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You simply cannot have a #FreakyFriday without the absolutely perfect Ivy Lebelle 😈😍🔥🥵 Markus Dupree #Horny4SomePorny #IvyLebelle #analized #pornosexual #ivylebelleisperfect #followme #pleaserp #like #cumslut #gooner #pornaddict #cumslut #analwhore #anal #markusdupree

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Horny4SomePorny (13k)

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216,140 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)

NSFW#FreakyFriday#Horny4SomePorny#IvyLebelle#analized#pornosexual#ivylebelleisperfect#followme#pleaserp#like#cumslut#gooner#pornaddict#cumslut#analwhore#anal#markusdupree
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Thank you all to 1,000 followers!!!😘 This is amazing 😍 In honor of reaching 1,000 followers 🙈 I thought I’d post a video for you guys💋 Of me being used and pissed in😈👊🏼 *LIKE (So I know your still here and what to post more of) *TIP (Like what see help a widow out send $) *RETWEET (Share me daddy Help the Keileenlovee family grow) *COMMENT (Let’s interact I’m here to serve at the pleasure of you daddy) This one guys like to piss in my ass while fucking me💦 And now I have him piss in me every time we fuck. 🥰 As well as pull out piss all over my lady cock and tummy!😜 #trans #Pride2023 #SantaCruz #onlyfans #bottom #submissive #cumslut
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Thank you all to 1,000 followers!!!😘 This is amazing 😍 In honor of reaching 1,000 followers 🙈 I thought I’d post a video for you guys💋 Of me being used and pissed in😈👊🏼 *LIKE (So I know your still here and what to post more of) *TIP (Like what see help a widow out send $) *RETWEET (Share me daddy Help the Keileenlovee family grow) *COMMENT (Let’s interact I’m here to serve at the pleasure of you daddy) This one guys like to piss in my ass while fucking me💦 And now I have him piss in me every time we fuck. 🥰 As well as pull out piss all over my lady cock and tummy!😜 #trans #Pride2023 #SantaCruz #onlyfans #bottom #submissive #cumslut

Keileen💋

17,318 views • 3 years ago

Andrés Iniesta on Luis de la Fuente benching Pedri against France in the FIFA World Cup semi-final. 🗣️ “I’m honestly shocked. If your identity is keeping possession, controlling the tempo and making the opponent chase the ball, then how do you leave Pedri on the bench? It makes absolutely no footballing sense to me.” “Pedri isn’t just another midfielder he’s the player who gives Spain rhythm, intelligence and control. You don’t voluntarily weaken your greatest strength before a World Cup semi-final. That’s an enormous mistake.” “France thrive when games become physical and chaotic. The one player who can slow everything down, keep the ball and make France suffer without possession is sitting on the bench. I simply cannot understand that decision.” “You don’t play a World Cup semi-final hoping to fix things later with substitutions. You start with your best footballers. Pedri should be the heartbeat of this team from the first whistle, not watching the game from the sidelines.” “If Spain lose the midfield battle tonight, the manager will have serious questions to answer. You cannot preach possession football and then leave one of the best possession players in world football out of your starting XI. That’s a contradiction.” “I hope Spain prove me wrong because I want my country to win, but this is one of those decisions that can define a coach’s career. In football, the biggest mistakes are often made before the match even kicks off and this feels like one of them.”
1:34

Andrés Iniesta on Luis de la Fuente benching Pedri against France in the FIFA World Cup semi-final. 🗣️ “I’m honestly shocked. If your identity is keeping possession, controlling the tempo and making the opponent chase the ball, then how do you leave Pedri on the bench? It makes absolutely no footballing sense to me.” “Pedri isn’t just another midfielder he’s the player who gives Spain rhythm, intelligence and control. You don’t voluntarily weaken your greatest strength before a World Cup semi-final. That’s an enormous mistake.” “France thrive when games become physical and chaotic. The one player who can slow everything down, keep the ball and make France suffer without possession is sitting on the bench. I simply cannot understand that decision.” “You don’t play a World Cup semi-final hoping to fix things later with substitutions. You start with your best footballers. Pedri should be the heartbeat of this team from the first whistle, not watching the game from the sidelines.” “If Spain lose the midfield battle tonight, the manager will have serious questions to answer. You cannot preach possession football and then leave one of the best possession players in world football out of your starting XI. That’s a contradiction.” “I hope Spain prove me wrong because I want my country to win, but this is one of those decisions that can define a coach’s career. In football, the biggest mistakes are often made before the match even kicks off and this feels like one of them.”

ᜰ

198,645 views • 24 days ago

Chas Freeman: Hamas is a resistance movement which has been resisting for 70 years absolutely outrageous treatment and Israel in many eyes has become an abomination on the face of the Earth. The Israelis have made it very clear—despite what some in the United States are saying—that they have absolutely no intention of ever permitting self-determination for the Palestinians. And yet without that self-determination, Israel cannot enjoy security and the Middle East as a whole will continue to be in a state of chaos. And so the world would like to see a two-state solution. I don’t believe at all that the Israelis wanted this attack but they have taken full advantage of it to do what they always intended which is to try to depopulate Palestine. So they have done this in a particularly brutal and highly objectionable fashion which is justifiably called genocide. And the Israelis simply do not understand that what they have done in response to October 7th has almost completely erased the international outrage that that attracted at the time. And Israel in many eyes has become an Abomination on the face of the Earth. Hamas is a resistance movement which has been resisting for 70 years absolutely outrageous treatment by Israel and the Israeli settlers. And Israel is a government, an elected tyranny, which tyrannizes and terrorizes the Palestinian population with the objective of expelling them from their homeland. No, there is no equivalence at all. What Hamas did is understandable. What Israel is doing is inexcusable. This is the view of the world. But what it has become is evil. And it is recognized as such almost everywhere now. Nobody shares the values Israel is now exhibiting: the racism, the murderous spirit, the utter inhumanity, the defiance of international decency, international opinion, and the rule of law. Nobody, nobody can sympathize with that. The Palestinians are just as entitled to self-determination and the right to defend themselves as Israelis are. You can’t have peace, we have learned, without addressing the Palestinian issue. And Israel remains determined not to address it except in terms of ethnic cleansing. That will not work. The notion that somehow or other the international community or Israel or the United States can wish Palestinian nationalism out of existence and impose a government on the Palestinians that they have not selected for themselves just won’t work. There must be democratic self-determination on the part of the Palestinians, and they, not Washington or Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, will be the ones to decide who governs them.
3:29

Chas Freeman: Hamas is a resistance movement which has been resisting for 70 years absolutely outrageous treatment and Israel in many eyes has become an abomination on the face of the Earth. The Israelis have made it very clear—despite what some in the United States are saying—that they have absolutely no intention of ever permitting self-determination for the Palestinians. And yet without that self-determination, Israel cannot enjoy security and the Middle East as a whole will continue to be in a state of chaos. And so the world would like to see a two-state solution. I don’t believe at all that the Israelis wanted this attack but they have taken full advantage of it to do what they always intended which is to try to depopulate Palestine. So they have done this in a particularly brutal and highly objectionable fashion which is justifiably called genocide. And the Israelis simply do not understand that what they have done in response to October 7th has almost completely erased the international outrage that that attracted at the time. And Israel in many eyes has become an Abomination on the face of the Earth. Hamas is a resistance movement which has been resisting for 70 years absolutely outrageous treatment by Israel and the Israeli settlers. And Israel is a government, an elected tyranny, which tyrannizes and terrorizes the Palestinian population with the objective of expelling them from their homeland. No, there is no equivalence at all. What Hamas did is understandable. What Israel is doing is inexcusable. This is the view of the world. But what it has become is evil. And it is recognized as such almost everywhere now. Nobody shares the values Israel is now exhibiting: the racism, the murderous spirit, the utter inhumanity, the defiance of international decency, international opinion, and the rule of law. Nobody, nobody can sympathize with that. The Palestinians are just as entitled to self-determination and the right to defend themselves as Israelis are. You can’t have peace, we have learned, without addressing the Palestinian issue. And Israel remains determined not to address it except in terms of ethnic cleansing. That will not work. The notion that somehow or other the international community or Israel or the United States can wish Palestinian nationalism out of existence and impose a government on the Palestinians that they have not selected for themselves just won’t work. There must be democratic self-determination on the part of the Palestinians, and they, not Washington or Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, will be the ones to decide who governs them.

🅰pocalypsis 🅰pocalypseos 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 🅉

12,134 views • 2 years ago

Alex Hormozi revealed exactly what business to start if you are broke: 1. Every business idea comes from one of three sources, what Hormozi calls the three P's: pain you personally overcame, your profession, or your passion. There is no fourth category. 2. A pain-based business often starts with something you already solved for yourself. A woman managing lunch for nine kids built an entire organized system around it, and that system itself became the seed of a business. 3. A profession-based business comes from a specific skill you already get paid for. A registered dietitian who learned how to bill insurance during a brutal 12-hour, six-day workweek turned that narrow skill into teaching other dietitians, and now earns close to a million dollars a year with only 5,800 Instagram followers. 4. A passion-based business comes from what you cannot stop consuming in your free time. Hormozi's own obsession with fitness content eventually led coworkers to literally offer to fund his first gym because his passion was so obvious to everyone around him. 5. You do not need the perfect idea on the first try. Picking something, even a flawed version, starts the iteration process. He calls this finding your best bad idea, because a bad idea that keeps getting refined eventually becomes a good one. 6. Once you have your what, you choose your who from three groups: people like you, people you have already helped before, and underserved markets. Most successful businesses come from the first two. 7. Sara Blakely built Spanx by solving her own personal frustration with underwear. Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook by solving a problem inside his own dorm room. Personal problems scaled into billion-dollar businesses more often than people assume. 8. Hormozi's first ever dollar came from casually helping a woman at his gym with her food choices. After an hour and a half of conversation at a pizza shop, she handed him a $100 check without him ever naming a price. 9. Narrowing your audience using at least three specific traits, age, profession, and a specific pain or interest, makes your message land far more powerfully than vague targeting ever will. 10. Getting more specific does not shrink your income potential, it grows it. A generic time management PDF might sell for $19. The same idea narrowed down to outbound sales reps in the garden and power tools industry could sell for $10,000. 11. The narrower and more specific your niche, the fewer competitors you face. Hormozi describes this as having the only lifeboat in an ocean full of people struggling to stay afloat, which means you can charge whatever you want. 12. Every offer needs two halves: the good stuff your product delivers, and the bad stuff it helps people avoid. Motivation only comes from one of these two forces, gaining something wanted or escaping something hated. 13. Vague promises like "lose weight fast" stopped working decades ago. Specific pain points, like the exact sensation of your thighs chafing in the sun, bypass people's skepticism because the specificity proves you actually understand their problem. 14. If you are not the target customer yourself, interview real people using direct questions: what are you struggling with, how long have you struggled with it, what have you had to give up that you loved, and what have you had to start doing that you hated. 15. The entire offer collapses into one simple formula: I help to get a good outcome without a bad outcome. Hormozi's own example: "I help 45-year-old women who just had kids get back into their high school jeans without giving up time with their family." 16. A unique mechanism is the special process or system that makes your solution feel different from every competitor's, even if the underlying mechanics are similar. P90X built an empire on the concept of muscle confusion. Weight Watchers built theirs on a points system. 17. A unique mechanism does not need to be scientifically revolutionary. It simply needs to feel like the missing piece that makes everything else finally click into place for the person buying it. 18. The simplest way to get your first five customers requires no funnel and no ad spend. Greet someone, compliment something specific and genuine about them, insert your one-sentence offer, and ask if they know anyone who might benefit from it. 19. Repeat that outreach process for four hours a day or until you have contacted 100 people, whichever comes first. Consistency in this single action is what produces the first five paying customers, not perfect marketing or branding. Follow Brad if you want more content on business, mindset & life changing ideas.
24:42

Alex Hormozi revealed exactly what business to start if you are broke: 1. Every business idea comes from one of three sources, what Hormozi calls the three P's: pain you personally overcame, your profession, or your passion. There is no fourth category. 2. A pain-based business often starts with something you already solved for yourself. A woman managing lunch for nine kids built an entire organized system around it, and that system itself became the seed of a business. 3. A profession-based business comes from a specific skill you already get paid for. A registered dietitian who learned how to bill insurance during a brutal 12-hour, six-day workweek turned that narrow skill into teaching other dietitians, and now earns close to a million dollars a year with only 5,800 Instagram followers. 4. A passion-based business comes from what you cannot stop consuming in your free time. Hormozi's own obsession with fitness content eventually led coworkers to literally offer to fund his first gym because his passion was so obvious to everyone around him. 5. You do not need the perfect idea on the first try. Picking something, even a flawed version, starts the iteration process. He calls this finding your best bad idea, because a bad idea that keeps getting refined eventually becomes a good one. 6. Once you have your what, you choose your who from three groups: people like you, people you have already helped before, and underserved markets. Most successful businesses come from the first two. 7. Sara Blakely built Spanx by solving her own personal frustration with underwear. Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook by solving a problem inside his own dorm room. Personal problems scaled into billion-dollar businesses more often than people assume. 8. Hormozi's first ever dollar came from casually helping a woman at his gym with her food choices. After an hour and a half of conversation at a pizza shop, she handed him a $100 check without him ever naming a price. 9. Narrowing your audience using at least three specific traits, age, profession, and a specific pain or interest, makes your message land far more powerfully than vague targeting ever will. 10. Getting more specific does not shrink your income potential, it grows it. A generic time management PDF might sell for $19. The same idea narrowed down to outbound sales reps in the garden and power tools industry could sell for $10,000. 11. The narrower and more specific your niche, the fewer competitors you face. Hormozi describes this as having the only lifeboat in an ocean full of people struggling to stay afloat, which means you can charge whatever you want. 12. Every offer needs two halves: the good stuff your product delivers, and the bad stuff it helps people avoid. Motivation only comes from one of these two forces, gaining something wanted or escaping something hated. 13. Vague promises like "lose weight fast" stopped working decades ago. Specific pain points, like the exact sensation of your thighs chafing in the sun, bypass people's skepticism because the specificity proves you actually understand their problem. 14. If you are not the target customer yourself, interview real people using direct questions: what are you struggling with, how long have you struggled with it, what have you had to give up that you loved, and what have you had to start doing that you hated. 15. The entire offer collapses into one simple formula: I help to get a good outcome without a bad outcome. Hormozi's own example: "I help 45-year-old women who just had kids get back into their high school jeans without giving up time with their family." 16. A unique mechanism is the special process or system that makes your solution feel different from every competitor's, even if the underlying mechanics are similar. P90X built an empire on the concept of muscle confusion. Weight Watchers built theirs on a points system. 17. A unique mechanism does not need to be scientifically revolutionary. It simply needs to feel like the missing piece that makes everything else finally click into place for the person buying it. 18. The simplest way to get your first five customers requires no funnel and no ad spend. Greet someone, compliment something specific and genuine about them, insert your one-sentence offer, and ask if they know anyone who might benefit from it. 19. Repeat that outreach process for four hours a day or until you have contacted 100 people, whichever comes first. Consistency in this single action is what produces the first five paying customers, not perfect marketing or branding. Follow Brad if you want more content on business, mindset & life changing ideas.

Brad

57,683 views • 1 month ago

Warren Buffett on the best asset to own during inflation: The question comes from the audience at a Berkshire meeting: Is a high-return, capital-light business like See’s Candy still the best inflation hedge? Or has Buffett come around to hard assets like railroads? His answer is unambiguous. The capital-light business wins. The logic is simple. When inflation hits, a business that can grow its dollar volume without needing much additional capital is in an enviable position. He uses the most relatable example he can find. “The ultimate test is your own earning ability. If you’re an outstanding doctor, lawyer, teacher, as inflation goes along, your services will command more and more in dollar terms and you don’t have to make any additional investment in yourself.” The worst businesses to own, by contrast, are the ones drowning in receivables and inventory. If prices double but volume stays flat, they need twice the capital just to stand still. Then he walks through the numbers on See’s Candy, his favorite example of a perfect business. When Berkshire bought it, See’s was doing around $30 million in sales on $9 million of tangible assets. Today it does over $300 million on roughly $40 million in assets. They put in $30 million of additional capital over the entire period. The return on that? About a billion and a half, pre-tax. “If the price of candy doubles, we don’t have any receivables to speak of. Our inventory turns fast. The fixed assets aren’t big. That is a much better business to own than a utility business if you’re going to have a lot of inflation.” The ideal, he says, is even purer than that. “You want a royalty on somebody else’s sales. All you do is get a royalty check every month based on their sales volume. You have no receivables, no inventory, no fixed assets. That kind of business is real inflation protection.” Charlie Munger cuts in with a characteristically dry observation: they didn’t always know this. And sometimes they forget it. Buffett doesn’t disagree. “It shows how continuous learning is absolutely required to have any significant achievement at all in the world.” The reason Berkshire is now in capital-intensive businesses like railroads isn’t a change of heart. It’s a constraint of scale. There simply aren’t enough See’s Candies in the world to put tens of billions to work. “We’d love to find them. But we can’t find them in the quantity.”
5:51

Warren Buffett on the best asset to own during inflation: The question comes from the audience at a Berkshire meeting: Is a high-return, capital-light business like See’s Candy still the best inflation hedge? Or has Buffett come around to hard assets like railroads? His answer is unambiguous. The capital-light business wins. The logic is simple. When inflation hits, a business that can grow its dollar volume without needing much additional capital is in an enviable position. He uses the most relatable example he can find. “The ultimate test is your own earning ability. If you’re an outstanding doctor, lawyer, teacher, as inflation goes along, your services will command more and more in dollar terms and you don’t have to make any additional investment in yourself.” The worst businesses to own, by contrast, are the ones drowning in receivables and inventory. If prices double but volume stays flat, they need twice the capital just to stand still. Then he walks through the numbers on See’s Candy, his favorite example of a perfect business. When Berkshire bought it, See’s was doing around $30 million in sales on $9 million of tangible assets. Today it does over $300 million on roughly $40 million in assets. They put in $30 million of additional capital over the entire period. The return on that? About a billion and a half, pre-tax. “If the price of candy doubles, we don’t have any receivables to speak of. Our inventory turns fast. The fixed assets aren’t big. That is a much better business to own than a utility business if you’re going to have a lot of inflation.” The ideal, he says, is even purer than that. “You want a royalty on somebody else’s sales. All you do is get a royalty check every month based on their sales volume. You have no receivables, no inventory, no fixed assets. That kind of business is real inflation protection.” Charlie Munger cuts in with a characteristically dry observation: they didn’t always know this. And sometimes they forget it. Buffett doesn’t disagree. “It shows how continuous learning is absolutely required to have any significant achievement at all in the world.” The reason Berkshire is now in capital-intensive businesses like railroads isn’t a change of heart. It’s a constraint of scale. There simply aren’t enough See’s Candies in the world to put tens of billions to work. “We’d love to find them. But we can’t find them in the quantity.”

