Via VigilantFox.com,

Jimmy Kimmel will finally return to the air on Tuesday night, after his show was briefly yanked for falsely labeling Kirk’s suspected assassin as “one of them” in a distasteful dig at conservatives.

Democrats rushed to defend Kimmel, calling it a “First Amendment issue.” But Bill O’Reilly says that story is, frankly, bullsh*t. The real free speech story, he argues, is what these mainstream networks have been doing for years.

Bill O’Reilly just RIPPED APART Jimmy Kimmel’s “freedom of speech” battle as nothing but BS.

He turned the tables with one brutal fact that blows the left’s entire narrative to pieces:

“Look, this [Trump v. Kimmel] story is bogus… The story is that Disney and Kimmel, for THREE… pic.twitter.com/gBN1FTewrp

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) September 23, 2025

Jimmy Kimmel will finally return to the air on Tuesday night, after his show was briefly yanked for falsely labeling Kirk’s suspected assassin as “one of them” in a distasteful dig at conservatives.

Democrats rushed to defend Kimmel, calling it a “First Amendment issue.” But Bill O’Reilly says that story is, frankly, bullsh*t. The real free speech story, he argues, is what these mainstream networks have been doing for years.

“Look, this [Trump v. Kimmel] story is bogus,” O’Reilly told Vittert. “The [real] story is that Disney and Kimmel, for three years, would not put on a non-liberal voice on his program.”

“You talk about no freedom of speech and expression? That story has been totally ignored,” O’Reilly lamented. “And it’s not just ABC. It was CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN. Okay? They will not put any non-liberal voice on the air.”

O’Reilly recalled how, before the Trump era, he was booked regularly on mainstream networks. Now, he says he and other conservatives have been deliberately excluded from those programs — something he called “Putin stuff.”

“This whole freedom of speech BS is coming from the far left to make Kimmel a victim and to make Trump a villain when, for ten years, they have BANISHED all traditional conservative thought and discourse on all of their programs.”

“All of them,” O’Reilly continued. “They don’t want non-liberal voices. That is Putin stuff!”

Following August’s big bonce in US Manufacturing survey data, the preliminary September data shows weakness for both Services and Manufacturing (despite strength in the hard data).

• Flash US Services PMI Business Activity Index: 53.9 (August: 54.5). 3-month low.
• Flash US Manufacturing PMI: 52.0 (August: 53.0). 2-month low.

However, both surveys are above 50 (expansion)…

Source: Bloomberg

“Further robust growth of output in September rounds off the best quarter so far this year for US businesses,” says Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence:

“PMI survey data are consistent with the economy expanding at a 2.2% annualized rate in the third quarter.”

It;’s not all goldilocks though:

“However, the monthly profile is one of growth having slowed from its recent peak back in July, and September saw companies also pull back on their hiring. Softening demand conditions are also becoming more widely reported, curbing pricing power. Although tariffs were again cited as a driver of higher input costs across both manufacturing and services, the number of companies able to hike selling prices to pass these costs on to customers has fallen, hinting at squeezed margins but boding well for inflation to moderate.

“The survey data are nevertheless still indicative of consumer inflation remaining above the central bank’s 2% target in the coming months. However, in manufacturing, there are also signs that disappointing sales growth has caused inventories to accumulate at an unprecedented rate, which could also further help soften inflation in the coming months.

“The inventory build-up of course also hints at some downside risks to future production. While growth expectations across both manufacturing and services also continue to be dogged by concerns over the political environment, and especially tariffs, September encouragingly saw business sentiment improve in part due to the anticipated beneficial impact of lower interest rates.”

Looking ahead, companies’ expectations about output in the year ahead improved to a four-month high in September yet remained below the survey’s long-run averages in both manufacturing and services. Service sector sentiment picked up to the highest level since May, while a three-month high was recorded in September.

Watch Live:

*   *   * 

Update (1033ET): 

President Trump is now speaking at the United Nations General Assembly…

Here’s the latest: 

• Trump’s address begins more like a State of the Union than a UN General Assembly speech. He’s mentioned mortgage rates, inflation, the stock market (twice), tax cuts, regulation – and boasted about how the US is the “best country” in which to do business. -via Bloomberg White House & National Security Editor Michael Jamrisko 

• Trump begins by bragging that “we are the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close.” -via Bloomberg State Department & Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin 

• Trump boasts about the US economy. “We are rapidly reversing the economic calamity we inherited from the previous administration, including ruinous price increases and record-setting inflation, inflation like we’ve never had before. Under my leadership, energy costs are down, gasoline prices are down, grocery prices are down, mortgage rates are down, and inflation has been defeated. The only thing that’s up is the stock market, which just hit a record high.” -via Bloomberg State Department & Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin

