@whyvert

Inquisitive and harmless wyvern. Interested in human nature and patterns of history. Otherwise known as Paul Cossins.

 Canada
Joined June 2014
  • Tweets39.8K
  • Following1.4K
  • Followers34.7K
The Flydubai injured pilot has given his incredible account of the nearly fatal terrorist attack by his Omani copilot: -Initially the copilot asked to pray 5 minutes before the attack began the Pilot thought this was unusual but thought nothing of it, 5 minutes later he was struck viciously in the back of the head. -The pilot vision blurred and was unable to defend himself momentarily, a brutal fight then ensued between him and the co pilot who was using a cabin axe to stab him repeatedly, at one point he managed to open the door and scream for help but the copilot managed to shut and lock the door. -The pilot severely injured now at this point lying on the floor then noticed the plane dramatically dip in altitude with the copilot pointing its nose down, and people outside the cabin door banging and screaming. -In a last ditch effort the pilot manages to fight his way past the copilot and unlock the cabin door once again, allowing the crew and passengers outside to burst in and subdue to copilot as well as stabilise the plane.
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OMG - this is impossible
Klonopin Centaur@facetedcarapace
21 Apr 2025
holy shit there is nothing that can prepare you for when they cut to the interview
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Russian doctrine is to attack infra, medical, water, sewage, schools. Now they have better missiles and drones, they are implementing this. Russians are ruthless. They completely destroyed Grozny (1990s) and Aleppo, Syria (2010s), and won.
Dara Massicot@MassDara
Oct 2
I haven’t seen the plan described in this article (although I want to) but I feel confident about its content and what’s next. Russian strategy has discussed for 10+ years what we are seeing now as strikes. A 🧵 on the calculated cruelty in the strategy: nytimes.com/2026/10/02/world…

Russia Is Planning Its Most Powerful Blow Yet to Try to Freeze Ukraine

Ukraine showed European partners what it said were intercepted Russian plans to cut off major cities from power, heat and water this winter.

nytimes.com
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Gregory Clark's new book (as a pdf) "To Have and Have Not: The Determinants of Social Status in England, 1600-2026" Plus several comments and a reply.
Econ Journal Watch
@EconJWatch
Oct 3
Overreaching on Genes? econjwatch.org/ancillary/boo… Rosalind Arden and Robert Plomin, John Benning, Noah Carl, Nikolai Eftedal, Joe Francis, Charles Murray, Jan Stuhler, and Greg Clark Titles include: Overreaching on Genes Who’s Afraid of Gregory Clark? Survival of the Richest To Have and Have Not To Know and Know Not
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It is hosted by Econ Journal Watch as a manuscript pdf because publishers have so far rejected it.
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Some people may not be aware that Clark supports redistributionism because of his belief in the importance of genetics. Because some have genetic bad luck and others have good luck with genes, there should be redistribution from the latter to the former.
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Econ Journal Watch has dropped the PDF of Gregory Clark’s new book on how genetics mostly determines social status: econjwatch.org/file_download…
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A recurring theme in coverage of illegal immigration is that both left-wing media outlets (like the NYT below) and European/US government officials will readily characterize these incursions as weaponized migration with malign intent—but only if it suits their political agenda
A Front Line at the Border: How Russia Uses Migrants as Weapons Against Europe https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/world/europe/latvia-immigration-russia.html

ALT A Front Line at the Border: How Russia Uses Migrants as Weapons Against Europe https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/world/europe/latvia-immigration-russia.html

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Why France was defeated in 1940.
Julia Willemyns
@jujulemons
Oct 2
Replying to @jujulemons @DuncanMcClement
In June 1936, just as France started to rearm, it capped the working week at 40 hours.
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A defeat of Hitler in 1940 would have been massive. Both Nazism and Communism discredited at one blow. (Remember, Stalin was allied with Hitler in 1940.)
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Pakistan airstrikes on Afghanistan. I love the irony. Pakistan was a safe haven for Islamist terrorists to attack Afghanistan. Now, Afghanistan is a safe haven for jihadist terrorists to attack Pakistan. Jihadism keeps winning!
Al Jazeera English
@AJEnglish
Oct 1
Pakistan has launched air attacks on Afghanistan, saying it targeted “camps and hideouts” used by armed groups in two locations and killed an estimated 22 fighters. aje.news/40f4c9

