Articles 5.
5.1
Your Money AND Your Life - Edward Snowden
“ The subject of this speech? CBDCs—which aren’t, unfortunately, some new form of cannabinoid that you might’ve missed, but instead the acronym for Central Bank Digital Currencies—the newest danger cresting the public horizon.
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Instead, a CBDC is something closer to being a perversion of cryptocurrency, or at least of the founding principles and protocols of cryptocurrency—a cryptofascist currency, an evil twin entered into the ledgers on Opposite Day, expressly designed to deny its users the basic ownership of their money and to install the State at the mediating center of every transaction.
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It’s Waller’s opinion, as well as my own, that the United States does not need to develop its own CBDC. Yet while Waller believes that the US doesn’t need a CBDC because of its already robust commercial banking sector, I believe that the US doesn’t need a CBDC despite the banks, whose activities are, to my mind, almost all better and more equitably accomplished these days by the robust, diverse, and sustainable ecosystem of non-State cryptocurrencies (translation: regular crypto).
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I risk few readers by asserting that the commercial banking sector is not, as Waller avers, the solution, but is in fact the problem—a parasitic and utterly inefficient industry that has preyed upon its customers with an impunity backstopped by regular bail-outs from the Fed, thanks to the dubious fiction that it is “too big too fail.”
5.2
The New Regime - George Hotz
“I want a government I’d be proud to work under, because they radiate competence. I want a newspaper I’d be proud to talk to, because they speak truth. I want to live in a society that aspires to greatness.
The smartest people are thinking and moving us forward. You won’t find them on any Prominent Newspaper List. And it might take 20 years, but I see the pieces coming together. I will follow the regime that delivers a satisfying rebuttal to the Unabomber Manifesto.
I still believe in the Internet. May the Good and the True conquer all.“
5.3
Vitamin D Deficiency and Covid 19 - Heather Heying *
“Vitamin D deficiency is so widespread, and so predictive of bad health outcomes, that it has itself been called a pandemic by many scientists, even in the title of at least one peer-reviewed scientific paper1. Others have argued that widespread vitamin D deficiency may be a symptom, not a cause, of ill-health2. In A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, Bret Weinstein and I contend that the rush to supplement with vitamin D is yet another example of reductionist, metric-heavy thinking that passes for modern medicine and science (excerpted here). Our broader point stands, including that we moderns are making matters worse with many of our lifestyle choices, such as spending too much time inside, and slathering ourselves with sunscreen when we do venture out. But with particular regard to whether WEIRD3os ought to supplement with vitamin D, we (both Bret and I) now believe that we were wrong.
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Four of the most common conditions associated with vitamin D deficiency are also four of the most severe comorbidities for Covid-19: age, race, obesity, and kidney disease. (Using data from over half a million patients, over 13 months, this paper is an excellent source on the medical conditions that are Covid comorbidities)26.
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There is considerable evidence that
there is a relationship between vitamin D deficiency and Covid;
many comorbidities for Covid are also demographic factors or conditions that are associated with vitamin D deficiency;
myriad other health conditions are associated with vitamin D deficiency;
there is widespread vitamin D deficiency among WEIRD populations in particular; and
vitamin D is not just safe but necessary.
Therefore, at this moment in time, everyone should be making sure that their vitamin D levels are sufficient. And the best way to do that, is by spending time in the sun.”
5.4
The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership - Bret Weinstein
“It’s almost like a deliberate non-sequitur. In fact, after decades of pondering the question, I’m now fairly convinced that that is exactly what the founders gave us: an intentionally vague pronouncement designed to force the question into the future, to ensure it would be repeatedly reevaluated to keep up with changing weaponry and circumstances. Near as I can tell, it’s a place holder for a principle they could not tailor in advance.
They clearly didn’t want to give the legislature or the courts complete latitude. They tied our hands; our representatives are not allowed to disarm the public, even if a majority desires it. And the founders gave us a strong hint about why — something about the need to protect a “free state” from, you know… stuff. But they didn’t tell us how much firepower citizens should be allowed to have. And thank goodness they didn’t, because muzzle-loaded weapons are no better a model of modern weapons than a movable-type printing press is for an algorithmically personalised infinite scroll.
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As a young man I regarded the second amendment as the founders’ biggest blunder. As we head into 2022, my position has flipped — I now believe history may well come to regard it as the most far-sighted thing the founders did, not in spite of its vagueness, but because of it. It’s like a mysterious passage from a sacred text that forces living people to interpret it in a modern context. The founders believed the people needed to be able to defend their free state — with deadly force — whether that refers to a geographical state, or a state of being, or both.
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But that isn’t really a persuasive argument, for two reasons. First, who decided this would be a fair fight? How many times will the US military have to find itself stalemated by inferior forces before we incorporate the lesson of asymmetric warfare into our national consciousness?
5.5
The Attack of the Hyperinflation Grifters - Concoda
“By declaring an imminent hyperinflationary collapse, the Gemini cofounder joined other pre-eminent Bitcoin evangelists, like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in the exclusive five-figure-likes club for beckoning economic doom.
You have to be high or pumping your portfolio or secretly be a high-functioning sociopath — or a mix of all three — to declare openly on social media that the direst economic scenario will grace the American economy. But here are two of the most high-profile, influential personages doing just that. Not only were their tweets an insult to impoverished Venezuelans experiencing genuine hyperinflation, who’ve had to shell out a million bolivars for a cup of coffee and “eat rats” to survive in the 21st-century. But this was also economic disinformation at its finest, something that’s grown into an epidemic in the era of easy money.
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Imaginary hyperinflation risk is the ultimate grift and gift for the crypto elite, because without understanding how money creation works in the modern system, the hyperinflation thesis appears legit. With Bitcoin’s intelligentsia singling “money printing” out as the primary cause of rampant rising prices, they blazon their marketing slogan: “40% of all U.S dollars have been printed in the last year!!!”. Yikes! A U.S dollar collapse must be imminent, right?
Not even close. Though today in the bailout age, “money printing” creates images of printing presses churning out large bundles of bills, and perceptions of Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell ferociously jamming his print button, money printing, in practice, is just the U.S. central bank typing numbers into a computer, creating bank reserves, and using them to buy government bonds.”
5.6
Free Markets Provide the Best Feedback - Naval
“Now, who decides you did the best work? Someone has to be in charge of doing that, and invariably that ends up being the biggest thug.
I don’t think that it’s an accident that every communist country degenerates into a dictatorship. Communism never seems to actually be run by a distributed majority of the people. It always ends up being run by a bunch of people who are taking charge.
It’s just human nature that if I get to decide who gets the gold, it’s going to go to my friends, family and the people that I like. And that’s invariably what ends up happening.
Either you need an objective function to carve it up—and money is the known objective function—or it becomes all subjective. And if it’s subjective, then who’s to say you’re carving it up instead of me? We’re just going to decide based on who has more physical force, who has more guns.”