i see the "they only gave us $1200" discourse has, unfortunately, returned. if everyone keeps forgetting about the superdole UI, we're never going to see it again, so please don't say that.

it's totally fine to blast senate republicans for being cheap fucks who'd rather 100,000 go hungry than 10 people pay more in taxes, but we got more than $1200, we got, for the briefest of moments, a glimpse of how we could genuinely end poverty in this country, don't ignore it.

there's a very good reason mcconnell is reportedly willing to look like he will cave on stimulus, and it's because he's taking it out of unemployment, which is a terrible trade-off, and everyone grumbling about $1200 is helping him sell it.

if you only got $1200, congratulations, you kept your job! tens of millions of people didn't, and as bad as things are right now, they'd be *significantly* worse if house and senate democrats hadn't written a genuinely visionary UI package into law.

so, definitely demand stimulus, but keep pushing for better unemployment and social stability programs, too, because if you find yourself unemployed (as i suspect many will in the year of disaster management to come), you're going to hope things look better then than now.

Choking on meat: A Thread

But what do the 'Mormons' really, Really, REALLY believe!?

Recently I participated in a discussion with two very courteous and well intentioned men of another Christian faith who were trying to expose the challenges the church faces today. In our discussion we covered only two topics, but in a previous discussion they covered a number.

There was in insinuation that the church has secret teachings and a checkered past that its tried to hide for far too long, and that the jig is coming up - the truth is coming out - and members of the church are checking out.

Let me start by acknowledging there's some truth to that. There are elements of our history that are controversial. The church has been very guarded with elements of its history because of treatment we've faced in the past over them. So let's look at the merits of this case.

First, I think we should ask if there are ever times it's appropriate to withhold information.

To me, the scriptures and God's actions as a whole form a resounding yes.

While covering a Nov. 10 protest led by @copsoutofNU, I spoke to an Evanston resident who experienced an easy relationship between EPD and Evanston residents. He put NIPAS in a different category, saying they appeared "dangerous." 🧵:

As of yesterday, we learned EPD police chief is responsible for all NIPAS calls and behavior, including calling for the firing of pepper balls on NU students on 10/31. Some of these students needed medical attention.

And while NIPAS, with their numbers and ammunition, appears chiefly responsible for larger, crowd control activities, EPD typically handles arrests.

I've spotted EPD arrest vehicles present at almost every NUCNC protests, big or small.

While covering NUCNC, I've noticed esp. in higher-income, White parts of Evanston that residents see the police relationship as peaceful.

( I work at a a local Evanston restaurant, and customers will often offer to pay for EPD officers meals when they eat at the restaurant.)

The idea, it seems to me, is that many residents in these higher-income, predominantly White parts of Evanston see the community as a gold-standard, liberal community where police and citizens get along.

When police are recorded engaging in violence, the blame shifts elsewhere.

#JoburgUpdates Fellow South Africans, in just 4 days from now, we will be ushering in a new year. This is traditionally a time of festivity & celebrating. Unfortunately, for us here in South Africa & others around the world, there is little cause for celebration this year ^GZ

#JoburgUpdates Yesterday, we passed the mark of more than one million confirmed coronavirus cases in our country. Nearly 27,000 South Africans are known to have died from #COVID19 #FamilyMeeting ^GZ

#JoburgUpdates The number of new coronavirus infections is climbing at an unprecedented rate. More than 50,000 new cases have been reported since Christmas Eve #FamilyMeeting #Covid19 ^GZ

#JoburgUpdates The majority of new cases are emerging in KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape, Gauteng and the Eastern Cape. Infections are also alarmingly on the rise in Limpopo #FamilyMeeting #COVID19 ^GZ

#JoburgUpdates Infections are on the rise in part because, as humans, we are social beings and have a need to socialise with one another. We feel the need to visit friends and family, we attend religious services and we go to parties #FamilyMeeting #COVID19 ^GZ

I was listening to parts of @PatrickByrne's interview about his meeting with @potus in which @SidneyPowell1 and @GenFlynn also attended.

First, I appreciate the fact that Patrick has spent $1.5 million of his own money to investigate voter fraud and fight the deep state machine

Second, the question was asked why does @Potus give people like White House General Counsel Pat Cipollone the time of day? Mr. Byrne said every time they would suggest a course of action to the President, Pat would shoot it down because Pat has been tasked by senior

Bureaucrats to do whatever it takes to get @realDonaldTrump to concede the election.

