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Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
His comments come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen, and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. Attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

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Bill Barr Just Kneecapped Trump’s Election Conspiracy Theory - Even Barr, one of Trump’s most loyal acolytes, thinks the election conspiracy stuff is insane.	vice.com
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AG Barr Says No Evidence of Widespread Voter Fraud After Trump Suggests DOJ Involvement in Election Rigging	newsweek.com
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Barr Says DOJ hasn’t uncovered widespread fraud in 2020 election	thehill.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	apnews.com
Barr Says DOJ Hasn’t Uncovered Widespread Voting Fraud	bloomberg.com
Attorney General Barr: No Evidence of Widespread Fraud That’d Change Presidential Election Outcome.	wmur.com
Barr says he hasn’t seen fraud that could affect the election outcome	washingtonpost.com
Attorney General Barr: No evidence of widespread voter fraud	usatoday.com
No evidence of voter fraud that would change election outcome, AG William Barr says	ktla.com
Barr says Justice Dept. hasn’t uncovered widespread voting fraud that could have changed election outcome	bostonglobe.com
Barr Admits DOJ Found No Evidence of Voter Fraud That Would Change Election Results	thedailybeast.com
DOJ hasn't uncovered widespread fraud that would change election results: Barr	abcnews.go.com
Attorney General Bill Barr says no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020 election	fox13news.com
Barr: No Evidence Of Fraud That’d Change Election Outcome	huffpost.com
AG Barr says no evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	wsls.com
DOJ finds no evidence of voter fraud that would change 2020 election outcome	independent.co.uk
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	chicago.suntimes.com
Barr: No Evidence Of Fraud That’d Change Election Outcome	m.huffpost.com
AG Barr: No evidence of fraud that'd change election outcome	abc7chicago.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	seattletimes.com
AG William Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	triblive.com
Atty General Barr said the DOJ hasn't found any evidence of widespread, results-changing voter fraud	pbs.org
Barr: No evidence of fraud that would change election outcome	dailyherald.com
Barr says DOJ has not seen evidence of fraud that would change election results	axios.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	washingtonpost.com
Barr: No Evidence of Fraud That Would Change Election Outcome	bloomberg.com
DOJ has not found fraud that would reverse Biden win over Trump, Attorney General William Barr says	cnbc.com
Barr future in doubt after Trump campaign blast him for denying widespread election fraud	independent.co.uk
U.S. Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud: AP	reuters.com
Barr finds no evidence of voter fraud	cbsnews.com
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Despite Barrage Of Losses In Court, Trump Camp Plans More Long-Shot Election Appeals	wesa.fm
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Barr: DOJ Has No Evidence Of Fraud Affecting 2020 Election Outcome	npr.org
Defying Trump, Attorney General Barr says the DOJ and FBI didn't discover any evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election	businessinsider.com
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William Barr says there is no evidence of widespread fraud in presidential election	amp.cnn.com
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Attorney General Barr Says DOJ Hasn't Uncovered Evidence of Voter Fraud That’d Change Outcome of 2020 Election	time.com
US Attorney-General William Barr says no widespread voter fraud has been found in the election	abc.net.au
After AG Bill Barr says no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020 election, 9 Texas Republicans decry "shocking lack of action" on allegations- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also called for the Supreme Court to hear one of Donald Trump's election lawsuits.	texastribune.org
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U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Tuesday the Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in last month’s election, even as President Donald Trump kept up his flailing legal efforts to reverse his defeat.	reuters.com
Analysis: William Barr breaks with Trump's election fantasy	cnn.com
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Are Republicans like Ron Johnson fools or liars, or both? As even Bill Barr admits the election was free and fair, the GOP has entered new territory. Now everyone has to say they believe conspiracies and the truth has become irrelevant	independent.co.uk

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
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A weird thing happened right after the Nov. 3 election: nothing.
The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before Election Day, 75% of Americans voiced concern about violence.
Instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the response was not mass action but crickets. When media organizations called the race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the U.S. to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump’s ouster.
Reactions Throughout the U.S. After Biden Wins Presidential Race in Unprecedented Election
A second odd thing happened amid Trump’s attempts to reverse the result: corporate America turned on him. Hundreds of major business leaders, many of whom had backed Trump’s candidacy and supported his policies, called on him to concede. To the President, something felt amiss. “It was all very, very strange,” Trump said on Dec. 2. “Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.”
In a way, Trump was right.
There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.
Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.
For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.
The democracy campaigners watched with alarm. “Every week, we felt like we were in a struggle to try to pull off this election without the country going through a real dangerous moment of unraveling,” says former GOP Representative Zach Wamp, a Trump supporter who helped coordinate a bipartisan election-protection council. “We can look back and say this thing went pretty well, but it was not at all clear in September and October that that was going to be the case.”
📷 Biden fans in Philadelphia after the race was called on Nov. 7 Michelle Gustafson for TIME
This is the inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election, based on access to the group’s inner workings, never-before-seen documents and interviews with dozens of those involved from across the political spectrum. It is the story of an unprecedented, creative and determined campaign whose success also reveals how close the nation came to disaster. “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. “But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.”
That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it. And they believe the public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.

THE ARCHITECT

Sometime in the fall of 2019, Mike Podhorzer became convinced the election was headed for disaster–and determined to protect it.
This was not his usual purview. For nearly a quarter-century, Podhorzer, senior adviser to the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest union federation, has marshaled the latest tactics and data to help its favored candidates win elections. Unassuming and professorial, he isn’t the sort of hair-gelled “political strategist” who shows up on cable news. Among Democratic insiders, he’s known as the wizard behind some of the biggest advances in political technology in recent decades. A group of liberal strategists he brought together in the early 2000s led to the creation of the Analyst Institute, a secretive firm that applies scientific methods to political campaigns. He was also involved in the founding of Catalist, the flagship progressive data company.
The endless chatter in Washington about “political strategy,” Podhorzer believes, has little to do with how change really gets made. “My basic take on politics is that it’s all pretty obvious if you don’t overthink it or swallow the prevailing frameworks whole,” he once wrote. “After that, just relentlessly identify your assumptions and challenge them.” Podhorzer applies that approach to everything: when he coached his now adult son’s Little League team in the D.C. suburbs, he trained the boys not to swing at most pitches–a tactic that infuriated both their and their opponents’ parents, but won the team a series of championships.
Trump’s election in 2016–credited in part to his unusual strength among the sort of blue collar white voters who once dominated the AFL-CIO–prompted Podhorzer to question his assumptions about voter behavior. He began circulating weekly number-crunching memos to a small circle of allies and hosting strategy sessions in D.C. But when he began to worry about the election itself, he didn’t want to seem paranoid. It was only after months of research that he introduced his concerns in his newsletter in October 2019. The usual tools of data, analytics and polling would not be sufficient in a situation where the President himself was trying to disrupt the election, he wrote. “Most of our planning takes us through Election Day,” he noted. “But, we are not prepared for the two most likely outcomes”–Trump losing and refusing to concede, and Trump winning the Electoral College (despite losing the popular vote) by corrupting the voting process in key states. “We desperately need to systematically ‘red-team’ this election so that we can anticipate and plan for the worst we know will be coming our way.”
It turned out Podhorzer wasn’t the only one thinking in these terms. He began to hear from others eager to join forces. The Fight Back Table, a coalition of “resistance” organizations, had begun scenario-planning around the potential for a contested election, gathering liberal activists at the local and national level into what they called the Democracy Defense Coalition. Voting-rights and civil rights organizations were raising alarms. A group of former elected officials was researching emergency powers they feared Trump might exploit. Protect Democracy was assembling a bipartisan election-crisis task force. “It turned out that once you said it out loud, people agreed,” Podhorzer says, “and it started building momentum.”
He spent months pondering scenarios and talking to experts. It wasn’t hard to find liberals who saw Trump as a dangerous dictator, but Podhorzer was careful to steer clear of hysteria. What he wanted to know was not how American democracy was dying but how it might be kept alive. The chief difference between the U.S. and countries that lost their grip on democracy, he concluded, was that America’s decentralized election system couldn’t be rigged in one fell swoop. That presented an opportunity to shore it up.

THE ALLIANCE

On March 3, Podhorzer drafted a three-page confidential memo titled “Threats to the 2020 Election.” “Trump has made it clear that this will not be a fair election, and that he will reject anything but his own re-election as ‘fake’ and rigged,” he wrote. “On Nov. 3, should the media report otherwise, he will use the right-wing information system to establish his narrative and incite his supporters to protest.” The memo laid out four categories of challenges: attacks on voters, attacks on election administration, attacks on Trump’s political opponents and “efforts to reverse the results of the election.”
Then COVID-19 erupted at the height of the primary-election season. Normal methods of voting were no longer safe for voters or the mostly elderly volunteers who normally staff polling places. But political disagreements, intensified by Trump’s crusade against mail voting, prevented some states from making it easier to vote absentee and for jurisdictions to count those votes in a timely manner. Chaos ensued. Ohio shut down in-person voting for its primary, leading to minuscule turnout. A poll-worker shortage in Milwaukee–where Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic Black population is concentrated–left just five open polling places, down from 182. In New York, vote counting took more than a month.
Suddenly, the potential for a November meltdown was obvious. In his apartment in the D.C. suburbs, Podhorzer began working from his laptop at his kitchen table, holding back-to-back Zoom meetings for hours a day with his network of contacts across the progressive universe: the labor movement; the institutional left, like Planned Parenthood and Greenpeace; resistance groups like Indivisible and MoveOn; progressive data geeks and strategists, representatives of donors and foundations, state-level grassroots organizers, racial-justice activists and others.
In April, Podhorzer began hosting a weekly 2½-hour Zoom. It was structured around a series of rapid-fire five-minute presentations on everything from which ads were working to messaging to legal strategy. The invitation-only gatherings soon attracted hundreds, creating a rare shared base of knowledge for the fractious progressive movement. “At the risk of talking trash about the left, there’s not a lot of good information sharing,” says Anat Shenker-Osorio, a close Podhorzer friend whose poll-tested messaging guidance shaped the group’s approach. “There’s a lot of not-invented-here syndrome, where people won’t consider a good idea if they didn’t come up with it.”
The meetings became the galactic center for a constellation of operatives across the left who shared overlapping goals but didn’t usually work in concert. The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync. “Pod played a critical behind-the-scenes role in keeping different pieces of the movement infrastructure in communication and aligned,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. “You have the litigation space, the organizing space, the political people just focused on the W, and their strategies aren’t always aligned. He allowed this ecosystem to work together.”
Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. As 2020 progressed, it stretched to Congress, Silicon Valley and the nation’s statehouses. It drew energy from the summer’s racial-justice protests, many of whose leaders were a key part of the liberal alliance. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy.

