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I'm watching the rocket-blast-off trajectory of this song with the eyes of a songwriter and producer. I see a song for the ages. The word that comes to mind to connect this brand new song with the universal ancient culture we all carry in our hearts is "lamentations." Anyway, here is something I came across that is a perfect example of people who try to vest wisdom without really observing what they talk about. Bah... Cerno. What's wrong with you? Go should all over sheep, dude. Those two X comments come from a "words" mentality, not a "deeds" mentality. Gotcha bullshit. And the only operating emotion I can detect is vanity. I love Cerno, but I said to myself, there he goes again, letting off a loud juicy fart at the dinner table. Normally, I give up on the world about 300 times a day, especially when I look at social media. So I was starting to give up on the world for the 17th time this morning, I caught this thing below. And I thought, "YES!" Finally someone else saw it. Not just gushed about the song. They saw it. I liked this so much I wrote on X, which I hardly ever do. After I wrote that, I came across the following reaction video from a 23 year old black man. This guy gets it down to the bones in his feet. Ahhh... Relief... No need to give up on the world just yet. Frankly, the success of this song and that reaction video should scare the shit out of the Predator Class right now. If you want to see the full reaction video, it's on YouTube. Both of these guys are my people. Michael

For anyone who is worried about the Bitcoin fear porn you constantly see in the media, take a look at this. Michael Saylor shut these guys with their gotcha questions down by simple facts and logic. He didn't even try to persuade them. What's more, you can almost see them thinking about buying more Bitcoin themselves after the interview. Michael Saylor is one my my favorite people in the Bitcoin world. I have a few I love and admire. I honestly believe these are on a Founding Father level. Michael

S, I'm not ready to give it up on Dr. Simone Gold. I love the Community Notes feature of Twitter because those notes are good at correcting facts and intentions. And I agree that Dr. Simone made it sound like the FDA was the party that first acted, not Johnson and Johnson. However, as I remember it, the pandemic has officially been declared over. So why should any vaccine continue to have emergency authorization? It's simple logic. If the emergency is over, the authorization to act outside of the norms in that emergency should end. So I agree with Dr. Simone that the Medical Industrial Complex, including the government cronies thereof, are trying to undo the harm they caused and hope we don't notice. The Community Notes make it sound like Johnson and Johnson's sole intention is to just follow the rules. Yeah, right. A Big Pharma company will willingly walk away from gazillions in free government money because it wants to follow the rules. How about a different motive? How about there was no more free government money to be had for that type of jab? So, if no more moolah is in sight, might as well make it look like Johnson and Johnson was doing the responsible thing and even try to look good for the upcoming barrage of lawsuits. So I agree with part of the correction of the Community Notes, but I do not agree with the implication that Johnson and Johnson's motives are as pure as the wind-driven snow. Had Dr. Simone worded it just a little differently, the implication that the FDA was covering its own tracks and starting to act with responsibility would not have been part of the message. But factually, Dr. Simone is correct in what she wrote. The FDA did revoke the emergency authorization. The Predator Class is trying to present an image that does not reflect its reality in the hopes that no one will notice. And we are noticing. The Community Notes do not correct any of that since all of that is true. I will go so far as to say that the Community Notes are not even helping to sell the idea that Johnson and Johnson is a goodie-goodie-two-shoes company, even though they intended to because they slanted that way. (Lots of money does wonders, doesn't it?) A lot of people have been injured and murdered by the jab as Big Pharma raked in gobs and gobs and gobs of moolah, not to mention the future profits they will gain from studying the results of behavioral manipulation and control of entire populations. And the family members of the injured and murdered, and a whole lot of other people are pissed. A reckoning is coming. Dr. Simone will not be discredited by a lame-ass gotcha to those people. Hell, not even a detail got corrected, an implication did. So she will not be discredited. Not to me. Not to many many many pissed off people. Michael

Finally something about AOC is worth writing about. There is a hilarious Twitter parody account of her, clearly marked parody, and it stings her bad enough to get a rise. Here was the direct response from the parody account. (NOTE: The @AOCPress account was deleted by the owner due to excessive death threats. That's why there is no tweet. But the text was identical in this case. ) This parody account caught fire a couple of days ago when Elon Musk responded to a tweet. (NOTE: The following was the text Elon responded to: "This might be the wine talking, but I’ve got a crush on @elonmusk") There are many articles in the press, yes, even the fake-ass news mainstream press, like this: AOC’s tantrum about side-splitting parody account fuels mockery, Musk tweet adds to hilarity AOC’s tantrum about side-splitting parody account fuels mockery, Musk tweet adds to hilarity WWW.BIZPACREVIEW.COM Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wasn’t amused by a viral parody account that has been tweeting out hilariously clueless statements that were too close to reality and […] Here's Newsweek on MSN for another, but there are many by now. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Addresses Parody Account Wreaking Havoc on Twitter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Addresses Parody Account Wreaking Havoc on Twitter WWW.MSN.COM "I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see," Ocasio-Cortez said on Tuesday. The real Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is trying to find a way in her recent tweets to stop the bleeding, but she is not good at fending off mockery (she's trying to gotcha Elon on a quote author and stuff like that). Meanwhile, the hilarity keeps pumping right along. Here are a few that made me guffaw. LOLOL... There are just too many to keep posting. Michael NOTE: The @AOCPress account was deleted by the owner due to excessive death threats. That's why there is no tweet. Scroll down for a few articles that preserved some of the texts.

