So now we have a certified Serologic testing of Red Cross US blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies, and that battery of testing shows widespread presence of SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies in donations made between December 2019-January 2020

New! @DOJ_EOIR is *finally* moving forward with its long-planned deployment of electronic filing at the immigration courts, through a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that may hopefully bring the agency into the 21st century.

Digging into it now.

https://t.co/f1itGIMseK

In the new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, EOIR is proposing to expand its e-filing pilot program (ECAS) to all immigration courts nationwide.

ECAS post-dates my time in immigration court so I'll defer to others on how well that system has worked so far.

EOIR proposes that all new cases in immigration courts which implement the new e-filing programs would get an "electronic Record of Proceedings" rather than a paper file.

BUT—this would only apply to NEW cases. The current 1.25 million cases would not be converted to electronic.

Once the new electronic filing system is in place at a court, all attorneys (including DHS) will be required to file documents electronically, with limited exceptions allowing judges to accept some documents in open court.

BIA-accredited reps will have to opt-in to e-filing.

Under the proposal, law students and law grads who practice in immigration court would be required to file all documents through their attorney supervisor's account, and additionally mandate for the first time that the supervisor enter an appearance and appear for all hearings.

The truly violent nature of the US neoliberal bipartisan political establishment is revealed in its commitment to funding racist, militarized police forces above funding healthcare & housing. The same ones who scoff at “defund police” also scoff at funding universal healthcare 1/

They put immense energy toward maintaining a veneer of “civility” by wearing high-priced suits, adhering to a certain decorum with one another & engaging in performative governance. But their policies, words & actions reflect the truly violent nature of their character. 2/

These are people who see little distinction between property & human life, particularly the lives of the poor, nonwhite &/or marginalized. It’s not surprising—given that this is the value system of those who established the nation in the first place,... 3/

...that those most comfortable in the modern day establishment would share this same general viewpoint.

These are not individuals who oppose violence in principle but who instead want to monopolize the use of violence in their roles as gov’t officials & the political class. 4/

What ultimately made the Trump era disruptive to the bipartisan establishment wasn’t racism or violence—the establishment upholds both & he still enjoys support from the majority of Republicans and white voters—but that there was no veneer of civility. 5/

1/ Satoshi’s Vision™ is a silly endeavor, as it doesn’t matter what it was, we are where we are now. However, those pushing the “Bitcoin was first made for payments” narrative insist on cherry-picking sentences from the white paper and forum posts to champion their perspective.

2/ The following tweetstorm is a categorical repudiation of this tired narrative. Bitcoin was purpose-built to first be a Store of Value (SoV), a thread:

3/ How do we determine Satoshi’s intention? We need to look at his ideology, description of functionality/architecture, timing, and audience. Let's start with how Satoshi describes the problem Bitcoin solves. In his first public comms after the whitepaper, in the first paragraph:

4/ “The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.” - Satoshi

5/ He later expands on that Libertarian thought in his other writings:

“[with Bitcoin] we can win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.” — Satoshi Nakamoto

1/ How do we prevent the next grifter-in-chief and stop Congress from enabling criminals in government?

2/ Trump and McConnell are both pushing pardons. Trump wants pardons for his criminal cronies, enablers, and children. McConnell wants pardons for meat packing plants and corporate criminals.

3/ Although past presidents have had family members working for them - Attorney General Bobby Kennedy is a famous example - none have ever had to pardon their family members for criminal activity in the White House. Until Trump.

4/ Trump’s family of grifters have been extracting money from our government and the American people since day one, starting with the inaugural fund scandal. Just since he lost the election. Trump has raised over $170, million: the grift continues!

5/ Trump has sold out our country and our values. He’s given top-secret information to foreign adversaries, embraced dictators and autocrats around the world, and enthusiastically damaged our relationships with allies. It’s almost as if he’s working for a foreign government.

If you don't have firsthand experience with how traditional financial institutions (pensions, corporate treasuries etc) administratively permission the moving of assets, it's hard to understand why it's still very difficult for an institution to own bitcoin. Here's why: /1

2/ I worked at an endowment for 4 years, so I'll use the example I'm most familiar with. The Uchicago endowment had $8b and a staff of ~24 when I was there. The head of the endowment is the CIO, but he can't move money or assets by himself.

3/ when he wants to transfer cash or assets (let's say to invest endowment cash in to a VC fund), it follows a carefully controlled process to avoid theft or malfeasance.

4/ the cash itself sits with a custodian. The endowment must transmit and verify instructions to the custodian in a specific way to authorize its transfer. This is typically something like a document signed by multiple parties at the endowment and a phone confirmation.

