1) You have to be a little vain to be on Twit & think your opinion matters to others. That's ok.

2) Personally, I'm honored & flattered that even 10 of you would follow me, let alone the number who do.

3) So, with that in mind, it's been said that there is the "Evil Party & the Stupid Party."

4) Increasingly, I think that's wrong.

5) There is definitely the Evil Party, the DemoKKKrats. What I think we overlook is that they know their evil & just don't care.

6) But I don't think you get where Yertle, Tom Collins, Minion & some of the others in the GOP are by being stupid.

7) I think they are vain to the radical extreme.

8) They are the Vain Party, who really believe that 74m people voted for "them" in November; who really . . .

8) contd . . . believe that "they know what's best" & their pucksnorter consultants are intelligent & skilled.

They really believe we do NOT matter because they are so much smarter. We just "don't get it." We don't see "how the game is played."

9) Here is the important part: this vanity comes from believing they are morally superior to everyone. That they can "lose gracefully" because people will appreciate how moral & upstanding they are & credit them.

I have a theory about 2020.

Bear with me...I’ve done the math and it checks out, but I have no way to prove it, so it’s purely theoretical.

At this time.

1/

Here’s the thing...it wasn’t supposed to be this bad.

There are safeguards, you see? Many times when things were going dark, heroes, mostly reluctant heroes, would appear from elsewhere to save us. To set things right.

But this year, they didn’t...why?

2/

When things go bad., it’s because someone messed with the timeline, and someone else has to set it right.

A thousand alternate timelines have been stopped before they could happen, because these chronsl plumbers showed up to fix the leak before it floods the house.
3/

The general public never knows what they have fixed because the alternate timeline has disappeared, vanished, into a limbo none of us ever touch.

But this year, something happened.

4/

You can’t break the laws of reality forever.

Eventually, the gatekeepers find you.

And their revenge is terrible.

5/

Reading my own old writing from 10+ years ago is rarely pleasant. It’s not that the ideas and techniques are worse/embarrassing by current tastes (though they often are), but that they have a brash energy I can’t vibe with anymore even where I can still stand by the content.

Most of that energy is not mine from a younger mindset personally (though there’s some of that) but a function of the era. 2010 generally had more of a brash energy going. An energy born of a widespread sense of the world making more sense and humans being more agenty within it.

2007-13: Brash energy. The GFC bloodied our noses but we still felt in control of the plot collectively.

2014-20: Angry-anxious energy. Everybody lost the plot. Winners and losers alike. Great Weirding.

2021 - : Mellow sadder-and-wiser energy on macro, brrr energy on micro.

Opening mood for 2021 feels like how a figure skater spins faster by pulling in tighter. Narrower horizons, more concentrated energy, easy to mistake conservation of momentum effects for an absolute increase in system energy. Shows up in everything from stocks to writing.

Its tempting to retreat to narrow horizons with primarily happy domestic cozy energy (these are really good times for anything that taps into domestic-scale psyche energy). But even the happiest broader thoughts are alloyed with that mellow sadder-wiser plotlessness.

#Georgia Hearing Live Stream


Rep. Williams starts off with a prayer.

If you could, what questions would you ask the #georgia Secretary of State?

Coward Rothlisberger avoids video has VPN problems.

Reads from a script

“Rumor whack-a-mole”

They claim they are putting out raw data of voters

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 /

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

#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

[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)

To add to the excitement of your Saturday evening, the focal S:N501 build is now updated with data from 8th Jan, including 48 new seqs in 501Y.V1 (B.1.1.7 #b117) & 501Y.V2.

1/12

https://t.co/AbdhO1rqpw

There are 46 new non-UK sequences in 501Y.V1, from the Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, the USA, and Luxembourg.
And 2 new non-South African sequences in 501Y.V2, from Australia for the first time.

2/12

In 501Y.V1:

Ireland has 4 new sequences (orange). 2 sit separately but are identical, indicating an additional introduction. 2 link to a previous sequence (green), 1 mutation away each. This could indicate location transmission, unsampled diversity, or a common exposure.

3/12

The Netherlands has 10 new seqs (orange). Many sit apart on the tree, indicating additional introductions. 3 cluster together separated by a few mutations. 2 are identical to an older seq. 1 falls in a cluster of older seqs. Some of these could indicate local transmission.

4/12

Israel has 22 new sequences (orange). 1 links to an older sequence, but is separated by 3 mutations, so may be separate introductions. Another is identical to an older sequence. But most new sequences cluster together (blue), clearly indicating local transmission.

5/12

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/

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]: