What you need to know about Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Bill.

Crude oil dominates Nigeria’s economy, accounting for around 90% of export earnings. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

The country has the largest oil and gas reserves in sub-Saharan Africa with an estimated 37bn barrels of oil and 188 trillion cubic feet of gas. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Yet for decades, the virtually ungovernable industry has been plagued by poor leadership, eye-watering corruption and environmental degradation. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Value has leached away through opaque licensing deals, unaccountable middlemen, a lack of refining capacity and graft in the government and state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). #NigeriaNeedsPIB

Sabotage and pipeline theft in the oil-rich Niger Delta have ensured that the taxpayer loses out on billions of dollars in annual revenues. #NigeriaNeedsPIB

I think Frank Edwards needs to hire a team to do major work sanitising and building a better digital experience for his music, his digital trail and everything else in between

I say this out of need to the larger lesson to creatives, i'd hate to restrict this to Christians alone

I love Frank Edwards, his songs form a huge part of my morning worship routine. But for the past two weeks, I've been looking for a song that I used to play a lot in my first/second year of uni and couldn't find it until I searched a random part of the lyrics and went as far as..

The 6th page on Google search. Yes, that's how badly I wanted it.

Even when I found the name of the song, the song was available as a lyric video on YouTube and published by someone entirely different from who I wanted to give streaming dollars to, that's if it counts for much.

Hit another bump. I want to subscribe, and I realise there's over 11 Frank Edwards on YouTube. Each with huge and growing subscriber numbers, that was worrying.

It was not until this morning I found one with 250k subscribers and I thought... Ah this has to be him.

I search on Google for Frank Edwards and his entire discography isn't listed on Google and it in fact worried me.

Now I am moving to upset because this is someone I love deeply and hate to see how there's so much low hanging fruit that he isn't taking advantage of.

1/
A huge mistake people make is to think of postmodernism, post-structuralism, intersectionality, Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, 4th wave feminism, and Critical Theory as being separate and distinct, having nothing to do with each other

This is a massive mistake.

2/
These disciplines are connected. They are not like individual academic factories producing different theories. The fact is that the ideas that are produced in various disciplines cross-pollinate and influence each other. The theorists make use of and share each others ideas.

3/
These fields are akin to ingredients used by activists to make the stew of Critical Social Justice.

Mix some postmodernism here with some intersectionality there, add Critical Race Theory and 4th wave feminist post-structuralism and *taste test* YUMMY...Social Justice!👨‍🍳

4/
Take a look through the activist literature and you'll see that they pull from all these theorists as they see fit and as they find it useful.

An excellent example of this is the book/website: "Beautiful Trouble." You can see how this dynamic works in that book.

5/
You all know the old trick about how "postmoderns" and Marxists are totally different? Well that was true at one time, but woke activists will gladly take ideas from both the Postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault (1st pic) and the Marxist Antonio Gramsci (2nd pic)

Somebody needs to tell a few people that, a general “policy” argument, telling a court that it has no right to decide an issue when the matter falls squarely within the case and controversy requirements of Art 3, and the Constitution specifically provides for jurisdiction of the=

parties; additionally, the court has federal question jurisdiction, is not a good take, and is not persuasive. Next, an argument of disenfranchisement of voters (a) is weak in countering the Bush v Gore equal protection opinion; (b) is beside the point, when the issues is the=

issue is not issues is

constitutional validity of votes cast by state appointed electors, especially in context of serious allegations that State officials unconstitutionally nullified provisions of statutes passed pursuant to the plenary power of the legislatures and thereby threw into chaos by=

dilution or nullification of their own citizens votes. More on this later-I am studying briefs because someone said “their brief is weak.” The person could not have referred to the TX brief. IMO, Tx did a fine, outstanding job in a case of first=

Timelines Switching : Total ReWiring

Energies of The Rebirthing Gateway of December 12-21 / Goddess Isis Gateway are already upon us as we interface with the Zero Point SHAPE SHIFTING Energies of the Great Central Sun . This might be experienced as a complete disintegrated of...

