Matt Lucas

Crypto punk, anti-monopolist, music nerd, asker of questions. Formerly @Princeton @collabfund

[Austen Allred @Austen]

The Supreme Court's Chevron ruling may be most impactful things to happen to startups in a long time, in ways that people don't realize.

A thread:

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

True progressives, rationally speaking, should be Western chauvinists.

Because the West remains the only place where progressive ideas flourish.

Instead Western progressives stan for the most intolerant, illiberal leaders around the world and actively root for the demise of the nations not just willing to tolerate them but actually celebrate them.

[David Wolpe @RabbiWolpe]

3/3      Battling that combination of ideologies is the work of more than a committee or a single university.  It is not going to be changed by hiring or firing a single person, or posting on X, or yelling at people who don’t post as you wish when you wish, as though posting is the summation of one’s moral character.  This is the task of educating a generation, and also a vast unlearning. Part of the problem is a simple herd mentality – people screaming slogans whose meaning and implication they know nothing of, or not wishing to be disliked by taking an unpopular position.  Some of it is the desire to achieve social status by being the sole or greatest victim.  Some of it is simple, old fashioned Jew hatred, that ugly arrow in the quiver of dark hearts for millenia.   

      In this generation, outside of Israel, we are called to be Maccabees of a different order. We do not fight the actual battle but we search for the cruse of oil left behind.  Remember the oil was to last one night, but lasted eight - which means there were seven nights of miracle.  But of course the first night was the greatest miracle — because the motivation to light the initial candle, to ensure the continuity and vitality of tradition in each generation, that is the supreme miracle.  Dispute but also create. Build the institutions you value, don’t merely attack those you denigrate.  We are at a moment when the toxicity of intellectual slovenliness has been laid bare for all to see. Time to kindle the first candle.  Create that miracle for us and all Israel — Blessing to you and Hag Urim Sameach.

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

As a professor who favors free speech on campus, I can sympathize with the "nuanced" answers given by U. presidents yesterday, about whether calls to attack or wipe out Israel violate campus speech policies.

What offends me is that since 2015, universities have been so quick to punish "microaggressions," including statements intended to be kind, if even one person from a favored group took offense. The presidents are now saying: "Jews are not a favored group, so offending or threatening Jews is not so bad. For Jews, it all depends on context." We might call this double standard "institutional anti-semitism."

University presidents: If you're not going to punish students for calling for the elimination of Israel and Israelis, it's OK with me, but ONLY if you also immediately dismantle the speech policing apparatus and norms you created in 2015-2016. Please read The Coddling of the American Mind. @glukianoff and I laid out exactly where the oppressor/victim frame came from (ch. 3), how it spread out of a few departments to gain power over administrators and campus culture (chapters 4 and 5), and how it drove the creation of the bureaucratic structures and processes that now have us all teaching and learning on eggshells (ch. 10). In chapter 13 we offer advice to leaders on how to to return universities to their academic mission and regain public trust.

[Micah Gantman @mfg]

I was transparent sharing that I'm Jewish and pro-Israel. What he said next should remind all of us whether you're pro-Palestine or pro-Israel that there is only one enemy here: Hamas. Their terror does not discriminate. And there simply cant be and wont be peace if Hamas exists

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Hamas: “we will repeat the October 7 massacre time and again, 1M times if we need to, until we end the occupation.“

Journalist: “occupation of Gaza?”

Hamas: “no, all of Israel.”

[Seth Dillon @SethDillon]

There was a time not too long ago when opposing eugenics was considered anti-science. The scientific community worried that charity and modern medicine were counter-acting natural selection too effectively, keeping people alive who should never have been born or permitted to breed. The consensus was that sterilizing the "unfit" would allow humanity to thrive, unhindered by bad genetics. This philosophy culminated with the Nazis exterminating millions of innocent people. Only then did it wane in popularity.

The lobotomy is a similar horror story. It was touted as a miracle cure. The scientist who pioneered the procedure won a Nobel Prize. Skepticism didn't surface until tens of thousands of people had been lobotomized — some of which were children.

It's helpful to remember these things when people tell you that some present-day atrocity is supported by science or studies or some kind of a consensus. Scientists can tell us what's possible; they have no business telling us what's permissible.

[Roxanne Hoge @RoxanneHoge]

This is a nugget of pure gold:

"Specifically, to play one’s part in Covid theatre, as in security theatre at the airport, is to suffer the unique humiliation of a rational being who submits to moments of social control that he knows to be founded upon untruths. That these are expressed in the language of science is especially grating."