• Trump is now boasting about resolving the “seven wars” that were “un-endable.” -via Bloomberg White House & National Security Editor Michael Jamrisko

• Trump complains that the United Nations wasn’t part of his work to end wars around the world. “The UN has such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential,” Trump says. -via Bloomberg State Department & Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin

• Trump is now going into details about the death and destruction in the Ukraine war, taking a swipe at predecessor Joe Biden and saying “It shows you what leadership is, what bad leadership can do to a country.” -via Bloomberg State Department & Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin

• Trump says the US is fully prepared to impose “a very strong round of powerful tariffs, which would stop the bloodshed, I believe, very quickly” if Putin doesn’t agree to end the war in Ukraine. That’s a threat he’s made several times this year without following through.-via Bloomberg State Department & Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin

• Trump says European nations must “immediately cease all energy purchases from Russia. Otherwise, we’re all wasting a lot of time.”-via Bloomberg State Department & Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin

• Trump chastises the UN for “creating new problems for us to solve,” highlighting uncontrolled immigration at the top of the list. -via Bloomberg White House & National Security Editor Michelle Jamrisko

• Trump said the “number one political issue of our time” is “the crisis of uncontrolled migration.” Trump made illegal immigration the central issue of his reelection campaign and has carried out mass deportations since taking office. -via Bloomberg White House Correspondent Kate Sullivan

• After a brief preview of a US call for the world to come together to end the development of biological weapons, Trump dives into a discussion of migration, saying that he has stopped their illegal arrival to the US, and calls on other countries to take their own steps to protect their own borders.-via Bloomberg State Department & Foreign Policy Reporter Eric Martin

• “You’re destroying your countries. They’re being destroyed,” Trump says, calling out Europe for allowing “illegal aliens” to “pour in.” -via Bloomberg White House & National Security Editor Michelle Jamrisko

*   *   * 

Tuesday is a big day in New York, as Trump returns to his home city for a much anticipated address before the United Nations General Assembly amid the week-long UN summit, where he’s expected to lay out his ‘vision for the world’. This one marks the 80th anniversary of the UN, and all eyes will be on the globe’s biggest stage for world leaders.

Interestingly, he’ll actually be the second world leader to address the general assembly on Tuesday. Trump will follow left-wing President Lula of Brazil, who actually says he’s not on speaking terms with the US president, especially given the ongoing Bolsonaro trial and tariff saga which has sent relations with Washington spiraling. Trump is to speak at 09:50 ET 14:50 BST at the UN General Assembly. Watch Live:

The White House has previewed that Trump while at the UN headquarters will hold a multilateral meeting with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan while at the gathering. There will additionally be a bilateral meeting with Argentina’s conservative President Milei.

An important meeting with Ukraine’s President Zelensky on the sidelines is also planned. “I would like to receive the signals, how close we are to understanding that the security guarantees from all partners are those what we need,” Zelensky said before preparing to travel to the US, according to Bloomberg.

“We have prepared the basis for security guarantees that Europe is ready to adopt, taking into account that the United States of America will be there,” the Ukrainian leader continued. “We have had many discussions, including among the leadership of our armies and general staffs with the Europeans and the Americans.”

The Ukraine war and potential for build-up to WW3 if a negotiated offramp is not found is expected to receive mention, but also the conflict in Gaza is expected to dominate the assembly.

Relations with America’s leading European allies are currently strained on the Palestinian issue, given the UK, France, and many others have moved to formally recognize a Palestinian state, resulting in condemnation from the US and Israel. Trump will likely raise the issue in his speech, and offer push-back.

The White House has further previewed that Trump will describe “how globalist institutions have significantly decayed the world order, and he will articulate his straightforward constructive vision for the world.”

Karoline Leavitt also said he’ll review the administration’s “historic accomplishments in just eight months, including the ending of seven global wars and conflicts.” It will further include “touting the renewal of American strength around the world.”

While not in attendance, without doubt Russia’s Vladimir Putin and other ‘rivals’ and ‘enemies’ of the United States will be following Trump’s speech very closely.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

US officials have told The New York Times that the real goal of the US military buildup in the Caribbean, and the bombing of boats in the region, is regime change in Venezuela.

The policy is being largely driven by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long wanted to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power. Back in 2019, when the first Trump administration attempted to back a coup against Maduro, Rubio posted a photo on Twitter of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the moment he was being brutally murdered in an apparent threat to the Venezuelan leader.

The Trump administration claims that Maduro is the leader of a drug cartel, but has not produced any evidence for the charge.