Black Edge

21,061 views • 1 month ago

🎈‼️🔥 Honourable Ashley Sauls delivers a moving sermon during the question time addressing the National Commissioner General Fannie Masemola🔥🔥🔥 The Chairperson Soviet Lekganyane asks him to repeat the sermon 🙆‍♀️ And he does 😭😭😭😭😭 Here you go: “You and others are held to a certain standard, because to whom much is given, much is expected. In these very chambers, many allegations have been made publicly, yet no proof has been produced to date. When I directly asked whether some generals or ministers are corrupt, I was told it cannot be said, as it is still under investigation. Testimony has pointed to factions—two sides. We have even heard it described, on record, as a ‘Zulu war’ by a former minister, Becky Taylor. The State Capture Commission showed us that the elite will simply use the law to protect each other from arrest and punishment. The country is of the view that nothing will really happen to the ‘big shots.’ It looks like this is just political theatre—and I refuse to be one of the characters. The law of men might not do much, or it may take too long to act—but the Lord will act. Therefore, today I choose to look to a higher court. Psalm 94 says: ‘The Lord is a God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long, Lord, will the wicked— how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting. God is not allied with a corrupt throne, a throne that brings misery by its decrees. The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the Lord has become our fortress, and my God, the rock in whom I take refuge. He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the Lord our God will destroy them.’ Thank you, General. Thank you, Jefferson. —Are you done, Honourable Thales? Yes, sir. —I’m going to request that you repeat that verse. It is a very important one. When we speak about the Lord, this is a moment of reflection. Do you have the generosity, through the benevolence of the Chair, to repeat that verse or statement you have just made? Okay, this is a very serious matter. Yes, I absolutely would—100%. I would gladly speak it again, because I know what it means. ‘The Lord is a God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long, Lord, will the wicked— how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting. God is not allied with a corrupt throne, a throne that brings misery by its decrees. The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the Lord has become our fortress, and my God, the rock in whom I take refuge. He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the Lord our God will destroy them.’ Thank you. Thank you so much.” #AdHocCommittee
4:14

🎈‼️🔥 Honourable Ashley Sauls delivers a moving sermon during the question time addressing the National Commissioner General Fannie Masemola🔥🔥🔥 The Chairperson Soviet Lekganyane asks him to repeat the sermon 🙆‍♀️ And he does 😭😭😭😭😭 Here you go: “You and others are held to a certain standard, because to whom much is given, much is expected. In these very chambers, many allegations have been made publicly, yet no proof has been produced to date. When I directly asked whether some generals or ministers are corrupt, I was told it cannot be said, as it is still under investigation. Testimony has pointed to factions—two sides. We have even heard it described, on record, as a ‘Zulu war’ by a former minister, Becky Taylor. The State Capture Commission showed us that the elite will simply use the law to protect each other from arrest and punishment. The country is of the view that nothing will really happen to the ‘big shots.’ It looks like this is just political theatre—and I refuse to be one of the characters. The law of men might not do much, or it may take too long to act—but the Lord will act. Therefore, today I choose to look to a higher court. Psalm 94 says: ‘The Lord is a God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long, Lord, will the wicked— how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting. God is not allied with a corrupt throne, a throne that brings misery by its decrees. The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the Lord has become our fortress, and my God, the rock in whom I take refuge. He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the Lord our God will destroy them.’ Thank you, General. Thank you, Jefferson. —Are you done, Honourable Thales? Yes, sir. —I’m going to request that you repeat that verse. It is a very important one. When we speak about the Lord, this is a moment of reflection. Do you have the generosity, through the benevolence of the Chair, to repeat that verse or statement you have just made? Okay, this is a very serious matter. Yes, I absolutely would—100%. I would gladly speak it again, because I know what it means. ‘The Lord is a God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long, Lord, will the wicked— how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting. God is not allied with a corrupt throne, a throne that brings misery by its decrees. The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the Lord has become our fortress, and my God, the rock in whom I take refuge. He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the Lord our God will destroy them.’ Thank you. Thank you so much.” #AdHocCommittee

Siyakhula

24,261 views • 4 months ago

If you thought you had it all figured out about Glyphosate, and that President Trump sold us out — you need to listen to this. RFK Jr. says he was not happy with the Executive Order, but he emphasizes this is a 60+ year train-wreck that President Trump did not create, and it certainly cannot be fixed overnight. RFK Jr understands exactly why Trump did it, and this is the dark truth: • A large majority of our food supply is Glyphosate ready and simply would not survive without it, and immediately banning Glysophate overnight would cause a chain reaction that would destroy our food supply and economy. • He says, as I discovered when researching, the large majority of glyphosate (the active ingredient in herbicides like Roundup) is produced in China. So think about it: — our crops need glyphosate — China controls glyphosate — Which means, China controls our food supply. — therefore, China, our greatest adversary could cripple our food supply. — which means, this is a matter of NATIONAL SECURITY • RFK Jr emphasized the importance of President Trump realizing the National Security implications, making his decision to start producing Glysophate in America absolutely necessary, and could limit the dangers getting it from our greatest adversary. • RFK JR emphasized the dangers of Glysophate very openly, minced no words about it — and said that his agency is actively working on new technologies and methods that get us off of this dangerous chemical for good. 🔻 MY THOUGHTS: I 100% stand behind what RFK Jr said. When the EO came out, I didn’t understand why.. but after researching how we got here, I quickly understood this was a very complex problem, one that doesn’t get fixed overnight. I am thanking God right now that we at lease have a President that recognized the dangers the past administrations have put us in, and a Health Secretary who understands the risks openly and is willing to do everything he can to stop this madness. I trust these men, both Trump and RFK Jr. I believe they are making amazing strides with the problems they inherited. Give them time. Have faith. It will all work out in the end.
10:12

If you thought you had it all figured out about Glyphosate, and that President Trump sold us out — you need to listen to this. RFK Jr. says he was not happy with the Executive Order, but he emphasizes this is a 60+ year train-wreck that President Trump did not create, and it certainly cannot be fixed overnight. RFK Jr understands exactly why Trump did it, and this is the dark truth: • A large majority of our food supply is Glyphosate ready and simply would not survive without it, and immediately banning Glysophate overnight would cause a chain reaction that would destroy our food supply and economy. • He says, as I discovered when researching, the large majority of glyphosate (the active ingredient in herbicides like Roundup) is produced in China. So think about it: — our crops need glyphosate — China controls glyphosate — Which means, China controls our food supply. — therefore, China, our greatest adversary could cripple our food supply. — which means, this is a matter of NATIONAL SECURITY • RFK Jr emphasized the importance of President Trump realizing the National Security implications, making his decision to start producing Glysophate in America absolutely necessary, and could limit the dangers getting it from our greatest adversary. • RFK JR emphasized the dangers of Glysophate very openly, minced no words about it — and said that his agency is actively working on new technologies and methods that get us off of this dangerous chemical for good. 🔻 MY THOUGHTS: I 100% stand behind what RFK Jr said. When the EO came out, I didn’t understand why.. but after researching how we got here, I quickly understood this was a very complex problem, one that doesn’t get fixed overnight. I am thanking God right now that we at lease have a President that recognized the dangers the past administrations have put us in, and a Health Secretary who understands the risks openly and is willing to do everything he can to stop this madness. I trust these men, both Trump and RFK Jr. I believe they are making amazing strides with the problems they inherited. Give them time. Have faith. It will all work out in the end.

MJTruthUltra

310,040 views • 5 months ago

lol, Harry’s LA dodgers and Bluejays fiasco is a perfect example of what happens when you are an attention seeker who fakes interest in things, just to get attention😏 Harry, just like Meghan, are quite simply bandwagon hoppers. Everything they do or say, is for pure publicity and attention. They fake interest in whatever topic or issue of the moment, that can get them the attention they need 🤷🏽‍♀️ Once you understand that, you cannot help but laugh at the tit Harry made of himself and how he is groveling to fix the fiasco he created for himself🤭 This couple was NEVER known to be sports enthusiasts; they were never known to be sporty or have a remote passion for any particular sport. The only royal couple known to be avid sports enthusiasts who are also known to be very outdoorsy and Athletic are Prince William and Catherine🔥 The fact is that neither Meg nor Harry cares about either the Blue Jays or the LA Dodgers. What they cared about was doing a PR stunt to cosplay W&C and rebrand as a “Relatable sporty couple” who attends games to support their team. The issue is they have no team they truly support and zero interest in sports and it shows😂 Thus, when the dodgers offered them good seats at the Game 4 of the World Series with other celebrities, H&M hopped on the bandwagon and wore their LA dodgers hats🤭 Harry never thought for a minute of the fact that as a British prince, whose father is King of Canada, and as the patron of Invictus who loves to use Canada as his playground to promote himself over veterans; he should NEVER have accepted to go support the dodgers against the Bluejays nor to wear their hat🤷🏽‍♀️ But Harry is as dumb as a rock. Harry never THINKS nor lead, Harry always FOLLOWS. So he followed his attention-seeking wife in this PR stunt that ended up backfiring in his face. Now that he is in Canada, to save face he claims it was under “duress” that he wore the dodgers hat🤡 No there was no “duress”, Harry and Meg are a couple of “Press-titutes” who are for sale to the best offer. Yes for the right amount, they will sing whatever you want them to. That is why they were never fit to be working royals👌🏽 If Harry is in the US, he says one thing; if he lands in the UK, he says another; if he arrives in Canada, he says something else. They have no loyalties to anything but money and attention. You cannot even get William to wear a Chelsea skit. He is Aston Villa and will die Aston villa. But then again, William is genuinely true to himself. He has no need to cosplay anyone😏 Harry spend his life saying things he does not mean and doing things he cannot care less about, simply because his life is spent cosplaying his brother’s interests and life🔥 Harry wants to live William’s life. Everything William has and does, Harry wants to have and do it too. It has been over 12 years that Harry stopped being the Spare to William with Prince George’s birth. But in Harry’s mind, he will always be William’s spare; this is the only role he has cast himself in🤷🏽‍♀️ It is very clear that Harry’s true focus in life is NOT on Meghan or their family; It is NOT on his charity work that is filled with sinister scandals of bullying, murder and torture of communities; It is NOT even about serving Veterans as he loves to pretend. No, the sad truth with Harry is that he married Meghan to compete with William and Catherine; Both H&M use their “children” to compete with W&C; Harry uses every project and charity he has left to compete with William; He schedules all his PR stunts around William’s schedule to compete with William. Yes, the centre of Harry’s life, his only driving passion in life is his eternal obsession with William👌🏽 Outside of chasing William’s shadow, Harry is a man without any proper identity or true passion in life to focus on and that is how he ended up in this Dodgers and Blue Jays backlash☕️
0:13

lol, Harry’s LA dodgers and Bluejays fiasco is a perfect example of what happens when you are an attention seeker who fakes interest in things, just to get attention😏 Harry, just like Meghan, are quite simply bandwagon hoppers. Everything they do or say, is for pure publicity and attention. They fake interest in whatever topic or issue of the moment, that can get them the attention they need 🤷🏽‍♀️ Once you understand that, you cannot help but laugh at the tit Harry made of himself and how he is groveling to fix the fiasco he created for himself🤭 This couple was NEVER known to be sports enthusiasts; they were never known to be sporty or have a remote passion for any particular sport. The only royal couple known to be avid sports enthusiasts who are also known to be very outdoorsy and Athletic are Prince William and Catherine🔥 The fact is that neither Meg nor Harry cares about either the Blue Jays or the LA Dodgers. What they cared about was doing a PR stunt to cosplay W&C and rebrand as a “Relatable sporty couple” who attends games to support their team. The issue is they have no team they truly support and zero interest in sports and it shows😂 Thus, when the dodgers offered them good seats at the Game 4 of the World Series with other celebrities, H&M hopped on the bandwagon and wore their LA dodgers hats🤭 Harry never thought for a minute of the fact that as a British prince, whose father is King of Canada, and as the patron of Invictus who loves to use Canada as his playground to promote himself over veterans; he should NEVER have accepted to go support the dodgers against the Bluejays nor to wear their hat🤷🏽‍♀️ But Harry is as dumb as a rock. Harry never THINKS nor lead, Harry always FOLLOWS. So he followed his attention-seeking wife in this PR stunt that ended up backfiring in his face. Now that he is in Canada, to save face he claims it was under “duress” that he wore the dodgers hat🤡 No there was no “duress”, Harry and Meg are a couple of “Press-titutes” who are for sale to the best offer. Yes for the right amount, they will sing whatever you want them to. That is why they were never fit to be working royals👌🏽 If Harry is in the US, he says one thing; if he lands in the UK, he says another; if he arrives in Canada, he says something else. They have no loyalties to anything but money and attention. You cannot even get William to wear a Chelsea skit. He is Aston Villa and will die Aston villa. But then again, William is genuinely true to himself. He has no need to cosplay anyone😏 Harry spend his life saying things he does not mean and doing things he cannot care less about, simply because his life is spent cosplaying his brother’s interests and life🔥 Harry wants to live William’s life. Everything William has and does, Harry wants to have and do it too. It has been over 12 years that Harry stopped being the Spare to William with Prince George’s birth. But in Harry’s mind, he will always be William’s spare; this is the only role he has cast himself in🤷🏽‍♀️ It is very clear that Harry’s true focus in life is NOT on Meghan or their family; It is NOT on his charity work that is filled with sinister scandals of bullying, murder and torture of communities; It is NOT even about serving Veterans as he loves to pretend. No, the sad truth with Harry is that he married Meghan to compete with William and Catherine; Both H&M use their “children” to compete with W&C; Harry uses every project and charity he has left to compete with William; He schedules all his PR stunts around William’s schedule to compete with William. Yes, the centre of Harry’s life, his only driving passion in life is his eternal obsession with William👌🏽 Outside of chasing William’s shadow, Harry is a man without any proper identity or true passion in life to focus on and that is how he ended up in this Dodgers and Blue Jays backlash☕️

Canellecitadelle

119,747 views • 9 months ago

It's not about what we have or don't have that drives our trading decisions—it's what we're afraid of losing. This fear of loss has often led me down the false path of perfectionism. Yet true mastery and profitability in trading, like in art, comes from embracing the craft's imperfections. ✉️ At the recent Mumbai traders' meetup, Chhirag Kedia spoke a line that has resonated with me all week— वो आदमी सफल होने से कोई रोक नहीं सकता जो अपनी कश्ती जला कर आया हो! It made me reflect on my trading journey and how my risk-taking appetite has evolved over the years. I'm inherently risk-conservative as an individual, though my career decisions and trajectory paint a completely opposite picture. I've never gone bust or even had a significant drawdown in my trading life—initially because I was too cautious, and now because my skills have improved. When I look back at my interactions with other traders and analyse my own performance graph, I am noticing a pattern: traders who started recklessly or faced major drawdowns—but persistently improved their execution—often developed better and faster learning curves than those who began cautiously with small positions. Even Quallamaggie (Q) and Zanger (Z) demonstrated similar patterns—their initial failures didn't reduce their risk appetite or aggression. Rather, they increased their risk appetite as their accounts grew larger. When ordinary traders dismiss Q and Z as exceptions in the trading world, they're likely rationalizing their own fears—fear of bouncing back from setbacks beyond their risk comfort zone, and fear of not having enough skin in the game. After all, as Taleb says, courage is the only virtue you cannot fake. I wonder if I would have been a better trader today had I started more aggressively—even borderline recklessly—and then learned to control that aggression, rather than the other way around. Has my obsession with perfection (or trying to get close to it) actually slowed down my learning curve as a trader? Perfectionism and Self-Abuse In every trade—even with flawless setups and meticulously calculated risks—there are countless ways to feel wrong, whether you make money or not: You buy and it goes down You don't buy and it goes up You buy, it falls, you sell—then it goes up It goes up, you sell, and it keeps going up It goes up, you buy, it goes up further—then drops You buy with half size and it moves up; you pyramid with full size and it goes down You buy with double size and it drops; you buy with half size and it doesn't go up as much . . . and the list can go on But there is only one way you'll feel right: When you buy and it immediately goes up, and when you sell and it immediately goes down. And this is a very very rare instance. But the pursuit of perfect trade—trying to capture both the first and last eighth of every trade—is where much self-belief and confidence is needlessly lost. The search for the perfect chart, perfect market conditions, and perfect mindset was probably the most paralyzing form of self-abuse in trading I had done. It led me to the comfort of inaction rather than risk the ego to scrape the imperfect rewards on offer. Lets take up an example that was discussed in the last Mumbai meetup - PDMJE Paper - Trade Objective An Episodic Pivot setup, gapping out of a big base, to be held as a longer positional play. Entry (Orange lines) 29th October 2024 Entry 113.95, Stop Loss 2% - 111.7 (~Day low) Risk on Trade 0.75% of portfolio, Size - 35% Sells (Blue Lines) 50% Sell at 6R - 128.6 - This was not a planned sell, but I observed weak market depth with sporadic volumes over the next 3-4 days. As a precaution, I reduced size in this illiquid counter. = 3R 50% sell at ~12R - 143 - The swing move had become overextended, moving far from the 10/21 EMA. The position was sold when price broke below the opening range lows in weakness. = 6R Impact of portfolio - 6.75% Analyzing this trade up to this point, it was executed well with little room for improvement—almost perfect. This was also a very obvious EP trade, and many others had executed it similarly. In the group discussion of this trade, even though everyone had profited, regret about the price movements after exit overshadowed the satisfaction from actual gains. If you had missed the pullback entries near the 21 EMA on November 13th (which wasn't actually setup-ready) or the breakout entry that triggered on November 29th (when markets were strong and many stocks were breaking out), you would have likely missed the 80% move that happened in less than a month, which I did. The traders in the group spent much of their emotional energy obsessing over this missed opportunity, ultimately accumulating emotional debt from the markets. The paradox of trading is that while realized losses may dent our account, missing potential gains often dent our confidence. Each time we let the fear of missed opportunities overshadow our actual successes, we unconsciously train ourselves to trade smaller, not bigger - precisely when our proven profitability should be empowering us to scale up. It took me years to understand that successful trading doesn't require feeling happy. I can make sound decisions and evaluate my performance objectively, even when I feel frustrated about missed opportunities. The only true nobility in this business is making money, not chasing dopamine highs. The Adjustment Taking a loss is straightforward—we simply follow our stop loss. The real challenge—and greatest potential for regret—lies in managing profitable positions, particularly when a stock has made big moves in a short period. This is particularly common in magnitude trades like an EP or IPO where our objective is to hold for a longer duration and sell into weakness, but often have moments when the stock is overextended in the short term with a high probability of pulling back. However, we hesitate to sell either because it conflicts with our original trade objective or because we fear missing the chance to buy back during the pullback. This is where many professional traders actively manage their core positions. Rather than passively waiting for a deeper trailing stop loss to trigger during weakness, they sell a portion when the price becomes extended and buy back the same amount at a lower price. This strategy proves more effective than enduring drawdowns while waiting for a formal pullback setup at support levels or moving averages. Let's take a recent example of IGIL (5 min chart) - Trade Objective An early-stage IPO setup displaying a typical volatility contraction pattern (VCP) on intraday charts. The plan is to hold this as a longer-term position, treating it as an All-or-Nothing trade. Entry (Orange line) 24th December 2024 Entry 504, Stop Loss 2% - 493.95 Risk on Trade 0.50% of portfolio, Size - 23% of pf Adjustment Context - 27th December 2024 The stock had surged powerfully over the previous two days, hitting Upper Circuits. On the third day, despite gapping up at open, it immediately broke down during the opening range - like a typical parabolic short setup. This was a point with a high probability of a short-term pullback or consolidation. Sells (Blue Line) 27th December - 585 - 50% size Buyback (Orange line 2) 27th December - 565 - 50% size - Gained 1R Rationale - My anchor bias was for the price to cool off for a bit. - At the 27th open, the price was already at ~8R+ for me. Even if the stock rose further after I sold my partial position, I wouldn't regret it much—I had already secured 4R with half my position still pending, well above my journal averages. This served as an important emotional anchor point for this adjustment. - When buying back, I was simply looking to average down my costs without a specific target or a perfect setup in mind. In this case, I bought back at 565, as the buyback itself presented a good psychological point to cover (10 Rs initial stop loss, 20 Rs points averaged ~1R at half size). It could have been lower too if the breakdown was slower. This was more intuitive and intentionally imperfect. - I close most of these adjustments on the same day since they are just short-term pullbacks and my overall bias remains bullish. A magnitude trade can also be looked at as a combination of several intraday trades around a core position. - This adjustment method applies specifically to magnitude trades like EP and IPO positions, where the trade objective aligns with pyramiding or averaging costs. Caveat You might think this is a cherry-picked example—and you'd be partly right, since it's one of my better and more recent trades (you can see similar patterns in Care or TI). However, I urge you to stay open to the concept. Look back at your previous trades where you held positions too long passively—you'll often find that temporary extensions and pullbacks were easily visible, offering opportunities to capture additional R’s along the way. Traders commonly face similar emotions and dilemmas when deciding how to act in these situations. End Note
0:45

