1/ Today, @nbcnews published my latest feature on the falsehoods and conspiracy theories that have defined Donald Trump's presidency.

It's the culmination of many years of reporting, so I thought I'd take you on a little trip through fact check history...

2/ But first, please read the story!

3/ I started this work as a campaign reporter — watching the now-president come down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 — and realizing that this beat would be different, that this candidate was different, and he was frequently not telling the truth.

4/ I chased Trump and other candidates all around the country for 18 months. By the time we reached the fall of the general election, the falsehoods were coming fast and furious

5/ I'd cut my teeth as a young reporter fact checking other reporters' stories at major magazines for $.

And it had been several years since, but I couldn't really shake the instinct to print all the speeches and debates and take my trusty red and black pens to them.

OK Koch heads... bring your hurt.

I’m glad you folks exist as we need people questioning everything.

However, I have found the “virus doesn’t exist” arguments unconvincing.

The virus isn’t the only cause of disease may have some ground.

I remain open to new papers on this.

Set some rules.
This was established in 1884. Watson & Crick discovered DNA structure in 1953.
He did not contemplate unculturable organisms... the vast majority of organisms are not culture-able.

Viruses by definition cannot be cultured. They require a host cell to culture.

This is where the debate gets dirty.

In order to culture the virus you need to find cells/organisms it can infect but not be a pathogen to those cells.

But Koch wants to demonstrate the pathogen creates symptoms of the disease which be counterproductive to culture.

This is like the uncertainty principle.

The cell line/model organism you choose to culture the virus, can’t be extremely affected by the virus or the culture won’t succeed.

Therefore the vector for the disease is unlikely to be the best place to look for the disease symptoms.

As a result we have folks discounting Vero cell (monkey kidney cells) studies for viral isolation.

By this same logic, all animal models are thus insufficient as well.

Any argument that Vero cells are not identical to patients must also reject all animal models.

I have been on this earth since 1951 and have to say that 2020 was the worst year I ever experienced. Not personally; being retired and a misanthrope with a loving wife made the lockdown fairly easy. I got covid but it was a mild case. So compared to others, I had it easy.

But I cannot think of a worse year than 2020 for most other people. I remember the polio epidemic of the 1950s, but I also remember competent public health officials who kept it under control.

I remember the Kennedy assassination and the awful year of 1968 when we lost Bobby and Dr. King, and the cities burned. (I lived not far from Newark and grew up in Detroit.) But those events left no serious, lasting scars on society. Neither did Watergate in 1974.

Probably the most personally painful events of my adulthood were the gas lines of the 1970s. But at least they didn't kill anyone, just caused a lot of inconvenience. The years since the 1970s were mostly okay as far as the nation and society were concerned except for 9/11,

which tuned out to be more of triumph over adversity than a tragedy. I could not have imagined that less than 20 years later we would kill as many as died on that day every day and the president would do absolutely nothing about it. Even more shockingly,

Normally at this time of year, I get to tout the successes we’ve enjoyed in #Chattanooga in the past 12 months, like initiatives that help our families, ribbon cuttings for park improvements, and economic development deals that bring good jobs.

This year has been different. 1/

As we enter 2021, it is also important to count our blessings. This painful, strange year, for example, has indeed brought renewed clarity to a lot of what is truly important. 2/

I’m thinking about the nurses, doctors, home healthcare staff, and medical providers who have been working harder than ever to care for COVID-19 patients and others. Every day, we witness their sacrifice and service. 3/

I’m thinking also about the police, firefighters, public works employees, teachers, child care workers, and other truly essential personnel who have shown unrelenting dedication to keeping us safe and educating our young people against truly staggering odds. 4/

The pandemic has been brutal on our small businesses and Chattanoogans already living on the edge. I appreciate our Economic & Community Development Dept giving rent and utility assistance and other kinds of support to the business owners and employees who need it the most. 5/

#2020yearinreview
My coverage and commentary of San Francisco homelessness in the past year.

To make it more interesting, I'm interspersing quotes throughout this thread ⬇️

‘The letters or cards that I had… they could never be replaced. It just meant more to me than a zillion dollars.’ -- Derrick, who lost his tent, ID and letters from his mother to sweeps by

'We’re essentially under arrest. On an equally interesting note, I haven’t had any medical examination since my arrival — a bit strange considering what I’m here for.' -- Ken, shelter client who was tested positive for

'The shelter in place has given us permission to be out here, otherwise it was just cat and mouse' -- Toro, whose tent camp in Castro District was temporarily reprieved from police

'It’s scary coming here, especially for people using on the street and with mental health issues, there’s a lot of paranoia. I didn’t know if I was being taken to a black site.' -- Joshua Owens, on his initial trepidation about entering a SIP hotel

I've received many questions from people considering to set up a #Bitcoin multisig wallet but confused about the backup process, what should be backed up, and why.

🧵So here's a thread on backing up multisig wallets - what, why, and how.

The main caveat in a multisig wallet is that, while you need only a threshold of devices (ie. 2 of 3, 3 of 5, etc.) to sign a transaction, losing access to even a single device could potentially prevent you from being able to spend the funds - if you don't back up properly!

The reason is that (usually) in order to make a Bitcoin transaction, it is not enough to be able to sign it, but you also need to provide the "terms for spending", that is, the Script (code) that is used to lock the coins.

That's because the full script is usually not stored directly on the blockchain, but only as a hash (a unique identifier of it).
Then on spending, you need to provide both the original script code which matches that hash, and satisfy any condition that the script may include.

In a single key wallet, this is trivial.

The script is composed of the public key of your wallet and a few standard commands - and satisfying it requires the signature for that key, so both the script and signature can be constructed by having access to that one private key.

