BC SOCIETY
Saved by @jay_millerjay

1/ A thread of comments & observations about the death of the cackling vampire Rush Limbaugh.

My first observations in the main thread are here, but this offshoot is needed because there's been so many wise & witty things I've

 2/ First, re: those who in their wayward moral obtuseness feel we "can't speak ill of the dead." I've said that this is what abuse enablers say, but I hear that some religious traditions preach this. Oy.
So there's this: https://t.co/7Ky4RA3nkZ & receipts:
https://t.co/ScpDZ4wEPf
3/ Drucker is another great wit, and this carries the proper mood
https://t.co/kexrXMcotl
4/ There's definitely a Jewish Tradition angle for how to treat evil people who die: the only respect is to justice, right & wrong, and above all compassion's existence necessitates condemning cruelty
https://t.co/c5nNjJkSip
5/ We're coming up on #Purim, and that's all about how to remember evil. There may be a reason, then, that I share the attitude of many other people committed to righting wrongs:
https://t.co/BtM3xCBrpU
&
https://t.co/bOYbGjpbBQ
6/ Well crafted Purim callout:
https://t.co/IOzySYGTyc
7/ More witty responses:
a) https://t.co/k1q6tClH72
b) https://t.co/k4pRzpuZPe
c) https://t.co/X8elhOzApf
8/ A key point: liking Rush condemns you as a person. He embodied cruelty. That is supposed to repel you.
https://t.co/dYi1eMTNsS
& https://t.co/JmlhvZvdiw
9/ That's personally why I can't understand "he was funny" - that's the bleat of people who laugh along with the bully when he crushes vulnerable people.

Really, examine yourself if you laughed along with him. It's not 'humor'

https://t.co/SbbSLhZ3sD
&
https://t.co/FO2yTBpZwV
10/ Instead of 'funny' the key descriptor is 'entertaining' and that is a through-line from Limbaugh to Trump (ym'sh)
https://t.co/sETuC5Qt93
and the connection between the two monsters is important to highlight
https://t.co/k83TxEmhvp
& https://t.co/EaxN91mjTe
11/ I actually didn't know how horrible he was - my parents are liberal and if my friends listened to him, they probably knew not to play it near me.

So here he is mocking AIDS patients. WHAT?!?
https://t.co/9RI0tmrCNi
& https://t.co/fFAqdJ0aLZ
& https://t.co/a0l88y0qHm
12/ Or truly loathsome comments about African-Americans:
https://t.co/i0TNFoFBe6

and here about abortion
https://t.co/LVwsnxIZKv

Seriously, how can someone say they listened to him with fondness? This is inexcusable immoral poison.
13/ And, like Trump (ym'sh) he mocked people with disabilities. In the clip below, he's gesticulating his arms around in order to mock Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson's.

Do people understand that anyone who does that is the worst sort of person?
https://t.co/ZTGpm7hHMo
14/ So who actually defends silence, and implicitly projects they defend all of the above cruelty? People like this guy who I was told to read during the election because of polling knowledge

https://t.co/YiTQEFAw7e
15/ The kicker is this guy from the National Review:
https://t.co/ITh28xuVKX

This is one witty response to that: https://t.co/wqCDE7sqAf
but this is a correct response: https://t.co/3zdhFe6dnV
16/ This will be it for now. We're at a moment when RedHats and other cruel fascists are trying to scurry under the garbage pits to avoid social stigma that they avoided when Trump (ym'sh) commanded the culture. Defending Rush is a sign of grotesque rot.
17/ If needed, I'll add more. But there's just so much filth I can stare at, even if the goal is justice. How much evil do you need to see before concluding it's unacceptable? My limit is very low.

@threadreaderapp please unroll.

@threader_app please compile.

More from Joshua Cypess

Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ OK a few more #Exodus thoughts (because I'm going through a mountain of parsha stuff amidst all my other writing) connected to the #DvarTorah here about the nameless collective-compassionate action of the multitude being the engine of the salvation.


2/ It struck me to link to another conundrum (kinda like the large plague frog in the room): how Pharaoh has his free will removed

So, the nameless action could be a purposeful contrast to the singular powerful individual who normally is history's

3/ IMO God manipulates Pharaoh in order to prevent one person making too much of a difference!