It's not about what we have or don't have that drives our trading decisions—it's what we're afraid of losing. This fear of loss has often led me down the false path of perfectionism. Yet true mastery and profitability in trading, like in art, comes from embracing the craft's imperfections. ✉️ At the recent Mumbai traders' meetup, Chhirag Kedia spoke a line that has resonated with me all week— वो आदमी सफल होने से कोई रोक नहीं सकता जो अपनी कश्ती जला कर आया हो! It made me reflect on my trading journey and how my risk-taking appetite has evolved over the years. I'm inherently risk-conservative as an individual, though my career decisions and trajectory paint a completely opposite picture. I've never gone bust or even had a significant drawdown in my trading life—initially because I was too cautious, and now because my skills have improved. When I look back at my interactions with other traders and analyse my own performance graph, I am noticing a pattern: traders who started recklessly or faced major drawdowns—but persistently improved their execution—often developed better and faster learning curves than those who began cautiously with small positions. Even Quallamaggie (Q) and Zanger (Z) demonstrated similar patterns—their initial failures didn't reduce their risk appetite or aggression. Rather, they increased their risk appetite as their accounts grew larger. When ordinary traders dismiss Q and Z as exceptions in the trading world, they're likely rationalizing their own fears—fear of bouncing back from setbacks beyond their risk comfort zone, and fear of not having enough skin in the game. After all, as Taleb says, courage is the only virtue you cannot fake. I wonder if I would have been a better trader today had I started more aggressively—even borderline recklessly—and then learned to control that aggression, rather than the other way around. Has my obsession with perfection (or trying to get close to it) actually slowed down my learning curve as a trader? Perfectionism and Self-Abuse In every trade—even with flawless setups and meticulously calculated risks—there are countless ways to feel wrong, whether you make money or not: You buy and it goes down You don't buy and it goes up You buy, it falls, you sell—then it goes up It goes up, you sell, and it keeps going up It goes up, you buy, it goes up further—then drops You buy with half size and it moves up; you pyramid with full size and it goes down You buy with double size and it drops; you buy with half size and it doesn't go up as much . . . and the list can go on But there is only one way you'll feel right: When you buy and it immediately goes up, and when you sell and it immediately goes down. And this is a very very rare instance. But the pursuit of perfect trade—trying to capture both the first and last eighth of every trade—is where much self-belief and confidence is needlessly lost. The search for the perfect chart, perfect market conditions, and perfect mindset was probably the most paralyzing form of self-abuse in trading I had done. It led me to the comfort of inaction rather than risk the ego to scrape the imperfect rewards on offer. Lets take up an example that was discussed in the last Mumbai meetup - PDMJE Paper - Trade Objective An Episodic Pivot setup, gapping out of a big base, to be held as a longer positional play. Entry (Orange lines) 29th October 2024 Entry 113.95, Stop Loss 2% - 111.7 (~Day low) Risk on Trade 0.75% of portfolio, Size - 35% Sells (Blue Lines) 50% Sell at 6R - 128.6 - This was not a planned sell, but I observed weak market depth with sporadic volumes over the next 3-4 days. As a precaution, I reduced size in this illiquid counter. = 3R 50% sell at ~12R - 143 - The swing move had become overextended, moving far from the 10/21 EMA. The position was sold when price broke below the opening range lows in weakness. = 6R Impact of portfolio - 6.75% Analyzing this trade up to this point, it was executed well with little room for improvement—almost perfect. This was also a very obvious EP trade, and many others had executed it similarly. In the group discussion of this trade, even though everyone had profited, regret about the price movements after exit overshadowed the satisfaction from actual gains. If you had missed the pullback entries near the 21 EMA on November 13th (which wasn't actually setup-ready) or the breakout entry that triggered on November 29th (when markets were strong and many stocks were breaking out), you would have likely missed the 80% move that happened in less than a month, which I did. The traders in the group spent much of their emotional energy obsessing over this missed opportunity, ultimately accumulating emotional debt from the markets. The paradox of trading is that while realized losses may dent our account, missing potential gains often dent our confidence. Each time we let the fear of missed opportunities overshadow our actual successes, we unconsciously train ourselves to trade smaller, not bigger - precisely when our proven profitability should be empowering us to scale up. It took me years to understand that successful trading doesn't require feeling happy. I can make sound decisions and evaluate my performance objectively, even when I feel frustrated about missed opportunities. The only true nobility in this business is making money, not chasing dopamine highs. The Adjustment Taking a loss is straightforward—we simply follow our stop loss. The real challenge—and greatest potential for regret—lies in managing profitable positions, particularly when a stock has made big moves in a short period. This is particularly common in magnitude trades like an EP or IPO where our objective is to hold for a longer duration and sell into weakness, but often have moments when the stock is overextended in the short term with a high probability of pulling back. However, we hesitate to sell either because it conflicts with our original trade objective or because we fear missing the chance to buy back during the pullback. This is where many professional traders actively manage their core positions. Rather than passively waiting for a deeper trailing stop loss to trigger during weakness, they sell a portion when the price becomes extended and buy back the same amount at a lower price. This strategy proves more effective than enduring drawdowns while waiting for a formal pullback setup at support levels or moving averages. Let's take a recent example of IGIL (5 min chart) - Trade Objective An early-stage IPO setup displaying a typical volatility contraction pattern (VCP) on intraday charts. The plan is to hold this as a longer-term position, treating it as an All-or-Nothing trade. Entry (Orange line) 24th December 2024 Entry 504, Stop Loss 2% - 493.95 Risk on Trade 0.50% of portfolio, Size - 23% of pf Adjustment Context - 27th December 2024 The stock had surged powerfully over the previous two days, hitting Upper Circuits. On the third day, despite gapping up at open, it immediately broke down during the opening range - like a typical parabolic short setup. This was a point with a high probability of a short-term pullback or consolidation. Sells (Blue Line) 27th December - 585 - 50% size Buyback (Orange line 2) 27th December - 565 - 50% size - Gained 1R Rationale - My anchor bias was for the price to cool off for a bit. - At the 27th open, the price was already at ~8R+ for me. Even if the stock rose further after I sold my partial position, I wouldn't regret it much—I had already secured 4R with half my position still pending, well above my journal averages. This served as an important emotional anchor point for this adjustment. - When buying back, I was simply looking to average down my costs without a specific target or a perfect setup in mind. In this case, I bought back at 565, as the buyback itself presented a good psychological point to cover (10 Rs initial stop loss, 20 Rs points averaged ~1R at half size). It could have been lower too if the breakdown was slower. This was more intuitive and intentionally imperfect. - I close most of these adjustments on the same day since they are just short-term pullbacks and my overall bias remains bullish. A magnitude trade can also be looked at as a combination of several intraday trades around a core position. - This adjustment method applies specifically to magnitude trades like EP and IPO positions, where the trade objective aligns with pyramiding or averaging costs. Caveat You might think this is a cherry-picked example—and you'd be partly right, since it's one of my better and more recent trades (you can see similar patterns in Care or TI). However, I urge you to stay open to the concept. Look back at your previous trades where you held positions too long passively—you'll often find that temporary extensions and pullbacks were easily visible, offering opportunities to capture additional R’s along the way. Traders commonly face similar emotions and dilemmas when deciding how to act in these situations. End Note

Anuragg Venkatakrishnan

24,423 views • 1 year ago

Valieva’s doping story makes perfect sense if you’ve never trained seriously. So what actually happened? A minimal amount of trimetazidine was found in her sample. It is a substance that can potentially increase endurance. Tennis player Jannik Sinner tested positive for a banned substance. A horse ridden by a Swiss athlete also tested positive. That is why commissions exist. They decide whether a disqualification is justified. In Sinner’s case, the explanation was that the substance entered his system through a massage treatment. Fine, it happens. In the German rider’s case, wait for it, the story was that a driver who had been taking the substance basically pissed it into the hay and that is how it got into the horse. Cleared. In Valieva’s case, despite the extremely minimal amount detected, similar in scale to Sinner’s, and despite the fact that it does not improve jumps, she received the longest ban. Try it yourself. First spin in the air or run without coffee. Then drink coffee and do it again. Did you run with more energy? Maybe. Did your rotations suddenly get better? No. Figure skating is not a cyclical endurance sport like triathlon. Jumps require coordination, technique, control of the vertical axis, and natural rotational ability. If you do not have an axis, no matter how much energy you have, you will simply be thrown off to the side. If you try to jump 100 times hoping to improve them, bad news. You will just lock in your mistakes. Valieva also has artistry. That does not mean smiling. It is work through the torso, arms, back, plus clean lines and turnout. When we talk about line, we mean geometry. The relationship between arms, legs, hands, and head. Straight knees, pointed feet, extended fingers, fully finished positions. All these body parts work together to express an image, passion, sadness, joy, innocence. Valieva had preparatory ballet training. That creates a completely different level of expressiveness. The ability to control the torso also gives more control in technique and helps with technical elements. What we see on the ice is a full package built through work in every direction. So this whole PR campaign, which I am sure is paid for, selling the idea that smiling on the ice is the standard of “proper” skating, is a substitution of concepts. Guys, Alysa scored fewer points than the bronze medalist of the previous Olympic Games. Who are they trying to fool? Stories for naive people about how she did not need the gold medal do not match the millions and the photo sessions with that medal. Did not need it? Then give it to the one who was crying. Their claims go as following: Why chase new records? Why stretch your back and legs, why spend years in ballet training? None of that is necessary because we cannot do it. We can smile. So that must be the “right” approach to sport. But that’s an absurd. Another fact that Alysa is half Chinese, and that in men’s skating the American Malinin, who is ethnically Russian (and a brilliant skater), was supposed to win, only adds more questions. So yes, endless manipulation, propaganda, PR campaigns, smear campaigns, corruption in sports, the arts, and beyond, this is also a war on an invisible front. Be informed and do not fall for it.
1:16

Valieva’s doping story makes perfect sense if you’ve never trained seriously. So what actually happened? A minimal amount of trimetazidine was found in her sample. It is a substance that can potentially increase endurance. Tennis player Jannik Sinner tested positive for a banned substance. A horse ridden by a Swiss athlete also tested positive. That is why commissions exist. They decide whether a disqualification is justified. In Sinner’s case, the explanation was that the substance entered his system through a massage treatment. Fine, it happens. In the German rider’s case, wait for it, the story was that a driver who had been taking the substance basically pissed it into the hay and that is how it got into the horse. Cleared. In Valieva’s case, despite the extremely minimal amount detected, similar in scale to Sinner’s, and despite the fact that it does not improve jumps, she received the longest ban. Try it yourself. First spin in the air or run without coffee. Then drink coffee and do it again. Did you run with more energy? Maybe. Did your rotations suddenly get better? No. Figure skating is not a cyclical endurance sport like triathlon. Jumps require coordination, technique, control of the vertical axis, and natural rotational ability. If you do not have an axis, no matter how much energy you have, you will simply be thrown off to the side. If you try to jump 100 times hoping to improve them, bad news. You will just lock in your mistakes. Valieva also has artistry. That does not mean smiling. It is work through the torso, arms, back, plus clean lines and turnout. When we talk about line, we mean geometry. The relationship between arms, legs, hands, and head. Straight knees, pointed feet, extended fingers, fully finished positions. All these body parts work together to express an image, passion, sadness, joy, innocence. Valieva had preparatory ballet training. That creates a completely different level of expressiveness. The ability to control the torso also gives more control in technique and helps with technical elements. What we see on the ice is a full package built through work in every direction. So this whole PR campaign, which I am sure is paid for, selling the idea that smiling on the ice is the standard of “proper” skating, is a substitution of concepts. Guys, Alysa scored fewer points than the bronze medalist of the previous Olympic Games. Who are they trying to fool? Stories for naive people about how she did not need the gold medal do not match the millions and the photo sessions with that medal. Did not need it? Then give it to the one who was crying. Their claims go as following: Why chase new records? Why stretch your back and legs, why spend years in ballet training? None of that is necessary because we cannot do it. We can smile. So that must be the “right” approach to sport. But that’s an absurd. Another fact that Alysa is half Chinese, and that in men’s skating the American Malinin, who is ethnically Russian (and a brilliant skater), was supposed to win, only adds more questions. So yes, endless manipulation, propaganda, PR campaigns, smear campaigns, corruption in sports, the arts, and beyond, this is also a war on an invisible front. Be informed and do not fall for it.

Rina Lu🇷🇺

72,876 views • 5 months ago

🥶=🌞 In high latitudes, the cold is your sun. Ignore it, and you live without one. What most people get wrong is believing that high latitude in winter, is a “deficiency problem.” It is only a deficiency if you do it wrong. In high latitude, we must embrace winter and accept a different set of physical rules. Thing you have to do: 1️⃣ Lock in time⏰ Wake when the environment wakes, even if that is darkness. Still go outside because infrared and magnetic cues exist even when the sun disk does not. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (the brain clock) does not run on Instagram sunlight. It runs on environmental timing. Miss that, and mitochondria lose rhythm. 2️⃣ Cold becomes the sun❄️=☀️ Real cold, outdoors Feel it by minimizing the clothing you wear. Don’t cover your face. Cover your hands & feet well if you plan to stay outside for hours, like I did, unless you want frostbite souvenirs you didn’t order. Cold in nature increases electron density, improves redox, and substitutes for missing photonic input. This is why northern mammals thrive in winter. They don’t complain. They adapt. 3️⃣ DHA becomes non-negotiable🐟 In winter Norway, seafood is not “nutrition,” it is optics. DHA turns cell membranes into antennas that capture what little light exists and store it in water layers. This is how biology cheats winter. Without DHA, the brain becomes noisy, inflamed, anxious, and hungry for carbs(carbs doesn’t substitute DHA) Don’t forget the other key semiconductor: phosphorus (pork, egg yolks, organ meats, cheese, shellfish, red meat, poultry) 4️⃣ Light discipline becomes extreme💡 After sunset, zero overhead light if possible. Candles beat incandescent, halogen, and LEDs. Screens are minimized or filtered hard. Blue light at night in the Norwegian winter is not a small mistake. It is circadian assassination 😵🔫 Most winter depression is not psychological. It is photonic. In my house, there is no such thing as darkness after sunset 😒, so I cover myself head to toe and, yes, with blue-blocking glasses. 5️⃣ Movement stays outside🏋🏼‍♀️ Whatever you do, do outside in nature. Winter gyms under LEDs at high latitudes are where mitochondria STOP adapting and start negotiating. Nature DOESN’T NEGOTIATE 6️⃣ Food simplifies🍽️ No carb loading to “feel better.” Protein and fat dominate. Local fish, roe, bone broth, salt. Hunger signals in winter are often light hunger, not calorie hunger. Eat less. Sleep more. This is carnivorous season. Respect it 7️⃣ NO supplements replace nature💊 Vitamin D pills do not replace the sun Magnesium pills do not replace grounding Adaptation beats substitution every time 8️⃣ Location🏡 Avoid cities like the plague They are blue-light and EMF hellholes If you work there, follow my office guide(with a proper winter twist add) 👉🏻 😇Now the part most people don’t want to hear😈 Norwegian winter isn’t for everyone. If someone cannot control light at night, cannot access cold safely, cannot eat seafood, or is already metabolically broken, winter will expose weakness fast. Nature is honest and brutal 🌬️🔥 Embrace it, or get the hell out🙄 Otherwise, sure👍🏻… stay cozy, stay lit up, binge Netflix like a pro. Just don’t be surprised when Mr. Death 💀shows up at your doorstep, asking if the next episode is almost over 👀 For us, especially with a transplanted kidney, the lesson is not fear. It is PRECISION Winter is a surgical tool. Used correctly, it builds resilience 👍🏻 Used poorly, it accelerates decline 👎🏻 So, if you live in Norway in winter, don’t complain about missing sun just behave like winter mammals, enjoy the weather. Stay grateful. Remember: biology doesn’t care what we believe. It only responds to physics✅ BTW this is the first time since I discovered ☣️ Pleb Kruse = BTC foundationalist in exile 🟩🔆 that I shoveled snow wearing cotton clothes in −8°C (18°F). Normally I’m inside a Michelin down jacket because I’m 1.65 m, 53 kg / 5’5”, 115 lb, zero insulation. My husb worried I’d get sick🤭 It felt amazing…
2:30

🥶=🌞 In high latitudes, the cold is your sun. Ignore it, and you live without one. What most people get wrong is believing that high latitude in winter, is a “deficiency problem.” It is only a deficiency if you do it wrong. In high latitude, we must embrace winter and accept a different set of physical rules. Thing you have to do: 1️⃣ Lock in time⏰ Wake when the environment wakes, even if that is darkness. Still go outside because infrared and magnetic cues exist even when the sun disk does not. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (the brain clock) does not run on Instagram sunlight. It runs on environmental timing. Miss that, and mitochondria lose rhythm. 2️⃣ Cold becomes the sun❄️=☀️ Real cold, outdoors Feel it by minimizing the clothing you wear. Don’t cover your face. Cover your hands & feet well if you plan to stay outside for hours, like I did, unless you want frostbite souvenirs you didn’t order. Cold in nature increases electron density, improves redox, and substitutes for missing photonic input. This is why northern mammals thrive in winter. They don’t complain. They adapt. 3️⃣ DHA becomes non-negotiable🐟 In winter Norway, seafood is not “nutrition,” it is optics. DHA turns cell membranes into antennas that capture what little light exists and store it in water layers. This is how biology cheats winter. Without DHA, the brain becomes noisy, inflamed, anxious, and hungry for carbs(carbs doesn’t substitute DHA) Don’t forget the other key semiconductor: phosphorus (pork, egg yolks, organ meats, cheese, shellfish, red meat, poultry) 4️⃣ Light discipline becomes extreme💡 After sunset, zero overhead light if possible. Candles beat incandescent, halogen, and LEDs. Screens are minimized or filtered hard. Blue light at night in the Norwegian winter is not a small mistake. It is circadian assassination 😵🔫 Most winter depression is not psychological. It is photonic. In my house, there is no such thing as darkness after sunset 😒, so I cover myself head to toe and, yes, with blue-blocking glasses. 5️⃣ Movement stays outside🏋🏼‍♀️ Whatever you do, do outside in nature. Winter gyms under LEDs at high latitudes are where mitochondria STOP adapting and start negotiating. Nature DOESN’T NEGOTIATE 6️⃣ Food simplifies🍽️ No carb loading to “feel better.” Protein and fat dominate. Local fish, roe, bone broth, salt. Hunger signals in winter are often light hunger, not calorie hunger. Eat less. Sleep more. This is carnivorous season. Respect it 7️⃣ NO supplements replace nature💊 Vitamin D pills do not replace the sun Magnesium pills do not replace grounding Adaptation beats substitution every time 8️⃣ Location🏡 Avoid cities like the plague They are blue-light and EMF hellholes If you work there, follow my office guide(with a proper winter twist add) 👉🏻 😇Now the part most people don’t want to hear😈 Norwegian winter isn’t for everyone. If someone cannot control light at night, cannot access cold safely, cannot eat seafood, or is already metabolically broken, winter will expose weakness fast. Nature is honest and brutal 🌬️🔥 Embrace it, or get the hell out🙄 Otherwise, sure👍🏻… stay cozy, stay lit up, binge Netflix like a pro. Just don’t be surprised when Mr. Death 💀shows up at your doorstep, asking if the next episode is almost over 👀 For us, especially with a transplanted kidney, the lesson is not fear. It is PRECISION Winter is a surgical tool. Used correctly, it builds resilience 👍🏻 Used poorly, it accelerates decline 👎🏻 So, if you live in Norway in winter, don’t complain about missing sun just behave like winter mammals, enjoy the weather. Stay grateful. Remember: biology doesn’t care what we believe. It only responds to physics✅ BTW this is the first time since I discovered ☣️ Pleb Kruse = BTC foundationalist in exile 🟩🔆 that I shoveled snow wearing cotton clothes in −8°C (18°F). Normally I’m inside a Michelin down jacket because I’m 1.65 m, 53 kg / 5’5”, 115 lb, zero insulation. My husb worried I’d get sick🤭 It felt amazing…

