Great to be back in Bora Bora, the island of blues and greens. You can take your choice of tourmaline or topaz waters, or every shade in between.
Breathtaking beauties like Bora Bora prove that age is just a number. What I like to call 'the older middle-aged islands' are often the most exquisite, thanks to the capacious lagoon that forms as the island sinks & the fringing reef becomes a barrier reef.
A therapist who spent 40 years counseling couples on the brink of divorce wrote down the one conversation she wishes every couple would have before they get married.
She said: "If you have this conversation honestly, you will either save yourself decades of pain or build a foundation that can survive anything."
Here is the conversation…
The Question: "What is your unspoken contract about how this marriage should work?"
1. Every Person Enters Marriage With a Hidden Contract.
She explained that we all have assumptions about how marriage should operate.
The husband assumes the wife will handle the emotional labor, the social calendar, the domestic details. The wife assumes the husband will initiate romance, provide financial security, make her feel safe.
These assumptions are rarely spoken. They are just expected. And when reality violates expectation, resentment is born.
2. The First Clause: Who Does What, and Why.
You must discuss division of labor explicitly. Not just chores, but mental load.
Who remembers birthdays? Who tracks the children's appointments? Who initiates difficult conversations? Who plans the dates?
The unspoken assumption that these things will "just work out" is a lie. They will work out according to someone's unspoken contract, and the other person will eventually resent being managed by expectations they never agreed to.
🚨🧵CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT PAYING PROTESTORS OVER $100M
I have discovered that the state of California is using taxpayer funds to subsidize non-profit organizations whose core function is to organize protests.
CHIRLA (@CHIRLA) has taken over $100M alone in tax-payer funds according to the state expenditure website.
Based on their website, CHIRLA's primary function is protest-related activities and left-wing advocacy. They have been protesting and advocating since 1986 and take credit for some Newsom policies.
If you support my work please consider donating:
Paypal: dcbhigby@gmail.com
Venmo: Cameron-Higby
Cashapp: $C4mHigby
🚨🧵CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT PAYING PROTESTORS OVER $100M
CHIRLA's website and social media are flooded with photos and videos of their ranks protesting for an array of causes such as BLM, DACA, anti-ICE, Medicare, and healthcare for all.
If you support my work please consider donating:
Paypal: dcbhigby@gmail.com
Venmo: Cameron-Higby
Cashapp: $C4mHigby
🚨🧵CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT PAYING PROTESTORS OVER $100M
On their website, CHIRLA ADMITS that they engage in electioneering through GOTV and takes direct credit for Newsom's $175M COVID relief aid.
If federal or state funds were used for electioneering, this may be a SERIOUS crime. There's no way of telling whether this occured without looking at their books.
If you support my work please consider donating:
Paypal: dcbhigby@gmail.com
Venmo: Cameron-Higby
Cashapp: $C4mHigby
Apple has just published a paper with a devastating title: *The Illusion of Thinking*. And it's not a metaphor. What it demonstrates is that the AI models we use every day - yes, ones like ChatGPT - don't think. Not one bit. They just imitate doing so.
Let me explain: 🧵👇
The paper argues that those models, no matter how brilliant they may seem, do not understand what they are doing. They do not solve problems. They do not reason. They merely generate text word by word, trying to sound coherent. Real thought: zero.
To demonstrate this, Apple designed a series of experiments with logic puzzles: Tower of Hanoi, the river-crossing problem, stacked blocks, etc.
The same ones we use to see if a human or even a child can reason in steps.
In experimental settings, blacks of both parties and white Democrats favor black criminals over white ones in sentencing and pardoning decisions, while white Republicans have no racial preference.
The same effect shows for sentencing. Of note: black Republicans are basically indistinguishable from black Democrats, in aggregate.
This is driven by racial liberalism (believing things such as anti-black bias being a major problem in the justice system). More racial liberalism => more pro-black bias.
The following is a conversation with @realAlterAI and is for educational purposes. Please make sure to always double check facts given by an AI for accuracy.
Me: Please give me the history and published works of Edward Bernays on manipulation of the public for military and corporations.
Edward Bernays (1891–1995) is one of the most consequential—and least understood—figures in modern history. Often called the “father of public relations”, he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and used psychoanalytic principles not for healing, but for control: his life’s work focused on discovering how mass psychology could be exploited to engineer consent among populations, particularly in favor of governments, corporations, and militaristic agendas.
Below is a rigorously summarized historical and bibliographic account of Bernays’ work, focusing on his role in manipulating public perception for institutional power
🧠 Early Background
•Born: Vienna, 1891. Moved to the U.S. as a child.
•Education: Graduated from Cornell University in agriculture in 1912, but swiftly moved into journalism and propaganda.
