So many fantastic recommendations here:

Including @Lolitachakra's 'Hymn' starring @AdrianLester & @DannySapani live-streaming from @AlmeidaTheatre. Playtext available here:

And @mogster's @EmiliaThePlay archive recording available throughout March on a pay what you can basis. Read the playtext here:

'The Whip' is also available as an audio recording on Youtube until 16th March.

Playtext:

Philip Ridley’s brand new play 'The Poltergeist' is available online until 28th Feb and you can pick up a copy of the playtext here:

For over 200 years the Census has asked “What is your sex”. This year there will also be an *extra* question asking about gender identity. That’s great. Two questions about two different concepts - lots of useful information /1

One question about facts – the sex you were born.
One question about feelings – how people identity and live.
The extra question will give us our first accurate indication of the size of the trans community. A move welcomed by everyone /2

So what's the problem? It's that trans pressure groups such as Stonewall say it's not enough that trans people have their own gender identity question. They think trans people should be allowed to answer BOTH questions according to gender identity /3

They say it's simply too offensive and hurtful to ask trans person a factual question about sex they were registered at birth. So now an undefined number of people will be allowed to put the wrong answer to the sex question so we don’t hurt anyone's feelings /4

This has alarmed scientists who need accurate data on sex.
Last year 80 academics, including Professors from top universities, wrote to the ONS saying they mustn’t do this /5

Today is our judicial review hearing over the Government contract awarded to friends of Dominic Cummings at Public First without competition.

We'll be tweeting live from 10.30am.

The greatest treasure looted from the Ethiopian people at Maqdala in 1868 isn't in the BL or V&A. The Kwer'ata Re'esu, the most sacred icon of the Ethiopian people, was stolen by a representative of the Queen, later sold by his heirs & remains hidden in a bank vault today. 1/10

The original painting, by an unknown Renaissance master, was brought to Ethiopia in the 16th century and became the talismanic icon of the Ethiopian people, a symbol of Imperial authority. Oaths were sworn on it & it was carried into battle at the head of the Emperor’s army. 2/10

Copes of the Kwer'ata Re'esu icon are ubiquitous in early Ethiopian art - here is one painted in the so-called Second Gondarene style in a late 17th century manuscript. 3/10

Its importance to the Ethiopian people is incalculable. In 1744 it was captured in a battle with Sudanese Muslims & later returned on payment of a ransom. James Bruce, a visitor to Ethiopia in 1768, wrote: "all Gondar was drunk with joy" on the return of the "quarat rasou”. 4/10

After the Siege of Maqdala it was stolen from the Emperor Tewodros' palace by Sir Richard Rivington Holmes of the BM, later the Royal Librarian at Windsor Castle, who took the painting - not for the British Museum or the Royal Collection - but for his own private collection. 5/10

NS2 a response to Mr Wolfgang Munchau. Although I agree on a number of points with WM in his recent @spectator piece-I disagree with his central contention that NS2 is about more gas for Germany. There is no more gas & what gas there is not for Germany. Lengthy thread to follow.

1.WMs @EuroBriefing article has swallowed a huge dose of Russian (and indeed German) propaganda. Throughout the article WM refers to Nord Stream 2 as being vital to Germany because of the need for more Russian gas. This is

2.The key point about NS2 is that it is a diversionary pipeline. There is no new gas. This huge political effort by Russia and Germany to deliver NS2 will not bring a single extra molecule of gas to Germany.

3.What is more the gas destined to land on the German Baltic coast at Greifswald (in AM's constituency) will substantially go not to Germany. The connecting pipeline for NS2, called EUGAL has the same capacity as NS2 (55bcm) and heads eastward to the Czech Republic.

4.Our friendly gas propagandists may well say that in December 2019 Gazprom signed a gas transit contract with the Ukrainian state owned energy company Naftogaz for 40bcm a year from 2021-2024. So with NS2 there will be more gas. NS2 plus the gas transited via Ukraine.

The #toolkit dropped by @GretaThunberg had many key players but the name of the foreign expert Pieter Friedrich was dramatic as he was the part of a true story we were working(About group which tried every possible way to unsettle

These series of events have been around everyone for long but yet major stakeholders failed to notice this shift from proxy war to info-war/psy-war
Our attempt was to try & map this network, we did expect a elaborate design but the reach & depth of the planning was shocking(2/17)

The proxy war:
The story starts from the 1980’s, where Bhajan Singh Bhinder aka Iqbal choudhary was funding a terror network for carrying out large scale violence with the help of another terrorist Lal Singh & Pakistan’s ISI. India escaped this attack,Lal Singh got arrested(3/17)

These attacks were part of a large conspiracy called K-2(#Kashmir-#Khalistan), which hatched in Lahore under patronage of Amir ul Azeem, the secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami and was supported by several others like the Uncle of present S&T minister of Pakistan @fawadchaudhry (4/17)

