Finally read the new update on UK variant B.1.1.7, posted yesterday, which includes a study suggesting the variant is no more (or less) severe than prior virus variants.
Just a very brief thread (or read the entire document here:

Researchers took 1769 cases of people infected with the new variant and then looked for 1769 cases of people with “normal” virus to compare them to. They chose these so that median age and proporion of females was the same. That’s why it’s called a “matched cohort study”

They then compared hospitalizations for the two groups:
Overall 42 people were hopsitalized,
16 with the variant
26 with wild-type
The difference between the two was not significant.

Caveat: “Due to potential time delays for receipt of hospital admissions data, the identified hospital admissions should be regarded as a minimum number of hospital admissions and further admissions data are likely to be received into this NHS dataset in the future.”

The researchers also compared fatality rate for those cases where 28 days had elapsed since sample was taken:
12 of 1430 (0.89%) variant cases had died
10 of 1360 (0.73%) wild-type cases had died
Again, the difference was not significant.

Part 1 of 2
“The 67th Bilderberg Meeting is taking place in Montreux, Switzerland from 30 May – 2 June 2019, where the about 130 invitees – so far confirmed – from 23 countries, are staying at one of Switzerland’s most luxurious venues, the Montreux Palace hotel. About a quarter

Once again, I find that @Maarblek is ahead of me in analysis. As he said a while ago: The only goal the left has now or has ever had is the liquidation of the kulaks (small property owners). This makes sense of the class alignments we see, and the left’s historic failures.

It’s a funny thing that two classes of people tend to join the left: The managerial class, and the lumpenproletariat. In modern terms: tech/educated class + the perpetually precariously employed / job hopper. What do they have in common? They would seem to be class enemies.

What they share is a hatred of the small property owners. On the part of the lumpen, these are often the people he collects a paycheck from (sure, some of them shitty). The lumpen doesn’t work for the elites directly because they demand high education and contract out low skills.

On the part of the managerial class and the elites, however, the small property owner becomes a target when growth in other areas is stalled. That market share is a potential avenue for firm growth once other options for expansion are foreclosed.

The managers promise the lumpens that if they help them overthrow the small owners and consolidate power in mega-firms, the managers will give the lumpens goodies (a small UBI, whatever). The Soviets made the same promise. And perhaps it holds—briefly.

Seven Gates of Hell; a thread

1. Jahannum

They said, 'Do not go forth in the heat." Say, "The fire of Hell is more intensive in heat" - if they would but understand.

Qur’an | 9:81

The gate is called jahannum cause the fire will burn the faces of men and women who enters it. And faces will be sullen. And in the Noble Qur'an Allah says:

Every time their skins are roasted through We will replace them with other skins so they may taste the punishment. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted in Might and Wise.

-Quran | 04:56

The ironic thing is this is the lightest punishment that one can receive.

2. Ladha (Fierce blaze)

The second level of hell is called Ladha because the fire will eat away their body parts one by one. Both internally and externally. It will invite those who abandoned Tawheed,

I received many DMs asking about my experience overseas. I wanted to share my time in Singapore, where we lived for 7 years. We moved there when my eldest was 6 months old. My second child was born in Singapore.

We were on an Employment Pass for many years before we made the decision to apply for Permanent Residency. About 4 years into our stay in Singapore, I received a letter from the government.

Letter was sent from a government unit. It was a personalised letter addressing my wife & children’s names. It talked about importance of people in Singapore’s nation building.

The letter also assigned me a relationship manager who gave me her contact details if I wanted to know about life in Singapore, assimilation & how I’d like to contribute to community or national development work

My colleagues said it was a cryptic way to encourage me to apply for PR. We were very comfortable in Singapore, it was home and we could see ourselves living there for a long time. We applied for PR.

@kgorilla5
@hmyaoi1
@ColeMoleson
@BasedMobster
1.OK so here is my response to the mess.
Here we have 2 things: the good ol calculation problem and Marxists having no idea what they are talking about when it comes to post-capitalism.
Lets address the latter first.

