Technology Archives - Page 7 of 10

November 8, 2021

What’s in the bipartisan infrastructure bill?

Another big legislative win crossed the line for Biden’s agenda late this Friday night: the $1.2T bipartisan infrastructure bill passed the House with 6 Democrats dissenting and a whopping 13 Republicans joining to finally bring Infrastructure Week to the American people. Still to come is the other partner to the twin bills circulating in Congress, the Build Back Better reconciliation bill that would add another $2T to the most Keynesian U.S. budget in decades.

Nevertheless, the bill is largely paid for via various means including adding significantly to economic growth and GDP over the next 10 years. The Biden infrastructure bill will not raise taxes on any families making less than $400,000, a campaign promise the president consistently made and has now delivered upon.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill is the second significant piece of legislation passed under Biden’s tenure in the White House, following the $1.9T American Rescue Plan back in March to successfully tame the covid-19 pandemic.

Infrastructure Bill 2021: Breakdown

What’s in the bill? A slate of sorely needed national funds to modernize our transportation, energy, and broadband systems, including provisions for increasing renewables and lowering emissions on a large scale to combat climate change. Here’s a list of what’s included in the largest single infrastructure investment in American history:

$110B for roads, bridges, & other infrastructure
$11B for transportation safety
$39B to modernize public transit, including replacing 1000s of vehicles with zero-emission models
$66B to modernize passenger and freight rail
$12B for high-speed rail
largest federal investment in public transit in history
$65B in broadband
$42B in airports and ports, including emissions reduction and low-carbon technologies
$7.5B for 0- and low-emissions buses (including school buses) and ferries
$7.5B for national network of EV chargers
$65B to rebuild the electric grid
$55B to upgrade water infrastructure
$50B to critical infrastructure cybersecurity
$21B to clean up toxic waste

October 8, 2021

The Great Philosophers

Elder wisdom, Thinkers, and Creators Since Antiquity

Some say there’s nothing new under the sun. Maybe we don’t need to go that far — but we should definitely appreciate the voluminous contributions of the ancient thinkers and great philosophers of antiquity, who figured out a dizzying array of complicated concepts long before the modern era.

We have much to learn from our ancestral teachers. Here’s a place to start — which shall grow over time as the knowledge is passed down yet again, age unto age. Things that stand the test of time are valuable, no matter what the currency of the day.

The Great Philosophers

Name	Known for	Born	Died	Where lived	Influenced
St. Thomas Aquinas	Summa Theologiae	1225	1274	Italy
Anaxagoras	Early Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who moved forward ideas about the nature of existence	c. 500 BC	c. 428 BC	Greece, Persia	Diogenes, Plutarch
Hannah Arendt	A politically progressive Jewish philosopher, Arendt fled the Nazi regime for America, where she wrote the foundational text on the political psychology of authoritarianism, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951)	1906	1975	Germany, America
Aristotle	Student of Plato and founder of the Lyceum, he is widely known for his Socratic Method of questioning as a basis for philosophical discussion	384 BC	322 BC	Greece	The Enlightenment, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante
Marcus Aurelius	Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher who advocated for cultivating an ethos of impermanence and doing one's duty.	121	180	Roman Empire
Avicenna	Persian polymath, father of early medicine, and a key figure during the Islamic Golden Age	980	1037	Persia
Francis Bacon	declaring that human intellect and reason are means of discovering the truth: "Knowledge is power“	1561	1626	England
Roger Bacon	Most celebrated European scientist of the Middle Ages.	1220	1292	England
Pierre Bourdieu	The French sociologist's work focuses on how upper social classes preserve their social privileges through generations despite the persistent myth of social mobility in post-industrial liberal societies	1930	2002	France
Jeremy Bentham	father of Utilitarianism	1748	1832	England
Daniel Bernoulli	Swiss mathematician widely credited for pioneering the field of statistics	1700	1782	Switzerland
Jacob Bernoulli		1655	1705	Switzerland
Jean Boudin	French political philosopher known for his theory of sovereignty	1530	1596	France
Louis Braille	French educator and inventor of the Braille system of reading and writing for the blind	1809	1852	France
Brunelleschi	Italian architect, sculptor, and designer	1377	1446	Italy
Joseph Campbell	Literature professor most known for his work in world mythologies, and the widely observed narrative of the archetypal hero	1904	1987	White Plains, NY	George Lucas and Star Wars
Andrew Carnegie	Gilded Age tycoon who made a fortune leading the steel industry in the late 19th century, becoming one of the richest Americans in history	1835	1919	Scotland, America
Cicero	Roman statesman, orator, philosopher, scholar, lawyer, and skeptic who championed a return to republican government during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar.	106 BC	43 BC	Rome	John Locke, David Hume, Motesquieu, Edmund Burke
Marquis de Condorcet	French philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who played a key role in transforming European society from feudalism to modern secular democracy.	1743	1794	France	Thomas Jefferson
Confucius	Confucianism -- a system of ethics and morals to guide "right" behavior	551 BC	479 BC	China
Marie Curie	Chemist and physicist whose work on radioactivity earned her a Nobel Prize -- the first woman ever to win the award.	1867	1934	Poland, France
Leonardo da Vinci	The Italian polymath, painter, engineer, inventor, scientist et al was a giant of the Renaissance. He is often credited as being the greatest painter in th history of art.	1452	1519	Italy
Charles Darwin	English naturalist most famous for the knowledge of evolution	1809	1882	England
Democritus	basic theory of the atom: a fundamental building block unit of all things that itself is not divisible (although later we would discover even smaller particles, the atom is still essentially the most basic building block)	460 BC	371 BC	Greece
René Descartes	cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am	1596	1650	France
Alexis de Tocqueville	French diplomat, philosopher, historian, and aristocrat best known for his two volume Democracy in America (1835 & 1840), now considered one of the earliest works of sociology.	1805	1859	France
Diogenes	The most famous of the Cynics, a school of philosophy founded in Athens c. 400 BC, advocating the pursuit of happiness through avoiding the unnecessary temptations of material goods	412 BC	323 BC	Greece	Zeno
Emilé Durkheim	anomie — concept of lack of a shared moral order. Normlessness.	1858	1917	France
Albert Einstein	Known for his theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, Einstein is widely agreed to be one of the greatest physicist of all time.	1879	1955	Germany, America
Ralph Waldo Emerson	Writer, philosopher, poet, and abolitionist who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and became a key figure in the American romantic movement	1803	1882	America	Henry David Thoreau
Empedocles	Greek philosopher best known for his cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements.	494 BC	434 BC	Greece
Epicurus	Greek philosopher and founder of the highly influential school of philosophy bearing his name, Epicureanism	341 BC	270 BC	Greece	John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx
Erasmus	A Dutch philosopher and Catholic theologian, Erasmus is acknowledged as one of the greatest minds of the northern Renaissance	1466	1536	Netherlands
Euclid	Greek mathematician and founder of geometry	c. 325 BC	c. 270 BC	Alexandria, Egypt
Michael Faraday	Hugely influential English scientist who made numerous contributions to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry	1791	1867	England
Enrico Fermi	Italian physicist who emigrated to America with his Jewish wife in 1938 and worked on the Manhattan Project, creating the world's first nuclear reactor and becoming dubbed the "architect of the atomic bomb."	1901	1954	Italy, America
Michel Foucault	Widely influential philosopher, literary critic, historian, and activist best known for his theories on the relationship between power and knowledge.	1926	1984	France
Sigmund Freud	Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis	1856	1939	Austria, UK
John Kenneth Galbraith	Concept of countervailing power — that collective worker power is needed to balance against growing corporatism in the economy	1908	2006	Canada, America
Galen	Greek physician, surgeon, and philosopher credited with developing the fields of anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, neurology, and logic	130	200	Greece, Rome
Galileo	The Italian polymath is considered the father of modern science, making groundbreaking contributions to the fields of modern physics, observational astronomy, and the scientific method itself.	1564	1642	Italy
Siddharta Gautama	The Buddha; achieving enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in India	563 BC	483 BC	India
Ghiberti	Sculptor most famous for his creation of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry	1378	1455	Italy
Johann Gutenberg	Invented the printing press, democratizing the dissemination of information for the first time.	1394	1468	Germany
Jürgen Habermas	German philosopher and member of the Frankfurt School, his work addresses public opinion and the public sphere through the lens of critical theory	1929		Germany
Friedrich Hegel	One of the most important figures in German idealism and a founding figure in Western philosophy	1770	1831	Germany
Martin Heidigger	German philosopher and member of the Nazi Party	1889	1976	Germany
Heraclitus	posited that change or flow is the most basic character of nature; that the world is characterized by opposites; and that God or "logos" is the essence of nature's constant flux and source of all things	535 BC	475 BC	Greece
Herodotus	first historian; first journalist; first foreign correspondent	480 BC	425 BC	Greece
Hippocrates	Greek physician who is considered the Father of Medicine and known for the Hippocratic oath still in use today	c. 460 BC	c. 370 BC	Greece
Thomas Hobbes	English philosopher and founder of modern political philosophy	1588	1679	England
Homer	Ancient Greek poet and author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey	c. 750 BC		Greece
David Hume	Key Enlightenment philosopher who championed empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism	1711	1776	Scotland
William James	The father of American psychology	1842	1910	America
Thomas Jefferson	Founding Father and third president of the U.S., Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence	1743	1826	America
Carl Jung	Founder of analytical psychology	1875	1961	Switzerland
Immanuel Kant	A central Enlightenment thinker who made contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics among other fields.	1724	1804	Prussia
John Maynard Keynes	English economist whose ideas profoundly changed the field of macroeconomics and economic policy, now known as Keynesian economics	1883	1946	England
Søren Kierkegaard	Danish poet and polymath regarded as the first existentialist philosopher	1813	1855	Denmark
Thomas Kuhn	Philosopher of science known for his theory of scientific paradigms and paradigm shifts	1922	1996	America
Lao Tzu	the Dao de Ching and philosophy of Daoism	6th c. BC	6th c. BC	China
Lamark	A botanist, naturalist, and taxonomist, the French academic was an early proponent of the idea of evolution	1744	1829	France
Gottfried Liebniz	The German polymath is a key figure in the history of philosophy and mathematics both	1646	1716	Prussia
Vladimir Lenin	Fomented the Russian Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the tsarist regime	1870	1924	Russia	Joseph Stalin
Carolus Linnaeus	The father of modern taxonomy and inventor of binomial nomenclature for the modern system of naming organisms	1707	1778	Sweden
John Locke	philosophy of liberty and natural rights	1632	1704	England
Martin Luther	Kicked off the Protestant Reformation when he broke with the Catholic Church over the practice of indulgences	1483	1546	Germany
James Madison	Founding Father and fourth president of the U.S., Madison is known as the father of the Constitution and the author of the Bill of Rights, as well as a co-author of the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay	1751	1836	America
Karl Marx	His political theories were so revolutionary he lived in exile much of his life, with his works The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital exerting enormous influence on subsequent intellectual thought and world history	1818	1883	Germany, England
John Stuart Mill	A key thinker in the pantheon of classical liberalism, Mill contributed to political theory, political economy, and social theory among others	1806	1873	England
Mozi	An ethical philosophy advocating the caring for everyone equally	470 BC	391 BC	China	Legalism
Mohammad	Arab social and political leader who founded the religion of Islam	570	632	Mecca
Isaac Newton	One of the greatest scientists of all time, Newton discovered gravity and the laws of motion among much else	1642	1727	England
Friedrich Nietzsche	Key figure in modern intellectual history	1844	1900	Germany
Alfred Nobel	Inventor and philanthropist who gave his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize	1833	1896	Sweden
Georgia O'Keeffe	Painter known as the Mother of American modernism	1887	1986	America
Thomas Paine	Political theorist and revolutionary whose pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis helped persuade the colonists to declare independence from Great Britain	1737	1809	Britain; America
Parmenides	early Rationalist; believed our perceptions are an illusion shielding us from true reality, which is only discernable via human reason	515 BC	445 BC	Greece	Plato
Louis Pasteur	A French chemist and microbiologist who discovered vaccination and pasteurization, Pasteur is considered the father of bacteriology and the father of microbiology	1822	1895	France
Petrarch	Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters helped spark the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century	1304	1374	Italy
Philo of Alexandria	Philosopher and theologist who entwined Jewish exegesis and Stoic philosophy	c. 20 BC	c. 50 AD	Alexandria, Egypt
Plato	Platonic Forms	427 BC	347 BC	Greece	Aristotle
Pliny the Elder	Author, naturalist, and navy commander who wrote encyclopedic works on natural philosophy	23	79	Rome
Marco Polo	The first European to create a detailed history of his voyage to Asia via the Silk Road, including China, Japan, Persia, India, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.	1254	1324	Italy
Neil Postman	The professor and cultural critic warned against the ill effects of tchnology and is best known for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)	1931	2003	America
Protagoras	Father of relativism; coined the phrase "man is the measure of all things"	490 BC	420 BC	Greece
Pythagoras	The Pythagorean theorem	570 BC	495 BC	Greece	Parmenides
François Rabelais	A writer, physician, Greek scholar, Renaissance thinker, Rabelais is infamous for his satirical and bawdy humor	1483	1553	France
John Rawls	Moral and political philosopher known for the thought experiment known as the "veil of ignorance," in which participants make decisions about the society they will live in without knowing a priori which class or social position they themselves would occupy.	1921	2002	American
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Political philosopher whose concept of the Social Contract inspired the French and American Revolutions, and underpins all modern liberal democracies	1712	1778	France	The Enlightenment, French Revolution
Jean-Paul Sartre	A key thinker in the philosophy of existentialism	1905	1980	France
Arthur Schopenhauer	The German philosopher was one of the first in the west to embrace Indian philosophy, including asceticism, self-denial, and the concept of worldly illusion. He influenced many other important thinkers and creators of the 19th and 20th centuries	1788	1860	Poland	Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Leo Tolstoy, Herman Melville, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Richard Wagner, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler
Joseph Schumpeter	An Austrian emigree to the US, Schumpeter taught at Harvard and popularized the economic term "creative destruction"	1883	1950	Hungary, United States
Seneca	Rhetoric teacher and Stoic philosopher	55 BC	37 AD	Roman Empire
Adam Smith	This Scottish philosopher was a pioneer of political economy, and is widely regarded as the father of economics and the father of capitalism.	1723	1790	Scotland	David Hume
Socrates	Widely considered a founder of philosophy; the dialectic method, among much else	469 BC	399 BC	Greece	Plato
Spinoza	An early Enlightenment thinker inspired by Descartes to go on to lead the Dutch Golden Age	1632	1677	The Netherlands
Nicholas Nassim Taleb	The author, mathematical statistician, and former options trader has written several influential books on probability, uncertainty, and randomness.	1960		Lebanon, America
Thales	Posited water as being the basic material of the cosmos	624 BC	546 BC	Miletus, Greece
Theocritus	Creator of ancient Greek pastoral poetry	c. 300 BC	c. 260 BC	Greece
Thucydides	Athenian historian and general who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War about the conflict between Sparta and Athens	460 BC	400 BC	Greece
Edward Tufte	Professor of computer science at Yale and a pioneer in the field of data visualization	1942		America
Virgil	Regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets, Virgil penned the Aeneid, the national epic of ancient Rome	70 BC	19 BC	Rome	Dante and the Divine Comedy
Vitruvius	Roman author, architect, and army engineer known for his significant contributions to architecture and design	c. 80 BC	c. 15 BC	Rome	The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci
Voltaire	Key figure in the Enlightenment, Voltaire was famous for his criticism of the Catholic Church and advocacy of civil liberties including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state	1694	1778	France	Jean-Jacques Rousseau
James Watson	Credited with discovering the double helix structure of the DNA molecule	1928		America
Max Weber	German historian and political economist widely regarded as one of the most important theorists of modern Western society	1864	1920	Germany	Critical theory, the Frankfurt School
Ludwig Wittgenstein	Considered one of the greatest modern philosophers, Wittgenstein made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind.	1889	1951	Austria, England
Zeno	Founder of the Stoic school of philosophy in 4th c. BCE Greece and Parmenides's most famous student.	c. 495 BC	c. 430 BC	Greece	Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes

