It’s always fun to guess what would happen next year, no matter how wrong we would be.

Below is my 2021 crystal ball – out there to be smashed :)

A thread to come.

1/ Theme 1: Bitcoin is still the King

2/ Breaking Theme 1 down into 5 things:

a) Bitcoin price hitting $100k
b) More momentum in developer sponsorship
c) Lightening getting beyond early adoption
d) Payment in bitcoin gaining more traction (Africa and LatAm)
e) More smart contracts built on top of bitcoin network

3/ Surprise Factor for Theme 1:

Will some small countries PUBLICLY load up bitcoin as part of their forex reserve?

4/ Theme 2:

Heightened focus on privacy continues to fuel DeFi growth

#MakeAbleistsUncomfortable pretty much all of abled culture's ideas and ideals about humanity and society are profoundly ableist. Read what disabled people have written. Listen to what we have said. Start unlearning that shit now, and continue doing so.

All the ways abled culture idealises ability and non-disabled ways of being, valorises the super-able (e.g. in superheroes and athletes) and envisions the future as a place of enhanced abilities, the worship of certain kinds of communicative ability as "charisma" - all this

unquestioning adoration of ability and idealisation of super-ability contributes to the degradation of disabled people, is at least eugenics-adjacent in its idea of whose bodies and minds are better, and if it continues to go unquestioned disabled people will continue to be

perceived as having lesser bodies and minds, lesser lives, lesser value (that people have differing levels of "value" is an icky concept in general), and the future will continue to be built of the same ableist crap as the past and the present.

Question what you value and idealise, in yourself and others and your ideas about the future and what society should be, what humans should be and could be. Are you factoring disabled people - in all our radical, nuanced, diverse existence - into it? Have you looked to see if

It's been a year (and then some), #YangGang.

My 2020 started in November of 2019. Brother-in-law just dropped dead out of the blue. Then another brother-in-law came down with terminal heart conditions (he's still kicking, believe it or not!). We spent nearly 50 days on the /

road and living out of our car. I wanted to go to Iowa. I planned to help the campaign. Life did not cooperate.

Iowa and New Hampshire were tough to watch through windows. Twitter, Discord, and Slack only delivered bad news for a few weeks, and what little political hope I had /

gained through 2019 turned to sadness and rage. I held hope for a Yang cabinet position, though, as that is just how political favors are paid ... and Yang clearly did Joe a favor, however small it may have seemed at the time.

Then 'Rona.

Trump politicized a damn virus. /

I will never know what went on in that twisted little brain of his, but suddenly, every lesson we learned since the great Spanish Flu pandemic was out the window "to own the libs." Freedom, or something. This is my personal "picture of the year." It motivated nearly everything /

that I did after that point. I began preparing for the fall of the USA in earnest at that point.

Like what?
- I deleted Facebook
- I distanced myself from toxic family members
- I became a crypto miner
- I moved to Hawaii

I still think we are in for dark times, but I am /

Has the course of History been directed by a small group of people with common interests? The paintings and pictures of the great men of the past centuries reveal a common thread which links them together.

[THREAD]:

1. Adler just got steamrolled by the media who never picked up on ANY of his other shenanigans. Looking at all angles, I noticed Austin DSA was QUICK to comment on #Adler #Cabo. Looks like they were waiting on the right opportunity.

[anan] Tsuchiya Tao × Murakami Nijiro Cross Talk

Nijiro: When I was offered the role of Chishiya, it wasn't long before the crank start. I remember downloading all the volumes of the original manga and reading it in one sitting on the airplane.
Tao: Wow! just in one sitting.

Nijiro: I was going to read it while thinking about whether I could play Chishiya or not, but it was so interesting that I forgot about that and got absorbed in it (laughs)
Tao: I read it like crazy too. I thought it'd be difficult to make a live-action based on a manga.

Some authors have been drawing for decades, and then they put the story together in a few hours in a movie or drama. I had a hard time believing that the appeal of the story would be conveyed properly. But when I realized that there are some fans of the original manga

who will watch the live-action version, but there are also people who will read the original for the first time after watching the live-action version, I was able to switch to pursuing the fun of the live-action version.

