can just hop on Runescape and get to level 99 in all skills?"

Now, logically speaking, these questions make no sense.

The reasons as to why you'd do the first instead of the second are obvious...

But, your brain works backward.

The only question your brain asks is "How can I satisfy this desire as quickly as possible with the least effort possible?"

THREAD

I don't talk much about it, but @AOC 's brave comments brought home my own experience, decades ago, when I was abducted at gun point for an hour.

The feeling that your life may end, that your fate is wholly in someone else's hands, that you have no control...

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...never leaves you.

The emotions don't disappear after the situation ends, but they do evolve, from fear to anger--that anyone else would claim for themselves the role of determining whether you live or die. That anyone dared place themselves in that position is enraging.

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And when you see similar situations that arise--a video on the evening news of a 7/11 being robbed at gunpoint, for example--you remember it all again. The feeling of seeing that gun pointed right at you. The lack of control.

And now someone new just joined the club.

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Or for years, when you read in the news about someone else being abducted at gunpoint, who didn't live to tell about it (because most people abucted in a car at gunpoint don't live to tell about it), you remember it again, and wonder how you got so lucky.

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But I also was in politics when this happened, so I also know the whiplash of having the whole thing politicized. People questioning the story. Media doubting it. Personal attacks. Innuendo. A judge, of all people, still telling people years later you made it up...

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One of the most fascinating revelations from the Snowden documents was the story of "fourth party collection," which is when the NSA hacks the spy agency of a friendly nation to suck up all the spy data it has amassed on its own people.

https://t.co/8WZ6WJigjU

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It's a devilishly effective spying technique and it surfaces a major risk of mass domestic surveillance - if your internal police get hacked by another nation, then that country can get all of your data. The secret police say they're spying to protect you - some protection!

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Even more mind-blowing is the existence of "fifth-party collection" (spying on a spy agency that's spying on another spy agency) and "SIXTH-party collection" (spying on a spy agency that's spying on another spy agency that's spying on another spy agency) .

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It's also fascinating because it's so obvious in retrospect. Willie Sutton robbed banks "because that's where the money is." Spooks spy on other spooks because that's where the kompromat is: gathered, sorted, filed and analyzed.

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This week, Google's Threat Analysis team published a warning to security researchers to be vigilant about a sophisticated threat-actor that is targeting the infosec

A stream of consciousness: what could be, based on historic actions of the r/wallstreetbets; where on another thread @coloradodeano asked for thoughts on how oppositional groups who all believe in the #2A could work together to protect the 2nd

#2ADefenders #guncontrol

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Yes, I am listening to sea shanties; The Wellerman, where the diversity of voices combined become an incredible harmony of unity; by this unity, able to accomplish anything, then on to some kPop/VNV Nation

Now, there's some very well known 2A Advocates

@MrColionNoir @DLoesch @MAJTOURE @ms_ezell @mom_at_arms @BearingArmsCom

then the ones you *should* know

@MassadAyoob @GunsiteAcademy ThunderRanch (IG) @bowtiegunguy

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Powerful voices within the #2A community, both on & offline; multiple platforms

@thereal_SnS @CamEdwards @clefore23 @TopShotChris @GabbyFrancoTS4

Then the organizations; @gunpolicy @GunOwners @liberalgunclub @CCRKBArms @EmPOWERed_2A

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Bringing up a strong foundation in grassroots is @2nd4Everyone @SocialistRA @jillyo4reallyo @Ivan_Is_Back @Hoplitemagazine @OpBlazingSword @ArmedEquality

I know i'm missing important individuals/groups; i need to get to the request.

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I used to wear Wonder Woman Underoos as a kid. My mother would make me behave by telling me I wouldn't be able to watch the original Lynda Carter show. I was OBSESSED.

Which makes the current DCEU version of WW downright depressing for me.

/THREAD

The problem with Wonder Woman in the live action DCEU has similar roots to the problems with ALL the live action DCEU. There isn't a single person in charge who understands and LOVES these characters. So no singular vision. To

Jenkins was correct to toss out Whedon's version of Diana. No way she sits on the sidelines while people suffer. That's not my Diana. My Diana would also not be an idiot over Chris Pine, but that's a different rant. This rant is about TERRIBLE WRITING.

Good writing has LAYERS. Go watch just about any Pixar film to learn about layering. Layers means that the action and dialog have one meaning for the characters and another meaning for the audience. An example from CAPTAIN MARVEL...

In CAPTAIN MARVEL, we have a badass woman who is kept under control by an evil dude who gaslights her about her power and potential. She is held back by a misogynist patriarchy that is downright terrified of what she'd be capable of if she was allowed to believe in herself.

Some people in this country are sincerely confused to hear people talk about “white supremacy” in conjunction with politics in America today. At the same time, a lot of people, both openly and in private, have consternation about changing demographics in America.

Let me explain.

In 1870, right after the Civil War, the US Census showed that there were six states in which African Americans made up more than 45% of the state population - South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and Georgia. The region we call the “Deep South” plus Florida.

Ten years prior, many of these human beings were considered to be the legal property of other human beings. And then came the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution. Suddenly, these former slaves were citizens. And the men could VOTE.

Suddenly, a lot of whites in these southern states had the fear that they were now either in the minority or at least not in a strong plurality. Their former subjects were now recognized as their equals according to the text of the US Constitution.

