50 Percent is a Good Start

But I suspect Elon Musk will soon discover that it’s not enough to cut Twitter’s staff in half.

Elon Musk will ax “around 50%” of Twitter’s staff within the next few days, according to a new report. The immediate terminations could save the new Twitter CEO significant money.

Just days after Musk’s goliath $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, a massive amount of layoffs for the big tech company could arrive as early as Saturday. There could be job cuts of “about 50%” of Twitter’s 7,500-person workforce, according to a report from the New York Times.

“I was told to expect somewhere around 50% of people will be laid off,” Ross Gerber – CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management – told the New York Times. Gerber said he was informed about the layoffs by Jared Birchall – the head of Musk’s family office.

A report from last month claimed that Musk was going to cut Twitter’s staff by nearly 75%. On Wednesday, Musk told Twitter employees that he doesn’t plan to fire 75% of the workforce, according to Bloomberg.

Apparently a substantial amount of bonuses will vest on Tuesday, November 1, so it would make sense to make it a very unhappy Halloween for soon-to-be former Twitter employees.

But I wouldn’t get even remotely excited about the coming changes at Twitter. It’s just moving from Insane Hard Globalist Left to Sane Moderate Globalist Left. It’s still enemy ground run by a corporate celebrity ticket-taker.

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Gammas are Never Wrong

Scott Adams illustrates the principle beautifully:

The biggest illusion of 2022 is that if your marriage doesn’t work it is because you picked the wrong person.

It doesn’t matter who you pick. Marriage is a pre-Internet, pre-equality system that no longer fits the modern world.

I don’t have a better idea.

The one thing, the only thing, that Scott Adams knows is that no matter what happens, it’s not his fault. The Gamma lives a life entirely free of self-accountability, which is why he is entirely incapable of learning from his not-mistakes.

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A Satisfying End

So, the first half of the soccer season is over. Ten games, eight wins, and two goals by yours truly. Despite being the oldest player on the team, I started all ten games, and even played four complete ones. Due to our attackers being very strong and the defender behind me usually being somewhat on the slower side, I spent most of my time shoring up the defense rather than getting forward, but I think the results speak for themselves.

I’m not bothered by the relative lack of goals. I know I can still score – I had four out of eleven in the final practice – but that’s not what my role on the team presently requires. The wing’s primary responsibility is to a) get the ball to the attackers in a scoring position, b) shore up the defense, and c) link the defense with the offense. But since The Magician can score from literally anywhere on the opponent’s side of the field – the center circle, the left corner, the right corner, it simply doesn’t matter – and three of our four attackers are serious threats to break past the defense and score at any time, it’s much more important to make sure that my side – usually the right – isn’t overrun on the counterattack.

We weren’t completely impermeable, but we only allowed two goals down our side in the ten games, both by Red/Black, the top team in the league, in their 6-3 win over us. We should have won our other loss, a freak 2-1 defeat which featured an uncharacteristic keeper’s error and a needless penalty, but we bounced back very strong in the final game with a dominating 4-1 victory over the defending champions.

So, now it’s time to heal up, keep stretching, and get back to the weights and the high-intensity circuits in preparation for the spring!

It was also great to see Ender get his first goal in the field, a beautiful, deliberate shot from 20 meters, just outside the box, following a nice cross from the other wing. His team started the first half of the season poorly, but they finished strong to finish the first half in fourth place.

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War and the Two Wests

Vladimir Putin makes it clear that he is not the enemy of Americans or Europeans, but rather, of the neoliberal, mercantile and cosmopolitan elite that rules over them and seeks to heal the world by ruling it.

The so-called West which is, of course, a theoretical construct since it is not united and clearly is a highly complex conglomerate, but I will still say that the West has taken a number of steps in recent years and especially in recent months that are designed to escalate the situation. As a matter of fact, they always seek to aggravate matters, which is nothing new, either. This includes the stoking of war in Ukraine, the provocations around Taiwan, and the destabilisation of the global food and energy markets. To be sure, the latter was, of course, not done on purpose, there is no doubt about it. The destabilisation of the energy market resulted from a number of systemic missteps made by the Western authorities that I mentioned above. As we can see now, the situation was further aggravated by the destruction of the pan-European gas pipelines. This is something otherworldly altogether, but we are nevertheless witnessing these sad developments.

Global power is exactly what the so-called West has at stake in its game. But this game is certainly dangerous, bloody and, I would say, dirty. It denies the sovereignty of countries and peoples, their identity and uniqueness, and tramples upon other states’ interests. In any case, even if denial is the not the word used, they are doing it in real life. No one, except those who create these rules I have mentioned is entitled to retain their identity: everyone else must comply with these rules…

This brings me to the key point all of us have gathered here for. Is it not equally important to maintain cultural, social, political and civilisational diversity?

At the same time, the smoothing out and erasure of all and any differences is essentially what the modern West is all about. What stands behind this? First of all, it is the decaying creative potential of the West and a desire to restrain and block the free development of other civilisations.