Nijiro: I studied abroad in Canada for a year when I was a student, and I had a strong image of manga and ninja when I thought of Japanese. Incidentally, Nijiro was called NINJA because (Nijiro) looked like (Ninja) when written in Roman letters.
Tao: I see! (laughs)

How to get the best image performance (Updated 2021)

1️⃣ Use `width` and `height` to prevent layout shift
2️⃣ Lazy-load images as they enter the viewport
3️⃣ Use modern image formats (WebP, AVIF)
4️⃣ Serve correctly sized images using `srcset`
5️⃣ Provide blur-up placeholders

1️⃣ Use `width` and `height` to prevent layout shift

These image attributes tell the browser how much space to allocate for an image, preventing the page from jumping when it loads. This avoids Cumulative Layout Shift

2️⃣ Lazy-load images as they enter the viewport

The browser shouldn't load images a user can't see. To prevent page speed from being penalized, we should load images as they're scrolled into the

3️⃣ Use modern image formats (WebP, AVIF)

These new formats reduce image file size while retaining quality. WebP is supported by all modern browsers. AVIF should be soon,

4️⃣ Serve correctly sized images using `srcset`

The browser should choose the best image for the device. By providing multiple options, we avoid shipping large images to smaller

Elkie’s Legal Letter to Cube for Contract Termination- Translation Thread

Mistreatments are stated in the legal letter

#CLC

To Cube Entertainment
The law firm is under the commission of Ms Chong Ting Yan and appoints lawyer to issue you this letter about the matters of terminating the exclusive contract between Ms Chong and your company as per followings:

According to Ms Chong ‘s statement and provided materials, it is shown that Ms Chong signed the exclusive contract with your company in Feb 2016. It was stated that your company would be the exclusive agency to manage Ms Chong’s entertainment activities. After the contract

was signed, Ms Chong’s joined the girl idol group CLC, actively fulfilled the responsibilities according to contract, obeyed your company’s arrangements and devoted herself in trainings for acting skills. However, Ms Chong claimed your company violated multiple terms & conditions

when fulfilling the contract, mainly as per below

1. During the contract period, all Ms Chong’s entertainment incomes were collected by your company first. However, your company has never revealed the actual details of the incomes to Ms Chong.

Dear @jjhorgan . When can we expect counselling to be covered by #MSP of #BC? Your appallingly ignorant reply to @j_mcelroy suggests anyone unhappy w/your governance requires it. cc: @SoniaFurstenau @kulpreetsingh 1/

The reason I ask is that -there are large numbers of people (1/4 is a figure I've heard) who do live with varying degrees of mental/emotional health issues; who might benefit from professional #MentalHealth care; who don't get it; because of the stigma and/or the expense. 2/

your comment was so dismissive and demeaning to so many #BCers Among them:
->the reporter who asked the question
->your fellow MLAs, whose job it is to represent their constituents (us) by questioning you and holding you to account 3/

..->any BC resident who wants to ask you a question . Will they/we be similarly brushed off and told that if we're unhappy with *you*- we need counselling? ! Do you realize how ridiculous that premise is? 4/

But most seriously it is utterly dangerous to
->anyone who genuinely requires and/or seeks counselling You used 'needing counselling' as an insult to the reporter/MLAs/citizens of BC. But who it really harms most are those who may actually require #MentalHealth support 5/

The Aftermaths of visiting an ancient ruin. A visit to ruins. Ghosts of the ancient past and the frightful events thereafter. Lost memory. A real life story and a Vedic Jyotiśa Perspective.

The monuments from the ancient past lure a large number of tourist from all round the

world. People love visiting the ancient ruins. Some people are thrilled at the mere mention of such places. The romanticism and thrill of seeing an ancient structure is bewildering for some. People also get attracted to more thrilling experiences like the Catacombs of Paris, the

prison of Alcataraz or Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia.
However, there is a hidden problem with all these ancient structures. These structures have been the domains of old and powerful entities. These places and structures have been witness to many dreadful incidents as

well. The incidents with their intensity and ghastliness remain in the form of energy at that respective place. The problem with energy is that, the energy is neither created and it is never destroyed. It just changes into different forms. These ruins hold concentrated dreadful

power zones that have gained power because of the long time factor and intensity of the incidents. These negative energies are like contagious virus that can inflict the weaker neurological reflexes. They can even possess people, without even a single hint.
I have found that

THREAD One of the weirder statistical consequences of the riot.

