Clint Watson

The irony is, after digging deep to find my true self and what I really want, I discover that I already have what I really want and have had it all along. 🤷‍♂️

@TrungTPhan There are scholars who think the crucifixion happened on Wednesday evening. Thursday that year was a High sabbath. Friday the women procured spices. Saturday was weekly sabbath. Jesus rose Saturday at sundown. Not in tomb Sunday. 72 hours.

The direct Bible reference between Jesus’ death and resurrection is closer to 40 hours but The Wachowskis went with the 72-hour reference. Anyway, The Matrix also has a good business story in how it got started:

The Matrix came out on Easter Weekend in 1999. One easter egg in the film is about Easter: Neo is dead in the Matrix for exactly 72 seconds. The Wachowskis made it 72 seconds to represent 72 hours, as in the 3-day period that spans Jesus’ death and resurrection.

@DrJStrategy Or, it’s a boneheaded move and the EU buys oil from Iran in a currency other than dollars ending the dollar’s dominance and triggering massive inflation

Food for thought. Trump, Hormuz and the End of the Free Ride For half a century, Western strategists have known that the Strait of Hormuz is the acute point where energy, sea power and political will intersect. That knowledge is not in dispute. What is new in this war with Iran is that the United States, under Donald Trump, has chosen not to rush to “solve” the problem. In Hegelian terms, he is refusing an easy synthesis in order to force the underlying contradiction to the surface. The old thesis was simple: the US guarantees open sea lanes in the Gulf, and everyone else structures their economies and politics around that free insurance. Europe and the UK embraced ambitious green policies, ran down hard‑power capabilities and lectured Washington on multilateral virtue, secure in the assumption that American carriers would always appear off Hormuz. The political class behaved as if the American security guarantee were a law of nature, not a contingent choice. Their conduct today is closer to Chamberlain than Churchill: temporising, issuing statements, hoping the storm will pass without a fundamental reordering of their responsibilities. Trump’s antithesis is to withhold the automatic guarantee at the moment of maximum stress. Militarily, the US can break Iran’s residual ability to contest the Strait; that is not the binding constraint. The point is to delay that act. By allowing a closure or semi‑closure to bite, Trump ensures that the immediate pain is concentrated in exactly the jurisdictions that have most conspicuously free‑ridden on US power: the EU and the UK. Their industries, consumers and energy‑transition assumptions are exposed. In that context, his reported blunt message to European and British leaders, you need the oil out of the Strait more than we do; why don’t you go and take it? Is not a throwaway line. It is the verbalisation of the antithesis. It openly reverses the traditional presumption that America will carry the burden while its allies emote from the sidelines. In this dialectic, the prize is not simply the reopening of a chokepoint. The prize is a reordered system in which the United States effectively arbitrages and controls the global flow of oil. A world in which US‑aligned production in the Americas plus a discretionary capability to secure,or not secure, Hormuz places Washington at the centre of the hydrocarbon chessboard. For that strategic end, a rapid restoration of the old status quo would be counterproductive. A quick, surgical “fix” of Hormuz would short‑circuit the dialectic. If Trump rapidly crushed Iran’s remaining coastal capabilities, swept the mines and escorted tankers back through the Strait, Europe and the UK would heave a sigh of relief and return to business as usual: underfunded militaries, maximalist green posturing and performative disdain for US power, all underwritten by that same power. The contradiction between their dependence and their posture would remain latent. By declining to supply the synthesis on demand, and by explicitly telling London and Brussels to “go and take it” themselves, Trump forces a reckoning. European and British leaders must confront the fact that their energy systems, their industrial bases and their geopolitical sermons all rest on an American hard‑power foundation they neither finance nor politically respect. The longer the contradiction is allowed to unfold, the stronger the eventual synthesis can be: a new order in which access to secure flows, Hormuz, Venezuela and beyond, is explicitly conditional on real contributions, not assumed as a right. In that sense, the delay in “taking” the Strait, and the challenge issued to US allies to do it themselves, is not indecision. It is the negative moment Hegel insisted was necessary for history to move. Only by withholding the old guarantee, and by saying so out loud to those who depended on it, can Trump hope to end the free ride.

@TheCinesthetic He was brilliant. I reread the books recently and can no longer picture Snape in any other way except Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman played Snape (Harry Potter, 2001) in his mid-50s, well older than the book’s early-30s version, yet his performance made the character unforgettable.

@girdley Do you know what you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start!

Business is all fun and stuff until the lawyers get involved.

@torreydawley Devotion always beats discipline. Discipline is essentially self-torture. Necessary at times, but unsustainable

I can’t think of a single example of someone exalting discipline as their cornerstone who isn’t mistaking it for obsession. I’ve referenced this many times in the past, most specifically regarding the strong identity reinforcement mechanism. Discipline is not the fuel that drives “I am the kind of person who will push through anything.” That fuel is identity. And identity reinforcement becomes an obsession over time. You literally “become” the thing, and no longer feel separate from it. And, to Julie’s point, this ADDS energy. It’s difficult for some people to see clearly what they’re truly driven by when they’re in this state, thus the misconception. But, make no mistake: The people who achieve their goals and enjoy their life are driven by what gives them energy. Never by what depletes it.

@Thomasdelvasto_ That is my understanding from revelation during meditation where a small glimpse of of that full light can even overwhelm

@Thomasdelvasto_ Sin doesn’t condemn one to hell through external punishment. Sin is the substance hell is forged with. We make our own hells and often suffer in them even before death.The full light of God for the unprepared soul when it loses the physical buffer feels like fire but it purifies.

