[Thread]
For those who followed last summer's exposure of #GenevanCommons hate group, there is an update.

It seems beneath my dignity to report it.
But then again, so much of what women end up having to say is beneath our dignity. 1/11

For *some* of the back story, see here: https://t.co/ojo19jWyvs

and here:
https://t.co/AsHuM8q861

2/11
Reminder: This group had upwards of 1,000 church officer and laypeople members. They mocked and slandered many, many of their brothers and sisters with racist, sexist and homophobic slurs. They plotted to disrupt their sister’s work for the church. 3/11

https://t.co/X52uXe75Ru
Last weekend, #GenevanCommons member Rev. Michael Spangler faced charges in a church trial. Two others in this presbytery have not been charged, though one has demitted office. 4/11
Charges
1: offenses against his brothers, “sowing discord in the church by publicly disparaging the governance of the Presbytery”
2: “publicly reviling and detracting Mrs. Aimee Byrd & Mrs. Rachel Miller,” focused especially on 2 WORDS Spangler wrote: “ruthless wolves.” 5/11
The outcome:
According to multiple sources, Spangler pled guilty to charge 1 & the Presby found him guilty of charge 2.

Recommended consequences: Suspension for 2 yrs for Charge 1, admonishment for charge 2 (the *lightest* of all possible penalties). 6/11
To my knowledge, aside from 1 other man, none of the people involved in the hate group #GenevanCommons, not even its administrators, have been held to account. 7/11
I first encountered some of these men in 2015, when I witnessed the last stage of a church trial. A minister was found guilty of not requiring his ill wife to attend church. Penalties on the table: suspension and expulsion from the church and ministry.

What have I learned? 8/11
Protect women, face serious consequences.
Revile and harass women – a slap on the wrist will suffice.

Trust the courts? Women so often bear the shame of church court failures. Courts remind us over and over, how little we are worth, how little abuse means in the church. 9/11
We are supposed to feel relieved & thankful when men take our cases to church courts. Here come the men w/ all the procedures!

But I do not trust systems that have been set up largely w/out the input of those they should protect. 10/11
Big problems are calls for big reflection, big scrutiny, potentially big change.

All that must take place at a fundamental level.

Until then, church courts are going to continue to go something like this … 11/11
I wrote this 3 yrs ago, suggesting where Presby churches might *begin* making changes to their Books of Church Order.
Perhaps someone might find it useful now.

*Sidenote: Ironically, I stopped writing for this particular publication b/c of abuse.

https://t.co/WDWxQtqq9c

More from For later read

I shared this on my FB page and asked, can ya really blame him?

I was half kidding. I also assumed someone would think of what I did pretty quickly and waiting for the comment to mention what I assumed was obvious.

The timing. I was sure someone else had thought of it.


But no one did. 20+ comments in people discussed the morality or bad sense or libertarian perspectives. Someone even said I’m thinking about doing that. No one said what I thought was obvious. Have you thought of it? Is it obvious to you?

Here’s a clue...recognize it?


How about this?


The author discusses it with Mike Wallace in 1958
Excited we finally have a draft of this paper, which attempts to provide a 'unifying theory' of the long economic divergence between the Middle East & Western Europe

As we see it, there are 3 recent theories that hit on important aspects of the divergence...

1/


One set of theories focus on the legitimating power of Islam (Rubin, @prof_ahmetkuru, Platteau). This gave religious clerics greater power, which pulled political resources away form those encouraging economic development

But these theories leave some questions unanswered...
2/

Religious legitimacy is only effective if people
care what religious authorities dictate. Given the economic consequences, why do people remain religious, and thereby render religious legitimacy effective? Is religiosity a cause or a consequence of institutional arrangements?

3/

Another set of theories focus on the religious proscriptions of Islam, particular those associated with Islamic law (@timurkuran). These laws were appropriate for the setting they formed but had unforeseeable consequences and failed to change as economic circumstances changed

4/

There are unaddressed questions here, too

Muslim rulers must have understood that Islamic law carried proscriptions that hampered economic development. Why, then, did they continue to use Islamic institutions (like courts) that promoted inefficiencies?

5/

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A brief analysis and comparison of the CSS for Twitter's PWA vs Twitter's legacy desktop website. The difference is dramatic and I'll touch on some reasons why.

Legacy site *downloads* ~630 KB CSS per theme and writing direction.

6,769 rules
9,252 selectors
16.7k declarations
3,370 unique declarations
44 media queries
36 unique colors
50 unique background colors
46 unique font sizes
39 unique z-indices

https://t.co/qyl4Bt1i5x


PWA *incrementally generates* ~30 KB CSS that handles all themes and writing directions.

735 rules
740 selectors
757 declarations
730 unique declarations
0 media queries
11 unique colors
32 unique background colors
15 unique font sizes
7 unique z-indices

https://t.co/w7oNG5KUkJ


The legacy site's CSS is what happens when hundreds of people directly write CSS over many years. Specificity wars, redundancy, a house of cards that can't be fixed. The result is extremely inefficient and error-prone styling that punishes users and developers.

The PWA's CSS is generated on-demand by a JS framework that manages styles and outputs "atomic CSS". The framework can enforce strict constraints and perform optimisations, which is why the CSS is so much smaller and safer. Style conflicts and unbounded CSS growth are avoided.