So just saw a clip with CNN pundits claiming Nigeria investing in rail transport with Chinese funding is nothing but a white elephant project. It would have been better spent to build schools. Since when did the media decide what Nigeria should and shouldn't do with its money?

Ive seen a Focus on Kenya Exclusive on CNN. They spent 4 minutes talking about Kenya's mobile banking system, which is the most sophisticated in the world, and spent an hour on Kenya's Kibera slums. When terrorist struck Nairobi mall CNN was unabash in showing images of blood

and gore of dead victims repeatedly all through the day. This will never happen in a similar style terror attack anywhere in the West. It’s time to take a hard look at the role of the liberal media in perpetuating a horribly simplistic and stereotypical portrayal of Africa

At what point do we stop being dormant?. At what point do we fight back to salvage our self esteem and integrity as Africans? They did not condemn the U.S invasion of Iraq that has forever changed the middle east.

If you are still suffering from cognitive dissonance and can't seem to interpret what is going on around you, let me see if I can at least help you understand what is happening within broader evangelicalism and the Roman Catholic Church:

(2) The "church" is becoming the state church. The church that doesn't just obey the state and governmental authorities but that is incorporated into the state.

Ecumenism will be based upon subjective economic, social, and supranational policies: and you must believe.

(3) And along with this transition you must obey and do whatever the state tells you to do. This is now "loving thy neighbor". This is the new collective.

And you must hate the old nation, the old constitution, the old economy, the old ways.

You must embrace the new systems

This is a very long thread. @SamtLeslie asked to give the playbook for service companies so here it is. Follow it and you’ll get to 5M+ in a few years.

This is pure operations playbook.

No leadership, financial or HR discussion. Enjoy.

Industry:
Doesn’t matter much. @sweatystartup has an awesome list of service industries on his website that will get the job done.

Trades:
If you are under 3M and in multiple trades you’re doing it wrong. I was there and it was a mess.

Businesses under 3M don’t have good system, managers, effective onboarding, training, hiring practices, or pricing methods. If you did then you’d be bigger.

Trades cont:
Multiple trades doubles that mess. Get your first business figured out then work on another.

I would recommend earliest 4M to add a second trade, if at all. Any earlier you’re splitting focus and treading water.

Focus Focus Focus.

Software:
If you’re using anything besides Servicetitan then please stop and go get Servicetitan. No other software even close to their capabilities.

It is 50% more expensive than other programs on the market while making you 100% better than any competitor not using it.

So much cultural criticism boils down to chewing on the strange result of popular genre chum--guilty pleasure stuff--being taken more seriously than it was really designed for or capable of sustaining.

Im thinking about the furors around American Dirt, Bridgerton, and WW84, which, in different ways, are all objects meant to be consumed for pleasure without thinking too much about why and how. And then you think about them and you're like "wow, this sucks."

Scads of thrillers as bad or worse than American Dirt are published constantly, and no one but their readers notices, but THIS one got lots of "serious" attention, so it was held to real literary standards and eviscerated.

Bridgerton is an adaptation of romance novels--not serious alt-history--but when claims for the progressive work it was doing were made, lots of folks were like "wow, this seems pretty silly and kinda careless?"

And the conversation around WW84 is fascinating because of the strange way "comic book movie" is simultaneously "stupid goofy fun, not supposed to make sense" and "this is an allegory for America under Trump" (doubly vexed by the "saving cinema!" role WW84 was slotted into)

In Douglas Adams’s popular 1979 science-fiction novel 'The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy', the supercomputer Deep Thought takes 7.5 million years to calculate that the answer to the “Great Question” of “Life, the Universe and Everything” is “42.”

A thread.

The author’s choice of the number 42 has become a fixture of geek culture, giving rise to a multitude of jokes, quips and satirical anecdotes. For example, you ask your search engine variations of the question “What is the answer to everything?” it will most likely answer “42.”

Now the question arises, why 42? If we delve a little deeper, we find that the number 42 turns up in a whole string of curious coincidences, whose significance is neither known, nor it is worth the effort to figure out, however intriguing the coincidences may seem. Let us see.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, during the judgment of souls, the dead had to declare before 42 judges that they had not committed any of the 42 sins as listed in the 'Negative Confession'.

For an interesting read, visit this link.

The marathon distance of 42.195 kilometres corresponds to the legend of how far the ancient Greek messenger Pheidippides ran between Marathon & Athens to announce victory over the Persians in 490 B.C. It is another matter that the kilometre had not yet been defined at that time!

@IndLeftNews @BenSpielberg @jimmy_dore (1) The #ReplacePelosiJan3 & negotiate w/other Speaker candidates 2 THEN #ForceTheVote + get more changes campaign was drowned out by the FTV movement. Today, the FTV ppl on the ground in DC r condemning Squad votes 4 Pelosi. Way too little & way 2 late.

@BenSpielberg @jimmy_dore (2) But, a more important 1, is that the Squad felt free 2 decide how 2 vote on Pelosi w/o consulting the ppl's movement. These advocates of bottom-up democracy did not practice it all when it came 2 the most important decision they would make during the next 2 years.

@BenSpielberg @jimmy_dore (3) They're not the only ones of course. Bernie Sanders did the same thing when he dropped out of the pressidential race. His "Not me. Us!" movement suddenly turned into an "it's my decision alone", affair. That enraged me at the time. It still does. After extracting all that ...