$787.5 million is a lot for a bit of slander and libel. Gosh them elites with their secret meetings and such. I remember looking for proof of fraud myself after the election and I remember how foolish I felt when a video of post office workers was shown, wheeling in a tub full of election returns. Ah ha I thought. Gotcha. Turns out that is what they do all day long at the post office. The Rolling Stones. . . No, you can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes you find You get what you need . . . And I went down to the demonstration To get my fair share of abuse Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration If we don't we're gonna blow a 50 amp fuse" Sing it to me, ladies You can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes, well you just might find You get what you need Oh, baby, yeah . . . .

The following is not just a gotcha or an uh oh.... It's what the public is going to start responding to. The public is like a giant herd in some respects. All it takes is one alpha to let 'er rip to start a stampede. Lots of new startups and alt sites, ones that will allow their code to be open source, or at least to be seen, will be welcoming them in with open arms. Michael

I'm not super-big on Brett Weinstein although I like him in general. But below, hats off. Brett just now eviscerated the gotcha mindset and false dichotomy system that underlies a lot of Scott's bullshit when he is on a vanity high. People in O-Land can resonate with this by imagining Rand as she asks, "What about those other elements?" And then says, "Blank out." I think the following quote from Brett needs to be on a tee-shirt. "Evidence is not synonymous with data." And I can easily imagine gotcha warriors, on seeing that, going, "Aw shit. There goes the gotcha weapon jamming." Michael

This meme takes a little explaining. This guy is making a meme from the right with the same competence that a lefie has when making memes. He's basically saying the left can't meme, and showing how it looks when people on our side do it their way. Or maybe I'm overthinking it and he's merely shitting on gotcha people. I'm not sure it comes off as he wants it to for most people. Or maybe it is. I mean, a hell of a lot of people are telling him Marx is spelled with an x, that the photo is of Lenin, that it's Soviet Russia and so on. For myself, I think it's hilarious... Michael

I want to do some free-flow musing right now because a few points have come up from the bottom of my mind. 1. Writing methods about writing methods. Most people who write how-to-write-fiction books repackage information they get from how-to-write-fiction books. I speak from studying a hell of a lot of them. This approach makes the jargon a mess. I have literally seen some people claim that narrative is merely a sequence of events, but story is when meaning is added, and other people say that story is the sequence of events and narrative is when meaning is added. Now imagine doing that with all the terms involved, including plot, theme, character, description, emotion, and so on. The mess is what modern story study materials look like. The people who use this approach often latch onto a pet theory and try to force all of story into it. They will give great nuggets of information here and there, but their scope problem is all over the place. For quick example, look at the Hero's Journey. Soon after Star Wars came out and George Lukas credited Joseph Campbell with the plot template he used, everybody and their entire families jumped on this bandwagon. Many people claimed that this is the only story template worth using for popular works. Others have done this with Save the Cat, Robert McKee's work, the three act structure, and on and on. At root, all these people do is repeat what they read and learned from instruction books abut writing and lump the information together with their own spin on it. Rand herself is guilty of this approach if you consider that she used lessons she had learned in Hollywood and amplified her own spin part with a high degree of introspection about what works for her. Since she rejected much of what she learned in Hollywood, too (like horror films), this makes her approach to teaching writing difficult to absorb by beginning writers. I believe this is one of the reasons so much fiction written by Rand-influenced people is so awful. They never learned how to tell a compelling story to begin with. The people who were strongly Rand-influenced and became successful knew how to tell a story--and did that in their writing--BEFORE they added in the Randian ideas. A great example is Terry Goodkind. The public loves him. The official O-Land people not so much. The reason is that protecting Rand's reputation is top value for them, but the public doesn't give a crap about that. The public wants a good story. And Terry laughed all the way to the bank when he was alive. He didn't need to feel superior to anyone. At telling a good story, he WAS superior. Just to be clear, Rand learned--to the point of greatness--how to tell a good story. She just sucked as a teacher of writing. And, to be fair, after one learns how to tell a story well, her books on art and writing have much to recommend them. But they provide insights here and there, not universal principles that explain, for example, the constant popularity through centuries and across different cultures of the Iliad or Gilgamesh or Jane Austin or Shakespeare and on and on and on. She vested the cloak of being the Brand New True Way and all of mankind's works up to that point are flawed (with a few exceptions). If that is your starting point and you don't know how to tell a story, you will probably suck when you try. After you can do story, getting tips and ideas from her way can produce some great results. But you have to use your own brain to make that work. And you have to be able to tell a story well. 2. The telephone game. In this approach, people look at the past up to the present, see what stories have been handed down over the centuries, and try to extract what parts have been kept the most. The metaphor for this is the telephone game. This is when a person telephones one person and tells a story. That person hangs up, telephones the next person and tells the same story. And so on down the line. As the story gets retold, it gets changed in minor (or major, but usually minor) ways by each teller. By the end of the line, the story is not recognizable as the first story that was told. The theory behind this method of study is that there are common elements between the first and the last (or last few studied--but essentially all versions) that have common elements to them. And these common elements are universal truths about human nature. The nonessential elements got chipped off with each retelling. Freud was one of the first modern people who picked up on this method and used it as one of his foundations for psychology. People who study fairy tales and folktales across different cultures (say Vladimir Propp, but there are many) do this, too. Joseph Campbell did this with the Hero's Journey. Blake Snyder did this with Save the Cat (except the group of samples he studied was more modern--basically countless hours of talk among practicing screenwriters as his starting point). And this leads me to Truby. He used the telephone method. That is why he can seem inconsistent at times. But if you know this, you can harvest a crapload of great story ideas from him that have withstood the test of time. You can use the things you like and dismiss the things you don't like and you will always be the richer for it. You will learn how to tell stories people have wanted to hear for centuries on up to now. This is why I implied earlier that people with a gotcha mentality are not able to use this system well. Truby is not making predictions about absolute truths. He is showing what has worked over time from his own observations and study. 3. The science way. Another way of studying story is neuroscience and modern psychology. DARPA invested a lot of money into this and there are university faculties all over the world that are now devoted to the study of story. For example, Paul Zak popularized the release of oxytocin in audiences from hearing, watching or reading a story based on his DARPA work. Another example. Ohio State University has Project Narrative and I am studying the crap out of the work of Angus Fletcher who is one of the leaders. This study the world over is backed up by science experiments, brain science things like fMRI scans, blood samples to measure neurochemicals and things like that. Neither Rand nor Truby fall into this category. But I believe these findings are used in a lot of propaganda in today's world. That's one of the reasons people are at each other's throats all the time. Propagandists use this stuff to gain covert advantages for their agenda, not to develop individual capacities for all humans based on their own volition. The propagandists are looking for tools of mass control, not tools for teaching skills and capacities to individuals (I want to say empowerment, but I can't stand that word in the way it has been abused these days). I am going to have a lot to say about this as I go along. In fact, I already have said a lot over the years. But I just scratched the tip of the iceberg. 4. Drama, Western and stuff. Truby left out drama in his list of genres this go around. But he has given classes on drama as a genre with beats and all. I found this curious because Soap Operas are enormously popular. So are films like Ordinary People. The gist of a drama is people trying to convince others close to them of something while dealing with their own dark secrets of things that happened to them in the past. Atlas Shrugged has drama genre running right through it in the stories of Hank Rearden's family or Cheryl Taggart's tragedy (that last is not a love story, it is a drama). I didn't look through the book to get quotes on drama, though. I am now reading the book and I will just see what Truby says when it comes up. Also, Truby included Western as a genre. Obviously, this is a minor form today if we limit it to cowboys and Indians. But if it is a template for settling new lands like planets in outer space or underwater colonies and so on, that is valid in today's popular culture. Avatar anyone? Which shows it weds well with the Science Fiction genre. At any rate, I want to see what Truby says as I read the book. If you are an aspiring writer and are going to go this route, and I highly suggest you do, I also suggest you take Truby's genre categories as a result of his own work distilling the telephone game for making blockbuster movies, TV shows and series, and novels. If you do his kind of study, you might find results that differ here or there. But the core will hold. I believe this book of his on genre, from what I have seen and based on everything I have studied up to now, will be about as solid a foundation for how to create feature fiction stories for pop culture as you are going to get anywhere. Rather than go about trying to disprove this or that, I believe it is far better to add to it according to your own experiences and thinking and values. In other words, use it as a tool, not as a thesis to bicker over. I gotta say that last part for any aspiring writers out there, but I am fully aware that telling O-Land people not to bicker is a losing proposition. Michael

