1/ Lockdowns are painful. Even Ontario's version will cause suffering for a lot of people. Compliance is high when people see results that are working and can see tangible proof that the tumult in their lives is contributing to the greater good.

2/ Most people's measure will be daily case counts. By delaying our mockdown 5 days Ford has basically endorsed family gatherings for Christmas day.
So that leaves us with our already record case counts about to be added to from a Christmas surge.

3/ People, who are already sacrificing so much, will see an increase of cases by the middle of January rather than a drop. At that point, they will have been "hunkered" down for 3 weeks and instead of a decrease, they'll be seeing similar or higher numbers.

4/ This is why these 5 days, at this time of year are so important. Modelling from yesterday showed a SIX-week lockdown started *immediately* would take current case counts down from 2300ish to around 500.

5/ The current mockdown is 28 days which even without the Christmas surge would not be enough to have a meaningful impact. Here's the issue, by delaying 5 days, even after all the sacrifices people have made, the numbers will still be high when we add the Xmas surge.

I've been skimming MAGA forums of late, partly, I admit, from schadenfreude, but also partly out of dark fascination / how-to-write-villains research. I've noticed an interesting thing about their nature of their beliefs, I think.

(Angst tw, idk if happy ending??)
Hizashi has always wanted to be a catastrophe.
Because maybe if he's spiraling out of control, someone will at least go through the motions of caring about him.
But it never works that way.

Present Mic is loud and fun and flashy, and you'd think he would have drawn at least a couple of people in like moths to a strobe light. And, sure, he's got fans. Lots of them.
But the second he shows any of them *Hizashi*, they lose interest.

He starts wondering if he can even connect to people as himself, or if only his fake face, the mask he puts on, is human enough.
Eventually, he stops trying to ever take that mask off, even with people he considers friends.

And he's loud on the outside, but that's a celebration. The disaster is quiet.
It's just him, taking care of himself like putting coins in a jukebox to make it keep playing.

When he doesn't, when the marionette falls down, he's too ashamed to let anyone see. Nobody ever comes knocking on his door to see where he's gone.
If Shouta or Nemuri calls, he says he's sick and leaves it at that.
And they leave him alone.

A Cradlesong

By which the Tepanecs in former times praised Ahuizotl, Mexica king. A composition of Nohnohuiantzin of Nextenco, singer and nobleman.

I. Child, Boy, Man

A

Ah, my song begins within the flower house,
And I carry my little one safe in my arms.

1/

#Tenet The major problem I had with Tenet was not the complexities of the concepts, but how the characters weren't characters in themselves and merely existed just to serve the purpose of giving the audience an exposition of the ideas and rules of the world.

The very fact of a film, be it Tenet or any, being an espionage, sci-fi thriller subsumes the justification that characters need not be as emotionally deep as they are in art-house films thus rendering any sort of expectation to form an emotional connect with the characters…

…null; but I expect the film to flourish of its capacities and techniques otherwise which is what the previous films of Nolan did, at least until Inception.

Tenet from the very first go feels jarringly cut and leaves no room for the characters to develop and indulges in exposition dump in every other scene.

It makes the film-watching experience a puzzle-solving task that we are left at times wondering whether to watch the present scene or process what has just been seen.

Ronald Koeman at Barcelona. A thread.

Ronald Koeman took the worst possible job in the world after leaving on of the best jobs in the world.

Joining a Barcelona of the back of their worst season in 12 years it is clear that Koeman had to do something major to justify him keeping the job.

But it is apparent that he's done horrible at Barcelona.

Messi is having his worst season at Barcelona in 14years despite having succeeded under 7 different managers. Clearly Koeman doesn't know how to exploit his strengths.

@PinkerbellPixie Once upon a time there was a little badger. She was a fierce little thing, but she felt lonely. And the longer she was alone, the more anxious she got - which made her more likely to snap at all the other animals, which led to them giving her a wide berth.

Then one day she came across a cow crying by himself in a field. He had gotten separated from his herd and was scared. The badger thought the cow was being silly, but he looked so pathetic that she couldn't help but feel sorry for him. "Fine, I'll help you find your herd."

They wandered through the plains together, but the herd was nowhere to be found. Then one day, they came across a fearsome dinosaur picking her teeth with bones. "Hello!" Said the badger, fearless as always, "we're looking for a herd of cows. Have you seen any?"

"... Maybe." The dinosaur replied. "It's hard to remember on an empty stomach tho. Do you have any wine, cheese, or burgers on you?"

"No," said the badger. And then thinking nothing of it, she turned to leave.

"Ah, but I see a burger right here." Said the dinosaur.

The dinosaur advanced on the poor frightened cow who just trembled in terror. Realizing her friend was in trouble, the badger snarled and scratched the dinosaur on the nose with her claws. "My friend is not a burger!" She shouted angrily.

Some ... personal news:

New York City must navigate the pandemic, and recovery efforts, while battling compound pre-existing conditions: racial injustice, inequality, and climate vulnerability. Local accountability journalism will make all the difference in the world to the shape we emerge in.

The team at @THECITYNY has an incredible record of impactful reporting, and I can't wait to join them in January. Some examples:

Labor reporting for the new world of work:

Campaigning reporting on solitary confinment in New York jails

Continues thread
1/
- DID THE BAD GUYS GET THE SCYTL SERVERS? -
A colleague of Byrne’s informed a friendly congressman about the Frankfurt data transfer. This congressman, unfortunately informed the President about this on an open line

2/
and within 12 hours of that conversation, the US Consulate in Frankfurt was raided “by men in US Army uniforms” but Byrne says, “It’s not clear at all who did the seizing. No one’s really taking responsibility, at the moment.” This would explain Sidney Powell’s comments

3/
during last week’s press conference that she was unsure if the Scytl servers seized in this raid had fallen into the hands of the Bad Guys.

4/
- CHINA ‘ABSOLUTELY’ SWITCHED VOTES -

Byrne says there are three different buckets to understand.

5/
Bucket #1, The technical functionality of these Dominion election systems, “Because they were built by Hugo Chavez in order to make himself El Presidente for Life, they were built with functionality that you would not imagine any legitimate voting system would have.

I went to bed last night really angry and frustrated that people are still forcing learners to be on camera...

At this point I wonder if the holdouts are people we can get through to, who are just in need of more support and information about the science of teaching and learning, or if they are committed to their own ignorance? Is it worth continuing the conversation?

I've been following the game localization/translation discourse, and there's something which I think hasn't been mentioned yet but is very important regarding the divide between how professionals and laymen use the word "localization" and its dangers.
[thread]

First, just to clear things up, the "industry professional" definition of localization is the process necessary to prepare a game to be prepared for foreign release. This includes translating the text, redrawing the UI, writing the promotional copy, preparing the manual,

dubbing, timing and writing subtitles, designing the foreign cover and logo, etc.
If localization is like preparing dinner, translation is like slicing the vegetables. It's an important step, sure, but it's just a single step.
Now, what has "localization" come to mean for the

average joe? Changing certain details during translation so that the translated text, rather than strictly following the original, focuses on being more easily viable to its "foreign" target audience. According to this definition, "translation" is instead a more literal,

strict rendering of the text in another language.
So, people use a word to describe something different than its original meaning. Big deal, you say. The problem here is that, when you frame it like that, you necessarily create a dichotomy between translation and localization.

Some #CIAdocuments posts..

#Q772 - "Read very carefully." -Q
Click hashtag for info. (Isn't obvious to everyone).

https://t.co/22ghygTOIu