🚨🚨 THREAD TIME 🚨🚨

let's talk about the differences between income, wealth, and class

tl;dr: income is earned, wealth is bought, and class is inherited

also hi friends, while on the topic of income, this work is my only source of it! times are tough and folks are really struggling, but if you have a couple extra bucks please consider sending a tip my way

💰 venmo rachel-kahn-5
💵 cashapp

INCOME is the amount of money a person makes from labor and investments

so if you work for 2,000 hours and are paid $40,000 in a year, that's income

OR if you have a $1,000,000 stock portfolio with a 5% return rate and cash out $40,000 of it, that's income too (fucked, right?)

WEALTH is the amount of capital you own

that could be owning a house and land worth $150,000

or owning a small business with $150,000 in assets

or owning $150,000 worth of stocks

wealth is the investments that are themselves accruing value

CLASS is about what you stand to inherit

in the united states we use a lot of weird doublespeak to avoid talking about the proletariat, the petit bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie directly

proletariat ~ working class
petit bourgeoisie ~ middle class
bourgeoisie ~ upper class

Historians agree that corruption was a pandemic in European life and politics in the 1800s, and that since then, corruption has generally declined along with economic growth and prosperity. What can Africans learn from this?

From the outset, when reading the very scarce literature on Western corruption it is clear that the decline of corruption largely corresponds with sociopolitical change and most importantly ECONOMIC GROWTH

Two main reasons are given for reduction in corruption: 1. SUSTAINED GROWTH which results in more entrepreneurship & productive investment

2. A PROSPERING ECONOMY that can afford to pay civil servants well, improving overall living standards, reducing motivation for corruption

There is very limited historical literature on corruption in Europe which often gives the impression that this is/was never really a major problem. Not so, for e.g for centuries England, was described as “shot through with corruption and venality”, just like the rest of Europe...

This period of rampant corruption in the West was at a time when Europe was at it's poorest economically. Even with the plunder and looting of the rest of the world, Europe would occasionally fall into hard times, and at this time, corruption would increase accordingly

THREAD: Here are the photos from the wedding of the daughter of the White House chief of staff, mid-pandemic. Let's take a look shall we?

An interview with @CondoleezzaRice appeared on the @HooverInst website yesterday. She had some things to say about historians. A thread, beginning with a direct quote 1/

#twitterstorians @AHAhistorians @SocHistTech

"Let's start by really bringing the best young historians of China and India. History is being practiced in the academy in a way that's not really very inspiring. History departments ask much narrower questions than in years past.... 2/

... When I was a young faculty member, I remember sitting at a first faculty meeting with Gabriel Allman, author of The Civic Culture, and Seymour Martin Lipset, who had written the Political Man. These were historians who explored big questions."
& now for some fact-checking 3/

Gabriel Almond (NOT Allman) was a political scientist, not a historian. He chaired the Stanford Political Science department from 1964 to 1969, and retired in 1976. Rice received her PhD in 1981 from the Univ. of Denver, and joined the Stanford faculty later that year. 4/

My historian’s mind sees a chronology snag, but I suppose it’s not impossible that emeritus profs attended faculty meetings back then. ?? Seymour Lipset was a sociologist AND a political scientist; again, not a historian. 5/

1/ @Square buys $50M of #Bitcoin w/ its balance sheet 🚀

let's untangle what corporate treasurers do and why this matters...

the role of corp treasurer didn’t exist until the 1970s, when co's faced high inflation and financial uncertainty

2/ in this environment, companies with no cash management or treasury strategy were losing 10-12% / yr to inflation

modern corporate treasury is typically focused on cash management and managing the opportunity cost of capital

holding cash is *not* a strategy

3/ when i worked in corp treasury, we mostly traded the overnight and short term rate markets

we could earn a nice 3-5% return in these very low-risk assets w/ time preference

treasurers today are living in a radically different world!

RATES ARE 0

TARGET INFLATION IS >2%

4/ faced with this new reality, corporate treasurers (and all investors) are looking at alternatives

#Bitcoin is a highly liquid asset that trades 24/7 in an increasingly regulated and structured global market - and its an effective portfolio diversifier!

5/ Square’s willingness to hold bitcoin on its balance sheet as a treasury asset speaks to:

(1) the changing landscape that treasurers must navigate, and;
(2) their ability to manage the operational, risk, and compliance requirements of holding bitcoin directly

Here’s a thread of all the folk game tiktoks I’ve been collecting for the past few months! Starting with a great use of high stakes

1/Today's @bopinion post is about Trump's taxes, and what they show about how America allocates capital.

We appear to have some big problems.

2/Trump has a bunch of businesses that lose money. Our financial system has lent him money to throw into unsuccessful golf courses, hotels, and so

3/A lot of these loans are loans that Trump hasn't even paid back yet, using loopholes in the tax system to avoid paying taxes on those unpaid debts.

Why would creditors give money to a guy who wastes the money on bad businesses and doesn't even pay them back?

