The Calvin and Hobbes comic strip ended 25 years ago, so let’s celebrate a New Years treat by analyzing it! Awhile back I had a students annotate structures in every C&H strip, so we have data on the whole thing. As Calvin says: let’s go exploring! 1/ https://t.co/GAm45Ni1m5

An interesting feature of this strip is that Watterson took a few sabbaticals during its run, and came back with more artistic freedom. So, I’ll focus here on how a few aspects of the strip change over time. Here’s what every panel per strip looks like (all 14,712 panels!) 2/

Let’s start with storytelling. Overall, the strip shifts to becoming more visual and multimodality balanced in meaning over time. In this graph, higher numbers mean more meaning carried by pictures than words (0=balanced) 3/

You can also see this in the overall increase of wordless panels across strips. Interestingly, you see the same trends for both daily and Sunday strips, suggesting broader shifts in Watterson’s storytelling inclinations 4/

The amount of words also changed. The strip steadily got more wordy in the first half of its run, but then started decreasing again as it shifted to visual meanings 5/

10 reasons why I think now is the greatest time to launch a startup

You should probably consider starting something

Just listen to this:

You can start with the community

I’ve identified ~8000 communities that could be unbundled from Reddit

- They are thriving
- They could make you ~$1m/year of revenue
- You often need $400 max to build MVP to tap that untapped value
- It's fun

Sounds like a dream job to me

People in Silicon Valley don’t have an edge on you

SF held the monopoly on startups for decades. Now, being in SF doesn’t matter for 99% of businesses

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise

The world is flat and is staying flat

Hell yeah. That feels good to say

You have 10x the amount of funding sources

You used to have to rely on VCs. Not anymore

To name a few:

- Fund via your community
- Fund via NFTs
- Fund via pre-sales
- Fund via tokens
- Fund via accelerators all over the world
- Etc

All of a sudden, you have 10x the options

Niche businesses can be worth billions

People used to laugh at niche. Why “go small” when you could “go big”?

The way to go big right now IS to go small

Large tech companies can’t be everything to everyone

I am going to say something very uncomfortable. Read before you react please.

Purity culture encourages pedophilia, a thread:

Purity culture encourages pedophilia.

Some of the standards of purity culture are innocence (pretty much ignorance about sex), submission (for women), virginity as the ultimate standard, and “modesty” (for women that is wearing clothes that don’t reveal their adult curves)*
1/

Purity culture makes the desirable standard a child. It makes child likeness desirable in regards to sexuality. It makes virginity, and innocence, and submission; what the male brain should want most in a partner. And your brain doesn’t rewire just because you get married.
2/

This doesn’t mean every man raised in purity culture is a pedophile, that’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is that purity culture wires the brain of men to desire child likeness, which encourages pedophilia. After all desire and objectification happen in our brain.

3/

Now if you are a pedophile who wants to act on those desires, purity culture does a lot of the grooming for you. Purity culture discourages comprehensive sex education leaving children without the ability to know what’s appropriate and what’s not.

4/

Do I look like I know what an MPEG is?

di i look like i know what an mpeg is

do i liook like i pw what am ,[eg os

Today I'm just quotating someone's words. Let's see how many of us recognise this man.

Real Hero of Bharat!

At about 2.30 in the afternoon, General Sir Roy Bucher walked into my room and said, "Eh, you, go and pick up your toothbrush. You are going to Srinagar with V P Menon. The flight will take off at about 4 o'clock". I said, "why me, sir?"

We are worried about the military situation. V P Menon is going there to get the accession from the Maharaja. I flew in with V P Menon in a Dakota. Wng Cdr Dewan, was also there. But his job did not have anything to do with assessing the military situation.

He was sent by the Air Force because it was the Air Force which was flying us in.

Since I was in the Directorate of Military Operations, and was responsible for current operations all over India, West Frontier, the Punjab, etc, I knew what the situation in Kashmir was.

I knew that the tribesmen had come in - initially only the tribesmen - supported by the Pakistanis.
Fortunately for us, and for Kashmir, they were busy raiding, raping all along. In Baramulla they killed Colonel Dykes.

Happy New Years y’all...

I was going to take a little nap until morning but that can wait 😅

So much has bothered me but nothing more than how everything has been manufactured, everything...

We are literally living in an illusion...

#Thread on Swastika

Meaning-

Swastika (स्वस्तिक) = Su (सु) + Asti (अस्ति) + Ka(क)
• Su(सु) means Shubh(शुभ) i.e auspicious or welfare
• Asti(अस्ति) means be/happen or exist. It stand for power or existence.
• Ka(क) stands for doer or performer i.e Karta(कर्ता)

So, Swasti means Be Auspicious or Be Welfare
and Swastika means Auspicious/Welfare Doer.
It is also believed to be a symbol of good, auspicious and welfare from ancient times.

