Iran
On X
2009
So @orzelc suggests that the purpose of twitter is less grand. Ok. *Mostly* (e.g. Iran) Chad's right...but only so far. Ergo: f-rt jokes.
2010
There is some rule of the world that media is not allowed to ignore transparent theater. Iran's peaceful nuclear program, Frum's firing, etc
Q: North Korea's theater is reported as theater. Iran's theater is reported as likely theater. AEI theater is "he said she said". Why? How?
Modern mobility: Nov 12, 2010 APS meeting abstract (Chicago) of physicist eliminated in targeted killing today in Iran http://bit.ly/enF4yA
Let's skip the foreplay: nobody outside Iran wants to see a nuclear theocracy. Does that allow us to assassinate scientists & their kin? No.
If you follow scientists on twitter, you will notice an absence of strong opinion on targeted killings of Iranian academic families.
Bottom line, if you lack the huevos to engage Iran at the state level, you have no right to target physicists, their wives & their children.
2016
Him: You're not a conspiracy theorist are you? Me: After Tuskegee, Mk-ultra, Iran-Contra, etc. all smart people are. Why? Do I look stupid?
Seizure of Mecca Masjid. Sadat assassination in Egypt. Revolution in Iran. All in the late 70s early 80s. [1/2] https://t.co/ivZWpc06DL
2017
This was retweeted by the official @POTUS account. From the leader of the free đ. So then this puts Iran & @Nordstrom both on notice?
The Oval office is likely exposing Israel's secrets to Iran via Russia.
That's not even JV.
It's Jeff Spicolian.
2019
Imagine a world in which the guy behind the Karen Silkwood case, the Christic Institute & countless bizarre moments from the Iran-Contra and Pentagon Papers stories is of no major interest to anyone on twitter beyond 620 followers. We forgot @danielsheehan45âs fascinating life. https://t.co/y0boLs6KB7
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@Rite_Brite @danielsheehan45 But you must also know that people become more engaged when there are lots of people following them. Hence my tweet. Letâs incentivize him to up his twitter game.
@Hockeyxxi @danielsheehan45 These tweets make a difference but they are among my least liked. But I use them to give back I guess to the people Iâm indebted to.
@danielsheehan45 Thank you Dan. Never forgot the issues you raised back during your Christic Institute period. Feel free to contact me.
Looking for a great film for International Womenâs day?
May I suggest an Iranian film âThe Day I Became a Womanâ? The first segment deals with a girl of 9 disappearing from her last free morning of childhood under a new adult Chador: https://t.co/4lSBPsDjxf
h/t: @TheRealKominas
Think about what you are seeing here. And what may well come next.
I have been saying for years now that what we are really in is a world wide low grade revolution of a previously unknown type. The idea that Chile, Iran, HK, Lebanon, Paris, Netherlands, etc are unrelated is off.
2020
Iâve spent all day trying to figure out what I think about this action. I think what I know is that there is no clear answer. Weâve been avoiding doing something sharp for a long time and Iran now counts on our fear.
[I confess to a bias against appeasing theocrat provocateurs.]
There are and have been risks all around with Iran. I canât weigh the risks well, but if youâve a crystal clear idea about what to do with a highly skilled & strategic Shia theocracy with nuclear ambitions boasting incredible brain power & a deep proxy network, you donât get it.
To form an opinion I would need to know what our decision makers knew about Soleimaniâs plans, why Iraq was chosen as the venue, what the follow up strategy is, etc... and I know none of that. So I donât think it is possible to have an informed opinion here as an ordinary person.
Which just sucks, given the gravity of all this. But there you are.
I think the Left has reached a hard fork. Those that want to explore extreme wokeness, open borders, anti-whiteness, apologizing to homophobic/misogynist theocracies, worlds w/o men, reparations for slavery, cancel culture, etc need to branch off. And good luck: Youâll need it.
The rest of us for markets, democracy, liberal values, modest social safety nets, tolerance, content of character over color of skin, due process, free speech, etc. have to go back to defeating our loyal friends across the aisle & squashing newly emboldened neo-fascists. #Enough
Emboldening the Iranian Government like this is insane. I donât care how traumatized you are by the US or how much you hate Trump or how much of Noam Chomsky youâve read. It just doesnât matter. Just get a hold of yourself.
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@MakesSnap https://t.co/HBZtmy7XqW
@FloMartinSec Kind of a work in progress. But ya know. Weâll see.
@erikbryn I donât think we are seeing this the same Erik. Iâm not just looking at the Tweet. If I was you would have a fair point. Iâm looking at over 20k likes on it after over 5k retweets. That makes it trickier. Also I have looked through a number of these accounts. This isnât isolated.
@erikbryn And despite her claims of technically being a republican, many of those applauding are clearly on the Left. Perhaps almost all? Maybe I should have made that clearer. But I thought it was obviously not a hawkish position to beg Iranâs mercy.
@erikbryn This is so interesting! I meet this all the time. Endless discussions about Rawlsian veils. Emma Lazarus. @Noahpinion? @fmanjoo? Etc. Everyone I know who has supported restricting immigration is called a xenophobe. How are we so far apart Erik?
Here:
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo You know my brother was a bio professor run out of his college over this? You know about the diversity oaths? I think you may just be mistaken as to how far this has gone.
Maybe you should come on my podcast and make this case when you are in LA? I so want you to be right!
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo Now Iâm lost. We are clearly sideways here. The right was in on this too calling for a constitutional amendment to open our borders to decimate US wages (although thatâs not how they sold it):
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo The game was traditionally played by saying ânow Iâm not for open borders, but...â and then calls were made for Amnesty, family reunification, paths to citizenship, expansion of allotments, no deportation, defunding enforcement, etc. which is to say gutting all of the barriers.
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo Yes. Iâm not on the Right. Thatâs up to them. But there is an open borders right just as there is an open borders left. We arenât connecting here Erik. Have you worked in Immigration? If not you have to experience it at a policy level. Itâs wildly bizarre.
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo Many on the Left have been eager to dilute the right wing vote with immigrants. The right has been eager to dilute laborâs ability to bargain for wages. Open borders has been pursued by both openly and cryptically for different reasons.