I understand Mr. Byrne's concern that @Potus is surrounded by a den of liars and deep state traitors who want nothing more than to be rid of the President, but this is classic Art of War tactics

being used by @Potus.

@Potus will act as if he is considering the advice of rats like Cipollone to gain intel on the plans of the deep state, and to appear weak when he is actually in the driver's seat. Don't think for one second @Potus does not know Cipollone's true intentions

Mr. Byrne said he believes @realDonaldTrump is too nice and that's why he allows people like the White House General Counsel to continue to advise him. I disagree. @Potus is a genius. He knows exactly what he is doing. He holds all the cards. The military is running this

My friend Larry King has died.

It is literally true that thousands of us can make that sad statement this morning. While he was easily caricatured, I’ve never known anybody who made a bigger deal out of the slightest kindness afforded him.

#RIPLarryKing

1) 25 years ago...

Those long awake are weathered and weary of everything. We feel as if we've been trapped in dystopian nightmare. A split reality. We've put on our "masks" and have assimilated to the false reality over the years, whilst still holding on, hoping the illusion is about to crumble.

I've been feeling this way for over a decade myself. I never wanted to make an attempt at a normal life, because I understood it was all a lie. You try to be a good member of society, and they crush you for it. Corruption pays off well, while honesty gets you entirely destroyed.

I had almost given up hope. After watching the election of 2016, and seeing blatant corruption from the left go unnattested; I looked into what Donald Trump was actually doing. I realized, this man gave up a luxurious, easy life. He gave it all up for us. All to save humanity.

He knew of the shadow they cast on the entirety of society. He saw how they kept us in the dark, whilst bleeding us dry. Not just America; the whole of the World was under their reign, and a large portion of the populace had fallen for the illusion they perpetuated repeatedly.

I realized for once, we have someone in Office willing to fight with every fibre of his being, with the entirety of his soul, to shine a light in a society that has been clouded by darkness. We who had been awake and masked, were finally given a voice. He guided us the whole way.

1. Meet Katalin Karico

It is an inspiring story. And a most relevant one for now and going forward. It's my honor to introduce you to Katalin Karico, if you have never heard of her. I hadn't until yesterday.

There is no doubt in my mind she will win a Nobel Prize some day.

2. The pioneering Dr. Katalin Kariko — who fled Communist-run Hungary at 30 for the US in 1985 with $1,200 hidden inside her 2-year-old daughter’s teddy bear — isn’t as powerful or rich as Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel or BioNTech’s Ugur Sahin. Nor has she ever been celebrated.

3. Kariko’s obsessive 40 years of research into synthetic messenger RNA was long thought to be a boring dead-end. She said she was chronically overlooked, scorned, fired, demoted, repeatedly refused government and corporate grants, and threatened with deportation.

4. All along, though, Kariko held fast to her belief in mRNA, which has turned out to be key to building the complicated technology behind the new vaccines developed by Moderna and Germany’s BioNTech (which has teamed with Pfizer.)

5. The co-inventor of modified mRNA, Katalin Karikó is finally getting her moment. She remembers sitting in her father’s butcher shop as a little girl, unafraid of the blood and entrails.

In the spring of 2001, I was going to a meeting at the place where I worked then and still work now. Another of the people at the meeting was an academic dean of our school. She was perhaps the purest expression of academia *at* that school.

1/

That day she was literally wearing a tweed blazer. Before she'd become a dean she'd been an English teacher. Now, the epitome of English Teachers, in my brain, was and remains my father. That day she was a close second.

2/

That day I said hello and asked how she was or somesuch.

She gave me a slightly wry smile. "Oh, you know. Measuring my life in coffee spoons," she said. I chuckled, and we may have traded a couple more lines of 'Prufrock.' I'm not sure.

3/

And I've always been a fan of T.S. Eliot, so it felt natural enough to come to and fro, talking of Michelangelo, and otherwise it seemed a clever turn of phrase just before a meeting about school management systems and database development.

4/

It is a couple of days before 2021, and I am 20 years older, and that memory has taken on a very different shade and tenor. We have all seen too much since then, over and over again.

