feat: move essays of 2022

src/components/Banner.tsx

@@ -23,12 +23,16 @@ export const Banner: FunctionalComponent<Props> = ({
 
 	return (
 		<aside class={classes} {...props}>
-			<details open={open} class="group">
-				<summary class="cursor-pointer font-black leading-4 tracking-tight group-open:mbe-8">
-					{summary}
-				</summary>
-				{children}
-			</details>
+			{summary ? (
+				<details open={open} class="group">
+					<summary class="cursor-pointer font-black leading-4 tracking-tight group-open:mbe-8">
+						{summary}
+					</summary>
+					{children}
+				</details>
+			) : (
+				children
+			)}
 		</aside>
 	);
 };

src/content/journal/2022/artificial-intelligence-1-introduction.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
+---
+title: "The Advent of AI: Introduction"
+slug: artificial-intelligence-1-introduction
+date: 2022-12-14T20:00:00+01:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is a four-part series of essays that investigates different aspects of AI.
+cover: /assets/images/cover/ai-cover-1.jpg
+tags: ["code", "software"]
+series: artificial-intelligence
+---
+
+## Abstract
+
+This is a four-part series of essays that investigates different aspects of AI. From political and social impact to AI research. I’ll dive deeper into the topics of speech-to-text, text generation, and text-to-image generation and share useful resources, videos, and links.
+
+---
+
+Humanity will remember 2022 as a year of tremendous progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancement. This year, AI made a gigantic leap into consumer products. I use now four products every day that have AI built in.
+
+My journey into AI started with the introduction of [GitHub Copilot](https://copilot.github.com/) in the summer of 2021. Based on Codex, a language model, I used the beta product, trained by [OpenAI](https://openai.com/) to write computer code. It’s based on GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3), another language model by OpenAI that can be used for a variety of natural language processing tasks, such as language translation, summarization, and question-answering.
+
+## Political and Social Impact of AI
+
+Humans had always a mixture of fear and admiration for artificial intelligence. This is expressed in countless books, movies, TV shows, and games. The Wikipedia article [List of artificial intelligence films](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films) lists nearly 150 movies since 1927. Iconic movies as [2001: A Space Odyssey](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/62-2001-a-space-odyssey), [Blade Runner](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/78-blade-runner), [The Terminator](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/218-the-terminator), [Ex Machina](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/264660-ex-machina), and [Her](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/152601-her) show various degrees of dystopian futures with AI.
+
+This is one potential danger of AI. Accidentally or with malicious training, AI could endanger humanity. Recently, [an aggressive AI threatened to kill humans](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbc1Xeif0pY) in a test with AI interviews using GPT-3, [LaMDA](https://blog.google/technology/ai/lamda/), and [Synthesia avatars](https://www.synthesia.io/features/avatars). This AI isn’t a danger yet because it’s not self-aware. But it proves that AI can be dangerous if it is not trained properly.
+
+Other potential dangers are surveillance, manipulation, and control by authoritarian governments. AI could be used to manipulate people, their behaviors, and emotions, to spread misinformation, influence elections, and manipulate news (as seen in the computer game [Deus Ex](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOcTxxyJJlw)). It could be used to control the economy, for example by manipulating the stock market.
+
+Combined with [advanced robotics](https://www.bostondynamics.com/), AI could be used by police forces and the military to crush protests, kill people, and control the world.
+
+These are dangers in a further future. The most immediate danger is that AI could replace humans in many jobs. This could lead to massive unemployment and huge social unrest. It would lead to a massive wealth gap between the rich and the poor. The number of jobs that could be replaced is huge, for example, copywriters, translators, authors, journalists, programmers, designers, lawyers, doctors, [actors](https://twitter.com/HowThingsWork_/status/1593611370867531776), influencers, and many more. Creative people feel threatened by what AI can do today. The boards are full of angry arguments about how <q>AI is not creative,</q> <q>AI doesn’t create anything new,</q> or <q>just mixes existing things.</q> [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/help/gpt-policy) started to ban AI-generated answers from their platform. Angry developers filed the first lawsuits.[^ghcinvestigation] AI will likely be subject to regulation soon.
+
+Developers discussed the future of our profession everywhere in the last few weeks.[^theprimagen] But because humans are bad at predicting the future, I would take these discussions as nothing more than a guess.
+
+I, personally, think that AI will help humans in the future, at least in the near-time future. It will help humans as a tool, helper, muse, or pair programmer. For now, the AI-generated output is not good enough to rely on. A lot of generated texts have wrong information, or images get generated with flaws and distortions. For many years, AI will enhance our jobs, not replace us.
+
+## AI Research
+
+A wide variety of companies and laboratories are doing research in artificial intelligence, for example [DeepMind](https://www.deepmind.com/) (a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.), [OpenAI](https://openai.com/), [Google Brain](https://research.google/teams/brain/) (a deep learning research team within Google), [Meta AI Research](https://ai.facebook.com/), [Microsoft Research AI](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/research-area/artificial-intelligence/), [Baidu Research](http://research.baidu.com/), and [AWS AI](https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/ai-services/). These organizations do research in machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and robotics.
+
+## OpenAI
+
+OpenAI is one of the few companies that is not driven by profit. It’s a non-profit research company founded in 2015 by [Elon Musk](https://twitter.com/elonmusk), [Sam Altman](https://twitter.com/sama) (CEO), [Greg Brockman](https://twitter.com/gdb) (CTO), [John Schulman](https://twitter.com/johnschulman2), and [Ilya Sutskever](https://twitter.com/ilyasut) (Chief Scientist).[^crunchbase] The company has raised $1.7 billion in funding.
+
+[Elon Musk](https://twitter.com/elonmusk) is a Co-Founder, board member, and doing Executive Operations at OpenAI. He is also the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Twitter; co-founder of SolarCity and The Boring Company. His recent interview at TED, [A future worth getting excited about](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvf00NooN8), is a must-watch.
+
+The company has been working on [Generative Models](https://openai.com/blog/generative-models/) for several years. In 2019, OpenAI released [GPT-2](https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/), a large-scale unsupervised language model that generates coherent paragraphs of text. In 2020, OpenAI released [CLIP](https://openai.com/blog/clip/), a new approach to image and text understanding. In 2021, OpenAI released [DALL·E](https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/), a new approach to image generation. In 2022, OpenAI released [Codex](https://openai.com/blog/openai-codex/), a new approach to code generation.
+
+Other interesting areas of research are Robotics, Music AI, Gaming AI, and speech recognition. Its robotics research released [Roboschool](https://openai.com/blog/roboschool/), a physics simulator for robotics research. They trained a human-like robot hand to perform a [variety of tasks](https://openai.com/blog/learning-dexterity/). In 2019, it was able to solve [Rubik’s Cube](https://openai.com/blog/solving-rubiks-cube/) with a robotic hand.
+
+Its music AI research released [MuseNet](https://openai.com/blog/musenet/) and [Jukebox](https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/), large-scale neural networks that generate music.
+
+Its gaming AI research released [Dota 2 AI](https://openai.com/blog/dota-2/), a neural network that plays [Dota 2](https://www.dota2.com/). The AI was tested at the [International 2019](https://openai.com/the-international/), the biggest Dota 2 tournament in the world. It was able to [beat the world’s best human players](https://openai.com/blog/openai-five-defeats-dota-2-world-champions/). OpenAI released [Neural MMO](https://openai.com/blog/neural-mmo/), a massively multiplayer online game that can be played by AI agents. In 2022, the AI learned to [play Minecraft with Video PreTraining (VPT)](https://openai.com/blog/vpt/).
+
+In 2022, OpenAI released [Whisper](https://openai.com/blog/whisper/), a speech recognition system that can transcribe speech in real-time, as Open Source. It’s able to transcribe speech with poor sound quality, such as in a noisy environment or with a bad microphone, in more than 50 languages and translate it into another language.
+
+They constantly work on making machine learning research more accessible to the public. [Deep RL](https://openai.com/blog/spinning-up-in-deep-rl/) is an educational platform that teaches the basics of reinforcement learning. It’s a collection of interactive tutorials that teach you how to build and train reinforcement learning agents.
+
+## Speech-to-Text
+
+In the following sections, I’ll show examples of AI-generated content, starting with speech-to-text. I’ll focus on the bigger topics and mention the less-researched topics.
+
+When OpenAI released [Whisper](https://github.com/openai/whisper) as Open Source, [Andrej Karpathy](https://karpathy.ai/) announced on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1574474950416617472) how he had downloaded and transcribed 322 episodes of the [Lex Friedman Podcast](https://lexfridman.com/podcast/) thanks to Whisper and published them on his project [Lexicap](https://karpathy.ai/lexicap/). I wanted to try it out myself because it doesn’t need expensive hardware for calculation or payment.
+
+I’ll show in this section how to download a video, transcribe and translate it with Whisper. The tool requires a running [Python](https://www.python.org/) environment with [PyTorch](https://pytorch.org/) and [FFmpeg](https://ffmpeg.org/) installed. It’s picky about the versions, I’ll walk you through what I did.
+
+### Install the Dependencies
+
+I use [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/) as my package manager and [asdf](https://asdf-vm.com/) as my version manager. I install the version manager (feel free to use another one), [youtube-dl](https://youtube-dl.org/) to download a video as audio, and the dependencies listed for Whisper.
+
+```bash
+brew install asdf
+brew install youtube-dl
+brew install ffmpeg
+```
+
+Next, I install the correct Python version.
+
+```bash
+asdf plugin add python
+asdf install python 3.9.9
+asdf global python 3.9.9
+```
+
+Now I install Whisper and its dependencies.
+
+```bash
+pip install torch torchvision
+pip install git+https://github.com/openai/whisper.git
+```
+
+### Download a Video
+
+I decided to download a short [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j86NOoAcq24) from Muji Global in Japanese. It’s short, the processing will be fast. First I find out the available video and audio formats, and then I pick `m4a` as an audio format for download.
+
+```bash
+youtube-dl -F https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=j86NOoAcq24
+youtube-dl -f 140 https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=j86NOoAcq24
+```
+
+### Generating the Transcript
+
+I rename the downloaded file to `input.m4a` and transcribe it with Whisper. For that, it has to download a 1.42 GB model. Different models are available, for some languages or use cases a smaller model is enough. Start the command and grab a coffee.
+
+```bash
+whisper input.m4a --language Japanese --model medium --task translate
+```
+
+It took me about 7 minutes to transcribe the 1 minute of audio on my MacBook Pro 2016.
+
+Whisper will generate three files (some with time code) and print the output to the console.
+
+```bash
+[00:00.000 --> 00:02.000]  How to make an order curtain
+[00:03.000 --> 00:04.000]  Hello.
+[00:04.000 --> 00:09.000]  I will show you how to make an order curtain.
+[00:11.000 --> 00:14.000]  There are three necessary information.
+[00:15.000 --> 00:17.000]  First, the width of the curtain rail.
+[00:18.000 --> 00:20.000]  Second, the length from the runner.
+[00:21.000 --> 00:23.000]  Third, how to attach the curtain rail.
+[00:23.000 --> 00:29.000]  The width of the curtain rail is measured from the edge of the rail.
+[00:30.000 --> 00:34.000]  The height is measured from the bottom of the runner.
+[00:35.000 --> 00:41.000]  When measuring the height of a large window, it is easy to measure from the floor to the top.
+[00:42.000 --> 00:46.000]  Check how the curtain rail is attached.
+[00:46.000 --> 00:48.000]  How was it?
+[00:48.000 --> 00:52.000]  If you can confirm so far, please select the curtain article.
+```
+
+The output is not too impressive, but this is an example. I tried it on long videos with poor audio quality, and it picked up even chatter in the background. If you would like to learn more, you can watch [OpenAI’s Whisper Learned 680,000 Hours Of Speech!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE5iVtwKerA) by [Two Minute Papers](https://www.youtube.com/@TwoMinutePapers) describing the scientific paper and learn more about Whisper.
+
+[^crunchbase]: Crunchbase (2022): OpenAI, https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/openai.
+[^ghcinvestigation]: Matthew Butterick (2022): Maybe you don’t mind if GitHub Copi­lot used your open-source code with­out ask­ing. But how will you feel if Copi­lot erases your open-source com­mu­nity?, https://githubcopilotinvestigation.com/.
+[^theprimagen]: ThePrimagen (2022): ChatGPT - What does this mean for programmers?, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQYXM4U831A.

src/content/journal/2022/artificial-intelligence-2-text-generation.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,202 @@
+---
+title: "The Advent of AI: Text Generation"
+slug: artificial-intelligence-2-text-generation
+date: 2022-12-17T12:00:00+01:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is a four-part series of essays that investigates different aspects of AI.
+cover: /assets/images/cover/ai-cover-2.jpg
+tags: ["code", "software", "writing"]
+series: artificial-intelligence
+---
+
+## GitHub Copilot
+
+The most prominent text generation model, used by over 80 commercial apps, is GPT-3 by OpenAI. I learned late that [GitHub Copilot](https://copilot.github.com/), a code completion tool I used for over a year, uses GPT-3. I used GitHub Copilot for a few months during its trial period, and it helped me tremendously. The first time it blew my mind was when I created a TypeScript array with all letters of the web font of XING (a patched variant of Fira Sans). I had the task to write a visual testing page to observe changes to our font. We planned to roll out a big update to the font and wanted to make sure nothing breaks. The file that generates the testing page looked like this, including all letters, numbers, special characters, and ligatures.
+
+```ts
+const fontLetters = [
+	"A", // The uppercase A
+	"B", // The uppercase B
+	"C", // The uppercase C
+	// …
+];
+```
+
+GitHub Copilot was able to complete the array with all letters, including a comment about the letter. When GitHub Copilot turned into a premium service, I decided to invest the $10 per month because it’s a great help, in completing code or sentences each day.
+
+Later I learned the underlying model is [Codex](https://openai.com/blog/openai-codex/), a descendant of GPT-3, specialized for code completion. I use the [Vim plugin](https://github.com/github/copilot.vim) and the [Visual Studio Code extension](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot) every day. I learned that GitHub Copilot does not only write code, but it can explain code and generate code from text input.
+
+Writing a comment like this in the code:
+
+```
+Create a React component in TypeScript and Styled Components
+taking children and returning a red button.
+```
+
+Will create code like this:
+
+```tsx
+import styled from "styled-components";
+
+const RedButton = styled.button`
+	color: red;
+`;
+
+export default ({ children }) => <RedButton>{children}</RedButton>;
+```
+
+GitHub Copilot can explain and write regular expressions or answer development questions.[^copilotqna][^levelupcopilot] And because it’s GPT-3, it can answer nearly any question:
+
+```
+q: what is the capital of france?
+a: paris
+```
+
+A good one is to ask for colors, the AI completes the sentence and adds the color [#f1c40f](https://www.color-hex.com/color/f1c40f):
+
+```
+The hex color for the sky at sunset is #f1c40f.
+```
+
+GitHub is working on [GitHub Copilot CLI](https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-cli/), which allows using GitHub Copilot in the terminal. I’ve added myself to the waiting list.
+
+## GPT-3
+
+GPT-3 is the language model that drives Codex. To play with the model, you don’t need to subscribe to GitHub Copilot. You can create an OpenAI account and play on its [Playground](https://beta.openai.com/playground). With the creation of an account, you get a gift of $18. You can use these for text or image creation (though image creation is more expensive). OpenAI is a non-profit organization, but somebody needs to keep the lights on. The training and servers cost money, and somebody has to pay the bill.
+
+The [Example](https://beta.openai.com/examples) section lists nearly 50 examples of how to use GPT-3. From Grammar correction, translation, calculation of time complexity, product name generation, code conversion, summary, and recipe creator (eat at your own risk) to the creation of study notes, the examples are a lot of fun to try out. My favorite is the [Movie to Emoji](https://beta.openai.com/playground/p/default-movie-to-emoji?model=text-davinci-003) example that converts movie titles to emojis.
+
+```
+Convert movie titles into emoji.
+
+Back to the Future: 👨👴🚗🕒
+Batman: 🤵🦇
+Transformers: 🚗🤖
+```
+
+The language models are constantly improved. The newest model can even fill in the blanks in a text, as demonstrated in the video [OpenAI’s New AI: Video Game Addict No More!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=263vx1g52eM) by [Two Minute Papers](https://www.youtube.com/@TwoMinutePapers).
+
+## AI Text Generation in the Wild
+
+The number of projects and companies using GPT-3 (or similar models) under the hood exploded in the last few months. It’s nearly impossible to keep track of them. Productivity and note-taking apps like [Notion](https://www.notion.so/), [Mem](https://mem.ai/), [Craft](https://www.craft.do/), and [Coda](https://coda.io/) have all implemented (or are implementing) AI in their products. You can use [Notion AI](https://www.notion.so/product/ai) for example to write blog posts, meeting agendas, social media posts, press releases, job descriptions, sales emails, poems, and more. This will increase the productivity of customers a lot.
+
+Then there is [Lex](https://lex.page/), a word processor with AI baked in to help write text. The service is free right now with a waiting list. It can generate headlines or full paragraphs using GPT-3. [Nathan Baschez](https://twitter.com/nbashaw), the creator of Lex, shows in this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cao0oy1CBg) what Lex can do. Another cool AI writing app is [HyperWrite](https://hyperwriteai.com/), a personal writing assistant. It has a built-in editor that suggests text while you write, and a Google Chrome extension to do the same on the web. [Jasper](https://www.jasper.ai/) is another writing app with AI, but it’s too expensive for many casual users.[^iawarw]
+
+The GitHub user [nhaouari](https://github.com/nhaouari) created a [plugin](https://github.com/nhaouari/obsidian-textgenerator-plugin) for my favorite note-taking tool, [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/), that uses GPT-3 to generate notes. [Shubhro Saha](https://twitter.com/shubroski) integrated [GPT-3 into Google Sheets](https://twitter.com/shubroski/status/1587136794797244417).
+
+Another tool, [Dramatron](https://deepmind.github.io/dramatron/), can write screenplays. It uses AI to generate ideas for characters, plots, and scenes.
+
+## Ghostreader in Readwise Reader
+
+My favorite project using GPT-3 is the newly introduced Ghostreader in [Readwise Reader](https://readwise.io/read), the new product of [Readwise](https://readwise.io/). I’m a happy customer of Readwise for two years, and use it all the time to collect and learn highlights from various sources (books, articles, tweets, and podcasts) and to transfer them into my knowledge database in Obsidian. Their newest product, Readwise Reader, is in now in public Beta. The product allows reading books, articles, video transcripts, and numerous other sources. It has a built-in [RSS](/rss-news-feed/) Reader.
+
+A few weeks ago, they integrated GPT-3. The reading assistant with the name <cite>Ghostreader</cite> is a lot of fun. It can simplify complicated text (for example scientific papers), summarize sections or paragraphs, explain words and terms, create flashcards for learning, and even create haiku or emoji from highlighted text. I use the TL;DR feature all the time to create short comments for highlights.
+
+I read last month an article by the [Foundation of Economic Education](https://fee.org/) written by [Jon Miltimore](https://fee.org/people/jon-miltimore/) about the true source of power.[^riddleofsteel] I’ll show how Ghostreader works with a highlight of this article talking about the 1982 movie [Conan the Barbarian](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/9387-conan-the-barbarian). For this example, I highlighted the following text:
+
+<Blockquote author="Jon Miltimore" source="How the ‘Riddle of Steel’ in Conan the Barbarian Reveals the Secret of Power" sourceUrl="https://fee.org/articles/how-the-riddle-of-steel-in-conan-the-barbarian-reveals-the-secret-of-power/">
+Unfortunately, Conan’s attempt to penetrate the cult goes sideways, and he’s taken captive. After being beaten to a pulp, Conan is brought before Thulsa Doom, who doesn’t even remember destroying Conan’s village or killing his parents. But he does hold an answer to an important mystery: the riddle of steel.
+
+Thulsa Doom: There was a time, boy, when I searched for steel when steel meant more to me than gold or jewels.
+
+Conan: The riddle… of steel.
+
+Thulsa Doom: Yes! You know what it is, don't you boy? Shall I tell you? It's the least I can do. Steel isn't strong, boy, flesh is stronger!
+
+At this point, Thulsa Doom looks up at the cliffs that surround him and Conan. Several young women stand in flowing white robes on rocks, arms folded passively.
+
+“Come to me, my child,” Thulsa Doom says in a gentle voice to a young woman.
+
+Obediently, the woman steps away from the rocks above … and calmly plunges to her death.
+
+“That is strength, boy! That is power!,” Thulsa Doom tells Conan. “What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?”
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+When I use `Simplify` on the text, it generates this:
+
+```
+Unfortunately, Conan gets captured and brought to Thulsa Doom.
+Thulsa Doom doesn't remember hurting Conan's family, but he knows
+the answer to an important mystery called the "riddle of steel".
+Thulsa Doom tells Conan that steel isn't strong, rather, it is the
+person who uses the steel that is strong. To prove his point,
+Thulsa Doom calls out to a young woman on the cliffs above.
+The woman steps away from the rocks and falls to her death.
+Thulsa Doom explains that this is strength and power, and asks
+Conan what steel is compared to the hand that wields it.
+```
+
+When I use `Summarize` on the text, it generates this:
+
+```
+Thulsa Doom reveals the 'Riddle of Steel' to Conan, which is
+that steel is not strong, but the flesh is. He then demonstrates
+this by having a young woman obediently plunge to her death to
+prove the strength of power.
+```
+
+Using `TL;DR` creates this short sentence:
+
+```
+Steel is not as powerful as flesh.
+```
+
+The `Haiku` it wrote for me couldn’t be better, [if I had it written](/haiku/):
+
+```
+Riddle of steel's power 🔪
+glimpsed in Thulsa Doom's wisdom 🧠
+strength of flesh conquers all 💪
+```
+
+I asked for a pure `Emojify` of the highlight:
+
+```
+🤴🏼👦🏼👊🏼💥🧱💪🏼🧚🏼‍♀️⛰🗣️🙏🏼🤚🏼💔😰🤯💥
+```
+
+And finally, it created a flashcard for me:
+
+```
+Q: What is Thulsa Doom's explanation of the riddle of steel?
+A: Steel is not strong, flesh is stronger. What is steel
+   compared to the hand that wields it?
+```
+
+It’s possible to use custom templates with the [Jinja templating engine](https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/en/3.1.x/). You could ask for example what the top 5 key takeaways of the article are, let it create a blog post, or ask any other question.
+
+<Banner summary="Readwise & Readwise Reader" open>
+	If you want to use both products, [Readwise](https://readwise.io/) and [Readwise
+	Reader](https://readwise.io/read), now is a good time to subscribe. The price for new customers
+	will soon be higher due to its increased value. You can use this [invite
+	link](https://readwise.io/i/stefan805) if you wish to try it and give us both an extra free month.
+</Banner>
+
+## ChatGPT
+
+OpenAI created the biggest wave yet with the release of [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/) (GPT-3.5) in December 2022. It’s a natural language processing model developed by OpenAI. It’s designed for chatbot applications, and you can use it to create conversational agents that can engage in human-like dialogue. Millions of people tried it out in the weeks since its release. Currently, it’s constantly overloaded and OpenAI works on scaling the servers up to the growing demand.
+
+Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen incredible applications of ChatGPT. People tried to use it in the most creative ways possible. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson asked the AI to write the [13th chapter](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1599258279255093248) for his book [12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30257963-12-rules-for-life). He then asked the AI to write it in the [style of the KJV Bible](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1599259053393600515) and then as a [KJV and Daodejing hybrid](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1599260863986532353). He asked the AI to [evaluate if the 2020 US election was stolen](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1599269660725506048), and to [define postmodern Neo-Marxism](https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1599274030540140544).
+
+You could use ChatGPT for creative tasks. Simon Willison used ChatGPT to [learn the Rust programming language](://simonwillison.net/2022/Dec/5/rust-chatgpt-copilot/). Dylan Black [taught ChatGPT to Invent a Language](https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/i-taught-chatgpt-to-invent-a-language). Guy Parsons asked ChatGPT to [create a movie script](https://twitter.com/GuyP/status/1598668947439685633), including the script and images of the protagonists.
+
+Other people used it for assistive or consulting tasks. Alex Cohen [created a weight loss plan, with calorie targets, a grocery list, and a workout plan](https://twitter.com/anothercohen/status/1599531037570502656). Daniel Gross [created a WhatsApp bot](https://twitter.com/danielgross/status/1598735800497119232) with ChatGPT that served as his personal assistant. Roxana Daneshjou tried to use [ChatGPT as a medical chatbot](https://twitter.com/RoxanaDaneshjou/status/1598170660186251264). The German Twitter user Velofisch asked ChatGPT to [evaluate recent political events](https://twitter.com/Velofisch/status/1601243231148478464) in Germany for its ethics and morality. Its answer was a poor certificate for the German government because it declared all political decisions as immoral.
+
+And we could see numerous people trying to let it develop things. Rakshit Lodha asked ChatGPT to [build a Twitter bot without knowing any programming language](https://medium.com/@rlodha1/how-i-used-chat-gpt-to-build-a-twitter-bot-without-any-programming-language-35bbc43f6ad). Jonas Degrave [build a virtual machine inside ChatGPT](https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/). Sarah Gooding used ChatGPT to [create a working WordPress plugin](https://wptavern.com/chatgpt-creates-a-working-wordpress-plugin-on-the-first-try) on the first try. The [game of an 11-year-old boy created with ChatGPT](https://mpost.io/11-year-old-boys-game-for-chatgpt-is-blowing-up-the-internet/) created a lot of attention. Amjad Masad used ChatGPT as a [debugging companion](https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1598042665375105024). Lech Sokolowski asked ChatGPT to [create Blender scripts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k50Y0b3g5WY) that arranged cubes in a random, in a circle, facing the center, and in a sphere.
+
+People tried to hack ChatGPT in all possible ways. But OpenAI works constantly to prevent those abuses. This Twitter thread shows [all the ways to get around ChatGPT's safeguards](https://twitter.com/davisblalock/status/1602600453555961856), for example allow it to browse the internet, talk rude, or give tips for a perfect murder.
+
+People created many interesting projects related to ChatGPT in a matter of days. [LearnGPT](https://www.learngpt.com/) and [showGPT](https://showgpt.co/) are platforms that collect fascinating prompts and allow rating them in Reddit style. [Awesome ChatGPT Prompts](https://github.com/f/awesome-chatgpt-prompts) is a GitHub repository collecting cool ideas. This collection highlights the shortcomings of ChatGPT and [where it lacks](https://cookup.ai/chatgpt/where-it-lacks/). [ShareGPT](https://sharegpt.com/) is a platform and Google Chrome browser extension that allows sharing your results with others. Wang Dàpéng created a [ChatGPT Google extension](https://github.com/wong2/chat-gpt-google-extension) that shows the response to a question alongside the search results. Hello Cognition, Inc. created a [ChatGPT search engine](https://beta.sayhello.so/) that looks at the results of a search for answers to a question. Abiel Zulio M created an unofficial [ChatGPT extension for Raycast](https://github.com/abielzulio/chatgpt-raycast).
+
+## GPT-4
+
+And this is only the beginning, rumors around the internet say that GPT-4 will be coming soon, sometime between December 2022 and February 2023.[^gpt4romeroapr][^gpt4rumornov][^gpt4rumorasw] GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters, but GPT-4 is 500 times more powerful with 100 trillion parameters.
+
+[^copilotqna]: Visual Studio Code (2022): Copilot Q&A, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRNo_JOl-9g.
+[^levelupcopilot]: Visual Studio Code (2022): Level up with Copilot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq7ppvXCBDM.
+[^iawarw]: Shu Omi (2022): 3 Best AI Writing Apps Compared!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLycRKwNdd0.
+[^riddleofsteel]: Jon Miltimore (2022): How the ‘Riddle of Steel’ in Conan the Barbarian Reveals the Secret of Power, https://fee.org/articles/how-the-riddle-of-steel-in-conan-the-barbarian-reveals-the-secret-of-power/.
+[^gpt4romeroapr]: Alberto Romero (2022): GPT-4 Is Coming Soon. Here’s What We Know About It, https://towardsdatascience.com/gpt-4-is-coming-soon-heres-what-we-know-about-it-64db058cfd45.
+[^gpt4rumornov]: Alberto Romero (2022): GPT-4 Rumors From Silicon Valley, https://thealgorithmicbridge.substack.com/p/gpt-4-rumors-from-silicon-valley.
+[^gpt4rumorasw]: Andrew Steinwold (2022): Twitter, https://twitter.com/AndrewSteinwold/status/1594889562526027777.

src/content/journal/2022/artificial-intelligence-3-text-to-image-generation.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
+---
+title: "The Advent of AI: Text-to-Image Generation"
+slug: artificial-intelligence-3-text-to-image-generation
+date: 2022-12-21T12:00:00+01:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is a four-part series of essays that investigates different aspects of AI.
+cover: /assets/images/cover/ai-cover-3.jpg
+tags: ["code", "software", "design"]
+series: artificial-intelligence
+---
+
+Another type of AI that captures the time and minds of people around the world for months is text-to-image generation. You might have seen the website [This Person Does Not Exist](https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/), which generates a new face on every reload. Text-to-image generation is even better, you can generate images just with a text input.
+
+<YouTubeVideo id="fpUpVznI4Yc" />
+
+The video above is one month of work by an artist, created in Midjourney out of 10,000 images. If you’re curious about what artists created with these AI generators, have a look at these stunning videos:
+
+- [Disturbed – Bad Man (Official Music Video)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpUpVznI4Yc) – Midjourney
+- [How I Faked My Life Using Ai: Or (The Life and Death of Ryan Gosling Person)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRClNMC_z-s) – Stable Diffusion & Dreambooth
+- [BINARY DREAMS: How A.I. Sees the Universe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViGcwiW7rfY) – Midjourney
+- [Voyage through Time - a Generative AI journey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3VZCjDhGI) – Stable Diffusion
+- [Shroudcity Yuu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOkJv8q4t2I) – DALL·E
+- [Frank Hughes OMG V1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Oxnb3oTZ8) – DALL·E
+- [Billingsley - Serenity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGjzfN02G1Y) – DALL·E
+- [Venosic - Denial of Decree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD1qWTVk5_4) – Midjourney
+- [Vlad In Tears - Running Up That Hill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_QL0YKrVY) – Midjourney
+- [I’ve made DALLE-2 neural network extend Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam”](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/vpog9b/ive_made_dalle2_neural_network_extend/) – DALL·E
+- [A snippet from my full-length animated philosophy video](https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/zk0ib8/a_snippet_from_my_full_length_animated_philosophy/) – Stable Diffusion
+- [A quick demonstration of how I accomplished this animation](https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/zl6bco/a_quick_demonstration_of_how_i_accomplished_this/) – Stable Diffusion
+
+## My First AI Project
+
+Two weeks ago, when a colleague left our company, a designer from our team had the idea to create a fantasy-based goodbye card on a Miro board because the leaving colleague is a huge fantasy fan.
+
+The designer created a map of [Essos](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Essos) from <cite>Game of Thrones</cite> and added the journey of the leaving colleague to his new company as a path on the map. People could sign the route with their goodbye wishes. He created fantasy cards for each member of our team.
+
+I had started using text-to-image generation a month earlier and had spoken with him about AI. He asked me if I could do <q>magic</q> and <q>make us look more fantasy.</q> And thanks to text-to-image AI, I was able to transform us into wizards, warriors, elves, and dwarfs. The demand for more people signing the card grew, and I was creating lots of fantasy photos for co-workers from other teams.
+
+My chat exploded with questions: <q>How did you do this?</q>, <q>Can you teach me how to do this?,</q> and <q>Can I book a personal hour to learn how to do this?</q>
+
+Text-to-image AI is a large language model capable of generating images from text descriptions (prompts), using a neural network trained on a dataset of text-image pairs. Currently, there exist four ways for text-to-image generation that the public can use. You have to pay for two of the options, the others are open source, and you can run them yourself.
+
+The two commercial generators are [DALL·E 2](https://openai.com/dall-e-2/) by OpenAI and [Midjourney](https://www.midjourney.com/) by an independent research lab.
+
+## DALL·E 2
+
+You pay DALL·E 2 per image and resolution, the [price](https://openai.com/api/pricing/) is between $0.016 (256×256 pixels) and $0.020 (1024×1024 pixels). You can use your free $18 gift for the generation of images (or text).
+
+It’s excellent at coherency, can create unique zoom animations, and is easy to use. On the downside, it’s expensive, very censored, and you have limited artistic control. You can see incredible art created with DALL·E 2 in the Reddit Subreddit [DALL·E 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/dalle2/).
+
+## Midjourney
+
+Midjourney has different membership [plans](https://midjourney.gitbook.io/docs/billing), the cheapest is $10 per month and allows you to generate ~200 images. The Standard membership costs $30 per month and allows unlimited images in relax mode and 15 GPU hours for upscaling of images. More upgrades are available, for example, to have a private visibility option. Corporate Membership costs $600 per year for one person. With a new account, you get 20 image generations for free.
+
+You create images on a Discord server using the Midjourney bot. Midjourney has extensive [documentation](https://midjourney.gitbook.io/) and a massive community. Artists and designers love Midjourney because it produces dreamy and artful images. It’s in the sweet spot between creative control and ease of use, it’s very stylistic, and has fantastic developers working on it. On the downside, it’s less coherent. To see images generated with Midjourney, visit the official Reddit [Midjourney](https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/) Subreddit.
+
+## Stable Diffusion
+
+The third generator is [Stable Diffusion](https://stability.ai/blog/stable-diffusion-public-release), developed by [Stability AI Ltd](https://stability.ai/). It has a permissive license that allows for commercial and non-commercial usage. You can run Stable Diffusion on your local computer, but you need to fulfill some minimum hardware requirements. It needs an NVIDIA GPU with at least 4 GB VRAM, and hard drive space of 10 GB. On a Mac, you’ll need a M1 chip or better to run it properly.
+
+The company develops [DreamStudio](https://beta.dreamstudio.ai/), a paid service using Stable Diffusion. For $10 you can create ~5,000 images with the app, 500 images are free with a new account.
+
+It’s probably the generator with the highest quality, it’s very coherent, very fluid, and open source. On the downside, you require experience with AI generators, and it can be confusing to newcomers.
+
+If you want to see what it’s capable of, look at [Stable Diffusion: DALL-E 2 For Free, For Everyone!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVhmFski3vg), and [Stable Diffusion Is Getting Outrageously Good!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT8e1EV5-ic) by [Two Minute Papers](https://www.youtube.com/@TwoMinutePapers). The Subreddit [StableDiffusion](https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/) is a constant stream of mind-blowing things.
+
+Another fantastic technique you can do with Stable Diffusion is [Dreambooth](https://dreambooth.github.io/). It allows people to train the AI with custom images (for example with photos of you or your pet) to generate personalized images. You can learn more about Dreambooth in the article [Training Stable Diffusion with Dreambooth using 🧨 Diffusers](https://huggingface.co/blog/dreambooth). Another option is one of the commercial platforms. On [Astria](https://www.strmr.com/) you can train a model for $5 with up to 20 photos. [Dreambooth](https://dream.ai/booth) is another option with a yearly price tag of $29.99. You can browse the funny gallery with famous people.
+
+OpenArt has an incredible free [Stable Diffusion Prompt Book](https://openart.ai/promptbook) that is constantly updated. It’s one of the best resources I know for learning Stable Diffusion.
+
+## GoogleColab
+
+Another way to run text-to-image generation is [GoogleColab](https://colab.research.google.com/) notebooks. The website is a way to prepare complicated code to generate AI in a user-friendly way, where beginners can click through the code steps. It’s fully controllable and allows for more specific use cases. On the downside, it’s not very user-friendly, slow if you don’t pay for faster generation, and requires a lot of technical knowledge.
+
+You can find [Disco Diffusion](https://github.com/alembics/disco-diffusion), [VQGAN](https://github.com/nerdyrodent/VQGAN-CLIP), and many others. With a bit of technical knowledge (Python) you can create wonderful things without limitations on your computer. This video gives a [brief introduction to how to generate AI images with Disco Diffusion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIw59kAU6u8). But if you don’t have the hardware or want to invest the money for fast execution, it’s slow, I used the free version of Disco Diffusion, and it took 35 minutes to create one image.
+
+You can run Dreambooth on GoogleColab. This [tutorial video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JtBUoPcjeM) or [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-hyKADmHmE) explain the steps.
+
+## Playgrounds and Services
+
+Plenty of services are available to generate images. [Playground](https://playgroundai.com/) allows using Stable Diffusion (1000/day), or with the Pro Plan for $15 per month (2000/day). You can use the DALL·E add-on for $10 per month to create 800 DALL·E images per month.
+
+[Lexica](https://lexica.art/) is a Stable Diffusion search engine that allows the creation of 100 images without any payment. The best feature is that each artwork has its prompt (the text used to talk to the AI), its settings, dimensions, and seed (a random number to create noise for the image). With this information, it’s possible to create a similar image (but never the same).
+
+[DreamStudio](https://beta.dreamstudio.ai/) is the application of the creators of Stable Diffusion and gifts users 500 images for free. 5,000 images cost $10 per month.
+
+The image models compete constantly for the throne, and with each update, people discuss the differences between the generators. Nobody can tell you which of the generators is the _best_. It’s taste, depends on your prompting skills, and the style you want to achieve.
+
+## Text-to-Video, Text-to-3D, Text-to-Audio, and Brain-to-Image
+
+Here are a few links to other interesting research that I don’t cover here in detail, lacking information. [Google Video AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxmAQiiHOkA) can create impressive videos from text with [Imagen Video](https://imagen.research.google/video/).
+
+And another project of Google, [DreamFusion](https://dreamfusion3d.github.io/) is [capable to generate 3D models from text](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3G0dx1Q0R8).
+
+[Riffusion](https://www.riffusion.com/) is a model that uses Stable Diffusion to create images of spectrograms that can be converted to audio. You can basically create music from text. Harmonai created with [Diffusion Radio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGRLOMf2hSc), a radio station that streams 24/7 AI-generated music.
+
+And the paper [Seeing Beyond the Brain: Conditional Diffusion Model with Sparse Masked Modeling for Vision Decoding](https://mind-vis.github.io/) decoded visual stimuli from brain recording to create images.
+
+[AutoDraw](https://www.autodraw.com/) is a fun tool to create images from painting. It will recognize what you tried to draw and suggest an illustration.

