Ronald Koeman at Barcelona. A thread.

Ronald Koeman took the worst possible job in the world after leaving on of the best jobs in the world.

Joining a Barcelona of the back of their worst season in 12 years it is clear that Koeman had to do something major to justify him keeping the job.

But it is apparent that he's done horrible at Barcelona.

Messi is having his worst season at Barcelona in 14years despite having succeeded under 7 different managers. Clearly Koeman doesn't know how to exploit his strengths.

1)
As promised the teachings of Thoth the Atlantean regarding age regression.

2)
List ye, O man, hear ye the wisdom.
Hear ye the Word that shall fill thee with Life.
Hear ye the Word that shall banish the darkness.
Hear ye the voice that shall banish the night.
Knowledge and power descended from old.

3)
Know ye not that all shall be opened when ye shall find the oneness of all?
One shall ye be with the Masters of Mystery, Conquerors of Death and Masters of Life.

Aye, ye shall learn of the flower of Amenti the blossom of life that shines in the Halls.

4)
In Spirit shall ye reach that halls of Amenti and bring back the wisdom that liveth in Light.
Know ye the gateway to power is secret.
Know ye the gateway to Life is through death.

Aye, through death but not as ye know death,

5)
But a death that is life and is fire and is Light.
Desireth though to know the deep, hidden secret?
Look in thy heart where the knowledge is bound.
Know that in thee the secret is hidden,
The source of all life and the source of all death.

A Cradlesong

By which the Tepanecs in former times praised Ahuizotl, Mexica king. A composition of Nohnohuiantzin of Nextenco, singer and nobleman.

I. Child, Boy, Man

A

Ah, my song begins within the flower house,
And I carry my little one safe in my arms.

1/

Just finished listening to Matt Stoller's Goliath, a political and intellectual history of the anti-monopoly movement over the last ~100 years. It gave me a better understanding of the intellectual history of 20th Century anti-monopoly thinking.

In particular, Stoller draws a distinction I hadn't thought very much about previously: between liberals who favor leaving monopolies in place and regulating them strictly vs. those who oppose bigness as such.

As Stoller tells it, New Dealers erected a complicated legal system designed to tilt the playing field in favor of small companies.

For example, there were laws against discounting to prevent big retailers from using their market power to win lower prices from suppliers and undercutting small retailers. A law capped deposit interest rates to prevent big banks from outbidding small banks for deposits.

Stoller situates Teddy Roosevelt, JK Galbraith, and Ralph Nader in the camp of liberals who (mostly) favored regulating monopolies instead of breaking them up. Also Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and most modern Democratic leaders.

@PinkerbellPixie Once upon a time there was a little badger. She was a fierce little thing, but she felt lonely. And the longer she was alone, the more anxious she got - which made her more likely to snap at all the other animals, which led to them giving her a wide berth.

Then one day she came across a cow crying by himself in a field. He had gotten separated from his herd and was scared. The badger thought the cow was being silly, but he looked so pathetic that she couldn't help but feel sorry for him. "Fine, I'll help you find your herd."

They wandered through the plains together, but the herd was nowhere to be found. Then one day, they came across a fearsome dinosaur picking her teeth with bones. "Hello!" Said the badger, fearless as always, "we're looking for a herd of cows. Have you seen any?"

"... Maybe." The dinosaur replied. "It's hard to remember on an empty stomach tho. Do you have any wine, cheese, or burgers on you?"

"No," said the badger. And then thinking nothing of it, she turned to leave.

"Ah, but I see a burger right here." Said the dinosaur.

The dinosaur advanced on the poor frightened cow who just trembled in terror. Realizing her friend was in trouble, the badger snarled and scratched the dinosaur on the nose with her claws. "My friend is not a burger!" She shouted angrily.

For what it's worth, a THREAD on Gary Player, my dad, and redemption.

My father was politicized by sport. His experiences as a young, sport-obsessed Indian boy gave him his first real sense of the inequities of apartheid...

...seeing white kids playing cricket on perfect greens, in their crisp whites - a world away from what he had.