From the video, here are the 14 genres and what they signify, or their theme, according to Truby. But this is the list as presented by Alex Ferrari (and cleaned up and formatted by me). But I looked at the book. Here is a quote from the book. And here is another quote from the book that gives more explanation. Truby also gives the list Farrari gave above. So I won't quote that. But then he also gave some examples. As you can see, the words change a bit. So this approach needs conceptual thinking, not paint-by-the-numbers thinking (and certainly not gotcha thinking. ) Also, there was something that bothered me. I mentioned that AS was an epic. From what I can tell right now, Truby does not consider epic to be a genre, but he does consider it to be a story form that is widely used. On skimming through the book, I saw that he uses epic as a form of qualifying a genre. So there is a Horror Epic, an Action Epic and so on. Here is a quote from his book about what epic means by itself: I don't want to quote more right now since I got those from keyword searches and skimming and not from knowing the material cold, like I aspire to do. But that alone should be helpful and get aspiring authors in O-Land to develop a fire under their asses to stop bullshitting and get writing... Michael

Body Language - Tracking and Persuasion I don't believe I neglected body language in in this Persuasion section. Well, let's fix this. As this thread grows, all kinds of information on body language will come out. Hopefully you will be able to learn a lot about it as we go along. And why do we want to use body language? Of course, we want to track the intentions of the person we are looking at. Is he lying or telling the truth? Ready to fight or bluffing? How about poker tells? How do they work? And so on. But there is a persuasion angle, too. Power posture and all that. I believe these two categories are all she wrote about body language. We track intentions and we persuade people with it. Maybe there is a self-affirmation angle, too, and some other things that are not evident right now. It will be interesting to see what comes up. Anywho, let's get this show on the road. Here is a first example where a lawyer in a recent case made a fool out of himself in a half-assed gotcha attempt. But there is a body language element I don't see anyone talking about. I posted this video elsewhere on OL (in the Kari Lake election trial stuff), but on rewatching it, the body language jumped right off the screen at me. I wondered how I missed it the first time. Regardless, once you see it, you can't unsee it. (The video is only a minute long.) Look at the lawyer's body language. You can use body language to persuade others by shaking your head "no" or "yes." This is often tracked by experts to tell if a person is lying. The person will lay out a whopper with all the sincerity in the world, but his head will be shaking "no." Oops... Persuasion-wise, Orientals use this a lot. They shake their heads "yes" all the time (often while smiling) and, like it or not, if you pay attention to your inner feelings when that happens, you want to agree with them by default. Well, as this lawyer was feeding his BS to the witness, notice that his head kept shaking "no" over and over and over. Only at the very end did he start shaking it "yes." This was the point where he wanted the witness to fall for the gotcha, but instead she blew him out of the water without hesitation. He was so inept at body language, I think he helped her hone in on what he was doing without her even thinking about it. So she didn't have to think about her answer. Her subconscious smelled BS way before and got the juices rolling. Imagine telling a small child while shaking your head "no", "You don't want this stinking old chocolate bar, nor this crappy hard lollipop that could break your tooth off, nor this soda pop that can give you a belly ache, do you?" Then you start shaking your head yes and say, "You want this yummy organic carrot and this nutritious serving of broccoli with raw onions, right?" Any young kid worth his salt has his bullshit meter going through the roof at that point. Hell, you can do this without the adjectives and the kid will still think you are an asshole based on the head movement alone, even though he won't be able to articulate why. So there we go. Pay attention to when people shake their heads "yes" and "no." You might be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised at what they are telling you without them realizing it. Also, you should pay attention to your own head shaking. Ever wonder why you keep getting busted over a certain thing? Michael

