Who is John Locke?

10yr CIA operations officer abroad.
BBA World Trade 1982; Masters International Management 1984.
Highly critical of critical theories

[Johnny Midnight ⚡️ @its_The_Dr]

Never heard it sang like that. Sounds awesome!

[Creative Deduction @CreativeDeduct]

Civilisations rarely collapse because they are conquered. They collapse because they lose the will to defend themselves.

That was James Burnham's warning in Suicide of the West.

In his 1964 book, Burnham argued that the West was not primarily threatened by external enemies or economic failure. It was being destroyed from within by its own dominant ideology - what he called liberalism. In Burnham’s usage, liberalism was not simply support for free markets or limited government. It was a broader worldview characterised by universalism, egalitarianism and a deep reluctance to assert power or defend Western civilisation as superior to others.

According to Burnham, this ideology had produced a profound loss of confidence. Western elites increasingly viewed their own civilisation through a lens of guilt and criticism, while treating non-Western cultures with a mixture of romanticism and moral deference. At the same time, the West’s managerial elite had become more concerned with administering decline than with preserving the cultural and political foundations that made Western success possible.

Burnham was particularly scathing about the liberal tendency to dissolve hard distinctions - between truth and opinion, between civilisation and barbarism, and between friend and enemy. Without the willingness to make such distinctions and act upon them, he believed, no civilisation can long endure.

What makes the book striking is its pessimism. Burnham did not believe the process was easily reversible. Once a civilisation loses the will to defend itself and begins to treat its own inheritance as a source of shame, recovery becomes extremely difficult. Suicide of the West reads like a warning that was largely ignored.

[The Free Press @TheFP]

Former progressive fundraiser @evanwch says the DSA wave is just the beginning.

[Erik Rostad (Books of Titans) @booksoftitans]

The entire Trojan War would have been cancelled had Agamemnon witnessed this omen.

[Who is John Locke? @TX17ChuckWilson]

@JoelWBerry @ConceptualJames That’s not what he said……

[Who is John Locke? @TX17ChuckWilson]

@SecretaryWright @mrddmia Hallelujah!

[Secretary Chris Wright @SecretaryWright]

I'm thrilled to report that after 35 years, on July 4th, we will end the subsidies for new wind and solar projects, thanks President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut.

[Rod D. Martin @RodDMartin]

US golf courses use 531 billion gallons of water per year. That’s down from 759 billion gallons per year in 2005 and is 0.5% of total annual water withdrawals in this country. And somehow, the country manages to not look like the Sahara Desert.

Meanwhile, data centers - the things actually powering the future instead of your uncle’s 18th hole mulligan - use somewhere between 17 and 70 billion gallons annually. That’s 0.017% to 0.070% of total withdrawals.

Or, for the math-challenged among us, roughly 3-14% of what the golf courses are using.

Sure, plopping a massive data center in the middle of nowhere without proper planning and infrastructure can stress local water systems. That’s called “basic engineering,” folks, not some apocalyptic thirst apocalypse.

But these lurid headlines screaming that AI is going to suck the rivers dry and leave us fighting over the last drop like Mad Max at a Buc-ee’s?

Pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Anyone parroting that nonsense is a paid or unpaid CCP Useful Idiot.

And yeah, China’s been quietly funding the opposition to US data centers because they’d love nothing more than to lap us in AI while we tie our own hands with performative environmental panic.

They win if enough credulous (or outright traitorous) Americans keep falling for it.

Priorities, people. We can handle a few server farms. The real existential threat is apparently the back nine at the country club.

Source: Ty Beard

[Davide Scifo @strange_days_82]

5 Minuti che Distruggono 30 Anni di Propaganda Climatica.
(Richard Lindzen, Professore emerito di Meteorologia al MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), uno dei massimi esperti mondiali di dinamica atmosferica, onde planetarie, monsoni e fisica dell’atmosfera.
Ha pubblicato centinaia di articoli scientifici peer-reviewed ed è stato per decenni una delle figure più autorevoli nel campo.)
#cambiamentoclimatico #CambioClimático #caldo #clima #meteo #Lindzen

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

Holy smokes. He's right, though.

[Who is John Locke? @TX17ChuckWilson]

@chriswithans Non-payment of taxes as an expatriating act.

Kudos to you.

[Sam Lyman @SamLyman33]

NEW: BPI research reveals that a Marxist-Leninist group with documented ties to China has been a critical mobilizer in efforts that have blocked or delayed $23.6 billion in AI investment in the US.