Maduro and other Venezuelan officials have forcefully rejected the accusation and have pointed to data that shows the majority of the cocaine that is produced in Colombia doesn’t go through Venezuela.

President Trump has also framed the military campaign in the region as a response to overdose deaths in the US due to fentanyl, but fentanyl isn’t produced in Venezuela, and it does not go through the country on its way to the US.

The Times report, which was published over the weekend, reads: “Several current and former military officials, diplomats, and intelligence officers say that while fighting drugs is the pretext for the recent US attacks, the real goal is to drive Mr. Maduro from power, one way or another.”

The US began bombing boats allegedly running drugs in the Caribbean on September 2. According to numbers released by President Trump, at least 17 people have been extrajudicially executed by the US military since the campaign began.

US officials have said the Trump administration is considering direct strikes on Venezuelan territory, which could lead to a full-blown war with the country.

Just what you want in a Secretary of State, the capacity to threaten assassination by anal knifing.

Rubio Posted Graphic Image of Gaddafi’s Murder in Apparent Threat to Maduro. Twitter Says it Didn’t Violate Their Terms of Service.https://t.co/ZPWBfYRI3L https://t.co/4NTHisH4at pic.twitter.com/aOEMK9FRBO

— Sam Husseini (@samhusseini) November 12, 2024

One US official speaking to Axios last month suggested that the US military buildup in the region could lead to a “Noriega part 2,” referring to the 1989 US invasion of Panama that led to the ouster of Manuel Noriega. Other US officials hope that the pressure and $50 million bounty on Maduro leads to his assassination.

Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

Treasury authorities in the US and UK have announced the formation of a transatlantic task force to explore “short-to-medium term collaboration on digital assets.”

In Monday notices, the US Treasury Department and HM Treasury said the cross-country effort, taking place through the already established UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group, would release a report with recommendations within 180 days.

The new task force, called the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future, will consider crypto laws and regulations as well as how the two countries can collaborate on “wholesale digital markets innovation.”

Source: UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves

The announcement follows a Financial Times report on a meeting last week between UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on how the two countries could work together on crypto regulation.

The discussion reportedly included representatives from several cryptocurrency companies. At the same time, the task force said on Monday that it should “seek input from leading industry experts to ensure that its recommendations are informed by what matters most to industry.”

The US Treasury did not explicitly state whether the task force formation was related to any crypto-related legislation in Congress, such as the law to establish a framework for payment stablecoins, the GENIUS Act. Under the bill, signed into law in July, the US Treasury Department is required to draft regulations with the Federal Reserve before implementation.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase shared the US-UK announcement on its blog on Monday, saying it was “proud” to support the partnership. Daniel Seifert, the exchange’s vice president and regional managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was present in the discussions between Reeves and Bessent, according to a spokesperson for Coinbase.

Similar approaches to crypto regulation?

The US and UK have both taken steps to address regulatory issues affecting digital assets and companies handling them in 2025. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with US President Donald Trump last week, signing a memorandum of understanding to explore the development of technologies, including artificial intelligence, though the deal is not legally binding.

While the UK Treasury under Reeves said in April that it would focus on crypto rules to “support innovation while cracking down on fraudsters,” the US side under Bessent has pushed an approach that suggests scaling back on regulation.

The US Treasury Secretary said in August that the department would explore “budget-neutral pathways” to acquire Bitcoin as part of the US government’s crypto reserve plans.

Authored by Kimberly Drake via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In the United States, 90 percent of Americans get the water they need from public drinking water systems that harbor disinfection byproducts, most of which are unregulated and understudied.

Disinfection byproducts form as a result of chemical treatments that water companies use to keep water free of dangerous pathogens. Some byproducts may increase the risk of cancer.

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently regulates four categories of disinfection byproducts for safety. However, researchers believe there may be hundreds—if not thousands—of unregulated byproducts lurking in the tap water that millions of people drink. The health effects of those chemicals are largely unknown.

* If you need a good filter *  

Take a look at this

Or travel size

Or this one for under the sink

*  *  *

There are simple steps people can take at home to minimize these potentially harmful regulated and unregulated byproducts in their water.

Sourcing Public Drinking Water

In larger cities, water treatment plants typically pull water from surface water sources such as lakes, rivers, or reservoirs; groundwater; or a combination of both. Small towns tend to source drinking water from groundwater.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that in 2015, 70 percent of water used in the United States came from surface water sources, and 30 percent came from groundwater.

Some locations may use recycled water, which comes from municipal wastewater, stormwater, or agricultural runoff.