September 19, 2021

Neoliberalism Explained: Why it must be dismantled

Or: How Milton Friedman destroyed Western civilization, the neolliberalism story.

An economic ideology first theorized in the 40s and 50s by scholars, it was brought to popular attention in the 1970s by the works of economist Milton Friedman and novelist Ayn Rand among others. It grew in popularity and became widely adopted in U.S. economic policy beginning with Ronald Reagan in the 80s.

The essential heart of neoliberalism is the idea of the rich as top performers and job creators, driving the economy forward through their achievements and innovations; and that societies work best with little government regulation and where citizens are shaped to work according to market principles. Its adoption as a major driver of policy effectively undid many of the gains to middle class opportunity created by the New Deal, FDR‘s ambitious public works project that pulled the nation out from the grips of the Great Depression following the 1929 crash on Wall Street.

Neoliberalism is the dominant economic orthodoxy in the modern era. It is both a political and a financial ideology, with the following extremist beliefs:

Antigovernment sentiment — Their pitch is that all governments, including democratic ones, threaten individual liberty and must be stopped (or “drowned in the bathtub,” in the words of anti-tax zealots and movement conservatives).
Free markets should conquer governments — They claim, absurdly, that the toppling of self-governance would improve both economies and individual liberties.
The victory of markets is inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it — The fall of the Soviet Union and Cold War Communism was deemed the “end of history” by neoliberals, who believed that laissez-faire free market capitalism would inevitably triumph over all other forms of economic and political systems.
Economies work best when governments don’t intervene — Neoliberals want to prevent the powers of government from interfering with their ability to cut corners, dump industrial waste, pay fair wages, offer benefits, adhere to safety standards, engage in deceptive advertising, commit tax evasion, and so on — while continuing to supply them a steady stream of the public’s money via unpaid for tax cuts that balloon holes in the deficit. They fight against regulation tooth and nail, and try to claim that markets operate “naturally” as if under something akin to laws of physics — while failing to mention that there are no markets without regulation, without standards of fairness, without a justice system to enforce contracts and do its best to ensure a relatively equal business playing field.
The alchemy of neoliberalism will transmute greed into gold for everyone — The neoliberal promise is about spreading wealth, freedom, and democracy around the world — at the barrel of a gun, missile, or drone if necessary. Neoliberals consider greed to be the essence of human nature, and have modeled an entire societal system around this most base of human instincts. They claim, improbably — and surely many are True Believers — that narcissism and the aggressive pursuit of power and wealth will somehow magically create peace, happiness, and riches for everyone.

The insistence that governments and self-rule should be subordinated to the ultra-rich, to the oligarchs — that, to me, is the core essence of why this framework is evil. The staggeringly dissonant conviction about transforming sociopathy into global peace is a very close second.

Since the 1970s and accelerating with Reagan years, wealthy elites in the right wing have been spending gobs of their ill-earned wealth on creating a conservative movement echo chamber of think tanks, talk radio, literature, televangelists, YouTube streamers, and more — it is the vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton warned us about. It most certainly exists, and it most certainly is aggressively pursuing its political aims to disenfranchise the American people as fully as possible, so as to better walk away with an absurdly unjust share of the mutually created wealth by the wealth of intelligent and diligent labor here in the United States.

Common whites

It appeals to the MAGA crowd because it allows them to vicariously tag along with the rich and powerful right-wing bigots who flaunt and dangle their wealth in front of the plebes by which to entice them to open up their wallets and send in a meagre donation for this or that white victimhood fund that does nothing but enrich the scam artists who run it as a hollow shell. It validates their hardcore white supremacy and casual racism alike, provides the sadistic satisfaction of attacking their enemies (symbolically and/or literally), gives them something to do and believe in, and keeps them entertained while their pockets are being fleeced in broad daylight.

Neoliberalism has succeeded in undermining some of the last shreds of democratic infrastructure and civic goodwill in society at this point in American political history. The defenses brilliantly architected by the Founders to ensure checks and balances would manage the power games in Washington to within workable levels have frayed even further under 4 years of Trump, and the vitriol of the January 6 coup attempt and insurrection that’s fueled further right-wing Big Lie entrenchment and domestic terrorist extremism.

Democracy is in crisis, and neoliberalism the culprit of this hostage story.

At least Joe Biden is correct in his analysis of the solution: we should tax the rich.

September 8, 2021

Human History Timeline v0.1

This is an attempt (bear with me!) to encapsulate a framework of the major events of importance since our curious species came down from the trees. Human History Timeline is going to be a work in progress… forever! Be sure to check back as time unfolds.