5/

thokozani. i understand that consulting with isangoma is still an act that is shrouded in secrecy and is a source of shame for many. it is this shame and secrecy that makes people ripe for exploitation and harm.

i am not here to perpetuate already existing boogeyman narratives about my job but i beg you all to never, ever go to a sangoma without alerting at least one person of your whereabouts.

unless you know you are up to no good wena self, it should be an easy location pin drop and "friend, this is where i am should you not hear from me in x hours." no further explanation necessary.

we must admit without taking it with our chests that certain generalisations exist because there are certain individuals that perpetuate them. that's life. i will give personal anecdotes:

there is a client that came asking for help some months back. her life was at a standstill and she didn't understand why until, together, we connected the dots. her secret trips to isangoma sakhe were not what i would call normal.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the lekki toll gate incident because my mind won’t shut up with the questions.

I also couldn’t find any objective or logical answers, so for the sake of my sanity I created a theory about what might have transpired that night

#Thread

https://t.co/guIGzPvBBA

Ten thoughts on today's decisions by the Facebook Oversight Board:
1. The Oversight Board is actually up and running and functional. This was not a forgone conclusion. Whatever its decisions, it is the beginning of an experiment that will affect the future of speech on line.

2.The results in these decisions are less important than the signals/precedent set for how the board will operate, how it considers its jurisdiction, what info about FB and its posts will be revealed in the decisions, and how ambitious the Board will be in checking Facebook.

3.The absence of signed opinions, the noting of minority views but not extensive dissents, the significant use of experts, the willingness to issue advisory opinions on policy – all are precedent setting as to how the Board (and public) will view its role.

4The considerable reliance on international human rights standards gives us a sense of the body of law that will govern. Not a foregone conclusion & is bound to trigger some conservative reaction in the US as int'l standards are not as speech protective as the 1st Amendment.

5.However, the fact that the Oversight Board overturned four of the five takedowns gives us a sense that it is likely to take more libertarian and speech-protective positions than Facebook.

I'm in the later stages of purchasing a niche sub-contractor in the SE US. I'm now working with the sellers on the nitty gritty handover items that need to be transitioned. Here is a summary of my working list:

Insurance: (Staying with current provider)
- auto coverage on fleet of 40+ vehicles.
- General liability policy.
- Workers Comp policy.
- Bonding, done on a job by job basis, for a minority of their work. (I got a backup quote from another bonding agent for a fall back).

Benefits:
- I'm doing an asset purchase, so retirement benefits will likely have to start fresh under new entity. Will keep the same provider.
- Health Insurance will remain with incumbent, but have to migrate and re-enroll everyone under new LLC.
- Exhaustive list of emp perks.

Payroll:
- Currently done in-house, and paid weekly. Will keep the same, but need to get everything lined up based on timing of close and bank account. (See below).

Bank Accounts:
- Goal is to keep the same bank account for now, to reduce number of changes- less to go wrong. Built in a true-up with sellers for any payments post-close that shouldn't have carried over. MAKE SURE to change authorized signers.

I've been an elected official for the same amount of time as the 5 (so far) UCP MLAs who decided that taking a warm vacation while telling Albertans to stay home was OK.

I've spent the last few days trying to figure out how in the world they came to that conclusion. #ableg

🧵

When you enter politics, you know your actions will rightfully be subject to public scrutiny. Not just because there's more attention, but also because you've asked the public to place their trust in you. You're expected to lead by example. Never more so than during a crisis.

Every day, I have moments where I reflect on my actions. Sometimes I'm sure I got it wrong. But the importance of that reflection has been heightened during the pandemic. It's brand new to all of us, I need to not only be seen to do the right thing, but I have to lead by example.

I also have to do the right thing because I feel responsible for keeping my family, neighbours, friends, & community safe. I want to get through this as much as the next person. I want my kids' lives to go back to normal. #ableg

A few weeks ago, my family went to the Leg to see the outdoor lights. We turned the car around halfway there because we had forgotten masks. The current orders do not *require* masks outdoors, but our mantra is to consider the spirit & intent of the orders, not parse words.

THE EVIL ACCIDENT OF TIME:

Recently, I was blessed to speak with my Teacher, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, wherein I asked him concerning ‘the evil accident of time’...

...and coming from what the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught regarding the reality of ALLAH (GOD) and His Mastery over all the Forces of his Creation, my question to him was “Why is the term ‘accident’ associated with time?” ...

And again, coming from the mindset that ALLAH (GOD) is the Author of Time, the Giver of Life, and the Cause of Death, where does ‘accident’ come in?

...Considering my question, I was thoroughly enlightened by his response, and I’d like to share with you the guidance I got from him in this study:

‘Evil’ means to exceed the measure or limit. An ‘accident’ is what we commit when conducting our lives and affairs without giving what we do much thought.