jroseland

Strasdi brat! I'm an American expat living here in Sofia. Enjoying this (relatively) red pilled country here on the edge of Europe.

Good luck surviving academia! Treat it like the first world war. Keep your head down. Staying moving. Don't get yourself killed trying to be a hero. Don't make too many friends.

Welcome! Is Switzerland really the most rational country? I'm an American living in Bulgaria and I gotta say this is a red pill AF country

Welcome Timothy! The South Africa situation is just like watching a train wreck in slow motion isn't it?

Wow. You've been through a lot. Other than the (talk?) therapy what ELSE have you found is effective in dealing with trauma?

Lately I've been reviewing books that would make you feel optimistic and happy about the world so I figured a review one that will make you really think that it's all FUBAR (great acronym "fucked up beyond any recognition"). The book shows how journalism has died in the digital age because of how the economics of the Internet reward the worst behavior from journalists and news websites Videoblog of this book review The subtitle of the book is Confessions of a Media Manipulator, the author is a PR consultant who would cleverly orchestrate the media to do his bidding and draw millions of eyeballs. He says Conning the conmen is one of life’s most satisfying pleasures. (p. 39) In the first chapter of the book he describes dressing all in black in the dead of night to go vandalize his own billboards, just to create a click bait worthy scandal. Which just sounds fun to me! In the book he describes the trading up 'media hack', I’d start with using HARO to get quoted on a blog that didn’t care much about credentials, then use that piece as a marker of authority to justify inclusion in a more reputable publication. (p. 56) How to go viral “the most powerful predictor of virality is how much anger an article evokes” (p. 63) I made it my strategy to manufacture chatter by exploiting emotions of high valence: arousal and indignation. (p. 66) On Fact Checking The link economy encourages blogs to point their readers to other bloggers who are saying crazy things, to borrow from each other without verification, and to take more or less completed stories from other sites, add a layer of commentary, and turn it into something they call their own. (p. 150) On trust He talks about how for some reason we assume that since something is written down it must be more legitimate than just something somebody says... Studies have shown that the brain experiences reading and listening in profoundly different ways; they activate different hemispheres for the exact same content. We place an inordinate amount of trust in things that have been written down. (p. 185) On snarkiness To be called a douche is to be branded with all the characteristics of what society deigns to hate but can’t define. It’s a way to dismiss someone entirely without doing any of the work or providing any of the reasons. (p. 204) On fake news The process is simple: Create a pseudo-event, trade it up the chain, elicit real responses and action, and you have altered reality itself. (p. 220) From here we get the defining feature of our world today: a blurred line between what is real and what is fake; what actually happens and what is staged; (p. 220) For example 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney leaked bogus information to an attention-hungry reporter for the New York Times, and then mentioned his own leak on Meet the Press to help convince us to invade Iraq. (p. 221) Probably like yourself, I almost never watch the mainstream media; Fox, CBS, CNN, NBC, BBC but there's a couple of what they call alternative media channels and personalities I do follow and have some degree of trust in because they are more antiestablishmentarian. Their news programs are not interrupted every 10 minutes with an advertisement from Pfizer or Ford. Unfortunately, after reading this book, I have even less trust in the alternative media sources I follow because I see that they are also subject to the unfortunate economics of the Internet that reward quantity over quality and scandal over veracity. How to combat fake news... This books confirms what I recommend in the High Leverage Information Diet which is to spend more time reading more books and less time reading articles. Book's are just so much more likely to contain truthful information because anyone writing a book has to spend at least $900 to have that book edited; they are going to take their fact checking a whole lot more seriously than that journalist or blogger who must bang out 3 articles a day. Anyone writing a book knows that their reputation and public persona is going to be permanently tied back to whatever they say in that book. Whereas a blogger or a "online journalist" has so much less moral responsibility for what they write. I'll encourage you to not read the news and if you do read the news because there's a story that you just have to inform yourself about read the stories and analysis that come out a couple of days or (ideally) weeks or months after the fact. These are so much more likely to present an accurate and holistic picture than the breaking news is.Thanks to the current US elections we are perhaps living in era where more eyeballs than ever before are transfixed by the breaking news. We have this epic showdown between this iconic egotistical billionaire and this Machiavellian, double faced super politician. I bet you that in a few years books will be written about this election that reveal things that are completely contrary to what the news is telling us right now. Get your information from online sources that are not economically compromised. The more ads you see surrounding the news you are reading the higher the likelihood that the veracity of news has been compromised by factors described in this book. This is a big part of the reason why I've never had ads on my website or Youtube channel that paid me per view. I've always made my money as a blogger or Youtuber via affiliate commissions. So my economic incentive is to make the most trustworthy recommendations of the very best products to my audience, so that they will keep buying them. I've always known that as soon as I installed ads on my site I would become a slave to the page view. Now a days we see some alternative media sources that serve the news and they make money by selling supplements, asking for donations or selling books. These seem like an imperfect but definitely more honest economic models of journalism than being paid tiny fractions of a cent per pageview. Some examples of this would be Infowars.com, Free Domain Radio or Mike Cernovich of Danger & Play. I'll add a silver lining to the pessimistic conclusions presented here; now a days whenever any type of news worthy event happens what do you almost always see around the periphery of the event? Everybody holding their smart phones out recording the event. It looks pretty funny actually, as opposed to enjoying the event or making an effort to keep their whits about them to stay safe, everybody is just transfixed on documenting it with their little rectangular devices. While it's a weirdly narcissistic behavior, it's great for the overall veracity of news and online discourse. There's been all sorts of instances where a scandalous news story broke and the public shaming and hysteria began but then a grainy video of what actually happened surfaced and everyone learned the truth. Eventually when we live in a world where almost everything that happens is recorded will "fake news" still be so prevalent? Maybe not...