The water source that usually needs the least treatment is groundwater.

Treating Public Drinking Water

Regardless of where it comes from, water supplied to the public goes through several treatment processes involving the addition of chemicals to remove small particles and filtration to ensure it is safe to drink.

During the treatment process, water companies must strike a balance. They must add sufficient chemicals to the water to ensure safety, without exceeding EPA limits for treatment chemicals and their byproducts.

This process involves several steps, including:

1. Coagulation: Adding chemicals such as salts, iron, or aluminum to bind small particles.
2. Flocculation: Mixing the water to help particles form larger clumps, sometimes with the addition of other chemicals.
3. Sedimentation: Allowing large, heavy clumps to settle to the bottom of storage containers.
4. Filtration: Passing the remaining clear water through several filters to remove residual particles, parasites, bacteria, and viruses. Some water treatment plants may use reverse osmosis, especially when treating recycled water.
5. Disinfection: Using chemicals such as chlorine or chloramine to kill harmful germs and prevent waterborne illnesses such as cholera and typhoid.

While some treatment plants may use ultraviolet (UV) light or ozone during this step, disinfection chemicals are necessary because they continue to kill pathogens as the water travels to people’s homes. UV and ozone alone cannot provide that protection.

Health Concerns With Disinfection Byproducts

According to a 2024 EPA report, although disinfection chemicals are effective, they can react with compounds present in water and create harmful byproducts, which treatment plant operators must remove during the water treatment process. EPA disinfection rules require utilities to monitor treated water for four disinfectant byproducts, including:

• Trihalomethanes
• Haloacetic acids
• Chlorite
• Bromate

Treating recycled water is more challenging, as research suggests it needs more chemicals and advanced processes to clean it, which may lead to the creation of more byproducts.

“There are consistent associations between disinfection byproducts and bladder cancer, also some associations with colorectal cancer,” Susan D. Richardson, a professor of chemistry at the University of South Carolina, told The Epoch Times. She also cited associations between disinfection byproducts and miscarriage and birth defects.

Studies using hamster cells have shown that more than 100 disinfection byproducts are toxic to living cells and DNA.

While research is limited, the strongest evidence linking disinfection byproducts to cancer appeared in a study published in January in Environmental Health Perspectives. Results suggest that the byproduct trihalomethane increases the risk of bladder cancer by 33 percent in the highest versus lowest exposure groups, and colorectal cancer by 15 percent, even when levels are below current regulatory limits.

A review published in June in the Journal of Hazardous Materials found that long-term use of chlorinated drinking water and exposure to high levels of trihalomethanes are associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer, particularly in men.

Another 2024 study suggests there are more than 600 known disinfection byproducts, and potentially thousands more, most of which have no purified reference standard. This makes it difficult to determine how often they occur in drinking water or how harmful they may be.

“While previous studies have looked at the fate of regulated disinfection byproducts in distribution systems, very few have investigated the more toxic, unregulated byproducts,” Richardson said.

A Chinese population-based study found associations between prenatal exposure to nitrosamines, a group of unregulated disinfection byproducts, and lower birth weight among newborns, as well as a heightened risk of preterm delivery.

A 2021 study coauthored by Richardson suggests that disinfection byproducts are typically present at 100 to 1000 times higher concentrations than other water contaminants. The authors noted that it remains unclear which byproducts may be linked to bladder cancer, miscarriage, and birth defects.

The paper’s findings prompted Richardson and her colleagues to recommend that unregulated byproducts—specifically haloacetonitriles and iodoacetic acids—be considered for regulation, as they were the main drivers of toxicity in drinking water in this U.S.-based study.

Richardson told The Epoch Times her group’s latest research, expected to be published soon, investigated the fate of 66 disinfection byproducts as the treated water travels through pipes from the treatment plant to people’s homes.

She said that water distribution pipes are like reactors where disinfection byproducts can continue to form or degrade, and some transform into other byproducts over time.

The Epoch Times reached out to the EPA for comment on disinfection byproduct safety and unregulated byproducts revealed in studies, but did not receive a response.

Reducing Exposure to Disinfection Byproducts

A recent Environmental Working Group (EWG) study found that advanced per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) treatment technologies reduced trihalomethanes by 42 percent on average and lowered haloacetic acid levels by 50 percent.

However, only 8 percent of U.S. water treatment plants currently have these systems.

Steve Via, director of federal relations for the American Water Works Association, told The Epoch Times there are several technologies utilities use in combination with chlorine or chloramines to produce fewer byproducts.