And because he developed such a strong sense of how sport and politics were intertwined, he loathed sportsmen who used their platform to support apartheid...

...who played a fair and gentlemanly game on the pitch, but off the pitch were cheerleaders for such extreme unfairness and injustice. None drew the ire of my dad more than Player.

It infuriated him that Player could thrive, despite being so publicly unrepentant, "in a democracy that he once did all he could to thwart".

1/11 TO ZANEF

let me be as very frank as possible. If you do not reign in @Sophie_Mokoena who has committed to spitting venomous fake news on Zim & leadership, then forget that this letter will have any consequence on my conscience. The @SABCNews through it's @Sophie_Mokoena

2: has instigated global hatred on Zim & her pple in SA thru spreading naked fake news typical of vendetta journalism bt u never called her out. If yu defend her when she is called to order & to stop publishing unverified falsehoods, then u hv no moral ground to do so on me.

3: @Sophie_Mokoena & @peterndoro masterminded the conspiracy to agenda Zim through a blackmailing campaign dubbed the #zimbabweanlivesmatter which was co-sponsored by fake news peddlers politicians in the @mdczimbabwe & cared not verify them from authorities.

4:It is disturbing to see the @SABCNews importing videos from other juridictions & presenting them as ongoing violence in Zim, presenting Zim like a typical Hobbesian state of nature society of an all against all? That I shall challenge with much vigour as director or myself

5: Each time I have received a call from @Sophie_Mokoena after I post my reservations she has alluded to forces above her whch she has not dared to share w u. Recently she made false alarms abt Beitbridge Border presenting a fake situation as if those who were there were homeless

Some ... personal news:

New York City must navigate the pandemic, and recovery efforts, while battling compound pre-existing conditions: racial injustice, inequality, and climate vulnerability. Local accountability journalism will make all the difference in the world to the shape we emerge in.

The team at @THECITYNY has an incredible record of impactful reporting, and I can't wait to join them in January. Some examples:

Labor reporting for the new world of work:

Campaigning reporting on solitary confinment in New York jails

Woo. Indemand have delivered again.

Do I wait two weeks to open it for my birthday, or just open it now? Decisions, decisions...

I do have other robots coming...

I kind of needed a pick me up, as yesterday was a pretty bad brain day. Plus I've got the Dominus set arriving on the 9th

Ratchet's gun was a pain to get out.
Let's look at Optimus.
He is so delightfully devilish. His purple and dark blue work exceptionally well. I kind of prefer it over the original botcon toy, partially because I don't own that due it's price, partially due to the use of the

Earthrise mold to deliver a more G1SG Optimus. It very much feels like a counterpart to G1 Optimus, as opposed to the general opposite-ness we got with 2008 Shattered Glass. I enjoy that.

He comes with a matrix that looks like it glows, but it's due to only being painted on the

Freezing as you hear the faint noise of one of the latex panthers.
As the creaking noises from around the corner get louder and closer you grit your teeth and turn, breaking into a sprint for the door at the end of the hallway...
You don't even get ten steps before you're caught.

The predator jump into your back, sending the both of you crashing to the floor, rolling slightly before you end up pinned beneath it, stomach down.
"You thought you could outrun me?" You hear her purr, the gentle creaks of her body sending a shiver down your spine.
"Poor prey."

You grunt, lifting and turning your head for just a moment before one of her paws presses down on your cheek, forcing the side of your face against the cool linoleum. She cranes her neck down, grinning as she purrs deeper,
"Look at you~. So indignant. So defiant." She grins.

You feel her paw slip a bit down your face, and suddenly you're made hyperaware of the thick scent of her body - like that of a pool, of synthetic chemicals. You had smelled it before, of course - it was impossible not to, with the number of them in the city.

But this was the first time you'd been so close. Your adrenaline fuelled body taking deep breaths, your nose dragging in more of those fumes...
"Aw, that's cute," she giggles, and you're broken out of your stupor. "That heat in your pants, just from my paw~?"
You suppress a moan.

