1/ Merry Christmas everyone! I'm a very odd and eccentric person, so after some Yuletide joy and wine drinking, my thoughts turn to what archaeologists of the future might make of my remains if I were to die in a sudden disaster, like the Vesuvius eruption.
(Quick disclaimer...

2/ I'm not an archaeologist - just someone who takes a keen amateur interest in these things)
After, let's say, a thousand years, and without very particular conditions of preservation that are unlikely in this climate, it's likely that all skin, gristle and textiles would have

3/ rotted into nothingness.
So, what's left?
My bones.
Presuming they're in a decent state of preservation, archaeologists would be able to tell from my brow ridges and gracile bones that I was probably a natal woman.
The eruption of my wisdom teeth and the condition of my

4/ pelvis would indicate I was 30-50 years old at time of death and had had at least one child.
Analysis of bones would indicate I had a land based diet, lived in N. Europe and was well-nourished. Lack of joint wear and tear shows I had undertaken no strenuous physical labour.

5/ What else would be left of me... most likely the sparkly beads on my clothes - both on the collar of my dress and my cardigan. They're made of gum/plastic - made to imitate gems, but very cheap. In the far future, finds like this would be plentiful. Archaeologists would likely

You might see an 'essay' going around today about 'the value of knowledge'. I'm not linking it, but I've taken out a few paragraphs that need to be reckoned with. 1/?

From the very first sentence, this person attacks Nikole Hannah Jones and the #1619Project in a typically conservative fashion, no doubt to get the conservative heads to go 'hear, hear!!'. He then says she 'claims' her expertise & essentially says to her 'stay in your lane'. 2/x

Ridiculous assertion aside, Considering this author is someone that routinely criticizes his education program for doing things like setting tasks of making 'BLM bracelets', but then heralds it in his bio, one must wonder how he reckons w/his own lack of expertise. 3/x

He then criticizes Gloria Ladson Billings, another Black woman for pointing out something that is literally true (have you not seen curricula that tell teachers to enact the slave trade? Or that propagate the thanksgiving myth?) 4/x

but does nothing to reckon with the the history of this country, the (failure) to teach Black children, the changes that DO need to be made in curriculum to ensure both rigor and windows and mirrors. 5/x

Soul ( AThread)
Life's biggest questions | Meaning, purpose, living

(1/n)
Soul is a story about Joe Gardner, a middle school band teacher, whose life hasn't necessarily gone the way he thought it would. He dreams of one day becoming a professional Jazz musician. It is what he always wanted in his whole life.

(2/n)
And just when he gets the break of a life time to finally fulfill his dream, an untimely accident separates his soul from his body.

(3/n)
As he begins to preced to 'The great beyond' Gardner skips to 'The great before' a world where souls develop personalities and traits before being sent off to earth. There, Gardner must work with 'soul 22' a soul with a dim concept of life.

(4/n)
To help '22' find passion, and in the process discover what it means to have a soul. Passion and obsession are two sides of the same spectrum. It is very easy for one to titre from one end to the other. Their ability to take in the beauty is the greatest inspiration.

What a year 2020 has been...

Earthquakes
Tsunamis
Cyclones
Floods
Volcanic eruptions
Massive forest fires
Unprecedented pandemic
Economic crisis
Social disharmony
Terrorist attacks
Armed conflicts and hostilities

A truly abysmal year, but thankfully, we survived...

We have also been spared much worse eventualities (so far), such as:
Solar storm
Nuclear war
Asteroid impact
Blazar

This has made me realise that our humble existence is an underappreciated facility.

This year seems to be a massive experiment in social engineering.

While coping with a sudden disruption in commercial activity leading to a brief spell of global socialism, we saw hijacked, outsourced and sponsored protests fuelled by social divisions and insecurities.

Personally, I experienced a complete collapse of my reward mechanism throughout this year, resulting in low motivation levels for prolonged periods. I couldn't even find the motivation to post much on social media.

It made me realise the incompetence of reward-oriented work.

Happiness (being home after 5 years) was in stark contrast of sorrow (loss of friends and family), effectively flattening any emotional upheaval.

From the yogic perspective (सुख-दुःखे समे कृत्वा), this was certainly an educational year but was devoid of satisfaction.

I'm a nerd re: productivity systems, so here's a thread of some books and things that helped me this year, and might be helpful for some of you making New Year's resolutions:

I like books that use behavioral science and / or neuroscience to guide recommendations. To that end, @bjfogg 's Tiny Habits is really good. Maybe the best productivity book I read all year.

The best one I read last year was @jamesclear's Atomic Habits. It's a quick, easy read and it prompted me to start habit tracking, which has been really useful:

I don't have hyperactivity issues but I have big inattentive issues, so CBT strategies for adult ADHD have been very helpful for me. This one's a little pricey, but had some techniques that I hadn't seen before:

This one is about systematizing research and ideas using a methodology called Zettlekasten that was developed by a German sociologist.