SECURING THE VOTE

The first task was overhauling America’s balky election infrastructure–in the middle of a pandemic. For the thousands of local, mostly nonpartisan officials who administer elections, the most urgent need was money. They needed protective equipment like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer. They needed to pay for postcards letting people know they could vote absentee–or, in some states, to mail ballots to every voter. They needed additional staff and scanners to process ballots.
In March, activists appealed to Congress to steer COVID relief money to election administration. Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, more than 150 organizations signed a letter to every member of Congress seeking $2 billion in election funding. It was somewhat successful: the CARES Act, passed later that month, contained $400 million in grants to state election administrators. But the next tranche of relief funding didn’t add to that number. It wasn’t going to be enough.
Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative chipped in $300 million. “It was a failure at the federal level that 2,500 local election officials were forced to apply for philanthropic grants to fill their needs,” says Amber McReynolds, a former Denver election official who heads the nonpartisan National Vote at Home Institute.
McReynolds’ two-year-old organization became a clearinghouse for a nation struggling to adapt. The institute gave secretaries of state from both parties technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes. Local officials are the most trusted sources of election information, but few can afford a press secretary, so the institute distributed communications tool kits. In a presentation to Podhorzer’s group, McReynolds detailed the importance of absentee ballots for shortening lines at polling places and preventing an election crisis.
The institute’s work helped 37 states and D.C. bolster mail voting. But it wouldn’t be worth much if people didn’t take advantage. Part of the challenge was logistical: each state has different rules for when and how ballots should be requested and returned. The Voter Participation Center, which in a normal year would have deployed canvassers door-to-door to get out the vote, instead conducted focus groups in April and May to find out what would get people to vote by mail. In August and September, it sent ballot applications to 15 million people in key states, 4.6 million of whom returned them. In mailings and digital ads, the group urged people not to wait for Election Day. “All the work we have done for 17 years was built for this moment of bringing democracy to people’s doorsteps,” says Tom Lopach, the center’s CEO.
The effort had to overcome heightened skepticism in some communities. Many Black voters preferred to exercise their franchise in person or didn’t trust the mail. National civil rights groups worked with local organizations to get the word out that this was the best way to ensure one’s vote was counted. In Philadelphia, for example, advocates distributed “voting safety kits” containing masks, hand sanitizer and informational brochures. “We had to get the message out that this is safe, reliable, and you can trust it,” says Hannah Fried of All Voting Is Local.
At the same time, Democratic lawyers battled a historic tide of pre-election litigation. The pandemic intensified the parties’ usual tangling in the courts. But the lawyers noticed something else as well. “The litigation brought by the Trump campaign, of a piece with the broader campaign to sow doubt about mail voting, was making novel claims and using theories no court has ever accepted,” says Wendy Weiser, a voting-rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. “They read more like lawsuits designed to send a message rather than achieve a legal outcome.”
In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in 2020, practically a revolution in how people vote. About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day.

THE DISINFORMATION DEFENSE

Bad actors spreading false information is nothing new. For decades, campaigns have grappled with everything from anonymous calls claiming the election has been rescheduled to fliers spreading nasty smears about candidates’ families. But Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers made disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the 2020 vote.
Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago. She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it. One component was tracking dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed. Researchers then provided information to campaigners or the media to track down the sources and expose them.
The most important takeaway from Quinn’s research, however, was that engaging with toxic content only made it worse. “When you get attacked, the instinct is to push back, call it out, say, ‘This isn’t true,'” Quinn says. “But the more engagement something gets, the more the platforms boost it. The algorithm reads that as, ‘Oh, this is popular; people want more of it.'”
The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. “The platforms have policies against certain types of malign behavior, but they haven’t been enforcing them,” she says.
Quinn’s research gave ammunition to advocates pushing social media platforms to take a harder line. In November 2019, Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. “It took pushing, urging, conversations, brainstorming, all of that to get to a place where we ended up with more rigorous rules and enforcement,” says Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who attended the dinner and also met with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and others. (Gupta has been nominated for Associate Attorney General by President Biden.) “It was a struggle, but we got to the point where they understood the problem. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? Yes. But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.”

SPREADING THE WORD

Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. It was crucial for voters to understand that despite what Trump was saying, mail-in votes weren’t susceptible to fraud and that it would be normal if some states weren’t finished counting votes on election night.
Dick Gephardt, the Democratic former House leader turned high-powered lobbyist, spearheaded one coalition. “We wanted to get a really bipartisan group of former elected officials, Cabinet secretaries, military leaders and so on, aimed mainly at messaging to the public but also speaking to local officials–the secretaries of state, attorneys general, governors who would be in the eye of the storm–to let them know we wanted to help,” says Gephardt, who worked his contacts in the private sector to put $20 million behind the effort.
Wamp, the former GOP Congressman, worked through the nonpartisan reform group Issue One to rally Republicans. “We thought we should bring some bipartisan element of unity around what constitutes a free and fair election,” Wamp says. The 22 Democrats and 22 Republicans on the National Council on Election Integrity met on Zoom at least once a week. They ran ads in six states, made statements, wrote articles and alerted local officials to potential problems. “We had rabid Trump supporters who agreed to serve on the council based on the idea that this is honest,” Wamp says. This is going to be just as important, he told them, to convince the liberals when Trump wins. “Whichever way it cuts, we’re going to stick together.”
The Voting Rights Lab and IntoAction created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Protect Democracy’s election task force issued reports and held media briefings with high-profile experts across the political spectrum, resulting in widespread coverage of potential election issues and fact-checking of Trump’s false claims. The organization’s tracking polls found the message was being heard: the percentage of the public that didn’t expect to know the winner on election night gradually rose until by late October, it was over 70%. A majority also believed that a prolonged count wasn’t a sign of problems. “We knew exactly what Trump was going to do: he was going to try to use the fact that Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted in person to make it look like he was ahead, claim victory, say the mail-in votes were fraudulent and try to get them thrown out,” says Protect Democracy’s Bassin. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies.
📷 Amber McReynolds, Zach Wamp and Maurice Mitchell Rachel Woolf for TIME; Erik Schelzig—AP/Shutterstock; Holly Pickett—The New York Times/Redux
The alliance took a common set of themes from the research Shenker-Osorio presented at Podhorzer’s Zooms. Studies have shown that when people don’t think their vote will count or fear casting it will be a hassle, they’re far less likely to participate. Throughout election season, members of Podhorzer’s group minimized incidents of voter intimidation and tamped down rising liberal hysteria about Trump’s expected refusal to concede. They didn’t want to amplify false claims by engaging them, or put people off voting by suggesting a rigged game. “When you say, ‘These claims of fraud are spurious,’ what people hear is ‘fraud,'” Shenker-Osorio says. “What we saw in our pre-election research was that anything that reaffirmed Trump’s power or cast him as an authoritarian diminished people’s desire to vote.”
Podhorzer, meanwhile, was warning everyone he knew that polls were underestimating Trump’s support. The data he shared with media organizations who would be calling the election was “tremendously useful” to understand what was happening as the votes rolled in, according to a member of a major network’s political unit who spoke with Podhorzer before Election Day. Most analysts had recognized there would be a “blue shift” in key battlegrounds– the surge of votes breaking toward Democrats, driven by tallies of mail-in ballots– but they hadn’t comprehended how much better Trump was likely to do on Election Day. “Being able to document how big the absentee wave would be and the variance by state was essential,” the analyst says.

PEOPLE POWER

The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives.
The best way to ensure people’s voices were heard, they decided, was to protect their ability to vote. “We started thinking about a program that would complement the traditional election-protection area but also didn’t rely on calling the police,” says Nelini Stamp, the Working Families Party’s national organizing director. They created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.
The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.