However, he noted that there are no alternatives to chlorine or chloramines for maintaining water sanitation during distribution to homes, as mandated by the EPA’s Surface Water Treatment Rule. These methods are generally considered best practice for water systems.

While most people have no control over what happens to their drinking water at the treatment plant, reducing exposure to potentially harmful byproducts at home is possible.

Richardson said her group’s research showed that activated carbon filters can remove some of the disinfection byproducts, although ongoing studies are investigating this in more detail.

Reverse osmosis systems are another option. A 2017 paper in the Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering found that reverse osmosis can simultaneously remove both organic and inorganic byproducts and their precursors.

Richardson noted that reverse osmosis is particularly effective for charged byproducts such as haloacetic acids and for larger molecules.

Water pitcher filters can also help reduce exposure.

* AHEM * 

Via advised that before purchasing a water treatment device, consumers should confirm it is certified to NSF standards for the contaminant of concern and install and maintain the device according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Activated carbon filters are typically installed where the water pipe enters the house (point of entry) or in the pipes leading to a faucet. Reverse osmosis systems are usually installed under a sink and connected to the faucet. Most commercially available filter systems combine carbon filtration and reverse osmosis to maximize chemical removal.

Installing filtration systems or using pitcher filters may help reduce disinfection byproducts, but these options can be costly. However, there are low- or no-cost ways to lower exposure.

“Setting aside drinking water in a pitcher in the refrigerator allows disinfection byproducts to dissipate, so that is one option,” Via said.

Storing water with or without a lid can reduce trihalomethanes by up to 47 percent, and boiling water for one minute and then storing it can lower the level of these byproducts by up to 92 percent, according to a 2019 study published in Science of The Total Environment.

People who want to learn more about what’s in their water can access water quality reports by calling their local water utility company, visiting the utility’s website, or searching for the report on the EPA’s Consumer Confidence Reports webpage.

Reports typically show levels of the four regulated byproducts, and inorganic contaminants like arsenic, fluoride, and nitrate. They may also reveal lead and copper levels, PFAS, and radioactive contaminants like uranium. Reports often indicate whether the water came from surface water, ground water, or recycled water.

The UN has announced it will need to cut $500m from their 2026 budget and will lay off 20% of its staff as it struggles to cope with a massive reduction in funding by the Trump administration.  Trump has eliminated at least $1 billion in total funding from the UN.  

The plan is likely to involve an initial minimum 3,000 job cuts out of a 35,000-strong main workforce, with eventual job losses at around 7,000. The overall UN core or regular budget would be cut from $3.7bn to about $3.2bn next year. It means reductions of 15.1% in resources and 18.8% in posts in the regular budget compared with the 2025 budget.

Despite the funding losses, UN Secretary General António Guterres continues to press ahead with his new “pact for the future” focusing on artificial intelligence and policies for sustainable development.  The UN is now looking for alternative funding for their operations, though, it is unlikely they will be able to fill the void left by US cuts.  Most countries have no interest in paying more; the reliance has been entirely on Americans for generations.

Critics of the Trump Administration argue that distancing the US from the UN will lead to disaster.  They claim that in the aftermath of World War I, the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations (supported by elitist President Woodrow Wilson) was a contributing factor to the outbreak of World War II. 

In reality, the League of Nations and the UN are precursors to global centralization.  Widespread war has always been the excuse used to push individual nations into greater compliance with globalist ideologies.  The end goal is ultimately to erase nation states and citizen governance altogether.  Just as the European Union is run by a gaggle of faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats, a “global union” would be operated in the same fashion. 

War is an acceptable risk, because separate nations and cultures help to prevent homogenized global tyranny.

Global organizations have only brought the US public misery in recent years through universal pandemic mandates and multiculturalist agendas that lead to mass immigration from the third world.  The UN has been the spearhead for “climate change” regulations around the world, from carbon emissions taxation to population control.  Man-made climate change claims have been largely debunked in recent years and the public is waking up to the reality that carbon emissions have little or nothing to do with changing temperatures. 

Faith in the UN’s purpose is dying, and their humanitarian efforts look more and more like a cover for a group that wants power and control more than it want’s what’s best for the public.  It’s difficult to defend the idea of taxpayer dollars continuing to pay for their operations.

As Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, argues: “The postwar global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us.”

The US government has made no secret of its intention to considerably reduce America’s engagement with international institutions. The White House has already announced withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  It has also declared it will no longer fund the UN Relief and Works Agency or the UN Human Rights Council.

A 180-day review of participation in international organizations, originally due in early August, is to suggest more organizations to leave.  The funding cuts expose a startling level of dependency within global organizations and foreign government.  How much of the world feeds on American taxpayers?  Too much.  