Its scalps include 10 data center moratoria, 1 permanent data center ban, and 4 rejected or scrapped AI projects.

In Part II of our foreign influence investigation, BPI exposes the Party for Socialism and Liberation (or PSL) as the political arm of Shanghai-based Neville Singham, and lays bare a national campaign launched by the party to stop America’s data center buildout.

Singham is the subject of multiple federal investigations into his reported ties to the CCP. Our research uncovers the anti-data-center organizing of his activist vehicle, the PSL, across 21 campaigns in 14 states, in roles ranging from lead organizer to one member of a broader coalition.

This report adds to the mounting evidence that China and its surrogates are committed to stopping America’s data center buildout so that Beijing can gain the advantage in the AI race.

[Carl Higbie @CarlHigbie]

FYI: you are 8 times more likely to die of diarrhea in India than you are of being killed by a gun in America

[Ida Turan 🇮🇷 ایده توران @iranidaturan]

Let me remind you why these recent arrests in Iraq matter and how they connect to the MoU:

The Islamic regime’s primary method of bypassing sanctions and selling its oil to China was to blend Iranian crude with Iraqi oil, export it as “Iraqi” crude, and then launder the money through Dubai.

Along the way, they paid substantial bribes to Iraqis and Emiritis.

If you look closely at the walls of many Iraqi officials’ offices, you’ll often see portraits of Khamenei and Soleimani hanging there, Iraqi officials were clearly on the payroll, receiving good money for their services as facilitators.

During the conflict, U.S. Economic Fury operations run by @SecScottBessent , particularly after the regime’s attacks on targets in the UAE, prompted the Emiratis to cooperate in closing these money-laundering loopholes.

The Iraqis, being far more deeply compromised, were slower to move. It took sustained American pressure to finally push Baghdad past its fears and hesitation to act against these networks.

This is important because under the MoU, oil sanctions on the regime were eased on the explicit condition that sales would be transparent and traceable. Yet the regime has every incentive to return to its old invisible channels to generate untraceable cash (funds it can freely divert to terrorism and proxy militias).

That’s precisely why these loopholes are being aggressively shut down: to force the regime into legal, monitorable oil sales and prevent it from funding destabilizing activities with dirty money.

Unfortunately, many of those who were most vocal against the MoU suffer from a rather closed and limited mindset. They assumed @POTUS , Bassent, Rubio and @jaredkushner were naive or incompetent, unwilling to accept that these officials understood exactly what game they were playing and what mechanisms they were trying to constrain.

[Ara Kharazian @arakharazian]

We can finally say AI isn't killing jobs.

A new paper from me, @tryramp, and @RevelioLabs uses firm-level spend and workforce data across 21K U.S. businesses to measure AI's impact on jobs.

Firms that adopt AI heavily grow headcount 10% over two years following adoption. Low adopters see no statistically significant change.

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Narrative violation: A new study of 21,559 firms in the U.S. finds that “companies that adopt AI tend to grow faster following adoption”.

“Firms making the largest AI investments grow employment by roughly 10% following adoption, while low-intensity adopters see no statistically significant change.”

“Entry-level headcount rises 12% for high-intensity adopters.”

“Gains emerge gradually and are broad across roles, including engineering, sales, administration, and customer service.”

“The results counter predictions that AI adoption will lead to broad job loss.”

The study is based on observed AI spending from Ramp card and bill pay data linked to Revelio Labs workforce records.

[RNC Research @RNCResearch]

Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) top leader David Jenkins: "Our goal is Communism."

[Arynne Wexler @ArynneWexler]

More Europeans die from the summer than Americans die from guns in an entire year

The more you think about it the more absurd it gets 😂

[Robin Monotti @robinmonotti]

The whole CO2 hoax was born out of Al Gore misunderstanding that CO2 rises follow global warming: they do not precede it. This is because the Oceans are the largest store of CO2 & release it as they warm up. Same with carbonated (fizzy) water: try it.

[Jim Matkin @JamesMatkin]

New Study: Ice Core Data Shows Modern Warming Is Statistically Unremarkable https://t.co/FnaBLkmTWD via @ccdeditor For further context, the Northern Hemisphere is said to have warmed by 4-5°C “within a few decades” 14,500 years ago (Ivanovic et al., 2017), and during these centuries, sea levels rose at rates of up to 7.5 meters per century (Smith et al., 2011), which is 20-30 times faster than modern rates.