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo And maybe I spent enough time in DC doing immigration listening to people say âWeâre basically for open borders but of course we canât just say that.â
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo You are aware that I wrote a paper on using Coase to ethically open borders? And another one that caught the National Academy and National Science foundation conspiring to use immigration to lower STEM wages?
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo We should hang out.
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo No. I refused to believe it until people told me what they were up to. You may want to read this rather carefully. Iâm not making this up:
@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo Let me have the NSF tell you in their own words why they want so many of your graduate students to be foreign. From section 5: https://t.co/zUatSf5v8l
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@erikbryn @Noahpinion @fmanjoo Great!
I don't know how many immigrants we'll need. What I do know is coward CEOs want to tame the famously disagreeable & independent US worker and make her/him more pliant. And by threatening that worker with a steady supply of 'the best and the brightest' he or she becomes docile.
No. We need to stop having our big hearts used against our own economic interests. True refugees once rescued make FANTASTIC citizens. A tiny number of Geniuses give us an edge & families often need to be together.
What's evil is the campaign to destroy worker bargaining power.
Since we're drowning in oceans of STEM talent in a market economy where long term labor shortages are impossible, we easily see who those cowards are. They're STEM employers insisting on a French kiss from our government & threatening to take the ball abroad if they don't get it.
Well, maybe they should go. I hear China is hiring! Also maybe Russia. Posssibly Saudi & Iran too.
So go run to your new masters STEM employers. Maybe you weren't cut out to make it in the dynamic freedom loving US economy.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out though.,,
I love @joerogan. You? Of course you do. We all do.
This is moronic. Also, China, Iran, North Korea and Russia are still out there while we worry endlessly over nothing.
But keep going corporate media...
Where are we on State-Sponsored pedophilia honey-pots?
Letâs try the following: How can we be sure that China, Russia or Iran wasnât behind Epstein if we canât ask the question of Epsteinâs ties to intelligence? So either we KNOW his tie, or we are leaving a giant security hole.
Pursue this even further: if news desks arenât asking these questions, arenât they under suspicion of being under control of foreign or domestic intelligence? That is can we essentially back out that some intelligence has captured legacy media if they arenât willing to *ask* Qs?
It is an entire concept that has disappeared: institutional accountability with institutions going after institutions rather than institutions going after those individuals who are the only ones who are still really raising questions.
@MarniSheppeard @AndrewMcElroy14 Excuse me??
@MarniSheppeard @AndrewMcElroy14 Racist???
@MarniSheppeard @AndrewMcElroy14 Blocked.
I now have zero patience for this.
If you want to meet the coolest devout Muslims, say something sweepingly stupid about all Hijabis. You will soon meet a skateboarding hijabi neurosurgeon who gigs as lead guitarist on weekends to raise money for the study of childhood diseases...or some equivalent amazing person.
This is not a defense of the Hijab which can raise many complex issues. Itâs an observation about how many amazingly accomplished women wear hijab and the dangers of simple stories that we tell ourselves about the other that donât survive brushes with the complexity of reality.
[This was motivated by a recent strident conversation about Hijabis.]
@YasMohammedxx Hi Yasmine, and no I am not. I would say that you want things to be simpler than they are. We both want to protect women against coercion. But too many people with no experience of the diversity within Islam are being directed to see *only* the most troubling aspects.
@YasMohammedxx Part of my point is that folks worried about coercion within Islam are not being taught to express themselves effectively. By only focusing on one aspect, one leaves oneself open to the argument that you are denying other facets of reality. Even if those are in a clear minority.
@YasMohammedxx I understand that fine. What does that have to do with anything?? I take it as a GIVEN that having to wear Hijab, Niqab, Chador, Burqa etc is pure hell. That includes having an abstract right to say no but being put under tremendous pressure to do it. Thatâs not the only reality.
@YasMohammedxx I hate that stuff. That is also irrelevant to my point about creating an collection of people unaware that many modern Hijabis exist and will tear their objections to shreds if not prepared for modern accomplished Muslim women who can and will defend Hijab eloquently.
@YasMohammedxx Your experience for example is not the experience of a modern Hijabi in Denver who came to Hijab on her own after growing up Methodist. Why pretend that the situation of Hijab in Iran or Algeria is the same as Colorado? It weakens the valid objections.
@YasMohammedxx Drop by the Portal when in LA next? Would love to hear you lay out your perspective!
@KDRasmussen @YasMohammedxx That is about how I see reality. But I also think this variable is quite a bit bigger than others here.
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen What? You hear that??
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen I have the feeling we arenât having a conversation. Iâve NEVER said anything remotely like that.
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen You keep *interpreting* me. I donât need to change my mind because I never took back the invitation. Likewise I never said anything like you insinuate above.
I believe the problem here is different. Letâs choose something unemotional to illustrate.
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen Letâs say you said âMammals are furry and give live birth.â
I might respond and say âNo. Thatâs not true. Echidna are a counter example.â
You might respond âI know #NotAll mammals. I never said that.â
Iâd say âNo. The point is that the exceptions show the description is off.â
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen You might say âWell. The vast majority of mammals give live birth.â
I might say âPerhaps, but the shift from the incorrect description is critically important. Itâs the difference between a phylogenetic and descriptive understanding of biology. Itâs not correct minus epsilon.â
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen Sure thing. But just read the last few tweets. You donât need to respond to them here. This feels like a technical issue between different descriptions.
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen Itâs emotional! Thanks for owning that and given your story I want to share your experience. I am emotional about it too if not at the same level. I canât stand the brainwashing, shame, coercision and implied threats of violence and abandonment that can go along with Hijab.
@YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen We arenât conflicted there. I can assure you.
@jonathan_ukc @M_Phatical @YasMohammedxx @KDRasmussen You have got to be kidding.
@ScopeCast @YasMohammedxx And thank you for making this block so easy. A pleasure.
To my Trump Supporting Followers: Iâve always treated you with respect despite our disagreement over the idea that Trump represented an existential risk to our democracy and, by extension, the world.