I posted the following in a different thread and I am cross-posting it here. It's kinda cheating, I know, but I don't care. This sea-change is important in the current culture and some OL readers might not follow both threads President Trump made his major announcement that he teased. He's selling NFT's - digital trading cards of himself dressed up in superhero costumes and situations. They are probably artificial intelligence art. Buyers automatically enter a sweepstakes to have dinners, golf games or online chats with him. This is pure PT Barnum level and is as American as apple pie. But there's a rub. First, let's just get it out of the way. His announcement. As usual, the leftie and anti-Trump Internet is exploding with derision and mockery. Which is just what he wants right now. People talking about him. Now, the rub. There are actually 2 rubs. 1. The first is that this is one of the events that will help save the entire NFT industry. After the recent cryptocurrency scandals, especially with FTX and even NFT scandals, the market for these things has tanked. Yet NFTs have the same fundamental characteristic as bitcoin. Once acquired, they cannot be confiscated like all other cryptocurrencies can due to a board of directors or other owners with power to mess with them. If you're interested, go here to see his announcement and video: Collect Trump Cards. Total hoot. Mockery hoot for Trump haters. Fun hoot for Trump supporters. 2. The second rub is that President Trump just came out with a declaration of war against enemies of free speech, including big social media companies. It is war-like in nature for real. He's talking about dismantling and destroying the "censorship cartel" (his term). He used terms like sinister, depraved, tyrants, etc. He said within hours of being sworn in, he will start bans on censorship. He will fire federal workers who have engaged in censorship--including people from the Department of Health, Homeland Security, FBI, DOJ, and other federal agencies and departments. He will use the DOJ to investigate and prosecute all people who have engaged in forming this censorship cartel with social media and media--and he listed a series of laws he will use in this law enforcement campaign. He wants a bill on his desk from Congress to revise Section 230 to get big tech out of the censorship business. He wants to defund all NGO and academic programs that promote censorship, banning universities that engage in this from receiving federal funds (research dollars and student loan support) for a minimum of 5 years. He wants criminal penalties for the government, including the intelligence community, using private entities to do an end run around the Constitution for election interference. He wants a 7 year cooling off period before anyone who leaves a federal intelligence agency is allowed to work for a media or social medial outlet that possesses vast quantities of user data. He also wants a Digital Bill of Rights from Congress. This is an amazing video. President Trump announced this on Truth Social, but he also put the video on his Rumble channel. President Donald J. Trump — Free Speech Policy Initiative President Donald J. Trump — Free Speech Policy Initiative RUMBLE.COM If we don’t have FREE SPEECH, then we just don’t have a FREE COUNTRY. It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple So I wonder, I wonder. What is the real superhero announcement? NFT trading cards? Or declaration of war against the authoritarian state in the name of free speech? Michael EDIT: Trump supporters are even laughing at being caught in the gotcha. Also, the transcript of the video is here: MUST WATCH: “I Am Urging House Republicans to Immediately Send Preservation Letters” – President Trump Makes HUGE Announcement Vowing to Reclaim Our First Amendment Rights