Year	Event	Region	Theme	Domain
-250000	Modern humans emerge in Africa.	Africa	Ancient History	Science
-120000	Earliest cave paintings we know of are located in a South African cave.	Africa	Ancient History	Arts
-100000	Modern humans migrate to the Middle East.	Middle East	Ancient History	Human History
-75000	Modern humans arrive in Southeast Asia and China.	Asia	Ancient History	Human History
-40000	Modern humans had now spread around the globe as we arrived in Europe, living alongside Neanderthals. The earliest European cave paintings are from around this time in Spain.	Europe	Ancient History	Human History
-28000	The Neanderthals go extinct.	Europe	Ancient History	Human History
-16000	Humans cross the Bering Strait to Alaska over a land bridge exposed by the warming planet	North America	Ancient History	Human History
-15000	The ice age ends, and global temperatures rise by 15 degrees C.	Global	Ancient History	Science
-14000	Modern humans reach South America	South America	Ancient History	Human History
-10000	First human settlements begin in the North American Great Plains, modern-day Syria, and in the Yellow River Valley region of China.	Global	Ancient History	Human History
-7000	Invention of textiles in Egypt	Africa, Middle East	Man vs. Nature	Technology
-5000	Cultivation of tin as a metal resource		Ancient History	Technology
-4241	The Egyptians begin using the 365 day calendar	Africa	Our Place in the Universe	Knowledge
-3800	Bronze Age begins	Global	Ancient History	Technology
-3500	Mesopotamian cities Ur, Uruk, and others have emerged in and around modern-day Iraq	Middle East	Ancient History	Politics
-2980	The Great Pyramid of Zoser is built in Egypt	Africa, Middle East	Ancient History	Architecture
-2000	The last woolly mammoths die out and the species go extinct	Global	Man vs. Nature	Science
-2000	Epic of Gilgamesh composed	Middle East, Africa	Our Place in the Universe	Arts
-1792	Hammurabi's Code of Laws	Middle East	Democracy's Story	Politics
-1200	The Iron Age begins almost simultaneously around the world, in the Middle East, Europe, and India	Middle East, Europe, Global	Man vs. Nature	Technology
-800	The city of Rome is founded by Romulus and Remus	Europe	Ancient History	Politics
-560	Siddharta Gautama born in India, later to become the Buddha; founder of Buddhism	Asia	Our Place in the Universe	Knowledge
-530	Greek tragedy is in full swing with contributions from Aeschylus, Thespis, soon Sophocles, and others	Europe	Our Place in the Universe	Arts
-510	Roman Republic formed when the citizens overthrew king Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, aka Tarquin the Proud	Europe	Democracy's Story	Politics
-49	Republic of Rome becomes the Roman Empire when Julius Caesar overthrows the Republic	Europe	Age of Empires	Politics
-27	Julius Caesar Augustus becomes the first emperor of Rome, ruling for 45 years	Europe	Age of Empires	Politics
79	eruption of Mt. Vesuvius	Europe	Man vs. Nature	Science
312	New self-made Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity — at least nominally; he makes the empire safe and welcoming to Christianity, while maintaining many of his old Roman beliefs	Europe	Age of Empires	Politics
325	Council of Nicaea called by Emperor Constantine; the adoption of the Nicene Creed establishes the empire's stance on the divinity of Jesus and establishes Christianity as the state religion	Europe
476	The last western Roman emperor , Romulus Augustinius, is deposed — beginning the era of the Holy Roman Empire and marking the end of Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages	Europe	Age of Empires	Technology
632	Death of Muhammad leads much of the Middle East and North Africa to convert to Islam	Middle East, Africa, Europe	Our Place in the Universe	Politics
656	The first battle between the Shia (followers of Ali) and the Sunnis (followers of Aisha) over the fate of Islam — a war still raging to this day	Middle East
900-1200	the golden age of North African science	Africa	Our Place in the Universe	Science
1000	an Indian mathematician recognizes the power of zero	Central Asia, Asia	Our Place in the Universe	Science
1040	Movable type is invented in China	Asia	Knowing Things	Technology
1066	Battle of Hastings — France's William the Conqueror defeats the other claimant to the English throne Harold and is crowned the first Norman king of England.	Europe	Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism	Politics
1073	China invents an elaborate incense seal clock	Asia	Knowing Things	Technology
1149	Founding of Oxford University in England	Europe	Knowing Things	Knowledge
1200	Cambridge University founded in England	Europe	Knowing Things	Knowledge
1265	first Parliament elected in England, consisting mostly of feudal lords, knights, and wealthy aristocrats	Europe	Democracy's Story	Politics
1271	Venetian Marco Polo travels to China with his father at the age of 17; having been the first Europeans to visit the court of Kublai Khan over a 9-year stretch, the elder Nicolò Polo brings his son with him on the return journey — it will take them a trek of three and a half years	Europe, Asia	Age of Empires	Knowledge
1328	The sawmill is invented	Europe	Business of the World	Technology
1330	the hour becomes essentially our modern concept of hour	Global	Man vs. Nature	Technology
1347-1351	Approximately 75 million people die from the Bubonic Plague	Europe, Africa, Middle East	Man vs. Nature	Science
1399	English poet Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales	Europe	Our Place in the Universe	Arts
1431	Joan of Arc is burned at the stake	Europe	Age of Empires	Politics
1445	Gutenberg invents the printing press	Europe	Attention Must be Paid	Technology
1492	Christopher Columbus lands in the Americas, ushering in the age of Spanish Conquistadores and the colonial period — first in the Bahamas, then Cuba, then Hispaniola before heading home	North America	Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism	Knowledge
1517	Martin Luther, a German monk, becomes disillusioned with the church's selling of indulgences to fund construction projects (and with Calvinism more generally). Submits his 95 theses to papal authority, and after various machinations is excommunicated for challenging the authority of the Pope	Europe	Our Place in the Universe	Knowledge
1583	Galileo dedicates himself to the study of mathematics and physics	Europe	Our Place in the Universe	Knowledge
1585	Founding of the first American colony at Roanoke, in modern-day North Carolina	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1607	Founding of the second American colony at Jamestown, in modern-day Virginia	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1636	Harvard University founded	North America	Our Place in the Universe	Knowledge
1637	the first American slave ship sets out on her maiden voyage	North America, Africa	Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism	Politics
1665	Plague arrives in London	Europe	Man vs. Nature	Science
1688	Glorious Revolution in England: Parliament invited Dutch William of Orange & his wife Mary, James's Protestant daughter, to replace James	Europe	Democracy's Story	Politics
1701	Yale College founded	North America	Our Place in the Universe	Knowledge
1760	invention of the steam engine in England (James Watt)	Europe	Man vs. Nature	Technology
1776	U.S. Declaration of Independence is written in Philadelphia	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1787	U.S. Constitution written in Philadelphia	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1789	U.S. Constitution is ratified	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1799	~10-year French Revolution overthrows the monarchy	Europe	Democracy's Story	Politics
1839	Louis Daguerre demonstrates the photographic technique he's developed: the camera	Europe	Our Place in the Universe	Arts
1844	The Associated Press founded	North America	Attention Must be Paid	Knowledge
1859	Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of the Species	Europe	Our Place in the Universe	Knowledge
1865	U.S. Civil War ends	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1914	WWI begins
1921	Tulsa massacre	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1942	Pearl Harbor	North America	Conquest, Imperialism, and Colonialism	Politics
1945	WWII ends
1949	Formation of NATO	Europe, North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1953	Korean War ends
1954	Brown v. the Board of Education	North America	Democracy's Story	Politics
1961	Stanley Milgram conducts his famous obedience studies showing how willing students are to give electric shocks to their peers if ordered to by authority figures			Science
1964	Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act		Democracy's Story	Politics
1975	The Vietnam War ends
1980	Election of former actor and PR agent Ronald Reagan as President of the United States
1984	Breakup of the Bell system monopoly
1986	Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine
1987	Iran-Contra scandal wherein Reagan trades arms for hostages and lies about it
1989	Berlin Wall falls
1990	Tim Berners-Lee puts up the first web page
1991	Soviet Union collapses
1998	Microsoft monopoly broken up
2000	Vladimir Putin becomes Russian President following Yeltsin's resignation
2007	Apple announces the first iPhone; Google announces Android
2008	Bitcoin and the blockchain invented
2010	Citizens Unied ushers in the era of dark money in politics
2012	Sandy Hook mass school shooting

August 4, 2021

American Fascists & the Global Right 😈

It feels like the 1930s all over again — and with good reason. The rise of American fascists and right-wing extremism around the world has been a known trend for decades, and America’s past flirtations with fascism had been largely swept under the rug by the then anti-semites who tried to put a stop to FDR‘s New Deal and prevent the U.S. from getting into World War II.

They fought against labor unions and labor organizers, often using private militia as henchmen to do their dirtywork with plausible deniability for themselves. The Ku Klux Klan — the principle paramilitary organization formed during Reconstruction to undo egalitarian gains from the Civil War — was just one of many instruments put to use in service of plutocratic aims to quell any “communist awakening” amongst their workers, lest they get any uppity ideas for themselves. They fell for the popular conspiracy theories of their time, which included Hitler’s bogus assertion that Jewish bankers controlled the world and had to be stopped before they destroyed the white race.

Fascist revanchism

Those fascists, butthurt over America’s overwhelmingly popular decision to enter the war and stop Hitler from exterminating the Jews, seethed with jealousy at the post-war “liberal consensus” that flourished alongside the booming US economy, propelled first by the war effort and later by the peacetime success of the New Deal‘s long shadow and the burgeoning of the American middle class.

The American fascists turned into the John Birch Society, and the McCarthyites, and the Libertarians, and the Moral Majority, and the Gingrich Revolution, and the Tea Party, and the MAGA / QAnon stew sloshing around mass media. The kooks on the far right — the kind of ilk so cray cray that even William F. Buckley excommunicates you from the Republican Party — have taken over the hen house now. Outrage sells, as Facebook well knows — and as two-bit dictators around the world have bribed Mark Zuckerberg to brainwash the masses using the most inanely illogical propaganda prolefeed, the world tilts dangerously towards authoritarianism and the end of our democracy as we know it. And with it, all hope for truth and light into the future for some time to come — the equivalent of a political meteor hitting the Earth.

The American fascists are still around, and now they have tools of propaganda that Goebbels could never have even wet dreamed of. They’re more powerful and more well-connected — to other sociopaths, malignant narcissists, and other pathological cult-leader types who might be of transactional service to each other from time to time. Many of them cling to ideas of Christian nationalism and Strict Father Morality. We’d be wise to keep an eye on these folks.

