Democrats have a lot of good ideas to help people fast, and visibly. They have good ideas for deepening democracy, like the "For The People Act." But if they let Senate Republicans filibuster everything, they will lose in 2022, and they will deserve it.

A lot of them understand this. “I’m going to do everything I can to bring people together,” Senator @RonWyden, who will chair the powerful Senate Finance Committee, told me. “but I’m not just going to stand around and do nothing while Mitch McConnell ties everyone up in knots.”

“This is a fight not just for the future of the Democratic Party or good policy,” Senator @BernieSanders told me. “It is literally a fight to restore faith in small-d democratic government.”

“I’ve said to the president-elect, ‘reach out across the aisle...But don’t let them stymie your program,’” @WhipClyburn told me. “You can’t allow the search for bipartisanship to ruin the mandate the American people gave you.’”

“It’s not a question of if the filibuster will be gone, but when it’ll be gone,” former Majority Leader Harry Reid said. “You cannot have a democratic body where it takes 60 percent of the vote to get anything done.”

I have a theory about 2020.

Bear with me...I’ve done the math and it checks out, but I have no way to prove it, so it’s purely theoretical.

At this time.

1/

Here’s the thing...it wasn’t supposed to be this bad.

There are safeguards, you see? Many times when things were going dark, heroes, mostly reluctant heroes, would appear from elsewhere to save us. To set things right.

But this year, they didn’t...why?

2/

When things go bad., it’s because someone messed with the timeline, and someone else has to set it right.

A thousand alternate timelines have been stopped before they could happen, because these chronsl plumbers showed up to fix the leak before it floods the house.
3/

The general public never knows what they have fixed because the alternate timeline has disappeared, vanished, into a limbo none of us ever touch.

But this year, something happened.

4/

You can’t break the laws of reality forever.

Eventually, the gatekeepers find you.

And their revenge is terrible.

5/

Mitten Thread 🥊
#BerniesMittens And Why It Is Such A Sensation.

Do you know those moments at a funeral, or after a person dies, when you start sharing memories and the grief briefly turns to laughter and joy? Well that’s a little bit of what’s happening now.
1/

🥊🧡
#BerniesMittens is a collective expression of our love for a man and a movement. It is our expression of deep-seated hope that we are all willing to #FightForSomeoneWeDontKnow.
Bernie could have been president. Bernie should have been president.
2/

3/ 🥊🧡🔥
So many of us are grieving that. There have been so many events that put the nail in the coffin of Bernie‘s presidency. Twice. Our grief has come in punches since 2016. Our dreams and hopes smashed, over and over.
This time, ....

4/ 🥊🔥
when Barack Obama intervened as he promised. When all the candidates suddenly dropped out. When Jim Clyburn exerted his influence. When somehow the lagging mule won South Carolina. When Covid hit. When Bernie dropped out so he could serve.

5/ 🥊
When Bernie did the right thing because he needed to exert his influence on the Senate to try to help people get what they need. Our grief has been suppressed.
How many times have you bitten your lip or your tongue or banged your head against the wall when ...

I am real mad about the Elastic relicense so I'm going to vent a bit.

Say that I contributed some code to Elastic, under the original open source license. That license defines the terms of our engagement. Me: "hey I improved your code, can you include this fix so I and everyone can use it?" Elastic: "sure!"

They require a CLA, which assigns ownership of my fix to the project steward. The idealistic reason to do this is to protect the long-term health of the project: if copyright law gets totally rewritten, we can update the license to reflect our original intent!

But this also requires me to trust in the steward organization to do the right thing. As the copyright holder on the project, I gave them the power to update the license to *anything* they want. Which, in this case, Elastic did.

Elastic didn't pick another open source license, which would provide the same guarantees for how I can use, contribute to, and redistribute the software. No, instead they said "thanks for contributing, your code is proprietary now, f off so we can make more money"

The S:N501 build is now updated with data from 25th Jan.

Remember, you can always check on any country by just typing that country name in the 'Filter' box on the left menu!

1/18

https://t.co/FTjvV7T7wL

In the 501Y.V1 (B.1.1.7) variant, here are a few of the non-UK countries with new sequences in this variant, including Denmark, Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Norway, Germany, the USA, South Kora, & Switzerland, & the UAE, Austria, & Czech Republic for the 1st time

2/18

Denmark has 52 new samples (some yellow), showing both separate introductions and further spread of existing local clusters.

3/18

Spain has 62 new sequences (orange & yellow). Many of these are separate introductions, and a few new sequences form distinct clusters. Some new sequences also cluster closely with older sequences (green).

4/18

France has 72 new sequences (orange & yellow). These show both separate introductions and clustering with older sequences.

