Emily Masters Truth and Deception 2025

          I have spent the past several days trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with Charles Ponzi. At last, I believe I have developed a working hypothesis. Ponzi, in my admittedly not-even-a-little-bit-professional opinion, did not understand the concept of delayed gratification.            This man worked ten times harder at the concept of getting rich quick than the amount of effort that would have been required to just go to college, get a degree, and start working a respectable job. His turnaround for both sky-high levels of success and crashing, crushing failure were all remarkably fast. He spent less than a year – only around eight months – as an influential financial mind before his own hubris and the fundamentally-unsustainable nature of his scheme collapsed around his ears. That’s the most dramatic example, but Ponzi’s lack of ability to use even a tiny degree of patience and self-control is also eviden...

          The Illuminati was a real organization founded in Bavaria in the 1770s based on the idea of spreading enlightenment, as well as to oppose how much influence the church, particularly in Europe, had over governmental affairs.            Adam Weishaupt founded the organization as an alternative to the Freemasons, because he found them too exclusive and counter to modern ideas of merit and intellect. By the end of 1778, the organization had expanded significantly and drawn twenty-seven recruits. However, they reached a major decline in the 1780s in which they grasped for more power than was perhaps wise. Bavaria attempted to suppress the burgeoning organization, and was by most credible accounts successful.  However, conspiracies regarding the Illuminati have spread significantly to believe that they control the world. Many organizations concurrently claim to be the true descendents of the original Bavarian Il...