Name	Type	Location	Known for
Greg Abbott	Politician	Texas	The 48th governor of Texas since 2015 who has presided over multiple energy grid disasters, a self-induced economic fiasco at the border, and ghoulish vigilante legislation designed to terrorize women seeking abortion services, and a perversion of the child sex trafficking apparatus to instead target and tyrannize trans youth
Roman Abramovich	Foreign agent		Russian oligarch close to both Putin and Trump
ACU Strategic Partners	Foreign agent		A company seeking to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East in partnership with a sanctioned Russia company; Mike Flynn was working for them without having disclosed it to the US government as required.
Sheldon Adelson	Businessperson	Las Vegas, NV	CEO billionaire of the Sands Corp casino empire (died, 2021)
AggregateIQ	Corporation		Canadian data firm connected to Cambridge Analytica parent company SCL Group that played a role in spreading Brexit propaganda
Roger Ailes	Media personality	Deceased	Primogenitor of Fox News whose downfall came over dozens of women testified to his decades of sexual assault and blackmail behaviors
Todd Akin	Politician	Missouri	Politician who lost his Senate race to Clairse McCaskill in 2012 when he made the comment on TV about women having a way to "shut the whole thing down" to avoid becoming pregnant if raped.
Nelson W. Aldrich
Ali Alexander	Extremist		One of the primary organizers of the Stop the Steal rally on January 6 that turned into and/or attempted to mask a coup attempt
Samuel Alito	Judge	Washington, DC	Supreme Court Justice who penned a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, riddled with Christian nationalist tropes and arbitrary Originalist interpretations
American Energy Alliance	Non-profit		A tax-exempt nonprofit that advocated for corporate-friendly energy policies. Koch's Freedom Partners donated $1.5 million in 2012.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)	Non-profit		Corporate-funded nonprofit that writes legislation for Republican legislatures, including spearheading the efforts to wrest partisan control over election results in 49 states.
Americans for Prosperity	PAC		The Koch Brothers' Libertarian political advocacy arm
Philip Anschutz	Businessperson	Colorado	CO oil and entertainment billionaire and founder of Qwest Communications
Michael Anton
Lee Atwater	Political Operative		Infamously brutal Republican strategist for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who promoted the "abstraction" of racism via Southern Strategy and ran the infamous Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Michele Bachman	Politician	MN	Minnosota Republican politician who was the first woman in her state to be elected to the House of Representatives, she is known for her extremist Dominionist views
Steve Bannon	Media personality	Houseboats	Former Breitbart provocateur who joined the Trump administration as a key advisor and dark propagandist for Trump intent on sowing chaos
Ross Barnett
William Barr	Public Sector		Donald Trump's Attorney General who shielded him from public awareness of his crimes, corruptions, and compromises during the 45th presidency.
Maurice Barres	Author	France	French nationalist author in the early 20th century who introduced Great Replacement theory
Louis Beam	White Supremacist
Roy Beck	White Supremacist		Executive Director of NumbersUSA, member of the white supremacist Tanton Network
Andy Biggs	Politician	AZ	House Republican subpoena'd by the January 6 Commission for his role in the attempted coup
Black Legion	Extremist	Michigan	Secret society of black-hooded terrorists working in MI against labor unions and labor organizers in the 1930s. Legionnaires talked of staging a coup to oust FDR and imposing a fascist regime in the United States
David Bogatin	Oligarch	NYC	A top figure in the Russian mafia who bought 5 luxury condos in Trump Tower to launder money, he admitted in 1987.
Jacob Bogatin	Oligarch		David Bogatin's brother, and a partner of notorious Russian mob moss Semion Mogilevich
John Wilkes Booth	Criminal	Deceased	Stage actor and Confederate sympathizer who shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head in April 1865, a few months after his re-election in 1864.
L. Brent Bozell	Extremist		BFF of William F. Buckley and author of Conscience of a Conservative to support Barry Goldwater's candidacy in 1960.
Harry and Lynde Bradley	Kochtopus		Midwesterners who built their wealth on defense contracts
Andrew Breitbart	Media personality		Founded both Brietbart and the Huffington Post
Anders Breivik	Extremist	Oslo, Norway	Mass murderer who killed 77 people in Oslo, Norway as inspired by the white supremacist ideology of Great Replacement theory
Mo Brooks	Politician	Huntsville, AL	House Republican from Alabama subpoena'd by the January 6 Committee for his role in the attempted coup
Brother's Circle	Criminal		Organized crime gang pursued by then-FBI head Robert Mueller circa 2011
Michael Brown		Ferguson, MO	Unarmed black man killed by the police in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking a series of riots in the city.
Pat Buchanan	Politician	Washington, DC	Politician and paleoconservative who worked for presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan before running against incumbent George H.W. Bush in 1992; widely considered a bigot, racist, and antisemite.
William F. Buckley Jr	Media personality
Doug Burley	Political Operative		Founding and leading both The Family and the National Prayer Breakfast of right-wing power brokers
Cambridge Analytica	Corporation	London, UK	Data firm implicated in the propaganda campaigns of both Brexit in 2015 and Donald Trump in 2016 that stole hundreds of millions of Facebook profiles and mined the treasure trove of information for weaknesses to manipulate in attempts to persuade
Renaud Camus	Author	France	French writer and critic who created the recent 2011 formulation of the Great Replacement Theory
Tucker Carlson	Media personality	NYC	Fox News evening opinion anchor and fish stick heir who promotes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory to his primetime audience of older white men.
Doug Casey	Businessperson		Ayn Rand devotee and "anarcho-capitalist" who specializes in how to profit from turmoil
Michael Catanzaro	Lobbyist		Partner at the CGCN Group lobbying firm who headed "energy independence" for the Trump transition team.
Cato Institute	Think Tank
Madison Cawthorn	Politician	NC
Center to Protect Patient Rights	Kochtopus		Dark money group funded by the Kochs to attack the ACA with fearmongering and vitriol
Mike Cernovich	Media personality
CGCN Group	Lobbyist		Lobbyist for the Koch brothers
James Chaney	Activist	Neshoba County, MS	One of 3 civil rights activists murdered by local white supremacists when engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, along with Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman
Jeremy Joseph Christian	Extremist	Portland, OR	stabbed 3 people who tried to intervene while he was hurling anti-Muslim slurs at 2 young women in Portland, OR
Chris Christie	Politician		Former governor of NJ and former Trump supporter and transition team lead who became a Trump critic
Michael Cohen	Businessperson	NYC	Donald Trump's personal lawyer, sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for felony crimes, including campaign finance crimes
Steven A. Cohen	Businessperson		Finance (SAC Capital Advisors)
Roy Cohn	Political Operative	Deceased	Lawyer who represented Senator Joseph McCarthy in the infamous televised 1954 hearings, and later went on to become a mafia-connected fixer in NYC and mentor to budding real estate developer Donald Trump
Competitive Enterprise Institute	Think Tank	Washington, DC	A Washington think tank that had been bankrolled by fossil fuel industries, particularly the Kochs.
Continental Resources	Corporation	Oklahoma	OK-based shale oil company with a large and profitable fracking operation
Coors brewing family	Koch Investor	Colorado	The Coors gave money to Oliver North to fund the Iran-Contra operation
Council of Conservative Citizens (CoC)
Ted Cruz	Politician	Texas
Jefferson Davis
Kim Davis	Public Sector	Kentucky	Former county clerk of Rowan County, KY who defied a US federal court order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in 2015
Devos family	Koch Investor		Founders of the Amway marketing empire; Betsy DuVos was the Secretary of Education under Trump
Amadou Diallo		New York	a West African immigrant mowed down by 41 shots from police when leaving his apartment on February 4, 1999.
James Dobson	Media personality		conservative talk-show host and fundamentalist Christian who strongly advocated spanking and corporal punishment be applied liberally to children
Chester Doles			Former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA. Nearly beat a Black man to death in 1993. Marched in 2017 in Charlottesville.
Rod Dreher	Extremist		Benedict Option author and traditionalist
Dinesh D'Souza	Media personality		Conservative gadly who alleged that Obama was "African" in outlook rather than American, absorbing his "radical" views from his Kenyan father
Doug Ducey	Politician	AZ	Governor of Arizona
Aleksandr Dugin	Extremist	Russia	Russia's primary fascist political philosopher and originator of Eurasianism conspiracy theory
David Duke	White Supremacist
John Eastman	Political Operative		Ran against Kamala Harris in 2010 for California AG, then showed back up in 2020 to write an outrageous op-ed that Newsweek for some reason actually published, that claimed that she was "secretly" not a US resident and therefore not eligible to be the VP! Now the Kamala Harris birther
Myron Ebell	Political Operative		Outspoken climate change skeptic, who headed the Trump transition team for the EPA
Election Integrity Project California	Extremist		Election fraud group working with Leonard Leo
Larry Ellison	Businessperson		Gave $5 million to Marco Rubio
Cassandra Fairbanks
Jerry Falwell, Jr	Televangelist
The Family	Lobbyist		Shadowy DC group with tremendous sway in Congress and around the world, following a distorted "strongman Jesus" version of Christianity.
The Federalist Society	Extremist
Scott Fitzgerald	Politician	WI	House Republican
Michael Flynn	Cult Leader
For America	PAC
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Fox News	Corporation
Free Congress Foundation
Freedom Caucus	Politician
Freedom Partners	Kochtopus		The Koch Brothers' secretive donor club.
FreedomWorks	Extremist
Matt Gaetz	Politician
Kevin Gentry	Kochtopus		VP of Special Projects and VP of the Koch Foundation
Greg Gianforte	Politician		body-slamming Guardian reported Ben Jacobs while running for a GOP House seat in Montana
Newt Gingrich	Media personality
Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet	White Supremacist
Rudy Giuliani	Politician	NYC
GiveSendGo			"Christian" donation platform
Barry Goldwater	Politician	AZ
Seb Gorka	Political Operative
Billy Graham
Madison Grant	Political Operative		Close personal friend of Herbert Hoover who helped draft the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924 -- the Stephen Miller of his day. His "Passing of the Great Race" was beloved by Hitler as "his bible."
Chuck Grassley	Politician		Senator
The Great Awakening
Marjorie Taylor Greene	QAnon	GA
Eric Greitens	Politician	MO
Harold Hamm	Kochtopus		Billionaire founder of Continental Resources, an OK-based shale company with large fracking business & one of the charter members of the Kochs' donor circle.
James Henry Hammond	Extremist
Warren G. Harding	Politician		Enthusiastically supported the white-supremacist work of Lothrop Stoddard et al
Billy James Hargis	Extremist
Orrin Hatch	Politician		Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.
Josh Hawley	Politician	MO	Missouri Senator funded by Peter Thiel who gave the January 6 mob a fist bump on his way in to object to certifying the electoral count
Matthew Heimbach	Extremist		White nationalist and one of the founders of the Traditionalist Workers Party
Jesse Helms	Politician
Leona Helmsley
Diane Hendricks		WI	The wealthiest woman in Wisconsin at $3.6 billion
Heritage Foundation	Think Tank	Washington, DC
Honest Elections Project	Extremist		A conservative legal organization connected to Leonard Leo that files legal briefs to SCOTUS opposing mail-in ballots and other voting reforms that help more people to vote,
Herbert Hoover	Politician	Washington, DC	White supremacist and wealth supremacist, he was adamant about doing nothing to help people during the Great Depression.
Mike Huckabee	Politician
Laura Ingraham	Media personality		Fox News host
Andrew Jackson	Politician	Deceased	US President
John Birch Society	Extremist
Andrew Johnson	Politician	Deceased	US President
Chuck Johnson	Media personality		Alt-right super troll
Ron Johnson	Politician		Wisconsin Republican Senator who supported Donald Trump, promoted ivermectin for covid, and said he wasn't afraid of the January 6 mob because they were white people
Alex Jones	Media personality		Host of InfoWars, the 9/11 conspiracy show that put the genre on the map
Jim Jordan	Politician	OH	A long-time Tea Party hyena, the Congressman known as Gym once helped his buddy cover up decades of sexual abuse of young wrestlers in their care.
Judicial Education Project	Extremist		A legal group tied to Leonard Leo, working to advance conservative takeover of the judiciary.
Islam Karimov	Oligarch	Uzbekistan	Former Communist official who became the first president of Uzbekistan in 1991, and remained the country's dictator until his death in 2016.
Alex Kaschuta	Media personality		Right-wing podcaster
Brett Kavanaugh	Judge	DC
Dr. D. James Kennedy			creating a Dominionist "conversion" playbook
John F. Kennedy	Politician	Deceased
Robert F. Kennedy	Politician	Deceased
Anna Khachiyan
Martin Luther King	Activist	Deceased	Civil Rights leader in the 1960s, and enemy of Southern politicians
Charlie Kirk	Media personality
Walter Kirn	Author	MT	Up in the Air author and disaffected former member of the American intellectual class
KKK	White Supremacist
Bill Koch	Businessperson
Charles Koch	Kochtopus	Kansas	industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc.
David Koch	Kochtopus	Deceased	industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc. (now deceased)
Fred Koch	Kochtopus	Kansas	Father of Charles and David, Fred Koch was an early and fervent acolyte in the ultra-conservative John Birch Society
Frederick Koch	Businessperson	New York
David Koresh	Cult Leader	Waco, TX
Ku Klux Klan (see KKK)	White Supremacist
Kylie Jane Kremer
David Lane	White Supremacist		Member of the white supremacist group The Order who coined the 14-word slogan popular with Great Replacement adherents: "We must secure the exisatence of our people and a future for white children"
Ken Langone	Businessperson		Founder of Home Depot
Lyndon LaRouche	Cult Leader
Robert LeFevre	Kochtopus		Charles Koch's mentor, a quasi-anarchist, who said, "government is a disease masquerading as its own cure"
Leonard Leo	Extremist		Chairman of the Federalist Society, a legal organization working to pack the courts with conservative judges.
Marine Le Pen	Politician	France
Honor Levy
Liberty Counsel			Christian special rights group
The Liminal Order
William S. Lind	Political Operative
Kelly Loeffler	Politician	Georgia	Insider trading immediately upon arriving at her unelected Senate seat when her husband, President of the NYSE, found a way to have some money arrive at Brian Kemp, the Governor, who appointed her.
Dana Loesch	Media personality		NRA spokeswoman
Sen. Huey Long	Politician	Deceased
Thomas Mair	Extremist		Assassin of British MP Jo Cox, who was outspoken against the UK's Brexit campaign
Paul Manafort	Lobbyist
Clarence Manion
Blake Masters	Politician	AZ
John McAfee	Businessperson	Deceased
Sen. Joseph McCarthy	Politician	Deceased	Senator best known for his demagoguery against alleged Communist agents in the US government during the Cold War in the early 1950s
Kevin McCarthy	Politician	CA
Michael McKenna	Kochtopus		Lobbyist and President of MWR Strategies lobbying firm, who have the Koch brothers as clients
Timothy McVeigh	Extremist	Oklahoma City, OK	White supremacist McVeigh was a disgruntled former military guy who took up with the white power movement and executed the Oklahoma City bombing -- as inspired, he said, by enacting "revenge" for Waco.
Andrew Mellon	Businessperson
Rebekah Mercer	Oligarch		Daughter of NY hedge fund manager Robert Mercer; she helped guide the Trump transition team following the 2016 election, and funded right-wing social network Parler
Robert Mercer	Oligarch		Father of Rebekah Mercer and longtime right-wing donor
MicroChip			Pro-Trump bot-king
Stephen Miller	Extremist
Michael Milken
Cleta Mitchell	Extremist	OK	Lawyer who represented various right-wing entities including the NRA, and was considered the "fringe of the fringe" -- at age 70 she "represented" Trump during his telephone call to Brad Raffensperger asking him to find ~11,000 votes
Semion Mogilevich	Criminal		Notorious Russian mob boss
Stefan Molyneux	Media personality		Alt-right troll
Sun Myung Moon	Cult Leader		Leader of the Moonie cult and self-proclaimed deity, Mr Moon served time in federal prison for tax fraud, among other charges.
Roy Moore	Politician	AL	Trump-backed politician and pedophile who narrowly lost the Alabama Senate race to Doug Jones in 2018.
JP Morgan	Businessperson
Rupert Murdoch	Oligarch		Fox News owner famous for his amoral media
Jack Murphy
Benito Mussolini
MWR Strategies	Kochtopus		Lobbying firm for the Koch brothers
Dasha Nekrasova
neo-Nazis	Extremist
Terry Nichols	Extremist		Blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building with Timothy McVeigh
Richard Nixon	Politician
Ralph Norman	Politician		House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection
NRA	Extremist		National Rifle Association
NYPD	Public Sector		New York Police Department
Barack Obama	Politician	Chicago, DC, Los Angeles	The 44th President of the United States, and the first black person to hold the job. He was widely loathed by the Right despite his positive record.
John M. Olin	Kochtopus		Chemical and munitions company titan
Viktor Orban	Politician		Radical right president of Hungary and Putin supporter
The Order			White supremacist group
Candace Owens	Extremist
Matt Parrott	Extremist		Co-founder with Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Workers Party
Laszlo Pasztor
Norman Vincent Peale	Businessperson		Christianity as a business man's religion
Mike Pence	Media personality		Donald Trump's VP
Rick Perry	Politician
Scott Perry	Politician		House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection
Jordan B Peterson	Academic		A sort of hero figure to the incel crowd
William Pierce
Pioneer Fund			A white supremacist group set up for "race betterment" in 1997 at a private club.
Jeanine Pirro	Media personality		Fox News host known for having a bit of a drinking problem and a brash on-air personality
Mike Pompeo	Public Sector		Sec of State after the firing of Rex Tillerson; former CIA Director; former Republican congressman from KS and largest recipient of Koch campaign funds in all of Congress
Jack Posobiec	Media personality
Lewis Powell	Businessperson		Wrote a 1971 memo that rallied the largely white and male business community around a plan to dismantle the New Deal and the liberal consensus
Sydney Powell	Political Operative		Also Associates with UFO believers and anti-vaxxers
Proud Boys	Extremist		Militia group involved in the January 6 coup attempt
Thomas Pyle	Businessperson		president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and the Kochs
QAnon	QAnon		Conspiracy theory about Democratic pedophiles that recycles Nazi ideology
Jean Raspail	Author	France	French author of the 1973 Camp of the Saints novel about migrants organizing to take over France; the racist fiction inspired the white power movement of the 1980s, Steve Bannon, and a host of other fascist movements in Europe, America, and around the world
Nancy Reagan	Media personality	Deceased
Ronald Reagan	Politician	Deceased	Actor and Republican who became the 40th President from 1981 through 1989
Kyle Rittenhouse
Pat Robertson	Televangelist
Dylann Roof
George Romney
Mitt Romney	Politician	UT
Murray Rothbard	Extremist
Dave Rubin
Richard Mellon Scaife	Koch Investor		Heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf Oil fortunes, and Koch donor
David Schnare	Political Operative		"Free-market environmentalist" who accused the EPA of having blood on its hands, who joined climate change denier Myron Ebell on the Trump transition team for the EPA
Stephen Schwarzman			Finance
Rick Scott	Politician
Jeff Sessions	Politician	AL
Marc Short	Political Operative		Ran the Koch Brothers' secretive donor club, Freedom Partners, before becoming Mike Pence's senior advisor during the 2016 presidential transition
Sinclair Broadcasting Group	Corporation
Paul Singer	Koch Investor		Finance (Elliott Management hedge fund). Supported Rudy Giuliani.
SNCC	Non-profit
Social Contract Press	White Supremacist		A racist publishing company, part of the Tanton Network, that published the white nationalist novel Camp of the Saints
Richard Spencer	White Supremacist
Balaji Srinivasan	Businessperson
State Policy Network	Kochtopus		Funded in part by the Kochs
Dan Stein	White Supremacist		President of Tanton Network organization FAIR
Lothrop Stoddard	White Supremacist		Author of the 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
Roger Stone	Lobbyist
Richard Strong	Businessperson		Strong Capital Management Mutual Fund
Sen. Robert Taft	Politician
John H. Tanton	White Supremacist	Michigan	White nationalist who organized The Tanton Network of 13 anti-immigrant organizations
Tea Party	PAC		Intensely antitax group
Peter Thiel	Businessperson	Los Angeles, CA	Eccentric Silicon Valley billionaire and pocketbook for the New Right project
Clarence Thomas	Judge	Washington, DC
Ginni Thomas	Political Operative	Washington, DC
Three Percenters	Extremist		Militia group who had a heavy presence at the January 6 attempted coup
Traditionalist Workers Party	Extremist
Turning Point USA	Extremist		Charlie Kirk's right-wing PR organization
Unabomber	Criminal
Unification Church	Cult Leader
Unite the Right	Activist	Charlottesville, NC	Charlottesville, NC event in 2018 where white supremecist groups marched with tiki torches, and activist Heather Hyer was killed by a right-wing extremist who drove his car through the crowd.
University of Texas at Austin	Academic	Austin, TX
JD Vance	Politician	OH	Venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte running for Senate in Ohio
Ricky Vaughn
Ruben Verastigui	Criminal	DC	Former RNC and other GOP offices staffer who made social media ads for the Trump campaign and was later arrested with child porn on his phone after a DHS sting.
John Vinson	Extremist		Head of the Tanton Network-backed anti-immigrant hate group American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF)
George Wallace	Politician	Alabama
Joe Walsh	Media personality
Kelli Ward	Politician	AZ	GOP Chair
Ron Watkins	Extremist		Identified as the most likely suspect to be Q of QAnon
Randy Weaver	White Supremacist	Naples, ID
Vicki Weaver	White Supremacist	Naples, ID
Weev	White Supremacist		Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer
Paul Weyrich	White Supremacist		Arch-deacon of the New Right ultraconservative movement and hugely influential figure who founded the Heritage Foundation, Council for National Policy, and ALEC.
White Citizens Councils	White Supremacist
Geert Wilders
Darren Wilson	Public Sector		Police officer who brutally killed a Black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, MO in 2014.
WikiLeaks	Foreign agent
Milo Yiannopoulos	Media personality

