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

“Those schools who try to do everything they would do in a face to face context in a remote context are going to come unstuck” Darren Northcott .....

“Worst workload is in schools that are reinventing the wheel rather than using resources like @OakNational “ ....

“Teachers are still being required to do triple and double marking, hand in daily and weekly lesson plans, and some schools are hanging onto flight paths and half term data drops AND now add remote learning to it”

“There is no evidence that one form of remote learning is better than another”

“There are schools with really effective remote learning that don’t use live streaming at all”

Kamala Harris is not eligible to be VP or POTUS under Article II & the 12th Amendment of the Constitution.

Too popular admin - good or bad?
The hype industry is a field in which even two admins, sometimes, can hardly turn around. Most likely they won't. Projects that are launched every day are most often similar to each other.

Only a few projects work stably and efficiently thanks to admins who know what to do. Once having gained popularity, the admin must continue to keep the brand. But whether this is true, let's figure it out.

1/ More thoughts on impasse over organizing Senate/committees. McConnell demands Democrats commit that they won't "go nuclear" to ban legislative filibusters. Schumer says no. The organizing resolution can be filibustered, hence McC's potential leverage. So what's going on here?

2/ Democrats are highly unlikely to make such a commitment, even if McC sees the ploy as a clever way to split the Democrats. Even if Dems *did* agree, both parties know it's not a credible commitment. The last time the party leaders shook hands on such an agreement (2011)...

3/ the agreement didn't stick. McConnell and the GOP's concerted effort to block judicial and executive nominees encouraged Reid and Democrats to nuke most nomination filibusters in 2013-- in a Congress that was covered by the 2011 agreement. Granted, that agreement was informal

4/ in the sense that it wasn't written into either the organizing resolution or one of the "standing orders" Senate agreed to in 2011. (Here, I highly recommend @ProfStevenSmith The Senate Syndrome. If we weren't in a pandemic, I'd pull out my hard copy to pinpoint the chapters!)

5/ Of course, even if agreement had been formalized beyond the 🤝, that wouldn't have stopped the Dems in 2011 (minor nuke of the cloture rule) or 2013 (major 💣of cloture rule) or the GOP in 2017-- once the party felt it could shoulder the political costs of bending the rules.

@Justfirenews Not quite. I’m arguing that they did the best that they legally could when constrained by bad policy. These are hard ethical calls. Do you continue working for an org that you think is heading in the wrong direction, or do you try to do your best from inside?

I think about this a lot. For instance, my university brought back uni students for in-person learning last fall w no surveillance testing or modified housing. I thought that was a reckless decision. But I didn’t quit my job...

Partially bc the balance of the work my colleagues were doing locally, nationally, & globally was so important and I could support that in a small way. Also income and longterm professional goals that I think will help public health beyond covid.

I think my position is justified. I think the work of many of my applied public health colleagues has been heroic and harm-reducing.

But I recognize that there are always ethical minefields. For instance, finders. My research is mostly supported by the federal government. I think it’s ethical to use that money for my work. But what about Department of Defense? They also...

Yes there is an ignorant part of me that loved both Chief Wahoo and the "Indians" name. Growing up as a kid watching Major League, it was cool.

1/

The name change for the Cleveland "Indians" is however long overdue, a great step towards progression regarding how Native Americans and their cultures are perceived in the U.S. and the wider world and I applaud Cleveland's acceptance of this.

2/

Stephanie Fryberg: We found that among Native people who are “highly identified” with being Native — people who voted in tribal elections, attended Native ceremonies or powwows, spoke their language, told Native stories

3/

Pete Buttigieg testifies today on his nomination to run the Dept. of Transportation.

I spent almost a year covering Buttigieg. He refused to speak with me, so I’m going to thread some of the things senators could ask him about today.

In 2011, Jiha’d Vasquez, 16, was found dead, hanged, on a utility tower.

In 2012, Buttigieg became mayor and Jiha’d’s mother asked him for help with the case. Common Council records show Buttigieg was at the meetings where she spoke about her son.

Jones and a local NAACP official wanted help because her son’s death had been ruled a suicide…with no autopsy and no investigation.

Items were missing from his backpack.

Jones told reporter @jharrell6468 that she asked Buttigieg to help get the case re-opened. She says he gave her his card and told her to call.

But when she did, she never got through to him, and no one ever returned her

When we looked into it in 2019, the county coroner told me it would be “prudent” to reopen the case. And also told us the file on the case was missing.

Buttigieg never responded to Jones or to our questions about the case. It remains closed

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

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)

A mini history re: AZ Senate Seat Politics:
McCain was an AZ Senator for 31 yrs over 5 terms.
In 2015 he was primary challenged by Dr. Kelli Ward, an AZ State Senator and tea party fav.
In a surprisingly brutal primary, where McCain poured HUGE 💰 into, he won. (Did he?🤔)

So here's the problem. Most (but admittedly not all) of the R reps & sens are signing up for this charade *because they know it will fail*. Their calculus is this gives them a media / primary advantage for doing it, but can safely discount the logical conclusion of their argument

That works for them because there's basically no personal cost to doing it. And in the US system as it is, not at all clear to me that externally-imposed consequences would ever be remotely on the table. Not criminal; no personal consequences; no political costs. So an easy win.