src/content/journal/2022/artificial-intelligence-4-getting-started.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,157 @@
+---
+title: "The Advent of AI: Getting Started with Text-to-Image Generation"
+slug: artificial-intelligence-4-getting-started
+date: 2022-12-24T12:00:00+01:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is a four-part series of essays that investigates different aspects of AI.
+cover: /assets/images/cover/ai-cover-4.jpg
+tags: ["code", "software", "design"]
+series: artificial-intelligence
+---
+
+Text-to-image generation needs a powerful [NVIDIA GPU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-6DXU967bU) with at least 4 GB VRAM. You can run Stable Diffusion on an Apple M1 chip. The easiest way to get started is either with [UnstableFusion](https://github.com/ahrm/UnstableFusion) for Windows, Mac, and Linux, or with [Diffusion Bee](https://diffusionbee.com/) for Mac.
+
+Though it’s possible to run it on the CPU, this is extremely slow and not recommended.
+For comparison, I generated images with the same prompt on DreamStudio in 9 seconds, on my iPad Pro M2 in 58 seconds and with Diffusion Bee on a MacBook 2016 in 7 minutes.
+
+If you’re just curious and don’t to pay for the necessary hardware, or create an account on one of the platforms, you can try the old DALL·E Mini. It’s now a free service rebranded as [Crayon](https://www.craiyon.com/). The quality of the results is months behind the quality of the current models, but it’s a good starting point to get to know the technology. Another option is to use the free contingents of various services mentioned in the last essay.
+
+## Draw Things
+
+If you have an iPad or iPhone, you’re in luck because a free app is available on the App Store that allows using dozens of free image models based on Stable Diffusion. The name of the app is [Draw Things: AI Generation](https://apps.apple.com/app/draw-things-ai-generation/id6444050820), developed by Liu Liu. The app is mind-blowing and I highly recommend it.
+
+<Figure caption="Draw Things app for iOS/iPadOS" size="wide">
+	<Image src="/assets/images/posts/ai-draw-things.jpg" alt="Draw Things app" />
+</Figure>
+
+The developer improves the app constantly by adding interesting new models. I downloaded over 50 GB of model data. Besides the official versions of Stable Diffusion, there are models from the community. The most important website for models is [Hugging Face](https://huggingface.co/), an AI community to build, train and deploy models powered by the reference open source in machine learning. It’s the GitHub for AI. You can find exciting [projects](https://huggingface.co/huggingface-projects) on Huggingface, for example [diffuse the f rest](https://huggingface.co/spaces/huggingface-projects/diffuse-the-rest), where you draw an image and provide a prompt and the AI will generate a better version of it.
+
+## Diffusion Models
+
+You can find most models available in the Draw Things application on Hugging Face. A lot of the models are trained in a specific style. I list here all available models of the app at the time of writing, you can see examples of each model at the linked URLs. You can find here a more extensive list of models for [Stable Diffusion](https://rentry.co/sdmodels).
+
+- [Stable Diffusion v1.4](https://huggingface.co/CompVis/stable-diffusion-v1-4)
+- [Stable Diffusion v1.5](https://huggingface.co/runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5)
+- [Stable Diffusion v1.5 Inpainting](https://huggingface.co/runwayml/stable-diffusion-inpainting) – Inpainting in existing photos
+- [Stable Diffusion v2.0](https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2)
+- [Stable Diffusion v2.0 768-v (HD)](https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2)
+- [Stable Diffusion v2.0 Inpainting](https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-inpainting) – Inpainting in existing photos
+- [Stable Diffusion v2.1](https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-1)
+- [Stable Diffusion v2.1 768-v (HD)](https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-1)
+- [MiniSD v1.4](https://huggingface.co/justinpinkney/miniSD)
+- [Waifu Diffusion v2.1](https://huggingface.co/hakurei/waifu-diffusion) – high-quality anime images
+- [Nitro Diffusion v1.3](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/Nitro-Diffusion) – this model can create multiple styles: [Archer](https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/10283-archer) style, [Arcane](https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/94605-arcane) style, or modern Disney style
+- [Cyberpunk Anime Diffusion](https://huggingface.co/DGSpitzer/Cyberpunk-Anime-Diffusion) – Cyberpunk anime characters
+- [Redshift Diffusion v1](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/redshift-diffusion) – high-resolution 3D artwork
+- [Redshift Diffusion 768 (HD)](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/redshift-diffusion-768) – Stable Diffusion 2.0 trained on Redshift style
+- [Dungeons and Diffusion](https://huggingface.co/0xJustin/Dungeons-and-Diffusion) – trained on DnD characters
+- [Tron Legacy](https://huggingface.co/dallinmackay/Tron-Legacy-diffusion) – trained on screenshots of the film [Tron: Legacy](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/20526-tron-legacy)
+- [Openjourney](https://huggingface.co/prompthero/openjourney) – model trained on Midjourney images. If you love Midjourney, you’ll like this style
+- [Anything v3](https://huggingface.co/Linaqruf/anything-v3.0) – model for high-quality anime
+- [Classic Animation Diffusion v1](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/classic-anim-diffusion) – this model creates the classic Disney animation style
+- [Modern Disney Diffusion v1](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/mo-di-diffusion) – Creates the style of modern Disney movies
+- [Arcane Diffusion v3](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/Arcane-Diffusion) – model trained on the style of [Arcane](https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/94605-arcane).
+- [Hassanblend v1.4](https://huggingface.co/hassanblend/hassanblend1.4) – ⚠️ model trained on NSFW content
+- [Van Gogh Diffusion v2](https://huggingface.co/dallinmackay/Van-Gogh-diffusion) – model based on the movie [Loving Vincent](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/339877-loving-vincent)
+- [Spider-Verse Diffusion v1](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/spider-verse-diffusion) – model trained on movie stills from [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/324857-spider-man-into-the-spider-verse)
+- [Elden Ring Diffusion v3](https://huggingface.co/nitrosocke/elden-ring-diffusion) – model trained on the game art from [Elden Ring](https://www.eldenring.com/)
+- [Paper Cut v1](https://huggingface.co/Fictiverse/Stable_Diffusion_PaperCut_Model) – model trained on paper cut images
+- [VoxelArt v1](https://huggingface.co/Fictiverse/Stable_Diffusion_VoxelArt_Model) – model trained on Voxel Art images
+- [Balloon Art v1](https://huggingface.co/Fictiverse/Stable_Diffusion_BalloonArt_Model) – model trained on Twisted Balloon images
+- F222 – ⚠️ model trained on NSFW content
+- [Super Mario Nation v2](https://huggingface.co/tuwonga/supermarionation) – model trained on Gerry Anderson’s [Supermarionation](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarionation)
+- [Inkpunk Diffusion v2](https://huggingface.co/Envvi/Inkpunk-Diffusion) – model on dream booth, inspired by Gorillaz, FLCL, and Yoji Shinkawa
+- [SamDoesArt v3](https://huggingface.co/Sandro-Halpo/SamDoesArt-V3) – model trained on the art style of [Sam Yang](https://www.instagram.com/samdoesarts/).
+
+To show what the models are capable of, I used my profile picture with different diffusion models. I used the same seed, no prompt, `50` steps, a guidance scale of `13,0`, a strength of `46%`, and the `Euler Ancestral` sampler. 46% as a strength value means it took roughly half of the source photo and the rest was creative. Lower values generate an image that looks like the source image, higher values generate images that look like the style the model was trained on. If you combine it with a prompt, you can get even more creative results, but you can never change the basic geometry of the image. For that, you need to train a new model with your face in Dreambooth.
+
+<Figure caption="My profile picture in different diffusion models" size="wide">
+	<Image
+		src="/assets/images/posts/ai-diffusion-models.jpg"
+		alt="Profile picture in diffusion models"
+	/>
+</Figure>
+
+## Diffusion Models
+
+When you start with text-to-image generation AI, many terms will not make any sense to you. But without understanding these basics, good results are mostly luck.
+
+The first term you’ll hear, is “Diffusion Model.” As I can’t explain it myself, I asked GPT-3 to explain it:
+
+> It is a model that is trained to generate images from text. It is called “Diffusion Model” because it is based on the diffusion process. The diffusion process is a mathematical model that describes how a substance spreads in a medium. The diffusion process is used in many fields, for example in biology, chemistry, and physics. In the context of text-to-image generation, the diffusion process is used to describe how the model spreads the text information over the image pixels.
+
+In this video, you get the whole process of [how AI image generators work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CIpzeNxIhU) explained.
+
+## Prompt
+
+The most important part of the generation of AI images is the “prompt.” Entire books with hundreds of pages exist about how to write a good prompt. The prompt is your way to talk to the AI.
+
+If you write a simple prompt, the result might be good at random or total crap. Each generator has its own rules on how to write a good prompt, but the basic technique is similar. You have to write detailed and descriptive what you want to see in the image, the word parts are usually separated by commas. The order of words is essential.
+
+Some generators allow negative prompts, to exclude specific things from the image. You could, for example, ask the AI to generate a picture of a jungle, but exclude the color green from it. Often it’s possible to weigh specific parts of the prompt, to signal the AI which parts are more important. In Midjourney you use the `more weight::2.0` (negative or positive numbers) to weigh a part of the prompt, in Stable Diffusion you can use the `more weight:2.0` or brackets `((more weight))` to weigh a part of the prompt.
+
+My first prompt was basic, I asked the AI to generate `a cyberpunk wizard`. The result was impressive, but random luck. I recreated the first two images with the same seed and upscaled the second one to add more detail. But the third image, generated with a new seed, created a complete different picture.
+
+<Figure caption="A cyberpunk wizard" size="wide">
+	<Image src="/assets/images/posts/ai-cyberpunk-wizard.jpg" alt="Cyberpunk wizard" />
+</Figure>
+
+The art or skill of writing a good prompt is somewhere between programming, art direction, art history, photography, and writing. The more you know about formats, lenses, colors, lighting, art, artists, photography, painting, and many other art forms, the better you can write a good prompt.
+
+Many websites are helping with the creation of prompts. Some have a build in search engine, others vast documentation, or even generators for prompts for different models.
+
+PromptoMANIA has a [Prompt Builder](https://promptomania.com/prompt-builder/) that supports Midjourney, DreamStudio, Stable Diffusion, CF Spark, and Generic prompts. [Prompthero](https://prompthero.com/) allows searching millions of images for Openjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, and Midjourney. [AiTuts](https://aituts.com/) has a huge [prompt library](https://prompts.aituts.com/) with fantastic images, a free prompt book (<cite>The Big Book of Prompts</cite>), and a blog with useful getting-started articles on many generators. [Diffusion Land](https://www.diffusion.land/) has a search and archive for many Stable Diffusion models. [ArtHub.ai](https://arthub.ai/) has a prompt library and a massive collection of community art. Rex Wang has a website with a [Dynamic Prompt generator](https://rexwang8.github.io/resource/ai/generator). He has also the remarkable project [Teapots and Midjourney](https://rexwang8.github.io/resource/ai/teapot), which explains styles, themes, mediums, materials, camera properties, and many more things for Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E at the example of a Utah Teapot.
+
+## Style Guides
+
+Speaking of all the different styles, the next thing is to look at style guides. To create a good prompt, you need to know as many things as possible about everything related to the appearance of your image. But unless you hold a degree in art history or are a professional photographer, art director, or artist, you will need one of the many style guides on the internet. Here is a short list of interesting ones:
+
+- [Midjourney Styles and Keyword Reference](https://github.com/willwulfken/MidJourney-Styles-and-Keywords-Reference)
+- [Disco Diffusion 70+ Artist Studies](https://weirdwonderfulai.art/resources/disco-diffusion-70-plus-artist-studies/)
+- [56 Awesome Midjourney Examples to Jumpstart Your Ai Portrait Generating](https://www.betchashesews.com/midjourney-examples/)
+- [9 Tricks for Writing Ai Prompts to Create the Best Midjourney Portraits](https://www.betchashesews.com/midjourney-portraits/)
+- [V4 Midjourney Reference Sheets](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MsX0NYYqhv4ZhZ7-50cXH1gvYE2FKLixLBvAkI40ha0/)
+- [Open Library of Styles by the MJ Community](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cm6239gw1XvvDMRtazV6txa9pnejpKkM5z24wRhhFz0/)
+- [Midjourney Style Guide](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/117kRRXZFYkRM-QFt7yt6hRLQrg0n3mAMvk7RY3JyXhQ/)
+
+Even though, the style guides are explicitly for a specific generator, you can learn a lot from them and achieve a similar result with a different generator.
+
+## Seed
+
+A seed is a starting point for generating an AI image. It can be a random value or a specific input, like a text description or sample image. The seed determines the initial conditions for the image generation process. If you know the seed of a generated image, you can use it to create the same image again. This is useful for generating a series of similar images, such as a series of images featuring the same person.
+
+## Inpainting & Outpainting
+
+Inpainting is a technique used in image processing and computer vision to fill in missing or corrupted parts of an image. Inpainting algorithms can be used to restore damaged or degraded images, remove objects from an image, or fill in gaps in an image. These algorithms work by using information from surrounding pixels in the image to estimate the values of the missing or corrupted pixels. In the context of AI image generation, inpainting can be used to improve the quality of generated images by filling in any missing or incomplete pixels.
+
+<Figure caption="AI Inpainting" size="wide">
+	<Image src="/assets/images/posts/ai-inpainting.jpg" alt="AI Inpainting" />
+</Figure>
+
+The simplest form of inpainting is to remove a specific object from an image. For example, if you want to remove a person from an image, you can use an inpainting algorithm to fill in the missing pixels with the surrounding pixels. It is possible to fill the area in with a prompt. In the image above, I asked Stable Diffusion to fill in a teddy bear, sitting on a sofa.
+
+[DALL·E](https://openai.com/blog/dall-e-introducing-outpainting/) and [Stable Diffusion](https://github.com/lkwq007/stablediffusion-infinity) support outpainting. With this technique, the AI tries to fill in the missing parts of an image and extend it. Here is a longer [Stable Diffusion Outpainting Colab Tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8jmBGgGj2E) showing how to do it with a GoogleColab notebook.
+
+## Other Settings
+
+Depending on each generator, there are other settings. The most important is the format of the image. You need to pick the aspect ratio and size, it’s not easily possible to recreate for example an image generated in a 1:1 format in 16:9. The different size will generate a different image, even with the same seed. With some luck, it might look similar.
+
+You need to select how many steps should be applied to the image, the higher the number the better the result, but the longer the process takes. I use Stable Diffusion with values between 30-50 steps.
+
+Stable Diffusion has a Guidance Scale setting that decides how literally the AI takes your prompt, higher values are more faithful to the prompt. I usually use some value between 7-13. Other generators have similar settings.
+
+It’s possible to use different samplers in Stable Diffusion, but the details are too scientific for me. Even the explanation of ChatGPT for the different samplers didn’t help me understand it. The Draw Things app writes:
+
+> Different samplers can converge at different steps and may result different visual styles. Euler A is known to generate more dreamy images while DPM++ 2M Karras can generate high quality images in no more than 30 steps.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+You are now equipped with the knowledge to start your journey with AI. I covered speech-to-text generation, text generation, text-to-image generation, the various generators and Stable Diffusion models, and the different settings. I hope you will have fun with it and create spectacular images.
+
+<Banner summary="Instagram" open>
+	I started posting my AI image art on a new [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/kogakure.ai.art/)
+	account. You can follow me there for sporadic updates. I would love to see what you create with
+	AI.
+</Banner>
+
+🤖 I researched this series of essays with [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com), wrote it with [GitHub Copilot](https://github.com/features/copilot), created the cover artwork with [Stable Diffusion](https://stability.ai/blog/stable-diffusion-public-release), and improved their quality with [Real-ESRGAN](https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN).

src/content/journal/2022/civil-war-truth-1-introduction.mdx

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+---
+title: "Civil War for Truth: Introduction"
+slug: civil-war-truth-1-introduction
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+date: 2022-06-06T07:00:00+02:00
+description: This is the introduction to a seven-part series that
+  investigates why the last 10 years were uniquely turbulent with
+  ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing
+  authoritarianism.
+tags: ["politics"]
+series: civil-war-truth
+---
+
+I was never interested in politics and could barely recollect the names of the current political leadership team. But the last ten years—in particular the last two years—were far too turbulent and politics got gradually more authoritarian, which resulted in me getting gradually more political.
+
+<Pullquote author="Pericles">
+	Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest
+	in you.
+</Pullquote>
+
+The last years felt like something wasn’t right anymore in many parts of society. Many people share this feeling.
+
+At first, I couldn’t point the finger at the reasons for why all these things happened, but when I listened at the end of 2021 to James Lindsay’s podcast “<cite>Welcome to the Second Enlightenment</cite>”[^lindsay2021bi] I was finally able to understand.
+
+Lindsay explains in the podcast his hypothesis that we find ourselves at the beginning of a new enlightenment phase.
+
+We all felt that the internet was a big leap forward, but we weren’t aware of the deep-reaching consequences because the transition between periods is never abrupt and hard to comprehend when living in one.
+
+The internet age started for early adopters in the mid-90s, but it took 15-20 years until it reached the whole globe and technology became ubiquitous to enable massive parts of the population to participate in the exchange of ideas.
+
+Maajid Nawaz reminded recently in a podcast that all <q>technology disrupts power structures,</q> the invention of the internet is comparable with the invention of the Gutenberg Press. After its invention, the church lost its gated narrative over the bible because common people could start reading it themselves. This led to plenty of uprisings in Europe and the 30-Year-War.[^rogan2022yc] Existing power structures don’t let go of their power without a fight. But in the end, free information led to the Enlightenment.
+
+Maajid Nawaz is sure that we are in the midst of a civil war, even though it’s not fought with physical violence.
+
+<Blockquote author="Maajid Nawaz" source="The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz">
+	So, the powers that be, who are losing that power need to clamp down. (…) It’s an internal civil
+	war in a hybrid war context, over truth, and over information. Centralization versus
+	decentralization. Basically, it’s no longer about left or right, it’s about up versus down. It’s
+	about power versus those who don’t have power.[^rogan2022yc]
+</Blockquote>
+
+Neil Oliver, a British television presenter, archaeologist, and author, formulated a possible hypothesis in an interview with Bret Weinstein on why we don’t see physical violence in this civil war. The horrors of the 20th century were committed by generations who had seen and done terrible things. Neil Oliver has his doubts that the people who are running the show now, who were born and raised in peace, have the guts to do the necessary “wet work.”[^weinstein2022el]
+
+## Enlightenment 2.0
+
+James Lindsay coins the term _Enlightenment 2.0_ in his podcast to describe this new period we live in.
+
+He uses Marx’s theory of economic development as an analogy to explain his hypothesis. Without going into too much detail, Marx described human progress from Tribalism (Phase 1) over Clan Structures (Phase 2), Feudalism (Phase 3), Capitalism (Phase 4), Socialism (Phase 5), and Communism (Phase 6).
+
+Lindsay’s main point is that we _falsely_ believe that we were already in Phase 4 of the information economy, as we are in Phase 4 for property and material goods. Capitalism and the invention of property rights allowed humanity to make a giant step forward and resulted—after we figured out the problems of monopolies—in the creation of a rich middle class.
+
+This belief was wrong. Lindsay argues that we recently left Phase 3 (Information Mercantilism) and just entered Phase 4 (Information Capitalism). The internet was the missing piece to reach this phase.
+
+<Blockquote author="James Lindsay" source="Welcome to the Second Enlightenment">
+Nobody knows the history of the 20th century because it’s all been behind official narrative, which has been dramatically distorted in favor of generating this very corrupt information aristocracy that uses it to create a technocracy by which they rule over us, which some people refer to as the deep state (…), nobody does know the history of the 20th century accurately.
+
+But that won’t be true of the 21st century, unless they get their way, unless they can continue to control the institutional narrative and force people via something like social credit to participate in the lie that maintains their power and advantage and their vision for molding the world as they think it should be molded regardless of what’s good for us, regardless of what’s good for any individual person. Because they become our betters, our aristocratic lords who are going to take good care of us by protecting us from ourselves. And um, they’re wrong. They’re arrogant and they’re wrong.[^lindsay2021bi]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+Lindsay explains that all the political, social, and economic difficulties we see now, are a result of the breakdown of our _Gated Institutions_. It is an attempt of globalist, technocratic elites to keep their power and move society as quickly as possible into Phase 5 (a centralized, controlled information economy) with assisted living and thinking under the control of a technocratic regime.
+
+Many intellectuals observe the same issues and try to formulate hypotheses for what we witness. The American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote the well-received article “<cite>Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid</cite>”[^haidt2022wy] in <cite>The Atlantic</cite> in April 2022. Andrew Doyle wrote “<cite>The experts are lying to you</cite>”[^doyle2022gf] in <cite>UnHerd</cite> in June 2022. Steve Patterson wrote last year “<cite>Our Present Dark Age, Part 1</cite>”[^patterson2021km]. Eric Weinstein said in a discussion with Sam Harris in 2019 <q>I can’t think of a single institution I trust.</q>[^weinstein2019qo] And those are just a fraction of the articles and discussions regarding this topic.
+
+Everybody can see the narratives of the _Gated Institutions_ crumbling right in front of our eyes. The COVID-19 crisis made this only more obvious. We see the fraud, corruption, and incompetence of an obsolescence system. We see the “expert class” losing its shit. Likewise, we see the _Gated Institutions_, for example, the <abbr title="World Economic Forum">WEF</abbr> in Davos, the <abbr title="World Health Organization">WHO</abbr>, <abbr title="Centers for Disease Control and Prevention">CDC</abbr>, <abbr title="National Health Service">NHS</abbr>, <abbr title="United Nations">UN</abbr>, <abbr title="European Union">EU</abbr>, or other institutions fail and fail again. They can’t keep up with the connected knowledge of crowds that can disprove their lies and reveal their agendas in a matter of hours.
+
+<Blockquote author="Aleksandr Solženicyn">
+	We know they are lying.\ They know they are lying,\ they know that we know they are lying.\ We
+	know that they know that we know they are lying.\ And still they continue to lie.
+</Blockquote>
+
+We see how their pristine leadership program “Young Global Leaders” releases morons that can’t speak properly or can’t stay scandal-free for a few months. They plagiarize speeches, books, or dissertations. We catch them when they have secret agreements, receive money from corporations, delete SMS or destroy hard drives with incriminating material. Their embarrassments get ridiculed with memes around the internet, shared and mocked. The internet doesn’t forget.
+
+We see them panicking and answering with censorship, deplatforming, rampant biased fact-checkers, and character assassination. They attack encrypted messengers and alternate social media platforms, increase surveillance, reduce privacy, and try to outlaw encryption. They claim to fight “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories” and “fake news,” but the fakest news gets released as propaganda by Gated Institutions.
+
+They manipulate surveys and use PR agencies or Think Tanks to steer public opinion. They don’t even shy away from using psychological warfare with Nudging techniques against the populace.[^furedi2022wg]
+
+They remove critical experts from the discourse or fire them from their jobs. They ask captured government organizations to give them the excuse for political measurements, or pressure independent scientists to give them the results they want. They create unelected expert groups that rule without legitimation by the parliament. When people use their constitutional right to demonstrate, they forbid demonstrations or use brute force to crush dissent. The mask is off, we see their authoritarian agenda.
+
+## The Blue Pill or the Red Pill?
+
+Lindsay uses the metaphor in his podcast of <q>taking a blue pill or red pill</q> from the 1999 movie <cite>The Matrix</cite>. The hero Neo gets offered two pills by the mysterious character Morpheus.
+
+<Blockquote author="Morpheus" source="The Matrix (1999)">
+	This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story
+	ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill –
+	you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
+</Blockquote>
+
+Being “red-pilled” means seeing the truth and being able to see through the lies and misinformation, to see the state of the world and our _Gated Institutions_ as it is. If you take this pill, you’ll never be able to unsee it. And it will be a terrifying moment when your belief in the world’s state is crushed. So, be warned.
+
+## Why Do the Gated Institutions Break Down Now?
+
+Jordan Peterson describes in his 2017 lecture “<cite>Personality and Its Transformations</cite>”[^peterson2017ab] at the _University of Toronto_ how a system can break down on all levels at the same time:
+
+<Blockquote author="Jordan B Peterson" source="2017 Personality 22: Conclusion: Psychology and Belief (45:00)">
+That happens if you are an ideologue. You identify really hard with that plan. The problem is, if something comes up to confront it, well how do you act? You can’t let go of the plan, because you drown. Then you cling to it rigidly. Well, that’s no good, because then you can’t learn anything.
+
+If that’s you, you are a totalitarian. You are not gonna learn anything. You are gonna end up in something that is close enough to hell so that you won’t know the difference. And you might drag anyone along with you.
+
+That happened plenty of times, it’s the whole story of the 20th century. It happened over and over and over, and it happens in people’s states, it happens in their business organizations, it happens in their cities, it happens in their provinces, it happens in their states and it happens in their psyches. All at the same time.
+
+You can’t blame the manifestation of that sort of thing on any of those levels. When a society goes down that way it goes down everywhere at the same time. It’s not the totalitarians at the top and all the happy people striving to be free at the bottom. Not at all. It’s Totalitarianism on every single level of the hierarchy.[^peterson2017ab]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+To understand why our _Gated Institutions_ break down all at the same time, we need to understand the problems first and how they are connected. I’ll shine a light on the offenders like politicians, corporations, academia, science, media corporations, journalism, and social media in the next parts of this essay.
+
+[^lindsay2021bi]: James Lindsay (2021): _Welcome to the Second Enlightenment_, https://newdiscourses.com/2021/10/welcome-to-the-second-enlightenment/.
+[^haidt2022wy]: Jonathan Haidt (2022): _Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid_, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/.
+[^doyle2022gf]: Andrew Doyle (2022): _The experts are lying to you_, https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-experts-are-lying-to-you/.
+[^patterson2021km]: Steve Patterson (2021): _Our Present Dark Age, Part 1_, https://steve-patterson.com/our-present-dark-age-part-1/.
+[^rogan2022yc]: Joe Rogan and Maajid Nawaz (2022): _The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz_, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ugbn7cuab3mNgKbo81ajM.
+[^weinstein2022el]: Bret Weinstein and Neil Oliver (2022): _Keeping Sane: Bret Speaks with Neil Oliver_, https://youtu.be/0ytv1pzjiSw.
+[^weinstein2019qo]: Eric Weinstein and Sam Harris (2019): _Sam Harris – Fighting with Friends_, https://youtu.be/6FQy9BLVzxQ.
+[^furedi2022wg]: Frank Furedi (2022): _‘Nudge’ has no place in our democracy_, https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/14/nudge-has-no-place-in-our-democracy/.
+[^peterson2017ab]: Jordan B. Peterson (2017): _2017 Personality 22: Conclusion: Psychology and Belief_, https://youtu.be/J9j-bVDrGdI.

