BC CULTURE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

End of the year scorecard: 2020 has been a difficult, dangerous and depressing year. Like last year, I again read 41 books this year- it was reading which kept me going through these gloomy times. I also reviewed 4 books, which are mentioned on the top of this list of 41 books

 1) Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry That Unravelled the Middle East
2) Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison by Ahmet Kuru
3) The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Divided Nation by Declan Walsh
4) Pakistan: A Kaleidoscope of Islam by Mariam Abou Zahab
5) On the Meaning of Life by Will Durant
6) Pakistan- The Politics of the misgoverned by Azhar Hassan Nadeem
7) Crafty Oligarchs, Savvy voters: Democracy Under Inequality in Rural Pakistan by Shandana Khan Mohmand
8) The Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power in Pakistan by Owen Bennett-Jones
9) The battle for Pakistan by Shuja Nawaz
10) Pakistan's Political Parties by Nahid Siddiqui, Mariam Mufti, and Sahar Shafqat
11) Pakistan at Seventy by Shahid Javed Burki
12) New Perspectives on Pakistan's Political Economy: State, Class and Social Change by Akbar Zaidi and Mathew MacCartney
13) Aap Beeti Jug Beeti by Saad Khairi
14) Fading Memories of Islamabad by Saud Mukhtar
15) Punjab and the War of Independence 1857-1858: From Collaboration to Resistance by Turab ul Hasan Sangrana
16) Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire by Priya Atwal
17) People's History of Punjab by Manzur Ejaz
18) Mastery by Robert Greene
19) The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
20) The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
21) The 50th Law by Robert Greene
22) Exercise of Power by Robert Gates
23) The Riddle of History: The Great Speculators from Vico to Freud by Bruce Mazlish
24) How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
25) The Man on Horseback: The Role of Military in Politics by S E Finer
26) India in the Persianate Age 1000-1765 by Richard Eaton
27) The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India by Supriya Gandhi
28) Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic by Narges Bajoghli
29) Leadership in War: Essential Lessons from who made History by Andrew Roberts
30) The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan by Aqil Shah
31) Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze
32) Partition: The story of Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan in 1947 by Barney White-Spunner
33) Cold War in the Islamic World: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Struggle for Supremacy by Dilip Hiro
34) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John Mearsheimer
35) India and Pakistan: Continued Conflict or Cooperation? by Stanley Wolpert
36) Prime Movers by Ferdinand Mount
37) Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness by Walter Issacson
38) The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov
39) Mencken's America by H.L.Mencken
40) The Strategy of Conflict by Thomas Schelling.
41) Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order by Charles Hill

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Rob Henderson
Rob Henderson
@robkhenderson
Best books I read in 2020

1. Atomic Habits by @JamesClear

“If you show up at the gym 5 days in a row—even for 2 minutes—you're casting votes for your new identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. Youre focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts”


Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

https://t.co/KZDqte19nG

2. “social anxiety is overwhelmingly common. Natural selection shaped us to care enormously what other people think..We constantly monitor how much others value us..Low self-esteem is a signal to try harder to please others”


The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

https://t.co/uZT4kdhzvZ

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents...Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a believe in a devil.”


Grandstanding

https://t.co/4Of58AZUj8

"if politics becomes a morality pageant, then the contestants have an incentive to keep problems intact...politics becomes a forum to show off moral qualities...people will be dedicated to activism for its own sake, as a vehicle to preen"


Warriors and Worriers by Joyce Benenson

https://t.co/yLC4eGHEd4

“Across diverse cultures, a man who lives in the house with another man’s children is about 60 times more likely than the biological father to kill those children.”
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Rob Ford
Rob Ford
@robfordmancs
One of the authors of the Policy Exchange report on academic free speech thinks it is "ridiculous" to expect him to accurately portray an incident at Cardiff University in his study, both in the reporting and in a question put to a student sample.