While many people are probably surprised over the fame and subsequent fall of semi attractive skinny white boys on TikTok this past summer, I unfortunately was not. In fact, I had just spent the first few months of a global pandemic watching a normally peaceful fanbase for a reality tv show become divided over one. This is the story of how a young upstart drag queen named GiGi Goode nearly turned a fan community upside down, and basically caused it to split amongst 2 apps. Since season 13 is on its way, and GiGi’s drag sisteHaus mate Symone is a contestant, I thought y’all would enjoy the sordid tale of miss Goode.
It was hard to find direct sources, as a lot of Reddit threads on the drama sub were locked, and I couldn’t link to them, but I did the best I could.
Setting the Scene In January 2020, RuPaul’s Drag Race announced its 12th season would be premiering February 28th, 2020. This season promised 13 new drag queens, who would compete in sewing, acting, overall performance, and a very infamous celebrity impersonation version of Match Game called Snatch Game.
For this story, we need to focus on 3 queens up and coming to the race.
First, there was plus sized queen Sherry Pie who many considered to be a wholesome theater kid, as well as super annoying.
Second, there was the essence of beauty, Jaida Essence Hall. At the time, she seemed to the fans to be just another pageant queen, nothing spectacular.
Finally, there was the reason this post is being written up on Hobbydrama, the beautiful miss GiGi Goode . She was 21, the minimum age to compete, but certainly seemed to be powerful and beautiful. Young queens don’t, on average, have a harder time winning, as someone unacquainted with the franchise might suspect.
No one could’ve suspected she’d garner the cult following she did, or that they’d be so... young .
Burnt Pie, And The Fastest Rise To Reddit’s Fan Favorite The series took the split premiere route, half of the queens being introduved on the premiere, and the other half being introduced a week later. Of the 3 queens worth mentioning, GiGi Goode competed in the first half, and Sherry Pie and Jaida were introduced in the second.
In the first premiere, fellow fashion queen, the French Nicky Doll overshadowed GiGi. GiGi’s only real star moment in the spotlight came during the challenge, a rap battle, in which she proclaimed that she was “Ggggggggggggigi goode”.
Meanwhile, in between the promos, shocking allegations came to light about Sherry Pie, which have already been discussed on this subreddit. In summary, Multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE men began reporting that Sherry had hooked them with a casting director named “Alison Mossey” who worked for HBO/Broadway, and was casting a project called Bulk. The men would be asked to read weird monologues for the camera, and one man was even asked to start taking steroids! Eventually, they had all learned that Alison Mossey didn’t exist, and that when they brought that up to Sherry, she ghosted them.
The fandom was outraged. In 12 years, this was the WORST thing a contestant had ever done before/during their season airing. Buzzfeed even picked up the story, practically calling for the season to be cancelled.
Production acted quickly, deciding to disqualify Sherry, and to edit her out of all future episodes. Unfortunately for them, it was too late to edit her out of that night’s episode, and it was clear she was supposed to be a well liked queen. The spoiler sub even revealed that she would’ve been a finalist, and potentially even had a rivalry story arc with GiGi Goode!
But fortunately for Jaida Essence Hall, in the dual premieres’ special version of the traditional lip sync battle elimination method where the top two queens instead performed for the win that night, she and Sherry Pie were set to face off. The Reddit live postings nervously held their breathes. Would Scammy Pie, as she was newly crowned, win the faceoff, or would it go to Jaida, who was automatically being adored just for opposing her.
Jaida beat her, and the fans rejoiced. They gave her nicknames such as Jaida Essence Christ, Savior of Season 12. She seemed to be unanimously loved...
And Then The Plague Hit When Coronavirus quarantine hit, fans were uniquely devastated. These new girls wouldn’t get to take advantage of the slew of gigs usually provided to new Ru girls! But one queen certainly did. And perhaps the pandemic emphasized what would’ve happened anyways, or perhaps it just created the perfect storm after Sherry’s disqualification.
See, if the Spoiler Subreddit’s rumors are to be believed, GiGi Goode and Sherry Pie were to be rivals originally, before the disqualification and re editing, and their feud was supposed to play a major part in the season.
For those who don’t watch the show, Rivalries can be VERY beneficial for those involved in them, practically guaranteeing you the crown, especially if the fandom despises your rival.
Season 4 winner Sharon Needles was infamously quarreling with fellow finalist Phi Phi O’Hara. Season 5 winner Jinkx dealt with a whole triad of mean girls who ended up in the top 4 with her, and their competition allegedly helped her take the last spot in the finale from one of the trio, Detox. Many fans speculated after season 11 that part of why its winner, Yvie Oddly, got so much more screen time in later episodes and later won the show despite having an ok run stats wise (I believe she has the worst track record of any winner, ever, despite the fact that she’s a gifted artist) was because fans loved her more than her frenemy, Silky. And the fans clearly adored Jaida after she beat Sherry, even if the pair weren’t proper rivals.
But with Sherry Pie needing to be edited out, the editors had to do something. And if the rumors are true, that would explain why they instead focused SO MUCH, and I mean, SO MUCH AIR TIMEon her alleged rival, GiGi Goode.
The Perfect Storm Before we continue, I need to say that GiGi Goode is a fabulous drag queen. She may be lacking in an interesting personality, but she can dance, sew, and capitalize on her lack of personality by impersonating a robot, as she did in Snatch Game to mercifully take the win from Sherry Pie’s offensive imitation of Katherine Hepburn’s Parkinson’s. She deserved almost all of her 4 wins (the Madonna Rusical win is unanimously believed to have belonged to fellow competitor Jan Sport), and I hold no animosity to her any longer, nor does most of the fan community. I also do not think her fans deserve to be bullied, considering most of them are literal middle schoolers who just don’t understand that reality tv shows are edited or that you can’t say dumb shit on the internet while you’re on a tv show without consequences.
Of course, she seemed like the front runner. But that wasn’t what really made her popular amongst the fandom’s younger members, who might not have been able to grasp how edited reality tv shows are.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I used the word boy in the title, since with drag queens, it’s polite to use she/her and girl or woman when referring to them in drag. But there’s a great reason for that.
See, with everyone on lockdown due to COVID, many young girls and gays, but especially middle school aged girls, were boy crazy. And it didn’t take long for the young teens of the fandom to realize that out of drag, GiGi was hot as hell . That, combined with her success in the competition, particularly during the middle of the season, which would’ve aired in April, when stay at home orders were strictest, seemingly made newer younger fans go crazy, especially on IG. For many who were newer fans of the show, either starting with this season or the disaster that was season 11, GiGi had attained godlike status.
Her young age also helped. She was 21, the youngest competitor on her season. She made funny faces in interviews, and referenced material popular with teenagers, such as her runway referencing the musical Heathers . She even “dated” costar Crystal Methyd, forming Crygi , a relationship that is still debated today as to whether it ever was real, is still real, or was made up for fun and extra attention by two best friends who’s big break was ruined by unforeseen circumstances.
Meanwhile, older fans, particularly here on Reddit, especially in the satellite subs, kept chugging along and rooting for Jaida.
After all, Jaida was a bad ass, as fans quickly learned. She was sharp, and possessed a wittiness not seen in the stereotypical pageant girl. Unlike GiGi, behind her pretty face was personality and sass. She even won the makeover challenge despite being paired with someone of another race, which can normally lead to disaster. But while Jaida was perfect and sweet, not causing drama with anyone, her fans were not often the same. In fact, they had an unusual disdain for GiGi.
Was it because she had attracted younger, annoying fans to the fanbase? Was it because GiGi’s mom is supportive, and GiGi was very proud of that, leading to fans in the cringe sub snickering and calling her “mama’s boy”.
Obviously, looking back on it, those are silly reasons to not like someone, but once again, it was quarantine. People needed somewhere for their emotions to go.
As the season continued, it became obvious the crown was really between Jaida and GiGi. Inevitably, this led to fan base tension. GiGi fans, regardless of age, were called immature, and chased off of the Drag Race satellite subreddits, preventing newer fans from joining the wider community. The main Reddit tried to stay neutral, but 85% of anything posted by a GiGi fan on any platform would end up on the cringe subreddit. The Drama subreddit would chronicle every time GiGi even breathed wrong, looking for more excuses to villanize her than they’d ever done with a queen before.
What makes this MORE infuriating looking back on it was that queens were getting death threats and being called racist slurs, badly this season. Brita had to leave social media, and widow nearly quit drag, but instead of calling out racist and rude fans, the critical Drag Race fans elected to pick on GiGi’s child fandom.
Meanwhile, Drag Race fan pages on Instagram, where fans tend to be on the younger side, had already practically declared GiGi the winner themselves, and had no patience for those who reminded them Jaida was just as talented, although they were by far not as vicious to Jaida fans as Reddit fans were to them. The community had gone from being unified in opinion on all platforms to essentially breaking up, with Jaida fans ruling Reddit and GiGi fans ruling Instagram.
As the finale approached, fans were split. Who deserved the crown more, Jaida, who had done the drag race equivalent of Beowulf slaying Grendel in her first episode, or GiGi, with her 4 wins, beauty in and out of drag, and iconic looks?
Not So Goode After All
The first signs that GiGi would be sort of problematic arose when she proclaimed on an Instagram story in late April or early May that “being queer is a privilege”. While her young, mainly straight or bisexual and female devotees saw it as inspirational, older fans found it offensive and mocked her for it, sharing their own experiences with homophobia and pointing out that no, being queer is not a privilege. The fact that she had, from day one, practically bragged about her amazing relationship with her mother, who makes many of her outfits and does a fantastic job, had already made fans with rougher coming out experiences see her as privileged and clueless about the real world. Her tone deaf remark sealed any doubts in her dissenters minds that she was more than a spoiled brat. GiGi quickly apologized for her remark, claiming it was “Just a saying we say in my drag Haus, you guys”.
She also caught flack for saying while prepping for a political debate challenge that she “didn’t read the news and wasn’t interested in politics”. Her young fans defended her as “having anxiety”, but older fans already pissed at her pointed out that the winners of the show are often considered by mainstream media to be sort of “ambassadors” for the drag community, and that their behavior (or lack thereof) could make drag performers look bad, or add to a trend of turning a blind eye to political issues within drag fans and performers. Some even went as far as to say that she definitely didn’t deserve the crown after her remarks.
