Participants of the armed protest near the State Capitol in Richmond, VA.

These guys tell me they have no affiliation with any militia, they are here to exercise their First and Second Amendment rights.

Boogaloo Bois are also out here, along with a ton of press

Boogaloos are now on the move, walking away from the Capitol

Definitely more cameras than guns out here

@vbspurs This will be my writing project for the day - hold on...

Fair warning: the Krittr family saga is not The Crown. Not even close. OTOH, it's not the Kartrashians either.

Ready?

It wasn’t as much that Grandpa Krittr (GK) didn’t understand her as he didn’t understand women in general. GK was the youngest of 8 kids born to a Volga German wheat farming family in Eastern Washington. He was the only one born in the US after 1/

2/ the family emigrated to the US. His only sister was almost 20 years older & had already moved away by the time he was born. [Yeah, he was a 7th son.]

[Side note: how the Volga Germans got to the US is an interesting story by itself. Short version is that they were all

3/ basically farmers who knew how to do one thing: grow wheat on unirrigated land, so they largely moved an entire village at a time from the Volga river valley to homestead in the areas where you can grow wheat without irrigation, namely E WA, parts of

4/ Montana & the Dakotas, and central Kansas. Often the villages spoke German except to outsiders, GK spoke German at home and English at school.]

Great grandpa Krittr (GGK) died long before I was born, but supposedly he was a good farmer, terrible to his wife and children,

Playing a bit of Tower of Druaga, in the Namco Museum collection. Splatterhouse is in there too, and it makes a good comparison, because you know how Splatterhouse's only draw is the hyper-detailed violence? Druaga is like that except the only draw is the hyper-obscure secrets.

But the secrets made it a huge hit in Japan in 1984. This is supposedly the game that created the Japanese arcade culture of players sharing notes, because the only path to success was approaching the game as a community.

Tower of Druaga clearly draws inspiration from Pac-Man (it's a maze chase) and Rogue (the maze isn't randomized, but everything *in it* is, plus you bump into enemies to attack them) and Wizardry/D&D (theming and upgrades).

To advance past each floor, you need to find the key and the exit, dodging monsters. You can also find a secret item on each floor. These "optional" items are crucial, some are literally required to proceed, and the processes you need to guess at to unlock them are *ridiculous*.

A sampling:
- Kill 3 slimes.
- Touch the left and right dungeon walls.
- Don't touch the outside walls for 12 seconds.
- Swing your sword while standing on the exit.
- Press 1P start.
- Kill 6 colored slimes in a specific order.
- Step on 3 unmarked tiles in a specific order.

At Wikipedia, we are told MLK and the other founders of the SCLC were inspired by Billy Graham. Right. Why would these guys be inspired by Billy Graham? Please ask yourself if that makes any sense.

If you will indulge me a little more, I'd like to share another element of the conspiracy theories surrounding inauguration, because we're hearing a LOT about Trump becoming the *19th* president of the United States

(no threats of violence here)
1/

OK SO - this truly bizarre story says that in 1871, the US ceased to be a nation and instead became a corporation that belongs to the city of London (attn @SadiqKhan)
AND if you see an American flag with gold fringe, well that represents the corporation NOT the country 2/

This, they say, is why the rich are privileged and the average guy can't get ahead. They do not explain why the City of London would do this to us, their American Corporation, but this is how we get the victim narrative introduced 3/

SO, the next step is that "Biden, Harris, Pence, Pelosi, etc." must be arrested before Inauguration for Crimes. We do not know who else is included in "etc" because, I suspect, figuring that out would take too much research on the part of whomever came up with this nonsense 4/

1/ In the Michael Butter book I read Saturday he made some interesting points. Up to the 1950s, in the West, conspiracy theories were regarded and completely legitimate forms of knowledge whose underlying assumptions were beyond question ( it was normal to believe in them)

Daily Bookmarks to GAVNet 01/18/2021

On this day of (mis)/remembering MLK, I think about the promise of Latin America’s pink tide (into which I was born and which molded me politically) to deliver economic redistribution and socialism by peaceful means, a version of MLKs dream. 🧵

In the past 20 years, various spots in Latin/Central America have been the murder capitals of the world. It remains the most dangerous place in the hemisphere to be a journalist or a politician. A half century of coups and counter-coups have beleaguered the continent

Collapsing global economies have left many countries behind, and almost all are struggling to find an economic path forward, including Vnzla which now under US sanctions and dwindling reserves must construct a post-petrol economy to survive and has failed to begin to do so.

MLK’s peaceful vision for racial and economic transformation in the US made him into an enemy of the state for whom racial and economic violence is both foundational and necessary for its hegemony and he was murdered by those complicit in that mission of domination.

Allende, MLK’s contemporary, succeeded in achieving part of MLKs vision by winning a democratic mandate for social justice and transformation at the ballot box and without firing a single bullet. This made him into an enemy of a faraway State, the US, and he was murdered for it.

After much investigation and conversations with people on here, I’ve formed a relatively robust theory of what may be happening with Tether.