As promised, a little story. Of how the EU ask of the UK on the level playing field is indeed new, how that came about, and why we should have been able to deal with this a lot better. And how, indirectly, David Frost is one of the reasons. Beware, contains analysis... 1/

Let us go back 5 years to the height of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) discussions. As you may recall, by 2015 TTIP was about as popular in the EU as allegedly the EU is these days in the red wall. What, thought the EU and Member States, could be done? 2/

TTIP will be more popular, declared more than one insider, if we show there are tough labour and environment protections against undercutting by the nefarious and probably untrustworthy US. That, optimistically they said, will get NGOs on side. 3/

But there was a problem with EU level playing field provisions in 2015. The unit of DG Trade responsible absolutely did not believe anything should be enforceable. Pages of loose commitments, fine. Add more! But apparently enforcement was best done through a good chat. 4/

Now such soft-touch EU enforcement of level playing fields was probably designed particularly for developing countries, where sanctions were seen as unfairly penalising struggling business and individuals for the actions of a terrible government. Not the US. 5/

The chart-topping band of @ChrisGiles_ @jimbrunsden (me on drums) have a piece up about the Brexit level playing field stand-off. But here's the thing: the opacity surrounding these (as so many) trade talks is making things much worse. Quick 🧵

One of the things that struck me talking to experts about this was a lot of hedging about "this is what I think the EU means" and "this is what the UK appears to believe". There's lots of jargon (non-regression, ratchet, equivalence etc) capable of multiple meanings. (2/n)

And even if the negotiators have been clear with each other about what they mean, they certainly aren't being transparent with their domestic constituencies: the EU member states and Westminster MPs aren't being given full details about exactly what's being proposed. (3/n)

There's an unhelpful culture of secrecy around almost all trade talks. Few texts are released along the way. The standard reason is so not to give away negotiating positions to the other side. This is, to use a technical WTO term, obvious bollocks. (4/n)

If you're not telling the other side what you're proposing, you aren't negotiating, are you? Duh. The function of secrecy is actually to hide from the public what's going on. But how are you supposed to build domestic consensus around a proposal no-one can see? (5/n)

Another long thread. Bear with me till the end please. These are my views, and not necessarily of those associated with me. Though those associated with me have been incredibly supportive. I thank everyone who messaged me. I thank @databoydg for inspiring me to say this next. 1/n

First, @databoydg: I hope this makes justice to what you've tried to teach me. I'm sorry if I'm a slow student. In this second part of the story, I'm a privileged academic having a drink in Montreal after a #neurips conference with @sindero 2/n

Simon says to me: I feel we need to do something about this (stark lack of minority representation in ML). We agree we'll do something about it, but it feels like we're at the bottom of Everest and have to climb it without any gear 3/n

Time goes by and with the creation of the @turinginst I suggest in the first meeting that we should use it as a public platform to improve the numbers of Black people in UK universities. I encounter a lot of resistance (to be honest, it felt aggressive) and defensiveness 4/n

I was told that was an Oxford and Cambridge problem only by another academic. I felt silenced. Ironically, by both men and women. 5/n

#HistoryKeThread: Mwangeka’s Blood

This first pic is of a view taken from high up in the Taita Hills.

In the late 19th century, Mekatilili’s Giriama were not the only community from present-day Coast province that rose against imposition of white rule by gun-toting Europeans. The Taita of Mwanda, too, did.

At that time, the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) was the vessel through which Britain asserted its dominion over what would later become Kenya.

Incorporated in 1888 and chartered later the same year by the Queen of England, IBEAC was specially created to promote trade activities in territories under the control of the British.

So in the 1890s, IBEAC stepped up plans to open up the interior of East Africa by setting up administrative structures and laying down infrastructure, such as ox-cart roads (that later formed part of Nairobi-Mombasa highway that we know of today).

Here's more on the new mitigation scenario for 1.5C. How does it work? What would society look like? Are we willing to do what's required to stop climate breakdown? See thread.

1. Most models assume we need to keep growing the economy indefinitely. The problem is this makes it impossible to transition to zero emissions quickly enough; so they speculate on geoengineering and negative-emissions technologies to save us. Scientists reject this as too risky.

2. By contrast, this scenario proposes that high-income countries don't *need* more growth, and can scale down unnecessary production and consumption. This reduces energy demand (from 140 EJ in 2020 to 40 EJ in 2050), and enables a rapid transition to renewable energy.