[Matt Lucas @MattBLucas]

@davidad @sempiedram I've seen worse but it is pretty bad...I can still see the main trend in the low exposure numbers over time thanks to luminance but it is very difficult to distinguish more granularity within each bar (deuteranomaly, red/green deficiency).

[Arjun Narayan @narayanarjun]

FDA delenda est

[toly 🇺🇸 @toly]

In summary, unless it comes from the ethereum region of France, it’s not an L2, it’s just a sparkling fraud validating data availability bridge.

[Matt Lucas @MattBLucas]

@AriDavidPaul @DaunenJ @goddek Many women (and men too, fwiw) can't afford to make that choice for themselves anymore.

If you want your kids to have good healthcare and get a good education and all that, and your spouse isn't rich, being a homemaker is not an option for you. You need the second income.

[CatGirl Kulak 😻😿 (Anarchonomicon) @FromKulak]

I keep encountering this misconception from people who don't follow Canadian politics...

That somehow the Trucker convoy was defeated.

The Freedom Convoy was the most wildly immediately successful protest in Canadian history, maybe WORLD history.

People remember Trudeau's crackdown, old ladies having their skulls cracked with batons, Disabled indigenous grandmothers trampled by police horses, Bank accounts frozen and public employees investigated for mere donations...

And there's a big reason people remember this: It was dramatic, and the media and the regime certainly wanted you to think resistance was futile.

What people don't remember is what happened in the immediate aftermath: The government caved on absolutely everything! Within a week for the most important things, and then a month or so for the rest.

First off there was the massive political shift that happened as the convoy was occurring:

Jason Kenny, the pro-lockdown Premiere of Alberta (Canada's most conservative province) was forced to announce his resignation, and Alberta immediately lifted all its lockdown impositions.

Erin O'Toole the pro-lockdown leader of the conservative party was likewise forced to resign, his temporary replacement Candice Bergen (not to be mistaken with the actress) being a longtime rival opposed to lockdowns, and his main rival who replaced her after party elections were
@PierrePoilievre
, the Politician after
@MaximeBernier
who was quickest to embrace the Truckers and their cry for freedom.

As the convoy was ongoing Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act (the Act which replaced the War Measures Act for invoking Martial Law)... Now these grant the government almost unlimited powers, famously the War Measures Act was invoked by Trudeau's Father to detain Quebecers and raid hundreds of homes without warrants during the FLQ separatist crisis of 1972...the catch is while the follow on Emergencies Act can be invoked by a prime minister parliament has to sign off on the act's continued use within one week.

Well, skulls were cracked, accounts were frozen, and as the week passed things came down to the deadline... On the very last night... Trudeau managed to get sign-off (without the conservative opposition) from the House of Commons, but it had to go to the Upper House, the Canadian Senate.

NOW. The Canadian Senate is a shameful institution.

It's like the British House of Lords but without the nobility.

A senate seat is a lifetime appointment, by the prime minister... and that's it. Little to no review, no democratic input, and this is supposed to be equivalent or superior to our elected House of Commons...

Naturally, the go-to use of the Senate is as a spoils system for cronies. Do some shameful favour for a prime minister, raise a lot of money for the party, and be politically connected to a provincial gov the PM wants to buy off... Get a Senate seat.

One of the longest-standing political agreements in Canada is how badly the Senate needs to be abolished... but can't be because Quebec is nominally overrepresented in the Senate, and abolishing it would cause a constitutional crisis.

So mostly the Senate keeps its head down and tries to avoid the news... because it will never be sympathetic.

So this nursing home for cronies, criminals, fall guys, and connected activists past--people whose names haven't been spoken aloud since 1996, an institution that was last in the news 10 years ago for an expense scandal whose essence was "Wait we're paying these leeches expenses!?" That body was called upon to sign off on the Emergencies Act...

And all these self-important losers smelled blood in the water.

.

Did they have some principled stand on civil liberties grounds? Absolutely not.

They had a principled objection that they weren't being treated as more important!

Sure they'd consider signing off on Trudeau's abuses, but they wanted an ongoing senate committee to continuously review the abuses, with cabinet-level briefings for the committee members, regular pressers, inclusion on the forming of policy... Juicy Juicy INFLUENCE.

The exact thing these shameful roaches had been denied ever since their real political careers flamed out in '92 and they'd been forced to become lost souls in the senate.

The speeches these delusional 70-year-old nobodies gave...MY GOD barely coherent gibberish from geriatrics convinced they were great statesmen... convinced their wisdom might now be included in great volumes of Canadian oratory next to Laurier, Macdonald, and Pearson...

