1/15 You'll hear a lot of talk today about how what happened yesterday is extraordinary and antithetical to our history. It's important to reject that idea, not out of cynicism or pessimism but because that pretense of innocence is dangerous. Let's talk about U.S. Cruikshank.

2/15 Cruikshank is a case virtually every single con law casebook discusses though most con law professors don't necessarily spend a great deal of time talking about but it's instructive about how we frame yesterday's events.

3/15 In Cruikshank, decided in 1875, SCOTUS considered whether, under the Enforcement Act of 1870, the federal government had the power to prosecute members of a white mob that killed between 80 to 150 Black people. The case was essentially about a mass lynching.

4/x The Court concluded Congress lacked the power to authorize such prosecutions because the massacre involved criminal matters constitutionally left to the states. In short, the court said the massacre was a series of murders and it was up to the states to prosecute such crimes

5/15 The thing is if you read the opinion, you'll get a vague sense that a mob was charged with violence but you'll never get that it was about the 1873 Colfax Massacre - the single deadliest instance of violence during Reconstruction and one that occurred because of an election

White dude wrote a thread about how he 'taught' his hungry 9 year old to use a can opener; 'figure it out' The child was in tears unable to figure out how to get the opener to align with and bite the increasingly damaged can for 6+ hours, during which time she didn't eat anything

Leaving aside all the incredibly abusive elements of this, I want to talk a bit about the things I've learned about teaching children, something I've spent a decade doing.

1) Kids, even very young kids, are incredibly perceptive, intelligent, curious, and sensitive.

2) Kids can figure out very complicated things on their own (I taught media analysis/fiction writing ages 7-16), but they need to be given the parts.

ALL my kids knew what a character arc was, but would not have been able to give you the words 'character arc' in a million years.

To repeat, I didn't teach them what a character arc was. They already knew what it was, I just pointed it out to them so they could see the patterns.

Same for plot structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. They all knew what these things were, but not necessarily how to apply them.

Kids can absolutely figure things out, but because they're kids and lack life experience, they have to have what they need in front of them.

You don't tell them 'find all the apples in this picture' and then surprise 'there's two in the shopping bag!'

1. I know I've been raging angry since the #MAGA #DomesticTerrorism attack on our nation, but for 20+ years I swore allegiance to the US Constitution, and I'm still so furious that our own POTUS would encourage our very own citizens to attack our nation.

#MAGATerrorists

2. The oath of office we vets take isn't something to be taken lightly. I would literally give up my life to protect our leaders, even those I disagree with. I would lay down my life for people like Trump, @LindseyGrahamSC, & even @tedcruz. I would take a bullet for all of them.

3. The fact that they would not only support, but still continue to encourage the #MAGATerrorists doesn't just hurt me as a citizen, but it destroys me as a disabled combat veteran. Their support of those who wish to bring down our country hurts me in ways #ISIS never could.

4. People like @tedcruz has never served, so they don't know what the pain of watching what they do to our country does to us who would literally stand against the gates of hell to make sure they survive as they flame the same fires which would kill me & my brothers & sisters.

5. They have no respect for my life or the life of loyal veterans everywhere.

I would like to remind them of the oath of office we officers must take to serve them to lead us in a mature and orderly fashion, not supporting #MAGATerrorists to bring us to the brink of #CivilWar.

I quit my job today and started a Twitter account for my cat (@KCPuppyCat). Why is going to take some time to explain. At least on the first count, anyway. Puppy deserves his own Twitter. But the job is about #a11y(accessibility) & a company with zero respect for their employees.

No, I'm not going to name the company. Suffice it to say they are in healthcare and provide customer service and other things related to benefits offered by other companies. They're kind of a middle man, controlled quite a few government regulations. There's lots of those around.

If you read the reviews of a company and there are a few disgruntled former employees saying horrible things, it's normal. If you look and nearly every review talks about how badly employees are treated, that's something else. I should have known. I thought I was prepared.