This thread will attempt to lay it out with neutral language for the purpose of discussion.
1/

Before we start, please note that ‘robust’ doesn’t mean ‘accurate’, it just means that:

1. the theory is internally consistent
2. it accounts for participant behavior

…but it’s important to remember that this is still hypothesis-stage thinking.
2/

First, let us note that the BTC ecosystem has clearly stated goals. They believe that:

1. Bitcoin is a new global reserve money.
2. They intend to create an alternative financial system around it.

Let’s just take them at their word and assume that’s directionally accurate.
3/

Next, a postulate: most people do not understand the current monetary system very well. This is exemplified by the “BRRR” meme and other variants of thinking which presume that the Fed prints money.

That’s not how the system actually works, as discussed elsewhere.
4/

In reality, what’s happening with the Fed is a bit more subtle and involves various forms of duration swaps and clerical activities that the populace at large gives more credence than those activities actually deserve.

Money is very complex.
5/

PATTERNS - a thread.

what do dairy products, shampoo and the very first couple all have in common?

the answer is lines, shapes...or rather patterns that traders use to predict where price is going in the future.

for years now, i've used these patterns systematically and have no clue how i would navigate my trading without them.

if i'm being honest i mostly learned from studying and trying to replicate charts from legends like @inversebrah, @LSDinmycoffee and @LomahCrypto

now patterns are supposed to make your charts simpler rather than adding unnecessary noise.

i've made TONS of mistakes in terms of bad, low effort and flat-out invalid patterns with my charts.

with analysis its very easy to make your charts look they way you *want* them to.

there have been some very expensive lessons as a result of these mistakes, but if those mistakes lead to knowledge i can apply to the future then it makes it all worth it.

i guess you can have fun staying poor...anyways

what did I learn? a lot.

there are countless patterns, and if i'm being honest you can almost "create your own" to suit your bias.

but for now, lets focus on three: Adam & Eve, Head & Shoulders and Wedges.

Of all the things that confuse me (there are easily 3k this morning) this stumps me most: When did we decide that saving an 80-year-old's life is worth sacrificing a child's? Or that the value of their lives are exactly comparable? I could've sworn we'd agreed to something else.

We have special provisions for children. In court, they're treated differently. We've agreed they shouldn't have to work. They need public school (or so I thought). They cannot consent to sex. We have a set of laws that protects them.

I thought this was understood, and enacted by the thousands of examples we can gin up of adults running into traffic to save a child - not necessarily their own - or stopping a bullet. Remember those heroic teachers in Newtown in Parkland who shielded their students? That.

And we derided adults who USED children as shields, or failed to protect them. The mother who lets her husband beat her child because otherwise he'd turn on her. Society abjures such a person. The guard who hid instead of rushing the shooter in Parkland? Hated.

But now, with Covid is is simply disallowed to claim that we should prioritize, say, a 10-year-old school child over an 84-year-old in assisted living. Where the hell did this attitude come from and why does half of my social circle seem to believe it's right?

(1/25) A number of Silicon Valley investors are putting their money and influence into a campaign to gaslight rape victims into not seeking medical treatment

despite the warnings of top law enforcement officials

and NOBODY is talking about this.

(2/25) First, a little about me. I used to be a licensed sexual assault crisis counselor, counseling victims admitted to one of three Minneapolis emergency rooms.

After I'd speak to the victim, they'd receive a medical exam from a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE).

(3/25) During the exam, DNA and other evidence is collected with a "rape kit" to optionally be used in a civil or criminal case.

(4/25) But collecting evidence is not the ONLY reason to receive an exam.

The victim may also receive:
- counseling (hello!)
- treatment for (potentially invisible) injuries
- medications like Plan B and emergency antiretroviral therapy for HIV prophylaxis.

(5/25) Leda Health, a startup cofounded by Madison Campbell and Liesel Vaidya, is raising money to sell "do-it-yourself" rape kits that wouldn't require a hospital visit

which is possibly the most HARMFUL startup idea that I have ever heard of.

The nuance of this issue is that while the left positions all of this as an organized, massive movement of white supremacists in the traditional way of understanding them, their attempt at 'multiracial whiteness' demonstrates how they are struggling to manage the complexity.

NEW info about vaccines in #Arizona. Please keep in mind when you hear about new sites opening it doesn't mean they have enough vaccines to meet demand. I'm copying news release almost in its entirety in this thread but first highlighting a key supply point:

"The biggest limiting factor on appointments is the limited supply of vaccine doses. Arizona receives weekly allocations from the federal government, which determines how many vaccine doses the state has and how many appointments can be offered.
Now, the full info from @AZDHS:

"In a major step forward as the state increases the pace of COVID-19 vaccination, prioritized Arizonans will be able to register starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19, for February appointments at two state-run sites.

Initial appointments are limited based on vaccine supply, with appointments opening up depending on distribution of the vaccine by the federal government.

More than 281,000 doses of the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine have been administered so far to 243,593 Arizonans, including 32,269 who have received both doses.