As my Christmas present to you all, here is a list of my top-10 metal tunes of 2020, in no particular order. It's a mixed bag of genres and styles, but they're all bangers!

First up, The Terror Begins by Make Them Die Slowly. Horror-movie inspired grind/black/industrial from Mick Kenney and Duncan Wilkins.

Next, Northern Irish thrashers @gamabomb, with Lords of the Hellfire Club from their excellent new album Sea Savage.

Now for something a bit off the beaten track: brilliant New York black metal experimentalists @imperialnyc's City

Time for something a bit more accessible: this year's best symphonic metal from Sweden's @eleine. Here's the title track from the fantastic 'Dancing in Hell' album.

So much has happened this year – the global pandemic, of course, but also political chaos, freak weather and wildfires, and protests everywhere.

So how do we capture 2020? @ReutersGraphics stitched together clippings from the longest year 👇 https://t.co/83ZgiqzV0W 1/13

January
🦠 The world welcomed 2020 as wildfires and protests clouded celebrations. Cities close to Wuhan saw a rise in coronavirus cases 2/13

February
The first coronavirus-related death occurred outside China.

⚽ One of the last soccer matches was played with fans in the stadium. One month later, Valencia said 35% of the squad tested positive for the virus 3/13

March
A deluge of death in northern Italy; Poor Indians flee to villages

’Some people will die of the virus. The rest of us will die of hunger,’ said Sanjay Sharma, a Mumbai taxi driver 4/13

April
China’s Wuhan came out of lockdown; A bread making frenzy swept the UK 🍞

Spain lifted its lockdown for children. Below, Paolo drew himself in a farm.
He said he missed climbing, friends and his grandparents the most 5/13

*** THREAD ***

Accuracy or Entertainment, Which Do You Prefer?

The Importance of Listening to Experts

1/

As you no doubt already know, Twitter is a vast universe of unbridled lunacy.

The most obnoxious and incorrect voices are often amplified, while the truth is drowned out, stifled, then beaten to death through groupthink, and mass pile-ons.

2/

I am not an expert in Active Measures, Information Warfare, Geopolitics or Counterintelligence.

I'm a student, loosely.

But there ARE experts and I have always tried to point my followers to them.

3/

Today, I have an opportunity to show you the difference between an actual intelligence expert with years of experience and a Twitter personality with zero intelligence creds, so that you may see the difference.

Let's compare...

4/

This take comes from a foreigner, who is not even an American citizen, with zero intelligence credentials.

I daresay it IS entertaining.

But, alas, it isn't accurate, which I will soon show

I am just one woman in Texas writing this to you @realDonaldTrump , not expecting that you will ever read this, but in honor of my family who fought in the Revolutionary war and every war America has fought ever since, I must cry out for freedom. 1/9

My family came to America to be free. We crossed the country in covered wagons, settled in inhospitable swamps and worked the land all the live long day until we could feed ourselves and our communities. Every drop of sweat & blood was worth shedding for because we were free. 2/9

We were a people free to worship our God when, where & how we wanted. We married in our churches. Buried our loved ones on our church grounds. We made choices for the betterment of our people & communities so we could all thrive. Life was hard but so good because we were free 3/9

We said goodbye to loved ones going to war. We lost loved ones on the battlefield who would gladly do it all over again if they had more than one life to give for America. We grieved as communities in tragedies and we laughed and danced during times of joy. We were free. 4/9

Then, the darkness came. Politicians we elected began to betray us in favor of foreign interests and big businesses who helped them grow fat and happy. Now we know their methods of obtaining and keeping power. 5/9

Why The West Want Sub-Sahara Africa To Stay Poor.

Fellow Africans, Howard Nicholas is not your enemy, he's actually your friend.
He's bold enough to tell you to stop being #SlavesByChoice

Your NGOs, CSOs, Journalists in collaboration with @cnni etc are used to destabilize YOU!

Your raw materials in #Nigeria, #Congo, #Cameroon, #Ghana, #Rwanda etc is the simple target.

They send funds to those among you running NGOs/CSOs, make those ones #SlavesByChoice so as to keep you all ENSLAVED.

Your underdevelopment is caused by "colonization", OK.
By now you are being recolonized in a new way. This time around, it is #SlavesByChoice. Some Nigerians talking about Ghana & applauding them didn't even know that Ghana has lost of of their villages to the Western Country.