Light Me Away ☀️

16,817 views • 7 months ago

Historic Press Meet – 1995 September 27, 1995, became a day Tamil Nadu would never forget. Rajinikanth, without formally entering politics, shook the state with words that made history. By morning, Poes Garden resembled a fortress. Fan club members crowded one side, plainclothes intelligence officers the other, and reporters jostled for position. Only the press was allowed near his residence; assistants screened everyone at the street corner. At 11 a.m., Rajinikanth appeared on the doorstep, dressed in a crisp white kurta. “Let’s give it an hour until everyone arrives, then I’ll meet you all,” he said with a smile before retreating inside. Within the hour, over a hundred journalists, photographers, and satellite TV crews had gathered. They were offered cold drinks, seated in the portico, and treated with warmth before being invited inside. The central hall showcased a Krishna-Radha statue, surrounded by decorative dolls. In an adjacent room, Rajinikanth welcomed the press, cigarette in hand, striking his signature pose in black attire. “No questions for now. I’ve prepared a statement addressing all your queries. My P.A. will read it,” he said. Sathyanarayanan, his P.A., began reading “Four Requests”, a statement addressed to AIADMK workers, his fan club, the public, and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. As the P.A. read, Rajinikanth shifted expressions and posed for cameras. When the Chief Minister was mentioned, he placed a hand on his face, visibly concerned. At one point, the P.A. read, “To the people of Tamil Nadu who give me life…” Rajinikanth interjected, “No, it should be, ‘To the people of Tamil Nadu, who are the gods who give me life…’” His words underscored the devotion he felt for his fans. The statement clarified, “I have no grievances against AIADMK workers or supporters, only dissatisfaction with its leadership,” signaling support for the members, not Jayalalitha. Another line, “Jayalalitha has used the Chief Minister’s position for her selfish interests and extravagant displays. If she is allowed to remain in power, even God cannot save Tamil Nadu’s people,” sparked whispers: a political blow delivered with unprecedented clarity. On politics, he noted, “If I enter politics now, it will create confusion. Only time will decide. I’m thinking about how to serve Tamil Nadu’s people without entering politics.” Reporters speculated he was waiting for the release of Muthu that Deepavali, with an auspicious alignment marking the perfect moment. He advised party workers, “Continue your work within your parties,” hinting at a future political role. Addressing the Chief Minister, he warned, “Don’t surround yourself with sycophants; keep good advisors instead,” a subtle critique of ministers who had criticized him. By the end, he had smoked six cigarettes. The statement concluded, “Our path is the path of non-violence, the path of Gandhi.” Sitting in silence, eyes closed, he seemed lost in thought before rising and saying, “Jai Hind.” Photographers requested different poses, which he graciously obliged, even posing against the compound wall. “Is that enough?” he asked with a grin, then disappeared upstairs. Outside, journalists scrambled to file their stories. RMV of Sathya Movies received the full statement, responding simply: “That’s his opinion.” Meanwhile, reporters loyal to the ruling party framed their headline differently: “He won’t enter politics—for now.” That day, Rajinikanth proved that even without stepping into politics, his words alone could change the state’s narrative.📈🔥 #SuperstarRajinikanth | #50YearsOfRAJINISM
0:28

Historic Press Meet – 1995 September 27, 1995, became a day Tamil Nadu would never forget. Rajinikanth, without formally entering politics, shook the state with words that made history. By morning, Poes Garden resembled a fortress. Fan club members crowded one side, plainclothes intelligence officers the other, and reporters jostled for position. Only the press was allowed near his residence; assistants screened everyone at the street corner. At 11 a.m., Rajinikanth appeared on the doorstep, dressed in a crisp white kurta. “Let’s give it an hour until everyone arrives, then I’ll meet you all,” he said with a smile before retreating inside. Within the hour, over a hundred journalists, photographers, and satellite TV crews had gathered. They were offered cold drinks, seated in the portico, and treated with warmth before being invited inside. The central hall showcased a Krishna-Radha statue, surrounded by decorative dolls. In an adjacent room, Rajinikanth welcomed the press, cigarette in hand, striking his signature pose in black attire. “No questions for now. I’ve prepared a statement addressing all your queries. My P.A. will read it,” he said. Sathyanarayanan, his P.A., began reading “Four Requests”, a statement addressed to AIADMK workers, his fan club, the public, and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. As the P.A. read, Rajinikanth shifted expressions and posed for cameras. When the Chief Minister was mentioned, he placed a hand on his face, visibly concerned. At one point, the P.A. read, “To the people of Tamil Nadu who give me life…” Rajinikanth interjected, “No, it should be, ‘To the people of Tamil Nadu, who are the gods who give me life…’” His words underscored the devotion he felt for his fans. The statement clarified, “I have no grievances against AIADMK workers or supporters, only dissatisfaction with its leadership,” signaling support for the members, not Jayalalitha. Another line, “Jayalalitha has used the Chief Minister’s position for her selfish interests and extravagant displays. If she is allowed to remain in power, even God cannot save Tamil Nadu’s people,” sparked whispers: a political blow delivered with unprecedented clarity. On politics, he noted, “If I enter politics now, it will create confusion. Only time will decide. I’m thinking about how to serve Tamil Nadu’s people without entering politics.” Reporters speculated he was waiting for the release of Muthu that Deepavali, with an auspicious alignment marking the perfect moment. He advised party workers, “Continue your work within your parties,” hinting at a future political role. Addressing the Chief Minister, he warned, “Don’t surround yourself with sycophants; keep good advisors instead,” a subtle critique of ministers who had criticized him. By the end, he had smoked six cigarettes. The statement concluded, “Our path is the path of non-violence, the path of Gandhi.” Sitting in silence, eyes closed, he seemed lost in thought before rising and saying, “Jai Hind.” Photographers requested different poses, which he graciously obliged, even posing against the compound wall. “Is that enough?” he asked with a grin, then disappeared upstairs. Outside, journalists scrambled to file their stories. RMV of Sathya Movies received the full statement, responding simply: “That’s his opinion.” Meanwhile, reporters loyal to the ruling party framed their headline differently: “He won’t enter politics—for now.” That day, Rajinikanth proved that even without stepping into politics, his words alone could change the state’s narrative.📈🔥 #SuperstarRajinikanth | #50YearsOfRAJINISM

Deathwish

225,193 views • 11 months ago

"Imagine that there's a God who brings about the world and creates the world, but does it maliciously, because he wants human beings to suffer." ~AA Suffering Makes God's Existence Unlikely "Could God have made it such that animals were all herbivores instead of carnivores and omnivores?" "We're talking about animals who are predated on from the moment that they begin existence." (If you know about Loosh and "Far Journeys" by Robert Monroe, these points should all ring a bell. But this discussion was NOT about Loosh. Fascinating debate.) 1 Atheist vs 25 Christians (feat. Alex O'Connor) | Surrounded Christian Tim: "Okay, so my first question to start out with is: What exactly about suffering makes this unlikely, on the condition that God exists?" Atheist Alex (AA): "I think that if God is all-loving, then he probably wouldn't want his creatures to suffer. And so, I think that the fact that they do suffer makes his existence less likely." Tim: "Okay, perfect. And is there some specific aspect of suffering that you're particularly honing in on, horrendous or whatever that is?" Alex: "In particular, non-human animal suffering. Because I think that Christianity has a celebrated tradition of theodicies, trying to explain why suffering exists: human free will, the development of the soul, higher-order goods. All of this kind of stuff. None of which apply to the suffering of non-human animals." Tim: "Have you heard of the Axiological Expectation Mismatch Problem?" Alex: "I have not." Tim: "Okay, so, philosophers of religion have started to understand that the thing that actually generates a problem between God and suffering is actually the value system you attach to the very attribute of perfect lovingness. Because the problem of evil is an internal critique, you have to look at a very specific version of theism and how it defines perfect lovingness. I want to present to you a version where my version of perfect lovingness does not actually constitute a problem and a misalignment, that mismatch between the suffering of animals - let's just say, the profusion of suffering of animals - and existence of God." Alex: "So let's hear it. What kind of God are we imagining that would allow and oversee and do nothing to prevent billions of years of untold animal suffering?" (There's no justification for all of the suffering that animals go through and it's borderline comical (if it wasn't so sad) to see Christians trying to come up with reasons to justify it.) Tim: "Right. So you're talking about non-prevention." Alex: "Or setting up the system that is natural selection, such that it relies upon things like predation and disease." (This is straight out of the Loosh chapter.) Tim: "Well, the first part is, I don't agree with the whole setting up the system part. So I'm not one of those theists that believes that God does this select and pick idea of creating worlds. I don't think that God actually creates worlds. I think that God lets worlds develop, according in a certain way. But because God can oversee an overarching narrative, he knows exactly how he can redeem anything." Alex: "Could God have made it such that animals were all herbivores instead of carnivores and omnivores?" Tim: "Yes, he could totally do that." Alex: "So had he done that, here's an instant way to reduce, by orders of magnitude, the amount of suffering that exists." (But then there would be no Loosh! I don't know if Loosh is a real thing, but if it IS, it would explain lot of things on this planet.) Tim: "Right, but hold on. That's, particularly, assuming a value theory, already, that I haven't told you I'm adopting, that has a problem with evil. So I have to give you my value theory first, for you to show that misalignment." Alex: "Okay, let's hear it." Tim: "Perfect, okay. So my value theory says that the most important thing about a sentient creature is not what merely happens to them, it's about the total timeline of their life and how and where their life permanently ends. Meaning, if you were to judge an author of a narrative, and the first few chapters, let's say, there's a lot of bad things happening, but the end ends with this crescendo where there's victoriousness, there's redemption, there's beauty. And everyone in the story actually endorses their entire existence that they live. They can look at the total timeline, and they actually each subjectively come to the conclusion, 'I'm glad I was made and I totally see what my suffering was for.' That's the particular I'm using with. Like John Hicks says, we have to judge the very nature of God's lovingness by what he does in the end, not these few time slices that we observe right now. For you to show that there's a problem, you have to show, to me, that the suffering of animals cannot be transformed, are intrinsically cut off from being transformed into a life that they will endorse. There's a couple of theses on the table." Alex: "So are you talking about the end of their life, as in their end of life on Earth, or are you talking about the afterlife?" Tim: "Antemortem, postmortem (before and after death)." (So once that animal, that suffered needlessly for most of their life, gets to the afterlife, they'll understand there was a reason for it. Really?) Alex: "Okay. Because if you're just talking about life on Earth, then I would say that if you had an author writing a book and a character. If we were trying to figure out the relationship between that author and the person in the book, and that person in the book shows up for five seconds in the first chapter, and is a child who almost immediately dies of cancer in an incredibly painful way. And there's no development, there's no sort of bring back to life, and suddenly everyone's grateful for it. It is just this miserable, tragic experience. "And I ask, well, what did the author, not want to do for the story of the book, but want to do for that character? I think it would be pretty damning. And also, when it comes to animals, we're talking about animals who are predated on from the moment that they begin existence." Tim: "Absolutely." Alex: "They sort of have disease. Zebras, when they're killed by lions, are often too big to be killed instantly, so they die over minutes with their windpipes caught in the jaws of a lion. How can this be developing, a zebra, which, by the way, probably doesn't even have the same kind of first-person conscious experience that humans do in order to sort of rationalize an abstract and learn from their sort of past and morally develop in that way? They just suffer. And what kind of God could oversee this?" Tim:"Okay, so there's a lot of assumptions on the table. Again, you're assuming a particular value system that I'm not laying out." Alex: "I'll tell you what I'm assuming here. What I'm assuming here is that a good God would not allow unnecessary suffering to obtain. Would you agree with that?" Tim: "We can talk about unnecessary suffering. We're talking about the justifying norms for suffering. You're saying it has to be in terms of necessity. Which is, an evil is only authorizable, by God, if it's in connection to a greater good or prevention of a greater evil, correct?" Alex: "If there's some kind of justification for allowing that sort of thing." Tim: "Yeah, but you're saying it's a necessary connection. Why...what's the term necessity...?" Alex: "Perhaps I should say unjustified instead of unnecessary." Tim: "Okay, so we both agree. I do not believe that God can authorize or justify unjustified suffering." Alex: "Okay, so tell me how that example that I gave you, the deer with its leg, starving, is justified?" Tim: "Because it's intrinsically redeemable. And the norms I'm working with is not this necessity condition that you're working with. Mine is about redeemable suffering, redeemability, or what we call, feasibility." Alex: "For the deer?" Tim: "If that suffering can be defeated within the creature's life. And I'll define what I mean by defeat, which is that they can, retroactively, look back at what they went through and integrate it into their life history, where they look at their life..." Alex: "I have to interrupt, because the example I gave you is one where the deer dies." Tim: "Yes, the deer dies. But here's the thing. You're probably talking about, this post-mortem example, I'm gonna put one thesis on the table: There's two philosophers that defend exactly what this goes through. One defends that animals will be given a martyrdom status. Well, God will be able to present himself in a way to animals in the afterlife, such that, in the same way you could give praise to a dog and a dog emotionally recognizes that he's loved, and that his life is worth living, right? To these animals that suffered like that, there's one view on the table, which is that God will give them a praiseworthy status where they will be able to actually..." (Bending over backwards to justify the suffering of animals. The deer will learn why he/she had to go through all of that when they die and God explains it and praises the animal for what they went though. Ridiculous, IMO.) Alex: "So can we talk about that claim? Because these animals are suffering for what? I mean, God might cause them to suffer..." Tim: "It's not means to ends." Alex: "God might cause them to suffer a bunch, and then essentially redeem them in the afterlife. But what for? Like, why do this? If I were to punch you in the face and then give you $20,000 afterwards, you might be grateful for the $20,000, but why couldn't I just give you the $20,000?" Tim: "We'll see. So that's assuming. So I saw your debate with Trent..." Alex: "Good stuff." ~ Christian Hayden (Not Hayden Christiansen) : "Would you say that theism or atheism better account for the idea that suffering exists and a purpose for it?" Alex: "It depends exactly what you mean. Because, of course, you might say that the world itself is more expected on theism, and since suffering needs the existence of the world, that it's theism. But granted the existence of a material world, let's say, I think atheism." Hayden: "Okay. Why does suffering exist at all? In an atheistic worldview, what is the cause of suffering?" Alex: "Oh, well, because, however life began, it developed through a series of natural selection, which requires animals to develop senses that they wish to avoid in order to be more likely to survive. And that's why pain receptors evolve in a world where not all of these pains are actually going to kill us, we're left with situations left with situations in which we're in a lot of pain but don't end up dying for it." Hayden: "Would you agree that consciousness is necessary for suffering?" Alex: "I would say probably, yeah." Hayden: "Does atheism account for consciousness?" Alex: "Yes, that's what I was talking about a moment ago. Perhaps not, maybe theism accounts better for consciousness than atheism does." Hayden: "Okay. So if there is no consciousness, there is no suffering? Is that right?" Alex: "That's probably true, yeah." Hayden: "So, if atheism cannot account for consciousness, then it cannot account for suffering. Would you agree with that?" Alex: "So I think what we're doing here is we're sort of slightly shifting the goal posts. If you don't want to grant the existence of the material world before we start talking about this, we can do an argument from consciousness. But then we need to debate whether consciousness is more...it is explicable on atheism. "What I'm going to say is this: Consciousness may seem to imply the existence of a conscious creator of the Universe. We're here talking about, I suppose we're talking about Christianity. The claim was about God. But the God that you believe in, let's say, if we grant that there is a creator deity who sort of brings about the universe of conscious creatures... Have you ever heard of the evil-god hypothesis that Stephen Law popularized?" Hayden: No, tell me it." Alex: "So the idea is that like, imagine that there's a God who brings about the world and creates the world, but does it maliciously, because he wants human beings to suffer. He brings about a world in order so that human beings will suffer, right? That seems like a plausible hypothesis. And even if you think that consciousness points towards God, the kind of God that a lot of Christians think is a sort of necessary quality of God, which is to be all-loving, might not have to apply here." (I know he wasn't talking soul-trap theory and Loosh, but it sounds just like it.) Hayden: "If Christianity were true, is it plausible that suffering is necessary for God's purpose, for his creation?" Alex: "If Christianity is true, then I think it must be necessary, because there'd be no other explanation for it." Hayden: "So we're not talking about whether or not Christianity is true..." Alex: "But if you're asking me if it's plausible that Christianity is true and therefore suffering is necessary, I would say probably not. Because I don't think suffering should be necessary or could be necessary." Hayden: "In an atheistic worldview, I would agree with you. It makes no sense at all." Alex: "So can I ask you why then, if God exists and wants to come to know everybody, and wants to love everybody and does so for the sake of human beings, why he chose to imbue the world with so much suffering that is at least, seemingly, completely inexplicable?" Hayden: "Are you a father?" Alec: "No." Hayden: "I'm a father. I want my son to become just like I am, better than I am, I should say. I want him to become the best that he can be. Is it possible for him to become, to reach his potential, without suffering in his life?" Alex: "Perhaps not, but there's two..." Hayden: "So suffering is necessary." Alex: "There are a few things I want to say. Firstly, that kind of moral development doesn't apply to non-human animals, as I've already said, right?" Hayden: "Why not?" Alex: "That does not account for the brutal death of animals in the wild. Also if - I don't want to talk about your son, because it's tragic to think about, but - somebody else's son has suffered and died immediately as a result of that suffering, they don't get to develop in the same way." Hayden: "I would agree that on a micro level, it's very hard to justify. And we can ask the question, 'Why doesn't God intervene on all of these sufferings?" (Exactly. And that's the Christian making the point.) Alex: "You might be able to justify an amount of suffering, right? But the fact that there's so much gratuitous suffering in the world is what I think makes God's existence unlikely. There are some instances where maybe a certain amount of suffering brings about a certain amount of good in a situation. That, by the way, would count as a justification. But when a child dies of leukemia... And they'e dead." Hayden: "Could there be a purpose to it? What if the death of the child brings their parents to God?" Alex: "Then perhaps...then the parents should be grateful that their child got leukemia because it's doing the will of the Lord." Hayden: "Not necessarily." Alex: "That seems obscene to me." (Yep. What if the death of their child caused the grandmother to have a nervous breakdown, the mom to be riddled with guilt her entire life, and the father to go off the rails? That's my family, by the way. Before I was born, my 8-year-old sister was killed when my mom's car was stuck on the railroad tracks and the train hit the car. Seeing people trying to justify that as God's will or offering up reasons to justify it (as several people have done on here) is really sad. Sorry if that offends you.)
10:38

