This is some true bullshit. A fully radicalized white man methodically builds and detonates a bomb like he saw in Speed complete with creepy music and a fresh, highly obvious target.

His girlfriend - who police considered mentally ill and didn’t shoot down in the street even as she sat next to guns on her porch - said he was building bombs.

The cops wandered over, knocked a bit, ran his name through a database and then said ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ welp I guess that’s that!

When a Black man or woman does any of these things it’s a damn festival. Bullets fly. Accusations rise. He was a follower of a militant preacher! He was a Muslim warrior!

And with this fucking turd its a mystery! Why did the skinny white dude drive an rv to downtown Nashville and try to blow up a telephone switch? Lord knows! Maybe he hated his service!?

@Zuasibel @MouthFactory @Lawrenc04048984 Mathis here belongs to a sliver of Jews in our tormented history who succumbed to the millennial war of attrition waged upon Jews and decided that resistance is futile and better join the persecuters and maligners than be their targets. /1

@MouthFactory @Lawrenc04048984 It's not enough that they were "liberated" from their Jewish shackles but they have to prove, convert-style, that whatever the antisemites do or say, they will out-do and out-slander Jews and thus gain some love for their wretched person. Examples: /2

@MouthFactory @Lawrenc04048984 Pablo Christiani, a converted rabbi from 12th century Spain, who took his children from his wife after he converted, tried to ban the Talmud, and, with the Pope's dispensation, compelled Jews to listen to his speeches and answer his questions in their synagogues. /3

@MouthFactory @Lawrenc04048984 A more recent example is Irene Nemirovsky, a talented author whose novels contained vicious portraits of Jews. She and her husband would die in Auschwitz, despite their pleading to Vichy for leniency on account of her sharing their distaste for Jews./3

@MouthFactory @Lawrenc04048984 I can find it in my heart to somewhat forgive Nemirovsky who lived in viciously unforgiving times. Maimonedes wd have mitigated for her sin of not loving Israel (Jewish people) in such circumstances, had he been her contemporary, I speculate. /4

I keep seeing posts by people complaining about NDP doing their job as opposition and ‘always being negative’. This is a go-to UCP retort as well. Alberta has never really had an effective opposition in the last 50 years at least. This is what it looks like. 1/11

I worked as a tour guide in the #ableg. It was the summer of the Universiade games and we had a lot of international visitors. We had our memorized tour script, including little quips and bits of trivia (the portrait eyes that follow you, the rain echo from the fountain, 2/11

the palm trees in the dome, the carillon, the kinds of marble, how the gemstones on the mace start with the letters ALBERTA, etc.) One bit was to point out the ‘opposition’ seats. I think there were 4 at that time. People from all over found that astonishing (and strange). 3/11

One of the opposition members at that time was Rachel Notley’s father. He was universally liked and admired. But there is only so much that such a small group of people can do to hold the government to account. 4/11

We now have an opposition who have been government themselves, who know how things work, who know what questions to ask, who know which stones to look under, and who have people that are very smart, very capable, and very much looking out for ALL Albertans. 5/11

It makes me smile every time I notice IGListKit at work in Instagram. We put a lot of work into making and improving it. Proud to see it holding up 4 years later.

🧵 with some memories on how it was built:

At Instagram, product work slowed around the holidays, so we used the time to pay down tech debt. In winter 2014 I reviewed a +12k line refactor from UITableView to UICollectionView.

We recently dropped iOS 5 so we could use the new 6+ APIs without backwards compatibility.

That review taught me a lot about UICV: data sources should mutate in one place else risk out-of-sync exceptions, the first view layout may reloadData, sticky headers make good perf hard, and many more UICV tidbits

We used reloadData for everything and it worked, for the most part.

Except two things bugged the hell out of me:

1. No animated changes (duh)
2. Images could flicker and the like animation could cancel

I dug into the latter and learned that if you reloadData, every cell on screen gets reused. So even if nothing in the UI changes, you still reuse (or init) cells, bind data, set images, etc. that’s a lot of work!

1) As the miserable year of 2020 reaches its end, it's time to return to the offices of Hindsight Capital LLC.

For those unfamiliar, this great, albeit imaginary, hedge fund invests with the benefit of a style guaranteed to beat all others: hindsight

2) As such perfect vision would allow infinite returns, certain limits are imposed on Hindsight Capital’s managers:

🚫It can't trade during the year
🚫It can't use leverage
🚫It can't invest in individual stocks
✅It must make broader or sectoral

3) Hindsight can, however, make “long-short” trades.

But the hedge fund must be able to explain how someone might have made such a trade based on only what they knew at the time. Foreknowledge of earthquakes and hurricanes, for instance, is not allowed

4) As for the pandemic, Hindsight Capital’s managers were aware of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan and had little difficulty in predicting how the world would react and what its effects would be.