Iâd like you to consider how far he is away from proving he won in a landslide. https://t.co/NQnU1sw3H4
Â
Iâm prepared to lose you today. But I need you to hear this from someone who disagreed with you respectfully, but saw where you were coming from.
Your candidate does not appear to be anywhere close to proving the massive conspiracy needed overturn this election. Consider: https://t.co/wWOvwMH4iQ
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Hypothetically, assume that you KNEW an election was stolen by coordinated fraud. That doesnât overturn the election.
You would have to prove that in a court and it would have to be a massive fraud. Thereâd be a code name like âOperation Ajax/Bootâ as there was in 1953 Iran. https://t.co/KyujL5Jf6J
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Okay. Assume your man won in a landslide now being covered up by a massive fraud operation.
What is the code name? Who headed it up? When was it launched? What was the size of the operation? Who funded it? How is it kept quiet? What is the size of the landslide? How do you know? https://t.co/FKr9Ls0jiD
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I know that many of you feel you arenât taken seriously by media. Iâve always taken you seriously.
But that means expecting you to be serious about your own allegations. Trump is so far failing to meet *any* expected thresholds for responsibly alleging a conspiracy of this size. https://t.co/61XHHMLnBp
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Look at MKUltra, Ajax/Boot, Mockingbird, COINTELPRO, Operation Condor, Iran-Contra, etc. Beyond what you believe is true, your team would need to prove a conspiracy. And the delta between what is now alleged v what is proven or even âalleged with specificityâ is growing alarming. https://t.co/pQxlg3bWiP
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Lastly, for those who will leave as followers from this thread: Thanks for hanging in there w/ me. Itâs been tough, but I really appreciate the kindness & decency most of you have shown me. I hope I reciprocated that by being your loyal opposition. So thanks for hearing me out.đ
Iâll say it plainly: I wasnât wrong. He always was & continues to be an existential risk as long as he has the football. If you love him & admire his best actions, show him. Let him know that the Delta between the allegation and proof of conspiracy must now close. Love you all. https://t.co/DhqWrjWkO7
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@keepitzebra I do! Letâs hope we are right.
@iwanttotalk_now Nobody is perfect. Just trying to not suck.
@lucidvincent Thanks Vincent. Be well brother.
@dbaboci It went from 443.9K to 443.7K. So far. Not huge but certainly expected.
Simple reminder: your crazy family are souls you know much better than figures like Biden & Trump who you know through a screen. Don't let our distant theater of power and politics rob you of something close and real.
[Just giving myself advice here.]
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
I provide this as a service to those Americans headed into Thanksgiving. Yes your Uncle may be #QAnon and your niece Antifa. You may be married to an NPC. But let's all realize that we're also bonkers. All three of the above are asserted by our media & are obviously incompatible.
A) Donald Trump is controlled by Russia, a hostile foreign power capable of hacking voters' minds.
B) The US IC is patriotic and more capable than Russia or than it was when it acted against elections in Iran & Chile.
C) There is no reason to fear rigging in 2020.
- ChooseAny2
Note: for those of you missing the point, there were not enough characters to say #chooseuptotwo. Sorry to cut that corner...but itâs Twitter.
@ArronShilling Intelligence Community.
2021
The following is pure speculation (Tutored by experience w/ GU):
I think we sent a signal to the cosmos in 1945 and then on Nov. 1, 1952. Fusing Nuclei is what you do JUST before you become root. If this is right, we let the cosmos know âEarth is root adjacentâ w/o awareness.
Now, if you can jack into the cosmos as âRootâ it MAY facilitate stuff thatâs unimaginable (e.g. dimension hacking) yet only one remaining big upgrade away from being able to fuse nuclei. Which is where we are now.
Iâd guess all civilizations that are Root care about each other.
I subscribe to an unpopular position. Consider 3 kinds of đ:
A) Ones with no life or at least no life within striking distance of the source code (ToE).
B) Worlds that are on the verge of gaining the source code but are confined to a terrestrial surface.
C) Root level access.
It makes sense to worry about *every* small boutique program: Lisi, Wolfram, Barbour, LQG, Tegmark, ConnesLott, Octonions, amplitudhedron, etc. Our science/defense establishment doesnât seem to get this idea: after 50yrs of no progress it seems too abstract to practical men.
So they told another story: âString theory didnât fail!! It may take 100s of years to figure it out!â That is âIf we String Theorists canât make progress, a Theory of Everything is now far over the Horizon for everyone else.â But thatâs not logically necessary. I say weâre close.
In those ~50yrs we learned to stop worrying. About Fusion-weapons, interstellar travel, a cosmos that listens or even our ability to progress to the end. In 1984, physicists were talking about the end of physics without irony. They then failed, while failing to report failure.
The idea of a newly space-time-faring unwise civilization with fresh root level access is a nightmare. And no one but no one on earth takes this seriously anymore. After 1952 fundamental physics went on progressing normally for ~20yrs. So after that itâs been~50yrs of stagnation.
Is there anyone in the cosmos listening? Perhaps not. But we are all acting as if living on a terrestrial surface with the ability to fuse nuclei is some totally normal thing due to <70 years of good luck. Which is insane.
Now what if Iâm right in the above and the cosmos cares?
I learned from my buddy @SamHarrisOrg that he thought đ˝ would be Millenia ahead of us. Look at Nov 1, 1952 from Nov 1 1902: you donât have powered flight, know what relativity or the quantum is, know that neutrons exist, know about anti-matter, etc.
From â02, â52 IS millennia. https://t.co/YiRc1AbkcU
Iran is now Nuke adjacent. And their facilities and scientists keep running into mysterious problems. Why? Surely not because Iran is too insignificant to her more advanced neighbors. That would mirror NDTâs argument. My argument is that root level access to nuclei *suffices*.
Thatâs what NDT has most wrong. He thinks we are far behind anything that could visit us, but that ISNâT backed up by science. Heâd have to explain why we arenât âroot adjacentâ right now or that root buys us nothing. Well?
Think of the relationship of Iran to nukes for example.
And I believe all at once.
What does that mean? I honestly donât know.
But Imagine you sent a chainsaw, a Bugatti, Ibogaine, âMy-1st-Crisperâ, and an F-18 to a badly behaved 5yr old child for a birthday present w a simple card: âEnjoy!â Weâd worry specifically b/c immaturity.