History-

The journey of Swastika from its origin to today's world is filled with mysteries and

broken links of evidences spread over different ages of civilization.

According to a research published by IIT kharagpur-
“The Vedas also have a mention of various forms of Swastika. 1.89.6 of Rig Veda, gives a brief introduction of Swastika in the cosmos,

with the higher level of Indra, Pusha, Tarksya and Brihaspati at the macrocosmic level and seeking their blessing is the man at microcosmic level. Lusha Dhanaka Rishi explains the various manifestations of the Swastika in the 10:35 and 36 Suktas of Rig Veda.”

The graphic form of in Indus Valley seals are the earliest recorded swastikas in India. The epic of Ramayana also mentions the symbol embossed in the boat that ferried Lord Rama while the Mahabharata describes the Chakra-Vyuha or the Swastika maze.

Kenyans are dying because of corruption in the health-care sector. Today, I focus on a little-known "Billionaire" and insurance cartel, James Olubayi and the heists he has pulled mostly in the public sector! THREAD

To start with, James Olubayi is known as a Stauch Christian and a church elder but even Osama worshipped.

James Olubayi is among the first Kenyan actuarial fellows and the head of an insurance cartel in Kenya, He once worked for Government.

James Olubayi owns pioneer through a proxy his brother being in the board

James Olubayi operates as a scammer and moonlights government parastatals and institutions influencing tenders.

Today in pulp I look back at the world of Soviet women's fashion!

It's not all berets, but it mostly is...

Now you may think that fashion and the Soviet Union go together like Groucho Marx and Friedrich Engels. However that is to misunderstand the nature of the Commad Economy: if she commands it, you'd better buy it for her!

So there is a rich history of fashion and fun (along with the tractor factories and endless ballet performances) in the old USSR. Let's take a sashay along it...

At the start of the Soviet years women's fashion, let's face it, tended towards the functional. Red was popular, as were headscarves, hobnail boots and the ability to field strip a 3-line rifle.

But all that was about to change...

...because Russia had a new fashionista in charge: Stalin! He hated the peasant look of War Communism because it made socialism seem synonymous with poverty. He ordered Soviet Woman to spruce herself up.

Story of Azad Hind Bank
Before independence, the picture of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was also printed on the Indian currency. A replica of this currency issued by Azad Hind Bank can be seen on the currency display board of the main branch of State Bank of India located at Bank

Road in Gorakhpur city of Uttar Pradesh.
He also got a lot of support for the war that Netaji had started to liberate the country. People also donated in a big way. A bank was also created in April 1943 to handle these money. Its name was 'Azad Hind Bank'. This bank was

established in Rangoon, the capital of Varma. Varma is now known as Myanmar.
In the olden days, even the king-maharaja used to issue coins in his name, so in the same way this government of Netaji also issued its currency through 'Azad Hind Bank'. The countries which supported '

Azad Hind Sarkar' also recognized this currency.
The ten countries that supported the Azad Hind government and the army were Verma, Croatia, Germany, Nanking (present-day China), Manchukuo, Italy, Thailand, the Philippines and Ireland that recognized the bank and its currency.

From ten rupees coins to one lakh rupees notes were issued by the bank. The picture of Subhas Chandra Bose was printed on the one lakh rupee note. Prior to this, only the information of 5000 notes issued by Azad Hind Bank was public. A five thousand note is also kept in BHU's

An amazing new project from @bearpelican was just released: https://t.co/DBov6sZTVS . A beautiful design; you can auto-generate a melody from chords, chords from a melody, and more.

It's technically brilliant, combining BERT, seq2seq, and Transformer XL
https://t.co/jF3mO5aXiu

It's also a wonderful example of leveraging and customizing the fastai framework in a deep & thoughtful way.

Here's the full set of blog posts diving in to this

Thread – The Buffoon in the White House (Irony)

1. A pal passed this to me the other day, and I saved it for today. The author is unknown (at least to me), but this has been posted on a number of blogs. An excellent read!