"Imagine that there's a God who brings about the world and creates the world, but does it maliciously, because he wants human beings to suffer." ~AA Suffering Makes God's Existence Unlikely "Could God have made it such that animals were all herbivores instead of carnivores and omnivores?" "We're talking about animals who are predated on from the moment that they begin existence." (If you know about Loosh and "Far Journeys" by Robert Monroe, these points should all ring a bell. But this discussion was NOT about Loosh. Fascinating debate.) 1 Atheist vs 25 Christians (feat. Alex O'Connor) | Surrounded Christian Tim: "Okay, so my first question to start out with is: What exactly about suffering makes this unlikely, on the condition that God exists?" Atheist Alex (AA): "I think that if God is all-loving, then he probably wouldn't want his creatures to suffer. And so, I think that the fact that they do suffer makes his existence less likely." Tim: "Okay, perfect. And is there some specific aspect of suffering that you're particularly honing in on, horrendous or whatever that is?" Alex: "In particular, non-human animal suffering. Because I think that Christianity has a celebrated tradition of theodicies, trying to explain why suffering exists: human free will, the development of the soul, higher-order goods. All of this kind of stuff. None of which apply to the suffering of non-human animals." Tim: "Have you heard of the Axiological Expectation Mismatch Problem?" Alex: "I have not." Tim: "Okay, so, philosophers of religion have started to understand that the thing that actually generates a problem between God and suffering is actually the value system you attach to the very attribute of perfect lovingness. Because the problem of evil is an internal critique, you have to look at a very specific version of theism and how it defines perfect lovingness. I want to present to you a version where my version of perfect lovingness does not actually constitute a problem and a misalignment, that mismatch between the suffering of animals - let's just say, the profusion of suffering of animals - and existence of God." Alex: "So let's hear it. What kind of God are we imagining that would allow and oversee and do nothing to prevent billions of years of untold animal suffering?" (There's no justification for all of the suffering that animals go through and it's borderline comical (if it wasn't so sad) to see Christians trying to come up with reasons to justify it.) Tim: "Right. So you're talking about non-prevention." Alex: "Or setting up the system that is natural selection, such that it relies upon things like predation and disease." (This is straight out of the Loosh chapter.) Tim: "Well, the first part is, I don't agree with the whole setting up the system part. So I'm not one of those theists that believes that God does this select and pick idea of creating worlds. I don't think that God actually creates worlds. I think that God lets worlds develop, according in a certain way. But because God can oversee an overarching narrative, he knows exactly how he can redeem anything." Alex: "Could God have made it such that animals were all herbivores instead of carnivores and omnivores?" Tim: "Yes, he could totally do that." Alex: "So had he done that, here's an instant way to reduce, by orders of magnitude, the amount of suffering that exists." (But then there would be no Loosh! I don't know if Loosh is a real thing, but if it IS, it would explain lot of things on this planet.) Tim: "Right, but hold on. That's, particularly, assuming a value theory, already, that I haven't told you I'm adopting, that has a problem with evil. So I have to give you my value theory first, for you to show that misalignment." Alex: "Okay, let's hear it." Tim: "Perfect, okay. So my value theory says that the most important thing about a sentient creature is not what merely happens to them, it's about the total timeline of their life and how and where their life permanently ends. Meaning, if you were to judge an author of a narrative, and the first few chapters, let's say, there's a lot of bad things happening, but the end ends with this crescendo where there's victoriousness, there's redemption, there's beauty. And everyone in the story actually endorses their entire existence that they live. They can look at the total timeline, and they actually each subjectively come to the conclusion, 'I'm glad I was made and I totally see what my suffering was for.' That's the particular I'm using with. Like John Hicks says, we have to judge the very nature of God's lovingness by what he does in the end, not these few time slices that we observe right now. For you to show that there's a problem, you have to show, to me, that the suffering of animals cannot be transformed, are intrinsically cut off from being transformed into a life that they will endorse. There's a couple of theses on the table." Alex: "So are you talking about the end of their life, as in their end of life on Earth, or are you talking about the afterlife?" Tim: "Antemortem, postmortem (before and after death)." (So once that animal, that suffered needlessly for most of their life, gets to the afterlife, they'll understand there was a reason for it. Really?) Alex: "Okay. Because if you're just talking about life on Earth, then I would say that if you had an author writing a book and a character. If we were trying to figure out the relationship between that author and the person in the book, and that person in the book shows up for five seconds in the first chapter, and is a child who almost immediately dies of cancer in an incredibly painful way. And there's no development, there's no sort of bring back to life, and suddenly everyone's grateful for it. It is just this miserable, tragic experience. "And I ask, well, what did the author, not want to do for the story of the book, but want to do for that character? I think it would be pretty damning. And also, when it comes to animals, we're talking about animals who are predated on from the moment that they begin existence." Tim: "Absolutely." Alex: "They sort of have disease. Zebras, when they're killed by lions, are often too big to be killed instantly, so they die over minutes with their windpipes caught in the jaws of a lion. How can this be developing, a zebra, which, by the way, probably doesn't even have the same kind of first-person conscious experience that humans do in order to sort of rationalize an abstract and learn from their sort of past and morally develop in that way? They just suffer. And what kind of God could oversee this?" Tim:"Okay, so there's a lot of assumptions on the table. Again, you're assuming a particular value system that I'm not laying out." Alex: "I'll tell you what I'm assuming here. What I'm assuming here is that a good God would not allow unnecessary suffering to obtain. Would you agree with that?" Tim: "We can talk about unnecessary suffering. We're talking about the justifying norms for suffering. You're saying it has to be in terms of necessity. Which is, an evil is only authorizable, by God, if it's in connection to a greater good or prevention of a greater evil, correct?" Alex: "If there's some kind of justification for allowing that sort of thing." Tim: "Yeah, but you're saying it's a necessary connection. Why...what's the term necessity...?" Alex: "Perhaps I should say unjustified instead of unnecessary." Tim: "Okay, so we both agree. I do not believe that God can authorize or justify unjustified suffering." Alex: "Okay, so tell me how that example that I gave you, the deer with its leg, starving, is justified?" Tim: "Because it's intrinsically redeemable. And the norms I'm working with is not this necessity condition that you're working with. Mine is about redeemable suffering, redeemability, or what we call, feasibility." Alex: "For the deer?" Tim: "If that suffering can be defeated within the creature's life. And I'll define what I mean by defeat, which is that they can, retroactively, look back at what they went through and integrate it into their life history, where they look at their life..." Alex: "I have to interrupt, because the example I gave you is one where the deer dies." Tim: "Yes, the deer dies. But here's the thing. You're probably talking about, this post-mortem example, I'm gonna put one thesis on the table: There's two philosophers that defend exactly what this goes through. One defends that animals will be given a martyrdom status. Well, God will be able to present himself in a way to animals in the afterlife, such that, in the same way you could give praise to a dog and a dog emotionally recognizes that he's loved, and that his life is worth living, right? To these animals that suffered like that, there's one view on the table, which is that God will give them a praiseworthy status where they will be able to actually..." (Bending over backwards to justify the suffering of animals. The deer will learn why he/she had to go through all of that when they die and God explains it and praises the animal for what they went though. Ridiculous, IMO.) Alex: "So can we talk about that claim? Because these animals are suffering for what? I mean, God might cause them to suffer..." Tim: "It's not means to ends." Alex: "God might cause them to suffer a bunch, and then essentially redeem them in the afterlife. But what for? Like, why do this? If I were to punch you in the face and then give you $20,000 afterwards, you might be grateful for the $20,000, but why couldn't I just give you the $20,000?" Tim: "We'll see. So that's assuming. So I saw your debate with Trent..." Alex: "Good stuff." ~ Christian Hayden (Not Hayden Christiansen) : "Would you say that theism or atheism better account for the idea that suffering exists and a purpose for it?" Alex: "It depends exactly what you mean. Because, of course, you might say that the world itself is more expected on theism, and since suffering needs the existence of the world, that it's theism. But granted the existence of a material world, let's say, I think atheism." Hayden: "Okay. Why does suffering exist at all? In an atheistic worldview, what is the cause of suffering?" Alex: "Oh, well, because, however life began, it developed through a series of natural selection, which requires animals to develop senses that they wish to avoid in order to be more likely to survive. And that's why pain receptors evolve in a world where not all of these pains are actually going to kill us, we're left with situations left with situations in which we're in a lot of pain but don't end up dying for it." Hayden: "Would you agree that consciousness is necessary for suffering?" Alex: "I would say probably, yeah." Hayden: "Does atheism account for consciousness?" Alex: "Yes, that's what I was talking about a moment ago. Perhaps not, maybe theism accounts better for consciousness than atheism does." Hayden: "Okay. So if there is no consciousness, there is no suffering? Is that right?" Alex: "That's probably true, yeah." Hayden: "So, if atheism cannot account for consciousness, then it cannot account for suffering. Would you agree with that?" Alex: "So I think what we're doing here is we're sort of slightly shifting the goal posts. If you don't want to grant the existence of the material world before we start talking about this, we can do an argument from consciousness. But then we need to debate whether consciousness is more...it is explicable on atheism. "What I'm going to say is this: Consciousness may seem to imply the existence of a conscious creator of the Universe. We're here talking about, I suppose we're talking about Christianity. The claim was about God. But the God that you believe in, let's say, if we grant that there is a creator deity who sort of brings about the universe of conscious creatures... Have you ever heard of the evil-god hypothesis that Stephen Law popularized?" Hayden: No, tell me it." Alex: "So the idea is that like, imagine that there's a God who brings about the world and creates the world, but does it maliciously, because he wants human beings to suffer. He brings about a world in order so that human beings will suffer, right? That seems like a plausible hypothesis. And even if you think that consciousness points towards God, the kind of God that a lot of Christians think is a sort of necessary quality of God, which is to be all-loving, might not have to apply here." (I know he wasn't talking soul-trap theory and Loosh, but it sounds just like it.) Hayden: "If Christianity were true, is it plausible that suffering is necessary for God's purpose, for his creation?" Alex: "If Christianity is true, then I think it must be necessary, because there'd be no other explanation for it." Hayden: "So we're not talking about whether or not Christianity is true..." Alex: "But if you're asking me if it's plausible that Christianity is true and therefore suffering is necessary, I would say probably not. Because I don't think suffering should be necessary or could be necessary." Hayden: "In an atheistic worldview, I would agree with you. It makes no sense at all." Alex: "So can I ask you why then, if God exists and wants to come to know everybody, and wants to love everybody and does so for the sake of human beings, why he chose to imbue the world with so much suffering that is at least, seemingly, completely inexplicable?" Hayden: "Are you a father?" Alec: "No." Hayden: "I'm a father. I want my son to become just like I am, better than I am, I should say. I want him to become the best that he can be. Is it possible for him to become, to reach his potential, without suffering in his life?" Alex: "Perhaps not, but there's two..." Hayden: "So suffering is necessary." Alex: "There are a few things I want to say. Firstly, that kind of moral development doesn't apply to non-human animals, as I've already said, right?" Hayden: "Why not?" Alex: "That does not account for the brutal death of animals in the wild. Also if - I don't want to talk about your son, because it's tragic to think about, but - somebody else's son has suffered and died immediately as a result of that suffering, they don't get to develop in the same way." Hayden: "I would agree that on a micro level, it's very hard to justify. And we can ask the question, 'Why doesn't God intervene on all of these sufferings?" (Exactly. And that's the Christian making the point.) Alex: "You might be able to justify an amount of suffering, right? But the fact that there's so much gratuitous suffering in the world is what I think makes God's existence unlikely. There are some instances where maybe a certain amount of suffering brings about a certain amount of good in a situation. That, by the way, would count as a justification. But when a child dies of leukemia... And they'e dead." Hayden: "Could there be a purpose to it? What if the death of the child brings their parents to God?" Alex: "Then perhaps...then the parents should be grateful that their child got leukemia because it's doing the will of the Lord." Hayden: "Not necessarily." Alex: "That seems obscene to me." (Yep. What if the death of their child caused the grandmother to have a nervous breakdown, the mom to be riddled with guilt her entire life, and the father to go off the rails? That's my family, by the way. Before I was born, my 8-year-old sister was killed when my mom's car was stuck on the railroad tracks and the train hit the car. Seeing people trying to justify that as God's will or offering up reasons to justify it (as several people have done on here) is really sad. Sorry if that offends you.)

Joe Murgia

12,708 views • 1 year ago

I am the Director of the White House Office of Extraterrestrial Affairs. In 2024 this government completed the most thorough search for extraterrestrial life in human history. We checked the sky. We checked the files. We declassified the saucers. The verdict came back: nothing. No life out there. Not one. So I closed the telescope. I opened the window. I pointed it at a Home Depot. Three million by lunch. The trick was always the word. *Alien* had been sitting in the science fiction aisle for sixty years and we were too shy to use it in a press release. The dehumanization was already written. It was just shelved under Fantasy. This year I moved it to Policy. Same word. New department. My department. I should explain the jurisdiction, because there are two of us and we do not speak. Down the hall is the Department of War. It used to be the Department of Defense, but defense sounded woke, so we changed the name for two billion dollars, half of it letterhead. They renamed it back to what it was in 1789, before someone noticed in 1949 that the old acronym, N-M-E, sounded too much like *enemy.* We have now re-adopted the name they abandoned for sounding like the thing it does. I find this clarifying. The signage alone is seven hundred thousand buildings. We are spending a billion dollars on new doors so the doors can say War. The Department of War runs and has a tab for UFOs. Real ones. They post the actual files. The saucers. The eyewitnesses. The intelligence officer left "virtually speechless." They are searching the sky in earnest, declassifying everything, and what they keep finding is *nothing.* No craft confirmed. No biology confirmed. Decades of looking up and the honest answer is: unresolved. So you have two federal agencies, one word, opposite directions. searches the heavens for aliens and finds none. I open a window and find three million. They declassify the ones that don't exist. I classify the ones that do. They got a press release. I got a tip line. Guess which one rang. We are, technically, hunting the same species. They just keep aiming the telescope up, and I keep telling them, gently, at the inter-agency sync: lower it. The homepage was mine. ALIENS DECLASSIFIED. THEY WALK AMONG US. I tested "Immigration Portal." Eleven percent scroll. I tested *the truth's out there,* and a White House official told a reporter, on the record, that the strategy was to "draw eyeballs." We drew eyeballs. The truth was out there. It was in a parking lot in Bakersfield, getting into a white van we are now contractually obligated to call a craft. In 1938 a man read a story about an alien invasion over the radio and the country panicked in the streets, and for ninety years that was taught as a cautionary tale, the danger of a broadcast that makes people believe an invasion is real. We studied that broadcast. We did not study it as a warning. We studied it as a launch. The difference between Orson Welles and this office is that he apologized the next morning, and we put a counter on it. I named the van the Mothership. I named the prison Area 51. I named the 5 a.m. knock First Contact. I named all of it from the third chair. I keep a felt-tip for naming and a Mont Blanc for the part that can't be undone. Then we made the cards. I want to be precise, because people assume I'm exaggerating. We took the faces of the captured and we printed them as trading cards. "Worst of the Worst." Mugshot, nationality, charges, and a weakness level, and the weakness level was a snowflake, and the snowflake meant us. We are the weakness. We were proud of that. When a children's franchise objected that these were, in fact, their cards, our official response, which I helped draft, was: "To arrest them is our real test. To deport them is our cause." We set the abduction to the cartoon's theme song. Gotta catch 'em all. The first half is the slogan. The second half is the quota. A man told Congress in 2023 we were hiding non-human biologics. Everyone pictured a grey on a slab. Cute. We do run a reverse-engineering program. We take the biologic. We study what it makes. It makes the drywall. The 4 a.m. milking. The lettuce. And the lettuce is round now, because forty percent of it stayed in the dirt with the only people who knew where the dirt was. We reverse-engineered the alien completely. The blueprint was a back. We call the biologic "labor." We classify the screaming as ambient. Identification is a science here. We do not arrest at random. We read the markings. A crown inked on a forearm. A soccer crest. We have catalogued the species by its tattoos the way Linnaeus catalogued the finch. One of the specimens turned out to be autistic and the crown was just a crown, but the taxonomy held, because the taxonomy is not falsifiable, that is what makes it a taxonomy. I have a desk for this. I have a magnifying glass. I have never felt more like a scientist. There is a second species, and this one we keep. An alien with five million dollars is not an alien. He is a guest. We printed him a card. It is gold. We are printing a Platinum one for the aliens with even more money, who may remain on the planet two hundred and seventy days a year and pay no tax on the wealth they made on other worlds. The website for this is the cheapest-looking website I have ever approved, and I approved the one with the saucer on it. The same agency that scans a gardener's forearm for gang signs scans a financier's bank statement for extraordinary ability. The statement always has it. The forearm never does. The species was never a people. The species is a price. In the old films the alien lands and says, take me to your leader. We have improved the line. Pay five million and we take you to ours. He golfs with him on Saturday. There was a film about this, and I am told the man who made it meant it as a warning, which is the recurring problem with the warnings. A drifter finds a pair of sunglasses, and through them he can finally see which people are the aliens, and it is the rich ones, the ones on the billboards telling everyone to obey and consume and reproduce and not think. I have a pair of those glasses, conceptually. I issue them at the tip line. But mine are tuned the other way. You put them on and the alien is never the man in the suit who paid five million to skip the line. The alien is always the man holding the leaf blower. The lenses cost a thousand dollars in advertising and they only point down. We have sold a great many pairs. You asked about the Men in Black. Yes. Regulation now. A Man in Black photographs poorly, and the witnesses would not stop filming us peel a woman off the sidewalk in daylight, so we issued the masks, and leadership's only note was that the masks tested well. We are no longer the cover-up of the abduction. We are the abduction. We skipped a step. Efficiency. Our communications team posted E.T. last summer. The bicycle. The moon. "Even E.T. knew when it was TIME TO GO HOME." I want to walk you through what happened in that meeting, because nobody stopped it. We chose the one film where the government is the villain. The men with the flashlights and the unmarked vans who hunt the small frightened alien hiding in a child's closet. That is us. We are the flashlights. We watched that movie as children and cried when the agents came, and then we grew up and became the agents and made the poster ourselves and scheduled it for nine a.m. The intern asked if we were the good guys in this one. We told her engagement was up forty percent. She has since been promoted. I built an app where you abduct yourself. CBP Home. You open it. You confirm you are the alien. You beam yourself off the planet and you save us the gas. And here is the part I cannot believe they approved. We *pay* you. A thousand dollars to vanish. We raised it to twenty-six hundred when the first price didn't move enough units. We are bidding against ourselves for your disappearance. Four-point-six stars. The one-stars are from users who got beamed mid-review. I keep the unfinished ones in a folder. I find them very moving. We opened a facility in a swamp. We ringed it with alligators and we called it that, on purpose, in the brochure. Then we opened a gift shop. Thirty dollars for the shirt. Twenty-seven for the hat. Fifteen for a set of koozies, so your beer stays cold while you celebrate the prison in the wetland. The fundraising email called it "gator-guarded, python-patrolled," a "one-way ticket to regret" for anyone who didn't self-deport in time. We sold the koozies to fund the swamp. The swamp funds the next swamp. I want you to sit with the fact that there is merchandise. The quota is three thousand a day. Stephen asked for it himself. Three thousand is not a number. It is a metabolism. The building is hungry by nine and we feed it Marco, who does the landscaping, and the building goes quiet, and by one it stirs again, and we find another Marco. There is always another Marco. That is the part I find beautiful. The supply is the point. The supply is everyone. The Secretary signs the warrants. She is very firm on one point, which she repeats in every briefing: the aliens, she warns, eat the pets. They are taking the dogs. I have read her book. In her book she takes a fourteen-month-old dog named Cricket to a gravel pit and shoots it, because it would not obey, and she writes this down herself, proudly, as a story about leadership. She wrote the part about the dog. She also warns us about the dogs. I have stopped trying to hold both sentences at once. I just file the warrant. The tip line was the masterpiece. "Report your neighbor" hit the shame ceiling. "REPORT SUSPICIOUS ALIENS" tested as a hobby. We handed the callers Roswell instead of a snitch's guilt, and the phones lit up like a saucer, and they hung up glowing, every one of them, like they'd finally seen the thing. They had. He coached the Tuesday team. He was at the bake sale. That is the horror we are selling you. The alien brought the orange slices. He was undocumented and luminous and gone by Tuesday. Roswell taught us the other half of the trade. In 1947 something fell in the desert and the government said: it was a weather balloon, nothing here, go home. That was the first administrative error, the founding one, the original sentence that says the thing you saw was not the thing you saw. We still use it. We have only reversed the polarity. In 1947 they saw a saucer and we called it a balloon. Now they see a father of three and we call it a saucer. The skill is identical. You simply decide in advance which truth the public is allowed to keep, and you hand them the other one, printed, official, with a seal. We did have one administrative error. We abducted a man a court had ordered us not to touch, dropped him on a planet called El Salvador, and called it clerical. A judge made us beam him back. So the DOJ stood up and warned the others: insist on a hearing and we will re-abduct you to the same planet. The Supreme Court said the aliens are entitled to due process. A very Earth opinion. We are appealing it to a higher sky. The planet has a prison, and the prison is the elegant part. In the film about the camp, the aliens are not killed. They are put somewhere they are not permitted to leave, while everyone agrees this is temporary, for their own protection, pending a status that never arrives. We built that. It is called CECOT and we rent it. A man goes in and the man does not come out, and the genius is that nothing has to happen to him, the room does the work, the room is the whole sentence. You remember the Men in Black had a small device. A flash, and the witness forgets the alien entirely. We have something better. We do not wipe the memory. We wipe the file. The man remembers everything, the cell, the flight, the day, all of it, in perfect detail, and it does not matter, because there is no document that admits he was here, and a memory without a file is just a story he tells in a language the form does not accept. The witness keeps the truth. We keep the paperwork. Only one of those is admissible. I learned that the flash was never the point. The point was always the filing cabinet. We run all of it on a spell from 1798. Two hundred and twenty-seven years old. Written for a war we are not in, against an enemy we have not declared. It works because nobody reads the small print on a curse. Storm Area 51 was a joke once. A hundred thousand people Naruto-running at a fence to free whatever was inside. I think about it daily. We're the ones inside the fence now. We kept the running. We just turned it around. We have a precedent we cite in the deck, proudly, on slide four. In 1954 the government ran a program of exactly this kind, and the program had an official name, and the official name was a slur. They printed the slur on the letterhead. They did not flinch. The President holds it up as the model, by name, at the rallies, and the crowd cheers the name. I admire the honesty of 1954 more than I can say. They did not need a saucer to make it palatable. They just used the word. We are the same operation with better art direction. The only thing we added was the costume. I love the callers. I want to say that plainly. For years they told each other a hidden cabal was running everything from the shadows, harvesting the innocent, and that one day the truth would come out. They were right. There is a cabal. It has a budget of a hundred and seventy billion dollars, the largest in the history of federal law enforcement, and it sits in this building, and I have a desk in it. And the people who spent a decade certain that shadowy elites were disappearing their neighbors now call our line, unpaid, to help the shadowy elites disappear their neighbors. They wanted to expose the conspiracy. We made them the staff. Do your own research, they said. They did. They found the gardener. The Department of War posted another tranche on the twenty-second. Saucers. Lights. A pilot's voice going thin. I read all of it. I want them to find one so badly. I want there to be a real one up there, a genuine visitor, something that actually came from somewhere else, because then, and only then, would a single creature in my files have been an alien. They never find it. The sky stays empty. The ground stays full. I have stopped attending the inter-agency sync. We were two departments looking for the same thing in two directions, and only one of us was ever going to be wrong, and it was the honest one. And here is the thing that keeps me at the window past dark. There was a real one. A rock from another star, the genuine article, the first verified object from outside the entire solar system, and a Harvard man went on television and said it might be a ship. An actual alien, possibly, inbound, free of charge, after sixty years of asking. We did not open a file. We could not arrest it. It had no forearm to read and no bank statement to approve. It was the only alien in America we had no use for, so we let it pass, and went back to the parking lot. Last winter the sky over New Jersey filled with lights nobody could name, and the whole government, every agency, every radar, looked up and said it did not know. The one time the unknown actually arrived, we had nothing. Down here I have never once said I do not know. That is the difference between their department and mine. They look up and find a question. I look down and have already decided the answer. Last week the President leaned over mid-briefing and asked if any of them were real. I told him the engagement was extremely real. He nodded. We do not break frame here. The frame is the only wall still standing. That, and the office fern. Nobody waters it. It will not die. The only thing in this building allowed to stay without papers. My plaque came Thursday. FIRST CONTACT, VISIONARY OF THE YEAR. Bold. Unapologetic. Unafraid. I lifted that off the homepage. It was written about one brave man telling the truth. I decided the man was me. I wrote it about me. I am the truth I declassified. I am the secret I warned you about. They walk among us, and I sign their mail. The counter is still live. Three million and climbing. I am told it will not be removed. We are not alone. We are just short a few landscapers. A few line cooks. A few nurses. And the entire night shift at the plant that makes the flag. Up. And to the right.
0:58