Going into the finale, it really looked like she would win. She was even able to land a collab with popular but controversial YouTuber, Jeffree Star, to go up the day after the finale aired, raising Redditors eyebrows that perhaps she really knew that she would win (often the winner just gets a feeling that it’ll be her, as do her competitors), and her and her Haus were able to talk their way into booking her a major collab for the very next day. It didn’t help that Jeffree is inherently a controversial figure, even when the pendulum of public opinion towards him is swinging in his favor, as it was at the time, or that she’d gotten to filming as soon as social distancing orders allowed it.
Then, GiGi fucked up.
”I Can’t Breathe”
See, the finale aired May 31st, 2020, right after George Floyd was murdered.
GiGi Goode, apolitical queen, was beyond excited for her big week. It’s been lost to time what the original context was. Was it her upcoming collab with Jeffree, one of the biggest names in the makeup and YouTube industry? Was it the upcoming finale? Either way, GiGi decided the only way to express her excitement for the week were in 3 simple words, 3 simple words also trending on Twitter.
“I can’t breathe.”
Fans were HORRIFIED. Was GiGi Goode making a joke about George Floyd? Many of her older fans quietly changed their Reddit flairs to one of the two other finalists. Some fans pointed out that I can’t breathe was a trending hashtag on Twitter when she tweeted, and, given her previous track record of cluelessness, she had likely just used the phrase in hopes of getting more engagement on her post.
6 months later and of living with the insanity that is GiGi Goode and her young teenaged fans, I can totally see that the latter is probably true. GiGi is an airhead who can barely answer questions when asked on Twitch livestreams. She was busy that week, obviously, and might not have been on social media enough to have heard about what happened yet. She likely assumed the phrase was a new meme or something, and used it without looking into it. What she did was wrong, but it wasn’t the worst thing a queen has ever done or said on Twitter, or even the most racially insensitive (the natural born red head erasure meltdown of summer 2019 takes the cake for that, but that’s another story).
But at the time, with the tension between mainly newer fans who didn’t realize the show was editing GiGi positively and that she wasn’t actually the world’s most amazing drag queen as well as some older fans who just liked GiGi, and Jaida’s fierce supporters nearly reaching a boiling point, GiGi had made a critical error. One that would need a major apology.
Quickly, GiGi put out a statement. In her statement she legit referenced the Wizard of Oz, which later turned out to be related to her finale lipsync look Fans were PISSED, and rightfully so.
Another issue was quickly leaked. Due to it being early in the pandemic, before how to shoot a tv show safely by quarantining performers and minimizing those on set was widely known as an option, the finale was filmed remotely. The queens were ordered to film at home, to keep things fair. After all, while GiGi lived in LA, competitors Crystal and Jaida lived in middle of nowhere Missouri and Milwaukee, respectively. GiGi and even Jaida were clearly at an advantage.
As usual, GiGi decided rules didn’t apply to her. The head of her drag Haus, Marko Monroe, has done work with Lizzo, and although no one knows if Lizzo’s the one who actually gave them the keys, his connections to the music industry meant she was able to get LA studio space.
When production found out, they were understandably PISSED. Whether it was because they were truly concerned about fairness, or worried that GiGi’s decision would be seen as an unfair advantage by fans unhappy with her win, they made her reshoot at home. The fans were even more pissed that she had essentially tried to cheat, especially after her “I can’t breathe” incident earlier in the week.
When the big night came, GiGi did... ok. She certainly wasn’t remarkable or groundbreaking, but she was decent. It was clear from IG she expected to win. Her Haus definitely violated California rules about gatherings, complete with a cake with GiGi’s face on it. She was ready for her big night.
However, When it was time for the winner to be crowned, Jaida, who had filmed her lipsync in her living room with no backdrop whatsoever, took the crown. Fans rejoiced. Peace was restored to the world of the Drag Race fandom. GiGi Goode tucked her tail between her legs and barely even promoted her collab with Jeffree.
Although we’ll never know for sure if GiGi’s faux pas cost her the crown, we do know that the fanbase holds some sway in who ultimately wins. After all, despite having only 1 win, the worst track record of a winner in Drag Race history, Yvie Oddly took the crown from competitor Brooke the year before, and while her epic finale reveal of a metallic version of her face on the back of her headpiece definitely was the primary reason, her popularity with fans while the season was airing, especially after fighting with Silky, certainly helped.
We also know the winner isn’t decided at the finale taping, or whatever you could call this year’s finale, and all queens who make it to the final lipsync are filmed winning, even if there are rumors that production knows who they’ll have win by that point from people who’ve attended live (one rumor states that Yvie, for example, originally made a joke about eating babies when her crowning was filmed, but production allegedly on the spot made her refilm it, telling her to cut that out). So it is entirely possible that, had GiGi not fucked up on Twitter, she could’ve won.
With the negative feelings towards her still fresh, instead of being known as a “robbed queen”, as many runner ups popular during their seasons are, GiGi became just another pretty faced fashion queen amongst the fan community. The hype around her had died. No one over the age of 14 was demanding she return for an All Stars, as they had with other finalists who had better track records than their season’s winner. In fact, the general consensus by both Reddit and Instagram fans became that she’d been pushed down their throats, and that Jaida had always been prettiefunniewearing better outfits anyways. The fandom returned to a harmonious place.
Where Are They Now?
With All Stars 5, the next season, mainly featuring queens from older seasons, and after the belittling and icing out for acting like, you know, CHILDREN, the younger fans who gave GiGi her cult following were not as interested in the show. They turned to worshipping her and her drag Haus, Avalon.
The Haus of Avalon started throwing Zoom “Haus parties” for 5 bucks a ticket, mainly attended by teenagers, in which their members performed. GiGi has, at both parties, performed scantily clad numbers for her middle school adorers, including one number that was basically her stripping in a car.
They also opened a Twitch channel and shoved GiGi in front of the camera, in or out of drag, as much as possible, allowing her teen fans to ask her exciting questions such as “Do you have Tiktok?” (No, she thinks she’s too good for it), and, “What’s your favorite American Horror Story season” (Coven or Asylum, depending on her mood that stream).
However, it’s benefited all of GiGi’s friends, as her pal who actually has a personality that isn’t “smol awkward 2014 Tumblr bean” Symone already has a strong fanbase going into season 13 .
GiGi Goode got to do a drive in tour with Voss, the premier drag race alum touring company, before they realized that teenagers so young they needed parents to drive them to the show mostly didn’t know how to behave at a drag show, much less one during a global pandemic. Needless to say, she was not invited on the Halloween tour, and the queens were no longer allowed to run around the VIP section for that tour. She’s doing quite well though, advertising for makeup brands and even walking in Rihanna’s SavagexFenty fashion show alongside All Stars 5 winner Shea Coulee. Arguably, she’s the most famous girl from her season outside of the drag community. Although All Stars 6 has already filmed and she’s definitely not on it, the fandom 6 months post her fiasco has stopped actively hating her, even the avid Jaida supporters, and seems to support the idea of her potentially being cast on All Stars someday, once she’s matured a bit more.
Jaida Essence Hall became known as one of the most deserving winners amongst the fanbase, and, it seemed, the drag community as a whole. Unlike past winners, she had no minor “bratty” incidents during her first few months reigning (and not because no clubs were open, as the two most recent former winners had their incidents occur on social media). The drag world loved her, and she was booked for so many virtual shows. She also got to walk in Rihanna’s show, in her own section and not with the other two drag queens. She might not have become a minor Instagram celebrity with constant interviews the way GiGi had, but within the fandom, she was universally loved.
And Sherry Pie has disappeared, as she should have.
TL;DR After a queen was exposed as being a sexual predator, RuPaul’s Drag Race decided to quickly edit her out, focusing more on the queen who allegedly was supposed to be her rival, GiGi. Unfortunately, many fans had already gotten attached to another queen, Jaida, who beat the predator in a lipsync on the one episode show runners couldn’t edit in time. Mainly young fans who didn’t know the full extent of what happened or weren’t old enough to comprehend that reality tv is edited to tell a story and focus on certain people adored GiGi, especially because she’s young and handsome out of drag, and they were in quarantine at the time. GiGi’s dipshit remarks, apparent flaunting of her positive parental relationship, and seemingly being pushed by producers soured older fans to her, and they mocked the shit out of newer fans, MAINLY YOUNGER TEENAGERS, who adored her. Eventually, GiGi tweeted something insensitive and gave a bullshit apology, pissing everyone off, Jaida won the crown, and the fandom eventually calmed down and stopped actively bullying children who hadn’t even entered high school yet.
EDIT: Wow, THANK YOU GUYS for 140 upvotes!
I know this isn’t the juiciest drama, but surprisingly, my former Catholic school kid complex needed to just write this all out in a bubble bath one night to feel less guilty about being part of it, and to the people who encouraged me to publish this, thanks!
Also, although the Drag Race fanbase has other, MUCH more serious problems, I also wanted to call us out preemptively before season 13 to make sure what happened during season 12 doesn’t happen again, because we are so much better than that. Especially to my fellow female fans: We are not the people who made fun of us back in middle school for being Tumblr kids or the adults who mocked us online, and we should not be becoming those people, in any internet space, not just the bowels of Drag Race Reddit.
To the literal children I was a part of bullying: I’m sorry. We went way too far in bullying you all off Reddit just because y’all were middle schoolers with a celebrity crush and a poor understanding of how reality tv works. Especially because most of these kids were girls (strangely young gay male fans weren’t really on the GiGi hype train), and I know damn well I probably would’ve been among them if I was 12-14 right now.
Edit 2: Considering I just landed on the Cringe subreddit, I will no longer be actively checking this post. Not that any of them would read far enough and realize I was basically calling them out for picking on kids and not “disrespecting Jaida in the name of worshipping GiGi”, and get really mad, lmao. I just don’t have time for messy people who are grown enough to know better.
Edit 3: and here they come, this post will be downvoted to 1.1K by the end of the day, guaranteed. Thanks for the love, y’all. Also, y’all coming here to read this from the Cringe subreddit know DAMN WELL I’m not defending that airhead GiGi Goode, but that I’m defending the literal children y’all found on the internet to harass. I even held the bitch accountable for her wrong doings.
I just hope when the kids come back for Symone this season, as they all went to being just Haus of Avalon fans after you kept picking on them after the season ended and everyone else moved on, you can treat the 13 year olds making shitty memes and using tumblr language so bad it gives anyone who grew up in that area nausea to read a bit more decency, and focus on mocking the racists, because lord knows for every one post calling out those bullying Brita and Widow, there were 5-10 more making fun of children for basic ass and unfunny memes or for basically being 12-14 year old girls.

