January 2021 Favorites

By Stefan Imhoff
20 min read

It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.

—Thomas Sowell

Videos

Science & Knowledge

Security & Privacy

History & Culture

Cinema & Film

Philosophy

Politics

Humor

TV Shows

  • The Expanse 5 P
  • Cobra Kai 3 N – A fantastic 3rd season, this TV show is gold!
  • Bad Guys 1 N – A policeman uses three criminals, a gang boss, a contract killer, and a serial killer, to clean up the crime in the city. Exciting, good action, interesting story!
  • Bad Guys: Vile City 1 N – I watched a lot of Korean TV shows and movies lately, but this one is really fantastic. Raw, brutal, thrilling, crime and political corruption, fights and mass brawl between police and criminals.
  • Inuyashiki: Last Hero 1 N – A Japanese Anime of a terminally ill 50-year old whose body gets replaced by Aliens with advanced weapons technology.
  • Headspace: Guide to Meditation 1 N
  • The A-Team 1 2 3 P – Streaming Service: Hey, watch our new bad rated woke TV show! Me: Nah, I rather watch some 80s action again.
  • Disenchantment 2 N – Still not as funny as The Simpsons, but funny enough.

Movies

Podcasts

New Discourses

James Lindsays podcast is gold 🏆 He is the person to explain the recent flare-up of Wokeness, Critical Theory, identity politics, and craziness into the mainstream. Intellectual very challenging, but worth every minute.

The Joe Rogan Experience

  • Tulsi Gabbard – Tulsi Gabbard is a former United States Representative, presidential candidate, and Iraq War veteran. Currently, she serves as the leader of Tulsi Aloha, a political action committee.
  • Lex Fridman – Scientist Lex Fridman researches human-centered artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles at MIT and is also the host of the Lex Fridman podcast.

The Megyn Kelly Show

  • Amy Chua on the Climate on Campuses, Political Tribalism, and Being a “Tiger Mom” – Megyn Kelly is joined by author and professor Amy Chua, to discuss cosmopolitan elitism, the current climate on college campuses, her experience defending Brett Kavanaugh, cancel culture, self-doubt, and confidence, reflecting on being a “Tiger Mom” and the value of hard work and more.
  • Tech Censorship And Independent Media, with Glenn Greenwald and the CEOs of Parler and Substack – Megyn Kelly is joined by Parler founder and CEO John Matze, Substack co-founder and CEO Chris Best, and journalist and The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald to talk about Big Tech and tech censorship, President Trump’s ban from Twitter and other social accounts, the rise of independent media, free speech, what everyday Americans can do to fight back and more.
  • Bari Weiss on the State of the Media, Cancel Culture, and Anti-Semitism – Megyn Kelly is joined by Bari Weiss, journalist, editor of a new Substack publication, and author of “How To Fight Anti-Semitism,” to talk about her time at the New York Times and her decision to leave, the leftward “woke” drift of the media and where the legacy media stands now, our cancel culture society, self-censorship, fighting anti-Semitism and the place of Jews in the cultural hierarchy, her move to Substack, and her recent engagement.
  • Douglas Murray on Overcoming Tribalism, the Asymmetry of Wokeness, and the Rise of Victimhood – Megyn Kelly is joined by Douglas Murray, author of “The Madness of Crowds” and associate editor of The Spectator, to talk about overcoming tribalism, our current political climate, the asymmetry of wokeness, COVID lockdowns and hypocrisy, the rise of victimhood, the way children are put on a pedestal in our current culture, the “loaded gun” of racism, our “trapdoor culture,” how we can all work together to cancel “cancel culture,” how to avoid the mob and more.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

  • Matthew McConaughey – Matthew McConaughey (actor, producer, and author of New York Times Best Seller “Greenlights”) sits down with Jordan Peterson to talk about Matthew’s new book, his upbringing, his relationships with his mother and father, his journey to being at peace with his fame, what it’s like to play malevolent or dark characters in movies or on television, and a surprising satirical review of Greenlights.
  • Gregg Hurwitz: Build a Better Democrat – Gregg Hurwitz is an American novelist, scriptwriter, and producer. In the last few years leading up to the presidential election, Gregg has been working with an independent team of Hollywood writers, producers, and directors to design and promote a moderate political message for the democrats with wide public appeal.

Bret Weinstein | DarkHorse Podcast

  • Tyranny Comes at you Fast – Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying discuss the value of gratitude. They pivot to the lab leak hypothesis, and what its discussion in the mainstream media means for the ability of society at large to consider what might be true regarding the origins of SARS-CoV2. They discuss what happened in the Capitol on January 6, and the ensuing censorship and purges by the big tech platforms. The boot coming down hard and fast, with calls from U.S. Representatives to refocus our concern on events and enemies within our borders.

