Why is it that even the most basic of jails require round-the-clock staff, cameras, locks, bars, special toilets, etc.
If that's what is required to keep a determined person against their will, then....
Why do most slave plantations barely even have fences?
Why are there so many "anomolies" [1] in the antebellum south? Why (in the heart of the south) was there a place so libertine that it spawned it's own racial mix, language, art, and music? Why not say...New York? [2]
Why is it that the "Underground Railroad" wasnt as "underground" as we're taught and largely consisted of keeping a poker-face while traveling on public transportation?
Why did Harriet Tubman (a Civil War spy and sharp-shooter btw) say she carried her pistol mostly for run-aways [1] that couldnt keep the necessary poker-face?
Why is it that West Virginia is considered the "hick" and "backward" state but the whole reason West Virginia seceded from Virginia was disagreement with Virginia and Maryland (who both wanted to keep slavery)?
If you pull a thread that you only just noticed dangling within the last few years, you can unravel a LOT of sweaters as you work backwards in history... I am regularly amazed how far the thread goes.
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The biggest international news story (no one knows about) broke in May of 1981. A radio broadcaster named Mae Brussell broke it down in real-time. Like a savant she connects dots that will COMPLETELY change how you look at history: From Watergate to JFK to Jonestown.
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She reveals in her broadcast that news stories we all know individually: assassination of JFK, RFK, John Lennon, Bangladesh's and Ecuador's President, attempt on Reagan, King of Spain, and Pope John Paul II are actually all connected and occurred in rapid succession
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She called it "A State WITHIN a State".
Mae Brussell did all this without the benefit of decades of retrospective research, like books written today. She did it AS it happened in May of 1981.
synthesizing tons of newspaper articles and dozens of books for us.
23 years after airing, I gave BBC's "Neuromancer" a try. (I didnt want to ruin my memory of the books).
If you (re)listen today, it's amazing what holds up : use of AI, the oligarchs, political intrigue of megacorps. And (of course) first use of the word "cyberspace" (🧵1 of 5)
William Gibson wrote amazing prose, but this BBC version misses some of his more poetic details, like this favorite scene of mine. In the book, Case isnt just laughing, his cheeks are streaked with tears of release. One of my favorite scenes as a teen/young adult
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The tech bits not only hold up, but the way society USES the tech does also. Amazing tech is ultimately just leveraged for surveillance, military, and hedonistic "bread and circus" for the masses. Pretty amazing to be that prescient in the first years of the 1980s.
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The BBC Radio play "Medici" is a good listen. A concise history of the banking Dynasty from Cosimo and his father down through Alessandro the black (Moor) Duke of Florence, down to Catherine the "Serpent Queen" of France.
The music is great and the show has small bits of historical references woven into the script for you to catch. the show also has lots of good one-liners like:
"you have ancient blood and modern hopes"
"you carry your own end within you"
"take time for your revenge"
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The show also gives the historical timeline in a clever way: by reading off P&L statements so the listener gets an idea of the size of the Medici wealth relative to other European powers, families, and rulers.
It just came out that the CCP hacked a buncha U.S. voting systems in 2020. U.S. Intel knew it and hid it from the public! This should be the biggest new story but:
The official logo of OPERATION Warpspeed that quickly deployed the coronavirus shots, had a strangely occult symbol in it, called the Antahkarana.
Anti-corona. Antekarana.
That antekarana looks curiously like something else also... (🧵 1 of 12)
The repeating Antekarana looks suspiciously like the "Greek Key" or "Meander" pattern found in lots of Greek and Roman architecture and Greek pottery (amphoras, wine flagons, etc).
A variation of Greek Key called "Enigma" is also on the seats of the US Capitol.
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If that pattern on the seats at the US Capitol look (to you) curiously like something else, you are not alone ;-)