This ties into another larger point I often make about the culpability of the Egyptians & how actually they, not Pharaoh, are the focus of the plagues.

4/ My point contrasts how the Egyptians - who were responsible for being enslavers, for dehumanizing & stealing the labor of Israelites up to the point of joining in the Pharaoh command of infanticide (see

5/ These individuals needed to make their choices without coercion from the autocrat, hence Pharaoh lost 'free will' in his capacity as someone who can move the engines of political power.

He lost free will in order to preserve the free will & action of his subjects
POLITICS
Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ This thread is an attempt to capture some of the week's discussions about Q*non and how to handle the cult followers and the danger they embody

(Side note, I plan to ask the Trumpites I know who're still clinging to their hate, "How's Q?" so they can confront the association)
POLITICS
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Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ I'm just reflecting about how many leaders from the Modern Orthodox community passed away in 2020. The list is an overwhelming pantheon of pivotal, unique, and creative rabbis. I'm stunned by the enormity of the loss.

2/ Right at the end of the year, the 9th of Tevet, we lost Rav Henkin z'l, probably the most prominent & compassionate Dati-Leumi posek we had! It's rare to have a highly superior halakhist with unimpeachable standards who is also wise &

3/ Another Dec. loss: Rav Schwartz z'l of Chicago, another towering posek who took brave & indominable positions that understood modern society while having complete, airtight respect for tradition.

In my work in medical halakha, he was a crucial

4/ In Nov. we lost Rabbi Dr. Sacks z'l! His paramount leadership wasn't in halakha but in theology. He was able to navigate the secular & traditional worlds at the highest level; a rare rabbi whose philosophical work was universally recognized as

5/ In Aug. we lost Rav Steinsaltz z'l! I'm - accurately - running out of superlatives; please understand this thread is not overstated. Steinsaltz is a nearly irreplaceable, unique figure in modern Jewish
SOCIETY
Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ Many people remark that we wouldn't have survived 4 more years of Trump (ym'sh) - and I agree - but this was a 40 year project of destroying the democratic form of US gov., starting with Reagan, and accelerated from Gingrich.

DJT was to almost the final hammer blow.

2/ Both Roosevelts changed the function of the government from preserving the entrenched power to an instrument to help people survive & thrive

TR was a Progressive, tore down the monopolies, established public health etc. When he left the party, the GOP became what it is today

3/ Wilson took up TR's platform (TR helped by splitting the 1912 vote) and when the GOP won in 1920, they actively tried to undermine the entire new project of what America would do for its

4/ Of course 12 years of retrograde regressive GOP destroyed the economy and led to a worldwide depression which aided the rise of totalitarianism around the world. 1920/1929 and 2020 share so many characteristics

But FDR, thank God, was able to pull us from the brink

5/ For the next 40 years FDR's vision of the government being the support and protector of its citizenry culminated in LBJ's Great Society, finally bringing many of the gifts to the oppressed engine that drove America's prosperity: African-Americans
POLITICS
Joshua Cypess
Joshua Cypess
@JoshuaCypess
1/ Another observation the #Literalist fallacy I see about how much Trump (ym'sh) has planned all of the chaos & violence. My overarching point will be that society is structured & that means there's an inherent pattern to effects no matter the 'intelligence' behind the causes

2/ The virus should teach us this. #Literalists claim it was made in a lab because they see a killing-machine that carves its way through society and they must apply individual force & cause to the effectiveness of the biological organism

3/ #Literalists see only the tree, not the forest, so they think every effect stands alone, and thus has individual cause. This is the root fallacy of 'intelligent design'

its what led my ancestors to presume every disease is caused by a demon. Nature becomes personified.

4/ [Note, I'm not a deist, I believe in an active, caring God - the God of the Exodus, not just Genesis - but, ironically, in our hidden-faced age I can only see God's presence in the anomalies of nature (miracles), when it skips a pattern, and not from it's surface efficiency.]