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

Your Facebook Friends Are Wrong About… Everything

I haven’t really been active on Facebook since the COVID era when it became pretty obvious to me that most of the people I grew up with or went to college turned into authority addicts and were thoroughly brainwashed by mainstream agitprop.

They’re still like that today…

…and they seem to buy it hook-line-and-sinker.

Libertarian podcaster Tom Woods, used to put out mini e-books titled “Your Facebook Friends Are Wrong About….”, and he’d fill it in with whatever the lemmings are up in arms about at the time: vaccines, mask mandates, gun control, whatever.

I’d been marvelling at just how dead the Facebook/Meta platform has become since the COVID years. Like tumbleweeds, really.

But over the past few months I had been posting a bit more there, but was trying to keep the politics out of it (like many, I’m a long-time sufferer of outrage-fatigue).

All that changed when Charlie Kirk was assassinated and the reaction from “the left” was just so appalling and indefensible that I got more vocal about it in my feed.

It was a mistake, and I ended up creating a couple of long-running comment threads and getting piled-on by people I knew in high school, or college or my early tech days in Toronto.

They started wearing me down with increasingly deranged and nonsensical talking points that seemingly came straight out of an Antifa 101 pamphlet.

A former bandmate sent me a private message featuring some “anti-hate expert” (a dude dressed up as a woman) lecturing me on why Charlie Kirk had it coming…

Another guy from my high school started comment bombing every post with 40 or 50 anti-Trump memes and multi-paragraph rants in ALL CAPS that ended with YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Fucking. Unhinged.

A couple nights ago I finally realized what I was doing to myself and deleted those threads (and blocked the comment bomber). I feel a little sheepish that it took me nearly a week to realize that I too, had been caught up in The Loser’s Game: arguing politics with my hometown friends on social media.

When you spend your time and mental energy on Facebook, getting sucked into emotionally charged political debates, trying to convince people you don’t really know anymore, can’t influence, and wouldn’t deal with in real life, you’re not just wasting time—you’re handing your life force over to people who are in all practical measures, losers.

(How can I say that these people are losers? Because they are wasting their lives arguing on Facebook. And as long as I participate in those arguments, then I’m being a loser, too).

The above is a screen grab from one of my favourite books of all time: Stop Being A Loser. I laughed out loud when I read it as I spliced it into this post, but it was also bittersweet, because I realized it was talking about me.

But I can’t help but notice that Social platforms like Facebook, Reddit and Bluesky have become breeding grounds for collectivist berserkers, and sundry boot-lickers.

They spend their days revelling in miserabilism, and they are quick to swarm anyone violating the boundaries of their groupthink.

I’ve also noticed that they take special exception toward anybody with independent thought or exercising personal agency.

Thank-you, Time Magazine

The single greatest heresy you can commit in our current collectivist zeitgeist, is to believe, or worse, demonstrate, that you can improve your own life without the mediation or intervention of The State.

Pyrrhic Victory & Opportunity Cost

Imagine you spend 45 minutes, or a couple of hours – arguing with some jerk you knew in Grade 10, who you never hung out with then, and you have never even thought about since. He insists Charlie Kirk’s assassin was a MAGA extremist and the real martyr of the day is Jimmie Kimmel.

You go back and forth with him over the course of a few days, weeks even, …and then, you actually bring him around to your point. You’ve won! Right?

Well… actually…

You’ve wasted the better part of an entire working day (or more) converting one, single, low importance, inconsequential NPC around an issue that even you are going to stop thinking about as much in a few days, weeks or months from now.

In that same time you could have:

• written a pitch deck that will bring in a 7-digit investment to one of your business ventures

• knocked out a blog post that racks up over 100K views and adds 500 new subscribers to your email list

• created a new email sequence that brings in a steady trickle new customers to one of your websites, every day, every week, forever

• optimized one of your conversion funnels and doubled your ROI

• fixed that software bug that was costing you $50K a year

• interviewed enough people to find that next great hire

• read through about a half-dozen 10-Qs of companies, one of which could 100X over the next decade

But you didn’t do any of those things.

You spent all that time and wasted all that energy arguing with someone you don’t really care about, whose intellect is too crude to digest anything that demands critical analysis anyway. They have Type 1 TDS and they’re well beyond Stage 4 (terminal brain worms).

If you really wanted to spend all that time on a single person, you would have been better off taking your spouse or kids on a special day trip – something you’ll actually remember, with people you genuinely care about.

Instead, you forfeited all that, it’s called opportunity cost – and these are all just examples of the kinds of opportunities playing The Loser’s Game has cost you: endlessly arguing with knuckle-dragging retards on a social platform infested with people who envy and loathe high agency people on principle.