June 7, 2021

📈 Data Sets 📊

Data literacy is the newest frontier. The world of information has a pale twin universe of disinformation, deep fakes, fake news, and true believers — keeping track of reality will become more and more important and valuable into the future.

RussiaGate: Russian hacking of the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 US elections

Bestiary: Principal actors in Russian interference with US democracy
Lexicon: Terminology of the new Cold War
Right-wing Populism Around the World
Timeline of recent Russian aggression

The Thinkery

Billionaires 2021: The Richest People in the World
Cognitive Distortions List
Common Psychological Biases List
Conspiracy Theory Dictionary
Corporate Welfare in Recent History: A White-Collar Affair
Dystopias vs. Utopias: Book List
Logical Fallacies List
Media Sources I Trust
Mental Models, Frameworks, and Terminology for Thinkers
Newspeak Dictionary: From 1984 to 2024
Proteanism vs. Cultism: Open vs. Closed Societies
Right-Wing Authoritarianism: A Dictionary of American Fascism
Core Timeline v0.1

May 30, 2021

Bullies

How to deal with bullies

Or, DADA vs. MAGA. Defense Against the Dark Arts was like the women’s self-defense class of Hogwarts — it taught you how to prepare yourself for the evil that was out there lurking and waiting for you out there. This course of DADA will follow suit, aiming to offer ways to detect, defend, and defeat the cultism rising in America and beyond.

It will be a work in progress over time, so please bear with me as I assemble learnings from a number of sources.

Red Flags: Traits to watch out for

evasiveness
- vagueness
- slipperiness
- can’t be pinned down
- won’t answer straightforward questions
denialism
cognitive dissonance
- doublespeak
- paleologic
- word salad
- contradictions
- nonsense
black and white thinking
- “my way or the highway”
- rigid and inflexible, even when obviously off the mark
- all or nothing framing
- narrow range of observations
- tunnel vision
motivated reasoning
deceptiveness
easily angered
- almost anything seems to trigger them

Attention: Take Back Control of Our Minds

The internet, social media, seemingly infinite channels of entertainment and franchises in gaming are but tips of the giant iceberg that now competes for our time and attention. The number of options to choose from has scaled exponentially over the past several decades — but our amount of time to spend has not increased whatsoever. If anything, it’s decreased

May 16, 2021

Brainwashing

A technique of torture and compliance, brainwashing is used in many contexts to control victims. From personal relationships and marriage to cults and high demand groups, all the way up to the scale of nation-states, removing or reducing independent thinking and action in a person or population gives the brainwasher enormous power and advantage.