I am the Director of the White House Office of Extraterrestrial Affairs. In 2024 this government completed the most thorough search for extraterrestrial life in human history. We checked the sky. We checked the files. We declassified the saucers. The verdict came back: nothing. No life out there. Not one. So I closed the telescope. I opened the window. I pointed it at a Home Depot. Three million by lunch. The trick was always the word. *Alien* had been sitting in the science fiction aisle for sixty years and we were too shy to use it in a press release. The dehumanization was already written. It was just shelved under Fantasy. This year I moved it to Policy. Same word. New department. My department. I should explain the jurisdiction, because there are two of us and we do not speak. Down the hall is the Department of War. It used to be the Department of Defense, but defense sounded woke, so we changed the name for two billion dollars, half of it letterhead. They renamed it back to what it was in 1789, before someone noticed in 1949 that the old acronym, N-M-E, sounded too much like *enemy.* We have now re-adopted the name they abandoned for sounding like the thing it does. I find this clarifying. The signage alone is seven hundred thousand buildings. We are spending a billion dollars on new doors so the doors can say War. The Department of War runs and has a tab for UFOs. Real ones. They post the actual files. The saucers. The eyewitnesses. The intelligence officer left "virtually speechless." They are searching the sky in earnest, declassifying everything, and what they keep finding is *nothing.* No craft confirmed. No biology confirmed. Decades of looking up and the honest answer is: unresolved. So you have two federal agencies, one word, opposite directions. searches the heavens for aliens and finds none. I open a window and find three million. They declassify the ones that don't exist. I classify the ones that do. They got a press release. I got a tip line. Guess which one rang. We are, technically, hunting the same species. They just keep aiming the telescope up, and I keep telling them, gently, at the inter-agency sync: lower it. The homepage was mine. ALIENS DECLASSIFIED. THEY WALK AMONG US. I tested "Immigration Portal." Eleven percent scroll. I tested *the truth's out there,* and a White House official told a reporter, on the record, that the strategy was to "draw eyeballs." We drew eyeballs. The truth was out there. It was in a parking lot in Bakersfield, getting into a white van we are now contractually obligated to call a craft. In 1938 a man read a story about an alien invasion over the radio and the country panicked in the streets, and for ninety years that was taught as a cautionary tale, the danger of a broadcast that makes people believe an invasion is real. We studied that broadcast. We did not study it as a warning. We studied it as a launch. The difference between Orson Welles and this office is that he apologized the next morning, and we put a counter on it. I named the van the Mothership. I named the prison Area 51. I named the 5 a.m. knock First Contact. I named all of it from the third chair. I keep a felt-tip for naming and a Mont Blanc for the part that can't be undone. Then we made the cards. I want to be precise, because people assume I'm exaggerating. We took the faces of the captured and we printed them as trading cards. "Worst of the Worst." Mugshot, nationality, charges, and a weakness level, and the weakness level was a snowflake, and the snowflake meant us. We are the weakness. We were proud of that. When a children's franchise objected that these were, in fact, their cards, our official response, which I helped draft, was: "To arrest them is our real test. To deport them is our cause." We set the abduction to the cartoon's theme song. Gotta catch 'em all. The first half is the slogan. The second half is the quota. A man told Congress in 2023 we were hiding non-human biologics. Everyone pictured a grey on a slab. Cute. We do run a reverse-engineering program. We take the biologic. We study what it makes. It makes the drywall. The 4 a.m. milking. The lettuce. And the lettuce is round now, because forty percent of it stayed in the dirt with the only people who knew where the dirt was. We reverse-engineered the alien completely. The blueprint was a back. We call the biologic "labor." We classify the screaming as ambient. Identification is a science here. We do not arrest at random. We read the markings. A crown inked on a forearm. A soccer crest. We have catalogued the species by its tattoos the way Linnaeus catalogued the finch. One of the specimens turned out to be autistic and the crown was just a crown, but the taxonomy held, because the taxonomy is not falsifiable, that is what makes it a taxonomy. I have a desk for this. I have a magnifying glass. I have never felt more like a scientist. There is a second species, and this one we keep. An alien with five million dollars is not an alien. He is a guest. We printed him a card. It is gold. We are printing a Platinum one for the aliens with even more money, who may remain on the planet two hundred and seventy days a year and pay no tax on the wealth they made on other worlds. The website for this is the cheapest-looking website I have ever approved, and I approved the one with the saucer on it. The same agency that scans a gardener's forearm for gang signs scans a financier's bank statement for extraordinary ability. The statement always has it. The forearm never does. The species was never a people. The species is a price. In the old films the alien lands and says, take me to your leader. We have improved the line. Pay five million and we take you to ours. He golfs with him on Saturday. There was a film about this, and I am told the man who made it meant it as a warning, which is the recurring problem with the warnings. A drifter finds a pair of sunglasses, and through them he can finally see which people are the aliens, and it is the rich ones, the ones on the billboards telling everyone to obey and consume and reproduce and not think. I have a pair of those glasses, conceptually. I issue them at the tip line. But mine are tuned the other way. You put them on and the alien is never the man in the suit who paid five million to skip the line. The alien is always the man holding the leaf blower. The lenses cost a thousand dollars in advertising and they only point down. We have sold a great many pairs. You asked about the Men in Black. Yes. Regulation now. A Man in Black photographs poorly, and the witnesses would not stop filming us peel a woman off the sidewalk in daylight, so we issued the masks, and leadership's only note was that the masks tested well. We are no longer the cover-up of the abduction. We are the abduction. We skipped a step. Efficiency. Our communications team posted E.T. last summer. The bicycle. The moon. "Even E.T. knew when it was TIME TO GO HOME." I want to walk you through what happened in that meeting, because nobody stopped it. We chose the one film where the government is the villain. The men with the flashlights and the unmarked vans who hunt the small frightened alien hiding in a child's closet. That is us. We are the flashlights. We watched that movie as children and cried when the agents came, and then we grew up and became the agents and made the poster ourselves and scheduled it for nine a.m. The intern asked if we were the good guys in this one. We told her engagement was up forty percent. She has since been promoted. I built an app where you abduct yourself. CBP Home. You open it. You confirm you are the alien. You beam yourself off the planet and you save us the gas. And here is the part I cannot believe they approved. We *pay* you. A thousand dollars to vanish. We raised it to twenty-six hundred when the first price didn't move enough units. We are bidding against ourselves for your disappearance. Four-point-six stars. The one-stars are from users who got beamed mid-review. I keep the unfinished ones in a folder. I find them very moving. We opened a facility in a swamp. We ringed it with alligators and we called it that, on purpose, in the brochure. Then we opened a gift shop. Thirty dollars for the shirt. Twenty-seven for the hat. Fifteen for a set of koozies, so your beer stays cold while you celebrate the prison in the wetland. The fundraising email called it "gator-guarded, python-patrolled," a "one-way ticket to regret" for anyone who didn't self-deport in time. We sold the koozies to fund the swamp. The swamp funds the next swamp. I want you to sit with the fact that there is merchandise. The quota is three thousand a day. Stephen asked for it himself. Three thousand is not a number. It is a metabolism. The building is hungry by nine and we feed it Marco, who does the landscaping, and the building goes quiet, and by one it stirs again, and we find another Marco. There is always another Marco. That is the part I find beautiful. The supply is the point. The supply is everyone. The Secretary signs the warrants. She is very firm on one point, which she repeats in every briefing: the aliens, she warns, eat the pets. They are taking the dogs. I have read her book. In her book she takes a fourteen-month-old dog named Cricket to a gravel pit and shoots it, because it would not obey, and she writes this down herself, proudly, as a story about leadership. She wrote the part about the dog. She also warns us about the dogs. I have stopped trying to hold both sentences at once. I just file the warrant. The tip line was the masterpiece. "Report your neighbor" hit the shame ceiling. "REPORT SUSPICIOUS ALIENS" tested as a hobby. We handed the callers Roswell instead of a snitch's guilt, and the phones lit up like a saucer, and they hung up glowing, every one of them, like they'd finally seen the thing. They had. He coached the Tuesday team. He was at the bake sale. That is the horror we are selling you. The alien brought the orange slices. He was undocumented and luminous and gone by Tuesday. Roswell taught us the other half of the trade. In 1947 something fell in the desert and the government said: it was a weather balloon, nothing here, go home. That was the first administrative error, the founding one, the original sentence that says the thing you saw was not the thing you saw. We still use it. We have only reversed the polarity. In 1947 they saw a saucer and we called it a balloon. Now they see a father of three and we call it a saucer. The skill is identical. You simply decide in advance which truth the public is allowed to keep, and you hand them the other one, printed, official, with a seal. We did have one administrative error. We abducted a man a court had ordered us not to touch, dropped him on a planet called El Salvador, and called it clerical. A judge made us beam him back. So the DOJ stood up and warned the others: insist on a hearing and we will re-abduct you to the same planet. The Supreme Court said the aliens are entitled to due process. A very Earth opinion. We are appealing it to a higher sky. The planet has a prison, and the prison is the elegant part. In the film about the camp, the aliens are not killed. They are put somewhere they are not permitted to leave, while everyone agrees this is temporary, for their own protection, pending a status that never arrives. We built that. It is called CECOT and we rent it. A man goes in and the man does not come out, and the genius is that nothing has to happen to him, the room does the work, the room is the whole sentence. You remember the Men in Black had a small device. A flash, and the witness forgets the alien entirely. We have something better. We do not wipe the memory. We wipe the file. The man remembers everything, the cell, the flight, the day, all of it, in perfect detail, and it does not matter, because there is no document that admits he was here, and a memory without a file is just a story he tells in a language the form does not accept. The witness keeps the truth. We keep the paperwork. Only one of those is admissible. I learned that the flash was never the point. The point was always the filing cabinet. We run all of it on a spell from 1798. Two hundred and twenty-seven years old. Written for a war we are not in, against an enemy we have not declared. It works because nobody reads the small print on a curse. Storm Area 51 was a joke once. A hundred thousand people Naruto-running at a fence to free whatever was inside. I think about it daily. We're the ones inside the fence now. We kept the running. We just turned it around. We have a precedent we cite in the deck, proudly, on slide four. In 1954 the government ran a program of exactly this kind, and the program had an official name, and the official name was a slur. They printed the slur on the letterhead. They did not flinch. The President holds it up as the model, by name, at the rallies, and the crowd cheers the name. I admire the honesty of 1954 more than I can say. They did not need a saucer to make it palatable. They just used the word. We are the same operation with better art direction. The only thing we added was the costume. I love the callers. I want to say that plainly. For years they told each other a hidden cabal was running everything from the shadows, harvesting the innocent, and that one day the truth would come out. They were right. There is a cabal. It has a budget of a hundred and seventy billion dollars, the largest in the history of federal law enforcement, and it sits in this building, and I have a desk in it. And the people who spent a decade certain that shadowy elites were disappearing their neighbors now call our line, unpaid, to help the shadowy elites disappear their neighbors. They wanted to expose the conspiracy. We made them the staff. Do your own research, they said. They did. They found the gardener. The Department of War posted another tranche on the twenty-second. Saucers. Lights. A pilot's voice going thin. I read all of it. I want them to find one so badly. I want there to be a real one up there, a genuine visitor, something that actually came from somewhere else, because then, and only then, would a single creature in my files have been an alien. They never find it. The sky stays empty. The ground stays full. I have stopped attending the inter-agency sync. We were two departments looking for the same thing in two directions, and only one of us was ever going to be wrong, and it was the honest one. And here is the thing that keeps me at the window past dark. There was a real one. A rock from another star, the genuine article, the first verified object from outside the entire solar system, and a Harvard man went on television and said it might be a ship. An actual alien, possibly, inbound, free of charge, after sixty years of asking. We did not open a file. We could not arrest it. It had no forearm to read and no bank statement to approve. It was the only alien in America we had no use for, so we let it pass, and went back to the parking lot. Last winter the sky over New Jersey filled with lights nobody could name, and the whole government, every agency, every radar, looked up and said it did not know. The one time the unknown actually arrived, we had nothing. Down here I have never once said I do not know. That is the difference between their department and mine. They look up and find a question. I look down and have already decided the answer. Last week the President leaned over mid-briefing and asked if any of them were real. I told him the engagement was extremely real. He nodded. We do not break frame here. The frame is the only wall still standing. That, and the office fern. Nobody waters it. It will not die. The only thing in this building allowed to stay without papers. My plaque came Thursday. FIRST CONTACT, VISIONARY OF THE YEAR. Bold. Unapologetic. Unafraid. I lifted that off the homepage. It was written about one brave man telling the truth. I decided the man was me. I wrote it about me. I am the truth I declassified. I am the secret I warned you about. They walk among us, and I sign their mail. The counter is still live. Three million and climbing. I am told it will not be removed. We are not alone. We are just short a few landscapers. A few line cooks. A few nurses. And the entire night shift at the plant that makes the flag. Up. And to the right.

Peter Girnus 🦅

60,870 views • 2 months ago

This is how your eyes work. Eyes are part of an irreducibly complex system of structures that work together to give you vision. There is no evolutionary pathway that could produce even the simplest eye. Here is everything you need to know about why eyes did not evolve and are certain evidence of design. This is the proposed version of eye evolution: 1. Photosensitive cell 2. Pigment cells without a nerve 3. Optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells, covered by translucent skin 4. Pigment cells forming a depression 5. Skin gradually takes a lens shape 6. Evolution of muscles for lens to adjust But each one of these steps still relies on a similar irreducibly complex system of machines for vision to function. The very first step, the mythical light sensitive cell, is actually incredibly complex by itself and has no plausible evolutionary pathway. A single photosensitive cell is an incredibly complex system of nanomachines. The simplest known light-sensitive prokaryotic cells have genomes with around ~1.3 million base pairs of DNA information, with around ~1,300–1,400 unique proteins. Knockout tests in cells have been able to simplify cells to 500,000 base pairs of DNA, with close to 500 unique proteins (but these are not light sensitive.) ALL vision systems require rhodopsin proteins. These handy little proteins capture light, transforms light into a signal, and sends that signal down a transduction pathway to the processing center (brain). So basically, ALL vision systems require at least 3 separate major systems, which are themselves filled with multiple subsystems - it's complexity on top of complexity on top of complexity. And none of it works if all of those systems are not in place together. There is no evolutionary pathway by which all of this arises together - nature doesn't engineer multiple interdependent systems together. Eyes are so complex and so different among various organisms today that evolutionists even widely recognize that vision systems must have arisen independently at least 30 times, because there is no genetic pattern to explain the origin of eyes from a common ancestor. The odds of that happening are absolutely absurd. Beyond logic. There is no evidence of eyes evolving in the fossil record, either. Complex, fully functional vision appears almost at the very start of the fossil record. The oldest eye in the fossil record, that of a trilobite, is a complex compound eye originating in the Cambrian, conventionally dated about 540 million years ago. From there, various different kinds of eyes appear in the fossil record of varying degrees of complexity - with both simpler and more complex version of vision systems scattered all throughout in no particular pattern of development. Evolutionists also like to claim the human eye is designed poorly. They point to “blind spots” & “backwards retinas” as evidence of poor design, which is why, they say, evolution makes more sense. But that is completely false, and shows they simply don't understand the biology of the eye in the first place. But this design actually makes our eyes better and fully optimized for our necessities. The Blind Spot: Vertebrates have an inverted retina, where photoreceptors face away from light and nerves bundle through a hole in the back, creating a tiny blind spot. The blind spot is only~1% of visual field and each eye's blind spot overlaps with the seeing part of the other eye - there is no actual vision loss. This could be seen as evidence of intelligently designed coordination. Vertebrate eyes also provide the sharpest vision among animals. Eagles (with inverted retinas) see clearly up to 2–3 miles away and spot prey from great distances. Features like oil droplets in photoreceptors improve color vision, and mitochondrial clumps focus light better, giving higher vision acuity overall. The Inverted design also allows direct, close access to the Retinal Pigment Epithelium (RPE) layer. RPE supplies massive nutrients/oxygen (vertebrate photoreceptors have the body's highest metabolic rate) and removes toxic byproducts from light detection. RPE's dark pigment absorbs stray light, giving a sharper image, and protects against sun damage, which makes our eyes last longer and stay healthier. Cephalopods eyes - often compared as a "better version" by evos who don't know better - have the everted retina which limits nutrient/toxin access, causing slower repair, shorter cell life, more vulnerability to damage. In summary, the human eye is optimally designed for the function required. The orientation of the retinas improves vision sharpness and the longevity & overall health of the eye. Anyone claiming the eye is evidence of “bad design” simply doesn’t understand how beautifully their eyes are designed. Even the simplest forms of vision require incredibly complex systems to come together at the same time for vision to arise. Evolution cannot do that. Only intelligence engineers irreducibly complex systems like Vision.
1:03