What are prices?

A layperson’s guide to understanding charts and volatility.
1/

It’s an observable fact that price has nothing to do with value. Perhaps over the long term these two converge, but in the short term it makes no sense that the price of, say, soybeans would change 3-4% from day to day.

So what’s happening?
2/

You’ve probably heard people say “markets are forward looking” and that’s sorta true, I guess.

But that doesn’t mean they’re any good at it.

It might be better to say “markets consistently attempt to look forward” because that would be more illustrative of what’s happening.
3/

When a day-over-day price makes a 3% move this is not a 3% shift in value, it’s a 3% shift in *aggregate expectations about future value.*

And that makes sense, right? Expectations are pretty ephemeral so they can move fast.
4/

Consider volatility through this same lens. When a market is highly volatile, this means that expectations about forward value are evolving rapidly.

This happened in March when everyone got scared about Covid - it broke people’s forward expectations, and thus broke markets.
5/

1/ End of year thread: in December 2019 I found out I was selected to be a 2020-2021 Public Scholar @Concordia. Though My tenure wouldn't start until May (when I started this Mega thread). I decided to start sharing more of my research in January 2020.

Nearly time to bid farewell to 2020. Never been prouder to be a @FT science writer - nor more grateful to be able to carry on working. A short, indulgent (sorry!) thread on writing covid...

Starting on Jan 8 with a mystery pneumonia https://t.co/d21b1e3gr4 via @financialtimes

A realisation at the end of Jan that this could be ‘the

...and that healthcare might need rationing. Except I thought this would be a one-off in the spring first wave. Never dreamed we’d be in a worse place nearly a year later.

Remember, we have yet to pay the ‘Xmas mixing’ dividend

But at least a vaccine was in the works. The road was shorter than I thought 😂...free to

...but, until it arrived, we had to learn to operate in a new landscape of risk (free to read)

As 2020 comes to a close, we're taking a look back at some of our best reporting on the environment.

The American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by rising use of neonicotinoid insecticides.

Banned in the EU, a sophisticated information war has kept these insecticides on the U.S. market.

Amid California's severe wildfires, grape growers in Sonoma County got exemptions to send in farmworkers who have few alternatives or options for support into fire evacuation zones.

With Trump's election, a small and previously marginalized group of toxics apologists suddenly took control over health and environmental regulations, ushering in higher profits for polluters and higher cancer rates for the American people.

Steven Donziger won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador. The company sued him in New York — as of December, he has been under house arrest for over 500 days.

Ok. Here goes.

I track all my books at https://t.co/WLPKFEPoYK. I am going to go through the list and talk about the books I read in 2020 that struck me. Hopefully this won’t be 55 tweets long.

The first book I read in 2020 was this book about punk rock I think recommended by @dansinker

I love books about music and especially music that I enjoy. I learned a lot reading this book and it introduced me to a number of bands. Was fun.

I will read anything by Ken Liu. This collections is wonderful. The story “The Paper Menagerie” broke my heart. I loved it so so much.

A friend recommended Infinite Detail and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I often think about the techno utopian world that we have build and what will happen in the future. This book details a very bizarre and weird future building on a lot of those ideals.

I loved reading this book. I didn’t really know anything about Jessica Simpson before - but really enjoyed her autobiography. Who knew!

Open Letter: “Is this Nate?”

It’s sizzling in my chest, so here it is. I don’t want to hurt the poor guy who called me—probably forced to call me—but it needs to be said. Yesterday, at about 11:00 at night, I got a call from a representative of the Governor’s office.

A nice guy. But last night, this guy wasn't so nice. He told me, with profanity and threatening piñache, that he’s, “not f##cking happy” about a tweet that I sent out. I didn't even know what Tweet he was talking about. But it turns out, he was mad that I criticized the . . .

Governor’s plan to go to the Bills game because only 6.500 people were allowed to go and I felt it reinforced the belief—incorrectly or correctly—that the #COVID restrictions do not apply to elites. Pretty mild, but I’m a team player. If this man had just called me . . .

and told me that I misunderstood the facts, got it wrong, I would have taken the Tweet down. But again, he called me at 11:00 at night. Swearing. Keep in mind, at this point, I’m just a taxpayer. I’m not running for office. I have no more connection to the Governor than you ...

Please put yourself in my shoes. An emissary for one of the most powerful politicians in America called me, late on a holiday evening, looking to take my head off. Disturbing. This isn’t the first time some elite Democrat called me—either directly or indirectly—over the past...

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 Situation Update, Dec. 31st – Game-changing bombshells to be unveiled before Congress on January 6

In today’s SU, we reveal Trump’s plan to unleash bombshell evidence in front of Congress on the 6th, right before Congress votes on which slate of electors to accept.

The 10 most important things I've learned in 2020.

10. Be very careful where you put your teeth when carrying balloons. It's also probably not a good idea to carry eggs if you can't carry a balloon.

#DogsOfTwitter #yegdog #CanadianDogs #LifeLessons

9. Humans should order more dog treats and less of these bags of air. Don't they know they don't need to get air shipped to them?

8. I would make a stunning statue!

7. It's important to wash your paws! Not as important as it is for humans to wash their hands, but still important. Also, check for eye boogers before going out.

6. Certain surfaces cause the tires on a wheelchair to build up static which then makes the treat ⚡your nose.

This year has been quite something.

But let's try to pick some of the most clownish stories this year had to offer.

Here's to 2020's end of year thread 1/50

Have you got a license for that opinion?

2/50

At least academics remain the same.

3/50

And Sweden didn't change

4/50

Don't have much to say about this one

5/50