2.For some reason a lot of leftcoms/classical marxists/orthodox marxists believe that socialismand comunism are very decentralised.This comes from interpretation of shit said inThe German ideology(btw i very much dislike the book and think there is a reason it was never published

3.There marx says that comunism will be the freee asociation of producers. I do agree with this but i have always interpreted it as producers being free from the limitations of capital as a concept and not free as in anarchic decentralised way.
As i will show later decentralised

4.communism is not technologically possible and doesnt make much sense( you would need some kind of hive min d tech for pure peer to peer society). Untill that is the case we will have to connect to a server.

5. Now that we cleared up that we are not talking about a situation of separate "communities" producing for eachother( and thus leading to barter, common unit and markets) we need to define what we are talking about.
A post capitalist system will have to be

Dear @jjhorgan . When can we expect counselling to be covered by #MSP of #BC? Your appallingly ignorant reply to @j_mcelroy suggests anyone unhappy w/your governance requires it. cc: @SoniaFurstenau @kulpreetsingh 1/

The reason I ask is that -there are large numbers of people (1/4 is a figure I've heard) who do live with varying degrees of mental/emotional health issues; who might benefit from professional #MentalHealth care; who don't get it; because of the stigma and/or the expense. 2/

your comment was so dismissive and demeaning to so many #BCers Among them:
->the reporter who asked the question
->your fellow MLAs, whose job it is to represent their constituents (us) by questioning you and holding you to account 3/

..->any BC resident who wants to ask you a question . Will they/we be similarly brushed off and told that if we're unhappy with *you*- we need counselling? ! Do you realize how ridiculous that premise is? 4/

But most seriously it is utterly dangerous to
->anyone who genuinely requires and/or seeks counselling You used 'needing counselling' as an insult to the reporter/MLAs/citizens of BC. But who it really harms most are those who may actually require #MentalHealth support 5/

Whoever loves his wife, loves himself!

Very early in my marriage, I remember vividly my wife complained about her phone which was not working well anymore due to battery 'ish' and distaste; so she was stylishly demanding for a new phone.

Each time the phone ‘make’ a mess, she get sad and i always feel like getting her a new phone forthwith.
I was using Q10. She was using a Techno phone but to her; it's like I should have compassion on her and give her my phone. She didn't say it but her body language did.

So I decided to surprise her with a Q10 on her birthday.
She was so glad. She threw herself on me and I felt relieved because she was happy to the 'extreme'.
I said to myself, at last I will have a rest of mind. But Little did I know that the phone will barely be for a while.

The phone was stolen the following day.
She almost fell sick, she locked herself up.
I was not happy also. It was surprising. I had to squeezed myself; denied some of my personal needs budgeted to get that phone.

That Night, I gave her my own Q10.
I searched my wardrobe for my long abandoned small Nokia Touch light tied with rubber-band as I decided to manage that till I will get another good phone.

[anan] Tsuchiya Tao × Murakami Nijiro Cross Talk

Nijiro: When I was offered the role of Chishiya, it wasn't long before the crank start. I remember downloading all the volumes of the original manga and reading it in one sitting on the airplane.
Tao: Wow! just in one sitting.

Nijiro: I was going to read it while thinking about whether I could play Chishiya or not, but it was so interesting that I forgot about that and got absorbed in it (laughs)
Tao: I read it like crazy too. I thought it'd be difficult to make a live-action based on a manga.

Some authors have been drawing for decades, and then they put the story together in a few hours in a movie or drama. I had a hard time believing that the appeal of the story would be conveyed properly. But when I realized that there are some fans of the original manga

who will watch the live-action version, but there are also people who will read the original for the first time after watching the live-action version, I was able to switch to pursuing the fun of the live-action version.

Nijiro: I studied abroad in Canada for a year when I was a student, and I had a strong image of manga and ninja when I thought of Japanese. Incidentally, Nijiro was called NINJA because (Nijiro) looked like (Ninja) when written in Roman letters.
Tao: I see! (laughs)

I just re-read Bernoulli’s 1738 paper “Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk” which is the foundational paper of Expected Utility Theory.

It’s Amazing

It’s so wildly different than EUT that its hard to believe this was its beginning.

Let’s see if you agree.

The paper isn't about utility. It’s about expected value.

Bernoulli used the utility concept to get the reader to abandon the traditional view of expected value(arithmetic average), and then used it to derive the equation for valuing risk.