That was crucial, as will be seen in this thread

5) Hindsight Capital always bases itself in the country with the year’s weakest currency.

In 2020, that was Brazil, giving its managers a great excuse to live out the pandemic from an office overlooking Ipanema Beach

Just did an assessment of our #health #finances. After a ten-year personal experiment with a health savings account (#HSA) and our employer's high risk insurance option: GOOD CHOICE. I'm definitely not an expert, but if you're curious, here's our experience (a thread):

Our life situation made us right for an HSA. I was single for half the first 5 years, married for the 2nd, when married, both of us on HSA. No children, overall pretty healthy. Here's an article about who an HSA is good for:

I deducted the maximum savings every year from my employer (which I believe was about $6,000). This went into our HSA. For medical expenses, if we had the extra cash, we used it rather than our HSA (as the HSA grows exponentially tax-free, which is a freaking good deal).

Due to the HSA, my hubby and felt free to pursue alternative health care options and therapies that would NOT have been covered under typical medical insurance (invisalign, chiropractor, contact lenses). We ended up skipping or get the cheapest dental/eye coverage.

It also made me think twice about expensive medical procedures: when I had gastro issues several years ago, my doc recommended a colonoscopy. I saw the price & thought, heck, I'm going to try a food elimination diet first. Voila! Problem solved and no need for the procedure.

A Legendary Magician - Saeed Ajmal
A Thread 🧵👇

Saeed Ajmal made his international debut at the age of 30 against India in an ODI on 2 July 2008. In that match Ajmal only managed to take one wicket that of Yusuf Pathan from his ten overs , returning with the figures of 1/47 in an winning effort.

Little did we knew that this man would go on to become one of the best spinners of his generation.

Saeed Ajmal played 35 tests, 113 ODIs 64 T20Is for Pakistan in which he managed pick up 178 test wickets @ 28.1 , 184 ODI wickets @ 22.7 and 85 T20I wickets @ 17.8 (I.e 447 international wickets) .

In his ODI career Ajmal picked up 8 4- fers and 2 5-fers with his Best Bowling Figures being 5/24. In the year 2013 Ajmal picked 62 wkts joining a elite list of bowlers who have picked 60+ ODI wkts in a single calendar year.

As the United States deals with insurgent forces at home, security professionals should look to the Middle East for insight on how this threat may evolve:



There are a lot of parallels between right-wing US extremism, and post-colonial Islamic extremism.

The most prominent, I feel, is the one between the @newtgingrich era GOP and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood, like most early Islamic terrorism, was a reaction to European colonialism in the Middle East.

What starts as a political movement interested in social change becomes an insurgent group engaged in violent extremism.



The same radicalization factors can be identified. It’s disenfranchisement and cultural erosion all the way down.

Both groups want a return to “tradition” to strengthen a culture they feel they’ve lost because of modernity. Both groups feel they’ve been economically and culturally disenfranchised by a foreign oppressor. You can see roots of this same problem in the Confederacy.

In our case at home, this is because of the inherent cultural divide between conservatives and liberals. Many conservatives do not feel that liberals are real Americans. This is an important factor for later.

Last year I co-founded Selva Ventures, a CPG-focused VC firm, as a solo GP

This week I’ve been reflecting on our first year in business and wanted to share some of the lessons learned in building a small investment firm
Thread 👇

1/ As a solo GP I wear 2 hats

Investor: Always challenging but familiar. Same thing I was doing before

Entrepreneur: Incredibly ambiguous and scary, but also the greatest source of fulfillment

2/ Early on, seemingly simple decisions took an eternity: naming the firm, designing a logo, choosing a fund admin partner to name a few

I was so scared of getting these things wrong, but it was so important to be excited about those decisions to build early momentum

3/ Fundraising could be its own thread, but in fund 1 narrow focus is everything

Build a narrative that can get people excited and DO NOT stray from it, even though it can be tempting

Anything that doesn’t fit? Use an SPV or let it go

4/ Starting out I knew nobody else doing this, but the content about this growing field of “Solo Capitalists” has been both educational and therapeutic

@nbt’s substack (below), @Samirkaji’s podcast (Venture Unlocked) and @oper8rio really stand out

One fascist to watch in 2021 is Joseph Charles "Oakman" Golinske of SE MI. He's been a Proud Boy for a couple years, but took a break recently from the group and promotes himself through the "Oak Nation" channel on Telegram.

Most people may be familiar with him as the tall guy in the Proud Boys bridge shot, from their August 17, 2019 attack on Portland, which featured an American Guard bus trying (and failing) to bludgeon antifascists with hammers.

He was also with his g/f at the time (Dominique Tota, left of Tarrio), and that's definitely a twitter account folks will want to block/report because he posts on it.