As WOPR, the 1970’s-era super-computer finally figured out in the classic flick of our youth, War Games: the best strategy is not to play.

Since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I have been playing The Loser’s Game. Arguing with people on social media about issues they’ve already made up their minds about anyway.

Connecting The Dots

General semantics is the discipline that studies how language and symbols influence human thought and behavior, and how our abstract representations of reality can distort our perceptions of it.

In his seminal work on the topic, The Book of Radical General Semantics, Gad Horowitz give us the metaphor of the dots:

Christopher Mayer on William O’Hanlon’s “The Reality of Reality”

(I read it as cited in Chris Mayers’ “How Do You Know?“)

In the 4×6 grid on the left each of those dots represents a “fact”.

As you can see, you can gather together a collection of “facts”, a group of happenings nobody disputes and are objectively real in terms of “they happened”.

But there are innumerable ways to “connect the dots”, which is surmising or assessing how all these separate, objective facts relate to each other.

And this makes a HUGE difference.

There’s a reason I bring this up here.

The Great Bifurcation, revisited.

There are two types of people:

Most people have a tendency to connect the observed dots using one path, and in their minds, that path is the only valid pattern to connect the dots.

That path becomes their Truth. Any other pathway that can also connect those very same dots is heresy, conspiracy, hate speech, denialism or some other manner of thought crime.

Some people (fewer in number) understand that there are numerous possible explanations of how the observed facts could relate to each other.

Even more important, is that the most probable path (the obvious one) is not necessarily the most accurate, nor is the most agreed-upon path (consensus-driven). Those paths could be inaccurate, and by “inaccurate”, what I really mean is wrong.

The difference between these two types of people is cognitive. The latter have access to an additional layer of mental abstraction that the former don’t even comprehend exists.

And those are the people I’ve been arguing with on social media.

I’ve written in the past about The Great Bifurcation – which was originally about wealth inequality, and I thought that would be a bad enough problem in our collective future.

Lately I’ve come to understand it primarily as a cognitive gap.

The human race is splitting into two completely different species – a la Morlocks and Elohim, and the barrier between them isn’t money. It’s the level of mental abstraction the individuals are capable of functioning at.

W R Clement’s book, Quantum Jump, a favourite of mine that I often to refer to, ascribes the entire Enlightenment and ensuing Scientific Revolution to the discovery of perspective (a.k.a “God’s Space”) in Medieval art.

Something similar is happening today – with the advent of cyberspace and the phenomenon of non-linearity.

This has all kinds of knock-on effects, not the least of which is the accelerating acceleration in the rate of change (tachyosis or hyper-acceleration).

Most people, are ngmi. And their inability to cognitively function at the faster-paced, non-linear levels of mental abstraction induces a kind of psychosis (“Future Shock“).

Connecting The Dots

Back to the dots that comprise reality:

Just by way of example, here’s three different pathways through the dots around the objective event of Charlie Kirk’s assassination:

1. The generally confirmed consensus view that Kirk was murdered by a kid from a Republican family who had been radicalized into far-left ideology, mostly acting alone, but amongst far-left groups who may have had foreknowledge of the plan.

2. This one was emailed to me by a reader: Charlie Kirk was a crisis actor, the death was faked, here’s proof (followed by a link to a 45 minute frame-by-frame video analysis of the ripple in his shirt as the bullet struck)

I’ll throw out another one that actually keeps intruding into my thoughts:

3. The Kirk assassination was a Reichstag Fire moment—carried out by entrenched MAGA operatives who may have also staged the July 13, 2024 attempt on Trump in order to manufacture a crisis, catalyze public reaction, and install an authoritarian “solution.” Standard Hegelian dialectic.

This was the moment that put Trump back into the White House.
Could it have been orchestrated?

All three lines connect the same observed dots. Which is correct?

I have no idea, and neither do you.

Beyond a few first principles—like “don’t murder people,” “everyone gets free speech,” and that a talk show host losing his job isn’t more tragic than a young man getting his head blown off in public —the rest is just hamster wheels in our heads.

Which is why the best use of your time and energy is focusing on what you can control, like how you respond to life events and focus on what’s actually within reach: honing your craft, developing your innate talents, expanding your skills, and deepening your relationships. That’s where the leverage flips and you gain more than you lose.

That is playing the winner’s game.

Of all the truly successful people that you know – how often do you observe them screeching or engaging in high-tension political histrionics on social media?

The most successful people I know don’t even have Facebook accounts. Their socials, if they have any, are run by interns.

