More study aids and generous grade boundaries for 2021's exams will be welcomed by many teachers and students. But doesn't address a fundamental problem of the next exam season: equity. Because there's great variation in how different schools have been affected by self-isolation.

Let's take the most recent attendance stats which I still don't think have really registered.

Most recent data- attendance rate across England of 83%

In secondary schools it's 78% (!)

So more than 1 in 5 secondary pupils are off school, largely for Covid related reasons.

But that’s just an average. Some schools’ attendance are at levels where they can’t really function, or certainly provide the quality of education they normally do.

Teachers’ are split between trying to run online lessons and those in schools.

Whole year groups are off.

Some students are in isolation, return to school and within days are in isolation again.

As I’ve reported before, IT provision is still patchy. Lots of reports of kids not doing work at home either because they get of the swing of it or they don’t have the IT resources.

And that’s before we get on to staff isolation, which is also proving a nightmare in many places.

In other words, you have to have everything go right for your education not to be impacted by Covid right now. And that’s affecting some places more than others.

Australian iron ore producer Fortescue (FMG AU) is a great example of how value investing often works in practice. In 2018 the stock was trading for A$4. It was cheap at spot iron ore - a mid single digit FCF multiple, even w historically high discounts on low-grade 58pc Fe (1/n)

The reason it was cheap was investors believed the increased 58pc discount was structural not cyclical, and benchmark iron ore prices of US$60-70/MT were not sustainable - Chinese demand would surely falter, and send prices down to US$40-50/MT (2/n).

I basically agreed with the market. That was also my expectation. But I decided to buy some anyway because I recognized I could be wrong, and if either iron ore prices stayed at US$60/MT or rose; OR 58pc discounts narrowed to historical levels, the stock would prove very cheap.

Meanwhile, the stock was fairly priced on the base case market expectation (mirroring my own), at perhaps a HSD FCF yield. Not many investors make an investment on the basis that they might be wrong, but I did due to (1) the asymmetry; and (2) the future being hard to predict.

So what happened? Unexpectedly, there was a Vale dam failure in Brazil, taking out several 10ms MT of supply. Chinese demand remained strong. 58pc discounts narrowed, and covid further interrupted Brazilian supply, while Chinese have stimulated infra to offset covid headwinds.

The Gameweek 11 Preview {THREAD}

Covering:
⭐️ Ones To Watch
⭐️ Captaincy
⭐️ Match Ups

With help from @fpl_shaker

#FPLCommunity #FPL

1) ⭐️The Watchlist⭐️

First off let's update the watchlist, focusing on players that you should keep an eye on going forward.

Quick reminder of last week's additions:

DEF: Cancelo - A bit punty since he is not nailed. Now it seems like he's playing midweek UCL games while Mendy plays the PL ones

MID: Jota - Looked good once again, bargain!

FWD: Vardy - Should be good going forward

DF: Lamptey (£4.8m) - Brighton started the season looking like one of the worst defences in the league, but seemed to have figured things out somewhat, only conceding 6 goals in their last 6 games which included tough tests against Spurs and Liverpool.

Facing four favourable fixtures in their next 5, Lamptey could have a baseline of clean sheets to support his penchant for attacking returns.

One like = one* interesting book pairing

* with an option to give up any time after 100 tweets

(Not formally part of @threadapalooza, just a warm up exercise / fodder for if I do give in to the imp of the perverse and do a 100 threads thread.)

1. "Ritual and its Consequences" with "Games: Agency as Art".

Both detailed analyses of social technologies (rituals and games) and how people engage with them by essentially suspending the normal complexities of the world within a structure. Would reward detailed comparison.

2. "The Collected Schizophrenias" with Ratcliffe's "Feelings of Being"

Autobiography of someone with schizophrenia paired with a detailed phenomenological analysis of what it's like to be schizophrenic. The latter would be an interesting lens to read the former through.

(<)3. "All About Love" by bell hooks and "About Love" by Josef Pieper.

The reason for the pairing is fairly obvious, but each of these has had significant and distinct impacts on my understanding of love.

(Both are fairly religious and/or spiritual)

My Phone Was Spying on Me, so I Tracked Down the Surveillants

THREAD on the location data industry and how European personal data ended up at a U.S. government contractor.

There are 160 apps on my phone. What they’re actually doing, I don’t know. So I decided to figure it out by using the power of the GDPR - or the more lame name of subject access requests (SAR).

Long story short – I got a lot of data on my movements. Actually more than 75.000 data points on my precise location.

Home and work:

How: I designed an experiment where I installed a lot of apps on an Android phone. I then consented to sharing my location data. Then I turned the tables: By using SARs I stitch together the data flows from me to different companies. (Better graphics in article.)

The app Funny Weather appeared in the metadata provided by Venntel and Gravy Analytics. The data might have been shared through Predicio, but the company did not respond to any requests for an interview.

"Red wall voters will not forgive Boris Johnson if he sells out to get a trade deal with Brussels, polls show"

It's in The Sun. Harry Cole wrote it...

So let's dig a

The poll was done by @SavantaComRes and the PDF of the results is here:

P. 57
If this 'no deal' scenario occurs, to what extent would you be
more or less likely to vote Conservative at the next General Election?

+ likely, total: 20%
no difference: 41%
- likely, total: 32%

P. 59

I don't actually know what these questions mean

"The UK establishes a new relationship with the EU that is based on EU law" What *is* that?

"The UK maintains political alignment with the EU after the Brexit Transition Period, such as a common foreign and security policy" What is political alignment? And does CFSP work?

"The UK cannot pass its own laws and ensure its courts enforce them" Oh come on.

Helen Webberley live on Facebook at the moment.

She is very clear that the medical team behind GenderGP will continue to prescribe puberty blockers to existing and new patients under 16, because the organisation's consent process is "robust".

Apparently, the Tavistock may have given poor evidence on purpose.

She rightfully pulls the Tavi up on their extremely poor data management and lack of research.

Interestingly, the lack of evidence does not seem to concern Helen Webberley (other than the outcome of this court case).

But she says that the treatment "definitely saves lives".

Again, she is (rightly) pulling the Tavi up on not publishing the evidence from their own study. But immediately going on to say that lives are saved, patients on PBs are happy etc.

Why was Mermaids not involved? Arrogance by the Tavi?

Webberley saying the GIDS website should link to Mermaids.

@Transgendertrd advice is "awful" and "transphobic", but they spoke very eloquently in court 🙄

Kicking off the afternoon session of the #RewildingSymposium is @JCSvenning talking about 'restoring the role of megafauna in European ecosystems'

He begins by highlighting that current megafauna is unusually poor. Last at this level >30 million years ago. Historically, super diverse megafauna was the norm.

He points out that most current species are 100,000 to >1m years old. Meaning they have a complex evolutionary background with the landscape and complex ecological characteristics

The presence of megafauna promotes biodiversity and provide crucial ecosystem services and trophic effects through, predation, seed dispersal, grazing, browsing, carbon diversification and non-trophic disturbance. Promoting heterogeneity both vegetation and abiotic

The absence of large herbivores is also threatening species depended on open and semi open habitats in Europe. Including species which are specifically adapted to megafauna effects. Europe has a far lower levels of herbivore biomass compared to what would be considered normal

3 December 2020 #MAGAanalysis #RedoTheElection

When You Catch A Thief

The sleeping giant of America sleeps no more. We have awakened. We're nothing more than the same Common Sense Americans we were in 1776. We're feisty. Independent and self-sufficient. Hard working.

1/ To all who answered my question ab the college spread run game, I'd argue that RichRod & Urban were the first devotees & developers to have major success with it. RichRod started at wvu in 2001 & Urb at BG also in 2001. It was Urb's unbeaten 2004 Utah team that hit bigtime.

2/ In an interview I heard that season, Urban noted that so much of what they were doing was based on Tom Osborne's offense using inside & outside zone principles, but just from the shotgun. That's how the game almost always evolves-someone borrows something and tweaks it...

3/ the evolution of the "zone read" goes something like this: 1) teams needed a way to control the cutback defender on IZ run plays, 2) the naked bootleg was the first constraint play off IZ, 3) then came "orbit motion". Both of these actions created conflict for backside DE...

4/ SG teams used IZ as a base run play so they also used the naked and orbit actions. The legend goes that one day in pract a RichRod QB accidentally "read" the BSDE rather than just handing the ball off on an IZ play. They started tinkering with that and found that it worked...

5/ this solved the major shortcoming of the naked and orbit actions--both those things were "guesses". If you called naked, and the bsde didnt squeeze the cutback, your qb could get a face full of hard plastic and metal. By reading him from the SG, this problem was solved...

When billionaire Femi Otedola in a telephone interview, was asked by the radio presenter, "Sir what can you remember made you a happiest man in life?" Femi said: "I have gone through four stages of happiness in life and finally I understood #RightMorals

the meaning of true happiness."
The first stage was to accumulate wealth and means. But at this stage I did not get the happiness I wanted. Then came the second stage of collecting valuables and items. But I realized that the effect of this thing

is also temporary and the lustre of valuable things does not last long. Then came the third stage of getting big projects. That was when I was holding 95% of diesel supply in Nigeria and Africa. I was also the largest vessel owner in Africa and Asia. #RightMorals

But even here I did not get the happiness I had imagined. The fourth stage was the time a friend of mine asked me to buy wheelchair for some disabled children. Just about 200 kids. At the friend's request, I immediately bought the wheelchairs.

But the friend insisted that I go with him and hand over the wheelchairs to the children. I got ready and went with him. There I gave these wheel chairs to these children with my own hands. I saw the strange glow of happiness on the faces of these children.

1-Every prof and teacher I know is having a really hard time at end of term. Everyone is overwhelmed. So are our students. So are university staff and administrators (hard to believe, right?) Everyone is working night and day, feeling inefficient, overwhelmed...

2-One way to address this, for those still having classes post-Thanksgiving, is like a friend (everyone's anonymous in this thread: they can out themselves!) who told students, if they wished, they could end their term w all the work they'd done pre-Thanskgiving and be done.

3-Another friend announced post Thanksgiving that the final exam would be "open everything" and they could work together if they wishes as long as they also submitted a signed "study/crib sheet" along w the final. They warned working together might hurt them because it slows.

4-Another friend--genius scholar and prof at an Ivy--had a "PJ day" where they came to class in flannel pjs and students did to and they played them a thank you song for their resilience and care on the guitar (their Covid hobby is learning to play guitar).

5-Another friend called off a week of class and held "open collective off hours" in those slots where anyone could ask and talk about anything--the most responsive week they've had all term and everyone learned far more than usual and it nourished them all.

I've been doing more study on the constant critic(s) that every church leader deals with. Its amazing how a steady group of 2-5 critics can really tax a leader's health and impact them way beyond their numbers. ie, more than 3 feels like 'legion' to a leader.

1/

All vocations face criticism of course.

I wonder if church criticism is unique because:

a) church leaders tend to conflate personal identity and church health more than most.

b) critics falsely think they know about leading a church because they attend a church.

2/

For example, doctors and teachers face criticism. People come into a Doc with diagnosis from Internet etc. But I wonder if attending and serving in a church makes someone more confident that they know when they really don't know.

3/

I've often marveled, and been hurt by how strongly someone has an opinion about something they've had zero training in. They are oblivious to how broad a church is - they think everyone thinks the same.

4/

One reason they think this is because their phantom mob is usually made up of like minded people. A handful of passionate people agreeing, so they say, 'everyone thinks' but actually it is less than 1% of the church.

5/

I really enjoy those posts where people have so much to say that they need multiple tweets.

1/9

I think they're called threads.

2/9

This is kinda like one of those threads.

3/9

But I don't have a story to tell or anything interesting to actually share

4/9

I've now also worked out if you click the plus button below, you can keep adding to the thread

5/9

Farmer Protests VS 370Abrogation.

Farmers from Panjab( Sikhs) are protesting against New Farm laws & see how politicians,Celebrities &everyone from Panjab are supporting &Standing behind them .Everyone is trying in his/her own capacity whatever he/she can done to help farmers.+

Union Minister(Harismat Kaur) resigned from cabinet in protest against farm laws.
Former CM of Panjab( Prakash Badal) returned his Padma Vibhushan Award in protest.
SAD has withdrawn from NDA alliance & Panjab Assembly has passed resolution against New farm laws.++

What my whole point is "See How they are fighting against these laws United & are getting support from every single person within & outside Panjab.++

370 Abrogation
Modi Abrogated 370 in JK & locked up people of Kashmir like animals almost for a year. Modi turned Kashmir into a prison for a year & no one was there for Kashmiris to raise their voice. Not even a single MP from Kashmir has resigned in protest so far. ++

No politician from Kashmir has even tried to hit on streets for protests. In fact during this one year Some politicians(Altaf Bukhari) launched their own political parties for their personal vested interests, some have quitted( Shah Faisal) like cowards. ++

Remember I tweeted early October that attempts would be made to challenge the legality of the Judicial Panels of Inquiry and smack on it, @policeng and its lawyers are doing that.
Should folks be worried?

Please, don't be worried because established case laws are already against the Police. The argument that only the FGN can set up Judicial Panels of Inquiry into SARS/Police brutality is only true, to the extent that it relates to Abuja & FCT. Nowhere else.

The powers to constitute judicial panels of inquiry, which the governors legally exercised, fall within the residual list of the Constitution- and only the states can exercise powers under the Residual List.

FGN has no powers overs matters in the residual list- See AG Fed v AG Lagos (2010).
The question of whether the FGN can set up Judicial Panel of Inquiry within the purview of the Tribunal of Inquiry Act 2004 was long settled by the Supreme Court in Fawehinmi v Babaginda

For me it makes no difference that the Judicial Panels of states are inquiring into SARS or police brutality. The fact is that the inquiries are into the actions of police officers in states and not how @policeng is "organised abd administered" under S.214(2)(a) CFRN 1999

How important are historians in achieving historical reconciliation? [THREAD] #History #historian #politics

1. Reparations agreements are a prominent and relevant example of historians being at the forefront of historical reconciliation. As they often involve monetary gains for one party from the other over memory and victimization.

2. Historians are at the forefront of presenting the state with so-called historical 'ammo' to legitimize the request of reparations. This could however be seen as a source of increased tensions, and could lead to an increase of nationalism and hatred due to negative memories.

3. However, a more definitively positive aspect of historical conciliation can also increasingly be seen due to evidence newly uncovered by historians.

4. For instance, as a result of the publishing of Jan Gross’s Neighbors in 2001, Polish president Kwasniewski issued an apology for the murder of 1,600 Jews who were killed by
their neighbors 60 years earlier in Jedwabne.

Alright, here's some content you didn't sign up for.

Here's are the top 20 EDM tracks of 2020. (as judged by me, an old white dude who drives a minivan)

#20 - Chameleon - Mako, Lliam Taylor, Latroit

Smooth and seductive vocals with some impressive surprises. Head nodding beats. This track is at home in the club or at the beach.