At the same time in the US Bhinder & his gang were involved in a major trans-national drug trafficking & a DVD privacy network. In order to fund this network they managed to take control of the most prominent Gurdwara(Fremont Gurdwara) after a bloody fight within Gurdwara (5/17)

Boxerman
----------
(Sung to the tune of Wellerman)

[A Musical Thread]

🎵
There once was a plan for an AFV
The name of the plan was the MIV
There’s more to the tail than you may know
Brew that bivvie boys, brew
🎵

(Hurr! 💪)

🎶
Soon may the Boxerman come
To bring us armour and tea and gun
One day, when the fightin’ is done
We’ll take our wheels and go
🎶

🎵
They must deploy two kay from shore
Fit two to a Herc or maybe more
We envied all that Soviet Cav
And soon was born MRAV
🎵

Presenting you the 1st Phase Opinion Poll of West Bengal Vidhan Sabha Election 2021 by Bongo Prokash. It's a joint venture by me & @ThePaulSaheb, 2 more such polls will be out in March. Please give your feedback. Constructive criticism will be appreciated trolls will be blocked.

In Coochbehar, BJP is sweeping all the seats except Sitai. Udayan Guha losing, so is Rabindranath. Rajbongshis stay with BJP.

In Alipurduar it's a BJP landslide. BJP maintains it's Lok Sabha strength & adds with recent defection by good organization leaders from TMC.

In Jalpaiguri too BJP sweeps, TMC draws a blank.

In Darjeeling the game becomes interesting. GJM is a divided house now in alliance with TMC. Tamang & Gurung factions heavily divided. GNLF backs BJP. BJP+GNLF ahead in Siliguri, Phansidewa, Naxalbari while GJM marginally ahead in Kalimpong, Kurseong & at the moment in Darjeeling

Please please please take your cyber security seriously even if you don’t consider yourself a high risk person. Here are a few easy things to start with. 1/n

Switch from WhatsApp to Signal and enable disappearing messages. Most of us cannot stop using WhatsApp entirely but at least turn off back ups to Google Drive or iCloud. 2/n

Do not have private conversations using the messaging service on any social media platform like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. 3/n

Switch from Gmail to ProtonMail or any other secure email service provider. 4/n


Switch from Google Docs to CryptPad or RiseUp Pad.

@ReformedTrader That is a long post, but well written. Real estate is a claim on the future prosperity or ruin of a geographical location. Real estate intrinsic values is its ability to generate cash or similar costs to rent in that area. Intrinsic value is above zero in most cases.

Ironically enough, the location that benefits most from property ownership are places where rising living costs expand faster than rising middle income wages. Deflationary areas are hostile to property ownership as price is falling make collateral and borrowing difficult.

Homes are bought using leverage with agencies loan subsidies by the governments. As long as you have fixed rates, the costs of living expenses for your housing is set for 30 or 15 years which allow family to budget. Wealth can be accumulate over time as asset and income risen.

Time passed, real estate become detach from intrinsic values. Monthly mortgage rocket pass incomes and growth in the area. Quick money into real estate turn into a landmine. The 2007 fiasco could have been better or worst, but the free market is effectively dead as an ideology.

At the time, investors attack the institutional that vulnerable to the MBS and structured derivatives linked to real estate bubble risks. Since many financial institution owned the agencies MBS, defaulting on these security means downward spiral for M1 and M2 in developed nations

There’s rumour about confidential negotiations btn the Biden admin and the German gov. Their goal: to find a way out of the mess in which the whole transatlantic community finds itself because of Merkel’s support for Putin’s pipeline—Nord Stream 2

2/ The preferred solution for the Biden team would be to deny Putin the ability to exercise energy blackmail against Central Europe and Ukraine, while at the same time foregoing sanctions against Germany.

3/ Early in his career, Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony @SecBlinken had analyzed the decision of the Reagan administration not to levy sanctions against West Europeans for building the Siberian pipeline with the Soviets.

4/ See for example:

5/ Reagan decided to take a step back, calculating that the unity of the West was more important than the gas pipeline. Not even Lady Thatcher supported Reagan’s policy.

Shopify is a $1T (5.5x) company in the next 10 yrs if any combo of the below work in its favor:

1/ Ecomm penetration continues to grow
2/ Global churn increase/US DTC model becomes viable
3/ Brand discovery (key!)
4/ Larger cut of each transaction

A thread:

1/ Doesn't require much explanation - the more things people buy online, the more $ Shopify makes. 2 things in Shop's favor here:
Can Shopify make ppl buy more things? *Did I really need that 5th pair of Allbirds?*
What other retail categories will move more online?

2/ *Heinz going DTC seems silly and doesnt move the needle for them rn, but why can't every small restaurant order their condiments DTC in the future? *DTC of wholesale makes a ton of sense.*

Ecom goes way beyond DTC (Shopify's current bread & butter)-Shopify can, and should...

