402 products in Books, Music, Movies & TV

Two complete volumes in one. Liber Null contains a selection of extremely powerful rituals and exercises for committed occultists. Psychonaut is a manual comprising the theory and practice of magic aimed atthose seeking to perform group magic, or who work as shamanic priests to the community.

Join the technological revolution that’s taking the financial world by storm. Mastering Bitcoin is your guide through the seemingly complex world of bitcoin, providing the knowledge you need to participate in the internet of money. Whether you’re building the next killer app, investing in a startup, or simply curious about the technology, this revised and expanded second edition provides essential detail to get you started. Bitcoin, the first successful decentralized digital currency, is still in its early stages and yet it’s already spawned a multi-billion-dollar global economy open to anyone with the knowledge and passion to participate. Mastering Bitcoin provides the knowledge. You simply supply the passion. The second edition includes: * A broad introduction of bitcoin and its underlying blockchain—ideal for non-technical users, investors, and business executives * An explanation of the technical foundations of bitcoin and cryptographic currencies for developers, engineers, and software and systems architects * Details of the bitcoin decentralized network, peer-to-peer architecture, transaction lifecycle, and security principles * New developments such as Segregated Witness, Payment Channels, and Lightning Network * A deep dive into blockchain applications, including how to combine the building blocks offered by this platform into higher-level applications * User stories, analogies, examples, and code snippets illustrating key technical concepts

Now featuring a new preface by Peter Thiel Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the bestseller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century. The Sovereign Individual details strategies necessary for adapting financially to the next phase of Western civilization. Few observers of the late twentieth century have their fingers so presciently on the pulse of the global political and economic realignment ushering in the new millennium as do James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Their bold prediction of disaster on Wall Street in Blood in the Streets was borne out by Black Tuesday. In their ensuing bestseller, The Great Reckoning, published just weeks before the coup attempt against Gorbachev, they analyzed the pending collapse of the Soviet Union and foretold the civil war in Yugoslavia and other events that have proved to be among the most searing developments of the past few years. In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore the greatest economic and political transition in centuries—the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed "the fourth stage of human society," will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government. This outstanding book will replace false hopes and fictions with new understanding and clarified values.

The shocking story of the legal persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the dangerous implications for the whistleblowers of the future. In July 2010, Wikileaks published Cablegate, one of the biggest leaks in the history of the US military, including evidence for war crimes and torture. In the aftermath Julian Assange, the founder and spokesman of Wikileaks, found himself at the center of a media storm, accused of hacking and later sexual assault. He spent the next seven years in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fearful that he would be extradited to Sweden to face the accusations of assault and then sent to US. In 2019, Assange was handed over to the British police and, on the same day, the U.S. demanded his extradition. They threatened him with up to 175 years in prison for alleged espionage and computer fraud. At this point, Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, started his investigation into how the US and UK governments were working together to ensure a conviction. His findings are explosive, revealing that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that Assange has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer’s compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow. The Trial of Julian Assange is told in three parts: the first explores Nils Melzer’s own story about how he became involved in the case and why Assange’s case falls under his mandate as the Special Rapporteur on Torture. The second section returns to 2010 when Wikileaks released the largest leak in the history of the U.S. military, exposing war crimes and corruption, and Nils makes the case that Swedish authorities manipulated charges against Assange to force his extradition to the US and publicly discredit him. In the third section, the author returns to 2019 and picks up the case as Ecuador kicks Assange out of the embassy and lays out the case as it currently stands, as well as the stakes involved for other potential whistleblowers trying to serve the public interest.

WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 'A gripping and masterful portrait of the brutal court of Mao, based on new research but also written with great narrative verve' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre 'A critical contribution to Chinese history' Wall Street Journal Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked, starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up with and overtake the West in less than fifteen years. It led to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotter's extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