5/18

Daily Bookmarks to GAVNet 01/31/2021

How to get the best image performance (Updated 2021)

1️⃣ Use `width` and `height` to prevent layout shift
2️⃣ Lazy-load images as they enter the viewport
3️⃣ Use modern image formats (WebP, AVIF)
4️⃣ Serve correctly sized images using `srcset`
5️⃣ Provide blur-up placeholders

1️⃣ Use `width` and `height` to prevent layout shift

These image attributes tell the browser how much space to allocate for an image, preventing the page from jumping when it loads. This avoids Cumulative Layout Shift

2️⃣ Lazy-load images as they enter the viewport

The browser shouldn't load images a user can't see. To prevent page speed from being penalized, we should load images as they're scrolled into the

3️⃣ Use modern image formats (WebP, AVIF)

These new formats reduce image file size while retaining quality. WebP is supported by all modern browsers. AVIF should be soon,

4️⃣ Serve correctly sized images using `srcset`

The browser should choose the best image for the device. By providing multiple options, we avoid shipping large images to smaller

Autism and meltdowns - what are they and how can you help?

A thread. Please read and share widely. As always, based on my own experiences.

#autism #autistic #Meltdown

Autistic people are stressed. *Very* stressed. Take it from me - our existence is generally peppered with moments of calm on a backdrop of continual tension and intense stress. The reasons for this are complex. /2

Our senses are often way too sensitive, meaning we live assaulted by intense sensory input - sound, vision, smell, touch and so forth. This means our base level stress is always much higher than most folks. /3

We are also usually struggling to make sense of social communication in a way neurotypical people don't need to worry about. Often we have to put actual brainwork into every interaction, as nothing seems to come naturally to us. Even with friends or loved ones. /4

So our glass of stress is very frequently filled to the absolute brim, and it doesn't take very much for us to spill over into a kind of 'post-stress' state, and I guess that's what we call meltdown. /5 #autistic

#Georgia Hearing Live Stream


Rep. Williams starts off with a prayer.

If you could, what questions would you ask the #georgia Secretary of State?

Coward Rothlisberger avoids video has VPN problems.

Reads from a script

“Rumor whack-a-mole”

They claim they are putting out raw data of voters

APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOL, POST #19: DEALING WITH COMPETITIVENESS/COMPARISON

There's so much competitiveness during the application process and beyond; how do you handle it?

@OpenAcademics @PhDVoice #AcademicChatter #AcademicTwitter #phdchat #gradschool #firstgen #nontraditional

The unfortunate truth about academia (in its current state) is that it's relentlessly competitive. Motivational quotes abound on not comparing yourself to others, but that's MUCH more easily said than done, especially when other people sometimes do the comparing for you.

So how can you survive the rest of the application process (and hopefully beyond) as gracefully as possible?

Firstly, I want to address "online forums." I won't name any because if you already know them, then you know what I'm talking about, and if you don't know any of them,...

I would personally recommend to PLEASE stay off of any online forums for prospective grad students. From what I've seen, those forums tend to be less of a helpful discussion, and more of a place for people to show off the grades, exam scores, interviews, and acceptances...

they're most proud of. I consider myself quite lucky because I didn't know about any of them when I was applying, so I never had to consciously prevent myself from reading and engaging with them. For what it's worth, I was able to get all the help and information I needed...

UPDATED FOR NEW LINK
Need a "red pill" crash course without the censored links?
https://t.co/pFvn6dlSkI

Without getting into the ins and outs of the ‘Is Christmas pagan?’ debate, it’s worth dealing with some faulty assumptions people often make about the ‘Christianisation’ of pre-Christian traditions (buckle up for the thread…)

First of all, language people use in this area can be quite emotive, e.g. talk of Christians ‘usurping’ or ‘sanitising’ a pre-existing pagan festival. There’s a tendency to ascribe a collective agency that never existed to ‘the Church’ or ‘Christians’ when it comes to Midwinter

That wasn’t how it worked; there was no centralised programme of reforming popular festivities. The Church introduced liturgical celebration of Christmas to northern pagan cultures; how those Christianised cultures then dealt with Midwinter festivities as a whole varied widely

The minds and behaviour of early medieval people weren’t software programmed by a Church that exercised total control. The Church showed sporadic interest in popular celebrations, but its main concern was Christian rites and belief - not suppressing all pre-Christian legacies

(By the way, it’s always a bit perilous to apply the term ‘pagan’ to pre-Christian legacies, because we know so little about pre-Christian religion we have no reliable way of distinguishing between *specifically religious* pre-Christian customs and others)

THREAD: Gorilla Troop Comms

These people are

2) Orig. tweet & timestamp

3) start >

San Diego

Members of the Gorilla [guerilla] Troop

San Diego

two guerillas

current circumstances

initiated the process

through

California

detected the presence of the virus in the gorilla troop > infiltrated?

confirmed the positive results

4) results confirm the presence

some of the gorillas

does not definitively rule out the presence

in other members of the troop > infiltrated by more than 1?

some congestion > trouble w/ communications

the gorillas are doing well

troop remains

together

full recovery

5) suspected

guerillas

acquired

infection from an asymptomatic staff member > again signaling infiltrated

precautions

protocols

wearing PPE when near the gorillas > ordering them wear masks

verified that some non-human > [I'm not decoding this one - WTF]