5/ This process is not all that secure given the dollar amounts in question, but it works because of the financial infrastructure plumbing. Wire transfers are reversible (short-term), and they effectively use "whitelisting."

Here’s the thing, Trump & his lawyers aren’t really trying to overturn the results of the election. They know that they don’t have a path to victory. These lawsuits were all supposed to fail, all of the fillings were intentionally sloppy and unsustainable, the “proof” is garbage

Guilani’s entire shtick, along with Powell’s utterly fabricated explanations are only meant to distract. The only people convinced by their so called evidence are Trump cultists who want to be fooled. They’re so ignorant that they have no idea just how ignorant they actually are.

The court cases have all failed because they were meant to fail. Because Trump’s people all know their evidence was fabricated and all the witnesses far from credible. Given the sheer level of incompetence Trump’s legal team has shown so far, their failures are intentional.

So, instead of trying to actually overturn the results of the general election, what are these people up to? The answer is two-fold: One. The attempts, rhetoric and ultimate failures are meant to shed doubt on the overall electoral process and to cast doubt on the legitimacy...

Of a Biden/Harris presidential term. Trump and his lawyers have used racially charged accusations to discredit the legitimacy of Black voters. Given that Trump earned votes in the same process that they’re trying to discredit, it’s systematic racism, hypocrisy and cynicism...

Over $600M has been locked up for staking in eth2. Problem is, it will potentially be immobile until 2022

Derivative ETH (DETH) to the rescue 👇

The first step to becoming an ETH 2.0 validator requires sending at least 32 ETH to a deposit contract on Ethereum’s PoW chain. The deposit contract is a one-way street and any ETH staked for ETH 2.0 will be locked until ETH's PoW chain is merged with ETH 2 (likely 2022)

While this indefinite lockup was a security conscious decision made by developers, it imposes a high opportunity cost on stakers.

Validators can earn anywhere from 4-23% yield on their staked ETH, but it’s difficult to say whether or not that capital could be put to more productive use elsewhere; particularly if the current market momentum continues.

Recognizing the illiquidity and opportunity costs stakers face, multiple solutions have emerged that will allow stakers to gain liquidity on their staked ETH.

For example, @liquidstake will allow stakers to borrow USDC against ETH staked through their platform.

One of the big promises of software is composability. You can build rich, powerful experiences out of basic building blocks.

APIs add new things to the toolbox. For example: Treasury, which lets an app/platform store, move, and track a business’

I've been a small business owner and can talk at length about SMB banking, and will later, but let's put on the software developer hat right now.

Lots of software talks about money, keeps records about money, does calculations about money, but can't *touch* money.

This is extremely frustrating when you're building SaaS apps for businesses, because you have total control over your UX right until your app needs to touch money... at which point all data about it lives in a silo you can't access.

So you generally push work to the operator.

For example, suppose you’re writing a business-in-a-box system for electricians, including an invoicing feature.

You need to be able to read bank transactions to reconcile. You probably can't. The owner can. So you ask the owner to do mind-numbing work a computer does better.

It sure would be great if your business customers had bank accounts you could actually introspect and operate on their behalves! You could just get the list of incoming payments and match against the invoices.

There is some software to write but it is not rocket science.

Who goes to work for China’s defense industry? In our latest, @emily_sw1 and I mapped talent flows between 🇨🇳 universities and defense SOEs.

🚨 We found that U.S. tech companies are indirectly aiding China's military.

Thread: (1/10)

2/10 In our report for @CSETGeorgetown, we measured the relationships between elite 🇨🇳 universities and China's defense industry by looking at their Graduate Employment Quality Reports.

Kudos to @alexjoske @ASPI_org for highlighting these sources:

3/10 We looked at disaggregated employment data for 29 of 45 leading universities—China’s Double First Class universities + those administered by MIIT.

Our dataset reflects the career moves of 140,000 Chinese university graduates in 2019.

6,000 took jobs at defense SOEs.

4/10 We confirmed that 🇨🇳 defense giants like CASC, CETC, and CSIC disproportionately recruit from seven universities: the Seven Sons of National Defense (国防七子).

The Seven Sons produced just 16% of graduates in our dataset, but 72% of those who took jobs at defense SOEs.

5/10 Then we started looking into the resources available to Chinese universities, investigating documents from the Ministry of Education.

MOE frequently "asks" foreign companies to help Chinese universities in research & curriculum development—the price of doing business in 🇨🇳.

Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money

education today is in fact a complete waste of individual time and a misallocation of societal resources.
#FeesMustFall
Thread

As has been widely reported, Sec. Pompeo is moving to designate the Houthis in #Yemen as a terrorist organization. I can’t stress enough how damaging that decision would be – but I’m going to try.

THREAD

1/

First, let’s say one thing plainly: the Houthis, like all parties in Yemen, have committed absolutely despicable acts. The victims and survivors of this conflict, including of the Houthis, deserve justice.

2/

But a terrorism designation is not an instrument of justice or accountability. It is a political tool with financial and reputational repercussions for the designee and far-reaching consequences for others, particularly people in poverty

3/

In #Yemen, those consequences depend on the mechanism for designation & licenses (exceptions) that are issued. ANY designation of Houthis will deal a blow to an economy whose collapse has already killed tens or hundreds of thousands

4/

The US government needs to call off plans to designate the Houthis as a group. If they don’t, the best-case scenario is that they’re listed by Treasury, meaning they’d be subject to sanctions

5/

Most think the youngest age it's appropriate to talk about race is age 5 or so, as they are ready to start kindergarten. This is too late.
A short thread.

We have years and years of research on children and their recognition of race. We know that 3-month-old babies already show preferences for faces that reflect specific racial groups.

By 9 months, children begin to categorize faces by perceived race-- this person is White, this person is Black. And by 3 years old, they are already associating Black faces with negative traits.

By age 4, a year before most people think it's appropriate to talk to kids about race, children already link White people with higher status and wealth.

By the time kids enter elementary school, researchers find that race-based discrimination is everywhere. Just as parents are beginning to have conversations about race, their children are already stereotyping others because of their color.

UAMS has taken the extraordinary step of asking leadership across our health system to refrain from traveling over the coming holidays and report to work or be available if needed. Other hospitals in our state are considering similar measures.

(1)

Although the health care system in the state of Arkansas is stressed right now, it is holding up, and additional surge capacity exists. But that capacity is not infinite.  Every day, we become more and more concerned about our ability to manage what lies ahead.

(2)

As health professionals, we are doing all we can. However, one thing is certain. We can’t meet this challenge unless you are with us. As Secretary Jose Romero of the AR Dept. of Health has said, we are in the midst of a “surge within a surge” in this COVID-19 pandemic.

(3)

Right now, the @UAMS_COPH COVID-19 forecasts, which have been strikingly accurate so far, indicate that the density of COVID-19 infections exceeds each of our abilities—yours & mine -- to avoid contact with actively infected individuals in our state...

(4)

...whenever we venture outside our homes. They predict an exponential increase in coronavirus deaths in the next two weeks, more than we saw in the first four months of the pandemic. We may soon exceed the number of beds, ventilators, & most importantly...

(5)

THREAD

1)
“Iranian Arms, Fighters Bolster Maduro Government in Venezuela, U.S. Says”

#Iran has a long history of meddling in #Venezuela with the U.S. in its crosshairs.

And Obama facilitated the mullahs’

2)
Iran has sent arms & dispatched paramilitary operatives to help Maduro remain in power.

“We see a growing Iranian influence in there,” said Adm. Craig Faller, head of the U.S. Southern Command, citing the “alarming & concerning” presence of IRGC Quds Force military personnel.

3)
“We’re concerned about what we see…It’s not just oil shipments, it’s arms shipments as well,” Adm. Craig Faller said. “We saw an uptick in that this year. We are watching the rate of change very carefully.”

More on Iran's malign role in South

4)
“… flotillas are often accompanied by Iranian naval vessels, including an intelligence ship that U.S. officials say has been used to transport missiles to Iranian proxies in the Middle East…”

More on Iran's gaining a dangerous foothold in the

5)
“Iran’s Mahan Air, an airline sanctioned by the U.S. for transporting men, money & arms for the terror-designated IRGC, has also restarted flights between the two

How To Have An Amazing First Meeting (thread).

Learning how to hold amazing first meetings with prospective clients is the single most important "sales" skill a real financial planner can learn.

Here's what I've noticed is important.

Start with getting your head straight.

All the tips and tricks in the world are just hacks without the right mindset.

There are 3 shifts to make:

Mindset 1:

Desperate ---> Confident

No one wants to work with a desperate advisor. The purpose of a great first meeting is for the prospect AND YOU to decide if it's a good fit.

Believe that and it will change the way you think, feel, and act.

Mindset 2:

Salesperson ---> Doctor

I love sales...but the purpose of the first meeting is NOT SALES. It's understanding. You CANNOT write a prescription before you diagnose.

Mindset 3:

Numbers ---> Feelings

You might think you're in the spreadsheet and calculator business, and maybe you are...but you're also in the feelings business.

People need to be heard in the first meeting. Make room for that. Plan on it. Create it.

@sriram_ET Agree. One point on Bihar though- at least the APMC monopoly repeal had already happened in Bihar well before this law passed at the Union level. So it wouldn’t be an issue anyway. But I totally agree with the broader point- this is a protest concentrated only in one state.