Saluwe

I got a philosophy degree once. Sometimes it gets me into trouble on Twitter.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

Every day, I become more and more convinced that those swayed by the whole Trump-Epstein psyop are among the dumbest and most gullible people in existence.

[Annie Agar @AnnieAgar]

making lions fans cry (again). this was an honor, love you grace and jarod ♥️

[Kurt Schlichter @KurtSchlichter]

Remember, there’s an exception to every rule called the Trump exception. When this guy’s fellow senior officers were being retired or relieved by Obama, that was OK. You certainly didn’t see him run to the Atlantic to write about it. But now the Trump does it in order to shape a military that conforms to the policies that the American people voted to support, it’s a crisis.
No.
We’re not doing that. We’re not playing the norms for you but not for us game.
Donald Trump has a right and a duty to build – actual rebuild – a military that the American people voted for when they elected him.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@2ANDVS @mrddmia That's a lot of yapping to say, "I'm on the side of the invaders to our home."

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@jemelehill @DrewRipsCards No, the implication is that she is being TARGETED because she's straight and white.

Which is obvious, which is why it's always a toss-up about why you're getting this wrong. Is it because you're evil or because you're stupid?

I vote both.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

What happened to my bank account? Absolutely nothing.

You believed a lie.

You believed a lie that was told to you by your political class, and your news media, to keep you from asking uncomfortable questions about how much you are paying in tax, where that money is going, and what quality of care you actually receive for the portion of it they didn't steal.

Don't believe me? Look at the pictures.

Look.

At.

Them.

That's my wife, @acrobatichobbit. Before and after.

That's a five centimeter mass. Stage 4 metastatic melanoma. The worst kind of cancer, the most vicious form of assassin your own body can betray you with. That bright area? Blood.

Ten years ago, anywhere in the world, the scan on the left is a death sentence... an endless gauntlet of painful surgeries, followed by chemotherapy, hair loss, uncontrolled vomiting, wasting away to nothing, death.

In America, today, it's not.

We have things here. Genetic therapies. Tailored viruses that attack tumor cells. Drugs that highlight cancers for your immune system, drag them kicking and screaming into the spotlight to be killed.

I won't tell you about her exact course of treatment, because that's none of your goddamned business, but I will tell you that it cost American drug companies and medical researchers a fortune to discover.

A fortune that your nation cannot afford because you chose socialism instead of progress. And socialism, however fine-sounding in theory, simply does not work.

Were she and I British, living in Britain, relying on the National Health Service, I would be a widower now.

Did saving her cost a ruinous amount of money?

Yes. This technology was expensive to create, and the people who did so deserve to pay their mortgages and feed their kids. So do the oncologists and surgeons.

Many of the men who cared for her were old men, experienced men, long past retirement age, still working because when your profession is clawing souls back from the void, sitting on a beach with a pina colada instead just doesn't hit the same.

They deserve every cent.

Did saving her cost a ruinous amount of money?

Yes.

Did I pay it?

No.

Because believe it or not, when things are ruinously expensive, but vitally necessary, we here in America come up with ways to deal with that.

Ways that don't involve creating a big pot of money and entrusting it to corrupt slimeballs.

We have insurance. And sometimes insurance isn't cheap, but the bite it takes is a hell of a lot less of what we have than the tax man takes from you.

And insurance companies sometimes have to make hard decisions about which spending choices will save the most people. I know about this in detail, because that is my wife's profession. She creates the mathematical models that pay for all this stuff.

The insurance that saved her is the exact same plan that she provides to others.

And at the end of an awful year and a half of treatment, awful because cancer medicines make you far sicker than the cancer itself...

We were left whole.

Battered and wounded in spirit, but financially whole, at least.

The only loss we took was the blow to my career as a novelist, because it turns out you can't write stories while your wife is dying, and you don't automatically recover that ability afterwards. Not right away.

I wondered every day if she was going to live or die. I wondered every day what the hell I was going to with myself without her.

But I never wondered, not for a moment, how the hell we were going to pay for all this.

Your government doesn't solve the problem. It is the problem.

They lie to you.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

Yeah, JD misspoke.

It would have been a 12 hour story if it had been a DEMOCRAT. Because the fetid filth protects its own.