I watched #Shazam last night (somehow) for the first time, and of the DC films I've seen, it's my favorite by a mile! To be fair I still haven't seen Aquaman or Birds of Prey, but my guess is that Shazam will still be my favorite when I do. My (probably) luke warm takes, below 1/

I thought I'd like it but I didn't know I'd like it as much as i did. Setting it in Philly endears it to me even more! I adore Philadelphia, so when movies are set there it probably makes me like them a little more than I otherwise would. That's just a thing for me. 2/

I also feel this movie made me believe that regular people in this world love the other DC heroes, specifically Supes and Batman. It just felt like a given in this story when they were brought up. Like "yeah of course heroes exist here!" It was part of the fabric of this world 3/

In my own headcanon, until it's contradicted, this film takes place in an area of the multiverse seperate from the other films. One where things are a little less grim and Supes isnt at all conflicted about being Supes, Batman isn't a murderer, WW is I guess the same, idk. 4/

After I finished it I couldn't help but wonder what a DCEU would look like if this had been the 1st movie in the series. If DC wanted to start their world with the idea that all the big heroes already exist, this would have been a perfect way to introduce that concept! 5/

I’ve recently been reading through “The Butchering Art”, a terrific account of 19th century surgery & the introduction of germ theory & anesthesia to Victorian medicine. I highly recommend reading it yourself, but here are some interesting tidbits that caught my attention (1/10)

(2) First, as you can imagine, early surgery was absolutely awful & almost always a last resort. One thing I didn’t realize was that back then, the best surgeons were the *fastest* surgeons — for instance, Robert Liston could remove a leg in less than thirty seconds (!).

(3) Early surgery was limited to “peripheral” conditions, like lacerations & fractures. This is because entering the body in surgery was almost always fatal due to infection. This led to the distinction of physicians practicing “internal medicine”, a term that still persists.

(4) More dangerous than the surgeries were post-operative infections & diseases. Four were particularly common — gangrene, septicemia, pyemia, and erysipelas — & were known as “hospitalism”. With the rise of early anesthesia came a rise in attempted surgeries & hospitalism.

(5) What’s wild about this era, looking back, is that no one really knew what was going on... but their theories made some sense. “Contagionists” thought disease was communicable, being transferred from person to person by “invisible bullets” or chemicals. Not the craziest idea.

THREAD: My top music picks for 2020. An ongoing tradition I’ve maintained for years, here are my favorite music projects of the year:

25: Brandy - B7
24: Lady Gaga - Chromatica
23: Niia - La Vita Bella
22: Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind
21: Grimes - Miss Anthropocene

20: Orion Sun - Hold Space For Me
19: Moses Sumney - Grae
18: Disclosure - Energy
17: Purity Ring - WOMB
16: Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia

15: BOSCO - Some Day This Will All Make Sense / Car Therapy
14: Little Dragon - New Me, Same Us
13: Jessie Ware: What’s Your Pleasure?
12: Lido Pimienta - Miss Colombia
11: Lianne La Havas - Lianne La Havas

10: Durand Bernarr - Dur&
9: Allie X - Cape God
8: Shygirl - Alias
7: Empress Of - I’m Your Empress Of
6: Kllo - Maybe We Could

The following puts everything in a nice neat package. Lets do this! 🔥🔥🔥

EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE won the Printz Medal!

Okay I’ve had a minute to take it in, and dance w/my family. But I stayed up last night wondering what would I do with the 15 seconds of attention I'm so grateful to have. I wrote this thread. Hear me out if you would:

It is unfathomable (to me) that a refugee who showed up to this amazing country unable to understand the language would win literary prizes 31 years later.

But it happened! MOM, IT HAPPENED! And glory glory what do I say to you reading this, right now, with my heart overflowing? I don't know, but it was all freely given, so there’s nothing to do but freely give.

Can we try that? As it says in my book, "King or Queen Reader," can we try something together? I figure this is my best week of sales, and an author makes about a dollar per book. So what if we tracked the Bookscan sales for this entire week?

For every book you buy this week, I'll give my dollar to @Heifer a nonprofit that fights global hunger by giving livestock so that impoverished families can create sustainable livelihoods for themselves.

So I finished reading The Velvet Rage today( I think it was Owen Jones who first put it on my radar) and it's been on my wishlist for a while, I had some extra cash thanks to some stocks I'd invested in so I decided to treat myself.
I have some thoughts™ (thread)

First off, the beginning chapters of this book are very good. They describe an experience growing up gay that I as a self identified queer man can vibe with. Even in a supportive household queer kids learn all too quickly what is and isn't acceptable parts of themselves to show

It stresses the book is writing very clearly about the gay male experience and acknowledges that the broad strokes it paints with could apply to lesbians too but are expressed in different ways. No acknowledgement is made however in highlighting the exp of non cis, non white gays

Topping that off, the book feels horribly upper middle class; talk of clients from executive backgrounds being ashamed of who they are. That may not be the experience of every gay. Theres also an assumption that most gays come from a home with a caring mother and distant father

It takes a certain view on non-monogamy and promiscuity, framing it as a symptom of trying to overcompensate for a lack of validation in teen years and while that's certainly probably the case for some, it doesn't frame anything other than monogamy as intrinsically rewarding.