There were complaints about how "you only get 15 minute breaks and they count points against you if you're a minute late." But that's normal. There was talk of favoritism...that's pretty common too. Even the talk of mandatory overtime didn't ring any alarm bells at first.

What didn't concern me at first that should have was talk of how incomplete training was, how employees were expected to do 2 weeks of training and be on the phones right away. I've had a job where that was the norm, but training was actually decent and we were actually prepared.

Indian muslims have faced injustice in 2020 as we have been facing since the Independence. It was not only the year of pandemic but also year of injustice and fascism for IMs

I have made a thread with picture of few Imp events:

Thread🧶🧵👇

#NeverForget

#InshaAllahInquilab

Secular India enacted a citizenship law which guarantees citizenship for everyone except Muslims

Muslim took part in Anti CAA protest

23 muslims k!lled for merely protesting against CAA in Uttar Pradesh

Muslim student leaders like Sharjeel Imam,Sharjeel Usmani,Umar Khalid were arrested under draconian UAPA for demanding justice and equal rights while the real Terr*rist are sent to the parliament

Students like Safoora Zargar, Gulfisha Fatima,Ishrath Jahan were arrested under draconian laws for protesting against injustice while criminals like Komal Sharma and Ragini Tiwari are still roaming free

⭐️ What We Learned ⭐️

1: 2020, a thread. Like everyone, B4B faced countless curve-balls in 2020. Here are some things we learned, that helped us increase our influence in the toughest year we have lived through /

2: Act quickly: As Covid fears grew, we had a contingency plan ready by March 2, long before lockdown was a threat. By March 12, work from home was a thing, and on March 15 we closed the office completely /

3: Put the team first: In a crisis, you need the team more than ever. We got our staff from overseas back home early, trialled work-from-home early, put health (inc mental health) and working policies in place early, so everyone was clear what was happening /

4: Use the tech. Our team was already using Zoom, Slack and various other tools but they really came into their own to do the heavy lifting of working remotely, before the Covid nervousness became a full-blown crisis /

5: Keep the team vibe: Daily team Zooms – a huddle to get things going in the morning, an update in the afternoon, & always a willingness to use some of the time for social chit-chat & the small-talk that we take for granted in an office. /

Dear UKRNIJN,

HERE ARE LAST MINUTE TIPS I'VE COMPILED SPECIALLY FOR YOU BEFORE WRITING THAT IELTS ON SATURDAY.

For the listening:
•Ensure your headset is well connected and audible enough before the starting time.

•Concentration is key, try all means not to lose focus.

•One lifesaver is reading the questions ahead of the audio.

•Write all your answers in the question sheet, you've got an additional 10minutes to transfer them into the answer sheet.

•Write them in capital letters, e get why.

READING:
This is the toughest aspect for me but I trashed it.

•Use the formula 15:25:20
I will explain how it works

•Always start with passage 1, it is the simplest,spend ATMOST 15minutes to answer it.

Go to passage 3,spend 25minutes here cos It is the simplest/complex.

•You can now go to passage 2 and spend the remaining 20Mins.

•In my next tweet, I'll be teaching you a strategy that I later used to trash the reading aspect.

WRITING
It was the simplest for me. I had as high as 7.5.

•Start with task 1, it's the easiest and has the lowest mark.

•The most important aspect is your 1st (Introduction) and 2nd paragraphs (Overview)

Short thread on attacks against Christians in the Telugu states, AP and TS:
1. Church Demolished in Guntur:
On January 9th, 2019, a mob demolished a Church in Narnepadu village in Guntur district of AP, because it didn’t follow Vastu rules.
https://t.co/iBKlPwfZj3

2. Church Set on Fire in Hyderabad
On 7 October, 2014, Nireekshana Mandiram (Temple of Hope) Church was torched by unknown assailants in Hyderabad, Telangana state. More than half the Church was burnt in the early hours of the

3. Church Vandalised:
On May 22nd 2017, the Lady of Fathima Church in Kundapalli village near Hyderabad was vandalised by a group of miscreants, who reportedly broke statues of Jesus and Mother Mary. Police booked the villagers for