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

It's actually mind-boggling that @JDVance would say Watergate would be a "10 hour story" today.
Just to review, Nixon's aides authorized a break-in of the DNC HQ to install bugging equipment--in a caper foiled by a night watchman, who called police. They then enlisted the CIA to mislead the FBI that the break-in was related to a probe of malign foreign actors.
The entire operation was paid for by a slush fund controlled by the WH.
The WH also enlisted the IRS to probe hundreds of Nixon's political enemies.
The AG, the WH COS and several other top aides all were convicted and served time for their involvement in the crimes and coverup.
Nixon was caught on his own secret tape system conspiring with them but was pardoned a month after he resigned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
That Vance thinks this would be a "10 hour story" today speaks volumes about the moral and ethical degradation of the Trump era.

[Carolyn D. Gorman @CarolynGorman_]

For years, mental health awareness efforts have driven me insane. These efforts are COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.

Here's EXACTLY why mental health awareness doesn't work:

Mental health awareness is a tool of the public health model. The public health model has been the dominate approach for trying to reduce rates of mental illness for more than a half-century.

Public health models aim to prevent disease in the few through broad population-level programs, rather than treating the few who become ill once they do.

Disease prevention is attempted by: raising awareness about the disease, educating the public about it, and screening everyone for it.

All these public health model prevention programs are done for the same purpose: to get as many people into treatment pre-emptively or early who wouldn't have sought treatment otherwise. Upstream treatment, in theory, would effectively prevent the disease.

We've now been doing all this preventative public health model stuff for DECADES, but no mental illness has been prevented. Why??

We still don't know the causes of mental illness, so we DONT ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO PREVENT IT. And even if we DID, we DON'T HAVE mental health treatments that are curative OR preventative. They simply manage symptoms.

How and why, then, did we even start doing this ineffective public health model stuff like mental health awareness??

Before this model took over and made everyone think they had ADHD and Anxiety Disorder, the primary approach was to treat active cases of mental illness. Mental illness, 100 years ago, was a FAR NARROWER concept--mostly meaning what we today call "serious mental illness."

Serious mental illness is best represented by schizophrenia. We're talking about functionally impairing, chronic, degenerative disorders, often with psychotic symptoms.

Serious mental illness only affects ~5% of the population, even though we constantly hear "more than 20% of people have a mental health condition." That includes people with mild anxiety, or depression after a grandparent dies, or post-divorce distress. Mild and moderate conditions.

Then, in the early 1900s, a movement of progressive social reformers came to believe--but NEVER proved--that serious mental illness was caused by distress from normal life challenges and bad social environments (poverty, divorce, poor education, etc.).

These reformers were inspired by the public health model, recently popular after the success of sanitary reform. Telling the whole population to wash their hands and practice good personal hygiene prevented a ton of disease.

Maybe, these reformers thought, encouraging people to practice good MENTAL hygiene would prevent everyday distress and, subsequently, would prevent serious issues like psychosis from developing.

These reformers encouraged good "mental hygiene" as meaning public health style efforts: raising awareness of mental illness, educating the masses on well-being (that is, avoiding normal distress inherent to human life), giving entire communities pre-emptive psychosocial interventions, and even engaging in political activism for more govt assistance.

A century has passed, and the mental hygiene movement still dominates, though it was rebranded "mental health" after mental hygiene got entangled with eugenics.

Everything these reformers wanted has happened:

- access to mental health treatment has been expanded indiscriminately at the population-level and made widespread: half of all Americans will receive a mental health diagnosis in their lifetime now

- a variety of "mental health" professionals provide pre-emptive psychosocial treatment through schools, workplaces, and community mental health centers

- public schools education children about emotions and mental states so they might recognize early signs of a "mental health condition"--which, remember, includes NORMAL DISTRESS--and report those negative emotional states for possible treatment

- mental health awareness efforts mirror these education efforts, teaching and normalizing mental health conditions and treatment, encouraging it positively for all. We're VERY aware of mental health now: the DSM, a clinical tool, is an amazon bestseller

- we screen basically EVERYONE for mental health conditions, starting at younger and younger ages, even though there are no biomarkers, brain scans, or blood tests to confirm whether someone's anxiety is simply because they lost their job or is pathological

Where has that left us?