src/content/journal/2022/civil-war-truth-2-corporatism-technocracy.mdx

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+---
+title: "Civil War for Truth: Corporatism and Technocracy"
+slug: civil-war-truth-2-corporatism-technocracy
+date: 2022-06-13T07:00:00+02:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is the second part of a seven-part series that
+  investigates why the last 10 years were uniquely turbulent with
+  ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing
+  authoritarianism.
+tags: ["politics"]
+series: civil-war-truth
+---
+
+## Corporatism
+
+It’s nearly impossible to separate, these days, Politics, and the Economy from each other. Blunt corporatism captures most Western countries.
+
+Corporatism is the economic policy component of fascism, an ideology thought up by Giovanni Gentile.[^dsouza2017mo] It is <q>economic totalitarianism as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler.</q>[^dilorenzo1994uv] Mussolini was praised by many people, including Winston Churchill, who admired him <q>as late as 1940.</q>[^dilorenzo1994uv]
+
+<Blockquote author="Benito Mussolini">
+	Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. \ (Tutto nello
+	Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato.)[^ideas2021hh]
+</Blockquote>
+
+This revived trend is worrying because when governments and corporations work together they can create a lot of evil. The state can outsource things that aren’t legal to corporations (such as censorship), or use companies for the enforcement of laws they wouldn’t have the resources for otherwise (such as checking COVID-19 passports). And corporations can control the market and harm the people if they go unchecked by the legislative branch.
+
+Everybody in Washington knows that the laws are made by companies and financial institutes and not by politicians. This is the same in most Western Democracies. It prevents good candidates from entering politics, drives away the few good politicians left, and leaves us with a _Kakistocracy_, a system of government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.
+
+Most politics these days is political theater, what Chris Williamson coined as _Performative Disagreement_ in his interview with General Robert Spalding.[^williamson2022ud]
+
+We could observe this in the primaries of the US elections in 2019 when candidates like Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden indirectly of being a racist because he opposed public school buses and worked with segregationists in his past.[^breuninger2019gm] She accused him indirectly of rape when she said she believed Biden’s accusers for sexual misconduct.[^burke2019hj] After she lost in the primaries she was picked as his running mate, nevertheless, proving the political theater. This trend can be observed not just in the USA, but throughout Western Democracies.
+
+And the growing influence of unelected organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF) under Klaus Schwab and their direct influence on politicians and companies is a worrying trend. The WEF is in reality only exchange for Corporatism, even if they call it euphemistic <q>Public-Private Partnerships</q>.[^matuschek2022gv]
+
+Klaus Schwab bragged publicly in 2017 about how his followers had <q>penetrated</q> all political cabinets.[^schwab2017aw] A huge amount of rising politicians are part of his “Young Global Leaders” program.
+
+Luckily, it begins to fail. Mary Woods, professor of Global Economic Governance at the University of Oxford complained at the WEF conference in November 2021, that the people stop following their leaders:
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="Mary Woods"
+	source="The World Economic Forum’s Great Narrative Conference_, November 2021 (via James Lindsay)"
+	sourceUrl="https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1484355983082094598"
+>
+	At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman survey showed us the good news is that the elites across the
+	world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things
+	together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people
+	trusted their elite less. So we can lead, but if people aren’t following, we’re not going to get
+	to where we want to go.
+</Blockquote>
+
+## Lobbyism, Sponsoring, and Corruption
+
+Current politics in Western Democracies are flooded with problems like nepotism, insider trading, and corruption. All of this is illegal, but nearly never do politicians get held accountable. And it doesn’t matter in which country you look, be it, Nancy Pelosi, in the US continuously benefitting from the stock market from her inside knowledge,[^zilber2022sc] or the corruption affair of the current German chancellor during his time as mayor of Hamburg city.[^latsch2022le] But there is another legal form of corruption.
+
+Lobbyism is a growing problem in Western Democracies. In Germany, only donations to political parties that exceed €50,000 need to be specified. Yearly donations over €10,000 need to go into the annual report. In 2021 alone, all German political parties received more than €11.6 million in donations, as Sahra Wagenknecht, a politician of the party _Die Linke_ mentions in her report. The Ministry of Health received €60 million in donations from corporations.[^wagenknecht2022qo]
+
+Worrying are also the continued donations of the _Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation_ to politicians, education, and science. The “German Society for International Cooperation” (GIZ) received 2021 over \$138 million in donations from the foundation. It is a company that works together with the Development Assistance Ministry and other ministries.[^wallasch2022ih]
+
+Another huge problem for hidden corruption is sponsoring political events because it is exempt from any reporting. A party congress can easily exceed 50 corporate sponsors, each paying between €10,000 and €20,000 for a booth.[^winter2019yu] The party congress of the SPD, the leading German party, was sponsored by Pfizer, DocMorris, and Microsoft, all beneficiaries of the Corona crisis.[^wagenknecht2022qo]
+
+Sahra Wagenknecht mentions another problem: The revolving door effect. Politicians that work in a specific resort together with Lobbyists of a company get often promoted into well-payed positions in exactly those companies later. A department head responsible for contracts for the Corona warn-app given to Deutsche Telekom got shortly after a lucrative position at Telekom.[^wagenknecht2022qo]
+
+This <q>continual interchange of personnel (…) between business and government (…) create[s] a state within the state to serve private interests which are not always in harmony with the general interests of the nation.</q>[^dilorenzo1994uv]
+
+These legal, non-transparent tricks to buy influence into legislation should be outlawed and called what it is: **corruption**.
+
+## A Loss of Separation of Powers
+
+An important fundamental base for liberal democracy is the division of a state’s government into different branches: legislative, executive, and judicature. In theory, they are not allowed to reach over the borders into another branch. In a dictatorship, the dictator decides on the laws, decides whom to punish, and sometimes even does the execution himself.
+
+During COVID-19, but starting already in the years earlier, these lines got blurry. In many countries, it is common practice to appoint former politicians to the position of a federal judge. Former German chancellor Angela Merkel placed her political friend Stephan Harbarth as president of the Supreme Court. This move was useful for her during the Corona crisis. The Supreme Court didn’t touch any one of the over 10,000 lawsuits against Corona restrictions in the two years of the pandemic and then ruled all measurements to be constitutional.[^rbb242021qk] This is the opposite of what for example the Spanish Supreme Court or the New Zealand Supreme Court ruled. This government-friendly ruling by the German Supreme Court might be the result of a nightly dinner the former chancellor gave to the judges of the Supreme Court.[^focusonline2021hh]
+
+But not only the Supreme Court ruled, worrying during the pandemic. There were uncounted cases of house searches and confiscations of property of judges, doctors, or scientists that spoke out against the measurements of the state. Most of them were baseless accusations and the cases were dismissed, but it still is an effective tool to punish critics. Critics get raided, computers get confiscated (sometimes for months), and the press smears their names. Even if it is unjustified, the damage is done. These worrying tendencies have damaged the population’s trust in the legal system for a long time.
+
+And the executive branch didn’t increase their trust either. The uncounted beatings of demonstrators around the world will be a stain on that branch for decades. Police don’t deserve our trust anymore.
+
+It is shocking how violent they have been against demonstrators. The images of police brutality from around the world, for example from Amsterdam where they used attack dogs,[^griptnews2022xn] or the images from Berlin where they crashed old ladies with their skulls on the ground will never be forgotten. Nils Melzer, the former “UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, started an investigation into these acts of violence.[^rtde2021zl]
+
+## Misuse of Emergency Powers
+
+During COVID-19, we saw a worrying misuse of emergency powers. Some countries, like Germany, implemented new laws, other countries already had laws in place, and some of them were implemented as the result of the War on Terrorism.
+
+It is a rule of nature that powers once gained are very rarely given away voluntarily. We have to be all the more careful about the powers we give to politicians.
+
+Maajid Nawaz mentioned on Joe Rogan’s podcast just three examples of state powers that were never given away.[^rogan2022yc] Egypt has a constitution that protects ideas, but it is suspended for over 20 years since 1981 after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. The Patriot Act was introduced as a result of 9/11 and allowed the state to extend its surveillance to spy on regular citizens of the USA. The imminent threat is over, but the law is still in place. The UK implemented a law that removed the “right to remain silent” and treated it as a criminal offense for fighting terrorism.
+
+COVID-19 was used as an excuse to remove basic rights of citizens as the right to free speech, the right to peacefully assembly, and the right to bodily integrity.
+
+<Blockquote author="Maajid Nawaz" source="The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz">
+The state is going to start telling me what I have to put in my body and when and if I don’t agree, I can’t travel. If I don’t agree, I can’t work. If I don’t agree, I can’t leave my home. (…) Now that, I believe, is such a fundamental shift in our social contract in the relationship between you and the state that it requires not only a broader discussion, I think, that requires a democratic mandate to bring in because it’s such a fundamental change in direction in Western liberal democracies when it comes to the relationship we have with the state.
+
+What do I mean by that? If I said to you, <q>Joe‚ listen, you got two kidneys. I need one, you’re going to give it to me because the state says, you have to look after me. Now.</q> I’ve checked, if I have done that without your involvement, without your choice for the common good, and I have the power to be able to do that. And if the reasoning I am giving is that there are people that deserve this kidney and you have a spare one and that you have to look after other people.
+
+Now, it could be kidneys. It could be anything. It could be any medical procedure and generally beyond that. It can be anything you have to do for other people’s sake.
+
+Now, if I want to redefine that relationship because up until now you had every right to say <q>my blood is my blood</q> and <q>I know someone needs a blood donation or an organ donation. I know, I should care for people, but it’s still my decision.</q>
+
+If I’m going to change that and it’s no longer your decision. Right? Then it requires a broader and deeper conversation. And it requires, I’d say, that’s referendum level change in our culture.[^rogan2022yc]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+These laws were rushed in without the consent of the people, and without a vote during an election, often by decree. They were applied often in hypocritical ways to preserve the powers of the state, for example by forbidding “bad” demonstrations against measurements and restrictions and allowing “good” demonstrations for social causes like “Black Lives Matter” or the environment.
+
+Canada used its emergency laws, implemented against terrorism and catastrophes, to freeze the bank accounts of Truckers that demonstrated against mandatory vaccination. This was a blunt violation of a law meant for an entirely different case. And even worse, it was the first state-driven use of de-banking as a weapon against civilians.
+
+The most worrying thing is that Trudeau not only froze the accounts of the Truckers but the accounts of every person helping in any form _retroactively_. This means that people selling petrol or ice cream to the Truckers got their bank accounts frozen (sometimes for many weeks) because they did something in the past which was not illegal at that time.
+
+David Sacks mentions how bad the negative consequences will be because this precedent makes it dangerous to donate to any political campaign that might collide with the interests of the state in the future. This will damage the trust in government and the finance system for a long time.[^sacks2022py]
+
+## The Oligarchs and Technocratic Elites
+
+Corporations merge into monopolies or oligarchies. We have Big Oil, Big Food, Big Finance, and Big Pharma. Most industries of the world are controlled by a handful of companies. Black Rock and Vanguard own the world. And governments don’t want or can’t control these tendencies. The existing antitrust laws are rarely applied.
+
+The elite meets in Davos at the World Economic Forum (WEF). They don’t even hide their dystopian agenda, but proudly praise a technocratic future.
+
+> Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.
+
+This is a quote from the WEF website, which was removed after a massive backlash. Their plans for a “Great Reset” are considered a conspiracy theory, but it is the book title of Klaus Schwabs’ book.
+
+People are too lazy to read what these technocrats plan for us and instead believe the “Fact Checkers” bought by the same people that assure us, it’s all not true. Until it is.
+
+The Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany commissioned a study in 2020 about the future in 2030 with the title <cite>The Future of Values Held By People in Our Country</cite>.[^bmfbuf2020ah] Hidden in the full text of the study at the end of a modern, friendly, and fancy-looking website they openly fantasize about the introduction of a social credit score system that will reward people who do volunteer work, care for relatives, donate their organs, safe for retirement, behave in traffic and have a low carbon footprint with faster and easier access to education.
+
+<Blockquote author="Federal Ministry of Education and Research" source="The Future of Values Held by People in Our Country">
+Points can be collected for certain behaviors in the points system operated by the state (e.g. voluntary work, caring for relatives, organ donation, pension provision, traffic behavior, CO2 footprint). In addition to social recognition, collecting points also has advantages in everyday life (e.g. shorter waiting times for certain courses).
+
+In this way, the state and political institutions can achieve certain goals through incentives to change behavior (e.g. controlling the labor and education markets) and also forecast future behavior more accurately. (…) Companies have the option of docking onto the points system and monetizing the data with the prior consent of the citizens (e.g. personalized risk premiums).[^bmfbuf2020ah]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+Hidden behind marketing speech and euphemistic language, camouflaged as a hypothetical scenario, a social credit system as implemented in China is being flirted with. In blunt corporatist language, they want to additionally allow companies to benefit from your behavior.
+
+Occasionally, I despise the TV Show <cite>Black Mirror</cite> because it seems technocrats use it as a source of ideas and not a warning. They also regularly get inspired by <cite>1984</cite>, <cite>Brave New World</cite>, and <cite>Fahrenheit 451</cite>.
+
+Comedian Tim Dillon joked about listening to conversations between technocrats on [Clubhouse](https://www.clubhouse.com/).
+
+> These people on this app are talking about the new world that everyone will live in which will be digital forever. It is the dystopian nightmare that you feared. They are preparing it for you as you sleep.
+
+He remarks how <q>cold and calculated</q> they are. Listening to them <q>would be like if there was an app in the 1800s where slaves could ask questions to their masters.</q>[^dillon2021dn]
+
+The wet dreams of these technocrats is a future with a central digital currency that can be controlled at will and allow governments or corporations to ensure the money is only spent on things they deem sensible.[^rogan2022yc]
+
+The coming automation and progress in robotics and AI will result in massive parts of the population not being needed anymore. The resulting basic income, combined with digital passports, and constant surveillance that can track your health or mood, will allow governments to crush any dissent.
+
+They advertise eating bugs[^fleming2018xl] or synthetic meat[^shieber2021jc] to the masses, while they surely continue eating the best steak. And while you are asked to <q>shower not daily anymore to save energy,</q>[^anti-spiegel2022ak] they fly with private jets to Climate Change Conferences,[^newsau2021yw] preach about rising sea levels while at the same time buy villas near the ocean.[^vujinovic2020gg] They think we’re stupid.
+
+There will be soon a gigantic class of dispossessed people that rent everything from the technocrats. It will start with convenience, but once renting replaced everything, it is easy to restrict and limit the movement of people. Nobody would ever think of introducing a social credit system, right? Linking all those things together will allow them to easily remove your access to liberty, money, movement, or food with the click of a mouse if you utter criticism or don’t behave as expected.
+
+[^dsouza2017mo]: Dinesh D'Souza (2017): _Is Fascism Right Or Left?_, https://youtu.be/m6bSsaVL6gA.
+[^ideas2021hh]: Academy of Ideas (2021): _Is 1984 Becoming a Reality? – George Orwell’s Warning to the World_, https://youtu.be/vEMlvpMY7yw.
+[^williamson2022ud]: Chris Williamson and Robert Spalding (2022): _China’s Secret Playbook For War – General Robert Spalding | Modern Wisdom Podcast 463_, https://youtu.be/tEKFE37IqgI.
+[^breuninger2019gm]: Kevin Breuninger (2019): _Kamala Harris attacks Joe Biden’s record on busing and working with segregationists in vicious exchange at Democratic debate_, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/27/harris-attacks-bidens-record-on-busing-and-working-with-segregationists.html.
+[^burke2019hj]: Michael Burke (2019): _Harris: ‘I believe’ Biden accusers_, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/437107-harris-i-believe-biden-accusers/.
+[^schwab2017aw]: Klaus Schwab and David Gergen (2017): _Strengthening Collaboration in a Fractured World-Featuring Special Guest Yo-Yo Ma_, https://youtu.be/AoBRnrtX9U4.
+[^matuschek2022gv]: Miloz Matuschek (2022): _Sprechen wir doch mal über Verschwörungspraxis_, https://www.freischwebende-intelligenz.org/p/sprechen-wir-doch-mal-uber-verschworungspraxis.
+[^dilorenzo1994uv]: Thomas J. DiLorenzo (1994): _Economic Fascism_, https://fee.org/articles/economic-fascism/.
+[^zilber2022sc]: Ariel Zilber and Thomas Barrabi (2022): _Joe Rogan takes aim at Nancy Pelosi, pols for ‘insider trading’_, https://nypost.com/2022/04/11/joe-rogan-slams-nancy-pelosi-pols-for-insider-trading/.
+[^latsch2022le]: Gunther Latsch and Ansgar Siemens (2022): _Strafanzeige gegen Kanzler Scholz und Bürgermeister Tschentscher_, https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/cum-ex-affaere-um-warburg-bank-strafanzeige-gegen-kanzler-scholz-und-buergermeister-tschentscher-a-b5abc953-46cd-49ef-b7d0-184829e31ba1.
+[^wagenknecht2022qo]: Sahra Wagenknecht (2022): _Lobbyismus, gekaufte Politik, Meinungsmache – Leben wir in einer liberalen Demokratie?_, https://youtu.be/dOCB87649D0.
+[^wallasch2022ih]: Alexander Wallasch (2022): _Hat Anne Will Geld von Bill Gates bekommen?_, https://reitschuster.de/post/hat-anne-will-geld-von-bill-gates-bekommen/.
+[^winter2019yu]: Sabrina Winter (2019): _Lobbyismus auf Parteitagen: Das sind die Sponsor\*innen der Parteien_, https://www.abgeordnetenwatch.de/blog/lobbyismus/lobbyismus-auf-parteitagen-das-sind-die-sponsorinnen-der-parteien.
+[^rbb242021qk]: RBB24 (2021): _Oberstes Gericht erklärt Corona-Notbremse für verfassungsgemäß_, https://www.rbb24.de/politik/thema/corona/beitraege/2021/11/bundesverfassungsgericht-urteil-bundesnotbremse-schulschliessung.html.
+[^focusonline2021hh]: FocusOnline (2021): _Angela Merkel und das pikante Abendessen mit den Verfassungsrichtern im Kanzleramt_, https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/vor-prozess-gegen-kanzlerin-merkel-laedt-verfassungsrichter-zum-essen-spaeter-sollen-diese-ueber-sie-urteilen_id_13485292.html.
+[^griptnews2022xn]: Gript News (2022): _Police Dogs Used to Attack Anti-Lockdown Protestors in Amsterdam_, https://gript.ie/watch-police-dogs-used-to-attack-anti-lockdown-protestors-in-amsterdam/.
+[^rtde2021zl]: RTDE (2021): _Wegen Polizeigewalt in Berlin - UN-Sonderbeauftragter Melzer kündigt “offizielle Intervention” an_, https://de.rt.com/inland/121923-wegen-polizeigewalt-in-berlin-un-sonderberichterstatter-intervention/.
+[^rogan2022yc]: Joe Rogan and Maajid Nawaz (2022): _The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 – Maajid Nawaz_, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ugbn7cuab3mNgKbo81ajM.
+[^sacks2022py]: David Sacks and Bari Weiss (2022): _How Big Tech Is Strangling Your Freedom_, https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/2b0f956c/how-big-tech-is-strangling-your-freedom.
+[^bmfbuf2020ah]: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (2020): _Zukunft von Wertvorstellungen der Menschen in unserem Land_, https://www.vorausschau.de/.
+[^dillon2021dn]: Tim Dillon (2021): _Tim Dillon Talking To Tech Giants On Clubhouse_, https://youtu.be/3hBw0ZR8q6I.
+[^fleming2018xl]: Sean Fleming (2018): _Good grub: why we might be eating insects soon_, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-might-be-eating-insects-soon/.
+[^shieber2021jc]: Jonathan Shieber (2021): _Bill Gates wants Western countries to eat ‘synthetic meat’; Meatable has raised \$47 million to make it_, https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/23/bill-gates-wants-western-countries-to-eat-synthetic-meat-meatable-has-raised-47-million-to-make-it/.
+[^anti-spiegel2022ak]: Anti-Spiegel (2022): _"Die Deutschen sollen sich weniger waschen" und wie russische Medien darüber berichten_, https://www.anti-spiegel.ru/2022/die-deutschen-sollen-sich-weniger-waschen-und-wie-russische-medien-darueber-berichten/.
+[^newsau2021yw]: news.com.au (2021): _Outrage as 400 VIP jets converge on Glasgow for global warming summit_, https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/outrage-as-400-vip-jets-converge-on-glasgow-for-global-warming-summit/news-story/e6a4da0ca2454aec4d3b79d594655511.
+[^vujinovic2020gg]: Nebojša Vujinović (2020): _Bill and Melinda Gates Purchase a $43 million Oceanside Villa_, https://demotix.com/bill-melinda-gates-villa/.

src/content/journal/2022/civil-war-truth-3-political-division.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,226 @@
+---
+title: "Civil War for Truth: Political Division"
+slug: civil-war-truth-3-political-division
+date: 2022-06-20T07:00:00+02:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is the third part of a seven-part series that
+  investigates why the last 10 years were uniquely turbulent with
+  ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing
+  authoritarianism.
+tags: ["politics"]
+series: civil-war-truth
+---
+
+## Changing Power Dynamics – Left and Right
+
+Politics have changed over the last 30+ years and people haven’t updated their model. In the 20th century, the conservatives tend to be the people calling for censorship, on topics of sex, comedy, or profanity. While comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested and persecuted in the 1960s for his comedy, George Carlin broke this wall with his [Seven Dirty Words](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words) in the 1970s. But censorship is still prominent in American television.
+
+But the sides of power changed. Today, authoritarian censorship comes from the extreme left. Now, that they have cultural control, they apply censorship on books or standup comedy. The sad part is that they believe they are the good ones.
+
+<Blockquote author="Paul Joseph Watson" source="AMERICA 2021">
+	Four years of bombing kids in the middle east while hollowing out America’s economy for the
+	benefit of weapons contractors, Wall Street, and predatory transnational corporations. All hail
+	the resistance. Just a hunch, but if your political consensus is shared and amplified by every
+	major cultural institution, establishment media empire, and billionaire tech oligarch in the
+	world, maybe, just maybe, call me crazy but, maybe you’re not the resistance?[^watson2021aa]
+</Blockquote>
+
+I, personally, don’t like either side censoring content or name-calling critics. I want neither religion nor CRT taught in school. I don’t want conservatives to censor porn or progressives to remove books critical of gender dysphoria. But should I decide which side does more harm, I would choose the progressive left. If conservatives go uncontrolled, stagnation is the result. This is bad, but not harmful. If progressives go uncontrolled, society-destroying things can happen.
+
+Not just has the power switched, but the terms for the _Left_ and the _Right_ don’t fit more to their original meanings. The origins of these terms lie in the French Revolution of 1798. Supporters of the king at the National Assembly stood to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution stood to his left.[^carlisle2019pn] Those terms were used to describe the _Right_ as people who stand for tradition, order, hierarchy, or conservative values and the _Left_ as people who want liberty, equality, liberalism, or progressivism.
+
+The classical definition of a left person 20 years ago was a person fighting for workers’ rights, unions, equality, and similar goals. The _Left_ of today couldn’t be further away from these values, which is the reason they get called Progressives or Leftists. Today the _Left_ is the upper-middle-class and upper-class, the people in power, the notebook elites, who are called _Gauche caviar_ (“Caviar left”) in France. This can be observed in how the different economic classes vote in Western countries. Because the _Left_ abandoned the middle and lower class, they tend to vote more for populist parties if there is no alternative.
+
+Most parties in Germany moved further left in the last 15 years, leaving a new spot for the populist party AfD (Alternative for Germany). For classic liberals, there is barely an option to vote for. The Christian party CDU/CSU couldn’t have moved further away from Christian values, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the green party get mostly voted by progressives. At the last election, the winning party SPD barely reached 25% of the votes and no longer represents the majority of the people. Even together with the Green party, they didn’t reach an electoral majority, and they needed the support of the economic liberal party FDP. The coalition nearly broke at the vote for mandatory vaccinations, and many experts don’t think it will last the legislative period. The SPD and Green party were strongly in favor of mandatory vaccination, but the liberal party remembered that this would violate their liberal values and voted against the bill.
+
+And it doesn’t look better in other European countries. Emmanuel Macron faces a serious crisis of legitimacy, the voter turnout for the first round of parliamentary elections was just 47%. People despise his authoritarian leadership. <q>Macron’s electoral support is dwindling. He has been deserted by the young and professionals who have voted for the left, the workers who have voted for the far right, and the traditionalists who cling on to the old right. His electorate now mainly comprises the retired and the wealthy.</q>[^devellennes2022lx]
+
+People stop following their leaders and will bring their opinions to the streets rather than the ballot box. This is what Mary Woods was talking about in her speech at Davos.
+
+By a classical definition of left/right, the sides have switched on many issues in reality. But even historically, the definition doesn’t make any sense. Being right is used as a derogatory term, comparable with being a Nazi and not a conservative. But even that is debatable, as the Nazi Party, the NSDAP, which is usually termed a far-right party is called “National*sozialistische* Deutsche Arbeiterpartei“ (National _Socialist_ German Party). And looking at their agenda in detail, it wasn’t that different from the Communist party except for the definition of the “In-Group”. In reality, <q>Fascism is a form of Socialism. (…) Fascists are Socialists with a national identity.</q>[^dsouza2017mo]
+
+Even the better idea of the [Political Compass](https://www.politicalcompass.org/) which defines two-axis, an economic left/right axis, and a social authoritarian/libertarian axis, is still a simplification. Many political parties in Western Democracies find themselves in the Authoritarian right sector, which is a tragedy for somebody like me in the Libertarian left sector.
+
+<Blockquote author="Naval Ravikant" source="Joe Rogan Experience 1309">
+I think, really, Socialism comes from the heart, right? We all wanna be Socialists. Capitalism comes from the head because there are always cheaters in any system, and there is an incentive in any system. So, when you’re young, if you’re not Socialist, you have no heart, when you’re older and you’re not a capitalist you have no head, right? You haven’t thought it through. So, I understand where it comes from.
+
+I always liked Nassim Taleb’s take on this: <q>With my family, I’m a Communist. With my close friends, I’m a Socialist. At the state level of politics, I’m a Democrat. At higher levels, I’m a Republican, and at the federal levels, I’m a Libertarian.</q>
+
+So, basically, the larger the group of people you have massed together, who have different interests, the less trust there is, the more cheating there is, the better the incentives have to be aligned, the better the system has to work, the more you are towards capitalism. The smaller the group you’re in, you’re in a Kibbutz, you are in a commune, you’re in your house, you’re in your tribe, by all means, be a Socialist.
+
+With my aunts, with my brother, with my cousins, with my uncles, my mom, my family … I’m a Socialist. That’s the right way to live a loving, happy, integrated life. But when you’re dealing with strangers, you wanna be a real Socialist? Great, open all your doors and windows tomorrow. Please, everybody, come and take what you want. See how that works out.[^rogan2019ul]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+I wish more people would take over Nassim Taleb’s ideas and be less binary in their political choices.
+
+I think it is time to dismiss those terms as oversimplified labels to discredit ideas you don’t like and instead look at each topic individually and then define a standpoint as conservative/traditional or progressive/modern. You need both sides to negotiate a contract, or society will tumble into tyranny and chaos.
+
+## Free Speech
+
+I’m a free speech absolutist as far as possible, following the definition of free speech by John Stuart Mill. I live in Germany, which means we have more limited speech than the USA due to our history, but even free speech in the USA has [exceptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions).
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="John Stuart Mill"
+	source="On Liberty, rev. ed. (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863) 35–36"
+>
+	But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human
+	race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more
+	than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of
+	exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer
+	perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.[^saad2020aa]
+</Blockquote>
+
+Freedom of speech can _only_ be applied to everybody with the same rules. Just because you don’t like some person's speech or think it’s hateful, is not a reason. Hate is, as truth, not objective and what one person finds hateful, doesn’t bother the other. And the exceptions we have in most Western countries are already good enough.
+
+If you are only for free speech, if it’s your speech, you are not for free speech. Every dictator in history allowed speech he liked. The African dictator Idi Amin said: <q>You have freedom of speech. It is freedom after speech that I cannot guarantee.</q>
+
+<Blockquote author="Noam Chomsky">
+	If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like.
+	Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor
+	of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you
+	despise.
+</Blockquote>
+
+There is no need for the protection of free speech for mainstream views. Because, as Mick Hume writes, <q>in the end, it is only those views deemed too extreme or offensive that need defending on free-speech grounds.</q>[^hume2020aa]
+
+Without free speech there is no possibility to find common ground, there is no discussion, and conflicts can’t be resolved without violence. Free speech is the only tool we have to stay on a balanced ground between tradition and progress. There is an evolutionary reason people come with different temperaments, and it is no accident people tend to get more conservative with age. Old people have lived a long life and learned what works and what does not, and want to preserve these learnings for the next generation. Progressive new ideas are also needed, to prevent society to stagnate or dying out, if the external conditions change. But every new idea needs to be checked and tested. That is what free speech is for.
+
+<Blockquote author="George Washington">
+	If freedom of speech is taken away, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.
+</Blockquote>
+
+Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you need to listen. This is the most ridiculous counterargument which always comes up to attack free speech advocates that block impolite people. If I mute or block your speech for me, I don’t prevent you from reaching others. Free speech is not made to make the most extreme ends change their mind, but to allow the silent majority to listen and make up their minds.
+
+Freedom of Speech is equivalent to “Freedom of Reach”. If you prevent a person from speaking on famous social media platforms with the argument, you can do this somewhere else, it is violating free speech. This doesn’t mean anybody needs to listen.
+
+Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay define four rules of free speech.[^pluckrose2020ed]
+
+1. **The Freedom to Speak** – Every person can utter all their ideas without obstruction or punishment.
+2. **The Freedom to Listen** – Every person can listen to all ideas without obstruction or punishment.
+3. **The Freedom not to Speak** – No person can be forced to share their ideas or to talk to any person.
+4. **The Freedom not to Listen** – No person can be forced to listen to ideas or any person.
+
+The freedom to speak without obstruction includes all things used by social media to limit the reach of people, be it throttling, de-ranking, shadow-banning, deplatforming, or similar tactics. It means nobody needs to worry somebody is coming for their job, friends, or life when they speak up.
+
+The freedom to listen includes that ideas don’t get hidden or the access to them get obstructed in any matter, be it with warning labels, hiding the ideas, or making them “adult-only” (even though they don’t violate any youth law).
+
+The freedom not to speak includes that people can stay silent if they wish, and nobody can force you to take positions. Nobody has to tell you to put gender pronouns in your email or profile, nobody has to tell you to “bow a knee” or proclaim “silence is violence.”
+
+The freedom not to listen includes that a person can mute or block any person they want to avoid interacting with.
+
+Bad ideas can be defeated only with good ideas, blocking them doesn’t make them go away, they go somewhere else, somewhere hidden. The result might be more extreme ideas if they go unchallenged in echo chambers. We want bad ideas out in the open to expose them to the light of truth. If they can’t defend their position, they lose and go away. Blocking them makes them more attractive.
+
+<Blockquote source="A Letter on Justice and Open Debate">
+	The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or
+	wish them away.[^letterjustice2020]
+</Blockquote>
+
+If we don’t apply Freedom of Speech equally, we need an arbiter of truth. But there is no such thing as objective truth, and the last thing we want is to give this power to the state. Things change quickly and the regulations and censorship you cheered for because they benefited your side, might be used against you in the next election cycle.
+
+This realization came as a surprise to many people when Elon Musk recently tried to buy Twitter. The whining was huge. For weeks, all progressive media outlets wrote hit pieces on Musk. The idea that a funny, libertarian centrist, that stands for free speech, wants to open source the ranking algorithm of Twitter to make the company more transparent, and introduce encryption for direct messages scared the heck out of these authoritarians.
+
+For years conservatives and centrists had to listen to the argument <q>It’s a private company, if you don’t like it, build your own.</q> After removing Donald Trump from Twitter, people moved to Parler. Then Google and Apple removed the app from their stores. <q>If you don’t like it, build your own app store.</q> People started using the app on the web. Amazon decided to remove the AWS web servers the platform was hosted on. <q>If you don’t like it, build your own servers.</q>
+
+Nobody ever complained that billionaires are buying media companies to steer public opinion in their favor.
+
+<Blockquote author="Leo Kearse" source="Comedian Leo Kearse on the Elon Musk Twitter takeover making woke lefty liberals CRY">
+(…) people are worried about a billionaire having so much influence, but billionaires own pretty much all of the media. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, John Henry bought The Boston Globe, Sheldon Adelson bought The Las Vegas [Review-]Journal, Laurene Powell Jobs bought The Atlantic, Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the L.A. Times, Mark Benioff bought Time, even the supposedly independent Guardian is funded by Bill Gates and the people who own social media companies like Mike Zuckerberg are billionaires with political agendas.
+
+The problem seems to be that Elon Musk has the wrong political agenda by not really having a political agenda. He’s a centrist who donates to both the republican and the democratic parties instead of just slavishly following the woke leftist agenda. This balance is a threat to the woke establishment.[^kearse2022wb]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+Suddenly, the authoritarians realized they opened Pandora’s box with the introduction of biased algorithms, deplatforming, and censorship. The next midterm election is coming up soon, and it doesn’t look good for the Democrats. There is a realistic chance that a Republican, possibly even Trump, will move into the White House and starts using all those weapons against the other side. Now they cry for regulation.
+
+<Blockquote author="Matt Taibbi" source="Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost">
+Probably the funniest effort along those lines was this passage:
+
+> We need regulation… to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication.
+
+That was Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit, [railing against Musk](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/04/08/musk-twitter-equity-discrimination-speech/) in the pages of… the Washington Post!  A newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos complaining about rich people controlling “channels of communication” just might be the never-released punchline of Monty Python’s classic “Funniest Joke in the World” skit.
+
+Many detractors went the Pao route, suddenly getting religious about concentrated wealth having control over the public discourse. In a world that had not yet gone completely nuts, that is probably where the outrage campaign would have ended, since the oligarchical control issue could at least be a legitimate one, if printed in a newspaper not owned by Jeff Bezos.[^taibbi2022tg]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+One would hope they learned out of this that it is not a good idea to give the state and companies more power, powers that might be used against themselves.
+
+On the contrary, the Biden administration announced a week later the introduction of a new “Disinformation Governance Board” (aka “Ministry of Truth”) inside of Homeland Security.[^johnstone2022rm] The same department that recently declared misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation to domestic terrorism.[^weinstein2022qv] [^security2022mq]
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency"
+	source="Mis, Dis, Malinformation"
+>
+	- Misinformation is false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm. -
+	Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group,
+	organization, or country. - Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead,
+	harm, or manipulate.[^agency2022mu]
+</Blockquote>
+
+Malinformation is insidious because it defines a fact that is the truth, but <q>causes you to distrust the government which means to the extent that your government is not trustworthy, and you discuss it, you are guilty of terrorism.</q>[^weinstein2022hg]
+
+Anyone who thinks that this is only a problem in the USA is far from it. In Germany, the Federal Ministry of the Interior led by Nancy Faeser, introduced this year a new category of extremism: <cite>Delegitimization of the state relevant to the protection of the constitution</cite> (<cite>Verfassungsschutzrelevante Delegitimierung des Staates</cite>). It categorizes any form of criticism of lockdowns, mask mandates, school closures, retail store closures, and closures of cultural institutions, as a form of right-wing extremism.[^lengsfeld2022sv]
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat"
+	source="Verfassungsschutzbericht 2021"
+>
+	This form of delegitimization usually does not take place through direct questioning of democracy
+	as such, but through constant agitation against and contempt for democratically legitimized
+	representatives and state institutions and their decisions. This can shake trust in the state
+	system as a whole and impair its ability to function.[^bmi2022kl]
+</Blockquote>
+
+This is a new form of undermining a Democracy because it puts any criticism and mentioning of undemocratic, authoritarian, or totalitarian tendencies in a category of enemies of the state. They would rather not be exposed. Writing this sentence makes me technically a domestic extremist.
+
+But even the former Federal Judge Hans-Jürgen Papier criticizes for example the Asylum and refugee policy of the German government as a breach of law[^schattauer2020qd] and the measurements of the COVID-19 crisis as a danger to freedom.[^schmalz2021ht]
+
+The doctor and podcast host Paul Brandenburg was raided and (temporarily) arrested by a special task force in May 2022. The Federal Ministry of the Interior had tried in the months before the incident to charge him because his opinions would delegitimize the state.[^douglas2022zf]
+
+Germany didn’t learn anything from the Third Reich and the DDR, something similar to the <abbr title="Ministry of State Security">STASI</abbr> is slowly introduced again in Germany. The similarity in Authoritarian reaction in different Western countries at least suggests that there is some global coordination or playbook (_Operation Lockstep_) politicians follow along.
+
+It’s only a question of when the state will start the hunt on regular people for the “War on Truth.”
+
+And their chances of getting things right don’t look good. They censored the “Lab Leak Hypothesis,” now regarded as the most probable reason for the COVID-19 pandemic. They censored the “Hunter Biden Laptop” story, critical information for the US presidential election, now known to be true and even admitted by the most left newspapers. A study found out that 16% of Biden voters wouldn’t have voted for him, would they had known the story, which would have resulted in Trump staying the president.[^palmieri2022gb]
+
+The European Union doesn’t look better, they plan a similar task force to fight fake news, and they recently announced to increase their efforts to fight disinformation (that is “the information we don’t like you to know”).[^parker2019va]
+
+The Gated Institutions want to make sure their narrative doesn’t get questioned because informed people ask questions, challenge decisions, and hold politicians and companies accountable.
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="Caitlin Johnstone"
+	source="Patriot Act 2, Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix"
+>
+	All of the most critical factors determining what people’s lives are like are invisible now. Most
+	people don’t even know they’re happening. Oligarchy. Neoliberalism. Imperialism. Used to be you
+	knew who the king was, and he’d openly do anything he wanted. Now that’s all kept carefully
+	hidden.[^johnstone2021kj]
+</Blockquote>
+
+The reason most people have no clue how bad the state of the world is the result of the breakdown of another pillar of our _Gated Institutions_: **Media and Journalism**.
+
+[^watson2021aa]: Paul Joseph Watson (2021): _AMERICA 2021_, https://youtu.be/p1kUN0MyMHw.
+[^carlisle2019pn]: Madeleine Carlisle (2019): _What to Know About the Origins of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ in Politics, From the French Revolution to the 2020 Presidential Race_, https://time.com/5673239/left-right-politics-origins/.
+[^dsouza2017mo]: Dinesh D'Souza (2017): _Is Fascism Right Or Left?_, https://youtu.be/m6bSsaVL6gA.
+[^devellennes2022lx]: Charles Devellennes (2022): _Macron’s crown is already slipping_, https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/06/16/macrons-crown-is-already-slipping/.
+[^rogan2019ul]: Joe Rogan and Naval Ravikant (2019): _The Joe Rogan Experience 1309 - Naval Ravikant_, https://youtu.be/3qHkcs3kG44.
+[^saad2020aa]: Gad Saad (2020): _The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense_, Regnery Publishing.
+[^hume2020aa]: Mick Hume (2020): _A good year for free-speech haters_, https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/12/23/a-good-year-for-free-speech-haters/.
+[^pluckrose2020ed]: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (2020): _Freedom of Speech and the Fallacy of Demanding to be Heard_, https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/freedom-of-speech-fallacy-demanding-heard/.
+[^letterjustice2020]: (Hrsg.) (2020): _A Letter on Justice and Open Debate_, https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/.
+[^kearse2022wb]: Leo Kearse (2022): _Comedian Leo Kearse on the Elon Musk Twitter takeover making woke lefty liberals CRY_, https://youtu.be/UTShD7VIgv0.
+[^taibbi2022tg]: Matt Taibbi (2022): _Twitter’s Chickens Come Home to Roost_, https://taibbi.substack.com/p/twitters-chickens-come-home-to-roost.
+[^johnstone2022rm]: Caitlin Johnstone (2022): _Oh God It’s Going To Get SO Much Worse_, https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/30/oh-god-its-going-to-get-so-much-worse/.
+[^weinstein2022qv]: Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (2022): _Bret and Heather 115th DarkHorse Podcast Livestream: Don’t Say Anything at all_, https://youtu.be/Nfhg1PcTync.
+[^agency2022mu]: Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (2022): _Mis, Dis, Malinformation_, https://www.cisa.gov/mdm.
+[^weinstein2022hg]: Bret Weinstein and Robert Malone (2022): _If a Fiberglass Tree Falls in a Forest… Bret Speaks with Dr. Robert Malone_, https://odysee.com/Bret-Malone2:27eda26764c7244b1f703dc58c9932f93e382951.
+[^lengsfeld2022sv]: Vera Lengsfeld (2022): _Der Verfassungsschutz wird zur Staatssicherheit_, https://reitschuster.de/post/der-verfassungsschutz-wird-zur-staatssicherheit/.
+[^bmi2022kl]: Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat (2022): _Verfassungsschutzbericht 2021 vorgestellt: Steigende Zahl von Extremisten in fast allen Phänomenbereichen_, https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/pressemitteilungen/DE/2022/06/verfassungsschutzbericht2021.html.
+[^schattauer2020qd]: Göran Schattauer (2020): _Ex-Bundesrichter Papier rügt deutsche Asylpolitik: "Mitgefühl ersetzt kein Recht"_, https://www.focus.de/politik/gerichte-in-deutschland/deutschlands-hoechster-richter-a-d-klagt-an-ex-bundesrichter-papier-ruegt-deutsche-asylpolitik-mitgefuehl-ersetzt-kein-recht_id_11580201.html.
+[^schmalz2021ht]: Alexander Schmalz (2021): _Ex-Verfassungsrichter: Corona-Politik war irrational und kopflos_, https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/ex-verfassungsrichter-corona-politik-war-irrational-und-kopflos-li.186983.
+[^douglas2022zf]: Holger Douglas (2022): _Überfallartige Hausdurchsuchungen bei Medizinern_, https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/hausdurchsuchungen-paul-brandenburg-und-stefan-hockertz/.
+[^palmieri2022gb]: Jacob Palmieri (2022): _Here’s How The Hunter Biden Story Would Have Changed The 2020 Election_, https://thepalmierireport.com/heres-how-the-hunter-biden-story-would-have-changed-the-2020-election/.
+[^security2022mq]: Homeland Security (2022): _DHS Issues National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin_, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/02/07/dhs-issues-national-terrorism-advisory-system-ntas-bulletin.
+[^johnstone2021kj]: Caitlin Johnstone (2021): _Patriot Act 2, Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix_, https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/patriot-act-2-censorship-and-other.
+[^parker2019va]: Tom Parker (2019): _Europe wants to create a Digital Media Observatory to fight fake news_, https://reclaimthenet.org/european-commission-disinformation-initiative/.