President Trump made his major announcement that he teased. He's selling NFT's - digital trading cards of himself dressed up in superhero costumes and situations. They are probably artificial intelligence art. Buyers automatically enter a sweepstakes to have dinners, golf games or online chats with him. This is pure PT Barnum level and is as American as apple pie. But there's a rub. First, let's just get it out of the way. His announcement. As usual, the leftie and anti-Trump Internet is exploding with derision and mockery. Which is just what he wants right now. People talking about him. Now, the rub. There are actually 2 rubs. 1. The first is that this is one of the events that will help save the entire NFT industry. After the recent cryptocurrency scandals, especially with FTX and even NFT scandals, the market for these things has tanked. Yet NFTs have the same fundamental characteristic as bitcoin. Once acquired, they cannot be confiscated like all other cryptocurrencies can due to a board of directors or other owners with power to mess with them. If you're interested, go here to see his announcement and video: Collect Trump Cards. Total hoot. Mockery hoot for Trump haters. Fun hoot for Trump supporters. 2. The second rub is that President Trump just came out with a declaration of war against enemies of free speech, including big social media companies. It is war-like in nature for real. He's talking about dismantling and destroying the "censorship cartel" (his term). He used terms like sinister, depraved, tyrants, etc. He said within hours of being sworn in, he will start bans on censorship. He will fire federal workers who have engaged in censorship--including people from the Department of Health, Homeland Security, FBI, DOJ, and other federal agencies and departments. He will use the DOJ to investigate and prosecute all people who have engaged in forming this censorship cartel with social media and media--and he listed a series of laws he will use in this law enforcement campaign. He wants a bill on his desk from Congress to revise Section 230 to get big tech out of the censorship business. He wants to defund all NGO and academic programs that promote censorship, banning universities that engage in this from receiving federal funds (research dollars and student loan support) for a minimum of 5 years. He wants criminal penalties for the government, including the intelligence community, using private entities to do an end run around the Constitution for election interference. He wants a 7 year cooling off period before anyone who leaves a federal intelligence agency is allowed to work for a media or social medial outlet that possesses vast quantities of user data. He also wants a Digital Bill of Rights from Congress. This is an amazing video. President Trump announced this on Truth Social, but he also put the video on his Rumble channel. President Donald J. Trump — Free Speech Policy Initiative President Donald J. Trump — Free Speech Policy Initiative RUMBLE.COM If we don’t have FREE SPEECH, then we just don’t have a FREE COUNTRY. It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple So I wonder, I wonder. What is the real superhero announcement? NFT trading cards? Or declaration of war against the authoritarian state in the name of free speech? Michael EDIT: Trump supporters are even laughing at being caught in the gotcha. Also, the transcript of the video is here: MUST WATCH: “I Am Urging House Republicans to Immediately Send Preservation Letters” – President Trump Makes HUGE Announcement Vowing to Reclaim Our First Amendment Rights

William, You did not take the quote too literally and Rand did use that exact phrase several times. I'll have to dig to find it, but it's out there. In fact, Rand herself is where I got the phrase from. Before insinuating something is false, you might want to ask yourself if you dug deep enough. But who knows? Maybe your shovel is different than mine and makes you hurt when you dig, poor thing. I'll look for where Rand said this phrase (exact phrase) and post it when I find it, but don't expect me to drop everything to satisfy your itch for gotcha. I recall one context--when she was talking about ITOE. Maybe in the Q&A. She was talking about how Aristotle did entity thinking and the world doesn't do that practice much anymore and it would be good if the world returned to it. That's all I've got off the top of my head, so I'll have to look. But be aware that this is not my top priority in life. Until I find it, I suggest you think I am a doofus who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. That may not be accurate, but it will be emotionally satisfying until the source appears. Michael

TG, You ain't learned that by now? A little vagueness is what makes a hot-button item spread like wildfire over the media and Internet. Trump uses this technique a lot. He often does it to be funny, as in his famous Trump gotcha technique. ("Blood coming out of her... wherever ..." Ears or nose anyone? ) But he sometimes does it for serious reasons. This, I believe, is one of them. But the left does it, too. Every one of the BLM and Antifa riots, for example, had vagueness in wording going on--whether a perpetrator "oppressed" by the police was innocent or guilty. The January 6 Capitol event is still nothing but vagueness in wording. People argue the issue to death. And the technique never fails to get massive engagement. Notice people never rioted over an outright execution or shootout where the bad guys or good guys were clearly defined. But throw in the vagueness in wording, and the press had a field day. And activists on all sides got a boost. Do you think there would have been the media shitstorm and the political outrage re the Jan. 6 event if a brigade of Patriots armed to the teeth had stormed the Capitol and executed guards and "enemies" left and right before being put down? Hell no. There would have been headlines for a while, then another story soon taking the headlines. Putting in vagueness makes people want to take sides and bitch at each other as they "prove" this or that. Discerning the truth by using reality standards is far more objective, but not more persuasive--except in the end. The truth comes out in the end. But by then, all the damage has been done or the effect has been imprinted on the culture. Watch for this and you will soon be unable to not see it. When it happens with big stories, the movers and shakers in the culture are not vague by accident. They do it on purpose. Michael

TG, Here is just one thing that's out there. And there are other things, too. How about a worldwide religion? The Raelian Movement Here is the logo at the top of that page: Here's the Wikipedia page if you are interested. However, in typical "control the narrative" fashion, the Wikipedia people display an abandoned symbol as if it were the one in use today. And they refer to the one with the swastika as an "alternative version." It isn't. It is the only symbol in use by Raelians today. But wait! The Raelians aren't trying to disguise anything like Wikipedia did. They are proud of their symbol. Here is another page on that same site. Symbol of Infinity Symbol of infinity - United States Raelian Movement RAELUSA.ORG Here is a quote from that page. I abridged and reformatted it to fit OL's software. Go to that page, scroll down a bit, and you will find a "World Swastika Gallery" with lots of examples of swastikas from ancient times to the present, and from all kinds of cultures and religions. Was Ye aware of this? I don't know, but I betcha he was. This Raelian movement is pretty big. Beside, this has all the markings of a perfect "Trump gotcha." And what it that? At the beginning of Trump's campaign, back in 2015, he loved to put out an outrageous statement that led people to think one thing. After the outrage ran for a while, he would say, "This is what I was actually talking about." And it made the outrage mob look like a bunch of hopeless fools. An example was when he said Meghan Kelly had, "Blood coming out of her... wherever." After the media went crazy and spent lots of effort teaching the world about menstruation, Trump said he was talking about Meghan's eyes. Blood coming out of her eyes. LATER EDIT: Oops. I means ears and nose. He was already talking about her eyes. Ye's use of the Raelian symbol fits the mold perfectly. He knew people would think Nazi, especially with him talking about Hitler, and now he can gotcha them. Will he? That's another issue... But even Elon Musk stepped in it. He openly said Ye was promoting violence. See here and here. I, and many like me, can't figure out the incitement to violence in any of Ye's messages. I've seen plenty of bullshit. But bullshit isn't incitement to violence. I personally think Elon banned Ye for allowing banned people (Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes and others) to tweet in his (Ye's) Twitter account and Elon is playing "control the narrative" with his statements. According to one Twitter user, Elon informed Ye in a DM, on banning him, that "Sorry you have gone too far. This is not love." (See here.) That one might not be true, though. It would be a hoot if it was... Michael

