BC BIDEN
Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

Along w/ Biden climate news, some thoughts on solar geoengineering (SG) research under Biden Admin. SG closer to Biden/Democratic politics than Trump/Conservative: science-based, multilateral “green” capitalism. Recent moves indicate SG steadily moving into climate policy: THREAD

 US is the world leader in SG research, with most funding from private sources – largely billionaires, wealthy individuals, and their boutique foundations – with ties to Silicon Valley tech firms, venture capital, and Wall Street hedge funds (also major donor bases for Dem Party)
Some philanthropists funding SG research include Bill Gates, Rachel Pritzker (billionaire heir of Pritzker family; Chair of Board at Breakthrough Institute), Chris Sacca/Lower Carbon Capital (billionaire VC, deep ties to Silicon Valley). All representatives of “green” capitalism
Leading centrist think tanks and environmental orgs like EDF and Resources for the Future (RFF), both of which take corporate funding (with RFF taking money from fossil fuel industry, e.g. Aramco, Chevron, Shell) support SG research and promote its inclusion in US climate policy
RFF recently published an SG policy paper by Harvard economists Joseph Aldy (fmr. Special Advisor to Obama for Energy and Environment) and Richard Zeckhauser that advocates SG as merely one prong of “prudent” climate policy: https://t.co/zfDffkS2J3
Harvard is home to the leading SG research program in the world, with millions in funding (much of it, again, from tech and finance billionaires). Harvard SG researchers are currently moving forward with outdoor experiments (SCoPEx): https://t.co/lPk3yqXvEv
Harvard’s David Keith and MIT’s John Deutch recently published a paper similarly advocating SG as one tool in a “rational” climate toolbox, presented at the elite Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group, co-chaired by Fmr. Treasury Secretary (and Goldman Sachs exec) Hank Paulson
Deutch is representative of corporate power and the defense community: former CIA Director and Deputy Sec. of Defense, board member of Citigroup, Raytheon, Schlumberger, member of National Petroleum Council. Link to Keith and Deutch Paper: https://t.co/RmJaqr62w0
Deutch also recently published a proposal for federal SG research: $50 million to 10-15 universities, overseen by a congressional blue ribbon committee. Written w/ Maria Zuber, new co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology: https://t.co/VbxSLAu7WJ
This would go well beyond existing congressional funding: FY20 saw allocation of $4 million to NOAA to support SG research, FY21 proposals call for an additional $9 million. Funding originates from Rep. McNerney’s (D-CA) “Climate Intervention Research Act” https://t.co/Km6s3TGWn8
Guidance for further federal SG funding and research will come from the National Academies of Science report on “blocking sunlight to cool earth,” which is expected to shape US SG policy. The NAS committee was initially chaired by Susan Biniaz, top US lawyer at the Paris Accords
Biniaz has published on SG, and is on the board of SG funding and research organization SilverLining. SilverLining is connected in Rep. McNerney’s office, and backed by billionaires like Pritzker, Sacca, and other Silicon Valley/venture capital interests: https://t.co/p9uksniOvo
SilverLining recently provided $3 million in grants for SG research to leading programs, and couches their work in the language of humanitarianism and “climate justice:” https://t.co/zmjilGIgd1 ... this is the increasingly dominant framing of SG research
Biniaz is now a top staffer in John Kerry’s Cabinet-level climate office within the National Security Council. SG easily aligns with Biden/Dem approach to climate security, and has long been on the agenda of military/intelligence agencies (e.g. CIA, DARPA) https://t.co/VpAvxEcOls
US remains an imperial empire, climate security will be enfolded into the imperial project. SG under US-led capitalist hegemony – driven by endless accumulation/growth via global south dispossession and imperialist rivalry – cannot be humanitarian even if nominally “multilateral”
The climate-friendly wing of the capitalist class, the policy/security elite, and politically connected scientists comfortable with billionaire money and green capitalism are embracing SG. This is no road to climate justice, merely a slightly “greener” version of status the quo
Compare this to signatories of the HOME Campaign’s Manifesto Against Geoengineering. I don’t fully share HOME/ETC’s politics, but the signatories make clear that those struggling for climate justice on the ground across global north and south oppose SG: https://t.co/Yi6hbJcqe0
Green capitalism (tweaks in market-policy-technology) cannot manage climate crises. Carbon removal at relevant scales remains dubious (see work on CDR by @wim_carton) ...likely the only way to deal w/ climate under capitalism is to “buy time” at a planetary scale, i.e. solar geo
Left climate organizations and journalists need to start paying closer attention to the development of solar geoengineering in the US: @SteveAHorn @KateAronoff @aldatweets ...thoughts? @mclaren_erc @OlafCorry @jenniecstephens @InaMoller @hollyjeanbuck @VozSilvestre @maxajl

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🇺🇸I Support Our Milita...
@TheWiseOwl_AZ
1. Inauguration and Your Character, Anonymous: It's truly fascinating. Many patriots, upon seeing Joe B*iden sworn in on TV — nothing but a theatrical production, of course — have lost their minds and surrendered to defeat. They had hoped that military arrests of B*iden would...
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César
@crimmigration
I just read the federal court’s decision to stop the 100-day deportation pause. The court granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Biden administration from implementing its 100-day deportation pause. The TRO applies for 14 days.

The court concluded that Texas is likely to win its argument that the pause 1) violates the Immigration & Nationality Act’s requirement that migrants ordered removed from the USA be removed within 90 days, and...

2) DHS acted arbitrarily & capriciously by suddenly shifting immigration policy from the prior administration.