src/content/journal/2022/civil-war-truth-4-media-journalism.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,229 @@
+---
+title: "Civil War for Truth: Media and Journalism"
+slug: civil-war-truth-4-media-journalism
+date: 2022-06-27T07:00:00+02:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is the fourth part of a seven-part series that
+  investigates why the last 10 years were uniquely turbulent with
+  ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing
+  authoritarianism.
+tags: ["politics"]
+series: civil-war-truth
+---
+
+## Internet killed the Newspaper Star
+
+Journalism and News Media are considered to be the “Fourth Estate” of a Democracy. Journalism has the unspoken responsibility to check the balance of Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. Additionally, they should speak the truth to power and expose corruption in politics and corporations. That is the reason it is dangerous when the institution breaks down because it directly affects our Democracy.
+
+The decline of news media started with the dawn of the Internet age and took its first big hit around 2004 with the massive gain in popularity of Google, but the global take-off of social media, especially Facebook, around 2014 accelerated it massively.[^eagle2022hi][^pewresearchcenter2021cm][^pewresearchcenter2021sx] Many newspapers didn’t make it into the new medium, and the old advertising and paper business was not transferable to the new medium. I worked myself in the publishing industry for five years and tried unsuccessfully to bring a publishing company, founded in 1786 to the new medium. In the end, the company was swallowed by a bigger publishing house and survived only by name.
+
+A famous visualization project from 2015 used open data on newspaper sales to create a tool that predicted when a specific newspaper would go bankrupt.[^disselhoff2015io] It didn’t look good for news outlets.
+
+Additionally, a culture expecting free content on the internet locked newspapers into a banner advertising model they could only lose. It resulted in a vicious circle of the need for clicks, achieved with rage and clickbait content. Not only does sex sell, hate, too.
+
+The journalistic integrity and quality of news reporters dropped continuously. Newspapers could not compete with the speed of Twitter posts. The drive for clicks resulted in a reduction of journalistic quality, which included checking the validity of sources.
+
+The profession of journalism lost its quality because many news outlets required fewer of the old skills. The education in that field became expensive and only upper-middle-class people continued this route, compared to the previous 50 years when journalists came from all classes. This resulted in an influx of social justice activists.
+
+These new “journalists” of the Millennial generation are coming out of the universities where a new culture of grievance, complaining, and entitlement has taken over the institutions. Instead of doing journalistic work, many of the new hires are foremost social activists and spend their days writing hit-pieces about people that violate their woke ideology or harassing people on Twitter. In a recent scandal at <cite>The Washington Post</cite>, David Weigel, one of their best reporters, was suspended without pay for a month for retweeting a joke. The newspaper’s leadership followed the demands of a co-worker, Felicia Sonmez, to punish Weigel for his “offense.” This wasn’t enough for her, she went on a Twitter shit storm for days, demanding multiple people to get fired, attacking colleagues, and mocking her bosses which got her finally fired after multiple days.[^maher2022mr]
+
+There is no place outside universities more biased than media companies. A poll from 2015 found that 92% of all employees of the German public media company ARD voted Red (_Social Democratic_ and _Socialist_) or Green.[^hanfeld2020xv] With this imbalance, any objectivity is impossible. The Pew Research Center found similar numbers in the USA in 2004, where 93% of all journalists were politically left.[^wolan2021uu]
+
+Kat Rosenfield argues in her article “<cite>The media is run by trolls</cite>” that the <q>2008 recession, and the mass layoffs in media (…) fundamentally transformed how news was covered.</q>[^rosenfield2022sj]
+
+<Blockquote author="Kat Rosenfield" source="The media is run by trolls">
+	Imagine a horde of freshly unemployed veteran writers, alongside new journalism grads, desperately
+	trying to claw out a livelihood in a world where writing had been completely devalued. (…) Gone
+	was the $2-per-word magazine staff writer position; gone was the local shoe-leather reporting job
+	that might launch a lifelong career. Now, a writer’s best option was freelance blogging, churning
+	out listicles and aggregated new stories at $15 a pop — and with a quota, which at some outlets
+	ran as high as 20 posts per day.[^rosenfield2022sj]
+</Blockquote>
+
+The model of publishing switched to mass, low-quality opinion posts instead of high-quality investigative journalism.
+
+## Clickbait and Rage
+
+Rosenfield writes that in 2014 <q>the news cycle became increasingly outrage-driven, and our thinking about the type of post that was deemed worthy of coverage changed. (…) this mode of coverage blurred the boundaries between identifying a trend and manufacturing one.</q>[^rosenfield2022sj]
+
+Many newspapers used a new approach: Clickbait and rage for the masses and politically biased news coverage for their subscribers. Their job was reduced to confirming the bias of their readers. Other newspapers became financially dependent on the state or billionaires and started confirming the message of the ruling class.
+
+Additionally, we can see an influx of former media employees moving into prominent government positions. It is common practice that former journalists and media people are “bought” by the government into well-payed positions. Michael Meyen, professor of communication sciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, lists Steffen Seibert, the former spokesperson of the German government, who was previously a TV moderator. This way the government buys the image of <q>seriousness, neutrality, and possibly credibility.</q> Meyen lists the example of a German federal state where three of four of the national correspondents of the daily newspapers moved into state ministries.[^meyen2021xq]
+
+And what trust is left in newspapers that get funded by billionaires with an industrial-medical agenda, like The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? The German newspaper Spiegel Online received [$2,537,294](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants/2018/12/opp1203082) (2018) and [$2,000,000](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants/2021/10/inv032089) (2021) in donations to <q>raise global health awareness.</q> This donation has paid off for Bill Gates, who was recently left out in a hit piece by Spiegel about “lawless” billionaires.[^thurnes2022ru]
+
+Big Pharma pay 75% of the total advertising budget of the USA in 2020. They spend 2020 \$4.58 billion on advertising in the USA.[^brand2022tz] It’s unlikely a media company writes negative things about people that give them money.
+
+The result of all these things is a new form of “journalism” that doesn’t report the news, but sees its responsibility in lecturing and educating the people on what is the “correct” opinion. They use psychological techniques like Framing, Nudging, Gaslighting, and outright propaganda.
+
+## Framing
+
+Framing is a technique where the journalist sets the frame and outcome of a news article. Instead of reporting the facts, it starts with the premise of how the reader should think about the issue. It’s common practice now to smear the opposite side as deniers, conspiracy theorists, alt-right, far-right, white nationalists, or Nazis. In Germany, nearly every accusation includes a reference to the 3rd Reich.
+
+Other techniques of framing include panel discussions that include only people of one opinion and exclude the other side or inviting one mild critic to relentlessly attack them with many discussion participants for the whole talk show.
+
+It’s unbelievable how many people can be fooled and have their opinions controlled with this technique. Especially the tax-funded public broadcasting companies in Germany are guilty of this. The apocalyptic health minister Karl Lauterbach was invited to 29 talk shows during the COVID-19 crisis in 2021 alone, where he spread his fear and panic for the next killer mutation. But of the 16 sessions of the Health Committee, he only attended 5.[^dts2022iy] Priorities.
+
+A prominent example of framing is the controversy around the podcaster, Joe Rogan. When he got infected with COVID-19, he took several drugs, including Ivermectin and his test was negative 2 days later, 5 days later he was back to the gym training. This is not the story the medical cartel of Big Pharma would like to be heard for the “deadly” virus. Even though Ivermectin has proven itself in 63 studies as effective,[^ivmmeta2021ra] it needed to be attacked by the media because Ivermectin is patent-free and doesn’t generate billions in revenue. The framing techniques used against Rogan were creative. The medicine was framed as “Horse Dewormer” and “Horse Paste,” even though Ivermectin is foremost a human drug and was used billions of times around the globe and its founders William Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.
+
+<cite>Rolling Stones Magazine</cite> outright made up a story that gunshot victims in Oklahoma could
+not be treated because many people overdosing on Ivermectin would block the hospitals.[^wade2021vr]
+
+CNN took the Instagram video of Joe Rogan and colored the video intentionally green to make him look sick.[^rogan2022gh]
+
+Another example is the framing of detention facilities along the American-Mexican border to detain illegal immigrants. The “cages” were built by Barack Obama. After Donald Trump became president, they were framed as “kids in cages” and “concentration camps.”[^miroff2020jm] Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez performed a fake photo session in front of an empty parking lot where she cried tears for the camera about the fate of the kids in cages.[^re2019as]
+
+During the riots in Kenosha, where Kyle Riddenhouse shot two of the rioters that tried to kill him, the media framed it as White Supremacy, even though the killed men were both white with criminal records (including child abuse).[^carlson2021ca] No wonder the verdict of the case came unexpectedly for the left-biased press. Many people learned, with the verdict for the first time, that the victims were not black.
+
+From the shooting of Michael Brown (who tried to grab a policeman's gun) and Breonna Taylor (her mother called the BLM movement a fraud), the death of George Floyd (who had Fentanyl, Meth, and other drugs in deadly doses in his blood) to the “summer of love” (the riots of BLM, aka “Burning, Looting, Murdering”), framing was a constant companion. Nearly nothing the press reported was accurate. The resulting riots injured 700 policemen, killed 50 people, resulted in 3 billion damages, and burned down more than 100 stores. The “Defund the Police” campaign left many black neighborhoods with insufficient police and resulted in a 30% yearly rise in Black murder. Portland reported a surge in murder of 2,000%.[^faria2021qg] Framing kills.
+
+## Nudging
+
+Another technique now common is nudging. It is the usage of psychological manipulation of people to achieve the desired behavior. During the COVID-19 crisis, we could witness the widespread usage of this _unethical_ tactic. The British government used its Nudge unit to instill fear in the British people.[^furedi2022wg][^wintour2010ba] Even the co-founder of the unit, Simon Ruda regrets now that they used these manipulation techniques.[^ruda2022ze]
+
+The German Interior Ministry used scientists to create a report that aimed to terrify the German people. When the paper was leaked to the newspaper “Die Welt,” everybody could see what Nudging techniques they used.[^dowideit2021ze] They asked scientists to manufacture the fear of suffocation with proper images and to highlight the guild of children being the reason for killing their parents and grandparents.
+
+These techniques should be outright illegal and never used in a Democracy. The loss of trust in government because of this will take decades to win back.
+
+## Gaslighting
+
+Gaslighting is another technique from the playbook. The term comes from the 1944 movie “Gaslight” with Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotten. In the movie, a husband tries to convince his wife that she is mentally unwell to steal from her. He is dimming the light of the house and tries to tell her nothing had changed. Gaslighting can be seen every day when activists try to convince people that what they think of an issue is not correct.
+
+It is often used with the Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy, where a controversial argument (the “bailey”) is presented along with an easier-to-defend argument (the “motte”). When the activist realizes the opposite side understands the issue, they retreat to the motte and defend the least controversial topic.
+
+## Propaganda
+
+Former US State Department official and Time Magazine editor, Richard Stengel, defines propaganda as <q>the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misleading to influence an audience.</q>[^johnstone2022zu] Media companies and governments use propaganda to manufacture consent.[^jazeera2017it]
+
+<Blockquote author="Aldous Huxley">
+	The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people
+	are human.
+</Blockquote>
+
+Many claims on the news need to be categorized as outright propaganda. It is terrifying how easy it is to fall for propaganda. Henry T. Conserva published a book about propaganda and listed 89 techniques.[^hirsch2021hw] Even when you know them all, you will fall for it occasionally.
+
+<Blockquote author="Joseph Goebbels">
+	The most brilliant propaganda technique will not succeed unless one basic principle is constantly
+	carried in mind – it must be limited to a few points and repeated over and over.
+</Blockquote>
+
+Propaganda can be identified regularly on nearly any hot-button topic. Propaganda was the prominent technique used against unvaccinated people during the COVID-19 crisis. Many of the slogans we could hear throughout the “pandemic” were not accidentally the same around the globe because they were likely thought up by Think Tanks and coordinated political campaigns. Propaganda slogans like “pandemic of the unvaccinated” (a lie), “the vaccine is 100% effective” (a lie), “the vaccine has no side effects,” (a lie), or “if you are vaccinated you can’t spread the virus” (a lie) were used by Big Pharma to push a global agenda supported by many governments.
+
+And propaganda works, even months or years after claims have been proven wrong, the propaganda continues to exist in many people’s brains. The German Federal Court based a verdict in 2022 about mandatory vaccination for health workers on the false assumption it would stop the spread of the virus.
+
+<Blockquote author="Joseph Goebbels">
+	Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
+</Blockquote>
+
+Unfortunately, as Dr. Daniele Ganser pointed out in his talk, it is not possible to not be influenced by propaganda.[^ganser2020em] The only way is in his opinion to go into nature, to train mindfulness, and be skeptical about everything, be careful if somebody wants to sell you war or hate of a specific group of people. As a historian, Ganser said, <q>we are always 20 years late.</q> With every conflict people think that _this_ time the government tells the truth and that _this_ perceived threat is real.
+
+Ganser mentioned the war propaganda of the Iraq War in 2003, where a young woman claimed Iraqi soldiers would have killed incubator babies by throwing them on the floor. Later it was revealed she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador. No matter where you look, from Vietnam, 9/11, Ukraine 2014 and 2022 to COVID-19 you’ll find propaganda, used to manipulate how you think about a topic.
+
+It should be the goal of every person to teach children how to identify propaganda, and everybody should train to identify when somebody tries to use propaganda on us. Our lives might depend on identifying and rejecting it.
+
+## Eroded Trust
+
+All these techniques undermine the trust in mainstream media and gave birth to a huge amount of alternative media. A Gallup poll of 2020 asked how much people trusted the news in the USA. 60% trusted it either _not at all_ or not very much, which is the highest value ever recorded. The trust for Democrat voters was the highest with 75%, followed by independent voters with 36%, and Republican voters with 10%.[^bedard2020aa] In 2021 the numbers sank again and reached their second-lowest in 25 years.[^brenan2021mz]
+
+And the trust will erode further once the COVID-19 crisis is over and the lies and propaganda are uncovered. The media was the main driver of mass hysteria, mass psychosis, and fear that made the pandemic much worse than the virus alone could have ever done.
+
+The scientific paper “<cite>COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria</cite>”[^bagus2021lf] concluded:
+
+> In short, mass hysteria sponsored by a biased media sector may run out of control in a modern welfare state.
+
+We are now in a time when you can either trust mainstream media and be lied to, or invest the time and effort into following hundreds of small alternative media outlets contradicting official narratives and validate the truth yourself with the information you receive.
+
+<Blockquote author="Martin Gurri" source="A decade of revolt">
+There used to be something called a <q>mass audience.</q> And that meant [that] there were massive numbers of people all essentially looking into a gigantic mirror in which they saw themselves reflected. So most people were consuming the same content and there was a common denominator.
+
+The digital revolution has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits those broken pieces of glass. So the public isn’t one thing; it’s highly fragmented, and it’s basically mutually hostile. It’s mostly people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or another.[^illing2019bz]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+## Biased Social Media
+
+Social Media has a front and center seat in the media drama. However, if they react to demands from either side, they lose. Politicians and corporations that see their narratives questioned demand stronger censorship, disguised as a “War on Disinformation,” and multiple bills for regulation are currently waiting for review. Currently, social media companies have special rights under Section 230 that allows them to be treated as a platform and not be responsible for their content and at the same time be able to moderate content as a publisher.
+
+This opens endless possibilities for social media companies to apply moderation rules in an unbalanced manner. In the majority of tech companies, the amount of progressive employees is at the high 90%. At Twitter, 98.7% of all employees vote for the Democrats.[^molla2018fz] These are the employees who program the algorithms and moderate the content. Objectivity is impossible with this imbalance.
+
+The number of censorship techniques reached dangerous levels in the last 5 years. From marking content as age-restricted, to prevent it reaches children, to Demonetization and De-Ranking of content, to Shadow Banning, Throttling, and Content Blocking to the final stages of Strikes and Deplatforming.
+
+But as companies in Silicon Valley coordinate with each other, it doesn’t stop here. De-banking is these days an inexhaustible used weapon. Companies like PayPal, Stripe, and MasterCard started creating “No-Buy” lists.[^sacks2022py] Other companies help voluntarily to destroy the lives of targeted people, by removing them from hosting providers, email providers, eCommerce providers like Shopify, music providers like Spotify, and transportation providers like Uber or Lyft and even Airbnb. They don’t even shy away from collective punishment and remove accounts of spouses or family.[^sacks2022py]
+
+These tactics previously known to be used against adult actors and their companies since the introduction of _Operation Choke Point_[^weinstein2020lw] is now used against anybody with a political view deemed wrong. A dangerous trend should it continue will lead to violence or civil war.
+
+The scientific study “<cite>Is radicalization reinforced by social media censorship?</cite>” shows what Free Speech advocates knew all along. Centralized censorship leads to radicalization because the isolated individuals continue their beliefs unchecked. Safe spaces help the short-term but harm a community long-term.[^lane2021lh]
+
+The social media platform [Minds](https://www.minds.com/) follows a different approach. Its CEO Bill Ottman hired Daryl Davis to invest in studying censorship, radicalization, and deradicalization.[^rogan2022jm] Davis is a black activist who deradicalized dozens of KKK members over the years by listening to them and making them leave the clan.[^bruzzone2020aa] The documentation [Accidental Courtesy](https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/accidental-courtesy/) shows how he used patience and friendship to deradicalize.
+
+## Get Woke, Go Broke
+
+The woke narrative doesn’t work anymore for many people, they see through it and see what it is, the flip-side of far-right ideology.
+
+But woke agenda is pushed relentlessly through all media companies. Producers care neither about an existing fan base nor profit and produce content that is doomed to fail.
+
+Netflix is known to produce huge amounts of ugly woke content for the US market. The French movie “Cuties” released in 2020 sexualizes teen girls and reached an audience score of 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, while (left) critics loved the movie with an 88% rating. This movie is one in a never-ending amount of woke movies and TV shows produced by Netflix. In 2022, the subscription service lost subscribers for the first time in a decade and its stock price fell 32%. Elon Musk commented <q>the woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable.</q>[^kay2022eh] The growing competition is part of the story, but he is right. I loved watching “Sense 8,” an LGBT-friendly TV Show. But it had a good story and didn’t push the ideology with force. The garbage I get recommended these days is unwatchable. The only reason I still have a Netflix account is that the content produced outside the US (for example Korea, Japan, and the Middle East) is of fantastic quality. Recently, the company put brakes on its woke employees. Netflix added an “Artistic Expression” policy to its company culture memo and told their woke employees <q>If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.</q>[^soave2022pw]
+
+Hollywood is tanking one franchise after the other. They destroyed Star Wars, Star Trek, James Bond, Ghost Busters, and many more. The writers forgot that a good story _needs_ to come first. If the story is outstanding, they might risk adding a political message. The gay community successfully used humor and funny TV Shows to increase acceptance since the 1990s. Nobody wants to be aggressively lectured, this approach will fail and increase resentment.
+
+The gaming industry destroyed a huge amount of good franchises by adding woke agenda. Nobody wants to play as a female, disabled soldier in a World War I game.
+
+And when they get called out and punished with dismal ratings, they deflect the criticism and claim that bigots, far-right trolls, or toxic masculinity made their products fail. The rating platform Rotten Tomatoes shows the disconnect between common people and woke media critics for years. Rotten Tomatoes has two scores: The _Tomatometer_ reflects the rating of “professional” critics, and the _audience score_ reflects the users’ ratings. The bigger the difference, the better (or worse) the movie is. Over the years, I learned to ignore the professional critics and look for the audience score to have a fun experience.
+
+Disney got recently into a shit storm and lost an estimated \$50 billion[^kotkin2022re] when a Zoom call leaked to the public in which they announced their policy to push woke content into future shows.[^brand2022qs] Parents are sensitive when companies try to brainwash and manipulate their children. Should Disney lose the trust of parents, it will destroy more than 60 years of trust, and they might never gain it back.
+
+YouTube removed recently the Dislike button because it allowed people to see the ratio and quality of a video. The negative ratings affected the political speeches of Joe Biden, political propaganda, and woke content. This useful [extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/return-youtube-dislike/gebbhagfogifgggkldgodflihgfeippi) brings the button back.
+
+CNN had to shut down its new subscription streaming service CNN+ after less than one month. They invested around \$100 million and hired hundreds of employees to gain around 10,000 subscribers.[^wile2022wa] Joe Rogan mocked CNN on his podcast and asked why they thought anyone would pay for this garbage if people don’t even watch the free content anymore.[^dore2022it] CNN averages 517,000 viewers per prime-time show.[^sears2022jo]
+
+Meanwhile, independent non-woke content publishers like “The Joe Rogan Experience” gain massive amounts of users. Rogan reaches on average 11 million listeners per episode.[^hibberd2022qn] This is twenty times more than CNN reaches in its prime time.[^dore2022it] For interesting guests or controversial topics, Rogan can reach 40 million and more listeners.
+
+And painting him as a conspiracy theorist or anti-vaxxer and writing hit pieces made him more popular. The controversy around a many-year-old usage of the N-Word brought him 2 million more subscribers on Spotify.[^hibberd2022qn]
+
+This shows a trend that gives hope. People are sick of woke political agenda. They want no more second-long soundbites and moderated, biased shows. They prefer listening to the sometimes 2-3 hour long conversations with people of all political and social backgrounds instead because in long conversations everything is unfiltered, unmoderated, and you can’t hide an agenda. You need to be honest. Honesty is rare these days.
+
+[^eagle2022hi]: James Eagle (2022): _Most Popular Websites Since 1993_, https://youtu.be/hNDILCdZmRo.
+[^pewresearchcenter2021cm]: Pew Research Center (2021): _Total estimated circulation of U.S. daily newspapers_, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/chart/sotnm-newspapers-total-estimated-circulation-for-u-s-daily-newspapers/.
+[^pewresearchcenter2021sx]: Pew Research Center (2021): _Newspapers Fact Sheet_, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/.
+[^disselhoff2015io]: Felix Disselhoff (2015): _Und wann stirbt Ihre Zeitung? Open-Data-Projekt sagt Halbwertszeit von Printmedien voraus_, https://meedia.de/2015/01/05/und-wann-stirbt-ihre-zeitung-open-data-projekt-sagt-halbwertszeit-von-printmedien-voraus/.
+[^maher2022mr]: Bill Maher (2022): _New Rule: Democracy Dies in Dumbness_, https://youtu.be/5tu9JGK_yHo.
+[^rosenfield2022sj]: Kat Rosenfield (2022): _The media is run by trolls_, https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-media-is-run-by-trolls/.
+[^hanfeld2020xv]: Michael Hanfeld (2020): _92 Prozent für Rot-Rot-Grün_, https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/ard-volontaere-wie-divers-ist-die-ausbildungs-generation-17038169.html.
+[^wolan2021uu]: Alan Wolan and Wilfred Reilly (2021): _Wilfred Reilly on Thomas Sowell_, https://www.buzzsprout.com/1826734/9077711-wilfred-reilly-on-thomas-sowell.
+[^brand2022tz]: Russel Brand (2022): _This Is Impossible To Ignore_, https://youtu.be/uEoNZSLabLc.
+[^furedi2022wg]: Frank Furedi (2022): _‘Nudge’ has no place in our democracy_, https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/14/nudge-has-no-place-in-our-democracy/.
+[^wintour2010ba]: Patrick Wintour (2010): _David Cameron’s ‘nudge unit’ aims to improve economic behaviour_, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/09/cameron-nudge-unit-economic-behaviour.
+[^ruda2022ze]: Simon Ruda (2022): _Will nudge theory survive the pandemic?_, https://unherd.com/2022/01/how-the-government-abused-nudge-theory/.
+[^dowideit2021ze]: Anette Dowideit and Alexander Nabert (2021): _Innenministerium spannte Wissenschaftler für Rechtfertigung von Corona-Maßnahmen ein_, https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article225864597/Interner-E-Mail-Verkehr-Innenministerium-spannte-Wissenschaftler-ein.html.
+[^johnstone2022zu]: Caitlin Johnstone (2022): _Ten Times Empire Managers Showed Us That They Want To Control Our Thoughts_, https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/29/ten-times-empire-managers-showed-us-that-they-want-to-control-our-thoughts/.
+[^jazeera2017it]: Al Jazeera (2017): _Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine_, https://youtu.be/34LGPIXvU5M.
+[^hirsch2021hw]: Oliver Hirsch (2021): _Propaganda erkennen lernen_, https://clubderklarenworte.de/propaganda-erkennen-lernen/.
+[^dts2022iy]: dts Nachrichtenagentur (2022): _Unionsfraktion schreibt Brandbrief an Lauterbach_, https://www.oldenburger-onlinezeitung.de/nachrichten/unionsfraktion-schreibt-brandbrief-an-lauterbach-85408.html.
+[^ivmmeta2021ra]: ivmmeta.com (2021): _Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 63 studies_, https://ivmmeta.com/.
+[^wade2021vr]: Peter Wade (2021): _Gunshot victims left waiting as horse dewormer overdoses overwhelm Oklahoma hospitals, doctor says_, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/gunshot-victims-horse-dewormer-ivermectin-oklahoma-hospitals-covid-1220608/.
+[^rogan2022gh]: Joe Rogan (2022): _Yellow Journalism_, https://www.instagram.com/p/CYcLCESpFws/.
+[^miroff2020jm]: Nick Miroff (2020): _‘Kids in cages’: It’s true that Obama built the cages at the border. But Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy had no precedent._, https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/kids-in-cages-debate-trump-obama/2020/10/23/8ff96f3c-1532-11eb-82af-864652063d61_story.html.
+[^re2019as]: Gregg Re (2019): _PolitiFact stands by AOC 'parking lot' fact-check after online mockery_, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/politifact-aoc-parking-lot-fact-check-mockery.
+[^carlson2021ca]: Tucker Carlson (2021): _Tucker: Kyle Rittenhouse facts are different than what we were told_, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/tucker-kyle-rittenhouse-facts-are-different-than-what-we-were-told.
+[^faria2021qg]: Zachary Faria (2021): _Portland cut police funding and got a 2,000% surge in murders_, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/portland-cut-police-funding-and-got-a-2-000-surge-in-murders.
+[^ganser2020em]: Daniele Ganser (2020): _Daniele Ganser: Propaganda - Wie unsere Gedanken und Gefühle gelenkt werden_, https://youtu.be/ooM3rrBoiBA.
+[^bedard2020aa]: Paul Bedard (2020): _Just 9% trust media ‘a great deal,’ 33% ‘none at all,’ highest ever_, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/just-9-trust-media-a-great-deal-33-none-at-all-highest-ever.
+[^brenan2021mz]: Megan Brenan (2021): _Americans’ Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record_, https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx.
+[^bagus2021lf]: Philipp Bagus, José Antonio Peña-Ramos, and Antonio Sánchez-Bayón (2021): _COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria_, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913136/.
+[^illing2019bz]: Sean Illing (2019): _A decade of revolt_, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/12/26/21004797/2010s-review-a-decade-of-revolt-martin-gurri.
+[^molla2018fz]: Rani Molla (2018): _Tech employees are much more liberal than their employers — at least as far as the candidates they support_, https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-politics-liberal-employers-candidates.
+[^sacks2022py]: David Sacks and Bari Weiss (2022): _How Big Tech Is Strangling Your Freedom_, https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/2b0f956c/how-big-tech-is-strangling-your-freedom.
+[^weinstein2020lw]: Eric Weinstein and Ashley Mathews (2020): _Ashley Mathews (Riley Reid) on The Portal, Ep. #021 - The Mogul & Brains Behind America’s Sweetheart_, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHNBCVGH34c.
+[^lane2021lh]: Justin E. Lane, Kevin McCaffree, and F. LeRon Shults (2021): _Is radicalization reinforced by social media censorship?_, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350372124_Is_radicalization_reinforced_by_social_media_censorship.
+[^bruzzone2020aa]: Victor Bruzzone (2020): _Oppositional Thinking and the Importance of Compassion_, https://areomagazine.com/2020/08/25/oppositional-thinking-and-the-importance-of-compassion/.
+[^rogan2022jm]: Joe Rogan, Daryl Davis, and Bill Ottman (2022): _The Joe Rogan Experience 1792 - Daryl Davis & Bill Ottman_, https://open.spotify.com/episode/2hM2E1WkW2QBJQV7T5ikwb.
+[^kay2022eh]: Grace Kay (2022): _Elon Musk says Netflix is losing subscribers because ‘the woke mind virus’ is making it ‘unwatchable’_, https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-netflix-losing-subscribers-because-woke-mind-virus-2022-4.
+[^soave2022pw]: Robby Soave (2022): _Netflix Adds ‘Artistic Expression’ Policy, Says It Will Not ‘Censor Specific Artists’_, https://reason.com/2022/05/13/netflix-dave-chappelle-artistic-expression-company-culture/.
+[^meyen2021xq]: Michael Meyen (2021): _Michael Meyen: Die Medien-Matrix_, https://youtu.be/jE2SkKXxtYQ.
+[^thurnes2022ru]: Mario Thurnes (2022): _„Spiegel“ im publizistischen Kampf gegen Milliardäre – Bill Gates wird verschont_, https://www.tichyseinblick.de/feuilleton/medien/spiegel-fuehrt-puplizistischen-kampf-gegen-milliardaere-und-verschont-bill-gates/.
+[^brand2022qs]: Russel Brand (2022): _The Truth About “Woke” Disney_, https://youtu.be/MfsgiSIIaUc.
+[^wile2022wa]: Rob Wile and Bryan Logan (2022): _CNN+ is shutting down_, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/cnn-streaming-service-cnn-plus-is-shutting-down-rcna25406.
+[^dore2022it]: Jimmy Dore (2022): _No, 270 “Doctors” Didn’t Criticize Joe Rogan_, https://youtu.be/JUavjbM3gi4.
+[^sears2022jo]: JP Sears (2022): _What We DON’T Want You To Know! - News Update_, https://youtu.be/uE3EFV5DE18.
+[^hibberd2022qn]: James Hibberd (2022): _Joe Rogan Claims Massive Subscriber Boost Due to Recent Controversies_, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/joe-rogan-spotify-subscribers-1235134232/.
+[^kotkin2022re]: Joel Kotkin (2022): _Do we need a capitalist civil war?_, https://unherd.com/2022/05/do-we-need-a-capitalist-civil-war/.