William, I actually looked deeper just now. I was sure you had stumbled somehow, but I wanted to see how. And I saw. Wanna know what I found? I found that you really need to do more than skim before you try to rebut something so obviously weird-looking. Here is a direct quote from the Revolver article you quoted the NYT from (my bold): Tsk tsk tsk... GOTCHA!!!! Michael

The press tried to get cute and do a gotcha on Trump supporters using the bullshit narrative the press itself concocted about Jan, 6. It did not go well for the reporter. Notice how she looks in shock in her inability to accept that people do not believe the fake narrative that she does. MSNBC Reporter Asks Trump Supporters Stupid Question About Jan 6, Gets Humiliated on National TV – Has No Idea About What Really Happened that Day MSNBC Reporter Asks Trump Supporters Stupid Question About Jan 6, Gets Humiliated on National TV - Has No Idea About What Really Happened that Day WWW.THEGATEWAYPUNDIT.COM MSNBC reporter Elise Jordan attempted to stump Trump supporters about Jan 6 in a recent focus group in Pittsburgh, PA. In the end, she was the one who got slapped down and corrected. Unfortunately for... I'm surprise that MSNBC breached one of the most sacred rules for lawyers and propagandists: Never publicly ask a person a question you don't already know the answer to. To be fair, Elise Jordan already knew the answers to the questions she asked the random people. Where she lapsed was not knowing that they thought her canned answers were bullshit. She presumed they would agree with her. They didn't. Here's the video. January 6th Narrative BACKFIRES ON DEMOCRATS SPECTACULARLY WWW.BITCHUTE.COM In this special report: January 6th Narrative BACKFIRES ON DEMOCRATS SPECTACULARLY Please support our sponsors: If you wish to support our work by donating - Bitcoin Accepted. ... Michael

TG, You got that right. But my perspective here is not story-wars. It's epistemology. Scott loves to sever context from a situation when he wants to win an argument. He like to predict things and predicting them better than others is part of his brand. So when his predictions do not bear out, he has a series of ways of saying, "I never said that to begin with." Claiming that analogies are not arguments is one of them. (btw - Just because I see the underbelly of Scott's fudging, that doesn't mean I think he's just a dishonest creep. He is wicked smart and those who underestimate him do so at their own peril. Scott gets into fudgy waters when his vanity is involve. Surprise, surprise. A celebrity has vanity issues. Also, Scott owns up to just enough failed predictions to satisfy the "damning admission" part of persuasion without destroying his predictive credibility to get trust, but that's another issue.) Technically and surface-wise, Scott is right. If you missed an appointment and you are being called on it, you are not a ship crossing another in the night. You are a person who missed an appointment. But once you get down into the nitty-gritty, the issue becomes epistemological, not an exercise in gotcha logic, and that's where it gets real interesting. Before we dig in, let's give Scott his due. If you want to argue something logically, it's a good idea to stick to the topic for your main arguments. That keeps things clear and honest. The switcheroo happens when you want logic to be persuasion, not logic qua logic. Remember, not all logical arguments are persuasive. A well told lie works far better to persuade than simple logic, at least in the short and medium term. But Scott often tries to claim or insinuate that, in the end, the logical argument will win as persuasion--even as he says logic has nothing to do with persuasion. It's a cognitive bullshit two-step and he's hellishly good at it. The truth is, persuasion actually is not the purpose of a logical argument. The purpose, in my view (and I got this from Rand), is to correctly identify reality. My view is not the popular one, though, especially among gotcha warriors. They see logic as making the rules of abstract systems align or conflict with propositions, which may or may not align with reality. Scott often uses this last as his main system for arguing, but not always. To be a smart-ass, in Scott's view, an analogy is not an argument unless it is. And what's the standard for when it is and when it is not? I know artists well and, for me, that one is easy-peasy. His vanity, of course. Certainly not epistemology. And here we get into an extremely interesting area. If you ever get the time, look at a book called Metaphors We Live By by cognitive scientists, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. As an aside, Lakoff is a despicable leftie of the worst--most childish--sort. You really have to see a video of his to understand what I mean and that I am not exaggerating. He is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (to use a perfect analogy ). In one instant, when lecturing to college students or some other academic audience, he is a serious, rational, credible authority on cognitive science. Then without warning, he turns into a smarmy sniggering pissant and caricature of a Twitter bot bad-mouthing conservative politicians left and right. And that sniggering... Ugh! It is a wonder to behold. I will always remember my shock on first seeing that. But on metaphors without all the politicking, Lakoff knows what he is talking about. It's been a while since I read his metaphors book. I remember he makes a compelling case about the need for metaphors in language just for language to have evolved at all. His book is filled with examples. To give a few, when you rise above your surroundings, you are not literally moving upwards through space. I almost said floating on air, but things float in water. So floating itself would be a metaphor. When you look back in time, you are not literally looking and you are not literally turning around to see. Those are easy obvious examples, but, as I remember, Lakoff goes to even more obvious ones. There are many and add many many more to that. So Scott's idea that an analogy is not an argument crumbles when you realize that well over 95% of language (if not more) is made up of not just concepts, but also analogies. When a dictionary has more than one meaning for a word, start looking and you will see, in a vast majority of cases, it's because the word incorporated an analogy or became one. And not just one. Many per word. If you merely stay on the surface, Scott's proposition is a good rule of thumb. Stay on topic, avoid homilies and try to keep your thinking set within the topic, not within an elaborate analogy. (btw - Did you notice that "set" is a great metaphor here? ) In other words, persuasion-wise, his rule of thumb is useful, especially to pick holes in the statements of someone you disagree with. But as epistemology, Scott is way off base. Without analogies, we can't think in words. That's literal. And just to simplify, when looking within this context, metaphor and analogy mean the same thing. I think Scott himself is aware of this on some level. He says analogies are useful to give first explanations of new and complex ideas. In other words, if you start off with jargon about something new and complex, your audience will not understand what you are talking about. But Scott conveniently leaves out the fact that the analogy thereby becomes an essential part of the abstraction. It becomes a standard to compare the new stuff against, so to speak. There are many reasons people use analogies. Setting the context is a major one for arguments. But wait, there's more! One of the main contexts of all is, Why should I care about this crap we are talking about? Analogies tell you why. Don't forget, a standard is not only commensurable, it is something familiar. If a standard is not familiar, it is not a standard for the person looking at it. How can he use it for comparison and measurement when he doesn't have anything to relate it to? And here we get into the bait and switch Scott uses often (but please don't forget, he is a good guy who is wicked smart, not an evil villain, he's a great explainer of many persuasion techniques, for me the clincher--he is pro-Trump, but the sad truth is, he's mostly a cartoonist ) . Think about it. If you don't have any working knowledge of a standard and you are awed by its awesomeness and the ideas derived from using it, you have to accept experts who use that standard on faith. On. Faith. And what persuader doesn't want that? So getting rid of analogies for logic and argumentation makes the persuader the standard bearer (groan) if he can get people to believe him. And, to repeat, what persuader doesn't want that? Ahh... dayamm... I can't resist. Let's put this in Randian terms. Getting rid of analogies for logic and argumentation is an effective method to implement sanction of the victim on victims. You lead them to believe that experts always know better than they do and that's better than their best thinking. Michael