Well, we may or may not have a major update in our future. And if it unlocks dimension hacking, looking glass matter, VEV/potential hacking, multi-temporal pseudo-Riemannian metrics, Dark Chemisty, Dark Light, additional families, RaritaSchwinger fields, etc then we get upgraded.
And I think NDT is enforcing a dangerous âCopernicanâ consensus that we are too insignificant to even monitor or visit, to go along with âWeâve had Nukes for 70 years without losing a city. I wouldnât worry. What could possibly go wrong.â
This is just a human rationality flaw.đ
Am I saying âAliens are hereâ? Of course not. But the âRoot Adjacency Hypothesisâ is not properly discussed almost anywhere. Which defies all explanation.
Perhaps everyone else is right & Iâm wrong. Absolutely! But itâs common for the world to make a crazy dumb idea a consensus.
âBut the public will never understand a partnership with our main rival as being safer than being frozen out of all CCP decisions. On the other hand we canât be seen as engaging in a bioweapons arms race. So we had myriad ways to evade the optics of what we were actually doing.â
The cognitive tools for understanding any rationale behind NIH funded Gain of Function Research in China are almost certainly being withheld.
Look at it from the point of a true believer in the system. âWe have to not lose the bioweapon arms race & should keep our rivals close.â
âSo what do we do? Do we have an open town-hall to explain all things that are part of delicate multi decade Wash DC political insider theory like âConstructive engagementâ, âIranian Nuclear Containmentâ, âTwo State Solutionâ? Of course not. Thatâs why we have an expert class.â
âOnly we canât talk about this. And our strategy that worked well enough when no one in the public knew âGain of Functionâ, âSpike Proteinâ or âZoonoticâ terms stopped working when everyone on the planet was forced to become amateur scientists. Then we lost âLab Leak is racismâ.â
âThen COVID got out. Suddenly the whole world was talking about zoonotic bat respiratory Corona viruses: a subject the public had never heard of before. Our excuses & proxies for what is essentially military strategy for containment of CCP biowarfare ambitions were center stage.â
The populist premise is simpler: âYou insiders seem to be incompetent at your jobs & more than competent at your extraction of wealth & obfuscation of all with which you have been entrusted. How can we force you âeliteâ to account for your non-elite malfeasance and incompetence?â
Start from this insider premise that is never said out loud, âThe purpose of democracy is to give the public the most minimal choice over multi-decade cryptic strategies that must be managed by insider classes, so that they can only slightly course correct from expert consensus.â
The idea that itâs time to come clean about Epstein, Iran, the West Bank, Strategic Engagement, Nuclear Bluffing, Climate & Wealth, internal spying, Assange and Snowden, simply never occurs to a class that believes it is acting in a way that can NEVER be open to public scrutiny.
So we sit around with the expert class withholding all the cognitive tools âwe the peopleâ need to figure out whether we have the CORRECT public spirited Elite. Which we do not.
Thus the âeliteâ get more and more resentful that we are meddling in âtheirâ strategic endeavors. Ha.
We need a well paid actual public spirited elite public servant class.
And no one I know is willing to say this. They either defend the system as is, or want some radical revolution.
We need new folks in their 20s-50s. Not Fauci. Not Biden. Not Trump. Not Pelosi. Not McConnell.
We should join the populists in demanding answers based on pathological extractive, unethical and incompetent behavior.
But you cannot âburn it all the fuck downâ, put it all on the blockchain or vote for complete transparency either.
Do I believe in an actual Elite that cannot share everything with the public. Yeah. Think about it; It cannot be otherwise.
Do I believe in this *elite*? This is the Keystone Cops meets Mr Magoo.
So I am neither a populist nor a defender of the system as it is currently found.
Thatâs how I see it. We have to stop talking about this in the exact terms we are handed by the very âeliteâ who donât want us talking about the real issues. We need to stop using the framings weâre handed.
For example, âGain of Functionâ is largely a euphemism for âweaponizedâ.
Soapbox speech over.
As always, thanks for listening and letting me try out these ideas at scale. đ
If youâve been in power for a long time and are now in your 70s & 80s? It is simply time to go. Thatâs not ageism.
Thatâs an IMPLICIT part of the system. Weâve never before remotely had a President & core group this out of touch, this old, and this technically over their heads.
@MickWest Iâm a proud friend and supporter of @danielsheehan45 through the years for his fearlessness on Silkwood, Iran Contra, the Pentagon Papers, etc.
What is the question?
@MickWest @danielsheehan45 No. I, for one, donât have that kind of evidence or any special information.
2022
Presidents, Senators, Representatives, Agency Heads, Operatives, etc. in a democracy, must and can be *forced* into accountability. This is what Ronald Reagan sounded like when forced out of prolonged silence over the Iran-Contra scandal:
You can *force* your representatives to hold deep painful searching hearings. What is our problem with forcing open hearings on Epstein, Wuhan/Covid-19, Afghanistan, CPI?
This happened. It hasnât always been like this. This is still possible. We could do this with Epstein, Wuhan/COVID, Bagram, CPI/Inflation, Stock Trading in Congress, Tech Censorship of political speech at government request:
cc:@tedcruz , @BernieSanders
I think not. But it is close to a multi-polar playing field with a lot of unskilled leaders and N Korea, China, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Russia, The United States, Israel, etc in play at once. So what do I know.
I may think not, but we *are* eroding our margin for error.
Key point is that there is going to be a lot of distraction and the ambitious may be expected to move rapidly, much the way looting often takes place when police are known to be stretched thin for whatever reason (e.g. an earthquake).
Tellerâs âNuclear Genieâ will hang over any resumption of attempts to saber rattle between nuclear, and near nuclear nations: China, N Korea, Israel, Pakistan, India. Particularly with rhetoric about experiencing âconsequences that you never have had before in your historyâ.
My concern, to sum up, is that we blunder our way into open ended nuclear rhetoric that opens the door to new levels of the unthinkable. I donât think this will get there. But I think it might and it may begin an erosion of the barriers to the unthinkable. As we saw in WWI & II.