The big difference is that... PUAs are doers/practitioners MGTOWS are complainers/theorists Traveling the world I've met a lot of PUAs and almost categorically they are action oriented They go out multiple times a week to hit on girls They go to the gym They are serious about healthy living, meditation, nutrition, etc They are small business/entrepreneurs Most PUAs are genuinely cool, smart guys who are very woke the kinds of red pill stuff we discuss here. MGTOWs I've almost never met in real life, there's probably some overlap but they probably mostly a bunch of losers. It seems to me that they just rehash a bunch of complaints about women and society. I don't see a lot of original thought and content coming out of the MGTOW-O-Sphere or the Moan-O-Sphere as lot of people call it. I don't want to completely discount MGTOWS, their complaints are legitimate but are MGTOWs really making any difference in this cultural war? By definition aren't they kind of like deserters? Being an active PUA is the intelligent response to the sexual marketplace dynamics we face.

I was watching this interview with the CEO of Onnit and he was talking about letting his girlfriend/fiancée get fucked by other guys. He talks about how he really hates when his girl fucks other guys and how the jealousy ate him up for months. Aubrey Marcus is... A wealthy founder of a major company A very handsome, very healthy guy Famous, something of an Internet celebrity He also seems to have done a lot of personal development; reading, writing, meditation, spiritual wu-wu, etc He says he decided monogamy was unnatural and to have an open relationship after reading this book Sex at Dawn and doing a bunch of weird drugs in the jungle. His girlfriend didn't like the idea but eventually he convinced her. Aubrey is the kind of guy that could easily have a harem. If you're a really high status male you can tell your girlfriend Look I'm going to fuck other girls. But this is not a two way street, you're not going to fuck other guys. I will provide for your sexual needs. I'm not going to tell you about fucking the other girls to try to hurt you or make you jealous but I am going to do it. These other girls are just sex to me, I don't care about them like I care about you, I won't be taking long walks on the beach with these girls, these girls wont be sleeping in bed and wont be kissing them in the mornings. They will be fucking and then going home in a taxi. And I'll use protection when I sleep with them. So I don't bring you an STDs. If you don't like that you can leave. Aubrey could probably tell that to his wifey and she would probably go along with it but instead he choses to subject himself to this psychological torture... for months! My understanding of psychology is that... Men are really sensitive to sexual infidelity - we don't really care if our wifey is having coffee and hours of conversation with some guy but the thought of her fucking other guys is nausea inducing. Women are really sensitive to emotional infidelity - women are really bothered if we are falling in love with another woman but they don't care as much if we are just having meaningless sex with them. Surely Aubrey must know this. Women seem to need a bit of jealousy or else they get bored with the man they are in a relationship with. But men on the other hand don't seem to need jealousy. I would be perfectly happy to go through the rest of my life without being viscerally jealous. I think almost all men would. Also there's the health concerns with polyamory... These cucks maybe able to justify the health issue by saying... Well she uses condoms with all the other guys Now the other guy's she's fucking are probably using condoms but it seems to me that there is still some health risks there. I could not kiss the lips of a woman that I knee were sucking some other man's cock the night before! Aubrey who's a health guru must also think about this... It seems like Aubrey has taken too many psychedelic drugs and been totally seduced by psuedo-spiritual bullshit. What do you think?

