Willamena

Mother. Abolitionist. Harm Reductionist.

[Mijurei @yuradeniis]

Monica Lewinsky was 22 when she slept with her boss, the president of the United States. A supposed friend taped 20 hours of her phone calls. Then she had to sit in a prosecutor's office and confirm every one. Seventeen years later she said who got paid for it.

The story broke online in January 1998. She calls herself patient zero of losing a reputation on a global scale.

That September, in the Independent Counsel's office, she listened to every minute of the tapes. She was legally required to authenticate every call. A few days later the transcripts were released to Congress. Weeks after that the audio aired on TV.

Her parents feared she would be humiliated to death. Her mother made her shower with the bathroom door open.

She says she lost her reputation, her dignity and almost everything. She says she almost lost her life.

On a TED stage she named who got paid. Public humiliation has a price, she says, and the internet jacked it up. The people who prey on victims collect it. Her word for the business is shame. The mechanics are simple: the more shame, the more clicks, the more advertising dollars.

One gossip site, she notes, logged over five million hits on a single story about hacked photos of actors. Someone was making money off the back of someone else's suffering.

She lost her name at 24. The sites got paid in clicks. The traffic was us.

Is clicking on someone's worst day just curiosity, or is it paying the people who profit from it?

[Jil Theo @theo_jil]

I'm 55.

I wasted 25 years learning this the hard way.

But I'll teach you in 5 minutes.

If you're soft, stop reading now.

Here are 25 uncomfortable truths I wish I knew earlier:

[Morgan Downey @morgan_downey]

Why aren't oil prices rallying on the chaos in Iran?

Iran is a major producer. It sits on the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil (WTI) today is $59.

Normally, regime change implies supply risk which implies $100 oil.

Not this time. The market isn't scared of a shortage. It is terrified of an inventory dump.

Here is why Iran is sitting on a 160-million-barrel oil market grenade:

1. Iran runs on natural gas. Iranian power plants, their heating, their industry. It all relies on the massive South Pars field. While some natural gas production is "dry" (the nat gas comes out of the ground without any oil), South Pars is a wet gas reservoir. You cannot produce the natural gas at South Pars without also lifting a liquid byproduct called condensate.

2. Condensate: Condensate is ultra-light crude oil (API 53° in this case). Think of it as raw gasoline.

The good: It is valuable if sold fresh.

The bad: It is volatile. If you store it in a steel tank in the tropics for 12 months, it doesn't just evaporate. It oxidizes.

The ugly: It becomes gummy. Refineries reject it because it fouls their heat exchangers.

3. The bind: Iran must pump the natural gas to keep the lights on in Tehran. That means they must figure out what to do with all the condensate produced from the same hole.

Thanks to recently stricter enforcement of sanctions, as well as wartime Russia selling their sanctioned oil to China, Iran can't sell its condensate.

So, what do you do?

You put it on a boat.

4. The floating market time bomb: Iran currently has 160 million barrels floating offshore.(50 million anchored and 110 million creeping along at 2 knots to avoid authorities, mostly offshore Malaysia and the South China Sea).

The scale: Iran currently accounts for over 75% of the world's floating storage, up from just 20% a year ago. 40% of Iranian floating oil is condensate. For context: Iran is now floating the equivalent of 40% of the entire US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) on boats.

Maybe Iran had some masterplan or clever endgame for this oil?

No.

These floating oil tankers aren't strategic assets. They are expensive overflow containers. Each costing $50,000+ per day in cash, they are holding a degrading product that is turning into sludge.

The Iranian government isn't a speculator holding out for a better oil price. They are storing a crude oil byproduct, so they don't have to turn off the electricity in Tehran.

The oil market knows this.

If the regime falls and/or sanctions are lifted, this oil doesn't magically disappear.

It gets dumped into global spot markets.

And that, my friends, is why oil isn't rallying on Iran.

[Willamena @Willamena3]

@kdemontfort Can we read your 10,000 words?

[Willamena @Willamena3]

@veilofreality @veilofreality have you considered an online discussion group for your first hour podcast listeners? Your content is rich and complex. For some of us who find your coaching groups out of reach financially, this would be an amazing way to develop your audience.

[Bernhard Guenther @veilofreality]

Pro-war or anti-war, choose your side, as everyone is a geopolitical expert again.

However, social media activism and protest are just as useless as believing that neutrality and shutting your eyes and ears to the world while focusing only on your personal reality bubble is the “solution.”

Wars and atrocities won’t be stopped by your casual assent or social media posts

For the most part, they just offer an emotional outlet to announce your “outrage”, moral virtue signaling, and feed your ego the illusion that you’re doing something “good,” while nothing fundamental changes in yourself or in the world.

Krishnamurti hit the nail on the head many decades ago. I remember handing out the text below as a leaflet shortly after the US attacked Iraq in 2003, 22 years ago. Some of you protesting now were still in kindergarten or high school.

Nothing will change until you take an earnest look in the mirror.

When you are sincere in this self-inquiry, piercing beyond the crust of your personality mask to face your shadow, you will be shocked by the things you see in yourself and how you lie to yourself about being a “good” and “peaceful” person.

You will see the war “out there” is in you.