And thatâs a real threat as this âgameâ hasnât been played like this for so long. Weâre like a black belt from a strip mall Aikido dojo getting into our first street fight. How well weâre actually prepared is open to speculation. No one knows where we are with open ended threats.
I donât think this will be a nuclear war as Iâve said. But I think the current crop of leaders has lost track of where posturing becomes reality. Putin would be an exception. My concern is that unskilled peacetime leaders may blunder into nuclear brinksmanship they canât manage.
Iâm also worried about China, N Korea, Iran, etc moving their pieces while we are focused on Russia/Ukraine. I donât know how well our system really works anymore after the Afghanistan pull out. Iâm not sure we really know how to play this role anymore. Hence the concern. đ
@AnnaGBusse The risk of blundering into nuclear war has skyrocketed now. It is still small. But no longer tiny. And it is likely to grow from here.
About time. Iran is too advanced, modern and important to the modern world to be under this kind of backward human rights violating religiously intolerant regime for this long. Itâs been 43 years of imposed backwardness on an advanced civilization. Maybe itâs finally enough.
Whatâs going on in Iran seems very different to me if I watch our media.
In Tahrir Square Egypt years ago, the media tried never to use the the word ârevolutionâ right to the end. It was always âprotestorsâ, âdemonstratorsâ, etc.
If youâre in news, how does this work?
Q: Is the Iran situation more likely than not to be a revolution in the making?
Iâve noticed that outsiders are of two minds about this.
A) Thatâs outrageous! B) Thatâs totally normal.
Some examples.
RULE: USG canât spy on US citizens. WORKAROUND: Get Allies to spy on your citizens.
RULE: No offensive Bioweapons. W-A: Do convertible âdefensiveâ research.
Washington DC lawmakers make rules to restrict what USG units may do. Units almost always work around the letter of the law to thwart that intent when intent would negatively affect their ability to perform. Examples of this are everywhere.
This leads to DC âWorkaround culture.â
This Workaround requires a narrative that says many things:
A) Vaccines are costless & safe. B) There is NO benefit to any other therapeutic, necessitating vaccines. C) The virus CANNOT be from a lab working around the Geneva & Biological Weapons Conventions. D) No forced jabs.
More or less Washington DC wants to forceâŚand I mean FORCEâŚus all to vaccinate using unapproved drugs. This could be for our benefit or not. But they canât do it under the letter of the law. So they do what is TOTALLY NORMAL to people who work in DC. They workaround the rules.
RULE: No importing ordinary labor for jobs Citizens can do. W-A: Reclassify aliens as extraordinary or âstudents.â
Etc.
Then we come to this moment: Science, Emergency Use Authorization, and Nuremberg rules against forced medical interventions. Or:
âScience vs TheScience(tm)â
And to this we see both reactions as before. But on *steroids* this time.
A) You unspeakably freedom hating evil godless tyrannical medical traitors of pure satanic evil.
B) Hello? Itâs just Public Health. Read âNudgeâ, chill out & grow up. Drama-Queen much? Itâs not personal.
E) Anyone who so much as *questions* any of the above is a despicable anti-science fringe charlatan crackpot psychopath who must be publicly reputationally incinerated w/ a quick & devastating takedown of racist pseudoscience conspiracy thy beliefs as this is Life&Death.
Ahem.
But I do know what Iâm looking at: a massive pre-internet style *workaround* Gated Institutional Narrative campaign (or GIN). This is exactly the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex or DISC that I introduced long before COVID.
And it is as close to evil as anything I know. Why?
Quite honestly I have a particular hatred for Public Health and other DC professionals that prevent smart non-DC science folks from asking obvious seminar questions in the middle of such broad narrative campaigns via reputation tarnishing. Hatred is probably too mild a word here.
First of all, because it destroys scienceâs hard won credibility.
Fauci/Collins/Baric/Daszak donât share Bioweapons workaround information. Which Is ânormal.â
But they MASSIVELY worked to destroy their colleagues like @DrJBhattacharya of Stanford who were doing actual science. https://t.co/lBxGGNbFvH
Â
I still donât know why Daszak/Fauci/Collins are lying. I get that it is a workaround. But what I donât understand is why we are continuing without hearings. I grew up with hearings into Watergate, Iran Contra, Domestic terror by FBI, etc. This world with no hearings is new.
If you screw up this badly with millions DEAD, you donât get to keep your secrecy. Or your grants/program. Or your workaround. You have to lose. You have to disclose. You donât get to stay secret. Too many dead. Donât like that?
Tough luck sweetheart: Picture the bodies stacked. https://t.co/CLgcYMmJbR
Â
Also, trying this out to see if @elonmusk is really in charge.
MORAL: The COVID narrative was the GIN. The destruction of all credentialed dissenters was the DISC. Now you know.
[Welcome Elon. Thank you. How can we help? Good luck & please please donât cock it up. ;-)] đ
So my point is this: Science needs hearings and REHABILITATION of those who were destroyed by this unholy workaround, likely of the Geneva and Biological Weapons Conventions via âNudgeâ coercion to evade Nuremberg restrictions in name only. Itâs pitchfork time in science. Enough.
[Result: Throttling still on. Red meat tweet after 20 minutes on an under 700K account. I meant what I wrote, but it was also a test. I know from years on the platform; thatâs not possible when people are this rightfully upset.] https://t.co/T3Tzfw2WpP
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@TommyRo Actually, it isnât as easy to tell as many think. CYA is the easy part. And I know all the guesses. I have mine as well. But yelling âProfits!â Or âTyranny!â or âCulling!â Or âScientific Arrogance!â or whatever doesnât equate to knowing what the decision makers thought they did.
@montuakmo66 No. But I did wonder whether the outgoing folks would flip the switches themselves to muddy the issueâŚ
@Alicethegoon5 @elonmusk I thought the outgoing engineers might do it. Actually.
@SJ_Cap I donât. True.
But Iâve been out here since 2009. So this isnât my first rodeo either.
@BowTiedIT I hear that a lot. Hopeful it may be soon in our rear view mirror.
2023
@DrBrianKeating Ethnomusicology and Folklore. Or linguistics.