TG, While everyone was playing games and gotcha, there is a growing body of evidence showing damaged babies and mothers. Here is Naomi Wolf's 2018 article talking about blue-green breast milk among other things. Destroying Women, Poisoning Breast Milk, Murdering Babies; and Hiding the Truth Destroying Women, Poisoning Breast Milk, Murdering Babies; and Hiding the Truth NAOMIWOLF.SUBSTACK.COM Conflicted Wire Services; Press Release Distributor, Spotify, BBC, Censored, Attacked Us --for our Pfizer Reports' Info re mRNA Vaccine Destruction of Pregnant Women, Fetuses, Babies (The quote below does not mention the blue-green breast milk, That comes later in the article.) But the cutest quote of all came soon thereafter (my bold). But I'm not going to leave anyone high and dry about sources on blue-green breast milk. Look at this from May 11: Blue-green breast milk after mRNA vaccines Blue-green breast milk after mRNA vaccines - by Jestre JESTRE.SUBSTACK.COM This is fine. Here's another that is full of references and scientific sources. Blue-Green Breast Milk What have we done?! Blue-Green Breast Milk - Lies are Unbekoming UNBEKOMING.SUBSTACK.COM What have we done?! This person went on to describe a journey of reawakening interest, then looking for sources and finding all kinds of stuff, much of which did not make sense between the science and the spin by the predator class press. Basically, according to one databased at nih.gov, 4%-8% of women in one study noticed that their breast-milk turned bleu-green after the jab. As Naomi Wolf keeps harping on, the babies who are sucking down that blue-green breast milk (and frankly, the breast milk of other mothers who took the jab) are not doing well. Some are dying. There is plenty more out there where all this came from. As for myself, others might believe poisoning babies is not worthy of attention and deserves gaslighting and mockery, but I am not on on board with that. I think poisoning babies is a serious matter and it needs to stop. Besides, blue-green breast-milk is icky to think about... Michael

Here's a cheap shot from William (who does not seek to discuss, but seeks to play games. Earlier today, he "liked" a post of mine from 2020, William does this at times and I normally do not mention it. But in this case, the issue itself (not William ) is so serious, I want to make something clear. Back in 2020, I doubt the doctors close to Trump gave him enough remdesivir to cause illness, much less death. His staff was infiltrated with enemies, that's a given, but there were also competent people next to him who took their jobs seriously. That means there was a big honking magnifying glass on the predators. However, by "treating" the President with remdesivir and publicizing that, this gave the drug credibility for their policy of pushing it as a replacement for normal therapeutics--and gave morale for them to do the slaughter in hospitals they did after. A lot of people died over this. And those deaths are the serious part. (But is William interested? Who knows? He plays games rather that say. After all, the death of others is a fine toy. And what can beat playing gotcha?) Of course, in 2020, Robert Kennedy Jr.'s book was not yet on the market. And the people blowing the whistle on remdesivir were being suppressed. So we were all duped. In fact, the positive news remdesivir got back in 2020, along with suppression of the critics irrespective of credentials, shows just how toxic the legacy media is. Are they interested in the deaths caused by the predator class? No. They prefer to play games. After all, the death of others is a fine toy. Michael