3/ start to take on the Squarespaces, Wix, Weebly's of the world. If you monetize online, Shopify should be your first stop.

Not to mention, overtime, Shopify will eat traditional competitors at the top (Oracle/SAP) and similar competitors will die out (Woo, Big, ect ect)

4/ High churn is a good thing for Shopify (ht @benthompson) The more people trying and failing on Shopify, also increase the probability of a major winner. Marginal costs of failures < marginal gains of big winners.

Globally, Shopify needs to reduce the pain of failure.

It's a slow, snowy afternoon. How about a 🧵 on "rationalists" & "rationalism"? I want to talk about what real rationalism might look like & what people devoted to rationalism might actually behave like--and how that differs from what you often see from self-styled rationalists.

Caveat up front: this is not about Slate Star Codex, which I haven't read regularly enough to have an opinion on, or about the recent controversy between SSC & the NYT. I'm more interested in the *idea* of rationalism (vs. the practice).

The core premise of rationalism, as I understand it, is simply that humans' cognitive machinery was not designed by evolution to find truth, but rather to advance the interests & welfare of the collective -- a Venn overlap, but not the same thing. Therefore ...

... reasoning well, both individually & as groups, requires special effort. It requires consciously trying to set aside the parochialism, biases, & other distortions that typically characterize our thinking -- resisting, to some extent, the dynamics of group membership/welfare.

That's all fine. I agree entirely that we should make special effort to reason well & to guard against the typical failures of reasoning to which we humans are prone. I believe it's the best (maybe only) way forward as a species. So far so good.

I started TRT before the age of 30.

I did it because I wanted to, not because I needed to.

My Total Testosterone Levels (naturally) were just above 700 ng/dl

That's **Good, but not Great**

I wanted to be at 1,000 ng/dl (GREAT)

...

So, I talked a doctor into prescribing me Testosterone Cypionate.

NO DOCTOR IN AMERICA is going to agree to prescribe TRT to a man who is naturally at 700ng/dl

So, I intentionally crashed my natural T levels down to 300-400 ng/dl, then got bloodwork done

(I intentionally made my natural T levels look far lower than what they really were)

How did I intentionally crash my natural testosterone levels? (to go from 700 nd/dl, to 300-400ng/dl)

Bloodwork was planned for Thursday

...

Tuesday and Wednesday Night, intentionally get trash quality sleep (balls can't produce testosterone when you are sleep deprived)

Drink a ton of alcohol Wednesday Night (high alcohol consumption suppresses testosterone levels)

Thread on snow ratios. The snow ratio, or snow-to-liquid ratio states how many inches of snow, when melted, yields one inch of liquid water. Ratios are usually around 10:1 or 12:1, but can vary from as little as 6:1 or as high as 30:1, or sometimes more. 1/

There's a common misunderstanding that the colder the surface temp is, the higher the snow ratio will be (fluffier snow). This is incorrect. As long is the surface temp is not close to freezing, it really doesn't matter all that much. 2/

As the surface temp gets close to or exceeds freezing, more snow is lost to melting, yielding lower ratios and heavy, wet snow. The same reasoning also applies to temps above the ground; if they exceed freezing, sleet or rain can mix with the snow, dramatically lowering ratios 3/

Much more important is the dendritic growth zone (DGZ), the layer of the atmosphere with temperatures between -12 and -18C. In this layer, snowflakes grow as dendrites, which can easily clump together into aggregates, which contain a lot of air, increasing the ratio 4/

At warmer or colder temps, the flakes grow as plates, columns, or needles, which don't clump together as well and contain less air, lowering the ratio. To make this even more complicated, there's also a dependence on atmospheric humidity. 5/

Latest update from @TheBernician

1/19

Hancock, Whitty, Vallance & Ferguson Stand Accused of Pandemic Fraud.

After yet more damning evidence arose last week, further additions had to be made to the court papers, which we are now aiming to lay in the coming week.

2/19

The four defendants will be Matt Hancock, Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance and Neil Ferguson, each of whom has inextricable and ultimately incriminating connections with Bill Gates and Big Pharma.

3/19

As well as three counts of fraud by false representation and seven counts of fraud by non-disclosure, under sections 2 and 3 of the Fraud Act 2006, we can now also prove that the entire worldwide scamdemic originated on these shores.

4/19

In fact, we can show that, without the dishonest statements and non-disclosures of the four defendants we are initially proceeding against, COVID-1984 would not have transpired.

5/19

Furthermore, the 1st defendant, Matt Hancock, cannot rely upon the defence of Parliamentary Privilege, on the ground that none of the evidence relied upon by the prosecution is capable of preventing parliamentarians from carrying out their lawful business in Parliament.