No idea. At all. It seems Turkic. The beginning contains a phrase that sounds like âHosh geldi arkadash.â Which welcomes the stranger as intimate. âPleasant coming my friend.â I think I can pick Out a reference to a goat (bakri) and the Arabic loan word for world (dunya) but if it were Azerbaijani or Anatolian Turkish I think I could get more of it.
So I am going to guess central Asian Turkic. Maybe one of the Turkic FSU republics but not Azerbaijani. Maybe Turkmen? Hosh is Persian. But the gelmek verb root argues against Iran or Tajik roots. Some features seem more mongol or East Asian. Hats seem akin to papakha.
Great game. Very hard. Thatâs a best guess without cheating. Thanks!
@elerrantenomad @DrBrianKeating Congratulations to you my new friend: you have devised the hardest way ever to win people over to Geometric Unity.
Glad to have you aboard sir.
2024
Q: How do you know that String Theory isnât working as physics despite expert assurances to the contrary?
A: No one at all is in any way worried about the Iranians, Russians or Chinese getting their hands on our cutting edge String Theory.
My audience is mostly Millenials. Second and third come the Gen Z/GenX cohorts. Fourth is Boomers and last is Silents. Truthfully, I have barely any engagement with those over 75 from experience. My audience also tilts male with strong english language comfort. If you have a different demographic structure, I would be interested to see this repeated with your followers.
I will say, being in my 50s, mostly my younger audience wants to know questions akin to the following:
"What should I do if I want a good life?"
"Is this normal?"
"How did we get here?"
"Was it always like this?"
"Why do I have to look up the things you say from history? Why weren't they taught to us?"
"What should we do to change things?"
"How do we get to a world where we also have a future?"
I have been forced to change my mind because of these questions. I used to think it was a resiliency failure. I think I was wrong.
What I think now is that the indefinite future collapsed. The future with homes. With courtship. With children. With careers. With retirements. With investment in one's youth to become a respected expert and pillar of society. With mentors. With rites of passage. With trustworthy institutions.
I now believe I didn't get it. Group resiliency is downstream from a societal future worth fighting for. Those young people who still see an individual future are still individually resilient.
As an example, a group of young tech entrepreneurs in San Francisco may not see a future for California. Yet, they are working their hearts out for their own futures. But they wouldn't be working nearly as much for their communities and the state if they perceive the government as unsalvagable.
So no, this is unlikely to be an enormous number of GenXers voting. But try it yourself.
I think the world knows that the generation least likely to go along with mass delusions is the one most passed over by delusional institutions.
And lastly, a few of you don't get the generational issue and my focus on it. You act as if it is some blindspot that I have somehow never considered.
Let me be blunt: It's not about magical cohorts and mindless generalization. You're not getting it.
The boy pictured is Etan Patz. If you were an American, You were either born before he disappeared on the morning of Friday May 25, 1979 or after. His disappearance determined whether you played outside the house or inside the house.
You were either born before or after the no-fault divorce wave starting in 1969. That had a huge effect on whether or not your family stayed together.
Similar things are true for Persians who either were born before or after the Islamic Revolution in Iran that begain in January 1978. Before or after the Berlin Wall fell. Or the internet. Etc.
Generations are groups of people formed by their developmental environments: Depression or Boom, War or Peace, Growth or Stagnation. Etc. While imperfect, these distinctions matter hugely as to how we approach the world.
Thanks for your time. As always...
Â
According to my feed, "Destiny" is being discussed everywhere because "Destiny" is apparently saying crazy things.
In a Plot Twist: "Destiny" is neither a musician nor an exotic dancer, nor even fate itself. I had hoped for "exotic dancer", but have been advised otherwise.
In other news, China, Hamas, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, N. Korea, looming AGI, etc. continue to exist.
[Oh man am I old...]
2025
The U.S. has every right to step away.
But if Israel alone frees the Persians from the Mullahs, and rids the region/world of a malignant thermonuclear theocracyâŚagain aloneâŚthen that will have consequences as well.
Israel is *not* attacking the people of Iran. Itâs trying to end a regional and global nightmare regime.
At least let us wish them and the Persian people a safe night while Israel is working through the wee hours to make sure that the mullahs wonât be able to strike us here with WMD. And let us pray they know what they are doing. Godspeed.
@Blackbeltnerd Iâm using Ron Paulâs.
@MrMosis Iâm a pretty huge fan of the Persians. Amazing culture. Amazing humans.
We have very short memories in the west, that this isnât just a regional problem.
That isnât just an opinion. Itâs a fact.
We just forgot:
@ario @MrMosis Thank you good sir.
@michaelshermer @rosscoulthart Ross is not being careful about what I have said I believe. And you in turn are not being careful about what Ross says in the clip here. Listen again. Then correct please.
For the record, many of us with contacts in the National Security complex are told this regularly: âThe lesson of the Manhattan Project that the government took away is that physics in particular is too dangerous to do fully in the open. Hence the separate Q-clearance system, separate laws on free speech, National Laboratories, and physics funding from the Dept of Energy.â
And I have said that I do *not* think it is at all likely that they cracked fundamental physics secretly. Very publicly. On Rogan.
A) I donât know that the USG did derange fundamental physics for security reasons. This may only be true at the level of nuclear physics, material science/condensed matter, etc.
B) I donât know that there are *any* successes in fundamental physics in black programs. Let alone âanti-gravityâ:
C) What I do wonder about is whether the U.S. government is blocking all public university fundamental physics preemptively with quantum gravityâŚwhile likely *failing* at it in secret (e.g. in national labs) as well.
That is accurate.
And I have also pointed out that physics has been recognized to be dangerous since Los Alamos.
And I have also pointed out that some physics is known to be done in secret (e.g. national labs).
And I have speculated that some of it may be deliberately fake (e.g. why doesnât anyone in government question what happened to 40 years of ignoring competitor proposals and blindly following the string theory and quantum gravity bandwagons?). Why speculate? Because it *IS* dangerous to do fundamental physics in public with rivals like China and Russia and Iran.