This is how your eyes work. Eyes are part of an irreducibly complex system of structures that work together to give you vision. There is no evolutionary pathway that could produce even the simplest eye. Here is everything you need to know about why eyes did not evolve and are certain evidence of design. This is the proposed version of eye evolution: 1. Photosensitive cell 2. Pigment cells without a nerve 3. Optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells, covered by translucent skin 4. Pigment cells forming a depression 5. Skin gradually takes a lens shape 6. Evolution of muscles for lens to adjust But each one of these steps still relies on a similar irreducibly complex system of machines for vision to function. The very first step, the mythical light sensitive cell, is actually incredibly complex by itself and has no plausible evolutionary pathway. A single photosensitive cell is an incredibly complex system of nanomachines. The simplest known light-sensitive prokaryotic cells have genomes with around ~1.3 million base pairs of DNA information, with around ~1,300–1,400 unique proteins. Knockout tests in cells have been able to simplify cells to 500,000 base pairs of DNA, with close to 500 unique proteins (but these are not light sensitive.) ALL vision systems require rhodopsin proteins. These handy little proteins capture light, transforms light into a signal, and sends that signal down a transduction pathway to the processing center (brain). So basically, ALL vision systems require at least 3 separate major systems, which are themselves filled with multiple subsystems - it's complexity on top of complexity on top of complexity. And none of it works if all of those systems are not in place together. There is no evolutionary pathway by which all of this arises together - nature doesn't engineer multiple interdependent systems together. Eyes are so complex and so different among various organisms today that evolutionists even widely recognize that vision systems must have arisen independently at least 30 times, because there is no genetic pattern to explain the origin of eyes from a common ancestor. The odds of that happening are absolutely absurd. Beyond logic. There is no evidence of eyes evolving in the fossil record, either. Complex, fully functional vision appears almost at the very start of the fossil record. The oldest eye in the fossil record, that of a trilobite, is a complex compound eye originating in the Cambrian, conventionally dated about 540 million years ago. From there, various different kinds of eyes appear in the fossil record of varying degrees of complexity - with both simpler and more complex version of vision systems scattered all throughout in no particular pattern of development. Evolutionists also like to claim the human eye is designed poorly. They point to “blind spots” & “backwards retinas” as evidence of poor design, which is why, they say, evolution makes more sense. But that is completely false, and shows they simply don't understand the biology of the eye in the first place. But this design actually makes our eyes better and fully optimized for our necessities. The Blind Spot: Vertebrates have an inverted retina, where photoreceptors face away from light and nerves bundle through a hole in the back, creating a tiny blind spot. The blind spot is only~1% of visual field and each eye's blind spot overlaps with the seeing part of the other eye - there is no actual vision loss. This could be seen as evidence of intelligently designed coordination. Vertebrate eyes also provide the sharpest vision among animals. Eagles (with inverted retinas) see clearly up to 2–3 miles away and spot prey from great distances. Features like oil droplets in photoreceptors improve color vision, and mitochondrial clumps focus light better, giving higher vision acuity overall. The Inverted design also allows direct, close access to the Retinal Pigment Epithelium (RPE) layer. RPE supplies massive nutrients/oxygen (vertebrate photoreceptors have the body's highest metabolic rate) and removes toxic byproducts from light detection. RPE's dark pigment absorbs stray light, giving a sharper image, and protects against sun damage, which makes our eyes last longer and stay healthier. Cephalopods eyes - often compared as a "better version" by evos who don't know better - have the everted retina which limits nutrient/toxin access, causing slower repair, shorter cell life, more vulnerability to damage. In summary, the human eye is optimally designed for the function required. The orientation of the retinas improves vision sharpness and the longevity & overall health of the eye. Anyone claiming the eye is evidence of “bad design” simply doesn’t understand how beautifully their eyes are designed. Even the simplest forms of vision require incredibly complex systems to come together at the same time for vision to arise. Evolution cannot do that. Only intelligence engineers irreducibly complex systems like Vision.

Divinely Designed

25,670 views • 6 months ago

The Empire Is Scrambling To Fully Dominate Latin America, And Other Notes US forces have seized an oil tanker carrying some 1.8 million barrels of oil from Venezuela to Cuba as part of its ongoing series of warmongering escalations against the Maduro government. When asked what would be done with the oil, President Trump told the press, “We keep it, I guess.” Meanwhile Chuck Schumer is refusing to oppose Trump’s regime change interventionism against Venezuela, and CNN just had former US intelligence official Beth Sanner on to proclaim that the Trump administration’s act of piracy “is absolutely normal.” So Trump’s ostensible opposition in the political-media class are putting absolutely no inertia on this. The US pirating a Cuba-bound oil tanker from Venezuela illustrates how the empire is hurrying to shore up control over Latin America in the same way the US and Israel are quickly shoring up control over the middle east. There’s a window of opportunity to shove through a bunch of pre-existing military agendas in both regions, and they’re aggressively seizing it before their attention has to turn to bigger geopolitical fish. You often hear US imperialists saying that obtaining regime change in Venezuela will help achieve it in Cuba as well; Senator Rick Scott recently told 60 Minutes that if Maduro is successfully ousted “it’ll be the end of Cuba,” and that “America is gonna take care of the southern hemisphere and make sure there’s freedom and democracy.” Stealing the oil hurts both Cuba and Venezuela, who are the two primary enemies of the US empire in the Americas because of their strongly socialist governments. They got a right wing government into Bolivia this year, and now they’re hurrying to push regime change in Caracas and Havana while they’ve got a right wing tyrant in office with a gusano secretary of state. The hope is to force the entirety of Latin America into full alignment with the empire before Trump leaves office. I have no idea if they’ll succeed. ❖ The US House and Senate have agreed to make registration for the draft “automatic”, which will simplify the drafting process if the empire decides to throw the youth of America into a horrific new military conflict. The US is making its biggest draft policy change in 45 years so it’s easier to force Americans to fight and die in a massive war, just as the New York Times editorial board launches a series explaining why the US must prepare for war with China. The latest edition of the New York Times’ arguments for the need for more US militarism is titled “This Is The 21st Century Arms Race. Can America Keep Up?”, which argues that “Congress needs to expand funding for research and development into technologies with military applications.” “To counter the growing threat, America must simultaneously win the race to build autonomous weapons and lead the world in controlling them,” the editorial board writes. Fun times. ❖ The BBC is reportedly training its staff that it is antisemitic for anyone to oppose Zionism, because most Jews identify as Zionists. You see this argument a lot, and it a textbook example of an ad populum fallacy, which is when someone claims that something is true or right just because a majority of people believe it. Just as the Atlantic slave trade would have been wrong even if every white person in the world supported it, a genocidal apartheid state which cannot exist without nonstop violence, theft and abuse would still be wrong even if every Jewish person on earth supported it. The claim that a majority of Jews support the existence of the modern state of Israel has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether such a state should exist, and does not invalidate any arguments that it should not. Israel supporters rely on lies, manipulations and fallacious arguments because their position is not based on truth or morality. If their position was right they would simply be making normal arguments like normal adults. They can’t do this because they are wrong. ❖ Whenever I catch myself wondering if I’ve been too hard on the Democrats I re-watch last year’s video of DNC attendees covering their ears and mocking activists reading the names of children who’d been murdered in Gaza. When they’re not in power it’s easy to forget how evil these people are. ❖ The Daily Mirror has a gross new propaganda piece out claiming that “Hamas plotters are spreading their tentacles of terror into Europe, with secret arms dumps and operatives planning attacks even as far as in the United Kingdom.” As you might expect, The Mirror provides no evidence whatsoever for this claim, citing only “an intelligence report” of unspecified origin. This is one of the dumbest narratives we’ve ever been asked to believe about Hamas, amid some very stiff competition. I don’t know about you, but am so sick of having my intelligence insulted like this. Reading by Tim Foley:
5:20

The Empire Is Scrambling To Fully Dominate Latin America, And Other Notes US forces have seized an oil tanker carrying some 1.8 million barrels of oil from Venezuela to Cuba as part of its ongoing series of warmongering escalations against the Maduro government. When asked what would be done with the oil, President Trump told the press, “We keep it, I guess.” Meanwhile Chuck Schumer is refusing to oppose Trump’s regime change interventionism against Venezuela, and CNN just had former US intelligence official Beth Sanner on to proclaim that the Trump administration’s act of piracy “is absolutely normal.” So Trump’s ostensible opposition in the political-media class are putting absolutely no inertia on this. The US pirating a Cuba-bound oil tanker from Venezuela illustrates how the empire is hurrying to shore up control over Latin America in the same way the US and Israel are quickly shoring up control over the middle east. There’s a window of opportunity to shove through a bunch of pre-existing military agendas in both regions, and they’re aggressively seizing it before their attention has to turn to bigger geopolitical fish. You often hear US imperialists saying that obtaining regime change in Venezuela will help achieve it in Cuba as well; Senator Rick Scott recently told 60 Minutes that if Maduro is successfully ousted “it’ll be the end of Cuba,” and that “America is gonna take care of the southern hemisphere and make sure there’s freedom and democracy.” Stealing the oil hurts both Cuba and Venezuela, who are the two primary enemies of the US empire in the Americas because of their strongly socialist governments. They got a right wing government into Bolivia this year, and now they’re hurrying to push regime change in Caracas and Havana while they’ve got a right wing tyrant in office with a gusano secretary of state. The hope is to force the entirety of Latin America into full alignment with the empire before Trump leaves office. I have no idea if they’ll succeed. ❖ The US House and Senate have agreed to make registration for the draft “automatic”, which will simplify the drafting process if the empire decides to throw the youth of America into a horrific new military conflict. The US is making its biggest draft policy change in 45 years so it’s easier to force Americans to fight and die in a massive war, just as the New York Times editorial board launches a series explaining why the US must prepare for war with China. The latest edition of the New York Times’ arguments for the need for more US militarism is titled “This Is The 21st Century Arms Race. Can America Keep Up?”, which argues that “Congress needs to expand funding for research and development into technologies with military applications.” “To counter the growing threat, America must simultaneously win the race to build autonomous weapons and lead the world in controlling them,” the editorial board writes. Fun times. ❖ The BBC is reportedly training its staff that it is antisemitic for anyone to oppose Zionism, because most Jews identify as Zionists. You see this argument a lot, and it a textbook example of an ad populum fallacy, which is when someone claims that something is true or right just because a majority of people believe it. Just as the Atlantic slave trade would have been wrong even if every white person in the world supported it, a genocidal apartheid state which cannot exist without nonstop violence, theft and abuse would still be wrong even if every Jewish person on earth supported it. The claim that a majority of Jews support the existence of the modern state of Israel has no bearing whatsoever on the question of whether such a state should exist, and does not invalidate any arguments that it should not. Israel supporters rely on lies, manipulations and fallacious arguments because their position is not based on truth or morality. If their position was right they would simply be making normal arguments like normal adults. They can’t do this because they are wrong. ❖ Whenever I catch myself wondering if I’ve been too hard on the Democrats I re-watch last year’s video of DNC attendees covering their ears and mocking activists reading the names of children who’d been murdered in Gaza. When they’re not in power it’s easy to forget how evil these people are. ❖ The Daily Mirror has a gross new propaganda piece out claiming that “Hamas plotters are spreading their tentacles of terror into Europe, with secret arms dumps and operatives planning attacks even as far as in the United Kingdom.” As you might expect, The Mirror provides no evidence whatsoever for this claim, citing only “an intelligence report” of unspecified origin. This is one of the dumbest narratives we’ve ever been asked to believe about Hamas, amid some very stiff competition. I don’t know about you, but am so sick of having my intelligence insulted like this. Reading by Tim Foley:

Caitlin Johnstone

19,771 views • 7 months ago

Absolutely masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France's opposition to the Iraq war and who, IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades. This is so important, so incredibly well argued, that I decided to translate it in full: "Hamas has set a trap for us, and this trap is one of maximum horror, of maximum cruelty. And so there's a risk of an escalation in militarism, of more military interventions, as if we could with armies solve a problem as serious as the Palestinian question. There's also a second major trap, which is that of Occidentalism. We find ourselves trapped, with Israel, in this western bloc which today is being challenged by most of the international community. [Presenter: What is Occidentalism?] Occidentalism is the idea that the West, which for 5 centuries managed the world's affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so. And we can clearly see, even in the debates of the French political class, that there is the idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war. That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage. This is not the way, especially since there's a third trap, which is that of moralism. And here we have in a way the proof, through what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the Middle East, of this double standard that is denounced everywhere in the world, including in recent weeks when I travel to Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America. The criticism is always the same: look at how civilian populations are treated in Gaza, you denounce what happened in Ukraine, and you are very timid in the face of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza. Consider international law, the second criticism that is made by the global south. We sanction Russia when it aggresses Ukraine, we sanction Russia when it doesn't respect the resolutions of the United Nations, and it's been 70 years that the resolutions of the United Nations have been voted in vain and that Israel doesn't respect them. [Presenter: Do you believe that the Westerners are currently guilty of hubris?] Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers. [Presenter: What is the historical drama? I mean, we're talking about the tragedy of October 7th first and foremost, right?] Of course, there are these horrors happening, but the way to respond to them is crucial. Are we going to kill the future by finding the wrong answers... [Presenter: Kill the future?] Kill the future, yes! Why? [Presenter: But who is killing whom?] You are in a game of causes and effects. Faced with the tragedy of history, one cannot take this 'chain of causality' analytical grid, simply because if you do you can't escape from it. Once we understand that there is a trap, once we realize that behind this trap there has also been a change in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian issue... The situation today is profoundly different [from what it was in the past]. The Palestinian cause was a political and secular cause. Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas. Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation. On the Israeli side, there has also been a development. Zionism was secular and political, championed by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. It has largely become messianic, biblical today. This means that they too do not want to compromise, and everything that the far-right Israeli government does, continuing to encourage colonization, obviously makes things worse, including since October 7th. So in this context, understand that we are already in this region facing a problem that seems profoundly insoluble. Added to this is the hardening of states. Diplomatically, look at the statements of the King of Jordan, they are not the same as six months ago. Look at the statements of Erdogan in Turkey. [Presenter: Precisely, these are extremely harsh statements...] Extremely worrying. Why? Because if the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian issue, hasn't been brought to the forefront, hasn't been put on stage [for a while], and if most of the youth today in Europe have often never even heard of it, it remains for the Arab peoples the mother of all battles. All the progress made towards an attempt to stabilize the Middle East, where one could believe... [Presenter: Yes, but whose fault is it? I have a hard time following you, is it Hamas's fault?] But Ms. Malherbe, I am trained as a diplomat. The question of fault will be addressed by historians and philosophers. [Presenter: But you can't remain neutral, it's difficult, it's complicated, isn't it?] I am not neutral, I am in action. I am simply telling you that every day that passes, we can ensure that this horrific cycle stops... that's why I speak of a trap and that's why it's so important to know what response we are going to give. We stand alone before history today. And we do not treat this new world the way we currently do, knowing that today we are no longer in a position of strength, we are not able to manage on our own, as the world's policemen. [Presenter: So what do we do?] Exactly, what should we do? This is where it is essential not to cut off anyone on the international stage. [Presenter: Including the Russians?] Everyone. [Presenter: Everyone? Should we ask the Russians for help?] I'm not saying we should ask the Russians for help. I'm saying: if the Russians can contribute by calming some factions in this region, then it will be a step in the right direction. [Presenter: How can we proportionally respond to barbarism? It's no longer army against army.] But listen, Appolline de Malherbe, the civilian populations that are dying in Gaza, don't they exist? So because horror was committed on one side, horror must be committed on the other? [Presenter: Do we indeed need to equate the two?] No, it's you who are doing that. I'm not saying I equate the faults. I try to take into account what a large part of humanity thinks. There is certainly a realistic objective to pursue, which is to eradicate the Hamas leaders who committed this horror. And not to confuse the Palestinians with Hamas, that's a realistic goal. The second thing is a targeted response. Let's define realistic political objectives. And the third thing is a combined response. Because there is no effective use of force without a political strategy. We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are. [Presenter: But when Emmanuel Macron talks about an international coalition…] Yes, and what was the response? [Presenter: None.] Exactly. We need a political perspective, and this is challenging because the two-state solution has been removed from the Israeli political and diplomatic program. Israel needs to understand that for a country with a territory of 20,000 square kilometers, a population of 9 million inhabitants, facing 1.5 billion people... Peoples have never forgotten that the Palestinian cause and the injustice done to the Palestinians was a significant source of mobilization. We must consider this situation, and I believe it is essential to help Israel, to guide... some say impose, but I think it's better to convince, to move in this direction. The challenge is that there is no interlocutor today, neither on the Israeli side nor the Palestinian side. We need to bring out interlocutors. [Presenter: It's not for us to choose who will be the leaders of Palestine.] The Israeli policy over recent years did not necessarily want to cultivate a Palestinian leadership... Many are in prison, and Israel's interest - because I repeat: it was not in their program or in Israel's interest at the time, or so they thought - was instead to divide the Palestinians and ensure that the Palestinian question fades. This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle. [Presenter: The "eye for an eye, tooth for tooth".] Yes. That's why the political response must be defended by us. Israel has a right to self-defense, but this right cannot be indiscriminate vengeance. And there cannot be collective responsibility of the Palestinian people for the actions of a terrorist minority from Hamas. When you get into this cycle of finding faults, one side's memories clash with the other's. Some will juxtapose Israel's memories with the memories of the Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe, which is a disaster that the Palestinians still experience every day. So you can't break these cycles. We must have the strength, of course, to understand and denounce what happened, and from this standpoint, there's no doubt about our position. But we must also have the courage, and that's what diplomacy is... diplomacy is about being able to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And that's the cunning of history; when you're at the bottom, something can happen that gives hope. After the 1973 war, who would have thought that before the end of the decade, Egypt would sign a peace treaty with Israel? The debate shouldn't be about rhetoric or word choice. The debate today is about action; we must act. And when you think about action, there are two options. Either it's war, war, war. Or it's about trying to move towards peace, and I'll say it again, it's in Israel's interest. It's in Israel's interest!"
10:25