This is not O-Land's Alex Epstein. This is The Blaze's Alex Stein. For story wars, he makes a good point. When you ramp up fear, people go into fight-and-flight mode with tons of neurochemicals pumping (hello cortisol and adrenaline). This is physical and involuntary. (You can override it with voluntary intent, but the default mode is involuntary.) From that frame, people don't see details and incongruencies. They just see large looming enemies and threats. That's why the news industry these days pours on the fear porn. But it's more. They pour on the fear porn before they pump the political agenda and calls to action. If you are a storyteller, or want to do propaganda, or want to analyze it, here's a tip. Instead of looking for the gotcha, the contradiction, the thing that doesn't make sense, look instead for where the fear porn happens in the message. For the majority of people, it doesn't matter what is said after that, just so long as it sounds like getting them to safety. You can convince anyone of anything this way. And you can take them anywhere. Michael

William, Ah... Now I understand. I couldn't figure it out before, but now it clicked. Asking for a bet on legal minutia. You are trying to gotcha Trump, right? Taking on a former president. I'm impressed. Your scope has grown. Now it's way bigger than OL. Michael

William, He's more reliable than the sources you normally use. btw - I don't recall him giving a time about Tedros. Gotcha! (I knew you would take the bait. With sanctimony, too. You can't help it. ) Michael

William, You still don't get the point. Zelensky does a bunch of stuff by DECREE. And I objected that he dismissed his advisors by DECREE. Rather than look at the "by DECREE" part, you ignore it and want to nitpick on how to leaders dismiss their advisors. Do you want to wait until Zelensky starts shooting his unwanted advisors dead? People who do the things he does escalate. It's a pattern. It's easy to see Zelensky's escalation. He's not hiding it. To go Goodwin's Law for a second. Hitler did not start out building concentration camps. In fact, he hid a lot of his bullying and murder and torture from the public, even to the end. But there were plenty of patterns to see at the time, even in the beginning. Nobody ever thought he would escalate to where he arrived at, but he did. If you look at the patterns, you will see what escalated and what did not. Some patterns escalate as part of their nature. If there is one thing you need to learn about me than anything else, it's that I look at patterns as my priority when looking at the world. And patterns are not debunked by falsification of one case or one example. In fact, most patterns have exceptions. That's the nature of patterns. Humans have two arms and two legs. That's the pattern. Just because some humans are born without one or without all of the normal members, or born with more than the 4, that does not debunk the pattern. Those are called exceptions. But for an exception to exist, the pattern has to exist. Popper's falsification process is only good for debunking scientific propositions that foretell the future in absolute terms, not for blanking out patterns. A person who moves toward DECREES as his main mode of governing will make more and more DECREES as time goes along. And if he is human, he will find out that he doesn't have to suffer the frustration of people disagreeing with him when a DECREE solves the issue. So he will start doing that. And once that escalates into normalcy, and once he gets politically strong enough, disagreements can be easily settled by a bullet (or poison, etc.), or by sending the inconvenient one to prison or a reeducation camp. This is pretty easy stuff to understand when you look at patterns. When all you want to do is debunk everything that does not align with the way your political agenda makes you feel, you are racing the wind. You will never win. The wind doesn't race... And, even granting your political premises, if you want to debunk a pattern, a gotcha doesn't work. It just doesn't. A pattern is not a rigid scientific proposition of fortune telling. It's not a crystal ball for Popper to shatter. In Objectivism, one for the forms pattern-making takes is called the Law of Identification. Humans arrive at that by observation. Sure, the mind can observe the exceptions, but it also observes the patterns. Both forms of cognition are valid. Incidentally, we are taking apart the Deep State because they are doing things worse than ruling by DECREE. Their patterns, some of which are not easy to detect, are horrendous in taking blood and treasure from innocents. At least, after all these years of malfeasance since WWII, and after the public can see a different way of ruling out in the open from observing the very the existence of Trump and the MAGA movement, these hidden patterns are more and more detectable in the mainstream. Granted, for the gotcha part, in the courts, even Deep State actors are innocent until proven guilty. But politically, we all know they are guilty and the Deep State needs to be dismantled. The American people do that by vote, and even then, the power is sliced and diced. There are lots of votes for lots of people, each with their own portion of power. There is no king position to vote for. And note well, this voting process is not ruled by "innocent until proven guilty" rule. The gotcha crew can't use it to falsify and gain power when voting is concerned. The American voters vote in and vote out icky inconsistent people all the time alongside the good. That's how they do it. And they live with the consequences of that flexibility, at least up to a point. The Civil War was too painful to repeat, but they will repeat it if their flexibility tolerance level gets stretched to the breaking point. Note also that if you look to the fundaments instead of just the surface words, the courts are for dealing with exceptions to legal and social patterns, not for establishing patterns. Authoritarians want to impose patterns on society and individuals from the top and do it instantly. They want to rule by DECREE and stealth. That's not how how American law works. The patterns in American law are different and incompatible with that aim. The fact that the Deep State fights against fair voting procedures is a telling pattern to look at if you never noticed it before. They know what endangers them. Michael