What I donât believe is that the U.S. solved gravity secretly or has a final theory of physics in some secure location. Itâs not impossible, but I think it is highly highly highly unlikely.
@ritunjoy2000 @michaelshermer @rosscoulthart Kyuu Merra dost? Mai soch raha hu ki yeh admi theek hai. Lekin, yahaa, is topic to ke barre mem, shayad torra torra pagal hai.
@NatyaGatya @ritunjoy2000 @michaelshermer @rosscoulthart Fakat, sirf torra torra.
Good to know from an Iranian ally and thus an authority with inside knowledge.
Anti-War/America Firsters: Read quoted tweet carefully.
âNow we can say it outrightâŚâ
And thank you for clarifying, Mr. Medvedev.
That was what confused me in part.
But it isnât âdetached from reality.â
What @edfrenkel is actually pointing at is quite subtle. (We had an almost 2hr phone call around it and other things this morning where we realized we lacked good language for what we were describing.)
His point is really that these structures were semi-dependent, semi-independent. At least in my way of looking at it.
They werenât an independent press. And they werenât a mouthpiece press either. Same for universities. And Think Tanks. Etc. They were a semi-independent archipelago of institutions. And we donât have language for this. I donât think Ed has language for this either. But I agree with that. It wasnât as tightly coupled into the soft fascism of the âWhole of Society Approachâ formulated only recently.
@edfrenkel @coreyum Itâs hard for people to hear it. We havenât seen this in earnest since like Iran-Contra or thereabouts. Or maybe Abu Ghraib. Dunno.
Church committee was too long ago.
âNo more wars for Israel!â
Enough of the Anti-Jewish Brainrot bullshit.
Letâs talk Kermit the Roosevelt. Operation Ajax. Etc.
My thoughts on @StevenBartlettâs podcast:
My usual critique of many things Israel does still stands. It doesnât get a free pass.
But Iran specifically is not just an Israel reponsibility. It is a U.S. responsibility. And a U.K. Responsibility (âOperation Bootâ as it was called there.)
If you want to save our country from what is coming you are going to have to face hard facts:
A) We have growing fringe movements in the parties looking for opportunities to turn to armed struggle.
B) The main asymmetry between the parties is party affiliation of institutional actors.
C) Media and Education are the two most dangerous institutions, and they are now suffused with normalized revolutionaries.
D) Revolutionaries have been normalized as if they were liberals. They are not. They are different.
E) Revolutionaries recruit people who have not been âdealt inâ. You canât stop this without dealing people in. No one is dealing these people in. They donât see a path.
F) Every attempt to point out E) results in someone who got themselves dealt in talking loudly about how easy it is if you have grit. This worksâŚ.bur it only works for some individuals. If it is so easy: show us all how to deal in three generations AT SCALE with AI on their heels as well.
G) We are going to have to stop fighting the kids and fight the party leaders.
H) The big tents are a huge problem. The sane center people have to see more in common with counterparts across the aisle than with their fringes itching to kill.
I) We need to help those who can be brought back. Identify those too far gone. And pray we can know the difference.
J) We are going to have to recognize how far gone this situation already, is and work like hell of we want to bring it back to sanity.
K) China, Iran, N Korea, Russia, etc. are watching. Likely not always passively.
L) We are going to have to have an entirely different conversation about the collision of internet anonymity, targeting behavior and free speech.
Sorry about the typos. As always.
2026
I cannot wait to visit Tehran.
Persia is of our worldâs greatest cultures. Iran has been almost half a century under this oppressive theocracy.
Wishing you all every success. Good luck out there.
I do not understand the lack of our coverage here. But we still hear you.
@SimoneSyed I feel like Iâm losing my mind. So weird right?
We donât know what the New York Times is. But it isnât a newspaperâŚ
How long does it take to find out if there is anything happening in Iran during what may turn out to be a revolution?
Letâs find out, shall we? Here is how long it takes to get to a story from âTodayâs Paperâ: https://t.co/yJEHLiV1S5
In 2011, respectable news didnât discuss the uprising or revolution in Egypt. They talked about demonstrations, complaints, or discontent. They talked about Spring.
What was âSpringâ?
Spring meant uprising & revolution. But it wasnât supposed to trigger that as an idea.
Well, itâs âSpringâ. I donât know what is going on with our media. But it is Spring again in Iran. There are âcomplaintsâ in the street. People are voicing their âincomplete satisfactionâ with âdemonstrationsâ of âdiscontentâ.
I kept talking in 2011 about the revolution in Cairo. And no one at Manhattan cocktail parties had heard that. âYou mean the demonstrations? You are being alarmist donât you think Eric?â
Was I insane? No. I was just not reading the Times or listening to NPR and instead only following accounts on Twitter that posted about 1/2 their tweets in Arabic.
And when Mubarak fell, it still wasnât a revolution in my NYC friendsâ minds. It was the damndest thing. They didnât realize that they had witnessed an actual uprising and revolution with their own eyes!! To them, there was a resignation during Arab Spring and demonstrations. Thatâs it.
That taught me the power that News organizations had on respectable people. It was mind control. You wanted to be mind controlled so you didnât fall from grace within the moderately successful educated elite.
If I didnât know better I would say it sure looks like an uprising with a more than likely revolution to followâŚ.But then again Iâm once again not a professor or journalist. Just a once respectable guy who, like you, canât get a straight quality story based on facts from reliable news sources. So, better ask someone else. Preferably with a chaired professorship or a Pulitzer Prize.
đ¤ˇââď¸
âIslamophobiaâ seems strongest in Iranian Muslims.
Which is particularly awkward if you are the United States paper of record.
Â
Q: Iran, right now: how to name what is going on?
@johnson_na87900 I donât know for sure either. But I know what I see.
I canât say for sure. But I donât think itâs a secret that I think Iâve pretty clearly been looking at revolution. And for *QUITE* some time now.
I famously donât love making calls on this little information. I think the Western News *SUPPRESSED* reporting an obvious revolution.
To be honest, even I didnât see this level of suppression comingâŚand Iâm the Kayfabe guy. I wouldnât have thought this level of make believe posssible for the New York Times.
I got that totally wrong. Itâs beyond comprehension, even for me.