With mere hours left to the deadline and no passage in sight... Trudeau voluntarily withdrew the act.

.

In the preceding week, his Finance minister Crystia Freeland had given press statements and interviews to the effect that they planned to hunt down everyone who donated to the convoy, and create an expansive new system of financial control... with hints that would extend not only to the protesters but all the unvaccinated...none of this would happen.

Instead, Trudeau weekly tried to claim victory... There were no protestors in Ottawa or on bridges! But in the week that followed lockdown measures were quickly and quietly pulled back. Alberta had already rescinded their measures, and other provinces were following suit. By June almost all domestic restrictions were gone the regime was desperately afraid that if the Protesters were able to shut down the capital and cross-border trade in minus 20 to minus 40-degree weather...what might they do in the Summer? Canada Day (July 1) was approached with fear.

By August I traveled to the US for a wedding... Unvaccinated. The greater barrier was the risk the US would refuse me entry than Canada would hassle me. The US border guard didn't ask.

And on the way back the Canadian border guard, obviously over with this stuff, told me "Now because you're unvaccinated you do technically have to quarantine, and they could possibly call, and if you say you haven't been quarantining they might do something..." I received one email from public health and immediately deleted it. There was no enforcement.

I traveled again in October and was not even asked on return.

The last measures had been withdrawn.

The Greatest barrier to travel was US border restrictions and requirements... which technically only ended in May this year.

.

WITHIN 1 month the trucker convoy had effected a hostile overthrow of the Governments of Alberta and the official opposition, the Conservative Party of Canada, from pro to anti- lockdown, and crushed the moderate wing of the conservative movement.

At Multiple points Trudeau was nearly forced out by his own party and his government was humiliated with most of its perceived power destroyed, it now exists as a rump failing to pass gun control bills (IN CANADA!) against moderate opposition.

Within 2-4 months all domestic restrictions were gone and within 8 months even the pantomime of international restrictions didn't exist, Canada had fewer covid restrictions than the US.

COMPLETE CONSENSUS had been totally destroyed such that in less than a year the national consensus was the polar opposite.

And all the actual action took place in 1 month, on the coldest days of the year, with a movement whose key members had to drive 4000-5000km (~3000 miles) along treacherous northern roads being greeted roadside by supporters who stood out in minus 40 to give them coffee food and support.

.

This was at once the most logistically challenging protest in human history involving the volunteering of tens of millions of dollars of equipment, weeks of time, tens of thousands of people, across a continent...

And it might just have been the most successful individual protest in human history. The most successful violent revolutions have not achieved such total reversals in culture and policy across so many levels of government, in such few short months.

.

THERE IS A VERY GOOD REASON THE REGIME WANTS YOU TO THINK OF IT AS A FAILURE.

The same reason things like Brexit, the Yellow Vests in France, or Jan 6th, or the Dutch Farmers protest freaked out the elite so much.

The greatest possible threat to them is that the mass of the Suburban and rural Middle-class: Flyover country, the Petite Bourgeoise, the small business owners, the farmers, the truckers, the Kulaks... The greatest possible threat to the regime is that this mass will realize its incredible power both in coordination, logistics, and initiative... And that it will overthrow the governing class of Bureaucrats, Regulators, Lawyers, DEI Administrators, and leeches who've gotten rich surviving off their tax cattle who actually work and produce things.

They HAVE to play off the Truckers as a failure... Trudeau had to declare victory and then cave on every single individual policy.... because they can't let people see what it was:

A premonition of the great Class War to come.

[Mike Benz @MikeBenzCyber]

The US gov't recently sanctioned Iran for carrying out Internet censorship of its own citizens.

Meanwhile, the US gov't is demanding it itself must be free to do the exact same thing in the Missouri v. Biden case.

Evergreen thread below 👇
https://t.co/PTrGBjNKwB

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

Who changed?

[Matt Lucas @MattBLucas]

@Timcast P

[Aaron Kheriaty @AaronKheriatyMD]

During the lockdowns of 2020, workers lost $3.7 trillion while billionaires gained $3.9 trillion.

This was the largest upward transfer of wealth in world history.

Follow. The. Money.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

@crikey_news @ASPI_org As soon as you find yourself writing anything like "According to my source from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute," you have ceased to function as a journalist and are now functioning as a propagandist. It's insane that this extremely obvious fact isn't better understood.

[Matt Lucas @MattBLucas]

If you're in crypto and you were mentally or financially unprepared for the last few days, you've been missing the point.

This is why crypto exists. Not to make you rich. To free you from banks and the whole centralized political-economic system they represent.

[Matt Lucas @MattBLucas]

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks