Hey, Happy New Year's Eve, I want to talk about the federal workforce 1/

Let's say in theory that a prominent retired military leader recently suggested that you could "pink slip 50% of the [defense civilian] workforce = 4x gain in productivity."

This is in no way unique, and is totally acceptable political rhetoric by public leaders.

Bashing the federal workforce as lazy, slow, pointless, non-responsive, intransigent, or even subversive is common, even successful, political commentary on a bipartisan basis.

There are many interesting things about this to me, but I'll start with an aside: do you imagine that a congressman could remark, to applause, that we should remove half the soldiers in the Army in order to experience a massive increase in military readiness? Probably not.

But back to your basic bureaucrat. I'm fascinated by understanding the origin of America's derision for the average federal worker. Because to start, it doesn't match with federal worker's view of themselves.

Max Boot calling for the FCC to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine to reign in Fox News Channel is what happens when a columnist writes with great passion and doesn’t bother to look up the specifics of what he’s writing

For starters, Fox News - and Fox Business News, One America Network, and NewsMax TV — are cable stations and do not broadcast over public

The Federal Communications Commission has little authority over cable channels. The FCC might have a little more authority over Fox News Sunday and other news programs that carried by the Fox Broadcasting

The FCC commissioners decided to revoke the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, a unanimous 4–0 decision involving two Republican commissioners and two Democratic commissioners.

The FCC counsel concluded that the rule had become counterproductive, as broadcasters “had shied away from covering controversial issues in news, documentaries and editorial

I know my opinion doesn’t count for much. I’m a faceless name on Twitter (for valid reasons I won’t dilute this message with). However I have been massively affected by what has taken place over the last few days in Scotland and I wanted to air my feelings around this. 1/

We are being told that sex and gender are interchangeable by many and that changing the wording within the amazing Forensic Medical Services Bill makes no difference to the services survivors receive.

We are told this as though we haven’t been privy to the raging debate 2/

around it for the last few years. In years past people often replaced sex with gender to appease sensibilities around sex. This was an accepted practice because it caused no real concerns or issues in regard to the actual protected characteristic of sex. 3/

However, in more recent times gender is no longer used in the same way. Gender is not defined in law but it is being conflated with sex to the extent that people are suggesting that they mean the same thing. They do not and the law agrees that they don’t. 4/

There appears to have been policy capture at the highest levels, within our government, LA’s, NHS and other orgs. These places have made preemptive assumptions on advice from lobby groups that they proudly display champion badges for and pay thousands of pounds to each year. 5/

One little push-pull I'm running into is that I'm selecting quality securities that appreciate; the "Active Satellite", but I'm sizing positions smaller for risk mgmt. Desire to increase size is there, but it has to be balanced into the overall picture & the portfolio as a WHOLE.

Generally, a normal #ActII #Center investing portfolio is tailored to the individual, but there are some broad principles that I've applied across portfolios. "Passive Plus" generally has a Passive Core & Active Satellite construction with a broad diversified asset allocation.

The Passive Core is usually around 75-80% of the portfolio consisting of low-cost tax efficient index ETF's covering most equity asset classes (Large Core, Large Value, Mid Core, Mid Value, Small Core, Small Value, EM, Int'l LG/SM) w/exposure to ALL at ALL TIMES.

One caveat to the "Passive Core" is that I use (held passively) a very small number of actively managed mutual funds within that 80% of the portfolio. These are GROWTH funds that worth the small extra expense & I have one manager for US Large and Small US Growth & Int'l Large

This part of the portfolio is truly "Core". It doesn't move. It doesn't get sold aside from rebalancing. It didn't get sold in the depths of March. There is a possibility these positions will be in place for decades. The asset quilt changes every year, so we are exposed to ALL

Deciding what to and when to go all in on an idea is super challenging and there’s a lot of bad advice out there

Here’s how it went for me and SwagUp

Here we go 👇

1/ the first important thing is that SwagUp wasn’t the first product/business idea I had worked on

By the time @swaguphq was started I had launched at least 15+ different ideas of varying levels of success growing up

2/ The chances your 1st, 2nd, or even 5th idea/product is going to take off are pretty low

And that’s largely because building startups are less about the product and ideas, and more about markets, timing, and execution

3/ So I think the first key lesson is that the number of swings you take early on is as important as the product you choose to work on

This is where you see many “over night successes” that were really the culmination of years of at bats, even for me at 25, I started at 6 :)

4/ Now back to the founding of SwagUp...

Leading up to it, I had known a bit about the industry, needing swag while launching and app in school, eventually selling flags and custom shirts to fraternities on campus in college

THE SNP'S 12-POINT PLAN FOR AN ILLEGAL REFERENDUM

1. We intend to fool our followers by proposing that we can hold a referendum on Scottish Separation.

2. A bonus is that we can distract them from Sturgeon’s problems in the Salmond inquiry.

3. We'll not tell our followers that we have no legal right to hold a referendum and never mention that it’s a matter reserved to the UK government.

4. We’ll tell them that it’s up to the UK Government to challenge the legality of our actions. Just like someone saying that burglary is not a crime, breaking into your house and then telling the judge it's legal because they said so.

5. We'll not mention that, because it’s illegal from the outset, local authorities, who control polling places, will reject holding it. And The Electoral Commission? Better not say anything about them either.