As a preliminary matter, the court found that Texas has standing to sue because it provided evidence “of damage to its public fisc by causing it to increase its spending on public services to illegal aliens.”

In particular, the court pointed to state expenses on emergency Medicaid, the Family Violence Program, the state’s health insurance program for children, and educational costs.
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Daniela Gabor
Daniela Gabor
@DanielaGabor
bankers against Biden's fiscal plan could really do with some proper fact-checking before sending their op-ed to the FT.

We all understand 'it's ideology, stupid!', but no excuse for lazy arguments.

apparently, the Gospel according to Morgan Stanley is that we havent had enough neoliberalism for the past 4 decades


if you click on BIS link, it tells you monetary policy, not higher deficits, are associated with wealth inequality.

Incidentally, unconventional monetary policy through which central banks basically rescued banks after they nearly destroyed the global financial system in 2008


speaking of government spending, who else but Morgan Stanley got $10 billion in equity investments from US Treasury in 2008?

I cant think of a more productivity-enhancing outlay for 10bn of public funds.


the OECD 'evidence' that 'four straight decades of growing government intervention in the economy have led to slowing productivity growth' is also, excuse my language, a lot of bullshit.
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David C Lowery
David C Lowery
@davidclowery
Okay. That was quick. I’m done with Biden. Renata Hesse is total nightmare for workers. Her previous stint in DOJ had her tightening restrictions on songwriters while letting big tech off the hook. She is a pawn of Silicon Valley. Be very very afraid.


Former Google attorney Renata Hesse when working at DOJ antitrust tried to change the details of the BMI and ASCAP consent decrees that would have made a $1 Billion lawsuit against Google go away. This is horrendously corrupt. This is a terrible terrible start for Biden.

https://t.co/yM5ej1rIBN

https://t.co/hkc1B31cR7

https://t.co/J5f3C90qsh
BIDEN
Ruth H. Hopkins, B.S., M.S., J.D.
Ruth H. Hopkins, B.S.,...
@Ruth_HHopkins
President Biden is signing an Executive Order today that will put an end to the Keystone XL pipeline.

I’m sharing a few of the pieces I wrote re #NoKXL that shows how long my people have been fighting it. Water the Life giver was published by Indian Country Today in 2011.


I wrote KXL equals death in 2013 for Indian Country Today. Eventually, President Obama heeded our wishes & stopped the Keystone XL Pipeline. Trump revived it on one of his first days in office. Now Biden will revoke the permit. It’s been a long, hard fought battle. #NoKXL


Here is a spirit camp held in 2014 by the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, offering prayers to stop the pipeline. #NoKXL


Our Tribes signed a treaty together United against Keystone XL.


The movement really got going when a small group of elders went out on a Reservation road and put their bodies in the path of trucks hauling construction equipment for the Keystone XL Pipeline. #NoKXL
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The 2018 State of JavaScript survey is out. They got 20,000 responses and have some delicious, delicious data. I'mma thread in some highlights:

First up: JavaScript flavors. There's TypeScript at 47% adoption, a tad higher than npm's own survey results (which said 46%). npm's survey is coming up again soon and will ask about TypeScript in a lot more detail.


I really, *really* like SoJ's "would not use again" question, which lets people who've abandoned a tech self-identify. This is noticeable in the graph above with Flow users -- 41% of people who've used Flow say they wouldn't use it again.

Now JavaScript frameworks. It's been a full year since npm's survey, so these numbers differ from ours in the directions I expected:
React 65% (vs. 60%)
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Ember 5% (vs 4%, I was expecting a bigger rise)

But there's a shocker in here: Angular.


npm's survey had Angular at 40% last year and SoJ has it at either:
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The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed
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Alex Oluwatobi
@alexlobaloba
According to psychologists, there are four types of intelligence:

- Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
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- Social Quotient (SQ)
- Adversity Quotient (AQ)

1. IQ is the measure of one's ability to comprehend, solve maths; memorize things & recall subject matters.

2. EQ is the measure of your ability to maintain peace with others; keep to time; be responsible; be honest; respect boundaries; be humble, genuine, and considerate.

3. SQ is the measure of one's ability to build a network of friends & maintain it over a long period of time.

4. AQ is the measure of your ability to go through a rough patch in life and come out without losing your mind. It is a new paradigm and can be used to determine who will give up in face of troubles and may abandon their families.

Now to the very interesting & analytical part👇

People that have higher EQ & SQ tend to go further in life than those with high IQ but low EQ &SQ.

Most schools capitalize on improving IQ level while EQ & SQ are played down.

A man of high IQ can end up being employed by a man of high EQ & SQ even though he has an average IQ.

Your EQ represents your character; your SQ represents your charisma. Give in to habits that will improve these three Qs but more especially your EQ and SQ.

EQ and SQ make one manage better than the other.

Try not only to have a higher IQ but also to have higher EQ and SQ.
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Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
1. Project 1742 (EcoHealth/DTRA)
Risks of bat-borne zoonotic diseases in Western Asia

Duration: 24/10/2018-23 /10/2019

Funding: $71,500
@dgaytandzhieva
https://t.co/680CdD8uug


2. Bat Virus Database
Access to the database is limited only to those scientists participating in our ‘Bats and Coronaviruses’ project
Our intention is to eventually open up this database to the larger scientific community
https://t.co/mPn7b9HM48


3. EcoHealth Alliance & DTRA Asking for Trouble
One Health research project focused on characterizing bat diversity, bat coronavirus diversity and the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in the region.
https://t.co/u6aUeWBGEN


4. Phelps, Olival, Epstein, Karesh - EcoHealth/DTRA


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