4. Church Set on Fire in Mahabubnagar:
On Jan 16, 2017, a Church in Tadur village of Mahabubnagar district, was set on fire by assailants. Almost everything inside the church was destroyed by the fire including carpets, instruments, songbooks, and

5. Teenage Christian Girls Beaten Up and Threatened, Bibles Torn:
Two girls were beaten up by Hindutva extremists for attending a prayer meeting at Mennonite Brethren Church in Narayanpet on 15th November 2014. The mob threatened them and tore Bibles

Here's a happy story to end the week. For years @RonJichardson and I had fantasised about going to New York. For almost as long as we'd known each other we'd dreamt of going and having a holiday there. In 2011 we sorted it and set off on our adventure.

We went for 10 nights which is a long time in New York. It was emotional. For both of us NY was the land of dreams. Seeing the Ghostbusters Fire Station is still one of the highlights of my life. My main memory is of the bars. I think we went to every bar in New York.

The best thing about going for 10 nights is you can do the tourist stuff pretty quick and then you're just mooching about as if you live there for a week. The days are long, especially when you're doing a pub crawl every day.

One of the games we'd play at home was The Lookalike Game. On a train, in a pub or on the Tube you'd spot someone and say "over your right shoulder, looks like a short Les Dennis" or "by the bar, a male Barbara Streisand". It was purely for our own amusement.

Towards the end of our trip in New York we're walking down a busy street in downtown Manhattan. We're playing the lookalike game. Jon says "he looks like Billy Connolly". I look up and there's a radiant man in a North Face gilet. He didn't look like Billy Connolly.

1. They spent years & acres of space in state media lampooning Morgan Tsvangirai. But in death, they eulogise him. It is not because they have discovered respect for the man, no. They do it to use him as a source of legitimacy by way of heirship to their preferred “successor”.

2. They abused Tsvangirai while he lived. They still abuse him after his death. They think if they can attach their horse to Tsvangirai he will earn legitimacy in the eyes of the MDC community. The aim is not to praise Mwonzora but to undermine their true & feared rival Chamisa.

3. The irony is that they applaud Mwonzora for the so-called notion of “responsible opposition” while at the same time naming him the true successor to Tsvangirai as if they ever recognised Tsvangirai as “responsible opposition”. In fact, they called him a puppet & beat him up.

4. For someone trying so hard to uplift their chosen horse & to pretend the MDC Alliance is irrelevant, Charamba spends far too much time throwing jabs at Chamisa & the MDC Alliance. MDC people can tell who is the successor to Tsvangirai by the amount of abuse from ZANU PF people

5. The MDC community knows that the Mnangagwa regime wants to build an opposition party that it can control. The MDC Alliance refused to be that kind of party. The regime found a willing horse in the MDC-T & they have been at it all year expelling MPs & grabbing party funds.

The anti-trans rhetoric masquerading as philosophical inquiry and political philosophy in our field is both intellectually vacant and manifestly harmful.

From an academic perspective it is an embarrassment to the profession that trans lives are "up-for-debate."

It should a matter of professional legitimacy taken up by our learned societies that people engage in and are rewarded for the kind of vapid pseudo-scholarship that I see crop up in the field around trans lives.

I have a chapter in my thesis about the problem of anti-trans propaganda which focuses on the *central* argument in that propaganda: that trans women, by virtue of their socialization as men, pose a credible threat to cis women if allowed in to gender-regulated space.

I'm going to tweet out some of the points below.

Canada has a data problem when it comes to sexual violence perpetrated against anyone other than cis people.