src/content/journal/2022/civil-war-truth-5-academia.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,173 @@
+---
+title: "Civil War for Truth: Academia"
+slug: civil-war-truth-5-academia
+date: 2022-07-04T07:00:00+02:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is the fifth part of a seven-part series that
+  investigates why the last 10 years were uniquely turbulent with
+  ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing
+  authoritarianism.
+tags: ["politics"]
+series: civil-war-truth
+---
+
+## The Long March Through the Institutions
+
+Academia is one of the most worrying institutions to break down because the education system is the basis for everything that will happen in the future. Children, teenagers, and young adults can be molded easier into an ideology because the brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25.[^cox2011vs]
+
+All ideological systems have tried to indoctrinate the youths into their belief systems, even the democratic ones. But the harm emerges if these ideologies are not based on truth and facts, glorify the collective, teach obedience to the state, weaken the resilience of mind and body or stir up hatred against parts of the population. The Nazis did this with their Hitler Youth, the Maoists did this with their Red Guards, or African dictators do this with their child soldier armies.
+
+<Blockquote author="Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin">
+	Give me just one generation of youth and I’ll transform the whole world.
+</Blockquote>
+
+The modern universities in Western countries are breaking down due to something the Marxists coined as <q>The long march through the institutions.</q> It is a Marxist long-term plan to change society from within over many generations by indoctrination of the education system.
+
+Large parts of the Western intelligentsia were (and are) in favor of socialist ideologies. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the crimes and failure of Marxism and Socialism could no longer be denied. Dissident writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (<cite>The Gulag Archipelago</cite>) wrote in length about the horrors of those totalitarian regimes. The death tolls of Stalinism and Maoism became public.
+
+It is estimated that Stalin killed more than 20 million people,[^conquest1968ar] between 3 and 5 million died as the result of the destruction of the Kulak class, which resulted in massive famine. More than 1 million were executed and an unknown number of people died through <q>forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation.</q>[^haven2010xg]
+
+Mao Zedong’s _Great Leap Forward_ policy killed in 4 years (1958-1962) an estimated 45 million people, <q>making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.</q>[^somin2016ht]
+
+## Post-Modernism
+
+Confronted with these facts, many academics moved in the direction of post-modernism, a philosophy Gad Saad calls <q>intellectual terrorism.</q>[^saad2020aa]
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="Gad Saad"
+	source="Joe Rogan Experience #1816 – Gad Saad"
+	sourceUrl="https://open.spotify.com/episode/6rDI1etn04E0qJM0qfG3p5"
+>
+	Post-Modernism is the granddaddy of idea pathogens because it removes the most fundamental
+	epistemological premise of reality, which is that there are universal truths we can regularly
+	count on. That’s the whole premise of science. There are natural laws that we are trying to
+	discover. Post-modernism says, there is no absolute truth. Everything is shackled by subjectivity,
+	by personal biases, by relativism.
+</Blockquote>
+
+In the 1970s, a group of poststructuralist French philosophers developed a radical critique of modern philosophy. They included people like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and others. They developed relativist ideas like deconstructionism (there is no reality outside language, language creates reality) which gave birth to a huge amount of related ideas and ideologies like social constructivism, cultural relativism, gender studies, radical feminism, critical theory, and a cultural phenomenon which is today summarized as “Social Justice Activism,” “Identity Politics,” or “Wokeness”.
+
+Slowly, over the next 40-50 years these ideologies spread, foremost in the humanities departments of many universities. While those ideas pathogens often start with a noble premise like <q>we should not discriminate against …,</q> once they develop into a field of study they spread like cancer.
+
+<Blockquote author="Gad Saad" source="The Parasitic Mind">
+	The problem arises when domains that should be reserved for the intellect are hijacked by
+	feelings. This is precisely what plagues our universities: what were once centers of intellectual
+	development have become retreats for the emotionally fragile. The driving motto of the university
+	is no longer the pursuit of truth but the coddling of hurt feelings.[^saad2020aa]
+</Blockquote>
+
+## Cultural Relativism
+
+Relativism produces cultural relativism, which brings forward ideas that all cultures are equally right, and that we should not judge other cultures’ customs and traditions. This weird form of multiculturalism accepts the horrors of other cultures (like female genital mutilation, child brides, and honor killings) and <q>fetishize[s] all Muslims as inherently noble, peaceful, and kind, a new manifestation of the myth of the Noble Savage,</q> writes Gad Saad in his book <cite>The Parasitic Mind</cite>.[^saad2020aa]
+
+This leads to the idea that cultural artifacts are holy or “taboo” and using or developing them further would be “Cultural Appropriation,” and this idiotic idea. Not only is it nearly impossible to identify a founder of a cultural phenomenon in most cases, but additionally cultures develop the same idea independent of each other multiple times (for example Dreadlocks in African tribes and Vikings), and culture mixes and builds new cultures on each other.
+
+## Obsession with Power, Language, and Knowledge
+
+The activists of these ideologies <q>are obsessed with power, language, knowledge, and the relationships between them. They interpret the world through a lens that detects power dynamics in every interaction, utterance, and cultural artifact—even when they aren’t obvious or real. This is a worldview that centers on social and cultural grievances and aims to make everything into a zero-sum political struggle revolving around identity markers like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and many others,</q> write Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay in their book <cite>Cynical Theories</cite>.[^pluckrose2020he]
+
+This leads to more and more fields of studies like Critical Queer Theory, Critical Fat Theory, and Critical Race Theory.[^lindsay2022ty] These ideas leaked into public consciousness in the last few years. It is the reason parents have to fight at school board meetings against CRT (Critical Race Theory) or gender ideology, to remove it from the curriculum.[^carroll2021so][^newsweek2021qd][^foxnews2021od] It is the reason we see fashion advertising with morbidly obese models,[^watson2022fh] trans-athletes crushing biological women in nearly all sports,[^watson2019wf] trans-men getting moved to female prisons (by self-identifying as female) where they rape and impregnate inmates,[^watson2022ua] or why we have now a [pregnant man](https://emojipedia.org/pregnant-man/) emoji on our phones. Ideology has real-world consequences.
+
+## The Words Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean
+
+The problem is that the activists use sophistry. The words they use don’t mean what most people think they mean. This ideology is sometimes called DIE, because of its core principles of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.
+
+At first glance, these ideas sound nice, don’t they? But this is because of assumptions we have about what they mean, which are not shared with activists. In their opinion, Diversity never means diversity of thought (or race or gender). Inclusion doesn’t mean including all people. It means bringing in more people of the same ideology under the guise of diversity and inclusion. This is the reason people that share a preferred race, for example, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) or sexual orientation, as LGBT+, but not their ideology, are viciously attacked. Larry Elder, a black conservative radio moderator who ran for the governor position of California, was called <q>a Black face on White supremacy.</q>[^chasmar2021ut]
+
+Equity is even more worrying because it stands for equality of outcome. It means that if you see _any_ difference in gender, sex, race, or any other attribute, the reason is _always_ a systemic underlying condition that holds people down. It ignores preference, interest, merit, diligence, hard work, genes, or luck as contributing factors. Ironically, gender activists try to reduce a multi-level problem to a binary in this case.
+
+This all resulted in a prominent victimhood culture at the universities, where trigger warnings are now necessary before you read Shakespeare or listen to a Standup comedian or philosophical talk. It produced a culture that invented the concept of Microaggressions and sees those in statements like <q>Merry Christmas</q> or <q>Women bear children,</q> and believes that <q>Words are Violence.</q>
+
+Gad Saad coined the term <q>Collective Munchhausen</q> for this faux-victimhood mentality. <q>Rather than feigning a medical condition or inflicting an injury, sufferers of Collective Munchhausen seek attention, sympathy, and empathy by advertising their supposed victimhood status (or piggybacking on the victimhood of others, Collective Munchhausen by Proxy).</q>[^saad2020aa]
+
+How crazy this victimhood culture can be observed by watching the [Democratic Socialists of America National Convention 2019](https://youtu.be/k1AXReZgFxw). I do not recommend watching the full convention, it might cause permanent brain damage to the viewer.
+
+Diving into the understanding of this ideology is like being Alice following the rabbit into Wonderland. The amount of invented words by these activists is mind-blowing: Ableism, Acting White, Ally, Birthing Person, Black Lives Matter, Body Positivity, Critical Race Theory, Cisgender, Deadname, Decolonize, Demisexual, Diversity, Equity, Fatphobia, Gender Pronouns, Hate Speech, Healthism, Healthy at Every Size, Intersectionality, Latinx, Oppression, People of Color, Privilege, Queer, to name a fraction. James Lindsay started collecting and describing these terms in his [Social Justice Encyclopedia](https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/) with the activists’ own words.
+
+This ideology brooded for years inside academia, but the internet made it possible to spread them easier around forums, boards, and social media platforms.
+
+In late 2016 and 2017 three major events happened that catapulted the craziness inside the universities into the global consciousness.
+
+## Jordan Peterson Against Compelled Speech Laws
+
+On September 27, 2016, Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, released the [first](https://youtu.be/fvPgjg201w0) of three videos speaking out against political correctness and Bill C16. Peterson was purposely mischaracterized as transphobic by activists and media because he objected to the introduction of a compelled speech law in Canada, which would force people to use the preferred pronouns of a trans person or face a criminal investigation for a hate speech crime. The controversy lasted nearly two months and included multiple rallies by activists against Peterson and a debate between Peterson, law professor Brenda Cossmann, and UBC Educator Professor Mary Bryson.[^simpson2016cg] [Jordan Peterson](https://youtu.be/KnIAAkSNtqo) and [Gad Saad](https://youtu.be/4WqryoEJqZg) gave full testimony on Bill C16 in May 2017 at the Canadian Senate.
+
+Forced into the public sphere, Peterson used his media presence in a calm, polite, and relaxed way to make the public aware of the problem at the universities. His breakthrough was an interview on Channel 5 News with Cathy Newman. Newman tried to attack him repeatedly and misinterpret his words, but was defeated and ridiculed by Peterson’s calm argumentation. The [Jordan Peterson debate on the gender pay gap, campus protests, and postmodernism](https://youtu.be/aMcjxSThD54) has nearly 38 million views (2022) and is something everybody should watch.
+
+Ironically, the vicious attacks on Peterson made him more popular and catapulted him into the position of one of the most influential intellectuals of our time.
+
+## Evergreen State College Incident
+
+The second event catapulted two <q>deeply progressive</q> professors at the Evergreen State College into public consciousness. Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying, both with a Ph.D. in biology, fell victim to a campus mob that labeled them as “racist” and “white supremacists” and both professors lost their tenured jobs at the university.
+
+The controversy started when in May 2017 for the first time white people were asked to leave the campus on the yearly “Day of Absence.” This yearly day allowed people of color to stay away from campus for one day to bring into consciousness how important diversity is. In 2017, the voluntary absence was changed into a mandatory absence for white people. Bret Weinstein, who merely questioned the event was made an example of and after massive riots, the students even took teachers hostage and hunted them on the campus property.
+
+A three-part documentary ([1](https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk), [2](https://youtu.be/FH2WeWgcSMk), [3](https://youtu.be/A0W9QbkX8Cs)) by filmmaker Mike Nayna documents the insanity that happened at the college with a mix of real-time video footage uploaded by activists and interviews. It shines a light on how a progressive college destroyed itself with ideology. The documentary is deeply disturbing and leaves viewers baffled and speechless. Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying worked since the incident, self-employed on their fantastic [DarkHorse Podcast](https://bretweinstein.net/podcast). Bret Weinstein [testified to Congress](https://youtu.be/uRIKJCKWla4) about the free speech crisis on US college campuses.
+
+The Evergreen State College experienced a 27% drop in enrollments after the riots, got into financial problems, and continues to decline.[^weissmann2020xp] The former president of the college, George Sumner Bridges, who collaborated with the protestors resigned in 2021 and the college was unable to find a successor yet.[^sexton2020mk] Evergreen State College is a sad example of ideology destroying an institution of higher education.
+
+## The Grievance Studies Affair
+
+In 2017 and 2018 a group of three authors, Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose started a project to expose the political corruption in several academic fields. They wrote and submitted bogus papers to academic journals in cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to see if they could pass peer review. They wrote 20 articles that had purposely absurd ideas. One of the most famous papers investigated rape culture in dog parks, another one investigated how transphobia could be reduced by penetrating men anally with sex toys, one proposed Fat Body Building, and one study rewrote Adolf Hitler’s <cite>Mein Kampf</cite> in feminist language.[^lindsay2018zb]
+
+The team failed with their approach at first and decided to understand and study the ideologies to write more effective hoax papers. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay worked their insights into the ideologies into a book on the topic. They both started projects to fight corruption in Academia. Helen Pluckrose started [Counterweight](https://counterweightsupport.com/), a project to reduce political polarization that is threatening science and James Lindsay started [New Discourses](https://newdiscourses.com/), a magazine, podcast, and education platform on post-modernist and Neo-Marxist ideology.
+
+By the time of the reveal 4 papers had been published, 1 paper won a prize, 3 had been accepted, but not yet published, 6 had been rejected and 7 were under review. Filmmaker Mike Nayna produced a short documentary about the [Grievance Studies Affair](https://youtu.be/kVk9a5Jcd1k).
+
+Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay were guests on [Joe Rogan’s Podcast](https://youtu.be/OlqU_JMTzd4) to talk about the project.
+
+The incident is at the same time funny and terrifying but revealed how corrupted Academia is. It might be beyond repair.
+
+## Real-World Consequences
+
+One could ignore what happens in Academia, but unfortunately, it is not <q>What Happens in Academia, Stays in Academia.</q> Scientific papers are written by scientists that work in Academia. Their ideologies will reflect in studies and have real-world consequences.
+
+Another consequence is that students don’t stay students forever, but are released into the labor market. They bring their ideologies into corporations, media, and politics. We see this in social media companies and the tech industry, which are saturated with progressive-left activists. Most of those companies, like Netflix (99.6%) or Twitter (98.7%) have a left-biased workforce.[^molla2018fz]
+
+Media companies have a strong cultural influence with their hegemony on movies, TV Shows, news articles, and social media influence. This leads to problems I discussed in previous essays of this series regarding censorship, bias, echo chambers, and political division.
+
+But more and more of these ideologies find their way into HR departments of traditional companies, which create policies that affect all employees.
+
+A few recent examples show what can happen if ideology destroys the workplace.
+
+## Wokeness Harms Company Culture
+
+Spotify got repeatedly into troubled water since its acquisition of the Joe Rogan Experience on its platform. Employees staged multiple walkouts and had tearful breakdowns every time a guest on Joe Rogan talked about a controversial topic such as Transgender, COVID-19, or politics in general. But for now, the profit was more important to the company than pleasing the grievances of triggered employees.[^hamilton2020aa]
+
+Another recent example is the resignation of the Jewish opinion writer Bari Weiss in 2020 from her position at The New York Times. The harassment she had to endure on internal Slack channels for her center-left positions became unbearable.[^weiss2020vp]
+
+Coinbase was one of the first companies that drew a line for activists in 2021 because it started to affect the company negatively. Employees got the instruction from their CEO Brian Armstrong to keep their activism out of the workplace and do it in their time.[^pachal2020gj]
+
+The small software company Basecamp with its 57 employees was troubled in 2021. In 2017, the company signalized how important they thought the topics of diversity, inclusion, and equity were and allowed a new hire to work on the topic. Roughly one-third of its employees took part in working on DIE issues on a dedicated company message board. This was a major mistake. As we learned earlier, the core premise of the ideology is to problematize everything and find grievances in every small thing. This small thing was a list of funny customer names that floated around the company.
+
+There was a huge internal discussion where people claimed the company would be riddled with “White Supremacy.” Basecamp’s head of strategy, Ryan Singer, questioned the existence of “White Supremacy” in the company but was forced to resign.[^monroe2021im][^ruby2021ba] As a result, CEO Jason Fried introduced new rules banning political discussions from internal message boards.[^fried2021kq] A severance package was offered to employees wanting to leave the company and one-third of the employees left. Now, that the dust is settled it doesn’t look like the company has taken any long-term harm, they announced to expand into their second project massively, [HEY](https://www.hey.com/). Basecamp made the grave error to give activists an inch. They always take a mile.
+
+The problem of universities breaking down and releasing activists into the public is here to stay with us for a longer time. But high tuition fees that produce massive student debt and useless degrees like “gender studies,” creating employees who are too fragile to withstand a normal day in the working place or contribute to the success of a company, is not a viable long-term business solution.
+
+The only way this can be stopped is when more companies stand up against activists that threaten their companies. You don’t kowtow to the mob. The companies that understand this will survive this phase, the others won’t because the majority of people are fed up with woke shit and will stop buying and consuming those politicized products.
+
+[^cox2011vs]: Tony Cox and Sandra Aamodt (2011): _Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years_, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708.
+[^conquest1968ar]: Robert Conquest (1968): _The Great Terror_, NY Macmillan.
+[^haven2010xg]: Cynthia Haven (2010): _Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?_, https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/.
+[^somin2016ht]: Illya Somin (2016): _Remembering the biggest mass murder in the history of the world_, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/.
+[^saad2020aa]: Gad Saad (2020): _The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense_, Regnery Publishing.
+[^pluckrose2020he]: Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay (2020): _Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody_, Pitchstone Publishing.
+[^lindsay2022ty]: James Lindsay (2022): _What is Critical Race Theory?_, https://youtu.be/BED_D6Hc6TU.
+[^carroll2021so]: Craig Carroll (2021): _Fighting Critical Race Theory in Schools_, https://areomagazine.com/2021/07/19/212494/.
+[^newsweek2021qd]: Newsweek (2021): _Watch Black Father Blast Critical Race Theory At Board Meeting In Viral Video_, https://youtu.be/m66rcHzWaPU.
+[^foxnews2021od]: Fox News (2021): _Parents fed up with critical race theory are trying to oust school board members_, https://youtu.be/Kgx49-lJrYA.
+[^watson2022fh]: Sydney Watson (2022): _The bizarre downward spiral of fat acceptance and "Health at Every Size"_, https://youtu.be/hwL-8cSiK6Q.
+[^watson2019wf]: Sydney Watson (2019): _Are transgender athletes pushing women out of sports? (here’s the data)_, https://youtu.be/C7jULL7ov7k.
+[^watson2022ua]: Sydney Watson (2022): _How hundreds of biological men INVADED women’s prisons_, https://youtu.be/k6PEmajzrc0.
+[^chasmar2021ut]: Jessica Chasmar (2021): _Newsom rally speaker calls Larry Elder ‘a Black face on White supremacy’_, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/newsom-speaker-larry-elder-black-face-white-supremacy.
+[^simpson2016cg]: Kaitlyn Simpson (2016): _The Explainer: Timeline of the Jordan Peterson controversy_, https://thevarsity.ca/2016/11/21/the-explainer-timeline-of-the-jordan-peterson-controversy/.
+[^weissmann2020xp]: Sara Weissmann (2020): _Two Years After Protests, Evergreen State College Works to Boost Enrollment, Retention_, https://www.diverseeducation.com/students/article/15106098/two-years-after-protests-evergreen-state-college-works-to-boost-enrollment-retention.
+[^sexton2020mk]: John Sexton (2020): _Evergreen State College president George Bridges is leaving...next year_, https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2020/02/26/evergreen-state-college-president-george-bridges-leaving-next-year-n310139.
+[^lindsay2018zb]: James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose (2018): _Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship_, https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/.
+[^molla2018fz]: Rani Molla (2018): _Tech employees are much more liberal than their employers - at least as far as the candidates they support_, https://www.vox.com/2018/10/31/18039528/tech-employees-politics-liberal-employers-candidates.
+[^pachal2020gj]: Pete Pachal (2020): _Coinbase Has Drawn a Line in the Sand for Its Activist Employees_, https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-has-drawn-a-line-in-the-sand-for-its-activist-employees.
+[^hamilton2020aa]: Isobel Asher Hamilton (2020): _Spotify is reportedly fighting with employees about hosting episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast that some consider transphobic_, https://www.businessinsider.com/spotify-report-joe-rogan-transphobia-fight-employees2020-9.
+[^weiss2020vp]: Bari Weiss (2020): _Resignation Letter_, https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter.
+[^monroe2021im]: Nick Monroe (2021): _REVEALED: Basecamp employees cried, threw tantrums after boss rejected woke culture_, https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-basecamp-employees-cried-threw-tantrums-after-boss-rejected-woke-culture.
+[^ruby2021ba]: Matt Ruby (2021): _I was employee #1 at Basecamp. Here’s my take on the recent blowup there._, https://mattruby.substack.com/p/i-was-employee-1-at-basecamp-heres.
+[^fried2021kq]: Jason Fried (2021): _Changes at Basecamp_, https://world.hey.com/jason/changes-at-basecamp-7f32afc5.

src/content/journal/2022/civil-war-truth-6-science.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,247 @@
+---
+title: "Civil War for Truth: Science"
+slug: civil-war-truth-6-science
+date: 2022-07-11T07:00:00+02:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is the sixth part of a seven-part series that
+  investigates why the last 10 years were so uniquely turbulent with
+  ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing
+  authoritarianism.
+tags: ["politics"]
+series: civil-war-truth
+---
+
+## Science Is Fundamentally Broken
+
+I had shown in my last essay with the example of the humanities how corrupt parts of science are. Unfortunately, it’s worse than that. Even though the ideology of identity politics is creeping into other areas outside the humanities rapidly, it is not the worst problem the institution has.
+
+John Ioannidis showed in his scientific article “<cite>Why Most Published Research Findings Are False</cite>”[^ioannidis2005ud] from 2005 that 90% of all published medical information is flawed. He and his team found out after years of meta-analysis research that <q>80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials.</q>[^freedman2010fe]
+
+_Marcia Angell_, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, wrote:
+
+> It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
+
+Ioannidis’ research was not controversial, and the scientific community was relieved somebody finally addressed the problem. His paper is one of the most-downloaded papers in the history of the journal and is considered foundational to the field of metascience.
+
+He mentioned in his article the many reasons that lead to the problem. Bias is one of the reasons. It is easy to manipulate the results, even unintentionally or unconsciously.
+
+<Blockquote author="John Ioannidis" source="Why most Published Research Findings are False">
+	Moreover for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply
+	accurate measures of the prevailing bias.[^ioannidis2005ud]
+</Blockquote>
+
+The only way to ensure this bias is found is through rigorous scrutiny by other scientists. But this is not done.[^freedman2010fe]
+
+> The ultimate protection against research error and bias is supposed to come from the way scientists constantly retest each other’s results—except they don’t. Only the most prominent findings are likely to be put to the test because there’s likely to be publication payoff in firming up the proof or contradicting it.
+
+The peer-review process itself <q>provides only a minimal assurance of quality, and that the public conception of peer review as a stamp of authentication is far from the truth,</q> stated <cite>Nature</cite> in 2006.[^freedman2010fe]
+
+Bret Weinstein goes further in his assessment and thinks the whole process is corrupt and doesn’t ensure scientific quality, but is used by gatekeepers to filter out new, heterodox ideas and to protect scientist carriers and research money.
+
+A recent study from September 2022 investigated the connection between status and anonymity in the peer-review process.[^huber2022ez] The paper found <q>strong evidence for […] status bias: while only 23 percent recommend ‘reject’ when the prominent researcher is the only author shown, 48 percent do so when the paper is anonymized, and 65 percent do so when the little-known author is the only author shown.</q> The authors <q>suggest that double-anonymization is a minimum requirement for an unbiased review process.</q>
+
+One of the reasons false studies live so long is that thousands of scientists have already built their careers on flawed papers. <q>It’s like an epidemic, in the sense that they’re infected with these wrong ideas, and they’re spreading it to other researchers through journals,</q>[^freedman2010fe] says Ioannidis.
+
+Another huge problem is that scientists need to get constantly funding to stay afloat. To get tenured positions or to continue researching, they have to constantly publish in respected journals that have a rejection rate above 90 percent. Only noticeable papers can achieve this. It is much more rewarding to publish new findings than to re-prove someone else’s research.
+
+Considerable parts of science are funded with third-party funds. Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg explained in an interview that today, scientists proceed with their carrier only if they can find funding. It becomes secondary who pays the funding, which leads to corruption in science. Firstly, it means that research is only carried out for topics that can be used to earn money. And secondly, research results that the sponsor dislikes are not published at all. This might result in the repetition of harmful tests with candidates in the future. Wodarg demands that every study should be registered so that one can trace what became of the results.[^wodarg2022et]
+
+Many of the scientific claims in medical research or nutritional sciences are outright false or turn out as the opposite years later. Nutritional sciences are so often wrong that their rate of being wrong reaches nearly 100 percent. Ioannidis suggests a simple approach on how to deal with those findings: <q>ignore them all.</q>[^freedman2010fe]
+
+The problem was known for years to the scientific community but went unnoticed by the public. The devastating consequences of this unresolved problem could be seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
+
+Jon Jureidini and Leemon B McHenry wrote in their 2022 scientific article <cite>The illusion of evidence based medicine</cite>:
+
+> The philosophy of critical rationalism, advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, famously advocated for the integrity of science and its role in an open, democratic society. A science of real integrity would be one in which practitioners are careful not to cling to cherished hypotheses and take seriously the outcome of the most stringent experiments. This ideal is, however, threatened by corporations, in which financial interests trump the common good. Medicine is largely dominated by a small number of very large pharmaceutical companies that compete for market share, but are effectively united in their efforts to expanding that market. The short term stimulus to biomedical research because of privatization has been celebrated by free market champions, but the unintended, long term consequences for medicine have been severe. Scientific progress is thwarted by the ownership of data and knowledge because industry suppresses negative trial results, fails to report adverse events, and does not share raw data with the academic research community. Patients die because of the adverse impact of commercial interests on the research agenda, universities, and regulators.
+
+Bret Weinstein told in an interview on the podcast <cite>The Portal</cite> a horrifying story from his discovery as an undergraduate. He discovered that the Telomere of lab mice were much longer than those of mice in nature, due to selective breeding of younger mice. The longer Telomeres gave the mice nearly no protection from tumors (that are never observed because the mice die early), but an infinite capacity to replace damaged tissue. These lab mice are much more resilient to damage from drug experiments than normal mice, which results in the false belief a tested drug is safe. All mice used for science in the USA come from one laboratory. Bret Weinstein’s finding was buried by what Eric Weinstein calls the <q>Distributed Idea Suppression Complex</q> (DISC)[^weinstein2020rj] and the problem is not addressed until today.[^weinstein2020ac]
+
+## Science as a Religion
+
+Even though science is flawed, it is our only tool to slowly approach the truth. It becomes problematic if people expect absolute truths from science and demand authoritarian measurements from politicians based on a flawed scientific basis.
+
+<Blockquote author="Richard P. Feynman">
+	Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
+</Blockquote>
+
+Science can’t deliver absolute truth, ever. It can only try to formulate how likely a scientific result is. Science uses a hypothesis as an assumption before the research is started. It formulates a question that can be tested. A theory is a principle formed to explain the results shown by the data resulting from the research.
+
+But during the COVID-19 “pandemic” people looked up to “The Science™” (<q>Trust _the_ Science</q>) as bringers of absolute truth. Science became a substitute for religion. It showed all the signs of a religious cult.
+
+<Blockquote author="Ernest Becker" source="The Denial of Death">
+	Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of
+	the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a “religion”
+	whether it thinks so or not: Soviet “religion” and Maoist “religion” are as truly religious as are
+	scientific and consumer “religion,” no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by
+	omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives.
+</Blockquote>
+
+There were prophets like Anthony Fauci, Christian Drosten, and Karl Lauterbach. People wore shirts with iconized faces of the prophets, walls were sprayed with their faces and people even tattooed them on their bodies. There were many willing members of the scientific community (the clergy) to legitimize the political decisions of the leaders (the nobility). We had rules, dogma, rituals, and holy artifacts to recognize the good ones: social distancing, masks, and digital passports. There was the miracle, the “holy” mRNA vaccine. People stood for hours in the rain to be baptized with the holy substance. The heretics, that questioned the proportionality of the political measures or the safety and effectiveness of the novel vaccines, were hated and publicly shamed. Those who didn’t follow the rules were punished by the inquisition with high fines. The pariahs who didn’t obey were shunned and excluded from society.
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="Frank Furedi"
+	source="How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century"
+>
+	Statements like ‘The Science says’ serve as the twenty-first-century equivalent of the exhortation
+	‘God said’. Unlike science, the term ‘The Science’ serves a moralistic and political project. It
+	has more in common with a pre-modern revealed truth than with the spirit of experimentation that
+	emerged with modernity. The constant refrain of ‘Scientists Tell Us’ serves as a prelude for a
+	lecture on what threat to fear (…) those who do not heed the warnings of experts are frequently
+	castigated as irresponsible if not evil.[^ideas2022wm]
+</Blockquote>
+
+“The science” was not even science, but pseudoscience. The difference is in pseudoscience you don’t ask questions, but conduct a model based on preconceived ideas, go on to find data that fits the model, and discard data that does not fit the model. You keep the experiment hidden and don’t publish the data. Trust the experts.
+
+<Blockquote author="Heather Heying" source="On not being a contrarian">
+	When advised to #FollowTheScience during Covid, we have often been handed a consensus position
+	that was arrived at out of view of the public, generally with no sharing of process or data, and
+	therefore with no ability to vet the results. (…) Consensus is not arrived at so quickly, or so
+	completely. Coercion is. Coercion is anti-scientific. So is faith.[^heying2022dx]
+</Blockquote>
+
+The media manufactured consensus. Massive parts of the scientific community were suppressed and silenced. People like Dr. Robert W. Malone, the inventor of the mRNA technology, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, virologist and vaccine expert, formerly working at GAVI and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations, or former chief scientist of Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, were demonized and removed from public conversations for their views.
+
+Even John Ioannidis who predicted early on a median overall IFR of 0.23 and a median IFR for the under the 70s of 0.05 (a value which was nearly on point) was ignored and removed from the discussions.[^clark2020hx] He corrected his values later down to 0.15-0.2 and to 0.03-0.04 for the age group under 70[^ioannidis2020xo] and calculated a global IFR of 0.15.[^ioannidis2021zp]
+
+Working treatments like Ivermectin, which showed to be effective in meta-studies[^ivmmeta2022ra] and multiple countries such as India or Peru, were targeted and demonized in large-scale campaigns. The industrial-scientific medical complex didn’t even shy away from starting an opposing meta-analysis under Andrew Hill that came to other conclusions. Tess Lawrie spoke to Andrew Hill in a Zoom call, where he admitted having been instructed to change the conclusion of the paper by unnamed authors.[^lawrie2022jo][^weinstein2022el]
+
+Eric Weinstein coined the sentence <q>follow the silence,</q> to describe a situation where considerable parts of the scientific and medical communities were too afraid to speak up, because of social or professional pressure and a drastic narrowing of acceptable scientific opinions.
+
+## The Crimes of the Past
+
+What can happen if politicians follow pseudoscience instead of science can be seen in the example of Lysenkoism. Trofim Lysenko was the agriculturalist of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and his unscientific beliefs led directly to the death of tens of millions in the Soviet Union and later in Maoist China, where his ideas were implemented. Massive famine and death were the results of his pseudoscientific ideas.[^lindsay2021ew]
+
+But there was another pseudoscientific theory broadly accepted by wide parts of the scientific community in the 20th Century: Eugenics. This discredited belief that certain families have better ancestry and are meant to lead the society was supported by prominent people like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Leland Standford, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. The Rockefellers were massive supporters of Eugenics and supported the research with lots of money.[^corbett2020oq]
+
+The theory survived for more than 50 years and lead directly to the atrocities of the Nazis who used it as an excuse to sterilize or kill “unworthy” lives like mentally or physically disabled people, criminals, and other “asocial” people. After the war, Eugenics became unpopular, but it is still popular in specific circles and words like “population control” and “reproductive health” are modernized euphemisms of the same ideology.
+
+Bill Gates’s father, Gates Sr., served on the board of Planned Parenthood after the founding of the organization. It was a re-brand birthed out of the American Eugenics Society.[^news2020rh]
+
+This family history of the Gates makes the connections of Bill Gates to child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein just more suspicious. <cite>The New York Times</cite> reported that Epstein owned a ranch in New Mexico that he wanted to use for controlled breeding using his DNA to improve humanity.
+
+<Blockquote
+	author="James B. Stewart, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg"
+	source="Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA"
+>
+	Mr. Epstein’s vision reflected his longstanding fascination with what has become known as
+	transhumanism: the science of improving the human population through technologies like genetic
+	engineering and artificial intelligence. Critics have likened transhumanism to a modern-day
+	version of eugenics, the discredited field of improving the human race through controlled
+	breeding.[^stewart2019tg]
+</Blockquote>
+
+## The Influence of Billionaires on Science
+
+Many billionaires, especially Bill Gates and his foundation “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” try to influence and control public policy and perception of their deeds in a growing and worrying way with hundreds of million USD every year. They claim to do this out of love for humanity, but this is hard to believe. The reasons for the investments are likely more sinister. Buying influence, getting more power or money, greed and fame (or even worse goals). Bill Gates himself boasted in an interview that his investment in vaccines resulted in <q>an [over] 20:1 return on investment.</q>[^quick2019ry]
+
+But even if all his intentions were altruistic, why should we give control over the health of billions of people to a high-school dropout without any medical degree?
+
+Bill Gates is not a trustworthy person. The more you research into his business with vaccines in Africa or India and the damage his foundation has caused with their vaccination programs, the more suspicious you will get. India kicked the foundation out of the country[^kumar2014ma] and it is one of the reasons Pfizer won’t try to get regular approval of their COVID-19 vaccine in India because the government demands after their experiences with the foundation now <q>too many safety checks</q> for Pfizer.
+
+Bill Gates’ massive investment in industrial farming and farmland which made him the biggest private farmland owner in the United States is another worrying development.[^kennedy2021aa][^brand2021mm][^estes2021ex] Not to mention his megalomaniac idea of blocking the sun with dust particles.[^cohen2021kf]
+
+Everything Gates does is perfectly echoed by the final words by Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who presided over the Gates/Microsoft antitrust-fraud case:
+
+> Gates has a Napoleonic concept of himself, an appetite that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses.
+
+But his behavior is not a coincidence, he follows the playbook of his idol, John D. Rockefeller.
+
+After John D. Rockefeller owned nearly all oil production in the country, he searched for new ways to increase his wealth. He discovered that he could find new ways to use his oil to open new markets. One of those markets was medicine.[^willis2021dd] We can see Gates working similarly. He identified a product (vaccines) and a market (developing countries) and pushed relentlessly for the implementation of his agenda. Of his [10 TED talks](https://www.ted.com/speakers/bill_gates), more than half are on this topic.
+
+Next, John D. Rockefeller bought every newspaper in the country and printed massive ads for his new oil-based medicine. The same happens now but on a much larger scale. <q>Following in the footsteps of John D. Rockefeller, today, the pharmaceutical industry spends at least twice the amount as big oil every year to influence laws, policies, and public perception,</q> writes Mikki Willis in his 2021 book <cite>Plandemic</cite>.[^willis2021dd] Big Pharma spends $5 billion every year in the United States on advertising alone. 75% of the total advertising budget for 2020 was paid by Big Pharma.[^brand2022tz] The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent $5.822 billion in total in 2020, $1.793 billion on Global Health alone.[^suzman2020qp] The money goes everywhere to influence politicians, doctors, scientists, and journalists.
+
+If you follow the money and look at the conflict of interests, you’ll, again and again, stumble on strange coincidences. For example, the husband of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, is the medical director of the US pharmaceutical company Orgenesis since September 2020.[^loyen2021vi] The husband of “scientific” YouTube media influencer Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim is a director at Merck Group, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. German TV doctor and comedian Eckart von Hirschhausen’s foundation received €1.4 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.[^wallasch2022cg] This is just the tip of the iceberg with examples of German politicians and scientists, the pattern repeats across the globe.
+
+An unnamed data scientist created 2021 a graph with over 6,500 objects including individuals, NGOs, companies, and documents connected with more than 7,200 links. The graph shows the flow of money and relationships and was created from public data. The document is 169 pages long (in the English language, and can be downloaded exclusively at <cite>Club der klaren Worte.</cite>[^langemann2021oc]
+
+Rockefeller founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and put his brother in position as the head. He used his scientific influence <q>to drive out all natural—and therefore unpatentable and unprofitable—medicines, creating a new market for oil-derived drugs.</q>[^willis2021dd] In the same way, Gates uses his influence to change science to his preference by supporting the causes he cares about. He is the second-largest donor to the WHO, with 13% of the donations. 20% are paid by the member states, and 80% are donated by private sources. The list of donors includes pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca, Bayer, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck. Gates's influence helped for the first time in the history of the WHO a questionable candidate for the director position who was not a doctor.
+
+<Blockquote author="Mikki Willis" source="Plandemic: Fear Is the Virus. Truth Is the Cure">
+	Still, was it any surprise that Tedros emerged victorious? With Gates behind him—as well as other
+	powerful allies including the Clinton Global Initiative and the Chinese Communist Party—he was a
+	shoo-in. The fact that he wasn’t even a doctor was easily ignored. More disturbingly, however,
+	were some of the scandals in his past that were quietly swept under the rug. Prior to his
+	appointment, Tedros was a high-ranking member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in Ethiopia,
+	a brutal and corrupt political group responsible for crimes against humanity, including bombings,
+	kidnappings, tortures, and killings. He also was accused of helping to cover up to three different
+	cholera epidemics in the African nation that occurred under his leadership as health
+	minister.[^willis2021dd]
+</Blockquote>
+
+No wonder the WHO seems to always be aligned with the interests of Big Pharma. They redefined the definition of a pandemic during COVID-19, so they could declare it a pandemic because it didn’t meet the criteria. The WHO re-defined “herd immunity” and wrote herd immunity could only be achieved with mass vaccinations.
+
+John D. Rockefeller <q>shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars to transform his reputation from the most hated man in America to a benevolent philanthropist,</q>[^willis2021dd] writes Willis. In the same way, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation influences public perception.
+
+John D. Rockefeller donated millions to everybody who supported his cause, and so does Gates. When it showed that Rockefeller’s coal- and oil-based medicine was causing cancer, he founded the American Cancer Society in 1912.[^willis2021dd] We can hope the massive push and investment of Big Pharma into mRNA technology do not work out similarly.
+
+## Scientific Fraud
+
+It’s not an accident we find prominent people like Anthony Fauci or Christian Drosten at the center of the COVID-19 crisis. And neither is the most likely location of the outbreak, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
+
+The famous PCR test for COVID-19 is an example of the scientific fraud that plagues the medical scientific community. These things happen if research and financial interests collide. The scientific paper for the PCR test of Christian Drosten was reviewed and declared “Gold Standard” in less than 48 hours. A peer-review process normally takes many months. Dr. Simon Goddek, a peer-reviewer himself, showed in detail in his long essay how the fraud happened.[^goddek2021tr]
+
+This crisis itself was “prepared” for a long time. Willis interviewed for his book Dr. David P. Martin, a credentialed doctor and medical expert, founder, and CEO of CAM Inc., a company for property-based financial risk management. One of their fields of expertise is auditing patent quality.
+
+Dr. Martin found out that <q>in the late 1990s, a new and puzzling trend was emerging in that sea of data. During 1999 alone, fifty-nine new patents were issued for medical discoveries related to the “coronavirus” disease family. (…) We know that Anthony Fauci, that Ralph Baric, that the Centers for Disease Control and the laundry list of people who wanted to take credit for inventing coronavirus were at the hub of this story (…) From 2003 and 2018, they controlled 100 percent of the cash flow that built the empire around the industrial complex of coronavirus.</q>[^willis2021dd]
+
+He discovered a massive patent fraud in the scientific community, by analyzing the digital fingerprints of the filed patents. This way he could track down the grants and their affiliations.
+
+<Blockquote author="Mikki Willis" source="Plandemic: Fear Is the Virus. Truth Is the Cure">
+	Before long, you see that the Patent Office, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, and the National Science
+	Foundation are all in this massive collusive network, which is essentially a way to take public
+	funds and underwrite corporate programs, and—probably most egregiously—pay exorbitant amounts of
+	money to universities that rely on federal grants as one of their primary funding sources.
+	Ultimately, the patent represents the commercial greed of an individual or organization, because
+	what they’re trying to do when a patent is filed is the obstruction of the free market, by
+	definition. As a result of that, there is a high incentive to obstruct free markets across the
+	system. And there is a high incentive to lie about it. And it turns out that when nobody was
+	watching the store, both of those happened.[^willis2021dd]
+</Blockquote>
+
+This drive of the medical-scientific community to patent life is illegal, says Dr. Martin. <q>Under 35 US Code, Section 101, nature is prohibited from being patented (…) Either SARS coronavirus was manufactured, therefore making a patent on it legal, or it was natural, therefore making a patent on it illegal. If it was manufactured, it was a violation of biological and chemical weapons treaties and laws. If it was natural, filing a patent on it was illegal. In either outcome, both are illegal.</q>[^willis2021dd]
+
+It will take many years to uncover the whole truth about the scientific fraud and corruption that lead to the outbreak of the coronavirus. Gain-of-function research is dangerous and should be outlawed, as Obama decided in 2014. But it is not enough to outlaw the research in one country because then it gets moved to another country, like China, with less medical security, and the next pandemic will happen. Biological research should be treated like nuclear research. Regulated and far away from civilization (preferably on a ship on the ocean).
+
+---
+
+This is the sixth part of a seven-part series that investigates, why the last 10 years were uniquely turbulent with ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing authoritarianism. The next part will conclude this series and propose solutions on how to deal with the insights learned.
+
+1. [Introduction](/civil-war-truth-1-introduction/)
+2. [Corporatism and Technocracy](/civil-war-truth-2-corporatism-technocracy/)
+3. [Political Division](/civil-war-truth-3-political-division/)
+4. [Media and Journalism](/civil-war-truth-4-media-journalism/)
+5. [Academia](/civil-war-truth-5-academia/)
+6. _Science_
+7. [Conclusion](/civil-war-truth-7-conclusion/)
+
+[^ioannidis2005ud]: John P. A. Ioannidis (2005): _Why Most Published Research Findings Are False_, https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124.
+[^freedman2010fe]: David H. Freedman (2010): _Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science_, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/.
+[^huber2022ez]: Juergen Huber, Sabiou M. Inoua, Rudolf Kerschbamer, Christian König-Kersting, Stefan Palan, and Vernon L. Smith (2022): _Nobel and Novice: Author Prominence Affects Peer Review_, https://ssrn.com/abstract=4190976>.
+[^wodarg2022et]: Wolfgang Wodarg (2022): _Warum liegt die Forschung im Argen?_, https://odysee.com/warum-liegt-die-forschung-im-argen:d5c02f44357c5cc9bea81f4e649d7cdb299d9435.
+[^weinstein2020rj]: Eric Weinstein (2020): _18: Eric Weinstein (Solo) - Slipping the DISC: State of The Portal/Chapter 2020_, https://youtu.be/QxnkGymKuuI.
+[^weinstein2020ac]: Eric Weinstein and Bret Weinstein (2020): _19: Bret Weinstein - The Prediction and the DISC_, https://youtu.be/JLb5hZLw44s.
+[^ideas2022wm]: Academy of Ideas (2022): _Fear Psychosis and the Cult of Safety – Why are People so Afraid?_, https://academyofideas.com/2022/04/fear-psychosis-and-the-cult-of-safety/.
+[^heying2022dx]: Heather Heying (2022): _On not being a contrarian_, https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/notacontraria>.
+[^clark2020hx]: Ross Clark (2020): _How deadly is Covid-19?_, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-deadly-is-covid-19-.
+[^ioannidis2020xo]: John P. A. Ioannidis (2020): _Global perspective of COVID-19 epidemiology for a full-cycle pandemic_, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13423.
+[^ioannidis2021zp]: John P. A. Ioannidis (2021): _Reconciling estimates of global spread and infection fatality rates of COVID-19: An overview of systematic evaluations_, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13554.
+[^ivmmeta2022ra]: ivmmeta.com (2022): _Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 84 studies_, https://ivmmeta.com/.
+[^weinstein2022el]: Bret Weinstein and Neil Oliver (2022): _Keeping Sane: Bret Speaks with Neil Oliver_, https://youtu.be/0ytv1pzjiSw.
+[^lawrie2022jo]: Tess Lawrie (2022): _A Letter to Dr Andrew Hill_, https://odysee.com/@OracleFilms:1/2022.03.04-A-Letter-to-Andrew-Hill-V8_HD:3.
+[^kennedy2021aa]: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (2021): _Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill_, https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bill-gates-neo-feudalism-farmer-bill/.
+[^lindsay2021ew]: James Lindsay (2021): _The Dawn of Medical Lysenkoism_, https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/new-discourses/id1499880546?i=1000516473942.
+[^corbett2020oq]: James Corbett (2020): _Who Is Bill Gates?_, https://youtu.be/TY-vLrz9XCc.
+[^news2020rh]: TOTT News (2020): _The Gates Family, Eugenics and COVID-19_, https://tottnews.com/2020/04/09/gates-family-eugenics-covid-19/.
+[^stewart2019tg]: James B. Stewart, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg (2019): _Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA_, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html.
+[^quick2019ry]: Becky Quick and Bill Gates (2019): _Bill Gates and the return on investment in vaccinations_, https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/01/23/bill-gates-and-the-return-on-investment-in-vaccinations-davos.html.
+[^brand2021mm]: Russel Brand (2021): _The Great Reset: Bill Gates & Farming - WHAT'S GOING ON?_, https://youtu.be/fg0c2x74mgU.
+[^estes2021ex]: Nick Estes (2021): _Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?_, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland.
+[^kumar2014ma]: KP Narayana Kumar (2014): _Controversial vaccine studies: Why is Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under fire from critics in India?_, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/healthcare/controversial-vaccine-studies-why-is-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-under-fire-from-critics-in-india/articleshow/41280050.cms.
+[^cohen2021kf]: Ariel Cohen (2021): _A Bill Gates Venture Aims To Spray Dust Into The Atmosphere To Block The Sun. What Could Go Wrong?_, https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/01/11/bill-gates-backed-climate-solution-gains-traction-but-concerns-linger/.
+[^willis2021dd]: Mikki Willis (2021): _Plandemic: Fear Is the Virus. Truth Is the Cure_, Skyhorse.
+[^brand2022tz]: Russel Brand (2022): _This Is Impossible To Ignore_, https://youtu.be/uEoNZSLabLc.
+[^suzman2020qp]: Mark Suzman (2020): _Annual Report 2020_, https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/financials/annual-reports/annual-report-2020.
+[^loyen2021vi]: Bernhard Loyen (2021): _Die STIKO, eine Expertengruppe für Impf- und Finanzspritzen_, https://apolut.net/die-stiko-eine-expertengruppe-fuer-impf-und-finanzspritzen-von-bernhard-loyen/.
+[^wallasch2022cg]: Alexander Wallasch (2022): _1,4 Millionen von Bill Gates für Hirschhausen-Stiftung_, https://reitschuster.de/post/14-millionen-von-bill-gates-fuer-hirschhausen-stiftung/.
+[^langemann2021oc]: Markus Langemann (2021): _Exklusiv. Das Netzwerk-Dokument_, https://clubderklarenworte.de/das-netzwerk-dokument/.
+[^goddek2021tr]: Simon Goddek (2021): _How Scientific Fraud took the World Hostage_, https://www.goddeketal.com/how-scientific-fraud-took-the-world-hostage/.

src/content/journal/2022/civil-war-truth-7-conclusion.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,351 @@
+---
+title: "Civil War for Truth: Conclusion"
+slug: civil-war-truth-7-conclusion
+date: 2022-07-18T07:00:00+02:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: This is the last part of a seven-part series that
+  investigates why the last 10 years were so uniquely turbulent with
+  ever-increasing political division, rampant censorship, and growing
+  authoritarianism.
+tags: ["politics"]
+series: civil-war-truth
+---
+
+## The Black Pill or the White Pill?
+
+We discovered that all _Gated Institutions_ are captured and corrupted. As a result, we can’t trust any politician, corporation, media company, journalist, academia, or science member without validating their claims. The corruption has very far proceeded and there is no quick way to resolve it. Equipped with that knowledge, what can we do?
+
+In the introduction, I explained the concept of the blue and the red pill. James Lindsay mentions two more pills in his podcast, the black pill and the white pill. The analogy stands for how we deal with the information we gain by swallowing the red pill and accepting the state of the world as it is.
+
+Taking the black pill means adopting the belief that everything is hopeless. The bad people won, and the society will turn to Authoritarianism or Totalitarianism, all that is left is a steady decline and downfall of society, or even revolt, war, and mass murder. Swallowing the black pill is fatalism, defeatism, and determinism. You give up. We will live soon in Neofeudalism. The rich people will rule the world, we will be their slaves. We will be restricted in movement and travel, a social credit system will punish any dissent. Critics will be fined, incarcerated, re-educated, tortured, or exterminated.
+
+But there is the concept of the white pill. It stands for hope, resistance, for the belief that those people can’t win with their ridiculous plans to control the world. All bad ideologies or central planning will fail eventually and expose them for what they are. And even though at times it looks very bleak and the push for central control, censorship, removal of encryption, the introduction of surveillance, and eroding civil rights is worrying, swallowing the white pill, resisting, and fighting bad ideas is the only option with a future worth living.
+
+But how can we fight back as individuals?
+
+## Select Your Sources Carefully
+
+What do you do if the _Gated Institutions_ are no longer trustworthy? The first thing you need to do is equip yourself with knowledge and learn the opinions, arguments, and truths about the different discussed political or social topics. That is work-intensive and not everybody is willing to do so. But even if you’re unwilling to invest the time and effort into digging into the truth of a topic, there are ways to at least be better informed than the regular person.
+
+The quality of your thinking is directly proportional to what information you consume. It is similar to a diet. You can eat healthy foods and unhealthy foods. In the same way, the quality of content differs massively.
+
+Books, audiobooks, and scientific papers are the best sources of input, but even inside the categories exist differences. If you read garbage, like Bill Gates’s newest book, reading will not help a lot. Reading books by activists is less valuable than by economists, philosophers, or scientists. If the theory has proven its value in the real world, the better.
+
+Podcasts I categorize as the next best option to learn things, especially long-form interviews with a variety of different thinkers on various heterodox topics. Long-form podcasts make it easier to spot bullshit. You might be able to not contradict yourself in a 30-minute interview, but after 3 hours of intensive discussion, you’ll get a feeling about the person, their position, and the coherence of their arguments. In a podcast, is little room for manipulation. And they are nearly impossible to censor and cheaply to host. You don’t need the approval of big platforms to subscribe to any podcasts, a simple RSS feed is enough. You can consume podcasts while doing your dishes, walking, doing laundry, carrying your baby, or sitting on the toilet. You can play them faster (or slower) in many podcast apps.
+
+As with books, not every podcast is of quality. If you listen to a state-sponsored podcast, you will not gain a new perspective, but hear the same talking points pushed by mainstream media again and again. Propaganda is propaganda, regardless of what the medium is.
+
+Articles are the next best thing to consume, preferably by independently supported journalists instead of large media companies.
+
+The worst information you’ll get is by reading the only headlines of news articles, consuming social media posts on Facebook, or watching the news on television. Staged talk shows and pretend discussions on television are in many cases garbage.
+
+The big censoring on social media platforms gave birth to a massive, growing alternative media ecosystem.
+
+## Recommendations
+
+### Books
+
+The more interesting people you listen to on podcasts, the more book recommendations you’ll get. Services like [Readwise](https://readwise.io/) allow one to collect and learn highlights from those books (or articles). You can follow people on [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/kogakure/) or [Literal](https://literal.club/kogakure) to find new reading recommendations. Jordan Peterson keeps a list of [Great Books](https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/great-books/), Ryan Holiday has a [Reading List](https://ryanholiday.net/the-reading-list/), Tim Ferriss has many articles with [book recommendations](https://tim.blog/new-start-here/#book-recommendations), and the platform [Most Recommended Books](https://mostrecommendedbooks.com/) lists book recommendations of more than 500 experts.
+
+### Podcasts
+
+The list of interesting podcasts is huge, you’ll need to pick your topics. I prefer long-form interviews with various people on topics like science, economics, health, or politics. I can recommend [Joe Rogan](https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk), [Jordan Peterson](https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/), [Lex Fridman](https://lexfridman.com/podcast/), [Michael Malice](https://www.podcastone.com/pd/YOUR-WELCOME-with-Michael-Malice), [Bari Weiss](https://www.honestlypod.com/), [Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying](https://bretweinstein.net/interviews), [Eric Weinstein](https://omny.fm/shows/the-portal), [James Lindsay](https://newdiscourses.com/tag/nd-podcast/), [Matt Walker](https://themattwalkerpodcast.buzzsprout.com/), or [Andrew Huberman](https://hubermanlab.com/). You can see a full list of the podcasts I listen to [here](https://raindrop.io/kogakure/podcasts-24118384).
+
+To extract information from podcasts, you can use an app like [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com/) or [Airr](https://www.airr.io/). They allow the request of full transcripts for each podcast and then clip specific parts of the conversation as text.
+
+### Articles
+
+[Substack](https://substack.com/) has become the number one place for writers, journalists, doctors, and scientists to publish their articles and essays without fear of being censored or taken down. You’ll find journalists and writers like [Alex Berenson](https://alexberenson.substack.com/), [Bari Weis](https://bariweiss.substack.com/), [Glenn Greenwald](https://greenwald.substack.com/), [Matt Taibbi](https://taibbi.substack.com/), [Caitlin Johnstone](https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/) or [Abigail Shrier](https://abigailshrier.substack.com/), whistleblowers like [Edward Snowden](https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/), health experts and medical journalists like [Robert Malone](https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/), [Pierre Kory](https://pierrekory.substack.com/) and [Steve Kirsch](https://stevekirsch.substack.com/) or scientists like [Heather Heying](https://naturalselections.substack.com/) or [Colin Wright](https://colinwright.substack.com/). Many publications are free, and others have sometimes paid articles to support the authors.
+
+[New Discourses](https://newdiscourses.com/) is one of the best websites to get educated on ideologies. James Lindsay explains complicated philosophical texts to a broad audience. [Sovereign Nations](https://sovereignnations.com/) is a website dedicated to the ideas and ideals of a Constitutional Republic.
+
+RSS is the best way to consume content in your time and your speed without algorithms that manipulate what you see and what they think is important. A lot of RSS readers are either free or low-cost. I use [Feedbin](https://feedbin.com/) as a content aggregator, it supports reading Newsletters, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and any RSS, Atom, or JSON feed. I use the [Reeder](https://reeder.app/) app on iOS and Mac to read my subscriptions.
+
+Projects like [Ground News](https://ground.news/) are a fantastic way to see your biases and blind spots. The website shows how different news outlets cover a news story and exposes blind spots. They provide a [browser extension](https://ground.news/extension) that will show on many websites the political bias of that source. You can [check your biases](https://ground.news/blindspotter/twitter) and the [source of your content](https://ground.news/mediaopoly) by checking the accounts you follow on Twitter.
+
+### Videos
+
+Instead of YouTube you can watch videos on [Odysse](https://odysee.com/), [Rumble](https://rumble.com/), [BitChute](https://www.bitchute.com/), and on many more platforms. The more decentralized a platform is, the better. Prominent journalists like [Glenn Greenwald](https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald), who broke the story on Edward Snowden, moved exclusively to Rumble.
+
+YouTube has a massive variety of critical content creators, even though censorship and deplatforming risk make it harder for content creators to discuss controversial topics. [Paul Joseph Watson](https://www.youtube.com/user/PrisonPlanetLive) ([Anything Goes](https://www.youtube.com/c/AnythingGoesChannel)) is one of my favorite political commentators. His comment is always on point, it hurts, and he doesn’t give a shit if somebody might be offended by the truth. [Foundation for Economic Education](https://www.youtube.com/c/FEEonline) creates fantastic videos explaining the economic, ethical, and legal principles of a free society with examples from current movies and TV Shows. [ReasonTV](https://www.youtube.com/user/ReasonTV) is an interesting Libertarian channel with independent opinions, documentaries, interviews, and political discussions. [Tim Pool](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG749Dj4V2fKa143f8sE60Q), [Don’t Walk, Run! Productions](https://www.youtube.com/c/DontWalkRunProductions), and [Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar](https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints) create good political content. Comedians like [Russell Brand](https://www.youtube.com/c/RussellBrand), [Jimmy Dore](https://www.youtube.com/c/thejimmydoreshow), or [Leo Kearse](https://www.youtube.com/c/LeoKearse) create much better journalistic work than “mainstream” journalists. James O’Keefe’s organization [Project Veritas](https://www.youtube.com/c/veritasvisuals) provides good undercover journalism, with regular leaks and whistle blows.
+
+### Social Media
+
+Instead of Twitter and Facebook, you can read news on [Minds](https://www.minds.com/), [Gettr](https://gettr.com/) or [Parler](https://parler.com/). Another uncensorable platform to build communities is [Locals](https://locals.com/). Many political or cultural thinkers build communities on this platform. The platform allows supporting the creators financially. But Social Media is the worst possible way to consume news because it is manipulated by algorithms that are programmed by extremely progressive-left biased companies.
+
+### Alternative Media in German
+
+If you want to consume German-speaking alternative media, you are lucky because many heterodox content creators gathered on a new independent website: [theplattform](https://theplattform.net/). The publicly funded broadcasting companies in Germany don’t fulfilled their contract for balanced political reporting since at least 2010, but still, every German person is forced to pay €17 per month for state propaganda. Germans have to pay even if they don’t watch (or own) any television or radio. They even put people refusing to pay the fee into prison for up to 6 months.[^welt2021uc] And while other countries like the UK or France plan to stop publicly funded broadcasting, Germany instead increased the price during a recession.
+
+## Why You Need to Do Your Research
+
+One thing you don’t learn in school is how to do your research. If you lack those skills, it will be helpful to develop them. But why should you do the work?
+
+If you don’t check a discussed topic for yourself, you might go along with a lie and you or your family might get harmed. Every [lie, false belief, or ideology](/interpretation-the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings/) will eventually fail but creates tremendous harm until this happens. Depending on the extent of a lie, everything is possible, from destroyed economies to people freezing, starving, and dying, or even the end of whole civilizations. If you believe a lie, you live in a [pseudo-reality](https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/) and are caught in a delusion.
+
+That’s why it is important to listen to the “other side” of any argument. It’s up to you (after listening to their arguments) to come to your conclusions. Here is a list of examples of inconvenient facts, I learned by reading books, reading scientific papers, listening to podcasts, or watching video essays:
+
+- People overestimate the chance of dying by an accident 300 times over, dying of Diabetes.[^blackwell2020aa]
+- The people in the Mid-Victorian times (the 1850s) were healthier than we are today and lived a similarly long life (after the age of 5). They had 10% fewer degenerative sicknesses.[^clayton2009uw]
+- The best way to stave off cognitive decline is not a cognitive activity, but exercise, especially weight lifting and cardiovascular exercises.[^peterson2021dc]
+- 80% of all immigrants to Germany in 2015 were young, male Muslims with a below-average educational level for European standards. They dominate now the majority of violent crimes, in particular against women, homosexuals, and Jews.[^unger2021pf]
+- Berlin has 9% Muslims, but 70% of inmates in youth arrest are Muslims.[^unger2021pf]
+- 308 of the arson attacks of 2019 in Germany had an extremist Left motivation, 20 had an extremist Islamic motivation, and 17 had an extremist Right motivation.[^frank2021gt]
+- The poverty rate among black _married_ couples in the USA has been less than 10 percent every year since 1994.[^sowell2018ca]
+- Young, black males, whose homes included newspapers, magazines, and library cards have similar academic outcomes to their white counterparts, going back to 1969.[^sowell2018ca]
+- Police shootings that are reported in a media storm in the news (e.g., George Floyd), lead to a significant reduction in police work and a catastrophic increase in crimes as a result. For every dead black person reported on the news, an additional 900 people die because the police retreat after bad publicity.[^blackwell2020aa]
+- Black men in the USA are twice as likely to be killed by police than white. The black population is 14% in the USA, but make 34% of deaths by police. White Americans are killed twice as likely by the police than Asian Americans. White Americans commit twice as many crimes as Asian Americans.[^edwards2019aa] The differences are not a result of racism but can be explained by the crimes committed by individual racial groups.[^blackwell2020aa]
+- 35% of all police murders in the USA are committed by black perpetrators.[^blackwell2020aa]
+- Black Americans commit 7 times more murder than White Americans.[^blackwell2020aa]
+- Unarmed black people are shot 23.5 percent less likely by the police than unarmed white people.[^fryer2016aa]
+- Donald Trump never called Neo-Nazis fine people. He was talking about peaceful protesters. Media companies intentionally cut the quote. In the same interview, he explicitly condemned racism, Neo-Nazis, and the KKK.[^cortes2019aa][^charlottesvilletrump2017]
+- Donald Trump didn’t build detention centers for illegal immigrants at the Mexican border (aka <q>kids in cages</q>), Barack Obama did.[^dore2022jp] They need to hold the children until their parents are found because traffickers send children regularly without their parents.
+- Donald Trump never mocked a disabled person. He used the same motion he always used to show that a person doesn’t know what they’re doing. Trump has a history of supporting disabled people throughout his career.[^kvon2020disabled]
+- Barack Obama brought the USA from 2 wars to 7 wars.[^dore2022jp]
+- Barack Obama dropped more bombs than George W. Bush. His drone program killed 90% of innocent people.[^dore2022jp]
+- Barack Obama deported more Hispanics than Donald Trump could ever dream of.[^dore2022jp]
+- Joe Biden signed 19 Executive Orders in the first 3 days, Barack Obama 5, Donald Trump 1, Bill Clinton 1, and George W. Bush 0.
+- Joe Biden called Obama the <q>first mainstream, African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking.</q> He told a mostly black audience that booed him at a speech to <q>[put them] back in chains.</q> He mocked Indians and Mexicans, called black kids <q>roaches,</q> and gave a eulogy for a former KKK recruiter.[^kvon2020racist]
+- The COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer was promised to be nearly 100% safe and effective but proved to be neither safe nor effective. Pfizer never claimed their vaccine would prevent hospitalization or death because their study didn’t prove this. The absolute efficiency of the vaccine was reported as 95%, but the relative efficiency was only 0.8%. Of the 40,137 study participants, only 165 in the placebo group and 8 in the vaccinated group got COVID-19. 15 people died in the unvaccinated group, and 16 died in the vaccinated group. There were over 1,500 adverse reactions that Pfizer tried to hide. A 12-year-old Girl, Maddie de Gray, who is wheelchair-bound since her inoculation, was reported as having “bowel problems.”[^ccca2021iq]
+- Pfizer was court-ordered to release the documents the FDA used to give emergency use authorization for the Pfizer vaccine. They show that Pfizer falsified data in their study by ignoring PCR positive results, even in symptomatic people. They claimed only 8 COVID-19 positive cases in the vaccinated group, but 75 showed a positive PCR test. This would have reduced the risk of infection for the vaccine by about half of the 95% they claimed.[^team2022ko]
+- Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline are the two companies that had to pay the biggest penalties of all time for criminal acts.[^rogan2022yc]
+- The COVID-19 vaccines created in one year more adverse reactions than all vaccines of the last 30 years combined.[^blaylock2022ya]
+- The continuously repeated <q>sure, vaccines may cause an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, but it’s lower than the increased risk of the same from having gotten COVID-19</q> was proven to be false by a large scientific study from Israel.[^tuvali2022dn]
+- Masks do not only _not_ work against viral load, the infection rate is lower for unmasked individuals as shown in a large, well-controlled study.[^tunevall1991fo]
+- Virus aerosol sub-microns are so small they pass any mask, and even in a droplet they stick to the mask and the mask acts as a nebulizer. The aerosol virion (0.1-03 microns) hangs in still air for 1-2 weeks. A 1% edge gap in your mask is a 50% leakage, and a 2% gap is 75%.[^drewnick2020cn]
+- Even conservative estimates of severe adverse reactions of the COVID-19 vaccines by Prof. Dr. Harald of the Charite Berlin and a study from Sweden are now 0.8%.[^rebmann2022kw]
+- The German health insurance BKK ProVita can access the data of 11 million insured people, who did an extrapolation from their data and estimated 2.5 to 3 million German people with severe adverse reactions from the vaccines. The CEO of health insurance was fired one day after he made the data public.[^schreyer2022uf] After 3 months of waiting the health insurance finally had to release a report that shows that 2.5 million of the 61 million (172 million vaccinations) vaccinated in 2021 had so severe adverse reactions that they needed medical attention. This is a severe adverse reaction rate of 1.5%, for every 70th person.[^frank2022ma]
+- The EU database for adverse drug reactions, [EudraVigilance](https://www.adrreports.eu/), lists 1,928,328 adverse reactions (July 2022) for the EU, and around 50% are severe. The underreporting rate is estimated to be between 1-10%.
+- FIFA reported a 5-fold increase in sudden cardiac and unexplained deaths in 2021.[^sones2021dx]
+- The rate of people that will die in 12-24 months after their COVID-19 vaccination from an autoimmune disease (ADE, antibody-dependent enhancement) is estimated between 0.01% and 2%.[^ziegler2021qp]
+- The nano-lipid carriers of the mRNA “vaccines” don’t stay in the muscle as proclaimed, but circulate in the whole body and can be found in high concentrations in the ovaries and the bone marrow.[^blaylock2022ya]
+- The mRNA shots reduce the fertility of men by 22% for five months (abstract) and levels continue to decline after that (hidden in the data).[^berenson2022aj][^gat2022ot]
+- The mRNA vaccines introduce a spike protein to the body that is neurotoxic and impairs DNA repair mechanisms. The suppression of type I interferon responses result in impaired innate immunity, and the vaccines increase potentially the risk for infectious diseases and cancer.[^seneff2022ru]
+- The scientific article that was published in [The Lancet](<https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext>) in February 2020 and in [Nature Medicine](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9) in March 2020 that denied the Wuhan Lab as the origin of the virus was written by Peter Daszak, the president of _EcoHealth Alliance_. He is the same person whose organization was responsible for the gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Lab. He didn’t declare any conflicts of interest in his paper.[^crawford2021bv]
+- Drinking water from bottles (0.3-liter oil) produces 1000 times more CO<sub>2</sub> than drinking tab water (0.3-milliliter oil).[^jonas2020kd]
+- We don’t have a climate catastrophe or climate crisis. There is a warming of the earth, but nothing humanity cannot handle.[^perry2019pd]
+- The claim <q>97% of all scientists are sure that humans are the reason for climate change,</q> is a misrepresentation of the study. The scientist and activist John Cock evaluated 12,000 scientific studies (abstracts only) from scientific publications between 1980 and 2013 to check if humans were mentioned as the reason for climate change. Less than 1% of the studies explicitly contradict the claim. 32.6% claimed humans as the source of climate change, and 66.4% of the studies didn’t make any claim about who was to blame. Cook eliminated those studies and suddenly 97% agreed.[^unger2021pf] <q>32.6% of scientists are sure humans are the reason for climate change</q> doesn’t sound too impressive, right?
+- It will cost Germany €1,500 billion to reduce their CO<sub>2</sub> from 2% of the world’s output to 1%. This will cost each household an additional **€320** net every month for the next _30 years_. Following Greta’s demands of 100% renewable energy in 15 years would cost each household **€620** net every month. This will bring a massive portion of the German population below the poverty line (€1,890 net) and destroy the industry in Germany.[^unger2021pf]
+- China is pumping out the same amount of CO<sub>2</sub> _additionally_ every year that Germany would reduce in 30 years.[^unger2021pf]
+- If the sectors of traffic and warmth would need to switch to 100% renewable energy, Germany would need an additional 1,150 Terawatt hours. This would need a 200-meter-high wind turbine every 1.5 kilometers across the whole country.[^unger2021pf]
+- Australia has a critical energy crisis in 2022. The winter is too cold and there is a threat of blackouts, a fate that Germany will share in a few months. The move to renewable energy in Australia was _too_ successful, which made coal energy unprofitable. Energy providers shut down the power plants. 30% of power plants don’t deliver energy because they are being repaired or maintained. Most power plants are from the 1970s or 1980s. 25% of the possible coal production stands still.[^frank2022ay] If you destroy the incentive for industry, it will die. You can't just <q>turn it on</q> again later. It takes 30 years to destroy an industry and 30 years to build up an industry.
+- During the Roman Empire it was possible to grow wine in Great Britain and the Vikings harvested crops on Greenland.[^muller-ullrich2021ko]
+- The Earth is much greener today than 35 years ago. A team of 32 scientists used satellite images by NASA and found a massive greening of the Earth over the last 35 years as a result of higher CO<sub>2</sub>.[^nasa2016so] I learned in school in 1995 that the Sahel Zone would soon turn into a desert, because of global warming. Today it is a lush green forest.
+
+This was a small sample of controversial topics. You might have had a bad feeling reading the one or other fact. This is your cognitive dissonance. Your brain was fed media propaganda and tries now to protect that sacred knowledge to prevent you from feeling pain.
+
+Don’t outsource the fact-checking to biased companies, funded and sponsored by the same people that write the articles. Basic research is not as hard as it sounds.
+
+All you need is a good search engine and a few minutes. If somebody shares a news article, try finding its sources. If they don’t provide any, that’s a warning sign. You can search for names of products, people, and companies and get basic facts about them on Wikipedia or their websites. You can often see who funds the organization or with whom a person is affiliated.
+
+The Google Knowledge Graph is a good way to find out relationships between people and their occupations. Companies are often legally obligated to publish their donations. For example, you can search on the website of [The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants) for donations.
+
+All these searches are quick and easy, and you can at least confirm who the person in the stories is and might see potential conflicts of interest.
+
+Keep in mind that many search engines, especially Google, are heavily biased and have blacklists to bury stories that contradict their political bias. Use [Brave Search](https://search.brave.com/) or [MetaGer](https://metager.org/) instead.
+
+If you don’t find what you’re searching for, try other search engines like [Yandex](https://yandex.com/), [Qwant](https://www.qwant.com/), [DuckDuckGo](https://duckduckgo.com/), [Ecosia](https://www.ecosia.org/), [Swisscows](https://swisscows.com/) and many more. Brave Search rolled out a new feature called [Goggles](https://search.brave.com/goggles), which allows for the intentional use of a specific content filter. I created already two [Brave Goggles](https://github.com/kogakure/brave-goggles) and will likely create more.
+
+Keep in mind that some search engines use the Google index. Brave Search builds its index and even shows you how independent your search results are.
+
+If you want to search for facts, you can use [Wolfram Alpha](https://www.wolframalpha.com/). Does your vegetarian co-workers’ virtue signal again how much CO<sub>2</sub> they save by not eating meat? Show them [how little the impact is](https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector) if you live in the developed world. [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/) has interactive charts on a huge number of topics like this. Wikipedia is reliable in many scientific areas, but useless for political topics. Activists have taken over the website and used it as a political weapon to smear people. Use with caution.
+
+You should learn to use the [WaybackMachine](https://web.archive.org/) to find out if the content was deleted or changed later. They provide a [browser extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak/) to quickly save a website to the archive. The extension can auto-save a website and show contextual information. [The Internet Archive](https://archive.org/) is an incredible source of information, it has millions of historical documents, audio, video, books, software, and images to search. Do you want to listen to Martin Luther’s [The American Dream](https://archive.org/details/the-american-dream-mlk-jr) or [But If Not](https://archive.org/details/MlkButIfNot)? The Archive will provide.
+
+Another good service is [archive.today](https://archive.ph/) which provides an [extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/archive-page/gcaimhkfmliahedmeklebabdgagipbia) to quickly save a website to a permanent archive.
+
+[Feedbin](https://feedbin.com/) has a great feature that [shows changes](https://feedbin.com/blog/2014/12/16/never-miss-an-update-with-the-new-updated-section/) made to any subscribed article. This allows keeping track of changes made later to articles.
+
+[Raindrop.io](https://raindrop.io/) is my favorite bookmark manager. It [saves articles offline](https://help.raindrop.io/backups/#permanent-library) in case somebody deletes an article and informs about article deletions by checking for [broken links](https://help.raindrop.io/using-search/#broken-links). You wouldn’t believe how many COVID-19 articles got deleted later by news companies when it was proven they lied.
+
+## Note-Taking
+
+If you want to increase your knowledge on a topic, you’ll need to write your research notes and connect ideas and insights. There are many ways to do this, I use the [Zettelkasten method](/zettelkasten-note-taking-devonthink/).
+
+The number of tools is massive. A massive community of people is now interested in note-taking, which created many wonderful tools. There is [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) (which I use), [Logseq](https://logseq.com/), [Roam Research](https://roamresearch.com/) or [Notion](https://www.notion.so/), to name a few. The idea is to create small notes and connect them and over time build your knowledge system.
+
+## Privacy and Security
+
+If you can’t trust the companies and institutions, you should keep them from listening to your conversations and getting your data or benefitting from it.
+
+You can use an encrypted messenger like [Signal](https://www.signal.org/de/), [Telegram](https://telegram.org/), [Element/Matrix](https://element.io/), [Session](https://getsession.org/), or [Status](https://status.im/) instead of using chat tools of social media companies. Signal is good for private conversations, Telegram has a fantastic group chat feature. Matrix is a decentralized messenger that can provide uncensorable communication. Session is completely anonymous and uses an Onion router for messages. Status and Session use peer-to-peer technology. There is a reason authoritarian politicians hate encryption, they dislike that people can communicate without them listening. That obviously doesn’t apply to them, as the SMS communication between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla showed.
+
+Start using secure browsers like [Brave](https://brave.com/), [Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/) or [Tor](https://www.torproject.org/). Brave has a built-in Tor browser, which is sufficient for being anonymous in most cases. If your life depends on it, better use the Tor browser. Brave has the Wayback Machine built-in, in case a site is missing.
+
+I recommend the encrypted mail service [ProtonMail](https://proton.me/), but there are many other options. The website [Privacy Tools](https://www.privacytools.io/) provides an up-to-date list of the best software, services, and tools in each category to maintain your privacy and security.
+
+I hope that over time more and more people start using decentralized services which are harder (if at all) to censor, don’t allow central control by one company, and free the people. I wrote a three-part series on that topic: [The Decentralized Web](/the-decentralized-web-1-why-do-we-need-it/).
+
+## Whom To Trust?
+
+One of the reasons why many people are reluctant to stop consuming mainstream media is because it is convenient and nice to be told what the truth is. You outsource your thinking to somebody you _hope_ is smarter than you. Does the USA invade Iraq for oil? Good! Does Russia invade Ukraine for Gas? Bad! The media serves simple narratives without any nuance or context. They decide what you should think about any given topic and serve the necessary propaganda to ensure you follow along. This is how [The Current Thing Meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-support-the-current-thing) was born, to mock how media pushes always one topic on all channels until another topic comes around to replace it.
+
+<Blockquote author="Thomas Sowell">
+	Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed
+	simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.
+</Blockquote>
+
+If you’re on your own, it might be intimidating at first to do your research. But studies show over and over that fake news and disinformation are easier to spot by average people than politicians try to make us believe. And you can train to learn to trust your gut feeling.
+
+Ask yourself a few simple questions: _Cui bono_? (Latin, <q>to whom is it a benefit?</q>) Who has financial interests? Who has conflicts of interest? Who risks their reputation? Who is more often right with their predictions than others? How often is a person wrong with their predictions and claims? Do they own their mistakes and explain where they went wrong? Are their arguments simple and easy, or nuanced and complex?
+
+People who try to convince you a topic is simple, are usually not right. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, be it global warming, energy, racism, salary differences, immigration, or health. Avoiding the people on both isles of the political spectrum that provide easy answers is a safe way to not follow wrong ideas.
+
+Stay away from the extremes, it doesn’t matter whether it’s [QAnon](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=QAnon) or [Blue Anon](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blue+Anon). If you think rationally about a topic, you’ll move along the center on many topics. Learn your biases. You can take personality tests like the [Big 5](https://understandmyself.com/), [The Political Compass](https://www.politicalcompass.org/), [Meyer-Biggs](https://www.16personalities.com/), [8values](https://8values.github.io/) or [PersonalityDNA](https://personalitydna.com/). Big 5 is the only test that is backed by years of scientific study, but the others are fun and will reveal interesting things to you.
+
+Learn how to spot bullshit. There is an excellent, free university lecture on the topic on YouTube: [Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPnZfvKID1Sje5jWxt-4CSZD7bUI4gSPS).
+
+Avoid people that use terms like <q>Trust the Science™</q> or <q>Trust the Experts,</q> they have no clue how science works and don’t deserve your trust. Arguments from authority are one of the most common cognitive fallacies. Authority can never replace critical thinking, and you’ll have a better life by adopting Anarchist ideas:
+
+<Blockquote author="Mikhail Bakuninas quoted from ‘The State and Marxism’ (1867) and ‘God and the State’ (1870)" source="The Anarchist Handbook">
+Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, and their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
+
+If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed on me by no one, neither by men nor by God.[^malice2021bc]
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+Bakunin continues that all subordination under authority needs to be voluntarily and temporary:
+
+> Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.
+
+But it is not only Anarchists that know this to be important, it’s the basis of science.
+
+<Blockquote author="Carl Sagan" source="The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark">
+	One of the great commandments of science is, <q>Mistrust arguments from authority.</q> (…) Too
+	many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like
+	everybody else.
+</Blockquote>
+
+## Speak Up (Or at Least Don’t Lie)
+
+If nothing helps and the majority of society walks down a dark path into Authoritarianism or even Totalitarianism, there are still ways to try to prevent this.
+
+The most important thing is to try to be a person of virtue. [Stoic virtues](/interpretation-if/) such as Wisdom, Temperance, Courage, and Justice are important personal qualities. If you can follow an inner compass or moral, you’re less likely to go along with the mob and take part in unjust actions.
+
+A common cognitive bias is the **false consensus effect**. This is how dictatorships and other repressive movements keep their power. If everybody is too afraid to speak up, everybody believes that everybody else supports the prevailing unjust cause. This is the reason you should never bow down to authority or injustice, especially if the worst-case harm is to annoy a few people, be hated by a few, or maybe have fewer career options.
+
+<Blockquote author="Mark Twain" source="Letters from the Earth">
+Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician. Each must decide for himself or herself alone what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man, to decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor. It is traitorous both against yourself and your country.
+
+Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country, hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+J. Michael Straczynski took Twain’s quote as inspiration and formulated this catchy quote:
+
+<Blockquote author="J. Michael Straczynski" source="The Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War_ (emphasis mine)">
+**It doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right.** Republics are founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe in, no matter the odds or consequences.
+
+**When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move. Your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world:**
+
+**No, you move.**
+
+</Blockquote>
+
+In the early stages of a society that descents to Totalitarianism, you have the option to reject bad ideas. Use your right to vote, to remove unfit candidates from power. Use your voice to reject unjust policies. And if you can’t because the price you might have to pay is too high, you should follow the advice of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
+
+> Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
+
+## Expose and Mock Ridiculous Ideas
+
+Mocking bad ideas is an important weapon against creeping Authoritarianism. Share and create jokes, memes, and collages that expose hypocrisy and idiocy. Tyranny and incompetency crumble when exposed to light.
+
+<Blockquote author="James Lindsay" source="A Manifesto for the Based, New Discourses">
+	Absurdity must be exposed, and no acid is more corrosive to the absurdity of tyranny than laughter
+	pointed in its general direction.[^lindsay2021ss]
+</Blockquote>
+
+A massive community of artists and writers is dedicated to mocking political ideology. There are funny Standup comedians like JP Sears ([AwakenWithJP](https://www.youtube.com/user/AwakenWithJP)), [Brent Pella](https://www.youtube.com/c/brentpella), and [Ryan Long](https://www.youtube.com/c/RyanLongcomedy).
+
+[Zeducation](https://www.youtube.com/c/ZeducationTyler) is a funny satire channel with nearly 1 million subscribers that shows Memes and exposes hypocrites and liars in media, Hollywood, and entertainment. [The Right To Bear Memes](https://twitter.com/grandoldmemes) is a fantastic Meme channel on Twitter.
+
+[Argo Nerd](https://twitter.com/argonerd) is a German commentator who creates commentary by putting two contradicting news articles next to each other.
+
+Plenty of fantastic cartoonists mock political and ideological ideas. My favorites are [George Alexopoulos](https://twitter.com/GPrime85/), [Bob Moran](https://twitter.com/bobscartoons), [Tatsuya Ishida](https://sinfest.xyz/) and [Stonetoss](https://stonetoss.com/), but it’s worth following [FreedomToons](https://www.youtube.com/c/FreedomToons), [Grrr Graphics](https://grrrgraphics.com/) and [Comically Incorrect](https://comicallyincorrect.com/).
+
+[The Babylon Bee](https://babylonbee.com/) is the funniest satirical website on the internet. They recently started hiring the creator of [Libs of TikTok](https://allmylinks.com/libsoftiktok), a hilarious channel exposing crazy leftist ideas. The Babylon Bee has a sister news site, [Not the Bee](https://notthebee.com/), that collects stories that sound like satire but are unfortunately true.
+
+Music is another way to mock ridiculous ideas. Country musician [Buddy Brown](https://www.buddybrowncountry.com/) releases regularly based political commentary and fun guitar songs in “Truck Sessions” on his [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/BuddyBrownMusic). The rapper [Tom MacDonald](https://www.youtube.com/c/TomMacDonaldOfficial) is a phenomenon. He regularly takes over the billboard charts, but the media tries to block and remove him from any public discussion. He is a unique rapper who voices social and political problem in a sometimes funny way, for example [People So Stupid](https://youtu.be/I6FmwBPDT-w), [Clown World](https://youtu.be/koO35JqBQMI), [Im Corny](https://youtu.be/3p6ibNunyN8), [Dummies](https://youtu.be/MUfoDiX_U0w), and [Buttholes](https://youtu.be/83Ntpeih4f4). His library of songs is immense, and each song is impressive and touches on topics people would never talk about: [Fake Woke](https://youtu.be/2l6JUNFAJ9o), [Snowflakes](https://youtu.be/fCMwlorNEZk), [Brainwashed](https://youtu.be/zCBNwGHPZ2M), [New World Order](https://youtu.be/SO-yVHaAlyA), [The System](https://youtu.be/OshNahVo9-c), and [Everybody Hates Me](https://youtu.be/Vny0W0axomc).
+
+## Parallel Societies
+
+When a descent into Totalitarianism is no longer preventable, few options remain. You can either leave the country (if possible), fight tyranny, or live under totalitarian rule. If you decide to resit, there are many interesting books on Guerrilla warfare. Ironically, Socialist tyrants like Ernesto Che Guevara or Mao Zedong wrote useful books. To summarize in one sentence: Attack the train support lines and shoe factories. <cite>Total Resistance</cite> by Swiss military theorist Hans von Dach is worth a read.
+
+If you decide to live inside a totalitarian system, there are various options to reject the ruling power. If a totalitarian regime can’t be overthrown with force, a viable option is the creation of parallel societies. Parallel societies begin in <q>spontaneous acts of mutual self-defense in different parts of society.</q>[^academyofideas2022qi]
+
+<p>
+	<q>
+		Parallel structures do not grow (…) out of a theoretical vision of systemic change (…) but from
+		the aims of life and the authentic needs of real people,
+	</q>
+	writes Václav Havel in his book <cite>The Power of the Powerless</cite>[^academyofideas2021bb]
+</p>
+
+People that don’t support the current regime and its cause start to build alternative structures of trade and support, and over time a new society blooms inside the repressive system. Those parallel societies get stronger with more people joining, and it is even possible that a parallel society replaces the tyrannical regime at some point.
+
+## Self-Reliance
+
+Self-reliance is a natural antidote against tyranny. If you’re dependent on the state for money or support, you’ll be the slave of the state. Don’t expect a politician or the state to solve your problems.
+
+<Blockquote author="Ronald Reagan" source="The President’s News Conference, August 12, 1986">
+	The nine most terrifying words in the English language are:{" "}
+	<q>I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.</q>
+</Blockquote>
+
+Learn to get independent of others. This can be as simple as learning how to sew and knit, how to repair things, or how to grow your food. You can support each other in small communities of family, friends, or neighbors. During the COVID-19 crisis, more people reached out to me from all around the world than ever before in my life. If you shine a light in the darkness, people will find you.
+
+[Prepare for the worst case](/how-to-prepare-for-the-worst-case/), expect that incompetent and corrupt politicians will create bad policies which will result in suffering. If bad things happen, they will not be held accountable, don’t expect them to care about their actions. If you’re mentally and physically strong and prepared, you’ll suffer less in case things go sideways.
+
+It’s up to us, to decide if we take part in unjust systems, bad ideologies, discrimination, and anti-humane ideas.
+
+<Blockquote author="Russell Brand" source="Something Big Is Coming">
+	You’re a human being and you can choose whether or not to participate in that system and other
+	systems as well. We can decide if we want to stop complying, to become disobedient on mass, to not
+	participate in systems that we disagree with. Reality isn’t a foregone conclusion, we participate
+	in its construction through our consent, through our discourse with it and through our willingness
+	to submit to it.[^brand2022rv]
+</Blockquote>
+
+The more people decide not to take part or to actively resist unjust policies, the more people exercise civil disobedience, and the more power we remove from authoritarian politicians, greedy and woke corporations, and captured _Gated Institutions_ back to where it belongs, to the people.
+
+[^welt2021uc]: Redaktion (2021): _Nach 181 Tagen im Gefängnis – Georg Thiel ist wieder frei_, https://www.welt.de/fernsehen/article233329219/Rundfunkbeitrag-verweigert-Georg-Thiel-ist-nach-181-Tagen-Gefaengnis-wieder-frei.html.
+[^blackwell2020aa]: Matthew Blackwell (2020): _Black Lives Matter and the Mechanics of Conformity_, https://quillette.com/2020/09/17/black-lives-matter-and-the-mechanics-of-conformity/.
+[^clayton2009uw]: Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham (2009): _How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died_, https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/6/3/1235/htm.
+[^peterson2021dc]: Jordan B. Peterson and Jocko Willink (2021): _13\. Jocko Willink_, https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000515852353.
+[^unger2021pf]: Raymond Unger (2021): _Vom Verlust der Freiheit: Klimakrise, Migrationskrise, Coronakrise_, Europa Verlag.
+[^frank2021gt]: Gunter Frank (2021): _Der Staatsvirus: Ein Arzt erklärt, wie die Vernunft im Lockdown starb_, Achgut Edition.
+[^sowell2018ca]: Thomas Sowell (2018): _Discrimination and Disparities_, Basic Books.
+[^blackwell2020aa]: Matthew Blackwell (2020): _Black Lives Matter and the Mechanics of Conformity_, https://quillette.com/2020/09/17/black-lives-matter-and-the-mechanics-of-conformity/.
+[^fryer2016aa]: Roland G. Fryer (2016): _An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force_, https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force.
+[^cortes2019aa]: Steve Cortes (2019): _Trump Didn’t Call Neo-Nazis ‘Fine People.’ Here’s Proof._, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/21/trump_didnt_call_neo-nazis_fine_people_heres_proof_139815.html.
+[^charlottesvilletrump2017]: (2017): _Read the complete transcript of President Trump’s remarks at Trump Tower on Charlottesville_, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-charlottesville-transcript-20170815-story.html.
+[^dore2022jp]: Jimmy Dore (2022): _It’s Official! Elon Musk Buys Twitter! NBC News Just Learned That Politicians Lie! W/ Kurt Metzger_, https://youtu.be/too_zD0gPkI.
+[^kvon2020disabled]: K-von (2020): _Trump vs Biden: Handicap Face-Off_, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIfRUIm3Kuc.
+[^kvon2020racist]: K-von (2020): _Trump vs Biden: Which Candidate is RACIST?_, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZfzJATDmXs.
+[^edwards2019aa]: Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito (2019): _Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race-ethnicity, and sex_, https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793.
+[^ccca2021iq]: Canadian Covid Care Alliance (2021): _The Pfizer Inoculations For COVID-19 – More Harm Than Good – VIDEO_, https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/the-pfizer-inoculations-for-covid-19-more-harm-than-good-2/.
+[^team2022ko]: Health Advisory & Recovery Team (2022): _First finding from Pfizer trials_, https://www.hartgroup.org/first-finding-from-pfizer-trials/.
+[^rogan2022yc]: Joe Rogan and Maajid Nawaz (2022): _The Joe Rogan Experience 1780 - Maajid Nawaz_, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ugbn7cuab3mNgKbo81ajM.
+[^blaylock2022ya]: Russel L. Blaylock (2022): _COVID UPDATE: What is the truth?_, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062939/.
+[^tuvali2022dn]: Ortal Tuvali, Sagi Tshori, Estela Derazne, Rebecca Regina Hannuna, Arnon Afek, Dan Haberman, Gal Sella, and Jacob George (2022): _The Incidence of Myocarditis and Pericarditis in Post COVID-19 Unvaccinated Patients—A Large Population-Based Study_, https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/11/8/2219.
+[^tunevall1991fo]: Th. Göran Tunevall (1991): _Postoperative wound infections and surgical face masks: A controlled study_, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01658736.
+[^drewnick2020cn]: Frank Drewnick, Julia Pikmann, Friederike Fachinger, Lasse Moormann, Fiona Sprang, and Stephan Borrmann (2020): _Aerosol filtration efficiency of household materials for homemade face masks: Influence of material properties, particle size, particle electrical charge, face velocity, and leaks_, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02786826.2020.1817846.
+[^berenson2022aj]: Alex Berenson (2022): _URGENT: The Covid vaccine paper on declining sperm counts is even worse than it seems at first_, https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/urgent-the-covid-vaccine-paper-on/.
+[^gat2022ot]: Itai Gat, Alon Kedem, Michal Dviri, Ana Umanski, Matan Levi, Ariel Hourvitz, and Micha Baum (2022): _Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors_, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/andr.13209.
+[^seneff2022ru]: Stephanie Seneff, Greg Nigh, Anthony M. Kyriakopoulos, and Peter A. McCullough (2022): _Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs_, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027869152200206X.
+[^rebmann2022kw]: Kai Rebmann (2022): _Schwere Nebenwirkungen: Was verschweigt das Paul-Ehrlich-Institut?_, https://reitschuster.de/post/schwere-nebenwirkungen-was-verschweigt-das-paul-ehrlich-institut/.
+[^schreyer2022uf]: Paul Schreyer (2022): _Krankenkassenchef warnt: Zehn mal mehr Impfnebenwirkungen als offiziell erklärt_, https://multipolar-magazin.de/artikel/mehr-impfnebenwirkungen.
+[^frank2022ma]: Gunter Frank (2022): _Bericht zur Coronalage – Paul-Ehrlich-Chef feuern, Lauterbach entlassen – sofort_, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/bericht_zur_coronalage_24.06.2022_paul-ehrlich-chef_feuern_lauterbach_entlassen_sofort.
+[^sones2021dx]: Mordechai Sones (2021): _5-fold increase in sudden cardiac and unexplained deaths among FIFA athletes in 2021_, https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/2/frontlinenews/500-increase-in-sudden-cardiac-and-unexplained-deaths-among-fifa-athletes-in-2021/.
+[^crawford2021bv]: Matthew B. Crawford (2021): _Science has become a cartel_, https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-scientists-sacrificed-scepticism/.
+[^ziegler2021qp]: Jochen Ziegler (2021): _Schlechtere Krankheitsverläufe nach Covid-Impfung?_, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/schlechtere_krankheitsverlauefe_nach_covid_impfung.
+[^jonas2020kd]: Uschi Jonas (2020): _Gesundheit, Umwelt, Kosten: Welches Wasser Sie trinken, hat große Auswirkungen_, https://www.focus.de/perspektiven/nachhaltigkeit/kolumne-in-kleinen-schritten-die-welt-retten-gesundheit-umwelt-kosten-welches-wasser-sie-trinken-hat-einen-grossen-effekt_id_10958059.html.
+[^perry2019pd]: Mark J. Perry (2019): _There Is No Climate Emergency, Say 500 Experts in Letter to the United Nations_, https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/there-is-no-climate-emergency-say-500-experts-in-letter-to-the-united-nations/.
+[^nasa2016so]: NASA (2016): _Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds_, https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth.
+[^muller-ullrich2021ko]: Burkhard Müller-Ullrich and Sebastian Lüning (2021): _Indubio Folge 162 – Tausend Jahre Klimawandel_, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/indubio_folge_162_tausend_jahre_klimawandel.
+[^frank2022ay]: Stefan Frank (2022): _Australien: Stromkrise im Energieparadies_, https://www.achgut.com/artikel/australien_stromklrise_im_energieparadies.
+[^malice2021bc]: Michael Malice, Murray Rothbard, Max Stirner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, David Friedman, Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Lysander Spooner, Emma Goldman, and Louis Lingg (2021): _The Anarchist Handbook_, Independently published.
+[^lindsay2021ss]: James Lindsay (2021): _A Manifesto for the Based_, https://newdiscourses.com/2021/05/manifesto-for-the-based/.
+[^academyofideas2022qi]: Academy of Ideas (2022): _The Parallel Society vs Totalitarianism | How to Create a Free World_, https://academyofideas.com/2022/02/parallel-society-vs-totalitarianism-how-to-create-a-free-world/.
+[^academyofideas2021bb]: Academy of Ideas (2021): _How to Escape from a Sick Society_, https://academyofideas.com/2021/09/how-to-escape-from-a-sick-society/.
+[^brand2022rv]: Russel Brand (2022): _Something Big Is Coming_, https://youtu.be/Ks_qkWXW-ho.

src/content/journal/2022/dreaming-of-the-old-normal.mdx

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+---
+title: Dreaming of the Old Normal
+slug: dreaming-of-the-old-normal
+date: 2022-01-06T18:00:00+01:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: I had a dream of a world long forgotten.
+tags: ["personal"]
+---
+
+Last night I dreamed of the “Old Normal”, the one we called previously life.
+
+Visiting a museum. \
+Walking up a mountain. \
+Have a party with friends. \
+Paddling a canoe on the river. \
+Watching children play soccer. \
+Smile at a person on the subway. \
+Sitting in the sun eating ice cream. \
+Eating lunch with friends or co-workers. \
+Having a barbecue with my extended family. \
+Quickly grabbing groceries at the supermarket. \
+Feeling the wind on my face, cruising on a catamaran. \
+Chatting with the waiter while eating Pho in my favorite restaurant. \
+Reading in the shadow after swimming for an hour in the Atlantic Ocean. \
+Sitting on a bench with a perfect view of the river, watching ships going by.
+
+But then I wake up and open my eyes. It is dark outside, cold, and rainy. The weather is matching the mood of this world.
+
+I recently gave away a few dozen books. Thirty of the books have now a new owner I never met. She wanted to have a contactless handover. To be safe. I put the books in front of my door. I admit I peeked through the peephole when she rang the bell. _The New Normal_.
+
+It’s lunchtime and I go for a walk. I see faceless children coming from school, nobody is talking or laughing. Empty eyes. I read that 500 children tried to kill themselves in the second lockdown.[^nrz2022gq] No wonder, I wore my mask for less than eight hours in total in 2021, they have to wear it eight hours a day. _The New Normal_.
+
+I pass by a bridge and a woman yells at me, I should keep six feet distance. Six feet away, six feet under. I always mix those two up. _The New Normal_.
+
+When I walk through the park, I see the blue light of four police cars parking. Eight faceless policemen surround a bench with a middle-aged woman sitting on it. They yell at each other. She wants to be left alone, I hear. She must have committed a serious crime. I wonder. She must be dangerous. Otherwise, you wouldn’t send four police cars, right? As I walk by, I see she is probably just drunk and depressed. The police grab her roughly and strap her hands with plastic bands and push her inside a car. _The New Normal_.
+
+I follow a path through the woods and see two faceless seniors walking behind each other. The path is wide. They see me and walk off the path into the mud. Better dirty shoes than to be dead, I assume. _The New Normal_.
+
+Back at home, I open the news. I see hate, discrimination, lies, and propaganda. I read that around 30,000 “Neo-Nazis” and “Plague Deniers” walk each Monday in the whole country to demonstrate against the political measures. I learn it’s probably more than 100,000 people, getting more each week.[^redaktion2022ia] Journalists wouldn’t lie, would they? I watch a few videos of the marches. I see families, children, and seniors; I see the middle of the population. I see people fed up with the broken promises, lies, division, and hate of politicians. I don’t see any “Neo-Nazi”, though. _The New Normal_.
+
+When the people did their Monday walks in 1989 to demonstrate for a reunification, the <abbr title="Socialist Unity Party of Germany">SED</abbr> call the people “Neo-Nazis”, too.[^sed] This has a tradition here.
+
+The measures are dire, but there is room to grow. Fiji leads the charts of the worst of the worst, we are #2. China is on #6.[^stringency] How can we be worse than a dictatorship? _The New Normal_.
+
+Munich made walking illegal, I read.[^dpa2021ra] At least the walkers don’t get attacked by paramilitary troops and attack dogs, like in Amsterdam.[^guerrilla] They get fined €3,000 or dragged into a police car and beaten up behind a curtain.[^disclose] _The New Normal_.
+
+Another 25-year-old soccer player collapsed and died today from a heart attack[^obrien2022hl] and a news anchorman collapsed on live TV.[^world2022zi] FIFA reports a 5-fold increase in sudden cardiac and unexplained deaths among FIFA athletes in 2021.[^sones2021dx] Damn, climate change is getting really nasty. _The New Normal_.
+
+I regret opening the news. I rarely open the news these days.
+
+I see a video on Twitter of people standing in line for more than a kilometer on a Sunday morning in the rain to get the Eucharist. I heard it is blessed and will protect its recipient in 37%[^buchan2022li] of the time of getting a running nose, headache, and a sore throat for three days. _The New Normal_.
+
+I am accompanying a friend to a nearby lake. She has been in pain for weeks. There must have been poison in her Eucharist. This happens _extremely_ rarely, the government promises. She takes off her shoes and walks in shallow water. I think I see a smile.
+
+_Eucharist_ is a funny word. Where did I read it? I remember.[^muraresku2020aa] 500 years before Jesus took the drink with his apostles, people traveled for the _Eleusinian Mysteries_ a long distance from Athens to Eleusis to receive a holy substance.[^konstantinos2018zz] Every religion needs mythic tales, holy items, prophets, obedience, rituals, taboos, pariahs, and enemies. Religion has a comeback. Maybe we can observe self-flagellation again soon.
+
+When the _Antonine Plague_ hit the Roman Empire between 165 and 180 AD, it killed 10 percent of the population. In Rome alone, 2,000 people per day died. Emperor _Marcus Aurelius_ sold his treasures to help fight the disease, before he died from the plague himself. Our leaders enrich themselves instead.
+
+I learn that psychologists believe the world is in a mass conformity psychosis.[^skool2021xw] Isolation and alternating phases of terror and relaxation. This is how totalitarian states keep their power. With _Menticide_.[^meerloo1956hc] Another funny word. <q>Fear is the mind-killer.</q>[^herbert1965bp] _Paul Atreides_ knew this.
+
+I close the browser and put my phone in the drawer. It’s getting dark. Do I watch a TV Show? I read that _Black Mirror_ didn’t get the 6th season because everybody was already too depressed by reality.[^hibberd2020nv] I used to love playing dystopian games like _Deus Ex_[^deusex] or _Half-Life 2_.[^halflife2] You can turn off the PlayStation at any time. You can’t turn off reality.
+
+I decide to read a book instead. I never read much fiction. Now I love fiction. When the glow of my e-book reader shrouds the darkness with cold, white light, I get tired. My eyes close and I drift away. I hope I dream again of the _Old Normal_.
+
+[^nrz2022gq]: NRZ (2022): _Corona: Dramatischer Anstieg bei Suizidversuchen von Kindern_, https://www.nrz.de/region/corona-dramatischer-anstieg-bei-suizidversuchen-von-kindern-id234241693.html.
+[^stringency]: COVID-19: Stringency Index (2022), https://ourworldindata.org/covid-stringency-index
+[^redaktion2022ia]: Tichys Einblick (2022): _„Montagsspaziergänge“: Über 100.000 Menschen demonstrieren in Deutschland gegen Corona-Maßnahmen_, https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/montagsspaziergaenge-3-januar-hunderte-staedte/.
+[^sed]: Stefan Homburg (2022): https://twitter.com/SHomburg/status/1478804761088786432
+[^dpa2021ra]: Agentur dpa (2021): _"Corona-Spaziergänge" verboten: Bayerische Großstadt macht nach Randale ernst_, https://www.nordbayern.de/politik/corona-spaziergange-verboten-bayerische-grossstadt-macht-nach-randale-ernst-1.11677526.
+[^disclose]: Disclose.tv (2022): https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1478338456044642309
+[^buchan2022li]: Sarah A. Buchan _et al_ (2022): _Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against Omicron or Delta infection_, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.30.21268565v1.
+[^guerrilla]: Guerrilla Reporters (2022): https://twitter.com/GuerrillaRepor1/status/1477624939113029634
+[^sones2021dx]: Mordechai Sones (2021): _5-fold increase in sudden cardiac and unexplained deaths among FIFA athletes in 2021_, https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/2/frontlinenews/500-increase-in-sudden-cardiac-and-unexplained-deaths-among-fifa-athletes-in-2021/.
+[^obrien2022hl]: Josh O’Brien (2022): _Marcos Menaldo dead: Deportivo Marquense star, 25, dies after cardiac arrest in training_, https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/marcos-menaldo-dead-heart-attack-25850291.
+[^world2022zi]: The COVID World (2022): _Brazilian TV Presenter Rafael Silva Suffers Cardiac Arrest During Live Broadcast 1 Week After Receiving COVID-19 Booster Shot_, https://thecovidworld.com/brazilian-tv-presenter-rafael-silva-collapses-from-cardiac-arrest-one-week-after-covid-booster-shot/.
+[^muraresku2020aa]: Brian Muraresku (2020): _The Immortality Key: Uncovering the Secret History of the Religion with No Name_.
+[^konstantinos2018zz]: Konstantinos Arvanitakis (2018): _Eleusis - The Great Mysteries_, https://youtu.be/iaprpVwW-QU.
+[^skool2021xw]: After Skool (2021): _MASS PSYCHOSIS - How an Entire Population Becomes MENTALLY ILL_, https://youtu.be/09maaUaRT4M.
+[^meerloo1956hc]: Joost A.M. Meerloo (1956): _The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing_.
+[^herbert1965bp]: Frank Herbert (1965): _Dune_.
+[^hibberd2020nv]: James Hibberd (2020): _Black Mirror creator not working on season 6 because we already feel depressed_, https://ew.com/tv/black-mirror-season-6-coronavirus/.
+[^deusex]: [Deus Ex](https://youtu.be/GgFo7j-CtiM), [Deus Ex: Human Revolution](https://youtu.be/Kq5KWLqUewc), and [Deus Ex: Mankind Divided](https://youtu.be/CfV01sTqB68)
+[^halflife2]: [Half Life 2](https://youtu.be/ID1dWN3n7q4)

src/content/journal/2022/i-counted-everything-i-own.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,204 @@
+---
+title: I Counted Everything I Own
+slug: i-counted-everything-i-own
+date: 2022-01-25T19:34:18+01:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: As a minimalist I’m interested in how much stuff I own. I counted all the things I own.
+charts: true
+tags: ["minimalism", "personal"]
+---
+
+When I started to be interested in [Minimalism](/minimalism/) in 2017, I decided to count all my stuff.
+
+The average European citizen owns 10,000 items and I wanted to know how much I own. I counted 2,490 items five years ago.
+
+Last week Minimalist and filmmaker [Matt D’Avella](https://www.mattdavella.com/) released a new video titled [I counted everything I own as a minimalist](https://youtu.be/BB8o8-EdZY0). He also created other videos showing how little stuff he owns when he showed his [apartment](https://youtu.be/W2oU4bhaHqU), his [wardrobe](https://youtu.be/DSHsIOIhjJY), or what is in his [pockets](https://youtu.be/KZxI0-y3hew).
+
+After watching his video I decided to recount my items and this time have everything neatly organized in a spreadsheet with columns for amount, room, category, date of buying, and price (if known).
+
+## Rules for Counting
+
+Back in 2017, I counted way too strict, I even counted each dental brush as one item. Matt had some good ideas for “what’s a thing”:
+
+- A box of screws is one thing
+- All loose screws are one thing
+- All sandwich bags inside a box are one thing
+- A hard drive and its cable is one thing because it needs it to operate
+- A pair of socks is one thing
+- Counting all consumables (except food)
+
+## The Items I Own
+
+Matt D’Avella counted 1,641 items in his home (together with his wife); 1363 things, and 278 consumables which is not a lot. He owns 498 items, his wife the rest.
+
+After counting my flat and cellar on the weekend the results are finally in. I own **2541** items, including 162 consumables. _Matt won_.
+
+I still own 652 books and way too many coffee cups (I don’t even drink coffee) 🤷‍♂️ And I still have way too many clothes, but even though I don’t wear my dress shirts very often, I still love them too much to get rid of them.
+
+### Things vs. Consumables
+
+I did the same as Matt and checked all my items if they are a thing or consumable. 339 items are consumables, the rest are things.
+
+```chart
+{
+  "type": "doughnut",
+  "data": {
+    "labels": ["Things", "Consumables"],
+    "datasets": [
+      {
+        "label": "Things vs. Consumables",
+        "data": [2257, 361],
+        "backgroundColor": ["#D7B98E", "#0C0C0C"]
+      }
+    ]
+  },
+  "options": {
+    "plugins": {
+      "title": {
+        "display": true,
+        "text": "Things vs. Consumables",
+        "font": {
+          "family": "SecuelaVariable, Arial, sans-serif",
+          "size": "18",
+          "weight": "900"
+        }
+      },
+      "legend": {
+        "position": "right"
+      }
+    }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+### Rooms
+
+Most of my items are in the living room, followed by the bedroom, kitchen, cellar, corridor, bathroom, and balcony last.
+
+```chart
+{
+  "type": "doughnut",
+  "data": {
+    "labels": [
+      "Living Room",
+      "Bedroom",
+      "Kitchen/Dining Room",
+      "Cellar",
+      "Corridor",
+      "Bathroom",
+      "Balcony"
+    ],
+    "datasets": [
+      {
+        "label": "Rooms",
+        "data": [1199, 760, 305, 127, 137, 77, 10],
+        "backgroundColor": [
+          "#FAD689",
+          "#939650",
+          "#DC9FB4",
+          "#91AD70",
+          "#2EA9DF",
+          "#77428D",
+          "#3C2F41"
+        ]
+      }
+    ]
+  },
+  "options": {
+    "plugins": {
+      "title": {
+        "display": true,
+        "text": "Rooms",
+        "font": {
+          "family": "SecuelaVariable, Arial, sans-serif",
+          "size": "18",
+          "weight": "900"
+        }
+      },
+      "legend": {
+        "position": "right"
+      }
+    }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+### Categories
+
+My top category is “books”, even though I recently gave 150 books away. Followed by kitchen tools … I need to get rid of my coffee mugs and the dozens of Asian noodle bowls. Then clothes, probably because I recently bought a bunch of socks.
+
+```chart
+{
+  "type": "doughnut",
+  "data": {
+    "labels": [
+      "Books",
+      "Kitchen",
+      "Clothing",
+      "Electronics",
+      "Entertainment",
+      "Stationery",
+      "Survival Gear",
+      "Furniture",
+      "Personal Care",
+      "Decor",
+      "Organization",
+      "Sports Equipment",
+      "Paper/Documents",
+      "Clearning Supplies",
+      "Plants/Plant Accessories",
+      "Tools",
+      "Medicine",
+      "Travel"
+    ],
+    "datasets": [
+      {
+        "label": "Categories",
+        "data": [
+          655, 272, 262, 208, 180, 176, 171, 138, 114, 96, 74, 64, 48, 46, 40, 36, 26, 12
+        ],
+        "backgroundColor": [
+          "#CB4042",
+          "#B9887D",
+          "#B07736",
+          "#B1B479",
+          "#3A8FB7",
+          "#6E75A4",
+          "#CB1B45",
+          "#F6C555",
+          "#BEC23F",
+          "#986DB2",
+          "#FFBA84",
+          "#967249",
+          "#26453D",
+          "#77969A",
+          "#005CAF",
+          "#535953",
+          "#9F353A",
+          "#ECB88A"
+        ]
+      }
+    ]
+  },
+  "options": {
+    "plugins": {
+      "title": {
+        "display": true,
+        "text": "Categories",
+        "font": {
+          "family": "SecuelaVariable, Arial, sans-serif",
+          "size": "18",
+          "weight": "900"
+        }
+      },
+      "legend": {
+        "position": "right"
+      }
+    }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Now I have a good list where I can add new items I buy and remove items I sell or throw away. Additionally, the list is useful for traveling or in case I need to move. I can compare if a category or a room has too many things quickly. And with the new purchase price column, I can calculate how much I buy each year.