Mechanically, as an EXPLICIT GOAL of the public health model, we've seen more people report distress, get diagnosed, and get treatment. This WILD overpathologization has become PERVASIVE in American society.

But who is better off???

Not the general public, who have not seen any ROI in the form of lower prevalence rates from prevented disease--or even better life satisfaction.

By contrast, the "worried well" have made themselves actually sick by thinking so much about whether or not they're POTENTIALLY sick, even though the vast majority of us are simply NORMAL unhappy humans, ALL of whom are unhappy and stressed at baseline to at least some degree, by nature of being human.

And the truly mentally ill, the most seriously mentally ill, have been abandoned to deteriorate and strain every public system--ERs, homeless services, jails, prisons, nursing homes...

So much emphasis has been on providing superficial supports to the "worried well" in order to prevent disorders we don't know how to prevent, and so little has been on treating those who need intensive interventions.

That is why spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on public-health-style "mental health" efforts like mental health awareness, rather than serious mental illness, doesn't work, and drives me totally insane.

[Larry Correia @monsterhunter45]

“So where should I start with your books?” is a question that I get a lot on social media, and the answer is it depends on what you’re into because I’m a multi-genre kind of guy. So here is a list of all my series, the genre, what they’re about, and where to start.

Monster Hunter International – contemporary fantasy/urban fantasy. This is my most famous series. It’s professional monster hunters battling the forces of evil for fun and profit. It’s guns, old school action-adventure, big damned heroes, good versus evil. Think X-Files meets the Expendables.

Start with Monster Hunter International (which was also my first published book!) This series is up to 8 books in the main series with 2 to go. And multiple spin offs where I collaborated with other authors, and three anthologies of short stories from various authors.

Saga of the Forgotten Warrior – epic fantasy/sword and sorcery. This one is considered my magnum opus (so far!) and best reviewed series. It’s an epic story of a militant magical law enforcer in a fantasy world based on feudal India with brutal caste systems and the ocean is filled with demons. Picture fantasy Judge Dredd who turns into fantasy George Washington.

Start with Son of the Black Sword. This series is 6 books, complete and done. And I absolutely nailed the ending.

Academy of Outcasts – progression fantasy. This is a newer series, and is lighter than SotFW. Think a fast, fun, D&D style series, about a working class guy from a crappy lava world who wants to make it as a wizard in the big city. A group of misfits form a magic school and scrape by adventuring.

Start with Academy of Outcasts. This is 2 books so far, with the 3rd up for preorder, and I just signed the contract for 3 more. This one has been doing extremely well.

The Grimnoir Chronicles – Urban Fantasy/Alternate History/Super Heroes. That crazy genre mash up is my love song to pulp noir, set in the 1930s in a world where magic appeared in the 1800s and changed everything. Some people have magic abilities that manifest like super powers. It is a wild adventure about a hard boiled detective fighting magical samurai. This one is great for history nuts.

Start with Hard Magic. This is a complete trilogy. And it is awesome.

American Paladin – Thriller/Supernatural/Urban Fantasy. My newest series is set in the modern west, about a vigilante who hunts regular human violent criminals, as well as monsters. Its part Haunted Mesa, part Repairman Jack. It’s my answer to lone vigilante stories like Reacher, only he’s a regular blue collar dude. It’s cowboys vs. Aztecs.

Start with American Paladin. There is only one book so far, with the second coming out next year. This is an ongoing series, and each book stands alone. There is also a graphic novel about this same character called Dust Sacrifice.

Dead Six – Thriller/Modern Action. Cowritten with Mike Kupari. This is from back toward the beginning of my career, its a thieves versus mercenaries showdown in a third world country as it is melting down in a military coup. Lots of twists and turns, conspiracies, and gun fights. This is for the Vince Flynn/Brad Thor fans.

Start with Dead Six. This is a complete trilogy. There is also an omnibus available called Secret Wars that has a bonus novella from author Peter Nealen.

Age of Ravens – Dark Fantasy/Horror. Cowritten with Steve Diamond. Think WW1 style trench warfare in the world where mankind’s darkest fairytales come from. The main character pilots a giant suit of battle armor that is built from the remains of dead golems. How grim is it? One of the “good guys” is a murderous secret policeman for a totalitarian dictator.