And they freaked out.

Im the quintessential middle-class man of this country!
1. I pay my taxes even when I see influential people avoid it
2. I follow all the rules even when I see influential people break/bend it
3. I pay my EMIs even when I see scamsters and frauds willingly default..

4. I turn-up and vote even when people sell their votes for cash
5. I give up my subsidy cos a leader asks me to give it up even when the majority lives off it
6. I stand in traffic blocks in sweltering heat as VIPs pass me by
I'm the all singing all dancing doll of this country

So,hear me out!
1.I buy movie tickets only for entertainment & all you moviestars are nothing without me, so know your place & don't pontificate
2.I pay taxes so that the govt can subsidize a few people and I get good services so without my taxes people who avail subsidies are..

Nothing.. this includes farmers, so know your place and don't pontificate
3. I watch cricket for entertainment so all you asshole cricketers know your place, with your fancy wives, cars and houses, and don't pontificate
4. All you politicians i elect you.. do you job and don't..

Pontificate!
5. All you NGOs i don't even care if you exist or don't so don't even think about pontificating
6. I dont give a rats backside about environment etc. I want what someone in a "developed" nation has, so "environmentalists" don't pontificate

(1) When you don’t communicate policies effectively, somebody else will, albeit incorrectly. This is called rumours. This is made worse during information vacuum, the period between saying you’ll announce something, and actually announcing it.

(2) Content - The government is in a position to control the narrative, avoid panic, minimise misinformation - how rumours starts. Govt also controls most media machinery - this should be simple.

(3) Audience - Govt must understand that vase majority of population are common people who are earn wages. They want to know how closures will affect them, their wages, their families. It’s day by day survival for many.

(4) Coordination - If you’re announcing something, make sure you know how to explain other aspects of life that is affected. What happens to schools? How will syallabus will be continued? How about kids with no laptops? Daycare? What if my employer refuses to allow WFH?

(5) Explain - articulate how you arrived at that decision, what considerations were taken, and ways to fix that. Assure people who are daily wage earners from their concern about loss of income. For many, not going to work daily, is a death wish itself.

No sé si os acordáis que en verano me fui unos días de las redes por un hilo que me dejó muy mal cuerpo. Es este, de la Etxe, justificando una agresión a una mujer trans, llamándolo "autodefensa".

Ahora que se lamenta de que la acosan mientras participa en una campaña de acoso y derribo, quiero arrojar luz sobre las barbaridades que defiende.

AVISO de que hablo de agresiones y muertes. Y el hilo es largo porque hay datos. Agradezco difusión y tal.

A esta mujer, Lara Rae, dos borrachas le pegaron una paliza usando karate, le lesionaron la muñeca y llamaron a un hombre para que la siguiera golpeando. ¿Su delito? Usar el baño.

La Etxebarría justifica el ataque diciendo que es un instinto que tienen las Mogeres de verdad cuando ven a alguien a quien no deben usar el baño. Gritar, insultar a alguien y golpearle entre dos hasta lesionarle porque crees que no debería estar es una reacción instintiva.

Llamaron a un hombre para que la golpeara, pero el hombre se fue. Siguieron insultándola, incluso después de que llegara seguridad. ¡Pura reacción instintiva! Seguramente, ser un par de borrachas violentas y tránsfobas no tuvo nada que ver.

So here's something interesting about our latest 'surge'. If one goes to https://t.co/unPSmmc8Mg you can toggle between 'confirmed' cases, 'probable' cases and both of them together.

So what is a 'confirmed' case? That would be any laboratory confirmed 'case' - any positive PCR, antigen or antibody test, with all the issues of false positivity and hypersensitivity and non-infectiousness that go along with all of those tests.

A 'probable' case does not even have a positive test result associated with it. All it requires are symptoms. Maybe an epidemiological link. We are now in the middle of what used to be referred to as 'flu season' when there is a wide variety of respiratory illnesses that exist -

- and are passed around, creating symptoms in individuals that count under one of the 44 symptoms of 'COVID' in Ohio.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ So how big of a deal are the probable cases in Ohio? On the left are just the 'probable' cases/hospitalizations/deaths. On the right are the total assigned cases/hospitalizations/deaths -

@JeffLadish I think because the reward structure of being a bio-ethicist rewards saying level-headed sounding, cautious-sounding, conventional wisdom?

Though I'm not sure why that is.

I guess if you want to radically improve the world, you mostly don't go into a field that is about opining on other people's work, you go into something like Engineering and do the work?

I note that Nick Bostrom is what a Bioethicist should be: he thinks hard about tradeoffs and risks, and crystalizes concepts like the Unilateralist's curse and black ball technologies.

But this is starting from a place of "The world could be vastly better. How do we get there?"

I don't know why bioethics doesn't look more like a field of (less smart) Bostroms.

I guess because everyone's disgust reactions are triggered by the actually good proposals, and in order to make those proposals the consensus of the field a lot of people have to bite the bullet and stick their neck out saying "I know this sounds crazy / absurd / vaguely evil...

Investigating networked disinformation and influence campaigns is hard. SIGINT is often scarce, and encrypted. But people are sloppy; HUMINT is vital, and developing it requires an iterative approach. Each cycle of reporting exposes more players, which attracts more sources.