Here is the incident Kaufmann incorporated into his study, as told by a Cardiff professor who was there. As you can see, the incident involved the university intervening to *uphold* free speech principles:


Here is the first mention of the Greer at Cardiff incident in Kaufmann's report. It refers to the "concrete case" of the "no-platforming of Germaine Greer". Any reasonable reader would assume that refers to an incident of no-platforming instead of its opposite.


Here is the next mention of Greer in the report. The text asks whether the University "should have overruled protestors" and "stepped in...and guaranteed Greer the right to speak". Again the strong implication is that this did not happen and Greer was "no platformed".


The authors could easily have added a footnote at this point explaining what actually happened in Cardiff. They did not.
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Sharon Collins
Sharon Collins
@305local
In a recent article published in the Stern, there is now a criminal complaint filed against Michael Inacker, the then CEO of the PR firm WMP for what includes allegations of the knock out payments from the emirate of Qatar to hide a dossier for their role in financing Hezbollah


That allegedly 750,000 euros, which would have been divided between Jason and Michael.


In return, "Jason" was supposed to keep to himself the information he had researched in Qatar, that a high-ranking person in the emirate of Qatar was financially supporting Hezbollah.


https://t.co/TdaAECu35a


There is an interesting point in the article, WMP (Inacker) still had PR contracts with both Qatar and Saudi and “Jason” had some information about arms deliveries organized by people from Qatar with suppliers in Belarus, Serbia, Macedonia, and Yemen.
CULTURE
David Roberts
David Roberts
@drvolts
The more I think about the Bruce Springsteen Jeep ad, the more disgusted I get. It's allegedly a call for unity, but it is drenched in a very particular culture's iconography: a Christian church (that superimposes the cross on the US flag), farms, rural living, "the middle" ...

... it's all so white. This is the "America" of nationalist fairy tales: rural land, settled by self-reliant white farmers & good Christians. It's all trucks & dust & manual labor & squinting at the horizon while wiping sweat from your brow. This is the kind of "unity" ...

... designed to comfort (or at least not threaten) white people. It says, "let's unify by joining together to reaffirm America's mythical self-conception, despite the real-world violence & repression it has always entailed."

If I'm, I dunno, a latino housekeeper in Vegas or black Uber driver in Sacramento, what's in the commercial for me? What does this kind of "unity" promise me? What can I find in "the (mythical) middle"? Nothing. It's not for me.

If America ever does come together in some kind of social solidarity again (which looks pretty doubtful), it's not going to be around the myths & iconography of 20th century hegemonic white culture in the US. It's going to be around something NEW -- new stories, new icons.
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Mentorshipzim
Mentorshipzim
@mentorshipzim
1. This morning we looked at wills & will writing but that is not the only component of inheritance. You can either die with a will or without one. Those who die without die intestate. And intestate comes in 3 ways.

2. a) If a person dies quiet a valid will,
b) if the person appointed to benefit from a will dies first & no substitution of heir is made
c) if the person appointed cannot take under a will.
The law focuses on the rights of the surviving spouse and the child if there is no will.

3. 2 major things affect intestate succession and these are date of death and marital status. This is because the current law ONLY affects people who died after 1 Nov 1997 & there are different laws that affect married & single people at death. The type of marriage applies too.

4. If you are married in terms of general law or what was once called ‘-Chapter 37’ & now ‘Chapter 5:11 or are married under ‘Chapter 5:07’ which is a registered customary marriage (muchato wekamudzviti) the Deceased Estates Succession Act applies. It’s only for registered 💍

5. If you are married under an unregistered customary law union (UCLU) which means having the traditional wedding without registration, the Administration of Estates Act applies. I don’t want to labour you with the technicalities but the distinction is very important.
CULTURE

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I think I'm giving up on mainstream marketing content.

I'm giving up on social media consumption too.

So little substance.

Need to devote more time doing. More time creating.