Hello fellow retards
I know these are difficult times for this sub and it’s almost impossible to post something solid which is not about the current meme stocks.
Instead of jerking to some porn i did some research on PLTR and want to share my DD with you. This might be a longer text for your love dopamine level so maybe you should grab some your Adderall before.
The following text might you give your eyes aids since English isn’t my native language. I will try my best.
Palantir as a Company – the beginnings
PLTR was founded by some people and one of them is Peter Thiel who worked alongside with our holy papa Elon at PayPal. As a payment-service they had concerns about money laundering and founded PLTR to tackle this issue early. The CIA also funded PLTR (they are always funding stuff like this – Siri as example). This actually might be the reason why people think that PLTR is a company which aggregates data and do data analysis for the government….but this is not accurate and not correct at all if you see the big picture. I will explain this point later.
You retard still reading? Nice here some rocket emoji’s to pump your dopamine and keep you happy.
Let’s start with the DD
First of all my POV is looking for a midterm to long term investment in PLTR. My valuation considers PLTRs current state and predicting from now on for the next few years.

• 1. The Management

Before I start with the product I rather start with the management. You can sell the nicest thing in the world. I can guarantee you that the product definitely won’t be considered as the nicest thing after a while if you have a shitty management (Intel). With Peter Thiel on the leaderboard we got a competent asshole and CEO is Alex carp (co-founder) Peter Thiel is well known and Alex Karp is one of us. He yolod his heritage into some business and become a chad. Seriously tho, I trust Peter and if Peter holds on Alex since Decades so do I. Peter proved so many times how cunning he is and showed how to pick adapt problems early and create solutions.

• 2. PLTR Business model/ products

Before we understand how important PLTRs products are we have to understand that we are simpeltons who don’t have any business with PLTRs. We create data. We don’t fuck with it. We creating with using our phones or working in the office. Only a few of us may working with accumulated big data. PLTRs customers’ base isn’t neighbor Joe or Aunt Nancy. The products they offer are not even for midcap companies they are more designed for whole industries and governments. That’s the reason why their products aren’t so tangible for many people.
PLTR basically offers systems to big companies/governments which import their data into these systems. PLTR doesn’t sends workers to the client to collect data and analyse it. They sell platforms. They got 2 Products called “Gotham” and “Foundry” You may think wtf is this guy talking about? Let me explain it in 2 examples:
First example is Syria with Gotham. It was impossible in the country to know who the good guys are and who the bad ones are. I know u muricans only know yourself and the rest of the world is the “rest of the world” for you. But this wasn’t so simple in Syria you had many factions with different intentions and some of them were allies and some of them were enemies. The lack of information or the ability of recognizing and sorting these information’s are crucial in a war. PLTR solved the struggle with creating a map which provided resilient information for the marines so they can operate safely. Civil problems over there could also be fixed.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/10/04/palantir-using-big-data-to-solve-big-humanitarian-crises/
Actually what the John Hopkins University does with the covid numbers and the map, is some sort of what PLTR offering with their solutions. There are rumors that the tracking of Covid and the vaccination will be done by PLTR.
In their S1 Form PLTR describes it this way
“Gotham, our first software platform, was constructed for analysts at defense and intelligence agencies. They were hunting for needles not in one, but in thousands of haystacks. And they did not have the software they needed to do their jobs. In Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers were mapping networks of insurgents and makers of roadside bombs by hand. Gotham enables users to identify patterns hidden deep within datasets, ranging from signals intelligence sources to reports from confidential informants, and helps U.S. and allied military personnel find what they are looking for.”
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgadata/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm#rom904406_11
The second example is about “Foundry” and it’s directly from the S1 File of PLTR (page 121)
“An Airbus A350, for example, has five million parts and is built by hundreds of teams that are spread across four countries and more than eight factories. Companies routinely struggle to manage let alone make sense of the data involved in large projects. Foundry was built for them. The platform transforms the ways in which organizations interact with information by creating a central operating system for their data.”
Both of these systems solving big issues with less effort. The arms industry as example would took billions for drones and stuff in Syria for the same job. The important fact is that PLTR does not spend so much resources for new clients they only have to provide access and support for their services and the client feeding the “machine” with data.
The key point is to understand that PLTR benefits very huge from economy of scales. This is very important since their costs for additional revenue is basically flat while the profits growing exorbitant with new customers. They offer a software and platforms and not kind of services where they need man power. All they do is working on their platforms and improving it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palantir-ipo-breakingviews-idUSKCN26E3I2

• 3. PLTRs big issue during the last decade

Peter Thiel was a great supporter of Trump and funded his elections campaign. The market thought that when trump wins then PLTR will get all the government (especially military) contracts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/technology/peter-thiel-bet-donald-trump-wins-big.html
But this didn’t happened. Peter got cucked by the huge authority apparatus in pentagon. These dudes loves bureaucracy and they do it for a good reason. If you retire from your job in pentagon you usually get a high paid luxurious position at Lockheed, Raytheon or Bae Systems to make additional free money for your retirement. Many thousand people working in pentagon just to select and buy stuff for the government. They spending billions of dollars for purchases and then PLTR came around and said like „look guys we can do this job for a few millions instead billions“. Of course the arms industry was pissed and the pentagon boomers helped them out. PLTR got constantly scammed from boomers and didn’t get the contracts. This was also the „swamp „trump was talking about.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-28/inside-palantir-s-war-with-the-u-s-army
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/03/27/palantir-trump-army-military-procurement.html
https://preview.redd.it/qd6q5xyfi4h61.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ed75e73d7eefbd35c97f50ded4d7cda9e6222c25
A fun fact to this matter: Before James Mattis got summoned as the Defense Secretary of the USA he was a general in Afghanistan. He ordered services from PLTR despite the fact the pentagon was against it. But the marines praised PLTRs software and valued it over the trash they used to know from the defense/arms industry.
https://www.military.com/defensetech/2013/07/01/special-forces-marines-embrace-palantir-software
Even with a James Mattis as the defense secretary, trump as president and regardless that PLTR does it better and cheaper than the arms industry, it wasn’t possible for PLTR to get the government contracts.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/11/palantir-defense-jim-mattis-inner-circle-239373
https://fortune.com/longform/palantir-pentagon-trump/
How it’s ended? Well Peter’s wife doesn’t have a boyfriend because Peter is the fucking boyfriend of their wifes. All ended at the court and PLTR won. All this injustice ended at the court. The judgements on these cases are true circuit breakers for PLTR. Not only because PLTR spent shit tons of money for law suits. The lawsuits were perfect uppercut hits on the arms industry and they ended some fraudulent behaviors and „best practices „in the government
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2016/10/31/judge-rules-in-favor-of-palantir-in-lawsuit-against-us-army/
https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/03/29/palantir-who-successfully-sued-the-army-just-won-a-major-army-contract/
PLTR will profit from a Biden who wants to decrease the military expenditures. They will get the job done and at the same time the costs will go down. With the recent judgements the door looks open
.