Tony Blair is LOTO, behind the scenes, other Blairites are involved too. Keir Starmer is just a front man, Alexandre Samuel Barros-Curtis is Labour's version of Dominic Cummings, he's THE top man. Everything makes sense from this perspective. #LabourLeak #StarmerOut 👇 #BREXIT

According to his LinkedIn profile, Barros-Curtis’s day job is as a consultant solicitor “Providing specialised legal advice in the area of derivatives and structured finance” in particular “Hedging, project financings, securitisations, credit derivatives” #LabourLeaks #HedgeFund

He has worked extensively on derivatives and structured finance matters in Europe and Hong Kong; as well as formerly working for the Clinton Foundation. Asked to comment on Mr Barros-Curtis and his role in the party Labour said they do not discuss staffing issues. #LabourLeaks

Starmer's team members were accused of what's called "DATA - scraping" - seeking to obtain certain information from a wider set of data. Mr Barros-Curtis was also the DATA controller for Keir's campaign website. Who hired Asaaf Kaplan and When?.

Tony Blair has said he would not want a left-wing Labour party to win a general election.

The former prime minister said that even if he thought a left-wing programme was the route to victory, he would not adopt one. 2015

1) Now learning about #GESARA and #NESARA. Starting to look like #Trump might have actually prepared the way for their implementation. A crucial step is getting nation off debt based system controlled by central banks and reclaiming control with gold-backed currency.

2) That's why I'm looking at ScoMo's much derided use of phrase "#goldstandard" in a new light. Remember that he made this comment about #NSWpol's handling of #COVID19AU back in September, saying "that is where we have to get everybody to":

3) ScoMo used phrase several times. In clip below (Dec): "NSW Govt's testing and tracing capabilities are #goldstandard not just in this country but anywhere around the world." So, local and global reference. #NESARA is USA, #GESARA is global.

4) In this clip (late Sept) he uses it again, specifically in reference to how #Victoria is catching up to NSW, which he believes is #goldstandard in #contacttracing. (In first clip above he also used it in comparing systems of these two states.)

5) Given that so much of what we see and hear in social and mainstream media from blue checks is coded comms, was this repeated use of distinctive and seemingly antiquated phrase another example? Was he giving heads up to *those in the know* that this system was imminent?

Lesser Known Fact:

Though it is believed that Pakistan’s first contact with Islam happened 711 CE with the conquest of Sind, Islam had touched the Indus region as early as the 640s during the caliphate of Umer R.A.

Thread on the early contacts of the Indus with Islam 1/n

As noted by Yaqut’s book ‘Mujam Al Buldan’, the Caliph’s intentions of spreading Islam in South Asia had been made as early as 634 CE.

The process of the first invasion upon the Indus region began in 641/‘42 CE when even after defeating the Sassanians at -

At the battle of Navahand, the Sassanid empire didn’t fully come under Muslim control and many provincial governors declared independence. So a large mobilisation of Muslim troops took place with 5 armies under 5 generals for 5 different places; one of which was Makran.

Shortly after the fall of the city of Isfahan, Abdullah Bin Utban (one of the men involved) marched towards the region of Kirman. The armies fought steadily with the locals of Kirman who were eventually routed and the city of Zaranj in modern Afghanistan was taken.

At this point, the Muslims made a treaty with the people of Kirman and the armies descended south to meet with the already present and arriving auxiliary forces strengthened near the border of Makran, preparing for the first thrust towards the Indus.

#Thread
1. #Margabandeeswar #Temple - located at #Virinchipuram, #Vellore dist. #TamilNadu
Sthala Vruksham: Palm Tree
Theertham: Simha, Sooli & Brahma Theertham
This is 1300 years old temple – the oldest & biggest #temple of #Vellore dist. @sattology
@harshasherni @Itishree001

2. #Sattology about this Temple: A 110 feet high, 7 stage, east facing RajaGopuram is the one that welcomes us first. Sri Adi Shankaracharya had done Beejakshara Pradhishta to Simha theertham. This temple is also known as ‘Baskara Kshetram’
@Tanvangi17 @almightykarthik

3. because Surya Bhagwan is said to worship Linga when its rays fall on it in the month of Panguni (March-April); The name of the place as Virinchipuram came from #Sattology that the #Temple was worshiped by Brahma, i.e., Virinchi; The #theertha of this Temple @onlyaravindh

4. is said to be produced by Gowri devi & so, this place is also known as #Gowripuram; #Vishnupuram & #Margabandheeswaram are also the other names of the place. This is the birth place of Sri Appayya Dikshithar (1520-1593), the greatest interpreter of
@pujari_anup @Nidhi7007

5. Advaitha Sidhantha after Adhi Sankara. His Margabandhu stotram on this Margabandheeswarar is for the protection of people while on journey. By reciting this one can have Mahadev with them as Marga-bandhu (protector during journey) along their journey. @Vaidyvoice @desi_thug1