When you see your "big mummies" selling the dummy of the Western world via IMF & the likes, when you see @cnni making them their beloved Heck-Horrormist to talk down Nigeria & paint the Govt bad, the purpose is simple. MISLEAD the people & make them #SlavesByChoice

Industrialization is your solution AFRICA.
"The lazy do not roast any game, but the diligent feed on the riches of the hunt."..Pro 12:27

Stop EXPORTING your raw materials only to IMPORT finished products. This is why they love to DICTATE who win your elections. #SlavesByTrade

Sam Walton: Made in America
[Autobiography of Wal-Mart's Founder]

- Creating Value for customers
- Being obsessed with Cost Control
- Taking care of employees
- Learning and Innovating
- Why stores Failed
- Sam’s Rules for Building a Business(Must Read)

A Thread 🧵👇

2/ Wal-Mart today is a $400B market-cap company with over $500B in revenues, $15B of net profits, and over $25B in operating cash flows. It also owns a majority stake in Flipkart, and thereby in Myntra and PhonePe.

3/ Develop Communication/People’s skill: “I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all, speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you.”

4/ Be obsessed with providing value to the customers, save them money by tightly controlling costs: On business trips, Sam Walton and his colleagues used to stay in one or two rooms, once 8 of them shared one room. Expenses were capped at 1% of the purchases.

5/ “We exist to provide value to our customers, which means that in addition to quality and service, we have to save them money. Every time Walmart spends one dollar foolishly, it comes right out of our customer’s pockets."

(Thread) Why do I own individual stocks?

Thesis:

1. The digitalization of our world is 10% complete.
2. This megatrend will continue for at least another decade.
3. If you enjoy spending your free time on individual stocks, then the potential for outsized returns is possible.

What is my approach?

There are two parts to my portfolio.

- 40% in Vanguard All-World ETF. This is on autopilot w/ regular contributions.
- 60% in what I consider to be high growth stocks

I keep a balance by adding cash. No shuffling around unless it gets too out of whack.

The latter is the interesting part.

I invest in companies that can

1. successfully disrupt an industry with new business models $TTD $SQ $PTON $TDOC

2. further enable the digital transformation with their services and infrastructure $ZS $HUBS $TWLO $CRWD

I intend to hold my shares indefinitely and allow my investments to compound over time.

I don’t believe that it is possible to time the market. Markets go up and down. I hold on knowing that quality businesses tend to bounce back.

The list of reasons to sell is always long.

If you have full conviction in your holdings, then no single piece of “infotainment” should make you change your mind.

Ignore it + people who make predictions about the economy.

Men are consistently told to step it up, to get their money up & to be better men & that we're trash & terrible leaders & abusers & misogynistic while most of us are just trying to find our way in life. No man under 30 has it figured out, those of us who seem like we do...

Are just master salesman & are tactically aware enough to portray a wholesome image while meeting our own ends. When we finally do reach the age where we are financially stable, sound leaders & are mature, well polished & successful...

We are told to date/marry the "age appropriate" women that were giving many of us shit as we were finding our feet. EVERY MAN KNOWS what it takes to be successful with women, yet no women give a fuck about what it takes to be successful with a man.

So this thread is to say to men, I know how many of you look through my content & don't engage, I know you're frustrated but never voice it out of fear of being shamed. But we men need to make our voices heard. Many women these days are unfeminine, confrontational, headaches...

Liabilities & downright unpleasant, but anytime we call this out we're branded misogynists... They call us out tons but are applauded... We are taught from a young age that we should take everything a woman gives you & never retaliate... Im here to say FUCK THAT.

These are the tools you will need for machine learning in Python.

🧵👇

Anaconda

When you work in python, you'll be working with several frameworks and many of them work only on specific versions of python.

(2 / 13)

Now imagine downloading a new version of python and then installing it for every framework you want to work with 😬.

Meet Anaconda which allows you to run several versions of python. It comes pre-installed with several data science and machine learning frameworks.

(3 / 13)

Pip-env is also a way of maintaining several versions of Python and comes pre installed with Python.
You can use pip env or Anaconda, whichever works for you.

(4 / 13)

Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter notebooks is an IDE just like VS code or Sublime. The special thing about jupyter is that you can parts of code in mini code editors called cells. This is great for prototyping and testing code.

(5 / 13)

The battle all $XRP holders were waiting for. I’m sure lots of holders will be debating whether to sell off this news... a few

and @bgarlinghouse will have anticipated this decision by @SEC_News for years, in which time they’ve built out an extremely experienced exec team who are poised and ready for this legal battle to commence.

has led a great PR narrative over the last year, pressing hard for reg clarity in the US via media and threatening to up sticks and move @Ripple overseas. Have the SEC played into his plan to force regulatory clarity that may not have otherwise came quick enough?

has shareholders who will expect certain growth in certain timeframes. Has Brad dangled the right carrot to get their attention by talking about leaving the US? Will this suit get legal clarity for $XRP quicker than waiting for industry wide clarity?

