BC HISTORY
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

So: by popular demand (my mum) a quick guide.

The 25th amendment was ratified- i.e. became part of the US constitution in 1967. The amendment is basically about clarifying the presidential and vice presidential succession.

 You see, Article 2 of the Constitution says "In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President"

But this is quite vague.
So when W.H. Harrison was the first president to die in office in 1841, it wasn't really clear what powers his VP, John Tyler, would have, nor what he would be called (president? acting president?)

Tyler took the oath and became president. This set a precedent.
Until the 1960s, convention dictated that if a president died in office, then their VP became president, was called the president, and had the powers of the president. Fine.

But this was not spelled out in law. And there were some outstanding questions:
1. If a VP becomes President, then how is the VP replaced?

2. What if the president is unwell, or unable to perform his role for some other reason? How can that be managed?
JFK's assassination in 1963 made Congress decide to actually sort this out- and this is what eventually became the 25th amendment.

It does a few things. First, it sets out in law that, yes, if a president dies (or resigns, or is removed from office), the VP becomes president.
Second, it says that if a VP succeeds to the presidency because of the death/resignation of the president, then the new president (the ex-VP) can appoint a new vice president, as long as Congress agrees.
Third, it sets out what happens if the president is unable to perform their duties-- and how that is determined. This is covered by Sections 3 and 4 of the 25th amendment- and that's what people have been talking about this week.
How does it work? Well, if the VP and a majority of the Cabinet OR a review body appointed by Congress deem that the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office", then the VP immediately becomes acting president.

BUT...
If the president disputes this- by writing a letter to Congress- then he becomes president again UNLESS the VP and majority of Cabinet send another letter (within 4 days) insisting that the president is still unable to fulfil their duties. If that happens...
Both houses of Congress have to meet within 48 hours and vote on the issue. 2/3 of the members of each House would have to agree that the president can't discharge their duties and that the VP should assume the presidency.
(Separately, the President can also write to Congress themselves to say they cannot temporarily fulfil their duties-e.g if they are going to undergo surgery or are unwell. The VP becomes acting president until the president tells Congress he's able to resume his duties.)
Has the 25th amendment been used? Well, the bit about appointing a new VP if the office of VP is vacant has been used. Nixon used it to appoint Ford as his VP after Agnew, his original VP, resigned.

Then when Nixon quit, Ford became President, and appointed Rockefeller his VP.
BUT section 4 of the 25th amendment- about removing a president from office if they are unfit to perform their duties- has only ever been used in fiction (as West Wing fans will know). Not in reality.

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Marina Amaral
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@marinamaral2
(Thread)

To My Old Master: this letter was written in August 1865 by former slave Jourdan Anderson to his old master, Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, who had the audacity to send him a letter asking that he return to work on the plantation.

See next tweets.


"Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdan, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me... 1/

... than anybody else can.

I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. 2/

I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.

Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. 3/

It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. 4/
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Amit Schandillia
Amit Schandillia
@Schandillia
[THREAD: WHEN GREECE RULED INDIA]
1/89
Some time in the 7th century AD, Sanskrit writer Bāṇabhaṭṭa did a biography on his patron, emperor Harshavardhana. It was titled Harṣacarīta and is said to be the first biographical work from the subcontinent.


2/89
Besides abundant references to the Greeks (as Yavanas, derived from Ionians), the book recounts a curious incident of king Vatsapati being ambushed by soldiers emerging from "the belly of a sham elephant."

This section may or may not have been lifted from an earlier work.
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Suhas S. Hardutt
Suhas S. Hardutt
@HarduttSuhas
RANI TARABAI the nemesis of Aurangzeb

The forgotten warrior queen who didn't allow the tyrant to trample upon Hindu rule which was passing through its darkest phase. Courage and resilience. A falling empire, personal tragedies and a vicious enemy. None could shake her.

(Thread)


Tarabai, the Maratha queen (1675-1761), is perhaps one of the most important contributors to the breakup of the M0ghul empire. She prevented the Maratha rule from disintegrating when it was at its lowest with almost all forts in M0ghul hands.(1)

Aurangzeb’s dream of a pan India dominion was destroyed in the hills and forts of western Deccan.(2)

First she survived the M0ghul onslaught, later on carrying the battle into M0ghul territory, raiding and then creating permanent outposts. Had she buckled there may not have been Maratha hegemony in the 18th century, which reduced the M0ghul control to a small area.(3)


She was the daughter of Hambir Rao Mohite, Shivaji’s cmdr in chief, and got married to Shivaji’s younger son Rajaram. She was well trained in sword fighting, archery, cavalry, military strategy, diplomacy and other subjects of statecraft.(4)
HISTORY
Malcontent News
Malcontent News
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Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day (a thread and history lesson)

In 1919 a young World War I veteran electrified a dissatisfied and bitter populace with his speeches in the beer halls of Bavaria

His name was Adolf Hitler

His ideas would lead to 50M dead across Europe
1/25

Hitler as an orator spread a message against communism, socialism, non-traditional ideas, and increasingly the Jewish people

He believed that a conspiracy of leftist, led by the Jewish people sold out Germany in World War I, preventing victory

2/25

Anton Drexler started the German Worker's Party or DAP, in 1918

In 1919 he wanted to rename it the German Socialist Worker's Party but a young Hitler objected to the name socialist being included

Drexler wanted to add the name to garner support with the middle classes

3/25

The DAP was rooted in the concept of an Aryan master race, anti-Semitism, anti-Marxism, was against the World War I armistice, and believed Germany could have won the war

All of these ideas appealed to Hitler, who also believe Germany could have won WWI

4/25

Among Hitler's earliest followers, Hermann Goering heard Adolf speak for the first time in 1919

Goering was a World War I hero and had liked wearing his uniform

He was badly beaten in late 1918 by a group of Communists, the injuries left him a drug addict

5/25
HISTORY
Erik Loomis
Erik Loomis
@ErikLoomis
This Day in Labor History: February 14, 1940. A group of Navajos write a letter of protest against the livestock reduction program the government forced upon them. Let's talk about how the New Deal transformed Navajo work culture in a shockingly negative way.