He's been plenty active at the pro-Covid/anti-mask/ReOpen protests in Lansing MI, seen here with Jerry Wayne and an effigy of Gretchen Whitmer, who his militia friends tried to kidnap and publicly execute.

Outside of the Proud Boys, his solo "career" with Oak Nation features the same misogyny, classism and gateway to far-right domestic terrorism the Proud Boys themselves feature. Here's him peddling oxychlorinque and bragging about harassing service workers.

Trump can’t win a primary.

Does #Bitcoin have a long-term future?
(long thread, 1/24)

I thought I might as well air some worries, which might be common but unarticulated among crypto newbies like me.

These worries center around BTC's medium-term vulnerability to propaganda attacks & psyop hacks...

2. I accept that bitcoin is technically brilliant, politically visionary, globally empowering, maybe the future of money, etc etc. Hopefully we'll use something like BTC when we colonize the galaxy, long term.

And BTC might still be a good investment short term.

However...

3. Insofar as crypto threatens US dollar hegemony as a global reserve currency, the higher BTC's market capitalization gets, & the more of a legit threat it becomes, the more incentive US and US-affiliated gov'ts have to try to crush it.

What will they do?

4. Govt's could try to crush bitcoin in ways that 'play nice' using legal means -- regulating it, taxing it, imposing capital controls, etc. If that doesn't work, they could escalate by banning banks, pensions, corporations, and individuals from trading it or holding it.

Or...

5. Govt's could play dirty. They could crush bitcoin with propaganda attacks & psyops rather than regulation. Propaganda is often much cheaper, faster, & often more effective than legal regulation/coercion. It seems like any number of psyops could easily destroy demand for BTC...

1/ BITCOIN GAMING 2020 RETROSPECTIVE (a thread)

This has been a challenging year all around, but we’ve witnessed incredible commitment to building on Lightning.

The #bitcoin gaming community specifically used this year as an opportunity to bring people together through gaming.

2/ This year we’ve seen the #bitcoin gaming experiment:

- Onboard new entrants to #btc
- Make microearning for play possible
- Create new ad models to engage audiences
- Complete the in-game circular economy
- Add value to esports, connecting streamers & influencers

And more!

3/ With the cancellation of numerous IRL confs and meetups, the #bitcoin gaming community transitioned to online demos and tournaments.

@MintGox, a next gen esports tournament powered by Bitcoin, was born to showcase companies building games on LN.

4/ Over the past 9 mo, @MintGox featured FPS, fighting, racing, battle royale, mobile games, & more.

The streaming dashboard intro'd a novel way to break the fourth wall, letting viewers interact directly with the gameplay, using sats to drop powerups, inc. bounty, & send tips.

5/ Since inception, @MintGox witnessed incredible growth (over 20% MOM inc. engagement) reaching global audiences and building a dedicated community. 🌏

The most recent MintGox event saw over 5,200 viewers, 10,000+ LN txs, and over 10 million sats (0.1 $BTC) in prizes.

THREAD: Former tax chief Shabbar Zaidi who many hoped would be the best bet to fix Pakistan’s tax system but left in less than a year made some very candid comments in a webinar /1

Pakistani businessmen have stashed $150 billion offshore after making those in profits through local businesses, claims Zaidi. They would make more returns on those in Pakistan but there is the fear factor of the unknown/2

As tax chief Zaidi went to business chamber KCCI, told them and I will ease any tax-related hurdles, just stop selling smuggled goods across Karachi, the president plainly refused the offer saying that’s not possible/3

“I faced resistance from the business community. They are not even 1% interested in tax reforms” said /4

“No politician has a listed company, except JKT. They don’t want documentation” /5

Vladimir Putin extended his greetings on Christmas and the New Year 2021 to heads of foreign states and governments, as well as executives of international organisations, except Ukraine and Georgia.

The Great Pyramids have always captured our imagination. For medieval Muslims, they were a relic of a ancient age of knowledge; an edifice of magic, astrology, and the jinn.

A thread-

By the 9th century there were several theories for who actually built the pyramids.

One stated they were built by the last jinn king, ibn Jann who ruled in the age before humanity.

In this narration, the jinn were the original inhabitants of the world. They filled the earth with wonder and corruption in equal measure.

Eventually a great jinn war broke out in which the angels sided with the goodly jinn and drove out the wicked ones.

Though the jinn king died in the war, mighty ifrits and ghuls guard the pyramids still.

The ifits arrive as mighty zawbaa, or whirlwinds of sand while the ghul lead unwary humans into the desert so they may eat them.

The jinn use phantom fires, sights, and sounds to drive the visitors mad.

💥📢💥Here’s a breakdown of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 invoked by Trump. In signing the $900 billion pork-laden “stimulus” bill that was presented to him by the political establishment, President Donald Trump invoked a little-known law called the Impoundment Control Act