Who needs another "5 ways to boost growth" post? I click and am disappointed every time. Not again.

I don't want to poop on content marketing, but marketers need to step it up.

Or at least, founders need to know that doing something is not always better than doing nothing.

Why is content marketing not as effective as it used to be? An innumerable amount of factors...

But one things for damn sure.

Things have to change.

Two of the chief sins:
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2. Not having anything more to add that's meaningful

Why blog/podcast/vlog/etc about something that's already been said? Already been done?

Do we really need another interview with founder of x hot startup? Do we really need another ultimate guide about facebook ads?

Not all content is like this...

Sometimes, you get an occasional piece that truly leaves you better off than you were before. That doesn't make you want to skim.

An original case study. A first time interview with a founder. An honest account of an experiment. An explanation of a change, shift, or realization.
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Spent a quaint half hour in a cafe listening to a guy yell at his dad after his dad said that the women Trump molested wanted it: "Dad, that's like saying the Jews who died in the Holocaust were asking for it!" ENJOY YOUR TERRIBLE FAMILIES THIS WEEK!

"Mom, has a man ever touched you without your consent?"
"Of course."
"Did you report it?"
"No."
"Dad, your WIFE has been through this!"

Dad was unmoved and told the guy to stop arguing with him.

At this point we learned the boy child has allergies.

I forgot to remark upon the presence of the very cute grandson, who was very small and gave not one shit about the yelling. I believe a sister or aunt was present and feeling very stressed. I wanted to hand her a Xanax or seven.

It was really hard to not jump in and say, "Sounds like you guys are going to have a fun meal tomorrow!" so they could unite in hatred against me, the outsider, and stop squabbling. Instead I exchanged glances with a nearby fellow lady patron, who also emotionally ate a cookie.

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Anshul Pandey
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IMPORTANCE, ADVANTAGES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF BHAGWAT PURAN

It was Ved Vyas who edited the eighteen thousand shlokas of Bhagwat. This book destroys all your sins. It has twelve parts which are like kalpvraksh.

In the first skandh, the importance of Vedvyas


and characters of Pandavas are described by the dialogues between Suutji and Shaunakji. Then there is the story of Parikshit.
Next there is a Brahm Narad dialogue describing the avtaar of Bhagwan. Then the characteristics of Puraan are mentioned.

It also discusses the evolution of universe.( https://t.co/2aK1AZSC79 )

Next is the portrayal of Vidur and his dialogue with Maitreyji. Then there is a mention of Creation of universe by Brahma and the preachings of Sankhya by Kapil Muni.


In the next section we find the portrayal of Sati, Dhruv, Pruthu, and the story of ancient King, Bahirshi.
In the next section we find the character of King Priyavrat and his sons, different types of loks in this universe, and description of Narak. ( https://t.co/gmDTkLktKS )


In the sixth part we find the portrayal of Ajaamil ( https://t.co/LdVSSNspa2 ), Daksh and the birth of Marudgans( https://t.co/tecNidVckj )

In the seventh section we find the story of Prahlad and the description of Varnashram dharma. This section is based on karma vaasna.
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신념의사나이...
@Belposto_korea
What does Gold- Backed mean?
The Chinese Elders have been accumulating gold for hundreds of years. They are gold-rich. Some of their gold was loaned to the Central Banking System so that it could fund the rebuilding of Europe after the many war-torn years from World Wars I and II

BTW they never returned it but used it to start their financial empire to enslave humanity. This is the Central Bank Banking System./2

Maybe this is why one of the conditions to use their gold for the QFS is the demise and full disclosure of the Central Bank banking system before the RV can take place./3

The Elders have caves of hidden gold and are now using it to gold-back the currencies in the QFS for every country in the world. It is important to understand that the QFS and the money it is about to release is all brand-new currency./4

It was designed by the Alliance to fund the new financial system that will reset all Currencies of the world to Gold-Backed currency./5
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