Pakistan says 22 fighters killed in air attacks on Afghanistan

Kabul says the strikes on Kunar and Helmand provinces killed nine women and children.

aljazeera.com
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Highbrow Misinformation is a very useful notion. On immigration: -The humanitarian fallacy -The universal benefit myth -Generalizing from the American experience -The ignorance stereotype: that public opposition is due to ignorance. Among others
Garett Jones
@GarettJones
Oct 1
Expected to be excellent since it's a @akoustov project. Personal hope (a man can dream): Kustov hands out the first-ever Highbrow Misinformation Awards, the Razzies of immigration research. Need a catchy name for them.
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I first encountered the term Highbrow Misinformation from the philosophers Joseph Heath and @danwilliamsphil
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Superb talk. Concise. Race: The Social and Genetic | Razib Khan | Heterodox 2026 youtube.com/watch?v=aMQgBOrB…

Race: The Social and Genetic | Razib Khan | Heterodox 2026

What can modern genetics actually tell us about race, ancestry and ...

youtube.com
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ok gang definitely Russian joke time after Stalin's death, a Jew was overheard making a political joke in a bread line a KGB agent overheard him and snarled "we used to shoot people for that" the Jew says to his wife "see, now they've even run of bullets"
Jarvis
@jarvis_best
Oct 1
I hope when President AOC has me executed for being straight they get it on the first try
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This is crazy important; read.
Robin Hanson
@robinhanson
Oct 1
"closure of the Internet occurred in two distinct phases: 2015-2019 and 2020-2022. Almost all of the technical & organizational infrastructure and conceptual justifications were built out in the first phase, which successfully decapitated & destroyed the previously-independent, but by definition fringe, online ecosystem of ideas. In the second phase, the same weapons that previously targeted heterodox online discourse were turned against opposition to the COVID measures du joure & mainstream conservatives. The scale of censorship has no precedent; tens of millions of accounts suppressed or banned, billions of posts removed." arctotherium.substack.com/p/…
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The situation is becoming quite critical in France Student protests in France are heating up into larger "urban violence" per govt (which just set up a crisis cell): 1000+ taken in by police across 350+ schools Wednesday and Tuesday, 500 reported this morning alone -30 universities blocked -several schools/buses in flames -public transportation suspended in Marseille/Strasbourg -several incidents with makeshift mortar fire, a headmaster doused with petrol, several more injured -air in Reims is "unbreathable" because of tear gas Intel source says far-left orgs behind it, including La France Insoumise "and its proxies". No immediate end in sight The burning school below cost around 70 million to build. Last urban riots in 2023 had cost an estimate 1bn euros in repaires
BFM
@BFMTV
Oct 1
Nantes: un incendie au sein du lycée Nelson Mandela
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Beginning of the formal process to put me in jail I've been advised that I need a criminal lawyer
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🧵We have run a version of the AI experiment before, with the printing press. In the 1540s, 3 of 4 English title pages spelled it "churche." By the 1590s, 9 of 10 wrote "church." In this thread: using 788,295 European titles: where print standardized fast, where it never did, and what that predicts for AI.
Arthur Spirling@arthur_spirling
Sep 30
When I was at school we read Caxton's "Eggs or Eyren" anecdote---i.e., that prior to the printing press there were large variations in how English was written/spoken even in England. Presumably AI-assisted writing will standardize to an even greater extent (?)
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you can't conclude that from those two graphs. the first one has a distribution, and from there you can fairly say the difference is very large, d= 1.5 or 2. the second graph only has point estimates, and I'd be surprised if the difference was much bigger than d=.6
Yaril Foxears@YarilFoxEren
Sep 30
It's common knowledge that "almost all men are stronger than almost all women" but did you know that almost all men are more tolerant than almost all women? If you're a libertarian, a male communist will be more tolerant of your views than a female libertarian.
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