Comparatively few Americans understand morality and rights. Fewer still understand the foundations of these things—as they have a singular, common, objective root.
1/

Most believe morality to be concerned with or rooted in religion or “decency.” Many believe rights to be things that government or sacred documents bestow upon people. But all of that is wrong.
2/

There is but one fundamental objective morality, one fundamental objective right. That being the unalienable right of an individual to his/her own life, genius, effort, and all the realized potential of these things—meaning property: the fruits of genius and effort.
3/

Anything and everything that violates this fundamental morality is, by definition, immoral. For there is no other objective definition of or standard for morality. Any other definition or standard put forth by anyone is a lie meant to perpetrate evil upon people.
4/

It is this incorruptible, objective standard that lays the foundation for just law. For, like governance, the sole objective purpose of law is to uphold & defend individual rights. Therefore, any law at odds w/individual rights is moot & repugnant to the Constitution.
5/

Jan Westerhoff makes an interesting point. Any assertion of nihilism is effectively a restatement of the liar's paradox:

Continues thread
1/
- DID THE BAD GUYS GET THE SCYTL SERVERS? -
A colleague of Byrne’s informed a friendly congressman about the Frankfurt data transfer. This congressman, unfortunately informed the President about this on an open line

2/
and within 12 hours of that conversation, the US Consulate in Frankfurt was raided “by men in US Army uniforms” but Byrne says, “It’s not clear at all who did the seizing. No one’s really taking responsibility, at the moment.” This would explain Sidney Powell’s comments

3/
during last week’s press conference that she was unsure if the Scytl servers seized in this raid had fallen into the hands of the Bad Guys.

4/
- CHINA ‘ABSOLUTELY’ SWITCHED VOTES -

Byrne says there are three different buckets to understand.

5/
Bucket #1, The technical functionality of these Dominion election systems, “Because they were built by Hugo Chavez in order to make himself El Presidente for Life, they were built with functionality that you would not imagine any legitimate voting system would have.

Thread: When I accepted my OBE I did so in full knowledge there would be backlash from academic philosophers in my discipline, and here it is. The letter contains some basic errors about my view - but that's to be expected as their aim is not truth.

I won't bother correcting errors, as I've made my written position clear many times before. We aren't dealing here with an ordinary philosophical dispute here, but rather a pathological desire to roleplay an ethical stance for public applause. But their stance isn't ethical. 2/

They want me - and by extension others, including their own students - to stop talking about biological sex and its social importance, wherever it could make conceivable difference to a trans person (which in their view, is almost everywhere). So, they want me to stop talking..3/

about the fact that in Canada - the country of the letter-author Jonathan Ichikawa - male sex-offenders have been placed in female prisons alongside women prisoners (also in Ireland and UK). I care about those forgotten women. 4/

They pretend any discussion whatsoever of violence against women, and what policies we should have about woman-only spaces in response, can only imply one thing - "all trans women are violent" (OF COURSE most are not, and this is not the implication). They want.. 5/

@beccalamjig You don’t have even the beginning of a facility for critical thought, do you? Can you read images in a thinking mode, i.e. through a critical semiotic lens?

Let’s begin (it won’t take long, I promise; this is quite straightforward).

You identified the title and the type of person in the picture correctly, well done. This indeed looks to be a book about women, more specifically quite young women.

Now, what is unusual about the photo?

Correct; the blindfold. The young woman, who indeed looks fairly stereotypical, is blindfolded.

What are the semiotics of blindfolding, Becca?

That’s right; being deprived of one’s sight by something that can be put on - and taken off.

In pictures, still or moving, we might associate blindfolding with kidnapping or bedroom play. This sets up what’s called a juxtaposition; two contrasting meanings that together form additional possibilities for interpretation. Let’s settle for a simple one; sex AND kidnapping.

This blindfold isn’t the type used in ordinary kidnapping though, is it?

No; it is made of deep pink satin roses.

What might deep pink satin roses symbolise? What are the associations?

@samtorode @eliehonig @maggieNYT Tell me Why Nancy Pelosi is talking to CCP antifa and fake news during on Jan 6 while PENCE was approving the election count. That little insurgency was a sting. WHILE CONGRESS WAS rushed to safety the undercover Marines (infiltrated antifa) took their laptops in the