The Invention of Whiteness: the Spanish Laboratory
a thread

To mourn the first day of the Invasion, I'm sharing thoughts from a future book.
Much has been written on British colonization of Ireland as a laboratory for creating whiteness in the anglo world. Much less has been...

...written on the equally important Spanish experience, owing in part to anglocentric historiography and to a simplistic anti-imperialism only capable of focusing on the evils of Anglo-US dominance, and denying the centrality of whiteness to Iberian and Latin American societies.

In fact, Spain itself was invented as an integral part of this process of colonization and the creation of whiteness.
It's the year 1000. The concepts of Spain or a white race do not yet exist. Most of the Iberian peninsula is inhabited by a diverse Muslim society. The western...

fringes of Christendom are organizing a major holy war to conquer this territory and exterminate the Muslims (note that many Christians and Jews live peacefully in the Muslim territory).
Spanish mythology will later refer to this as a "Reconquest" but the political & cultural...

groups that organize it did not exist when Muslim armies first took over Iberia around 720. Christian wars of conquest will last more than 500 years and will include frequent massacres of civilians. The bloody process will shape Castillian practices of warfare and create an...

One evolution in my thinking over the last ~5 years is that I now hate High Theory

I find a few other people using the phrase, but no crisp definitions so I'm going to attempt one.

It will necessarily be wrong

...if I claimed it was simple AND correct IT WOULD BE A HIGH THEORY

2/

A "high theory" is an explanation of multiple phenomena using a simple (low Kolmogorov complexity) explanation, often coupled with an appeal to essentialism.

3/

A trailer park example of High Theory is "Jews pull all the strings" or "whites are better than blacks in every way".

4/

A mid brow example of High Theory is "Christianity caused the dark ages and delayed Real Civilization by 1,000 years".

5/

High brow examples of High Theory are whatever most philosophers are nattering on about, and anything 1 or 2 steps removed from a TED talk.

A short reflection on the connection between personal psychology and "conspiracy theory."

(Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay
https://t.co/JdaHUam549)

Let me clarify why is it next to impossible for #Hindus to win this ongoing Ideological/ civilizational war with us #Muslims:

If the #Hindu cause is +1, #Islamic cause is -1, and 0 is neutral, then we #Muslims are fighting hard for -1 while U Hindus R aiming for just 0!..(1/12)

..Let me explain:

V #Muslims attack #Hinduism.
U #Hindus attack only Traitors & Pakistan!

V fight for #Islamic cause.
U fight for #Nationalist cause!

We #Muslims want #Sharia state.
You #Hindus want #Secular state! ...(2/12)

... V R fighting #Religious war.
U just fighting political war!

V vote on Islamic grounds.
U vote on #SabkaSathSabkaVikas

V #Muslims never raise voice for #KashmiriPandits but burn cities for #Rohingyas!
U #Hindus speak for not only KP but also for Sufis & Balochis! ..(3/12)

...V #Muslims rename Rampur to Rahimpur
U #Hindus rename Aurangzeb rd to Kalam rd!

V speak for Junaid & Akhlaq only
U speak for GorakshakGopal & soldier Aurangzeb in same breadth!

V straight away abuse ur Religion & God
U only oppose the radicals amongst us! ...(4/12)

V want rights to abuse only ur religion
U want rights to abuse all religions including urs!

The flags of #Pakistan is fully #Islamic but the flag of India is just 1/3rd #Hindu!

Pakistan has less than 1% Hindus remaining but Indian #Muslims are grown to 25%! ...(5/12)

There is an interesting correlation between what is going on in the USA today & what happened at the end of the Roman Empire.

What brought down the empire?

1/Invasions by Barbarian tribes (we had 911 & Al Qaeda/Taliban then Russians invaded our elections...)

2/Economic troubles and overreliance on slave labor (we’ve had a reliance on illegal immigrants working on farms, in construction & restaurants)

3/The rise of the Eastern vs West Empire (we have China)

4/Overexpansion and military overspending (The U.S. Spends More on Its Military Than 144 Countries Combined)

5/Government corruption and political instability (this one is all about the GOP & Trump)

6/Christianity & the loss of traditional values (Religion at its core was created to control the destructive tendencies of man but people have figured out it was all just a story & science is the true god-society is currently in the middle of this transition & it will be painful)

7/Weakening of the Roman legions (consider what the Trump administration has done to the USA’s standing in the world & the politicization of our courts and key Federal agencies)

#FoodForThought

1/ I recently read about Adjacent User Theory and, despite it being focused on expanding existing users. thought there were some great takeaways about prospecting.

2/ General concept is that just beyond your existing users are groups of potential users who would better adopt your product if it were positioned differently. As you expand your positioning, you convert under-engaged users.

In outbound sales it's the same.

3/ Too many startups try too hard to guess their exact prospect profile. This is necessary to find their first successful customer profile, but beyond that, identifying new types of prospects should be more formulaic.

4/ Here's how I've done it to identify 12 different successful prospect profiles in a few months:

- Use the 80/20 rule: 20% of the leads you reach out to should fall outside of your current core prospect profile.

5/ Priority should be on profiles with only 1-2 differences from the current core. Perhaps a slightly different pain point, but not dramatically different.

I can’t bring myself to watch Republican Senators like Cruz, Lee, and Sasse wax rhapsodic about the Constitution while the President they support is spreading disinformation about the election and accusing Biden, Obama, and Clinton of treason. Sorry, just can’t do it.

Anyone who’s read the writings of the founders knows full well they their beloved Trump is the Platonic form of the type of President the founders most feared, and that they epitomize the sort of short sighted and craven public officials they also desperately feared.