There is also an openly mercantile interest, of course. By imposing their values, consumption habits and standardisation on others, our opponents – I will be careful with words – are trying to expand markets for their products. The goal on this track is, ultimately, very primitive. It is notable that the West proclaims the universal value of its culture and worldview. Even if they do not say so openly, which they actually often do, they behave as if this is so, that it is a fact of life, and the policy they pursue is designed to show that these values must be unconditionally accepted by all other members of the international community…

It is simply necessary to understand clearly that, as I have already said before, two Wests – at least two and maybe more but two at least – the West of traditional, primarily Christian values, freedom, patriotism, great culture and now Islamic values as well – a substantial part of the population in many Western countries follows Islam. This West is close to us in something. We share with it common, even ancient roots. But there is also a different West – aggressive, cosmopolitan, and neocolonial. It is acting as a tool of neoliberal elites. Naturally, Russia will never reconcile itself to the dictates of this West.

I suspect the neoliberal lords of the Second West will find it rather easier to cancel Kanye West than the man with the finger on the trigger of the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. This is not a man who doesn’t understand exactly “who, in fact, is at the helm of the world, who runs it, and whether the world is amenable to being run at all.” And it is also clear that Vladimir Putin is a man who understands that his nation’s war with the Second West is not entirely one of this world.

On a very related note, even the globalist media is belatedly beginning to realize that the Second West’s geostrategic position is nowhere nearly as strong as they previously believed.

Our familiar system of global political and economic alliances is shifting, and nothing has made this change clearer than the varied reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the United States and its closest allies in Europe and Asia have imposed tough economic sanctions on Moscow, 87 percent of the world’s population has declined to follow us. Economic sanctions have united our adversaries in shared resistance. Less predictably, the outbreak of Cold War II, has also led countries that were once partners or non-aligned to become increasingly multi-aligned.

History never ended, but the neoliberal rules-based “New” world order is observably in trouble.

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Mailvox: Intellectual Stimulation

I have a number of friends who struggle to find some kind of intellectual fulfillment outside of their work. They were raised loving school, pursuing growing their mind, etc., and are stuck in this lie that the only way to continue that stimulation and that growth is by having a job. Do you have any advice for those (women especially) who have this deep drive to keep learning, but want to be moms and are worried that their intellectual side won’t be stimulated in the home?

Yes. Read a fucking book. Then, once you’ve finished it, read another one. If you’re intellectually fulfilled by sitting in an office or a classroom, you’re literally retarded.

It’s probably not an accident that no one ever asked me to write an advice column.

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On Returning to Twitter

I don’t see any reason to do so. SocialGalactic is my primary social media, and for public social media I have more followers on Gab than I did on Twitter – 34.5k vs 33k. I see Musk’s antics as just another exercise in gatekeeping, since Parler, Gettr, and TruthSocial have all abysmally failed.. As evidence, consider the way in which those who were never banned or censored are pushing the “come back in, the water’s safe now” narrative in the wake of Musk’s purchase.

The ticket-takers always support the gatekeepers. The charlatans back the frauds.

Caveat: I won’t criticize businesses that utilize every possible channel to reach their customers. Especially in this age of dysfunctional email, any means of communication should be utilized. Arkhaven and Castalia have had Twitter accounts all along, so we’ll probably make use of them again at some point.

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Signs of a Winter Offensive

Col. Douglas Macgregor observes an ongoing buildup of Russian forces that suggests a winter offensive is planned.

The stupefying air of self-righteousness the Biden administration assumes when it attacks erstwhile strategic partners such as Saudi Arabia or delivers moralizing lectures to Beijing’s leadership, or when its media surrogates express contempt for the Russian state, is downright dangerous. Political figures in Washington are ready to indulge any transgression if it is committed in the name of destroying Russia. They do not view U.S. foreign policy in the context of a larger strategy, nor do they comprehend Russia’s capacity to hurt the United States, a bizarre judgment of Russia’s actual military and economic potential.

The ongoing buildup of 700,000 Russian forces with modern equipment in Western Russia, Eastern Ukraine and Belorussia is a direct consequence of Moscow’s decision to adopt an elastic, strategic defense of the territories it seized in the opening months of the war. It was a wise, though politically unpopular choice in Russia. Yet, the strategy has succeeded. Ukrainian losses have been catastrophic and by November, Russian Forces will be in a position to strike a knockout blow.

Today, there are rumors in the media that Kiev may be under pressure to launch more counterattacks against Russian defenses in Kherson (Southern Ukraine) before the midterm elections in November. At this point, expending what little remains of Ukraine’s life blood to expel Russian forces from Ukraine is hardly synonymous with the preservation of the Ukrainian state. It’s also doubtful that further sacrifices by Ukrainians will assist the Biden administration in the midterm elections.

The truth is Moscow’s redline concerning Ukrainian entry into NATO was always real. Eastern Ukraine and Crimea were always predominantly Russian in language, culture, history, and political orientation. Europe’s descent into economic oblivion this winter is also real, as is support for Russia’s cause in China and India and Moscow’s rising military strength.

Remember, the globalist media operates in terms of a) daily and b) weekly news cycles. As such, they are completely incapable of correctly analyzing events that take months to unfold. While its “Ukraine is Winning” Narrative is obviously false and openly mocked, the full extent to which it is untrue will not be understood until the winter offensive is well underway.

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