You can only be denied a security clearance (or have a current one revoked) if the allegations made against you fit within one of 13 adjudicative guidelines, numbered A-M.

Despite being ostensibly narrow, these guidelines are actually pretty broad in scope, & it can be argued that there's not really much of anything that a savvy adjudicator can't fit under their umbrella. But we're not going to talk about that today.

When the government denies or revokes a clearance, it has to issue you what is called a "Statement of Reasons" which sets forth the allegations made against you & explains which of the 13 guidelines they fit under. The most common ones tend to be B (foreign influence), C ...

(foreign preference), E (personal conduct), and F (financial issues). By far the least common one, at least in my experience, is Guidelines A: Allegiance to the United States.

That's because to fall under Guideline A, you can't just prefer another country over the US or be ...

subject to that country's influence, you have to actually do something hostile to the United States, like try to overthrow it by violence or advocate violence against it. I've never personally seen a Guideline A case & most clearance lawyers have probably only seen 1-2 max ...

Autism and meltdowns - what are they and how can you help?

A thread. Please read and share widely. As always, based on my own experiences.

#autism #autistic #Meltdown

Autistic people are stressed. *Very* stressed. Take it from me - our existence is generally peppered with moments of calm on a backdrop of continual tension and intense stress. The reasons for this are complex. /2

Our senses are often way too sensitive, meaning we live assaulted by intense sensory input - sound, vision, smell, touch and so forth. This means our base level stress is always much higher than most folks. /3

We are also usually struggling to make sense of social communication in a way neurotypical people don't need to worry about. Often we have to put actual brainwork into every interaction, as nothing seems to come naturally to us. Even with friends or loved ones. /4

So our glass of stress is very frequently filled to the absolute brim, and it doesn't take very much for us to spill over into a kind of 'post-stress' state, and I guess that's what we call meltdown. /5 #autistic

Finally read the new update on UK variant B.1.1.7, posted yesterday, which includes a study suggesting the variant is no more (or less) severe than prior virus variants.
Just a very brief thread (or read the entire document here:

Researchers took 1769 cases of people infected with the new variant and then looked for 1769 cases of people with “normal” virus to compare them to. They chose these so that median age and proporion of females was the same. That’s why it’s called a “matched cohort study”

They then compared hospitalizations for the two groups:
Overall 42 people were hopsitalized,
16 with the variant
26 with wild-type
The difference between the two was not significant.

Caveat: “Due to potential time delays for receipt of hospital admissions data, the identified hospital admissions should be regarded as a minimum number of hospital admissions and further admissions data are likely to be received into this NHS dataset in the future.”

The researchers also compared fatality rate for those cases where 28 days had elapsed since sample was taken:
12 of 1430 (0.89%) variant cases had died
10 of 1360 (0.73%) wild-type cases had died
Again, the difference was not significant.

Since the reshuffle in No.10, there has been a lot of talk about whether the PM should choose between his new Northern spoils or his Southern heartlands.

Today, @ukonward publishes "No Turning Back", a detailed look at the parties' new voting coalitions. A few highlights:

🧵1/?

1. There has been a lot of sorting in the electorate over the last few elections, driven by Brexit and the realignment of British politics away from old divisions of class towards a values divide on culture and age.

This is from the 2015 result to the start of the 2019 campaign

2. There was further sorting during the 2019 campaign itself.

This is from the start to the end of the campaign. The Tories converted 71% of Brexit Party supporters during the campaign and 35% of DKs and WNVs. 6% of Lib Dem voters switched to Labour.

3. As a result, the two main parties have fundamentally different coalitions to five or ten years ago.

The Tories are more provincial, working class, regionally distributed. Labour are more metropolitan, middle class and urban.

4. It is also hard to overstate how different geography of the Conservative Party is to recent decades.

This is the 2019 party against the party after its 1997 defeat. The Conservatives now represent 57% of seats in the North and Midlands, their highest share since 1935.