Start with Servants of War. Book two is in the works.

Gun Runner – Sci-fi/Action. Cowritten with John D. Brown. A fun adventure novel about a smuggling crew who specialize in stealing battle mechs, and selling them to poor planets which aren’t allowed to have advanced weapons, until they get double crossed on a nightmarish colony world and end up stuck in an uprising.

Start with Gun Runner. This series is one and done. It’s a great book, but it came out right when everything was locked down for Covid and that killed the release. There is however a graphic novel adaptation in the works.

The Malcontents – Fantasy/Steam Punk. I wrote this for the Warmachine game, so I do not own this IP. However, I wrote a super bad ass couple of novels about a Dirty Dozen style group of knights armed with mad science lightning swords and their homicidal giant robot in a war against religious fanatics in the first one, and druids and werewolves in the second.

Start with Into the Storm. Though I love these, there are only two, and won’t be any more because the publisher folded and the game was sold to a different company. They’re still great books though.

Target Rich Environment – All the genres! These are my short story collections, and they feature stories from all my universes, a bunch of originals, and things that I wrote for other people’s franchises, including some big ones like Alien, Predator, and V-Wars.

There’s just two of these, Target Rich Environment volume 1 and volume 2. I’ll probably do another once I’ve accumulated some more shorts.

In Defense of the Second Amendment – Non Fiction/Gun Rights. This is my one foray into non fiction publishing, with a book about gun control, self-defense laws, education, and sixteen pages of small print cites because I did my homework! I wrote this to be educational and useful to all gun owners. It makes a great gift to the fence sitters in your life.

Audible Exclusives –

These are not in print, but are currently available only on Audible.

The Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent – Comedy/Sci-fi. The absolute silliest thing I’ve ever written. Its about the most dedicated to quality customer service insurance agent ever, his clueless intern, and a time travelling manatee. It’s goofy, hilarious, and not for people who are easily butt hurt over politics.

Start with Number One in Customer Service because it is a collection of all of the stories put together so that’s the best way to spend your credit!

Lost Planet Homicide – Sci-Fi/Mystery/Police Procedural. Set in the same universe as Gun Runner, I’d describe this as Space Bosch. It’s about the last honest cop on a horrible, acid covered, colony planet. It’s a gritty crime drama in space. I love these.

Start with Lost Planet Homicide. This is a series of three novellas. Each one is a stand alone mystery. I have plans for a fourth, and to then bundle them together as a novel.

This pic isn't even complete because I've had a couple more come out since!

[The Drunk Republican @DrunkRepub]

On this, America’s 250th anniversary, I have a proposal: no more apologizing for this country’s past sins for at least the next decade.

I’m a gen Xer, and the horrors of slavery, suffrage, and the Trail of Tears were preached ad nauseam at nearly every level of my education.

That’s 40-plus years of self-flagellation, and I’m from the Deep South.

While I agree that our history is far from perfect (whose isn’t?) and acknowledging those imperfections was once necessary, it’s been done to death.

And where has it gotten us? It certainly hasn’t brought us together; if anything it’s fueling the national divide that seems to grow every election cycle.

So I’m done for a while.

Going forward I’ll be bragging about our contributions instead.

You know, about how we put a man on the moon; saved the world from tyranny, not once but twice, in the 20th Century; and about how our capitalist economic dominance enabled the greatest global migration from poverty to middle class in history.

And most importantly how now, as Europe, Canada, and Australia collapse, we stand as the last great hope for the survival of Western Civilization.

So from here on out when someone bemoans our imperfect past instead of saying “I’m sorry” I think I’ll reply with “you’re welcome.”

Because if decades of apologies aren’t enough nothing ever will be, and life’s too short to try to make peace with those who profit from war.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

Unfollowed this account after this lying bullshit. The account made some cute memes, but this is too damn dishonest to waste any more time on.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

Ooo-de-lolly FTW.

[All The Right Movies @ATRightMovies]

4 movie versions of the Robin Hood story, 1 choice. Which is your favourite?