Lex Fridman Podcast

TRIGGERnometry

‎Quillette Podcast

Indubio

  • Der nächste Virus bitte… 🇩🇪 – Dr. med. Gunter Frank, Allgemeinarzt in Heidelberg und Winterthur, Dr. med. Jesko Matthes, Hausarzt in Deutsch Evern bei Lüneburg und Prof. Dr. med. Henrik Ullrich, Chefarzt am Zentrum für Radiologie der Collm Klinik Oschatz in Sachsen, sprechen mit Burkhard Müller-Ullrich über Intensivbetten und Pflegenotstand, über administratives Chaos sowie über die Verwechslung von Leben und Infektionsverhinderung.

Books

Articles

Inspiration

Stuff & Things

  • Signal – I use the messenger a while already. Recommended by Edward Snowden, end-to-end encrypted, no ads, no tracking, open-source. Drop WhatsApp and join!
  • Minds – I rediscovered this blockchain-based social network that is a mix of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. I had tried it in 2018 but stopped using it. In the meantime, it improved massively and the plans for 2021 look fantastic: Including the Matrix decentralized communication network, group chats, file sharing, e2e encryption, and much more. I started sharing things in I like in my stream and had a much better exposure than on Twitter.
  • Session – A nice new end-to-end open-source encrypted messenger based on the Loki network that uses no phone numbers, but instead a Session id, and is resistant to censorship or data breaches. It supported Group Chats, voice messages, attachments, and disappearing messages. All messages are routed through an onion routing network. My Session id is 05f4473f1b7b4ea42c3471453c42665142aa295d3c3d9d31b8e8d05780237ff540.
  • The StoryGraph – A nice app to track your reading and choose the next book based on your mood and favorite topics and themes. It allows importing your Goodreads library. You can follow me here.
  • Thinkspot – I stumbled on Jordan Petersons anti-censorship social network service, he created in 2019. It’s still in beta but hosts interesting intellectual people and content.
  • IPFS – The Inter-Planetary File System is a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol. I learned about it because Brave integrated it this month into its browser. It’s a file-based decentralized internet that is fast and not possible to censor because you request files, not location addresses. It was used to make Wikipedia accessible again in Turkey after the government blocked access to the site. DTube is a video website, running on IPFS. I read through the documentation, watched this and this video and plan on reading The IPFS Primer.
  • This is Tulsi Gabbard – The new podcast of Tulsi Gabbard coming soon.
  • Facts Matter with Roman Balmakov – If you’re interested in US politics and want mostly unbiased and un-opinionated news coverage, this new channel by The Epoch Times summarizes what happened 2-3 times a week.

Quotes

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

—Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

In Asia, as in Europe, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere, the intelligentsia have been prominent among those pushing ethnic identity ideology and intergroup polarization. Under such influences, Sri Lanka went from being a country whose record for harmonious relations between majority and minority was held up to the world as a model by many observers, in the mid-twentieth century, to a country whose later ethnic polarization produced decades of mob violence and then outright civil war, in which unspeakable atrocities were committed, on into the early twenty-first century.

—Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, Pos. 988

Nothing is easier than to find some individuals — in any group— who share a given writer’s opinion, and to quote such individuals as if their views were typical. This approach became common in media coverage of ghetto riots. Newsweek magazine, for example, quoted various black youths, including one described as “a child of Detroit’s ravaged ghetto,” even though the poverty rate among Detroit’s black population before the riots was only half of that of blacks nationwide, the homeownership rate among blacks in Detroit was the highest in the nation, and the unemployment rate of blacks in Detroit was 3.4 percent— lower than that among whites nationwide. It was after the riots that Detroit became a ravaged community, and remained so for decades thereafter, as businesses withdrew, taking jobs and taxes with them. But here, as elsewhere, an idea that fit the vision did not have to meet the additional requirement of fitting the facts.

—Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, Pos. 1818

If criminals, rioters, and vandals from within the group are to be automatically defended or excused for the sake of group solidarity, then the costs of that solidarity include not only a lower standard of living, since such people raise the costs of doing business in their neighborhoods and thereby raise the prices of goods and services above what they are in other neighborhoods, such people also cause fewer businesses to locate in their neighborhoods and fewer taxis to be willing to take people to such neighborhoods. Worst of all, the damage committed by those representing the lowest common denominator— encompassing crimes up to and including murder— is overwhelmingly against other members of their own group.

—Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, Pos. 2144

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it.

The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

—Thomas Sowell

Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.

—Thomas Sowell

The course of history is determined by what people do with their opportunities.

—Thomas Sowell

Four years of bombing kids in the middle east while hollowing out America’s economy for the benefits 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?

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

—Aldous Huxley