The word’s origin is from a Chinese term meaning “forcible indoctrination to induce somebody to give up basic religious, social, or political beliefs and attitudes in favor of a belief system imposed by the brainwasher.” It’s also been referred to as mind control, thought reform, undue influence techniques, or coercive persuasion — and is a form of highly unethical emotional and psychological manipulation.

Thought reform

Brainwashing is essentially a method of inducing a false personality into a target, after breaking them down psychologically. There are many different methods and techniques employed, from disinformation and sleep deprivation to hypnosis to emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. The goal of this “thought reform” project is to remove the individual’s agency and train them to follow the orders of the cult or high-demand group.

Seemingly normal, totally “average” people can fall under the sway of brainwashing techniques in use by cults much more easily than one might think. Cults and abusive organizations prey on people at vulnerable times in their lives, when they are most suggestible and least likely to mount an opposition. People who have gone through a loss, or a major life change, or are feeling particularly adrift may be lured by the sway of a deceptive organization. It can be very exhilarating to feel plugged in to an intense community after going through a period of grief or anxiety — almost irresistable, to some.

7 brainwashing tactics

isolation — separating you from family and friends, or any kind of support network who may provide alternative and negative views of the abuser
monopolization of attention — they seek to have the target orient their entire world around the abuser, leaving them little time to think about anything else
weaken your resistance — wearing down your defenses over time, so their messages take firmer hold
give occasional indulgences — providing temporary relief or even pleasure contributes to the overall program of intermittent reinforcement, to induce dependency on the abuser for stimulation of any kind
demonstrates “all-knowingness” — becomes an absurd moral authority on your entire life, presenting the truth about your inner self and past history with more omniscience than you yourself possess. They know you better than you know yourself — and you believe them!
destroy all sources of joy — the brainwasher needs to ensure that they are the sole source of pleasure and pain, for complete operant conditioning control over the target. All other pleasures in life are eradicated or eroded.
degradation and humiliation — if the target gets close to figuring out the truth about the power imbalance and impropriety of the abuser’s behavior, the abuser will immediately begin a scathing shame campaign to punish the temerity of daring to stand meekly on one’s own

Brainwashing in politics and religion

Use of brainwashing by communist officials in China, Korea, and Vietnam gained attention in the U.S. in the mid-20th century. The brainwashing technique is also used by gangs, cults, and organized crime networks to control both members and outgroups.

Perhaps most commonly it is associated with fringe religious groups like the Peoples Temple, Unification Church (or Moonies), Children of God, Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, The Manson Family, and thousands of other cults less well known. Sometimes the brainwashing is intended to limit the followers’ access to the outside world, and sometimes it is about grooming them to perform criminal acts from financial crimes to murder to starting a race war.

Important research

Many interdisciplinary minds across multiple fields have studied the topic of brainwashing and undue influence, or have contributed significantly to our understanding of behavioral influence. Here are some highly consequential thinkers, researchers, and experiments on the subject:

BF Skinner
Ivan Pavlov
Robert Jay Lifton
Asch Experiments
Stanley Milgram — Obedience to Authority
Zimbardo Prison Experiment
Erich Fromm — Escape from Freedom
Theodor Adorno — The F-scale
Hannah Arendt — the banality of evil
Bob Altemeyer — The Authoritarians

Related to:

Mao Zedong
Nazis
Moscow Trials
Jim Jones
David Koresh

See also:

undue influence
thought reform
mental predation
phobia indoctrination
hypnosis
Stockholm Syndrome

May 14, 2021

The Goldilocks Zone vs. Unbounded growth

The concept of the Goldilocks Zone reminds us that most typically, there is a range of possibilities above and below which would not be viable. This is in contrast to the idea of unbounded growth, in which one or more key performance indicators is expected to continue to grow forever, without bounds. Think: up and to the right.

Commonly used as a metaphor, the Goldilocks Zone has its origins in planetary science. It defines a planet that is within the habitable zone of its star system, meaning not too hot and not too cold — with the ability to sustain liquid water. Without it, life on the only living planet we know — ours — would cease to exist. Therefore, one good place to look for potential life on other planets is the Goldilocks Zone, which has also come to be used as a reference meaning “the perfect conditions” for some ideal state or goal.

“Going viral” isn’t always desirable

We crave it in our social media feeds, but avoid it like the plague when it is the plague — viral contagion can both giveth and taketh away. In America we’ve recently been having both as of this writing.

Whereas the Goldilocks Zone presupposes limits at both ends, unbounded growth expects no limits to ever be encountered from the start. In a finite world inside a finite universe, it is simply unlikely to be true with much regularity.

You could say that Goldilocks Zones know a lot about establishing boundaries, while the infinite growth areas tend to extremism. Beyond the pandemic, cancer is another infamous candidate for illustrating the dangers of growth without bounds. Arguably, hypercapitalism belongs.

The Goldilocks Zone is a moderate

Goldilocks Zones are akin to the center of the Bell curve; the boundaries of the margin of error; the middle path. James Madison would have been a fan of the Goldilocks Zone — it would have smelled to him like his own concept of the moderating force of many factions preventing too much extremism from taking root in governance, and reminded him of the insights of the Marquis de Condorcet.

“Moderation in all things” was made famous by first the Greeks and later the Romans. It is a kind of ancient wisdom that turns out to have very old roots indeed — back even to the early days of the universe.

May 11, 2021

Liberal values vs. Authoritarian worldview

The following list must be prefaced with some caveats about painting with broad strokes, and acknowledging everything is a distribution and Not All Republicans espouse all of these things to the same degree or even at all. Nevertheless, both the extremism and the polarization in our political system is the highest in recent memory — certainly in the totality of my Generation X memory, and by all accounts the highest since the 1930s. Extremism is high on both the Left and the Right, but research shows it’s been growing much more extreme on the Right.

And in many ways it feels like we are living through something akin to the 1930s, again. The rise in authoritarian regimes and totalist thought and linguistic patterns is troubling and dangerous. The United States never had an armed insurrection take over the Capitol building prior to January 6, 2021. America has had many periods of brutality in its past and present, but historically speaking nothing like the recent decades of escalating mass shooter events.

What can explain the religious devotion to a failed businessman and failed President on the Right? Loathe him through we might on the Left, Trump is revered on the Right for espousing the “virtues” of a traditional hierarchical society, and for giving coded approval to America’s most shadowy extremist groups that he would be finding excuses to look the other way if they chose to strike. They both held up their ends of the bargain, with would-be assassins in tactical gear assaulting the nation’s lawmakers as they certified the 2020 election results as mandated by the Constitution, and paid puppets in the Senate letting them all off the hook… technically speaking, that is.

Trump looked the other way, but only for another 14 days — until Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. With a new sheriff Merrick Garland in town, all bets are off regarding leniency for the nation’s most vile and seditious lot who stormed the Capitol and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in US history — a sad day for the country and its venerable history of managing to keep the republic.

This will be a work in progress, as usual. And a tool for discussion — we’re going to need it for the coming years.

Liberal Values	Authoritarian Values
Equality	Hierarchy
Justice	Force
Liberty	Control
Popular sovereignty	Unpopular rule
Common good	Privatization
Logic	Magical Thinking
Reason	Power
Truth	Propaganda
History	Myth
Reality	Fantasy
Responsibility	Escapism
Rationality	Irrationality
Integrity	Hypocrisy
Character	Character disorder
Wisdom	Ignorance
Generosity	Greed
Honesty	Deception
Earnestness	Cynicism
Skepticism	Loyalty
Curiosity	Boredom
Compassion	Contempt
Empathy	Sadism
Driven by care	Driven by fear
Morality	Nihilism
Transparency	Secrecy
Consideration	Callousness
Patience	Impatience
Maturity	Immaturity
Emotional intelligence	Emotional manipulation
Wholeheartedness	Cognitive dissonance
Vulnerability	Defensiveness
Authenticity	Mimicry
Deliberation	Act without thinking
De-escalation	Aggression
Conscious	Unconscious
Self-aware	Self-deception
Education	Brainwashing
Diversity	Conformity
Creativity	Destruction
Artistic	Fundamentalist
Solutions	Grievance
Community	Rugged individualism
Trust	Distrust
Gratitude	Envy
Respect	Disrespect
Sustainability	Extraction
Self-regard	Cathexis
Spirituality	Religiosity
Self-actualization	Follow the leader
Problem solvers	"Tear it down"-ers

May 4, 2021

Unthinking

Unthinking is a kind of militant stance against thinking, for oneself and others. It goes beyond a simple distaste for or preference against thinking, and on into something of a dedication, mission, or serious zeal for anti-intellectualism. As well, the Unthinking mentality includes a sort of reverence for instinctiveness and impulsiveness, and a distaste or contempt for “over-thinking” or being “overly sensitive.”

Fascism and cults have a technique in common: “thought stopping.” In cults, followers will be directly taught to attack negative and critical thoughts from their minds via use of a mantra — this further insulates them from independent sources of information outside the cult and its belief systems. Under fascism, the tactics of this type of unthinking are more easily disguisable:

short, repetitive slogans (“Lock her up!” “Build the wall!”)
arouse fear — invent enemies, dramas with the enemies, and distrust of allies to sniff out disloyalty
create confusion — say one thing, then confidently say its opposite
sow doubt — plant rumours, falsehoods, and conspiracies amongst the people
intimidate — threaten, while pledging to rescue

Theory: Fascism is about championing Unthinking. Desire for "unity" is about slipping into the mystical feeling of the hive mind. The premise is: give up critical thinking in exchange for ready-made beliefs and sense of spiritual oneness; "loyalty is better than independence."
— barb dybwad (@doctorparadox) May 3, 2021

Unthinking is a reactionary response to professionalization and globalization

Unthinking is the sinking feeling that perhaps more of Gustave Le Bon’s controversial 1895 Study of the Popular Mind is true than one might hope. Our willingness to trade away our independent, critical thinking faculties to follow orders from authorities has been well-documented — yet somehow we still struggle to wrap our minds around those folks who, well, don’t seem to be nearly as interested in wrapping their minds around stuff.

Those folks do exist, and they have no intention of coming in second place to the coastal brainiacs who manage to enjoy mental labor thank you very much. In the Trumpian world view, if you are at a deficit in the intellect department, you do not under any circumstances accept the intellectual authority of The Enemy as legitimate. You simply rebrand yourself as the “smartest guy in the world” no matter what the subject, and you say it confidently, no matter how absurdly false it is and no matter that all the people around you know it to be false. It is their compliance with your non-stop stream of lies that brands them as useful pawns and allows them to live another day under your beneficent gaze.

It’s the status, stupid

Much has been made about how the so-called “Hillbilly Elegy” types are actually a distribution that includes plenty of comfortable and well-off business owners and working professionals who are not struggling economically. While that is true, I think it’s still relevant to the upper-middle class whites who support Trump that they perceive themselves as having not done as well as their liberal Commie counterparts in big cities. They may not be hurting so much themselves in Barbara Eirenreich fashion, but they are “hurting” in terms of status wounds. They are not being recognized as much as they believe they are due.