Universalism or the belief that God does not indulge in eternal punishment doesn’t mean hell doesn’t exist I’d buy that some people who are extremely sinful may be in hell for hundreds of thousands of years - the blink of an eye compared to eternal hell

Goodhart's law explains why gambling always creates a problem.

@Thomasdelvasto_ I completely agree. The fact the church rejected it though, fortunately, doesn’t negate its Truth.

Continuing to think that rejecting universalism was one of the Church’s biggest mistakes Christianity becomes a very different religion if you believe that all souls will be saved in the fullness of time

@JustineBateman Their great fantasy work should have been Game of Thrones but Martin flaked out

Millennials and Gen Z have long been forced a pop culture diet that is nothing but a rehash of the Gen X’s pop culture.

@girdley @_robyn_smith We don’t need zombie movies anymore. We live in one now. They shuffle around with black mirrors in their hands yelling at you and getting violent if you bother them while consuming everything in sight.

@_robyn_smith Replaced by "friends with a space rock" buddy movies.

We as a society have really been slacking on the zombie movies

@AlexPowers3000 @fandompulse I completely agree. I was theorizing why people think what they do about balancing the two. Plus the use of the word “balance” confuses. “Integration” would have been more accurate but doesn’t sound as cool.

@ClintavoCreates @fandompulse What happened when the father was weakened? The son ( the darkside went batshit ) that’s the point, everyone has a dark side, you have to learn to control it, but live by the light. That’s also the point in the later Yoda arc from S6.

George Lucas on the Force: "The core of the Force. I mean you got the Dark Side and the Light Side. One is selfless. One is selfish. And you want to keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the Dark Side is that it goes out of balance, and then you get really selfish and you forget everybody. And, ultimately, you lead yourself, because when you get selfish you get stuff or you want stuff and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you get afraid somebody’s going to take it away from you whether it’s a person, or a thing, or a particular pleasure, experience. Once you become afraid that somebody’s going to take it away from you or you’re going to lose then you start to become angry especially if you’re losing it. And that anger leads to hate. And hate leads to suffering. Mostly on the part of the person who is selfish because you spent all your time being afraid of losing everything you’ve got instead of actually living. Where joy, by giving to other people, you can’t think about yourself and therefore there is no pain. But the pleasure factor of greed and of selfishness is a short-lived experience. Therefore you’re constantly trying to replenish it. But, of course, the more you replenish it the hard it is to sort of…so you have to keep upping the ante. You’re actually afraid of the pain of not having the joy. So that is ultimately the core of the whole Dark Side, Light Side of the Force. And everything flows from that. ... The only way to overcome the Dark Side is through discipline. The Dark Side is pleasure, biological, and temporary, and easy to achieve. The Light Side is joy, everlasting, and difficult to achieve. A great challenge. Must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures, and overcome fear which leads to hate." Why do so many people think balance in the Force is equal Dark and Light when Lucas made it abundantly clear that was not the case in the films and in interviews?

@ErwanLeCorre I’ve never trained but it always made more sense to me to hold after inhale when swimming underwater for example

Most people who tried or trained breath-holding have done it after hyperventilating and after an exhale. Doing it without hyperventilation and after a large inhale is a completely different animal. But it has way more benefits.

@girdley We’re about to be complaining how hard it is to make everything that relied on middle east oil which is…well….just about everything.

Everybody bitching that we can't make low-value sweaters in the USA, when we should be complaining how hard it is to make nuclear power plants, affordable homes, and spaceships.

@TukiFromKL Wasn’t the strait already blocked? Not that it changes your point

🚨 Are you keeping track of what happened today.. this morning: Iran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz - 20% of global oil.. this afternoon: Russia banned gasoline exports starting April 1st.. and now: Qatar just declared force majeure on LNG contracts through May 2026.. canceling gas supply obligatins to Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China.. Qatar supplies 20% of global LNG.. "force majeure" is a legal declaration that says something changed that they weren't willing to put in writing.. Italy.. Belgium.. South Korea.. China.. entire continents just had their gas supply cancelled in one announcement.. this is what an energy crisis actually looks like.. not one dramatic event.. three dominoes falling in the same day.. in 1973 one country cut oil exports and the entire Western economy collapsed.. stagflation.. gas lines.. a presidency destroyed.. today three of the world's biggest energy players moved at once.. This is what winning a war without firing a shot looks like.

@ErwanLeCorre I often catch myself not breathing in between breaths, though I think it happens less often after the inhale. This seemed to happen naturally as a side effect of regular meditation. Seems like I now have a slower breath rate and much deeper breathing. Will try it.

Gentle breath-holding is a non-pharmacologic intervention for stress reduction. It goes like this: Inhale normally. Short hold. Exhale, inhale. Short hold. etc., Don't count and forget about time. Exhale long before discomfort. Relax and appreciate the experience.

@getbehindmesa @AlpacaAurelius Doesn't sound like a big deal.

@ClintavoCreates @AlpacaAurelius It is not a big deal- at all..

ladies, stop getting fillers it doesn't naturally dissolve. this MRI shows the chemicals last for up to 15 years in your face, just migrating elsewhere, potentially causing complicatons. this trend must end

@LibsAreGoofy @dom_lucre

@ClintavoCreates @dom_lucre Would you rather put filler in rigid bone or soft tissues?

🔥🚨VIRAL NOW: This MRI of a 33 year old revealed how injections of filler never fully dissolves horrifying thousands of women in the process.

@lifeistheanswer @AlpacaAurelius Hyaluronic acid is a natural substance produced by the body and has a number of beneficial effects. Doesn't sound like something to freak out about. But X thrives on hysteria.

@ClintavoCreates @AlpacaAurelius Because they migrate around the body. And people keep getting it done every few months so it adds up. Not to mention having exogenous chemicals in th body is harmful for health.