The four Navajos were named Scott Preston, Julius Begay, Frank Goldtooth, and Judge Many Children. They wrote, in part, "The Navajo Indians are not opposed to grazing permits as such, in fact we believe they heartily approve them if the manner of issuance is fair...

....and the limits are sufficiently high to permit the family to exist.

For instance, in our own district (No.3) the sheep unit is set at 282. If a person has 5 horses, that would be the equivalent to 25 sheep; 1 head of cattle is the equivalent of 4 sheep....

... A Navajo family will consume 150 head of sheep or more per year depending on the size of the family. In addition to this amount, it is necessary to sell for their staples enough to keep the family from starvation....

.... Then each family must be prepared to meet natural losses. We understand the families with smaller than the maximum are not permitted to raise that limit, but those above must be reduced....
HISTORY

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Here is a special thread introducing our series on “The Making of the Islamic World.” It offers 10 episodes about the transformation of Islamicate societies between the 7th and 17th centuries. You can find the series page here: https://t.co/7mL9eWmMmz


This is Chris Gratien posting. I created this series during Fall 2020 for my students as asynchronous material supported by readings and discussion. This is going to be a long thread, but it will be a great shortcut for those looking to make similar use of these materials.

There are two items worth pointing out: 1. This is an overview of the political, social, and cultural history of Islamicate societies. It does not deal with the origins of Islam or many theological questions. It does discuss Islam’s spread and the transformation of Islamic law.

2. This is the first part of a two-part sequence that takes the history of the Islamic world into the present. It emphasizes developments and themes that have particular relevance for later periods.

This is really a multivocal narrative of Islamic history. We feature over 20 scholars from almost as many institutions. Many of those who worked on it, myself included, study the early modern and modern era but have teaching obligations that take us further back in history.
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Ｌａｄｙ Ｂｌａｚｅｓ...
@Lady_Blazes
Oh my Goodness!!!

I might have a panic attack due to excitement!!

Read this thread to the end...I just had an epiphany and my mind is blown. Actually, more than blown. More like OBLITERATED! This is the thing! This is the thing that will blow the entire thing out of the water!


Has this man been concealing his true identity?

Is this man a supposed 'dead' Seal Team Six soldier?

Witness protection to be kept safe until the right moment when all will be revealed?!

Who ELSE is alive that may have faked their death/gone into witness protection?


Were "golden tickets" inside the envelopes??


Are these "golden tickets" going to lead to their ultimate undoing?

Review crumbs on the board re: 'gold'.


#SEALTeam6 Trump re-tweeted this.
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Roger Grosse
Roger Grosse
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Important paper from Google on large batch optimization. They do impressively careful experiments measuring # iterations needed to achieve target validation error at various batch sizes. The main "surprise" is the lack of surprises. [thread]

https://t.co/7QIx5CFdfJ


The paper is a good example of lots of elements of good experimental design. They validate their metric by showing lots of variants give consistent results. They tune hyperparamters separately for each condition, check that optimum isn't at the endpoints, and measure sensitivity.

They have separate experiments where the hold fixed # iterations and # epochs, which (as they explain) measure very different things. They avoid confounds, such as batch norm's artificial dependence between batch size and regularization strength.

When the experiments are done carefully enough, the results are remarkably consistent between different datasets and architectures. Qualitatively, MNIST behaves just like ImageNet.

Importantly, they don't find any evidence for a "sharp/flat optima" effect whereby better optimization leads to worse final results. They have a good discussion of experimental artifacts/confounds in past papers where such effects were reported.
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James Felton
James Felton
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Butt plugs were originally sold as a miracle cure for headaches, acne, and insanity

Thread, article here and h/t: @qikipedia :
https://t.co/Ts84xnmWKJ


For a long time, medicine was pre-occupied with the question "can this be solved by putting something in the butt?"

Take, for example, tobacco smoke enemas, in which 18th Century physicians saw drowning victims and attempted to de-deadify them by blowing tobacco smoke up their rectums with a pipe.


Despite having no medical benefit whatsoever, the practice was popular, and enema kits lined the Thames like lifebelts, ready to be used as one final humiliation for somebody who was crap at swimming.

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Anshul Pandey
Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
THE NOTICEABLE SIGNS OBSERVED ON IMPENDING DEATH(मृत्यु के संकेत या चिन्ह)

As per Skanda Puran, Kartikeya had narrated to Muni Agastya about the signs of the coming death. This is as per this ancient scripture.


If one experiences the air coming out of right nostril continuously then it is observed that the person dies within three years. If the breathing is continuous towards upper side from both the nostrils, then the person can die within two three days.

If the breathing is through the mouth instead of the nostrils then the person may live only for two days. The person should take into coignance these signs of the occurance of any sudden death.

As per astrology when the Surya is in the 7th house and Chandrama is in its own house and the breathing is only through the right nostril then the danger exists. If you see a yellow black coloured figure who becomes invisible immediately then the life span is limited to 2 years.

If any person sneezes, passes urine, stool and semen all together he has only a year more to live. If a person sees blue coloured snakes flying in the sky then he has only six more months to live. If a person sees any thing opposite to its real self like colours
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