If I can work that out, I’m sure he can.

This isn’t just a small startup, it’s a global company with extremely reputable board members, partners and investors, who will also add pressure to the SEC’s case. Take @yoshitaka_kitao in Japan for example.

Voice To Skull / Voice Of God
War Tech Goes Mainstream

Futuristic device from Israeli puts music in your head, without headphones

Sound beaming’ 3-D technology from Noveto Systems tracks ear and sends it audio using ultrasonic waves, personal

#JusticeFootballLeague #JFL #EyeDropMedia
#JusticeIsComing #Trump #DarkToLight #NFL
A sporting analogy. RedPill Camouflage? #RedPilled

💥💥💥30 TEAMS - THE JUSTICE LEAGUE💥💥

👇👇👇👇 SEE TEAMS BELOW VIDEO👇👇👇👇

There have been so many White folks who’ve asked me how they can be allies in the fight for racial justice. In the words of @BLoveSoulPower, we need co-conspirators and comrades willing to put something on the line and take risks. Use your Whiteness to advocate for BIPOC lives...

White parents in @ChiPubSchools , you have an opportunity to leverage your Whiteness by refusing to send your children to school without a safe, well-researched, and realistic plan that is created with @CTULocal1, school staff, parents and youth

You may feel that your children’s schools ARE safe. And that may be true. Because White students, while only 10% of the student body, more likely attend selective enrollment and/or more fully resourced schools in CPS.

But the overwhelming majority of children in CPS do not attend well-resourced schools. They attend schls that lack proper ventilation, hot water, nurses or the classroom space needed for social distancing.

The children who attend these under-resourced schools are overwhelmingly Black and Brown. They come from communities where COVID positivity is dangerously high. And they are the children who are dying disproportionately from this virus.

@JeffLadish I think because the reward structure of being a bio-ethicist rewards saying level-headed sounding, cautious-sounding, conventional wisdom?

Though I'm not sure why that is.

I guess if you want to radically improve the world, you mostly don't go into a field that is about opining on other people's work, you go into something like Engineering and do the work?

I note that Nick Bostrom is what a Bioethicist should be: he thinks hard about tradeoffs and risks, and crystalizes concepts like the Unilateralist's curse and black ball technologies.

But this is starting from a place of "The world could be vastly better. How do we get there?"

I don't know why bioethics doesn't look more like a field of (less smart) Bostroms.

I guess because everyone's disgust reactions are triggered by the actually good proposals, and in order to make those proposals the consensus of the field a lot of people have to bite the bullet and stick their neck out saying "I know this sounds crazy / absurd / vaguely evil...

What we have been waiting for is here and I want to explain what tomorrow will bring to the world. First of all remember that the earth (physical plane) stays the same. It doesn't change so tomorrow the world is not going to be any different than it is now except the fact that

Why the Flynn Pardon Matters https://t.co/RQ6Wclo7Z6 @benjaminwittes via @lawfareblog

Trump has long loved the pardon power, though not because of the good a president can do with it. He loves it because of the unchecked power it offers to make statements, make constituencies happy, give out goodies to friends and anger enemies.

As Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic has written, the pardon power works the way Trump wishes the entire presidency works.

For this reason, the Flynn pardon is likely to be the first trickle of what will ultimately be a flood of postelection clemencies—a flood composed mostly of controversial actions designed to energize core Trump supporters and irritate others.

Look for this flood to include a number of different categories of pardon:

The “own the libs” pardons. These serve chiefly to anger Trump’s political opponents by rewarding someone who both flatters him and represents some value or set of values offensive to liberal opinion.

1/ In September 1993, then-Microsoft exec Nathan Myhrvold wrote his landmark memo "Road Kill on the Information Highway", laying out a dozen-ish predictions on the rise of the internet

27 years later, I think it's a super interesting case study. Let's evaluate the predictions -

2/ PREDICTION #1: The rise of a surveillance society - police bodycams, CCTV, 24/7 personal recording, and deepfakes

GRADE: A-

Pretty close!

3/ PREDICTION #2: Telecommuting, an end to the "tyranny of geography" and gerrymandering

GRADE: B-

Alas, the electoral college still matters today. The WFH prediction hits closer, but turns out it took two and a half decades + a pandemic to get things going

4/ PREDICTION #3: Telco convergence - phone companies become cable providers and vice versa

GRADE: A-

Honestly this one was a bit of a layup, although it took 15 years longer than anyone expected

5/ PREDICTION #4: The rise of online neo-banks

GRADE: C

Three decades later, and physical banks still exist. Neobanks have a presence in emerging markets, UK, and basically nowhere else. Regulatory inertia: officially a thing