And they know the reason they’re missing out on this entitlement is because some globalist scum outsmarted them. They know instinctively, whether consciously or unconsciously, that they cannot win in an intellectual battle with the Coastal Elite Enemies. This vulnerability is absolutely unforgiveable and can never be discovered by anyone — so they move the goalposts. They claim that intelligence is a worthless thing to have, and/or that if you have it you’ll be impure and no longer worthy of membership in the tribe. This anti-intellectual streak on the right is equal parts self-delusion (“smarts don’t matter!”) and hyper-competition — by discouraging potential rivals from becoming more educated than they are.

Unthinking is a reactionary response to secularization

The seemingly inexplicable Evangelical support for the violence of Trumpism can perhaps in part be explained by the great paranoia and growing existential fear of a secularizing nation. In a way, they’re not wrong to be foretelling of the End Times — most likely not the one they’re envisioning from the book of Revelations, but the one where Christianity dwindles from the landscape, leaving a roiling mass of American heathen liberal commies to eat babies at their pedo parties right out in the open.

That reality is happening before our eyes — the dwindling part, anyway, if not so much the rest (if anything, evidence so far has shown those pedo parties are on the Right…). Older believers are dying out, and new ones are not being formed fast enough to create a new base. You could look at this as a triumph of science over superstition, as liberals do — or, you could look at it as a threat to your way of life, as the Trumpists do.

It is highly problematic that there are not really many or even any replacements for religion and the church in terms of providing people a place and a platform for spirituality. As religious adherence continues to drop, this hunger for spiritual solidarity will only grow — many folks will seem as if hungry ghosts, gasping for a wisp of organized religion’s shared hivemind experiences.

Where else shall we get our sacred? What new institutions can we collectively devise, by which to safely explore the mystical unknowns of our most basic existence? How can we find, regain, or re-imagine a sense of shared togetherness and fellowship? How can we rebuild basic reciprocity?

It is urgent we find these answers, for the doomsday clock is running for American democracy.

April 21, 2021

Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance Capitalism Dictionary

They were inspired by hippies, but Orwell would fear them. The giants of Silicon Valley started out trying to outsmart The Man, and in the process became him. And so, surveillance capitalism got born. Such is the story of corruption since time immemorial.

This surveillance capitalism dictionary of surveillance is a work in progress! Check back for further updates!

Term	Definition
algorithm	A set of instructions that programmers give to computers to run software and make decisions.
artificial intelligence (AI)
Bayes' Theorem
bioinformatics	A technical and computational subfield of genetics, concerned with the information and data encoded by our genes and genetic codes.
child machine	Alan Turing's concept for developing an "adult brain" by creating a child brain and giving it an education
CHINOOK	checkers program that becomes the first time an AI wins an official world championship in a game of skill, in 1994
click-wrap
collateral behavioral data
common carrier	A sort of hybrid public interest served by corporate promise of meeting a high bar of neutrality -- a historical precedent setby the early Bell system monopoly, and an issue of public-private strife today with the advent of the internet.
contracts of adhesion
cookies	Small packets of data deposited by the vast majority of websites you visit, that store information in the browser as a way to extract intelligence about their users and visitors.
corpus	In Natural Language Processing, a compendium of words used to "train" the AI to understand patterns in new texts.
decision trees
Deep Blue	Chess program that beats world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997
deep learning
evolutionary algorithms
Facebook
facial recognition
Flash Crash of 2010	sudden drop of over $1 trillion in the E-Mini S&P 500 futures contract market via runaway feedback loop within a set of algorithmic traders
FLOPS	floating-point operations per second
Free Basics	Facebook's plan, via Internet.org, to provide limited free internet services in rural India (and elsewhere in the developing world).Controversy centers on the “limited” nature of the offering, which gives Facebook the power to select or reject individual websites and resources for inclusion.
genetic algorithms
GOFAI	"Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence"
HLMI	human-level machine intelligence: defined as being able to carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human
interoperability
Kolmogorov complexity
language translation
linear regression
machine learning
Markov chains
monopoly
NAFTA
natural language processing (NLP)	A technology for processing and analyzing words
neofeudalism
net neutrality	Legal and regulatory concept maintaining that Internet Service Providers must act as common carriers, allowing businesses and citizens to interoperate with the physical infrastructure of the communications network equally, without being subject to biased or exclusionary activities on the part of the network.
neural networks
netizens
"Online Eraser" law (CA)
patrimonial capitalism
Pegasus
phonemes
predatory lending
predictive analytics
privacy
private eminent domain
probability
prosody
qualia
r > g	Piketty's insight
randomness
random walk
recommender systems
recursion
recursive learning
right to be forgotten	When it became EU law in 2014, this groundbreaking legislation gave citizens the power to demand search engines remove pointers to content about them. It was the growing of a data rights movement in Europe that led later to GDPR.
SciKit
simulation
smart speakers
speech recognition
spyware
statistical modeling
strong vs. weak AI	"weak AI" refers to algorithms designed to master a specific narrow domain of knowledge or problem-solving, vs. achieving a more general intelligence (strong AI)
supermajority
supervised learning
surplus data
TensorFlow
Tianhe-2	The world's fastest supercomputer, developed in China, until it was surpassed in June 2016 by the also Chinese Sunway TaihuLight
Terms of Service
Twitter
unsupervised learning
Watson	IBM AI that defeats the two all-time greatest human Jeopardy! champions in 2010
WhatsApp
WTO
Zuccotti Park

April 18, 2021

Billionaires 2021

The Richest People in the World

The vast majority of billionaires in the world got richer during the year of the pandemic — fantastically richer. And they still demand more!

Inequality grows and grows, warping both capitalism and government, and yet still the plutocrats press their advantage further while whining about their invented delusional oppression.

Certainly not all rich people are gigantic assholes, but a depressing many of them are. We can hang onto the good ones while tossing the others out of the Titanic lifeboats where their rugged masculinity can carry them to shore.