5/ So nature looks intelligent, but that's another irony: we only see overt nature when it works. A dysfunctional organism, an inefficient virus, won't replicate to a degree that we'll experience & perceive it, especially as a culture
TRUMP

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Nuddering
Nuddering
@NudderingNudnik
A long thread on how an obsessive & violent antisemite & Holocaust denier has been embraced by the international “community of the good.”

Sarah Wilkinson has a history of Holocaust denial & anti-Jewish hatred dating back (in documented examples) to around 2015.


She is a self-proclaimed British activist for “Palestinian rights” but is more accurately a far Left neo-Nazi. Her son shares the same characteristics of violence, racism & Holocaust denial.

I first documented Sarah Wilkinson’s Holocaust denial back in July 2016. I believe I was the 1st person to do so.

Since then she has produced a long trail of written hate and abuse. See here for a good summary.


Wilkinson has recently been publicly celebrated by @XRebellionUK over her latest violent action against a Jewish owned business. Despite many people calling XR’s attention to her history, XR have chosen to remain in alliance with this neo-Nazi.

Former Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP is among those who also chose to stand with Wilkinson via a tweet.

But McDonnell is not alone.

Neo-Nazi Sarah Wilkinson is supported and encouraged by thousands of those on the Left who consider themselves “anti-racists”.
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Twitter Data
Twitter Data
@TwitterData
r u abbreving less rn?

Since the switch to 280 characters a year ago, we've seen an increase in people writing out full words and phrases.


All about the please and thank you.

With 280 characters, people are saying 'please' (+54%) and ‘thank you’ (+22%) more.

THANKS!!!!

💬💬💬

280 characters later, there are more ? and replies to Tweets. More room, more conversations!
SOCIETY
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Dr. Simon \u30c4
Dr. Simon ツ
@goddeketal
1/ One year of destroyed economies, social isolation & deep social splits calls for an anniversary ⬇️thread ⬇️ to celebrate the RT-qPCR manuscript by Christian Drosten (@c_drosten) & Victor Corman (@vmcorman), submitted on 21st Jan 2020 to @Eurosurveillanc. #UnbiasedScience


2/ Before this very publication, virologists were neither treated like superstars, nor were they considered icons or half-gods. In 2009, Drosten almost succeeded in installing the false premise virology could supersede holistic medical sciences as discussed in this thread.

3/ Drosten is a virologist. He neither has any background in epidemiology, nor has he ever worked in the civil service. He also doesn’t have a background in public health. Yet he and his colleagues affect our daily lives to the level of whom to meet up or how to flush the toilet.


4/ Before January 2020, Drosten and Corman were common virologists at Charité Berlin, whenever they were not involved in economic implications (https://t.co/UTDwG8U7Du). Other than that, they looked at coronaviruses in dromedary calves in the Middle East or Africa. 😍 #cute


5/ Finally in Jan 2020, the published paper laid the theoretical grounds for the current pandemic, the RT-qPCR mass testing-religion, for which he was awarded his second German Federal Cross of Merit (he received the first one in 2005 for developing the SARS-CoV PCR test).
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BIG DADDY
BIG DADDY
@bigdaddyvinz
If you often procrastinate, open this

Stop being a perfectionist.

The root of procrastination for most people ain't laziness, it's anxiety.

I know your anxiety will tell you the worst case scenario. It’s a damn liar.

If you're a procrastinator, you will find every excuse not to do what u need to do. But here's an advice: DO IT FIRST, I call it reverse procrastination.
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houston policy scrap fighter
houston policy scrap f...
@zoyamiddleton
Since a lot of my fellow Texans are going to apply for aid through @FEMA let’s talk about the agency and some of the barriers disaster survivors encounter and persisting program flaws.

First things first, @FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Here’s a blog I wrote about its history and shortcomings in how the agency is funded:

Many people will be applying for Individual Assistance (IA), but past disasters have shown us that help isn’t evenly distributed and frequently struggles to reach those in deepest need. This unpacks some of the class bias in accepted/rejected apps:

Of course, there are racial dimensions to this as well:

Documentation is seen as helping reduce fraud, but after a disaster many docs are destroyed. People who are denied assistance and appeal are often told to make small changes to the documents they provide or provide updated documentation b/c of how long the aid process takes.
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A long time ago, I was a talent agent. I worked for a woman named Susan Smith, who had her own small boutique agency. She was known for three things:

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I'm gonna do my other star wars thread tomorrow, which will primarily be me yelling at a @RowanKaiser-shaped strawman for calling the First Order and The Resistance "cosplayers who the rest of the galaxy has to deal with"

the deal w/the New Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance is very weird and complex and I actually take issue with how Story Group frames the actual conflict.

pre-TFA stuff is presented as a "cold war" between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire that form the First Order, which 100% makes sense.

