Der Spiegel: During your career, you have kept your distance from Western style democracy. Are you still convinced that an authoritarian system is the future for Asia?

Lee Kuan Yew: Why should I be against democracy? The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that."

www.spiegel.de (2005). Der Spiegel International - Interview with Singapore’s founder Lee Kuan Yew: ‘It’s Stupid to be Afraid’. Available at: https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-singapore-s-lee-kuan-yew-it-s-stupid-to-be-afraid-a-369128.html.

From 1969!

The WHO has always been a terrorist organization.
https://gab.com/lightningstrikeshere/posts/114915179127273137

BREAKING: U.S. Marshals have now taken control of the Washington, DC, Police Department.

@GeneralMCNews

Peter Turchin Kept the Receipts

One of my favorite analysts, Peter Turchin, is one of the few people who loves data even more than I do. He quite usefully chose a pair of opposite predictions concerning the Ukraine war back in 2022, one from Paul Krugman and one from Scott Ritter, and constructed models on the bases of those predictions […]

https://voxday.net/2025/08/15/peter-turchin-kept-the-receipts/

☕️THREE WAY ☙ Friday, August 15, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS🦠

Late yesterday, the DC takeover operation entered a new, bigger, more "authoritarian" phase, but guess how the locals feel about it all? That, and much more, in the roundup.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/three-way-friday-august-15-2025-c

The Thiel-Yarvin connection runs deeper than previously understood. According to communications revealed in 2016, Yarvin privately claimed to Milo Yiannopoulos that he had been “coaching Thiel” in politics and that they watched the election together [1][2]. In these messages, Yarvin described Thiel as “fully enlightened, just plays it very carefully” [1][2]. This suggests not merely casual philosophical exchange, but active political consultation.

"Thiel’s transformation from someone who declared in 2009 that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” [3] to an active political kingmaker appears closely aligned with Yarvin’s anti-democratic philosophy. Thiel’s 2009 essay for the Cato Institute laid groundwork that mirrors Yarvin’s later articulated vision—calling for escape from politics through technological solutions and criticizing the extension of voting rights to women and welfare recipients as incompatible with libertarian goals [4][5]."

https://www.technocracy.news/did-peter-thiel-use-curtis-yarvin-to-create-dark-enlighenment/

A DOGE AI Tool Called SweetREX Is Coming to Slash US Government Regulation | WIRED
https://www.wired.com/story/sweetrex-deregulation-ai-us-government-regulation-doge/

The subtext here is that the FBI encouraged and allowed the theft to take place, ruining $21 million worth of moon rocks, just so some agents could get an easier case to prosecute.

"When the meeting came, it wasn’t buyers waiting — it was undercover FBI agents. The rocks were recovered, but the FBI said they were now “virtually useless to the scientific community,” and the theft also destroyed 30 years of a NASA scientist’s handwritten research notes."

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/sex-moon-inside-nasas-most-unusual-21-million-heist

"Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."
https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/121/11/1771/30038/The-importance-of-stupidity-in-scientific-research#:~:text=Productive%20stupidity%20means,make%20big%20discoveries.