Name	Net Worth	Wealth Source	Industry
Jeff Bezos	$177 B	Amazon	Technology
Elon Musk	$151 B	Tesla, SpaceX	Technology
Bernard Arnault & family	$150 B	LVMH	Fashion & Retail
Bill Gates	$124 B	Microsoft	Technology
Mark Zuckerberg	$97 B	Facebook	Technology
Warren Buffett	$96 B	Berkshire Hathaway	Finance & Investments
Larry Ellison	$93 B	software	Technology
Larry Page	$91.5 B	Google	Technology
Sergey Brin	$89 B	Google	Technology
Mukesh Ambani	$84.5 B	diversified	Diversified
Amancio Ortega	$77 B	Zara	Fashion & Retail
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers & family	$73.6 B	L'Oréal	Fashion & Retail
Zhong Shanshan	$68.9 B	beverages, pharmaceuticals	Food & Beverage
Steve Ballmer	$68.7 B	Microsoft	Technology
Ma Huateng	$65.8 B	internet media	Technology
Carlos Slim Helu & family	$62.8 B	telecom	Telecom
Alice Walton	$61.8 B	Walmart	Fashion & Retail
Jim Walton	$60.2 B	Walmart	Fashion & Retail
Rob Walton	$59.5 B	Walmart	Fashion & Retail
Michael Bloomberg	$59 B	Bloomberg LP	Media & Entertainment
Colin Zheng Huang	$55.3 B	e-commerce	Technology
MacKenzie Scott	$53 B	Amazon	Technology
Daniel Gilbert	$51.9 B	Quicken Loans	Finance & Investments
Gautam Adani & family	$50.5 B	infrastructure, commodities	Diversified
Phil Knight & family	$49.9 B	Nike	Fashion & Retail
Jack Ma	$48.4 B	e-commerce	Technology
Charles Koch	$46.4 B	Koch Industries	Oil & Gas
Julia Koch & family	$46.4 B	Koch Industries	Oil & Gas
Masayoshi Son	$45.4 B	internet, telecom	Technology
Michael Dell	$45.1 B	Dell computers	Technology
Tadashi Yanai & family	$44.1 B	fashion retail	Fashion & Retail
François Pinault & family	$42.3 B	luxury goods	Fashion & Retail
David Thomson & family	$41.8 B	media	Media & Entertainment
Beate Heister & Karl Albrecht Jr.	$39.2 B	supermarkets	Fashion & Retail
Wang Wei	$39 B	package delivery	Service
Miriam Adelson	$38.2 B	casinos	Gambling & Casinos
He Xiangjian	$37.7 B	home appliances	Manufacturing
Dieter Schwarz	$36.9 B	retail	Fashion & Retail
Zhang Yiming	$35.6 B	TikTok	Technology
Giovanni Ferrero	$35.1 B	Nutella, chocolates	Food & Beverage
Alain Wertheimer	$34.5 B	Chanel	Fashion & Retail
Gerard Wertheimer	$34.5 B	Chanel	Fashion & Retail
Li Ka-shing	$33.7 B	diversified	Diversified
Qin Yinglin & family	$33.5 B	pig breeding	Food & Beverage
William Lei Ding	$33 B	online games	Technology
Len Blavatnik	$32 B	music, chemicals	Diversified
Lee Shau Kee	$31.7 B	real estate	Real Estate
Jacqueline Mars	$31.3 B	candy, pet food	Food & Beverage
John Mars	$31.3 B	candy, pet food	Food & Beverage
Yang Huiyan & family	$29.6 B	real estate	Real Estate
Alexey Mordashov & family	$29.1 B	steel, investments	Metals & Mining
Robin Zeng	$28.4 B	batteries	Energy
Hui Ka Yan	$27.7 B	real estate	Real Estate
Susanne Klatten	$27.7 B	BMW, pharmaceuticals	Automotive
Vladimir Potanin	$27 B	metals	Metals & Mining
Dietrich Mateschitz	$26.9 B	Red Bull	Food & Beverage
Pang Kang	$26.4 B	soy sauce	Food & Beverage
Klaus-Michael Kuehne	$26.3 B	shipping	Logistics
Vladimir Lisin	$26.2 B	steel, transport	Metals & Mining
Wang Xing	$26.1 B	e-commerce	Technology
German Larrea Mota Velasco & family	$25.9 B	mining	Metals & Mining
Leonardo Del Vecchio & family	$25.8 B	eyeglasses	Fashion & Retail
Takemitsu Takizaki	$25.8 B	sensors	Manufacturing
Leonard Lauder	$25.5 B	Estee Lauder	Fashion & Retail
Thomas Peterffy	$25 B	discount brokerage	Finance & Investments
Vagit Alekperov	$24.9 B	oil	Energy
Leonid Mikhelson	$24.9 B	gas, chemicals	Energy
Jim Simons	$24.6 B	hedge funds	Finance & Investments
Jiang Rensheng & family	$24.4 B	vaccines	Healthcare
Gina Rinehart	$23.6 B	mining	Metals & Mining
Rupert Murdoch & family	$23.5 B	newspapers, TV network	Media & Entertainment
Shiv Nadar	$23.5 B	software services	Technology
Zhang Zhidong	$23.4 B	internet media	Technology
Iris Fontbona & family	$23.3 B	mining	Metals & Mining
Lei Jun	$23 B	smartphones	Technology
Zhang Yong	$23 B	restaurants	Food & Beverage
Richard Qiangdong Liu	$22.4 B	e-commerce	Technology
Gennady Timchenko	$22 B	oil, gas	Energy
Stephen Schwarzman	$21.9 B	investments	Finance & Investments
Goh Cheng Liang	$21.7 B	paints	Manufacturing
Stefan Quandt	$21.6 B	BMW	Automotive
Li Xiting	$21.5 B	medical devices	Healthcare
Pierre Omidyar	$21.4 B	eBay, PayPal	Technology
Stefan Persson	$21.3 B	H&M	Fashion & Retail
Abigail Johnson	$20.9 B	money management	Finance & Investments
R. Budi Hartono	$20.5 B	banking, tobacco	Finance & Investments
Andrew Forrest	$20.4 B	mining	Metals & Mining
Ray Dalio	$20.3 B	hedge funds	Finance & Investments
Michael Hartono	$19.7 B	banking, tobacco	Manufacturing
Li Shufu	$19.7 B	automobiles	Automotive
Zhong Huijuan	$19.7 B	pharmaceuticals	Healthcare
Xu Hang	$19.5 B	medical devices	Healthcare
Lui Che Woo & family	$19.4 B	casinos/hotels	Gambling & Casinos
Emmanuel Besnier	$19.1 B	cheese	Food & Beverage
Laurene Powell Jobs & family	$19 B	Apple, Disney	Technology
Eric Schmidt	$18.9 B	Google	Technology
Sun Piaoyang	$18.9 B	pharmaceuticals	Healthcare
Theo Albrecht, Jr. & family	$18.8 B	Aldi, Trader Joe's	Fashion & Retail
Alisher Usmanov	$18.4 B	steel, telecom, investments	Metals & Mining
Robert Pera	$18.3 B	wireless networking gear	Technology
Wu Yajun	$18.3 B	real estate	Real Estate
Fan Hongwei & family	$18.2 B	petrochemicals	Energy
Dhanin Chearavanont	$18.1 B	diversified	Diversified
Peter Woo	$18 B	real estate	Real Estate
Chen Bang	$17.9 B	hospitals	Healthcare
Andrey Melnichenko	$17.9 B	coal, fertilizers	Energy
Dustin Moskovitz	$17.8 B	Facebook	Technology
Su Hua	$17.8 B	video streaming	Media & Entertainment
Donald Newhouse	$17.6 B	media	Media & Entertainment
Petr Kellner	$17.5 B	finance, telecommunications	Finance & Investments
Lee Man Tat	$17.4 B	food	Food & Beverage
Pavel Durov	$17.2 B	messaging app	Technology
James Ratcliffe	$17 B	chemicals	Manufacturing
Jorge Paulo Lemann & family	$16.9 B	beer	Food & Beverage
Reinhold Wuerth & family	$16.8 B	fasteners	Manufacturing
Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken & family	$16.7 B	Heineken	Food & Beverage
Radhakishan Damani	$16.5 B	retail, investments	Fashion & Retail
Wang Chuanfu	$16.3 B	batteries, automobiles	Automotive
Steve Cohen	$16 B	hedge funds	Finance & Investments
Ken Griffin	$16 B	hedge funds	Finance & Investments
Chen Zhiping	$15.9 B	e-cigarettes	Manufacturing
Ernest Garcia, II.	$15.9 B	used cars	Automotive
Uday Kotak	$15.9 B	banking	Finance & Investments
Carl Icahn	$15.8 B	investments	Finance & Investments
Suleiman Kerimov & family	$15.8 B	investments	Finance & Investments
Thomas Frist, Jr. & family	$15.7 B	hospitals	Healthcare
Lukas Walton	$15.6 B	Walmart	Fashion & Retail
Mikhail Fridman	$15.5 B	oil, banking, telecom	Energy
Wei Jianjun & family	$15.5 B	automobiles	Automotive
Zuo Hui	$15.5 B	real estate services	Real Estate
Zhou Qunfei & family	$15.4 B	smartphone screens	Technology
Donald Bren	$15.3 B	real estate	Real Estate
Hinduja brothers	$14.9 B	diversified	Diversified
Lakshmi Mittal	$14.9 B	steel	Metals & Mining
Georg Schaeffler	$14.9 B	auto parts	Automotive
Eric Yuan & family	$14.9 B	video conferencing	Technology
Wang Jianlin	$14.8 B	real estate	Real Estate
Kwong Siu-hing	$14.7 B	real estate	Real Estate
Robin Li	$14.7 B	internet search	Technology
Pallonji Mistry	$14.6 B	construction	Construction & Engineering
Eduardo Saverin	$14.6 B	Facebook	Technology
Roman Abramovich	$14.5 B	steel, investments	Diversified
David Tepper	$14.5 B	hedge funds	Finance & Investments
Gong Hongjia & family	$14.4 B	video surveillance	Finance & Investments
Mike Cannon-Brookes	$14.2 B	software	Technology
John Menard, Jr.	$14.2 B	home improvement stores	Fashion & Retail
Seo Jung-jin	$14.2 B	biotech	Healthcare
Cheng Yixiao	$14.1 B	video streaming app	Media & Entertainment
Liang Wengen	$14.1 B	construction equipment	Manufacturing
Scott Farquhar	$14 B	software	Technology
Finn Rausing	$13.9 B	packaging	Food & Beverage
Jorn Rausing	$13.9 B	packaging	Food & Beverage
Kirsten Rausing	$13.9 B	packaging	Food & Beverage
Brian Chesky	$13.7 B	Airbnb	Technology
Joseph Lau	$13.6 B	real estate	Real Estate
David Duffield	$13.5 B	business software	Technology
Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi	$13.5 B	alcohol, real estate	Food & Beverage
Kim Jung-ju	$13.3 B	online games	Technology
Robert & Philip Ng	$13.3 B	real estate	Real Estate
Zhang Bangxin	$13.3 B	education	Service
Anders Holch Povlsen	$13.2 B	fashion retail	Fashion & Retail
Wang Wenyin	$13.2 B	mining, copper products	Metals & Mining
Wang Liping & family	$13.1 B	hydraulic machinery	Manufacturing
Tatyana Bakalchuk	$13 B	ecommerce	Fashion & Retail
Michael Platt	$13 B	hedge funds	Finance & Investments
Huang Shilin	$12.9 B	batteries	Energy
Ricardo Salinas Pliego & family	$12.9 B	retail, media	Fashion & Retail
Kumar Birla	$12.8 B	commodities	Diversified
Dang Yanbao	$12.7 B	coal	Metals & Mining
Cyrus Poonawalla	$12.7 B	vaccines	Healthcare
Robert Kuok	$12.6 B	palm oil, shipping, property	Diversified
Hank & Doug Meijer	$12.6 B	supermarkets	Fashion & Retail
Jack Dorsey	$12.5 B	Twitter, Square	Technology
Lu Zhongfang	$12.5 B	education	Automotive
Ma Jianrong & family	$12.5 B	textiles, apparel	Fashion & Retail
Zhang Tao	$12.5 B	e-commerce	Fashion & Retail
Nathan Blecharczyk	$12.4 B	Airbnb	Technology
John Doerr	$12.4 B	venture capital	Technology
Joe Gebbia	$12.4 B	Airbnb	Technology
Forrest Li	$12.4 B	gaming	Media & Entertainment
Yu Renrong	$12.3 B	semiconductors	Manufacturing
Liu Yonghao & family	$12.1 B	agribusiness	Service
Gordon Moore	$12.1 B	Intel	Technology
Jeff Yass	$12 B	trading, investments	Finance & Investments
Bobby Murphy	$11.9 B	Snapchat	Technology
Patrick Drahi	$11.8 B	telecom	Telecom
Jensen Huang	$11.8 B	semiconductors	Technology
Alexander Otto	$11.8 B	real estate	Real Estate
Cen Junda	$11.6 B	pharmaceuticals	Healthcare
Joseph Tsai	$11.6 B	e-commerce	Technology
Aliko Dangote	$11.5 B	cement, sugar	Manufacturing
Marcel Herrmann Telles	$11.5 B	beer	Food & Beverage
Mikhail Prokhorov	$11.4 B	investments	Finance & Investments
Jorge Moll Filho & family	$11.3 B	hospitals	Healthcare
Viktor Rashnikov	$11.2 B	steel	Manufacturing
Harry Triguboff	$11.2 B	real estate	Real Estate
Leonid Fedun & family	$11.1 B	oil	Energy
Eyal Ofer	$11.1 B	real estate, shipping	Diversified
Evan Spiegel	$11.1 B	Snapchat	Technology
Luis Carlos Sarmiento	$11 B	banking	Finance & Investments

April 17, 2021

Efficiency isn’t everything

There are many things in life you don’t want to rush through; many experiences you wish to linger. The American cult of efficiency is a kind of over-optimization, and over-fitting of a line that delusionally demands up and to the right every single day, every single quarter, every single time.

The benefits of stopping to smell the flowers have been extolled by sages and philosophers throughout the ages. In all of recorded human history lies some form of the mantra, “haste unto death” — for it is true. We rush headlong off the cliff after all the lemmings ahead of us. We can’t help ourselves — eternal moths to eternal flames.

The slow life

From the cuisine to jurisprudence, from behavior economics to psychological well-being, moving more slowly has numerous well-established benefits. Efficiency should never be the only goal, in any domain or at all times. As James Madison strongly agreed with, “moderation in all things” is the mathematically optimal way to approach life, justice, and governing. Influenced by the Marquis du Condorcet, the invention of statistics, and a distaste for extremism in all forms, The Founders were prescient regarding the later theory of the wisdom of the crowds. They sought to temper the passions of the crowds via checks and balances in our system of governance.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. That the veracity of the quote remains unsettled is unsettling, like strange fruit swinging in the southern breeze. Yet the “quick justice” barbaric efficiency of slavery, the Confederacy, Jim Crow, superpredators, and mowing down unarmed Black men for traffic violations to name a few, are no examples of fairness. Faster isn’t always better, especially when it comes to justice. It takes time to gather facts, talk to witnesses, piece together the crimes and document them in an airtight way, brokering no doubt in the mind of a single jurist.

Anti-government sentiment rejects oversight

Here is yet another reason to be skeptical of anti-government sentiment amongst so-called “patriots” who seek to overthrow free and fair elections: how can government fulfill its sacred obligation to perform its oversight duties if it’s been drowned in a bathtub? It can’t!

Related concepts:

God
the watchful eye — annuit coeptis
the Oversight Committee
the rule of law / spirit of laws
surveillance
- the Panopticon
- surveillance capitalism
night watchman state
police brutality
transparency
“Hell is other people”
Eye of Sauron
the peanut gallery
hecklers
hall monitors
judges
supervisors
parents
overseers
vantage points
command view
crow’s nest
dystopia

Technology

Infrastructure Bill 2021: Breakdown

Elder wisdom, Thinkers, and Creators Since Antiquity

The Great Philosophers

Common whites

Fascist revanchism

RussiaGate: Russian hacking of the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 US elections

The Thinkery

How to deal with bullies

Red Flags: Traits to watch out for

Attention: Take Back Control of Our Minds

Thought reform

7 brainwashing tactics

Brainwashing in politics and religion

Important research

“Going viral” isn’t always desirable

The Goldilocks Zone is a moderate

Unthinking is a reactionary response to professionalization and globalization

It’s the status, stupid

Unthinking is a reactionary response to secularization

Surveillance Capitalism Dictionary

The Richest People in the World

The slow life

More efficiency topics

Anti-government sentiment rejects oversight

Related concepts: