The Humble Libertarian original

By Aytekin Tank, Founder of JotForm The best-selling productivity author David Allen called it Getting Things Done. Malcolm Gladwell, researcher and writer about the wonderful weirdness of human psychology, coined the “10,000 hour rule.” But perhaps neither method for maintaining momentum has been adopted as fiercely as an off-the-cuff remark made by comedian Jerry Seinfeld over a decade ago: Don’t break the chain. “He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” Don’t break the chain.” Not breaking the chain leads to momentum. And momentum isn’t mystical. Science defines it as the force that allows something to grow stronger or faster as time passes. Read the rest on Medium. This is the song your

By Ingrid Lunden 'BitTorrent, an early mover (and currently the largest player) in decentralised computing architecture to distribute and store data, is being sold for $140 million in cash to Justin Sun and his blockchain media startup Tron, according to multiple sources close to the deal, who spoke to TechCrunch. Variety earlier this week reported that a sale of the company to Sun closed last week, without naming a price, following rumors that circulated for at least a month that the two were in negotiations. Shareholders have now been sent the paperwork to sign off on the deal, and that has detailed the $140 million price — which includes both a cash payment from Sun as well as cash in the company being distributed to shareholders alongside proceeds. Some are, we understand, still disputing the terms, as more than one person claims to have made the introduction between Sun and BitTorrent . A source says it’s unlikely that the disputes will actually kill the acquisition, gi

If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, Because thou lovest the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As, passing all conceit, needs no defence. Thou lovest to hear the sweet melodious sound That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes; And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd When as himself to singing he betakes. One god is god of both, as poets feign; One knight loves both, and both in thee remain. — Richard Barnfield, The Passionate Pilgrim

Eric Ross Weinstein is an American economist, writer, and managing director of Thiel Capital, Peter Thiel's investment firm. He writes on investments, capitalism, science, and mathematics.

Proud of YouTube for not demonetizing this. These boys ain't right. Another video they made the same day for iDubbbz' channel:

Duncan Trussell is a stand-up comedian, and host of his own podcast “The Duncan Trussell Family Hour.”

There is no fear in business. Fearless.

By: Howard Gold "Almost lost amid the torrent of recent news was a sobering item that will surely have far-reaching consequences. The U.S. government announced that for the first time since 1982, it is tapping into Social Security trust funds to pay current benefits to recipients and it is dipping into Medicare’s reserves to cover the costs of that program. The trustees also projected that the trust fund will run out of money by 2034 and that Medicare’s fund for paying costly hospital bills will be depleted by 2026. That may ultimately force a cowardly Congress to cut benefits, raise taxes, increase the eligibility age, or some combination of the three. For the 52% of Americans who rely on Social Security for more than half their retirement income and the 25% of retirees who get more than 90% of their income from the program, that would be a disaster." Read the rest at MarketWatch.

By: Megan Fox "An Argentinian movie that Netflix offers called Desire is upsetting subscribers because of what looks like illegal content. Viewers on Facebook have shared a clip of the movie and are calling it outright child porn. In the opening scene, two little girls who look to be about seven and nine are playing 'horse' on pillows. The older girl begins to obviously masturbate as the younger child watches. The camera even takes this scene into a closeup of the child's face in slow motion, moving up and down and panting like a porn star. The scene is graphic and includes an orgasm. The film is directed by Diego Kaplan. PJ Media reported it to the FBI and the Department of Justice, along with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which has launched an investigation." Read the rest at PJ Media. What is it about the movie business that attracts sickos? And what is with these new age liberal feminists who are cheering on the sexualizatio

By: Sigmund Freud We laymen have always been intensely curious to know–like the cardinal who put a similar question to Ariosto–from what sources that strange being, the creative writer, draws his material, and how he manages to make such an impression on us with it and to arouse in us emotions of which, perhaps, we had not even thought ourselves capable. Our interest is only heightened the more by the fact that, if we ask him, the writer himself gives us no explanation, or none that is satisfactory; and it is not at all weakened by our knowledge that not even the clearest insight into the determinants of his choice of material and into the nature of the art of creating imaginative form will ever help to make creative writers of us. If we could at least discover in ourselves or in people like ourselves an activity which was in some way akin to creative writing! An examination of it would then give us a hope of obtaining the beginnings of an explanation of the creative work of write

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless you're the EU, in which case, fix it til it's broke! EU Toys With Blowing Up the Internet as We Know It Members of the European Parliament have voted to advance legislation that could have a disastrous effect on the internet as we know it. Changes to the EU's Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which were approved by committee members on Wednesday, contain an article that would force platforms to pay a "link tax" to publishers whose content is linked on their services, and another that would force publishers to install automated filters to prevent the uploading of copyrighted material. Article 11, the "link tax," grows out of experiments in Germany and Spain that are ostensibly designed to give local publishers a cut of the profit that giant American companies like Google and Facebook make by advertising against the links and snippets of text their users post. The rule has had di

Welcome to your life There's no turning back Even while we sleep We will find You acting on your best behavior Turn your back on mother nature Everybody wants to run the world It's my own desire It's my own remorse Help me to decide Help me make the most Of freedom and of pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to run the world There's a room where the light won't find you Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down When they do, I'll be right behind you So glad we've almost made it So sad they had to fade it Everybody wants to run the world I can't stand this indecision Married with a lack of vision Everybody wants to run the world Say that you'll never, never, never, need it One headline, why believe it? Everybody wants to run the world All for freedom and for pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever Everybody wants to run the world

The Trump travel ban ( which was upheld today by five of the nine wise ones) on any citizen of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, is not anti-Muslim. It's far worse than anti-Muslim. It's a tacit admission of how badly the United States has devastated these countries, so badly that we can't risk letting anyone from there over here because we know some of them might just have a reason to give us back a tiny taste of the hell our government has unleashed on their countries. So why is Trump continuing to do this to other countries?

My purpose in writing this essay is to evaluate the immigration policy that is commonly supported by conservatives today, especially in the years leading up to and including the Obama-Trump era in U.S. politics, and to show you how this immigration policy is not conservative in any way, how its underlying arguments and mindset are entirely foreign to the American conservative tradition, and how it in fact has far more in common with the ideas and mindset of radical leftist ideologies like those of Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin. Nailing down a definition of conservatism is no easy task, but generally American conservatism has been characterized by an intellectually rigorous understanding of and commitment to rule of law, individual liberty, and limited government. 1. A conservative immigration policy would not violate anyone's individual liberty. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain un

"I want you to go play the two million dollar game now."

By: Sandeep Ravindran 'Talk about a high-altitude buzz. Bumblebees may be capable of scaling Earth’s tallest peaks, flying higher than Mount Everest, according to new research. It’s difficult for most insects and birds to fly at extremely high altitudes where the air is thin and oxygen is scarce. Flapping wings push against the air to generate lift, and the thinner the air, the less force those wings can produce. Yet bumblebees are abundant in high alpine regions. Researchers have long wondered how these tiny flyers were able to navigate the challenges of high-altitude flight—and just how high bumblebees could go. (See intimate portraits of bees.) “We wondered if these challenges—the reduced air density and oxygen—would limit how high bees can fly,” said Michael Dillon, a scientist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie who recently spent time with colleagues capturing bumblebees at 10,660 feet (3,250 meters) above sea level in China. “The answer seems to be a resoundin

By Lisa Marchiano, Psychotherapist and Certified Jungian Analyst Having lived through both World Wars, Jung was aware of the dangers of what he termed “psychic epidemics.” He discussed the spontaneous manifestation of an archetype within collective life as indicative of a critical time during which there is a serious risk of a destructive psychic epidemic. Currently, we appear to be experiencing a significant psychic epidemic that is manifesting as children and young people coming to believe that they are the opposite sex, and in some cases taking drastic measures to change their bodies. Of particular concern to the author is the number of teens and tweens suddenly coming out as transgender without a prior history of discomfort with their sex. “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria” is a new presentation of a condition that has not been well studied. Reports online indicate that a young person's coming out as transgender is often preceded by increased social media use and/or hav

Neocon Charles Krauthammer Dead At 68 Caitlin Johnstone pulls no punches: "Fox News contributor, Washington Post columnist and neoconservative thought leader Charles Krauthammer has died of cancer , and there is a mad media rush of establishment eulogies scrambling to canonize him as a great man in the eyes of the public before anyone can step back and take stock of what this man’s legacy actually is. This is perfectly understandable, because if social consciousness cements into history what a wheelchair full of toxic human waste Krauthammer actually was, it will make things much more difficult for them to manufacture support for their neoconservative wars going forward. In April of 2003, Charles Krauthammer christened the Iraq invasion he had loudly and persistently advocated the ' Three Week War .' As part of his arguments about how easy the war would be and how soon it would be over, the time-challenged Krauthammer bizarrely asserted that the war in A

Via PoliticsMaven: "Asked what he thinks of people comparing ICE to Nazis, acting director Thomas Homan replied with the Nuremberg defense. The acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Monday that comparing ICE agents to Nazis is unfair, because 'they’re simply enforcing laws enacted by Congress.' Thomas Homan employed the 'Nuremberg defense' – used by German Nazi officials in an attempt to escape accountability with the claim they were merely following orders." Watch: Acting ICE director Thomas Homan, without any sense of irony, tells @TuckerCarlson that he objects to people comparing ICE to Nazis because they "are simply enforcing laws enacted by Congress." pic.twitter.com/Jwqnnd3C0C — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 19, 2018 This Is The United States.

P&G's stock went up, likely on anticipated Pepto sales CNBC : "Stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after President Donald Trump's latest threat to China increased fears of an impending trade war between the world's largest economies. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 329 points, with Boeing, DowDuPont and Caterpillar as the worst-performing stocks in the index. The 30-stock index also erased all of its gains for the year and was on pace to post a six-day losing streak, its longest since March 2017." Axios : "President Trump announced on Monday that he wants to identify $200 billion worth of Chinese exports on which to add tariffs of 10% — in addition to the $50 billion in tariffs the administration has already announced — which could set off the next battle in a burgeoning trade war. What to expect: China has said it will hit back with its own tariffs, as it has done before. If that happens, Trump said in last night's announcement that he wa

Take the Power of Nine Challenge and listen to one Beethoven symphony a day for nine days in a row to massively up your power level. Do this while you're working, working out, or doing household chores. Or do it quietly while sitting still with your eyes closed. As these spirits wash over you in a sublime frolic, they will make everything clean and pure, and you will approach life with a sense of humor and divine potency. If you're in this to win this, take the Power of Nine Challenge.

ProPublica has obtained audio from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, in which children can be heard wailing as an agent jokes, “We have an orchestra here.” Read ProPublica's report here .

I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell and promote fine writing. A colleague’s forwarded email has set me straight. Sent to a literary agent, presumably this letter was also fired off to the agents of the entire Penguin Random House stable. The email cites the publisher’s ‘new company-wide goal’: for ‘both our new hires and the authors we acquire to reflect UK society by 2025.’ (Gotta love that shouty boldface.) ‘This means we want our authors and new colleagues to reflect the UK population taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability.’ The email proudly proclaims that the company has removed ‘the need for a university degree from nearly all our jobs’ — which, if my manuscript were being copy-edited and proof-read by folks whose university-educated predecessors already exhibited horrifyingly weak grammar and punctuation, I would find alarming. Th

What JBP actually says in this is Bravery Overcomes Fear. What are you afraid of?

Oh boy A story that defies understanding until you realize... how old the parents are. It's a boy! And he's five. Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, have spent half the decade concealing the gender of their son, Sasha. "I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," Laxton said. I'm confused. Is being stereotyped as a boy worse than being stereotyped as a court jester with an extra chromosome? "Wha--! That is so offensive!" Agreed. So why did she do it? "Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?" On a hunch I checked out her blog to see how opposed she was to slotting people into boxes: I may be wrong, but this appears to be a woman whose whole life is boxes. The premise for this unstory is that the parents wanted to prevent any gender stereotyping, so hid the child's gender from everyone to let him [sic] grow unstereotyped. The problem is that the parents already know

Sweet, soothing, and celebratory– a very fun album.