The final equation doesn’t use utility

He starts out the paper identifying that tradition evaluation of risk come from expected values, which are calculated with the arithmetic average.

Notice the rule here in italics is about expected values.

Then points out that this average ignores anything about the specific financial circumstances of the participant. It’s not a risk aversion point, but that a poor person values money differently than a rich person.

Therefore the rule for determining expected values must not be correct. An item is valued by its usefulness (utility) therefore the expected value must also reflect the usefulness it yields.

This was originally Latin, so not sure of the translation, but I love the word yields.

Traditions vary, but you'll be faced with about 2 ounches of a brown fluid.

A typical batch tastes like you'd imagine motor oil would.

If you're lucky, it will taste like espresso that's been left out overnight.

You take a drink, wait.

The longest 30 minutes of your life....

If it's your first time, you've read blogs and listened to some podcasts. But you're about to learn that you're not prepared.

If you'd gone under before, you may be more on edge than the newcomers.

You know *something* is about to hit, and don't know what.

You sit and wait...

"The fear of the thing is always greater than the thing itself," is true 99% of the time.

You dread asking for something, because you fear rejection. But the rejection is never that bad.

As you're sitting, waiting, wondering, you brace for the thing you fear.

Before experiencing ayahuasca, first-time users obsess over whether they will throw or take a crap.

Going in, that's what you're afraid of. "Will I shit my pants?"

You have NO IDEA how trivial such banal concerns are about to seem...

When you're hunched over a bucket, yes it hurts. Puking like the worst food poisoning you've have.

And you're so grateful.

Because you're back in your body.

You're alive.

You may have felt like you'd never return.

Hey, We need to talk, we really need to talk

We need to talk about moving on so quickly, you carry on residues of unresolved hurt in your heart, we really need to talk

We need to talk about sitting with your emotions in full and dissecting them in little chunks, we need to talk

We need to talk about our intense focus on speed over direction, we need to talk about chasing shiny things at the expense of valuable things in our lives, we need to talk.

We need to talk about silence and counting days and having no plans, and how those are okay things too.

We need to talk about comparison and how it is such a thief of progress, and how you steal from yourself every moment you put yourself down.

We need to talk about our willful blindness to how far we have come, cheating our hearts, one "do they have two heads" after another.

We need to talk about slowing down, about solo conversations in the parking lot, we need to have more of that, where we are truly thankful for where we are and where we are going.

Life is more than just ticking the boxes. There's full love and wholesome friendships to be made.

I hoped that we'd sit with our emotions, and for most of us, not having a schedule can almost come off like a disease, but hey, you are here again. It will be fast soon, so you need to treasure the silence and the solitude of your own voice in your head

You deserve some time off

1/ Thread: You are not a lottery ticket

Peter Thiel is a contrarian. In 2013, he spoke in SXSW pushing against the conventional wisdom of luck’s outsized role.

2/ I like Thiel’s ideas not because I fully agree with them, but because he consistently pushes against ideas that seem settled.

Peter showed a simple 2x2 framework to make his case.

Are we optimistic/pessimistic about the future?
Is the future determinate or indeterminate?

3/ Optimists think about the promises of the future whereas pessimists deeply fear the future.

If the future is determinate, you should have strong conviction. If it is not, you should heavily diversify.

4/ In the 50s-60s, Americans not only believed they would be at the forefront of progress but also had big, hairy audacious projects in mind that would materialize the definite future they had in mind.

5/ US, generally speaking, still remains optimistic perhaps by just extrapolating the past, but the future vision seems increasingly unclear.

Japan and Europe probably need no explanation at this point.

1. [ F OF C4BAL ] THREAD: 3

Q’s Farewell.

“Anonymous 12/20/20 (Sun) 16:14:32

“Dear Patriots,

“Some of you may recognize my name. I have daily briefings with POTUS and have posted here before a handful of times as a ‘helper’.”

“What I'm about to disclose is the most important post you'll read before the inauguration.”

“Q will not post here again, at least not for a while. The operation is ongoing but must run silent at this point.

“Once we wind down you will not hear from Q again. Don't let this worry or upset you.”

“We are in perhaps the most critical juncture of American history. POTUS is fully aware of the gravity of this time period. We have prepared from before 2015 for this exact moment.”