The problem is that this strategy is now the new normal. Next time the political cost of engaging in this strategy will be *far* lower.

That's fine (but obnoxious) so long as it stays in the realm of symbolic political bullshittery.

But one day it won't be. Maybe that'll be in 2025, maybe 2029, maybe later. But eventually this strategy will coincide with majorities in Congress where the strategy isn't doomed

And on that day, America will break in a way that won't resolve without extreme violence. America *will not survive* the direct blow of a democratic election for the highest office being explicitly overruled by the other party.

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.

It’s 3 a.m. and the 2020 Fall Sitting of the 30th Alberta Legislature has concluded. #ableg 1/10

Jason Kenney and the UCP shut down debate on a number of their horrendous bills, including one to strip away workers protections and supports for the very Albertans on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. #ableg 2/10

The Government also rammed through legislation to accelerate their failed $4.7-billion corporate handout tonight. #ableg 3/10

Earlier in the session, the UCP passed broad legislation to put tolls on new Alberta roads and existing roads that are under construction. They also stripped away rights for drivers injured in motor-vehicle collisions. #ableg 4/10

The UCP pushed forward healthcare legislation with glaring privacy holes that have been flagged by the Information and Privacy Commissioner. #ableg 5/10

The client was always a scary landscape to me. Not necessarily because of the many inconsistencies of the browsers. Not because of the idiosyncratic and plain silly parts of javascript, the chosen language of the client. Not even…

I don't trust the client. This, I always thought, is a good thing. A back-end developer should not trust the client. Every input should be validated and mistrusted, all possible interactions with that less (and less-than)…

I think some of the inherent conflict, not enmity - never that obvious, between front-end and back-end stems from such mistrust. How can we not mistrust them? To us they are a load of hippies using toy languages and eldricht incantations to work around…

But, something has changed. The browser-wars have quieted down somewhat. Javascript performance has begun to approach a qualitatively acceptable domain. HTML has matured and with FlexBox and Grid even CSS is starting to make some sense (if I squint at it).

And now we have Web Assembly. I'm not going to poke into that with my time and effort, I lost enough nights to assembly back at university. After that i took a look at Java and later C#, and decided that life is far too short to spend it managing…

Today the Commons will debate regulations that will essentially tip those who have not yet acquired their EUSS status into the Hostile Environment from 1 July 21. Some thoughts: /1

The regs. are legion. Covering nearly every aspect of the Hostile Environment. These regs have been made using Henry VIII powers. They perfectly illustrate the problem with this power. A single debate on all clauses with no opportunity to amend is not good democracy. /2

The consequences are equally legion. Those who fail to get status will face problems with work, housing, benefits and risk of removal/criminalisation. Yes people with reasonable excuses can apply late to EUSS, but by then the damage may well be done. /3

What of those who apply late? Their status of not being able to work, rent etc. Continues until a decision is made. Increased waiting times and additional hurdles will undoubtedly lead to people delayed in this misery for some time. /4

Doesn’t seem right does it? The Withdrawal Agreement says that those with pending applications have rights until a decision is made (18(3)) so yes it is problematic in ways beyond what is right and just. /5

Part 1
Here’s the Hancock breakdown in case you missed it:
1) it’s the public’s fault
2) I’m not answering that question about the police arresting people - properly
3) act like you’ve got the virus because most of you will soon (herd immunity)
4) the rich can fly in
#marr

Part 2 (had to make a cup of tea):
1) I love the NHS (ha ha)
2) we aren’t heading for a national lockdown (Pinocchio moment)
3) the new variant deflections: respond to different question, use vague language ‘not quite right’, verbal stumble (I’m in trouble)
#marr

Part 3 (the deflection continues)
1) November 5th - December the 3rd anomalies you say and I’m supposed to know what is going on (la la la I’m going to my happy place)
2) The only journalist I deign to give pretend answers to is you, Andrew (please please please be nice)

Part 4:
1) genomic surveillance (who’s a clever boy, eh?)
2) spread the blame: ‘brought to ministers’ attention’
3) no, no don’t show me the video of ‘the Boss’, making him look like a liar ...
4) mention the Archbishop of C (I’m a good person too!)

Part 5:
1) ‘when the evidence is clear’ (when we had to face the fact we’ve endangered even more lives for a Brussel sprout)
2) called my mum (I’m a human being too, guys!)
3) being in government is hard (face palm at this point)
4) the variant is to blame (keep saying it)

A couple of years ago I promised myself that one day I'll be strong enough to be able to talk about my mental health openly. I've made this my goal. I think this is the day, so here's how I ended up diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 37 - a thread...

In 2017 I reached my rock-bottom. I got back home from Philippines, where I failed to deliver my conference talk due to being a mental train-wreck (for which I'm terribly sorry!). I started having suicidal idealizations and I realized it's time to get help.

It's not that I wanted to end myself, but I would see myself dying in all sorts of ways every-single-day. These are called intrusive thoughts and the ones I had were probably one of the worst ones you can experience.

I started therapy in May 2017 and it was surprisingly easy for me to...just start talking. It was a relief that I could just talk to somebody because I pretty much isolated myself from everybody.

Unfortunately, my therapist didn't want to be specific about my problems and everything was just...too generalized? I don't know how to describe this. I wanted to hear concrete facts eventually, like "you're dealing with X and you should do Y to improve".