Dead Can Dance We Are The Stars Which Sing We Sing With Our Light We Are The Birds Of Fire We Fly Over The Sky Our Light Is A Voice We Make A Road For The Spirit To Pass Over We Are Like The Wind Wrapped Luminous Wind We Make A Road For The Spirits To Pass Over For The Spirits To Pass Over Outo, Ba Mwen Son Oue Outo, Ba Mwen Son Oue Tanbouye, O Ba Mwen Son Ou Soley Leve Outo, Give Me Your Sound Outo, Give Me Your Sound Drummer, Give Me Your Sound

Amazing that in the 80s it was conservatives who were stuffy and self-righteous, and who led moral panics against offensive speech, and today it seems far more often that conservatives are the ones poking fun at sacred cows, while liberals are more often the ones reacting with sanctimonious moral panic.

I am merely enforcing the law!

But I'll be stumbling away Slowly learning that life is okay Say after me It's no better to be safe than sorry

Only the most credulously partisan Republican wingnut would choose to believe that the Democrats are making the Trump Administration do this. As for the Bible, in the book of I Samuel, the children of Israel sin by clamoring to Samuel for God to appoint a government headed by a king to rule over them. God is disappointed in them and tells them of all the misfortunes a king will bring to their nation. One of the things He warns will happen is that the king will separate children from their parents.

The Fox News North Korea hypocrisy video is making its rounds on the Internet this week after Now This dug up footage of Fox News anchors and analysts slamming Barack Obama for expressing his willingness to meet with North Korean leaders, and contrasting it with clips of the heavily partisan cable news network heaping effusive praise on President Trump for doing just that. The video begins with a clip of one of the Fox & Friends morning show hosts, Steve Doocy, criticizing as "extraordinary" then-President Obama's willingness to meet with leaders of North Korea: "Would you, as president, meet with the leaders of a country like North Korea? Obama, extraordinarily, said, 'I'd meet with them.'" In another clip, Mike Huckabee (whose daughter, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now works for Mr. Trump as White House Press Secretary) waxes indignant: President Obama likes talking to dictators! As Huckabee would have his audience believe, Obama doesn'

( Part I Here ) Gilgamesh Walks Around Within The Walls of Uruk Like A Wild Bull He Makes Himself Mighty Head Held High Over The Others There Is No Rival Who Can Raise A Sword Against Him His Men Stand At The Alert To The Sound Of His Voice But The Men Of Uruk Grow Anxious Gilgamesh Does Not Leave A Son To His Father Day And Night He Stretches Out His Hand To Take Is Gilgamesh The Keeper Of Uruk-Haven? Is He As A Shepherd? Bold, Eminent, Knowing, Wise? Gilgamesh Does Not Leave A Girl To Her Mother The Daughters Of Warriors, The Brides Of Young Men Their Laments Rose To The Gods Above So The Gods Of The Sky Implored Anu Lord of Uruk "Indeed Have You Brought Into Being A Mighty And Proud Wild Bull There Is No Rival Who Can Raise A Sword Against Him His Men Stand At The Alert To The Sound Of His Voice But The Men Of Uruk Grow Anxious Gilgamesh Does Not Leave A Son To His Father Day A

From Wikipedia: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 – 2 February 1594) was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition. He had a lasting influence on the development of church music, and his work has often been seen as the culmination of Renaissance polyphony. In music, polyphony is one type of musical texture, where a texture is, generally speaking, the way that melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic aspects of a musical composition are combined to shape the overall sound and quality of the work. In particular, polyphony consists of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, which is called homophony.

The first of many globally successful private cryptocurrencies over the last decade, Bitcoin is history's most profitable investment so far. To understand why, we first have to fundamentally understand what money is and why it's so valuable. If you want to start investing in cryptocurrency, it's important to understand these fundamentals first. One of the easiest ways to lose a lot of money investing is by not having a deep understanding of what you're putting your money into. "Invest in what you know." Peter Lynch is the legendary American investor and mutual fund manager who averaged a 29.2% annual return (more than doubling the S&P 500 stock index) from 1977 to 1990, the best performance of any mutual fund over that period in the world. The assets under his management grew from $18 million in '77 to $14 billion by 1990. He's famous for saying, "Invest in what you know." CryptoCurrency Is Private Money If you