• 4. Valuation problems

I could spam some multiplication on revenue or even a DCF but I think it’s not necessary. Expect the costs of research and development (maybe marketing) the costs of PLTR stood mostly flat in the last quarters. It’s a growth stock and the pricing is mostly in the perspective of PLTR. This is actually all we need to know that the revenue increases while the costs staying mostly flat. Check out the balance sheets at page 12 on the S Form 1.
Let’s talk about the market. The whole market seems overpriced but it isn’t tbh. Due to the low cost of capital there is no alternative than to throwing your money on stocks or on real estate. There is nothing with a solid interest rate around (not even in emerging markets). At the stock exchange like in 70s, the companies had to offer a return, a perspective which should be more attractive as putting your money on a saving account with 8% interests without risks. These times are gone since the 2000s. So before people discuss insane valuation they should check out the fiscal and economical policies.
Now back to PLTR and why the price is difficult to set (cheap imo). First of all PLTR did a direct listing without an investment bank for their share offerings. Its lacking of the valuation which they usually would get through such a process.
PLTR wanted to do IPO with Morgan Stanley but it was mess.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-04/morgan-stanley-s-long-romance-of-palantir-pays-off-as-ipo-nears
Morgan Stanley proved themselves many times as stubborn communists when it comes to valuations. I mean you guys remember their disgusting price targets for tesla like 100$ post split or stuff like that.
These guys are very focused on numbers and I know it’s difficult to price in the potential and perspectives. But you can’t ignore these things for a fundamental valuation. If you want to consider these things in the price you have to understand the business of the company.
This ended that one team at Morgan Stanley valuated PLTR with 5 billion while another team thought they worth 40 billion.
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/11/14/palantir-ipo-valuation-morgan-stanley.html
How is this difference possible and why is this happening? Because people don’t understand what they are valuating. This happened a lot in the last decade because the decision makers in these banks and many analyst don’t have any idea which metrics they should use on companies like that. They are using the metrics from classical industries on new business. They freaked out when Facebook was valued with 100 billion as IPO. Same with Twitter and in the last years it was Tesla. They said apple going to tank every damn year in the last decade. I honor Warren Buffet so much since he has the dignity to realize that he don’t understands something but at the same time he sees the potential and the trend. That’s why he hired 2 Chads who bought Snowflake for him. The transformation and the generation change didn’t happened yet. That’s why they try to use the metrics from Caterpillar on Tesla.
Guys the whole market is mooning with the cheap liquidity. Pennystocks and zombie companies transforming into billion dollar market cap companies. Facebook as IPO had a market cap of 104 billion back in 2012. At that time it wasn’t possible for Facebook to monetize their users with selling ads. They just paid 100 billion for the potential in more difficult market conditions.
Look at the IPOs like doordash, Bumble. I’m not going to call this a bubble. Just check out their business cases and use the metrics. Maybe its easier for people to understand Bumble and Doordash…
On page 12 of the S1 (balance sheet) Form you can already see the huge positive trends in PLTRs revenue and their costs. All this without all the positive events and contracts PLTR recently got.
PLTRs valuation is difficult and I think it’s miscalculated by pessimistic communist who don’t understand that their products are game changers for industries, governments and defense forces. Because of these points I think there is huge price potential for PLTR.

• 5. Risks for PLTR

Despite the general market risks PLTR mentions at page 29 of the S1 Form the competitors as the main risk: “We face intense competition in our markets, and we may lack sufficient financial or other resources to maintain or improve our competitive position.” The S1 Form didn’t aged well. Actually I don’t think that PLTR would have any trouble with offering new shares. Also with Peter Thiel as one of the founders the financial side should be stable.
As PLTR competitor people use to mention IBM. The boomers from IBM already surrendered with their Windows95 computers and decided to cooperate. The biggest threat would be big tech with big money like AMZN or APPL. You all now the stories about APPL and Spotify or AMZN and all the merchants. Even if the big players would step into PLTR markets it would be difficult for them since PLTRs products doesn’t rely on an Amazon store or on apple devices. PLTR is years ahead with their products.
I think the greatest risk (still) are the boomerish arms industry and all the boomers in pentagon and other authorities.
There are very corrupt infrastructures when it comes to decision making and assigning contracts. People fear changes but they can’t avoid the changes. With the recent judgements we can see a turn on the tables but the transformation will still take time. It’s a circuit breaker with an avalanche effect.
The risk factors on page 16 on the S1 form mostly aren’t relevant anymore. People complained that PLTR wasn’t profitable for 18 years. Well PLTR was never designed to be profitable and Alex Karp once said “love us or leave us alone”.
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/09/09/palantir-ceo-makes-livestreamed-pitch-to-investors.html
But even this changed recently. PLTR became profitable in 2020 with 130,000,000§. Now the same people complaining about how high the stock price compared to the profits. Well just you wait.

• 6. Conclusion and Outlook

If you still reading I have to admit that this was a lot text and i am sorry again about the lingo. Let’s connect the dots and bring this information to a point

1. The boomer coalition in the pentagon and in the arms industry is taken down by PLTR. They will able to get the governments contracts and the classic arms/defense industry is no match for PLTR products. The judgements of lawsuits were catalyst and the effects should be already shown in the next earnings. These were such underrated events but I think there still will be some odds but PLTRs situation is much better as it was a time ago. The chains are off!
2. Military expenditures rising worldwide

https://preview.redd.it/es8lf2qei4h61.jpg?width=744&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=90ba50e0ce9a0de2a0ca3957a1f2af3c7607e3b1
https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2020/global-military-expenditure-sees-largest-annual-increase-decade-says-sipri-reaching-1917-billion
With Bidens presidency we will see more disruptive technologies chosen by the government. Biden want to reduce the military expenditures. PLTR is able to provide better service for lower cost. Not only the recent judgements also the political change will help PLTR. Ironic if you remember that Peter supported Trump and getting his tendies from Biden.

1. PLTR superior products profits hugely from economy of scales. They don’t have any significant costs when they acquire new customers. Making the big data usable for decisions making is already very important and step by step people realize that this issue growing fast. We creating everyday more data than we did yesterday and leaving the majority of it as trace and unstructured data. We don’t work with it but big Institutions does.

Here is the passage from the S1 and I fully agree with it:
“The systemic failures of government institutions to provide for the public — fractured healthcare systems, erosions of data privacy, strained criminal justice systems, and outmoded ways of fighting wars — will continue to require both the public and private sectors to transform themselves. We believe that the underperformance and loss of legitimacy of many of these institutions will only increase the speed with which they are required to change.”

1. PLTRs value. The current situation of the market with tons of liquidity seems like a bubble. People don’t know what to do with the cheap capital and people throwing it even on meme pennystocks.

Facebook had his ipo back in 2012 during much harder market conditions as now. The valuation of Facebook was over 100 billion and people called it insanely overvalued. They did it because Facebook didn’t had a way to monetize their users (especially on mobile platforms). Facebook has a market cap of over 750 billion now and nobody calling it over valued.
A remember the recent examples? Bumble?! Bruuuh. Don’t get me wrong if you invested in Bumble but they have nothing special to offer and their business case can easily copied or improved by others. Its shows the current state of our market with the crazy liquidity that even zombie companies got astronomic valuations. Use these metrics on PLTR with great products, great management, low cost base and less odds as ever before….
PLTR price is wrong imo especially in this market and with PLTRs current state and perspective.

1. Do you use PLTR? Me Neither! It’s not designed for us and we have to inform us about the success. PLTRs new contracts and their future are shining bright. With the settled lawsuits the sky is clear for PLTR. But their customer base is not only America. I’m not a murican and 3 weeks before I just find out that the police departments in our state using PLTR products. I don’t need to link endless evidences here since you can google it by yourself and see how many contracts PLTR recently got. Especially after the circuit breakers we talked about.

I have genuinely trust into Peter Thiel and Alex Karp that their will make the best of PLTRs potential. The odds getting removed and the demand for PLTR is increasing.
If all these information would priced in correctly we would have a share price of at least 60-70$. With upcoming and ongoing positive events PLTR share price should soar more..
What’s next?
Now we have earnings ahead and the lock up period ending.
For the earnings I think the number will be fine and keep up the positive trend on revenue with a disproportionately trend of the costs. The most important part will be guidance for 2021. We should listen closely and see if the magic is already happening.
The second event is the ending of the lock up period. You all remember the end of the lock up period of Nikola? Just 1-2 days after they announced they don’t got the GM deal? The stock tanked – for a good reason. You know the guy Trevor Milton.
But in PLTRs case everything is different. Despite the successful deals they got, does a guy who says “love us or leave us alone” sounds like someone who going to drop his shares at the first possibility? I don’t expect such a behavior from Alex Karp and neither from Peter Thiel. If some employees drop their shares it should be fine.
I would appreciate if the stock prices would go below 3ß. It would create a healthy bullish chart pattern and would be actually a nice discount to get in or stock up. I don’t think that the shares going to dump a lot because of this event. The earnings and the guidance are more important and the key events if you want to invest mid – long term.
What does all this means for you? Nothing! Please don’t do any market activity based on my DD. I’m just sharing my knowledge and looking for critics so I can reevaluate my theses. This is not a financial advice.
This is not a financil advise!
I’m not well positioned and not trying to pump this stock. I have 70 shares and a CSP. Fair play and fuck all the bots and pump and dumper we recently got in the sub!
Leave an upvote if this post helped you. I need some more karma to be able to shitpost everywhere again!
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OG: u/PutsOnYourWife Link: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/lim9dk/pltr_dd_brain_cells_required_if_you_are_an_ape/