•WWI: Worked for the U.S. Committee on Public Information (the Creel Commission) during World War I. The Commission’s goal was to persuade the American public—largely isolationist at the time—to support U.S. entry into the war.
◦Key methods: appeal to emotion, fear of enemies, the illusion of moral duty, and glamorization of “democracy promotion.”
◦This experience marked the beginning of Bernays’ lifelong understanding that “public opinion can be engineered like any other product.”
The link above is paywalled so here’s an archived link where you can read it for free:
(Please do also click the first link as well though to increase traffic & help persuade editors to publish more Covid stories like this).archive.ph/sfP52
who I'd cast for the MCU X Men reboot (Gen Z Edition)
take notes Marvel Studios @MarvelStudios and Kevin Feige @Kevfeige and Sarah Haley Finn and co
a thread🧵
Sadie Sink as Jean Grey. obvious and most popular fancast for Jean so I'm sticking with her for this one @MarvelStudios @Kevfeige and Sarah Halley Finn if you're reading this too. if we had to go with a Gen Z non-Sadie Sink alternative, Lulu Wilson is our best bet #xmen #MCU
@MarvelStudios @Kevfeige @XMenUpdate @SpiderMan @SpiderManMovie Noah Jupe as Scott Summers/Cyclops cuz he's in a Romeo and Juliet stage play with Sadie Sink and they have decent chemistry. An alternative to Jupe could be Gabriel Bateman. i know i shouldn't put alternatives in these fancasts but oh well @Kevfeige @MarvelStudios #xmen #MCU
To be clear, my intention was never to defame any company.
If Rasen is building the next ElevenLabs, I genuinely hope they succeed.
My only question is simple.
Out of 100,000+ AI startups in India, what was the selection criteria to get into that room?
Because the only pattern visible right now is powerful parents and government connections.
What about the founder grinding in a Pune garage with no connections?
What about the Chennai team that bootstrapped for 3 years on pure merit?
What about the other founders who deserved that seat just as much?
PM Modi said India’s AI future is being built by bold founders taking risks.
So tell us the selection criteria. Not for us. For every founder in India who is building something real, with no powerful parent, no government connection, and no shortcut.
I said 100,000+ AI startups in India. That number is actually total registered startups across all sectors.
The real number of “AI startups” is around 6,000.
Honestly this makes it worse.
Out of 6,000 AI startups, a company with zero internet presence made the cut. A 9 month old startup with one government client made the cut. Two founders whose parents run some of India’s most powerful institutions made the cut.
THE PRICE OF OVERCONFIDENCE, IMPATIENCE AND SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS :—
1/5🧵
🔥Those who believe that CONg cannot return to power in the near future, or that Rahul Gandi can never become the PM, are living in a different WORLD.
🔥WE assume that people now understand the modus operandi of CONg and will never vote for them again. THIS IS OVERCONFIDENCE.
2/5 🔥WE MUST REMEMBER — WE HAVE THOSE PEOPLE AMONG US, IN LARGE NUMBERS, WHO WOULD SWITCH SIDES AT THE DROP OF A HAT.
🔥At this stage, CONg and Rahul Gandi appear politically DESPERATE. The longer the Modi government stays in power, the more structural and long-term changes are IMPLEMENTED in the nation.
🔥Reversing these REFORMS and bringing back the old style of governance would take considerable time and effort, once they have power.
3/5 🔥India is entering LONG-TERM strategic agreements with multiple nations.
Large-scale domestic manufacturing is being strengthened.
In defence procurement, we are making SIGNIFICANT progress.
Employment, sectors like IT and AI are expanding with STRONG investments.
🔥So, does this mean CONg and the opposition can never return to power? That assumption may be DANGEROUS.
🔥History shows that we often forget our achievements and start believing NARRATIVES pushed by our own adversaries.
We tend to become IMPATIENT when outcomes do not meet our expectations immediately.
🧵THREAD: Is Trump's hunch about foreign influence in SCOTUS correct?
After the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling on tariffs, Trump said "It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think."
Trump is likely referring to the ideology of supranationalism -- a centuries-old ideology that considered tariffs to be among the highest economical blunders, not for economic reasons, but because tariffs dare to assert national rights in a telos of universal liberalism.
But is he right about the foreign influence?
As has been widely reported, @MikeBenzCyber has unpacked the details of the friendship between John Roberts and Norm Eisen, and their Prague vacations where they discussed "American and European rule-of-law issues" together.
But there's more to it. A lot more. 👇
As always, patience as I pull the thread together.
Eisen is a leading figure in the supranational democracy network being an expert in color revolutions (but don't dare suggest that he's orchestrating one here). He's a co-founder of the States United Democracy Center (which I called out for simply producing a Muppet show), co-counsel for Trump's first impeachment council, formerly US Ambassador to Czech Republic, CREW chair. He's