11 moments women changed the world in 2020 💪What would you add?👇

1. Kamala Harris makes history as first woman of color elected US vice-president

2. Female-Led countries handled coronavirus better, study suggests

3. Record number of women took over Fortune 500 companies in 2020

4. Malala Yousafzai Graduates from Oxford University

5. Zendaya makes Emmys history as youngest lead actress drama winner

[THREAD]

(TW; Sexual Abuse; Rapist)

I was very recently forwarded a news article concerning a person who has been convicted of various sexual offences against children, and it has came to my attention that this individual may have been targeting the #ActuallyAutistic community

The person’s name is Tom Graham. He used a couple of different Twitter account names, but the most common was this one, @serverusautismo

In December 2020, Thomas Graham was returned to prison after breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, (SOPO). He was in prison after being convicted of rape in 2011, and previously was jailed in 2003 for taking and distributing indecent images.

When he was on Twitter, Graham frequently tried to ascertain the ages of individuals on Twitter, and given what has come to light, this is now extremely worrying as I believe he was searching for individuals to groom.

I believe he specifically targeted Autistic People because he believed we were more vulnerable to his advances for a variety of reasons.

Everyone in church knew him. He was a difficult man and would make boast of this.

“Even Pastor sef know say I stubborn”. He once boasted.

“Sir, you can’t reason with my husband! Many have tried including Pastor and he hasn’t changed”. His wife said.

He had a drinking problem; that much was evident. His eyes always looking beady.

Even with the AC in church, he would sweat like someone who was running a marathon.

He had an easy smile but at the edge of that smile was a man with a fierce temper.

He would beat his wife and send her out of the home. His teenage sons never wanted to be around him and he knew this so he made life difficult for them.

Several times have the Pastor, a wonderful and kind hearted man, done to entreat him speaking love to him.

Yet, he persisted.

One-day, the church had a new Men’s fellowship leader, one who had the heart for men whom have missed or failed to understand their sonship in Christ.

He paid him a visit one evening and they got talking about the Holy Spirit.

He paid attention.

The brother, with the Spirit of God upon him started operating in the gift of word of knowledge.

He revealed things to him that even his wife didn’t know. He watched as this brother shared his life’s experience going through life without the Holy Spirit.

So what happens now?

Let me try to peer into a crystal ball here in 2021 so we can drag this thread up & laugh at me and/or praise my vision in 2024

This is not what I WANT, it’s just what I think is likely to unfold over the next four years

Chime in if I forget your pet issue

First, there’s still a split Senate & a bare majority in the House, they can’t just ram through everything Nancy has put in the docket since 2018 on Day One unless Manchin & Sinema play ball.

Which I don’t think they will on everything. No packed court, no nuked filibuster.

We will see a second stimulus & possibly a third.

Vaccine distribution will normalize & by the end of summer we’ll be in a rocky recovery.

There will be a big fight for a public option that the Dems will probably lose unless they win big in 2022 because again Manchin.

Marijuana will be rescheduled & decriminalized but likely not federally legalized unless some GOP cross the aisle. Biden will be blamed because people don’t know how the system works.

But more & more states will legalize until it doesn’t really matter.

Trump’s tax cuts will be repealed, funding will be restored to gutted departments, but the brain drain will take a long time to heal, & no one will understand why everything doesn’t go back to normal like killing the head vampire so all the other vampires just vanish.

The societal cynical obsession towards unharmful non-issues, makes them acquiesce to oppression and abuse. Nigerians were brought up to think homosexuality, adoption, abortion, being proud of your bodies and what you wear, being non-religious etc— are all taboos.

[Thread]

— But there's hardly any energy about how wrong and barbaric sexual harassment and abuse is ETC.

The despicable things that make this country a shithole are normalized, but Nigerians would demonize people for things they shouldn't be demonized for.

When people are obsessed with policing and ostracizating themselves for nonmalignant trivialities, it beclouds the reality of their suffering, and removes the gaze from challenging the oppressor, to challenging the oppressed.

It is always the case that whenever an individual is abused, Nigerians devote their time to utilize their skewed morality to scrutinise the abused — victim-blame and shame, turning a blind eye to the abuser.

The government mirrors this trait because most of its constituents comes from the society itself. That's why we have a government that would rather flex muscles on the vulnerable citizens than tackle the issues that envelop the country.