There's more today on the weirdness of a housing boom in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 300 years, helped by temporary tax breaks that will expire - probably before Lockdown3 comes to an end.

It's always puzzling why people aren't more repulsed when lenders report "soaring" house prices; we wouldn't, for example, welcome "soaring" gas or electricity prices - or soaring bread prices. But in any case that's what Halifax says they have been doing:

"Soaring" sounds very different if you're hoping to be a first-time buyer than if you're a potential seller who thinks 'ah - freebie time'. That something for nothing mentality has led politicians for decades to think it's bad politics to have prices fall.

...and to spend taxpayers' money propping them up (from mortgage interest relief in the late 1980s to Help to Buy to the current stamp duty holiday). But the reality is that unless your next move in the housing market is to downsize - rising house prices work against you.

Today the estate agency chain Chestertons highlights a huge imbalance in supply and demand: “There were 4% more homes for sale in 2020 than the previous year compared to a more than 40% rise in buyers." And apparently the outlook for the market is therefore 'positive'.

Really good americana type songs I've been listening to to avoid podcasts/politics.

"How to Crush Your Biggest Goals in 2021" #podcast
https://t.co/NDq0IV6kd3
Well worth a listen (8mins-57mins for juicy bits).

Six pillars in thread below 👇
~~
#SelfImprovement #Success #Entrepreneur #EntrepreneurLife

1. Mental toughness, grit. 2021 is gonna be harder than 2020.

2. Maximising what you get out of your time. Being productive.

3. Associate with people who have accomplished what you are trying to accomplish. This requires learning new social skills.

4. Self confidence. (The opposite of self-limiting)

Saw a post that triggered a wild spirit journey of remembrance.

To make a covenant anciently they parted certain animals and 'passed through' the parts, then they partook of [consumed] their part. This was a ritual of purification and of covenant.

See here esp. v. 9-10, 17-18

Jeremiah explicitly supports this too; as do many other accounts in the scripture and in history all over the world, they attest to this tradition of parting a sacrificial animal [body] and passing through the parts and blood as a covenantal and a purification ritual.

This connected the dots to the Covenant with Israel as the Waters of the Red Sea [and various bodies of water later] parting and the purified 'passing through' - or back it up and transpose this idea to the marking of the door posts with the blood of the Lamb at 'passover'

Look now to the Baptismal covenant, a purification covenant [for the remission of sins], a symbolic "passing through" to our 3rd Estate and future resurrected life full of the purifying Holy Spirit of the Celestial Kingdom (as the Gift of the Holy Ghost).

The Priesthood 'parts' the bread and 'divides' the water, 'passing it to' the Saints to renew their Baptismal covenants by 'partaking' (consuming) the symbolic body and passing through the symbolic blood of the Lamb of God. The Divine Body and eternal atoning sacrifice.

WRITING A WINNING STATEMENT OF PURPOSE (SOP)

PART A

This VERY long thread will break down the process of writing an SOP using six questions that have worked for me in the several admissions and scholarships I have secured.

Get a drink and let us begin.

Writing an SOP requires thorough research and planning. Writing an SOP involves writing a story of your academic and professional experience.

Remember that volunteering or internship roles also count when you are writing your SOP.

It is important to tell a coherent story from start to finish of your SOP. This allows the assessors to link your passion with your academic and professional trajectory.

It is also very significant that you allow others (mentors, friends, professionals) to review your essays.

This is important because, your essay might be coherent and convincing but if it is laced with grammatical errors, you are likely to lose points.

You can also use editing software or websites to assess your writing.

I will be providing six questions that I aim to answer when I write my SOPs. I will also expand on the questions as we go along. Part A will speak to four out of the six questions. Part B will continue from Q4.

🎩🎉🥳⏳ 2020 New Year's Time Capsule in oil paintings -

Thread 🖌️20 highlights of (approx 50) projects from 2020.
No particular order, but some have greater impact than others.

Tweets are numbered,
last one will say /end thread/

1) "Turning Angel"
A tribute to...

1b) "Turning Angel monument, built over the graves of five children killed in a factory explosion in the early 1900’s:

(2020)She was recently vandalized, toppled, had a broken wing. She is made whole here.
This was my first time painting in only black & white, no color at all."

1c) "When I first heard about this statue being toppled and damaged, something about it tugged at my heart. When I found out that it was a memorial over the graves of five children, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I looked up the statue to see what it looked like…decided to

1d) "paint it. I understand how it feels to create something to honor the deaths of people, & to have someone destroy it in a hateful action. That beautiful angel statue, installed as a memorial for children who died so tragically young- toppled to the ground with a broken wing"

2) 🖌️ Even in 2020, we are welcome at His table, multitudes.
Come as you are.

ASSANGE thread
1/ Introducing ICELAND
home of ORIGINAL TURNCOAT Sigurdur_Thordarson (see2/belo)
WATCH: 2 min film by
a/STRATFOR #lookitUp
b/no mention of CHINA
c/no GEOTHERM, GAMING or ELECTRONICS inf
d/no ASIANS pictured

Iceland's Geographic Challenge

“This work”, says the publisher, “was not named ‘The Qur’an and its Translation’, because its author, M. Quraish Shihab, was acutely aware that the Qur’an is a holy book that cannot possibly be translated into any other language.” #qurantranslationoftheweek 🌏🇮🇩

Nevertheless, Muhammad Quraish Shihab’s (MQS)“Al-Qur’an dan Maknanya” (“The Qur’an and its Meanings”, first published in 2010) comes across as a Qur’an translation, rather than a qur’anic commentary.