Absolutely masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France's opposition to the Iraq war and who, IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades. This is so important, so incredibly well argued, that I decided to translate it in full: "Hamas has set a trap for us, and this trap is one of maximum horror, of maximum cruelty. And so there's a risk of an escalation in militarism, of more military interventions, as if we could with armies solve a problem as serious as the Palestinian question. There's also a second major trap, which is that of Occidentalism. We find ourselves trapped, with Israel, in this western bloc which today is being challenged by most of the international community. [Presenter: What is Occidentalism?] Occidentalism is the idea that the West, which for 5 centuries managed the world's affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so. And we can clearly see, even in the debates of the French political class, that there is the idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war. That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage. This is not the way, especially since there's a third trap, which is that of moralism. And here we have in a way the proof, through what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the Middle East, of this double standard that is denounced everywhere in the world, including in recent weeks when I travel to Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America. The criticism is always the same: look at how civilian populations are treated in Gaza, you denounce what happened in Ukraine, and you are very timid in the face of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza. Consider international law, the second criticism that is made by the global south. We sanction Russia when it aggresses Ukraine, we sanction Russia when it doesn't respect the resolutions of the United Nations, and it's been 70 years that the resolutions of the United Nations have been voted in vain and that Israel doesn't respect them. [Presenter: Do you believe that the Westerners are currently guilty of hubris?] Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers. [Presenter: What is the historical drama? I mean, we're talking about the tragedy of October 7th first and foremost, right?] Of course, there are these horrors happening, but the way to respond to them is crucial. Are we going to kill the future by finding the wrong answers... [Presenter: Kill the future?] Kill the future, yes! Why? [Presenter: But who is killing whom?] You are in a game of causes and effects. Faced with the tragedy of history, one cannot take this 'chain of causality' analytical grid, simply because if you do you can't escape from it. Once we understand that there is a trap, once we realize that behind this trap there has also been a change in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian issue... The situation today is profoundly different [from what it was in the past]. The Palestinian cause was a political and secular cause. Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas. Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation. On the Israeli side, there has also been a development. Zionism was secular and political, championed by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. It has largely become messianic, biblical today. This means that they too do not want to compromise, and everything that the far-right Israeli government does, continuing to encourage colonization, obviously makes things worse, including since October 7th. So in this context, understand that we are already in this region facing a problem that seems profoundly insoluble. Added to this is the hardening of states. Diplomatically, look at the statements of the King of Jordan, they are not the same as six months ago. Look at the statements of Erdogan in Turkey. [Presenter: Precisely, these are extremely harsh statements...] Extremely worrying. Why? Because if the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian issue, hasn't been brought to the forefront, hasn't been put on stage [for a while], and if most of the youth today in Europe have often never even heard of it, it remains for the Arab peoples the mother of all battles. All the progress made towards an attempt to stabilize the Middle East, where one could believe... [Presenter: Yes, but whose fault is it? I have a hard time following you, is it Hamas's fault?] But Ms. Malherbe, I am trained as a diplomat. The question of fault will be addressed by historians and philosophers. [Presenter: But you can't remain neutral, it's difficult, it's complicated, isn't it?] I am not neutral, I am in action. I am simply telling you that every day that passes, we can ensure that this horrific cycle stops... that's why I speak of a trap and that's why it's so important to know what response we are going to give. We stand alone before history today. And we do not treat this new world the way we currently do, knowing that today we are no longer in a position of strength, we are not able to manage on our own, as the world's policemen. [Presenter: So what do we do?] Exactly, what should we do? This is where it is essential not to cut off anyone on the international stage. [Presenter: Including the Russians?] Everyone. [Presenter: Everyone? Should we ask the Russians for help?] I'm not saying we should ask the Russians for help. I'm saying: if the Russians can contribute by calming some factions in this region, then it will be a step in the right direction. [Presenter: How can we proportionally respond to barbarism? It's no longer army against army.] But listen, Appolline de Malherbe, the civilian populations that are dying in Gaza, don't they exist? So because horror was committed on one side, horror must be committed on the other? [Presenter: Do we indeed need to equate the two?] No, it's you who are doing that. I'm not saying I equate the faults. I try to take into account what a large part of humanity thinks. There is certainly a realistic objective to pursue, which is to eradicate the Hamas leaders who committed this horror. And not to confuse the Palestinians with Hamas, that's a realistic goal. The second thing is a targeted response. Let's define realistic political objectives. And the third thing is a combined response. Because there is no effective use of force without a political strategy. We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are. [Presenter: But when Emmanuel Macron talks about an international coalition…] Yes, and what was the response? [Presenter: None.] Exactly. We need a political perspective, and this is challenging because the two-state solution has been removed from the Israeli political and diplomatic program. Israel needs to understand that for a country with a territory of 20,000 square kilometers, a population of 9 million inhabitants, facing 1.5 billion people... Peoples have never forgotten that the Palestinian cause and the injustice done to the Palestinians was a significant source of mobilization. We must consider this situation, and I believe it is essential to help Israel, to guide... some say impose, but I think it's better to convince, to move in this direction. The challenge is that there is no interlocutor today, neither on the Israeli side nor the Palestinian side. We need to bring out interlocutors. [Presenter: It's not for us to choose who will be the leaders of Palestine.] The Israeli policy over recent years did not necessarily want to cultivate a Palestinian leadership... Many are in prison, and Israel's interest - because I repeat: it was not in their program or in Israel's interest at the time, or so they thought - was instead to divide the Palestinians and ensure that the Palestinian question fades. This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle. [Presenter: The "eye for an eye, tooth for tooth".] Yes. That's why the political response must be defended by us. Israel has a right to self-defense, but this right cannot be indiscriminate vengeance. And there cannot be collective responsibility of the Palestinian people for the actions of a terrorist minority from Hamas. When you get into this cycle of finding faults, one side's memories clash with the other's. Some will juxtapose Israel's memories with the memories of the Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe, which is a disaster that the Palestinians still experience every day. So you can't break these cycles. We must have the strength, of course, to understand and denounce what happened, and from this standpoint, there's no doubt about our position. But we must also have the courage, and that's what diplomacy is... diplomacy is about being able to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And that's the cunning of history; when you're at the bottom, something can happen that gives hope. After the 1973 war, who would have thought that before the end of the decade, Egypt would sign a peace treaty with Israel? The debate shouldn't be about rhetoric or word choice. The debate today is about action; we must act. And when you think about action, there are two options. Either it's war, war, war. Or it's about trying to move towards peace, and I'll say it again, it's in Israel's interest. It's in Israel's interest!"

Arnaud Bertrand

10,935,420 views • 2 years ago

The Cosmological Argument Without the Kalami Baggage The reason I know Hijab hasn't carefully read Ibn Taymiyya on these questions is that he says something like this without seeming to notice what it actually does to the route he's taking. If he really sat with those discussions, the point he's making in this clip would not look like support for his strategy at all. He says he does not know anyone who accepts an infinite regress of causes, and that's true. But once that much is already out the way, this whole shift to an Avicennan framework with all the baggage it comes with should already start looking a lot less appealing. Let me explain why. If an infinite regress of causes is impossible, then all you need in order to reach the conclusion Hijab wants to reach is just one thing that came into being after not existing at all. All you need is one instance of temporal origination. Your own coming into existence and the things happening right in front of you give you exactly that. And unless you're now going to retreat from even this to satisfy the skeptic, you already have all you need. Not just from what's all around you, but from within your very self. You have, in your very own existence, something that came into being after not existing, and therefore requires a cause that brought it into being, a self-sufficient cause whose existence is not itself from something else. And regardless of whether the sequence of temporally originated things extends infinitely into the past or not, it still follows that the whole series cannot sufficiently explain the temporally originated thing in question, because if an infinite regress of causes is impossible, then the series cannot just hang there without terminating in a self-sufficient cause. So once he's already granted that much, the conclusion he's after is already right there in substance. But if that's the case, why abandon this clearly more straightforward route in favor of Ibn Sina's? Why leave behind the immediate and obvious reality of temporal origination and retreat into a highly abstract metaphysical framework with all the theological baggage it comes with? Part of the answer is that there's a significant amount of kalami pressure still doing work in the background, whether he sees it clearly or not. He's still being pulled by a picture in which that one temporally originated thing right in front of him somehow does not yet feel enough, and in which there's still a need to rule out a beginningless past of any kind at all before the argument is secure. And since fighting through this kalami route comes with its own heavy costs, Ibn Sina's more abstract starting point becomes appealing precisely because it seems to float above that whole battlefield entirely. That whole picture doesn't just come from nowhere. It belongs to a framework shaped by Mu'tazili-Ash'ari atomist commitments and by the Avicennan alternative that presents itself as the way out. But that's precisely the false dichotomy that Ibn Taymiyya's engagement with these schools exposes. And that's why I said at the start that Hijab clearly has not absorbed those discussions. I say this because nobody exposes how this whole dilemma gets manufactured in the first place more clearly than Ibn Taymiyya. Once you follow both of these approaches through to where they actually lead, the picture roughly looks like this: On the kalami side, the world is temporally originated, but there's no temporal cause and no temporally specifying reason for why it began when it did rather than before or after. On the Avicennan side, the idea of a temporally originated world without a temporally specifying reason for why it began at one moment rather than another is rejected, and what that drives them to is an eternal world flowing necessarily from a timeless source. The first side is left saying that the world did not exist and then suddenly came into being, when absolutely nothing changed in the first "non-existence" state to bring the "existence" state about. No new act, no new cause, no new specification of any kind. Just non-existence, and then existence, with nothing in between that accounts for the difference. And this isn't just the ordinary sense of "why this moment rather than another" as if time was already flowing in the background and there was succession of some sort. The issue is that there's no succession there at all, and yet somehow a first occurrence appears without anything new accounting for it. The second side, on the other hand, tries to avoid that mess by denying the beginning altogether. But then it runs into a worse problem, because if the world flows necessarily from an eternally sufficient cause, then by right, there shouldn't be temporally originated things happening right in front of us at all. If the sufficient cause is eternally what it is and its effect follows necessarily, then nothing genuinely new should ever come to be. And yet things do come to be and events do occur right before our eyes. So that picture ends up in something far worse than the kalami one, because it leaves the very occurrences we're constantly witnessing impossible to account for in the first place. This choice between denying any kind of beginningless past on one side, or accepting an eternal emanation of the world from a timeless source on the other, only starts looking meaningful once certain premises about God have already been quietly accepted in the background. Brother Hijab is either knowingly or unknowingly operating within a system that traps you between these two options. Part of what Ibn Taymiyya's critiques are meant to show is that this whole "menu" is already the product of framework-level concessions that didn't need to be made in the first place. The whole force of Ibn Sina's move depends on those prior concessions. If you deny real volitional attributes and deny that God's willing and acting are themselves genuinely real and successive (as opposed to being reduced to mere effects within creation), then of course you're going to be left staring at the world's coming into existence and finding nothing in God that accounts for it. And that's exactly the pressure Ibn Sina exploits. He isn't exposing some universal difficulty that falls equally on every conception of God. He's taking advantage of a problem that only becomes a problem once those earlier denials are already in place. From our side, that whole pressure is manufactured by a prior departure from what revelation teaches plainly and what a sound fitrah and uncorrupted reason recognize naturally about God. He acts when He wills. He does what He wills. One thing genuinely follows another by His act and decisive will. He truly answers when called upon. He creates, commands, speaks, loves, is pleased, is angered, and does what He wills when He wills. This is not some later philosophical patchwork brought in to rescue a weak position. It's the direct meaning of what was revealed to the prophets (peace be upon them) and the most natural and intelligible understanding of the Creator in the first place. The whole metaphysical mess we've been walking through only begins after that is set aside and people start trying to reconstruct coherence in its absence. The dilemma that pushes Hijab toward Ibn Sina simply does not arise for those who never made that initial concession. But even if all of that is set aside and Ibn Sina is taken on his own terms, his approach doesn't solve this manufactured problem anyway. It makes it worse. If the world proceeds from an eternally complete cause that necessarily produces its effect without interval or delay, the very occurrence of events within the world becomes unintelligible. If the sufficient cause is eternally what it is and its effect follows necessarily from it, then why are new things happening at all? Why is anything coming to be? Why is there succession? Either everything that proceeds from that cause should always have been exactly as it is, in which case the occurrence of new events becomes impossible to make sense of, or events are somehow happening without anything genuinely bringing them into being, which is even worse. Hijab's own position sits uncomfortably between both of these frameworks without actually being grounded in either of them. On the kalami side, the denial of real volitional attributes is driven by the famous dalil al-a'rad that Ash'aris inherited from the Mu'tazila. A flawed argument whose anti-past-infinitude burden Hijab himself seems uneasy about defending, and one that even scholars within the kalami tradition have never fully settled among themselves. On the Avicennan side, the denial of volitional attributes is tied to the composition argument, which is even more obviously flawed than the first, and which Hijab himself effectively rejects the moment he wants to affirm real attributes of God elsewhere. So he's neither willing to fully own the kalami grounds nor willing to accept the Avicennan ones, and yet he remains caught between both frameworks in a way that has him selectively borrowing loaded conclusions from each while rejecting the very premises that would at least give either position a fighting chance at internal coherence. As for the position that actually makes sense, the one that does not require any of this maneuvering and doesn't come loaded with any of these burdens, that's the one he keeps stepping around. He already has temporal origination staring him right in the face, not just in the world around him but in his very own existence. And once he grants the impossibility of an infinite regress of causes, that's already all he needs to arrive at the conclusion he's after. And yet instead of taking the direct route that's right there in front of him, he moves into inherited frameworks with all the speculative premises and theological costs that come with them, and then has to spend his time patching around the problems those frameworks generate. That's what happens when you reach for the most sophisticated-looking formulation without a sufficiently clear view of what drove people into those frameworks to begin with, and without a clear understanding of what they had to give up along the way to stay in them.
0:31

The Cosmological Argument Without the Kalami Baggage The reason I know Hijab hasn't carefully read Ibn Taymiyya on these questions is that he says something like this without seeming to notice what it actually does to the route he's taking. If he really sat with those discussions, the point he's making in this clip would not look like support for his strategy at all. He says he does not know anyone who accepts an infinite regress of causes, and that's true. But once that much is already out the way, this whole shift to an Avicennan framework with all the baggage it comes with should already start looking a lot less appealing. Let me explain why. If an infinite regress of causes is impossible, then all you need in order to reach the conclusion Hijab wants to reach is just one thing that came into being after not existing at all. All you need is one instance of temporal origination. Your own coming into existence and the things happening right in front of you give you exactly that. And unless you're now going to retreat from even this to satisfy the skeptic, you already have all you need. Not just from what's all around you, but from within your very self. You have, in your very own existence, something that came into being after not existing, and therefore requires a cause that brought it into being, a self-sufficient cause whose existence is not itself from something else. And regardless of whether the sequence of temporally originated things extends infinitely into the past or not, it still follows that the whole series cannot sufficiently explain the temporally originated thing in question, because if an infinite regress of causes is impossible, then the series cannot just hang there without terminating in a self-sufficient cause. So once he's already granted that much, the conclusion he's after is already right there in substance. But if that's the case, why abandon this clearly more straightforward route in favor of Ibn Sina's? Why leave behind the immediate and obvious reality of temporal origination and retreat into a highly abstract metaphysical framework with all the theological baggage it comes with? Part of the answer is that there's a significant amount of kalami pressure still doing work in the background, whether he sees it clearly or not. He's still being pulled by a picture in which that one temporally originated thing right in front of him somehow does not yet feel enough, and in which there's still a need to rule out a beginningless past of any kind at all before the argument is secure. And since fighting through this kalami route comes with its own heavy costs, Ibn Sina's more abstract starting point becomes appealing precisely because it seems to float above that whole battlefield entirely. That whole picture doesn't just come from nowhere. It belongs to a framework shaped by Mu'tazili-Ash'ari atomist commitments and by the Avicennan alternative that presents itself as the way out. But that's precisely the false dichotomy that Ibn Taymiyya's engagement with these schools exposes. And that's why I said at the start that Hijab clearly has not absorbed those discussions. I say this because nobody exposes how this whole dilemma gets manufactured in the first place more clearly than Ibn Taymiyya. Once you follow both of these approaches through to where they actually lead, the picture roughly looks like this: On the kalami side, the world is temporally originated, but there's no temporal cause and no temporally specifying reason for why it began when it did rather than before or after. On the Avicennan side, the idea of a temporally originated world without a temporally specifying reason for why it began at one moment rather than another is rejected, and what that drives them to is an eternal world flowing necessarily from a timeless source. The first side is left saying that the world did not exist and then suddenly came into being, when absolutely nothing changed in the first "non-existence" state to bring the "existence" state about. No new act, no new cause, no new specification of any kind. Just non-existence, and then existence, with nothing in between that accounts for the difference. And this isn't just the ordinary sense of "why this moment rather than another" as if time was already flowing in the background and there was succession of some sort. The issue is that there's no succession there at all, and yet somehow a first occurrence appears without anything new accounting for it. The second side, on the other hand, tries to avoid that mess by denying the beginning altogether. But then it runs into a worse problem, because if the world flows necessarily from an eternally sufficient cause, then by right, there shouldn't be temporally originated things happening right in front of us at all. If the sufficient cause is eternally what it is and its effect follows necessarily, then nothing genuinely new should ever come to be. And yet things do come to be and events do occur right before our eyes. So that picture ends up in something far worse than the kalami one, because it leaves the very occurrences we're constantly witnessing impossible to account for in the first place. This choice between denying any kind of beginningless past on one side, or accepting an eternal emanation of the world from a timeless source on the other, only starts looking meaningful once certain premises about God have already been quietly accepted in the background. Brother Hijab is either knowingly or unknowingly operating within a system that traps you between these two options. Part of what Ibn Taymiyya's critiques are meant to show is that this whole "menu" is already the product of framework-level concessions that didn't need to be made in the first place. The whole force of Ibn Sina's move depends on those prior concessions. If you deny real volitional attributes and deny that God's willing and acting are themselves genuinely real and successive (as opposed to being reduced to mere effects within creation), then of course you're going to be left staring at the world's coming into existence and finding nothing in God that accounts for it. And that's exactly the pressure Ibn Sina exploits. He isn't exposing some universal difficulty that falls equally on every conception of God. He's taking advantage of a problem that only becomes a problem once those earlier denials are already in place. From our side, that whole pressure is manufactured by a prior departure from what revelation teaches plainly and what a sound fitrah and uncorrupted reason recognize naturally about God. He acts when He wills. He does what He wills. One thing genuinely follows another by His act and decisive will. He truly answers when called upon. He creates, commands, speaks, loves, is pleased, is angered, and does what He wills when He wills. This is not some later philosophical patchwork brought in to rescue a weak position. It's the direct meaning of what was revealed to the prophets (peace be upon them) and the most natural and intelligible understanding of the Creator in the first place. The whole metaphysical mess we've been walking through only begins after that is set aside and people start trying to reconstruct coherence in its absence. The dilemma that pushes Hijab toward Ibn Sina simply does not arise for those who never made that initial concession. But even if all of that is set aside and Ibn Sina is taken on his own terms, his approach doesn't solve this manufactured problem anyway. It makes it worse. If the world proceeds from an eternally complete cause that necessarily produces its effect without interval or delay, the very occurrence of events within the world becomes unintelligible. If the sufficient cause is eternally what it is and its effect follows necessarily from it, then why are new things happening at all? Why is anything coming to be? Why is there succession? Either everything that proceeds from that cause should always have been exactly as it is, in which case the occurrence of new events becomes impossible to make sense of, or events are somehow happening without anything genuinely bringing them into being, which is even worse. Hijab's own position sits uncomfortably between both of these frameworks without actually being grounded in either of them. On the kalami side, the denial of real volitional attributes is driven by the famous dalil al-a'rad that Ash'aris inherited from the Mu'tazila. A flawed argument whose anti-past-infinitude burden Hijab himself seems uneasy about defending, and one that even scholars within the kalami tradition have never fully settled among themselves. On the Avicennan side, the denial of volitional attributes is tied to the composition argument, which is even more obviously flawed than the first, and which Hijab himself effectively rejects the moment he wants to affirm real attributes of God elsewhere. So he's neither willing to fully own the kalami grounds nor willing to accept the Avicennan ones, and yet he remains caught between both frameworks in a way that has him selectively borrowing loaded conclusions from each while rejecting the very premises that would at least give either position a fighting chance at internal coherence. As for the position that actually makes sense, the one that does not require any of this maneuvering and doesn't come loaded with any of these burdens, that's the one he keeps stepping around. He already has temporal origination staring him right in the face, not just in the world around him but in his very own existence. And once he grants the impossibility of an infinite regress of causes, that's already all he needs to arrive at the conclusion he's after. And yet instead of taking the direct route that's right there in front of him, he moves into inherited frameworks with all the speculative premises and theological costs that come with them, and then has to spend his time patching around the problems those frameworks generate. That's what happens when you reach for the most sophisticated-looking formulation without a sufficiently clear view of what drove people into those frameworks to begin with, and without a clear understanding of what they had to give up along the way to stay in them.

Abdul Rahman (TAP)

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