Ok. I’ve organized my thoughts about the revival of Six Days in Fallujah. I want to approach this through the lens of someone who was IN Fallujah during 2004-2005, during some of the worst urban combat US Forces have ever experienced.

Let’s get a few things out of the way: the invasion of Iraq was a war crime. Period. Argue otherwise and I’ll block you. Does that make myself and others who fought war criminals? No, of course not. Did individual soldiers and Marines commit war crimes? Absolutely.

I’m someone who is deeply proud of my service. I tried my hardest to conduct myself as humanely as possible. I’m also someone who was forced to do things I’m not proud of to survive. Taking lives should never be a point of pride.

Iraq was a failure of our own making. Not only did we invade illegally, we did it without a plan. The vast majority of the insurgency were disaffected Iraqi soldiers without a job after we broke apart their military, not religious fanatics.

Yes, groups like AQI showed up to fight, but they came after we handed them a major propaganda victory by showing up in the first place and turning PMCs like Blackwater loose. There was little to no cultural sensitivity training.

10 Lessons I Learned While Working With William O’Neil (Thread)

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1. The importance of trading psychology and emotional/physical well-being

Trading psychology and physical/emotional well-being is probably one of the least discussed, yet most important aspects of becoming a successful trader.

However, the large majority of traders spend little time if any focusing on this aspect of their trading and instead, dedicate their time to methodology, technique, and “special indicators.”

Start by taking good care of your physical and emotional health.

This means getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising, etc.

Next, pick up a couple of books and study trading psychology. Two excellent books on this subject are, “Trading in the Zone,” by Mark Douglas and “The Psychology of Trading,” by Brett Steenbarger

2. The importance of sound rules to avoid emotional decision making.

Having a sound set of rules that are proven to work is essential to success in the stock market. Why is this so important? Two words. Human nature.

1. Ok, so most people have a vague sense of frustration that the last Dem administration didn't do enough on the economy. But it's still just a vague sense. So my org wrote a report showing in detail, industry sector-by-sector, what policymakers did wrong.

2. We also wrote one pager descriptions of every sector. For instance, in media and telecommunications, there were multiple massive mergers (Comcast-NBC, Disney's roll-up, Charter-Time Warner).

3. Consequences were bad. The median weekly compensation of writer-producers on television and online series declined 23 percent between 2014 and 2016 despite record profits in the industry and peak demand for programming.

4. Health care, consolidation was bad. "From 2010 to 2015, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly raised their insulin prices by 168 percent, 169 percent, and 325 percent, respectively; the three are essentially the only manufacturers of insulin in the U.S."


5. Newspapers, same story. Since 2005, America has lost 2,100 newspapers, one fourth of its total, leaving 1,800 communities without any local news coverage whatsoever.

So I asked for Jay Postones of @tesseractband to state PUBLICLY the allegations against me (which led to my a) ban from his #Twitch channel, b) ban from the TesseracT Discord, and c) temporary (allegedly - we'll see, I guess) band from @Rockwithdan's personal Discord server) 1/x

And I have received EXACTLY the square root of bugger ALL of a response. Nothing by email. Nothing by Discord. Nothing HERE. Well alrighty then. Stage Two begins.

The following is the text of an email that I sent, via an intermediary, Jay, early this morning. Enjoy!

"I'm really NOT a bad person. I would hope that, if "actions speak louder than words" then my public, visible-to-ALL actions within the Twitch Music Community over the last, say, six months, would stand testament to that. But obviously not as far as "Glassships" is concerned" 2/x

" And obviously Jay has decided to stand by his mod. On the one hand, that speaks to admirable loyalty by Jay to his team of moderators, but here's the thing - in my months of infesting both Jay's stream and yours with my unspeakable toxicity, I have never ONCE 2/x

"a) seen anyone called "Glassships" in either channel. Not once. I make (well, MADE) a point of speaking with EVEEY mod in EVERY Twitch Music channel that I support (or have supported) - which, by the way, is over one hundred channels." 3/x

Like @ezraklein I was born and raised in OC and educated at a UC. He is right to point to some of CA's problems. But they aren't a sign "progressivism cannot work here". It's a sign corporate/right-wing power hasn't been sufficiently broken.

In the late 1970s an alliance of suburbanites, corporations, and right-wingers rigged state government to make it nearly impossible to use CA's power to meet the full scope of human needs, from housing to schools to jobs.