Swarmwise (2013) is a tactical guide to changing the world using cost-efficient swarm methodology. It is a leadership handbook that outlines how the Swedish Pirate Party was able to beat the political competition on less than one percent of their budget, and shows how any cash- and time-strapped executive or manager can use swarm methodologies, whether the goal is business, social, or political. That organization, founded by one man without resources, has now spread to over 70 countries using the same cost-efficient swarm methods. Swarmwise will tell you what it takes to found a swarm of volunteers, to organize and energize it, and to lead it to success. The book doesn’t go into theoretical detail, psychology, or deep research papers. Rather, it is very hands-on leadership advice from pure experience – it covers everything from how you give instructions to new marketing assistants or activists about handing out flyers in the street, up to and including how you communicate with TV stations and organize hundreds of thousands of people in a coherent swarm. Above all, it focuses on the cost-efficiency of the swarm structure, and is a tactical instruction manual for anybody who wants to dropkick their competition completely – no matter whether their game is business, social, or political. A chapter overview of Swarmwise: Chapter 1 - Understanding the Swarm deals with the basic concepts of a swarm organization, and explains why the swarm is open and transparent. It introduces the concept of a cost-efficiency advantage of two orders of magnitude. In Chapter 2 - Launching Your Swarm, we learn that the published project plan must be tangible, credible, inclusive, and epic, and what that means in practice. Chapter 3 - Getting Your Swarm Organized gives tangible advice on how to organize a volunteer organization and why. We look at the dynamics of different group sizes and how to build a culture of trust. One of the more counterintuitive lessons is detailed in Chapter 4 - Control the Vision, but Never the Message. It explains how you need to use volunteers to translate your vision into messages that fit a specific social context, rather than using an one-size-fits-all slogan. A healthy dose of classic project management is found in Chapter 5 - Keep People's Eyes On Target, And Paint It Red Daily. We talk about metrics, choosing the right metrics, and causing self-organization to happen when you publish the right metrics to optimize. In Chapter 6 - Screw Democracy, We're on a Mission from God, we talk about conflict resolution mechanisms and how to optimize the swarm for speed, trust, and scalability. Chapter 7 - Surviving Growth Unlike Anything the MBAs Have Seen details how the swarm can grow by 200% in a week when some events play out, and how to handle such situations. One of the more advanced chapters, Chapter 8 - Using Social Dynamics To Their Potential goes into how we can tap into the long tail of people and effectively cross-use online and offline friendships to grow organically. Seeing how most organizations need to deal with TV, newspapers, and radio, there is also Chapter 9 - Managing Oldmedia that details everything from press release processes to TV crews. Finally, Chapter 10 - Beyond Success shares a bit of experience of what happens when you feel at the top of the world, and what to do then. "Your most valuable asset isn't your employees," I told the executive. "Your most valuable asset is the thousands of people who want to work for you for free, and you don't let them." The book can also be downloaded as a PDF from the author's website at http://falkvinge.net/books/.

Principles of Economics is a university-level textbook offering a comprehensive, engaging, and easy-to-read overview of the field of economics that is valuable to the university student, the general reader, and the professional economist. Saifedean Ammous’ first book, The Bitcoin Standard, is an international best-seller that has been translated into 37 languages. The book garnered praise from respected scholars, successful entrepreneurs, professional athletes, and countless readers worldwide for its engaging and enlightening presentation of sophisticated economic and technical concepts, delivered in a style accessible to the general reader. With its sequel, The Fiat Standard, Ammous established himself as one of the world’s most effective communicators of economic ideas, whose writing resonates with a growing global readership. In Principles of Economics, his most ambitious and elaborate work to date, Ammous offers readers a potent antidote to the modern economics textbook. After two decades of learning and teaching economics at university level, Ammous became aware that most economic textbooks confuse more than they illuminate and most university students tasked with reading them learn very little that is useful and actionable. The culmination of four years' work, this book uses the underappreciated approach of the Austrian school of economics to introduce the principles, methods, and concepts of economics in a readable, engaging, and informative manner. Rather than relying on mathematical analysis of aggregates and arcane theoretical models, the book uses the clear written word to effectively illustrate key economic concepts. The book first presents the Austrian school method and the foundational concepts of value and time. With these foundations laid, the second part of the book explores how humans act individually to achieve their ends under scarcity—in other words, how humans economize. A chapter is dedicated to detailed overviews of labor, property, capital, technology, and energy, and each topic is accompanied by vivid examples explaining its relevance to the reader. The third part of the book examines economizing in the social context, with chapters examining trade, money, the market order, and capitalism—important concepts that are often shrouded by misconceptions in most modern treatments. The fourth part of the book presents the Austrian perspective on monetary economics, laying the groundwork through a detailed discussion of time preference, followed by a discussion of banking and credit, and the business cycle and its monetary origins. The final section of the book explains why respect for property rights in an extended market order is the basis for human civilization, how the market order protects against aggression, and the failures of monopoly provision of defense.

Economics is a science. It primarily examines how decisions are made, which alternatives provide greatest benefits to various stakeholders. Contrary to popular belief, economics is not about money. It has and continues to be about the study of allocation of scarce resources (behaviours). We enforce them through incentives and disincentives (punishments).You don’t need to be an economist or technologist to understand the book. We keep things high-level to digest the information, yet coming from fundamental academic research.The difference between economics (soft science) and physics (hard science) is that economics is continuously evolves because it is a study of human behaviours. As we moved from Web 1 to Web 2 and now Web 3, the economics 101 that we initially understood has changed.While is important to be coding the tech infrastructure of Web 3.0 and having ideas of what Web 3.0 is like, an important aspect is the economics and incentive alignment of Web 3.0 users. It is easy to create a token or currency out of thin air. The token is only valuable when the economics make sense.The aim of this book is to dive into the core foundational principles of economics in Web 3.0. We explore the evolution to economics, the change in principles we learnt in Econs 101, and the new environment that economics will exist in.Then, we explore ways to apply these foundational principles in Web 3.0, with or without a token. We also tap into the general mathematics that defines the economic mechanisms.