The eminent computer pioneer Jaron Lanier once put out an entire book on “10 Reasons why we should all delete our social media accounts“. Reason number one is “it turns you into an asshole”.

I have been guilty of playing The Loser’s Game.

(As comedian Cathy Ladman once put it, “Some of these I do, just for me”)

It’s time to get back to work.

Join the Bombthrower mailing list free and get a copy of the CBDC Survival Guide when it drops. Follow me on X here.
If you want a special trial deal to check out The Bitcoin Capitalist, you can grab that here »

As Germany marks 35 years of reunification on October 3, some depopulated eastern towns are offering “trial-living” schemes: several weeks of super-cheap housing to attract new residents, according to Yahoo/AFP.

Participants pay just €100 a week, and in towns like Guben, flats can be rented for only €5–7 per square meter.

One of the newcomers is kindergarten teacher Weslawa Goeller, 50, from Mainz, who is testing life in Guben with her toddler. At first, she said, “Since I arrived, I feel like I never see anyone.” But she’s warming to its pace: “It’s green and quiet,” and with free childcare, “I could easily work here as an educator.” Still, she admits, “Old trees like me are hard to uproot. But I might decide to move here.”

Yahoo/AFP writes that Guben’s population has dropped from 31,000 in 1990 to 16,000 today, despite its slogan, “A town where people stay.” Like much of the east, it never recovered fully from the collapse of state industries after 1989. Researcher Tim Leibert warns the demographic decline could become “a bomb for the German economy,” with the east projected to lose up to 16% of its population in 20 years.

Some, however, embrace the quiet. Anika Franze, 38, left the “Berlin party scene” for Guben and now works on the trial-living initiative. She calls the scheme “a very modern concept, a bit like a 30-day right of return.”

Project head Kerstin Geilich, 61, recalls the economic trauma of the 1990s but says conditions have improved with jobs in factories and healthcare. Still, “It’s hard to make (people) understand that you can find a good job here today.”

Other towns are following suit. Eisenhuettenstadt, built in 1950 as East Germany’s steel hub, has lost half its population since reunification. Mayor Frank Balzer calls it “the tragedy of the 1990s.”

IT consultant Melanie Henninger, visiting from Bremen, is considering a move: “I would like to contribute to society here, for example by training older people in digital technology.” She adds, “I try not to have any preconceptions… I have to give this place a chance.”

Authored by Guy Birchall via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Most Europeans would be unwilling to take a pay cut to work from home, according to a European Central Bank (ECB) survey published on Sept. 25.

The portion of eurozone workers aged 20 to 64, who are not self-employed and at least partially working from home, has doubled from 11.7 percent in 2019 to 22.4 percent in 2024, according to data from Eurostat.

The survey found that 33.6 percent of employees reported working from home at least two days per week since May 2024.

According to figures from the ECB, the majority of workers in the Eurozone, 55.7 percent, still do not work from home.

Hybrid working, or operating between home and workplace, was the most common form of arrangement for the 44.4 percent of people who do at least some remote work.

Of those hybrid workers, 11.9 percent signed in from home one day a week, and 21.9 percent for between two and four days a week.

Some 10.6 percent of respondents worked entirely remotely.

“Overall, a hybrid working pattern appears to be the preferred remote working option, with most hybrid workers (84 percent) expressing satisfaction with their current arrangement,” the ECB said.

“Interestingly, 43 percent of employees who work fully remotely would prefer to spend fewer days working away from the office. This suggests that remote working may be driven more by necessity or employer requirements than by preference.”

The ECB survey also found that 70 percent of employees would not be willing to accept any pay cut to either continue or begin working from home.

Of those who would accept a reduction in remuneration, it found that 13 percent would take a pay cut of between 1 percent and 5 percent, and 8 percent would accept a reduction of between 6 percent and 10 percent.

“The average pay cut that employees would accept to work two or three days per week from home is 2.6 percent,” the ECB said.

“This is significantly lower than other estimates in the empirical literature.”

Other analyses it cited included a survey of German workers in 2024, which found they would be willing to accept a reduction of 7.7 percent of their pay to work fully remotely.

Another survey of workers in the United States tech sector said some would accept a cut of 25 percent in their pay packets for a remote position instead of an in-person role.

The ECB found that employees who work from home more frequently would be willing to accept a higher pay cut to preserve their current arrangement, but that cut was only of 4.6 percent.

The survey also found that younger workers were more likely to value the ability to work from home, as were employees with children or those who had long commutes.

Alongside this, the ECB found that other factors such as income, education level, and gender seemed to have little impact on the value workers placed on flexible working.