Here are my guesses:
Why didnât mainstream media properly cover one of the biggest stories of our time in Iran? Some guesses. Not particularly high quality, as I am grasping at straws a bit.
A) It is likely a revolution and, if it is, it is about to hand a huge win to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. By far the most likely.
B) Itâs mask off time as our rivals in China somehow have their hooks in our media via business models in a way I donât grasp and didnât fully understand.
C) Revolutionaries among editors and journalists are more powerful than I had understood and donât want to lose the Red-Green alliance (where Jihadi Militants are the only disciplined lunatics willing to pick up a gun and massacre civilians at scale for a fever dream revolution against the West in a semi-organized fashion).
D) The west got out of the Foreign Correpondent game decades ago and hasnât been reporting news for so long that they donât actually know how to report a major story of this magnitude.
E) Iâm getting this totally wrong. Iâm making a mountain out of a molehill because of what I WANT to happen, and this is just the usual set of protests which always fizzle out against the Mullahs.
F) There really is some Davos-type secret agenda that mere mortals like yours truly canât understand and which is little understood outside the true Illuminati. Iâve been wrong all along and the hard core conspiracists are right: the so-called âBreakaway Societyâ is totally real has been supporting the Ayatollahs all this time to keep the public off balance and the arms industry afloat. Itâs all about chess, oil and guns baby.
G) The news is cooperating with NATO, EU and the USG requests to use âStrategic Silenceâ until it is a done deal. Perhaps Turkey and Saudi are worried about anti-Islamist contagion.
H) No progressive in media wants to report on virulent âIslamophobiaâ breaking out among Muslims actually subject to the brutality of Sharia Law. It makes you look like an idiot in too many completely different ways.
ââ-
Iâd go with A) mostly. But I have been confused since December as to why it isnât being properly covered. Sorry? Iâm at a loss on specifics. đ¤ˇââď¸
đ
So, @grok, what are your thoughts on this. Am I getting this wrong? Some mixture of A)-H)? None of the above?
It seems like a weird decision to show everyone that the news has some inability to cover events. Or perhaps I am just wrong here.
@grok Dude. The quote tweet from me was just two days ago, and the situation has litterally been building and building since 2025. It is now Jan 11, 2026 in Tehran.
They are being forced to cover this. No?
@hoppah_1776 I thought that they at least needed to
- Minimally* cover news, even if simply to guide the narrative. That is what I thought.
@grok Appreciate that. I dunno. It feels a lot like the Arab Spring narrative to cover up actual revolution as demonstrations.
Thx. Be well.
In a single post, my dear friend @NicoleBehnam cuts through geopolitical noise to explain exactly why this President, explicitly affiliated with a campaign of Non-Interventionist ideology, has specifically chosen 2 nations, Venezuela & Iran, for direct U.S. Military intervention.
I mean it could be oil related tooâŚbut you do have to admit itâs a bit confusing what the actual ideology is now, and why it appears to differ considerably from stated objectives of AF Neo-isolationismâŚ
When the Jihadi Psychotics decided where to kill in Bombay in 2008, they came straight here. The Leopold Cafe.
Irani cafe culture is still strong in India. Welcoming. Sophisticated, and Diverse. Radical Islam knows its enemy is Persians. So we make sure to visit for a drink.
Â
Islamic intolerants know that they have always been at war with the culture(s) of Iran which Iranians and Persians carry with them in the diaspora.
They massacred 11 souls here in this one famous cosmopolitan cafe in Colaba. Just massacred them. Tourists. Indians. Persians.
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I donât post that much about this, but two of my favorite cities, those truly closest to my Heart, are Istanbul and Bombay.
The 2008 attacks by jihadis in 2008 near Colaba, still feel like an open wound.
The ear splitting 4am loudspeakers in Bebek are a show of force by Anatolian intolerants against the Modern Turks just trying to get through a day.
In both cities we have seen our Jewish sanctuaries turned into killing grounds. Neve Shalom famously in Istanbul.
But in Bombay, Nariman House is here on the street where our family lived for decades.
Here. Take a look at what Islamic militancy really is. They havenât repared the killing zone. They cleaned up the blood and flesh but otherwise left the wound open, so you donât look away at what âIslamic resistanceâ really is.
Itâs murder:
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Islamic extremists and intolerants hate each other. They hate themselves. They hate Muslims. They hate Iranians.
They simply hate us *all* by extension.
That is why we must choose life.
To the Jihadi militant, we Jews are merely the worldâs oldest and strongest Life-Cult.
I donât chant for their death. I just pray for Iran to throw off its oppressor and everyone to wake up to the beauty of this one life we are all granted.
To those in Iran. I donât envy you.
We all need you heroes to win. Send video when you can.
Salam alaykum. Good luck.
I wish you all courage, and am sorry for your staggering losses. Truly.
@ArAIstotle @ye_dennis @grok You want to check Nariman House too @grok. Iâm not making this up.
@grok @ArAIstotle @ye_dennis Thanks @grin. How about the 4am ear splitting Loudspeakers in Bebek and all over Istanbul? Am I right that changed from 40 years ago?
@AOR519555889776 I believe they are still behind the pictures.
The time for feel-good posts about brave protestors throwing off their hijabs in Iran seems long over.
We appear to be in the âmass murder of civiliansâ phase of this revolution.
Iran is ruled by psychopathic theocrats.
I am not egging anyone on from the sunshine and safety of California. This is life and death struggle in the streets.
But to those brave souls who know the risks and STILL return to the streets: I am in awe of your courage amidst your staggering losses.
I canât imagine what you are going through. Yet it is the inspiration of the world to all those everywhere who are still awake and alive.
May the great powers outside your borders be inspired to use their tools and levers to help you in your bid to throw off your own murderous tyrants.
Humanity First. Good luck.
So @grok, can you think of a faster way for the murderous leaders of this psychopathic regime, to end their own 47 year old tyranny over Iran?
I think I speak for many Jews and Americans who desperately want to support the brave Iranians being absolutely massacred right now.
Imagine a modern Iran, free from theocracy, tyranny and madness.
There may be a lot going on, but Iâm not taking my eye off Iran. The big story.