Finally after 2 years of Trump bashing Sam Harris has done a conversation with the (not quiet committed to actually being a...) Trump supporter Scott Adams. It's a pretty good debate actually, recommend you give it a listen, Scott Adams is a great mind (if a bit docile). Sam has disabled comments on his website so I added The Untruth About Donald Trump to Sam's Tweet thread. Please retweet, heart or share it if you're a Twitter user. Tweet threads can be a surprisingly effective way to get a message in front of a lot of eyeballs.

I shared the excellent recent interview with Simon Roche here on the Sam Harris subreddit https://redd.it/6bvfgw The responses I got confirmed that Leftists there will deny, make excuses for, laugh about, enable and ultimately execute political violence, especially genocide. One leftist responded I will be the first one to drop the guillotine when that day comes. Sam Harris is the guy who talks about meditation all the time and debates free will. I would think that his community would be a place that you could find reasonable liberals (if such a thing exists), yet it's quiet the opposite, it's just a den of the most cynical, nihilistic, insulting people. As Mike Cernovich said, these people would put us in concentration camps if they could. (If you have a reddit account feel free to vote it up, maybe we can red pill a few of Sam's followers)

That sounds interesting... I see it was written in 2011. Does it discuss demographic change/mass immigration as a factor? 6 years ago it was a topic that not many conservatives were considering. Although, the people predicting that the United States will collapse between 2030-2050 are I think not factoring a) Surveillance technology b) Economic engineering These two factors will allow the government to project power even if the economy and social cohesion break down completely. In the past if governments or superpowers ran out of money to maintain their armies they would be over run, conquered and replaced. A collapse between 2030-2050 would be a disastrous soft collapse; American values, liberties, freedom of speech would die and the demographic makeup of the country would change radically but in name only it would remain the United States. The Holy Roman Empire wasn't officially dissolved 1806, but we all know that it was an impostor empire, it wasn't Rome.

I don't think the fall of Rome is analogous because in our time a centralized government can project power literally all the way around the globe. Do you think a soft landing is preferable?

The point I was trying to make was that a collapse in 2030 would be a soft collapse - it would result in further constriction of liberty as opposed to an opportunity to reorganize society

A bad day like September 16, 2008... Although, I'm not really an expert on the stock market. Would history not bear though that risky Wall Street trading can cause inflation?