Published in a single 650-page volume, which includes both the Arabic text of the Qur’an and an appendix that summarizes the content of all surahs, the work renders the meaning of the Qur’an into Indonesian verse by verse.

Some footnotes contain additional explanations, and the occasion of revelation of a segment of the Qur’an is infrequently provided, but the proportion of such additional material is small.

MQS (b. 1944) is a prolific Indonesian exegete, and a highly visible one as well, as he was the country’s first TV exegete. In 2004, he began hosting TV programmes that focused exclusively on the interpretation of the Qur’an.

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

I've been publicly addressing white mediocrity since my 2011 blog post "The American Way: Mediocrity, When White, Looks Like Merit," but I learned A LOT from @IjeomaOluo's MEDIOCRE. As Brittney Cooper's @nytimes review said, it really is an invitation for society to do better.

Of necessity, that invitation requires unvarnished truths. A few of my favorite lines:

“When I talk about mediocrity, I am not talking about something bland and harmless. [...] I’m talking about a dedication to ignorance and hatred that leaves people dead, for no other reason

than the fact that white men have been conditioned to believe that ignorance and hatred are their birthright and that the effort of enlightenment and connection is an injustice they shouldn’t have to face” (6).

“Perhaps one of the most brutal of white male privileges is the opportunity to live long enough to regret the carnage you have brought upon others” (30).

“Nothing says ‘American’ like a boy making a woman struggle so that he can seem independent” (35).

“Mediocre, highly forgettable white men regularly enter feminist spaces and expect to be centered and rewarded, and they have been. They get to be highly flawed, they get to regularly betray the values of their movement, yet they will be praised

Interesting to see lots of talk about grammar lately. Here's a thread from me on why I think explicit grammar instruction is important, but not all explicit grammar instruction is created equal!

I think explicit grammar instruction is important because it helps pupils to write better sentences. Pupils often write run-on sentences, and they aren't sure where they should put a full stop. This makes their writing much harder to understand.

For me, grammar instruction is about sentence structure. It's not about pedantic 'gotchas' designed to show how clever you are or how stupid everyone else is. It's about helping students to marshal their thoughts into coherent, logical sentences.

(On that note, I am sure there will be errors in this tweet thread, because I am writing it pretty quickly. I apologise for them in advance and hope it doesn't impede your understanding too much!)

To write good sentences, I think you have to know what a verb is and what a subject is. So what's the best way to teach those? You can teach definitions - a verb is a doing word, a noun is a person, place or thing, a subject is the person or thing that is doing the verb.

"What would you say if I asked you to run away with me?"

Asahi stills, the tip of his pencil hovering over his notebook, and looks up at Nishinoya seated across the table from him.

Nishinoya is staring out the window, chin propped in his right palm as he idly stirs the soda in

front of him with his left hand.

The question takes Asahi by surprise.

Noya had never asked anything like that before.

"What?"

Noya turns his head away from the water droplets streaking the glass window to fully look at Asahi. "If I said "Hey, Asahi-san, let's run away,"

what would you say?" Noya rephrases.

He's joking.

He's got to be.

After all, they're here right now helping Yuu study for his entrance exams in three months. They'll be in different courses, but Yuu is aiming for the same college as Asahi. Asahi's already been cleaning out

his spare room so Noya can move in with him until he finds a place in Tokyo.

Plans for the future have already been made, so Noya /must/ be joking.

But with the way Noya's watching him, waiting patiently for an answer, it doesn't feel like a joke.

"...I would say... that you

need to stop joking around and focus on your entrance exams." Asahi smiles, but it feels awkward, forced. "If you don't work a little harder on your math, you won't make it into the same college as me."

Noya watches him for another minute, and Asahi swallows, anxiety tying his

1/9 For Holocaust Memorial Day, I drew this short comic based on one of the many stories my grandpa used to tell. When he was 14, he came home to discover his family was gone. With no where else to turn, he was forced to hide and live in nearby woods for years.

2/9 As much as he wanted a companion during this time of isolation and terror, he made the decision to tell the dog to go away, fearing that the barking would get him caught. Miraculously, the dog understood, left, and never came back.

3/9

4/9

5/9

🧵THREAD🧵

So, I'm on a another platform with some very smart people that apparently got Jack's goat over the years, and late last night, I got a crazy idea.

The idiot shitlibs have been, with varying degrees of effectiveness, using a basic rulebook since the early 1970s.

That book is "Rules For Radicals" by Saul Alinsky.

Until @realDonaldTrump came into politics, every time a Republican was confronted by one of these rules, they rolled over and showed their soft bellies as they waved the white flag.

The Boss is different though.

Here in the next tweets, I'm going to go over the "rules" and how Trump has broken, subverted, or appropriated their rules to beat them at their own game.

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."

Trump's answer: This is straight out of the "Art of War": Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

Interesting dichotomy, isn't it?

This is why so often, the MSM backs the Democrats and demeans Trump, to create the illusion that the Left is more powerful than they are, and that Trump is working from a position of weakness/illegitimacy/stupidity.