Over the last 40+ years progressives have had growing success chipping away at that edifice. But it's a struggle. Props 15 and 22 demonstrate the obstacles that remain.

(Rather, the failure of Prop 15.)

Diversity is America's greatest strength 🇺🇸

Diversity is Ireland's greatest strength 🇮🇪

Diversity is Germany's greatest strength 🇩🇪

Diversity is Australia's greatest strength 🇦🇺

Diversity is Belgium's greatest strength 🇧🇪

Republican North Dakota legislators have introduced #SB2333, a bill that prohibits large tech companies from locking their users into a single app store or payment processor.

https://t.co/PgyhgOhFAl

1/

While his has implications for Android and other large tech platforms, its most immediate and far-reaching effects with be on Apple, whose Ios platform uses lock-in to monopolize both apps and payments (and another domain, not mentioned in the bill: repairs).

2/

Predictably, this has thrown Apple into a fury, with Apple's privacy chief @erikn telling the SD legislature that Apple uses its monopoly over the app store to protect its users' privacy and

Neuenschwander makes a good, but incomplete, point. To the extent that Apple has the same interests as its users, it uses its app store monopoly to lock out bad apps (to the best of its ability).

4/

But when Apple's interests diverge from its users' interests, the prohibition on sideloading apps actively harms those users' privacy and security. Think of how Apple caved to Chinese state demands to remove working VPNs from the Ios app store to facilitate mass surveillance.

5/

The recent focus on reaching herd immunity through vaccination may be overblown.

My modeling suggests that it is increasingly unlikely that the US will reach the immunity levels required for theoretical herd immunity in 2021.

https://t.co/7jDgND5vE1

(A 🧵 w/ my thoughts)

This conclusion is based on the following new developments over the past month:

- Remained high levels of vaccine hesitancy
- New variants that may lower vaccine efficacy
- Rollout of the J&J vaccine (efficacy ~70%)
- Delayed arrival of the children vaccine

That said, herd immunity does not have a hard threshold, and being close to herd immunity may be sufficient to prevent large outbreaks.

Our goal should not be to reach "herd immunity", but to reduce COVID-19 deaths & hospitalizations so that life can return to normal.

From my recollection, this was the goal last year, to have a vaccine that would reduce deaths and strain on our healthcare system.

But now the messaging has shifted to "getting at least X% of the population vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity".

I believe this new public health messaging that herd immunity means "X% of people vaccinated" is flawed.

It seems to ignore the fact that:

1) Vaccines do not provide 100% immunity
2) Nor do they stop 100% of transmissions
3) ~30% of population have already been infected

Spectator thread: Among the Scottish parliament’s many crucial roles, there is none more important than its ability to scrutinise government and hold it to account. The same is true of a free press. Both are at their best when they hold power to account on behalf of the public.

But neither can do this essential duty when crucial documents are withheld during important inquiries. The Holyrood inquiry into the Scottish Gov’s handling of the Alex Salmond affair decided last week that it would not publish crucial submissions, including Mr Salmond’s ....

... apparently because it would contravene reporting restrictions rightly introduced to protect the identity of complainants.
We have published a duly redacted version of Alex Salmond’s account on our website.

We felt that an overly-cautious interpretation of the court order by the committee was frustrating the due process of parliamentary inquiry — and the freedom of the press to publish matters of public interest and importance.

We were aware that the court never intended to obstruct parliamentary or public scrutiny; but because of how the committee had interpreted the issue, we today sought clarification from the High Court in Edinburgh.

The importance of T-cell immunity!
A recent study has found that after one dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, patients had a strong T-cell response, and a boosted antibody response after their second dose. This is good news for many reasons so let’s read up.

This study found that people’s antibodies were moderately effective against the original strain after their first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, less effective against the B.1.1.7 variant, and were unable to neutralize the B.1.351 variant. Read what I said, that’s only after ONE dose.

However, they had strong T-cell responses against ALL known variants after the first dose. So why is this important? To recap, T-cells stimulate B-cells to make antibodies. Antibodies are just your first line of defense which is what is initiated when you get a vaccine.

It’s our T-cells that are responsible for long-term immunity. When antibodies diminish after your initial inoculation, your T-cells-will tell your B-cells it’s time to produce more antibodies. As long as your T-cells still recognize this virus and inform your B-cells they need

to produce antibodies, the vaccine is still doing its job. Your antibodies will get built up over and over again. Just FYI your TCRs and your BCRs target different parts of the Coronavirus’ spike protein. Antibodies can prevent infection, your T cell-responses ensure that those

SCOOP: A Philadelphia elementary school forced fifth-grade students to celebrate "black communism" and simulate a Black Power rally to "free Angela Davis" from prison.

I've obtained exclusive whistleblower documents and photographs from the school. Here's the story. 🧵

My (probably) last co-authorship paper from grad school is out!!

The long story short is, any evidence for Planet Nine is gone. It doesn't exist.

This is the most comprehensive study EVER that examines the original clustering argument, led by @kjnapes. Let's get into it!

🧵

First, some background.

In 2014, astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo noted a weird clustering in the orbital elements of the most distant Kuiper Belt Objects they'd found. They hypothesized sorta in passing that a new planet could be responsible.

Enter Batygin & Brown

Mike Brown & Konstantin Batygin originally set out to DISPROVE the new planet hypothesis!

But instead, their simulations suggested a new planet, & even predicted its properties!

The resulting paper set off the biggest planetary debate of the century since Pluto's demotion.

What's the debate?

Well, the argument for the last five years has all centered around the fact that you find objects where you look in the sky.

No surprise there, right?

This problem is complicated though, because the objects we're talking about have some of the most distant and elongated orbits of all the objects in the solar system.

We only find them when they're closest to the Sun, when they're at their brightest.

A thread on employee equity in early stage startups -- what are the compensation norms? What every early employee should ask? Some thoughts on whether the structure is fair.

Read on >>

1) First, there are NO NORMS! Hah. I have literally seen everything from giving early employees no equity to giving employee #1s near co-founder level of shares.

But what is more common than not?

2) In the Silicon Valley, if you're hiring your 1st employee, & you've raised NO $$ & are paying very little (e.g $0-$10k / yr or thereabouts), your first employee is basically a co-founder.

And the equity tranche for employee 1 should be closer to a co-founder level.

3) For ex, a friend of mine gave his employee #1 10% (vesting over 4 yrs of course) of the business. This employee was only getting his housing paid for. And this was 10 yrs ago, so it was during the bust.

4) On the flip side, if you have raised some $$ & are paying employee #1 near mkt rate, typically I see around here ppl get 1-5% (w/ vesting).

Caveat - near mkt rate doesn't mean compared to Google or FB salary rates. I mean compared to "normal big cos"

Last month, the @HouseDemocrats impeached Donald John #Trump. When they did so, they adopted a resolution proclaiming that their impeachment was done in the name of the #HouseofRepresentatives and in the name of, and for, the United States of America.

That formula, explaining that the House impeached someone and did so in the name of the House and in the name of the United States, is common. Yet the assertion is troubling.

Half or more of the country disapproves of the House’s impeachment, and of the Senate’s trial.

But politicians will still claim they are doing it for us.

They aren’t.

And it is particularly urgent that we repudiate the idea that the House’s 2021 #impeachment of #DonaldTrump was in our name.

Why?

Because the @HouseDemocrats and their #HouseManagers have crossed a clearly drawn line that risks the impression that we, the People of the United States, approve of the #prosecutors in a #courtofimpeachment using #falsified #evidence to #inflame #passions and to convict.

Can there be a clearer component of the constitutional right to #DueProcessofLaw than that a conviction obtained on the strength of falsified evidence is no conviction at all. Falsifying evidence is a a crime.

Wait … so … how much worse could the pandemic response and unprecedented death rate get?

How much farther shall our economy crater?

I wonder what it will feel like to get better.

I wonder what it will be like for things to get better after being arguably as bad as they have ever been.

Wait … sooo … were things this bad in 2016?

Wait … things were good? After eight years under a democratic administration?

Huh.

I wonder how all those falsehoods will play after things start to get better.

I wonder how many full fledged COVID deniers will finally encounter this deadly pandemic.

I wonder if red states will continue to suffer needlessly under Trumpian COVID policies.

I wonder what the recovering blue states will look like from those red states.

I wonder how much aid these red states will require from said blue states.

And I wonder what it will feel like to those red state constituents when the aid forced upon them makes things a bit better?