A thread:

1 GOs don't require the use of images. From my reading, DCT is about the use of images paired with words, to aid retrieval. And as @olivcav has pointed out, Pavio worked with simple ideas and concepts.

2 Most of the research into GOs appears to be unhelpful. Hattie lumped all visual strategies together and reported his finding under the heading, concept maps.

3 Fiorella and Mayer, in LaGA, report that mapping, while having a medium-to-high effect size, also take a long time to complete and are difficult to construct.

4 Both studies appear to concentrate on concept maps and in doing so, omit 30+ other GOs. All of which, I argue, are less complicated to read and construct. Skipping over all GOs, to begin with concept maps, is like a ballerina being introduced to pirouettes before a plie.

5 In my opinion, Fiorella and Mayer’s boundary conditions of time and difficulty to construct, are nonsense.

cw // doxing, threatening, manipulating, death threat

yesterday, an elf threatened to dox my friend and me over petty fanwar.

exposing @kyufella and in doing so—@jungkyukie too.

a thread (PLEASE READ IT FULL)

You know how unwilling men are to accept that their attraction to women is socialized to desire and prefer women closer to a child’s age/ aesthetic? They will deny it until they die even when you point out how that most of what they find attractive represents “youth” 🙂🙂🙃🙃

First: Skin

No wrinkles or blemished skin, even if their skin looks like a Google satellite map

Ask a man over 30 if he finds wrinkles in a woman’s face sexually desirable, see what he says. He should. He likely cant. He doesn’t know how. He’s never learned to see them that way

Second: Fitness

They seek evidence of “health” bc that is associated with youth. We know that as we age, our bodies/ health deteriorates. Women who “work out” are seen as healthier and more youthful, not old and decrepit. However, this doesn’t apply to fat women who exercise

Third: Body Count/Marital status

The assumption is that the older a woman is the more men have been inside of her and if she’s divorced, a man used to own her pussy. This isn’t something pushed as attractive. Older men seeking younger women is connected to this

body count matters for various reasons but the one we don’t talk enough about is sexual insecurity and the fear of not measuring up to past lovers. The more there are, the greater the risk of failure. Younger women are more attractive bc they minimize this risk of embarrassment

As Mark Twain once said, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Here's a thread that looks at Premier Kenney's claim that the international border testing pilot program of air travellers has been a "success." #ableg

At his Jan. 1 presser, Kenney noted the the pilot program had a test positivity rate of 1.48% compared to an overall positivity rate from testing done in the province of about 7%. See video link at approximately 3:15:

Indeed, Kenney's numbers for the pilot project are accurate. Of the 18,021 travellers who had participated as of December 17, 1.48% had tested positive after arriving in

But was it appropriate to compare the results among travellers who were presumably screened before boarding and found asymptomatic to those from recent testing results among Albertans who are overwhelming if not entirely symptomatic or have had a known contact with the disease?

Perhaps, it would have been better if Kenney had compared those results to those done among similarly asymptomatic Albertans. As @CBCFletch noted in an October 23 tweet, 659,000 tests among people with no symptoms found a positivity rate of just 0.11%....

Now that we lost our power, it's time for healing.

Of course, if we were in your position, we would crush you. That's what would make your capitulation so healing.

Yes, we are acting in bad faith. But if you acted in good faith, that would help us a lot, I mean, help the country heal.

We definitely haven't learned our lesson, but if you give us a break, maybe we will.

Admittedly, we have acted very badly. But do you want to sink down to our level? You are better than that, America.

A belief to me proves only the phenomenon of belief, not the content of the belief.

-Carl Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

-Carl Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"

Touching evil brings with it the grave peril of succumbing to it.

-Carl Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"

The individual is so unconscious that he fails to see his own potentialities for decision. Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity.

-Carl Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"

Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything.

-Carl Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"

@amerix @FitFounder 1/16 I tried deep-diving into some of the learnings from @JamesClear . In such simple words Atomic Habits gives such a great framework as to how to go about in life.

Sharing some of those learnings for common benefits.

A Thread

@FitFounder @JamesClear 2/16 Whatever habits are normal in your culture are among the most attractive behaviors you will find.

@FitFounder @JamesClear 3/16 For this exercise, first action item is to write down your desired identity. Only if you are aware of who you WANT TO BE, would you be able to decide the best in the world around you.

@FitFounder @JamesClear 4/
1. The Close :

Find groups with whom you benefit from having a shared identity.

@FitFounder @JamesClear 5/
Action Items :
a. Join a book club if you are a reader
b. Toastmasters if you like public speaking
c. Build Chat(whatsapp)groups with people you share a common identity with eg Those who are equally passionate as you about Gyming or Starting up.

Thread: I compiled all D1 team stats listed on the NCAA site from the last full NCAA softball regular season and here’s what I found from 297 teams.
⬇️

1/

Let’s start with the most important stat of all: Winning.

The two stats correlated most to Winning% are Runs Scored & ERA.

I think most of us could have guessed that scoring more runs than you’re allowing is a good recipe for success.

2/

What is the best way to score runs? A high OPS.

I also added the correlation between Stolen Bases per Game & Runs per Game. I was surprised by this, are you?

3/

Winning in the regular season helps set up a chance for the postseason. The NCAA loves their RPI metric for determining their postseason qualifiers and here’s how Wins, Losses, & SOS correlate to RPI.

4/

Here’s how the postseason looked based on RPI & SOS. I’m not going to elaborate on this. We’ll continue with something more fun.

5/