These GOP Senators are smart and well-read enough to understand how outlandish their President is, and how embarrassingly cowardly their behavior has been these past four years.

The chutzpah of these people to pass themselves off as great patriotic lovers of the founders’ Constitution. Feh.

If they loved the Constitution, they would be telling people not to vote for Trump until he agrees to accept the results of the election. Otherwise they are aiding and abetting an attempt to shred the Constitution. Shame on them,

If you are observing #ColumbusDay instead of #IndigenousPeoplesDay2020 here is a list of what you are celebrating...

1. Christopher Columbus's army used Indigenous people as dog food. They were known to feed live babies to dogs in front of their horrified parents.

CW: SA

2.) His "voyage" initiated the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade when he captured 1600 Taino people and shipped them to Spain for gold. Most died on the journey.

3.) Columbus sex trafficked Indigenous girls for his own personal profit. He journaled, “There are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”

4.) Columbus's army required any Taino person 14 or older to bring them a thimble of gold dust every 3 months. If not, the army would chop off their hands and tie the victim's hands around their neck. Most victims bled to death. An estimated 10,000 Taino people died this way.

5. His army systematically raped Indigenous women. His close friend Michele de Cuneo wrote the following

“While I was in the boat I captured a very beautiful Carib woman... I conceived desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution but she did not want it...

Thread – The Real Joe

1. Dementia Joe is a walking gaffe machine, prevaricator, plagiarizer, and an all-around liar, as ANYONE paying attention at all knows. Even Dementiacrat voters know that, but then they are sheep and will vote for him regardless.

1/ Republicans are suddenly trying to pretend that their rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett isn't about ACA repeal.

They are lying.

I've put together in one thread the story of their 10 year plan to get rid of the ACA. It all leads to this moment.

Please read the whole thing.

2/ From the start, Republicans were obsessed - I mean OBSESSED - with getting rid of the ACA. Nothing mattered more.

From 2010-2017, they tried to repeal all or part of the ACA 70 times. Their most high profile failure was, of course, in summer

3/ At first, Republicans' chanted "repeal and replace" - but they NEVER had a plan to replace it.

In 2017, with much fanfare, Paul Ryan unveiled the most serious replacement bill Republicans had ever offered. It ended health care for 23 million

4/ But after McCain's thumbs down in 2017, Republicans came up with a new plan. If voters wouldn't allow them to repeal the ACA through the elected branch of government, then they would go another way - the courts.

McConnell and Trump put together a devious, detailed plan.

5/ The plan began with tucking into the 2017 Trump tax bill a repeal of the individual mandate tax. Curiously, the bill left intact the mandate.

This was purposeful, bc the Supreme Court had upheld the ACA in 2012 based on the existence of the tax.

"Working software is the primary measure of progress" is an enabling constraint. Sometimes, managers use the phrase as a club to get people coding. Coding, however, is a necessary driver of creating software, but it's not the only thing you have to do. 1/5

Standing in front of a whiteboard and discussing design, creating and running tests, just staring out the window and thinking, are all necessary parts of the development process; but if you don't get that software into your customers hands, you've accomplished nothing. 2/5

Using working software (the result of the process) as your measure of progress, puts natural limits on the entire process, including the staring-out-the-window parts. It forces you to work small (thus the "constraint") enough to deliver frequently. 3/5

I'll add that sometimes, progress does have to slow down so that you can think things through. That's fine. That's natural overhead in the process. Incorporate it into your planning. 4/5

But, if the overhead overtakes valuable work (creating "working software"), then you need to take a long hard look at how you're doing things. 5/5

One of the many paradoxes of trading in markets is that - for a given period of time - strategies that are ‘right’ in the broader time context can be absolutely catastrophic in other times. Indeed, careers of one or two currently lauded by FinTwit and the wider financial media

were made by doing exactly the wrong thing at the right time for just long enough before the cycle changed back again.

* The market constantly changes its reward structure (i.e. what approaches it rewards)
* It can be relied upon that the variance exhibited in the future on

data that does not yet exist will exceed that which is observed on historical or contemporary data.

With these two points in mind, it is no wonder that the overwhelming majority of the ‘turtles’ do not make it to the sea from their hatching places. (To take from the great

Dennis/Eckhart experiment of the early /mid 1980’s)

The ‘turtles’ I refer to are new entrants to markets with outrageously good technical qualifications.

I believe that as a member of rare club of quant traders who have traded in three consecutive decades I have earned the

right to say that our education standards for preparing people for markets has shifted way too far towards the ‘edge’ being related to manipulating large amounts of data quickly rather than actual alpha.
This is why 99/100 advertised ‘Quant Trader’ roles - to the extent that

Rafael Nadal has arrived for his press conference. #RG20

Rafael Nadal on Roger Federer: “We have a very, very good relationship. We respect each other a lot and I think in some way he’s happy when I’m winning [and vice versa. We have been going through a great rivalry for a very, very long time.” #RG20

Rafael Nadal: “I’m super happy, but I’m not stupid. It’s still a very sad situation [worldwide]. If you ask me, I am super happy. But in the other hand, I am not *that* happy because of the situation in the world.” #RG20

Rafael Nadal: “I played an amazing level of tennis for two sets and a half. It’s been impossible to have that score against [Novak Djokovic] without playing well.” #RG20

Rafael Nadal said that he felt more confident & comfortable with the ball as the tournament progressed, but he did not want to be too confident going into the final with Novak Djokovic. Either way, he seemed to play with an unbelievable amount of confidence from the start. #RG20