@BenSpielberg @jimmy_dore (4) work & money, often from poor ppl, he didn't feel he had to consult w/anyone else but, at most, his inner circle about whether it was time to support Biden or not. Going beyond progressive "leaders" however, I think all our politicians in our "democracy" feel free 2 take ...

@BenSpielberg @jimmy_dore (5) support of all sorts from us w/out involving us in decisions they are taking that are critical to our lives. Very few of them talk bottom-up democracy, but even those who do, practice top-down democracy, in which they mobilize us for fundraising & 4 coming out to vote 4...

A short question thread for single pringles.

Leggo.

1) Are you single by choice or by force?

2) Are you single all round abi you are only single online?

3) For how long have you been single?

4) Why did you end your last relationship?

1/23: One #startup trap to avoid (founders and VCs) is to fall in love with a value prop that can’t be delivered IRL now. Good diligence will surface disconnects but they’re often brushed under the rug by #VCs who believe fixing delivery over time will be fine. Unpacked:

2/23: The foundational reason why this matters from day 1 is that building a franchise of loyal customers is difficult for any #startup to pull off but the challenge is amplified if the #startup has to rebuild its franchise as it scales.

3/23: Broken or unfulfilled promises lead to customer behaviors that have real consequences. Poor ratings and reviews. High customer service costs. High complaint volume. Low engagement. High attrition/returns/cancelations. Low organic growth.

4/23: Undoing damage takes time and sometimes is nearly impossible. Convincing inactive customers to “retry” your product isn’t easy. Overcoming bad reviews can be a Herculean task. And resources will be thrown at fixing past sins at the expense of new functionality.

5/23: And guess what happens when #VCs dig into questionable early performance numbers? These conversations tend to revolve around caveats, apologies and synthetic analysis that bakes in significant improvements (many of which are still “unknown” in nature).

1/ Today we announce immi, a food brand we've been working on for 18 months. @kchanthasiri and I spent the past decade in tech and started over by learning the food industry from scratch. Here's why we're doing this, the $42bn food category we're tackling, and where we're going👇

2/ We met close to a decade ago working as product managers at a company called Kabam. We didn't know each other, but during a work trip in Vancouver one morning, we somehow arrived at the same noodle joint. We became the two PMs in our org. who bonded over noodles for breakfast.

3/ After Kabam, we stayed close friends and roommates, but both of us went separate paths. KChan stayed as a PM at a health-tech startup called Amino, and later went on to be a lead PM at Facebook. I went the early-stage venture route, most recently as an investor at @pearvc.

4/ Over our friendship, we discovered that we share similar family backgrounds in the Asian food industry. My grandparents are farmers in Taiwan and grow a fruit called a rose apple. KChan's grandmother ran a noodle stand in Thailand and his dad ran a Thai restaurant in LA.

5/ Our families immigrated to the U.S. so we could avoid working in the food industry. (Ironically, we've now come back full circle).

As we've grown older, we've noticed an alarming fact: our families are getting sicker due to chronic health conditions from unhealthy diets.

In 2019, @propublica and @postandcourier ran blockbuster investigations into SC's magistrate judges: inexperienced political appointees with no training who held South Carolinians' lives in their hands - and who use the bench to extract bribes, deal in overt racism and worse.

1/

The first revealed that SC's magistrates got less training than its barbers, and their appointments, though subject to reapproval, were practically speaking lifelong and irrevocable, regardless of misconduct, bumbling, or actual criminal

The qualifications process is bizarre. SC magistrates need to pass a one-hour exam, but they can (and do) re-take it many times without penalty. That test includes questions like "Which of the following numbers is larger?" And magistrates fail that test. Repeatedly.

3/

Magistrates are so ill-qualified that the rare, decent appointee can end up repeatedly breaking the law without knowing it, as construction worker (and local GOP chairman) Arthur Bryngelson did, leading to him resigning in horror and reporting himself for breaches.

4/

Not all of the unqualified magistrates have Bryngelson's moral fiber: BBQ chef/magistrate Clemon Stocker got his relative Willie Earl Reese released on bail after he pistol-whipped a man. Reese murdered his wife five days later.

5/

Last night, @gisellegeneral requested a list of inexpensive or free businesses and resources for candidates who are looking to keep moving their campaigns forward, even if money is tight right now.

Below is a SUPER THREAD! #yegcc

Graphic design: Canva for social media and Venngage for infographics. Both have free versions with some limitations.

Social media management: Hootsuite is most popular, and at $30/month for the entry level version, not too pricey. Buffer is also reasonable ($15/month) and Later is free, but we don't have as much experience with these two platforms, so let us know how they are if you use them!

Website: We use Wix for our website, which is easy to use and offers domain options as well. Wordpress is also a good option.

Both of these offer free or low cost options, but you may want to upgrade your package once the campaign gets into swing to get better site analytics!

Databases: Lots of campaigns rely on Excel or Google sheets. Both will merge with your web platform easily. Excel and Google are more work to update but can be more flexible than your NationBuilders.

Whatever you choose, good data security is a must!

How we got here, a thread (1/25)

Before Christmas, owing to rising infection rates, Greenwich advised their schools to shut before the end of term – several councils later advised the same.

.@educationgovuk threatened these schools with legal action if they did, resulting in schools re-opening their doors for the last few days of term.

The General Secretary of the ASCL, @RealGeoffBarton, accused the @educationgovuk of using "bully boy tactics" to stick to a "robotic mantra to keep schools open whatever the cost" but added "the costs could be incredibly high."

During this time, @KevinStannard1 warned that we could be heading for another exams U-turn (*spoiler alert*: he was correct). (5/25)