4/One seemingly obvious answer is that capital is just really cheap these days. Companies are able to borrow more easily than at any time in the last few decades.

5/But this presents us with a mystery.

Why hasn't an abundance of cheap capital caused the return on financial capital to fall? Interest rates are low, but stock returns have held up strongly.

1RT → 1 Wisdom

Science, Life, Health

Don't use Teflon. It should be illegal. People should be jailed for what they have done.

Material ranking:
1) Borosilicate Glass
2) Clay
3) Ceramic
4) Cast Iron
5) Everything else

You have neurons in your gut, interacting with your microbiome.

This is where you get your gut feeling from. It is imperative that you trust it. The brain does many things well, but it can never be trusted above the Gut.

You have Neurons in Your Heart.

Your Heart Intelligence is not slow, like your Brain, for it knows truth near instantly.

Listen to Your Heart is an old saying, but more importantly you must Learn to Ask it Questions.

If you habitually listen to Your Heart and Gut, the Neurons in Your Brain, Heart and Gut form perfect coherence — meaning that you can No longer distinguish between these three, for you are finally a complete human being.

This is another side of the coin: "Integrate Your Shadow"

At Udemy, we were 3 first-time entrepreneurs trying to raise seed capital. We made every mistake in the book.

We got 200+ no’s and wasted 12 months fundraising.

We eventually pulled through, just barely. 😅

This thread shares our mistakes as lessons for founders.

**Read On**

We built an impressive product, but we were nobodies.

We thought: we need money to build our vision, so let’s go talk to some investors.

WRONG.

Nobody gave a fuck that we needed money. We needed to prove we deserved their money.

We met some associates and intermediaries who might introduce us to investors.

Few decision-makers wanted to meet with us.

We should’ve stopped there.

If getting meetings is hard, it will take you forever to raise.

Instead, spend your time building product + getting traction.

I was frustrated with investors: treated them as adversaries who asked dumb questions. My derision turned them off.

Learn to understand and appreciate investors. Follow them on Twitter, listen to podcasts from @HarryStebbings or @eriktorenberg.

An investor's job isn't easy.

They kiss a ton of frogs just to find one deal that may make them money 10 years from now.

They only win if you become a billion dollar company.

Don’t kid yourself - if you aren’t the right fit, bootstrap.

Risk-adjusted, bootstrapping can make you happier and more successful.

South Korean carmaker Hyundai on Wednesday presented the first 7 hydrogen-powered trucks to customers in Switzerland, out of 50 such vehicles scheduled this year to bring zero-emission commercial vehicles to European roads


For long haul, proponents say hydrogen-powered trucks have an advantage over electric rivals as they have a greater range and require less charging times but their uptake and mass production has been slow because they are expensive

However, a McKinsey study in January said that once relative efficiencies of the power sources and lifetime costs of a truck are factored in, green hydrogen could reach cost parity with diesel by 2030

PARITY WITH DIESEL ???

Hyundai has been partnering with Swiss companies to build a value chain covering the production of green hydrogen from hydropower, hydrogen charging stations and the service and maintenance of the trucks

The customers, which include supermarket chain Migros, will be leasing the trucks from Hyundai Hydrogen Mobility HHM to transport goods around the country, backed by the new hydrogen infrastructure

I think I'm having one of the biggest aha moments I've had all year, which is that in many ways folks who belong to the "woke" left & those who belong to the "reactionary" right want the same things; & in this context, I mean it not as a critique, but an opportunity for hope.

Ladies and gents I sense a thread coming along. ;)

If you ignore the toxic impulse some folks on the left have to label certain things as "whiteness," what they claim to want is to actually create the conditions that fight against alienation and isolation.

If you look at some of the documents floating around in DEI circles, they define "equitable cultures" as those that value "interdependence & collaboration," "seeing discomfort as growth," & "seventh generation thinking" which is a philosophy that comes from the Iroquois tribe.

If you boil down much of it (& again, view the weird "whiteness" piece as a bug & not a feature), what is actually being requested is a deviation from the factory-oriented/central planning styles of work and a more communal oriented way of work life.

Today in pulp... I look back at Raleigh bikes: the most exciting bikes on the planet! #ThursdayMotivation #cycling

Raleigh was the all steel bike that defined a generation of cyclists: for many it was their first introduction to the joys - and perils - of cycling!

The brand was named after Sir Walter Raleigh - inventor of the cigarette. And it was built in Nottingham - home of the cigarette. So obviously everyone who rode one smoked...

Now of course British cycling has a long and noble history...

...but you didn't come here for that! You want a big fat hit of nostalgia, so let's get right to it.

I've talked with people who argue that they should be allowed to have the sort of conversations that might offend people because if someone is offended, they don't have to be part of it. It's a seductive idea, but it won't

Why? Because there's a ratcheting effect. If you could measure rudeness, a chat might start at 1. People who don't care for that level will leave. So now the chat can start moving toward rudeness level 2 with fewer people to object or moderate.

