I’m sure it will be. But I really want to hear the case for why I shouldn’t re-buy the check, enhance my reach and make more $. I am not doing it now because I don’t want to reward those assholes for administering the public square. But what’s the downside once your info’s out there and you are already posting under your real name?
INTOLERANCE
If you would not associate with someone who supported segregation for gay or black people, why are you associating with people who supported segregation for those who didn't want to inject themselves on command with a pharmaceutical product?
If you would not associate with someone who publicly ridiculed people for their religion or ethnicity, why are you associating with those who did the same to a persecuted minority who earnestly didn't want to take a particular drug?
If you think there was good reason (at the time) to believe the unvaccinated should be segregated from society, you might be surprised to learn many who historically supported tyrannical and unjust policies, likewise believed they had good reasons.
Ask yourself what the operating principle is. I imagine it's something like this: Everyone I know agrees it's wrong to denigrate people based on race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Many people I know are okay with it based on pharma non-compliance, i.e., It's wrong if everyone in my social and professional circles thinks it's wrong, otherwise it's okay.
Consider where that principle would have led were you around during some of the darker episodes of our past.
. . .
Some of you might object to this thread of Twitter posts by saying, “Well, you have to understand. People were terrified at the time, and they thought the mRNA shots would extricate us from the pandemic.”
For starters, the shots weren’t available until a year later, by which time the infection fatality rate of covid was well known not to be much different than the flu. (It was more contagious, but if you did catch it, and many had by then, your chances of surviving were just as good.)
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume some people were still genuinely terrified (they were told to be) and believed sincerely the mRNA shot was the best way out. Does that absolve them of their bigotry toward innocent people who declined to inject medicine they didn’t want? It does not.
Whenever a minority is scapegoated for society’s ills, those encouraging the persecution believe it’s for good reason. Effective propaganda uses real-world fears, links them to the targeted group and impresses upon its audience the urgency of the cause.
That you have not been subject to the same pressures to mistreat black or gay people — in fact you are subject to opposite pressures — makes it hard to understand why people in the past would do such a thing.
But I imagine people in the future, looking back at those persecuting innocent people (not letting them attend restaurants and public spaces, firing them from their jobs, not letting their kids play sports, openly denigrating them in front of others, family members excommunicating them from Thanksgiving dinner) for not taking some medicine cooked up by large pharmaceutical conglomerates will feel the same way about this.
Of course, one might be tempted to point out, that while the situations might be analogous, they are far from identical, and there are important differences between the scapegoated groups. But that objection misses the point — it is not the similarity of those targeted that’s relevant, but of the intolerant people targeting them.
. . .
So I go back to the initial thread and ask — if you are not willing to tolerate the bigotry and hate directed at historically-persecuted minorities for simply being who they are, why are you okay with those who did the same toward others for merely declining medicine they earnestly didn’t want?
I suspect the answer is mostly because overt racial/ethnic/religious bigotry is widely despised in polite society today, but bigotry against those with different views/decision-making heuristics is accepted. In other words, you will tolerate hateful, intolerant people if their hatred and intolerance was directed toward the right people.
The operating principle then isn’t rejecting intolerance and hatred, but rejecting the the kind that would get someone like you in trouble. The kind that was encouraged? That’s the kind for which you find excuses.
. . .
I'm convinced those who tried to scapegoat people for earnest medical choices are the same kinds of people who would have scapegoated a person for his race or sexual orientation were those things permitted in their social and professional spheres. Opportunists waiting for the license.
The test of someone's tolerance isn't whether he's respectful to the groups he's incentivized to respect, but how he treats those society encourages him to hate. People revealed themselves these past couple years, and in many cases, it was ugly.
I’m as paranoid as the next person — more so probably — and I want everyone to extricate themselves to the greatest extent practicable from the legacy systems.
But why is this sensitive information to give to Twitter when the government (the most invasive entity with which we interact) has it already?
In other words, if I were currently anonymous to my government — and no one knew where I lived or kept my fiat currency — I would never even consider sharing it with Twitter.
But my info is everywhere at this point, so what’s the argument against letting Twitter have it in order to get paid and stack more sats?
And BTW — I bought a blue check for two months to test it out, and then canceled it because I felt my reach was *still* being throttled, and there was no transparency around it.
Deleted Twitter from my phone. Small steps
Elon Musk put a corporate careerist in charge of the world’s public square! Bullish for NOSTR.
Really want to post more here, but everyone I know is on Twitter. Getting increasingly bad vibes from Twitter, but that’s where the interaction is. Having trouble on-boarding people to NOSTR because of the pub key/private key set up rather than just a link. I have to get more creative, because ultimately decentralized is the only option.
Nothing is done, nothing’s left undone.
Trust The Experts
I’ve been told time and again to trust the experts, rather than my own research, knowledge and intuitions about matters of health. But who is telling me to do this? Largely it’s non-expert people who are following particular experts of their choosing. So plainly if I am to take their advice, I must ignore them, for they are not experts.
But if they are telling me, that means they believe I should heed their advice. On what basis? They must believe that while they are not experts at researching medical treatments, they are experts in judgment, i.e., experts in deciding what to believe and what not to believe, who to follow and not to follow.
How am I to decide if they are as expert as their logic implies? I could look at whether they have track records of being right in the past, whether they themselves are in good health, for example. But that would require me to be an expert in deciding who is an expert! Because if I deem them experts, but I lack the requisite expertise in expert-vetting, then by their own terms I should not trust myself to vet them.
The only solution to avoid being paralyzed by inaction then is to develop your own expertise in interpreting events rather trusting others to do it for you. While you might not be an “expert” right away, trusting one’s own judgment is the only way to get the requisite experience toward that end. Eventually, you will develop some acumen for sniffing out disingenuousness, reasoning from first principles rather than emotions and seeking truth rather than beliefs that comply with tribal edicts.
I’m gonna post more on NOSTR. Twitter (X) has something sinister about it.
If you want to travel at the speed of light, you had better pack light. Like not even an electron.
Elon Musk’s walled-garden Twitter is bullish for Nostr. AOL vs WWW — 2.0.
One way to get people to NOSTR is to post your paywalled content on Twitter and make it free here. I’ve gotten two people to sign up and follow me, and if more content creators did the same, it would make a difference IMO.
It’s worth giving away a little revenue to incentivize decentralized social media, and it might not even be people who would have paid in the first place.
The Obvious -- Round by round, per current NFFC ADP, players who jump out at me as obvious draft targets:
https://www.realmansports.com/p/96062354-62cd-4e73-9aee-4fd3e2f68c30
Entire piece is free on NOSTR:
https://www.realmansports.com/p/4e95236f-86d1-43ab-a6a8-5f9e2573440b
Satire post from 2022, think it holds up:
https://chrisliss.substack.com/p/how-to-persuade-the-vaccine-hesitant-to-take