3. What does it require? In the global North (Annex 1 countries)
•a shift from private cars to public transportation
•reduction in flights
•smaller average house size

Meanwhile, consumption in the global South (non-Annex 1 countries) rises to converge.

4. Significant reduction of aggregate material use. How? Longer product lifespans; regionalization of production and consumption; ban on advertising; a shift in taxes from labour to resources. All of this allows us to reduce ground freight, which cuts energy use.

What is the difference between financial econometrics, econometrics and quantitative finance?
@GARP_Risk @CQFInstitute @SOActuaries

Financial Econometrics basically utilizes Financial Market Data to build mathematical and statistical financial models and later analyze the statistical significance and make predictions.

It is generally used by risk managers and economists to predict(forecast) and study the return market characteristics. GARCH models and other Time Series Models are used to study the pattern of Return Volatility Clusters, Tail Dependence Events, Covariances,

Heavy Tails Phenomenon, Serial Correlations, Mean Reversions, Random Walks, White Noise Disturbances, Risk Migrations, Contingent Claim Volatility Smiles, Probability of Defaults, Credit Rating Matrix Volatility, Value at Risk, Deviations from Normality and other prices of assets

Model Validation, Cross-Validation and Selection are also topics of interest that fall within the domain of Financial Econometrics. It is a field which is more dependent on Time Series (inter-temporal) Analysis using data spread over a lookback period.

This centenary year has seen a resurgence in publishing of books and pamphlets by the Communist Party. 📚

It has been a year where we discovered much about our history and the members who contributed so much to the shaping of the modern union, women's, anti-racist anti fascist, anti-imperialist and peace movements.

A year in which the Party talked for itself rather than let others define our history, or describe our policy.
A vibrant struggle of ideas; communists as builders of peoples movements and of struggle for improvement in the daily lives of workers, their families and communities.

It is the Communist Party that, for 100 years, has never lowered the Red Flag of socialism. There have been some high points in the year, not least a requirement to go for a fourth pressing of our programme, the Britain's Road to Socialism, since March.

And of course there was the Centenary for Socialism launched at a 'Making History' live event.

We are proud that the following publications, in addition to clearly setting out our line of march, are of a high standard of research and are well-written and designed.

My first and last Brothel experience. A thread

The date 21/12/18

They say when you go knocking on the door of a prostitute its not sex you are looking for , its a connection to god. Well i got neither of those things. The reality of a Brothel is complete contrast to what you see on TV or in films.

Looking back the 1st mistake I made was viewing myself as a samariton who was going in there on a mission to expose a human trafficking ring.When I finally met my lovely Romanian girl at5am at this point she had all the enthusiasm of PhilipSchofield at his 25thwedding anniversary

When she said follow me, this was the part I thought would be quite exciting and sexy, maybe a little bit of kissing and fondling before we get to the room... unfortunately the reality was more like 1940s Germany being escorted by a nazi solider to an almost certain death.

It made the green mile look like an uplifting feel good film.We finally get on the bed, she then starts shouting at me 'why have you been fighting' she proceeded to snatch my phone and take my pic,Christ I looked like shit, the nose bleed was due 2 the gear wed been doing all day

International Sabotage against IITM, thru Stray Dogs inside campus. 

Says Padma Shri Dr.Ashok Jhunjhunwala. 

Here in the minutes of NGT appointed permanent committe, Dr.Ashok records his objections on 3/10/20.

It's recorded by him, that in 40 yrs living inside the campus, last three years the stray dogs have increased multiple times and have become highly violent, towards humans. 

Residents children cannot play outside as they have started to hunt in packs.

He also records his personal experience of death cry from deers early mornings, when they are being attacked by feral stray dogs. 

Visiting faculty and students have raised strong Serious concerns over dog menace,

Which directly affects the reputation of the Institute which is now ranked No:1 in the country. 

Out of 400 faculty who had to vote, 98℅ voted against dogs being in the campus let alone increase its feeding grounds.

IITM has been granted 'Institute of Eminance' and it's expected more number of foreign faculty and students will come and stay inside the campus.if this dog menace continues this will tarnish the reputation of IITM in international academic community and a bad name to our Nation.