I’ve been with my SO for 12 years. We have a 5 year old and a mortgage so it’s essentially a marriage without the extra paperwork.
Up until 2016 my SO had very few political opinions and didn’t pay much attention to politics. When we heard Donald Trump was running we both laughed and thought it was ridiculous, thought he had no chance. By the end of 2016 my SO had started complaining about things Obama was doing, when he had never expressed an opinion on him before. He knew I had voted for Obama and that I generally supported him but it was just the odd comment here and there so I didn’t let it get to me too much. Then he told me he liked the idea of a non-politician in the White House and he was going to vote for Trump. I tried to talk him out of it but ultimately that’s the choice he made.
The next 4 years consisted of him getting angrier and angrier at “SJWs” and “woke people”. He started watching right wing youtubers and just regurgitating what they said about our society and government. If I shared an opinion he viewed as “woke” he would yell and tell me I was wrong and stupid, sometimes worse names. He’d slam doors and tell me to stfu. He’d yell at me that I don’t know what I’m talking about because I don’t do as much “research” as him.
He’s watched Joe Rogan for years, since before Trump was on the political radar. Because of Joe Rogan my SO believes that Alex Jones is a legitimate source of information. When I asked him what he thought of what Alex Jones said about Sandy Hook, he actually defended it by saying there’s proof that people hire actors to fake events like that and Alex had good reason to say that.
When the BLM protests were happening this summer I was following them very closely. My SO constantly berated me for supporting the movement and even just for believing that systemic racism is real. He immediately started blaming antifa for everything.
Over and over I asked if we could just agree to disagree and not discuss it anymore. He refused, insisting that my beliefs are wrong. He insisted I have “Trump derangement syndrome”.
He started taking about Hollywood and how it’s full of pedophiles. He claimed Tom Hanks and Stephen Colbert are part of a liberal Hollywood pedophile ring along with a bunch of others.
When we received our mail in ballots he acted like I was going to tamper with or destroy his ballot, because thats what he believed liberals were doing to conservative ballots. Even though he knows I believe in the importance of democracy and everyone making an informed vote.
When Trump lost the election that my SO was 100% convinced he would win in a landslide, he went quiet. Suddenly he wasn’t bringing up politics at all. This lasted several days. Then the kraken lawsuits started and he was arguing that “America’s mayor” (Giuliani) was going to prove that the democrats cheated and Trump really won. I reminded him that there are many, many people out there who feel like I do and want Trump gone. He continued to remind me I suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome and that I’m just wrong, along with anyone else who shares my opinion.
When the insurrection at the capitol happened he showed me a photo of the guy we now know as the qanon shaman allegedly at a BLM protest. To him it was proof that it was all staged by antifa. Fortunately I had already “done my research” (ha) and I knew who the qanon shaman was, so I was able to immediately prove him wrong.
It’s been several days since he’s brought any of this up. I’m really hoping Trump leaving office will be the end of this dark chapter in my relationship... it’s really worn me down and made me resent my SO.
Thanks/sorry if you read this whole thing. This is the first time I’ve told anyone any of this. It’s just been happening privately for years and I needed to get it out.
Edit: I really appreciate all of the supportive comments. I even appreciate the comments telling me things that are hard to hear. I have pretty severe social anxiety and basically no support system. Because of the conditions of my own childhood I have a tendency to just accept shitty situations and try to adapt to them, rather than actually try to change what’s shitty. But for the sake of myself and my daughter I do plan to seek out therapy when I can save up some money. Thank you everyone for reading my rant and letting me get it out.

While Keir Starmer and the current Labour Frontbench seem almost scared to even consider announcing new party policies, I wanted to raise a discussion on whether or not it is finally time that the Labour Party formally backs Proportional Representation as our new voting system.
It is no secret that the current electoral system is a flawed two party system and favours the Conservative Party too much, which will now be made worse by the upcoming electoral boundary changes that are essentially gerrymandering in all but name.
Labour have been out of power for over ten years now and the party faces a mammoth task to try and gain around 120 seats in the next election if they want to have a majority of just one. Landslides like this have happened in the past with the likes of Tony Blair, however the odds are very slim and I feel the stakes are too high to gamble on the small chances of Labour managing to pull this off.
Henceforth I believe it is time that Labour backs Proportional Representation and encourages the smaller parties of Westminster - namely the Liberal Democrats and the Greens - to lend them their votes in the next election and stand aside in key target sides in order to ensure Labour wins a majority in the next election so that they can roll through Proportional Representation.
This is in Labour's interest in order to finally get the murderous Conservatives out of Westminster, end austerity after eleven years of it and put through a more progressive and representative voting system.
The political union has also been greatly threatened in recent years following strong support for Scottish Independence and Northern Ireland being threatened with different treatment to the rest of the UK in recent Brexit talks. With much of the United Kingdom feeling more disunited, having a more balanced voting system in Proportional Representation could help to restore faith in our democracy and truly make all votes across the entire country count, with all voices of the UK - English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish - being included.
After years of political instability and uncertainty, coupled with the diminished odds of Labour securing a majority in the next General Election and thousands being indirectly murdered by the Conservatives through austerity and deliberate Lockdown in-competencies, I feel that it is in the national interest for the voting system to be changed to Proportional Representation and that Labour are the only ones who can deliver it.