Where is the limit? Well it will trend toward the comfort level of the most committed members. If part of the "value" of a chat is that it's "honest" (read "rude"), people who don't value that will leave. Problem solved? No! The next level will offend another set of people.

This is what make me so uncomfortable about the ignore feature. It gives people the idea that the way to handle rude behavior is to look away. On an individual level, that's not a bad technique. Why put yourself though frustration if you don't need

But for a group, it's a disaster. It just creates a situation where many people feel powerless, unheard and left out. At some point someone speaks up and discovers it wasn't just them. Now everyone is in for a world of hurt and misunderstanding.

1/ Trump should have been a release valve for the anger and frustration of ordinary Americans. That's what populism has historically been in America, a release valve.

But the Derp State and the media worked overtime thwarting Trump and his mostly middle-of-the-road policies.

2/ Trump is not a radical figure, historically, his policies are not out of the mainstream.

But the reaction to him was so over-the-top and the demonization of his followers so complete, that the populist sentiments of the American people continue to be bottled up.

3/Because Trump was thwarted, as bad as the anger and frustration were in 2016, it's now a thousand times worse.

The populist sentiment, which usually dissipates after a few years, is now stronger than ever.

4/ What this means is that Trump will win reelection, easily, probably with a slight popular majority.

My supposition, is that many people are simply not responding to polls, or are lying to the pollsters, who are seen as an extension of the corrupt media they've come to hate.

5/But, if Trump should happen to lose (he won't) the results for the establishment and the left will be disastrous.

The populist core of America will come together politically, especially as the useless Biden and the repulsive Harris try to take revenge on the Deplorables

I am very concerned about what I have learned about @VP Mike Pence's debate preparations.

It's an incomplete view, no doubt, but also a worrying one, given the stakes.

There are a few hours left, so read this thread and RT if you want someone on VP's team to see this.

(1/10)

How to have better, more creative ideas

A thread of wisdom from:
@TheSchoolOfLife
@david_perell
@anthilemoon
@joulee
@stephsmithio
& more

🧵👇

First, recognize that there are no new ideas.

Innovation is just rearranging existing concepts in a revolutionary way.

To get better at that, learn to combine your unique interests.

I wrote about this

offers a five step process for generating inspiration:

1. Gather raw material.

2. Work over them in your mind.

3. Let your subconscious mind process them.

4. Have a “Eureka" moment.

5. Shape and develop your idea — make it

suggests increasing your creativity by being prolific

Generate as many ideas as you can, as often as you can

Have a daily routine that primes your mind for

looks for a specific combination of traits in order to determine if an idea is worth pursuing

The criteria are:
- interesting
- doesn't exist in that exact form
- something she can uniquely contribute

Hey y'all! I've assembled a collection of "how to fill out your mail-in ballot/ absentee ballot" tutorials for almost 40 states I found specifically for the Nov 2020 election. Please feel free to share with the disclaimers I've included here ⬇️. Make your vote count! #BidenHarris

Here is a tutorial video on how to fill out your Alabama absentee/mail in ballot. Ballot design/enclosures might vary by county WITHIN the state so follow all instructions enclosed with YOUR ballot even if they vary from the video. #Vote #VoteByMail2020

Here is a tutorial video on how to fill out your Alaska absentee/mail in ballot. Ballot design/enclosures might vary by county WITHIN the state so follow all instructions enclosed with YOUR ballot even if they vary from the video. #Vote #VoteByMail2020

Here is a tutorial video on how to fill out your Arizona absentee/mail in ballot. Ballot design/enclosures might vary by county WITHIN the state so follow all instructions enclosed with YOUR ballot even if they vary from the video. #Vote #VoteByMail2020

Here is a tutorial video on how to fill out your Arkansas absentee/mail in ballot. Ballot design/enclosures might vary by county WITHIN the state so follow all instructions enclosed with YOUR ballot even if they vary from the video. #Vote #VoteByMail2020

You were born a lion, but society wants you a sheep.

//Thread//

The Lion and the Sheep.

A classic red pill story.

Read at your own discretion.

~~ This is a copy I found online of an ancient story I stumbled upon some time ago ~~

I'm not sure of the author it originated from but since then it's been taken by many different cultures and told in different versions.

If you know the original source, please let me know. 👇

Having lost its way, a baby lion wandered for days, alone, forlorn, anxious at finding itself in a strange and dangerous environment. Weakened from hunger, it came upon some sheep.

One of the mother sheep took pity on the poor, malnourished, bedraggled, crying baby lion and adopted it as her own. She showed her new baby how to forage for grass, what noises to make to talk to other sheep, and warn them of impending danger.

The young lion grew up, fast and strong, amidst the flock of sheep. Many years passed, and there, with a flock of sheep foraging for grass, now roamed the young lion, powerful and with a long mane and tail, behaving exactly like a sheep.