Since ancient times we have been taught that we are not alone. We are not alone in our universe, nor are we alone here on our own planet. Aliens, Angels, & Demons takes us on a journey from the secret teachings about Inner Earth and Pre-Adamic civilized humanity to the many extraterrestrial races in outer space, their relationship to us (and to G-d), and our collective human future in dawning “messianic” times.Aliens, Angels & Demons looks at the teachings of the ancients alongside modern understandings, and insights. What we explore and discover is that the legends of old and the legends of today might very well be one and the same. More so, what is considered by many to be merely legend may indeed be something far greater; something very real and very relevant to us all.If you want to know what is out there, you might very well find your answers in here.

When this gem first appeared in 1963, it took the form of a small paperback designed for mass distribution. We've conjured up that spirit again with this special edition of Rothbard's primer on money and government.Innumerable economists, investors, commentators, and authors have learned from this book through the decades. After fifty years, it remains the best book in print on the topic, a real manifesto of sound money.Rothbard boils down the Austrian theory to its essentials. The book also made huge theoretical advances. Rothbard was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed. But just as importantly, it is beautifully written. He tells a thrilling story because he loves the subject so much.The passion that Murray feels for the topic comes through in the prose and transfers to the reader. Readers become excited about the subject, and tell others. Students tell professors. Some, like the great Ron Paul of Texas, have even run for political office after having read it.Rothbard shows precisely how banks create money out of thin air and how the central bank, backed by government power, allows them to get away with it. He shows how exchange rates and interest rates would work in a true free market. When it comes to describing the end of the gold standard, he is not content to describe the big trends. He names names and ferrets out all the interest groups involved.Since Rothbard's death, scholars have worked to assess his legacy, and many of them agree that this little book is one of his most important. Though it has sometimes been inauspiciously packaged and is surprisingly short, its argument took huge strides toward explaining that it is impossible to understand public affairs in our time without understanding money and its destruction.

What Has Government Done to Our Money? details the history of money, from early barter systems, to the gold standard, to present-day systems of paper money. Rothbard explains how money was originally developed, and why gold was chosen as the preferred commodity to use as money. The author also explains how the gold standard makes money a commodity, and how market forces create a stable economy. Rothbard shows that many European governments went bankrupt due to World War I and left the gold standard in order to try to solve their financial issues, which was not the right solution. He also argues that this strategy was partially responsible for World War II and led to economic problems throughout the world.

Humanity is at a crossroads. Never have we had so much potential to do good in the world or literally transform our civilization into transnational gulags. Almost 175 Years have passed since the Communist Manifesto was written and circulated by Marx and Engels. Some statistics point to it being one of the most widely read and distributed works of political science and economics. However, the core ideology has led to hundreds of millions of murders worldwide at the hands of those who fervently 'believed' and 'reformed' society by its decrees. It's about time something was written to help challenge and potentially unwind some of the moral, intellectual, social, and economic damage done since. * Why is it that an idea with a consistent failure rate draws more young people to it than ever before? * What is it about the original book that's so infectious that it continues to influence people around the world almost two centuries later? * What elements of the original text are accurate observations, and what conclusions are drawn ignorant of human psychology and praxeology that lead to devastating consequences? We wrote The UnCommunist Manifesto to answer these questions and much more. We emulated the format and length of the Communist Manifesto, so it is a sharp, concise and lucid read, but the message contained is a reminder for people to reach upward and become better versions of themselves instead of renouncing individual responsibility by classifying themselves into static groups and intellectually validating their desire to bring others down to their level. One goal was to change the axis of the “struggle.” Marx and Engels outlined it as “a struggle between two classes’, whom an individual is arbitrarily assigned to based on their material wealth. We reject this and assert that the real struggle is between individual autonomy, sovereignty, and responsibility versus the collectivist tendency toward group identity politics, rights, entitlements, and co-dependencies. Between cooperation and coercion. It always has been. We hope to see it used as an inspirational text in the years ahead as Individuals seek to maintain autonomy and claim sovereignty, while the collective seeks to coerce. Our longer-term hope is that this text can be a beacon of hope, sanity, and sense in a world being swallowed up by the envy inherently justified by Marxist doctrine. Humanity is at a crossroads. Never have we had so much potential to do good in the world, or literally transform our civilisation into transnational gulags. The siren call of Marxist entropy is stronger than ever. The greatness and sanctity of the individual and the soul must counter it. May this book be not just an answer to the misguided, nihilistic, and often dangerous ideology that is Marxism, but a message of hope, responsibility, and liberty for all. This is the first edition, and we hope that you find deep meaning within it. Aleks Svetski & Mark Moss