A comprehensive list of books that might be of interest to people that want to read something that would improve their thinking or some friends?
I have not read many of these, thus I can not personally vouch for all of them or recommend one over the other.
I'm not affiliated with Goodreads, but linked to them since I wanted to include the ratings and they have links to several different sources including libraries if you want to borrow or acquire any one of these, and often some quality reviews.
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
by Michael Shermer 3.93 · Rating details · 6,985 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9754534-the-believing-brain
The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished.
In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
by Richard Paul, Linda Elder
3.93 · Rating details · 1,082 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17296839-critical-thinking
Critical Thinking is about becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover.
Discover the core skills of effective thinking; then analyze your own thought processes, identify weaknesses, and overcome them. Learn how to translate more effective thinking into better decisions, less frustration, more wealth Ñ and above all, greater confidence to pursue and achieve your most important goals in life.
The Thinker's Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder,Richard Paul
3.89 · Rating details · 163 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19227921-the-thinker-s-guide-to-analytic-thinking
This guide focuses on the intellectual skills that enable one to analyze anything one might think about - questions, problems, disciplines, subjects, etc. It provides the common denominator between all forms of analysis.
It is based on the assumption that all reasoning can be taken apart and analyzed for quality.
This guide introduces the elements of reasoning as implicit in all reasoning. It begins with this idea - that whenever we think, we think for a purpose, within a point of view, based on assumptions, leading to implications and consequences. We use data, facts and experiences (information), to make inferences and judgments,based on concepts and theories to answer a question or solve a problem. Thus the elements of thought are: purpose, questions, information, inferences, assumptions, concepts, implications and point of view. In this guide, authors Linda Elder and Richard Paul explain, exemplify and contextualize these elements or structures of thought, showing the importance of analyzing reasoning in every part of human life. This guide can be used as a supplement to any text or course at the college level; and it may be used for improving thinking in personal and professional life.
The Thinker's Guide to Intellectual Standards by Linda Elder, Richard Paul
4.19 · Rating details · 16 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19017637-the-thinker-s-guide-to-intellectual-standards
Humans routinely assess thinking – their own thinking, and that of others, and yet they don’t necessarily use standards for thought that are reasonable, rational, sound.
To think well, people need to routinely meet intellectual standards, standards of clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, logic, fairness, significance, and so forth.
In this guide authors Elder and Paul offer a brief analysis of some of the most important intellectual standards in the English language. They look at the opposites of these standards. They argue for their contextualization within subjects and disciplines. And, they call attention to the forces that undermine their skilled use in thinking well. At present intellectual standards tend to be either taught implicitly, or ignored in instruction. Yet because they are essential to high quality reasoning in every part of human life, they should be explicitly taught and explicitly understood.
The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide by Gleb Tsipursky (Goodreads Author) 4.24 · Rating details · 63 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36800752-the-truth-seeker-s-handbook
How do you know whether something is true? How do you convince others to believe the facts?
Research shows that the human mind is prone to making thinking errors - predictable mistakes that cause us to believe comfortable lies over inconvenient truths. These errors leave us vulnerable to making decisions based on false beliefs, leading to disastrous consequences for our personal lives, relationships, careers, civic and political engagement, and for our society as a whole.
Fortunately, cognitive and behavioral scientists have uncovered many useful strategies for overcoming our mental flaws.
This book presents a variety of research-based tools for ensuring that our beliefs are aligned with reality.
With examples from daily life and an engaging style, the book will provide you with the skills to avoid thinking errors and help others to do so, preventing disasters and facilitating success for yourself, those you care about, and our society.
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
by Robert A. Burton 3.90 · Rating details · 2,165 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2740964-on-being-certain
You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know.
He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge.
In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact.
Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason.
But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know.
Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
by Christopher Chabris,Daniel Simons 3.91 · Rating details · 13,537 ratings · 704 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7783191-the-invisible-gorilla
Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself—and that’s a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology’s most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually missing a whole lot.
Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We’re sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our minds with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we’re continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.
The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it’s much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking
by M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley
3.94 · Rating details · 1,290 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/394398.Asking_the_Right_Questions
The habits and attitudes associated with critical thinking are transferable to consumer, medical, legal, and general ethical choices. When our surgeon says surgery is needed, it can be life sustaining to seek answers to the critical questions encouraged in Asking the Right Questions This popular book helps bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysing the things we are told and read. It gives strategies for responding to alternative points of view and will help readers develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.
On Truth by Simon Blackburn 3.60 · Rating details · 62 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36722220-on-truth
Truth is not just a recent topic of contention. Arguments about it have gone on for centuries. Why is the truth important? Who decides what the truth is? Is there such a thing as objective, eternal truth, or is truth simply a matter of perspective, of linguistic or cultural vantage point?
In this concise book Simon Blackburn provides an accessible explanation of what truth is and how we might think about it.
The first half of the book details several main approaches to how we should think about, and decide, what is true.
These are philosophical theories of truth such as the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, deflationism, and others.
He then examines how those approaches relate to truth in several contentious domains: art, ethics, reasoning, religion, and the interpretation of texts.
Blackburn's overall message is that truth is often best thought of not as a product or an end point that is 'finally' achieved, but--as the American pragmatist thinkers thought of it--as an ongoing process of inquiry. The result is an accessible and tour through some of the deepest and thorniest questions philosophy has ever tackled
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
4.16 · Rating details · 317,352 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ZNhf1bAIxd&rank=1
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.
He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.
Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do by John A. Bargh (Goodreads Author)
3.97 · Rating details · 788 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35011639-before-you-know-it
Dr. John Bargh, the world’s leading expert on the unconscious mind, presents a “brilliant and convincing book” (Malcolm Gladwell) cited as an outstanding read of 2017 by Business Insider and The Financial Times—giving us an entirely new understanding of the hidden mental processes that secretly govern every aspect of our behavior.
For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has conducted revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research featured in bestsellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said was “the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past twenty years,” Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
Dr. Bargh takes us into his labs at New York University and Yale—where he and his colleagues have discovered how the unconscious guides our behavior, goals, and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behavior, and addiction.
With infectious enthusiasm he reveals what science now knows about the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind in who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more.
Because the unconscious works in ways we are completely unaware of, Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as useful tricks to help you remember items on your to-do list, to shop smarter, and to sleep better.
Before You Know It is “a fascinating compendium of landmark social-psychology research” (Publishers Weekly) and an introduction to a fabulous world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to knowing yourself and unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38315.Fooled_by_Randomness
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 4.07 · Rating details · 49,010 ratings
Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.
Philosophy books
Epistemology by Richard Feldman 3.84 · Rating details · 182 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387295.Epistemology
Sophisticated yet accessible and easy to read, this introduction to contemporary philosophical questions about knowledge and rationality goes beyond the usual bland survey of the major current views to show that there is argument involved. Throughout, the author provides a fair and balanced blending of the standard positions on epistemology with his own carefully reasoned positions or stances into the analysis of each concept. KEY TOPICS: Epistemological Questions. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Modifying the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Evidentialist Theories of Justification. Non-evidentialist Theories of Knowledge and Justification. Skepticism. Epistemology and Science. Relativism.
Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology by Michael J. Williams
3.79 · Rating details · 86 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477904.Problems_of_Knowledge
"What is epistemology or 'the theory of knowledge'? Why does it matter? What makes theorizing about knowledge 'philosophical'? And why do some philosophers argue that epistemology - perhaps even philosophy itself - is dead?" "
In this introduction, Michael Williams answers these questions, showing how epistemological theorizing is sensitive to a range of questions about the nature, limits, methods, and value of knowing.
He pays special attention to the challenge of philosophical scepticism: does our 'knowledge' rest on brute assumptions? Does the rational outlook undermine itself?"
Williams explains and criticizes all the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on human knowledge, such as foundationalism, the coherence theory, and 'naturalistic' theories. As an alternative to all of them, he defends his distinctive contextualist approach.
As well as providing an accessible introduction for any reader approaching the subject for the first time, this book incorporates Williams's own ideas which will be of interest to all philosophers concerned with the theory of knowledge.
Philosophy: The Basics
by Nigel Warburton 3.84 · Rating details · 1,928 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31854.Philosophy
Now in its fourth edition, Nigel Warburton's best-selling book gently eases the reader into the world of philosophy. Each chapter considers a key area of philosophy, explaining and exploring the basic ideas and themes.
What is philosophy? Can you prove God exists? Is there an afterlife? How do we know right from wrong? Should you ever break the law? Is the world really the way you think it is? How should we define Freedom of Speech? Do you know how science works? Is your mind different from your body? Can you define art? For the fourth edition, Warburton has added new sections to several chapters, revised others and brought the further reading sections up to date. If you've ever asked what is philosophy, or whether the world is really the way you think it is, then this is the book for you.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14829260-the-oxford-handbook-of-thinking-and-reasoning
by Keith J. Holyoak (Editor), Robert G. Morrison (Editor)
4.08 · Rating details · 12 ratings
Thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have over the past century emerged as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Formerly seen as too complicated and amorphous to be included in early textbooks on the science of cognition, the study of thinking and reasoning has since taken off, brancing off in a distinct direction from the field from which it originated.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is a comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning.
Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading.
Chapters include introductions to foundational issues and methods of study in the field, as well as treatment of specific types of thinking and reasoning and their application in a broad range of fields including business, education, law, medicine, music, and science.
The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, education, and linguistics.
Feminist Epistemologies
(Thinking Gender) by Linda Martín Alcoff, Elizabeth Potter 4.14 · Rating details · 43 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477960.Feminist_Epistemologies
Noticed this review by an evangelical:
"I have found this an immensely suggestive book, collecting as it does essays from both prominent and rising figures in feminist philosophy of knowledge--albeit from about two decades ago. I am struck by how little impact feminist thought, even of this high and generally temperate quality, has had on evangelical theology, to the shame of my guild."
-John
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely 3.94 · Rating details · 13,620 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13426114-the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty
The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves.
Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty?
Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat.
From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty.
Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis.
But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not.
For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards.
But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (Goodreads Author)
4.27 · Rating details · 59,893 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
What Is the Name of This Book?
by Raymond M. Smullyan
4.24 · Rating details · 757 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/493576.What_Is_the_Name_of_This_Book_
If you're intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes, these 200 mind-bending logic puzzles, riddles, and diversions will thrill you with challenges to your powers of reason and common sense. Raymond M. Smullyan — a celebrated mathematician, logician, magician, and author — presents a logical labyrinth of more than 200 increasingly complex problems. The puzzles delve into Gödel’s undecidability theorem and other examples of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Detailed solutions follow each puzzle
The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
by Eugenia Cheng 3.55 · Rating details · 740 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38400400-the-art-of-logic-in-an-illogical-world
How both logical and emotional reasoning can help us live better in our post-truth world
In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can't be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic--for example, emotion--is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.
How to Think about Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age
by Theodore Schick Jr. Lewis Vaughn, Martin Gardner (Foreword)
4.00 · Rating details · 530 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41756.How_to_Think_about_Weird_Things
This text serves well as a supplemental text in:

• critical thinking
• logic
• introduction to philosophy
• philosophy of science
• epistemology
• metaphysics
• introduction to psychology
• anomalistic psychology
• perception and cognition

as well as any introductory science course.
It has been used in all of the courses mentioned above as well as introductory biology, introductory physics, and introductory chemistry courses. It could also serve as a main text for courses in evaluation of the paranormal, philosophical implications of the paranormal, occult beliefs, and pseudoscience.
Popular Statistics
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
by Charles Wheelan 3.94 · Rating details · 10,367 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17986418-naked-statistics
Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called “sexy.” From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more. For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.
And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't by Nate Silver
3.98 · Rating details · 43,804 ratings · 3,049 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13588394-the-signal-and-the-noise
One of Wall Street Journal's Best Ten Works of Nonfiction in 2012
New York Times Bestseller
"Not so different in spirit from the way public intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith once shaped discussions of economic policy and public figures like Walter Cronkite helped sway opinion on the Vietnam War…could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade." -New York Times Book Review
"Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of a New Machine for the 21st century." -Rachel Maddow, author of Drift
"A serious treatise about the craft of prediction-without academic mathematics-cheerily aimed at lay readers. Silver's coverage is polymathic, ranging from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism." -New York Review of Books
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair's breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger-all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.com.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the "prediction paradox": The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.
In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good-or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary-and dangerous-science.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.
With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver's insights are an essential read.
Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way: Understanding Statistics and Probability with Star Wars, Lego, and Rubber Ducks
by Will Kurt 4.20 · Rating details · 126 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41392893-bayesian-statistics-the-fun-way
Fun guide to learning Bayesian statistics and probability through unusual and illustrative examples.
Probability and statistics are increasingly important in a huge range of professions. But many people use data in ways they don't even understand, meaning they aren't getting the most from it. Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way will change that.
This book will give you a complete understanding of Bayesian statistics through simple explanations and un-boring examples. Find out the probability of UFOs landing in your garden, how likely Han Solo is to survive a flight through an asteroid shower, how to win an argument about conspiracy theories, and whether a burglary really was a burglary, to name a few examples.
By using these off-the-beaten-track examples, the author actually makes learning statistics fun. And you'll learn real skills, like how to:

• How to measure your own level of uncertainty in a conclusion or belief
• Calculate Bayes theorem and understand what it's useful for
• Find the posterior, likelihood, and prior to check the accuracy of your conclusions
• Calculate distributions to see the range of your data
• Compare hypotheses and draw reliable conclusions from them

Next time you find yourself with a sheaf of survey results and no idea what to do with them, turn to Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way to get the most value from your data.
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
by Brian Christian (Goodreads Author), Tom Griffiths (Goodreads Author)
4.15 · Rating details · 19,580 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by
A fascinating exploration of how insights from computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind
All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such issues for decades. And the solutions they've found have much to teach us.
In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, acclaimed author Brian Christian and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths show how the algorithms used by computers can also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
by David Deutsch 4.12 · Rating details · 5,026 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10483171-the-beginning-of-infinity
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
In this book David Deutsch argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations. Though this quest is uniquely human, its effectiveness is also a fundamental fact about reality at the most impersonal cosmic level – namely that it conforms to universal laws of nature that are indeed good explanations. This simple relationship between the cosmic and the human is a hint of a central role of people in the cosmic scheme of things.