Just like you’re disturbed by what’s happening in the world, the real work begins when you recognize the futility of trying to change the outside world without transforming yourself.

But many are too scared (or lazy) to face themselves and so evil and darkness are being projected externally on the “other”.

And so round and round we go….

Even Sri Aurobindo said “what is not faced within must manifest as war” echoing what became Carl Jung’s life work on the shadow.

We still have a long way to go.

•—————

“To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me.

To put and end to this sorrow, to hunger, to war, there must be psychological revolution and few of us are willing to face that.

We will discuss peace, plan legislation, create new leagues, the United Nations and so on; but we will not win peace because we will not give up our position, our authority, our lives.

To rely on others is utterly futile; others cannot bring us peace. No leader is going to gives us peace, no government, no army, no country.

What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not withdrawal from outward action.

On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge.

Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.

An Ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is.

To have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them.

Some of you will nod your heads and say, “I agree”, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years.

Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent.

They will be only stopped when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else.

If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself.”

- Krishnamurti

[Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa @HRCA_info]

Prohibition created two markets for drugs.

Prohibition never deterred or prevented an unregulated supply, nor has it reduced demand.

Prohibition has create an unreliable, unpredictable and unsafe underground market that is highly lucrative.

A market run and managed by gangs and cartels.

Prohibition has fuelled international crime, murder, violence, overdose, disease and addiction.

We only need one system for drugs, not two.

That is - legalise and regulate the supply of ALL drugs and end this devastating politically driven experiment called prohibition.

[Willamena @Willamena3]

@lawandchocolate Yes, unfortunately it's common all across Canada. The Provincial institutions and remand centres let this happen on the regular I am afraid. Sickening. I kmow many mothers whose children have died or nearly died from withdrawal in prison. It is inhumane.

[Willamena @Willamena3]

@lawandchocolate Horrifying 😪 In what jurisdiction did this happen (I know it's happening everywhere, just curious where someone is actually going to do something about it)

[Laura Matsue @lauramatsue]

You can be authentic and still have good manners.
You can be real and still be considerate of other people’s feelings.
You can speak your truth with compassion.
You can be both fierce and loving.
Authenticity doesn’t have to mean being harsh or unkind—it’s more about showing up as your true self while honoring the humanity in others.
Being real and being respectful can (and should) coexist.

[Kevin Tanaka @ItsKevinTanaka]

1. Chesterton’s Fence

“Do not remove a fence until you know why it was erected.”

G.K. Chesterton warned against dismantling systems without understanding their original purpose.

A company abolishing “outdated” weekly meetings might later discover they prevented departmental silos.

This principle advocates humility: assume historical solutions addressed real problems, even if their rationale is no longer obvious.

[Willamena @Willamena3]

@veilofreality @WoolyJulie Nuance...it is such an important aspect to navigating life, and so many do not even know it exists. Your eloquence on this is appreciated. Thank you for your work, it is a constant reference for me in these times.

[Bev Schechtman🇮🇱 @ibdgirl76]

Look at this presentation from Reckitt in 2011 regarding Suboxone and their "vision." Slide 16: Seems they're happy Methadone wasn't allowed as OTP, giving Suboxone exclusive OTP in Primary Care. This CEO giving this presentation ended up in prison for 6 months for fraud. Media doesn't seem to care. This was before they were caught lying about the films being safer than the pills all to extend patent and keep generic away.

[Meg Inwood @InwoodMeg]

Shame on BC's government. By what trumped-up "right" do ignorant politicians override the guidance of harm reduction doctors & decades of effective policy (within the sad limitations of Canadian law)?
I may not get carries anymore - the dope is so cut that instead of 3-5 days /1

[Laura Matsue @lauramatsue]

Reposting because I want the algorithm to know how much I need more content like this

[guyfelicella🇨🇦🍁 @guyfelicella]

I've done many presentations for law enforcement, about how I overcame gangs, addiction, crime and the vicious cycle of prison. Many officers have reached out over the years to tell me how they were impacted by hearing about my journey, and how it’s changed the way they do their job.

Last night a police officer gave me a call saying: "I want to let you know I can't promise you my organization will change, but I will definitely change my approach for dealing with people who are struggling with substances, addiction, mental health challenges and homelessness.”

This is how we make things better: by winning people over one person at a time. Pretty cool 😎.

[Gabrielle Peters 👩🏻‍🦽 @mssinenomine]

I want to say something about this that I so far have not seen in any of the quote-tweets or comments.

I am not advocating people do this but I want to speak about why this speaks to my sunken spirit as a poor person.
🧵

[Willamena @Willamena3]

@garthmullins @PenguinRandomCA Pre ordered the audiobook already! April needs to come quick, Saskatchewan winters are loooonggg!

[LEAP Scotland @LeapScotland]

Nothing has changed. The War On Drugs has been a huge success. If you're a cartel, organized crime gang, pharmacist, private prison, politician talking tough crap, etc etc.

[Raghu Venugopal MD @raghu_venugopal]

What Premiers need to know is that ER doctors like me - and across Canada - see patients all the time that voluntarily want to change their lives, want detox and want to get off the street - but we have nothing to offer them. The cupboard is bare. @fordnation @Dave_Eby