Many prescient minds agree that we are on a trajectory for civilizational collapse. Insane amounts of national debt Vulnerability of national infrastructure None-replacement birth rates Toxic culture thanks to cultural Marxism and feminism Mass 3rd world immigration Islamic extremism My thesis is that a western civilizational collapse with a Hard Landing is preferable. A hard landing is relatively rapid, taking weeks or months as opposed to years or decades. A hard landing is acutely painful for the people who go through it. Governments will be caught unawares by a hard landing. A hard landing is disruptive to the dominant establishments of business, media, academia, etc A hard landing creates chaos, out of chaos there's the opportunity for civilizational reset. A hypothetical Hard Landing in the United States... Wall Street has a very bad day of trading which triggers an economic death spiral of hyperinflation. In the course of a few days or weeks the Dollar loses much of it's value. Food and resources price hikes or shortages further enrage the population. Perhaps a coincidental black swan event occurs exacerbating national panic; terrorism, natural disaster, domestic unrest, etc. A federal government shut down occurs as politicians endlessly squabble about how to fix it. The government runs out of money to fund welfare programs, food stamps and pensions. Widespread rioting occurs in major US coastal cities. Tribal warfare escalates in urban areas between racial and political groups. The Federal government declares martial law and announces deployment of troops to mitigate unrest. With the federal government not providing services, a few states (Looking at you Texas!) rebel against the federal government and announce the intention to succeed from the union. Some rogue generals and military commanders refuse to follow orders from the federal government and declare loyalty to local governments. Many members of the military who are fundamentally patriotic refuse to fight and kill other Americans. Other states follow, the United States of America breaks up along racial, cultural and political lines (perhaps into 9 different nations) At least a couple million Americans die from a combination of food and resource shortages, lack of health care and battles between the federal military and state militias. Some states implement communist and extreme leftist economic and social policies (Looking at you California!), opening their borders to mass immigration and descend further into disorder. They do what many 3rd world countries do now; managing to avert total collapse and keep their socialized services barely working by accepting billions in foreign aid from globalist central bankers. Authoritarian socialist dictators or techno-oligarchs rise to power in the new North American banana republics who constrict freedom but restore a semblance of order and normalcy with a combination of state sanctioned violence and surveillance, like in many 3rd world countries! But in some of the new republics, there is a return to libertarian principals of small government, property rights and free markets. They resist central banking and use gold backed currencies or Bitcoin. The new republics use the power of technology and Internet to implement direct democracy and forms of minimal government that are less susceptible to corruption. Militias of patriotic gun owners guard their borders vigilantly After a few tough years the standard of living and economic opportunity is on par with what it is now in America and there is a return to political sanity, but tens of millions have had a rude philosophical awakening. Western civilization survives! France is going through a Soft Landing civilizational collapse... The people are so totally indoctrinated by cultural marxism and fear of racism that they refuse to recognize their own national self interests. As the right to free speech disappears and economic opportunity dwindles, the government will appease younger generations of voters by legalizing drugs. Increased brain drain of entrepreneurial young people leaving the country will exacerbate unemployment. Increasing terrorism will be blamed on lack of economic opportunity, racism, climate change and a foreign bogeyman, either Russia or the United States. Urban warfare between tribal and political groups becomes common place but the mainstream media refuses to report on it and alternative media is totally censored. The government will use a major terrorist attack as an impetus to fight a war against extremism. The extremists targeted will be Nationalists, Patriots, Libertarians, Anarchists and Christians. The anti-fascists will find that the fascists of their nightmares have indeed finally appeared. The central government will jail leaders of dissident political parties, journalists, etc just on basis of opinions expressed. A national militarized police comprised almost totally of none-white French will be in charge of enforcement. They will put down small rebellions of ethnic French patriots. The government will collaborate with Silicon Valley tech firms to spy on their citizens every word and thought through their smart phones. Pre-crime prosecution will begin. Thanks to declining native birth rates a tipping point of Islamic social influence will be reached and an uneasy alliance will exist between the authoritarian socialist globalists in the government that control the economy and the military and authoritarian Imams and Muftis that control the culture. As economic opportunity becomes none existent automation will save French society from total collapse. The government will announce a Universal Basic Income scheme which will be funded by a combination of higher taxes and money printing. The population will kept comfortably complacent by a combination of guaranteed basic income, services provided by automation, free healthcare, legalized drugs, porn, video games and propagandistic media. France breaking up or declaring itself an Islamic state would be such an admission of failure of the media and the globalist establishment that France will remain France but in name only. The frogs are being very slowly boiled so there's no widescale freakout, just incremental decrease in freedom and western civilization dies with a wimper. In the past a soft landing to civilizational collapse would be preferable because of lack violence and loss of life. It would be a relatively pain free civilizational reset. However, it's a very different in our era; A slow decline will allow the government and ruling establishment to entrench and further protect their power. Local police forces will be replaced with national militarized police forces. The current world financial system allows for countries to be saved from their idiotic decisions by fiat money printing and loans from foreign central banks (Looking at you Greece!) Over time people become complacent with tyranny, they cynically accept that the government is corrupt and criminal and that there is nothing they can do. Ubiquitous smart phones and social media make it possible for the government to spy on you everywhere. It was said that in the Soviet Union that the only time you could express your anger with the government was in bed, with the lights out, under the covers to your wife. In a Soft Landing civilizational collapse we won't even have that freedom because we all use our smartphones in bed and wives have been replaced by porn! There's a high likelihood that the kinds of totalitarian governments resulting from a soft landing would eventually start a nuclear war with each other. Which of course is actually good for the elites because it reduces the number of useless eaters that need to be provided for. The best case scenario is a dystopian technologically mediated tyranny and the worst case scenario is a nuclear war occurring that would kill millions or billions of humans. As I've said elsewhere Western Civilization wobbles on a knife's edge, how could it be nudged for a Hard Landing as opposed to a long descent into darkness? (I'm speaking purely hypothetically, I would never advocate violence or economic terrorism) It seems to me that a sudden economic crash is our best to hope for a Hard Landing. A nuclear EMP attack on the United States (as portrayed in AmeriGEDDON) would certainly trigger a Hard Landing. What else...? Secondly, do you agree with my reasoning that a Hard Landing is preferrable? It seems to me that a hard landing in the near future would be preferable, on their present course a black swan disaster in several decades will probably just be an opportunity for government to expand their power. The deadline for answering these questions is Tuesday , November 3rd 2020, the day of the US general election. President Trump is the most conspicuous manifestation of our effort to prevent a civilizational collapse. If there's something to the Great Man view of history; Trump would be the man that could turn things around and avert a civilizational collapse. But if Trump is subsumed by the swamp and totally fails in his campaign promises, then it's fair enough to say that the system is beyond saving. At that point it would be clear that civilizational collapse is inevitable and a Hard Landing preferable.