But they frame the First Order's attack on the Hosnian system and the subsequent battle that takes place across TFA and TLJ as a full on war when it's very clearly a coup. A war implies at least equal standing, but the First Order completely wrecks shop and takes over the galaxy.

ok never mind I'm fucking doing this now.

The First Order fleet we see in TLJ is *not* the entire fleet of the First Order (I don't even think Starkiller Base was their main base of operations honestly, it couldn't have been considering they were operating out of Wild Space)
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👇Thread.

Published a new essay: The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics – 80 slide deck included!


This was a deck that I created on my (longish) interview process with @a16z. It was a long path, starting with meeting folks at the firm 10 years ago. But the purpose of the deck was to explain how I would use my superpower in an investing context

Here's what I explain in the deck. As investors (whether angel or VC) we're often confronted with an up-and-to-the-right graph. Is it going to go up? Or down?


One solution to forecast these growth curves is the Growth Accounting Framework, where you add up New+Reactivated and subtract churned users. In each time period that gives you the difference in monthly actives.


The problem with this is that it's a lagging metric, not a leading one. We need to go one level deeper and look at the underlying loops that drive these numbers, to understand the quality.
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1) My Stan Lee story happened when I was in 5th grade. I was visiting NYC with my Dad and had read the address for Marvel in the comics I read constantly. I begged my Dad to take me and to his credit he did. And guess what? It was just an office.

2) We were down in the lobby and I was kind of crushed. I don’t know what I expected, The Thing and the Yancy Street Gang to be sitting around smoking cigars? Anyway, my Dad was taking a beat to figure where we were going next and a guy came up to us.

3) He was wearing a white shirt and tie and said to Dad “Is he disappointed because. The Marvel offices were just offices?” My Dad said yes and then the guy who had gray around his temples and a mustache said “hold on a second” and opened one of those office mailboxes with a key.

4) He then handed me a thick stack of EVERY SINGLE MARVEL COMIC COMING OUT THE NEXT MONTH. “Here you go. Keep reading Marvel comics” he said and then walked off. I left in a daze and about 15 minutes later it hit me “Gray around the temples, mustache... That was Stan Lee!”

5) Later when I wrote on the Ant Man movie I told Kevin Feige the story, the year, look of the guy etc and Kevin said “That’s exactly the kind of thing Stan would do and he would have been there then. That was him.” Rest In Peace Stan Lee and thank you for the comics.
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PETER PADUKAM - THE LEGEND OF MADURAI MEENAKSHI TEMPLE AND A BRITISH COLLECTOR.

A British Collector named Rous Peter was appointed as Collector of Madurai from 1812 to 1828.

Though a Christian by faith, he respected all faiths including Hinduism and also honored local practice


Collector Peter was the temple administrator of the Meenakshi Amman Temple and conducted all his duties with sincerity and honesty and respected the religious sentiments of all people.

Collector Rous Peter respected and treated people of all faiths equally and this noble trait

earned him the popular nickname ‘Peter Pandian'

Goddess Meenakshi Amman Temple was situated between Collector Peter's residence and office.

Everyday he used to go to the office by his horse and while crossing the temple, he got down from his horse, removed the hat and his shoes

and crossed the whole path on his foot.

Through this small gesture he expressed his reverence to the Goddess!

One day there was a heavy downpour in Madurai city and River Vaigai was in spate.

Collector was sleeping in his residence and was suddenly disturbed and woken up by

the sound of anklets and he left his bed to find out from where the sound had came.

He saw a small girl wearing pattuvastrams (silk garments) and precious ornaments and addressing him as 'Peter come this way'.
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