[Larry Correia @monsterhunter45]

I’ve been telling people this for years.
GRRM pissed off millions of customers but he don’t give a shit. He got his bag. But his legacy is being such an epic bum ass bum that he crippled an entire genre, ruined consumer sentiment, and killed off an entire generation of epic fantasy authors.

Romantasy and LitRPG grew as a direct result of filling the smoking crater George left in the industry. New writers could no longer get deals to write epic fantasy unless the entire series was in the bag, and nobody can afford to gamble that much time to write that many books they may never sell.

Publishers no longer took chances on new series because customers had got burned by lazy shirkers like George and Pat. Agents wouldn’t represent new epic fantasy unless the whole thing was done. It hurt Indy because dudes had to convince customers that they weren’t bums too. Except when book one makes $50 total, because customers said Im not starting a new series until it’s done! they sure as shit ain’t writing book two. So it’s a self fulfilling prophesy of suck.

In the comments Dunning-Krugerands are saying this isn’t true. Look at guys like Brandon Sanderson. Wrong. Guys like him, or me, who already had established names, reputations, and fan bases were fine. We had enough customers who trusted us we could still do new things and people would come along to make it economically viable.

For example, the only reason my epic fantasy series got picked up is because I was already successful and could guarantee a viable level of sales off my existing fans. Newbs don’t have that. And over the ten years it took for me to write the six books to finish it, the entire time I heard from potential customers, nope, not gonna start a new series that might not finish because of George.

I am fine during this because I’m still gonna make a couple hundred grand off each of those just off my existing fans. Newbs make two bucks an hour, say to hell with being a writer I’m going back to my day job, and you all missed out on the next great author and his absolutely brilliant series, because you were too mad at billionaire George shoving twinkies in his mouth instead of writing.

Nope. Guys like me and Brandon are fine. George’s profound laziness screwed over the new guys. Customers and the industry quit taking chances on new guys. We will never know how many excellent fantasy series we missed out on, robbed by George’s laziness burning so many customers.

Some writers gave up, but others moved into different genres. Which is good. But it sure does suck if epic fantasy is your jam. LitRPG is close but different enough it blew up during this time frame because that’s where the talented went.

Being such a pretentious, bloviating bum that you damage an entire industry and strangle a generation of aspiring artists is quite the legacy.

Kal (who is a good writer btw, check out his books) asks what can we do about this? For me personally I’m just gonna continue mocking George’s work ethic in the hopes more normies realize what an outlier he is, and how they should expand their horizons to read other authors who aren’t stuck up, know it all, dickheads.

And before anybody starts barking at me that I’m such a hypocrite because I’ve not finished all my series, sorry I’ve only finished three of eight so far, and have only written THIRTY books since George’s last one, the next MHI comes out in December, and the last two books are next year, and I’m not planning on retiring anytime soon (if ever).

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@politicalmath Yes, orderly transition would be better for the program. But it would (a) be met with the same shrieks of "you're killing people" that are now happening, and (b) give the grifters and money launderers time to react and preserve their cash flow.

Hence the move.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@GavinNewsom In other words: "I want more of the money that other people worked for because I'm a soulless hair gel weasel and a parasite on the body politic."

So, standard Newsom.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@LouiseMensch @infantrydort @USSOCOM @PeteHegseth Oh good lord, Louise Mensch is still alive? The alpha gal of batshit crazy?

Clearly, she hasn't gotten any smarter or more self-aware since the last time she emerged from her fetid swamp.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@alexthechick @MitchRMorgan That saying pairs very well with "Stay dangerous", don't you think?

[C3 @C_3C_3]

Want some truth?

The Democrats imported voters to steal elections and then imported Judges to protect the stolen elections.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@ClayTravis Then clearly Democrats must never again be back in power.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@gshartman97 @CynicalPublius No, it's a realistic statement, and you're picking at nits because you don't like the other side and can't give them a fair shake.

You were mildly interesting for a while, but you've quickly become tedious. Have a nice life. Muted.

[Saluwe @saluwe]

@gshartman97 @CynicalPublius As for the nuclear program, it's because they rebuild stuff. It's because instead of taking the hint, they rushed back to do the thing even harder.

Trump gives warnings. They didn't heed, so it got worse for them. Again, adults understand this.