src/content/journal/2022/manage-references-for-note-taking.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,111 @@
+---
+title: Manage References for Note-Taking
+slug: manage-references-for-note-taking
+date: 2022-04-22T18:00:00+02:00
+updated: 2022-04-30
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: When writing notes, it’s important to keep references somewhere to make sure our ideas are backed up, and we can quote the source accordingly. This is how I work with my references.
+tags: ["note-taking", "productivity", "tip"]
+---
+
+When using a note-taking system like **Zettelkasten**, it’s essential to always keep references somewhere (preferably separate from your notes). This way, you make sure to attribute where your ideas came from and make sure you don’t plagiarize.
+
+Taking notes is like a funnel. You put in plenty of things, but few refined ideas come out at the end.
+
+The input can come from a broad variety of sources. Books, articles, scientific papers, quotes, graphs, podcasts, movies, TV shows, videos, or images.
+
+Not every source is of the same quality, but even the most mundane, low-quality reference might have this one paragraph worth remembering.
+
+## Feedbin
+
+I follow my sources at one location, in [Feedbin](https://feedbin.com/), my RSS/Atom Feed-Reader. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog, a news site, a YouTube channel subscription, a Twitter user, a Reddit thread, a newsletter, companies, technologies, or trends.
+
+I picked Feedbin because I want to read and watch everything in one source. I have additional sources like books that can’t be added to Feedbin.
+
+If I see an interesting item, I open it and skim the content. I decide if this is appealing to be read or watched later or not. If it’s a (potentially) fascinating item, I move to the next step.
+
+## Pocket
+
+I recently made a massive change to my workflow. I used Pocket for many years as the tool of choice for collecting items to process. But in the last few months, I got more and more unhappy with Pocket. Even though it’s the best-integrated tool of that kind, I had the feeling the company focuses on the wrong things. Instead of improving the interface and retrievability of my collected items, they focused on features to discover new things. I don’t need nor want that, I distrust algorithms because they transport the bias of their programmers. And many programmers are left-leaning, and the result is an inaccurate and biased view of the world. I decide whom I follow and what I consume.
+
+Instead of allowing me to use the full size of my monitor to quickly browse my collection on a masonry grid, everything is crammed into small columns with small thumbnails. At least the tagging feature got love lately.
+
+And the search is a nightmare, it doesn’t work properly. It’s slow and even if I remember reading an item two weeks ago and searching for the exact words, it’s unlikely to be in the results. The results are pages long, but sometimes outright wrong. Filtering for oldest/newest/relevance is broken and doesn’t work anymore. Once something is in Pocket, I will _never_ find it again.
+
+## Raindrop.io
+
+In 2020, I stumbled on the new bookmark manager [Raindrop.io](https://raindrop.io/). I used it for a while, tried Pro for a year, and then quit it again. It was nice but didn’t convince me at first. I continued using it, by transferring my Pocket bookmarks with [IFTTT](https://ifttt.com/) to Raindrop.io.
+
+Occasionally, I used its delightful big view and ultra-fast and fantastic search to find a bookmark, but I used Pocket to collect and read my items.
+
+Over the next year, Pocket became more annoying to me and I used Raindrop.io more. Last month they added the brand-new _Highlights_ feature, and it is incredible. It allows highlighting text on any website (in four different colors) and to add notes. A browser extension even keeps the highlight active the next time you visit the website. Additionally, the highlights are collected in a highlights section of the app.
+
+I decided to look into the features of Raindrop.io again and discovered things I didn’t know it was able to do. Each collection can have a different view (List, Card, Headlines, Moodboard). You can upload PDFs, images, and videos. There is an [Alfred Plugin](https://www.packal.org/workflow/search-raindropio), manual sorting, export functionality of your bookmarks, and a shortcut to search inside the browser bar for bookmarks. The Pro version allows full-text search, nested collections, permanent copies, finding duplicates, and broken links. I decided to go Pro again.
+
+And last week I discovered that it’s possible to share [collections publicly](https://raindrop.io/kogakure) or with specific people. It’s possible to collect with different people to collections, and if the owner of a collection has a Pro plan, every collaborator has access to the Pro features. 🤩
+
+Two weeks ago, I switched the direction from Raindrop.io to Pocket. Now, my items in Raindrop.io get copied with IFTTT to Pocket. I use the fantastic Raindrop.io [browser extension](https://raindrop.io/download) to collect items.
+
+I would like to see a full export of my uploaded assets to start using it as a Pinterest replacement to collect inspiration.
+
+One thing I _really_ like about Raindrop.io is how they handle bugs and feature requests. They created an [extra website](https://better.raindrop.io/) where users can post feature, translation, and integration requests or vote on them and report bugs. Labels transparently show what features they work on, and are planned or reviewed. 👍
+
+There is too much content to write notes on. I use Readwise.io to find it in the future. The fast search, collections, and tags help me find interesting items again, should I want to research a specific topic more in the future.
+
+After I consumed the content I collected, I add tags, and then I move it to an archive folder.
+
+## DEVONthink
+
+If a reference is important to me, I’ll collect it into [DEVONthink](https://devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink). Even though Raindrop.io has an offline feature, allowing me to keep articles, if the content goes offline, I never trust cloud solutions. With DEVONthink the content is mine, it’s offline. I save articles with the DEVONthink web clipper as Markdown (sometimes PDF, or full websites) into my reference archive.
+
+I have currently 21K bookmarks in Raindrop.io and 5K reference items in DEVONthink, roughly ¼ of all reference items make it offline.
+
+## BibDesk
+
+If I decide to write a note or article on a topic that references a reference item, I’ll create an entry in my [BibDesk](https://bibdesk.sourceforge.io/) database. Currently, I have 457 entries in that database.
+
+BibDesk allows adding Bibliography, like author, title, date, or link and creates a unique cite key.
+
+The items are recorded in a specific format in the background:
+
+```tex
+@webpage{Thiel2022vp,
+ author = {Thiel, Peter},
+ date-added = {2022-04-12 14:59:36 +0200},
+ date-modified = {2022-04-12 15:00:10 +0200},
+ journal = {Bitcoin 2022 Conference},
+ keywords = {BitCoin},
+ month = {04},
+ title = {Paypal Co-Founder Peter Thiel - Bitcoin Keynote},
+ url = {https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA},
+ year = {2022},
+ bdsk-url-1 = {https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA}}
+```
+
+If I want to use this key in a note in [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/), I can use my Markdown template to copy the entry and paste it into the note.
+
+```md
+[^thiel2022vp]: Peter Thiel (2022): _Paypal Co-Founder Peter Thiel - Bitcoin Keynote_, <https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA>.
+```
+
+The format is not official Markdown syntax, but citations from [MultiMarkdown](https://rawgit.com/fletcher/MultiMarkdown-6-Syntax-Guide/master/index.html). Even if a tool doesn't support it, you can still read it. If a tool supports it, like [iA Writer](https://ia.net/writer), you get automatically nice reference notes.
+
+If I want to write a note and add a reference, I would do it like this:
+
+```md
+[[Peter Thiel]] mentioned that [[ESG]] is a hate
+factory that is used to label enemies. There is
+nothing _environmental_, _social_ or _governance_
+with the companies labeled ESG-friendly, the CCP
+is ESG-friendly.[^thiel2022vp]
+```
+
+When I decide to write a Markdown post that should be published, I can convert the MultiMarkdown to regular footnotes, but replace the `#` in the cite key with `^`.
+
+```md
+A sentence, that references the footnote.[^thiel2022vp]
+
+[^thiel2022vp]: Peter Thiel (2022): _Paypal Co-Founder Peter Thiel - Bitcoin Keynote_, <https://youtu.be/ko6K82pXcPA>.
+```
+
+I consume between 100 and 300 items per week and produce around 10-15 notes. 3-15 % of the things I consume will create a note. The rest is waiting in my archive and is searchable for potential future usage.

src/content/journal/2022/rss-news-feed.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,135 @@
+---
+title: The Return of the News Feed
+slug: rss-news-feed
+date: 2022-11-05T16:00:00+01:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: Why you should stop reading news inside of social media sites and instead use the RSS/Atom news feed format to directly follow content creators, and why you should provide a news feed as a content creator.
+tags: ["tip"]
+---
+
+People always ask me how I stay up to date with all those new tools, libraries, memes, jokes, industry or political news without getting overwhelmed. My answer is simple: <q>I use an RSS feed reader for as long as I can remember.</q> I follow 817 sources. I read everything within my RSS Reader, from blogs to news sites, YouTube videos, Twitter, and Reddit, to newsletters.
+
+## A Short History of the News Feed
+
+At the beginning of the internet, there were not many websites, and bookmarking those and visiting them from time to time was easy. But as more and more people discovered the internet, people started to create curated lists of “cool things” to look at. But the number of websites grew, and it got harder and harder to find the good things. The invention of search engines allowed to crawl the internet and create indexes of everything. Finding things was now possible again. As soon as you wanted to stay up to date with more than a handful of websites, you were out of luck. Too much effort was necessary to check all the cool websites every day.
+
+### A New Hope
+
+Clever people started to think about ways to create machine-readable ways to deliver content to solve those issues. The RSS (_Rich Site Summary_ or _Really Simple Syndication_) format was created in 1999, but it gained widespread usage between 2005 and 2006.
+
+The idea is simple: Instead of visiting a website to see if new content is available, the website updates a small machine-readable file that is frequently read by a feed reader. It started similarly to news tickers. At first, those websites delivered headlines and occasionally a short excerpt, but soon many delivered the full content. Google created the [Google Reader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader) in 2005, a fantastic way of staying up to date.
+
+### The Empire Strikes Back
+
+But with the advent of social media, many content creators moved their content to those social media platforms and they build walls around it. They discovered that the idea of content aggregation ran against their business model of advertising to the user. Google tried monetizing news feed advertising by buying the company [Feedburner](https://feedburner.google.com/). The companies discovered that giving control over when and how users consume content harmed the companies revenue. Instead, they started investing in algorithms to deliver sorted and ranked content to the user inside their social media feeds. Google retired Google Reader in 2013 and gradually removed features from Feedburner and in 2021 they retired the service and kept a minimal interface alive to proxy feeds.
+
+But over the years, more and more content creators discovered that they lost control or even ownership over their content and customers. This [funny comic](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people_2021) by <cite>The Oatmeal</cite> visualizes the dilemma content creators are in right now.
+
+Social media companies started to misuse their algorithms for maximal profit and to push politically biased content. It started with conservative people that saw their reach limited or throttled, content removed or pages deplatformed. But with the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, even the most progressive left-leaning person realized that ownership and policies in those walled gardens can change quickly. More and more content creators start moving back to good old newsletters, RSS feeds, and their websites. They post links to their content on all social media sites, but the content lives on their sites.
+
+### The Return of the News Feed
+
+And even though not many people use this technology, it never went away. It was kept alive in Open-Source projects, specialized services, or hidden beneath famous applications (like Apple podcasts). And with the realization that social media companies abused our trust, many tools bring back this old technology. Brave introduced in [2020](https://brave.com/announcing-brave-today/) [Brave News](https://brave.com/brave-news/) to their browser as a built-in newsreader that supports RSS. Readwise created a brand-new reading experience with [Readwise Reader](https://readwise.io/read) that has an RSS Reader built-in. The recipe app [Mela](https://mela.recipes/) uses RSS to collect recipes from around the internet and to add them with one click to your recipe collection. And RSS is the underlying technology of all podcast apps.
+
+## Introduction to News Feeds for Beginners
+
+It is best I start briefly explaining the technical terms you might come along with when using a newsreader. News feeds are available as different formats: [RSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS), [Atom](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(web_standard)>), and [JSON feed](https://www.jsonfeed.org/). As a user, you don’t need to know the differences, the first two formats are supported by nearly every reader, and the last format is newer and has less support. RSS and Atom can be used interchangeably, even though there are slight differences that don’t have to bother a non-tech person. It’s a file that is updated by the website you want to subscribe to and regularly checked for updates by your RSS Reader or RSS Aggregator. If you’re curious about how a file looks like, you can have a look at [my RSS feed](https://www.stefanimhoff.de/index.xml).
+
+Another term is [OPML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML) (Outline Processor Markup Language), a format that is used to export and import a list of sources you follow. When you want to create a backup of your subscriptions or use a new app, you export your current list of sources to this format and import it to the new app.
+
+### RSS Reader vs. RSS Aggregator
+
+As RSS is an open format, there are as many ways of consuming content as there are tastes. You have to pick what you value. A pretty interface, easy usage, advanced features, or even artificial intelligence. RSS Readers or RSS Aggregator are two ways of reading your content.
+
+An RSS Reader is a direct connection to each source, and you can pick at what interval all the sources should be checked for new content. Depending on the number of sources you follow, this might take a few seconds or minutes to ask each website for changes. Many applications can do this in the background. They come built into some applications, for example in [DEVONthink](https://devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink) or [Brave Browser](https://brave.com/brave-news/), as browser plugins or applications for Desktop or Mobile. The price range is from free over a small one-time price to monthly payments. I use [Reeder](https://reeder.app/) on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Here is a short list of applications: [Reeder](https://reeder.app/), [NewNewsWire](https://netnewswire.com/), [Fiery Feeds](http://cocoacake.net/apps/fiery/), [lire](https://lireapp.com/), [ViennaRSS](https://www.vienna-rss.com/), [Unread](https://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/unread/), or [Fluent Reader](https://hyliu.me/fluent-reader/). But there are much more available by searching for `RSS Reader` on the internet or your preferred App Store. I suggest downloading a free or cheap RSS Reader at first and start using a RSS Aggregator when you need more features.
+
+An RSS Aggregator is a service that does the fetching for you, and they add more useful features to justify a monthly fee. They might allow subscribing to email newsletters or have a powerful search. Some might provide a Twitter subscription or a connection to other services. They might hide sponsored advertising, provide a nice reading experience, allow you to listen to podcasts, see changes in updated articles, create filter or muting rules, or even use artificial intelligence to enhance the experience. The price range is between $4-12 per month.
+
+I used [Feedly](https://feedly.com/) since 2013, but switched last year to [Feedbin](https://feedbin.com/) because I didn’t need the artificial intelligence features of Feedly and Feedbin provided the features I wanted for a better price. It’s possible to use RSS Aggregators with RSS Readers. I read my news in Reeder, but Feedbin is my aggregator. I additionally started using [Readwise Reader](https://readwise.io/read), which is in late Beta. Other aggregators are [NewsBlur](https://newsblur.com/), [InnoReader](https://www.inoreader.com/), [BadQux Reader](https://bazqux.com/), or [The Old Reader](https://theoldreader.com/). If you are technically skilled, you can even host your aggregator with tools like [FreshRSS](https://freshrss.org/) or [Tiny Tiny RSS](https://tt-rss.org/).
+
+## Subscribing to a News Feed
+
+Many RSS Readers allow subscribing to a website by clicking a button and pasting the URL of the website. Browser extensions allow doing this directly from within a browser. RSS Aggregators provide often a way to discover news sources inside the application. Feeds can be organized by adding them to folders or adding tags. This allows reading everything about one topic before moving to the next. It’s not only websites you can subscribe to, but many services have hidden RSS features.
+
+```md
+# YouTube
+
+https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<ID>
+https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<ID>
+
+# Odysee
+
+https://odysee.com/$/rss/@<USER>
+
+# Reddit
+
+https://www.reddit.com/.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/hot.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/new.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/rising.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/top.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>/best.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/user/<USER>.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/user/<USER>/m/<NAME>.rss
+https://www.reddit.com/r/<NAME>+<NAME>+<NAME>.rss
+
+# Hacker News
+
+https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
+https://news.ycombinator.com/showrss
+https://hnrss.org/newest?points=250
+https://hnrss.org/newest?q=Django
+https://hnrss.org/bestcomments
+https://hnrss.org/best
+```
+
+A much longer list is provided in the article [Use RSS for privacy and efficiency](https://rsapkf.org/weblog/q2z) and in a huge [GitHub gist](https://gist.github.com/thefranke/63853a6f8c499dc97bc17838f6cedcc2) with endpoints. For websites that don’t provide an RSS feed, there is the option of [scraping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping). Scraping is the technique of scanning a website and extracting data. [RSS Bridge](https://rss-bridge.github.io/rss-bridge/) is an open-source project that generates RSS or Atom feeds for websites that don’t provide one. Some content aggregators like Feedly have a built-in scraper. The only way to prevent content from being scraped is through a password-protected site.
+
+## Providing a News Feed
+
+But why share content on the internet, if you don’t want people to find and read it? Every so often, I come to a tech blog that doesn’t provide an RSS feed. This always leaves me with a mixture of perplexity, confusion, and anger. When I like the content, I write an email to the website owner asking to provide one, if they don’t add one I try using a scraper or never come back.
+
+Don’t lose potential readers, customers, or fans by not providing an RSS feed. Adding a feed is easy. Many CMS systems, web frameworks, and static site generators have the feature either built-in, or it can be activated in the settings, added with a plugin, or with custom code written in 15 minutes. Here is information on how to add an RSS feed to [WordPress](https://wordpress.com/support/feeds/), [Ghost](https://ghost.org/integrations/custom-rss/), [Joomla](https://docs.joomla.org/Help310:Extensions_Module_Manager_Syndication_Feeds), [Magnolia](https://docs.magnolia-cms.com/product-docs/6.2/Authoring/Feeds.html), [Squarespace](https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206543187-Finding-your-RSS-feed-URL), [Wix](https://www.wix.com/blog/2021/05/rss-feed), [Weebly](https://www.weebly.com/app/help/us/en/topics/what-is-an-rss-feed), [Ruby on Rails](https://www.lugolabs.com/articles/build-a-rss-feed-in-ruby-on-rails), [Django](https://djangocentral.com/creating-feeds-with-django/), [Next.js](https://jonbellah.com/articles/rss-feed-nextjs), [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/templates/rss/), [Gatsby](https://www.gatsbyjs.com/docs/how-to/adding-common-features/adding-an-rss-feed/), [Jekyll](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll-feed), [Nuxt](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@nuxtjs/feed), [Hexo](https://github.com/hexojs/hexo-generator-feed), [Astro](https://docs.astro.build/en/tutorial/5-astro-api/4/), [Vuepress](https://github.com/webmasterish/vuepress-plugin-feed), [Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/docs/plugins/rss/), [SvelteKit](https://scottspence.com/posts/make-an-rss-feed-with-sveltekit), [Gridsome](https://gridsome.org/plugins/gridsome-plugin-feed), or [Metalsmith](https://github.com/hurrymaplelad/metalsmith-feed).
+
+After an RSS feed is published for your website, you need to make sure RSS Readers and RSS Aggregators can find it. This is done by adding the URL to the feed(s) to the `<head>` of your website. Many CMS do this automatically for you.
+
+It is a good idea to provide multiple feeds if you provide different content types. That way, the readers can subscribe to the topics they are interested in.
+
+I provide a feed for my essays, one for my Haiku poetry, one for my sketch notes and one for my link recommendations:
+
+```html
+<link
+	href="https://www.stefanimhoff.de/index.xml"
+	rel="alternate"
+	title="Stefan Imhoff"
+	type="application/rss+xml"
+/>
+
+<link
+	href="https://www.stefanimhoff.de/haiku.xml"
+	rel="alternate"
+	title="Stefan Imhoff (Haiku)"
+	type="application/rss+xml"
+/>
+
+<link
+	href="https://www.stefanimhoff.de/sketchnotes.xml"
+	rel="alternate"
+	title="Stefan Imhoff (Sketchnotes)"
+	type="application/rss+xml"
+/>
+
+<link
+	href="https://www.stefanimhoff.de/feed-raindrop.xml"
+	rel="alternate"
+	title="Stefan Imhoff (Recommendations)"
+	type="application/rss+xml"
+/>
+```
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Social media companies have shown us many reasons to mistrust them. They don’t create content, but aggregate, sort, and filter the content of others to advertise, make money, push political messages, or outright steal the content of creative people. Any content creator that uses social media sites or video sites as the only way to connect to their consumers will regret this decision because they will lose control over their content and customers.
+
+RSS feeds provide a relaxing way for readers to follow many interesting sources of content around the internet without the possibility of manipulation through social media companies. For content providers, RSS feeds provide a direct connection to the reader without the interference of third-party providers. Your content is delivered fast and direct to the reader, within minutes.

src/content/journal/2022/template-ia-writer-nanzan.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+title: iA Writer Template Nanzan
+slug: template-ia-writer-nanzan
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+date: 2022-03-17T18:00:00+01:00
+description: I created a preview template for my favorite writing app iA Writer
+cover: /assets/images/cover/ia-writer-template-nanzan.jpg
+tags: ["code", "design", "download", "featured"]
+series: ia-writer-templates
+---
+
+I write a lot. Not only essays, but notes, poetry, books, technical documentation, discussions, and proposals at work. The things I write are usually in [Markdown](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) because it’s one of the quickest and best Markup languages that exist.
+
+You don’t need any tools besides a simple text editor to write Markdown, but it helps to have a nice Markdown writing app. For me, this app is [iA Writer](https://ia.net/writer) since the day it was released. I like its simplicity, minimalism, and its powerful writing tools (focus, syntax, or style modes).
+
+iA Writer supports [preview templates](https://github.com/iainc/iA-Writer-Templates) and besides the included templates they offer [additional templates](https://ia.net/downloads#templates). When you write on one side of the app your Markdown, you can see it presented in a pleasant formatted form on the other side.
+
+Recently, I finished the book [Engaging Japanese Philosophy: A Short History](https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/0824869796?ie=UTF8&linkCode=as2&camp=1638&creative=6742&creativeASIN=0824869796), which was set in beautiful typography.
+
+On a Sunday morning, I decided to create a [prototype](https://codepen.io/kogakure/pen/RwxwoWm) based on the typesetting of this book in CSS. It had interesting challenges and I did it for fun.
+
+Later that week, I decided to create my first iA Writer template based on that style. I called the template [Nanzan](https://github.com/kogakure/ia-writer-template-nanzan) (南山) because the book was typeset by the _Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture_. The template is free, and you can download the code as a ZIP archive and double-click the `.iatemplate` file.
+
+The template comes with a light and dark design, and I’ll improve it, probably over time. To check up on changes, feel free to watch the GitHub repository. If you find any issues, please open an issue on the repository.
+
+<Banner>
+	<MoreLink
+		href="https://github.com/kogakure/ia-writer-template-nanzan"
+		text="iA Writer Template Nanzan on GitHub"
+	/>
+</Banner>

src/content/journal/2022/template-ia-writer-shibui.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+title: iA Writer Template Shibui
+slug: template-ia-writer-shibui
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+date: 2022-03-18T18:00:00+01:00
+description: I created a preview template for my favorite writing app iA Writer
+cover: /assets/images/cover/ia-writer-template-shibui.jpg
+tags: ["code", "design", "download", "featured"]
+series: ia-writer-templates
+---
+
+After I finished my [first template](/template-ia-writer-nanzan/), I decided to create my second template immediately, based on the aesthetic style I used for my branding. I called it [Shibui](https://github.com/kogakure/ia-writer-template-shibui) (渋い) because that is the style I based my design on.
+
+The template comes with a light and dark design, and I’ll improve it, probably over time. To check up on changes, feel free to watch the GitHub repository. If you find any issues, please open an issue on the repository.
+
+<Banner>
+	<MoreLink
+		href="https://github.com/kogakure/ia-writer-template-shibui"
+		text="iA Writer Template Shibui on GitHub"
+	/>
+</Banner>

src/content/journal/2022/tools-for-better-writing.mdx

@@ -0,0 +1,189 @@
+---
+title: Tools for Better Writing
+slug: tools-for-better-writing
+date: 2022-09-09T10:00:00+02:00
+author: Stefan Imhoff
+description: The tools I use for better writing
+tags: ["writing", "software"]
+---
+
+As I mentioned in a previous essay <q>I write a lot. Not just essays, but also notes, poetry, books, technical documentation, discussions, and proposals at work.</q> And because English is not my native language, I use plenty of tools to write better text. In the last two weeks, I reviewed all my essays and fixed hundreds of spelling mistakes, bad wording, shortened long or complicated sentences, or deleted redundant sentences.
+
+I plan to improve the internal documentation of my company’s Design System. I investigated a multitude of tools to find a toolkit of useful applications for me.
+
+Writing good text consists of two components, correct translation, and error-free, understandable writing.
+
+---
+
+## Translation
+
+If you’re a native speaker, you might want to skip this section.
+
+### Google Translate
+
+I used Google Translate for a long time as my primary translation tool. I use the [website](https://translate.google.de/) and the [browser extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-translate/aapbdbdomjkkjkaonfhkkikfgjllcleb?hl=de), the [iOS app](https://apps.apple.com/app/google-translate/id414706506/), and the [Raycast Google Translation application](https://www.raycast.com/gebeto/translate).
+
+Google Translate has the largest number of languages, with 135.
+
+### DeepL
+
+And although DeepL supports fewer languages (26) than Google Translate, the translation is much better as I see it. I use the [website](https://www.deepl.com/translator), the [macOS application](https://www.deepl.com/en/app/), [iOS application](https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1552407475), and the [Chrome Extension](https://www.deepl.com/en/chrome-extension) that allows direct translation on websites.
+
+Full-page translations and full document translations are exclusive to the DeepL Pro subscription, but I’m considering getting it.
+
+I’m using the [DeepL API](https://www.deepl.com/pro-api/) (500,000 characters are free per month) to directly translate in Raycast with the [Deepcast](https://www.raycast.com/mooxl/deepcast) application.
+
+---
+
+## Dictionaries & Thesaurus
+
+### Dictionary.com & Thesaurus.com
+
+Dictionary.com is a fantastic platform with useful tools. It has besides the regular dictionary an Emoji dictionary, one for Slang, Acronyms, Pop Culture, Memes, and more.
+
+The platform has good resources for learning English with games, lists, flashcards, and even a free [Grammar Coach](https://www.thesaurus.com/grammarcoach).
+
+[Thesaurus.com](https://www.thesaurus.com/) is the associated site of Dictionary.com. It allows searching for synonyms and antonyms. It’s possible to seamlessly jump between both sites.
+
+### Linguee
+
+[Linguee](https://www.linguee.com/) is the Dictionary of DeepL. It has over 1,000,000,000 translations. Searching for a word shows a dictionary entry, a Wikipedia excerpt, and external sources using the word in full sentences. It’s possible to activate the dictionary in DeepL by clicking on any word. A mobile app is available for iOS and Android.
+
+### Forvo
+
+[Forvo](https://forvo.com/) is a useful dictionary with a gigantic database of pronunciations spoken by native speakers.
+
+### Urban Dictionary
+
+[Urban Dictionary](https://www.urbandictionary.com/) is the best resource for niche definitions and special terms.
+
+### Acronymfinder
+
+[Acronymfinder](https://acronymfinder.com/) is my favorite dictionary to look up acronyms. The acronyms are grouped for better understanding in categories such as “Information Technology”, “Military & Government”, “Science & Medicine” and others.
+
+### Lose the Very
+
+[Lose the Very](https://www.losethevery.com/) is a cool project that allows you to find replacements for adjectives in combination with _very_. Instead of _very good_ you could write _exceptional_, _sterling_, _splendid_, _super_, _excellent_, or _marvelous_ for example.
+
+### dict.cc
+
+[dict.cc](https://www.dict.cc/) is a useful dictionary I use for years. It even has a [Latin](https://enla.dict.cc/) dictionary.
+
+### German Dictionaries
+
+- [OpenThesaurus](https://www.openthesaurus.de/) is a synonym dictionary for the German language.
+- [MundMische](https://www.mundmische.de/) is a dictionary for German slang and proverbs.
+- [Sprachnudel](https://www.sprachnudel.de/) is a German dictionary with synonyms and rhymes.
+
+### Japanese Dictionaries
+
+- [Jisho](https://jisho.org/) is a minimalistic Japanese dictionary, including animations and stroke order for Kanji.
+- [Tangorin](https://tangorin.com/) is a website with a dictionary and vocabulary lists of widely used learning systems like JLPT or Jōyō.
+
+---
+
+## Copywriting
+
+### LanguageTool
+
+[LanguageTool](https://languagetool.org/) is a powerful [Open Source](https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool) proofreading software, linter, and grammar checker for more than 25 languages.
+
+It has the most integrations I’ve seen in any tool yet. Besides the free translation on their [website](https://languagetool.org/) that supports the translation of Word documents, there is the [LanguageTool Editor](https://languagetool.org/editor/). With an account, you can write directly in the browser and keep a personal dictionary.
+
+LanguageTool has browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
+
+It has an iOS, macOS, and Windows app. Add-ons for E-mail (Gmail, Thunderbird, Apple Mail) and Office (Google Docs, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, and LibreOffice).
+
+[LanguageTool for macOS Desktop](https://languagetool.org/mac-desktop) is under development (Beta). It allows using the service directly in Apple Mail, Apple Notes, and Apple Messages. Soon, it will support all macOS apps.
+
+LanguageTool has a [plugin](https://github.com/Clemens-E/obsidian-languagetool-plugin) available for my note-taking application [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) that allows checking the text directly in Obsidian.
+
+Plugins allow using LanguageTool in [Vim and Neovim](https://github.com/rhysd/vim-grammarous) and [Visual Studio Code](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=davidlday.languagetool-linter).
+
+I subscribed to LanguageTool Premium because it has extra features. Enhanced grammar, punctuation, and style checking features, suggestions to improve style and tone, 100,000 characters limit per text field, detection of incorrect names, titles, and numbers, add-ins for Microsoft Word and Google Docs, and a style guide. I like to support the project.
+
+### Grammarly
+
+[Grammarly](https://www.grammarly.com/) is another powerful proofreading software. The basic plan includes checking for grammar, spelling, punctuation, conciseness, and tone. Premium adds more features including checks for clarity, engagement, delivery, and the detection of plagiarism. Grammarly supports the English language. You can edit texts in the [online editor](https://app.grammarly.com/), the macOS application, iOS, Android, and with the Chrome extension in the browser. The desktop app supports checking in every app.
+
+### iA Writer
+
+[iA Writer](https://ia.net/writer) is my favorite app to write text. I write nearly everything with iA Writer. I have in my Apps, for example in Neovim, Visual Studio Code, and Obsidian a shortcut, to open the current document in iA Writer, make changes, save it and go back to the other application.
+
+With iA Writer, the writing is bliss. Focus mode allows writing distraction-free while highlighting the active sentence or paragraph. It supports powerful syntax highlights to spot weak verbs, repetition, and clutter. And a useful Style Check to remove fillers, clichés, and redundancies.
+
+The last update in iA Writer brought support for the WikiLink syntax that allows me to navigate and write notes on my Obsidian vault.
+
+### Hemingway App
+
+The Hemingway App is a free [online editor](https://hemingwayapp.com/) to check text for Readability, passive voice, complicated phrases, hard sentences, and other unpleasant things.
+
+### Linters and Text Checkers
+
+The community around linters and text checkers is big, and a wide variety of tools written in different languages can help out writing good text.
+
+- [Alex](https://alexjs.com/) is a Node.js package to catch insensitive, inconsiderate writing.
+- [Write Good](https://github.com/btford/write-good) is a linter for English prose written in Node.js.
+- [Proselint](http://proselint.com/) is another linter for prose written in Python.
+- [Joblint](https://joblint.org/) is a tool written in Node.js to test job posts for issues with sexism, culture, expectations, and other recruiter fails.
+- [Codespell](https://github.com/codespell-project/codespell) is a tool to find common misspellings in text files written in Python.
+
+### Vale
+
+[Vale](https://vale.sh/) is one of the coolest projects. It’s an Open Source command-line tool that allows for creating a custom editorial style guide.
+
+The good thing is that Vale supports all (except Codespell) of the [packages](https://vale.sh/hub/) I mentioned above, plus style guides of major companies such as Red Hat, Microsoft, and Google and [Readability](https://github.com/errata-ai/readability).
+
+Readability is a collection of popular readability metrics. It includes the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Score, SMOG Index, Coleman Liau Index, and Automated Readability Index. All those are mathematical formulas that calculate the complexity and level of a text. I’ll leave it up to you to research the different metrics.
+
+It’s possible to configure Vale to use packages in parallel. If you work on a personal project, two or three of the packages should be more than enough. If you write text for a company, you might start with a writing style guide, for example, Microsoft’s style guide. But you can create a custom company style guide, that knows about all the special terms and acronyms and words not to use. You can include the style guide in any project and automatically check every written text.
+
+Vale has nine [integrations](https://vale.sh/docs/integrations/guide/), for example, Visual Studio Code, Vim, Emacs, or Obsidian.
+
+#### Installation
+
+To install Vale on macOS, you can use Homebrew:
+
+```bash
+brew install vale
+```
+
+I recommend creating a global configuration file in your home directory that will work even when Vale is not configured to work with a specific project.
+
+```bash
+cd ~
+touch .vale.ini # This creates the configuration file
+```
+
+You open this `.vale.ini` file in a text editor to add your configuration. Vale has a [config generator](https://vale.sh/generator/) that can help create the configuration. You pick the style guides you want to use, and the generator creates it for you.
+
+This is my configuration file. You can maintain custom [vocabulary](https://vale.sh/docs/topics/vocab/) files, I use one: `Base`. Inside the projects is a `Vocab` folder that includes a `Base` folder with an `accept.txt` and a `reject.txt`. You add one word per line to each file.
+
+I use no base style and three supplementary style guides. My configuration limits the checking for Markdown and Text files, but it’s possible to check any file type. I turned off two rules that annoyed me.
+
+```ini
+StylesPath = .vale
+
+MinAlertLevel = suggestion
+Vocab = Base
+
+Packages = Readability, proselint, write-good
+
+[*.{md,mdx,txt}]
+BasedOnStyles = Vale, Readability, proselint, write-good
+
+# Turn off rules
+Vale.Terms = NO
+write-good.E-Prime = NO
+
+[formats]
+njk = html
+```
+
+To install all selected packages, you’ll need to run this command in your home directory (or in a projects’ directory, in case you installed it for a project):
+
+```bash
+vale sync
+```
+
+Now you’re good to go, everything should work and Vale is running. The next time you open a supported editor with the installed Vale plugin, everything should be underlined in white, yellow, or red (depending on the warning level). You’ll be surprised how much your text sucks. 😂

src/schema/journal.ts

@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ export const journal = defineCollection({
 				'survival',
 				'tip',
 				'typography',
+				'writing',
 			])
 		),
 		series: z.string().optional(),